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Choosing birthday cards is always a daunting task--they're either too smarmy, too sexual, too juvenile, too something. The picture is wrong, the sentiment not quite what one had hoped to say. Only rarely does one find that perfect card--and then, one is always tempted to buy seven of the same. In my formative years as a card shopper (not giving a card was a major transgression in my holiday-happy family), I had an additional problem: the length of the verse.…

I'm the guy who knocked on your door in the summer of 1972 to ask you if you knew Jesus. It is probably time for me to apologize. You looked rather stunned that day; we'd have laughed together if we hadn't both been so nervous. Your eyes flitted around, your hand sweaty on the doorknob. I rubbed mine on my jeans. You said you'd been a Methodist since you were a kid. As if that answered the question. I invited…

This age reveres personal choice in religious matters and deems personal feeling the test of what is authentic, and even Reformed churches are heeding popular culture's call to "do your own thing." Given that, it is helpful to hear what the Reformed tradition has to say on these trends. One gem in Reformed thought, one that is too little known, is Jonathan Edwards' "Personal Narrative." In contrast to Edwards' weighty theological discourses, this short autobiographical essay provides a show-and-tell demonstration…

Five years ago my buddy, Duane Shrontz, and I rendezvoused at the Waukesha County Fairgrounds, 15 miles west of Milwaukee, for the 95th anniversary celebration of Harley-Davidson motorcycles (see "Gone to Hog Heaven," Perspectives, October 1998). He rode his new Dyna-Wideglide straight through from Salt Lake City, Utah, not even stopping for the thunderstorm that tossed him about in its cross-winds on the eastern slopes of South Dakota. But that was Duane. Combine his love of motorcycles with his stubborn…

THE GHOSTS OF NOVEMBER Wailing, chilled winds assailed my tortured yard. The leaves spun up from blasted grass like clouds Of crumbling colors, with each swirling shard Of withered leaf absorbed in whirling shrouds. With sudden force the leaves turned to the ghosts Of budding joys I slew that waning year. They spiraled into images like hosts Of demons making acts of mine too clear. Appearing first was Kristin's plaintive face, Thinking how I ignored her finest grade. My son…

The life of Jonathan Edwards, born 300 years ago this month, is a tale of a singular but complex vision crossed by paradoxical outcomes under sometimes extreme conditions. The boy was reared in a nearly all-female family under the close watch of a rigorous father. Absorbed from the start with the demands of a fearsome deity, he broke through in his late teens to a vision of that same God being, literally, sweetness and light. Plagued by a brittle personality…

Religion and politics seem to be ever more entwined in the American public square, with religious language being used to alternately affirm or decry stances on any number of issues--the Iraq War, the death penalty, abortion, same-sex marriage, and so on. However well-intentioned, something about such rhetoric seems fundamentally reductive, regardless of where on the political spectrum it originates. How refreshing, then, to read Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God. In three hundred pages Winner never once attempts to connect religious…

I was blessed with getting stuck in the great blackout of 2003; the most profound of all blackouts in American history. We were in the process of a very messy move from Locust Valley on Long Island to Hillsborough where I had accepted a call to the Millstone church. The movers had done a poor job, leaving much behind, forcing me to make repeated trips back from New Jersey to Long Island. The week of the great blackout found me…