I once called Easter Monday “that forgotten day of the church calendar seemingly dedicated to, well, getting on with our lives.” This year, when nothing feels all that normal, it’s probably less true that Easter’s joy will “[dissolve] into the mundane, predictable routine of the workweek.” But under quarantine or not, we’ll continue to spend … More The With-God Life: Call and Response
Since Isaiah 42:1-9 starts Holy Week, I came to it prepared to read today’s lection as an oracle about Jesus: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen; in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift … More The With-God Life: “How shall I call upon my God?”
[Jesus answered the Sadducees] “…as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they … More The With-God Life: God of the Living
Tonight HBO premieres the first episode of a six-part adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America. Since its alternate history premise centers on the subject of my current writing project, I thought some of my readers might be interested in my response to Roth’s book — originally published at The Anxious Bench after … More Charles Lindbergh and The Plot Against America
Greetings from the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan! After a terrific couple days at the Conference on Faith and History, I’m waiting for my flight home and thought I’d share a few of the pieces I’ve been reading the last seven days: • With all that’s been going on at my … More That Was The Week That Was
Let me suspend my Lenten hiatus just long enough to share the text of the sermon I delivered yesterday at Salem Covenant Church in New Brighton, Minnesota. It was the fourth in a “Path to Renewal” series inspired by The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity, with my co-author — and Salem’s senior pastor … More The Path to Renewal: Be a Priest! (John 2:13-22)
“[T]he most distinctive feature of history as an academic discipline,” I once argued, “is the relative paucity of the sources available. All we’ve got to go on are whatever artifacts survive the passing of time, and most of those sources erode. Past supporting preservation and archival efforts (including oral history projects), there’s not much historians can do … More Why We Can Remember the Holocaust
On Friday, President Trump told participants in the Values Voter Summit that “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values.” Now, critics found it hard to take the “Judeo” part seriously, given that Trump immediately followed that line with another version of his pledge to restore “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” And it’s … More The Anti-Fascist Origins of “Judeo-Christian Values”
Here… • In some ways it’s not strong enough, in other ways it’s too strong, but it’s what I think about the Nashville Statement. (For another perspective… a British evangelical tried to explain why he signed the Nashville Statement, even though he regarded it as “far from perfect” and worried that its credibility was damaged.) … More That Was The Week That Was
The rest of this summer our pastors are going preach on what David’s life teaches us about leadership. Jonna got things started this past Sunday with a fine meditation on how God, when he chose David to be anointed as king, looks beyond the superficial to see the heart. (A good fit with the Tom … More The Violence of God
