Recently I learned a term for something that I already knew existed: Moralistic therapeutic deism This term is defined in a 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton.(We will not quibble over whether the term should be ‘deism’ or ‘theism’ as I am […]
Hallows’ Day
Today is Halloween, but most people don’t know why. It is a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. A day, in the Catholic tradition, for remembering those who have gone ahead of us into heaven and praying to them for intercession on our behalf. In Protestant traditions it is more of a memorial day. As a […]
Do NOT Go Home
John MacArthur was named as one of the top 25 most influential preachers of the 20th century by Christianity Today in 2008. He is famous for, among other things, the MacArthur Study Bible. At a panel discussion at the “Truth Matters” conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, Oct. 18, 2019 he and […]
Stealing (and Revealing) Scripture
A recent article in National Geographic speaks to the fraught world of identifying and collecting ancient texts. For me, and many others, it is a fascinating subject in its own right even leaving aside and issues of faith. But the article does bring faith into the question, as it must. When this sort of thing […]
First Called Christians
According to Acts 11 followers of what had been known as the Way of Jesus were first called Christians in a town in northwestern Syria known as Antioch. Originally it was probably meant as an insult, “little messiahs”, but we came to embrace it. Today Antioch falls in the legal borders of Turkey and is […]
Witchhunts
A recent article in the Smithsonian discusses the scale of witch hunts in Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries. A total of 3,141 men and women were accused of practicing witchcraft, and we know from the Authorized English Version’s (a.k.a. The King James Bible) translation of Exodus 22:18 the penalty for witchcraft is death. […]