As I reflected on today's prayer, I had a flashback of sitting in a seminary class studying Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. As my professor was explaining the conflict in the Corinthian church, he described Corinthian believers as...
The enrollment cliff is coming to a college near you. The college-age population in America is shrinking, and universities are now feeling the squeeze. If you add higher tuition costs and increased debt load to the mix, you can appreciate why...
He was a career ambassador for Prussia (nineteenth century German Empire). He was good at what he did since diplomacy was his strong suit. Baron Christian Charles Josia von Bunsen (1791-1863) was appointed ambassador to Rome, having earned a...
Lady Elizabeth de Grave left church one Sunday despondent over the state of her soul. After listening to the preacher pronounce God's judgment for those who transgress the law, doubts about her salvation kicked into high gear. Maybe she was kidding...
Teaching was his "sacred calling." He tried his hand at preaching but soon realized his skills were best served by providing young African Americans with the best education possible. Benjamin Griffith Brawley (1882-1939) showed early academic...
John Harvard and his wife Anne sailed to America in 1637. John was assigned to lead a Boston church but died within the year of tuberculosis at the tender age of 31. He donated his library of four hundred books and half of his considerable estate...
Two teenage girls, Susan and Anna, were plucked from their swanky Manhattan townhome to relocate to a dilapidated farmhouse on a deserted island that years earlier had protected the Hudson River Valley from invading British forces during the...
It was a time of massive religious and political upheaval. England was in the throes of a civil war, and Christians were at each other's throats. Whoever was in charge, whether Protestants or Catholics, could find nothing good in each other and...
John and Amelia Schenck owned a farm in Deer Park, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati) during the Civil War. Their family farm also provided refuge for escaped slaves, aided by the Underground Railroad. John and Clara Ann Thompson fled their enslavement...
It may be the most vexing question in Scripture--why do the wicked prosper? David asks it in the Psalms (Ps. 73.3), as does Habakkuk (Hak. 1.3-4), and who can forget Job’s running debate with his friends over seeming injustice? The prayer Jeremiah...
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was the foremost theologian of his day. Many regard him as the first great Christian philosopher. His father urged him to go into politics, but Anselm wanted to study in a monastery. It was before the age of...
Leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church of the Netherlands offered Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747) an intriguing proposal. They needed a young, enthusiastic minister to lead four small churches in Raritan. Theodorus assumed Raritan was an...
People say, “Seeing is believing.” Not according to poet George MacDonald. “Seeing is not believing,” he said, “it is only seeing.” John records in his gospel an account of a man born with congenital blindness (John 9). Jesus restores his physical...
We have turned the Good Samaritan parable into a mushy morality tale. You know, be like the Good Samaritan and show kindness to people. We have tamed this provocative short story and blunted its subversive impact. Make no mistake, when Jesus first...
British Parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1869 to stop the spread of venereal diseases, especially among the Royal Navy. The law afforded police broad powers to arrest and detain any women suspected of prostitution and subject them...
He seemed ill-suited to pastor a church in a remote fishing village along the English coast inhabited by sailors earning their living from the sea. While sailors had minimal education, he was a first-rate scholar and accomplished poet. He brought...
He described himself as "timorous and averse to debate." You could have fooled me. I can't detect a trace of timidity in him when he was called on the carpet for refusing to comply with the Act of Conformity of 1662 (called the Glasgow Act in...
I came upon Sermons of the Great Ejection recently, nine sermons from well-known Puritan preachers delivered on the Sunday before the Act of Uniformity of 1662 became law. The Church of England had become the official state religion, and anyone who...