O God, who in thy providence didst call Joseph Schereschewsky from his home in Eastern Europe to the ministry of this Church, and didst send him as a missionary to China, upholding him in his infirmity, that he might translate the holy Scriptures into languages of that land: Lead us, we pray thee, to commit our lives and talents to thee, in the confidence that when thou givest thy servants any work to do, thou dost also supply the strength to do it; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, Bishop and Missionary, 1906 pic.twitter.com/F0xkkbLRRH

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) October 14, 2023

omething more powerful than philosophical argumentation is on display here. You can’t argue someone into seeing the Grand Canyon’s beauty. But you can point and say, “Look.”

Perhaps morality is like that. Encounters with both betrayal and loyalty, selfishness and self-sacrifice, greed and generosity—these are the experiences that shape our moral views. Philosophy simply refines them.

This means that weighing the validity of moral realism is never merely an academic exercise. It’s one of the most urgent and consequential tasks we can undertake.

If moral realism is false, then our deepest moral convictions—about justice and kindness, oppression and cruelty—are just preferences. How we treat others is negotiable. The Holocaust isn’t evil, and the abolition of slavery isn’t progress. All this leaves victims of abuse, persecution, and exploitation not only with the pain of their suffering but also with the silence of a universe incapable of calling it wrong.

But if moral realism is true—if there really is a moral structure to the universe independent of human opinion—then the picture changes completely. Our longing for justice is not naive. Charity and love are truly good, and cruelty and deceit are truly bad. Each human being has inestimable worth.

In this way, The Good, the Right, and the Real is not only a philosophical argument but also a gentle plea for moral attention….

Read it all.

'If moral realism is false, then our deepest moral convictions—about justice and kindness, oppression and cruelty—are just preferences. How we treat others is negotiable. The Holocaust isn’t evil, and the abolition of slavery isn’t progress. All this leaves victims of abuse,…

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) September 22, 2025

During the past 20 years or so, however, less emphasis has been placed on urban mission and ministry in the Church of England, as new challenges have arisen in response to the decline in affiliation and religious observance. This has resulted in new “mission” attempts to reverse that trend, which have focused more on increasing the number of personal conversions to Anglican Christianity, and on novel approaches to church-planting.

Sadly, however, in 2025, high levels of economic and social inequality, deprivation, and sometimes even mental despair are still being experienced by many in towns and cities. This raises the question of how far we have come since 1985 in improving matters.

It was with this purpose in mind that we decided to commission a number of essays written by some of those who were involved in the publication and implementation of the report itself, and others who have been engaged in urban ministry and community-organising since then, which evaluate the importance of Faith in the City for the present day, and seek to open a debate on urban policy, theology, and practice.

This collection of essays examines the impact that the report had at the time of its publication; the changes that have taken place in the political landscape in the period since; the changes that have taken place in English society in the period since; and the changes that have taken place in the Church of England, including in its approach to urban mission, ministry, and welfare provision.

Read it all.

📉 From radical report to quiet retreat? Critics say the Church of England has sidelined urban mission in favour of growth strategies. Time to re-centre the margins.

✍️ Terry Drummond & Joe Ford in the Church Timeshttps://t.co/7s2uC1gDTZ

— Sacristy Press (@SacristyPress) September 8, 2025

Tolkien later wrote that he began creating his Middle Earth mythology – the foundation for the future “The Lord of the Rings” – while “in grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candlelight in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.”

Yes, the man who survived days huddled in shell craters and trenches in France would later write, in a blank page in an Oxford student’s exam book, these famous words: “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”

Tolkien and Lewis remain stunningly popular – in print and on digital screens. A graphic novel by John Hendrix, “The Mythmakers: The remarkable fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,” will soon become a feature-length animated film. Netflix recently began filming the latest movie and cable-television production based on “The Chronicles of Narnia,” the seven novels Lewis wrote for children and families. Another film linked to “The Lord of the Rings” – “The Hunt for Gollum” – is scheduled for 2026 release.

Loconte stressed that the faith woven into the works of Lewis and Tolkien was a sharp contrast to the despair and doubt found in many classic books after “The War to End All Wars,” which killed 16 to 22 million soldiers and civilians.

Read it all.

#Tolkien, #Lewis and great post-World War I myths https://t.co/Iepqr5gWB0

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) August 21, 2025

I think the single most important contribution that Vernon makes to the literature is his choice at the outset to take Blake’s visions, his encounters with angels, apostles, prophets, and even God himself, seriously: to take Blake at his word and to see where that word leads us. So many writers on Blake never leave the modern secular mind-set, and so they patronise Blake rather than learn from him. They psychologise or medicalise his visions and speculate about migraines or psychotic episodes, and, likewise, they treat his poetry as an aesthetic or literary artefact rather than, as Blake intended, a call to awaken from sleep and see the world anew.

Given Vernon’s expertise and experience as a psychotherapist, one might have feared that he would do the same. Not so. By taking Blake seriously as a visionary, a prophet, and a teacher, he has written an exciting and refreshing book, which offers us what he calls “a Blakean education” in how to live well, which he summarises under four headings: “first, savvy innocence, second, perceptual openness, third, confident imagination, fourth, fearless critique”.

These approaches to life are set out in a series of chapters that skilfully combine biography of the poet with close reading of the works that he was writing at the various stages of his life. 

Read it all.

”…the Blakean insights that Vernon sets out so lucidly in this book are prophetic for our own age… he unveils the deeper powers at work and shows us a way out.” Thanks @malcolmguite for a great review @ChurchTimes https://t.co/OMPgQEDBcR

— Mark Vernon (@platospodcasts) August 1, 2025

Carr concludes Superbloom by proposing we look for ways to turn aside and form alternative communities on the edges of these digital networks. “Maybe salvation, if that’s not too strong a word, lies in personal, willful acts of excommunication,” he writes, in “the taking up of positions, first as individuals and then, perhaps, together, not outside of society but at society’s margin, not beyond the reach of the informational flow but beyond the reach of its liquefying force.” 

He’s right, but it’s the togetherness aspect of this response that is particularly vital, for communication technologies by their very nature pose challenges that demand cooperative responses. What Carr does not say is that communities and even institutions already exist, all over our country, that are uniquely equipped to rise to this challenge: Christian families, schools, and churches.

We should be taking the lead in embodying alternative ways of communicating and feeling together. We need to practice developing a different kind of consensus, the consensus of members of the church conforming to the mind of Christ (Rom. 12:2; 1 Cor. 2:16), not members of an increasingly secularized society oriented around New York and Silicon Valley. This type of consensus is the stability we need to avoid fresh waves of vertigo as dramatic technological development, particularly around artificial intelligence, continues apace.

Read it all.

“It’s our commitment to living as members of Christ’s body that will enable us to serve a techno-addled society and call it to a better way of life,” writes @jeff_bilbro.https://t.co/04inICPPOo

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 25, 2025

The reason I do not hesitate to call my experience representative of a multitude of people is that how Packer reached me was the printed word. This is the story of Packer’s life and ministry. Packer never held a prestigious professorship at a famous university, nor did he fill a high-visibility pulpit permanently. Furthermore, he lived before the age of social media and the instant dissemination they confer. When I interviewed Packer for my biography of him, he affirmed his steadfast refusal throughout his life to cultivate a following.

Additionally, Packer was a soft-spoken and unassuming man. No assignment was too small or humble for him. During one of the summers that the ESV translation committee met in Cambridge, England, Packer accepted an invitation to speak to a group of local young people in a church member’s living room. One of the translators and his wife smuggled their way into the meeting. They later reported that the living room was so crowded that some of the young people sat under a table.

In view of this absence of ordinary channels for becoming widely known, how is it possible that surveys of influential evangelicals conducted early in the present century found Packer near the tops of the lists? The answer is that J. I. Packer achieved his prominence through the printed word and its uncanny ability to reach ordinary people in the ordinary circumstances of life. Some of Packer’s books, such as his first book (Fundamentalism and the Word of God), began as a series of addresses to students and lay people. His signature book Knowing God, which sold a million and a half copies, began as a series of articles on basic Christian beliefs for a religious magazine. J. I. Packer is a classic case of someone who was faithful in little and thereby found himself set over much. I cannot think of a better validation of the effectiveness of Christian publishing than the career of J. I. Packer.

Read it all.

#OTD July 17, 2020:
Death of J.I. Packer evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America. Known for his best-selling book, Knowing God, written in 1973,… pic.twitter.com/AXFXN4x828

— ☧ Today in Christian History (@HistoricalRook) July 17, 2025

“In Philadelphia, the same day as the British landing on Staten Island, July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress, in a momentous decision, voted to ‘dissolve the connection’ with Great Britain. The news reached New York four days later, on July 6, and at once spontaneous celebrations broke out. ‘The whole choir of our officers … went to a public house to testify our joy at the happy news of Independence. We spent the afternoon merrily,’ recorded Isaac Bangs.”

“A letter from John Hancock to Washington, as well as the complete text of the Declaration, followed two days later:

“‘That our affairs may take a more favorable turn,’ Hancock wrote, ‘the Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the connection between Great Britain and the American colonies, and to declare them free and independent states; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the head of the army in the way you shall think most proper.’ “Many, like Henry Knox, saw at once that with the enemy massing for battle so close at hand and independence at last declared by Congress, the war had entered an entirely new stage. The lines were drawn now as never before, the stakes far higher. ‘The eyes of all America are upon us,’ Knox wrote. ‘As we play our part posterity will bless or curse us.’

“By renouncing their allegiance to the King, the delegates at Philadelphia had committed treason and embarked on a course from which there could be no turning back.

“‘We are in the very midst of a revolution,’ wrote John Adams, ‘the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.’

“In a ringing preamble, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the document declared it ‘self-evident’ that ‘all men are created equal,’ and were endowed with the ‘unalienable’ rights of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ And to this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

“Such courage and high ideals were of little consequence, of course, the Declaration itself being no more than a declaration without military success against the most formidable force on Earth. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, an eminent member of Congress who opposed the Declaration, had called it a ‘skiff made of paper.’ And as Nathanael Greene had warned, there were never any certainties about the fate of war.

“But from this point on, the citizen-soldiers of Washington’s army were no longer to be fighting only for the defense of their country, or for their rightful liberties as freeborn Englishmen, as they had at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and through the long siege at Boston. It was now a proudly proclaimed, all-out war for an independent America, a new America, and thus a new day of freedom and equality.”

—-David McCullough, 1776

Happy birthday, America!

Wishing our Army Reserve Soldiers, their families, and the nation a great Fourth of July!#July4th #IndependenceDay pic.twitter.com/NXRd77Mqd3

— U.S. Army Reserve (@USArmyReserve) July 4, 2025

Without considering these wider questions, it is hard to see how the politics of abundance can work. Even if one accepts that liberals have been complicit in the undermining of government, it doesn’t make it any easier to undo the damage. Trust in politicians and officials is exceptionally low, and with good reason. Klein and Thompson argue that liberal politicians would benefit from taking more risks and being able to show results, and they cite the example of the Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, rushing through the rebuilding of the I-95 bridge in Philadelphia after a disastrous accident. As they acknowledge, however, his scrapping of procurement rules, and the autonomy given to project leads to bypass normal safety procedures, could have gone horribly wrong. If it had, voters would have been unlikely to give Shapiro the benefit of the doubt. In the UK, during Covid, the vaccine programme bypassed normal procurement rules to great acclaim, yet attempts to do the same for protective equipment led to widespread fraud and a big scandal. Much of the worst regulation is created reactively – in response to scandals, to assuage an angry public – and it is not hard to see how taking more risks could backfire in such an adversarial political system.

One of the best chapters in Abundance looks at the way in which scientific funding in the US is granted ever more cautiously to academics who – and projects that – already have a track record, thus failing to support riskier ideas that could lead to paradigm-shifting breakthroughs. The authors also highlight the absurdly bureaucratic grant processes that lead to scientists spending a vast amount of time filling out forms and managing obsessive audits of their spending. The same is true in the UK. But there is a reason that this happens – this is public money, and it is easy to embarrass politicians by highlighting even small amounts of fraud or by “outing” a silly-sounding project in the media. The political environment is what decreases risk appetite.

Ultimately, “abundance” is a highly optimistic political philosophy – even utopian in Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s version – and we do not live in an optimistic age. It is hard to get people excited about nuclear fusion and driverless cars when even the most basic services don’t seem to work, and public spaces look ever shabbier. These authors are making an important point about the rigidities of regulation and the cost of procedural sludge. But to make progress, we need a much more coherent and broader framing that tackles the deeper defects of our economic and political systems. Assuming that the problem is primarily about over-regulation mistakes a symptom for the cause.

Read it all (subscription).

'California is home to 12 per cent of the US population and 50 per cent of the country’s unsheltered homeless people.'

Sam Freedman (@Samfr): The centre left has joined the populist right in despairing of good government
https://t.co/JdxdLEDE5n

— The TLS (@TheTLS) July 2, 2025

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?

The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.

But to live,–to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered,–this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour,–this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.

When Tom stood face to face with his persecutor, and heard his threats, and thought in his very soul that his hour was come, his heart swelled bravely in him, and he thought he could bear torture and fire, bear anything, with the vision of Jesus and heaven but just a step beyond; but, when he was gone, and the present excitement passed off, came back the pain of his bruised and weary limbs,–came back the sense of his utterly degraded, hopeless, forlorn estate; and the day passed wearily enough.

Long before his wounds were healed, Legree insisted that he should be put to the regular field-work; and then came day after day of pain and weariness, aggravated by every kind of injustice and indignity that the ill-will of a mean and malicious mind could devise. Whoever, in our circumstances, has made trial of pain, even with all the alleviations which, for us, usually attend it, must know the irritation that comes with it. Tom no longer wondered at the habitual surliness of his associates; nay, he found the placid, sunny temper, which had been the habitude of his life, broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads of the same thing. He had flattered himself on leisure to read his Bible; but there was no such thing as leisure there. In the height of the season, Legree did not hesitate to press all his hands through, Sundays and week-days alike. Why shouldn’t he?””he made more cotton by it, and gained his wager; and if it wore out a few more hands, he could buy better ones. At first, Tom used to read a verse or two of his Bible, by the flicker of the fire, after he had returned from his daily toil; but, after the cruel treatment he received, he used to come home so exhausted, that his head swam and his eyes failed when he tried to read; and he was fain to stretch himself down, with the others, in utter exhaustion.

Is it strange that the religious peace and trust, which had upborne him hitherto, should give way to tossings of soul and despondent darkness? The gloomiest problem of this mysterious life was constantly before his eyes, souls crushed and ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent. It was weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and sorrow. He thought of Miss Ophelia’s letter to his Kentucky friends, and would pray earnestly that God would send him deliverance. And then he would watch, day after day, in the vague hope of seeing somebody sent to redeem him; and, when nobody came, he would crush back to his soul bitter thoughts,that it was vain to serve God, that God had forgotten him. He sometimes saw Cassy; and sometimes, when summoned to the house, caught a glimpse of the dejected form of Emmeline, but held very little communion with either; in fact, there was no time for him to commune with anybody.

–Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

#OTD, 1850: Harriet Beecher Stowe arrives in Brunswick. She wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in her husband Calvin's study in Appleton Hall (he was Class of 1824 and taught theology at Bowdoin) and at their home on Federal St, often hosting students to discuss drafts of the book. pic.twitter.com/6IlBvkhoDl

— Bowdoin College (@BowdoinCollege) May 25, 2020

The High Court rejected school board’s description of the books as merely “exposure to objectionable ideas” or as lessons in “mutual respect.”

The Court said the storybooks “unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender.” The books are designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated, and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected….

“I’m encouraged by the Court’s ruling today to protect the rights of parents to raise their children according to their deeply held convictions, even as they are educated in public schools,” said Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

“As the primary teachers of their home, parents should have the right to opt their children out of curriculum that actively undermines their religious convictions regarding marriage, family, gender, and sexuality. Religious families should be accommodated so that parents do not have to worry that their children will be indoctrinated in an educational setting.”

Read it all.

“Supreme Court sides with religious parents seeking to opt out of LGBTQ storybooks.”

Yup.

The 6-3 decision could have big implications for schools nationwide.

Good decision. I’m always struck by just HOW oppressive heavy-handed “inclusion” proved to be. https://t.co/dH83SutF2C

— Frederick M. Hess (@rickhess99) June 27, 2025

E

very few weeks, it seems, we hear statistics about an American epidemic of loneliness, the purposelessness of young men, an increase in anxiety and depression in younger generations, and growing political tribalism. But we haven’t identified reliable pathways through the morass.

Meanwhile, our church cultures are not immune to these larger challenges. Although the number of those leaving the church may be stabilizing, Pew reports the “stickiness” of religion is declining. What can account for a disconnect between the gospel the church proclaims and the lives we often lead? What has captured our imaginations?

It’s possible for Christians to hold broadly similar doctrines while differing dramatically in how those doctrines shape their lives and outlooks. Accordingly, Christian leaders who care about discipleship in 21st-century American evangelical churches should be asking not only what we believe but how.

I’ve come to believe that much of our discipleship gap results not from an informational deficit but from an imaginative one. Although we need deep familiarity with theological truths, we first need to form a more robust Christian imagination so we can incorporate these truths into a coherent way of life. This has less to do with knowing facts, important as they are, than with learning to think, dream, and love more Christianly.

Two recent books on beauty and the imagination are helpful starting points.

Read it all.

“To behave and believe Christianly, we need a certain imaginative flexibility, one that can embrace the already-and-not-yet grammar of the gospel,” writes @aahales.https://t.co/kSDQAIMFeu

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) June 18, 2025

Based on the 2022 Cambridge Hulsean Lectures, this short book (c.50,000 words) is a finely argued text that successfully covers a wide range of issues. Imagination is seen at work in ordinary, everyday perception in the interaction between what we suppose ourselves to see and how this is modified and restructured by more social determinants such as wider inherited assumptions and presumed roles. This is to reject the existentialist search for an internal, self-sufficient authenticity, and instead to find “Christian faith . . . as a mode of seeing the world which beholds in that world an unseen depth of goodness, significance and love which we do not make but in which we can participate”.

In the next chapter, the late plays of Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett are then used to illustrate how we can be challenged to revise those roles, sometimes in a more explicitly Christian direction, while, in the subsequent chapter, the way in which the visual artist or poet encourages new ways of perceiving (depth perception) is explored, and the parallel drawn with Christian faith in its capacity to “invest that world imaginatively (or inspiredly) with an unseen depth of divine intention and spiritual significance”.

Read it all.

Book review: David Brown considers the part played by the imagination in theologyhttps://t.co/y892qeqqoe

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 16, 2025

Three

very different people — C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and T. S. Eliot — all thought that Charles Williams was the most genuinely good person that they had ever met. Eliot for example wrote: “He seemed to me to approximate, more nearly than any man I have known familiarly, to the saint.” On the other side, it has to be noted that he had a troubled marriage and, like Eliot, a “Beatrice” figure in his life.

Seventy years ago, the works of Williams, with their strong Christian themes, were widely appreciated. Today, he is little known, though an excellent Wikipedia article on him indicates the extraordinary range of his writings and the influence that he had not only on Eliot and Lewis, but on Dorothy Sayers and Dante studies more generally — all this while he had a full-time job at the Oxford University Press.

Stephen Barber however, has remained a big fan not only of his novels, but also of his much more difficult poetry. In this book, he assembles writings of his own on Williams, of varying length and purpose….

Read it all.

Book review: Richard Harries reflects on lesser-known work of a spiritual influencerhttps://t.co/HBvAOS57BX

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 10, 2025

‘The Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit that has always intrigued me. They called Him An Geadh-Glas, or “the Wild Goose.” I love the imagery and implications. The name hints at the mysterious nature of the Holy Spirit. Much like a wild goose, the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed.

An element of danger and an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious at first earshot, I cannot think of a better description of what it’s like to pursue the Spirit’s leading through life than Wild Goose chase. I think the Celtic Christians were on to something that institutionalized Christianity has missed out on. And I wonder if we have clipped the wings of the Wild Goose and settled for something less—much less—than what God originally intended for us.’

–Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase: Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2008), pp. 1-2

Let me share with you my favorite depiction of Pentecost from Ethiopia! ❤️‍🔥

The caption on top says: "How the Paraclete descended upon the Apostles on the Fiftieth Day and they drank the medicine of the Holy Spirit."

Ethiopia, 15th c. #apostles #pentecost #africanart pic.twitter.com/8EsVtuuptp

— EthiopicManuscriptArt (@ArtEthiopic) June 9, 2025

In the classroom, MacIntyre followed the example of Socrates, who demonstrated to those in his company the depths of what they did not know. My first graduate class with him was on twentieth-century ethics. I read all the books for the fall semester the summer before, so I thought I was ready to impress. On the first day of class, he began in stern British schoolmaster style, “I’m Alasdair MacIntyre, but if you don’t already know that, you probably shouldn’t be in this class.” Unlike other professors, he did not address us as “Christopher” or “Rebecca,” but as “Mr. Kaczor” and “Ms. DeYoung.” The only exception was “Master Resnick,” who had gained his MA already. MacIntyre announced that in order to earn an A on a paper, we would have to write an essay of the caliber that he would put his own name on it. An A minus meant he would almost put his name on it. My first paper came back with a grade that I had never before received. Indeed, a grade I had never before seen: B minus minus.

A philosophical version of a Marine boot camp instructor, MacIntyre left us in much better shape than when we began. As Lee Marsh put it, “When I met Alasdair MacIntyre, I realized how much I did not know and why I should know it.” We learned that there was such a thing as a stupid question. One grad student asked, “What are the Thirty-Nine Articles?” MacIntyre replied, “Do you happen to know where the library is? It’s not too late to learn.” We were kept continually off balance, often not knowing where the jokes ended and the serious warnings began. One day, Alasdair announced, “I happen to be one who believes torture is not always wrong—something you may want to remember.” He warned us, “Never call me at home unless you want to no longer be a student in the graduate program.” This admonition was entirely unnecessary as most of us were afraid to speak with him even during class time. Graduate students brave enough to visit his office, dark as a cave and lit by a solitary lamp, found it adorned with a Gallic cross and a photo of the Jewish-born philosopher Edith Stein, who died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. One day, having finally earned paper grades in his classes better than B minus minus, I ventured into his office to ask for his coveted letter of recommendation. It took courage to request one. He told one grad student, “I can certainly write you a letter, but it is the kind of letter that keeps you from getting a job.” Fortunately, his letter of recommendation for me was not that kind of letter. 

Not only did he help us on the job market, MacIntyre’s virtues gave his students an example to emulate. When doing a directed readings class with one undergraduate, MacIntyre remarked that there was a recent article in French very much relevant for their discussion. Unfortunately, the student couldn’t read French. So the next time they met together, MacIntyre provided the student with a translation he had made of the article. Alasdair had a great love for American football, especially Notre Dame football.

Read it all.

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)

Requiescat in pace pic.twitter.com/Ta89InMBX3

— Chad Pecknold (@ccpecknold) May 22, 2025

In the past few years, Americans have grown generally more positive toward the Bible, but that doesn’t mean they’re reading it more.

According to a Lifeway Research study, U.S. adults increasingly view the Bible as a book worth reading multiple times, but few have actually done so.

More Americans describe the Bible as true, life-changing and helpful today, compared to a 2016 Lifeway Research study. Additionally, more than 2 in 5 Americans (44%) say the Bible is a book to read over and over again, up 4 points from the previous study. Yet 9% say they’ve read it all more than once, unchanged since 2016. Still, half of Americans have engaged with the Bible beyond just a few stories.

Read it all.

NEW RESEARCH: In the past few years, Americans have grown generally more positive toward the Bible, but that doesn’t mean they’re reading it more. https://t.co/AQ1x8mDsLd

— Lifeway Research (@LifewayResearch) May 13, 2025

Jipp’s view is that Paul wants to offer “a robust theory of how relation to Christ is humanity’s supreme good, and is, therefore, necessary for human flourishing”, and he is right to insist on the importance of facing the inevitability of death”, as our “fundamental human predicament”, which means that in this life human flourishing is unobtainable because of the undeniable presence of sin and death (“this present evil age” — Galatians 1.4). But for Paul, of course, death is not the end; our only hope is that God has raised Jesus from the dead. Paul sees the possibility of a “transformed moral agency”, whereby we are seen to think, act, and feel in a way that is orientated towards, and therefore unified by, loving and worshipping God.

This is a very rich and powerful doctrine, in which Christ is seen as the “foundation of a new epistemology for persons-in-Christ”. Love is absolutely central here, making of us a sacred community, related to Christ and to one another, where the Church has to be a reconciling and forgiving community.

Jipp offers a very attractive vision of how “persons-in-Christ” can speak to our world. What, in your view, does it mean for any of us to flourish and live a good life in the world? I strongly recommend this book; it is not easy reading, but sheds interesting new light on the remarkable apostle Paul and his very telling use of athletic and military imagery.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Book review: Nicholas King looks at being in Christ in St Paul's theologyhttps://t.co/baVGtgLjKc pic.twitter.com/ICUNsKhtA0

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 21, 2025

‘Christian faith is less about providing a set of cast-iron winning arguments, more about an invitation to “come and see“.’

–Rowan Williams, Discovering Christianity: A guide for the curious (London: SPCK, 2025) p. 93

Contemplative prayer classically finds its focus in the awareness of God at the centre of the praying person's being— and, simultaneously, God at the centre of the whole world's being: a solidarity in creatureliness.
— Rowan Williams, ‘On Being Creatures’ (76) pic.twitter.com/sa3CPJJf1H

— Jacob Sherman (@Shermanicus) January 27, 2025

In her introduction to your latest book, Jesus Changes Everything, Tish Harrison Warren mentions something many Christians are concerned about: that we live in a post-Christian world. She’s wondering if we actually are living in a pre-Christian world and whether that might not be such a bad place to be. What’s your take on the time in which we live and the opportunities in front of the church?

Well, the mainstream Protestant church is dying. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It makes us free. I mean, for some time people argued that the world would go to hell if it were not Christian. That may be the case. But being Christian doesn’t mean you need a Christian America. 

What I think we’re experiencing is the ultimate working out of nihilism, which so often goes with liberalism. Liberalism is the presumption that you should have no story except the story you chose when you had no story.

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In an interview with @Plough’s Charles E. Moore, Stanley Hauerwas meditates on the necessity of the gospel, the politics of the kingdom, and the high demands of sanctification.https://t.co/XI9F2ySH5C

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 11, 2025

I have read many books by Alister McGrath, renowned scientist and theologian. I have appreciated all of them and, indeed, reviewed one very positively in these columns only a year ago (Books, 23 February 2024). This, though, is the best I have read (Feature, 21 February). It is quite simply brilliant, a must-read for those who want to reflect deeply on the whole question of belief. It will be particularly helpful to those who want to be able to defend their own. I remember Rowan Willams being quoted as saying something along the lines that it could be such a relief not to be made to feel foolish for embracing belief. No one who has read this book need do that.

The intention of the author is consider belief in general, not just religious belief. Demonstrating clearly that it just won’t do to pretend that we live in a “purely factual, belief-free world”, he concludes that “believing is not only intellectually defensible but existentially necessary” (his italics). He offers many fascinating references from a variety of disciplines as, with characteristic clarity and accessibility, he presents a highly sophisticated argument.

In powerful testimony, McGrath explains how, having been raised in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, he gave up on religion. His first love was the natural sciences; he became an atheist with a strong interest in Marxism. It was as an Oxford undergraduate — ironically, through reading the atheist Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy — that he began to realise that it was possible to hold beliefs without being able to prove them and, in fact, that to live life to the full it was imperative to do so. “Only shallow truths can be proven,” he writes, “not the profound existential, moral and spiritual beliefs that bestow dignity and significance upon human life.”

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"It is quite simply brilliant, a must-read for those who want to reflect deeply on the whole question of belief." @BishopJohnInge reviews Why We Believe: Finding meaning in uncertain times by @alisteremcgrath https://t.co/njISQN0hnN

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 7, 2025

To understand Douthat’s method, recall a scene from the end of the third Indiana Jones film. Indy is faced with a choice: Let his father die or take a leap of faith. The leap in this case is literal, a physical step into a chasm with nothing to hold him up. He takes the step, and by a miracle of movie magic, doesn’t fall. There was a bridge in front of him all along, invisible to the human eye.

For some, this is a picture of true faith: a passionate, even reckless jump into the unknown, based on blind trust, not reason. Douthat demurs. As he writes, “Joining and practicing [some faith] is fundamentally a rational decision, not just an eyes-closed, trust-your-friends-and-intuitions jump.” You can and should consider the case in your mind.

Moreover, whatever the social benefits of church—and they are many!—they aren’t the place to start. They’re a byproduct of the thing itself, and that’s of interest only if it’s true. That’s why Douthat opts to “start with religion’s intellectual advantage: the ways in which nonbelief requires ignoring what our reasoning faculties tell us, while the religious perspective grapples more fully with the evidence before us.”

This is not a case for mere Christianity, then, so much as “mere religion.” Though Douthat ends the book with a chapter explaining why he is Roman Catholic, his aim is to clear the ground for religious commitment in general, to show why Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews as much as Catholics and Protestants are not exotic residue of a superstitious past.

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Christianity is having a moment.

Intellectuals are converting. Atheists are softening. Agnostics are hungry.@DouthatNYT’s “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious” is a response to this moment and to the readers he’s trying to reach. https://t.co/UfEYYzZxbb

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 11, 2025

But when our institutions are weak and frayed, as many say they are now, the mature response is to root out bureaucratic rot while also strengthening our common bonds—the approach of a spade in one hand and sword in the other we see in Nehemiah 4:17. We defend and build simultaneously. We cannot simply critique church without seeking its peace and purity. We cannot tear down without also building up. We cannot sever spiritual growth from the manner and place in which Jesus says it takes place: the church.

Yuval Levin recently reminded us in the journal The New Atlantis that such institutional building is others-centered. We must take attention away from self to build for other (future) people. Levin’s criticism is sharp: “The inability to value those other people and judge them worthy of our work and sacrifice is a characteristic failing of a decadent society.” When we focus exclusively on our self-experience to the detriment of others, in the present or future, our cultural artifacts resemble a stagnant pond. There is no life there. 

In 2020, Ross Douthat identified American society as being in a period of decadence, “something that comes on civilizations when they’ve reached a certain stage, and it’s not clear where they go next.” Decadence, Douthat believes, happens after the ladder of success has been climbed: a sort of stalemate of cultural production and dialogue. Movies rehash the same stories, and sequels rule the day. We often see this stagnation in form before we see it play out in content.

Blue Like Jazz’s form felt new and edgy for young millennials and Gen Xers in 2003. In hindsight, the fruit it bore is that of a decadent society where the self is ultimately authoritative, where individuals self-select into churches that feed their values (rather than sharpen like iron on iron), and where our Christian message is no different from the world’s—if we stay in the church at all.

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US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades.

Average reading scores deteriorated among students who took the Congressionally-mandated assessment in 2024, according to results released Wednesday from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“This is a major concern,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test known as the Nation’s Report Card every two years. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”

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US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades. https://t.co/mHk2GPQyId

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) January 29, 2025

Readers interested in the growing diversity of the Christian story will find it useful to consider Shaw’s work alongside another recently published volume, The Palgrave Handbook of Christianity in Africa from Apostolic Times to the Present. Though focused mainly on African Christianity, it features several articles on the work of Black missionaries. Noteworthy contributions come from historians like Brian Stanley (who examines the important role of Black missionaries in Africa), David Killingray (who shows how emancipated slaves served the missionary movement), and Kimberly Hill (who considers how the concept of “Ethiopianism” spurred Black efforts at evangelization).

Studies like these offer a richer and fuller picture of the diversity of Christianity. Africans and African Americans embraced the gospel, transformed it in significant ways, and then made remarkable contributions to the growth of Christianity. Even today, we are only now beginning to appreciate the contours of this story. As Killingray notes, even the “evangelization of Africa” was “in the hands of Africans” and “often out of sight of European missions.”

Historians are now bringing these stories into the open, casting new light on the prophetic remarks of King David in Psalm 68:31–32. In the words of the King James Version, “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God” and sing the praises of the Lord.

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Sermons, letters, diaries, journals.

A new book sifts through documents to bring to light the nineteenth-century history of African American missionaries.https://t.co/momIunqmmF

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 23, 2025

Neither N. T. Wright, author of major original theological research such as The Resurrection of the Son of God or The Climax of the Covenant, nor Tom Wright, author of the popular series . . . for Everyone (including two slim volumes, Acts for Everyone), needs any introduction. The current volume springs from a series of lectures first delivered in Oxford in 2023 and elaborated in Houston, Texas, during that summer. It is typical of the author’s informal and cheerful spoken style; the reader experiences him challenging, correcting an imaginary audience, almost singing the occasional musical illustration.

Clearly the product of wide learning, the book is not itself a work of scholarship, but, as it claims, a challenge. There are brilliant nuggets, such as the bracketing of Acts at beginning and end by emphasis on the Kingdom of God restored to Israel or the critical sketch of the Church at Corinth, “arrogant, puffed up, casual, chaotic, soft” because they avoided persecution, or the claim that worship of the gods then was like electricity today: no household could function without it. But the real joy of the book is its confident, free-ranging suggestions for further explorations: e.g. a new Temple theology.

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(2009 [London] Times) Tom Wright–The Church must stop trivialising #Easter https://t.co/QRZfgvbKEq #easter2019 #anglican #theology #apologetics #21stc pic.twitter.com/iJmw4MoY9g

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 22, 2019

What can we say about The Widening of God’s Mercy?

 In the light of the points noted in the course of this review we have to say that Chris and Richard Hays do not offer a persuasive argument in The Widening of God’s Mercy.

They do not show that the biblical laws were revised or that different laws contradict one another.

They fail to recognise that in Isaiah 2 and 56 the advent of universal peace and the inclusion of foreigners and eunuchs is dependent on the nations and particular individuals submitting to God’s law

They fail to show that God changes his mind and admits to having given his people bad laws.

They fail to show that John 16 talks about further revelation through the Spirit that supersedes biblical teaching.  

Finally, they fail to show that rules, boundaries and theologies are rethought in the Bible, they misrepresent the thought of Karl Barth, they say that LGBTQ people need to be included when the New Testament says that they already are, and they fail to distinguish between welcoming people and affirming their behaviour.  

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Here's my review of Richard & Christopher Hays' new book "The Widening of God's Mercy" for @TGC.
They haven't found new evidence that changes what the Bible says about same-sex sex. They're offering a sub-theistic view of God to justify their conclusions.https://t.co/17acFfKTHI

— Rebecca McLaughlin (@RebeccMcLaugh) August 29, 2024

Before the service starts on Sunday morning at San Diego Reformed Church, the building fills with the sound of singing. Sean Kinnally, an associate pastor, leads a 45-minute Psalm-sing so the congregation can practice reading music together and using printed hymnals.

“We’re seeking to add more and more hymns—it’s a more robust form of worship,” Kinnally said. “There has been incalculable growth in the singing at our church.” 

San Diego Reformed is in the process of shifting its worship toward hymnal-aided congregational singing. The congregation is part of what appears to be a growing number of churches working to recover the practice—never entirely lost, but not as popular as it used to be—of singing from books.

Hymnals offer perceived permanence and stability in a musical landscape that changes quickly and often. The decision to reintroduce congregations to hymnals is often an ideological one, especially for churches that made the transition away from them in recent decades.

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A number of churches are choosing the printed page over lyrics projected onto a screen.

“Hymnals offer perceived permanence and stability in a musical landscape that changes quickly and often,” said Dan Kreider, the composer of the “Sing! Hymnal.”https://t.co/MfajqRkS5w

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) October 20, 2024

By Williams’s estimation, our societal disregard for God’s image in mothers and children has a far-reaching impact. It means that we see pregnancy as a sickness to be prevented or solved by means of birth control or abortion. It means we reduce our children’s existence to an “assembly-line life,” obsessing over educational achievement and resisting the reality that “children, like all people, are unpredictable individuals and are not made for the convenience of their parents.” It means we force new moms back to work too early, pitting their careers against their children. 

Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic begins by describing contemporary problems. But disdain for mothers and children, Williams demonstrates, was also characteristic of antiquity. Drawing on myths, literature, and histories from Greek and Roman writers, she describes a past in which women were sexually exploited, infants were left “exposed” on “village dung heaps,” and anyone who couldn’t achieve military victory on the battlefield was a second-class citizen by default. 

It’s Christianity, she argues, that changed all of this—that gave us the human rights we take for granted, that blessed the meek and lowly instead of kowtowing to the powerful. “It is because of two millennia of Christian valuing of human life,” she states forcefully, that “we do not delight in the suffering of the weak.” Both the life of Christ and the writings of the church fathers demonstrate that “the church is responsible for caring for the bodies and souls of the neglected and the abandoned at all ages and life stages, because their lives are priceless.”

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In western post-Christian society, humans are treated more like commodities than image bearers.

In ‘Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic,’ @NadyaWilliams81 uses ancient and modern sources to show how Christians can value life amidst an empire that seeks to dehumanize it. pic.twitter.com/ErT36b1P0n

— IVP Academic (@ivpacademic) October 15, 2024