Category: Christians & Culture

Commentary, from a Biblical perspective, on current events that are primarily cultural. There may be some overlap with politics and government, but the emphasis is on broader societal developments apart from politics, which also includes analysis of specific individuals.

Shall We Retire the Term “Evangelical”?

  

I call myself an evangelical. What does that mean? “Evangel” means good news; an evangelist is someone who spreads good news; evangelicals, therefore, are those who believe in spreading the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So I like the term. Yet it has come under scrutiny lately within the church because it seems to be losing its original meaning. Some are questioning whether it ought to be dropped as a description of those who follow Christ. Most… Read more »

Unity, Union, & a Great Awakening

  

Today, I offer an excerpt from one of my books, If the Foundations Are Destroyed: Biblical Principles and Civil Government. The topic is the principle of Unity and Union and how imperative it is to first have internal unity before attempting an external union. The initial step in the formation of unity in the colonies came from God. It was called the Great Awakening. The Awakening was a revival of the Christian faith that began sporadically in the 1720s and… Read more »

An Appeal to Evangelicals

  

This post is not intended as a hit piece on Donald Trump. It’s simply a statement of a few facts and an appeal. It’s now pretty well established (and I waited on this one) that Trump had a brief affair with a porn star (celebrity name: Stormy Daniels) after marrying Melania and four months after the birth of their son. It’s also pretty well established—particularly by the abrupt silence of the woman in question after having given interviews earlier—that she… Read more »

That Which Comes Out of Our Mouths

  

But among you, as is proper among the saints, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or impurity or greed. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or crude joking, which are out of character, but rather thanksgiving. Eph. 5:3-4 Those are instructions to Christians, the called-out ones, the saints (yes, that word is used in the passage). It’s not a suggestion, but a God-given standard for our lives. The world around us doesn’t care about that… Read more »

Our Own Version of Newspeak

  

I read George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 way back sometime in my youth. Orwell, a socialist who saw the potential tyranny of socialism (read his Animal Farm for a withering treatment of Soviet-style communism under Stalin), displayed in 1984 just how bad it could get. One of the words he introduced in the novel was Newspeak. It has now become part of our vocabulary. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term this way: Propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the… Read more »

That Writing Urge

  

I am a teacher and a writer, and have been now for three decades. Earlier in life, I never envisioned myself as a teacher; in fact, I minored in history as an undergraduate, avoiding making it my major out of fear that I would end up having to teach. Well, God had a different path for me, and I can now see that He developed that desire to teach even when I was trying to ignore the calling. I think… Read more »

The Confessing–and Faithful–Church

  

Every day I receive an e-mail from the Christian History Institute with a feature story about some aspect of church history, highlighting the faithfulness of Christians in ages past. Today’s was especially poignant to me as it revealed the stark difference between those who link their Christianity too closely to the State and those who stand for righteousness when the State does not. This account centers on Nazi Germany, but the principles remain the same for any nation: After Hitler… Read more »