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How to Worship

How Liturgy Simplifies Worship for the Cognitively Impaired

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me. In 2005, God blessed our family with our third child, our second daughter, whom we named Bethany. As soon as Bethany was born, we knew there was something different about her. Unlike her two older siblings, who were born…

by Gregory LaughlinMay 4, 2017
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Creeds

How Pastors Can Incorporate the Creeds in their Churches

Christian, what is it that we believe? While Creeds like the Nicene and Apostle’s have been fundamental pieces of Christian liturgy and life, the American Church is highly unattached to these classic statements. From this creedal phobia has arisen the popular “No Creed, but Christ” slogan. Such slogan, of course,…

by Uri BritoMay 2, 2017
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Books

Myth of Religious Violence

Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence . The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic,…

by Peter LeithartApril 27, 2017
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Church Calendar

A Glad New Day

19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so…

by Arthur KayApril 25, 2017
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John

Thomas and Us

An octave is a repetition, a repetition with a difference. It’s not the first note played again , but the first note played at a higher pitch. Octaves have always marked new beginnings. Hebrew boys were circumcised on the eighth day. Firstborn sheep were dedicated to Yahweh on the eighth…

by Peter LeithartApril 21, 2017
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Church Calendar

Resurrection: The Best and Worst News

We say Jesus’ resurrection is good news. It wasn’t good news for the disciples on the first Easter. More like perplexing, bewildering news. For others, it wasn’t perplexing, and it certainly wasn’t good. It was plain old bad news. Early in Luke’s gospel, Herod is terrified that Jesus might be…

by Peter LeithartApril 20, 2017

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From Freedom to Fascism

Robert Kuttner's NYRB review of Gareth Dale's Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left highlights Polanyi's relevance to contemporary global politics and economics. Kuttner observes that the "period between the two world wars, free-market liberals governing Britain, France, and the US tried to restore the pre–World War I laissez-faire system.…

January 5, 2018

Scattering and Gathering

The Chronicler gathers all Israel - indeed, a cross section of ancient humanity - on the opening pages of his chronicle. The genealogy is a great, inter-generational qahal (assembly), and the Chronicler is the Qoheleth, the Gatherer. As soon as his story starts, though, Israel is being dispersed. Israel flees…

January 4, 2018

Left Behind

In his forthcoming The Left Behind , Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow tries to penetrate past the headlines and stereotypes to discover the truth about, his subtitle has it, decline and rage in rural America. Wuthnow didn't drop into flyover country for a long weekend of hanging with local pundits at…

January 4, 2018

Conservatives on Globalization

James R. Rogers offers a useful taxonomy of contemporary conservative critiques of globalization. He defines globalization as "decreasing costs to capital and labor mobility. Mobility across, but also within, national borders." Alternatively, it could be defined as "the process of incorporating new regions of the world into a unified market…

January 3, 2018

Free Theocracy

In his Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov , Jonathan Sutton lays out Solovyov's (Solovyev; Soloviev) conception of "free theocracy." For Solovyov, "the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth is presented as an ordering of all aspects of life (individual and communal life) according to Christian principles. Furthermore, this…

January 2, 2018

Gentiles in Chronicles

In a contribution to The Chronicler as Author , Ehud Ben Zvi reviews five statements about Israel from foreigners in the book of Chronicles. The foreigners are Huram of Tyre, the Queen of Sheba, Sennacherib, Neco king of Egypt, and Cyrus the Persian. The first and last two are positive…

January 2, 2018

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