The Great Pope Within
“I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, self.” Martin Luther almost certainly never made this statement (though many have falsely attributed it to him).…
Category Reformation21
The Quest for Biblical Worship (Part 2)
Reformed churches not only have the regulative principle worship (RPW) to guide them regarding elements and forms, but they also, throughout their history, have had liturgies and directories. The liturgies were the more restrictive (e.g. Strasburg, Geneva, Amsterdam), the directories…
The Truth about the Rapture
“We…will be caught up” (1 Thes. 4:17) Soon after I was converted at age 17 my dad gave me three books–a King James Bible and two by a local pastor I had yet to hear of: Hal Lindsey’s The Late,…
A Vital Call for the Vitals of Religion
In the denomination in which I serve as a minister–The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)–we have confessional standards to which all our ministers voluntarily agree to submit, subscribe, and support. The language we use to describe this action is that…
Closely Connected Care
With each cultural crisis or natural disaster, our minds are freshly flooded with a litany of images and calls to come to the aid of our neighbors who have been the victims of an injustice or who have suffered loss.…
The Nashville Statement: A Test of Orthodoxy?
When the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) released the Nashville Statement on biblical sexuality, there were immediate responses from almost every quarter. Reactions ranged from wholehearted endorsement to begrudging acceptance to outright rejection. Many of those who rejected the…
I Can’t Hear You Over All the Name Calling
Lately I have been reading articles by a few Evangelicals who are deeply committed to racial justice. As I agree and sympathize with much, I do find myself in reaction to some of the things they have said. These ideas,…
Love the Sinner as You Love Your Sinful Self?
Over the past week, I’ve seen more appeals to the second half of Matthew 22:39 than I’ve seen artist postcards in a hipster coffee shop. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (which is the second greatest command, according to Jesus) is…
A Social Savior
As I continue to scan the landscape of Christian social justice activism, that is, social justice-labeled activities that are said to be carried out “in the name of” Christ, I’ve noticed many Christian activists have a tendency to proffer to…
When Calling Yourself a “Christian” Isn’t Enough
As a new Christian, I was very interested in studying cults. I studied the nuances of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarianism, and so on. When we think of cults, we tend to think of groups that not only pervert what the…