Drew Carey is an American comedian who burst on to the national scene in 1991, when he appeared on the Johnny Carson Show. I saw that appearance and I am still chuckling. Beginning 1995 he starred in The Drew Carey Show for . . . Continue reading →
Perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of this present age is the sheer speed with which unquestioned orthodoxies—for example, the nature of marriage, or the tight connection between biology and gender, or the vital importance of free speech to a free . . . Continue reading →
In 2018 an estimated 111 million people watched the Super Bowl. That is about 1/3 of all Americans. In our media-fragmented age, in our cord-cutting age, in our on-demand age, rarely do that many people watch the same thing at the same . . . Continue reading →
The flood of bad news easily overwhelms us these days. Some of us are old enough to remember when we did not know who was doing what to whom in Iceland right at the moment but we live in a world when . . . Continue reading →
James Anderson is among many calling attention to the case of a teacher who has been fired by the West Point, Virginia school board for refusing to submit to their demand that he refer to students who belong biologically to one sex . . . Continue reading →
John Millbank is a theologian and the leader of an influential school of thought known as Radical Orthodoxy. Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology was published 20 years ago by Millbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward. According to R. R. Reno, the Radical . . . 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 →
Judging by what one sees in the media, Americans seem to be at war with one another. Political violence seems to be a rising problem. We are not yet witnessing the sorts of bombings and mass protests that marked the late 1960s . . . Continue reading →
Paul was a theologian of the twofold kingdom. In what Calvin called the “spiritual” aspect of the kingdom we find a covenant of grace in which sinners are accepted (justified) and saved by God out of his free favor (sola gratia), through . . . Continue reading →
Now it is certain that our Lord did not want to change anything about the government (police) or the civil order, bus without reviling it in any way, he made his office, for which he came into the world, that of forgiving . . . Continue reading →
Broadly, in evangelicalism, there are two stances toward the Ten Commandments or the moral law. For many, if not most evangelicals, it is believed that the Ten Commandments are so uniquely Mosaic, so identified with the Mosaic epoch in redemptive history, that . . . Continue reading →
The late-modern period is a a time of disillusionment in the West and perhaps nowhere else is that disillusionment more acute than in America where, since at the least the early 20th century, the false promises of Modernity (human perfectibility, the universal . . . Continue reading →
I have been thinking some lately about Karl Marx (1818–83). Now, it has been a few decades since I have read Marx but I did read him a fair bit in University as an undergraduate. I think my various Political Science professors . . . Continue reading →
The most disturbing part is that many seem completely oblivious to the shifts. Among a new generation of Reformed pastors and churchgoers, there seems to be little awareness that the project they are pursuing, and the shifts they are pushing, have already . . . Continue reading →
The world has changed quite a bit since I entered Dundee Elementary in 1965–66. No-fault divorce did not yet exist. Two-parent families were the norm. Abortion had not yet been legalized. The late-modern drug culture had not yet exploded. WWII had been . . . Continue reading →
The deeper problem here is hermeneutical. O’Donovan—and following him, Smith—fail to give sufficient attention to the Bible’s covenantal storyline, and how that storyline affects the authority of church and state. Specifically, the lessons of the kingdom of Israel transmit directly to Christ . . . Continue reading →
One of the several reasons that it is difficult to have a reasoned discussion about the events that transpired in Charlottesville is that the groups like neo-Nazis and the Klan provide such an almost irresistible opportunity for self-righteousness. The history of these . . . Continue reading →
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So begins the second paragraph of the . . . Continue reading →
One of the great temptations faced by the Israelites as the entered the land of Canaan would be to absorb the Canaanite religion and thereby either to apostatize by becoming pagans or to attempt to synthesize Canaanite paganism with the biblical religion. . . . Continue reading →
The Foundry, Resonate, Relevant, The Bridge, and Passion City are just a few of the contemporary church names noted by Dennis Baker and mocked by Url Scaramenga in 2010. A search for “contemporary church names” brings up a wealth of resources offering . . . Continue reading →