May 1, 2014

The Consortium for Classical and Lutheran Education will be holding its annual conference July 15-17 in St. Louis on the beautiful, historic gothic campus of Concordia Seminary.  This year there will even be child care! I’ll be there–talking about George Herbert, the Christian poet whom

April 30, 2014

Hillary Clinton cited her commitment to the “social gospel” in a speech to United Methodists.   That goes back to the 19th century when many Protestants said that instead of emphasizing the gospel of eternal salvation in Heaven through Christ, they should emphasize a gospel of

April 30, 2014

More from Methodist minister Morgan Guyton’s post entitled “Six Ways that Capitalism Fails the Church.”  He discusses competition between churches, the way churches “with bling” take members away from churches “without bling.” (more…)

April 29, 2014

Sarah Palin, in a speech to the NRA, said that “waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”  Lutheran journalist Mollie Hemingway calls that blasphemy.  Her article in the Federalist includes a shoutout to the Cranach Institute, a quote from my daughter, and a critique of civil

April 29, 2014

In the context of an article criticizing President Obama, George Will says that the president continually uses “the four basic teenage tropes” that characterize the way adolescents argue.   I give them after the jump, with my emphases in bold.  I don’t really want to discuss

April 28, 2014

G.C. McLoughlin G.C. McLoughlin G.C. McLoughlinG. It’s still Easter, and it will be for 40 days, corresponding to the 40 days that the risen Jesus was with his disciples until His Assumption into Heaven.  So we should still revel in this season, and I’m going

April 28, 2014

Have you heard about this book?  The Christian Gentleman’s Smoking Companion: A Celebration of Smoking to the Glory of God.  Jonathan Binnie, who told me about it, says that his brother attends a church that has a “men’s cigar outreach ministry.”  It’s called “El Lector,”

April 28, 2014

. . .is soon to be China, according to scholars who project that in ten years the still-Communist country will have 160 million Protestants (the USA has 159 million) and in 15 years 247 million Christians in all, more than any other nation. (more…)

April 25, 2014

Methodist minister Morgan Guyton has written a post entitled “Six Ways that Capitalism Fails the Church.”  His main point has to do not so much with free market economics as with the way the marketing and consumer mentality is distorting how churches operate.  I don’t

April 25, 2014

Western states are organizing in an effort to take over all of that federal land within their borders, which often constitutes most of their territory.  (See the map after the jump.)  I can see why the states would have a better claim than the federal


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