When I was preaching week by week to the same congregation, one of my fundamental convictions was that I needed to keep politics out of the pulpit. Perhaps I should express that more precisely: I needed to keep party politics out of the pulpit. I was—and still am—convinced that how an individual votes at the […]
Ever since the age of five, I’ve been reading my Bible. I fell in love with theology at the age of thirteen. Reading my Bible and reading good books has been a big part of my journey of growing in God’s grace personally and with God’s people. Reading my Bible and reading good books has […]
Engaged ruling elders bring vitality to a congregation. Like life in a city without the infrastructure of roads, water, and power lines, church life without active ruling elders grinds to a halt and pastors, however talented, find themselves drained. Enter Vital Churches: Elder Responsibility for Their Pastors and Congregational Planning by Wendell Faris McBurney, a […]
Introduction In the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul begins an exposition of the nature of humanity’s idolatry. Rather than addressing a particular group (cf. Gal. 1:6) or event (cf. 1 Cor 5:1), Paul describes the condition of “all…men” (Rom. 1:18). In describing this common fallen condition, Paul writes “Claiming […]
Two eschatologies, or views of history and creation’s destiny, clashed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. One was rooted in the triumphalism that marked Anglo-American Protestantism since the Spanish Armada’s defeat in 1588 and produced the courageous confidence of the New England Puritans. The other was rooted in the disillusionment with society’s gradual […]
It is difficult for American Christians today, long accustomed to the political benefits of liberal democracy, to imagine what it was like to live in a time when religious freedom was not taken for granted. The concept of the separation of Church and state was a radical idea in the seventeenth century, and it is […]
As if it weren’t challenging enough to live by the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments (see Matt. 22:34-40), somewhere along the line someone decided that we also needed an additional “Four Spiritual Laws.” So now, right after “God so loved the world,” many Christians add, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan […]
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In this issue of Modern Reformation, we think about the theological mind. That’s a funny thing to say but an important thing to do. For Christians over the centuries, questions concerning the renewal of the mind, the maturation of Christian discernment and wisdom, and the charge and state of theological education have proven to be […]
At least four questions are pertinent for any attempt to assess the current state of evangelical intellectual life in the contemporary United States. What do we mean by “evangelical”? How should the contemporary academy be viewed? What kind of scholarship are evangelical or evangelical-connected thinkers producing? And what is the theological vision grounding such scholarship? […]
“Secular writers have begun to discover theology.” This verdict by Boston College politics professor Alan Wolfe appears in his New York Times review of economist Benjamin M. Friedman’s new book on the Arminian roots of capitalism. Wolfe relates that “if someone had told me that a former chairman of the Harvard economics department would write […]
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