Blast from the Past: An Old Bibliotheca Sacra Journal Article from 1951 Chiding Pentecostals for Being a “Small” Denomination

In my research for my thesis, I came across the following from BSac—V108 #429—Jan 51—pps. 46-47
Is the Pentecostal Movement Pentecostal?
Part 1 – Roy L. Aldrich
The first statement to be examined is the assertion that the modern Pentecostal movement is “a second, or fuller, realization and fulfillment of Joel 2:28–29” than was known previously. If the [...]

United Methodists Trying to Reach Younger Folks, Lower Average Age

The United Methodist Church, having already lost a couple million members over the years and continuing along that trend, have decided that they will make a proactive attempt to lower their average member age from its current median of 57 (link).
They have unleashed several PR initiatives, including their “Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors” campaign [...]

“Emerging adults” and Liberal Theology

Peter Leithart comments on the end of Christian Smith’s Souls in Transition.  Here is his full post:
Near the end of his recent Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, Christian Smith summarizes the argument of a 1995 article by N. Jay Demerath of the University of Massachusetts.  Demerath writes, that the [...]

Against Evangelical Hipsters

In the Summer 2009 issue of The City there is a superb piece of writing that diagnoses a creature that I come across quite a bit online and sometimes in the flesh up in D.C. – the evangelical hipster.  John Mark Reynolds wrote the piece, where he diagnoses the persona of these individuals:
Secularists should stop [...]

“Emerging Adults” and Religion

Christianity Today’s Katelyn Beaty interviewed sociologist Christian Smith for the current issue.  Smith’s new book, Souls in Transition,  looks at the religious attitudes and practices of 18-29 year-olds.  The idea that this phase of life is now a prelude to married life has come out in several things that I’ve read.  Some good examples are [...]

Reaching the Next Generation With Substance, Not Style

Kevin DeYoung, pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan, did a series this week on his five-part plan for “reaching the next generation” with Christ: “Grab them with passion.  Win them with love.  Hold them with holiness.  Challenge them with truth.  Amaze them with God.”  The focus of the series is this: substance [...]

The Man Who Went to Church for Starbucks

A local church plant sent out fliers to each home advertising a free Starbucks gift card to all who would show up. They are also running ads on Facebook with the title “Free Starbucks Gift Card”. If people choose a church because they can receive a free Starbucks gift card, then I would seriously question [...]

Book Review: Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

My first response to Noll’s work is to express my appreciation and respect for the amount of research and expertise that went into writing America’s God.  Noll has a tremendous grasp of the different theological traditions of 18th- and 19th-century America, and displays impressive familiarity with the broader history of the United States in the [...]

Lincoln Bests the Theologians

The last major chapter of America’s God compares the subtlety and humility of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in March 1865 with the way that theologians talked about the Civil War, which Noll finds predictable and self-righteous.  Noll writes that while American theologians in the mid-19th century often believed that they could interpret God’s sovereign will [...]

John Wesley: a “hairs breadth” from Calvinism, a mile away from modern Wesleyanism?

For those who don’t know, I pastor a Church located in a strong Nazarene community. Nampa, Idaho houses Northwest Nazarene University and several large Nazarene Churches. The Nazarene church roots itself in the Wesleyan tradition. As I have gotten to know the lay of the land, many people have expressed to me their griefs [...]

The free market and American Christianity

In my last post, I summarized Mark Noll’s (America’s God) belief that American evangelicals in the early 19th century generally accepted the developing free market, which brought great economic and social change to the new U.S.  I thought that Noll’s fuller explanation deserved an extended quote:
European Protestants, who for the most part maintained the ideal [...]

Influences on American theology: republicanism, commonsense morality, and the market

Noll now explores the changes in American theology that came after independence.  Noll believes that the new, republican order that overturned the religious and social establishments of the colonial period needed new institutions, and the expanding evangelical churches provided just that.  See this post for my summary of his explanation.
Chapter 11 of America’s God shows [...]

Calvinism and Methodism get Americanized

Chapters 13-17 of America’s God consider the process by which the two major theological traditions in early America became Americanized; in other words, each began using the language and assumptions that fit with the broader culture’s republican and commonsense philosophies.  This meant the softening of beliefs about man’s inherent and inherited depravity into a more [...]

Theological innovations in the American republic

Chapter 12 of America’s God explains the tenets of what Noll calls “American theology.”  He believes that as American evangelicals built a new culture, they also absorbed its assumptions; having torn down traditional authorities, they instead defended Christianity or their denominations with the language of republicanism and commonsense moral ideas rather than relying solely on [...]

Book Review of Mark Noll’s “America’s God” (Chp. 10)

Chapter 10 of America’s God discusses the cultural consequences of the rapid expansion of evangelicalism.  How, he asks, did evangelicalism come to play such an important role in the culture?
While crediting the interpretations of Gordon Wood, Robert Wiebe, and Nathan Hatch that stress the importance of the destruction of hierarchies by the American Revolution, he [...]

Book Review of Mark Noll’s “America’s God” (Chapter 7-9)

In Chapters 7-8 of America’s God, Mark Noll shows himself to be a careful historian as he documents how traditional and “innovative” theologies did not become “American” theologies during the period of the American Revolution.  In other words, even as “commonsense” moral philosophy and republican political theory became more accepted by evangelical Christians, they did [...]

The marriage of Christianity and republican political theory in America

Noll’s fifth chapter analyzes the American combination of Christianity and republican political ideas, which was a rare combination in the 18th and 19th centuries.  You can see my notes on his previous chapter, where he explained more about this, here.
Noll argues that the most powerful influence in combining Christian beliefs and republican political principles was [...]

Jonathan Edwards and the Decline of the Puritan Covenant

In Chapter 3 of America’s God, Noll writes that while Jonathan Edwards ably defended the doctrines of Calvinism in a way that understood the Enlightenment, his conception of the church represented a break with the Puritan ideal.
The Puritan covenant bound society and church under a covenant with God, using biblical Israel as the model.  In [...]

The Roots of American Theology

I’ve finally gotten a chance to begin, for at least the second time, Mark Noll’s America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.  He’s set out an interesting task for himself: answering the question of how theological ideas in America became so thoroughly integrated with American cultural ideas.  Specifically, he is exploring how evangelical religious [...]

Countdown to Pentecost Sunday: Pentecostals, Greatest Global Movement?

Time magazine had recently cited the “New Calvinism” as one of the most important ideas in the world. While I am excited about such as a Calvinist myself, I was somewhat surprised by the omission of Pentecostalism.
Jenkins calls Pentecostalism,“the most successful social movement of the past century” (Jenkins 2002:8). Jenkins, P. (2002) The Next Christendom: [...]

The Suburban Megachurch Youth Pastor…Gagggg

All I got to say is that I strived to be genuine and authentic in my time of youth ministry. The youth needed to hear about Jesus more than what movies I watched, what games I play, what sort of clothes I am wearing, etc.  The youth pastors that made the [...]

So, Who Are the “Young Evangelicals”?

There’s certainly been a lot of discussion about younger evangelicals and their differences with their parents’ generation.  Matthew Lee Anderson, a “young evangelical” himself, tries to unpack the cultural trends of this group, focusing on their criticisms of their parents’ generation as well as the blind spots of this new generation.  One particular trend that he [...]

Evangelical Collapse

Well, I obviously missed this when it was posted in January, so perhaps linking to it now is kind of lame.  But if you want to read a bracing assessment of the current state of evangelicalism, check out the Internet Monk’s posts: reasons for the collapse, what will remain, and the effects.  Here are his first two reasons [...]