I want to undertake a detailed review of a new book by Jason Stellman, one entitled Dual Citizens. There are a number of reasons for doing this, but those reasons should become increasingly manifest as we go along. The central reason is that I have become settled in my conviction that a particular form of …
Thy Kingdom Go
The walls of the church are permeable, and this is by God’s design. This means that when the church is being the church, there is no way to keep the influence of this from seeping into the world. On the flip side, when the church has lost her vision, or her focus, or they have …
A Thousand Amens
Allow me to differ with Michael Horton, then agree with him, and then differ again. I am referring to this article. Here, in the first place, is the key place of difference. “If the church is not to be identified with culture, is it necessarily a counterculture? If Christians as well as non-Christians participate in …
How Many?
Owen Barfield once commented that what C.S. Lewis thought about everything was contained in what he said about anything. Lewis himself pointed to the opposite tendency somewhere when he said that modern men have been trained to have a dozen incompatible ideas bouncing around in their heads. But a Christian world and life view is …
Breathing the Air of Smug Platitudes
Samuel Johnson famously said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. That being the case, accusations of racism (when losing an argument) is the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel. And, as time goes by, and the argument (on health care, say) continues to be lost, the accusation moves closer and closer to …
Triangles Don’t Have Outliers
In a previous thread Jane Dunsworth asked the question when it comes to all questions of “reading culture.” How do you tell the difference between some manifestation of lowlife culture and that same thing (apparently) adopted and carried out by someone whose respectability is beyond question? Hmmm? The problem is the same regardless of how …
Night Shift at the Flying J
So let’s talk about nose rings for a minute. In our recent discussion of tattoos, the nose ring question developed into a significant sideshow, and so a few specific words should be addressed in this direction as well. The first thing to point out (and which I have pointed out elsewhere) is that nose rings …
No Relation Calm Down
When Joe Wilson shouted “you lie” to the president, we all discovered how little some folks like it when somebody speaks truth to power. And generally the folks that don’t like it are the ones who use phrases like “speaking truth to power.” Anyhow, I now read that Wilson, no relation calm down, has raised …
911
It has been eight years since the horrific attack on the World Trade Towers. If all you had to go on was our typical left/right tangled discussions of the event, you would conclude either that Obama struck the right note on his international apology tour, assuming in the background of his speech that America somehow …
Abraham Kuyper on John Calvin on the United States Congress
Here is a money quote, passed on to me by my son-in-law Luke, who got it from his dad, who is working through Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism. Kuyper is quoting from Calvin’s commentary on Samuel. “And ye, O peoples, to whom God gave the liberty to choose your own magistrates, see to it, that ye …