In 1988 my church aided (that's an understatement) the resettlement of twenty-four Ukrainian Pentecostal refugees. For me it was part of the experience of a lifetime: I had my first contact with the Soviets on a commercial level the previous year, and visited Moscow and what was then Leningrad in April. Getting to know the …
The Real Problem with @timkellernyc
It's been quite a back and forth between First Things James R. Wood and Tim Keller on the latter's evangelistic idea and the effect that it has on whether he's stuck with the Gospel or not. Wood's basic premise is that Keller's method is past its sell date due to changes in the culture; Keller's …
Book Review: Richard Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism
It's another pet peeve of mine: Americans can't bring themselves to discuss the effects of class differentiation in the life of the church, let alone the life of the nation. They'll talk about just about every other type of differentiation, especially those related to race or gender. But class? Off the table. That applies to …
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The Passage from Jerome that Landed @bethallisonbarr in a Mess
It's this one, from Jerome's Letter 108, his panegyric to Paula at the time of her death: Inflamed by their virtues she thought more and more each moment of forsaking her home. Disregarding her house, her children, her servants, her property, and in a word everything connected with the world, she was eager — alone …
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Deconstructing Santa Claus
A little while back I posted The Bad Little Bunny: An Easter Tale, where I made my teacher hopping mad at my refusal to go along with the conventional wisdom. (Another Chattanoogan, Jon Meacham, got accused of putting a bullet in the Easter bunny, so maybe my incident needs some re-evalulation.) Evidently there's something about …
Nicene Theology and Patristic Exegesis Go Together
I never thought I'd live long enough to read this statement: I realized that if classical theism was to be retrieved, it was necessary to defend the superiority of patristic exegesis, a project I undertook in Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (2018). By the time I published my …
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I Wonder…How Many of these ACNA Exvangelicals Still Believe in Eternal Security?
There's no doubt that the "exvangelicals" that have populated places like C4SO have made a splash in the Anglican Church in North America. What kind of spash...that's another story. When the ACNA started, some of us thought an influx of same would breathe some new life into North American Anglicanism. Now I think we're having …
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Maria Gerber: How a Pentecostal Missionary Became an “Angel of Mercy” During the Armenian Genocide
This Week in AG History —December 4, 1915 By Darrin J. RodgersOriginally published on AG-News, 09 December 2021 An estimated 800,000 to 1,500,000 …Maria Gerber: How a Pentecostal Missionary Became an “Angel of Mercy” During the Armenian Genocide
Anglicanism: Reformed Catholicism, Protestant and Catholic
The question that continues to vex Anglicanism (perhaps since the time of the Reformation but even more so over the last 200 years) is whether she is…Anglicanism: Reformed Catholicism, Protestant and Catholic This is one of the more intelligent treatments of this complicated subject. I think there are two core problems here. On the Protestant …
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The Fact that Kristin du Mez Won’t Explain Anything Explains Everything
And she takes her time about doing it too, I'll reproduce just a snippet: Do I personally affirm “the church’s teaching that homosexuality is sinful?” Which church? My own church (local & denomination) is actively reexamining this issue in light of tradition, interpretation, history, & science. I’m participating, but as a historian, not a theologian. …
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Positive Infinity 