Sturtz Stuff

If you remember the story of Ben Franklin and his lightning experiment, do you remember the part about protracted theological objections? Me either.  Benjamin Franklin was many things during his lifetime. Among other things he was a scientist, writer, inventor and diplomat. He was also a slave owner and a founding father of America. Around the month of June in 1752 Franklin launched a kite into some storm clouds and made history. Will either he did or someone else did. Franklin was well known for his meticulous notes on each experiment that he performed. Interestingly, Franklin seems to have never made any notes about the kite-lightning experiment.1 So who knows. Prior to his kite-lightning experiment, Franklin had done considerable work attempting to understand electricity. In fact Franklin had achieved a kind of popular notoriety among his scientific contemporaries that he was perhaps the Galileo or Newton of his time. Our modern understanding of electricity and lightning are gre...

Here is a blog post from Roger Olson. If you would like to read this from Roger Olson's blog - click here. I post this because the issue that he is defining and critiquing often seems to pop up among Christians and churches. Regrettably when the issue discussed by Olson pops up it ends up causing all kinds of fear and anxiety. Perhaps a little understanding might lower the fear and anxiety level a bit.         What Is “Fundamentalism” and Who Is a “Fundamentalist?”      Recently I posted here “Why I Am Not a ‘Liberal’ Christian.” Someone asked me to write a similar post about fundamentalism—specifically how to identify a fundamentalist. I’ll begin with what most readers, probably, want to see and what the requester asked for—a series of criteria for identifying fundamentalism (or someone as a fundamentalist). Then I’ll go on to give historical-theological justification for the criteria. Readers who are not in...