Killing of John Allen Chau, Controversy re: Pope Benedict's View of Jewish-Christian Relations, Claim of Franklin Graham That Trump Defends the Faith: Idea of Religious Mission Now in News

With the killing of John Allen Chau on North Sentinel Island and controversy about EPope Benedict XVI's understanding of Jewish-Christian relations in the news right now, religious missionizing is unexpectedly in the spotlight of the mainstream media. In the current conversations about Christian mission, it would be short-sighted not to recognize that these conversations are taking place against the backdrop of great fear in some quarters that Christian cultures are being overtaken by Muslim ones, and that Christianity needs to compete with Islam in a way reminiscent of the "Holy Wars" period in the past.

Prof. Paul Harvey on Colorado Fires: Anything but a Natural Disaster

I blogged last week about how the horrific Colorado fires have particularly ravaged Colorado Springs, a bastion of religious conservatism sometimes called the "Protestant Vatican" because of its high concentration of right-wing evangelicals and right-wing evangelical institutions, including the rabidly anti-gay group Focus on the Family.  

Haiti, the Push for Theological Answers, and Liberation Theology's Correction of Christian Necrophilia

Paula Cooey has published  a thought-provoking article at Religion Dispatches about the push for theological questions following the Haitian earthquakes.  As she notes, in the wake of massive tragedies like what has happened in Haiti, people begin to ask theological questions—theodicy questions.  Questions about where God is as millions of people suffer.

And people of faith sometimes respond to those questions with answers—with answers that are altogether too glib.  Answers that implicitly make God responsible for the massive suffering that causes us to question where God is, as people suffer . . . .  Job’s-comforter answers, which explain it all to us, when silence and solidarity with those who are suffering would be a far more adequate theological response than cheap, falsely explanatory answers.