Articles, Reviews
& Interviews
A
New Kind of Urban Christian: "The relationship of
Christians to culture is the singular current crisis point for
the church. Evangelicals are deeply divided over how to interact
with a social order that is growing increasingly post-Christian."
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The
Conservative Humanist: "What if there were a movement
dedicated to the question, What does it mean to be human?"
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Choose
Life: "If we eventually become a true counterculture
for the common good, that counterculture (and that good) will
simply be the product of our faithfulness."
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Loving
the Storm-Drenched: "God has not called us to change
the weather. Our primary task as believers, and our best hope
for lasting success, is to care for individuals caught up in the
pounding storm." more»
Marsden
on Fundamentalism & Politics: "To serve God
through the institutions of one's culture can be a Gospel imperative
and politics can be a power for good, especially if we recognize
the realities of self-interest and the tendency for power to corrupt."
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Sex
& the City of God: "But what is king's food
now? What is that element within our culture that, if the people
of God participate in it, will ruin us? I think it's our culture's
sexual ethics." more»
Habits
of Highly Effective Justice Workers: "In many cases,
you do not need to relocate in order to meet a need. But when
working for justice, it is crucial to have personal proximity
to injustice." more»
Faith,
Scholarship and the College Classroom: "I contend
that students and professors at a Christian college or university
are in a real sense more free to pursue truth than their counterparts
at public universities."
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How
the Kingdom Comes: "Some use the word 'seekers'
to describe those we are trying to reach in this culture. But
the truth is that they and we are more like tourists than seekers,
let alone pilgrims, flying from place to place to consume experiences."
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The
American Dream & Christian Ethics: "By taking
seriously the power of class and the dynamics of power imbedded
in social life, we may be able to foster, and even realize, a
moral vision, or a 'dream' that is more Christian than American."
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Academia
Coram Deo: "Consciously or unconsciously, we all
live our lives coram deo—“before the face of God.”
Our words, actions, and thoughts play out before an audience of
One."
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Christian
Academe vs. Christians in Academe: "To the extent
they are open about their Christian faith, the evangelicals do
so the same way that professors who are enthused about sailing
or cooking can share with students something about their life
outside the classroom."
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Shopping
for God: "Every conversion is a betrayal, even as
we depict it as an act of higher loyalty." more»
Theology
of Scandal: "The reality for many young evangelicals,
attending college and seeking for a way to be as serious in their
learning as in their devotion to Christ, Rome offers a better
option than a cafeteria-styled religious identity."
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The
Pattern of Christian Truth: "The reason that the
'integration of faith and learning' has become little more than
a rhetorical gesture in the evangelical academy may be that the
Bible itself has become marginalized within our academic discourse."
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God
and Country: "Homeschoolers are not the most obvious
raw material for a college whose main mission, since its founding,
five years ago, has been to train a new generation of Christian
politicians."
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In
God's Image: " While creativity itself may not
be a virtue, then, I would argue that the truest, most unsentimental
thing we can say about creativity is that it is a constant invitation
to virtue." more»
Bible
Illiteracy in America: "Secularists don't see it
that way; but the Bible's penetration into the farthest corners
of the known world is simple fact. Most contemporary philosophers
and culture critics are barely aware of these things… and
(for the most part) don't care."
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Evangelicalism’s
Insecure Calvinists: "These authors perceive a declension
within American evangelicalism,… a turn from a life grounded
in theology to a life grounded in the personal experience of the
divine and the benefits such experience brings."
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The
Twilight of Atheism: "Atheism was once new, exciting,
and liberating, and for those reasons held to be devoid of the
vices of the faiths it displaced. With time, it turned out to
have just as many frauds, psychopaths, and careerists as religion
does." more»
Typing
Alone: "Our students have lost the space in which
to act with purpose, which I think of as narrow but deep attention,
not quite obsession but a healthier version of it."
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The
Academic Left and the Christian Right, Part II: "The
intellectual left and the religious right not only could come
together. Given the right kind of political leadership, they will."
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God's
Politics: "All over the country I feel the hunger
for a fuller, deeper, and richer conversation about religion in
public life, about faith and politics. It’s a discussion
that we don’t always hear in America today."
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Praise
the Lord and Pass the Ammunition: "In addition to
the increase in violence against mission and aid workers, indigenous
Christians are now fleeing areas where American-led war has helped
to escalate the dangers in which they live and worship."
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The
Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: "Scandalous
behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their
daily activity, most 'Christians' regularly commit treason. With
their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions
they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment."
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What
American Teenagers Believe: "In general, religious
traditions that expect more and demand more of their youth
get more. And those that are more compromising, more accommodating,
more anything-goes, end up not getting much."
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Faculty
Clubs and Church Pews: "I think that if my church
friends and my university friends got to know each other,
they'd find a lot to like and admire. More to the point, the
representatives of each side would learn something important
and useful from the other side."
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Atheist
Becomes Deist: "The evidence for the resurrection
is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.
It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity,
I think, from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most
other supposedly miraculous events." more»
God-Talk
and Moral Values: "All too often I have seen
a 'personal relationship with God' used to justify behavior
that is a radical departure from the life of Jesus."
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Secret
Siblings: "Paul's letters talk about Jesus'
radical new vision of believers as family. But some Bible
translations miss the point altogether."
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Spirit
and Flesh: "Ault's two worlds of friends—at
home, at church—occasionally obliged him to enflesh
stereotypes of the opposing camps."
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Is
Cutting in Line Moral? "[Locke's] resolution
was to say that God is the ultimate owner of everything, but
that the mixing of one's labor with the goods of the earth
creates an entitlement."
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You
Kill It, You Eat It: "If the old thrift was rooted
in religion, specifically Protestant Christianity, where will
the motor of the new thrift arise? We cannot count on religion
as it, too, has given way before the ethic of consumption."
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Christian
Worldview: "Rather than imparting to my students
the abstracted and naïve certainty of a worldview, I would
rather leave them with strong, mature habits of thought to which
they may have recourse in all that their lives will bring them."
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Should
Christians Vote for President?
- Mark
Noll: "I will almost certainly cast my vote
once again for none of the above."
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- Charles
Colson:
"[Noll's] position is dead wrong and damaging to democracy"
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- Alasdair
MacIntyre: "When offered a choice between
two political intolerable alternatives, it is important
to choose neither"
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Divided
by a Common Faith: "Americans have long been
'divided by a common language' from our friends in the Commonwealth.
What is new is that evangelicals in the United States are
increasingly divided by a common faith from evangelicals almost
everywhere else."
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Mark
Noll: "Ten years after the publication of The
Scandal of the Evangelical Mind…"
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God
is My Co-Author: "If evangelicals expect to
be depicted fairly and fully by the elite media, Case says,
they need to get their hands dirty and play a role in the
institutions that define the larger culture."
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Max
Weber and the Enchanted Cage: "The Protestant
Ethic remains indispensable, even urgent, precisely because
of its humanist resistance to the authority of experts and
moneybags." more»
For
the Health of the Nation: "We also engage in
public life because Jesus is Lord over every aspect of life."
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Unintelligent
Debate: "God's designs will always elude our
expectations, blow away our tidy, settled theories."
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Soft
Patriarchs: "Evangelicalism holds up a traditional
ideal of the family and yet has more non-traditional families,
whereas mainline Protestantism holds up a more liberal ideal
and yet has more traditional families in their pews"
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What
Is a Good Christian Movie, Anyway? "If
the measurement of a good, Christian movie is that it be exclusively
family-friendly, then surely Christians will have been robbed
of their mandate to explore Christ's renewal of all dimensions
of human experience."
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Why
the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out: "The issue of canon—what
books constitute the final authority for Christians—is
no small matter. If the critics are correct, then Christianity
must indeed be radically reinterpreted, just as they suggest."
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Top
100 Spiritually Significant Films: "Dekalog,
The Apostle, Magnolia, The Gospel According to St. Matthew,
The Passion of the Christ, The Miracle Maker, Jesus of Nazareth…"
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Progressive
and "Pro-Life"? "We have to integrate
parenthood and school or parenthood and work to relieve some
of the social and economic pressures that make abortion feel
like the only choice."
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Sociologist
as Servant of the Church: "There is no discipline
more salutary to religious vision… than being forced
to ask the basic question as to what is actually the case
and what is most likely to follow from a given course of action."
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Why
Don't Journalists Get Religion? "However central
belief and faith might be to the American populace, our news
media seldom puncture the surface in their reporting on religion."
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Why
Do Churches Grow? "As they tell the story, something
approaching equilibrium is now in place, and the net gains
or losses from religious change are about over."
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The
Lawyer, the Bible and the Governor : "My goal
is to seriously look at our national tax policy and take the
position that we are not thinking and talking about this from
a moral framework."
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Finding
God in the Heavens: " For Christians, recent
announcements about discoveries in space allow observers to
see God's design of the heavens, not just facts about the
universe."
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Alan
Wolfe: "American faith has met American culture—and
American Culture has triumphed."
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Overcome
with Passion: "Prominent in our endorsement
of The Passion, however, is the notion that art is only worthwhile
if it tells the truth for specifically evangelistic purposes."
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Alone
in the Academy: "Was there nothing else in history
to wonder about besides a ritualistically rehashed liberation
tale?"
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Religiously
Ignorant Journalists: "How do I break the news
to him that there are no 'Episcopals'?"
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Diverse
Diversities: "But then of course universities
use the term not as the morally neutral term it is."
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Confessions
of a Christian Historian: "For me, history is
also a source of revelation, a collection of wisdom."
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Finding
Darwin's God: "It is difficult to live a life
as a committed person of faith in most American universities,
not because faith is persecuted or suppressed, but rather
because faith is not taken seriously."
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Deconstructing
Evangelicalism: "We no
doubt exemplified traits that would suggest to scholars that
we were 'evangelicals,' and few of us would have shunned the
label. But that's not what we were about."
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N.T.
Wright: "The faddish culture of our day is still
clinging to the threadbare pseudo-moralisms of the late Enlightenment
world."
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Don't
Read the Bible Alone: "I think evangelicals
sometimes go wrong by thinking they don't need the church
because it's just me, my Bible, and a radio preacher."
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Luke
Timothy Johnson on the Countercultural Creed: "Not
every construction of the world can be true."
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Cruciform
Education: "The gospel is not a message of individual
salvation, which can then be applied to the 'worldly' concerns
of literature and politics, of economics and art. Rather, it announces
the world’s redemption, and 'worldly' concerns are inherent
to it."
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What
Do the Stones Cry Out? "Archaeology is a unique
enticement for Christians of our era. We are called to live by
faith, yet we also want tangible proof of that which we believe."
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Finding
God in Small Groups:
"They often say that the secret of the Methodist movement
was its small groups. But when I began my research, I found
that nobody had gone deeply into what made those small group
structures work."
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Teachers'
Guilt: "It was a tremendously liberating discovery,
this notion that students, rather than being angels, were
sinful humans."
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A
New Religious America: "Quite unconsciously,
the United States has long since committed itself to an immigration
policy that will inexorably make the country a far more solidly
Christian nation than would have been dreamed of in the 1960s."
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Minding
the Evangelical Mind:
"Those of us who call ourselves “evangelical scholars”
are accustomed to suspicion from the church and incredulity from
the academy."
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Faith
Communities in the Academic World: "It is precisely
the presence of faithful Jews and Christians in academic institutions,
openly living the richly communal life God has given them, which
can bring a steady, healing challenge to the demonic forces of
atomistic individualism that more and more possess academic life."
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Evangelical
Christianity and Critical Thought: "The truth of
the matter is that Christian thought, even evangelical Christian
thought, is sufficiently diverse that no straightforward influence
on the nature of intellectual work is readily found." more»
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