By the end of this week, Mark and I will have submitted the manuscript for our book on Pietism and the future of Christianity. As it happens, this stage concludes as churches like ours prepare to celebrate Reformation Sunday, and our book will come out in 2017 — the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, Martin Luther is currently … More Reformed and Always Reforming… Even 499 Years Later
Thanks to conservative intellectual Eric Metaxas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become a member of this crazy election’s extended cast of characters. At multiple points this year (most recently in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and then a series of tweets), Metaxas has hearkened back to his Bonhoeffer biography in order to make the case for supporting Donald Trump. We ARE responsible for … More The Bonhoeffer Effect, “Unpleasant Parallels,” and the 2016 Election
One of the benefits of working at a place like Bethel is that I get to learn from brilliant colleagues like Adam Johnson, who teaches cognitive neuroscience in our psychology department. Adam’s research focuses on memory, decision-making, and moral psychology and has been supported by grants from BioLogos and the National Institutes of Health. In this guest post, he draws on insights … More Moral Psychology and Politics: Why Is the Trump Tape Such a Revelation to Evangelicals? (Adam Johnson)
Last Thursday I reached a point where I wondered aloud whether evangelical support for Donald Trump ought to make Christian intellectuals like me (many of whom have publicly criticized Trump and his evangelical enablers) question if we exert any significant influence. Yesterday’s news that Books & Culture will cease publication didn’t alleviate that angst. But fortunately, many of you wrote helpful comments … More Further Thoughts on the Impact of Christian Intellectuals (Sean O’Neil)
Today Andy Crouch, the editorial director of Christianity Today, managed to do two things with a single essay: make me look much smarter than I am, and give me hope that the evangelical movement might actually learn something from this debacle of an election. First, making me look smart: I’m in Denver to speak at one of … More “Strategy Becomes Idolatry”: Christianity Today Against Evangelical Support for Trump
If you don’t spend your evenings following Twitter, you’re both a better steward of your time than me and perhaps unaware that the evangelical internet exploded last night, after Time magazine published this story: InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to dismiss employees who support gay marriage https://t.co/ExtuqqltaZ — TIME (@TIME) October 6, 2016 Elisabeth Dias reported that InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA, … More InterVarsity, Sexuality, and the Importance of Christian Unity
Let’s end the week on a high note — with one more sneak peek at the working draft of our book on Pietism and the future of Christianity: Mark’s chapter on the Pietist instinct to “hope for better times.” (If no one else needs to read this, I do.) We’ll dive right in with this excerpt from early in … More Sneak Peeks of Our Pietism Book: Hoping for Better Times
With just over a month until Election Day, I hope that lots of fellow Christians paid attention to Miroslav Volf’s interview with journalist Jonathan Merritt, since the Yale theologian makes a plausible argument that Hillary Clinton is not only the more competent of the two major party presidential candidates running for office now, but that the kind of vision she stands … More Have Christian Intellectuals Made Any Difference in This Election?
Ten years ago yesterday, a man named Charles Carl Roberts IV shot ten students in a school near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, then committed suicide. Five children died; five eventually recovered. Sadly, episodes like this have become almost familiar in American society, but this mass murder was unique. Not only did it take place at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in rural … More Amish Grace and the Anabaptist Way
Heading into Monday night’s first presidential debate, an ABC/Washington Post poll found Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton among white evangelicals, 71%-22%. Much though Trump’s boorish, unprepared performance in the debate embarrassed even political conservatives, I’m not sure that my fellow evangelicals learned anything new that night that shouldn’t already have dissuaded them from backing Trump. As a FiveThirtyEight profile pointed out Tuesday, his support from … More One More Reason Evangelicalism Needs Fewer White Men in Leadership
The Pietist Schoolman 