In 2007 Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, released a documentary entitled Friends of God. She, and a television crew from HBO, toured American evangelical hotspots, mostly in the South and Inter-Mountain West including Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas, Ted Haggard’s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Jerry Falwell and Liberty University.
Pelosi presents an Evangelicalism that is pervasive, politically engaged, passionately partisan, single (or simple) minded, and kinda tacky. (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…)
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…)
What do you remember about your dad? I remember that when I was a little kid my Dad would get down on all fours and block the doorway to my room, daring me to try and get by him. I would attempt to climb over him and giggle wildly when he made grunting noises like a pig and snuffled his nose in my shirt.
A 77 year old German man remembers that “he loved his father as any child should.” His dad wanted “to make his own family because he had nothing as a child. He was strict, but he had a very big heart.” A postcard that he received as a teenager while at a boarding school was particularly special to him. His dad wrote, “To my dearest, darling child…I would like to come and see you next weekend, the 14th. Would you be able to see me then? With all my love, father.” (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…)
Dr. Watt, my adviser at Temple, had me start with C. Allyn Russell’s Voices of American Fundamentalism, which gives seven biographies of first generation fundamentalist leaders. Russell starts the series with a look at the life and ministry of J Frank Norris, the Texas Southern Baptist minister best known for shooting an unarmed man in his study while preparing a sermon one Saturday afternoon. (more…)
