Can the Kuyperian tradition produce a Mother Teresa? (You might want to read the whole post before you answer that question.) The Neo-Calvinists are a version of modern Kuyperians, and the issue for our post today is how they see the Christian relating to politics. We are looking at Craig Bartholomew’s comprehensive sketch of the Kuyperian tradition, and in this chp we are treated to a special clarification. (See Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition.) His opening claim: It is one thing... Read more

Ryan Burge: Though academics have long wondered whether the US will follow the secularizing trend found in most of Europe, the greatest shifts among believers have occurred within Christianity, not away from it. The three-wave Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES)—which surveyed the same individuals in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and started with 9,500 respondents—reveals how few Catholics and Protestants have changed affiliations and how many have moved from one denomination (or nondenomination) to another…. Protestants largely stay Protestant, defecting at... Read more

By Jonathan Storment “If the Devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.” –Corrie Ten Boom Dallas Willard was once asked if he had to describe Jesus in one word what would it be, and he said “Relaxed.” I like that little idea a lot. It’s not what first comes to my mind when I try to describe Jesus…which might be why I struggle so much to relax. It turns out that I’m not alone in this. 37... Read more

Embracing Our Goodness, by Chad Thornhill Of all the ways Smith makes his case for embracing a beautiful, good, and true story about a beautiful, good, and true God, his fifth chapter of The Magnificent Story may be the most thought-provoking. When articulating a doctrine of humanity in light of the gospel, the common Christian line of thinking likely begins with “we are sinners,” which then entails our need for forgiveness, and thus our need for the cross. While Smith... Read more

Let’s hear your thoughts. What’s the right and just punishment for Louisville? The judgment today was to take away their 2013 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. What say you? Read more

Jesus did not speak the ‘red letters’ in your Bible. He did not speak English … or even Greek. What we have is translation, interpretation, and paraphrase.The Gospels convey the true story of Jesus, but it does so through the medium of written communication that made sense to the original audience and continues to carry the message to us today. The evangelists pulled together incidents from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, putting them in written form, in books,... Read more

A friend of mine recommended that I read David Steinmetz’s well-known essay, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” in his book Taking the Long View: Christian Theology in Historical Perspective.  Here’s at least one of the problems: Bible reading intimidates many ordinary Bible readers, and one reason why is specialists — names not given — are so good at what they do, so insightful in what they teach, and so industrious in their efforts (footnotes galore, historical sources cited galore, knowledge galore)... Read more

By Michelle Van Loon www.michellevanloon.com www.ThePerennialGen.com “They’re back from another conference,” one of my former pastors said in a staff meeting, shaking his head in mock exhaustion. He didn’t need to explain who “they” were, or even what conference “they’d” attended. We knew he was referring to a clique of women who went as often as they could to conferences featuring their favorite teachers and worship leaders. Themes and subject matter were usually secondary in importance to the women. They... Read more