Scot McKnight opens The King Jesus Gospel by relating several stories about the confusion of the word ‘gospel’. He reckons evangelicals by and large use the word to be ‘how you are saved’ and that this results in a culture where the key thing is to get people ‘over the line’. […]
Last month, Wendy Alsup blogged about a new wave of complementarians and so ensued a great deal of discussion on the internet. (Catch up here.) People asked, who are the ‘old’ complementarians?; is it divisive to call this wave ‘new’, as if you’re setting yourself against others (maybe Mark Driscoll?); […]
Like so much of Rob Bell’s work, What We Talk About When We Talk About God is really a sort of sermon: accessible, full of anecdotes, and with a clear persuasive thrust. The content, too, is what we might have expected. When We Talk About God shows Bell drawing on his […]
In 2010 we hosted a debate for our theological college: Will the real Mars Hill please stand up? The debate invited the audience to compare and contrast two well-known American megachurches and the leaders behind them, Rob Bell and Mark Driscoll, whom we saw as representing powerful and differing forces […]
New Calvinism is a phenomenon in American Christianity. Now its proponents want to take it offshore, claiming inroads in the UK, Australia and South Africa. Can it become a truly international movement, a movement that is cross-cultural and culture-portable?
I recently got a copy of Rob Bell’s Love Wins: a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived (I’ve got Kindle on my computer). I’m just starting to read it and thought I’d make a few comments about how I’m approaching it.
America has long been seen as the premier Christian nation (if such a thing is possible). Since its foundation, there has been an amazing amount of Christian language and influence embroidered in American public life. And the thing that evangelicals from the rest of the world have found exciting, like […]
Meet Jesus at uni 