To follow-up on my blog post “Sunday of Orthodoxy: Or, When Schisms Are Functionally Irrelevant,” the excerpt below has helped me to understand John Calvin’s treatment of idolatry. Understanding must precede criticism.From Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville: . . . . Continue Reading »
Via Tyler Cowen, a paper by Davide Cantoni casts some doubt on the efficacy of the Protestant Ethic: Many theories, most famously Max Weber’s essay on the ‘Protestant ethic,’ have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With their . . . . Continue Reading »
It is hard to make generalizations about Protestant theology, given the inherently splintered nature of Protestantism and the multiplicity of theological fads found within its borders. Nevertheless, people who otherwise have very little in common theologically are remarkably joined in their . . . . Continue Reading »
It has become a commonplace that religious controversy today occurs more often across church boundaries than between them. Prior to Vatican II, the most important theological disputes in America—and in the West in general—pitted Protestants against Catholics. In the decades since, such . . . . Continue Reading »
George Lindbeck, the distinguished Lutheran theologian, served from 1962 through 1965 as one of sixty “Delegated Observers” from other Christian communions at the Second Vatican Council. As Lindbeck has noted on previous occasions, the ecumenical observers from the worlds of Orthodoxy and . . . . Continue Reading »
Revolutions in consciousness sometimes announce themselves in minor, even trivial, ways. It was some ten or twelve years ago. My oldest daughter and I were watching a college football game on TV on a Saturday afternoon. Notre Dame was one of the teams, and my daughter, then a teenager, cheered as . . . . Continue Reading »
A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation by wade clark roof harpercollins, 311 pages, $20 Beyond Establishment: Protestant Identity in a Post-Protestant Age ed. jackson carroll and wade clark roof westminster/john knox press, 361 pages, $19.99 It is well known that . . . . Continue Reading »
To the extent that Lutherans are noticed at all by non-Lutherans in America, impressions can be wildly contradictory. From one perspective, they can look like mildly exotic ethnics—sort of like the Mennonites, only more numerous. Thus it is possible for interested outsiders to smile . . . . Continue Reading »
Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantismby Robert Moats MillerAbingdon Press, 624 pages, $29.95 Garfield Bromley Oxnam (1891-1963) was a bishop of the Methodist Church, and a cover subject of Time, though it’s hard to imagine the two going together today. Billy Graham can . . . . Continue Reading »
Iam a member of the United Methodist Church and a graduate student of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. One might ask why a United Methodist would go to a Roman Catholic university to study philosophy. The answer is, I am at Notre Dame because I cannot study philosophy at a Methodist . . . . Continue Reading »
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