I’m the music director at my church, my wife is one of our pianists. We and another pianist, a very dedicated and skillful lady, recently attended a Majesty Music Conference in order to gain instruction and, frankly, inspiration for a church music program (our own!)...
Culture
Liberalism is Unstable
Liberalism is architecturally unstable. It is a massive edifice that has been slowly, intentionally, and, by design, built without concern for its foundation. It has been built on the assumption that a stable, prosperous, and free society can allow "incentives to do...
Alan Jacobs on How to Think
Jacobs' new book, How to Think, is great. This is great: I’d bet a large pile of cash money that thousands of people read Adrian Chen’s profile of Megan Phelps-Roper and said, to others or to themselves, “Ah, a wonderful account of what happens when a person stops...
Three SCOTUS Quotes Christians Need to Keep Handy
In the Obergefell v. Hodges decision of 2015, Justice Anthony Kennedy, arguing for the majority, promised that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage...
Wow. Just Wow.
Wow—from an evangelical literary review that looks promising: I’m wondering if perhaps “fundies” have advantage in our emerging justice culture that others don’t have. Fundies grew up knowing that what they watched and where they went had moral importance. Fundies...
Is a “Purity Culture” Necessarily Bad?
I haven’t read the book this CT article summarizes, a book about dating on Christian college campuses, so I am making no comment on it other than that it looks wildly interesting and, surely, hits close to home. Dating culture on evangelical campuses—well, one in...
Marijuana Talk in Surrey
The kind folks up at Back to the Bible Canada, and particularly Isaac Dagneau of the indoubt podcast (a ministry to Millennials) had me up for a recent event in Surrey, B.C., to speak on the cultural changes surrounding the acceptance of recreational marijuana. I was...
A Must-Read Must-Read
I'm really liking Jonathan Leeman. He humbly lets his gifts be sublimated to those of Mark Dever when the two chat on 9Marks Pastors Talk episodes, but when I read The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love and then went and heard his paper at the 2016 ETS—I...
Wise Words from Lesslie Newbigin on Pluralism and Secularism
I'm listening to Lesslie Newbigin's Foolishness to the Greeks (Eerdmans, 1988). My local library had it among their digital audio loans, and I thought it was high time I went through a Newbigin book. The book comes from lectures he delivered in Princeton's Warfield...
Some Thoughts on Some Thoughts on the Future of Christian Higher Ed
Alan Jacobs and Carl Trueman are probably right to fear that the sexual revolution will "annihilate" a number of Christian institutions of higher learning once discrimination for sexual orientation fully and officially becomes the new racism. But my alma mater...
Christians Should Be the Most Gracious and Edifying People on Social Media
I like Alastair Roberts. Here's some wisdom for you (emphasis mine): Progressive versus conservative evangelical spats are one of the very worst things about Twitter, which is really saying something. Such arguments illustrate just how poor a medium Twitter can be for...
Condoms and Consent
Mark Regnerus in Public Discourse: Saying that it’s all on men to change their behavior may signal progressive virtue online, but it will do little to diminish real-life grief. The realities of sexual exchange will not disappear and cannot be eviscerated by fiat or...