David Heim
Demographic destiny?
I
knew that mainline congregants tend to be older than the general population.
The average member is about 58, whereas the average American is age 38. The
latest survey from Hartford Seminary fills in the
picture with this piece of data: in more than half (52.7 percent) of mainline
Protestant congregations, a third or more of the members are 65 years old or
older.
Nuggets of learning
David Steinmetz is a senior scholar who can
distill his learning in graceful, compact essays. The articles collected here
...
Is Constantinianism all bad?
"Constantinian" has lately been a favored pejorative in
theological circles. The term--an allusion to the fourth-century Roman emperor
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What MLK said
I had an English professor who used to get
deeply annoyed whenever students would cite some literary passage but not
bother to quote it exactly. I recall him telling us, "Look, if you're going to
quote somebody, get it right."
The slightly Lutheran congresswoman
When reports started circulating that Republican
presidential contender Michele Bachmann was a member of a congregation in the
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The foundation of politics
Of
all the books that might be read to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, one of
the most probing is by a law professor at Yale, Paul Kahn. In Sacred
...
Into starkness
Dramatic conversion stories are the exception, not the rule,
in the life of faith. Coming to faith usually involves a gradual adjustment of
...
Summer reading list
The term "summer reading"
conjures up leisurely days immersed in fiction. I have a few items in that
pile.
Unsustainable medicine
It's routine, as you get out your credit card in the supermarket
checkout line, to be asked to donate a few dollars to medical research. It's an
...
Peer power
Some years ago, medical researchers at Vanderbilt considered
how best to intervene with doctors whose patients had complained about their
...
Who's in hell
Even
before Rob Bell's book Love Wins (see
the Century review
by Peter Marty)...
One good sentence
Staring helplessly at a broken appliance or other household
malfunction, I often recall a quip by Joseph Epstein, an essayist and editor:
the only thing I can fix is a sentence.
Ayn Rand's sphere of influence
In the latest First Things, David Bentley
Hart skewers the thought of Ayn Rand. Yet only in a passing reference does he acknowledge
the reasons for the renewed interest in Rand.
Stories of sorrow
In
times of grief, "the very sun and moon seem taken from us," writes Oscar Wilde.
He continues:
News cycle
A blogger at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America points out that some lines of Paul-Gordon Chandler's article on events in Egypt are unusually close to lines in a February 19 article in the New York Times—and charges that Chandler lifted them from the Times.
Libya illusions
Neo-cons at the Weekly Standard like Bill Kristol, Republican
leaders like Mitch McConnell and John McCain, and liberal interventionists such
...
Alan Wolfe on Metaxas's Bonhoeffer
In the Feb. 3 New Republic, Alan Wolfe, the magazine's
...
The logic of revolt
It
used to be that the defense of Second Amendment rights was linked, at least
rhetorically, to the rights of hunters and outdoor enthusiasts, who worried
...