The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is planning to eliminate its arts, humanities, and social science majors. Here's why Christian colleges need to beware heading down that path... Read more
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is planning to eliminate its arts, humanities, and social science majors. Here's why Christian colleges need to beware heading down that path... Read more
Marilynne Robinson, writer of beautiful novels and perspicacious essays, turns some attention to New England Puritans in an American Scholar article drawn from her most recent book, What Are We Doing Here? She characterizes Puritans as progressive contenders for a society shaped by grace rather than harsh punishment. “What do we lose when we ignore early American history and, to the extent that we notice it, mischaracterize it? The stigmatizing word that makes the North fall out of sight is... Read more
I have blogged quite a bit recently on early Christian history, and the further I get into this material, the more interested I become in one particular period – quite a narrow period in fact, of a quarter century or so. I keep coming back to these years as the critical turning point in early Christian history, and it rarely receives the respect it demands. For all the attention paid to the era of the Council of Nicea, about 325,... Read more
A few weeks back, evangelical theologian Richard Mouw explained over at Religion News Service why he declined to sign “prophetic” declarations. (You know, the official statements proliferating about this or that “justice-related matter.”) Since that time, the essay has been reprinted at First Things, and also at The Banner (the magazine of my own denomination, the Christian Reformed Church). Clearly it is resonating with religious audiences. When it comes to his reluctance to sign statements, I don’t blame Mouw. I... Read more
In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention amended the Baptist Faith and Message for the first time since 1963. They voted to add a four-paragraph statement on the family. The new statement declared that a woman should “submit herself graciously” to the leadership of her husband. She “has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.” Her husband, in turn, has the “God-given responsibility to provide for, to... Read more
In the first decades of the 20th century, many Americans embraced aviation with religious enthusiasm, with some evangelizing for it as a source of social and physical transformation. Read more
My book Crucible of Faith recently received an extremely positive and generous review, and I want to argue strenuously against it. Well, not exactly, but here is what happened. In the British Catholic Herald, Michel Duggan gave the book just an excellent review, but he made one point that troubled me – not troubled that the reviewer was making the point, but because it raised an issue I really should have addressed more explicitly. My book described the emergence of... Read more
In several past blogs, I have commented on the extreme difficulty of reading the New Testament in English translation, where you miss a lot of the connections, echoes, and resonances that would strike a Greek speaker. The same is true of Hebrew in the Old Testament, where reading in even the best translation means missing a great many puns and word-plays, but that’s a separate subject. Here I want to focus on one particular Greek word that points to a... Read more
For me, as for many evangelicals, Billy Graham’s death is personal. In 1988, Billy Graham came to my hometown of Rochester, New York. I was a fourteen-year-old Christian. Two years before Graham’s visit, I had come forward to dedicate my life to Jesus Christ at a church revival. I was active in Young Life. By active, I mean that I encouraged my high school classmates to come to weekly YL meetings and come to the summer camps at which they... Read more
How black fundamentalists responded to Moody Bible Institute's accommodation to racial segregation Read more
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