Yes, we are back. It’s taken me a couple of days to get caught up after being gone. In my catching up, I read some really good things, so I decided to share them with you.

At Ben Witherington’s blog, you will find two exellent posts:
Thus Spake Zarathustra—The Dying Out of Monotheistic Religion: He talks about the dying out of Zoroastrianism, an ancient monotheistic faith. I like his reason for why we find monotheistic faith all over the world, whether they were influenced by Judaism or not.
What Is the Character of God?: this is a wonderful treatise on God’s relationship with us and the rest of creation and the foundation and undercurrent of that relationship: love. This is long, but well worth the time it takes to read.

Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, has just published a book, Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right. This is definitely going on my reading list. He has also started up a blog for conversation about the book and as a place for us to talk about how we can get the word out that the Religious Right does not have a monopoly on evangelicalism or Christianity in this country.

And over at my favorite site for making sure the Religious Right does not have a monopoly on faith and politics, Street Prophets, is a very basic and insightful article on Islam written by a Musliam: Salaam ‘alaikum (peace be unto you). Make sure you read the comments too. We’ve been having a wonderful conversation, and JD has graciously answered all our questions about Islam and given us further insight into his religion. I am pointing this out because I think most of what we see and hear about Islam and Muslims is a caricature (just as most of what see about Chrisitanity in this country is a caricature). If you really want to see how a faithful Muslim views and explains his faith, this is a great place to start. JD also has a blog: Dunner’s. Don’t miss his entry Bush Administration Misuses the Word “Caliphate”. It’s a very enlightening article, and here again we see that there is moderate Islam just as there is moderate Christianity.

Happy reading!