I Look to the Stars: Embracing the Joy of General Revelation
Astronomy When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained (Psalm 8:3 KJV). My parents were my teachers. They homeschooled me and my four younger siblings from first grade through high school. When I was nine or ten, my mother began to teach us about astronomy. We learned to identify the constellations of the northern hemisphere from studying books on astronomy and star maps:...
Samuel Richardson’s Use of John Murton and Roger Williams on Religious Liberty
In the past couple of years, a great deal of discussion has occurred regarding Baptist political theology. It has often focused on what Baptists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries taught on religious liberty and how Baptists today should approach religious liberty in post-Christian America. Some self-professed Baptists have even advocated for forms of Magisterial Protestantism, which is at odds with Baptist political theology...
The Church as the Plausibility Structure
“You might be the only Bible that someone ever reads.” This phrase has been repeated in youth group rooms and from pulpits across our country. The sentiment is good. It is a reminder for individual Christians to take seriously a biblical ethic. If believers claim to believe the Bible is true, then they should follow it so that their lives would reflect that truth. Moreover, non-Christians often will not start with the Bible in their...
The Role of Music in Civic Life
by Jacob Lute Introduction: The Communal Bond of Music Most of us would readily admit that music plays a significant role in our personal lives; after all, we spend countless hours listening to music in our cars or through our earbuds. But how often do we consider the role it plays in our social and community lives? I was raised in Southern Ohio where my family had a special affinity for college football, especially when The Ohio...
Recommended Books (Summer 2023)
The dog days of summer have been punishing this year in much of the United States. The extreme heat and, in the South, high humidity have strongly incentivized each of us to find shelter inside air-conditioned buildings. The increased time indoors before the crisp days of Autumn arrive provide us with some good opportunity for reading. Below, you will find reading suggestions from our group that come from a wide range of disciplines...
Stewarding Fertility
Recently my husband and I, no longer able to stifle our curiosity, sat down to watch the Amazon Prime documentary, Shiny Happy People. While I will not weigh in here on the actual merits of the documentary, it highlights, through its depiction of the Dugger family, a movement found in some conservative Christian circles referred to as “Quiverfull.” The term is taken from Psalm 127:3–5, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:...
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