Multicultural Ministry Matters

I have previously blogged about my mother, Dr. Patricia Weerakoon: Evangelical Christian, and professional researcher and teacher in human sexual health.   She has written a book on sexuality for teenagers: " Teen Sex By The Book ".  It integrates a lifetime of academic research with the Biblical framework for sexuality.  I highly recommend it as a resource for yourselves and your youth leaders.   Patricia is available to speak at churches & other ministries.  See her website for details.  Some of her talks are on vimeo - here's the one she did at MBM church - search her name for more.   Let's do everything we can to help people live healthy, God-pleasing, productive lives in the midst of an unhealthy, self-destructive, permissive, sex-crazed society.  

Ross Douthat has written a fascinating op-ed piece in the New York Times on the decline of the American Episcopal Church: Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?  He notes, amongst other things, that: [The American] Episcopal [= Anglican] Church ...has spent the last several decades changing ...into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States... In the last decade [2000-2010], average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase... Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance.   But, lest conservative churches get a big head, he also notes:  The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament messag...

Here in Australia we're in the throes of debate about same-gender marriage.  One of the issues in the debate is: from the secular side: "what right do Christians have to dictate how other people live?"; and from the Christian side, the exact same question in reverse: "why bother trying to impose Christian values on non-Christians?  They're unforgiven sinners anyway; just let them do what they want." Here's some thoughts on why Christians care about other people's marriages.  Not specific to the same-gender marriage debate, though of course it has implications for it. 1. Biblically speaking, God instituted marriage in Genesis ch 1 & 2.  It's an aspect of being created male & female, for procreation - babies - and ruling the earth.  Jesus validates heterosexual lifelong monogamous marriage in Matthew ch 19 (and parallels).  There is a consistent Biblical metaphor of God and his people being compared to a groom and his bride, eg: Ezekie...

ABC has two interesting articles on community, the first on secular society, the second on the international Anglican church. There's a good article on the ABC's Drum on the Q&A failure-of-a-debate between Richard Dawkins and George Pell. Try not to let Scott Stephens ' pontificative pollysyllability put you off, it's quite a good social comment. Basic point: we're so used to doing whatever we want, just coz we want to, we no longer have any basis for shared community. Questions without answers in a Kingdom of Whatever . Then John Millbank has an excellent article on the future of the international Anglican communion. Note his presuppositions about the nature of the church: "... the Anglican Communion [is] part of the Universal Catholic Church (it has never been officially identified as "Protestant")..." The Anglican denomination has been "struggling against" Puritanism and Calvinism. And this only goes to show there really ar...

Princeton Theological Seminary has partnered with the Internet Archive to create the Theological Commons digital library . It provides free, online access to over 50,000 theology and religion books from the PTS Library. And don't forget the Christian Classics Ethereal Library , with thousands of documents from church history available on-line and downloadable in various formats for free.

Every ethic is connected with an assumed anthropology and worldview. We instinctively act out of a sense of who we are, and our place in the world. Our answers to the questions “ Who am I?” and “ What am I?” are intimately connected to the question of “ How ought I to be in the world?” In other words, theological anthropology can never be entirely descriptive. A description of human nature always both presumes and entails a prescription for human living. [ Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed : 2-3, emphasis in original] Christian ethics are theological, evangelical and scriptural. As Christians, we conduct all of life coram Deo : God is the ultimate reality, the foundation and framework of the world we operate in, in whom all things hold together. We think of ourselves as beings created by God, beloved by him, and responsible to him. This God we worship is not distant and unknowable, but is God in Christ. The cosmos is Christ-powered; it does not o...

A couple of days ago I got asked whether polygamy is immoral. Here's some biblical ruminations on the topic. God created Adam and Even (Gen. 2), not Adam and Eve and Rachel and Charlotte and... In the OT, polygamy always caused problems. Abraham's son through Hagar was not the child of the promise; Isaac, his son through Sarah his wife, was (Gen 17:15-22). Jacob wound up marrying Leah and Rachel because of Laban's deceit, but he loved Rachel more than Leah, and that caused tension and competition between the women (Gen ch 29-30). Song of Songs portrays exclusive love. "My lover is mine and I am his" (SoS 2:16; 6:3). Jesus validates one-man one-woman in Matt 19:5-6 & Mark 10:7-8, where he quotes the "one flesh" reference in Genesis 2:24. Paul requires monogamy from church leaders: 1 Tim 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6. This cannot be reserved for church leaders alone because they are supposed to be examples to the rest of the people: 1 Tim 3:15. One way...