World Their Parish

Last updated on: July 17, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Though over a decade old, David Martin’s Pentecotalism: The World Their Parish is still a revelation. Densely textured in both form and matter, it demands, and rewards, slow and careful reading. This is partly because of the book’s reprise of Martin’s arguments concerning secularization (see his updated theorizing On Secularization), which emphasize the diversity of patterns of secularization. Continental, Iberian secularization is not the same as Anglo-American secularization because of differences between Protestantism and Catholicism and between the church-state settlements. Though large... Read more

Desolate City

Last updated on: July 17, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Revelation 18 ends with a terrible description of post-apocalyptic Babylon, a city fallen. The description focuses on the silence, enumerating the sounds (phone, 3x in vv. 22-23) that are no longer found. Sounds, and the unseen sights. We’ve seen this scene before – in I Am Legend and countless other films: The city empty, eerily quiet, dead. The description in Revelation 18:22-23 alternates between sounds and sights: A. Sound of harpists, musicians, flute-players, trumpeters heard no longer. B. Craftsmen found... Read more

Weak Churches

Last updated on: July 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In their 1994 study of mainline decline, Vanishing Boundaries, Dean Hoge and associates offered evidence in support of Dean Kelley’s thesis (Why Conservative Churches Are Growing). Kelley claimed that churches grow when they are “strong,” that is, when they have clear doctrinal beliefs, demand commitment, and enforce a particular lifestyle. “Weak” churches leave doctrine up for grabs, don’t demand much, and live and let live. Hoge and his associates argued that the mainline was declining in membership and vitality because... Read more

O’Connor as Catholic Writer

Last updated on: July 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

William Giraldi really doesn’t like being mistaken for a Catholic novelist. And he doesn’t much like Catholic novels of Graham Greene or of the later Walker Percy because they are too Catholic, too guided by dogma. He does like Flannery O’Connor and even though he wants to retain a questionable gap between a Catholic storyteller and a Catholic who tells stories, he does capture O’Connor’s skill: Again and again one is staggered by her alien abilities, her empyreal genius couched in... Read more

Flesh and glory

Last updated on: July 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

To defend the resurrection, Paul indulges in a piece of cosmology (1 Corinthians 15:35-49), which circulates around seed, body, flesh, and glory. A seed goes into the ground and a plant comes up. Each seed has a body of its own, a gift from God, and each plant too has a body. The body of the seed becomes another body in the process of producing the plant, but “process” isn’t quite apocalyptic enough to catch Paul’s point: The seed has... Read more

Structure in Revelation 18

Last updated on: July 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Revelation 18 has an obvious surface structure. Three speakers are introduced – an angel from heaven (v. 1), another voice from heaven (v. 4), and a strong angel tossing a millstone (v. 21). The first angel and the strong angel have a similar message. The first speaks of the fall of Babylon (v. 2), while the strong angel announces that Babylon will be thrown into the sea (v. v. 21), and demonstrates how. (The sea is the waters on which... Read more

Forgetting Lolita

Last updated on: July 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

We are awash in Lolitas – Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry. As Ira Wells says in a New Republic piece, “at a certain echelon of pop music megastardom . . . they are all Lolitas now.” Yet Wells insists that as the number of Lolitas has risen exponentially, we’ve forgotten Lolita, the original Nabokov novel. These two phenomena coexist because we’ve taken Stanley Kubrick’s film Lolita as our model more than Nabokov’s. The contrast is evident from the film’s opening... Read more

Marriage and Freedom

Last updated on: July 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The confusion about marriage in contemporary America is profound. It’s a confusion about the very roots of marriage. Few confusions are more basic than the notion that marriage is essentially a matter of freedom. Scripturally, the opposite is true. Marriage is a form of bondage. Paul alludes to this point subtly in the way he describes marriage in Romans 7 and 1 Corinthians 7. His phrase “bound to a wife” uses the Greek verb deo, used elsewhere in the New... Read more

Clothed in righteousness

Last updated on: July 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Clothing metaphors have long been associated in Protestantism with imputed righteousness: “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness / My beauty are, my spotless dress.” Being “clothed with Christ” is definitely a New Testament metaphor, and the image of being “clothed in the Spirit” has deep roots in the Old Testament. In Revelation 19:7-8, though, the bride who is the church is clothed in righteous acts of the holy ones. She clothes herself in the bright clean linen of righteous acts. She... Read more

Demon Sabbath

Last updated on: July 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When Babylon the great city falls, all the inhabitants are driven out. No human sights or sounds are left – whether of music, of labor, of commerce, or of a wedding celebration (Revelation 18:22-23). But the city is inhabited by three sets of citizens: demons, unclean spirits, and unclean birds (18:2). It becomes a habitation and a prison (2x). The description of these three categories uses fourteen words: dwelling, demon, and (3x), prison (2x), every (2x), spirit, unclean (2x), bird,... Read more