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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Democracy

The Babylonian Unity of the Church

There are many legitimate reasons to lament the divided state of the church. Fleshly pride, theological hubris, sectarian rivalries are each in their own ways modern versions of the Galatian heresy, refusing table fellowship with brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. And denominations have frequently played the same role…

by Toby SumpterJune 23, 2015
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Theopolis News

Bogumil Jarmulak

Though Bogumil Jarmulak was not able to deliver his lectures on Jurgen Moltmann due to flight delays, he preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning, June 14. He encouraged the church in how to deal with misery in this life, and pointed them to their only hope in life…

by Brian MoatsJune 18, 2015
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History

Christians, Liturgy, and the Past, 2

Connecting with the past within the present is a complicated endeavor. One of the most immediate challenges facing us is that of ensuring that, as Christians, our use of the past is undertaken in service of present faithfulness. The past is not a realm to which we retreat, but a…

by Alastair RobertsJune 18, 2015
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Theopolis News

Letter From Peter Leithart

Dear friend of Theopolis, Before he attended the Theopolis course on Holistic Mission during Easter term, 2014, Jonathan Sedlak lived with his family in the quiet, comfortable Milwau­kee suburb of Slinger, Wisconsin. An intensive week in Birmingham changed all that. Listening to missionary Wes Baker and hashing over readings and…

by TheopolisJune 16, 2015
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Architecture

The Crystalline Vision: Bauhaus and the Bible

“What is in the nature of these materials?” The Bauhaus, founded in Germany in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, had a profound influence in every area of design, from graphics and typography to clothing, furniture and architecture. The institution was not so much a style as a method, its philosophy…

by Mike BullJune 11, 2015
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Books

The American Way of Being Church

​Russell Richey's ​Denominationalism collects some of the most important essays on its titled topic. The authors are a who's-who of 20th century American religious history: Winthrop Hudson, Timothy L. Smith, Sidney Mead, Richey himself, H. Richard Niebuhr and Martin Marty. Some are broad synthetic studies; others are more granular studies…

by Peter LeithartJune 10, 2015

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Catholicism and Democracy

According to the standard story, Catholicism made its peace with democracy rather suddenly in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in Vatican II. On this narrative, Vatican I represented the kind of authoritarianism that the second Vatican council overturned. Not so, argues Emile Perreau-Saussine in his Catholicism and…

June 1, 2013
History

British Empires

Looking at maps of the 19th-century globe, you get the impression of a solid, complete (and a solidly and completely pink) British empire. That’s a “cartographical illusion,” says John Darwin in his Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain . We forget that “this was always an empire-in-making, indeed an…

June 1, 2013

Stitching the Global Village

An 1880 ad for Singer Sewing machines offers a vision of humanity united by technology: “On every sea are floating the Singer Machines; along every road pressed by the foot of civilized man this tireless ally of the world’s great sisterhood is going upon its errand of helpfulness. Its cheering…

May 31, 2013

Ancient Sacrifice

Why did the Greeks and Romans sacrifice? The TLS reviewer of two new books on the subject, Smoke Signals for the Gods: Ancient Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman Periods and Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers , summarizes the main theories, which come from Walter…

May 31, 2013
Science

Telos, Mind and Cosmos

The debate over Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False continues apace. The TLS reviewer observes that Nagel’s “provocation” of a book doesn’t simply demand an explanation for how consciousness arose, but demands to know how consciousness is so central a…

May 31, 2013

Tame sex

In Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation , Roger Scruton pinpoints the ethical and metaphysical issue in same-sex sexuality: “The heterosexual ventures towards an individual whose gender confines him within another world. The homosexual unites with an individual who does not lie beyond the divide which separates the world of men…

May 31, 2013

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