7:08 PM

The Scroll 12/20/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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  1.  Five Ways to De-Commercialize Christmas
We’ve created a Christmas monster: a grotesque assemblage of pagan, Christian and capitalist symbolism into something that resembles something we’re both attracted to and repulsed by at the same time. We’re fueled by an admixture of both guilt and greed, while the domestic economy pins its annual hopes on our propensity for spending far more than we have or want to spend...continue reading

2.  9 Things I Want to Say (But Don’t) To Your Curious yet Racially Charged Microaggressions [.....]

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6:11 PM

5 Great Things The Pope Has Done

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Today marks the 77th birthday of Pope Francis. It is bizarre that for so many Christians around the world there is Christianity and then there is Catholicism. For the better part of history the Catholic Church was synonymous with Christianity. Perhaps the disconnect between Catholicism and Protestantism serves as a sign of just how exceptional this pope is since so many non-Catholics are identifying with his theology and gravitating toward him like the international icon he is. I don't know how many people view the pope as a [.....]

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6:09 PM

Madiba: Rest in Peace to an Icon

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I wrote a post dedicated to Fred Hampton, the 21 year old Black Panther Party leader who was gunned down in his sleep on December 4, 1969, but in light of today's events it would seem more appropriate to dedicate a post to Nelson Mandela. John 15:13 states, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." I quote this verse a lot when discussing my heroes because they all understood love and ultimate sacrifice. Although Nelson Mandela did not suffer the same fate as [.....]

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9:19 PM

3 Popular Spiritual Cop-outs

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I once went on a twitter rant about what I described as spiritual cop-outs. I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit the topic. This time a little more in-depth. The problem I found was our tendency as Christians to create scapegoats and deflect blame when we reflect on our spirituality, whether it be sin in our life or our inability to live out the biblical call in a way that is pleasing to God.

This is not an opportunity to point fingers, rather a chance to [.....]

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9:44 PM

The Scroll 11/22/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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1.   White Men, Black Female Bodies, and Renisha McBride
Some might be scratching their heads, finding it difficult to understand why — in 2013, the same year that we commemorated the 50-year anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings (in which four little black girls were killed by white Klansmen who were never arrested) and celebrated “how far we’ve come” as a society — we also witnessed the similarly unjust execution of Renisha McBride...continue reading  2.   Do You See This Woman?: Renisha McBride and the Imago [.....]

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4:48 PM

Hollywood: Whitewashing the Bible

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Following the success of the History Channel's mini-series, The Bible, which appeared weekly last March, Hollywood seems to have renewed an avenue in which Biblical adaptations are allowed to enjoy a significant amount of limelight. Two blockbuster titles are to set to be released in 2014; Paramount Picture's Noah and 21st Century Fox's Exodus. These two films both boast a star-studded cast as directors Darren Aronofsky and Ridley Scott hope to astonish audiences by combining stunning visualizations with two of the most popular accounts from the Old Testament, the Great [.....]

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5:50 PM

The Scroll 11/15/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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1.   To Redeem the Soul of the Black Church Fifty years ago a preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. came with others to our nation's capitol, challenging America to "live out the true meaning of its creed." The son and grandson of activist preachers, King was a child of the black church, a church born fighting for freedom. Accordingly, he and others organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 not simply to dismantle segregation but with this motto: "To Redeem The Soul of America...continue reading 2. [.....]

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12:39 PM

Lost Ones

posted by Ryan Herringin 2 comments

Recently I was blessed to be in the presence of someone who I love dearly. This individual and I have not had the opportunity to hang out in quite some time. Naturally, I was delighted to finally get the chance to sit down and catch up, although, because of social media there was not much that we did not already know about, as far as what was happening in each other's lives. In fact, I was fully aware of the trajectory this person's life had begun to follow [.....]

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5:18 PM

The Scroll 11/08/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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1.  The Jesus Legend: What Did Early Christians Really Believe?
I think it is fair to say that there are aspects of the Christian faith that rail against modern sensibilities. The miracle stories, the virgin birth, the resurrection and ascension… these all operate outside the framework of contemporary science. One of the common accusations leveled against Christianity is that these stories were developed over a period of time, adopting surrounding philosophies and mythologies, and sculpting a legend of Jesus that eventually gave birth to Christian theology generations [.....]

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4:44 PM

Breast Cancer Awareness: In The Eyes Of The Beholder? by Tiffany Fox

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Many of us define Breast Cancer Awareness Month, also known as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM), as an annual health campaign organized by major breast cancer charities every October to (1) increase awareness of the disease and to (2) raise funding for research into its cause, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure.
Critics define Breast Cancer Awareness Month by conflicts of interest, mostly between corporations sponsoring breast cancer awareness while profiting from diagnosis and treatment. For example, Breast Cancer Action, a breast cancer advocacy organization, sites that October is now more of a public relations campaign that avoids discussion of the causes and prevention of breast cancer and instead focuses on “awareness” as a way to encourage [.....]

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5:23 PM

The Scroll 10/25/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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1. Ja Rule Exposes My Sinful Heart
This week Marc Lamont Hill of HuffPost Live interviewed rapper Ja Rule about life after a two-year prison sentence, his new movie, “I’m in Love with a Church Girl” and his newfound faith. Much of the hip hop community has been abuzz with the news of Ja’s faith. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the full 19-minute segment...watch here 2. “I have disabilities…I am broken but not because [.....]

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5:42 PM

The God of Rap

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On the opening night of the Yeezus Tour, multi-platinum, Grammy award-winning rapper Kanye West brought out an actor to portray Jesus during his concert in Seattle. Most of the time when I see "White Jesus" depicted, I don't get offended because I don't find it to be historically accurate. But between this and the title and theme of Kanye's last album, Yeezus, I was initially fed up. His antics were disrespectful, offensive, and just plain unnecessary.

Before I began to write this post I searched for concert [.....]

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5:21 PM

Life Is Tough...So Is God by Brandon Herring

posted by Ryan Herringin 1 comments

Life is hard. No matter who you are at some point in time you have felt this overwhelming feeling. For many of us it centers on money or family or life decisions or all of those and more. Interestingly enough no one seems to be able to escape this feeling. Not even the rich and famous are immune; in fact in some ways maybe it takes an even greater toll on them. How often do we see troubled celebrities, people that we just wish we had half of what they have or could be half as famous as they are? How often are we baffled when we hear that our favorite celebrity, that we love and envy, has been admitted to rehab [.....]

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6:11 PM

The Scroll 10/11/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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1.  WATCH: God's Justice Never Shuts Down — Jim Wallis on #FaithfulFilibuster
Jim Wallis talks about the #FaithfulFilibuster outside the Capitol Building and offers a reading of his conversion text, Matthew 25...watch here 2.  Where There Is No Guidance
Proverbs 11:14 speaks volumes in the context of the black community. It is no secret that African American communities tend to be plagued with poor school systems, poor medical access, high incarceration rates, broken families, and of course [.....]

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12:19 PM

Let’s Spend Our Time In The Service Of Justice by Rev. Alvin Herring

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At the end of the summer many of us watched the verdict in the Zimmerman case with great concern, even worry. We sat with knotted stomachs, aching hearts, and frazzled nerves waiting for a just verdict but anticipating one that would once again bring us to a very unsettling place around the issues of race and violence in America. We’ve been here too many times before – stuck in a vortex of sorts, where we struggle mightily for a moral anchor for our feelings, our fears, and our outrage but knowing all the while that as a society we lack the moral courage to confront ourselves and our history.
As a Black clergy person, who is working [.....]

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6:38 PM

The Scroll 10/4/13: Top Five Christian Articles of the Week

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1. Dispensationalists Are Wrong – Things Aren’t Getting Worse [Questions That Haunt]
Dispensationalism is a recent and minority opinion. Invented in the 19th century, it is premised on a particularly literalistic reading of particular Bible passages in Revelation, Daniel, and certain sayings of Jesus. In order to be a Dispensationalist, for example, one must completely ignore the realities surrounding the apocalyptic genre of literature in the Ancient Near East — realities that make sense of the “revelations” [.....]

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