23 Jan 2017

Can the Religious Right be Left? Christian Political Organizing in the Age of President Trump

Donald Trump has officially been sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. For many this is a victory of a forgotten people against an elitist establishment. For the majority of Americans, however, the election of President Trump represents something far different. While fractures along racial and denominational lines within the American church are not new, the 2016 election cycle, and disagreement on President Trump himself, have uncovered new fault lines

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23 Nov 2016

Letters from the Gulag

November 9th, 2020. Can it be? Has it really been four years since that fateful morning after the election when I wrote, “The odds are high that Hillary Clinton will have unambiguously swept the electoral college by the time you read this”? Oh, how that seems such a different life now. I suppose it is. That was the era Before the Administration. I remember that time now only dimly, as if through something, uh, dim.

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26 Oct 2016

A Random Musing on an Inapplicable Moment in History

To the relief of readers and editors, today’s article is not about the election bid of businessman Donald J. Trump. There’s no longer any reason to discuss that, given that its current state of acrid evanescence is more analogous to a cloud of rapidly dispersing canine flatulence than a real presidential campaign. I would instead like to revisit an episode of early church history: the 3rd century persecution under the Roman emperor Decius and the

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29 Jul 2016

What is Common Grace?

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a remarkable individual. Playing the roles of pastor, theologian, journalist, and prime minister of the Netherlands, Kuyper is no doubt one of the most prolific Christians in church history. Although Kuyper’s direct lineage today represents only a small portion of Christendom (in America the denominations of the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America), and though his thought remains influential primarily within Calvinist evangelicalism, I believe his thought ought

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01 Mar 2016

A Sonnet on the Occasion of Super Tuesday

For this pack of wolves, it is now the time To the cameras howl and bear shiny teeth All are future kings, if just in their minds But none are better than a common thief I’ll be at my desk away from all the din Fighting ignorance, which is our disease Not with sword and shield, but the humble pen. Let us not forget holy charities Love the Lord thy God with mind, soul, and

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