Mid-City Christian: What's So Great About Easter?

Friday, April 14, 2017

What's So Great About Easter?

I would be remiss if I didn't point readers of The Galli Report to an Easter article by yours truly. I recognize that nearly all of you are subscribers to CT (right?), and that there may be only one or two of you who are not (yet). For that tiny minority, I share a link to subscribe, and a link to the online article: "The Most Astonishing Easter Miracle: It's Not That Jesus Rose Bodily from the Grave."

America's Greatest Public Theologian

That is how many scholars describe Reinhold Niebuhr, and I would have to concur. He has certainly shaped my notions of what it means for Christians to be active in the public square. Historian Martin Marty reflects on Niebuhr's contributions in this brief blog post, which is also an introduction to a new documentary on Niebuhr. It's a great way to get up to speed on this important theologian quickly. Here is a trailer and schedule of showings (sorry, this is a little late, but you may catch a rerun or simply purchase the DVD!), as well as discussion guides for churches and small groups.

'Resist the Internet!'

So argues Russ Douthat in The New York Times. Among other reasons:

There are also excellent reasons to think that online life breeds narcissism, alienation and depression, that it's an opiate for the lower classes and an insanity-inducing influence on the politically-engaged, and that it takes more than it gives from creativity and deep thought.

He also suggests some constructive ways forward.

A Vigilante an Editor Can Love

A "grammar vigilante," that is. Some impassioned soul who goes around London fixing errant apostrophes on public signs. This person has a refined sense of civic duty—talk about the common good!

I may have shared this quote already, but if so, I thought it worth repeating because of the way it connects Good Friday and Easter Sunday:

Certainly the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ in death, and the death to which we are delivered up in his death, can never occupy us too much. But we miss what he has done for us in it if we understand it in isolation from what he has received for us in his resurrection.