Debaptize yourself?

fire-insurance-thumbSince the time of Constantine, baptism has often been one of the strands holding together the knot of national identity and Christendom.

In other situations, the fear that a child, tainted by Original Sin, might end up in hell for all eternity if she were to die before being baptized has led parents, grandparents and other guardians to seek out baptism in churches as though it might  provide some sort of magical fire insurance.

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How Richard Elliott Friedman Re-Wrote My Bible

Another reason I eventually chose to attend seminary can be traced back to the Documentary Hypothesis.  I didn’t know back then that that is what it is called.  But the popular work of Richard Elliott Friedman changed my world in 2001.

I had only been back in church for about a year and was a member of a congregation that highly valued Bible study and daily Bible reading as a form of personal devotion.   I was reading whatever I could get my hands on.  I picked up a copy of Who Wrote the Bible? and, as it turned out, I got more than I had bargained for.

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APA says conversion therapy just doesn’t work

Last week the APA released a new report regarding sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), more commonly known by some of its more common forms such as conversion therapy, reparative therapy or ex-gay ministries.

The Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation looks at a variety of published research findings from the 60’s through 2007 in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness and/or potential harm caused by the programs in question.

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