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Writing

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

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Pastoral Ministry

Rural Church Growth

I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…

by TheopolisAugust 10, 2017
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Art

Letter to a Young Artist

Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…

by Joel ClarksonAugust 8, 2017
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Biblical Theology

Stones and Fruit: Divination and Procreation – (Part 3)

The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…

by Mike BullAugust 3, 2017
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Isaiah

God's Market, the Church

Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…

by Peter LeithartAugust 1, 2017
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Romans

In the Flesh: Then and Now

The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…

by Bill SmithJuly 27, 2017
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How to Worship

The Minister's Uniform

You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…

by Jon HerrJuly 25, 2017

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American Politics

House Divided Stands?

Philip Terzian isn't much disturbed by the tumult in the Republican Party. He concedes that the Party is going through some changes, whose outcome remains to be seen: "The coalition that propelled Donald Trump into the White House may be a harbinger of the party’s future, or it might have…

December 8, 2017

Death and the Community

In his Death, Burial, and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity , Jon Davies attends to the communal significance of the deaths of biblical patriarchs. He writes, "Jacob is gathered ‘unto his people,' not explicitly unto his God. On the orders of his son Joseph, Jacob was embalmed (a rare…

December 8, 2017

Rough Trade

Julie Bindel's study of The Pimping of Prostitution takes a sustained, unrelenting look behind the veil of what's euphemistically called "sex work." According to the TLS reviewer , Bindel's study is based on "interviews with fifty current or former sex workers in thirty-five countries, from New Zealand to rural India,…

December 8, 2017

Sociology and Common Knowledge

"We encounter reality only if we approach it on all the paths which we, as creatures, can tread," writes Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 230). He's commending his quadrilateral cross of reality, arguing that we must pursue the fourfold path of "the soul, of reason, culture, and…

December 8, 2017

Before the Two Cultures

CP Snow's famously complained about the divergence between "two cultures" of humanism and science. Among Romantic poets, the humanist resistance to science is best exemplified by Blake. As Algis Valiunas observes , Blake's "unflattering" painting of Newton depicts him as "a consummate specimen of a particular human type, and it…

December 8, 2017
Poetry

For Easy Poetry

"Once upon a time," writes Anthony Madrid , "there were two traditions in Anglophone poetry. On the one hand, there was poetry that was completely easy to understand and whose elegance depended on translucent phrases and straightforward sentiments. On the other hand, there was the hard stuff: poetry where the…

December 8, 2017

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