Reformation21

I love the hymn "Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners" - but one line makes me uncomfortable every time I sing it: "Jesus! What a strength in weakness! Let me hide myself in him; tempted, tried, and sometimes failing , he, my strength, my vict'ry wins." Sometimes failing? How about many times...often...

Several days ago I was distracted from my mid-afternoon, back-porched task of grading college research papers by the presence of a pair of cardinals flitting around our yard. As I watched them doing what cardinals do, I began wondering whence precisely cardinals derived their peculiar name. My...

If you ever go to see the John Knox statue at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, you won't come away with warm and fuzzy feelings. Knox, in statue and in Scottish historical memory, comes off as stern, formidable, and unapproachable. To admirers, he was also a man of deep principle and driven...

If you ever go to see the John Knox statue at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, you won't come away with warm and fuzzy feelings. Knox, in statue and in Scottish historical memory, comes off as stern, formidable, and unapproachable. To admirers, he was also a man of deep principle and driven...

A couple of weeks ago a friend asked a question: "How would you encourage a faithful brother who had been pastoring for several years and has not, in that season, seen a conversion directly from his preaching, though the church is growing and health with saints being built up and believers joining...

A few days ago, Harambe the gorilla was shot by the Cincinatti Zoo after a 4-year-old child accidentally climbed past the fence and enclosures--only to tumble into the moat surrounding the gorilla's habitat. Sensing that the child's life was in immediate danger, zoo workers made the prompt decision...

Tomorrow the remains of Hughes Oliphant Old (April 13, 1933 - May 24, 2016) will be interred at the Christian Street Cemetery in White River Junction, Vermont. A prince in Israel has died, leaving behind mourners who will miss both his genteel Christian piety and the vast body of knowledge that he...

The details of Luther's mid-1520s tussle with Erasmus over the issue of sin's impact on human freedom are generally well known. Luther responded to Erasmus's 1524 De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio with his own 1525 De servo arbitrio [ On the Bondage of the Will ]. Erasmus, deeply offended...

Over recent years, I have noticed that more and more Christians are opting for the cremation of their bodies after death. The primary reason for this seems to be financial, as cremation is considerably more affordable than the pricey cost of caskets, plus the other amenities of a funeral,...

What can the Old Testament possibly say to our culture? It seems a million miles and sometimes a million years away from our time, our generation, and our problems. How can something so old address all the new challenges of globalization, sex-trafficking, the digital revolution, etc. There's no...