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A Frugal Capitalism

As a 60 year-old teacher, I am different from most of my students in many ways. One way is that I am able to remember a time when things were significantly different from the way they are today. The decade of the fifties, which began when I was eight and ended when I was eighteen, is of all the decades of my life the one that was probably the most formative, the one that is most clearly my decade. I…
Dave Schelhaas
January 16, 2003
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Smiling in Church

"I need to say something," the seminarian said prior to giving a benediction to a surprised congregation. "I've led worship here three Sundays in a row and I detect an absence of Christian joy," he declared from the top of the chancel stairs, facing the center aisle and two long sections of pews, peopled by a small congregation of Reformed Christians, all of whom were much older than the twenty-something seminarian. "I see serious faces and frowns rather than smiles…
Edward H. Schreur
January 16, 2003
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The Beejabers

In one dream, I find the room and arrive on time, but the seats remain empty. In another I search pantingly for the room as the clock ticks relentlessly past the starting time. Still another has me arriving on time with the students all in place, but I have forgotten some important item of clothing. Sometimes the students hiss and jeer and fail to laugh at my jokes. I wake up early. The semester approaches. These are teacher dreams, familiar…
Thomas B. Phulery
January 16, 2003
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Beyond the Hype: The Internet and the Church

The Internet: full of promise, full of power. And full of hype. As a Christian pastor and theologian, and, until recently, a technology professional, I am disturbed by the fawning hype I frequently hear about the Internet. Some of that hype may have diminished in the wake of the dot-com bust and September 11th, 2001. But the hype has not disappeared entirely, and its presence is seen everywhere from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. One might expect…
Daniel M. Griswold
January 16, 2003
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Are Mormons Christians?

Recently I participated in a theological conference at Brigham Young University. It was called, "Salvation in Christ: Christian Perspectives." Six Latter Day Saints (LDS) scholars participated as speakers, all of them impressive and serious faculty members in the Religious Studies department at Brigham Young University (BYU), and nine representatives from what I will call historic or mainstream Christianity. They included six Protestants, two Catholics, and one Greek Orthodox pastor. Evangelicalism was well represented.1 Although this was my second visit to…
Stephen T. Davis
January 16, 2003
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Keeping the Faith in the Christian College, Past and Present

These two recent studies by veteran faculty members take dramatically different approaches to the question of how colleges that are serious about maintaining their Christian identity can resist the temptations of secularization. One seeks an answer far back in the history of Christianity, distilling common elements in the early church fathers that remain relevant for today's first-year students. The other looks instead to the recent past and the present complexion of six representative institutions and suggests models to guide them…
David A. Hoekema
January 16, 2003
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God Takes Ugly and Makes Beautiful

I work in a fairly ugly place: downtown Grand Rapids--where one finds cafes, specialty shops, and restaurants next to convenience stores to buy smokes, condoms, and booze. The doorways smell like urine; the sidewalks are littered with trash. And the people aren't so beautiful either: the homeless, the diseased, the mentally ill, the prostitutes, the addicts, the drunks, the hungry, the thirsty. I carry this place within my heart and these people who know nothing but ugliness--iniquity, disease, death, rejection,…
Pamela J. Henshell
January 16, 2003