Peter Enns @peteenns Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Depart, O woman of valor, out of this world; In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you; In the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you; In the Name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. #BecauseOfRHE

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

2 years

In my experience people do not so much deconstruct from Christianity but from certain forms of Christianity that claim to be the only Christianity. #deconstruction

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Theology is an act of creativity, not bookkeeping.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

The #SCB19 stance on women, anchored in the slogan that we dare not compromise Scripture by capitulating to culture, is itself an articulation of a form of Christianity that has capitulated to culture. If you’re having trouble seeing that, I may have made my point.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

I think a good bit of our stress concerning the Bible’s “historical accuracy” would be eased by remembering that the biblical writers interpreted their past and did not simply record it.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Okay @EasternU theology students, who can tell me what is wrong with this advertisement? Be very, very careful. It's super subtle. No, it's not that I wasn't invited to speak. But you're getting warmer.

kaitlin shetler

@tufftaffy

5 years

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

This week’s episode with Rachel Held Evans is among her last podcast interviews, recorded 2 months before her untimely passing on May 4. We offer this episode in Rachel’s honor, as a testimony to her humor, insight, power, gentleness, and courage.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

3 years

I don’t know. How’d we get to the point where you have a website?

The Gospel Coalition

@TGC

3 years

How did we get to the point where celebrating homosexuality and transgenderism became a month-long event that rivals Christmas?

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

OK . . Or . . maybe (just throwing this out there) what leads some fundamentalist Christians to full-blown (as opposed to partial-blown) atheism is when they realize they’ve been shafted about the Bible, simplistic answers to the problem of evil, and how “culture” is the enemy.

The Gospel Coalition

@TGC

6 years

Three ideas that may lead some progressive Christians into full-blown atheism: 1. They may adopt a belief that the Bible is unreliable. 2. They may have an unresolved answer to the problem of evil. 3. They may affirm a culture-adapting morality.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Evangelical support for Trump is not driven by biblical teaching. Rather Evangelicals mine Scripture to justify their support of Trump. #TrumpIsNotCyrus

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Remember that Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house before he repented. Zacchaeus had worth and value before God as a person before not simply after he turned his life around.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

A horrible era in American politics is over. I shed tears of exhaustion and relief for the first time ever over politics. 3 thoughts: 1. If 45 is convicted of one of his many crimes he can’t run in 2024. 2. I trust Joe to try to bring people together. 3. I no longer hate Philly.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Paging @ericmetaxas

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

And speaking of the Adam and Eve story, I don't think we should assume that ancient Israelites thought animals could talk. A talking serpent is more of a genre clue by the author telling us--screaming at us “Hey, this is metaphorical."

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Everyday Christians could really use a readable book that explains credibly how quantum physics, consciousness theory, and neuroscience can help us understand God and ourselves in ways not limited by theological systems rooted in other scientific models.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

2 years

As I see it, the Bible, as much as anything, is a framework for an ongoing, ever-adjusting conversation about what it means to know God in this world.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Just another day.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

2 years

“I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse.” CS Lewis “Religion is like a fire: it warms, but it also burns. And we are the guardians of the flame.” Jonathan Sacks

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

3 years

No theology is strictly speaking timeless. All theology has a historical and cultural context, including the theology of the biblical writers. And that is good news, for it gives us permission to accept the responsibility to think through what it means for God to be present now.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

@TGC What utter, sub-Christian nonsense.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

If anyone thinks Romans 13 means God always wants us to obey the State, keep reading. Paul got arrested for refusing to do so.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Call me Capt. Obvious, but the Gospel is never compatible with unquestioned patriotism in the face of any sponsored injustice/ oppression.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Friends, the prayer I posted is slightly modified from the Book of Common Prayer. It means a lot to me. I’ve spoken it many times in my life, and I can't get through it without getting teary. Especially today. What a sad day. I need the words of others.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Today is my last day of being 58, and I do not lament growing older, for 1. It is the way of things, 2. I have seen too many young people in my life whose lives have been cut short, 3. I am still learning and growing, God is real and is present.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

If America is found anywhere in the Bible, it is by analogy. And we are not the hero of the story. We are Rome.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Christian theology isn’t about repeating what the Bible says, but expanding upon it, reframing it, transposing it, of reimagining God across time and place.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

We need to take a break from god every once in a while to be reminded that what we’re taking a break from isn’t God.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

MmHm.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?” ~C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed, p. 66).

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Rant for the day: America is not a Christian nation. It is Babylon. Christians who think their call is to make America great again have lost sight that they are exiles in a country not their own. 1/2

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

The many tensions and contradictions of the Old Testament bear witness that its editors cared more for preserving Israel’s diverse traditions than achieving an artificial logical coherence. I feel like there is some sort of lesson for us to learn there. Just maybe.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

People can be very smart and still harbor bad ideas because of the collective intellectual space they occupy. More smarts will not fix that. In my experience, a life-changing, disorienting experience is often needed to help smart people see it.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

A downside I experience of being an academic—creatures warm & cozy in the world of ideas—is that my default is to evaluate people on the basis of what they think. I have learned to stop myself and remember “This is a person. Stop evaluating for a sec. Listen for the story.”

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Well bless his heart. Other options: Maybe she died giving birth. Maybe she was off praying for her son. Or .... maybe we should get our theology from what the text mentions rather than from what it doesn’t. Or .... maybe some people really shouldn’t be pastors.

Robert Downen

@RobertDownen_

5 years

wut in tarnation

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

The Bible does not justify Trump’s presidency. Faulty interpretation of the Bible does. #TrumpIsNotCyrus

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Few things have challenge my faith more than reading the Bible carefully. And few things helped my faith more than learning to let that happen.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

Rachel’s legacy is more than the books and blogs she wrote, but the God she wrote about—a God of liberating hope, justice and compassion for all

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Dear sweet baby Jesus, we ask you can use your baby Jesus powers to help Sen. Lynn Hutchings never to go near a Bible ever again, and to learn some history so he can know what the Roman Empire is about, and please stop him before he decides to bring back crucifixion.

Nick Reynolds

@IAmNickReynolds

5 years

Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, argued that without the death penalty, Jesus Christ would not have been able to die to resolve the sins of mankind, and therefore capitol punishment should be maintained.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

I would simply put it this way: The Bible deconstructs from within what the church has made of it.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Fear, arrogance, more fear, belligerence, and fear, theological naïveté, and very much afraid. This is what the audio clip below sounds like to me.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

The Bible does not shape Evangelical thinking, as they claim. It merely serves as a means to baptize Evangelical political ideology.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

8 years

Much of what Christians disagree over really isn't about what the Bible SAYS but what they think deep down the Bible IS.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

We need to take a break from god every once in a while to be reminded that what we’re taking a break from isn’t God.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Here is a pic of last year’s @EvolvFaith , posted by @WilGafney . You can see Rachel holding her infant daughter. I’m in the middle with my shoes off during Q&A where I threatened to take off one article of clothing for each tough question I get. We had a lot of fun that weekend.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

One reason I love the Old Testament is that it says some things about God and faith that if you said them in church you’d be tossed out or at least barred from helping out in the nursery. #yayBible

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

“Adam was literally the first human, just like Moses wrote it in King James English.

Kate Hackett

@HackettKate

5 years

You've been kidnapped. Your kidnappers allow you to keep tweeting to pretend everything is alright. What would you tweet that would alarm your followers without the kidnappers knowing you're asking for help? "And then I put in the exact amount of garlic the recipe called for."

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Student A: Who do you have for Bible? Student B: I don’t know. Some old guy. But he’s funny. So I’ve got that going for me.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I had a wonderful time at North Point Church and getting to know @AndyStanley a bit. You’ll be happy to know he has committed himself to reading one chapter of the Old Testament each day. He also accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

If you are teaching your children a faith that cannot weather intellectual scrutiny 5 minutes after they leave home, you're doing it wrong.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Friends, Monday is our usual day for airing our weekly podcast episode and the obligatory social media posts, but the Bible for Normal People team felt this day would be better spent remembering, honoring, and mourning our friend, Rachel Held Evans.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

The Gospel in the hands of those who have not been transformed by it is a dangerous thing. For example, @robertjeffress or anyone else who conflates the work of the infinite Creator with the work of one segment of one political party. #GodIsNotAPoliticalPawn

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

The final push begins. I’ve got some reading to do. I really hope this book isn’t boring.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

@mikemchargue @revstacey @TGC And the article itself ...

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I think we could have so many more wonderful theological moments between us if we don’t take ourselves or our traditions quite so seriously and laughed at ourselves rather than at others. We are, after all, toddlers in all of this.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

1. This is a direct quotation from Alan Jacobs's blog, "Snakes and Ladders," and one with which I wholeheartedly agree: "There’s one rhetorical tic to which Trump supporters are addicted that I desperately wish I could banish from the earth.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

3 years

This is what happens when people attempt Hebrew without adult supervision and basically have no idea how languages work. Also Perrystone in Hebrew means “Alas, conspiracy theory.”

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Evangelicals should not underestimate the extent to which the Evangelical project is responsible for producing former Evangelicals.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Reading the Chron. of Narnia again. Sorry if that's not sophisticated enough for you, but I can read Greek, Hebrew, and German so shut up.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Nothing to see here. Just me dropping some knowledge on A-J Levine, John Dominic Crossan, and NT Wright.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Adjusting theology over time is the very history of Judaism and Xty. Otherwise they cease to exist. Holding to a pure original is a myth.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

4. paranoid narcissist. We just want a President who, to borrow a phrase from P. J. O’Rourke, is bad within normal parameters."

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Here’s a generalization but I’m sticking with it. Any claim to adhere the “whole (or full) authority of Scripture” is code for “adhering to a theological system that needs to be able to claim it rests on biblical authority.” OK boys and girls, have at it. But I’m right.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I'm so excited to bring you my newest book, How the Bible Actually Works. It’s all about how the Bible leads to wisdom, rather than “being right.” This is going to be a good one - I promise. Pre-order it at

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

3. But our criticism of Trump is not that he has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it’s that he is a person of exceptionally terrible character: He is a petty, vindictive, mercurial, willfully and grossly ignorant, self-serving, congenitally dishonest,

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Just so everyone knows, I’ll be dressing like David Rose this upcoming school year. #SchittsCreek

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I’d like to give every man I know a copy of Fr. Richard Rohr’s FALLING UPWARD. Maybe next Christmas. Women can read it too but I’m not made out of money. But seriously, if the soul is ready, it will profoundly affect how you look at your life and faith. Richard Rohr

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

2 years

One reason I emphasize as much as I do historical critical readings of scripture is not because they are the absolute end of the matter, but because they render null and void biblical literalism,a.k.a. biblicism. Once biblicistic readings of scripture 1/2

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

To think critically about the Bible doesn’t mean looking down from a place of intellectual superiority but to suspend our own centrality and think from the point of view of the other, which in biblical studies typically means the ancient world. 1/2

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

I give you ... the leader of the free world.

The Lincoln Project

@ProjectLincoln

4 years

Oh my god.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

My granddaughter. This is not staged. A beautiful symbol of Rachel’s legacy.

Elizabeth Enns Petters

@eepetters

5 years

Thank you Rachel ❤️ @rachelheldevans

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

2 years

Thought for the day: Martin Luther went through a process of religious deconstruction. The system he was deeply committed to began falling apart for him FROM THE INSIDE, and so he sought a better way—and not without criticism from those committed to defending the system.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Doctrine is a dance between the human need to find patterns and the Bible’s refusal to give us any.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

3 years

The process of deconstructing biblicism is evangelicalism's gateway to embracing mystery, as long as the biblicism is left behind. Otherwise it is a gateway to unbelief.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Given the circumstances, I’d either raise their allowance or, if they were old enough, buy them a car.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I learned from @RichardRohrOFM that the failure in the west to have meaningful male initiation rites into manhood leaves boys to initiate each other through domination and violence. For me, this gives some insight into the events in DC this past week—I hears boys talking.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin about.

Christopher Mathias

@letsgomathias

6 years

Standing ovation at #Pittsburgh vigil as leader of Islamic Center of Pittsburgh announces Muslim community has raised over $70,000 for victims and their families

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I believe the Spirit has moved the Church beyond what the biblical writers held to be true concerning slavery—and some other things. What say you?

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Heading to Atlanta to spend a couple of days with @AndyStanley and staff to discus faith and doubt. I will personally donate $1 to The Neo-Calvinist and Southern Baptist Recovery Center for every smug and self-assured Tweet that transpires over the next few days.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

OK, let’s have a little contest. Caption this video with a Bible verse. Winner gets my undying admiration and gratitude.

NowThis Impact

@nowthisimpact

5 years

‘To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.’ — Trump’s faith adviser and ‘Righteous Gemstones’ character come to life Paula White is now an official White House employee

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

So many Christian “leaders” who should not be allowed to be left alone in a room with “the flock” or a Bible without strict adult supervision.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

The fact that the Bible presents events in a stylized/literary manner doesn’t in and of itself mean they are not historical. But the mere fact that these events are described in the Bible doesn’t in and of itself make them historical.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Are you FOUR real? We just hit FOUR MILLION downloads! A big thanks to all of our listeners for making this happen. You’re a big part of this milestone so we hope you’re celebrating with us. 🎉

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Christianity will always have to critique, call to account, and resist empires because empires are never founded to be temporary. No conquerer (or set of founding documents) says, “Let’s try this for a while.” They always say, “We are have arrived, in power and glory."

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

IT'S HERE! How the Bible Actually Works is now available wherever you get your books. Grab a copy today and tell your friends (and enemies)!

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

3 years

Fun fact: Francis Bellamy (a Baptist minister and author of the original United States' Pledge of Allegiance) was a Christian Socialist. (I’ll give you a moment to wrap your head around that.)

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

There is so much I don’t know, even what I think I know. And I just laugh. I am thankful this gospel is inexhaustible.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Some say, whatever you think the Spririt is saying must be in agreement with scripture. Others say, whatever you think the Bible says must be in keeping with the Spirit’s movement. Jesus promised the Father would send us the Spirit, not Scripture. So pick which view is better.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

I really don't enjoy knocking on Evangelicals. But this has to be said.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

Christians: always, always err on the side of compassion. Be known for that.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

Christians have never really get their complete code of moral standards from the Bible. Rather they have a long history of interpreting difficult texts (sometimes painfully) to make them more morally agreeable. 1/2

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

4. How I approach aging is a decision I get to make every day, 5. I happen to think that death is a transition to another form of consciousness, 6. I believe god is real and is present.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

4 years

What's the over under for @realDonaldTrump giving @JerryFalwellJr a cabinet position and what would it be?

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

Nailed it.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

7 years

I’m just going to say this: enforcing the evangelical/fundamentalist paradigm on young ppl is a great way to lose the future of the church.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

3 years

We all sometimes need to be held up by those who see with their hearts more than their heads.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

5 years

In every academic field, including theology, there are legitimate voices to the contrary, but not every contrary voice is legitimate. Unlearned opinions do not get a pass simply because they are strongly held, and their adherents cannot cry “close minded” when called out.

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Peter Enns

@peteenns

6 years

White Christian men, get to know @KaitlinCurtice @austinchanning @sandravanopstal @NishWeiseth @cindy_w_brandt @osheta @kathyescobar Buy their books. Read their wisdom. Learn. Be challenged. #EvolvFaith18

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Peter Enns

@peteenns