Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my last essay, we saw how consumer culture has gutted the familial category necessary to understand the church. When a consumer visits a church, he expects another service-provider, such as a hospital or a restaurant. He doesn’t understand the role of men in ministry, and thus, not the role…
First time visitors to our church sometimes express their surprise that children, even the youngest, participate with their parents in the entire worship service. Many congregations created an expectation for the parents (and children) of Sunday School or Child Care being available during the entire worship service or during the…
Quantifying the Love of God “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” ~ John 3:16 This most beloved verse in all the Bible was spoken by the Savior himself to Nicodemus. As…
While The Lord’s Prayer enjoys wide recognition throughout the Church, its richness and depth may be unrealized due to a lesser familiarity with, what I will argue is, its primary inspiration: the Tabernacle. There, Christ’s intent can rightly be discerned. The Prayer’s methodological correction to the Jews and Gentiles wasn’t…
The Consumption of the Covenant Idea of the Church Last time we saw consumerism, having canalized its attitudes in our culture, shapes what the consumer sees when he or she steps into a church. Here, we’ll see how it has eviscerated the covenant and familial ideas necessary to understand the…
The ignoble Jayber Crow can stir your appetite for the noble. It’s the simplicity of a good ol’ Port William boy that builds the charm of the book. In fact, the elitists in Port William receive the harshest blows and severest outcomes, as they should. But before delving into the…
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Trump and Aristotle may not seem to have a lot in common, Carson Holloway argues that Aristotle's Politics illuminates the deep source of Trumpism. In Book 5, Aristotle describes the origins of political factions: “In general, he teaches, human beings become factious over equality and inequality. That is, political conflict…
Matthew Crawford is an advocate for the moral and intellectual value of manual labor. He argues in Shop Class as Soulcraft that “T he moral significance of work that grapples with material things may lie in the simple fact that such things lie outside the self. A washing machine, for…
Listening to Rod Dreher read the final paragraph of After Virtue , I was struck by MacIntyre's description of the political prerequisite for forming communities of virtue in the new dark ages that are upon us. Here's the famous passage: “It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between…
“Until the mid-1980s, green-felt table games such as blackjack and craps dominated casino floors while slot machines huddled on the sidelines, serving to occupy the female companions of ‘real' gamblers,” writes Natasha Dow Schull in her 2014 Addiction By Design . Slot machines were “often placed along hallways or near…
Comparisons of different religious beliefs and practices wasn't new in the 19th century. At least since the age of exploration, Europeans had been compiling long and detailed treatises comparing Christian with “heathen” religion. What was new in the 19th century was the formation of a discipline of comparative religion. In…
In an essay on “ The Intelligent Use of Space ,” David Kirsh observed that since we have bodies, “we are spatially located creatures: we must always be facing some direction, have only certain objects in view, be within reach of certain others. How we manage the space around us,…
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