At the end of March Brad Isbell, Wilson Van Hooser and I discussed whether Revivalism can be Reformed. As usual, great fun was had by all. Here’s the video: Here’s the audio-only episode in the Presbycast Libsyn feed. Subscribe to the Presbycast . . . Continue reading →
Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) is America’s most famous theologian and perhaps its most famous philosopher too. He is an important and influential figure and worth seeking to understand for these reasons alone. We should think about Edwards for other reasons, however. He is the theologian par . . . Continue reading →
One of the earliest and most rhetorically powerful charges made by the proponents of the eighteenth-century (colonial) revivals was that their critics were either unregenerate or impious. Religious experience is usually defined by proponents of revival as being composed of certain religious . . . Continue reading →
As I write there is a major land war ongoing between Russia and Ukraine, Israel has suffered a horrific terrorist attack by Hamas and is facing a two-front war with Hamas to the South and Hezbollah to the North as she seeks . . . Continue reading →
A former student of mine many years ago at Westminster Seminary California once mentioned that he was feeling concerned about his devotional life since beginning seminary—a thought many first-semester seminary students have. He said that before attending seminary, he had an active . . . Continue reading →
A spontaneous marathon revival among students and faculty at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, resulted in a week-long shut-down of classes and reached out to other colleges and communities from coast to coast this month. Students, faculty, townspeople, and visitors wept, and . . . Continue reading →
Why is it so difficult for Evangelicals to make the transition from evangelical “praise and worship” services to the more restrained and, dare I say it, dignified Reformed worship services? Any pastor of a Reformed church can tell stories about evangelicals, particularly . . . Continue reading →
Much of modern evangelical theology, piety, and practice, is not driven by Scripture as much as it is driven by history. Many evangelicals assume, as I once did, that the altar call is a biblical practice. They do not know, as I . . . Continue reading →
My thirst for more drove me on. I began to explore the doctrine of the Spirit. Raised as a cessationist, I believed that the Holy Spirit comes to each believer at conversion, after that there is nothing more to it. I was . . . Continue reading →
…We have been trained by the broader culture that how we feel when we come to worship is determined by the success of the instrumentation to create a good feeling. The assumption is that praise is created by the success of the . . . Continue reading →
Another Christian musician has announced that he has “deconstructed” his faith. Continue reading
The “extraordinary affairs” at at home referred to the beginnings of what was among the most revealing episodes in the whole Edwards saga. On Wednesday morning, January 20, 1742, Sarah Edwards was enraptured by a spiritual ecstasy that continued for more than . . . Continue reading →
Events described by the author of the Savage manuscript, in other words, provide an opportunity to reimagine Edwards as an active promoter of the most radical dimensions of the evangelical new birth experience—a figure who, during the early months of the Awakening, . . . Continue reading →
Presbyterian and Reformed congregations occupy an odd space in American Christianity. We do not really belong to American Christianity in significant ways. Our roots are not in the nineteenth-century revivals nor even in the eighteenth-century revivals. We are no part of the . . . Continue reading →
For a few years now Ligonier, in conjunction with Lifeway, has been conducting surveys of Americans (and others) to track the state of American Christianity. They want to know, as they write, what “Americans believe about God, salvation, ethics, and the Bible.” . . . Continue reading →
Jason Estopinal is the host of the podcast and he writes: “It’s been said that for fish that living under water, with all they’ve ever known is underwater living, and all the other fish around them also only know underwater living—that these . . . Continue reading →
The phrase “swimming the Tiber” is a metaphor for converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. I have not been able to determine its origins but the online Dictionary of Christianese traces the expression to 1963, which, if true, would mean that it . . . Continue reading →
Introduction Arguably Reformed theology has never been more popular among evangelicals than it is right now. There are multiple large parachurch movements that extol the virtues of Reformed theology in a way that was unknown thirty years ago. It has never been . . . Continue reading →
I am interrupting the series on the doctrine of God again to do the call-in show I have been promising. With this episode, you the listener get to vote on the Heidelblog. You tell me which call you liked best and I . . . Continue reading →
There are reports (documented in the comments below) that various ostensibly evangelical congregations are cancelling worship services this Lord’s Day. This has become something of a pattern in recent years. It seems that people, including the congregants, pastors, and church staff are . . . Continue reading →