Though First Things is often viewed as mired in the Catholic side of things, the truth is that this is an ecumenical publication intensely interested in the happenings of wider Christendom. From the founding of Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994 to Aaron Renn’s sociological reporting in recent years, inquiry into intellectual Protestantism and the various stirrings and movements that continue to form the foundational American religion has never been secondary.
This is why I am pleased to announce our latest project: The Protestant Mind, a newsletter about Protestantism authored by Dale M. Coulter, will launch next Tuesday, February 10. The Protestant Mind is about the intellectual, historical, and spiritual forces that have driven and still drive the continual reformation of American Christianity. Coulter is a frequent contributor to First Things, and uniquely situated to comment on the massive and diverse world of Protestantism. He writes,
One of the challenges of American Protestantism is to see the whole movement all at once. And yet that is the point of this newsletter. Growing up Pentecostal, my entrance into the big tent of Protestantism was through reading Louis Berkhof, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr in college. Little did I realize that these thinkers opened the door to the neo-Calvinism that dominated the evangelical world and neo-orthodoxy and Christian realism in the mainline. My seminary training took me further down the neo-Calvinism road, while my doctoral work opened the Barthian world of England and Europe. It was an introduction to the Protestant Mind that informed Protestantism in the mid-twentieth century. I hope to capture that mind—particularly its distinctive American hue—in this newsletter.
Coulter is an ordained minister in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and professor of historical theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He studied medieval theology at Oxford University, has written six books, and contributed extensively to ecumenical dialogue, including Evangelicals and Catholics Together.
I urge you to subscribe for free by clicking here or by visiting protestantmind.com. The Protestant Mind will hit your inbox twice a month, and won’t be available to read anywhere else.
This project is made possible through the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, allowing First Things to launch a series of newsletters about the topics that matter most to our readers. In December, we launched The Fourth Watch, a newsletter about Catholicism written by James F. Keating (subscribe here). The Jew From Nowhere, written by J. J. Kimche, will follow in the next month or two.
For now, subscribe to The Protestant Mind. There is much to discover.
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