My first exposures to Protestant-Catholic conversation were more like shouting matches than dialogues. Speakers took a confrontational approach and charges flew on both sides. In my mind, they sound roughly like this Protestants charge, “You…” Preach salvation by…
By the 19th century, the story of Lady Jane Grey, the young queen who succeeded Edward VI for less than two weeks, had already been heavily fictionalized, romanticized, politicized, and reinvented. The famous painting by Paul Delaroche, The Execution of…
In the Old Testament, the king ruled the people on behalf of God; the prophet represented God to the people, speaking God’s word to them; and the priest represented the people to God, performing sacrifices on their behalf in the…
Adam McHugh, plainly and accurately states that the “slant towards extroversion in the larger culture has also infiltrated the church.”[1] (See part 1 of this series for more on how this ‘slant’ came to be.) Not only has this slant…
This little trilogy of posts relates to godliness and the Christian ministry. It arises out of Paul’s counsel to his young ministerial protégé, Timothy, the then pastor of the church in Ephesus. As with many a young pastor, Timothy was…
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…
Those who take the Bible seriously believe that its message is coherent and consistent. It does not contradict itself. Although it is presented through the multiple voices of its human authors, those voices ultimately speak with one voice: that of…
The idea of unlimited submission to unjust government, especially to foreign British rule, was ablaze in America several generations prior to the revolution. Even the leading British evangelist of the Great Awakening, having come to America, weighed in on the…
Several months ago, I wrote an article entitled “Jesus is Head of the Churches,” in which I sought to describe the practical implications of Christ’s headship in our churches. Over the course of this last year, worship in various places…
Many doctrinally solid evangelical churches would not self-identify as “confessional”. What is the value of historic confessions for this kind of typical evangelical church? If the church is already doctrinally orthodox, evangelical, and solid, why encourage such people to think…
