Dr Paul Allen

The Vatican is equating the teachings of Jesus with those of Buddha in its first interfaith message since Pope Leo XIV’s election, signaling the pontiff’s desire for continuity with the dialogical approach of Vatican II and Pope Francis to the world religions. The pope’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue sent its greetings to Buddhists on Monday on the occasion of the festival of Vesak, likening Jesus's message in John’s gospel to the teaching of the Buddha in the Dhammapada—an anthology of teachings in the Buddhist canon. “The Buddha taught that, ‘he who is free from craving and attachment is perfect in uncovering the true meaning of the Teaching, and knows the arrangement of the sacred texts in correct sequence — he indeed is the bearer of his final body,’” the Vatican noted. “He is truly called the profoundly wise one, the great man” (Dhammapada, Ch. 24, V. 352),” the document, titled 'Buddhists and Christians in Liberating Dialogue for Our Time,” stated, marking the “sa...

We all have questions about death. What is death? Why do we die? Why do we all die? Why is death so scary? Why did Christ die? Why do Christians have to die? How can I face the death of someone I love? How can I prepare for death? How can I help others prepare for death? What happens after death? To answer these questions, we need to look to Scripture and see what God has to say. The Bible is God’s Word and is completely reliable and true. If the Bible tells us something about death, then we can stake our lives on it. We also have a lot of help. Our spiritual ancestors thought profoundly and practically about death. Throughout the church's history, pastors and teachers have sought to help God’s people face death in light of the riches of biblical truth. In the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago, the church recovered the gospel in its full biblical integrity. Martin Luther, John Calvin, the British Puritans, and their spiritual heirs have left us rich reflections on suffering...

 ‘Queers for Palestine’ The headline declared, “WATCH: ANTI-ISRAEL ‘QUEERS FOR PALESTINE’ PROTESTERS BLOCK ACCESS TO DISNEY WORLD.” In this story, we learned that tensions “rose when anti-Israel protesters with the group Queers for Palestine blocked traffic on Saturday outside Disney World in Orlando, Florida.” Queers for Palestine? But of course! That’s like African Americans for the KKK or Jews for Nazism. A delightful mix. You can feel the chemistry. Never mind the fact that there are precisely zero queers in Palestine — because, as many have pointed out, such people would be instantly marked for death by the terrorists in charge. GLAAD So Sad Finally, we read that “Jennifer Lawrence Calls Mike Pence Gay at GLAAD Media Awards: ‘Conversion Therapy Is Not Real – Even Though You Think It Worked on You’.” After making a crude joke about gay sex and noting that “she once fell in love with a gay man but eventually realized her love would never be reciprocated,” Lawrence chose to attac...

Riley Gaines The forced evolution of language is a key aspect of the LGBT movement’s colonization of culture. Those of you paying attention will have noticed that all sorts of new terms have cropped up in the past few years – new pronouns, neo-pronouns, new genders, and more. These terms are not part of the natural evolution of language, but are a top-down imposition, dictated by ideologues to the elite class, who obediently begin using them in politics, academia, and the press.  One of the most succinct responses to this shift in language came from the late comedian Norm MacDonald, when he was attempting to explain to another comedian what the definition of the term “cisgender” is. “Cisgender” is a term activists use to describe a male who “identifies” as male. Or as Norm put it: “It’s a way of marginalizing a normal person.”  By adopting someone’s “preferred pronouns” or agreeing to declare your own, you are granting tacit approval to an entire ideology. Pronouns are premise...

In a recent segment, Tucker Carlson, someone who needs no qualifying remarks, made some statements about the relationship between Transgenderism and Christianity. Carlson’s comments came in the aftermath of the shooting of six people, three adults and three 9-year old students, at a private Christian school in Nashville, TN. The shooter, someone called “Audrey Hale,” was a transgender person. As far as I have been able to discern from media coverage, Hale was a biological women who identified as a man. This would make the shooting an extreme rarity since less than 1% of mass shootings in American have been carried out by women. However, to the point about Carlson’s commentary on the incident (which the reader should watch prior to continuing), there are important insights to glean from the Fox host’s broadcast. Carlson makes some initial points of interest in the commentary that I believe are fairly accurate. These provide an appropriate cultural context to the story. It is a context w...

As a citizen of this country, I was shocked and profoundly disturbed by the  murder of two police officers and an innocent civilian  by the Trains in Wieambilla in December 2022. This was a heinous crime that should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. As a Christian theologian, I was also startled to hear the Queensland Police describe this crime as  “a religiously-motivated terrorist attack”  on the basis that Nathaniel, Gareth, and Stacey Train subscribed to “a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system, known as premillennialism.” Listening to last week’s  press conference conducted by Deputy Police Commissioner Tracy Linford , it was hard to resist the impression that she was struggling to understand the belief system she had been tasked with explaining. For instance, she stated that “premillennialism” is the belief: "that Christ will return to the earth for a thousand days and provide peace and prosperity, but it will be preceded by … a period ...

IS GOD A MALE? If I were to guess, I’d say many Christians’ vision of God the Father is a grandfatherly figure with a beard who lives in the sky. Or maybe he has a deep, soothing voice like Morgan Freeman. We remember that God the Father sent his Son to the earth. Jesus the Son was born as a Jewish man. All these “pictures” of God make us think, maybe implicitly, that God is male or he privileges males. Maybe Christianity even has a masculine feel that tends to exclude females. Amy Peeler, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, argues in her new book Women and the Gender of God that God is not male. And she argues even more––God doesn’t have certain “male qualities.” Peeler affirms that while orthodox Christians have sustained God is beyond gender, his “maleness has always existed alongside its denial,” creating what some have called a “masculine feel” to Christianity (3). Considering the Incarnation Peeler begins with a discussion of God as male. God isn’t sexualized even in t...