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Jake MeadorChurchBook Reviews

Dawson on How the West Got Saved - Commonplaces

Dawson: Unlike Christian Byzantium, Christian Rome represents only a brief interlude between paganism and barbarism. There were only eighteen years between Theodosius’s closing of the temples and the first sack of the Eternal City by the barbarians. The great age […]

Jake MeadorChurch

The Five Phases of Movement and Cultural Renewal - Commonplaces

Start by listening to this Mark Sayers lecture from a conference in Melbourne a few years ago. Sayers argues that one of the ways the discussion about Christianity and the west has gotten off track is that it’s not really […]

Jake MeadorChurch

The Ecosystem - Commonplaces

I see two problems that are going to catch the American church in a pincer maneuver if we don’t sort them out soon. First, our institutions are decaying, decadent, or dying and as the boomers die a lot of the […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Panopticon Discipleship - Commonplaces

(I’m just trying to do some short stuff that would’ve gone on Twitter, in much less thoughtful, developed form, on the personal blog instead.) One of the trends I have noticed in many conversations with people who have left the […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Preaching in a Disorienting, Low-Competence Society - Commonplaces

Beck: I think Newbigin was right. On Friday I was making Newbigin’s point by describing the modern world as “a moral vacuum.” And my point at the end of the post was to note that advice-giving has intrinsic appeal in […]

Jake MeadorChurchHenri De Lubac Project

Critical Race Theory Isn't Going to Get You - Commonplaces

In an old standup bit from a few years before his untimely death, Norm Macdonald mocked the way American media sometimes manufactures fear through their coverage of global affairs before memorably pivoting to the one country that really did scare him. […]

Steven WedgeworthFeaturedChurch

In Memoriam: Rev. Dr. Gregg Strawbridge - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

The Reverend Doctor Gregg Strawbridge died on January 26th, 2022 from a sudden heart attack. His death was entirely unexpected and has occasioned an outpouring of love and admiration from those who knew him and benefitted from his ministry. An […]

Jared MichelsonFeaturedChurchEvangelicalismFormation

Power, the Trinity, and Abuse: Notes on the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Predictably, the lessons drawn from Christianity Today’s “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” vary according to the biases of the listener. Some of those ‘deconstructing’ see the Mars Hill saga as increasing conformation of the wholesale bankruptcy of evangelical […]

Dustin MesserFeaturedChurchEvangelicalism

Why We All Need Baptists to be Baptist - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

The liturgy started sleepily this fourth Sunday in Advent, people trickling in later than usual. A traffic jam made traveling downtown to our Anglican parish especially difficult. It turned out the standstill was caused by the Secret Service. As we, […]

Bruce ClarkFeaturedChurch

Ten Theses on Homosexuality and the Church - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

I wrote the following to clarify my own thoughts and also to (indirectly) respond to some recent discussions and developments within my own denomination (the PCA). But at present here are my own reflections on homosexuality today as a pastor […]

Jake MeadorFamilyChurch

Deconstructing in the Ruins - Commonplaces

I don’t know a way to start this without some level of personal detail, but I’ll try to be brief: I grew up in a church somewhere right of John MacArthur which, these days, things MacArthur is a progressive. If you […]

Trevor LaurenceFeaturedChurch

An Unresolved and Perilous Ambiguity - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Recently, the 48th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America convened in St. Louis, Missouri. While much important business was conducted in the span of a few days, considerable attention was directed to the issue of ordination standards, particularly […]