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Writing

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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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Trinity

Contracting the Trinity

Trinitarian theology blossomed in English theology in the post-Reformation period, evidenced by the creative development of the vestigia trinitatis . During the seventeenth century, though, Trinitarian theology began to contract and wither. According to Philip Dixon ( Nice and Hot Disputes ), there were two dynamics at work. First, Trinitarian…

February 25, 2016

Structure in 1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles begins with a list of 13 names, from Adam to Japheth. From Genesis 10, we know that the list is broken into two lists, 10 + 3. The first ten names mark generations from Adam to Noah; the list of three names are all from the same generation,…

February 25, 2016

Economy of Force

Patricia Owens summarizes her recent Economy of Force in a symposium at The Disorder of Things . Her book is a history of modern counterinsurgency, but that history has much broader implications for the history of political thought and scholarship on international relations. As Owens puts it, “The book is…

February 24, 2016

Liturgical Orientalism

Robert Taft ( “Eastern Presuppositions” and Western Liturgical Reform ) credits the Melkite patriarch and bishops with exercising a disproportionate influence on the direction of reform at Vatican II, due to their “remarkable imaginative and universal vision.” They were the first to state that the council should avoid definitions and…

February 24, 2016

Separability and Situatedness

Marcia Pally's Commonwealth and Covenant is a study of the “economics, politics, and theologies of relationality.” She works through these topics using the categories of “separability” and “situatedness.” Separability is “the ability to leave one's place and develop oneself differently from past and neighbors” (3). She thinks that the contemporary…

February 24, 2016

Debtor Nation

“In 2010, Americans had total debt outstanding of $52.4 trillion, more than three-and-a-half times the country's gross domestic product,” writes Rowena Olegario in The Engine of Enterprise (1). Over $13 trillion is household debt, $24.5 is business debt, and 24% or $12.4 trillion is government debt, mostly federal debt. Each…

February 23, 2016

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