Reflections on God … Man … Life
As I ponder the current crisis in Ukraine, instigated by a Russian despot, I think back to what I wrote in a book I published in 2015. The aim of The Witness and the President was to analyze the lives and beliefs of Ronald Reagan and Whittaker Chambers and try to figure out which man was more correct about the future of freedom. Reagan was the supreme optimist. That doesn’t mean he didn’t see threats clearly, but he had faith… Read more »
Russian oppression of Ukraine is nothing new. Back in the days of Stalin, there was an attempt to wipe out all Ukrainian resistance to his policy via the genocide route. A book that documents this attempt, The Harvest of Sorrow by historian Robert Conquest and published in the 1980s, spells out clearly what Stalin sought to do and what he actually accomplished with respect to widespread death and destruction in Ukraine, especially in the state-sponsored famine of 1932-1933, known as… Read more »
I returned from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College about a week ago. I was there for two reasons: to hear a lecture from historian Mark Noll regarding C. S. Lewis’s connections with Americans (many of you know I wrote a book on that topic); to delve into more research for a hoped-for future book that will examine Lewis’s understanding of history–its significance, its limitations, and how Christians should incorporate it into their comprehension of God’s redemption plan…. Read more »
One practice I’ve incorporated into morning devotions is to read excerpts from devotional works throughout the history of the church. They are varied, ranging from the very early years to twentieth-century followers of Christ. Most recently, I’ve been reading selections from the journal of John Woolman, an American Quaker of the eighteenth century. At the end of the reading this morning, I was struck by his comments after meeting with fellow Quakers who owned slaves. Woolman was passionately opposed to… Read more »
Study C. S. Lewis long enough and you will come to the realization that there are gems to be found in some of his works that most have overlooked. We tend to concentrate on the well-known writings, which is understandable, but we also need to look deeper into the lesser-known pieces. One such gem can be found in a collection of Lewis’s essays in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Originally written as an introduction to a proposed book, “De… Read more »
My upper-level history adjunct offering this semester at Southeastern University is a course I’ve taught only once before but am eager to do so again. It’s the final one I developed when I was full-time at the university: Religion and the Presidents. The aim is to examine and analyze each president’s religious beliefs (or sometimes the lack thereof) and personal character to see how those beliefs showed up in their personal lives and in their public policies when they became… Read more »
A phrase I’ve heard throughout my life, “putting the cart before the horse,” comes to mind for me when I survey the Christian response to politics in our day. Or at least the response that many Christians are making with respect to the current political scene. The phrase means “reversing the proper order of things,” and I see that more and more. Christians should always put the Gospel and the Kingdom of God before anything else, and we can sometimes… Read more »