Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Gambling The Bible nowhere condemns gambling, and so we need to be careful in our assessment of it. Let me begin by making a strong case against gambling. Then I will surprise most readers by pointing out that gambling may not always be sinful. The reader should bear in mind…
Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard (Ace Books, 1991). Reviewed by Jeffrey Meyers. Tim Power’s latest novel is now available in paperback. The story is set in early nineteenth century England and Italy, in the world of the poets John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. Michael Crawford, a…
A close supporter of Biblical Horizons asks whether it is proper and wise to get involved in all the boycotts that Christians are being asked to observe today. She raises the point that Paul’s advice about eating meat sacrificed to idols seems relevant to the discussion. I think she is…
Solomon began to build the Temple of the Lord in the fourth year of his reign, which was 480 years after Israel came out of Egypt, the year A.M. 2993 (1 Kings 6:1). Seven years later, in the year A.M. 3000, the Temple building was finished (1 Kings 6:38). The…
Several months back, a candidate for ordination was being examined for entrance into the Presbytery of which I am a member. The candidate had a good deal of trouble with the exam on the sacraments, stumbling badly as he tried to define the "nature of the sacrament." Apparently in an…
Exploring the influence of televangelism on American religion in his book, The Struggle for America’s Soul , Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow presents a typical, though hypothetical, case study: Mabel Miller. Mabel lives alone, thousands of miles from her family. She grew up in a Baptist Church, but now, approaching 65,…
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O wen Chadwick devotes a chapter of The Reformation to “the decline of ecclesiastical power.” He reviews the effects of the Reformation on excommunication, the benefit of clergy, church property and the power of the local parish church. Sanctuary was one of the medieval institutions ended by the Reformation. Sanctuary…
D iarmaid MacCulloch ( Reformation: Europe's House Divided ) calls attention to the effect of Psalm-singing, spurred on by Beza's publication of a French Psalter in 1562–3: The metrical psalm was the perfect vehicle for turning the Protestant message into a mass movement capable of embracing the illiterate alongside the…
D iarmaid MacCulloch ( Reformation: Europe's House Divided ) points to the “bizarre fortunes” of the Bremen Cathedral to illustrate the “stand-off and ill-will between the two Protestantisms,” Lutheran and Reformed: With its crucial position in the north-west of the German lands, [Bremen] had once been the very heart of…
B rad Gregory ( Unintended Reformation , 130-2) argues that, despite their obvious differences, modern states that allow free religious expression, confessional states, and totalitarian states that suppress religion have a common root. Both assume that the state determines the limits of allowable religion on its own, an assumption that…
Z echariah thought utopia is a place where there are games in the streets: “the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets” (Zechariah 8:5). Anthony Esolen agrees ( Out of the Ashes , 164-5), because the fact that children play in the…
D ouglas Murray reports at The Spectator on the ongoing and largely ignored persecution of Christian villages in Nigeria: “These tribal-led villages, each with their own ‘paramount ruler,' were converted by missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries. But now these Christians — from the bishop down — sense that…
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