Archive

Christians typically read Romans 13 as a stand-alone passage. And it reads pretty well that way—a whole political theory in a few sentences. The problem is, when read in...

Yesterday I discussed parts of Shane Claiborne’s Biblical arguments in Executing Grace in favor of abolishing the death penalty. While I don’t think there are strong practical reasons to...

In Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us, Shane Claiborne argues for the death penalty’s abolition. He wants “to build a movement of...

How do, or how should, Christian Americans answer the question of the moment: “Does the welfare of non-Americans count in the creation of U.S. economic policy? Secondly, to what...

Mary gets more attention than usual this time of year, at least in Protestant churches. But Richard A. Shenk points out in his new book, The Virgin Birth of...

Russell Moore’s 2016 Erasmus lecture, “Can the Religious Right be Saved?,” provided a wide-ranging indictment of the Religious Right—of its often unreflective baptism of GOP talking points, its theological...

I wrote last week about some of the contributions made by R. R. Reno’s new book, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society. Today I quibble. To be sure,...

In his new book, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, First Things editor R. R. Reno provides a unifying analysis of seemingly disparate facets of the current crisis...

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville discusses what he thought was a strength of American Christianity—and it is a strength, after a fashion. But the passage also illuminates a problem...

In the August/September print edition of First Things (Subscribe!) R. R. Reno comments on the puzzling fact that bathroom access for transgender students ranks as high as it does...

Sudan largely dropped out of the news after the secession of South Sudan. Independence for South Sudan came on the heels of reduced conflict in Darfur and, earlier, the...

Mercersburg theology has a small but devoted following among evangelically-oriented Calvinists. It was a nineteenth-century movement centered in the German Reformed seminary at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Leading scholars John Williamson...

I just sent the John Kasich presidential campaign another $100 contribution today. A grain of sand from me to weigh on the side of Kasich staying in the presidential...

Yesterday I wrote about the broad argument in Richard B. Hays book, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. It’s a useful book, although oddly positioned. On...

I’m not entirely sure who the intended audience is for Richard B. Hays recent book, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. I don’t intend that as...