I have a half-baked theory that evangelicalism was a much greater spiritual force about a hundred years ago. I'm not a historian or sociologist, and I don't have a lot of interest in figuring out exactly what went wrong between our time and the golden age. It's enough to know that sometime around the first quarter of the twentieth century, somebody obviously spent the famil...
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Words from J.H. Jowett, written in 1910:
It is possible to evade a multitude of sorrows by the cultivation of an insignificant life. Indeed, if it be a man’s ambition to avoid the troubles of life, the recipe is perfectly simple — let him shed his ambitions in every direction, let him cut the wings of every soaring purpose, and let him assiduously cultivate a little lif...
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The turkey on the table is roasted red, and Freddy age six gives a wave so exuberant that it might take as many as six fingers to get the message across.
Happy Thanksgiving from the Middlebrow gang. We've been on the road this week at an annual conference and are giving thanks to be back home, ready to get back to blogging.
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Brad Stetson gave a lecture at Biola this week on the virtue of tolerance. Stetson, a PhD in social ethics from the University of Southern California, co-authored a widely-praised book on this subject last year. In just about 40 minutes, Stetson can put thoughts in your head that burn away the enveloping fog of confusion on this subject.
The most helpful thing I heard Ste...
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Is public education helping our children to succeed as adults? Do today’s modern teaching methodologies actually enable our children to develop skills that facilitate their ability to flourish in society? Given that most of today’s educational models have been influenced by modernity I would say that they have been for years developing systems that are antithetical to pro...
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In 1872, Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836-1895) managed to spin a book out of two words of Scripture: In Christ . The book is a ten-chapter gem, and as an opening gambit, Gordon freely admitted that the phrase "in Christ" points to a great mystery. Though he had plenty to say in describing the ramifications and effects of being in Christ, Gordon did not attempt to explain the t...
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There are some peculiar footnotes in the 1845 edition of Calvin's Institutes translated by the industrious Henry Beveridge. The weirdest ones are the result of Beveridge double-checking his translation work by turning from the Latin Institutes to the French translation (much of which is by Calvin's own hand). My favorite example is in Book I, chapter 11, when Calvin is ridic...
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At the top of a steep green hill, we see a momentary lull in the eternal battle for the teddy bear. The tall purple knight represents the Bearhead Clan, known for the severity of their discipline, the unornamented armor, and their total devotion to the face of the bear, whose emblem marks his shield. Over against him stands the smaller blue knight of the order of Ursus Corpu...
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Dorothy Sayers was not a theologian, and she availed herself of every opportunity to make some version of this denial public. “Playwrights Are Not Evangelists,” she wrote in 1955, and in later life she drafted a form letter of rejection to send to people who invited her to come speak on theological topics. She called the form letter NMR (No More Religion). However, mos...
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Losing is no fun, but it points the way forward for traditional Christians who are also Republicans. First, there is no sense attacking the voters for their choice. In some cases the Republican candidate was tainted (Burns) or not really Republican (Chafee), but that is not enough to explain our losses. Good people lost, especially Santorum and Allen. They lost in part because ...
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Senate will be lost?
It appears to me that the Senate will also be lost. Democrats did better than most thought and it is a big win for them. Let's hope that Lieberman and the "middle of the road" Democrats will work together with Republicans to win the War.
The President lost this one. This election is a wake up call for Republicans to look for candidates like Romney th...
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Last night, trying to figure out how to vote my way through that long list of court of appeal judges, I resorted to the web for guidance. As a last ditch effort to check my work, I logged on to the Daily Kos to see who they recommended voting for, on the assumption that voting the exact opposite of that would probably put me in the neighborhood of the truth. Somewhere in the...
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