by W. Jackson Watts Recently I’ve been lumbering through Charles Taylor’s widely discussed book, A Secular Age. Published in 2007 by Harvard’s Belknap Press, this dense, 800+ pager (with endnotes) is an expanded presentation of the material Taylor originally gave for the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1999. A Secular Age is a difficult book to …
Keep Readingby Matthew Pinson (This post first appeared on Dr. Pinson’s blog at matthewpinson.com) Recently a friend and former student, Jesse Owens (now a Ph.D. student in historical theology at Southern Seminary) told me about a statement Herbert McGonigle had made about Wesley “raising the ghosts” of John Goodwin and Thomas Grantham. This was very interesting to me, because of a …
Keep Readingby Randy Corn Does the name Piotr Mledozeniec ring a bell? If you are anything like me, it doesn’t, but I would bet you have seen some of his work. Mr. Mledozeniec is a Polish graphic designer who came up with a design for a traveling exhibit from a museum based in Jerusalem back in 2001. It incorporated a Muslim …
Keep Readingby Matthew Pinson In my courses at Welch College, I often introduce my students to C. S. Lewis’s comments on “chronological snobbery.” Lewis described himself before he became a Christian, when he was still an atheist, as a chronological snob. He defined chronological snobbery as the “uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption …
Keep Readingby W. Jackson Watts One of the most important aspects of pastoral ministry is understanding how one’s “pulpit ministry” is connected to their “pew ministry.” By pulpit ministry, I mean the regular, weekly preaching and teaching of God’s Word. In what I’m calling “pew ministry,” I’m referring to the personal engagement of the pastor (or pastoral staff) with congregants through …
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