Chris recalls how a guitar-slinging Pentecostal gospel singer named Sister Rosetta Tharpe helped develop rock 'n' roll. Read more
Chris recalls how a guitar-slinging Pentecostal gospel singer named Sister Rosetta Tharpe helped develop rock 'n' roll. Read more
This blog is unusual in format in that I am not so much making a case as seeking ideas, in an open-ended way. There are no correct answers to my question, and I am genuinely looking for guidance. My questions specifically concern the 2010s, an important and action-packed era that comes to its end in a month or so. That decade, I fear, also falls short of getting the attention it deserves. I am presently writing a couple of retrospective... Read more
In my last post, I discussed the 1888 English novel Robert Elsmere, which was vastly influential in its time. Briefly, it describes the crisis of faith of an Anglican clergyman, who suffers a deconversion experience inspired by contemporary Biblical criticism. How does the book stand today? Have Christians come to terms with these questions? What can we learn from the book today? Looking at the novel today, several major points come to mind. One, as I remarked last time, is... Read more
In Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States during the Second World War, Matthew Sutton explores a unique set of secret agents. Recruited by William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency), they sought to serve God and their country and believed they could do so through espionage and diplomacy. The cast: William Eddy was the son of Presbyterian missionaries to Lebanon, a WWI veteran, a professor and college president.... Read more
Why white evangelicals don't care what Michael Gerson or Peter Wehner say about Trump Read more
Guest blogger Barry Hankins argues that "Evangelicals will only recover their witness when they forget about their brand — and the strong man politician they think protects it." Read more
[I do not normally give homilies nor post them as blogs, but seeing that I was asked to give the homily this Sunday (an All Saints’ Day service) at my church, I post it below. I hope it might provide some historical and theological food for thought. The title comes from a line of Dante’s] Homily – All Saints’ Day – Cornerstone Anglican Church, Valparaiso, Indiana – 3 November 2019 “In His Will is Our Peace” Who do you admire... Read more
I recently posted about The Damnation of Theron Ware, a classic example of a book that was hugely popular and influential for some decades, but is now largely forgotten. Actually, literary history is littered with such cases, and their oblivion is often unfortunate, as some of these texts – like Theron Ware itself – are really excellent pieces in their own right, beyond their value for historians and scholars of religion. Probably the greatest example of this type of book... Read more
George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, one of the world’s premier analysts of the Catholic Church, and a prolific author. His new book is The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. JT: What is the “irony” of modern Catholic history? GW: There are many ironies in this particular fire. The first mega-irony is that the Catholic encounter with modernity, which began with raw anathemas... Read more
I almost didn’t write this post. After all, what more could I say? Sarah Bessey already voiced my outrage. The scoffing laughter of John MacArthur’s audience echoed in my head as I read her words. “It’s a sin to quench the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the lives of women. Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand!” Kate Bowler already spoke up for the “precarious power” of evangelical women leaders like Beth Moore. “Unfortunately,” she told us... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In