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The Church as Culture

From the April 2004 Print Edition

Last spring on a trip to Erfurt, the medieval university town in Germany famous for its Augustinian cloister in which Martin Luther was ordained to the priesthood, I learned that only twenty percent of its population professed adherence to Christianity. In fact, when the topic of religion came up . . . . Continue Reading »

Keeping the Commandments

From the November 2003 Print Edition

Given the contentiousness of public life in America today it was inevitable that the bulky stone monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments and placed in the rotunda of the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama would provoke controversy. When Judge Roy S. Moore commissioned Richard Hahnemann to . . . . Continue Reading »

Roots of Jihad

From the October 2003 Print Edition

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis Modern Library. 170 pp. $19.95 Among the papers left by Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who shot the Pope on May 13, 1981, was a letter containing this sentence: “I have decided to kill John Paul II, supreme commander of the . . . . Continue Reading »

In Defense of Constantine

From the April 2001 Print Edition

Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intoleranceh. a. drake johns hopkins, 609 pages, $68 The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Romeelizabeth de palma digeser cornell, 199 pages, $39.95 The ritual pronouncement of anathemas against Constantinianism has become so commonplace that . . . . Continue Reading »

How To Read The Bible

From the May 1999 Print Edition

Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies.By André Lacocque and Paul Ricoeur. Translated by David Pellauer.University of Chicago Press.  441 pp. $30. In the wake of the Enlightenment’s assault on tradition no field of theology has suffered more than the study of the . . . . Continue Reading »