Christian Culture

We’ve all heard about postmodernism.[1] This popularity is probably a result of the fact that it’s the dominant pop worldview in the West. Our culture hosts several worldviews, but it’s postmodernism that's widely pervasive on the popular level. One of the most memorable, brief descriptions of postmodernism is also the title of Walter Truett Anderson’s [...]

Carl Henry’s 40-year verdict on his small early book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism included the summary: “[T]wo things sometimes surprise me: … how little I said and how boldly I said it” (Theology, News and Notes, December, 1987, p. 3). I had a similar experience reading Christopher Wiley’s The Household and the War [...]

The video-cast is here.

Today’s church is increasingly thin.[1] It has little substance. It blows about with every wind of doctrine (Eph. 4:14). It drifts from fad to fad, from kitsch to kitsch, from celebrity to celebrity. It chases the latest cultural prostitute. It is the laughingstock of the depraved society it so slavishly imitates. The church no longer [...]

We should have great pity, but also a measure of respect, for those who practice or champion homosexuality and who, understanding its incompatibility with the Faith, publicly abandon Christianity and the church. They understand and act on the principles involved. However, we should view with contempt and suspicion those claiming to be Christians who practice [...]

A friend recently asked my opinion about a famous Bible teacher charged with heresy because of his view of the relationship between faith and good works. Here is the substance of my response: I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching this very topic (exegetical theology, systematic theology, and historical theology), and I wrote two dissertations relating [...]

Ours is an age of autonomy (“self-law”). Of course, autonomy has been around since the Fall. What’s different today is that the secular West has created sophisticated rationales for it. It’s not just that man is autonomous; it’s that man should be autonomous, and any other way is unnatural and enslaving. Man hasn’t simply broken [...]

Today we hear this sentiment all the time: “Be true to yourself.” “Bernie Sanders is not a regular politician; he’s authentic.” When rock stars go wild on stage, ripping off their clothes and breaking guitars, we admire them, because they’re expressing what they really are.

Sitting here on the eve of the inaugural Runner Academy, I was thinking of the course of Christianity and the cultivation of intellect over the last two and a half centuries. A common and injurious error at the time of the Enlightenment was for many Christians to assume that the Christian Faith could be defended [...]

Blue-Jeans Religion Christian leaders who until the last five years stood for biblical truth and historic orthodoxy are caving in record numbers to what Francis Schaeffer called “forms of the world spirit”:[1] Cultural Marxism (“social justice”),[2] “wokeness,” ideological feminism, same-sex “marriage” and “-attraction,” “Christian socialism,” and upgraded Darwinism. These “thought leaders” among evangelicals, the Southern [...]

As is often the case, my discussion with Pastor Douglas Wilson on classical liberalism contra post-liberalism, subset of the dispute between Sohrab Ahmari and David French presently rankling conservatism, exhibits greater agreement on substance than might have initially appeared. Simultaneously, the issues on which dispute remains have become clearer. As far as I can tell, [...]

Because I’m a long-time friend of David Bahnsen and long-time fan of National Review, I’ll address briefly Pastor Douglas Wilson’s (mild) criticism of both. My chief impetus, however, is to reassert the Christian assumptions behind classical liberalism, the underlying (though not exclusive) political philosophy of the American Founding under withering assault by modern “progressives” (Cultural [...]

The Gospel Coalition (TGC) has been increasingly tolerant of and sympathetic toward the “social justice warriors.” Thabiti Anyabwile (aka Ron Burns), for example, champions leading tenets of Cultural Marxism (CM) under TGC rubric. He declared that whites should collectively repent for assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr. (Yes, he did write that.) So we shouldn’t be [...]

Dr. Sandlin, Do you know what's driving the resurgence of Classical Apologetics, Neo-platonism, and the subsequent reaction against worldview within Reformed circles? I'm seeing more and more of this on FB posts, footnotes, books, etc. Otherwise trustworthy and respectable pastors/theologians are pushing this. What's worse, it seems they're promoting it as if the early presup[positional] [...]

Henry Fuseli’s Romantic horror masterpiece The Nightmare (1781) Ours is a culture lush in Romanticism, but to grasp it we need to know what it was a reaction against: the European Enlightenment. [1] The Enlightenment began in full force in the 18th century. It was best defined by Immanuel Kant as man’s liberation from his [...]

Christians  are quick to blame secularists and neo-pagans for the cultural marginalization of our Faith, but much of it is due to our own timidity, compromise, and cowardice.  Before he ascended, our Lord charged the first Christians to disciple the nations (Mt. 28:18–20). It was a bold charge that demands a bold life and message. [...]

The family is a Christ-created cosmic norm Just in time to catch the cresting wave of our secular culture’s anti-family crusade, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, chides Christians for championing the family. He’s not the only one. In the 80’s and 90’s, evangelicals perceived the [...]

Political conservatives are interested in government. One of conservatism’s chief distinctives is commitment to small government: restoring states’ rights, reducing taxes, and deregulating business, for example. Conservatives deplore ever-expanding government intrusion into citizens’ lives. They stand for the Constitution, largely because our Founders believed in limited government. Jesus Christ, too, is interested in government. We [...]

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 in order to grow to adulthood and die for the sins of the world. This death and subsequent resurrection, the source of our salvation, presuppose [...]

Evangelicals tend to be mimics. The surrounding apostate culture invents a trend, and evangelicals eventually adopt it, usually decorating it with a pious veneer. This is the case with the current widespread marginalization of and assault on marriage. Some moderns argue that ours is the best of times (or at least an improving time) for [...]

The short answer is “no,” or “neither,” but this answer demands elaboration if it’s not to mislead. Pastor Tim Keller argues that Christians don’t fit into the present U. S. political party system and marshals reason why. I disagree. Keller and I both embrace Protestantism, one of whose distinctives is the final authority of the [...]