“The announcement comes a year after the cathedral’s then-dean, the Rev. Gary Hall, said the 8-by-4-foot windows have no place in the soaring church as the country faces intense racial tensions and violence, even though they were intended as a healing gesture when they were installed.”   Washington National Cathedral, one of the country’s most... Continue Reading

Southern Baptists are less evangelistic,” acknowledged Trevin Wax last year, a popular Southern Baptist cultural commentator and managing editor of The Gospel Project. “There’s no way to prove or disprove this statement. But considering the drop in the SBC’s baptismal numbers, it seems clear that Southern Baptist outreach efforts are diminishing — either in effectiveness... Continue Reading

The greatest ideal animating the American experiment is here: the notion of equality by creation. In other words, whatever our social standing, we all stand equal before God as created beings. Earlier statements like the Virginia Declaration of Rights had spoken more vaguely of people as being “by nature” equal, but here Jefferson and his... Continue Reading

Many Christians, however, entertain a negative view of Old Testament History; of its usefulness and even of its accuracy. It is often regarded as “far away” and “distant” chronologically, geographically, socially, and theologically.   Shakespeare wrote that each person’s history is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The... Continue Reading

“Isn’t it possible that a politician could be God’s judgment on a nation’s churches (not that any of us has that kind of word from God)? And isn’t it possible that God’s plans go on even when his people and prophets go into exile as part of divine judgment?”   Have those who oppose Trump... Continue Reading

“The world represents sinful humanity and is not worthy of God’s saving love. Apart from the love of God, the world stands under God’s condemnation. But in Christ, believers experience God’s surprising, redeeming, and never-ending love. John 3:16 is not about the greatness of the world but about the greatness of God.”   One of the... Continue Reading

“Echoing a new Pew Research Center study that found religious people are more apt to volunteer and make charitable donations than others, the Rescue Mission and other Central Florida charities say the faith community provides critical support in providing food, shelter and clothing for the needy.”   Religious people donate and volunteer more than their... Continue Reading

“I have been suppressing these attractions and feelings since adolescence,” he said. “Trying not to be gay has only led to a desire for intimacy in friendships which pushed friends away, and it has resulted in a marriage where I couldn’t love or satisfy my wife in a way that she needed.”   During an... Continue Reading

In this worldview, the group that can prove the greatest source of contemporary oppression becomes the group with greatest authority. This ideology doesn’t bode well for the future. Heller worries “the cracks in the American left are likely to grow—with more campaign arguments about who is the ‘true’ progressive, more shouting past one another, and... Continue Reading

After the spate of “Calvin against the Calvinists” articles, books, and chapters in the twentieth century, in which Puritans featured prominently, people started to question whether the later folks could really appeal to the great man as in some way foundational for their theology. The Calvinists had twisted and deformed the theology of the Genevan... Continue Reading