Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. (1 Timothy 2:15) Years ago, the wife of a prominent American theologian recognized that even in Christian circles mothers were under a kind of social pressure to justify the worthwhileness of their…
I caught my five year old washing his hands again. He had already washed them several times that hour, so I asked him if he was okay. He told me he didn’t want to get “the virus”. That was before I had told him anything about coronavirus, but we did…
Very early in life, I developed the habit of walking and thinking and meditating. I came from a rather strict home, and the only way I could get out of the house at night was to walk the dog. So, I did. I would walk the dog for miles and…
From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us. The Fourth Deprecation from Thomas Cranmer's 1544 Litany 1 A deprecation, such as that above, is a prayer to be spared from disaster, its Latin root deprecari meaning to…
In the previous essay in this series, we saw that Jesus’ words about coming on the clouds were spoken on more than one occasion, first to the disciples on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:30; Mark 11:36; Luke 21:27), then, a few days later, to the high priest and Jewish…
The following is excerpted from an essay first published at Church Life Journal . We are grateful to the editors for permission to repost here. The word “science” at its root means “to know” and the word “theology” at its root means “to think about God.” Can we know anything…
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John Pinheiro's Missionaries of Republicanism is, according to the subtitle, a “religious history of the Mexican-American War.” He shows how the war was infused with religious themes, linking American Protestantism with Anglo-Saxonism and Manifest Destiny. Near the heart of the religious justification of the war was anti-Catholicism: The United States…
John condemns harlot Babylon for her luxury. The Greek word is strenos , which is used only once in the LXX, to describe the “complacency” of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:28). The Hebrew term behind it is sha'anan , which describe the women of Jerusalem (Isaiah 32:9, 11), those who are…
In a contribution to the 1988 volume, Eliminating Racism , Thomas Pettigrew explained the uniqueness of the African-American experience, which “uniquely combines a long history of being simultaneously an integral part and on the outside of the society” (23). Few of even the most racist Americans consider blacks to be…
When Israel was deported to Babylonian exile, it would have been natural for Israelites to reason that they ought to limit the size of their families and wait for a return to the land. It might even be best to avoid marriage/ After all, who wants to support a wife…
Since Ferdinant Toennies introduced the categories, sociologists have often contrasted the gemeinschaftlich forms of social life in traditional societies with the gesellschaftlich forms in modernity. As Nancy Ammerman explains the distinction, the former are marked by “affectivity, particularism, ascription, and diffuseness. In such communities, relationships had emotional depth, were idiosyncratic,…
Charles Bambach's Heidegger's Roots is an attempt to trace the roots of Heidegger's affinity for Naziism. The “roots” of the title have a double meaning - both the intellectual background to Heidegger and Heidegger's formulation of Bodenstandigkeit , “rootedness.” Early on, Bambach summarizes Ernst Bloch's “caustic and penetrating” response to…
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