I find “Meaningful Dialogue Across Christian Traditions,” the headline at Conciliar Post, to be a simple and beautiful way to capture much of what we write here. The common ground of faith in Christ, accompanied by a sense that various Christian traditions have potential strengths others can benefit from, makes for a wide-ranging and charitable field of discussion of which I am glad to be a part. Considering my appreciation for this kind of harmony,

Christianity makes some bold claims: God created the universe. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Human existence does not end at physical death. These statements all point to an important component of the Christian worldview: that which we can see, touch, and measure—the physical world—is not all that is. Reality is composed of something beyond the natural, physical material that we see all around us. Once one accepts the reality of the non-natural, an important question

I’m certainly a bit late to the party, but in the wake of some of recent studies on global Christianity, I picked up John MacArthur’s controversial book Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship. MacArthur—targeting everyone from African bishops to Southern prosperity preachers—takes aim at a broad swathe of religious doctrines and behaviors he identifies with the “Charismatic Movement” Naturally, plenty of ink has already been spilled on MacArthur’s theology

The Pentecostals and Charismatics are the weird cousins of the Christian denominational family. They’re the ones that go on about how important it is to be “baptized in the Holy Spirit” and preach “the full Gospel” while they get slain in the Spirit and hold Jericho marches. But you usually just end up praying they won’t start speaking in tongues at the family reunion this year. The fervor of the Pentecostals and Charismatics for their

I grew up in a small, quiet, unnoticed town in Michigan. Tucked in a corner of that town, hidden in the hills and woods, is a small, quiet, unnoticed church. You probably wouldn’t find it unless you were looking for it or happened to live on the humble, residential road that hosts it. On a crowded Sunday, it might boast about fifty attendees. Compared with the mega-churches, the televised multimedia worship experiences, and the intrepid

One of the largest controversies within Christianity has been the rise of three movements associated with the fresh indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I consider myself to be a part of the Spirit-filled traditions. The confession of sin and acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior does not necessarily bring this baptism of the Spirit. There have now been three ‘waves’ of the Spirit: Pentecostal, Charismatic and Third Wave movements. Each of these has placed