history
The reduction of fatherhood
![Michael Haykin](/media/images/Michael_Haykin.2e16d0ba.fill-32x32.format-webp.webp)
Michael Haykin
Over the past two centuries, there has been a steady recession of the social role of fatherhood. Fathers have either gradually moved or been moved from the heart to the margins of family life.
Overall, the cultural story of fatherhood in the West has been essentially downhill since the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries. But at the outset of the 18th century, fathers were regarded as primary and irreplaceable caregivers in the family.
history
How should Christians disagree?
![Michael Haykin](/media/images/Michael_Haykin.2e16d0ba.fill-32x32.format-webp.webp)
Michael Haykin
At the outset of his invasion of Scotland in the summer of 1650, Oliver Cromwell remarked that theological disagreements (and surely he is thinking in part of the differences among the English and Scottish Puritans that had led them to war) are endemic to the life of the church in a world marred by sin.
Disagreements are a sad reality with which Christians have to contend. Nonetheless, Christians can control the way that they participate in such disputes.
First for Reformation women
![Emily Lucas](/media/images/Union_Headshots_Septemb.2e16d0ba.fill-32x32.format-webp.webp)
Emily Lucas
The Reformation Fellowship has hosted its
first Theological Conference for Women,
with over 150 joining on Zoom from around
the world, including the Philippines and
America. ‘The Fear of the Lord’ conference
opened with a seminar by Union’s President
and Professor of Theology, Mike Reeves.
Many women are used
to
speaking of
a desire to walk
in
fear of the Lord, of
using the phraseology and seeking to
live
this
life of wisdom. However,
to
speak
of
fear
in association with God can also
breed wrongful association, particularly as
we
live
in a culture, as Reeves describes,
that is ‘allergic to fear’. Reeves gave a rich,
refreshing recapturing of the true sense of
what it means to have and live in fear of the
Lord. Drawing on his recently published
Rejoice and Tremble, Reeves passionately and
eloquently refreshed the hearts of the saints
attending with the truth that the fear of
God, true saintly fear of God, is the Bible’s great balm for today’s fears and anxieties.
350 years on: the life and lyrics of Isaac Watts
‘Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less’
I almost missed this anniversary and hadn’t realised that Isaac Watts was born not far from where I now live. He’s a hero of mine and given that I won’t be writing posts in another 350 years, I’ll make my pitch now for this unusual chap who cheerfully lived through perilous times.
Everyone has heard something he wrote. Even if church is absolutely not your thing, you’ll struggle to make it to New Years Day without hearing several arrangements of Joy to the World, a cheerful anthem with added zest from Handel’s magnificent melody. Meanwhile, the more mournful, O God our help in ages past, seems to be the sort of thing religious people sing, at least in films and dramas. I vaguely recall Ichabod Crane warbling it nervously in a Sleepy Hollow cartoon I saw as kid.