Easter

Atonement

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Good Friday is the day on which Christians reflect on a truth that has long been controversial: the doctrine of atonement. God in the person of Jesus Christ took our sins on himself in order to pay a price that...

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Singing songs about Jerusalem

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“Your name burns my lips like a Seraph’s kiss, If I forget you, Jerusalem, who are all gold.” So wrote the Israeli song-writer Naomi Shemer in her iconic song “Jerusalem of Gold.” Shemer originally composed this for the celebrations in...

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The miracle of suffering

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“Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted...

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Power and privilege and the Passion

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Many of us have heard that “the wisdom of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” But the cross has mysterious elements for all of us. Christians can retrospectively reason it into seeming obvious. We can make sense...

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Three Sundays in April (Part 3)

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If you had thirty minutes to say something to the most powerful man in the world, what would you say? This is how I started our short series titled “Three Sundays in April.” On April 12, 2020, Donald Trump watched...

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Three Sundays in April (Part 1)

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If you had thirty minutes to say something to the most powerful man in the world, what would you say? Three evangelical ministers–Greg Laurie, Robert Jeffress, and Jack Graham–had this opportunity during the Easter season. On Palm Sunday, Donald Trump,...

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Jim Wallis’s Easter Sermon

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If you have time for one more Easter sermon, here is a taste of Jim Wallis at Sojourners: As pastors and churches are living into these new and difficult realities, here are three practical and vocational roles that faith communities...

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I Think Donald Trump Just Prophesied His Own Resurrection

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His political resurrection, that is. In another blatant and perhaps irresponsible appeal to evangelical voters: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_rwSsxiKpA&w=560&h=315] But there may be a Judas in the mix: But Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, appeared less enthusiastic regarding...

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Easter Break

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We are taking a few days off while I spend time celebrating Easter with family. “Morning Headlines” and the “Commonplace Book” will  be the only posts that will appear here over the course of the next couple of days. See...

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Canadian Evangelicals on Easter in an Age of Trump

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Check out Douglas Todd‘s piece at the Vancouver Sun.  He asks leading Canadian evangelicals what they think about all the evangelicals in the United States who support Donald Trump. Here is a taste: Three Canadian evangelical theologians say the politics of...

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Tony Campolo at Messiah College

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I don’t make it to Messiah College chapel as much as I would like or should.  But yesterday morning I went to see Tony Campolo.  It was part evangelical inspiration and part evangelical nostalgia, but I loved the fact that...

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N.T. Wright on Christmas

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This Advent season, on the recommendation of several The Way of Improvement Leads Home readers, I am reading Biblical scholar N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I don’t know Wright’s body of...

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