From William Palmer Ladd's Prayer Book Interleaves: The Church of England had its Prayer Book, and thus the liturgical way of life was kept alive. But when in the XVIII century, the heyday of the Whig bishops, the easy-going parsons, and the infrequent Eucharists, a prophet arose in the person of John Wesley, the Church …
The Baptists, Their Doctrine and Their Nasty Politics
Next week the Southern Baptist Convention meets in Nashville. They're facing a number of serious issues: declining membership, Critical Race Theory, and sex abuse scandals, both opposite-sex and same-sex. They've had some high-profile departures from the Baptist universe such as Russell Moore, an enlightening analysis of which is here. The denomination everyone thought "had it …
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Giving Paige Patterson the Boot Was Messier Than You Thought
The Baptists are at it again: Southwestern’s dispatch in the annual Book of Reports, which presents information for messengers attending the denomination’s upcoming annual meeting, alleges Patterson misappropriated “confidential donor information” and took seminary property after his 2018 termination over allegations of mishandling sexual abuse. The report comes three months after the seminary settled a …
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You’re an Anglican Now, Scot McKnight, Leave the Baptistic Stuff Behind
I never thought I'd ever see a debate on the subject of the inerrancy of Scriptures in an Anglican context. But one Dr. Scot McKnight, Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and (I think) in the C4SO (the usual source of trouble in the ACNA these days) has put himself front and centre with …
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Those Hard Drinking Americans
When The Atlantic notes it, it's a problem: Right now we are lurching into another of our periodic crises over drinking, and both tendencies are on display at once. Since the turn of the millennium, alcohol consumption has risen steadily, in a reversal of its long decline throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Before the pandemic, …
The Baptists and WO: It Isn’t About Authority, Albert Mohler
Mohler opines in a lengthy piece on the subject: In truth, the issue of women serving as pastors fuelled the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC. The question was instantly clarifying. The divide over women serving in the pastorate served as a signal of the deeper divide over the authority and interpretation of the Bible. Simply …
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Renewing Your Faith: The Aftermath
In the last post, I gave a book review of Donald Connolly's In a Holy Year, Renewing Your Faith: An Anthology of Spiritual Readings. I promised I'd give some life reflections on this, and this is the fulfilment of that promise. This book is more than just a book: the anthology compiler was my first …
What We Were Really Trying to Accomplish in Men’s Ministries
As sort of a follow-up to my last post, I'd like to defend something else that's under attack these days: men's ministries. I actually worked in this field during my time with Church of God Lay Ministries, from when I started in 1996 until the department was abolished in 2010. So I can speak with …
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The Episcopal Snobs and the John Wayne Evangelicals
There's never a dull moment these days, and to shut off the possibility of one occurring we now have the food fight around Kristin Kobes du Mez' Jesus and John Wayne. The most recent volley has been around the illustrious Anglican Anne Carlson Kennedy's review of same, with the usual suspects saying the usual things. …
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I’m Featured in the New Humanist About Working in Heaven
It's the topic that never seems to go away (sorry!) My first post on this topic was in 2012, but just a few weeks ago I wrote this in response--and amplification--to an article which featured my first post in, of all places, MEL Magazine (a secular publication for men.) Now Ralph Jones has written a …
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Positive Infinity 