Jay Gary poses the 11th question …
The subtitle of my new book is Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith.
Jay Gary (whose work has influenced my own in many positive ways) offers number eleven here.
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Countdown Day 0!
This is the day! Please consider dropping by your local bookstore and picking up A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. If they don't have it, please ask them to order it ... And of course, you can order it online too. Here's the last quote in our countdown of 100 days ...
You may feel it as a curiosity, a desire for better answers than you inherited so far. You may experience it as frustration, knowing that there must be more to faith than you currently know. You may know it as hope, hope that God is seeking humble people whose hearts and lives can be the womb of a better future. You may be carrying this pregnancy now, with symptoms beginning to show - increasing love, joy, and peace; growing patience, kindness, and goodness, strengthening faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In you, your family, your faith community, and circles of friends, among people of peace and faith everywhere, something is trying to be born, indeed, indeed. (259)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available now online)
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Countdown Day 1
Tomorrow the book releases! Thanks to all who have pre-ordered it, and to all who will venture out to your local Barnes and Noble, Borders, or other bookseller tomorrow ...
We’ve gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible. First, we are in a scientific mess. Fundamentalism again and again paints itself into a corner by requiring that the Bible be treated as a divinely dictated science textbook providing us true information in all areas of life, including when and how the earth was created, what the shape of the earth is, what revolves around what in space, and so on. (68)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
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One more on Palestine …
I'll be focusing on the book release for the next several weeks, but I wanted to include this note I just received:
Rev. McLaren - thank you for your wonderful report/response to your time in the Occupied Territories. Christians have, for too long, been complacent in the treatment of the palestinian people. As a Christian whose circle of friends include several muslims and a future rabbi (as well as having an MA in theology my self and a wife who loves anything to do with the Hebrew Bible) I am very pro ANYTHING that allows the diversity of human beings to work together for peace.
I don't know if you met with them during you time in the territories but can I point you and your readers to Sabeel? Sabel is the 'Ecumenical Palestinian LIberation Theology Center'. It is a training center for clergy and lay people alike to engage in non-violent liberation theology in a palestinian context.
http://www.sabeel.org/
Thanks - yes, I am a big fan of Sabeel, and encourage folks to read everything that they produce, especially books by Naim Ateek. I'll be coming back to speech and action on Palestine in the weeks and months ahead ...
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