“Students now,” she says, “arrive in my class thoroughly versed in the language and categories of identity politics; they are reticent to disagree with anything for fear of seeming intolerant—except, of course, what they perceive to be intolerant.”   For five years, Dr. Abigail Rine has been teaching a course on gender theory at George Fox University,... Continue Reading

“What we really need is confidence in the Bible. It is the only Spirit-inspired, Spirit-crafted, Spirit-preserved, self-authenticating revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is the most influential Book of all time, the most powerful apologetic device in the world, and most of the Christians in the world have seen the glory of Jesus in... Continue Reading

“Smith suspects the problem in the United States is not simply one of closed-mindedness from religious fundamentalists and dogmatic secularists, but also of geography — people living and working in enclosed communities where they don’t encounter people of different beliefs, so their own beliefs are never contested.”   In our new secular age, there are... Continue Reading

“Pentecostalism – whatever else it is – is a religion of the extraordinary and the new.  Its leaders at times find the pursuit of the exciting to be exhausting.  (Interestingly, Charles Grandison Finney, the apostle of excitement, warned in his Lectures on Revival that excitement long continued would be destructive.)”   In 1926 Aimee Semple... Continue Reading

“No healthy Christian ever moves past sermons, Scripture, prayer, sacraments, and the organized church. These are the God appointed means by which we grow in Christ. When we reject these ordinary means laid out in the Word, we not only invite the kind of spiritual elitism that flowed from Marguerite’s two-tier ecclesiology, we also show... Continue Reading

“Proper feminine submission is (as my wife often puts it) “kinetic.” It is not servile, which is why Paul and Peter employ a different word for wives than Paul uses for slaves in their relationship to masters (Eph. 5:22; 6:5). Being a biblical helper requires wisdom, creativity, and godliness. So we should put the most... Continue Reading

“Luther himself endured many instances of depression. He described the experience in varied terms: melancholy, heaviness, depression, dejection of spirit; downcast, sad, downhearted. He suffered in this area for much of his life and often revealed these struggles in his works. Evidently he did not think it a shameful problem to be hidden.”   The... Continue Reading

“The next wave of societal controversy is likely to involve one’s approach to children. Studies show that a significant number of people who experience varying degrees of gender dysphoria as children choose to identify with their biological sex after puberty.”   In case you’re just tuning in, Bruce Springsteen, Target, and bathrooms are at the... Continue Reading

“The Court’s decision could also empower other municipalities to take a closer look at tax-exempt properties in their own jurisdictions as possible cash cows. Other religious organizations in Massachusetts are monitoring the case, fearful that their own assets could be the next targets for taxation.”   Property-tax battles are rarely sexy. But a case now... Continue Reading

“At the heart of the recent departures has been the series of actions by the General Assembly which has moved the Kirk towards legitimizing homosexuality.  There are various pieces to this.  Most notoriously, the transfer and installation of an openly gay minister in a congregation in the Aberdeen Presbytery in 2009 caused a storm of... Continue Reading