Postcards from Palookaville

With moving job and house in the last two months, I was only vaguely aware of the Revoice Conference until a few weeks ago. Then suddenly my phone started to light up as friends forwarded me tweets and blog posts and interviews, pro and con. Finally, at the weekend a whole pile of very disturbing...

It was some six years ago that I accepted the call to become Pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Ambler, Pa., as a bi-vocational appointment. I had been on the session there for two years as Teacher and took the call because it was clear that finances meant a full-time pastor was not...

Amid all of the discussion surrounding the so-called Pence Rule and also the forthcoming book from my friend, Aimee Byrd, there is one lacuna that is slightly puzzling. It is certainly the case that what the Rule seeks to achieve for Mike Pence are good and proper things, and the mockery to which...

Amid all of the discussion surrounding the so-called Pence Rule and also the forthcoming book from my friend, Aimee Byrd, there is one lacuna that is slightly puzzling. It is certainly the case that what the Rule seeks to achieve for Mike Pence are good and proper things, and the mockery to which...

The second century is arguably the Cinderella of the early church, generally neglected in favor of other, apparently more exciting and accessible, periods. It is populated by largely shadowy figures about whom we know enough to be tantalized, even impressed, but it lacks the giant intellects and...

Some years ago a student came to ask me if the Puritans had a theology of suffering. Apparently he had been told by someone that they did not. My response pointed to three basic facts. First, the Puritans lived in a time before the discovery of antibiotics, analgesics and flush toilets. Disease and...

Many people outside of Scotland may be unfamiliar with the story of the Rev. Kenny Macdonald who died last weekend. His story is well worth reading and pondering. I met him only once -- when we both happened to be visiting my soon-to-be father-in-law in hospital in Inverness in 1989. A most...

While thinking about the #MeToo movement, and the prominent place being played in it by members of the Hollywood establishment, I have asked myself a couple of times, ‘Is this a root-and-branch reformation of the structure of modern morality or merely something superficial?’ To be more...

I am grateful to Todd for mentioning my upcoming DC lectures and also to RTS DC for their kindness in asking me to present some of the firstfruits of my Princeton work in a public forum. The two lectures are entitled as follows: Lecture 1: Acknowledging the Unacknowledged Legislators: From William...

Over at Marginalia , a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, my old pal Bruce Gordon of Yale Divinity School has put together a panel of scholars to offer reflections on the Reformation. Bruce's Introduction and Joseph Koerner's Art in a State of Siege are already available. My...