America's Changing Religious Landscape

How Religious is America? I came across this story via Ben Witherington's Blog that is worth a quick read. This is the culture we live in and what people are pursuing spiritually. Here is one noteable observation by Ben:

"More than a quarter of all Americans have left the faith of their childhood for either another religion, or no religion at all. If you count shifts between one Protestant Church and another over 44% of all Americans have changed faiths just in the last ten years or so. What this reflects is the erosion of brand name/denomination loyalties."

For more on this see Ben Witherington's Post and also the original NY Times article.

Any thoughts on what implications this has for Christianity in 2008?

What is Knowledge and Why Does it Matter for the Christian?

What is knowledge? That is a very important question. And as Christians, we need to recover the view that Christianity provides knowledge about our world--it is a knowledge tradition. One of my former profs, J.P. Moreland, explains the ins and outs of knowledge in a short and accessible essay cleverly titled "What is Knowledge?" It is definitely worth a read...

Part of Living Well Means Thinking Well

Welcome to the new blog of thinkChristianly. One of the main areas I want to explore is what does it mean to think well and think as a Christian (contrary to popular opinion, these are not mutually exclusive). Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College Jay Wood provides us a good place to start:

“Your intellectual life is important…for the simple reason that your very character, the kind of person you are and are becoming, is at stake. Careful oversight of our intellectual lives is imperative if we are to think well, and thinking well is an indispensable ingredient to living well.”

What we believe in large part determines how we live--how we order our lives and what we value. We can't not think. The question is, will we think well? And if we claim the name of Christ, will we think Christianly?