This Thanksgiving, Be Thankful the Pilgrims Tried Communism–And It Didn’t Work
Guest post by Dr. Gregory Soderberg The “first Thanksgiving” is one of the treasured legends of our American beginnings. You can Google the real story later. Less well-known is the Pilgrim’s failed experiment with communism. In these historically-ignorant times, when socialism and communism are sexy again, we can be thankful that the Pilgrims tried a […]
Christian Defense of Nationalism
Guest Article by Darrell Dow The last decade has seen the global emergence of nationalism and populism. From Japan to the Indian subcontinent, from the Middle East to Europe and the Americas, the global political divide is increasingly defined by the chasm separating corporate global elites from a rising tide of nationalism expressed via populist […]
Donald Trump, Fat Tony, and Elite Evangelical Discourse
By Rhett Burns Donald Trump is an exclamation point, a bolded font, an underscore, an orange highlighter, drawing attention to the fecklessness of conservative leaders. This man—serial adulterer, womanizer, uncouth, proud, foul-mouthed, and greedy—is the man ending wars, speaking at the March for Life, de-regulating businesses, and standing up to the Left. Is there anything […]
A Response to Matt Chandler
By Levi Secord I like Matt Chandler. I’ve benefited from both his books and preaching. On many central and secondary doctrines, we are closely aligned. In this way, I view him more as an ally than a theological boogeyman. But, I’ve noticed his normal clear thinking is lacking when it comes to issues of race […]
Houses of Healing, Houses of Hope
Guest Article By Gregory Soderberg In the midst of the global COVID-19 crisis, there are many features of our modern life that we take for granted. Toilet paper, meat, hand sanitizer … and hospitals. Although adequate medical care is still tragically absent in many countries throughout the world, a huge percentage of the world’s population […]
Machen and Lessons for Today’s Liberalism
By Jesse Sumpter In the midst of the theological and cultural battles in our time–Revoice, Woke theology, Feminism–a wonderful resource to draw from is J. Gresham Machen (born July 28, 1881). His battle with Liberalism a hundred years ago offers important lessons for those who are fighting today’s Liberalism. Here are three key lessons to […]
Jung, Occultism, and Weird Science
By George Grant Watkins’ Bookshop in Cecil Court, just off Charing Cross between Leicester Square and Covent Garden in London, was established in 1891 by John Watkins, and is still London’s premier occult bookstore. One of its most famous customers was Carl Gustav Jung, who would together with Sigmund Freud, pioneer the field of psychology […]
The Church is Plan A
By George Grant The Church is Plan A. And there is no Plan B. The Church is the means by which the Lord has purposed to demonstrate His grace, His mercy, and His providential rule in the world. The orthodox Christian faith cannot be reduced to personal experiences, academic discussions, dogmatic formulations, philosophical revelations, or […]
Immediately
Poet, literary critic, and novelist, Arthur Quiller-Couch, was best known for his incomparable anthology, The Oxford Book of English Verse. As a lecturer at Oxford beginning in 1886 and a professor at Cambridge from 1912-1944, he taught an entire generation of English writers how to write. Exceedingly prolific himself, he wrote in almost every conceivable […]
Education and Hope
Haarlem is a beautiful little Dutch town on the River Spaarne, fifteen minutes by train from Amsterdam. Founded sometime in the 10th century, in 1245 it was granted city status or stadsrechten and was made the capital of the province of North Holland. By the 14th century, it had become a mercantile hub as a […]
Just Preach It
When I was in seminary, the “Church Growth Movement” was just getting its sea legs. So, of course, it was all the rage in the hallowed halls of academia—if not amongst the profs, most assuredly amongst their charges. Filled with uninformed enthusiasm my peers tended to gobble up every fad and fancy that came down […]
Self-Examination As a Check Against Idolatry
The years leading up to the Scottish Disruption and those immediately afterward produced some of the most remarkable servants of God in the history of the church. Andrew Alexander Bonar (1810-1892) was a member of that galaxy of brilliant, Reformed Scots preachers, writers, and missionaries which included his brothers John, James, and Horatius, as well […]
Yokefellows in Hardship
The horrific ruthlessness of ISIS, the brazen cruelty of Boko Haram, the obsessive repression of the North Korean Juche, the vicious terrorism of Al-Qaeda: I confess that when faced with the gleeful persecution of my Christian brothers and sisters around the world in recent days, I am shocked. But, I know I shouldn’t be. Long […]
Lost Words
In his classic book, The Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul bemoans the absence from our vocabulary of certain, once-familiar, King James Version words. It wasn’t so much the loss of antiquated verb forms like walketh and talketh, or sayest and mayest that bothered him. It wasn’t obsolete pronouns like thou and thee, or thy and […]
The Ichabod Church
“And thus was he called Ichabod, for the glory of the Lord had departed.” 1 Samuel 4:21 The rising tide of heresy in the latter half of the fourth century very nearly engulfed the entire church. Most of the Nicean fathers had either passed into glory or were constrained by dotage. Even the seemingly ageless […]
Meaning It, Believing It, and Living It
It is one of the great ironies of our day that Christians can pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,” and not actually mean anything by it. Indeed, it is a stunning paradox that we can live as if such a prayer could not be answered. Even worse, we can […]
The God Who Answereth By Orphanages
In 1821, Dr. John Rippon, pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in Southwark, London, began a ministry to the homeless poor. A complex of almshouses was erected on a property adjacent to the church and the monumental task of rehabilitation was begun. Rippon wrote, “Christian compassion is driven by a holy and zealous compulsion […]
Taking Every Thought Captive
“We ought to bring our minds free, unbiased, and teachable, to learn our religion from the Word of God.” Isaac Watts One of the basic demands of Christian discipleship, of following Jesus Christ, is to change our way of thinking. We are to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians […]
Worldviewishness
“The most practical and important thing about a man is his view of the universe. The question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.” G.K. Chesterton “Worldview is the most important thing that we can know about a man. Ideas have consequences. […]
The Madgeburg Confession
By the 16th century virtually no one disagreed on the fact that the West needed to be reformed. What they disagreed on was what that reform should entail and how it was to be effected. In frustrated tension, dozens of competing factions, sects, schisms, rifts, rebellions, and divisions roiled just beneath the surface of the […]