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American Politics

Voting, Praying, and Purity: Two Different Versions of Civil Religion

Pastor John Piper has written on why he (probably) won’t be voting in this month’s presidential election. Reading his argument, I couldn’t help wondering if voting has a cultic significance to Piper. As much as self-admitted Christian Trump-voters are characterized as cult followers, Never Trump Christians often strike me as…

by Mark HorneOctober 30, 2020
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Literature

Pastor Frankenstein

Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself… –– Victor Frankenstein In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Victor Frankenstein is a young intellectual with an excessive thirst for glory and worldwide acclaim. Having lost his beloved mother, Frankenstein works to…

by Drew KnowlesOctober 27, 2020
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How to Worship

Against Practical Preaching

“Our daughter is just like a baby hippo,” my wife says to me as I hang my coat up. “After we watched a video of hippos munching whole watermelons, she sat down to her own watermelon lunch. She gobbled them up with those same puffy cheeks and big eyes.” My…

by John HigginsOctober 22, 2020
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Abortion

Evangelicals for Adolf: Christians in Hitler’s Germany

Christian compromise with Nazi Germany’s political leadership is well documented in painful detail. There was resistance, but it was the exception rather than the rule. German Christianity was terribly timid. Leadership lacked spiritual strength because of serious Biblical ignorance and unbelief. But it was not just the leaders. Christians in…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2020
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Abortion

For Whom Should a Christian Vote: Moral Reasoning and the 2020 Election

Can a Christian vote for Donald Trump? That might seem like a surprising question given the widespread evangelical support for the President. Yet for a growing number of evangelicals, to vote for Trump is to endorse his moral repugnancy and further discredit gospel-believing Christians who have sold their birthright for…

by Blake JohnsonOctober 13, 2020
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Hermeneutics

Two Yeshuas and a Fish

Thirty-eight years is a long time to take getting somewhere (Deut. 2:14). You could just ask anyone in the unfaithful generation of people whom God brought to the edge of the Promised Land the first time under Moses—if they were still alive, that is (Num. 14:22-23, 32-35). But there are…

by Eric RobinsonOctober 6, 2020

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Sex in Eden

S tephen Greenblatt writes in The New Yorker about “How St. Augustine Invented Sex.” How typical of The New Yorker , a cynic might say—interested in the greatest theologian in the Western tradition only because he said something titillating. But it doesn't take much reading of Augustine to realize that…

June 30, 2017

Tragedy of Asa

K ing Asa of Judah made a strong start, purging the land of idols, altars, and images, and winning a war against the ginormous Cushite army led by Zerach. It all unraveled in his final years. From his thirty-fifth year to the forty-first year, when his reign came to an…

June 29, 2017

Under the Kanun

B essian Vorpsi, a young writer from Tirana, makes headlines in the Albanian capital when he decides to spend his honeymoon on the Rrafsh , the High Plateau, a semi-autonomous portion of Albania governed by the detailed rules of the medieval Kanun . He and his wife Diana visit sites…

June 29, 2017

Mystery Play

I n his quirky little essay on Benedict XVI, The Mystery of Evil , Giorgio Agamben cites Odo Casel's finding that “the term mysterion indicates a praxis, an action or a drama in the theatrical sense of the term as well, that is, a set of gestures, acts, and words…

June 28, 2017

Oneself in Another

I n his study of The Power of God in the Trinitarian theology of Gregory of Nyssa, Michel Rene Barnes distinguishes what he calls “Nicene” theology from later “pro-Nicene” theology. One of the key issues has to do with the conception of divine power, and the way it is elaborated…

June 27, 2017

Nationless States

I n an essay contributed to Christianity, Democracy, and the Shadow of Constantine , Capodistrias Hammerli looks at and through the Lautsi case to expose the rift between Eastern and Western Europe. The case began when Mrs. Soile Lautsi filed suit against the Italian government for putting crucifixes on the…

June 27, 2017

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