Other nontheists — both male and female — have shared stories of unwanted sexual attention at nontheist gatherings, including propositions for sex and unwelcome touching. Chatter has ranged from calls for more women to attend nontheist events to personal attacks on prominent female skeptics for discussing harassment. As skeptics, atheists and humanists prepare to gather... Continue Reading

Let me try this illustration. You are trying to impress someone, maybe a girl you want to date. However, your mother insists you take your ugly and socially inept cousin along with you…You know that if you don't cut the cords from this cousin you ain't going to get the girl. Of course, if and when you do get the girl your cousin is still your cousin. You can't hide him forever.

My own conversion was intellectual. I didn't need a quick spiritual fix. Instead, I encountered a compelling and luminous vision of reality so powerful and attractive that it demanded a response.

There will be a visitation Sunday afternoon at 2:00PM with the service following at 3:00 in the Sanctuary at Christ Presbyterian Church, 2323 Old Hickory Blvd. Nashville (halfway between Hillsboro Road and Highway 100)

'Did his medical training impact the way he read the Bible?', 'Did personal rivalries within the British evangelical movement of the 50s shape the way things fell out in the 60s?' and 'Was his understanding of the Puritans something they themselves would have recognized or did it involve infusing a certain amount of whacky eighteenth century Welsh Methodist mysticism back into them?'

Another ability that many pastors have not acquired is casting a vision. Although “the vision thing” is often the subject of satire among ministers, a church suffers if the pastor is not able to align the staff and people and move them toward a goal that they all can embrace or at least accept! In... Continue Reading

I did not know Dale, but I know several men who knew him well. They say the church has lost a great pastor and great friend. As in so much else of life, it is the celebrities that get all the attention, even at death. This story is evidence that we should not succumb to that cultural standard.

Shortly after the Declaration of Independence, Haynes wrote “Liberty Further Extended,” possibly the most powerful argument against slavery from the Revolutionary era. In the 1780s, Haynes began a thirty year pastoral career in Vermont, and was likely the first African American to pastor a largely white congregation.

And I think that is the one thing that is most amazing. How Christianity has found its way in every part of the world. And nothing to me is more touching than to see someone that is lost in the world, come to Christ and have a transformed moment. You see that so often in... Continue Reading

There was a spoiled brat in the New Testament, too. He had lots of money and an outsized sense of his own merit. (Did his parents tell him he was special from his youth?) This young man came to Jesus with a question about salvation. The Scripture says that Jesus took him seriously and “looking at him, loved him.” (Mark 10:21)