Mission

Richard John Neuhaus on the Secular University

This comment from a brief article by the late Richard John Neuhaus is brilliant, and important: A secular university is not a university pure and simple; it is a secular university. Secular is not a synonym for neutral. Not to say that Jesus is Lord is not to say...

Absolute Must Read

I have been swept away. This article by Allen Guelzo (whose dissertation benefited my own, and whose work on Lincoln and the Civil War is waiting for me on my Kindle) is a must-read for every Christian academic. If there's anything in the world wrong with it, I can't...

Insightful Quotation from Francis Spufford

This quotation has really caught my fancy recently as a good summary of the way conservative Christians are viewed by the surrounding culture in Western nations: Believers aren’t weird because we’re wicked. We’re weird because we’re inexplicable; because, when there’s...

Article in Answers Magazine

I originally wrote this article for the New York Times opinion page, but it wound up in a slightly less partisan publication, Answers Magazine. (To be clear, the article has been edited a bit to reflect the change of audience.) I just got my copy: [gallery...

Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption

I finally got my copy. It's the culmination of my nine years at BJU Press and the one book of mine most likely to actually get read: Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption, a 12th grade Bible textbook for Christian and home schools. But I can't say the book is...

Sing a Better Song Apologetics

I thought this was a really great illustration from my friend Jeremy Larson: When Odysseus schemed to evade the Sirens, whose beautiful song enchanted and ultimately destroyed sailors, he had his crew put wax in their ears and ordered them tie him to the mast. The...

If Humans Were Really Just Robots

Skeptical humanist writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote an experimental novel, Breakfast of Champions, in which he told one of his characters, Dwayne Hoover, that “everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception—Dwayne Hoover.” When Dwayne finds out that he lives in a...

New Kevin DeYoung Book

Kevin DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 158 pp. Here's a PDF sample, and here’s a study guide. DeYoung is using his gifts to serve the church; as I've said before, he's a gifted popularizer. But that doesn't...

An Excellent and Important Point by Russell Moore

I find this point by Russell Moore to be very helpful and insightful: Many of those leading the discussion of religious freedom have little or no understanding of what motivates religious people. This shows up in almost all of these conversations, whether over the...

Most Popular Bible Verses by Country

YouVersion tells us that these are the most popular Bible verses by country: I feel guilty for complaining about people's choice of Bible verses... But not so guilty that I'll stop yet. You may guess, as I did, what people are looking to these verses to do. Listen to...

Evangelical Atheism

Two posts for the price of one: 1. This is an absolutely fantastic, must-read article by non-evangelical atheist John Gray. It’s probably just as well that the current generation of atheists seems to know so little of the longer history of atheist movements. When they...

Scientism

From a really wonderful little book; well written and enlightening: In order to understand early modern natural philosophy, it is necessary to break free of several common modern assumptions and prejudices. First, virtually everyone in Europe, certainly every...