Young, Restless, and Immediate: The Future of Evangelicalism

Last updated on: July 24, 2015 at 6:23 pm By Chris Armstrong

Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on the Future of Evangelicalism in America. Read other perspectives here. Historian David Bebbington famously defines evangelicalism as Biblicist, crucicentrist, conversionist, and activist. But to limit our understanding of evangelicalism to its fondness for the Bible, focus on the cross, call to conversion, and impulse to reform church and society is to miss an essential experiential commitment and a key demographic fact. The experiential dimension we may call immediatism. This is the expectation that... Read more

This is not the first evangelical crossroads

Last updated on: July 24, 2015 at 6:28 pm By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on the Future of Evangelicalism in America. Read other perspectives here. A long time ago, as a precocious United Methodist teenager, I went to college. It was a Christian college in the “historically denominational but now in many ways secular” mold, not the “small evangelical school with a behavior covenant” mold. My mother, who had helped me choose this school in preference to the small-evangelical-with-a-behavior-covenant school she had attended, was still worried enough about... Read more

Facing Facts About the Future of the Church in America

Last updated on: July 24, 2015 at 6:29 pm By Guest Contributor

Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on the Future of Evangelicalism in America. Read other perspectives here. By Neil Carlson If the church is to survive and thrive in the United States, we have got to face facts. “Facing facts” here does not involve a gloomy recap of survey data showing increasing rates of religious “nones” without any church affiliation, especially among the Millennial generation born since 1981. Such gloom is common enough: identify the problem (declining numbers), diagnose the... Read more

We’re all working for the Pharaoh

Last updated on: August 5, 2015 at 1:35 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

More of our reports and analysis from the recent Acton University conference. Read the first eight posts here: The refreshing difference We can’t create heaven on earth “Don’t immanentize the eschaton” Is there really enough to go around? Letting our Jesus Freak flag fly Was Jesus a socialist? But what about sin? The pursuit of wealth is not neutral By Edwin Woodruff Tait The first lecture I attended at Acton, after the required series of four foundational lectures, was John... Read more

Solving office politics: part 7 of an interview with Gloria Nelund

Last updated on: July 14, 2015 at 7:56 pm By Ethix

Read the previous installments of our interview with Gloria Nelund, reprinted from Ethix: Defining financial success Helping the middle class Too big to fail? Don’t invest in anything you don’t understand Don’t solve your company issues in the men’s bathroom 7 secrets of success Getting Into the Financial World How did you get into the financial industry? I went to University of Dayton to study elementary education. But while student teaching I realized that was not for me. I suppose... Read more

7 secrets of success: part 6 of an interview with Gloria Nelund

Last updated on: July 14, 2015 at 7:56 pm By Ethix

Read the previous installments of our interview with Gloria Nelund, reprinted from Ethix: Defining financial success Helping the middle class Too big to fail? Don’t invest in anything you don’t understand Don’t solve your company issues in the men’s bathroom Quitting the Job [Nelund picks up on the story of quitting her job from our last post.] I got on a plane that night, took a red eye to London, and the next day I met with my boss and... Read more

Don’t solve your company issues in the men’s bathroom: part 5 of an interview with Gloria Nelund

Last updated on: July 14, 2015 at 7:23 pm By Ethix

Read the previous installments of our interview with Gloria Nelund, reprinted from Ethix: Defining financial success Helping the middle class Too big to fail? Don’t invest in anything you don’t understand Gender Issues Let’s talk about gender issues. There weren’t many women executives at Deutsche Bank when you were there. What are the challenges of being a woman in a man’s world? I was the only woman among the top 200 executives in Deutsche bank. A couple times a year... Read more

How the incarnation and God’s sacramental presence in all creation put our everyday work in a new light

Last updated on: July 13, 2015 at 6:53 pm By Chris Armstrong

What follows is part of what ended up on the cutting-room floor when I handed in 6,000 words for a 3,500 feature on Christian thought about vocation in Leadership Journal. Since I still like it, I’m posting it here. The Incarnation Luther and other Reformers certainly did advance Christian reflection on work and calling. But if we turn again to the early and medieval church and look beyond the clerical and monastic usurpation of the term “vocation,” we will find some... Read more

A “Windex Cure” for America’s Moral Decline

Last updated on: July 7, 2015 at 5:23 pm By Center for Faith and Work, LeTourneau University

By Bill Peel America is losing faith and becoming a secular nation — but I believe there’s a cure. Escalating racial discord, the ethical failure of leaders in public and private sectors, and the breakdown of traditional family values can, I believe, be traced back to the decreasing influence of faith on American life. Recent polls document our decline. The number of American adults who describe themselves as Christian has dropped nearly eight percentage points over the past seven year.[1]... Read more

The pursuit of wealth is not neutral

Last updated on: August 5, 2015 at 1:35 pm By Edwin Woodruff Tait

More of our reports and analysis from the recent Acton University conference. Read the first seven posts here: The refreshing difference We can’t create heaven on earth “Don’t immanentize the eschaton” Is there really enough to go around? Letting our Jesus Freak flag fly Was Jesus a socialist? But what about sin? One of the claims I hear most often from people affiliated with Acton, or with pro-free-market Christianity more generally, is that modern churches have an excessive, simplistic suspicion... Read more