Our Philadelphia correspondent alerted me to an arresting invocation of J. Gresham Machen and H. L. Mencken — Baltimore’s two bad boys (one on religious, the other on cultural grounds) — at the G-rated Gospel Coalition of all places. The post surprised me not for the appeal of Machen to those who channel Edwards via… Read More→
From our Canadian correspondent comes word of a 1926 New York Times headline that reported on one of J. Gresham Machen’s sermons about the condition of American Protestantism. Church Teaching Scored–Professor Machen Says the World Is Full of Quack Remedies For Sin–Calls for More Pessimism Not many people — believers or not — find pessimism… Read More→
Apparently the Brothers B have dyslexia, though I am open to other explanations for how they garble other peoples’ writings and ideas. Tim Bayly has written yet another blast of their loud trumpet against 2k theology. This time they identify with the plow boy who knows right from wrong and they pit the common person… Read More→
If Reformed Protestantism is basically evangelical then how do you account for the major divisions that have occurred among American Presbyterians? The fundamentalist controversy apparently has nothing at stake for the Reformed/evangelical consensus since Machen and other conservative Presbyterians were fighting liberalism and EVERYONE knows that liberalism is bad. (Of course, the problem here is… Read More→
While working on a talk for a conference last week hosted and attended by academic conservatives, I revisited the Manhattan Declaration. My point was that so many who think themselves conservative think they also take religion seriously by injecting faith into public affairs. But what ends up happening most often is that the complexities and… Read More→
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church turns 75 today. Festivities have so far included lectures, presentations from the General Secretaries of the Assembly’s standing committees, a banquet tonight, and the opportunity to purchase handsome coffee mugs. Thankfully, the Assembly’s organizers resisted the chief temptation of our time — t-shirts (which are fine to wear under shirts with… Read More→
The first installment in this series about this blog was to clarify what a blog is. One aspect that I did not mention was that the more successful blogs are provocative – that is, they agitate readers and that’s why people come back. The most successful blogger in the world arguably is Andrew Sullivan, the… Read More→
Over at Ref21, Ligon Duncan supplies a drive-by quote from Herman Bavinck that the Mississippi pastor directs against John Williamson Nevin. Here is the the Bavinck quote: In a comparatively sound church life, it is possible to assume that as a rule the children of the covenant will be born again in their youth and… Read More→
I had the wonderful opportunity to speak last night at the WSC conference, Christianity & Liberalism Revisted. My topic was “The Perennial Machen,†which I changed to “The Perennial Problem with Machen.†Since evangelicals, neo-Calvinists, and even secular do-gooders malign the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, I attempted in one point to explain… Read More→
Three Strikes and You’re Out
The piece by David Noe on Christian education (or the lack of it) has attracted a number of heated responses and none of them give much confidence that the proponents of Christian education are going to do something that is distinctly Reformed or decidedly educational. But these responses show the real weaknesses of w-w thinking… Read More→