Schools and scholars can help the Christ-centered movement become all the more Jesusy. Historian Mark Noll’s prophetic call in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind launched a thousand more laments about the shallowness of evangelical scholarship and thinking. The judgment remains accurate as far as it goes. American evangelical Christians are American Christians, and Americans …
Reading his book is like enjoying a cup of tea with a wise elder statesman. Among my favorite books is Catholic activist Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness. When asked why, I often reply, “Because it’s like enjoying a cup of tea with a wise older woman who lived an astoundingly courageous life and led some …
Michael McClymond decries the rising popularity of an idea Christians have rejected for most of church history. Rob Bell made a splash in 2011 with the release of Love Wins, a book that challenged settled Christian understandings of heaven, hell, and divine judgment. But as many critics pointed out in response, Bell’s musings about universal …
An astronomer ponders one of Jesus’ most memorable sayings. When Jesus defined himself as “the light of the world,” listeners probably associated those words with common objects well known to them: the hot sun of Judea, the stars twinkling in the sky, the moon shining during the night, torches they carried on the roads, small …
How I found a power greater than the white powder that enslaved me. Don’t put the powder in your nose,” I said as I looked in the mirror. “Don’t do it.” I was sure I could talk myself out of snorting cocaine one more time. My words sounded so real, so genuine. But just like …
Dowling Park was a retirement community built around widows and orphans. A century later, it’s a model for intergenerational ministry. Charles Moore says he must have heard about Florida’s first retirement community when he was in the cradle in the late 1930s. His father loved reading the Present Truth Messenger, a newspaper of the Advent …
Examining how female biblical characters have been visually represented over time. As part of the launch of her latest book, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber asked would-be readers to mail her their purity rings. Then she took the submissions and had them melted down and turned into a vagina statue. While the …
How Lois McMaster Bujold’s Hugo Award–winning stories depict reverence in the face of divine mystery. The fear of the Lord,” says Proverbs 1:7, “is the beginning of knowledge.” Indeed, God’s scriptural appearances are often terrifying. Moses sees only God’s cloaked back and is nearly undone by the sight (Ex. 34:4–8). Isaiah sees God’s throne room, …
Macrina’s famous brothers approved the words in the Nicene Creed: ‘maker of all things visible and invisible.’ But she explained why it matters. In AD 379, Basil the Great, one of the men who contributed to the Nicene Creed, died. Basil and his brother Gregory of Nyssa were two of the three Cappadocian Fathers—men responsible …
On the first day of Lent, I’m reminded of a love that “alters not” and “bears it out even to the edge of doom.” Many years ago this winter, I published my first novel. That was a proud day for me. I had a sense of maybe having achieved something of lasting significance. The novel …