Gary Shogren's Blog
Addendum from August 2020. In recent weeks (July, August 2020) some churches have decided to disobey the government's ban on large gatherings. In a fraction of these cases, their leaders assert that they are casting off government oppression. One California megachurch has reopened, without mandatory social distancing or face-masks and with congregational singing. They have... Continue Reading →
Paul didn’t just pass out workbooks and tell his disciples to fill in the blanks for next Sunday. He didn't go on TV and tell millions of people how to live, then pack up and go home. No, he was a day-to-day living model of how a Christian should live: “you became imitators of us and... Continue Reading →
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica Originally published in Evangelical Quarterly 61 (1989): 99-108; bibliography and some ancient references updated in 2008. “Are any among you ill? Let them summon the presbyters of the Church and let them pray over them after anointing them in the name of the Lord with olive... Continue Reading →
Jerry Falwell was fond of describing his Liberty University as “conservative as Harvard is liberal.” In other words, if Harvard University is on the far left, then the appropriate Christian response is to run in an equal and opposite direction. It is Newton’s Third Law of Motion as applied to a Christian political and social... Continue Reading →
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica Newt Gingrich is on record as saying: There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand... Continue Reading →
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica I have at last spotted a creature that until now I’d only read about. It is the reappearance of a style of preaching which does an end-run around the rational mind and appeals to the non-rational. I’m probably the last one of my social set to... Continue Reading →
8 “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!’... Continue Reading →
The following was published as "The Wicked will not Inherit the Kingdom of God”: a Pauline Warning and the Hermeneutics of Liberation Theology and of Brian McLaren in Trinity Journal 31NS (2010) Abstract: Emergent spokesman Brian McLaren promotes a view of the kingdom of God that draws near to and often merges with Liberation Theology. An examination... Continue Reading →
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica Is government intervention and restriction of free enterprise always diabolical? It seems to me we can come up with some positive examples of it: the government regulated banks (Jefferson, Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, many others); freed enslaved labor (Lincoln); introduced anti-trust law and passed the Food and... Continue Reading →
I just read a blog about music in the Latin American church. He noted that there is a strong tendency to emphasize the music over the text of the song; that the lyrics are often shallow and repetitive; that the sound system tends to drown out the congregation; that the worship leaders seem to be... Continue Reading →
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 