The Bible is a complicated book. Using the Bible to condemn sexual minorities requires that people make a series of choices and assumptions. Whatever proof texts one side or the other cooks up, the Bible simply doesn't work as a rule book.

Clarence Jordan stands among my list of top five Christian heroes, but most folks have never heard of him.

Did not Jesus occasionally but intentionally violate the Torah? In a word, no.

Is Jesus inconsistent, or does Matthew have an agenda? Crossan, like most interpreters, says that Matthew 23 reflects not Jesus' own teaching but a conflict that emerged decades after Jesus' career.

Elementary-aged children are still learning but are not yet fully accustomed to "church language," so their prayers are not encumbered by doubt over using the right church words.

There's a problem with penal substitution. Biblical sacrifices do not represent human attempts to purchase forgiveness; instead, they offer a ritual means of acknowledging the costliness of sin and alienation from God.

If we emphasize Jesus' death, cut out from the whole tapestry of his life, we reduce his crucifixion to perverse ritual rather than a direct consequence of his confrontation with the powers of his day.

Revelation reveals what it means to worship God and Christ. It challenges believers to faithful living in the midst of cultural pressure to compromise.

No one understands all of Revelation's numbers and symbols. Still, almost all interpreters have come to a common assessment of several keys: the Lamb, the Beast, the Great Prostitute, the Other Beast and the New Jerusalem.

Evangelicals demonstrate increasing political homogeneity, their political views shaped more by conservative and Republican ideology than by their theologies. In response, young people are abandoning the churches in droves.

The answer is, simply, that the early churches did value women's contributions. Not only did women show their strength in numbers, they did so in leadership positions as well

Science and religion, Bourgeois Buddhists, Unemployment and God, Troy Davis, and asking Is That All there Is?.. It has been a busy week on HuffPost Religion.

An early church meeting must have been a wild scene. Almost all churches included masters and their own slaves, the rich and the destitute, tradespersons and menial laborers.

Religious Arrests, the Green Buddha, Ramadan Resources, Hindu Service, Identity Fundamentalism, and the Best NASCAR Prayer Ever - It has been a busy week on HuffPost Religion

Joe Nelms' inappropriate use of public prayer is symptomatic of a larger disorder among evangelicals -- masculinity compensation disorder. The movement needs aggressive treatment.

Slavery stands as the single most contested issue in the history of biblical interpretation in the United States. What did slavery mean in the biblical world, and how did biblical authors respond to it?