ken wilson online

Words are very potent things.  They carry things like truth in them.  They can function as “memes.”  Memes are bits of cultural data that are analogous to genes.  They get transferred from person to person, outlasting persons and seem to have a life of their own.  They can be as difficult to shake off as your grandaddy’s DNA.   I’ve made my peace with that.  There are three words that I’ve accepted and despite pressure from many quarters don’t wish to relegate to the word bin of history: evangelical, religion, and love. 
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Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, a man whose name has been much maligned by many in my own American evangelical tribe.

My friend, Carl Safina, an ocean conservationist and author of the acclaimed Song for the Blue Ocean told me that his two heroes are Charles Darwin and Jesus; Darwin for revealing the unity of all living things, and Jesus for teaching us to love our enemies. Would that my fellow believers understood as well the rule of Jesus, a rule which demands that we bother to understand each other.
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Been doing little print and radio interviews related to the release of Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. It’s a good exercise because both print and radio are looking for colorful and concise little expressions of things that pop up in the book. Like the idea that we need to dig extra hard for Jesus as the treasure buried in the field of religion, owing to the current “trademark infringement on the Jesus brand”–meaning the negative public perception of Christianity among those on the outside of faith looking in. I find myself illustrating this with the popularity of Rush Limbaugh among many Christians in the United States.
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Bob Dylan produced three albums during his openly Jesus-faith period: Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. Somewhere along the line, something happened and Dylan went icognito with his faith. One can only imagine he overdosed on something–not Jesus most likely but something on the religious landscape burned him bad. There’s a hint, maybe in The Disease of Conceit, recorded after his out there Jesus time. It’s written in the cadence of an old tent revival and it happens to be about the occupational hazard of religion.
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