Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 2h

True Christianity advances without coercion. We persuade by love, witness, reason, rhetoric, Spirit, and, if need be, by martyrdom; but never by force, never by the sword, never by the coercive apparatus of this state.

1 12 57

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 1d

*I know I’ll be criticized for the lack of diversity and I accept that criticism. I’m not telling you what it should be but what it actually is. I’m still trying to learn.

12

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 1d

The ten who have most influenced my theology.* (In alphabetical order.)

Walter Brueggemann
Sergius Bulgakov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bob Dylan
René Girard
David Bentley Hart
Stanley Hauerwas
C.S. Lewis
N.T. Wright
L. Glen Zahnd

1 1 18

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 2d

This Sunday I begin a new three-part series on the story of Job: DARK AS MIDNIGHT

1 8

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 5d

* Empires are rich, powerful nations who believe they have a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to their own agenda. As such they are an idolatrous affront to the seminal Christian confession that Jesus is Lord.

1 26

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 5d

A Christianity that promotes the interests of empire* is a Christianity that rides the back of the beast as the whore of Babylon.

14 39 240

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 6d

(The painting is Rembrandt's "Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem," 1690. I have a print of this painting in my study.)

7

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 6d

The prophets and psalmists of lament show us how to find faith and hold on to hope in the time of tears. I'll preach on this tomorrow.

5 3 34

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 11d

Confessing Jesus Christ is Lord
And pledging allegiance to America
Are incompatible commitments
Choose one
Choose this day
Choose whom you will serve

19 15 110

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 15d

This Sunday I'm preaching in Denver. Amazing Grace Church, 10AM. My sermon is called, "The Lord Said to Satan..." You're invited. www.agcdenver.net

2 7

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 15d

This photo is upside down. It is also an illustration about the nature of reality and illusion, heaven and earth, the eternal and the temporal. I'll talk about this next week at our Mountain Retreat where the theme is "In Search of Narnia."

16

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 16d

Beware of isms. There be devils.

3 2 12

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 17d

The rapture happened. I’m in heaven. 😎

9 14 300

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 18d

A sermon in which I attempt an interpretation of what may be Jesus’ most difficult parable—the parable of the Unjust Steward.
youtu.be/bYOLy7OeAjo?...

A Strange Parable, A Curious Grace || Pastor Brian Zahnd

YouTube video by Word of Life Church

youtu.be

3 20

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 21d

It grieves me to see people I’ve known for years (some as far back as the Jesus Movement of the 1970s) seduced by a mean-spirited culture-war Christianity that is but a perverse caricature of the authentic faith formed around Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, it grieves me terribly.

45 90 670

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 21d

Reading.

1 2 33

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 22d

The task of preaching is not to bring commentary on current events but to bring a word from elsewhere.

1 3 29

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 24d

Some of us turn off the lights and we lay
Up in the moonlight shooting by
Some of us scare ourselves to death in the dark
To be where the angels fly

~Dylan

1 9

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 25d

“If any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name of Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.”
~The Last Battle

3 8 78

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 26d

Holy Cross
youtu.be/-8XpbyY3i0M?...

Holy Cross || Pastor Brian Zahnd

YouTube video by Word of Life Church

youtu.be

6

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 27d

When theology is forced to bow to a particular political ideology, you are going to get bad theology. The Subject of theology cannot be accurately described or curtailed by the politics of this age.

8 19 130

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 29d

Just arrived in Chicago to participate in the Church at the Crossroads Conference.

To be Christian does not entail the embrace of an aberrant eschatology used to justify war crimes; to be Christian is to walk this world in a deliberate attempt to imitate the Prince of Peace.

6 5 68

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · 29d

Seeing Swell Season (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) tonight at the Midland Theatre was just what I needed. The song is “Her Mercy”—a song I used a few years ago in Finding God In The Music.

1 1 50

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · Sep 8

A Christianity that revels in cruelty stinks of the devil.

20 63 300

Brian Zahnd @brianzahnd.bsky.social · Sep 8

open.spotify.com/episode/0Dw5...

S9, Episode 1, A summer conversation in Copenhagen with Brian Zahnd

open.spotify.com

2