Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) identified himself as a Presbyterian, but he was also a deist.  Is it possible to be a deist Christian, or a Christian deist?  Franklin believed there was a little bit of good in every religion and so he gave to all kinds of church related fund raisers; schools, church buildings, orphanages, etc.  [...]

Some conservative Christians seem to think the survival of America is dependent upon the strength of the American church.  The others think that the survival of American Christianity is dependent upon the strength of the United States.  Can both statements be true?  Or, maybe they are both wrong and for the same reason.

If God is one (Mark 12:29-31; Ephesians 4:4-6; 1 Timothy 2:5) and if he speaks with one voice, why do intelligent, sincere, committed believers hear him saying so many contradictory things? The bible contains a variety of conflicting ideas about God, Christianity, the church and morality.  We can know this because intelligent, sincere, committed believers [...]

The problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism, writes Christian Smith, is that  “it simply does not matter whether the Bible is everything that biblicists claim theoretically concerning its authority, infallibility, inner consistency, perspicuity, and so on, since in actual functioning the Bible produces a pluralism of interpretations.”

“The very same Bible—which biblicists insist is perspicuous and harmonious—gives rise to divergent understandings among intelligent, sincere, committed readers about what it says about most topics of interest. Knowledge of “biblical” teachings, in short, is characterized by pervasive interpretive pluralism.”