What does the future hold for corporate evangelicalism? Read more
What does the future hold for corporate evangelicalism? Read more
Every Christmas in the yard of a house not far from us stands a manger scene. The Christ Child rocks gently in his small white wooden manger; his halo glowing from the spotlight. Instead of Mary and Joseph gazing at their holy infant, or even angels surrounding the yard with praise, an unlikely figure stands next to the makeshift cradle. Santa Claus kneels before the baby Jesus. I confess the first year I saw Santa genuflecting before Jesus, I totally laughed.... Read more
While 2016 has one more month, the Christian calendar has already entered its new year. Read more
In recent columns, I looked at what happened to a religion heavily focused on hierarchy and clergy when it was cut loose from those moorings – how in fact it reverted to what we might call a default kind of religion. I noted for instance the emphasis on sacred places and objects, on charismatic individuals, and the central focus on preserving relations with the dead. Believers are also drawn by the prospect of healing. I produced a ten point system,... Read more
After literally decades of planning and delay, Martin Scorsese has finally released his film of Shusaku Endo’s classic novel Silence, about the persecution of Catholic Christians in seventeenth century Japan. It looks magnificent. (You can watch the trailer here). In the New York Times, Paul Elie has a wonderful article on The Passion of Martin Scorsese, about the film, and more generally about Scorsese’s relationship to faith. The “passion” pun is obvious enough, but very appropriate. Silence has been Scorsese’s... Read more
I have been posting about a source on religion in Wales around 1715 , which illustrates how Christian communities maintain themselves when church structures and institutions have been removed. The author, Erasmus Saunders, tells us a lot about the rural society of his time, and its religious life. Almost as important, though, is what he does not tell us. Although this is not really a live argument these days, reading Saunders makes nonsense of what was once a powerful historical... Read more
In Augustine’s Confessions, at the end of a discussion of infancy and childhood, there is a beautiful passage about thankfulness. [Note the quotations that follow are from Maria Boulding’s translation]. Much of Book I baffles contemporary readers, who think that Augustine is rather too hard on himself and others. Augustine insists that the “only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames; the minds of infants are far from innocent.” Babies glare “with livid fury” at their fellow nurslings.... Read more
Around eighteen years ago, my wife and I drove out into the countryside beyond Louisville to find somewhere quaint to attend church one Sunday morning. It’s not hard to find quaint churches nearly anywhere in rural America and certainly not in Kentucky. We found a Reformed Baptist church. It was God’s will that we did so. By Reformed, I think they meant “Calvinist.” At the very least they very much believed in human depravity. The preacher that Sunday began by... Read more
In the wake of a divisive election, we should revisit Abraham Lincoln's original 1863 proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving. We'll find not only gratitude, but the virtues of humility and empathy. Read more
For a “think tank” of sorts, I find myself writing a white paper on education (yep, the whole shebang) and its current aspirations and ailments. It’s a tough assignment, for how does one make sense of such a large category. Here’s my first swipe at defining “institutional parameters.” I welcome feedback! I. Institutional Parameters “Education” is an immense category that defines a field of human endeavor—traceable in the Western tradition to Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum—that attempts to instruct the... Read more
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