Pensacola Christian College requires almost all students to attend the “Campus Church.” While touring the magnificent auditorium, I asked the tour guide if students were required to be members of the Campus Church. My question earned me a kick in the ankle from my wife and a smooth answer from the tour guide. The guide quickly told our group that the college would never require students to be members of the church; rather the students had the [mandated] opportunity to attend the same services and hear the same preachers in the same building that just happens to be on the school’s campus. (more…)
The week after our wedding Jes and I did what any honeymooning couple would do when staying in Pensacola Beach, Florida; we took a tour of Pensacola Christian College. (more…)
Theological liberals have found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place during the once-a-decade Anglican convention known as Lambeth Conference 2008. For the past five years, the Anglican Communion / Episcopal Church (I shall refer to the joint group as Anglican from now on) has suffered repercussions from the election of openly homosexual clergyman Gene Robinson to the bishopric of New Hampshire. (more…)
When I was a kid I devoured science fiction. At the tender age of 7 or 8, my dad introduced me to his 1960s copies of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, a monthly magazine which published pure science fiction stories alongside actual scientific articles. To be honest I usually skipped over the hard science and dove into the worlds of Poul Anderson, Ben Bova, Robert Heinlein, Christopher Anvil, and of course Isaac Asimov. (more…)
Last week the Board of Westminster Theological Seminary voted 18-9 for the suspension of Dr. Peter Enns from the faculty effective at the end of the schoolyear. The Board passed the issue to the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) reccommending that Dr. Enns’ tenured position be terminated. (more…)
Recently Mark Dever’s 9Marks ministry published a forum of conservative evangelicals and moderate fundamentalists. 9Marks asked the panel “What Can We Learn from Fundamentalists?”
The participants gave a list of both positive and negative lessons they thought could be learned from Fundamentalism. A basic problem reared its ugly head and my debater background reacted; few of the participants ever offered a workable definition of Fundamentalism, with the exception of Mark Minnick. (more…)
Richard Niebuhr gets less attention in evangelical circles than his older brother Reinhold. The two were born to a modernistic Lutheran pastor in Missouri, earned degrees from Yale, and became noted neo-orthodox thinkers.
In Social Sources Richard argued that sectarianism within Christianity is caused by social, economic, and political pressures. For example, he pointed to Weber’s thesis about the Protestant work ethic in order to argue that the capitalist spirit aided the advance of Calvinism. Niebuhr also believed that socio-economic tensions contributed to a class division between “respectable” middle class churches, like the Lutherans and Calvinists, and lower class Anabaptists and Methodists. (more…)
When I was an impressionable 9th grader at Bob Jones Academy my parents were notified in a faculty staff meeting that the upcoming University opera needed more extras for the production of Verdi’s Aida. Since I was, and proudly remain, a nerd, the idea of trying out appealed to me. Thankfully the audition consisted only of measuring the girth of my torso and legs. Of course, any schmo who happened to share my post-pubescent hunkiness was equally qualified to be an extra, but that did not diminish my happiness upon being accepted. (more…)
I just finished rereading Larson’s examination of the 1925 Scopes Trial, which was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History. Larson is a Harvard law graduate who also earned a PhD in history at the University of Wisconsin.
Larson’s Pulitzer was well-deserved (I’m sure he is relieved to know I approve). He displayed no discernable bias in his treatement and presented the foibles of both creationists and evolutionists with equanimity. (more…)
I admit I was skeptical when I began reading The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism by Carl Henry, a founder of Fuller Theological Seminary and of neo-evangelicalism. Growing up at Bob Jones University imbued me with suspicion of my new-evangelical brethren and their engagement with the “world.” My worst fears appeared to be confirmed when I read Harold Ockenga’s introduction which calls for “a progressive Fundamentalism with a social message.”
But by the time I finished the book (a relatively quick read at 89 double-spaced pages, though taking far longer than the page count would indicate owing to Henry’s obtuse writing), I was convinced by parts of Henry’s thesis. (more…)
