Sorting by

×
Skip to main content
Uncategorized

We are Who We are by the Grace of God

In our series, "Taking the Long View," we interview senior leaders in the Reformed and Presbyterian community, asking them to reflect on their experiences and careers, noting the achievements, changes and challenges affecting the Reformed tradition today.  All of these women and men have made distinguished contributions to the church, the academy, or the professions, and are approaching or enjoying retirement.  However, we think you will find them anything but "retiring."  It is our hope that the accumulated wisdom and…
Uncategorized

My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir

Not long ago a well-known, highly accomplished author wrote an "op-ed"-type article in the New York Times Book Review.  Surveying the publishing landscape, this author sniffed dismissively at the welter of autobiographies and memoirs on the market.  He noted the oft-heard observation that something like eighty percent of people think their life story is interesting enough to tell.  In his considered opinion, a quick glance at the average bookstore would reveal that most of the people who think that way…
August 1, 2003
Uncategorized

Base Running as Obedient Art

What is competition?  We talk about healthy competition, ensuring competition, and being a competitive person, all of which have positive connotations.  Americans, in general, see it as a good thing, or, if not good, at least natural . . . like a self-regulating free-market or an undisturbed ecosystem in balance.   For this reason it's not surprising that in defining the word competition, the Webster dictionary uses both business and organic competition as its secondary examples.  The primary definition however is…
Ethan Brue
August 1, 2003
Uncategorized

What has Managua to do with Baghdad?

Watching the preparations for the recent Iraqi War gave me a disturbing feeling of deja vu. The Bush Administration issued ever more dire warnings about the danger posed by Iraq, though no imminent danger seemed evident to Iraq's neighbors. From the start it seemed clear that the Bush Administration wanted to settle this "crisis" militarily; their requests for Congressional and U.N. approval were grudging gestures designed to placate critics and provide legitimacy for a course of action already decided upon.…
Daniel R. Miller
August 1, 2003
Uncategorized

Barbed Questions and Bread from Heaven

Listen in on a conversation between Jesus and a crowd of persistent people gathered on the shores on the Sea of Galilee. It is the morning after the feeding of the thousands back on the other side of the lake. A conversation between Jesus and a crowd of people? Chances are, it was more like a high-stakes press conference, with questions being shouted from all corners of the crowd. There is a certain haphazard, disconnected, non-sequitur quality of this encounter…
Leanne Van Dyk
August 1, 2003
Uncategorized

Sport and War in a Television Culture

We have a TV in our home. It rarely gets used. So I can't claim to be an expert on television programming. However, when I have occasionally engaged in a 30 minute channel flipping exercise, I am shocked--shocked by the content, yes, somewhat, but more so by the lack of variety. All the imagery that greets me from the flickering screen is blandly uniform regardless of the channel I call home. I am beginning to think that the worst part…
Ethan Brue
June 1, 2003
Uncategorized

To the City and to the World

During the great missionary era of the nineteenth century, many servants of God from different denominations went over land and seas to far off places carrying with them the greatest gift they could ever offer to people whom they had never known or seen before, namely, the redeeming and liberating Good News of Jesus Christ. His gospel of the grace and the love of God is found to be so revolutionary and subversive that recently it was reported in the…
Uncategorized

Community, Rootedness, and Deliverance from Evil

As a Christian, I habitually pray not to be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil. These are times in which those prayers become especially urgent. As war, on whatever front, becomes more likely, we are surrounded with temptations and we desperately need the wisdom to discern good and evil. Political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain emphasizes that the problem with thinking about the ethics of war is that the very rhetoric of war invites us "to hate without…
Caroline J. Simon
June 1, 2003