“A professional musician can miss reading the moment. And worse yet, a worship leader can fall into executing the songs instead of leading the worship.” - C.Leaders

“In his short and very readable book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t, Australian pastor and blogger Stephen McAlpine sails into the contested waters of Christian cultural engagement with admirable calmness.” - C.Today

“A critical look at what could be responsible for believers’ inability to withstand calamities of life is traceable to “bread and butter messages” in churches today. Sound doctrines are rarely preached and many Christians have been weakened by rosy messages that only make Christians focus on how to find solutions to the challenges of life through God. When expectations are not met, frustration sets in.” - C.Post

“I would prefer to describe these two postures as ‘authoritarian’ and ‘nurturning.’ Its only a slight change of words, but ‘authoritative’ and ‘nurturant’ just don’t sound quite right to me. For one thing, I think religious leaders should be authoritative but without being authoritarian.” - Roger Olson

“Gaarder was a high profile conspiracy theorist who made TV appearances and edited an online magazine. He is known in Norway for sharing false information about COVID-19, likening it to the common cold.” - NewsHub

Christian biographies are a great means of edification and godliness. And yet, their benefits aren’t free from dangers. One danger that comes to mind is that of developing an unrealistic view of the Christian life. Often, Christian biographers maximize the virtues and minimize the faults of the saints. The picture they paint has too rosy a hue. We can partly understand this. Obviously, we want to view Christians in the best light. We want to give them the benefit of the doubt. We want to showcase their faithfulness to God. But we can come away with the idea that genuine Christians rarely, if ever, commit sin. This perspective begins to affect the way we view ourselves and one another.

“The complaint alleges that Falwell created a ‘well-resourced exit strategy’ from his role via a 2019 employment agreement while not telling Liberty officials about his personal scandals.” - C.Post

More…

“Luther’s ideas were revolutionary because they were much more than a minor argument against indulgences. Rather, Luther’s opponents sensed what he was doing….Luther was instead claiming the Christian faith first of all hearkens to God’s promise of salvation through Christ, as revealed in his Word.” - TGC

“The embryos, described Thursday in the journal Cell, were created in part to try to find new ways to produce organs for people who need transplants, said the international team of scientists who collaborated in the work. But the research raises a variety of concerns.” - NPR

“Both! This world is getting better and it is getting worse at the same time! The good seed is growing and producing an abundant harvest. The grain on one stalk is much more than the little seed that was cast into the ground. And the weeds are growing too.” - Colin Smith

James R. Gordon argues against the Eternal Functional Subordination view of Ware and Grudem and in favor of the “doctrine of divine simpicity.” - Credo

“…flipping a switch does not always have immediate results. Similarly, understanding God’s command for us to use our skills and resources for his glory does not immediately transform our outlook on work.” - IFWE

“Absolute freedom of speech is not a moral right. … there can be no moral right to commit wrong, although there may often be a legal right. And clearly a great deal of speech, expression, and writing is wrong—whether by spreading falsehood, seducing to sin, tearing down the innocent, and much more.” - TGC

No, Religious Conservatives Didn’t Cause Church Membership Decline

“for a small but growing cadre of intellectual Roman Catholics the political philosophy of ‘integralism,’ with church and state integrated, not separate, is increasingly common. There’s disagreement over practical specifics, but what unites integralists is their conviction that the liberal democratic order is now, and perhaps always was, morally bankrupt.” - James Diddams

Read Part 1.

One of the most fascinating sights that we saw on our 500^th-anniversary Reformation tour was the Luther Monument—sometimes called the Reformation Monument—which is located across the street from the park where Dr. Martin Luther’s famous stand before the Diet of Worms is memorialized.

“Alliance Defending Freedom, a national religious liberty advocacy legal group, filed a motion last Friday to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of college students at Corban University in Oregon, William Jessup University in California and Phoenix Seminary in Arizona.” - C.Post

“The Good: Two-Thirds of Churched Adults Feel “Encouraged” After Worship Services….The Bad: Half of Churched Adults Feel “Disappointed” After Church at Least Sometimes” - Barna

“In the Greek New Testament, the noun euangelion (“gospel”) appears just over seventy times. Since, in one sense, the whole New Testament is about the gospel, we might have expected the word to have been used more frequently. Even more surprisingly, its use varies greatly among the authors of the New Testament books.” - Ligonier

“The state of North Carolina currently prohibits businesses from discriminating based on qualities that include race, sex, and religious belief, but does not specify protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” - C.Leaders

“The main lesson [of Rasmussen’s new book Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders] is to not place much hope in the amount of happiness, amity, and social progress that politics alone can produce. And the great teacher of that lesson, the lone Founder who retained a great deal of optimism about the American future, is James Madison.” - The Dispatch

“How can we avoid the pitfall of being one of these well-meaning, but miserable comforters?” - TGC

Along with the startling claims of John’s prologue there are other texts in the NT which convey the same essential facts. In Colossians 1 the apostle Paul refers to Jesus this way:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Colossians 1:15-17)

And the author of Hebrews writes this:

“The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is announcing a new slate of faith leaders for its clergy advisory board who mostly hail from states controlled by Republicans or in the South, a move officials say follows a ‘wave of lawmakers’ such as Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock who have worked to ‘proudly champion reproductive rights as a matter of faith.’” - RNS

“One [study] found that since the George W. Bush-appointed John Roberts assumed the role of chief justice in 2005, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of religious claimants 81% of the time. This compares with a rate of about 50% for the 20th century.” - The Conversation

“According to the groundbreaking American Worldview Inventory 2021—the first survey of its kind to measure not only biblical worldview, but six prominent competing worldviews—found that the overwhelming majority of American adults lack a cohesive, coherent worldview, and instead substitute a patchwork of conflicting, often irreconcilable beliefs and values as they navigate life.” - CRC

“But so-called ‘premium’ Bibles aren’t new. And while they may not carry the same steep price tag, a number of new and traditional Bible publishers are stressing the beauty of an old-fashioned book and the experience of slowing down to read at a time when so much of life is lived online.” - C.Today

Related (RNS): Marketing ploy or sacred art? Bible publishers appeal to millennials with focus on design

“It matters that Google is a private company because the rights it enjoys as a private entity are the same ones that protect all of us from aspiring authoritarians, regardless of from which side of the aisle they emanate. Eroding these rights for some weakens them for all.” - Dispatch

“Thomas Sowell once said, ‘It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.’ Humility must precede all healthy learning and dialogue. An awareness of our own limitations will not only force us to take a more humble stance ourselves but also compel us to grant grace to our fellow human beings.” - LifeWay

I have read about how 45% of evangelicals are refusing to take the COVID vaccine. We are described as the largest demographic of non-vaccinators. You can read one such report from the New York Times here.

Of course the world cannot distinguish between various versions of Chrsitianity, much less the distinctions between evangelicals, conservative (doctrinally oriented) evangelicals, and fundamentalists.