Peter J. Leithart

Ecclesiastical anarchism has a long history in American Christianity, but few have gone quite as far as James H. Rutz, whose new book, The Open Church, had a prominent advertising spread in World, an evangelical news magazine. To his credit, Rutz has identified some of the glaring . . . . Continue Reading »

The New Testament’s epistle to the Hebrews was written to Jewish converts in the early Church who had shrunk back from their Christian confession when faced with persecution. To encourage them to persevere in the new covenant in Christ, the writer shows how the details of the Old Testament . . . . Continue Reading »

Protestant evangelicalism, it seems, has a symbiotic relationship with American denominationalism. Evangelicals trace their deepest roots to the Protestant Reformation, which was, among other things, a church split. In America, experiential revivalism and disestablishment have combined to liquidate . . . . Continue Reading »

“Vatican II,” George Weigel writes in Freedom and Its Discontents, “posed a basic challenge to the many monisms, religious and secular, ancient and modern, that continue to beset human life and the cause of human freedom.” The Council mounted this challenge to the monistic cast of . . . . Continue Reading »

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A history of the relation of sacramental theology and practice to Western intellectual and cultural history has yet to be written. The notion that such a history would be worth writing might seem quaint in our day, but there are hints that the enterprise would be a fruitful one. What, for example, . . . . Continue Reading »

A friend of mine, more radical and pessimistic than I, claims that it is illegal to be a Christian in the United States today. Though I find that assessment overstated, not to say hysterical, it can hardly be doubted that public expressions of Christianity have, in the last several decades, been . . . . Continue Reading »

Christians see an ultimately knowable universe while acknowledging their own . . . . Continue Reading »

Exploring the influence of televangelism on American religion in his book The Struggle for America’s Soul, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow presents a typical, though hypothetical, case study: Mabel Miller. Mabel lives alone, thousands of miles from her family. She grew up in a . . . . Continue Reading »

In his 1989 novel The Storyteller, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian novelist and erstwhile presidential candidate, describes the Machiguenga, a scattered and wandering Amazonian tribe, the various clans of which are unified by the activities of the mysterious “hablador,”or “talker.” . . . . Continue Reading »