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Common Ground and a Big Table for All Citizens

EVANGELICALS ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES: SUSTAINING A RESPECTFUL POLITICAL CONVERSATION HAROLD HEIE ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014 176 pp. $17.99 At my Christian university, political science majors make up less than 10 percent of the student body. When I talk to other students about voting, politics and faith, they tell me that they lack interest partly because of the nasty arguments. The religious right, Red Letter Christians arguing with the religious right, fighting about gay rights, refusal to take climate…
Julia K. Stronks
September 1, 2014
Poetry

God Likes Hair Salons

I can’t believe God lives outside the house of earth, beyond the lawn of stars, and the fenced-yard universe, out in the timeless cold, his raw breath, his radon brow, ridged, veiling nebular eyes, and his fingers, freezing as he writes down names in a book, for later. Of course God prefers the clamour of pubs, the company of welders and waitresses, the warm feel of a beech wood pool cue, the chatter on wharves and in hair salons, the…
Stephen T. Berg
September 1, 2014
Essays

“Like the wideness of the sea?” 15 years later

Compelling Analogy by Steve Bouma-Prediger Lew Smedes was one of my esteemed teachers when I was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary in the mid-1980s. I vividly recall his stimulating class titled “Calvin and the Christian Life.” I had read his popular book “Sex for Christians” (Eerdmans, 1976) for a religion class as a student at Hope College in 1978 and read everything he wrote in the old Reformed Journal in the 1970s and 1980s. Lew was a larger-than-life person,…
David E. Timmer, Annie Reilly and Elizabeth Vander Haagen
September 1, 2014
Essays

God and the Seattle Seahawks

MAY/JUNE 2014: ESSAY by Matthew Kaemingk If we would know ourselves, the ancient Temple at Delphi advises, the study of sports in all its connections to the rest of art and life would seem to be an ideal quest for understanding of self and the world. —Simon Kuper, athletic anthropologist I am a rabid fan of the Seattle Seahawks. I am also a Christian theologian. When I claim to be a rabid fan, I mean what I say. Consider the…
Matthew Kaemingk
May 1, 2014
Poetry

Poetry by Rose Postma

MAY/JUNE 2014: POETRY by Rose Postma The Apostle Peter Contemplates Logical Fallacies Somewhere in Northwest Iowa, a Silver Laced Wyandotte grips the gray-cracked wood of a fence post with his claws. He puffs his feathers in the black-cold, shakes his matched set of comb and wattles once, draws in breath to expel through the syrinx, and crows. The sun rises. Post hoc ergo propter hoc: the sun is not controlled by the cock, but it could be—the way a question…
Rose Postma
May 1, 2014
As We See It

Feeling Minnesota: The Art of Not Winning

MAY/JUNE 2014: AS WE SEE IT by Jason Lief "So who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?" All week it was the same question. "I hope they both lose," is the response I gave. "Oh, but Peyton Manning—" Blah, blah, blah. Yes, great football player, even better Saturday Night Live host—his United Way skit is comedy gold. Still, I wanted him to lose. "But the Seahawks, come on, they've never won a Super Bowl. Surely you'll root for…
May 1, 2014
As We See It

Coincidence or Correlation?

MAY/JUNE 2014: AS WE SEE IT by George Brown Jr. What caught my attention that afternoon was the word "Rogue": someone dishonest, a nonconformist or playfully mischievous. The word shone out in bright chrome letters on the back of the SUV stopped in front of my car. While I waited for the traffic light to change, I thought "Rogue" was an apt name for the way the SUV had been driven the past few blocks. Perhaps in a hurry to…
George Brown Jr.
May 1, 2014
Essays

Church and State: In Defense of Augustine’s Allegory of the Two Cities

The ongoing political debate on the separation of church and state has been all too ambiguous in the use of political arguments of St. Augustine of Hippo. Politicians who include George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have appealed to the elements of Augustine's legacy. Particularly the critics of Augustine's allegory of the two cities have often relied on his writings to argue for a strict church-state separation. Yet in contemporary political uses of Augustine, it remains unclear what…
Peter Rozic
May 1, 2014
Poetry

Liturgy for March, Life, and Walking with Jesus

MARCH/APRIL 2014: POETRY by Barbara Crooker Liturgy for March So, here you come again, scratching the ground with your thin green nails. Go ahead, unbutton your purple robe, let us see clear into your golden heart. Let us believe in the resurrection of the earth. Forgive us now our unbelief. Life After "Starfish," by Eleanor Lerman This is what life does. It hits you like a stone through the window in the form of a phone call from your son-in-law…
Barbara Crooker
March 1, 2014