Seductive Statism: David Bahnsen, Robert Sirico, and Big Government
By Jesse Sumpter Thursday, April 9, Acton Institute hosted a live conversation on Zoom between David Bahnsen and Fr. Robert Sirico about the current Covid-19 Economic situation. David Bahnsen is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group, managing over $2.25 billion in client assets. Bahnsen was recently on CrossPolitic to talk […]
Coronaing Out of Control
By Levi Secord At this point, frustration, bewilderment, and despair rule over much of our world. As a pastor, I’m tasked with shepherding my flock throughout life. This calling includes helping them live faithfully in the face of global uncertainty. Trials shed light on who we are, especially our weaknesses. Unfortunately, like with other controversies […]
THE MYTH OF NEUTRALITY: How Christians Should Read Coronavirus “News”
Guest Post by Joel Webbon I want to remind you friends, during this season, that although we should be diligent not to politicize everything, everything is still being politicized by just about everyone else. If we believe that political policies (including what kind of bans should be enforced during the coronavirus) flow downstream from morality, […]
Can the Church Replace the Natural Family?
A few weeks ago, I wrote the following in this space: We should also stop conflating the church and the natural family as if the former may be substituted for the latter. While there is some overlap, and family works as a metaphor to describe the church, these are two separate spheres that God has […]
Psalms With a Southern Accent – My Soul Among Lions
In my first church job the Pastor gave me a bit of advice that stuck. Children learn most of their theology from the songs that their church sings. They may not remember your sermons, but they will carry the songs they sing in church the rest of their lives. This is not just true of […]
Idol Matching 2
Round Two Same-sex mirage and divorce. Same-sex mirage and fornication. In a previous post, I argued that far too often, the idolatry we enshrine in our own hearts matches the idolatry present in same-sex mirage. As Christians, when we countenance any sort of abuse of God’s gifts of sexual intimacy and marriage, namely divorce and […]
Are Young People Leaving the Church? Probably Not
Post One in the series “A Church for the Next Generation” The church, we are told, is graying rapidly. Churches in rural areas are shrinking as Americans migrate to the cities, while churches in urban areas are not the bastions of ethnic and religious solidarity they once were. One Philadelphia church, its congregation having dwindled […]
A Manifesto on Art and the Church
The Christian Church is in exile. Not that we are living in tents (though many church buildings may qualify as temporary). Instead, there is a deeper exile. The soul of the American Church is in the plot point of the epic poem in which the protagonist becomes a homeless wanderer Like the exiled warrior of […]
Does the Church Fail the Uneducated?
The church in America has in part given way to a social club that maintains the apparatus of Christianity while providing different social classes, from the lower middle class on up, respectability and community. This respectability and community sometimes comes at the cost of exclusion of the poor and less-educated.
Packaging the Tribe: Selling More than Music
Netflix’ new documentary Hip Hop Evolution is a history of the development and rise of Hip Hop and Rap. In one of the interviews, Ice T, a primeval purveyor of Gangster Rap, talks about his early rhymes: “I was just writing about my reality.” He was trying to capture “the laid back vibe of reality.” The people in the neighborhood listened because they recognized their life in his words. According to Ice Cube, another early Gangster Rapper, Ice T wrote rhymes that “were our version of what a day in the life of Los Angeles was like.” They were not trying to create a new genre. They wanted to fetter their daily insanity with verse.
Yes, God Still Hates Homosexuality
The debate over homosexuality is raging as much as it ever was. Indeed, arguments advocating its acceptance have gotten more and more fabulous. This has not diminished the need for Christians to give a defense of what the Bible says about homosexuality but only increased it. But when it comes to actually confronting unbelievers about […]