Principled and Pragmatic (Part I/II)
“Did you know that conversion rates for companies using custom visual content are 7 times higher than companies that do not?” I could hardly believe my eyes when I first read these words. They were in the subject line of a message sent to our church email account. I was relieved when, upon closer inspection, I saw that it was not from a parachurch ministry, and the “conversion” to which it referred was not of the spiritual sort....
Recommended Books (Summer 2017)
Reading is a sacred act of creation and memory. Our ability to use words to call worlds historic and fantastical into existence is a part of God’s image in us. When we write, we create new worlds on the page that are fully realized only when our words are incarnated in the mind of a reader. Sometimes those worlds are florid products of our imaginations that are only tangentially tethered to the real world. These creations recall and...
What’s All the Fuss About “The Benedict Option”?
by Christa Hill with Matthew Steven Bracey For several years now, Rod Dreher, prominent conservative thinker and journalist, has been talking about the Benedict Option. For nearly as long, several of Dreher’s critics and allies have not had a clear understanding of what exactly he is proposing. Finally, Dreher published The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation in 2017. In this 262-page volume, Dreher...
Proving the Existence of Apologetics
Shortly after my conversion, I became enamored with apologetics, like many Christians my age. I would drive twenty minutes to the nearest Christian bookstore to survey their shelves in the hope of finding a new volume to catch my eye. As a sixteen-year-old, I remember purchasing and reading through Josh McDowell’s 743-page tome Evidence for Christianity. I was hooked. I knew I had confidence in my newfound faith, but I wanted more...
ANYONE CAN BE SAVED: Book Review
by Richard E. Clark From General/Arminian to Particular/Calvinist, Baptists have struggled to locate themselves along the theological spectrum. Some have unsuccessfully tried to avoid the debate, labeling themselves Calminians.[1] Others, however, have attempted to escape the paradigm altogether and articulate a unique theological identity for themselves. Anyone Can Be Saved (Wipf & Stock, 2016) is a collection of essays...
When Free Will Baptists Went Liberal (Part II)
In Part I, we began examining the Free Baptists’ relationship to Higher Criticism, particularly through Alfred Williams Anthony’s writings. In this piece, we’ll consider the influence of Higher Criticism at Bates College and Cobb Divinity School, as well as the Free Baptists’ interest in the Ecumenical Movement. This exploration will us a clear understanding of the theological status of key Free Baptist leaders and institutions in the...
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