What a Time to be a Universalist

Last updated on: March 31, 2020 at 5:20 pm By D. G. Hart

David Bentley Hart, or D.B., has made the rounds with his new book on universalism. Here is the book description: The great fourth‑century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Christian communities. In this momentous book, David Bentley Hart makes the case that nearly two millennia of dogmatic tradition have misled readers... Read more

Immunology and Numerology

Last updated on: March 25, 2020 at 3:21 pm By D. G. Hart

Lots of people are panicking about the spread and threat of COVID-19. Among those fearful is Angelo Cataldi, a sports-talk radio host on Philadelphia’s 94WIP. One of the reasons Cataldi and his morning team are still on the air is that Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Wolf, deemed radio stations an essential business. To it’s credit, the station regularly plays either public service announcements about washing hands (and more) or reports news about the pandemic. One of the seeming misunderstandings about this... Read more

Fear of Death

Last updated on: March 20, 2020 at 3:48 pm By D. G. Hart

Some Americans during the current health crisis are worried about death. This fear is fairly disproportionate to the actual threat of COVID-19. For instance, the New York Times compares the coronoavirus this way: An analysis of outcomes for more than 44,000 confirmed patients in China found that roughly one in 50 died. Eighty-one percent of patients infected with the new coronavirus had mild illness, 14 percent had severe illness and 5 percent had critical illness, according to the study. The... Read more

Evangelical Hypocrisy Deepens

Last updated on: March 18, 2020 at 12:47 pm By D. G. Hart

By now, the number of people who know about American evangelicals’ hypocrisy in voting for Donald Trump is almost as high as the number of people unaffected by COVID-19 (which is high, over seven and a half billion). What is less well known is the hypocrisy that pervades even those sectors of evangelicalism opposed to the POTUS. Consider the example of Randall Balmer in a recent piece for Sojourners. There he shows somewhat convincingly that nineteenth-century evangelicals opposed capitalism, which... Read more

Can You Change Evangelicalism’s Spots after Billy Graham?

Last updated on: March 16, 2020 at 3:25 pm By D. G. Hart

Here is part of my review of Thomas Kidd’s new book Who Is An Evangelical? When historian Thomas Kidd was likely in diapers (the early 1970s), two books appeared that foreshadowed his own study of evangelicalism, Who Is an Evangelical? Part of a seven-book series called, “Evangelical Perspectives,” and edited by John Warwick Montgomery, the historian, Richard V. Pierard, and the sociologist, David O. Moberg, both complained that evangelicals were so attached to conservative politics and the Republican Party that... Read more

A Pro-Life Social Imaginary – What To Do with New York City?

Last updated on: March 11, 2020 at 11:08 am By D. G. Hart

Karen Swallow Prior makes the useful point that defending unborn children is bigger than electoral politics, legislation, or even POTUS speaking at the March for Life rally: The way people in a community imagine their life together is referred to by philosophers, anthropologists, and sociologists as the “social imaginary.” This shared vision for our collective life is reflected in our laws, religion, institutions, economic systems, government, values, and (again) our symbols. Because everything we do is influenced by the values... Read more

If Evangelical Support for Trump is Toxic, Won’t It also Hurt Bernie?

Last updated on: March 2, 2020 at 5:43 pm By D. G. Hart

Polling data shows that the more Americans know about evangelicalism, the more their appreciation for evangelicals declines: those who correctly answer more religious knowledge questions overall tend to express warmer feelings towards most religious groups of which they are not a part. For example, Jews receive an average thermometer rating of 70 degrees from non-Jews who correctly answer at least 25 of the 32 religious knowledge questions. By comparison, Jews are rated at 54 degrees among those who get eight... Read more

Increasing Subscriptions by Doing Good

Last updated on: February 24, 2020 at 5:54 pm By D. G. Hart

I recently received this email message from Nikole Hannah-Jones. I don’t believe she sent it only to me (“Reader” is a clue). I’m pretty sure it went out to all subscribers: Dear Reader, I am a journalist at The New York Times Magazine and the creator of The 1619 Project. I cover racial inequality and injustice for the magazine, and in many ways, this project feels like the journalistic endeavor I’ve been working toward my entire life. I understood that... Read more

Courage in the Age of Trump

Last updated on: February 12, 2020 at 3:55 pm By D. G. Hart

Peter Wehner continues his opposition to the president by praising Mitt Romney’s vote to convict Donald Trump on the charge of abuse of power: Mitt Romney is doing something nearly unheard of these days: He’s putting his country above his party. He’s voting his conscience when doing so comes at a cost. He’s not rationalizing weakness and timidity by prettying them up as virtues. He will vote to convict President Donald Trump, in an act of extraordinary political courage. This... Read more

No Words, No Real Presence

Last updated on: February 6, 2020 at 1:01 pm By D. G. Hart

Protestant converts to Roman Catholicism will often refer to the power of Christ’s real presence in the Mass as a primary factor in their experience. Sometimes Christ’s real presence in the Mass is the reason to remain Roman Catholic even in the face of scandal: A friend asked recently why I don’t choose a church that feeds me spiritually and aligns better with some of my personal values. My response, which surprised me more than my friend, was, “I think... Read more