Wokeism in Court I should begin by congratulating Frank Resartus on his excellent essay “Defeating the Equity Regime” (May). Resartus believes “conventional right-wing jurisprudence” on “just a handful of constitutional questions” could “defeat the [equity] regime altogether.” . . . . Continue Reading »
With Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Mark Stoll chronicles how conservationism and its green progeny arose from Calvinism. “When Emerson advised the solitary individual to seek mystical union with the Divine in the woods,” writes Stoll, “he simply restated long-standing Calvinist advice.” Continue Reading »
Abraham Kuyper was fond of appealing to John Calvin’s authority on various subjects, but when he turned to the subject of art in his 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary, he did so in a rather odd way. He said that he was going to look for insights from the Genevan Reformer on the subject . . . . Continue Reading »
On a late November evening in 1867, two years after the end of the American Civil War, Celestia Ferris, chief washer-woman at the Bureau of Engraving, organized a prayer meeting not far from the U. S. Capitol. She was joined by a circle of earnest Christians, mostly of the Baptist persuasion, who . . . . Continue Reading »
In the mid-1970s, the famous Mennonite theologian and ethicist John Howard Yoder visited Calvin College to give a lecture explaining the Anabaptist perspective on political authority. His opening comments offended many in his audience (including me). Referring to the Gospel account of the third . . . . Continue Reading »
During the debate over “biblical inerrancy” that raged among evangelicalism for several years in the late 1970s, I remember someone observing that Harold Lindsell’s 1976 book, The Battle for the Bible, which pretty much got that debate going, was more a theory of institutional change than it . . . . Continue Reading »
To say that we evangelicals haven’t always engaged in respectful dialogue with folks representing other perspectives is to put it mildly. But there are clear signs that things are improving, in at least some parts of the evangelical world. The presence of many evangelical voices as a part of the . . . . Continue Reading »
One day in the spring of 1990, I received a phone call from Professor Hendrikus Berkhof, a well-known theologian at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He was visiting Southern California and had a free day at his before flying out. “I would like to see Fuller Seminary,” he said. Having never spent time with Professor Berkhof, I was quite honored by his request. I had read and re-read at least five of his books, and his discussion of themes in Reformed theology had (and has) significantly influenced my thinking. Continue Reading »