That Was The Week That Was

Posted on by Chris Gehrz

Greetings from Covenant Pines Bible Camp in beautiful northern Minnesota.

Since I’m on retreat with other members of our congregation, I probably shouldn’t even have a laptop and wifi, but since I do… a few links from this blog and others:

Here…

• The real “crisis in authority” in evangelicalism is that women don’t have authority in evangelicalism.

• You can now pre-order our book (due in September)!

• And episode two of my new podcast featured Sam Mulberry and me riffing on words like sabbath, nostalgia, and trump. (Not Trump, trump.)

…There and Everywhere

Colwell, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits• Books & Culture editor John Wilson is back with his newest venture, Education & Culture. An early highlight for me: John’s interview with the author of a book on the repatriation of Native American artifacts.

• At The Anxious Bench, I shared a version of my recent talk at Crown College: “The Three Journeys of the Christian Liberal Arts.”

• Some good news about higher education in America: it’s always been a mess.

• What were the most popular Bible verses for late medieval English preachers? My Bench-mate Beth Allison Barr found gospels and nothing but the gospels.

• Given the current regime in North Korea, you might be surprised to learn that it was the center of a massive Christian revival just over a century ago.

• A British critic wondered why Americans don’t remember World War I.

• The Stars and Bars: not just for southerners.

• Civil War buff-in-chief Donald Trump waited until the National Day of Prayer to issue an executive order on religious liberty… and even conservative evangelicals were unimpressed.

• Even though Trump is their “dream president.”

• Even though some had breathlessly reported on being invited to the White House the night before.

• Elsewhere in Washington, the House passed a new health care act that revealed again how the “appeal of the prosperity gospel is intricately linked to the rise of Donald Trump.”

• Why do Christians defend sexual harassers like Bill O’Reilly?

• Blasphemy laws still exist in the (post)Christian world, not just majority-Muslim countries.

• Here in the Twin Cities, you might not guess which Christian community is growing rapidly.

• J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and, um, Dan Brown… some of the authors whose works many of us haven’t read, despite claiming to have done so.

• He hasn’t addressed it explicitly, but what might Pope Francis think about the Benedict Option?