Evangelization After the Secular Sabbath
For Christians of a certain age, I expect a certain kind of Christian testimony will sound familiar: You grow up in a home with both of your biological parents (who are married), you grow up in and around the church,...
Growing the Merry Band
A short update on where things stand at Mere O HQ (AKA my home study): I’ve been doing Mere Orthodoxy full-time since January. God willing and if the magazine’s finances allow it, this is what I will be doing FT for the...
Winsomeness, Evangelism, and Pastoral Theology
It is an odd thing to see a pastor from New York City presented as the spokesman for a movement supposedly defined by its concern with “winsomeness.” Though I do not know the city that well, my few trips to it have...
The Self is a Problem
There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating them from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality,...
The Three Ages of Christian American Exceptionalism
In 1789, Otobo Cugoano, a freed slave and a Christian, wrote in his Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evils of Slavery against those who claimed that the manstealing and enslavement of Africans was justified by the fact that some of...
In Memoriam: Michael Baker: Teacher of Persons
I suspect that my old high school teacher Michael Baker would have rather mixed feelings about having an obituary published in a magazine called Mere Orthodoxy. Certainly, he was the kind of teacher that would have scared many white evangelical parents,...
On Loving Newcastle
Michael Chaplin. Newcastle United Stole My Heart: Sixty Years in Black and White. London: Hurst and Co, 2021. 280pp, $25.00. The first thing to say is that Michael Chaplin’s Newcastle United Stole My Heart is one of the most delightfully...
People Flourish Together: Introducing Issue #2 on Nations and Nationalism
People flourish together. That is the animating conviction behind this edition of Mere Orthodoxy. Because it is not good for us to be alone, it follows that we must needs be bound to one another in relationships of love, mutuality,...
Good Friday
Every year on Good Friday as a rule we go dark with regards to publishing new essays or reviews. Instead, we share a few songs to help people mark Good Friday. I pray that today will be a somber one...