My story is told briefly and selectively. (A post office box is at the end of this post, if you wish to contribute to this teaching ministry.)
I have been part of the Renewal Movements since my conversion in the Jesus Movement in the 1970s at a little Assembly of God church in southern Oregon, USA, in my mid-teens. (See my post: What Are Renewal Movements in Christianity?). A friend invited me.
At my age and before the worldwide web, I knew very little about denominations. I did not fully understand, further, that I was part of the Jesus Movement. I just lived it. I was never part of the hippy-and-drug subculture, but I saw firsthand the salvation and deliverance that came to the hippies.
I moved to Southern California to attend Melodyland School of Theology (long ago defunct), where I got a B.A. in Theology. I attended Melodyland Christian Center, for a few years, where numerous leaders from the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements were guest speakers. The church building was right across the street from Disneyland. (The MCC building, a theater in the round, was demolished long ago.)
Further, a group of students and I sometimes piled into a car and went to the Friday Night (or Saturday night?) concerts at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, where innovative music was being introduced to churches for the first time. I seem to recall that the electric guitar made its first appearance in church services then. It was exciting to be at the hub of the overlapping Charismatic Renewal and the Jesus Movement.
After I graduated from MST, I went to Paris, France, to do missions, where I helped a French Baptist church, pastored at that time by Jules Thobois, and St. Michael’s Anglican church, Paris, pastored at that time by Englishman Rev. Peter Sertin. Both were part of the Charismatic Renewal but are now deceased. While spending sixteen fun and productive months in Paris, I realized, when talking with Europeans, who did not know the Bible, that I could not communicate with them about life or history or complex issues, other than by that ancient book. There was a mutual impasse. I was much too uneducated. I had to close the gap.
I returned to Southern California, but soon went to Lubbock, Texas, to attend Texas Tech University and got a B.S. in Education at this state university, which would not go defunct. I then went back to Southern California and earned an M.A. in Religion at Vanguard University of Southern California.
From there I earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at UC Riverside (1994), majoring in Religious Studies and Classical and Hellenistic Greek, in conjunction with the Classics Department at UC Irvine and the History and Classics Departments at UCLA, where I took about ten or so graduate Greek classes. I also took senior-level classical Greek classes at UC Riverside. I specialized in early Christianity at UCLA and in the Religion Department at UCR, at that time only an undergraduate program. In 1997, Hendrickson published my dissertation: Women, Class, and Society in Early Christianity: Models from Luke-Acts (now out of print).
In graduate school: I also took critical literary theory in several seminars, reading Derrida and Barthes and Foucault and others. I have long ago left this topic behind, except in a few posts, where I criticize their views.
My teaching career: as it happened, I have become a generalist. I have taught basic philosophy and ethics, world literature, Shakespeare, Humanities I and II, world religions, and basic writing at various colleges and once in a while at a university. I cannot claim that I am a Grand Expert in these various fields, but I worked hard and learned a lot. I share my notes on this website.
I have written over 600 (substantial) articles, most of which have been posted at my first and now defunct website Live as Free People. Many of them have also been posted first at American Thinker. I have imported most of them into my new website, here.
After 9/11, I read the Quran and a few Islamic traditions, and then, feeling nudged by the Spirit, I spent countless hours in study and began to write my findings in articles, from 2004 to 2007 and revised the ones on sharia in 2012. They are hard-hitting but truthful because this is online writing. People had to be warned. I also share those posts with you.
Now let’s transition to my ministry today. Here’s one of my life verses, which describes who I am by God’s call on my life:
God has placed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers … (1 Cor. 12:28, my translation).
I’m the third guy. That’s it. My personal motto:
I learn; therefore, I teach.
The next equation sums up my life in Christ and study of Scripture:
Perpetual Learning = Perpetual Discipleship ….
Why do I translate and comment on the NT? Just to add another translation? No. I learn; therefore I teach. Learning and teaching. That’s it, and in that order.
But I don’t consider myself a top-level scholar. These classes of men and women are far ahead of me:
Those who:
1.. Put together thick lexicons
2.. Put together the Greek New Testament
3.. Write thick Greek grammar textbooks
4.. Write grammar commentaries on each book and each word in the NT
5.. Write printed commentaries on the NT, book by book
6.. Write thick systematic theology textbooks, sometimes multivolumes
This is not false modesty. I depend on all of those scholars. I’m ranked about seventh, if that.
Time to wrap this up.
My full name is James Malcolm Arlandson, and my nickname is Jim. Please put the accent on the first syllable in my last name (pronounced: AR-lund-sun). I go regularly to a contemporary, small church, which is part of the Renewal Movement, in Southern California.
If you need a category for me, I am a Jesus follower (who loved the pejorative “Jesus freak” back in the day), translator and commentator (exegete) and teacher and essayist, with the degrees of BA, BS, MA, and PhD.
I hope you’ll enjoy the site and learn from it as much as I am learning.
Contact me:
jamesmarlandson[@]hotmail[.][com]
Please delete the brackets to contact me and keep the standard email address. If you wish to contribute to this teaching ministry, here is the address:
James M. Arlandson (write check out to this name)
P.O. Box 56236
Riverside, California 92517-1136
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About the Site (where I very briefly lay out its purpose)
Statements of Faith: Apostles Creed and NAE
Supplemental Statements of Faith: Two Historic Creeds
‘Total Inerrancy and Infallibility’ or Just Infallibility? (my view of Scripture)
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 