Presby-Musings

As we are quickly approaching a hotly disputed national election, I thought I would engage in some reading on faith and politics.  I'm also preaching a two-part sermon series called "God's Politics" the Sundays before and the after the election, and I wanted to start preparing. The book I am reviewing and recommending today is  Honoring God in Red or Blue: Approaching Politics with Humility, Grace & Reason  by Dr. Amy E. Black, Associate Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College . In a recent interview, Black explained why she wrote Honoring God in Red or Blue: "My book came out of an adult education class I taught at my church and from my work teaching at a Christian college. I recognized that many thoughtful Christians didn't know as much about the political process as they thought they needed to be active participants and a lot of folks wanted a basic primer about how it all worked.  I'm also concerned about the tone of contempor...

Forged: Writing in The Name of God, Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are by Bart D. Ehrman , Harper One (2011) Book Description: Bart D. Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus, Interrupted and God’s Problem reveals which books in the Bible’s New Testament were not passed down by Jesus’s disciples, but were instead forged by other hands—and why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit. A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan , Ehrman’s Forged delivers a stunning explication of one of the most substantial—yet least discussed—problems confronting the world of biblical scholarship. In Forged , Ehrman reveals:  The Apostle Peter was illiterate, and therefore could not have written two letters (1 & 2 Peter) credited to him in the Bible. Six of the Pauline letters in the New Testament are forgeries. The First Boo...