Letter from America
Letter from America
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Sep 2010
A book which deserves a much longer review is James Davidson Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Later Modern World.
As I say, I cannot possibly do this book justice in these few words, other than to say that if you are interested in the problem of cultural change in our day you really should read it. I don’t agree with everything that Hunter says. For instance, it is frustrating that Hunter (so sure footed elsewhere) makes if not monumental gaffes in historical summary, at least takes a particular side in the historical debate about particular events without seeming to realise that the side he is taking is far from non-controversial. He seems to regard it as an open and shut case that Luther was at least partly responsible for the German genocide of the Jews, and that Calvin was entirely responsible for the judicial execution of Servetus on religious grounds. As a historian (admittedly my period being a century or so later among the Puritans and the early Evangelical Awakening), those two statements are debatable and not to be taken at face value. That frustrates me, because to some extent it undoes a lot of the good work that Hunter does, of significant service to the church. Talking of the Puritans, you would also think that a brief survey of Protestantism would mention them quite a bit, especially writing as an American.
Letter from America
Letter from America
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Aug 2010
Let me talk about an important book bearing on the American scene.
Sebastian Junger’s War (New York, 2010) is a specifically non-religious book, but with great relevance to assessments of the effects and experience of war in Afghanistan for American troops. Junger ‘embedded’ himself with the ultimate front line troops in a far flung outpost of Afghanistan to experience daily life in combat.
Letter from America
Tweet, tweet
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2010
The financial crisis of 2008 caused many a surprise, but perhaps none as unusual as the recent discovery made by John Bollen of Indiana University.
Bollen has analysed messages sent through the website Twitter during that crisis. He expected that the emotional content of these ‘Tweets’ would mirror the market. But he was wrong. The Tweets did not reflect the market; they predicted it by two to three days, and at an accuracy of about 86%.
Letter from America
Whence now 'religious' politics?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Oct 2010
After Glenn Beck (a Mormon Fox News commentator) organised and led a massive rally in Washington DC recently, calling on the need for reviving America, many discerning Christian commentators were disconcerted — to say the least – to discover that evangelical Christians seemed able to embrace Beck as one of their own.
Justin Taylor has since posted a repeat of the ESV Study Bible’s teaching about what is different between Mormonism and Christianity1, and Russell Moore has opined successfully that the problem is not that Beck is an effective leader, nor that he is allowed to speak his mind in religiously free America, but that some evangelical Christians are so undiscerning.2
Letter from America
For the fame of God's name and in honour of a servant
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Nov 2010
John Piper is one of the most influential of his generation of evangelical leaders, and this month Crossway have come out with a ‘festschrift’ in his honour.
The book lists a remarkable catalogue of friends and colleagues with whom Piper has collaborated over the years. And it is surely a testament to the way God has used John Piper that such a book could be put together.
Letter from America
Environmentalism USA
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jul 2010
The growing environmental crisis in the (Mexican) Gulf, following the breakage of the BP oil pipe, is doing something unexpected to evangelical environmental concerns: there is a developing tenderness.
Dr. Moore, Senior Vice President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes winsomely and captivatingly about his epiphany after his recent exposure to the issue in the Gulf area (http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/06/01/ecological-catastrophe-and-the-uneasy-evangelical-conscience/).
Letter from America
Western evangelicalism and 'postmodernism'
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jun 2010
I understand the normal apologetic narrative of evangelicalism’s standard engagement with contemporary culture, and by and large agree with it.
Typically, we are told, that we now live in an age where ‘modern’ scientific certainty has given way, or is in process of giving way, to more ‘postmodern’ relativistic assumptions about the meaning of life. Along with this shift, and at its root, is an epistemological issue, which impacts how our language, conversation, preaching, evangelism and truth claims are made, or heard to be made at the least.
Letter from America
Where are we on justification by faith?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Apr 2010
Josh Moody interviews Professor Douglas Moo on this important issue.
JM: Dr. Moo, would you explain to us (in 100 words or less!) what the current state of play is ‘theologically’ with regard to the issue of justification?
Letter from America
Haiti: what evangelicals say
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Mar 2010
It wasn’t long after the current crisis in Haiti broke that I was sent the following YouTube clip of Pat Robertson ascribing the devastation of Haiti to the work of the devil, indeed a pact of the devil (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NCduEhkBM). Cue usual snorts of derision from non-Christians (and many Christians no doubt too), and cue usual despair that the rather more sophisticated — it’s not hard to be rather more sophisticated — apologists are not given the same airtime.
Then there was also the link I was sent of some former evangelical professor who seemed to suggest that the ‘clever ones’ (or some such phrase) offering an attempted theodicy would be trying to so do by saying it was all a ‘mystery’.
Letter from America
Finances, the economy and the church
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Feb 2010
Whether or not — and to what extent, and at what speed — the international market economy is recovering is beyond the scope of this paper, and certainly beyond my expertise as a writer.
But from the ground up it still looks like, to say the least, we are in ‘interesting’ financial times, and some list it as ongoing through 2010 at least (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932010). What does this mean for the church?
Letter from America
The Manhattan Declaration?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jan 2010
The city ‘that never sleeps’ and which is the cure for ‘small town blues’ has rather incongruously become the location for a gathering of evangelical, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox ministers to issue a joint statement against the current cultural moral decline called the Manhattan Declaration. Since then, a firestorm!
Those evangelicals who signed it are accused of compromising because throughout the Manhattan Declaration the term ‘Christian’ is used to define all three groups. Plus, very little mention is made in the declaration about the gospel itself (inevitably given the different views on the gospel the original signatories of the document hold).