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JANUARY 2012: NOT MY OWN: REFLECTIONON THE HEIDELBERG by Leanne Van Dyk Question 27: What do you understand by the providence of God? Answer: The almighty and ever present power by which God upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaves and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and unfruitful years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, and everything else, come to us not by chance but from God's sustaining hand. It is…

JANUARY 2012: INSIDE OUT by Marlin Vis Thus Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised on that very day; and all his household, his homeborn slaves and those that had been bought from outsiders, were circumcised with him. Genesis 17:26–27 The boy watches as his father walks toward him from the ridge above. The youngster knows his father's brisk stride and always marvels at the way the old man can scurry up and down the hills and valleys that mark…

JANUARY 2012: REVIEW by Mitchell Kinsinger WAS AMERICA FOUNDED AS A CHRISTIAN NATION? A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION JOHN FEA WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS $30.00. 287 PAGES. Among the hot topics in contemporary politics that inspire "religious" devotion is the proper relationship between church and state, or more specifically, between religion and government. Sooner or later this discussion will wend its way back to the founding of our nation, where opinions will differ sharply as to whether the founders were, or intended…

JANUARY 2012: REVIEW by Ronald A. Wells CONFESSING HISTORY: EXPLORATIONS IN CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE HISTORIAN'S VOCATION EDITED BY JOHN FEA, JAY GREEN, AND ERIC MILLER UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS, 2010 $35.00. 354 PAGES. This welcome collection of sixteen essays is the result of collaboration by three young historians: John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller. They are professors in small colleges in the orbit of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities, institutions that value the essential question…

JANUARY 2012: POETRY by Barbara Crooker   The goldenrod's tarnished and dull, gone to rust, as the Dow Jones plummets like the mercury on a January night, echoing Frost's warning that nothing gold can stay. Not the birch leaves that glittered like sequins on a tap line, not the marigold's petals, not the finch's wing. It falls through our fingers, pebbles in a placer's pan. We try to spend it, but the days are too short, and the stores won't…

JANUARY 2012: ESSAY by Brian Porter "One could do worse than be a lover of U2." So said Howard Schaap in "Music and Politics: U2 and the Country of Adolescence" in the June/July issue of Perspectives. I agree. But I found it interesting that Schaap felt obliged to justify attending two U2 concerts this past summer. Meanwhile, I feel the need to explain my grappling with a similar U2 dilemma, but reaching a different conclusion. After much deliberation, I chose…