Like you, perhaps, I tuned in to ABC News recently to learn the story of Brooke Greenberg: a sixteen-year-old girl the size of an infant with the mental capacity of a toddler. Doctors are baffled by her body's inhibited development; it's the only case in all known medical history of a virtually ageless person. As […]
Music in the Vernacular: The Psalter One of Calvin's early initiatives was to translate music designed for use in public worship into the language of the day. Realizing that what people sing in a holy context has enduring impact on how they act, Calvin wanted worship’in all its aspects’to be intelligible. Shortly after his settling […]
Often in reaction against the perceived narcissism of consumer-oriented faith and practice, a lot of younger Christians are talking about discipleship these days. On the one hand, this is very hopeful. Basically, we're seeing the children telling their Baby Boomer parents, "Enough about you and how you can have your best life now." Many of […]
I'm fascinated by the parts of the Bible that leave us to wonder what happened when the story is over. For example, how did the formerly demon-possessed man live after he moved out of the cemetery, gave up his chains, and returned to family and community? How did Lazarus live once he'd removed the wrappings? […]
Rural Sweden is dotted with pristine, government-subsidized Lutheran churches whose pews and pulpits are mostly empty-even on Sundays. So it's worth taking a close look at Bible Illuminated: The Book, a new version of the Good Book that in one year has increased Swedish Bible sales by 50 percent and received more press than a […]
Some years back, the late E. J. Young was speaking in a church and responded to a question asking for an overview of the Bible. Dr. Young's response was full, yet simple and edifying. In From Age to Age, Mathison has written a similar overview of the Bible with a focus on eschatology. The format […]
Crazy for God is a sassy, angry, honest, revealing, vulnerable, unsettling, insightful, frustrating book. In other words, it sums up Frank Schaeffer. It is not, however, the tell-all, reject-all book about his parents and evangelicalism that I thought it might be. I do have serious misgivings. He has been accused of dishonoring his parents, especially […]
Before George Marsden and Mark Noll were, David Bebbington was. This is to say, that before prominent evangelical historians became so because of their definitive and defining work on the history of evangelicalism, David Bebbington, whose name is seldom heard in the United States outside academic circles, wrote a book arguably more important than any […]
How do you exegete "the poor will always be with us" and reconcile that with the command to love our neighbor as ourselves? Enter Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist, looking for a lead on a one-off story and finding instead a four-plus-year relationship with an exceptional musician living on Skid Row. This is a […]
Three years ago, my family and I found it necessary to leave the little local evangelical church where we had been members for about thirteen years (I intend no slight to that congregation; we were concerned about the effect of a style of preaching on our young son). Like refugees, we arrived at the Presbyterian […]
The editors of Modern Reformation have kindly asked me to write a bit about my new book Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers (P&R, 2009). The title is a double theft. The "Why Johnny Can't" part is stolen from Rudolph Flesch, Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do About […]
Last fall, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article outlining some of the challenges facing public schools in our time. The report included a school official who was quoted as saying that middle schools in the area should no longer be thought of as "cold, instruction-driven places." I was amazed by that particular comment. How […]
