Posts tagged "News"
Book Review: "Good News for Anxious Christians" by Phillip Cary
Books / Church / Religion / Reviews

Book Review: "Good News for Anxious Christians" by Phillip Cary

by Todd Brewer on Mar 23, 2011 • 3 Comments

In the ever-shifting landscape of American Evangelicalism, it seems that many people are attempting to correct what they perceive to be failures in the system. Everyone thinks something is wrong and whatever it is, it needs to be fixed now.

Within this debate, Phillip Cary’s book “Good News for Anxious Christians“, provides an unique diagnostic of both ourselves and the state of modern evangelicalism. As a professor of philosophy at a leading evangelical university, Cary hears from his students how the “new Evangelical theology” has translated into the core beliefs and practices of our youth. What…

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Ideas or the Human Heart?
Church / News / Religion / Suffering

Ideas or the Human Heart?

by Stampdawg on Mar 4, 2011 • 4 Comments

From a BBC news flash yesterday:

Pope Benedict has rejected the idea of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ’s death, in a new book to be published next week.

Tackling an issue that has led to centuries of persecution, the Pope argues there is no basis in scripture for the Jewish people to be blamed.

It’s a good thing for the Pope to say this, of course. But the BBC article (read it here) is misleading in that it repeatedly gives the casual reader the impression that this idea is the result of groundbreaking exegetical research. That’s of course always going to be…

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Women Are More Forgiving Than Men?
Forgiveness / Gender

Women Are More Forgiving Than Men?

by David Zahl on Feb 21, 2011 • No Comments

At long last, the truth is out! A brief and very interesting but – let’s face it – pretty inconsequential report from Medical News Today, concerning a study from The University of the Basque Country, ht JD:

According to the study, parents forgive more than children, while women are better at forgiving than men… “A decisive factor in the capacity to forgive is empathy, and women have a greater empathetic capacity than males”, Carmen Maganto, co-author of the study and a tenured professor at the Psychology Faculty of the UPV, tells SINC.

What drives forgiveness? Children believe that “one…

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Humor / Religion

Sharing the Good News?

by DPotter on Feb 2, 2011 • 3 Comments

Top MBird News Pieces of 2010
Celebrity / Film / Grace in Practice / Humor / News / Politics / Sports / Year In Review

Top MBird News Pieces of 2010

by Bryan J. on Dec 31, 2010 • 2 Comments

In the age of the 24 hour news cycle, here are my picks for Mockingbird’s Top News Stories of 2010

10) The Rent is too Damn High, November 2010

Jimmy McMillan, candidate for Mayor of NYC, has found the solution to all of New York’s problems. The rent is just too damn high. Take the rent part out, replace it with unmerited grace, and you pretty much have Mockingbird’s philosophy of preaching- repeat the gospel over and over again till people start to change.

9) Kill the Ump! Grace & Baseball, June 2010

Jim Joyce, professional MLB umpire, blows a perfect…

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Michael’s Michael
Music / Reviews

Michael’s Michael

by David Zahl on Dec 14, 2010 • No Comments

So today marks the release of Michael Jackson’s first “real” posthumous record, Michael, and the verdict is predictably mixed. It’s certainly not the tour-de-force he was rumored to be working on in the years leading up to his death (high profile collaborations, for example with will.i.am and Ne-Yo, are nowhere to be found), but it is also not without its charms. In fact, if you can overlook the god-awful opening “Hold My Hand” (really an Akon solo track with Michael as guest), you’ll find some near-prime MJ. Chief among them, “Behind the Mask,” a smoking collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto that…

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Another Week Ends: Self-Evangelism, Jay-Z, Paradoxes, Susan Boyle, NASA, Friday Night Lights
Church / Music / Philosophy / Science / Sermons / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Self-Evangelism, Jay-Z, Paradoxes, Susan Boyle, NASA, Friday Night Lights

by David Zahl on Dec 3, 2010 • 1 Comment

1. Another scorcher from our 2011 NYC conference speaker Mark Galli entitled “Evangelizing Ourselves”, in which he unwittingly sums up much of our operating philosophy:

How do we talk about our faith without making others feel denigrated or angry? For one, we can talk about our faith so that everyone feels equally denigrated and equally inflamed!… So that everyone—even the Christian—recognizes his or her sinfulness…[and his or her] desperate need of a savior. If we can do that, a couple of remarkable things will happen. First, we will recognize afresh that we’re not talking about our religion versus…

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Mere Anglicanism 2011
Bible / Conferences / Law / Theology

Mere Anglicanism 2011

by Jacob on Dec 2, 2010 • No Comments

The 2011 Mere Anglicanism conference this year is held in thanksgiving for the faithful witness of Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison to the Word of God’s Grace. It will be held at St. Phillips Church in Charleston S.C. January 20-23. Some of Mockingbird’s favorite theologians will be speaking at the conference.

This is one of my favorite quotes from Bishop Allison:

“A sergeant told a grim joke to his trainees during the Second World War, which shows the real flaw in the Pharisaic understanding of Christianity. A man stopped on a dirt road to help get another man’s car our…

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All Who Wander Are, um, Lost
News / Psychology / Religion / Science / Suffering

All Who Wander Are, um, Lost

by David Zahl on Nov 16, 2010 • 2 Comments

Nothing we didn’t already know about the human propensity to live anywhere other than the present, but it’s quite amusing to hear it put in such scientific terms. When geared to the future, “mind wandering” is simply the mode of anxiety/fear, and when geared to the past, the mode of guilt/anger, no? Regardless, it seems to be a pretty accurate measure of faithlessness. Via Medical News Today, some real humdingers of understatement:

The research, by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, is described this week in the journal Science. “A human mind is a…

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Music

MJ Breaks The News

by David Zahl on Nov 9, 2010 • No Comments

Old news by now, but slightly dated beat aside, it’s a fantastic tune, and a great blast of vintage MJ-victimhood spleen-venting:  True, it may not be for us to know the times or dates the Father has set, but occasionally we catch a glimpse: only 34 days until MICHAEL is released! [Click here to watch part of the interview Oprah did with his family yesterday.]

p.s. Never thought such exciting posthumous MJ news could come close to being matched, but word has just come out that Mbird heroes Pulp are reuniting! This blogger has never forgiven himself for missing their secret show…

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THE MOCKINGBIRD SINGS: Pensacola & Good News for People with Big Problems, Plus
Addiction / Conferences / Film / Humor / Literature / Music / Poetry / Sermons / Theology / TV

THE MOCKINGBIRD SINGS: Pensacola & Good News for People with Big Problems, Plus

by Mockingbird on Nov 8, 2010 • No Comments

1. The Pensacola Mini-Conference is a mere 11 days away! November 19th and 20th are your long-awaited chances to experience Mockingbird in all its physical, um, glory. The theme is “God’s Grace When We Need It Most: The Gospel For Hard Times,” and we promise it will be more fun than it sounds (you can read the previews of the content here), especially with the Mockingfather himself, Dr. Paul Zahl, speaking! Believe it or not, what we’re most looking forward to is PZ’s pre-conference seminar on preaching/ministry/life – not that any of us need help with our sermons, of course…!

Register…

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Funny Because It’s True
Bible / Comics / Theology

Funny Because It’s True

by Aaron M. G. Zimmerman on Oct 28, 2010 • No Comments

From the 9/13/10 issue of the New Yorker:

St. Paul: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment…” (Romans 12:3)

Jesus: “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23, italics added)

St. John: “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people…

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Thursday Afternoon Blues: Blind Willie McTell and Mark Miller
Music / Suffering / Theology

Thursday Afternoon Blues: Blind Willie McTell and Mark Miller

by Mockingbird on Jul 22, 2010 • 3 Comments

Mockingbird friend Mark Miller has just released an amazing record called “Ain’t It Grand: The Gospel Songs of Blind Willie McTell.” It’s really quite astonishing – gospel blues of the highest order with some jaw-dropping slide guitar. Get your copy today, and then tell everyone you know! We need to support this very worthy project. The music speaks for itself, as do Mark’s powerful liner notes:

My fascination with the music and life of Blind Willie McTell began on a seemingly mundane Tuesday morning in September 2009. I was searching through my iTunes for songs when a title that both intrigued…

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Literature / Religion / Testimony

Sinners Welcome

by Jeff Hual on Jun 25, 2010 • 2 Comments

Mary Karr was recently interviewed by Religion & Ethics News Weekly:

Obesity and the Bound Will
Food / Politics / Suffering

Obesity and the Bound Will

by Stampdawg on Jun 4, 2010 • 2 Comments

NEWS FLASH: there’s a really interesting Mockingbird thread going on right now, started by Jeff Dean and Dave Browder, on a proposed tax on sugar sweetened drinks like Coke. It’s already quite long — take a look!

The thoughtful comments started by Herr Browder made me think of an extraordinary cover article in THE ATLANTIC a couple months ago called Beating Obesity. It touches on a huge number of things, including all the different public health strategies being considered — one of which is the soda tax. But even more important it is written almost in the form of a personal…

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