I usually don’t read literary biographies, but recently Kenneth Slawenski’s J.D. Salinger: A Life came across my desk and I could not put it down. I had never given much thought before to the life and career of J.D. Salinger. I think I read The Catcher in the Rye at some point in high school, but I don’t remember much about the novel or its central character, Holden Caulfield. There was a lot about Salinger’s character that I find troubling. ... Read more
There’s nothing like having school-age children to get you thinking about education. Yes, I went to college for eleven straight years (from B.A. to Ph.D.), and yes, I have taught at the college level for eleven years, too. But I had never thought so much about education — specifically, what kind of education is best for kids in Christian families — until the last few years, as we have been homeschooling our children. (We are part of a Classical Conversations... Read more
Back in April 2011, at the height of the so-called Arab Spring, I published an essay on realclearreligion that made me few friends. Under the title “Death Warrant of Ancient Christianity,” I pointed out that while it was proper to criticize despotic regimes in the Middle East, we should be very careful indeed about trying to destabilize them without thinking through the consequences. Under the Ba’ath regime in Syria, especially, minorities of all shades found a home in a way... Read more
In a recent posting, I discussed the medieval heretical movement known variously as the Cathars or Albigensians, who flourished in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries until they were wiped out in an extraordinarily violent persecution. (If anyone ever tells you that you can’t kill an idea, suggest that they go find an Albigensian and argue the point with them). The great question about this movement was whether it was Dualist and Manichaean, as its enemies proclaimed, or... Read more
We are rapidly approaching the fortieth anniversary of a paradigmatic event in the history of American evangelicalism. Beginning on June 12, 1972, around 85,000 young Americans (mostly high schoolers and collegians) assembled in Dallas, Texas, for what became known as Explo ’72 (short for “spiritual explosion”). Historians in recent years have paid a surprising amount of attention to Explo ’72. I highlight the event in my history of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Darren Dochuk and Daniel Williams both found... Read more
My daughter graduated from eighth grade tonight. I was very proud of her. As the president of her middle school’s student council she had the opportunity to address the audience and introduce the evening’s festivities. After a few inspirational charges from school administrators, much of my evening was spent, as is the case with most of the graduation ceremonies I have attended, watching the members of my daughter’s class parade across the stage and receive a piece of paper akin... Read more
In May 2012 a group of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders posted a statement on the “Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation.” The statement defended man’s free will in accepting Christ’s offer of salvation, and highlighted what is now the key theological division within the country’s largest Protestant denomination. With SBC conservatives having largely taken control of denominational leadership and seminaries from moderates and liberals by the 1990s, the debate over Calvinism, including predestination, election, and God’s sovereignty in salvation,... Read more
I am not foolish enough to review a book before reading it, so please treat this as a pre-review. I am just beginning to read what looks like a really important book on Christian history, and I want to define the points I hope to get out of it. The book in question is R. I. Moore’s The War On Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe. Before going further, let me begin by explaining why this matters so much,... Read more
Anyone not already familiar with the term “majority-minority” should add it to their vocabulary very soon. That is particularly true for anyone planning for the future of US churches. Through US history, non-Latino whites have always constituted a substantial majority of the population, sometimes 85 percent or more, depending on how we count Native Americans. That proportion has fallen steadily since the 1960s, and at the turn of the new century, some states achieved the status of majority-minority, meaning that... Read more
One of the more surprising developments (at least to me) in recent weeks was the apparent equivocation of megachurch pastor Andy Stanley on the issue of homosexuality’s sinfulness. Stanley is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church (according to Wikipedia the second-largest congregation in the country) and related campuses and ministries. I heard him speak at North Point quite a few years ago, though I have to admit that my ears were recovering from the pre-sermon worship music and I... Read more
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