Ryrie is most compelling when he connects Protestant behavior with underlying religious beliefs. For example, Protestants tend to question and reject authority, because they believe with Martin Luther that every believer is a priest before God. Ryrie shows how this tendency gave rise to anti-apartheid initiatives in South Africa, advocacy on behalf of migrants and refugees, and anti-abortion campaigns. At... Continue Reading

“I think many of the old hymns, the ones that have endured–and plenty of the newer hymns too, actually–tap into a deeper reality than a lot of the more explicitly emotive stuff. In a strange way, the old gospel hymns affect us more emotionally by not dealing primarily with how we feel.”   The gospel... Continue Reading

Reform Thought in Sixteenth-Century Italy is interesting in other ways to anyone who has an interest in the 16th century religious thought. If there was every an example of heterogeneous thought, it was in Italy at this time. A Reformation of the church was clearly needed, but opinions differed as on its nature and extent.  ... Continue Reading

In every age, Christians have had to carefully navigate their culture, to ensure that they are taking their cues not from the world around them, but from the Bible. In every age, Christian parents have been responsible to help their children separate culture lies from biblical truth. This is as true today as it has... Continue Reading

“And, as the Lord has brought us safe through thus far, we have good ground to trust him to the end.  We know not what is before us.  Perhaps we may meet greater difficulties by and by than we have ever yet seen.  But if we keep in mind who has delivered us from the... Continue Reading

It is that paradox that lies at the heart of The End of White Christian America, and in discussions of Christianity and public life more generally. How can a religion often defined as a religion of outsiders — one whose sacred texts embrace the overturning of the money changers in the Jerusalem temple and celebrate those who... Continue Reading

The absence of Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason, easily one of the most important studies of American evangelicalism of the last decade, is probably the most surprising omission, but there are big gaps from the scholarly literature on topics like gender, race, and capitalism, to name just a few of the richest terrains historians of evangelicalism... Continue Reading

The authors’ thought-provoking essays, presented in a point-counterpoint format, broadly address religious liberty, tolerance, and discrimination, providing a valuable framework from which to assess public policy as it relates to these questions in the context of intimate matters including marriage, sex, and child rearing.   In a new book, three scholars make the argument that a... Continue Reading

The Catholic Church and Protestant churches often use the same vocabulary—words like “gospel,” “grace,” “mercy,” “evangelization,” and more. Importantly, however, these words don’t carry the same connotations when used by the two traditions. One thinks of the “Door of Mercy” in the Catholic Church, a means of obtaining mercy polar opposite from the way Protestants obtain mercy.... Continue Reading

“The foundation is to be laid, as was said, in mere grace, mercy, and pardon in the blood of Christ. This the soul is to accept of and to rest in as mere grace, without the consideration of any thing in itself, but that it is sinful and obnoxious unto ruin. This it finds a difficulty in,... Continue Reading