Putting the Protest in Protestant
I for one think Christians should be wary of cheering for fellow Christians in public square arguments. It looks like special pleading. Read more
I for one think Christians should be wary of cheering for fellow Christians in public square arguments. It looks like special pleading. Read more
Now that we have illiberal democracy in the United States, maybe we can also consider illiberal freedom. Andrew Bacevich does: So the operative principle is this: Anything that enlarges choice is commendable. A recent Times story about the first women to complete army infantry training—“a towering milestone”—offers a vivid example. Young women “who dreamed of going into the infantry” now have those dreams come true, the Times reports, and with that “are no longer barred from the core combat positions... Read more
Crawford Gribben’s careful and thoughtful biography of John Owen is also an important contribution to the history of the book. Early on he points out that the standard way that many modern evangelical and Reformed Protestant readers encounter Owen, such as through the Banner of Truth edition of Owen’s collected writings, distorts the author and his context: . . . book historians insist that “forms” relating to a text’s status as a material object are also essential components of its... Read more
Supposedly the rise of Protestantism upended the glorious harmony of Christendom and the Roman Catholic Church. Read more
Anyway, why can’t you look at the results of the 2016 election and read it as a sign of evangelicals’ evolving maturity, an indication that they are now more pragmatic than idealistic, more political than moralistic? Alan Jacobs certainly doesn’t read it that way. He continues to interpret the vote as an indication of evangelicalism’s great hypocrisy. On the one hand, the religious right used to talk about the necessity of moral character when assessing a political candidate: As Albert... Read more
Is it more likely to come from the evangelicals who voted for Trump or from the writers and producers of Saturday Night Live? Shadi Hamid shows great restraint and these days uncommon wisdom in recognizing that viewers of the hit series Handmade’s Tale should not rush to condemn evangelicals as theocrats: What makes Gilead, or for that matter any authoritarian theocracy, so terrifying isn’t just, or even primarily, the religious absolutism. It’s that religious laws, once promulgated, cannot be undone... Read more
So why does Dwight Longenecker think that his appeal to 2000 years of church teaching will net more coherence than Protestants who appeal to the Bible only? As soon as you get involved in these Bible gunfights you realize that the exchange of Bible verse proof texts accomplishes very little. That’s because the Protestant (despite his protests to the contrary) does not actually believe in his favorite doctrine of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone). He reads the Scriptures through his denominational... Read more
Gushee is only the most recent indication of evangelicalism's hollow identity. Read more
And Lena Dunham‘s Girls is no Leave it to Beaver. So why doesn’t Colbert see how much he has in common with Donald Trump? Some say Colbert should be fired; others say CBS should be sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission. I say Colbert should be commended for revealing to the American people one important reason why Trump managed to rise to the presidency—namely, the degradation of American culture to such a low level that a vulgarian such as Trump... Read more
Rod Dreher writes about his appearance on the On Point NPR show and needing to explain whether his church (Eastern Orthodox) makes room for transgender persons: A transgender person called in and wanted to know if there was any room in my church for her. I said of course there was, because we are all sinners. That transgendered person is a precious child of God, no question. But I did not want to leave the impression that being a part... Read more
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