Month January 2007

You can’t choose your family . . . or can you? Last week ABC News reported that 40-year old Jenna MacFarlane has adopted new parents.  Feeling estranged from her own family, MacFarlane took out a personal ad that began “Single…

In a recent post, taxi driver Keith Moon was quoted as saying that entertainer and post-Wittgensteinian linguistic philosopher, Charo, claimed in the back of his cab that Del-Boy was converted at a Stryper concert.  It has since emerged that this…

It is always nice to receive constructive comments and questions from readers of ref21.  A question I received with reference to the sin of slavery (from my reply to Susan Wise Bauer) reads as follows: “Could someone kindly show me how this…

Thanks, Phil, for your helpful comments regarding feminism.  In light of this, I would like to say that I am sympathetic to the reasons why women are drawn in a feminist direction.  While I do not believe that patriarchy (biblically…

Once again, I put aside joking around just for a minute to ask blog readers to pray for my colleague, Alan Groves, and his family, as he struggles with cancer.  See

From Dave Shiflett, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity (New York: Sentinel, 2005). Shiflett wonders what accounts for the diverging growth rates of liberal (on the decline) and conservative (on the rise) churches in America.  He…

I see that Rick Phillips has already written a full-length response to Susan Wise Bauer’s Books & Culture review of Finally Feminist, a new book by John Stackhouse.  I have not read the Stackhouse book, but based on the summary in…

Taking some exception to my recent theological slur on his beloved sport of cricket, an English friend has written to correct my athletics and my theology: “I feel moved to defend cricket against the charge of pelagianism recently made on the…