In 1988, during my family business' first trip to the then Soviet Union, my brother Pem and I were given the chance to visit the Monastery of Trinity-St. Sergius, which was the administrative centre of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is located in the town of Sergeiev Posad, which was called Zagorsk during Soviet times. …
Taming the Rowdies
Originally posted November 2004. In the early part of the new millennium, a large Evangelical church set itself to build a new sanctuary, tripling its seating capacity in the process. It had the usual capital stewardship programme and, having lined up financing for the rest, began construction. One of the features of the new sanctuary …
Book Review: Bishop Claude Payne’s Reclaiming the Great Commission
Church growth books, even with the present crisis Evangelical Christianity finds itself in, are still in good supply. But one from an Episcopalian, whose church's ASA has been dropping the entire decade? That's the idea of retired Bishop of Texas Claude Payne's Reclaiming the Great Commission. Written before much of the excitement in TEC (The …
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To Do The Work
Originally posted March 2006. This issue has cost the Republican Party dearly, perhaps fatally. Had conservatives realised the reality of what they were defending, they might have taken a different view. Then again perhaps not... It wasn't so long after the first English settlers came to Jamestown, VA, that black slaves were forcibly brought from …
Public Education: A Christian Perspective
This article was originally published in the Winter 1990 issue of the National Forum of the Phi Kappa Phi honour fraternity. Â It was considerably reduced for publication; below is the complete text of the article. The subsequent history of the article is documented in a two-part series (Part I and Part II.)Â Also of …
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It Still Pays to be a Foreigner. Literally.
Back in April, I noted that the IRS, in a private letter ruling, had certain exemption from the tax code's excess compensation limits. (No, people, the concept of the government deciding what is excess compensation is nothing new.) Chuck Rubin, whose tax blog is great, reports that the IRS, in a different part of the …
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Circling the Wagons Around Evolution
The Department of Biological Sciences of Lehigh University (from whence my grandfather graduated in 1912) took the rather bold step of publicly opposing the concept of intelligent design as articulated by one of its own faculty members, Dr. Michael Behe (author of the opening shot in this debate, the book Darwin's Black Box.) How times …
Creation, Evolution and Lysenko
This was actually my first blog article, posted 14 April 2005. After a hiatus, this past spring I found myself back teaching Civil Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. This is an activity I find professionally and personally satisfying, if not financially. During the hiatus, the campus had made some major technological changes. …
The Strange Anglican Response to Father Alberto Cutié’s Switch to TEC
The Archdiocese of Miami's response to Father Cutié's bailing out on the RCC is understandable: According to our canon law, with this very act Father Cutié is separating himself from the communion of the Roman Catholic Church (c. 1364, §1) by professing erroneous faith and morals, and refusing submission to the Holy Father (canon 751). …
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Book Review: N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God
N.T. Wright, Anglican scholar and Bishop of Durham, has gained for himself the reputation as a strong "reasserting" scholar, especially with his massive book series Christian Origins and the Question of God. The Resurrection of the Son of God-dealing with the most important point of the debate-is the third book of the series. The Resurrection …
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Positive Infinity 