The empire strikes back

The empire strikes back: An attack on a prominent classical Christian school shows the movement has the liberal establishment running scared A majo...

November 3, 2024

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Expository Preaching—The Antidote to Anemic Worship

Evangelical Christians have been especially attentive to worship in recent years, sparking a renaissance of thought and conversation on what worship really is and how it should be done. Even if this renewed interest has unfortunately resulted in what ...

February 27, 2017

Preaching as a Means of Survival

This post is the last of three in a series on Preaching in a Secular Age. With our cultural analysis behind us, I would like to consider the role of preaching in a secular age, particularly preaching as a survival strategy for the church. Many tod ...

January 31, 2017

Impossible to Believe — Preaching in a Secular Culture

This post is the second of three in a series on Preaching in a Secular Age. The previous post in this series examined Peter Berger's explanation for the progress of secularization in the Western world. In addition to Berger, Canadian philosopher C ...

January 23, 2017

Secularism, Preaching, and the Challenges of Modernity

This post is the first of three in a series on Preaching in a Secular Age. I began my chapter on preaching and postmodernism in We Cannot Be Silent with these words, “A common concern seems to emerge now wherever Christians gather: The task of tru ...

January 12, 2017

“And Them that Mourn” — Celebrating Christmas in the Face of Sorrow

Families across the Christian world are gathering for Christmas even now, with caravans of cars and planeloads of passengers headed to hearth and home. Christmas comes once again, filled with the joy, expectation, and sentiment of the season. It is a ...

December 24, 2016

From One Reader to Another: Books to End a Year’s Reading, or to Bring in a New Year

Columnist Dave Barry got this one just right: "The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter." On the other hand, winter is a great season for reading. Herewith I offer some books I think are ...

December 15, 2016

“I Loved Heresy…But the Holy Spirit Found Me” — Thomas C. Oden (1931-2016) and the Recovery of Christian Orthodoxy

Thomas C. Oden, one of the most gracious and respected theologians of our times, died yesterday at age 85. Professor Oden made the pilgrimage from theological liberalism, and what he acknowledged as an infatuation with heresy, all the way to the orth ...

December 9, 2016

His Winnowing Fork Is in His Hand

The Christian celebration of Christmas brings essential truths into clearer view. The central fact of the incarnation of the Son of God looms before us as the dividing line of all human history and the fulfillment of God's promises. Priests and proph ...

December 2, 2016

Thanksgiving as Theological Act: What Does it Mean to Give Thanks?

Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act, rightly understood. As a matter of fact, thankfulness is a theology in microcosm — a key to understanding what we really believe about God, ourselves, and the world we experience. A haunting question is th ...

November 23, 2016

Will Beauty Save the World?

Sometimes persistent questions demand a response. The question I would like us to ask and answer this morning is will beauty save the world? It may sound like an odd question. It’s a question occasioned by Dostoevsky the great Russian novelist, in hi ...

November 1, 2016