I’m back from a great week of vacation with my fellow pagans some great Christians at the Cornerstone Festival.

I’m so glad to see I missed out on another bar room brawl over baptism. (uber-jn) While y’all continue to fight that one out, I’ll brush the broken glass and wood splinters off my seat and sit down to a pint of ale. I will throw out, for the consideration of anyone who cares, that I understand the position of the Evangelical Covenant church to be that each individual family decides for itself whether to baptize as infants or as older believers. The rub is that for the pastor, they must be willing to respect the wishes of the family, so while I’m sure there are some credos there, they must be willing to do the paedo thing for the sake of the family that asks for it. I’m not a member of a Covenant church, though, so I don’t know for sure, though I would be open to seeking ordination there. Perhaps Scot McKnight can shed some light on this? (Scot, do you read this site?)

As for Cornerstone, I enjoyed it more this year than last year. There were many, many bands, and too many of them the kind of hardcore where the lead vocal is really little more than screaming good lyrics rendered unintelligible. But I did get to enjoy Family Force 5, The Myriad, Skillet, Pillar, and Leeland. (FF5 is more of an experience than a mere concert. The Myriad was the best performed and most “musical” show of the week. There were others, but not worth mentioning.)

Seminars were also good. Nicholas Perrin (of Wheaton) was a research assistant for NT Wright in London for three years. He did a 5 session series on NTW’s theology. I didn’t learn anything new, but it was a good and balanced presentation of his views. I wish Mr. Perrin would put this presentation online. Any time a controversy over the views of “The Bish” shows up online, I could point them there. Stephen Sizer gave a six session series on Christion Zionism, and did a superb job of destroying the “Left Behind” view of the future. The last one I attended in full was from Edward Gilbreath from Christianity today on being a black evangelical in a white evangelical world. We got some helpful info here, since the odds are highest that the child we adopt will be all or part black. We’re already in a good multi-racial context in our personal lives, but every bit of info helps. I didn’t get to all of this last series, but John Morehead was talking about Burning Man. (His series was really about how far the Christian can go before contextualization becomes syncretism.) He also had some interesting thoughts on his Masters thesis, and thinking about developing a theology of “play” for adults. I wish I had some time to ask him to contrast it with some of Piper’s teaching about redeeming the time, not wasting your life, etc.