If you’re looking to cry in empathy with an author’s grief and hardships yet sense an undercurrent of hope, this memoir might be the book for you. Jonathan Tepper grew up as a missionary kid in Madrid, Spain. His parents tried to “save” people for heaven in a new church, but failed. Then they pivoted their ministry to help people overcome heroin addiction, and they slowly grew a church and social service. However, the HIV/AIDS…
I’m a huge fan of French polymath Blaise Pascal simply because he provokes thought. Besides his scientific and mathematical contributions, he died before forming his greatest philosophical work into a coherent defense of the plausibleness of Christianity. Instead, they were left as a series of fragments for us to ponder in the following centuries. Simply titled Pensées (or “thoughts”), they give us insight into the spiritual life of one of history’s greatest scientific geniuses. This…
Søren Kierkegaard’s writings have long entranced me since I first ran across it as a teenager. He brought a thoughtful and philosophical approach towards the Christian life that didn’t center around being merely “churchy.” Indeed, as this biography testifies, he ran into conflicts with the institutional church throughout his life. Clare Carlisle details how Copenhagen received this eccentric bachelor before his eminence grew after his death. She particularly focuses on his love life as the…
Our Sunday School class chose this book to discuss over the summer, and I led discussions. I found the discussion guide and videos from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture helpful. We discussed the topic of religion in the public square shortly after the 2024 US election, which made moderating conversation challenging. Christian nationalism is ascendant today, a phenomenon only alluded to in Volf’s book. In his era, Muslim nationalism was the main threat,…
First, I want to acknowledge the nobility of this book’s purpose. HIV is a dehumanizing condition that only worsens with stigma. Today, both women and orphans are disproportionately affected, and both groups have traditionally been objects of the church’s compassion. However, such a compassionate orientation hasn’t been the case with HIV; instead, stigma reigns, especially in countries hardest hit by the epidemic. This book represents a direct call for the church to instead reclaim its…
Nadia Bolz-Weber co-founded a Lutheran church in downtown Denver, Colorado. Her life story itself is interesting, but this book tells the stories of her parishioners. Most of these people do not fit the traditional mold of a “Christian saint” yet have life experiences that integrate with the Christian Gospel. Yet she finds God’s touch in each one of them. Therefore, she writes openly about how they have affected her and taught her. Nadia’s central point…
Increasingly, Christian churches have become echo chambers that only amplify a given leader’s viewpoint. Their messages resemble denominational perspectives or, recently, boost an interdenominational framework loosely resembling political ideologies. To many, like myself, such a framework conveniently forgets about the diverse, historic nature of Christian theology. Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, was once a megachurch but shrank in membership as decades wore on. It revived itself through becoming a conversational center where people participated…
The Hebrew religion has an interesting role of a “prophet” (navi). Along with the Law and the Writings, it serves as one of the big three sections of the Hebrew Bible. Only a couple of other religions, usually Canaanite, have a similar personality type of ecstatic truth-tellers. Presbyterian theologian Walter Brueggemann, borrowing from Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel, describes the essential prophetic feature as an imagination of an alternative reality. Prophets apply that imagination against a…
Like many Americans, John Lewis’ casket coming across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 2020 evoked tears in me. He was one of the last great leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement to die. With the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets, the baton had been passed to a new generation. I grew up a white Republican in conservative South Carolina and did not knew who John Lewis was until much later…
Setting: The 1925 Scopes Trial in East Tennessee Ninety-nine years ago in 1925, the famous Scopes trial occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, in the state’s eastern part, halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville. The state legislature had recently made it illegal to teach human evolution in public schools. The rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s genetic mechanism for evolution had brought these concepts to the front of the American mind. At the ACLU’s encouragement, one teacher John Scopes deliberately…