My response to chapter 6 won’t be that long because I agreed with a great deal of it. Jason does a good job nailing those who have jumbled up their Christian faith with their heartland, red state patriotism. When that particular jumble gets knocked, we should just let matters unfold. The United States does not …
Driving the Cultural Car
Chapter 5 is called “Subversive Sabbatarianism,” and addresses the countercultural nature of sabbath observance. It provides a great test case for Jason’s thesis because it is a command that has to do with living, breathing bodies, as well as with competing claims on those bodies. Unfortunately, I don’t think Jason sees this. First, the agreement. …
A Pretty Complete Cultural Transformation
Chapter 4 of Jason’s book is “The Power of Weakness.” In it, he points out, accurately enough, that Americans like underdogs just so long as they don’t have to be one. He also comments on a certain kind of evangelical body-builder posing down in the public square as evidence that we are more interested in …
Laughing at the Piltdown Man
I agree with Jason Stellman that after a rocky start, the discussion between the spearmen of our two tribal blogs is generally charitable. With him, I am grateful for this, and in that spirit am going to take it upon myself to start calling him Jason in these posts, thus inviting him to call me …
No Stinkin’ Geologists
We are going to get to some significant disagreements, I promise. But Chapter 3 was another pretty good chapter, with many trenchant observations about how contemporary Christians tend to look at the outside world. At least thus far, Stellman is great in stating and confirming his premises, and only off in what he thinks those …
The Relevance of Irrelevance
Chapter 2 of Stellman’s book was also quite good. It is entitled “The Irrelevance of Relevance.” The problems I would have with it are, I suspect, still in the background. But here he says a number of things I agree with wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. He doesn’t quote C.S. Lewis’ great line — “whatever is not …
Church of the Guttering Flame
The first formal chapter of Dual Citizens is really quite good. He begins where all thoughtful discussions of the church’s role in the world should begin, and that is with the question of corporate worship on the Lord’s Day. He has a true Reformed focus on the importance of Word and sacrament (p. 8). He …
From the Church Drinking Fountain
In the Introduction, Stellman argues for a couple of his foundational premises, wanting us to see a clear distinction between worship and life. The basic question he is seeking to answer is this: “What is the relationship between cult and culture, the church and the world?” (p. xviii). Stellman argues that theocracy requires two components …
The Cape and Beanie Make It Worse Somehow
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 …