Category: Evangelicalism
Rich Christians in an Age of Competing Obligations
Christianity is a religion of seemingly impossible paradoxes, and the Christian life is a series of decisions made within a set of difficult, often excruciating tensions. The simplest paradoxes are the purely theological ones: Jesus is fully God and man;...
Kites
I taught my sons to fly a kite the other day. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and the wind was just right for it. They are old enough to know how a kite should fly but not old enough...
Can I Get a Witness?: A Response to Tim Keller
In his recent essay, Tim Keller has entered his bit in a persistent dialogue regarding how Christians should speak in public. The players in this dialogue, including James Wood, Aaron Renn, and Simon Kennedy, are working to sort out how...
How Should Christians Speak in Public?
Watching David Koch skewer evangelical pastor Guy Mason on Australia’s morning show Sunrise was an excruciating experience.[1] Andrew Thorburn had been dismissed for his association with the City on a Hill church just a couple of days after being appointed...
Our Spiritual Malaise
“There are some people [that] tell us that they are tremendously interested in the gospel as a point of view, as a Christian philosophy…Christianity is to them a matter of tremendous interest and they believe and proclaim that if only...
Rules for Winsomeness
At root, the kerfuffle sparked by James Wood’s summer essay(s) on winsomeness revolves around the question of what makes for an effective Christian witness in America’s current sociocultural moment. For many, this question raises additional issues for how Christians should...
A Ride Worth Leaving: Escaping the Anxiety of the Modern Church
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...
Panic
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:
Speech Without Accountability: Reckoning with Anonymous Christian Trolls
Our church invited Aimee Byrd to speak on Sunday morning several weeks ago. It wasn’t the first time. It won’t be the last time. While we only ordain men, we also allow non-ordained individuals to teach our congregation periodically—including women....
What Augustine Might Say to Someone Deconstructing
In my early twenties, I dove deep into questions and doubts about the Christian faith. After hundreds of Sundays, countless youth programs, and a few years at a Christian college, I began dismantling many things I had always assumed. Today...