The Relevance of Religious History for Today
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...]
The National Football League (NFL) playoffs begin this weekend. Over the next several weeks, twelve teams–six from each conference–will contend for a chance to play for the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLVIII, held at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Holding a virtual monopoly on professional football in North America, the NFL manages [Read More...]
In my last post, I suggested that the evangelical embrace of personality-driven leadership forms the backstory to the Mark Driscoll-Janet Mefferd imbroglio over plagiarism. Several commentators on the blog raised astute questions regarding the pervasive nature of this aspect of American evangelicalism. After all, doesn’t personality-driven leadership characterize evangelicalism in local congregations, not just mega-ministries [Read More...]
In the mid-twentieth century the world underwent geopolitical reorientation. Decolonization carved the imperial-colonial divide into a new landscape, and World War II left only two major superpowers: the Marxist Soviet Union and the liberal democratic United States. Once allies against Nazi Germany, ideological differences rapidly turned them into foes. Each side began to “recruit” allies [Read More...]
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