The Archive

Every essay.

Matthew LaPineFeaturedChurch

Preventing Destructive Leadership: Some Reflections for Elders - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

We ought to be aware by now of the danger of destructive leaders. 2020 brought two important books addressing the issue, Chuck DeGroat’s When Narcissism Comes to the Church and Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer’s A Church Called Tov. Russell […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Christendom in Winter - Commonplaces

There’s a certain sort of mainline Protestant, blessedly rare these days so far as I can tell, who has at times argued that while Scripture might teach that such and such is the Christian teaching on sexuality, we must adapt […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Christendom in Winter - Commonplaces

There’s a certain sort of mainline Protestant, blessedly rare these days so far as I can tell, who has at times argued that while Scripture might teach that such and such is the Christian teaching on sexuality, we must adapt […]

Simon StokesFeaturedChurchEvangelicalism

A Ride Worth Leaving: Escaping the Anxiety of the Modern Church - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. —Ecclesiastes 1:9 Imagine a windmill with its blade turning in the breeze. The blade of […]

Miles SmithFeaturedHistoryCurrent Politics

A Puritan Founding? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Earlier this year Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry published The Flag + the Cross, a sociological expose on what they identified as the threat to American democracy from what they called white Christian nationalism. It’s a work of sociology more […]

John CarpenterFeatured

Objects of Doubt - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Three months to live. That was what my father heard when he went into the Mayo clinic for treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the Spring of 1986. That proved accurate. My father made his living on the business-side of health […]

Jake MeadorFeaturedCultureCulture War

Panic - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

My friend Rod Dreher recently argued from his blog that we have hit a point in the trans revolution where a moral panic is appropriate, saying:

Jake MeadorChurch

Small Groups, Church Life, and Being Human - Commonplaces

A striking and depressing stat, this: 20% of people in the US have no extended family within a 1-hour drive (among those who have any extended family). The proximity varies most by race/ethnicity and education. pic.twitter.com/4POlHWndon — Demographic Fact A […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Small Groups, Church Life, and Being Human - Commonplaces

A striking and depressing stat, this: 20% of people in the US have no extended family within a 1-hour drive (among those who have any extended family). The proximity varies most by race/ethnicity and education. pic.twitter.com/4POlHWndon — Demographic Fact A […]

Jake MeadorFamilyFeaturedFormation

Threnody for a Good Man - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Mat Feltner died at a hospital in Lincoln this week. Obviously it wasn’t Feltner himself — he lives nowhere outside of the mind of Wendell Berry, the pages of his novels, and the imaginations of the many thousands of us […]

KJ DrakeFeaturedChurch

Schmemann’s Vision of a Sacramental World and the Reformed Tradition - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Alexander Schmemann is a window into a theological world much different than typically encountered in American evangelical circles. With a faith firmly grounded in the Russian Orthodox theological tradition and speaking determinedly into late-modern Western life, Schmemann has intrigued many […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Perspective - Commonplaces

Some real talk: On a typical Sunday here in Lincoln, I would bet good money that there are more folks in PCA churches than there are PC(USA). 20 years ago, that would have been insane—but thanks to God’s kindness to […]