Political life continually confronts the contemporary Christian. Newspapers and television newscasts are filled each day with the latest acts and foibles of our government leaders, and in election years the stream of political information becomes a torrent. Bumper stickers, billboards, and lawn signs congest the quietest neighborhoods. Most believers would readily assert that Christianity cannot […]
The question of whether the character of our political leaders really matters is frequently asked. Perhaps it is frequently asked because the answer is not necessarily obvious. On the one hand, many, if not most, people, and certainly most Christians, instinctively believe that character must certainly matter. The idea that those who are entrusted with […]
The pastor of my local church caused no small stir several years ago when he removed the American flag from its perch just behind the pulpit. Indeed, he removed it from the sanctuary entirely. As you might imagine, this provoked some consternation among at least a few members, who no doubt wondered if this brash […]
We've all seen the "biblical scorecard" literature that floats about during election seasons, grading candidates based on their voting record. The criteria are usually the same: pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality. Most of us would hopefully agree that one is safe in concluding that these are indeed biblical objectives. The problem comes when a whole series of […]
Every four years, I get nervous as election day approaches. Inevitably, well-meaning ministers publicly announce their endorsement of a presidential candidate and call on all "professing Christians" to elect (or re-elect) the nominee. Church leaders on both right and left confidently answer the same question ("What Would Jesus Do?") with different answers ("re-elect Bush!", "vote […]
One sure way to generate Christian opposition to an idea, person, or organization is to attach the adjective secular to the institution, item, or person under scrutiny. Think of how much more harmful humanism sounds merely by adding secular. After all, humanism in the early sixteenth century stood for a literary reawakening that the Protestant […]
The year was 1926. The issue was Prohibition. J. Gresham Machen, assistant professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, had just voted against a motion in his presbytery to support the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, the federal legislation that made illegal the sale and distribution of alcohol between 1918 and 1933. Machen's denomination, […]
Michael Cromartie has been a leading spokesman for the relationship between Christian ethics and public policy through his work at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he directs the center’s Evangelical Studies Project. You’ll often see him quoted in the leading news magazines around this time of year and we’re happy to have him […]
The question mark in the title of Schultze's book is not to be overlooked. Despite undoubtedly genuine efforts at fair-mindedness and overt statements directed against technophobes, this volume seriously questions the widespread use of presentation technologies in Christian worship today. Schultze rightly warns that technology tends to develop a life of its own, unrestrained by […]
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 […]
Frequent Modern Reformation contributer Philip Ryken's Written in Stone is a wonderfully accessible treatment of the Ten Commandments. Drawn from sermons first preached at Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, this book's great strength is its unoriginality. In an age where many evangelicals have jettisoned the moral law and some Reformed types have overreacted by making the […]
