Dale M. Coulter

Evangelical Protestantism will continue to grow at a slow pace, primarily through an increase in ethnic minorities.  Continue Reading »

The Reforming Catholic Confession acknowledges the many divisions within Protestantism and calls for a return to its catholic roots.  Continue Reading »

As we celebrate 500 years of the Reformation, we should remember that a new reformation is occurring right before our eyes. Continue Reading »

This art of verbal jousting does not fit in the postmodern world, so concerned with providing safe spaces. Continue Reading »

Taylor’s prescription for our secular age remains connected to his reading of Christian tradition, in particular his understanding of the communion of the saints. Continue Reading »

Kennedy at his inauguration and medieval theologians agree: humans owe their existence to something beyond themselves, and they should live in light of that debt. Continue Reading »

Readers of First Thoughts will know by now that Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence by Shūsaku Endō was released in select theaters on December 23. The novel warrants the attention it is getting. Set in the 1640s at the end of Japan's “Christian Century” (1549-1639), Silence is a haunting journey through one priest’s struggles to remain faithful in the most challenging of circumstances. Continue Reading »

The season of Advent reminds Christians that uncreated nature grounds, heals, and elevates created nature, which marks the foundational principle of the city of God. Advent has a politics within it. Continue Reading »

Before November 8, numerous voices suggested that the Religious Right was in its death throes and that no intervention could resuscitate it. Then Donald Trump got elected. Continue Reading »

The recent issue of Modern Age contains a commemorative essay by Susan McWilliams marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics. McWilliams reminds readers that Lasch offers a positive analysis of populism that speaks to the current political malaise. As part of his critique of the cult of progress, Lasch attempted to ground politics in the intuitions of the petty bourgeoisie and the populist tradition that gave life to those intuitions. He saw in petty-bourgeois culture a moral realism that recognized the cost and limits of human existence, reinforcing a healthy skepticism of progress. The “small proprietors, artisans, tradesmen, and farmers” of the petty-bourgeois world were the least likely “to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven.” Continue Reading »