One of the most fascinating features of the Bible is that it tells what is ahead for our world. Both Old and New Testaments contend that history is moving to a climax and that the sovereign God is in ...
A friend of mine, lecturing in a theological college in Kenya, introduced his students to “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” This, he said, was a movement of thought and scholarship that in its ear...
The witness of Christian history is that the ambitious need quiet hearts. We need ancient paths for our modern, busy lives that teach us to be settled with God in an unsettling world.
Matthew 22:39, Philippians 2:3-4, 1 Corinthians 10:24, Romans 15:1-2, Galatians 6:10, Romans 12:10, Acts 20:35, Matthew 25:35-40, Isaiah 58:6-7, Proverbs 19:17, Luke 10:30-37, James 2:15-16, 1 John 3:17, Proverbs 31:8-9, Matthew 25:40, Acts 11:29-30, 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-35, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26
Pursuing the common good has been a strong marker of the Christian church from the very beginning. The early church had many habits that they became known for, of course—including meeting frequently, ...
On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...
Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...
More than half of all Christian adherents in the whole history of the church have been alive in the last one hundred years. Close to half of Christian believers who have ever lived are alive right now...
The African Methodist Episcopal Church began when Richard Allen and Absalom Jones demanded an equal place in the Methodist Episcopal Church and were refused. In their preaching and teaching, jus...
In this short excerpt, Father Roderick Strange speaks to those who want to write off the church. It is written primarily to a Roman Catholic audience, but it relates quite well to Protestants as well:...
Job 1:42, Daniel 3:, Matthew 5:10-12, Romans 8:35-39, Psalm 23:4
John Chrysostom, the eloquent Church Father, had incurred the wrath of the Byzantine (aka Roman) Emperor Arcadius. Enraged, the emperor consulted his counselors on how to punish the powerful preacher....
A Joyful Easter Proclamation John Chrysostom (344-407) was the Bishop of Constantinople and is remembered as a Doctor of the Church. He was a renowned preacher (his name, Chrysostomos means "...
Every ministry context-whether in the family, a church, or another organization-has a complicated structure of relationships. The capacity to act and to influence others is largely a result of the his...
In this short excerpt, the abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass describes the tension between faith in Christ and faith in a form of Christianity willing to enslave an entire race of peopl...
Romans 3:4, Isaiah 5:16, 1 Peter 3:15, Isaiah 42:8
Apologetics (from apologia in Greek) is a “word back,” a reasoned defense mounted on behalf of the one we love who is innocent but has been falsely and unfairly accused. Faith desires to let God be Go...
Good liturgy, whether formal or informal, ought never to be simply a corporate emoting session, however “Christian,” but a fresh and awed attempt to inhabit the great unceasing liturgy that is going o...
1 Kings 8:28–30, Daniel 6:10 , Nehemiah 1:4–6, Luke 18:1–8 , Acts 16:25–26 , 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18
When one prays the hours, one is using the exact words, phrases, and petitions that informed our faith for centuries. . . . We are using the exact words, phrases, and petitions that were offered just ...
Luke 3:8, 1 Samuel 16:7, Isaiah 1:17, Micah 6:8, James 2:1
In the Christian faith, we frequently take for granted how radically Jesus evens the playing field. No matter your wealth, your position, let alone your race or gender, all of us are equal in God’s ey...
We have the same biblical texts that earlier generations of Christians thought their way through, of course, but our reflections are shaped by six unique factors. (1) Especially in the Anglo-Saxon wo...
On August 20 and September 5, 1977, two spacecraft named Voyager were launched. Eventually leaving the solar system and heading into deep space, they represented a revolutionary and promising breakthr...
Esther 4:14, 1 Samuel 15:22-23, Proverbs 24:33-34, Matthew 9:37-38, 2 Corinthians 6:2, Psalm 95:7-8
In 1258, Islam stood on the brink of collapse, with Egypt as its last stronghold. While Islam was struggling, the vast Mongol Empire, under the rule of Kublai Khan, stretched from the Black Sea to the...
Titus 2:7-8, Jeremiah 2:4-9, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 41:
While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...
Did you know that the history of the word “fellowship,” is, rather simply, a relationship among fellows? The idea of a fellowship being that two or more people have been bonded together in some signif...
The world that we enter in the book of Acts is the most modern in all the Bible by virtue of its urban identity. Most of the action occurs in the famous cities of the Greco-Roman world, not in the loc...
There Are No Ordinary Things J. R. R. Tolkien tells a short story about an ordinary fellow who just wants to finish a painting. Over time, he is constantly distracted by the requests of his neighbors...
What do you say to someone who is suffering? And what do you say when it is not just that they are in pain, but that they are being harassed and singled out for violence or slander because of their fa...
What do you say to someone who is suffering? And what do you say when it is not just that they are in pain, but that they are being harassed and singled out for violence or slander because of their fa...