Timothy Tennent

Slaves, Women and Homosexuals

Over the past few decades, some Christians began comparing the legitimization of homosexuality and the legalization of same sex marriage with earlier struggles in our society over slavery or the status and role of women in the church and society. One of the more recent examples of this argument can be found in an article […]

The Voice of Anselm Rises again

Anselm was a well known 11th century Benedictine monk who has mostly been forgotten by the contemporary church. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury and was known for his courage. His ministry was marked by many conflicts with the power brokers of his day as he insisted on the truth of the gospel. He was […]

The “Yes” of God in Jesus Christ

The great poet Samuel Coleridge wrote a poem entitled The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the poem a ship is being followed by an Albatross, one of the great birds of the sea with a wingspan of up to twelve feet. They live on remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the ancient world […]

Going to Church when You are in Despair

I was praying through Psalm 142 yesterday and was struck by how alien such a prayer is to the forms and structures of modern Christian worship. Psalm 142 is not a particularly unusual Psalm but is one of a whole class of Psalms which are known as laments. The whole Psalm emerges out of a […]

The Three Advents of Jesus Christ

This is the season of the Church year when we remember and celebrate the incarnation and the “advent” of Jesus Christ. There are many dimensions of this Advent. It certainly refers to the coming of the Second Person of the Trinity as the Son of God into the lowly stable of Bethlehem as the exalted […]

Disruptive Evil vs. Disruptive Grace in Newtown, Connecticut

This past week we all learned of the horrible acts of evil committed by a 20 year old young man armed with an assault weapon in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. In the end, 27 people were dead – 20 children (all 6 or 7 years old), 6 adults (including the mother of the […]

Charge to December 2012 Graduates of Asbury Theological Seminary

From the iconic Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz we learn afresh of the importance of courage. Who can forget those memorable words, “what makes the muskrat guard his musk? What makes the Hottentot so hot, or put the “ape” in apricot? Courage. Like the Lion, we may feel we’re not very courageous, but […]

Reflections On How The “Love of God” Changes Us

In his 1937 landmark book, The Kingdom of God in America, Richard Niebuhr memorably described the weakened message of the church in his day as follows: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[1] Tragically, Niebuhr’s devastating critique could easily be […]

Why The Church Is So Concerned With Same-Sex Marriage and Homosexual Ordination

I occasionally hear someone make the case that evangelicals have invested far too much energy fighting against same sex marriage and the ordaining of homosexuals as pastors in the church. There are some who have become convinced by weak exegesis and, feeling the winds of culture blowing, have convinced themselves that the Bible doesn’t actually […]

Imprecatory Psalms: Are All the Psalms Suitable for Christian Use?

For the past two years, my wife Julie and I have started each day by singing a Psalm and then carefully thinking and praying through the Psalm line by line. We use a collection of metrical psalms known as the Trinity Psalter which draws from many of the great historic metrical Psalm collections (such as the […]