June 10, 2020
by Elie Haddad This COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to question many things in our lives that we deemed as sacred. At ABTS, given our role of theological education and leadership formation, we are having to question the very essence of education and formation, especially for the purpose of effective […]
May 7, 2020
by Brent Hamoud Humanity is spending a lot of time at home these days. Stay-at-home orders have largely limited us to private confines resulting in some staggering consequences: half the world’s population was under lockdown at one point, 9 out of 10 students have been left out of school and […]
April 23, 2020
by Nabil Habibi One of the more challenging aspects of the biblical world is the focus of the ancients on purity laws. Many ancient Jewish groups and even common people were constantly aware of their ritual purity, especially concerning eating or praying in everyday life.[1] They lived in fear of […]
April 9, 2020
by Mike Kuhn …and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour… (Luke 23:44) I confess. I thought pandemics were medieval. Sure I remember SARS and Ebola. But those didn’t get close. They affected others. I caught H1N1 (Swine Flu) but I recovered eventually and life went […]
April 2, 2020
by Caleb Hutcherson A mu’azzin calls people to pray at home, rather than coming together to pray. A church cancels its Sunday services, moving to online broadcasts. A seminary pivots to online instruction, temporarily closing in-person classes. In ordinary times, any of these local changes would barely make the news. […]
March 25, 2020
by Wissam Nasrallah One thing spreading faster than the coronavirus is fear: the fear of the unknown, fear of not being in control, fear of losing our livelihoods, and fear of becoming a social pariah for contracting the virus or simply sneezing[1]. But most of all, we fear death.
March 19, 2020
By Martin Accad Lebanon this academic year (2019-2020) has so far reaped three “pandemics:” the collapse of our political system, the collapse of our economy, and the collapse of our public health. Who could have predicted that we would use these words in a single sentence? As someone who grew […]
February 6, 2020
by Nabil Habiby Gandalf the Grey, a wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings epic, stands before the Balrog, a rather malicious creature of the caves, and shouts with a great voice: “You shall not pass!” Gandalf’s friends escape, but he is downed in a great pit with the […]