Category: Evangelicalism
Bucer, Freud, and the Evangelical Counseling Wars
I’m pleased to publish this guest essay from Brian Mesimer. The door closes as your next appointment walks in and sits in the chair across from you. Putting his head in his hands, Rick lets out a mournful sigh. After...
How to Celebrate the Reformation
Today marks the 500th anniversary of the day that Martin Luther (might have) nailed his famous 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. While the historicity of that famous event is in dispute, what is not in question is...
The Real Presence and the Presence of Reality: In Defense of Reformed Sacramentology
This lecture was originally delivered at Hillsdale College. A PDF version of this essay is also available. Last year, one of Hillsdale’s most famous alumni, Peter Leithart, wrote an essay called “Why Protestants Can’t Write” that began with the line...
On Powers, Principalities, and Politics
“I’m the idiot box. I’m the TV. I’m the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I’m the boob tube. I’m the little shrine the family gathers to adore.” “You’re the television? Or someone in your the television?”...
Ecclesiology and the Zombie Pastor Problem
A brief note on the furor surrounding Patheos’s decision to add Mark Driscoll to their Evangelical channel: One of the common responses when something like this hits the press is for evangelicals, self-lacerating sorts that we are, to say that...
On the PCA’s ‘Tim Keller Problem’
Last week Erick Erickson spoke up about a topic that many of my friends have also noticed and been concerned about for some time: In a denomination with few rockstars and even fewer mega-churches, there are a lot of young...
Evangelicalism’s ‘Flight 93’ Moment: Reflections on the Nashville Statement
What does the Nashville Statement mean? And to whom should we look to help us understand? Conservative evangelicals have been gripped by such questions since the CBMW released the statement two weeks ago. Yet while its advocates and defenders have...
The Weightier Things of the Law: A Case Against Conscience-Binding in the Schooling Debate
As the nation’s schools continue to move down the path paved for them in the Obergefell decision, many Christian parents are pulling their children out of the public schools. Though the exact reasons for doing this vary from person to...
In Praise of Cultural Christianity
I’m pleased to publish this guest editorial from Stephen Wolfe. Cultural Christianity is frequently an object of scorn in American evangelical Christianity. Though elsewhere even atheists claim to be culturally Christian (e.g., Richard Dawkins), in the United States the term...
How Marketing Jargon Poisons Christian Community
We’ll be back to normal posting next week (I’ve been traveling for the past week which has made writing and editing difficult), but for the moment I wanted to flag a short review from the latest issue of Christianity Today and make...