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Peter Hahne's Schluss mit lustig: Das Ende der Spassgesellschaft (Stop the Merriment: The End of the Fun Society, Johannis Verlag, 2004) is, at least for Americans concerned with the German cultural and religious scene, a curious, telling little volume. The appearance of yet another critical commentary on a contemporary Western society is not in itself surprising, though Hahne writes in an unusually sharp, sometimes harsh tone. That this analysis is done by a prominent television news analyst might also be…

It may or may not come as a surprise to learn that sometimes when we preachers begin to write a sermon, we do so having no idea just where that particular sermon will wind up. Lest you think this explains why some sermons seem to wind up precisely nowhere, let me say quickly that like most pastors, I know that some of the best sermons I've ever written were the ones that did not have a clear roadmap when I…

INTRODUCTION There is one thing for which I am regularly (and justly) scolded by my wife: I just don't know how to rest. Far too often, we find ourselves talking about my inability to just sit on the couch--without a book, without the TV on, without a notepad in hand, without an agenda of some sort. Rest is something I do very poorly. Of course, in our driven, accelerated culture of achievement and consumption, that might seem like a virtue.…

Every time I've been in Charles Mix County, South Dakota, in the last few years, I've stopped at a ghost town called, simply, Academy, about an hour north and west of Platte, not all that far from the route of Lewis and Clark on the broad Missouri River. What's there in Academy doesn't really amount to much--a couple deteriorating houses (a few people still live there) and one sizeable old building that sits up on a rise. That old building…

Marilynne Robinson is an instructor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is the author of the 1981 novel, Housekeeping, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for that year. Since then she has written two works of non-fiction: Mother Country in 1989 and The Death of Adam in 1998. Her most recent novel is Gilead, a kind of memoir composed by an Iowa preacher who is facing the end of his life. Gilead was reviewed here in Perspectives in December 2004. Last…

There was awkwardness between Jesus and Peter--after all, Peter had denied Jesus three times only a few days before. Yet Jesus did not demand an apology nor suggest Peter avoid such denials in the future. Instead Jesus simply asked: "Do you love me?" During the very brief time between his resurrection and ascension, Jesus could have said and taught many things to Peter. Jesus could have asked many questions to see whether Peter was up to the task of ministry.…

" values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society--and the duty of protecting these values against their enemies is the common calling of freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages." This righteous call to arms was proclaimed in 2002 by President George W. Bush in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Bush also decreed a "single sustainable model for success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise" (187). What are Christians…