Repost of “Hillbilly Elegy” review

July 19, 2024 By Coyle Neal

With the nomination of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate, I thought it worthwhile to repost a conversation about Vance’s excellent book Hillbilly Elegy held seven years ago on the City of Man podcast. The conversation starts about seven minutes in (after an announcement for a conference that happened seven years ago, which if I were less lazy I’d go back and clip out, and introductions of other podcasts, most of which are now defunct). Available in the player below, here, or... Read more

Two more from 9Marks

July 12, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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9Marks has been slowly releasing a series of pamphlets in the “Church Questions” series. Each short book aims to answer in a few pages key questions about the life and theology of the church. The two I received for review are both short enough that I’m going to cover them together in one review rather than posting two reviews, each of which would run the risk of being longer than the text in question… The first is How Can I Grow... Read more

The end of the world

July 5, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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Does God judge the earth? What does that judgment look like? Is it a fleeting-but-still-terrible thing? Or long-running-but-not-so-bad (the proverbial drinking beer with friends in hell)? Thomas Schreiner has tackled these and other questions in his new short book The Justice & Goodness of God: A Biblical Case for the Final Judgement. In just over a hundred pages, Schreiner walks us through what the Bible has to say about the final judgment and how it squares with God’s good character. This... Read more

You can go home again

June 28, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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Have you ever read the parable of the prodigal son and thought “they should rewrite this for kids.” For kids, yes, but that’s been done. Charlie and the Preschool Prodigal by Ginger Blomberg is the telling of the tale about the brothers of the tale as children. The plot is pretty straightforward (and I won’t spoil much of it here, though can one really spoil a children’s book based on a story everyone knows?). Eddie is the mess/wild kid, Charlie is the clean/orderly... Read more

Using your mind for science

June 21, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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Christianity and the sciences have fallen on hard times in the last century and a quarter or so. Gone are the days when Henry Drummond openly celebrated the theory of evolution as the Theistic alternative to Spontaneous generation, or Cotton Mather rejoiced in Isaac Newton as the great expounder of God’s governance of the universe. And yet, Christians are still obligated to explore and participate in the sciences. That such has fallen on hard times is no excuse. To help us do... Read more

Restoring our Confidence

June 14, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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How should Christians live in the modern world? This is of course not a new question–God’s people have been asking that for as long as He has been calling us out from the world to live as His chosen people. And while Christians have always debated the best way to answer that question, the modern era is somewhat unique in failing to search the past for wisdom in answering this question. Carl Trueman wants to set us right on this... Read more

Coming of age in the Galaxy

June 7, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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In the middle of the 20th century, an ongoing concern of science fiction writers (and others too, of course) was the question of how to raise a generation of people as tough and clever and successful as the Greatest Generation had been without the pesky formative influences of a Great Depression and a World War 2. Robert Heinlein’s young adult books explore this from various perspectives, and his excellent little book Citizen of the Galaxy is a solid example of this.... Read more

Proclaiming Christ Still

May 31, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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You’d think that when a theologian passes away, their scholarly output would cease. And yet here we are with another new book from J.I. Packer, Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic Age. To be fair, this book is a compilation of lectures from 1978, so in that sense it’s not exactly “new.” And yet, it’s also fresh and timely (as we would expect from Packer). Striking directly at what he sees as the theological temptations of his own day, what were “temptations”... Read more

Christians and Pop Culture

May 24, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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How should Christians engage with modern American entertainment culture? Robust thinking about this topic has been a staple of the Christian world for the last half century, and an important classic contribution to the topic was Kenneth Myers’ All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes. Myers’ 1989 reflection provides a great starting point for Christians who want to think about the topic–though it may not be the best place to stop. While Myers’ argument is too complex to engage in full... Read more

Tradition Reigns at the ACM Awards

May 16, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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The Academy of Country Music Awards show last night on Amazon was a pageant of contemporary stars, new music, aged icons, pop stars, football players, and classic Country. (FYI Prime was not required to watch the show live last night, but it might be now?) In my description of what was obviously an eclectic mix, don’t hear that this was a show dedicated to the pop-driven components of contemporary Country music that you might be used to if you listen... Read more