Some of you know that I have been arguing for some time that evangelicalism is going the way of all flesh–that is, historical Christian flesh.  Throughout history heresy has arisen when Christians have been more concerned about bringing the faith up to cultural speed than staying true to creeds and confessions.  I have been saying that the only way that evangelical theology will remain orthodox is for it to exercise intellectual humility and submit to the Great Tradition of historic... Read more

I traveled to Israel last May to search for Herod the Great and I found him, or at least his ghost, at his tomb at Herodium. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/travel/herod-the-greats-israel.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1 Read more

Ryan Anderson The only religious liberty concerns that we’ve seen in this general area involve weddings. Wedding photographers, florists who provide flowers for weddings, bakers who bake wedding cakes—they’re happy serving gays and lesbians for get-well-soon flowers and happy-birthday cakes. Their only objection is to the same-sex wedding.  And I don’t know why we need to have the government to coerce a 70-year-old grandmother into violating her beliefs about marriage. http://dailysignal.com/2015/04/03/how-to-talk-about-the-indiana-law-with-your-liberal-relatives-at-easter/ Read more

Good Friday is the first of the Triduum, or most holy “three days” of the church year. Actually, they started last night on Holy Thursday evening, with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.  Because the Jewish day starts in the evening, historically and theologically the Three Days go from Holy Thursday evening into the dark dawn of Easter morning.  (Think of the three days as starting on three successive evenings–Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.) Did you notice verse 10 in... Read more

This is troubling—and not just for the reasons you might guess. It’s not because I think everyone should agree with this law. On its substance and wisdom, I think honest people can disagree. What’s troubling is the emotional virulence with which people are reacting to this particular law, when it is identical to protections offered in thirty other states and in the federal government. Indiana is just playing “catch up” here, legally speaking. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/04/14733/   Read more

“People of the Land”: A Twenty-first Century Case for Christian Zionism This is the title of a one-day conference at Georgetown University on Friday, April 17. As far as we know, this is the first academic conference that makes a case for Christian Zionism.  Usually, academics bash the concept as exegetically impossible and theologically illegitimate. This conference will be innovative in two ways: 1. It will show that the roots of Christian Zionism lay in non-dispensationalist movements that came long... Read more

Mary Eberstadt There’s no mercy in yelling slurs at anyone who points out that the sexual revolution has been flooding the public square with problems for a long time now and that, in fact, some people out there are drowning—but slurs are the new intolerance’s stock in trade. Above all, there is no mercy in slandering people by saying that religious believers “hate” certain people when in fact they do not; or that they are “phobes” of one stripe or... Read more

My people have mistakenly been called “Christian Arabs” but the reality is that we are Arameans, descendants of people who lived here in Israel since the time of the Bible. http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/03/27/it%E2%80%99s-hard-to-be-a-christian-arab-in-israel-but-not-because-of-prejudice/ Read more

When I was nine years old, my father told me he wanted to become a woman. I know I speak for others who have undergone similarly tragic childhoods when I say that I pray the Supreme Court will seriously consider the six amicus briefs submitted by the children of LGBT parents. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/03/14661/ Read more

I remember in 1975, as the Cultural Revolution in China was drawing to an end, that Time magazine had these words emblazoned in large letters on its cover, “When China went mad.” This was the time when students drove their teachers and professors with sticks and beatings out to the countryside to work, and Mao’s wife unleashed a pogrom of ideological purity that resulted in the death of millions of Chinese people. We wondered how so many in a whole... Read more