As we approach the end of 2022, it seems appropriate to reminisce. Looking back, 2022 has been an exciting year for Modern Reformation. We’ve celebrated thirty years with a redesign of the print magazine and website, we’ve published some significant content—tackling tough but important issues in a spirit of humility and fidelity—and we’ve engaged in […]
by Friedrich Balduin; translated by Todd Rester This edition of Balduin’s 1623 work Defensio Augustanae Confessionis (Wittenberg: Paul Helwigius, 1623; fols. G4v–H4v) was a response to Cardinal Peter Pázmány, S. J. (1570–1637) and his Hungarian polemic against Protestants titled Hodegus Igazságra-Vezérló Kalauz (Wien: Posonban, 1613); other editions Bratislava (1623 and 1637) and Trnava (1766). Pázmány devotes six […]
Early in the sixteenth century, Thomas Platter traveled with five friends through Switzerland, stopping in a small village en route to St. Gallen to attend the Mass. After Vespers, the early evening service, one of the priests called them heretics because they had come from the city of Zurich, which no longer considered the pope […]
*** The great green earth revolves and in Its turn to us reveals not active fate Nor recompense on scoria ground But quiet talks at the gate. Our lanes of back-east pastureland Listen in on winter light, As haunted as I feel haunted by The 9/11 strike I Carry still, and then come snowy Hoof […]
We’re not Baptists yet. We still have a lot of questions.” The couple sitting across from me in the pastor’s study had been visiting our church so long that I had wrongly presumed they were already Baptists who were just new to the area. But over the course of our conversation, I discovered that these […]
The church is the crowning achievement in the work of salvation, planned by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and brought into reality by the Spirit (Eph. 1:3–14). The Father’s “plan for the fullness of time” is to sum up all things in heaven and earth under the headship of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:10). This […]
We live in an age of denominations and distinctions, and many bemoan the seemingly constant influx of new denominations by way of church splits and schisms. The total number of Protestant denominations today varies based on who is doing the talking (and often based on their denominational affiliation as well!), but most estimates put it […]
It often feels like the church is dividing along political lines. When we declare a church to be conservative or liberal, we are often not referring to theological stances (as J. Gresham Machen did in his classic Christianity and Liberalism), but to political ideology and cultural stances. Those who try to hold these parties together […]
*** I am a deserted barn, my cattle robbed from me, My horses gone, Light leaking in my sides, sun piercing my tin roof Where it’s torn, I am a deserted barn. Dung’s still in my gutter; It shrinks each year as side planks shrink, Letting in more of […]
April 25, 2003, was an ordinary Friday morning. I was making final sermon preparations for the coming Sunday when my next-door neighbor informed me that a friend of mine was going to recite poetry in Concord that afternoon. Jim Bradley and I had discussed literature in depth for years. He was a University of Chicago […]
*** High here on Hawk’s Nest, No hawks fly tonight; Songbirds heading south or west or east, Or where sons and daughters Have gone for good, Regain the sky, Winging up over cottonwood crowns and this hill’s weedy crest To flutter in mid-flight in front of our eyes. Barley fields and summer fallow Far away […]
*** Baylor University Press | 2021 | 253 pages (hardcover) | $44.99 James K. A. Smith’s readership has surged in recent years through accessible books, such as You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Brazos Press, 2016). You Are What You Love argues persuasively for Christian discipleship focused on habits, virtues, and […]
