Gillis Harp
Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Reflections on the Pilgrimage to Anglicanism Nearly 40 Years After Webber’s Classic
By now, the pattern is familiar. A young evangelical becomes disenchanted with her religious upbringing, discovers the liturgical church, and “walks the Canterbury Trail,” joining an Anglican or Episcopal church. She may even conclude the Anglican tradition is insufficiently Catholic and turn to Roman Catholicism or the Eastern Orthodox Church. Back in 1985 when Wheaton […]
Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History by Gillis J. Harp Oxford University Press, 2019 323 pages (hardback), $34.95 Since about the time when Jerry Falwell Sr. founded the Moral Majority in 1979 (with lots of help from Republican Party operatives), confessional and evangelical Protestants have generally identified as conservative. In Christian terms, being conservative […]
More than sixty years ago, Carl F. H. Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947) chastised fundamentalists for their anti-intellectualism and cultural pessimism. While commending fundamentalists for preserving doctrinal fidelity to the supernatural gospel, Henry lambasted their “pessimism” and “indifference” to social ills. He also lamented the fact that “social reform movements dedicated to […]
Among the most daunting challenges I have faced as a college professor has been the task of convincing my students that the study of history is an intrinsically worthwhile project. Perhaps accounting and engineering majors have always been a hard-sell in this regard, but the pervasive antihistorical spirit of our contemporary culture makes many students […]
Amid the growing number of popular works on worship (many of uneven quality), New Testament scholar D. A. Carson has edited a volume that is both theological and practical. The book contains engaging essays on worship from representatives of three distinct Protestant traditions (Anglican, Free Church, and Presbyterian/Reformed) prefaced by a theological introduction that examines […]
Dutch theologian, Dr. G. van der Leuw, once aptly observed that "whoever takes the little finger of liturgy soon discovers that he has grabbed the whole fist of theology." Evangelicals appear to have confirmed the truth of this dictum in their rediscovery of worship in recent years. In the past, we have understandably focused on […]
"Discerning the Spirits: A Guide to Thinking About Christian Worship Today" by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. and Sue A. Rozeboom
This volume is a collaborative work produced by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College. Although Plantinga and Rozeboom are the primary authors, it includes more than twenty brief articles or sidebars on related topics, mostly penned by the members of a Lilly-funded research team. The book's "main project . . . is […]
In this lengthy and ambitious book, Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) pastor Jeffrey Meyers, summons biblical, theological, and historical arguments to make a case for well-ordered liturgical worship. Significantly, Meyers argues for the sort of structured corporate worship that most conservative Protestant congregations eschew in favor of either a populist informality or a Spartan neo-Puritan […]
Michael Horton has written a unique book that is a thoughtful mixture of spiritual autobiography, biblical exposition, devotional meditation, and theological/cultural critique. The author's struggles with a terminally ill father and a mother suffering concurrently from a debilitating stroke prompts some probing reflections about the quality of true faith and the nature of divine providence. […]
