Calvinists: The Worst of White People

Last updated on: April 3, 2019 at 5:10 pm By D. G. Hart

Within a few days of each other, two authors decided to attribute to Reformed Protestants (i.e. Calvinists) the worst features of tribalism. They did so at a time when everyday brings a news story about identitarian politics leading to banning some speaker from campus, or humiliating a public figure into resignation or even to court. But with all that noise, Tim Challies and Paul Carter decide to single out Reformed Protestants as instances of offensive Christian rhetoric and behavior. For... Read more

Being Reformed is Hard (and so few have tried it)

Last updated on: April 1, 2019 at 3:48 pm By D. G. Hart

They asked and I accepted. Christian History Institute requested an essay about John Williamson Nevin, Philip Schaff and the Mercersberg Theology and I wrote one. Mercersburg was the site of the German Reformed Church’s seminary, the institution where Nevin and Schaff taught. For a time they resisted the central trends of evangelical Protestantism in nineteenth-century America. Their reason was trying to adhere to a way of being Protestant that was closer to the Reformation than to the modernizing tendencies of... Read more

Race, the Sabbath, and Resolutions

Last updated on: March 29, 2019 at 10:53 am By D. G. Hart

I wonder if Thabiti Anyabwile will support a resolution condemning the desecration of the Lord’s Day if I will also support a resolution condemning racism. The thought occurred to me after reading the pastor’s reaction to news that Tennessee’s legislators had refused to support a resolution condemning racism. Might it be the case that the inability to admit the obvious about our past shows itself in fresh aggravation and consternation when we see Neo-Nazis marching today? Could it be that... Read more

Evangelical Politics: Same As it Ever Was

Last updated on: March 27, 2019 at 5:13 pm By D. G. Hart

Jemar Tisby repeats the refrain that white evangelicals who support President Trump are hypocritical: In the 2016 presidential election, exit polling tells us, about 8 out of 10 white evangelicals who voted pulled the lever for Donald Trump. This information came as a disappointment to many and, to some, as further indication of the moral hypocrisy of white evangelicals. Those who promote “family values,” espouse equality for all people and stand for biblical ethics chose to embrace a man whose... Read more

The Difference a Degree Makes

Last updated on: March 25, 2019 at 2:48 pm By D. G. Hart

People with Ph.D.s do not make a lot of money and the perks of teaching at a college or university rarely bestow the kind of privilege that comes with being born in a wealthy, well-connected family or the son or daughter to a powerful politician. That does not mean, though, that academics identify with the ordinary people. University life and the paces of graduate school often expose the folks headed for Ph.D.s to the dynamics and culture of elite institutions... Read more

Can Your Civilization Do This?

Last updated on: March 19, 2019 at 5:13 pm By D. G. Hart

Do not get me wrong. The West, for all of its faults, is sometimes glorious display of human achievements. Sometimes Western Civilization is hard to define, but it has had many defenders. One was the political scientist, Samuel Huntington: the Western heritage is rooted in “Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law, Latin and Christianity,” a common culture with penchants for the separation of “spiritual and temporal authority,” the rule of law, representative governments, and civil liberties. In the post-Cold War... Read more

What Did Evangelicals Know and When Did They Know It?

Last updated on: March 15, 2019 at 12:41 pm By D. G. Hart

The National Association of Evangelicals, one of the major institutional outlets for white Protestants who coalesced around the ministry and institutions associated with Billy Graham, has issues a call addressed to the increasing awareness of sexual abuse in Christian circles. A Call to Sexual Purity and Child Protection has three sections, a code of ethics for pastors, another for congregations, and one more for church leadership. Here is a sample of the call’s instructions for pastors: Avoid sinful sexual behavior... Read more

Moral Equivocation with Trump and Lincoln

Last updated on: March 11, 2019 at 3:28 pm By D. G. Hart

Michael Sean Winters comes out hard against the contested comments of Ilhan Omar about Israel and its supporters and knows that Democrats can’t attack Republicans for hypocrisy and leave the Congresswoman from Minnesota unscathed: I can understand people’s frustration with having to call out Congresswoman Omar when we have a racist bigot in the White House. As ugly as her comment was, it was no worse than Trump’s post-Charlottesville comments about “both sides” having “good people” when one side had... Read more

Semioticians All

Last updated on: March 8, 2019 at 6:12 pm By D. G. Hart

When I was in college, I studied film and took a few classes in film theory and criticism. It never stuck and so I went more into the production side of film. One of the subjects that put me off was semiotics — the study of signs and symbols along with the study of the interpretation of signs and symbols. Don’t get me wrong. I liked good lighting, composition, juxtaposition, and editing with many of my film majors. But looking... Read more

Radical Christianity and Christian Culture

Last updated on: March 6, 2019 at 3:50 pm By D. G. Hart

Some Christians are uncomfortable either with their world or their place in it. The rise of anti-liberalism among some Roman Catholic intellectuals is one indication of it. Calls for radical Christianity, which have been around since the 1970s, is also part of such discomfort. If American society is not suitable or comfortable for Christians, then what might a Christian-friendly place look like? Roger Olson recalled his own Christian upbringing as one way that Christians avoided worldliness and carved out their... Read more