Posts from November 2024
We Ought to Be a Most Thankful People
It has become my own Thanksgiving tradition to print historical Thanksgiving Proclamations in this space. The American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara has collected all of them for anyone to read; if this sort of thing interests you, I encourage you to check them out. I find historical Thanksgiving Proclamations to be interesting with the insights they provide into the times in which they were issued. While perusing that database, I cam across this lesser-known example from…
Justin Martyr and Early Christian Worship
From their emergence in this country in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the ethos of churches of Christ has been restoration. European nations had established churches: Roman Catholicism in many countries, Anglicanism in Great Britain, Lutheranism in Scandinavia. These were supported by taxes, given privileges by the government and, in some cases, compelled membership of all citizens. The New World offered an opportunity for religious freedom, as most of us learned in grade school. But that freedom came…
An Election Postscript
The election is now behind us. I know there are strong feelings on both sides about the result. But if you have been following this series of articles over the last several weeks, I encourage you to consider the fundamental Scriptural principles that we have laid out that should guide us politically: the sovereignty of God; the Lordship of Jesus; and the church as God’s kingdom. We followed that with articles on the mission and method of the church: to…
The Church’s Social Strategy
We have attempted to refine our thinking on the relationship between Christians and the government. After laying down some fundamental principles, we moved last week toward application, exploring the mission of the church: to call people out of the world and into the kingdom of God. That leads to a second, closely related observation: attempting to co-opt the government to promote a Christian vision of society is not only the wrong mission, it is the wrong method. Political Activism When…