Resources from 2018
It’s fitting that a book about the phenomenon of “spiritual fluidity” or “religious multiplicity” should aspire to be several things at once. Duane R. Bidwell’s When One Religion Isn’t Enough: The Lives of Spiritually Fluid People aims to describe the experience of participating in more than one religion while also helping the spiritually fluid feel […]
A cursory reading of Scripture might leave a new reader wondering what exactly the Old and New Testaments have to do with each other—the Old Testament talks a lot about Yahweh; the New Testament seems primarily concerned with Jesus. Where do the two (not forgetting the third!) persons of the Godhead meet? Was there some kind […]
The Fourth Gospel: Authentic Artifact or Fake Reproduction? There once was a man who claimed to be in possession of a lost painting of Leonardo da Vinci. Upon hearing this claim, the curator of a prestigious museum asked him if it had ever been appraised. “No,” said the man. “No one outside my family has […]
When I first heard the title of Ashley Hales’ début book, Finding Holy in the Suburbs: Living Faithfully in the Land of Too Much, I confess that I became defensive. What’s wrong with the suburbs? I’ve lived in southern California for most of my life and I loved it. When I left the suburbs to […]
What are men good for? Biceps, brains, and simplicity. That’s the take from a recent article by Andrée Seu Peterson, where she responds to the recent outpouring of antagonism towards men in positions of power and more broadly throughout America, by enumerating all the things she appreciates about men. From one angle, Peterson is correct: […]
Humans have an innate desire to be respected and treated in a dignified manner. When we perceive that we have been slighted or ignored, our response is to become incensed or defiant. We search for ways to regain our dignity and rally together with our fellow sufferers when the forces we face are too considerable […]
Two particular events have shaped my approach to writing: the first was a lecture I attended as a schoolboy in the early 1980s, given by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. The topic was not dead parrots or the unexpected nature of the Spanish Inquisition but Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” on which he had just published […]
For nearly three decades, Camille Paglia, Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has been one of America’s most controversial and consistent public intellectuals. Her writings have covered topics ranging from Aeschylus to Madonna; from Baroque art to liberal Presbyterian attitudes to human sexuality. A truly independent thinker, […]
“Most would-be Christians, he said, insist too much on faith. But all God looks to find in us is desire. If we want him, belief spills in. It rises to His level, and it will fill the void. Isn’t that right, Lord. Real faith isn’t about laws, moral prohibitions. No, Lord. He cited early Christians, […]
Debates about the distinctions between male and female lie at the heart of much political discussion in the USA today, so it is not surprising to find that John Piper was recently asked whether gender roles apply outside of marriage. Many pastors will have faced the same; and it was disappointing to read his answer, […]
America is fractured. A divided land. America is distracted. A land of novelty. America is lonely. A home for none. We are a people given over to loneliness, obsessed with technological marvels, distracted by the same devices at which we marvel, and utterly divided on an array of economic, social, and political matters. This is […]
“When were you saved?” Many Protestants who ask that question might be as flummoxed as traditional Roman Catholics by the Reformers’ answer, roughly paraphrased: “On Easter weekend, around AD 33.” Strictly speaking, we are not justified by faith any more than by works. It is the apostle Paul himself who declares that we are “justified […]
The rather pathetic truth about our adolescent obsessions with social media, digital distractions, apps galore, podcasts, gaming, entertainment programming and the like, has come to light in a number of national stories about familial denouement, altered neural pathways, and stunted societal awareness, yielding what Mark Bauerlein calls The Dumbest Generation. Alan Noble brings the conversation […]
In response to the Black Death of 1348-50, the Church of England called for weeks of special prayers and fasting. However, in the 1980s, the church called for more government funding for medical research. Drawing on this example, sociologist Steve Bruce explains, “individualism, egalitarianism, liberal democracy, and science and technology all contribute to a general […]
Can women podcast with men? Aimee Byrd was forced to consider this question when she joined her two male co-hosts on the Mortification of Spin podcast. Listeners warned that she “was an affair waiting to happen, a possible career ender, perhaps Satan’s strategy to bring down another pastor and church” (7). This kind of thinking […]
