Ghost Churches
Introduction A new term in ecclesial nomenclature is “ghosting.” It denotes church members’ dropping out of their congregations without informing their church leadership, simply disappearing. In our age that increasingly…
The Creed of Leftism
1. There are no absolute, transcendent standards for this world and, therefore, humanity must create them. 2. The central standard humanity must create is the widest possible human autonomy. There…
Gospel or Salvation?
Many Christians calls themselves “evangelical,” but actually they’re soterians. They’re not Gospel Christians, but soteriological Christians. These two aren’t the same. Read the article here.
The Degeneration into Political Soteriology
“This insurrection is sometimes called ‘conservative counter-revolution,’ but it never is. It claims to be restoring the moral order overturned by Leftists, but it is actually an attempt to reverse…
The Human Types that Make Statism Necessary
Three kinds of individuals are particularly attracted to statism, the ideology that that there is no social problem for which increased political control isn’t the best solution. It is impossible…
Will You Help CCL this Year’s End?
Dear friends and supporters: A number of you have already sent a generous year-end donation. Thank you deeply. Most Christian ministries receive a large proportion of their income at the…
Christmas: Excarnation Versus Incarnation
This Advent and Christmas season we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Incarnation literally denotes enfleshment. The eternal Son of God assumed humanity as a babe in Bethlehem…
Let the Right One In
“If we open our heart to the ungodly, we are opening our heart to ungodliness. It is impossible to separate the person from his moral condition, as much as we…
The Un-Toned-Down Gospel
First-century apostate Judaism and the ancient Roman Empire did not feel threatened by a theological interpretation of the death of Jesus Christ, vital though it is to the health of…
We’re All Progressives Now
“One of the leading 20th century Christian philosophers to have outlined the development of progressivism is Augusto Del Noce. He declares that progressivism can be identified by the ‘today it is no…
The Post-Resurrection Gospel Presupposes the Pre-Resurrection Kingdom
The reason that the life and message of Jesus Christ portrayed in the gospel accounts, particularly the Synoptics, seem so far removed from the post-resurrection Gospel of Paul and the…
The 2020 Political Victory
“The 1619 Project and BLM are right — you must get rid of the United States as we’ve known it to produce ‘The Good [i.e., Godless] Society.’” Read the article…
The Arc of Providence Bends Toward Victory
“No, the objection is much more profound: politicians who believe it’s their responsibility to protect citizens from ordinary, adult decisions; who believe that adults shouldn’t be permitted to govern themselves;…
Is Biblical Christianity Republican?
But the decision to be biblically obedient in today’s political context means we don’t have the luxury of standing above partisan commitments, and it obviously means that commitment cannot be…
The Political Pietism of John Piper
Likely no prominent evangelical exemplifies both the assets and liabilities of contemporary pietism more than Piper…. Read the entire post here.
CCL November 7 Symposium
2020 Vision for a Blurry Year Topics: The upsides of a downside year Presidential election as chaos The political ideology of the COVID-19 drama Cultural Marxists in the streets The…
The Church After Covid – Why Bother Going Back?
The COVID-19 crisis, both the real crisis and the manufactured crisis, will subside, though much too quickly for the panic-porn purveyors in our major media outlets. Consequences of the crisis…
Our Promissory God
Several decades ago a Canadian schoolteacher Everett Storms read the Bible through 27 times specifically counting God’s promises. The number he came up with is 7,487. We might dis‐ pute…
The Actual Culture War, October, 2020
Today’s progressives are in line with Marx’s vision…. They support radical egalitarianism in family and church and the wider society, because God’s order is based on benevolent hierarchies. They start…
What Whites Owe Blacks
Fledgling editor Timothy Dalrymple of Christianity Today (Astray?) has called for the evangelical church to pay blacks reparations for the Unites States’ history of slavery and 19th century ministers’ defense…
Liberals and Conservatives Against the Free World
In 2020, the Free World isn’t simply competing with Islam and other authoritarian regimes. It’s plagued by its own cultural civil war. The Free World is under attack from within,…
The Diabolical Disappearance of Answered Prayer
In 2020, it’s difficult to imagine a Christian college president anywhere writing such a bold, faith-drenched book. Such simple, fearless faith poses an embarrassment to the minds of many modern…
John MacArthur on the Abiding Authority of Biblical Law for Modern Nations
In what must be the boldest, most fearless, most biblically drenched sermon by a megachurch pastor in 2020, John MacArthur today declared that: (1) nations must recognize the true God;…
The Cultural Tail Wags the Political Dog
“Politics is downstream from culture.” To my knowledge, this truism originated over 20 years ago with conservative social commentator Don Eberly, but most political conservatives, including many Christians, seem not…
Contemporary Battle Lines: Liberty versus Liberation
We live in a time that values release from oppression seemingly above alleviation from most other hardships. The idea that oppression and, therefore, oppressors are everywhere, is, well, everywhere. Read…
Pessimism Is Not a Strategy
“Hope is not a strategy” — this is an increasingly popular adage. It means that we can be hopeful all we want, but unless we have a plan and strategy…
Is the Culture War Necessary?
By its very nature, biblical Christianity mandates a culture war. This easy-to-understand 40-minute talk is suitable for high school age and older.
Reductionist Christianity Gets Its Comeuppance
Three discernible schools have emerged among conservative Protestants since the 2000s with respect to Christianity’s relationship to culture. Richard Niebuhr’s standard five-fold classification (Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture,…
Christian Counterpunching
It’s profoundly unsettling for devout Christians to contemplate the possibility that the faith they practice might be defective in any major particular. I’m not referring to orthodox belief, which is…
Boisterous Irrelevance
Theological hyper-specificity and theology without Christian worldview are two hazards leading to irrelevance during the great battles of the time. Our calling is to fight where the “battle rages,” where “the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battle-field.”
Mandatory Masks, “Shelter at Home,” and (Anti-) Social Distancing: A Christian worldview analysis and a brief theology of the state
During the COVID-19 crisis, many biblical Christians have been resistant to the ethics and legal guidelines dictating mask wearing, “sheltering at home” (euphemism for virtual house self-arrest), and (anti-)social distancing,…
What About Mask-Wearing as Christian Charity?
My CultureChange e-newsletter “Mandatory Masks, “Shelter at Home,” and (Anti-) Social Distancing: A Christian worldview analysis and a brief theology of the state” raised several valid questions. One of them…
Unaddressed Insensitivity Will Doom MLB Mascots
Now that the NFL’s Washington Redskins, shamed by their many-decades’ racial insensitivity, are unveiling their new mascot, it is clear that Major League Baseball cannot avoid the virtuous mascot-toppling that will make our world a safer, kinder, gentler, more understanding place.
America’s Exceptional Greatness
In hearing the increasingly pervasive and sometimes hysterical and violent criticism of the United States, it might be helpful to consider the other side of the ledger. No nation or…
A July 4 Worldview Clash
During no July 4 of my lifetime have the cultural stakes been as momentous as they are in 2020. The Leftist protests of the late 60s, motivated by the Vietnam…
“We Are the Destroyers”
Several years ago my wife Sharon and I were visiting our son Richard at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he was launching his Ph.D. program in philosophy…
Cultural Gravediggers
The paradox of free societies is that they carry in their DNA the capacity for their own destruction. Free speech and press and assembly; religious, political, and economic liberty; and…
The Marxism in the Mayhem
Behind the violent riots in the wake of the reprehensible killing of George Floyd is a pernicious web of ideas known as Cultural Marxism. Not that one in a thousand…
Coronavirus and Culture
What we see playing out before our eyes is a response of rival religions to a lethal virus.
The Great(est?) Easter Poem
Seven Stanzas at Easter John Updike (1932–2009) Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids…
Jesus Christ in Three Acts
The sin-bearing, weary, suffering, grief-filled, and broken Jesus of Nazareth was transformed the first Easter Sunday into the splendorous, Spirit-supercharged, evil-crushing, risen and reigning King of kings and Lord of lords.
COVID-19 and Technology: An Interview with Kevin D. Johnson
The epidemiological models that have been used to estimate the impact of the virus have received a lot of criticism in the last few weeks mostly because of the consistent overestimating that has been done in terms of the suggested mortality risks to the United States and the rest of the world. However, the models themselves are not really the problem. Highly developed and constantly improving statistical epidemiological models have been in play since the early twentieth century and in fact simple mathematical models have been in use for things like smallpox mortality since at least 1766.
Our Lord’s Crucifixion as Exaltation
It seemed that Jesus was one lowered and humiliated at the crucifixion. What the watching world — and Satan himself — did not yet know is that it was Satan and his entire usurping empire that was dispossessed and humiliated at the Cross. The Cross inaugurated the new (and final) world order.
COVID-19 and Theology: An Interview with Brian G. Mattson
Christians … are equipped to understand that God has purposes; that he is not a cold, distant, silent, and mute machine dispensing what we’ve got coming, but a merciful Father who calls us to cry out to him in our need; and that in Christ Jesus we have no ultimate existential fear of death. I think that is quite a distinct way of viewing this crisis.
Easter Against the Gnostics
The earliest heresy afflicting Christianity was Gnosticism. The followers of our Lord, committed to the Bible, believed that God created a good world but that man’s sin had corrupted it,…
Social Justice Isn’t
We hear a lot about social justice these days. The January 21, 2017 Women’s March in Washington D.C. and Atlanta was billed as championing social justice. We even hear the…
A Christian and a Patriot?
May a Christian be a patriot? May a Christian in the United States be a patriot? He may, he should, and in many cases, he must. The primitive Christians sent…
The Greatness of Victorious Eschatology
The modern conservative church has been plagued by pessimistic, unbelieving, and anorexic eschatology. The biblical hope of a glorious future on the earth should animate all we do. Listen here.
New CCL e-book: “Total Revolution”
This is a book about what revolution is, how it came about, how it is transpiring right before our eyes, and what Christians can do to arrest and overcome it.…
