Peter J. Leithart

I have occasionally given students a “pop culture” survey that tests their knowledge of movies, music, and TV. They do scarily well. Some of them remember advertising jingles and silly sitcoms from my childhood. Then I give them a Bible trivia quiz, asking them to identify the daughters of Zelophahad or give the weight of Goliath’s armor or identify Jeremiah’s birthplace. On that test they typically do, shall we say, less well… . Continue Reading »

A couple of weeks ago, the fourth of our ten children got married. We’re down to three at home, our version of empty-nesting. And it’s not over. Soon enough, the other children will leave, and my wife and I will be back where we started, just the two of us. Then we’ll both die, and the Peter Leithart family will vanish. This is as it should be. Families exist to die… . Continue Reading »

Once upon a time, everyone followed a simple, relaxed, guilt-free religion, uncluttered by rites and dogmas. Along came the greedy priests, who complicated and corrupted everything. They added ceremonies and demanded payment for their performance, elaborated precise doctrines, and persecuted deviants, and in all this perverted the God-and-me immediacy of true religion. It’s as predictable as gravity: From the beginning, every religion devolves from primitive purity to decadent ritualism… . Continue Reading »

When the Dutch prince William of Orange took the English throne in 1688, he sparked a poetry war. Originally a supporter of William, the journalist John Tutchin became disenchanted and in “The Foreigners” attacked the Dutch as a people “void of Honesty and Grace, / A Boorish, rude, and an inhumane Race” and chided his countrymen for giving to such “excrement” a “Portion in the Promis’d Land, / Which immemorially has been decreed / To be the Birth-right of the Jewish [that is, English] Seed.” Daniel Defoe, a Whig supporter of the Revolution, responded with a poem of his own … Continue Reading »

It seems that denominationalism has had its day. A 2009 Barna survey found that denominational commitments have gone squishy in mainline Protestant churches, and Evangelicals don’t fare much better than the rest. After a similar survey, Ron Sellers of what was then Ellison Research said that Protestants are as “loyal to their denominations as they are to their toothpaste … Continue Reading »

My youngest son and I just finished a road trip. We revved up our overloaded Toyota Camry in Idaho, stopped in Sheridan, Sioux Falls, Chicago, Columbus, and Pittsburgh, and continued across Pennsylvania to New York City before taking a sharp right to Philadelphia and Washington on our way to Birmingham. Sixteen states, eight hotels, and over 3,800 miles in two weeks, and only one lost piece of electronics… . Continue Reading »

Christianity has resources of skepticism that would make Nietzsche and Foucault blush. Read a few pages of Augustine or C. S. Lewis, and squirm as they surgically strip away the layers of self-justification and self-deceit and self-righteousness that you didn’t know you had wrapped on. They are true masters of suspicion. … Continue Reading »

Western Christians celebrated Pentecost last Sunday, while Eastern Christians look ahead to Pentecost in late June. It’s the season of the Spirit, a time to muse on the politics of Pentecost. When Israel’s prophets predict the future coming of the Spirit, their next thought is almost always about the renewal of creation … Continue Reading »

In a recent talk at the Wheaton Theology Conference, the Kenyan Anglican Archbishop David Gitari told of a Christian ministry that hired an ambulance to assist employees at a factory where injuries were being reported regularly. Eventually, someone had the bright idea of finding out why so many accidents were happening in the first place. … Continue Reading »

Ephraim Radner is one of those rare theologians whose work can be described as “relentless.” His most recent book, A Brutal Unity, may be his most relentless yet. Radner dismantles every self-congratulatory, self-protective ecclesiology that blinds Christians to what is self-evident to everyone else: The Church is shattered… . Continue Reading »