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It's a basic tenet of the Calvinist faith by which I was raised that those sinners who haven't plumbed the depths of their own darkness simply are not capable of comprehending the blinding luminosity of grace itself. I rather like that equation, but then I live on the Great Plains, where the Lord wrote the textbook on winter. Because out here we know winter, I'm willing to lay down hard cash that we know, therefore, more deeply the joy of…

You all need to know that on Monday evening, 15 April 2002, the President of your Seminary was arrested by the New Brunswick City Police on the charge that I did "purposely obstruct, impair, or prevent the administration of law or a governmental function, by means of physical interference or obstacle."  I am required to appear in Municipal Court to answer this charge.  It is my intention to plead not guilty. The story of the event is as colorful as…

In a speech at the United Nations not long before the start of the war against Iraq, Nelson Mandela made a number of comments that many American found objectionable. At the end of the speech, however, he said something in frustration that got spontaneous applause from the audience present: the trouble with the United States President George W. Bush is that "he doesn't think properly." Mandela was in deadly earnest, but the British-sounding criticism was comic. It was easy to…

Along with others, I have grown weary of the term postmodern as the blanket characteristic covering our time. The term simply carries along too much baggage, and each bag opens, as a postmodernist would say, on different meanings for different audiences. From spiritual and ethical positionings, from ways of perceiving the world, and from ways of holding all human products up to critical scrutiny, analysis, or distortion, postmodernism has settled like a dense fogbank on the scholarly imagination. One of…

The events of September 11 have presented considerable spiritual challenges to contemporary culture. I would like to discuss one aspect of one of these challenges which, specifically, is how to engage persons of other faiths in a manner consistent with grace and truth. How do we honor their right to practice a religion different from our own, respect them as persons, love them as beings made in the image of God, and yet maintain the integrity of our own faith?…

Easter Day Thou, whose sad heart, and weeping head lies low, Whose cloudy breast cold damps invade, Who never feels the Sun, nor smooths thy brow, But sits oppressed in the shade, Awake, awake! And in his Resurrection partake, Who, on this day (that thou might rise as he) Rose up, and cancelled two deaths due to thee. Awake, awake: and like the Sun, disperse All mists that would usurp this day;Where are thy Palms, thy branches, and thy verse?…