Mt. Ellis Academy in Bozeman Montana appears set to win $500,000 in the Kohl’s Cares for Kids $10M Giveback Contest on Facebook. The Seventh-day Adventist high school is currently in the top twenty of hundreds of 501(c)(3) schools vying for a slice of a $10 million total purse.

I’m in the midst of reading Alden Thompson’s latest book, Beyond Common Ground: Why Liberals and Conservatives Need Each Other. I have often been troubled by the seeming hostility between liberals and conservatives on this blog, and as I was thinking about how we could overcome it, an old, familiar song from Oklahoma! came to mind

The good news never ends over at Caricatures of Adventists.

No question about it, we are experiencing a Creation crisis. It only takes paying a little attention to the media, only a little listening to conversations, to see that things are not well where Creation is concerned.

It is also clear that people conceive of the nature of the Creation Crisis differently.

Last Sabbath morning a visitor said: “My daughter was recently married, and the groom’s mother was there with her boyfriend. During the weekend, the boyfriend asked me: ‘What have I done to you, that your people hate my church so much?”

I was a participant in the Sabbath School class, not the teacher, and I leaned in to catch the rest of the story.

At the wedding gathering the boyfriend—he would likely become the bride’s step-father—had taken a pretty hard verbal beating. He was Roman Catholic, and he had gotten an earful.

Hume closes his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by laying out the implications of his views:

In his final chapter, Jim Belcher tackles the subject of culture, again setting emerging church and traditional church ideas about culture against one another and then offering his synthesis as a third way, or "deep" approach to, in this case, culture.

The question of how Christians should relate to culture is a tricky one, to be sure. It would probably be difficult to arrive at much consensus about the definition of "culture", let alone a theology of culture, but I think Belcher does an admirable job in the space he's given himself.

Having noted the widely divergent responses (both Adventist and non-Adventist) to Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling on California's Proposition 8, I decided to read for myself what he’d said. So for a Saturday night’s entertainment recently, I read through all 136 pages of the judge's opinion, word for word.

Over at the Club Adventist online forum, Stan Jensen conducted an interesting interview with Lowell Cooper, vice-president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I recently wrote an article titled “Ten Reasons Why I Think the Debate About Origins is Weird.” The article triggered a flurry responses, some quite contentious.

A Seventh-day Adventist pastor, Samir Salmanovic, author of It's Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim, Atheist, Jewish, Christian, shares his views on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque."

August 12, 2010 - Vol. 187, No. 26

GENERAL COMMENTS
This is an Adventist-Layman’s Services & Industries (ASI) issue. The projects mentioned by Sandra Blackmer in SHARING CHRIST IN THE MARKETPLACE can be contacted via their site. JANET’S CHILDREN reported by Conna Bond is a MUST READ. Mark Finley’s description of the medieval church seems shockingly modern, and Cliff Goldstein’s newfound humility and admirable writing skills are turning me into a fan.

According to a La Sierra University press release, "the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) has reaffirmed the accreditation of La Sierra University for eight years.

"Love the sinner, but hate the sin" is commonly tossed around to describe the proper Christian attitude toward men and women who are gay. It sounds good, doesn’t it?

In an article on religious leaders as community organizers, Sojourners notes the work of a Seventh-day Adventist.

This is the seventh post in a nine-part series for the SPECTRUM/re-church Summer Reading Group. The nine posts will be drawn from chapters of Deep Church, by Jim Belcher. You can find the reading schedule here.

"Anyone paying attention the last couple of weeks has heard multiple reports about plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero," writes James Standish, deputy secretary general of the International Religious Liberty Association and Seventh-day Adventist Church representative to the United Nations.

Continuing in his online Washington Post On Faith op-ed, Standish writes:

An advisor with Religious Freedom USA, Samir Selmanovic, Ph.D., sent this over for our consideration.

When John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, fear-mongers raised the specter of his dual loyalty.

August 2010 - Vol. 6, No. 8

GENERAL COMMENTS
As usual, I suggest glancing at WORLD REPORT and WORLD VIEW for a quick check of what’s happening around the world. I found INTO POLAND by Hans Olson of particular interest.

REVIEWS
ABOUT HERNIAS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT by Marvin Atchison is a fascinating informational read and a thoughtful metaphor.

What happens when a group of Adventist graduate students in the sciences get together and discuss the hot-button issues affecting our church? We cry out for more data!

Enjoy these musings from around the Adventist blogosphere. Sure beats traditional Sabbath "lay activities"!

Nomad is Chantel Davies' blog. Davies is a researcher in the UK who fostered a recycling and composting program in her Adventist congregation. Recently she considered the newsy matter of Anne Rice's renunciation of Christianity. She writes:

I wish I had a Spectrum journal subscription for all the times I've heard Adventists repeat a version of the following. "We used to be on the cutting edge of health reform, but we compromised and now the world is preaching our message better than us!"

Whom shall I hate? Whom shall I reproach or commend? Whom shall I exclude from full participation in the life of my church or community?

The August 2, 2010, issue of TIME carried an unusual story about how Panera Bread Co. has taken a leaf out of the “playbook” of the congregation where I serve as pastor.

This is the sixth post in a nine-part series for the SPECTRUM/re-church Summer Reading Group. The nine posts will be drawn from chapters of Deep Church, by Jim Belcher. You can find the reading schedule here.

In the middle of the General Conference Session I was sitting in my hotel lobby talking with the pastor of my church when Jerry Page, our conference president, walked up and joined the conversation.

For some time I have become increasing conscious of the fact that the Adventist Church is lurching towards an anti-science and anti-reason posture on matters of Genesis. Such a tone has become increasingly represented in the pages of the Adventist Review, and actions of the General Conference, including the 2004 Affirmation of the Faith and Science Committee, and the recently voted decision to move towards revision of Fundamental Belief (FB) number six.

The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has been banned from Somalia along with two other Christian aid organizations, according to a report from the Associated Press.

The militant Islamist group al-Shabab, with ties to al-Qaeda, issued a statement on Monday barring ADRA, Diakonia and World Vision from operating in Somalia, alleging that the organizations were proselytizing under the guise of humanitarian aid, according to the AP report.