Mission to the City

Last updated on: July 2, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a hundred years it may be more important that you are from New York, Shanghai, New Delhi, Johannesburg, or Amsterdam, than that you are from the United States, China, India, South Africa, or Holland. The city is becoming central in new and unique ways. The great institutions of the last 500 years are the nation-state and the university, both of which are now in severe decline. Nation-states increasingly cannot govern, and our universities have become strongholds of civilization destroying... Read more

Gone Fishin’

Last updated on: June 29, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

I’m taking a break from the blog for a couple of weeks. Back in mid-July. Read more

Protestants All

Last updated on: June 26, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a seminal 2001 essay, Fenggang Yang and Helen Rose Ebaugh studied 13 Houston-area religious institutions to discover how the religious lives of new immigrants are changed by their move to America. They discovered three processes: The congregations adapt “in organizational structure and ritual”; they return to “theological foundations”; and they make an effort to reach “beyond traditional boundaries to include other peoples” (270). There is pressure, in other words, both toward a return-t0-basics “fundamentalism” (their term) and an outward-focused... Read more

Euro-centric Theory

Last updated on: June 26, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In an essay entitled “The World is Not Flat,” sociologist Stephen Warner describes his growing realization of the limits of sociological theories of religion. Initially attracted to the “sacred canopy” ideas of Berger and Luckman, he came to the insight that the theories were forged from European rather than American experience, and for that reason their application to American religion was limited. As Warner puts it, “religious institutions in the US had never been embedded within what the reigning theory spoke of... Read more

Like Father, Like Son

Last updated on: June 26, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Psalm 101 begins as praise to the Lord (v. 1), but it quickly becomes a description of David’s reign as king. He thinks of his royal house, and his rule, as a replica of Yahweh’s palace and His rule. One must be pure to enter the courts of Yahweh, and David walks in purity of heart within his house (v. 3) and requires purity in walk of his servants (v. 10). David dismisses evil counsel from before his eyes (v.... Read more

Sea and the Dry

Last updated on: June 26, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When a storm breaks out at sea on a voyage to Tarshish, the sailors want to know who Jonah is. He tells them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh God of heaven who made the sea and dry land” (Jonah 1:9; Hebrew for “the dry” is yabbashah). The God of Jonah is the God of the three-decker universe, heaven, land, sea. It’s a meaningful self-description, in part because the sailors know that Jonah’s God is responsible for the... Read more

Confederate Civil Religion

Last updated on: June 25, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In an essay in Judgment & Grace in Dixie, Charles Wilson Reagan traces the evolution of Southern civil religion from 1920 to 1980. He argues that over the decades the civil religion of the lost cause “evolved from a public faith celebrating the virtues of a religiously sanctioned regional culture to preoccupation with what the region’s new destiny was on the national and indeed universal human scale.” The new South was to provide a vision for America’s renewal, and through America... Read more

Techno-Ecumenism

Last updated on: June 25, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Robert Wuthnow points out (Boundless Faith, 115-6) that improvements in technology enabled leaders to transcend denominational boundaries: “Communication and travel increased the opportunities to organize transnational ministries in new ways, just as philanthropy and fund-raising techniques did. The earlier denominational boards depended on corresponding secretaries to stay in contact with missionaries and on the relative proximity of congregations and regular contacts among clergy to solicit money and new recruits. By the end of the nineteenth century, leaders like [Arthur Tappan]... Read more

Primal Wound

Last updated on: June 25, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

During the night before Jacob returns from his sojourn with Laban in Haran, a man confronts him and they wrestle (Genesis 32). Jacob refuses to let the man go and the man touches him in the yerekh – usually translated as “socket of his thigh.” He returns to the land, but he returns limping. He’s a victor in his encounter with the Angel of Yahweh, but he’s a wounded victor. In her contribution to The Covenant of Circumcision, editor Elizabeth Wyner Mark... Read more

Sons and Daughters

Last updated on: June 25, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

We are the temple of the living God, Paul says (2 Corinthians 6:16), and he supports the claim with a string of quotations. God says, “I will dwell in them and walk among them” (Exodus 29:45). He says, “I will be their God and they shall be My people” (Genesis 17:8). In order to be the temple of the living God, it’s necessary to separate from the unclean, and so Paul goes on (v. 17) to quote Isaiah 52:11 (“come... Read more