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Friday, October 7, 2011

Friends on Evangelical Identity

One of the best things about my time at InterVarsity Press (IVP) in the 1990s was working with great authors. Two of the most fun and witty authors I had the opportunity to work with were Scot McKnight and Roger Olson. During my decade long evangelical exile in Boston and California I lost track of their work, but I have reconnected with them in the blogosphere in recent months and I am back to enjoying and learning from them. They are each engaged of late in discussing significant new books that go to the heart of evangelical identity. Scot is discussing his new book The King Jesus Gospel and Roger is analyzing Christian Smith’s book The Bible Made Impossible. These are conversations well worth following for anyone interested in the latest happenings at the center of evangelical thought. In that context I should also mention a blog post at Christianity Today. The last issue of CT on 9-11 was the occasion for quite a bit of critical comment/analysis by me. Nothing so controversial to me in this issue, but an important post at their blog on Perry/Bachmann.

While I was critical of Jim Wallis’ initial post on evangelical identity, I like the broader points being made at the Sojourner’s blog highlighting the diversity of evangelicalism. This from Lynne Hybels was particularly interesting:

In Jesus I also found a radical call to compassionate action in the world. At Jesus’ first public appearance he said, “I have come to set the captives free and to preach good news to the poor.” Then, through his teaching and life of servanthood, he slowly and methodically turned the values of the powerful Roman Empire upside down.

To that I say AMEN and have a great weekend!


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