The Relevance of Religious History for Today
I am a big fan of religious disestablishment. I appreciate the tireless advocacy (and agitation) of my Baptist forbears for freedom of conscience in matters of religion. Over the decades, men such as Thomas Helwys, John Clarke, John Leland, Isaac Backus and the signers of historic Baptist confessions like the First London Confession (1644), The [Read More...]
[This week's post comes from my Patheos archives.] Many an evangelical pastor has concluded a sermon by asking non-Christians to “ask [or receive, or invite] Jesus into their heart,” or to pray a version of what some call the “sinner’s prayer.” But some evangelicals, including Baptist pastor David Platt of Birmingham, Alabama, have in recent years [Read More...]
For the February 2014 Patheos Book Club With the publication of Birmingham Revolutionon the occasion of the Birmingham Campaign’s fiftieth anniversary last year, IVP Books provided a readable, well-informed, and smartly packaged work that can serve as either an introduction to those unfamiliar with the seminal events of spring 1963 or a refresher for those [Read More...]
No. In an ideal world, you should send him or her to Gordon College. Its robust blend of faith and intellect, its ideal location near Boston, and its commitment to the liberal arts ideal—all make it the only choice any right-minded Christian parent would opt for. (The fact that I teach at Gordon and my [Read More...]
As the mid-twentieth century American evangelical renaissance bloomed, a whole host of evangelical ministries intent on engaging the world for Christ emerged. Youth for Christ adopted trendy new methods to evangelize teenagers beginning in 1944, Mission Aviation Fellowship began serving missions in remote locations the year the World War II ended, and Fuller Seminary opened [Read More...]
Edward Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church (InterVarsity, 2013) offers both a stirring challenge and a strong dose of hope to American evangelicals. Gilbreath, an editor at large with Christianity Today and executive director of communications for the Evangelical Covenant Church, focuses his gaze at King’s 1963 “Letter from [Read More...]
Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism is a sobering encounter with an old friend. At first glance, one’s friend seems to have left some of his old ways behind. He’s more sophisticated, and more well-heeled than in his younger years. He thinks he’s changed a great deal. But when [Read More...]
January 23, 2014 marks the 300th birthday of the remarkable but troubled Welsh revivalist, Howell Harris. Harris was one of the foremost preachers of the Great Awakening in Britain, and a close friend (for a time) of George Whitefield (the subject of my current book project), who was born later in the same year, 1714. Whitefield [Read More...]
In 1866 William Taylor, a renegade Wesleyan evangelist from the Appalachians, arrived in the south of Africa. A tall six feet with a long, scraggly beard that draped down over a barrel chest, Taylor was “a Methodist preacher of the old school.” He was “adept at charming his hosts, delivering folksy sermons, deflecting opposition, spinning [Read More...]
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