Articles

Of course, I did not espouse a democracy or a Presidency in my lifetime. My disciples teased out the logic, however, of my thought and reached new positions. If one wishes to hear the early Calvinist principles, one would need to look to two sets of texts: Text Corpus #1: Calvin himself , in his...

Note: all quotes are from sources as noted. The only fictitious elements in these diary posts are to treat these as letters from John Calvin. I send greetings to all Protestants at the Inauguration of the 45th President of the US. Believe it or not, some of our tradition’s ideas have led you to...

A Stew Pot One of the more frequently visited proverbs of my childhood came to me from my mother. “A stew pot never boils,” she would say. I felt what it meant long before I actually understood it. Explanation of the phrase came in its fuller version: “A stew pot never boils when watched .” It is...

Years ago, one of my favorite Rainer Maria Rilke poems gave me a new perspective on the night, and I’m reminded of this at Christmas time whenever we sing “Oh Holy Night,” one of the most beautiful songs that has ever entered my ear. Let me provide the poem first and then explain what I mean. You,...

Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...

A survey of congressional proclamations for days of fasting or Thanksgiving is instructive, especially to those who have been catechized in the dogma of strict separationism. [1] Indeed, the religious worldview of the 1770s betrays the following key theological assumptions, which were apparently...

Despite having been born near John Calvin’s Geneva (Nyon) and having attended the University of Geneva, John Fletcher (1729–1785) later relocated to England and threw all in with the Wesley brothers. He was ordained to the Anglican priesthood in 1757 but his sympathies were all with the upstart...

Joseph Sewall (1688-1769) was a Boston scion, the son of a Chief Justice, who later was offered the presidency of Harvard (from where he graduated in 1707). He delivered this early Fast Day sermon before the Massachusetts’ Governor and Council in 1740. Indeed, by order, the Council commissioned...

Elhanan Winchester (1751-1797) served as a pastor in New England, South Carolina, and even London—ultimately moving from the Baptist faith to Unitarianism later in life. He was also a popular and influential Baptist pastor in Philadelphia for the seven years just prior to the constitutional...

Samuel Cooper (1725-1783) graduated from Harvard and furthered his training with a doctorate in divinity from Edinburgh. He followed in his father’s footsteps (the Reverend William Cooper) as one of the younger pastors at Boston’s Fourth church, long a landmark of preaching for the area. Later, he...