Sorting by

×
Skip to main content
Category

Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Christianity and Culture: Engagement or Triumph?

T. M. Moore's Culture Matters has a twofold goal: first, to provide a unified approach to cultural engagement from a Christian perspective, overcoming what H. Richard Niebuhr claimed in Christ and Culture to be a situation of permanent and inevitable pluralism within the faith; and second, to inspire evangelical Christians to overcome their passivity on cultural issues. Its appearance, along with other books such as D. A. Carson's Christ and Culture Revisited (Eerdmans, 2008), is an encouraging sign of reflection…
David E. Timmer
February 1, 2009
Uncategorized

Thinking Biblically About Culture

There is a subtle irony in the fact that a book by a liberal theologian has so thoroughly suffused contemporary evangelical selfunderstand ng. H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture has achieved the status of a classic not because it has been particularly influential amongst his mainline confreres, but because his taxonomy of various Christian understandings of "culture" has become a template for evangelical introspection. Wittingly or unwittingly, the spate of recent books that articulate the evangelical mission of "transforming culture"…
February 1, 2009
Uncategorized

On Keeping Vocational Fidelity: The Secret of Ebey’s Landing

I believe place matters. No one lives in a vacuum, disembodied, or isolated from ecologic necessity. Existence requires location. Life has geography. Our contexts of land and culture matter for shaping who we are and who we might become. A place gathers our moments, collects our stories, even as it stores these memories in fragrances of the seasons. In our places we worship, go to school, work, sing, fight and forgive, fall down and get up, live and die. Despite…
Trygve Johnson
January 16, 2009
Uncategorized

A Huge Step

In March, 1968, we drove all night long in order to get to Florida for Spring Break, Daytona Beach. When we got there--as I remember--it was late evening, and the beach was wild with college kids. We looked for some place to stay but didn't find a thing until we stumbled into what seems, in my memory, to have been a retread army barrack. We got in line. We were third. It was late, almost midnight, and we were desperate.…
January 1, 2009
Uncategorized

On Choosing Hope

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit…
Megan Marie
January 1, 2009
Uncategorized

A Little “Already” in My “Not Yet”

I hosted a last-minute New Years party last January--some close friends, some cocktails, and some board games. No big deal, really, but I think I'll remember that party for a long time. We made a couple of prophesies that night that ended up being fulfilled, which is always exciting--something cool to add to your resume as you're looking to become a pastor. The first happened when we clinked glasses after the ball dropped, and someone looked ahead to the coming…
Kate Kooyman
January 1, 2009
Uncategorized

A Landmark Election

On a magnificent evening in early November, we rejoiced as our nation took a historic step toward a new day. In Chicago we had a special opportunity to witness and participate in this inspiring event. When the newly elected President and his beautiful family walked onto that stage in Grant Park, tears were streaming down my face. Now, I have never been able to get through one of Martin Luther King's speeches on a PBS history program without weeping, so…
Reinder Van Til
January 1, 2009
Uncategorized

I Wish Him Well

I did not vote for Barack Obama for president, but I wish him well. I'm a Republican--partly from inertia, partly by chance, partly by personal loyalty, but mostly, in my view, because I think a lot about the American political systems and their unique attributes and how to see them through Christian lenses. The Republican notion of limited government allows more room than the other party option in America for the great Christian social traditions--Catholic subsidiarity and Kuyperian sphere sovereignty.…
Douglas L. Koopman
January 1, 2009