Book Reflection: The Making of Stanley Hauerwas
Recently I read The Making of Stanley Hauerwas, a book adapted from David Hunsicker’s doctoral dissertation. Hunsicker is a Presbyterian minister in Alabama and former theology professor. Published dissertations usually aren’t a type of reading material that gets me very excited, but the subject matter of this one intrigued me. For the last thirty years, Stanley Hauerwas has been among the most discussed and debated theologians in the...
Pastoral Care to Persons with Suicidal Ideations
I suspect that, for the vast majority of people, trauma and mental illness go unattended and unprocessed.[1] Some recent talk has occurred about mental illness and the need to reach out to those dealing with this issue, but still these struggles are mostly kept secret. We face a problem where suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 123...
Pining for the Glory Days: A Review of Randall Balmer’s Evangelicalism in America
by Joshua R. Colson The term evangelicalism means many things to many people. In contemporary usage, the term often refers to a bloc of white, conservative Christian voters. Indeed, pundits and pollsters regularly identify evangelicals with the Republican Party, free markets, and politically conservative causes. The identification of evangelicals with the Republican Party is apparently justified by the fact that eighty-one percent of...
Recommended Books (Spring 2020)
What an odd spring we have all had! Amid all the clamor about viruses and social distancing, one of the unintended benefits of quarantine has been increased free time (at least for some of us). Let’s not waste such a moment with insipid social media scrolling, binge-watching old (or new) television series, or shallow reading (what Charlotte Mason referred to as twaddle). Instead, we should steward this moment well with good books and...
Living on the Fringe: Navigating a Culture without a Religious Center
by Ron Davis Is it correct to assert that the United States is no longer a Christian nation? If we’re judging based on census answers, then no, the majority of the U.S. still claims Christianity. The answer is yes, however, if we are concerned with what occupies the center of the nation’s cultural thought and life. A type of postmodern thinking, which holds that individuals are the arbiters of truth for themselves (in particular times...
Christ’s Work in Housework
I knew even from childhood that I wanted to be a mom; a stay-at-home mom; a homeschooling-stay-at-home mom. I knew that was an important job. After all, children are people! I wanted to be there for all the important moments of the little people’s lives, helping to shape them. However, what I never would have said I wanted to “grow up to be” is a homemaker. Now, I know that homemaking tends to come with the territory of childrearing....
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