Among the many things that Christians say that annoy people is their assertion that Christianity is the only true religion. Given the tremendous number of alternatives to Christianity on the religious market today, the assertion savours...
Popular theology is a little bit whacked. Or, in more elegant and precise terms, many people’s understanding of God is fatally limited and flawed. It posits that God (beard or no beard) sits up there somewhere, and having made the...
In the days of St. John Chrysostom, the Liturgy began with the entry into church of the bishop and the people. The bishop would ascend to his episcopal chair at the back of the altar facing the people, greet them by saying, “Peace be...
The world is filled with wonders: it is apparently a controversial thing to affirm that Judaism was a true religion worshipping the one true God. A sentence affirming this in the recent online OCA Essential Orthodox Christian Beliefs: ...
As the pastor of a church community where many of our members are converts from Protestant Evangelicalism, I am sometimes asked about my view of the current Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues. What follows is a part of my...
In an interview that was part of the BBC 2005 documentary on Auschwitz there is a chilling interview with a person (then quite old) who took part in the shooting of Jewish men, women, and children in Ukraine. He said that he felt...
I have just finished reading a volume published in 2017 entitled, In Search of Ancient Roots: The Christian Past and the Evangelical Identity Crisis by the Presbyterian author Kenneth J. Stewart. Dr. Stewart is, as the title of his...
I am told on good authority that it is offensive to invite people of other religions to convert to Christianity. Thus it is offensive to say to a Jew, “Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God and so you should be baptized and become a...
One is tempted to say that it takes a fair bit of either courage or foolhardiness in our culture to write in praise of virginity. But virginity is now so misunderstood and undervalued that some words need to be offered to understand it...
There are stupider things to do than arguing with a culty fundamentalist. As the late great Jim Croce reminded us, you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger. ...
A wise man once said, “What we believe always remains intellectually possible; it never becomes intellectually compulsive. I have an idea that when this ceases to be so, the world will be ending.” That is, in this age we walk by faith,...
We continue with our study of Israel in the New Testament, including our numeration of points for ease of discussion.6. Though the Jewish Christians (the followers of “the Way” as they were known) were initially regarded as fellow Jews...
One occasionally finds people who believe that the Old Testament is a Jewish book written for the Jews, while the New Testament is a Christian book, written for the Christians. Though this odd popular perception is wrong, one does see...
The Church has the same task in whatever land it takes root and finds itself, namely that of making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Trinity, and of teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded. How it...
Quiet confession just between us: nostalgic freak that I am, I still like listening to old songs from the Christian folk group “Children of the Day”. The group was one of the earliest Jesus People music groups, and consisted of four...
