Why the Public Schools Need the Bible

Last updated on: October 7, 2016 at 12:05 pm By D. G. Hart

If exposed to passages like the following, graduates of public schools would not need trigger warnings at college: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside... Read more

President Obama is the Most Christian President Ever

Last updated on: October 5, 2016 at 1:00 pm By D. G. Hart

Okay, maybe “ever” is too strong. But if you read his remarks when welcoming Pope Francis to the White House, you sure do wonder why Christian conservatives think President Obama is hostile to faith: Your Holiness, in your words and deeds, you set a profound moral example. And in these gentle but firm reminders of our obligations to God and to one another, you are shaking us out of complacency. All of us may, at times, experience discomfort when we... Read more

High Church Protestantism

Last updated on: September 29, 2016 at 12:29 pm By D. G. Hart

You don’t need to become an Anglican to have a high view of the visible church. Reformed Protestants, for example, take the visible church seriously, so much so that evangelicals commonly regard Calvinists as overly scrupulous (or kill joys). But if you do think that creeds matter, ordination sets someone apart for holy work, and that the sacraments are not merely symbols but bonds of communion, then you may have a little high church Protestantism in you. One way to... Read more

No Need for Tony Campolo to Give Up Being Evangelical

Last updated on: September 28, 2016 at 12:42 pm By D. G. Hart

Evangelicals have always been liberal Protestants, if you define liberalism, as most religious historians do, as a departure from orthodoxy. Unitarians are liberal Christians because they reject Nicene orthodoxy. And so evangelicals are liberal Protestants because they reject Reformation theology. Follow the logic: Luther baptized babies. Calvin taught predestination. Evangelicals neither baptize babies nor believe God elects only some people for salvation. Ergo: evangelicals do not follow the original Protestants and therefore stray from Protestant orthodoxy. I know this is... Read more

Hell Is not (a problem) Reserved for Calvinists

Last updated on: September 23, 2016 at 12:15 pm By D. G. Hart

Roger Olson shows some civility to Calvinists in a post about a t-shirt caption making the rounds, “#Some Lives Matter – Calvinism,” an iteration intended I suppose to play off Black Lives Matter and the Calvinist belief that only the elect will be saved. Olson is correct that the eternal damnation of the non-elect is not one of those topics you bring up at a cocktail party. It’s not even all that comfortable for Calvinist theologians: So, according to Boettner... Read more

Does This Mean Black Lives Matter is Fundamentalist?

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 12:22 pm By D. G. Hart

Benjamin Corey thinks fundamentalism is making a come back: American culture is currently experiencing what some, and now I, am calling New Wave Fundamentalism. The original fundamentalists stem from the early 20th Century, and was rooted largely in fear– fear over this new concept of evolution, fear that culture was growing too liberal, fear that the nation was drifting from God, and fear that it would all come crashing down if they didn’t take culture back. (Swap out evolution for... Read more

Can You Be Progressive and Intolerant?

Last updated on: September 15, 2016 at 12:36 pm By D. G. Hart

A theme that goes around in evangelical circles is how born-again Protestants were once on the cutting edge of societal reform but then got mugged by the Republican Party and have been square, suburban, and oh so white ever since. Donald Dayton’s Discovering an Evangelical Heritage was one of the earliest contributions to this perspective. In it he noticed the disparity between how Republican evangelicals had become after World War II compared to how reform minded they had been when... Read more

What Historical Perspective Looks Like

Last updated on: September 13, 2016 at 2:07 pm By D. G. Hart

I know I’ve given evangelical historians a bit of grief for opposing Donald Trump (opposition is fine, reasons for it another question). But I heard an interview with journalist, Sam Kriss, that captures well my objections to several of the blogs I’ve read. Here is the historical perspective that Kriss brought to his assessment of Trump: We are in very dangerous times, of mobs and meaninglessness. People aren’t swayed by facts anymore; they’re indifferent to reality and openly scornful of... Read more

The Temptation of Raising the Stakes

Last updated on: September 8, 2016 at 12:08 pm By D. G. Hart

Don’t do it! Christians who write about politics and culture are in the habit of searching for first principles. Neo-Calvinists (followers of Abraham Kuyper) and Roman Catholics are famous for doing this perhaps because both aspire to an integralism that seeks to integrate religion and all walks of life and because both sets of Christians privilege academic philosophy. As an intellectual exercise, the search for first principles and the subsequent assessment of religious bona fides has some appeal. Most people... Read more

Imagine What It’s Like to Be A Calvinist

Last updated on: September 7, 2016 at 1:26 pm By D. G. Hart

Mary Eberstadt in her new book, It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies, says Christian have it rough: In short, what many Western men and women of faith feel to the marrow these days is fear. Fear that they will lose the good opinion of their neighbors, family and friends — because traditional Christianity, especially, is said over and over to stand on the wrong side of history; because religious faith of that particular kind is denigrated across... Read more