These traditions were created in the hope that consumers would purchase… Do you have any other traditions like these? By Rebecca Zerzan Here’s how some beloved traditions came about, including diamond engagement rings and the ubiquitous green-bean casserole. 1. RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER The origin of Rudolph has nothing to do with Jesus or Santa. He sprang from the mind of Robert May, a copywriter for Chicago’s Montgomery Ward department store. May wrote and illustrated the poem (that later became... Read more

Anthony Bradley’s essay at Acton is worth your reading. His case is that one Joy Allmond speaks about Christianity, even evangelical Christianity, in NYC as if the resurgence of folks like Timothy Keller is the whole story. We need to learn what we know and what we don’t know and then learn quickly that what we think we know is always only part of the story when it comes to the big story of Christianity. Apart from folks like Mark... Read more

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Read more

From Missio Alliance, a conversation starter. What do you think of “soft” difference? In an article called Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation Between Church and Culture in 1 Peter, Volf takes a look at the persecuted Christian community in the first letter to Peter and notes that the Christians at that time certainly would have been right to perceive their community to be existing in a hostile world. As Volf analyses this Christian community he says that they kept... Read more

Two of the most influential voices in evangelicalism were not evangelicals themselves, though they have been claimed for evangelicalism and many younger thinkers can’t imagine their not being evangelicals. Those two are Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an orthodox Lutheran, and C.S. Lewis, an Anglican with the sensibility of a “mere” kind of Christianity. In their day neither was claimed by the kind of evangelicalism that then existed, which was more like the very conservative side of evangelicalism today. One could probably tally... Read more