Follow the Bouncing Evangelical Ball

July 20, 2017 By D. G. Hart

Readers may be hard pressed to figure out what some have recently written about evangelical and mainline Protestantism lately. Back in the 1950s these labels may have distinguished the right and left in the world of white American Protestantism, but any more, evangelicalism is meaningless even if journalists and academics pay it far more attention than the mainline denominations. One indication is Matthew Lee Anderson’s review of John Compton’s The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution. Instead of following a... Read more

Freedom with Qualifications

July 13, 2017 By D. G. Hart

From presidents to non-Americans, many people used to regard the United States as the leader of the free world. That was an easy line to maintain when the world was divided between the “free” nations and the tyranny of Soviet Communism. It was so easy, that when POTUSes went to the American public to justify defense spending or intelligence gathering, they employed the language of freedom. Who could be against that? What POTUSes forgot to remind people was that this... Read more

First the South Was Toxic, Now the West

July 11, 2017 By D. G. Hart

Staying on the right side of history is tricky in these fast changing times. Back in 2015 Christians in the U.S. needed to figure out what to do about gay marriage after Obergefell v. Hodges. My own communion, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church last summer held a conference on what churches might think about doing in the light of the new interpretation of the Constitution. But by then gay marriage had moved to the back pages, Cailtyn Jenner had moved transgenderism... Read more

What Patriotism Isn’t

July 4, 2017 By D. G. Hart

Sean Michael Winters corrects against two popular errors. The first is to blame America: The disposition to blame America first was not restricted to concerns about Central America and today it tends to look as much at our own nation’s past as to any misdeeds perpetrated abroad. The penchant for pulling down heroes of the past, from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson, evaluates historical figures by modern-day standards, and ignores the good that was often done by these obviously flawed... Read more

Ecclesiastical Independence

July 4, 2017 By D. G. Hart

Where does the American War for Independence mesh with the Protestant Reformation? The short answer is a rejection of sacral monarchy. British colonists rejected divine-right monarchy (which allowed Parliament, mind you, to raise taxes without representation). Protestants, from Lutherans to Anabaptists, rejected a divine-right sacral monarch, also known as the pope. So is it odd or fitting to observe at this celebration of July 4th that the Roman Catholic Church, according even to its own members, is suffering from the... Read more

Theology of the Cross says Losing is Winning (and winning losing)

June 27, 2017 By D. G. Hart

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, was on the surface a victory for religious liberty. The justices ruled, 7-2, that a Lutheran school with a playground was legally eligible to receive state funds for re-paving its playground. Technically, the court upheld the separation of church and state, but approved the cooperation of state and playground. But Lutherans, who have a theology of two-kingdoms, are leery of such support from the state even for such apparently secular or public... Read more

If Worldview Goes, So Does WWJD?

June 24, 2017 By D. G. Hart

Trying to make politics conform to gospel ends is to miss the ginormous gap between God's ways and ours. Read more

Shouldn’t Implicit Bias Make a View of the World Go Away

June 23, 2017 By D. G. Hart

For the last three decades at least (thanks perhaps to Francis Schaeffer and Reformed Protestant intellectuals like George Marsden and Nicholas Wolterstorff), the notion of world view (it pains me to spell it out so hereafter w-w) has inspired and informed evangelical ministry, academics, cultural criticism, and more. I have always been suspicious of the idea (it is Hegelian after all), because who beside God can pretend to view the world. I remember that opening section in C. S. Lewis’... Read more

Jesus Forgives Sins, the United States Doesn’t

June 15, 2017 By D. G. Hart

If Southern Baptists think their resolution condemning the alt-right will make them right with the nation, boy are they going to be disappointed. Read more

Today’s College Students Can’t Handle the Stones

June 14, 2017 By D. G. Hart

One of my stations at Pandora is The Moody Blues, one of the bands that comprised the Progressive Rock scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Millennials who wonder what progressive rock is should consider a song that lasted an entire 20 minutes. Wow Groovy! The Moody Blues station at Pandora is not precise and so throws in other bands like the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling Stones — it’s more period that genre specific. The other night I heard... Read more