On 17 July, 2020 J. I. Packer (b. 1926) went to be with our Lord. Like Carl Trueman I am thankful for Packer. As a young evangelical, Packer and John R. W. Stott saved me from the mindless evangelicalism toward which I . . . Continue reading →
Diversity, an $8 billion enterprise back in 2003, exploded in the wake of Donald Trump’s election into one of the nation’s fastest-growing industries. Colleges funneled millions of dollars into diversity and inclusion efforts; in 2019, a survey found that 63% of working . . . Continue reading →
And think about this whenever progressives — such as we are dealing with in US Orthodox Christianity — say that we have to get with the times, and change our faith and practice to make it more suitable for contemporary America. But . . . Continue reading →
So, let us speak of slavery. The American republic inherited slavery from the British empire, in much the same way that it inherited its fiscal poverty, its lack of manufacturing capability, and its primitive infrastructure. We expected to overcome all of these . . . Continue reading →
I think I first read about “web logs” about 1995, when I was teaching at Wheaton College. Then they were the domain of people writing about what they had for breakfast. They were daily, public journals where people recorded online their most . . . Continue reading →
In 1923, a young assistant professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary named J. Gresham Machen published a scathing critique of the worldview animating establishment or “mainline” Protestant Christianity in Europe and America. That worldview, Machen argued in Christianity and Liberalism, . . . Continue reading →
In October of last year the HB noted the release of the documentary American Gospel, an exposé of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” as well as the widespread confusion in evangelicalism over the nature of justification. I noted then, for far too many . . . Continue reading →
The margins of a screen or a piece of notebook paper are the spaces between the very edge and the area where we are allowed to write. There are also social and cultural margins. Some institutions in society are right in the . . . Continue reading →
Did you stop and get to know those people in the churches? Did you ask them about their burdens? Is it possible there were things much bigger that you were overlooking because of a superficial need for an emotional buzz during worship? . . . Continue reading →
For far too many American and global Christians, the “prosperity gospel” is all they know of Christianity. For far too many Christians what the Scriptures actually teach about the law and the gospel is almost entirely unknown. Their leaders and influences are . . . Continue reading →
One of the questions submitted to the Reformation conference last fall at the Lynden URC asks “in regards to the current state of the church, what is needed in terms of a Reformation?” That’s a great question. If we are talking about . . . Continue reading →
A Pulpit Is Not A Platform Since the early 18th century, American Christianity has been dominated by personalities. George Whitefield, the Wesleys, and Jonathan Edwards feature prominently in any narrative of the history of eighteenth-century American Christianity. When we think of the . . . Continue reading →
In the United States, Memorial Day is day for remembering those who died in the service of the US military. It began as Decoration Day in 1868, on which day 5,000 people decorated the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington . . . Continue reading →
When I saw Chris Rosebrough tweet something about a “sneaky squid spirit doctrine” I thought it must be something from The Onion or the Babylon Bee. It is not. It is the latest thing from the world of charismatic continuing prophecy. The . . . Continue reading →
Müntzer stretched Karlstadt’s distinction between the Spirit and the flesh still further by discarding baptism altogether and by setting aside the Scriptures as in themselves constituting no more than a dead letter. ‘Bible, Babel, bubble!’ was his slogan. A. Skevington Wood, “The . . . Continue reading →
Perhaps the most intense and difficult part about growing up is learning how to fit in, when to try, and when it does not matter. I suppose, we probably never really outgrow those questions but perhaps, as we mature, it matters less . . . Continue reading →
A few days ago someone, somewhere on social media, in objection to something I wrote, used the arresting expression “biased facts.” I learned from the Dutch Reformed philosophical theologian Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987) that there are no such things as uninterpreted facts . . . Continue reading →
There was sometimes an expressed commitment to certain iconic traditions of Anglicanism that seemed to supersede the commitment to the gospel message and the primacy of Scripture. I began to perceive that many of Episcopalian background regard the traditions of Anglicanism as . . . Continue reading →
For a long time, I have felt that the cause of biblical Christianity has been undermined in our time by sincere people who engage in unbiblical activities for the sake of being an influence. The sad and ironic result of those actions . . . Continue reading →
I am not certain what it means but pastors resort to military analogies with surprising frequency. One of them is the metaphor of “dying on a hill.” The image is that of a marine charging up a hill or fighting to hold . . . Continue reading →