David Mills has found himself in trouble—for making the stunning claim that conservative Catholics are not conservative Protestants, and conservative Protestants are not conservative Catholics. Continue Reading »
A few weeks ago, I assigned the article “What is Marriage?” to the students in my gender theory class, which I teach at an evangelical university. This article presents an in-depth defense of the conjugal view of marriage, and I included it on the reading list as part of my efforts to expose students to a range of viewpoints – religious and secular, progressive and conservative. The goal is to create robust civil dialogue, and, ideally, to pave the way for thoughtful Christian contributions to cultural understandings of sex and gender. The one promise I make to my students at the beginning of the course is that they are guaranteed to read something they will find disagreeable, probably even offensive.That promise used to be easier to keep. Continue Reading »
Sometime in the mid-1990s, sickened by what I perceived as the shallowness of evangelical culture in suburban Wheaton, Illinois, I launched into the post-hippie, proto-hipster nightlife of Chicago. I roamed not yet fully gentrified streets with dropouts and homeless people, under the L-tracks and along the wind-battered shores of the third coast. The counter-culture then radiated from Belmont Avenue, which I imagined to be something like what Haight-Ashbury (since colonized by Ben & Jerry’s) must have been in 1969.Following one such night of seeking suburban Wheaton’s opposite, I experienced a moment of transfixing beauty. I wandered into Lincoln Park Zoo at dawn and had it all to myself—a solitary Adam among the animals. Then, as I watched sea lions frolic in the shallows of their tank I braced myself for a return to Wheaton College where I would reluctantly (and barely) finish my undergraduate degree. In my arrogance, I may have even thought to myself that I was returning to splash in the shallows with evangelicals like the animals before me. Continue Reading »
A recent Gallup-Purdue survey 0f more than 30,000 college graduates explored connections between education and workplace engagement and well-being. The former combined job satisfaction with intellectual and emotional connection to the people and places of employment while the latter encompassed the . . . . Continue Reading »
It is the right thing to do. Listening to the questions and doubts of those who are struggling with belief in God, the nature of scripture, doctrine or how to think about the subject matter of the culture wars. No one truly begrudges the spiritual journey of another. But seriously, I think . . . . Continue Reading »
Part of the responsibility of ministry leaders is having an awareness of influences that have guided the minds of our culture and, therefore, the church. No church exists in a vacuum and to varying degrees, everyone has had ideas and beliefs shaped by the world around them. So it is with great . . . . Continue Reading »
“I said to the president, ‘You should have taken me by the lapels and tossed me onto Pennsylvania Avenue for what I have done.’ He said to me, ‘I forgive you.’”Gayle recently spoke with Timothy S. Goeglein, author of The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of . . . . Continue Reading »
Most days I just don’t want to go there. While I disagree with my friends on the egalitarian side of the gender role debate, I think they know I respect them and their studious work on the subject. But I believe we have reached a point in the debate, at least at a popular level, where we find . . . . Continue Reading »
“Christianity isn’t a list of rules, it’s a relationship” is how the cliché goes and I’ve never been very fond of it. While I agree that Christianity is about the transformative power of the gospel in the real lives of God’s children and not about keeping . . . . Continue Reading »
John Stott has passed away. The English evangelical leader who inspired so many American believers. When I was a student leader in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, it was a source of pride that our organization was linked to this man. He’s probably most famous for Basic Christianity and The . . . . Continue Reading »
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