Tonight someone (who shall remain nameless) asked me to argue the case that all people should live in tents. I won't go into what prompted the request, but I thought you'd like to hear my answer. Here it is: 1. It's for good reason that many ancient societies preferred tents to permanent dwellings. They allowed …
Reading Harry Potter with Christian eyes
A topical sermon preached by Rod Benson, 6 Jan 2002 Deuteronomy 18:9-13; Isaiah 5:20-21; Colossians 2:8-15; Philippians 4:6-8 Sometimes we forget that the world in which we live is the canvas on which good and evil splash their stories. It might take the rise of Adolf Hitler, or the destruction of the World Trade Center …
A candid friend of historiography
A short commentary on the method employed in Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years “Of making surveys of Christian history, there is no end,” Diarmaid MacCulloch observes in his 1161-page book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Yet he suggests that his approach stands out as more daunting than certain other notable contemporary accounts.[1] As a historian, MacCulloch …
What to do about asylum seekers
A sermon by Rod Benson on Psalm 145 Muriel was a professor of art at a major university. She used to leave her office door unlocked so students and colleagues could walk in and leave messages on her mural-sized bulletin board, a collage of clippings, photographs, sketches and notes. For about a year, two items …
Gandalf, Galadriel and God
Isaiah 40:1-31 One of the sermons of Jonathan Edwards that God used to kindle the Great Awakening in New England in 1734-1735 was titled “The Excellency of Christ.” In it Edwards unfolds the glory of God’s Son by describing the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Christ.” His text is Rev 5:5-6, and he …
iDigress 