Reading my friend Beth Allison Barr’s response to 9Marks editor Jonathan Leeman this morning at The Anxious Bench, I found it hard to avoid her conclusion: Complementarianism is a small world. But Christianity is a big world, far more diverse, complicated, and interesting than what you’ll find in the center of the Venn diagram where … More It’s a Big, Big Christian World
“I’ve never quite been persuaded that the Anabaptist way of following Jesus is the right one,” I wrote in my response to this month’s lead essay in the Following Jesus conversation, “but it always leaves me feeling like my own way is to follow the path of compromise and safety.” So I’m grateful to Michael … More Following Jesus: The Anabaptist Tradition
If last year we celebrated Easter amid the physical death of a pandemic, this year of the COVID vaccine we remember Jesus’ resurrection amid the apparent dying of his church in the United States. Having hovered around 70% since Gallup began polling, the share of Americans who belong to a faith community is now below … More Don’t Look for the Living Among the Dead
This week I turned in my Lindbergh biography manuscript and recorded a new COVID-themed episode of my favorite, strangest podcast. Elsewhere: • “Nothing in a church or a family stays hidden forever,” wrote Bob Smietana of a new church scandal, centering on John Ortberg and his children. • In his first public comments since being … More That Was The Week That Was
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” No, I reflected two days ago: all I could do to mark Good Friday was to “imagine the unimaginable: the death of God.” This Easter Sunday, I woke asking myself another verse from that same spiritual: “Were you there when he rose up from the grave?” And … More The With-God Life: Christ is Risen!
This week I continued my “With-God Life” series of lectionary devotions (from John 9 to John 11, with psalms, apocalypses, and more in between) and recorded a podcast about teaching sports when COVID-19 has shut down sports. Over at The Anxious Bench, I recommended some virtual field trips for home-bound kids and considered the significance of … More That Was The Week That Was
This week I wrote about the effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic on American churches. I thought it might be well-timed, but I couldn’t have anticipated what would follow, during a week unlike many others in recent memory. (For that matter, I can hardly remember recording a podcast on Wednesday, in which we innocently wondered … More That Was The Week That Was
Earlier this month I attended the memorial service for Dr. Jim Johnson, who spent thirty years teaching U.S. history at Bethel. Jim retired about a decade before I arrived, and we’d only met a handful of times over the years. So I felt a bit like an interloper in a room full of his closest … More A Funeral and Four Thanksgivings
I thought through the educational implications of a Pietist motto, updated my speaking schedule for 2019-2020, and interviewed the author of a helpful new book on Christians who support Donald Trump. • Another way of looking at Red State Christianity: from the point of view of American evangelicals who live in England, came home for … More That Was The Week That Was
When we attended worship at First Covenant Church Minneapolis (FCCM) a week ago, guest preacher Judy Peterson warned that it can be hard to make meaning of an event up close. Sometimes it takes ten or twenty years. That distance can give us perspective is wisdom this historian should know well… but finds hard to … More Hoping for Better Times after Omaha
The Pietist Schoolman 