The real issue for religious conservatives isn’t whether they can trust Gingrich. It’s whether they can afford to be associated with him. More than any other Republican constituency, religious conservatives have good reasons to be wary of Newt Gingrich. As the leader of a right-wing insurgency in the early 1990s, he often kept their causes... Continue Reading

…the great thinkers of the early church, however, we find that they often had a different way of posing the issues than we do…They regarded both justification and sanctification as things that God gives us at the beginning of salvation, and they defined both as the righteousness that we receive when we are united to... Continue Reading

Today marks the second year of my youngest’s diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes. I delivered this at Grace Presbyterian’s Christmas Eve Service of that year, and I’m reposting in honor of her courage and spirit. She is my hero. Philippians 2:3-11 3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant... Continue Reading

John Hodge, in his What is Ecclesiastical Law as Defined by the Church Courts? wrote, “When the relation of a Stated Supply to a church is continued beyond the emergency, it is an irregularity, an evil, and is inconsistent with our polity” (p. 48). Christ Himself gave pastors and teachers to the Church to build... Continue Reading

If the Obama administration is committed to defending constitutional rights, why is it… standing “united” on speech issues with an organization trying to undercut our freedoms. Last July in Istanbul, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-chaired a “High-Level Meeting on Combating Religious Intolerance” with the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Mrs. Clinton invited the... Continue Reading

I want to raise an ecclesiological question that I’ve been mulling over since I read What is the Mission of the Church? a couple of months ago To what degree are representatives of the different tendencies talking past each other because they mean different things when they use the word church? We were pleased to... Continue Reading

In the early 1900s, when the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, wanted to send an inspirational Christmas message to each of his workers around the world to convey what he saw as the essential message of Christmas and the core mission of Christians. The problem was that Western Union charged by the word... Continue Reading

It is not a lack of faith to use medicine. With all the advertisements on television by law firms looking for clients to sue drug companies because of bad drugs it takes faith just to take the medicine. Faith healers make me sad and sometimes furious. I read it in the London Daily Mail last... Continue Reading

…as a Christian academic I simply have not witnessed this alleged groundswell of support for literal six-day young-earth creationism in the academy (except, perhaps, among those who teach at schools where literal six-day young-earth creationism is a requirement for employment!). I want to thank Dr. Bill VanDoodewaard for his recent post “Hermeneutics and Awkward Science”... Continue Reading

“Many pulpits across the land consistently preach the Christian and not the Christ.” Todd Wilken As I said in Ed Stetzer’s interview of me a couple weeks ago, the way many of us think about sanctification is, well…not very sanctified. In fact, it’s terribly narcissistic. We spend too much time thinking about how we’re doing,... Continue Reading