Why Blasphemy Laws Are Wrong
The kingdom of God doesn’t consist in talk but in power
The old Puritan colonies of New England drove out dissenters, true enough, and Christianity was as official as could be, and those places are now as burned over and secular as it gets in the United States.
Emergent Christians and 9/11
“What we’re hearing are the death cries of Christendom" --P. Tickle, EC
The New Atheists, on the other hand, seemed to gain a boost by labeling all pious citizens as potentially dangerous fanatics. Optimism faded for a short while (notice the darker colors and military surplus style in fashion or the pre-2008 cynicism in both political parties).
Rosh Hashanah and Religious Freedom
Vandalism against churches is obviously terrible anywhere it occurs. But it probably is a lot more common, even per capita, in the U.S
“The travails of a handful of Trappist monks in Israel — or Dalit and tribal Christians in India, or Nigerian Christians menaced by the Boko Haram, or the 150,000 new Christian martyrs every year generally — simply have a hard time breaking through the media filter in the West"
A Week of Remembrance
September 11th, The Gospel, and the Greek/Armenian Genocide of 1915-22
Christians who had taken refuge in churches were burned to death as the buildings were locked and set on fire. Churches that remained had their crosses taken down and crescents put up in their place. All of this was part of a move to exterminate Christianity from the lands of the old Byzantine empire, to “liberate” Asia Minor from Christian influence and put it into the hands of Islam.
Is lack of unity the great sin of the modern church?
Unity is not simply an ideal. It is a command.
Although the conservative confessional Reformed world is unified under the North American and Presbyterian Reformed Council (totaling roughly 500,000 Christians), that body is itself divided into no less than 12 different denominations. These denominations profess the same basic doctrines and hold to the same confessional documents, they observe the sacraments in the same way and have the same form of church government, and they even worship in broadly similar forms, but due to various cultural or theological distinctives they cannot seem to join themselves together as one church.
What the Church Needs is Men Without Fear
The vulnerable God who, in Luke 15, is portrayed with feminine qualities, angers those obsessed with roles and authority
Men…pray this…If this is the man I am to become, may I be given the grace to lift my robe and run, like the prodigal father, with vulnerability and without fear, into the brokenness of the world – even as the onlookers jeer.
The Evangelical Jesus Prayer
It's not perfect, but the Sinner's Prayer is a work of genius.
There may be good reasons to reform or replace the Sinner's Prayer in evangelical "liturgical life." But we have to do better than theological snobbery or spiritual self-righteousness
Why should Christians read literature?
Leland Ryken helpfully suggests that literature "clarifies the human situation to which the Christian faith speaks."
Why should Christians bother reading literature at all? Because reading literature humanizes us -- in the best sense of the word. Literature helps us realize the image of God in us in ways that we cannot afford to miss. (By "literature," I am simply thinking of published works of imaginative writing in various genres, such as poetry, fiction and drama.)
In Defense of Partisanship and Parties
Jesus preached what all Scripture declares, that our primary loyalties are to God
Not all Christians have similar earthly vocations, and not all Christians are called to intense political involvements. But thankfully God has called some, whose labors make our political process function. Although all are called to prayerful concern about the state and to good citizenship, most are not called directly to political activism Liberal... Continue Reading
The Reverend Rants
The NCAA could do with a little two-kingdoms or even sphere-sovereignty theology.
According to Tim Bayly: “As I’ve pointed out many times and will continue to point out, those weddings you attend or officiate that do not include the wife’s vow to obey or submit to her husband are not Biblical weddings.” Father (as in patriarchy), forgive us. Rebellion against Nature. I have read that... Continue Reading