Month: October 2022
Mocking Death
A few weeks ago, my two-year-old daughter and I were out enjoying one of the first crisp afternoons of autumn with a walk around our neighborhood. We turned a corner, and suddenly she stopped and pointed to a house down...
Holographic Spurgeons and AI Sermons
At a fête for one of evangelicalism’s largest online media outfits, a colleague shared how he asked GPT-3, a language AI, what the Bible says about transgenderism. The AI produced a cogent theological explanation with Biblical citations. A senior editor...
John Quincy Adams: Christian Nationalist?
In the February of 1824, politically active Calvinists across the northern United States finally got their wish for a godly devout president who made the American republic a more explicitly Christian and righteous nation. The House of Representatives chose John...
Why We Never Move Past the Gospel of John
David Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. The following interview revolves around Ford’s latest book, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary. The Gospel of John: A Theological...
The Four Quadrants of Church Life in the Gray Zone
Any pastor of a church over 70 people[1] has to develop some kind of rhythm or strategy with which they encourage their church into greater fruitfulness in Christ. For better or ill, we’ve been calling these things ‘programs’ for some...
Platforms Aren’t the Problem
In How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explore how healthy democracies descend into authoritarianism. Counterintuitively, “Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.” A nation elects a demagogic figure who uses executive power to take control of the...
Resistance and Rebellion
(Excerpted from Protestant Social Teaching published by the Davenant Institute. Used with permission.) As the Reformation took hold throughout Europe, much ink and blood was spilt over the question of what is right to do when the government is wrong....
When the Therapeutic Replaces Sin
Chuck DeGroat. When Narcissicism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020. 200 pp, $24. (originally published in Digital Liturgies) Imagine the following scenario. You are approached by two people in your church,...
Ecclesiastes’ Cure for Depression
Twenty years ago, I was depressed. I was 37 years old living in a nice home in Kentucky. Just a couple of months earlier I thought I was set up for the life I had been working so hard for....
How to Cultivate Epistemic Virtue
Bonnie Kristian. Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking our Brains, Polluting our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022. 225pp, $24.99. Over the last decade, many of us have found ourselves increasingly unable to relate to the...