Reclaiming Life at Home: Declaring War on Clutter to Save the American Soul

Last updated on: August 8, 2017 at 3:48 pm By Kristin Du Mez

Imagine for a moment a team of anthropologists walking through your door, taking a look around, and settling in for a close observation of your possessions, how you interact with them, and what this means about American life. That’s pretty much what happened to 32 middle-class families between 2001-2005. I recently came across the results of this anthropological study, published in 2012: Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors, by Jeanne E. Arnold, Anthony P.... Read more

Should Women Rule? Netflix’s The Crown and Complementarian Theology

Last updated on: August 9, 2017 at 12:04 am By Beth Allison Barr

Riding the London Eye is deceptively peaceful. The city that slowly unfolds below seems a different place from the noise and heat of the crowded South Bank. I always look first for Cleopatra’s Needle, the 3500 year-old Egyptian obelisk shipped to England in the nineteenth-century and hoisted along the Victorian Embankment Gardens. The startling incongruity of this ancient African monument standing in the heart of ultra-modern London always fascinates me. But the revolving capsule doesn’t let you stare at one place... Read more

The Religious History of Negro League Baseball

Last updated on: August 4, 2017 at 5:18 pm By Chris Gehrz

For decades, two of the most important institutions in African American life were the black church and the Negro Leagues. How much did their histories intersect? Read more

The Aquatic Gospel

Last updated on: August 7, 2017 at 6:55 am By Philip Jenkins

I have been discussing the story of Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, and particularly why it occupies the very strange position it does in that text. By all probability, the event must be associated with Jesus’s last days and his final visit to Jerusalem, but in the gospel as we have it, it is placed near the start of the work, and of Jesus’s ministry. The answer to that quandary lies in the story’s relationship to another tale that... Read more

Placing Nicodemus

Last updated on: August 3, 2017 at 6:22 am By Philip Jenkins

Depending on the church calendar you might follow, one day in early August commemorates St. Nicodemus. This is the otherwise mysterious figure found only in the Gospel of John. He visits Jesus at night, speaks (discreetly) on his behalf in the council, and assists in his burial. I will focus here on the first of those events, mainly for what it says about how John’s Gospel was written, and its really complex literary devices. I am staking no claim here... Read more

Pilgrims 400

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 7:38 pm By johnturner

In three years, various communities on both sides of the Atlantic will celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the English separatist emigration from Leiden (via Southampton, Dartmouth, and Plymouth) to what became New Plymouth. The two Plymouths in particular hope and rightly anticipate that the anniversary will boost tourism. For a glimpse at the Mayflower/Plymouth 400 plans, see the American and European websites, respectively. The latter is quite useful for locating various Pilgrim sites around England. It’s fascinating to me... Read more

The End of the Mainline as America’s Public Conscience

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 8:25 am By David Swartz

This is Part II of my interview with Mark Lempke, author of the new book My Brother’s Keeper: George McGovern and Progressive Christianity. See Part I here. –David *** David Swartz: What was your biggest research find as you wrote this book? Mark Lempke: I think the most historically significant discovery was the degree to which McGovern and antiwar mainline leaders were cross-boarding in 1972, to borrow a term from euchre. One of McGovern’s closest friends, James Armstrong, was the... Read more

Christian Colleges, Sexuality, and “Cultural Waterloo”

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 1:29 am By Chris Gehrz

I don’t know Carl Trueman or Rod Dreher, but I do know many people who inhabit the world of Christian higher education. So to the extent that one Bethel professor can speak on behalf of the latter group, let me respond to the former pair, who suggested last week that Christian institutions of higher learning, in seeking dialogue and compromise on the contentious topic of human sexuality, are capitulating to a post-Christian world. While I can’t pretend to have answers to... Read more

What to do about what’s wrong with America

Last updated on: July 30, 2017 at 5:01 pm By Agnes Howard

One of the happy characteristics of America, mythical or actual, is its hospitality to those who want to begin the world anew, whether by building a purified church, crafting a commonwealth—whose very name suggests there is such thing as a recognizable public good—or establishing a new order of the ages. For centuries space remained between Atlantic and Pacific for those anxious to try again to get things right. The United States, especially in the nineteenth century, was sprinkled liberally with... Read more

Five Rivers Flowing Out Of Paradise

Last updated on: July 27, 2017 at 1:21 pm By Philip Jenkins

Five rivers flowed out of Paradise, and we all know their names. That may sound like a riddle, but it actually points to some truly radical interpretations of Scripture, and maybe even to a revolution in Western thought. It also suggests one possible outcome of the Radical Reformation. The story involves Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676), the legendary seventeenth century English radical and mystic, who in 1648-1649 led the communal sect of the Diggers, or True Levellers. Both the Diggers and Winstanley... Read more

Who said: "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him"?