Despite the disappointments and mistakes of the past, I’m convinced that we have everything we need to tell a different story. First, despite the rise of political sectarianism, Americans, including many Christians, are fighting against this anti-social imaginary. They do…
Search Results for: idol
(CT) Our Attraction to Idols Remains the Same, Even When the Names Change
Are the temptations to idolatry faced by God’s people in the Old Testament the same ones Christians encounter today? Obviously, we give the idols different names. But as you analyze Baal worship in the Old Testament, comparisons aren’t hard to…
William Witt–Eating and Idols: A Sermon About the Church in a Post-Christian Setting
How then might what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians provide guidance for us as we seem to be moving into a post-Christian culture? Should we listen to Rod Dreher or to Jamie Smith? First, I would say that Paul does…
(CT) Thomas Kidd reviews Robert McKenzie's The First Thanksgiving–Stop Idolizing the Pilgrims
In The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History, Robert Tracy McKenzie takes the historical challenges posed by the Pilgrims as his starting point. I cannot recall ever reading a book quite…
A CT Editorial–In Guns We Trust: Fear and idolatry are our real gun problem
Let’s debate less and dialogue more. Most Americans, whatever their stance on gun control, want less violence, fewer family accidents, less gun-related crime. However, minds often are clamped shut against the other side’s proposals and statistics. Instead of using research…
[Andrew Wilson] The Case for Idolatry: Why Evangelical Christians Can Worship Idols
[I really hope it’s obvious that this is a parody, but if not: it is.]For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to worship idols. It’s not that my parents raised me that way, because they didn’t; I was…
Archbishop Welby's sermon in Ireland: Economic idolatry+incapacity to cope w/ difference
…I want to pick two challenges in our environment in these islands, but generally across Europe and North America. Two challenges which undermine the presuppositions on which we depend as Christians to give us a common language to address the…
(NYT) Prime Real Estate at the Cemetery Is a Plot Next to an Idol
For Mr. Goines and others with similar ideas about where they want to be when they die, it is a different kind of hero worship, and puts a new twist on the real estate cliché “location, location, location.” It could…
(CT) Thomas Kidd reviews Robert McKenzie's The First Thanksgiving–Stop Idolizing the Pilgrims
In The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History, Robert Tracy McKenzie takes the historical challenges posed by the Pilgrims as his starting point. I cannot recall ever reading a book quite…
Justin Taylor–An Interview with Andy Crouch about the Idol and Gift of Power
I have heard a lot of sermons, and read a lot of books, articles, and blog posts, on imitating certain attributes of God and the incarnate Christ (e.g., compassion, love, goodness, mercy, humility). And I have heard a lot and…
Tim Keller–The Signs of Political Idolatry
One of the signs that an object is functioning as an idol is that fear becomes one of the chief characteristics of life. When we center our lives on the idol, we become dependent on it. If our counterfeit god…
David Novak–Idolatry and injustice: A Jewish appreciation of Reinhold Niebuhr
It seems to me that Niebuhr’s appeal to many nonreligious people was because he treated idolatry as the root of the injustice they felt was so wrong and had to be opposed. Niebuhr did not require them to make a…
Billy Graham–We still worship 'idols' like money, power and possessions
Q: My cousin took us to her church when we visited her a few weeks ago, and the preacher said something about people today being just as idolatrous as people in ancient times. What do you suppose he meant by…
Archbishop Rowan Williams' FT Op-Ed –Time for us to challenge the idols of High Finance
One is something we have now heard clearly from many sources ”“ a plea endorsed by the Vickers Commission that routine banking business should be clearly separated from speculative transactions. The rolling-up of individual and small-scale savings into high-risk and…
(Chiesa) Sandro Magister: The New Polytheism and its Tempter Idols
“Polytheism”: this word echoed like thunder, last October, in a speech by Benedict XVI at the synod of the bishops of the Middle East, the very birthplace of the one God made man, Jesus, and of the most powerful forms…
Living Church–Presiding Bishop: ”˜Idolatry’ of Individualism Causing Church Crisis
Professor Christopher Seitz of the Anglican Communion Institute noted that the presiding bishop needed to define her terms. If by the “Western heresy” she meant the individualism of the Enlightenment, the priority of the individual conscience as articulated by Kant,…
Henry G. Brinton: Learning from Calvin on fiscal idolatry, diplomacy and democracy
I think we all know what a false god the stock market has turned out to be. Not that investments are always a bad thing, but the market should never be confused with God. “Every one of us is,” warned…
Gene Robinson accuses opponents of 'idolatry'
The openly gay bishop whose consecration led to the crisis over sexuality in the Anglican Communion has accused his evangelical opponents of “idolatry”. The Bishop of New Hampshire, the Right Rev Gene Robinson, is to defy the Archbishop of Canterbury…
Mark Shea: Patriotism As Idolatry
The moment we put the creature before God, it stops being a means of grace and becomes instead an idol. We can do this with virtually any creature, but three of the most popular idols are money, sex and power.…
From the Morning Bible Readings
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But fornication and all impurity or covetousness must not even be…
From the Morning Scripture Readings
And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, You shall be holy; for I the LORD your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and…
From the Morning Bible Readings
Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering…
From the Morning Bible Readings
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols, however you may have been moved. Therefore I want you to understand that…
From the Morning Bible Readings
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven…
(CT) The Dangers of a Psychedelic Gospel
We have now had years of headlines talking about new research into using psychedelic drugs for therapy and, along with it, an increase in spiritual seekers. Studies about the use of psychedelic drugs for therapy have been growing for years,…
(FP) Bari Weiss Talks to Walter Russell Mead–Are We Tipping into a New World War?
Now, with antisemitism in America, historically, we’ve had several peaks. There was one in the 1890s and another in the 1930s and 1940s, but these were some of the worst times in American history. During the Great Depression, unemployment reached…
From the Morning Bible Readings
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols, however you may have been moved. Therefore I want you to understand that…
From the Morning Bible Readings
I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same supernatural[a] food…
(ABC Aus) Luke Bretherington–Brexit as Theodicy and Idolatry
The life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, rather than economic prosperity, political sovereignty or national greatness, are the condition and possibility of movement into new kinds of relationship with God and neighbour. Yet this conversion demands that as…