Phillis Wheatley: A Culturally Confident Believer (Part I/II)
by Frank Thornsbury The early-American poetess Phillis Wheatley lived over two hundred years ago, from 1753 to 1784, yet her life and literature speak to some of the most difficult questions of Christian cultural engagement today. How could this be? C.S. Lewis once wrote that through literature we can gain a window into someone else’s view of the world.[1] My aim is to help you see the world as Wheatley saw it and as she portrayed it...
Recommended Books (Spring 2019)
Whew! The school year is over, and everyone is ready to unwind. However, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become complacent during down times. Our less constrained schedules allow us to focus on other areas of our lives. Students and teachers especially should take this opportunity to develop their minds and spirits at a more even pace. But regardless of your vocation, we have a few reading recommendations for you. We have found these...
Welch College Graduate Breakfast Charge: Fools for Christ
This past week Welch College graduates participated in commencement exercises. It was a time of celebration and excitement. I was deeply appreciative of and honored by the opportunity to issue the charge at the graduate breakfast. What follows is the manuscript of that charge. Graduates: Thank you for the opportunity to give to you the senior challenge. Through the years, I’ve had most of you in class, I’ve seen many of you in my...
Job 31 and Countercultural Integrity
by Gowdy Cannon There are not many chapters like Job 31 in our Bible. This beaten down and defensive man with nothing left, backed into a theological corner about God’s justice, spends forty verses defending his integrity. I suppose this is understandable, considering what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had driven him to with their simplistic view on suffering and God; yet it still smacks of pride. We know that Job did not consider...
The Church’s Response to the Opioid Epidemic: An Interview with Daniel Edwards
From 1999 to 2017, more than 700,000 people died from drug overdoses. In 2017, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioids and illegal opioids like heroin and illicitly manufactured Fentanyl) was six times higher than it was in 1999. On average, 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. To put these numbers in perspective, opioid-related deaths outnumber car crashes and gun-related deaths...
The Fourth Strand of the Reformation: A Review
Evangelicals exist along a spectrum concerning their interest in ecclesiology. Some are largely disinterested in what the Bible says about how to structure the local church. Yet others express a revived interest in ecclesiology, which ministries such as 9Marks have deeply influenced in the Baptist world. Where we fall on this spectrum isn’t driven entirely by our soteriology either. We might be tempted to think that the interest in...
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