Douglas Bond
If it was good enough for Isaac Watts, then it’s good enough for me.” I didn’t come right out and say it, but I came close. I certainly was not going to attempt writing a new hymn; none was needed. Over two decades of writing and speaking about singing and liturgy, I’ve been accused of […]
It’s easy to yawn over yet another new book on Martin Luther, this past year’s five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation notwithstanding. We’ve seen the movie, right? We all know he fell terror-struck in a thunderstorm, confessed copious amounts of sins we would today label as personality foibles or age-related distress, gave the “Here I stand” […]
“He’s merely a monk who wants a wife.” So the pope dismissed Martin Luther when first he heard of the Saxon monk’s decrying of the papacy. But then in 1521, during his compelled sequester in the Wartburg Castle, Luther began hearing of many former priests taking wives. “Good heavens!” he retorted. “They won’t give me […]
"Welcome to Babylon, Daniel," said Ashpenaz, bow?ng low before us. I stared numbly at Nebuchadnezzar's chief eunuch. So much had just happened to me and my friends. When Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and I were little more than boys, we had looked on in horror as the king's army destroyed Jerusalem. The city was sacked and […]
Once again I find myself writing the “Point of Contact” book review column, which we subtitle “Books Your Neighbors Are Reading.” The last time I wrote this column (Olive Kitteridge, January/February 2010), I lamented how too few people rush out to purchase and read the latest Pulitzer Prize literature winner. I find myself in a […]
Among the many ways that people, institutions, and publications are commemorating the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth, a Calvin tour can be one of the more illuminating. But for those cutting back on vacation spending, or who have already committed those dollars for a trip to Hawaii, the following imaginary tour of some of […]
