Centre for Public Christianity (April 2017)

Among other items of interest, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted the audio of a lecture and Q&A by Amy Orr-Ewing (Director of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics) on ‘Is Christianity Bad News for Women?’, and an audio interview with Paul Williams (the new Chief Executive of the British and Foreign Bible Society) on the Bible as ‘a public book’.

Credo Magazine on Luther at 500

The current issue of Credo is available, this one devoted to the topic of ‘Luther at 500’.

According to the blurb:

‘The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The reformer who ignited this Reformation was none other than Martin Luther. But who was Luther, why was his understanding of God’s grace so radically different than Rome’s, and what was his contribution to the Reformation as a whole? These are the type of questions this new issue of Credo Magazine, “Luther at 500,” aims to answer as we turn our attention not only to Luther’s life but to Luther’s doctrine.

Normally a pdf of the entire issue is available to download, though this facility does not appear to be available in this case. However, individual articles in the magazine are available to read from here.

Leaven 24, 4 (2016) on the Joseph Story

I’ve always found the journal Leaven worth checking out. It’s published quarterly by the Religion Division at Pepperdine University, and ‘exists to help fellow Christians think together about the challenges of ministry’.

The current issue is devoted to the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50, and contains the following articles (available from here):

Andy Walker

The Role of Genesis 37:1-11 in the Joseph Novella

John T. Willis

The Biblical Testimony of Joseph: the Immanuel Perspective

Danny Mathews

“God Has Made Me Ruler over Egypt”: Joseph and Moses as Royalty

Kilnam Cha

Joseph’s Unjust Economic Policies in Genesis 47:13-26

Stuart Love

What About Judah?

Mark Mangano 

Judah’s Redemption

Rodney Ashlock

A Good Leader is Hard to Find

Mindi Thompson

Patriarchs, Prostitutes, and Potiphar’s Wife: A Study of Genesis 38-39

Glenn Pemberton

The Joseph Novella: Resources for Preaching and Teaching

Sarah Dannemiller

Joseph’s Dream

9Marks Journal (Spring 2017) on Pastoring Singles

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, available here as a pdf and here in other formats, is devoted to the topic of ‘Pastoring Singles’.

In the Editor’s Note, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘Certainly, a single person is far more than his or her singleness. Nonetheless, it’s often experienced as a trial (see Eccl. 4:9–11), even while Paul describes it as a gift (1 Cor. 7:7, 32, 38). So trial and gift. We need to maintain both perspectives in all our speaking and praying and preaching on the topic. And doing that requires wisdom.

‘Why devote an issue of the 9Marks Journal to pastoring singles? To help pastors and members both grow in conscientiousness and wisdom and love for singles.’

James K.A. Smith on Philosophy as/of Worship

The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship has made available from James K.A. Smith an ‘annotated research guide from the field of philosophy, focusing on the “liturgical turn” in Christian philosophy of religion. It’s designed ‘for students, teachers and scholars with interests in studying congregational worship practices, including fields of study that have not traditionally studied worship practices extensively’.

There’s more information here, and the document is available as a pdf here.

The Benedict Option

What began as a 2013 article in The American Conservative – and which attracted a lot of attention then and since – has now become a book, recently published: Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017).

I have a copy on order, but so great is the amount and volume of engagement with it and reviews of it – an indication of its significance – that I almost feel as if I’ve read it already!

It’s written from a North American perspective, which means that some adjustments will need to be made for other ‘post-Christian’ contexts. Still, in his own situation, Dreher suggests that American Christians should look back to the sixth-century monastic order of Benedict of Nursia for a model to help us survive life in a post-Christian society. Calling on us to prepare ourselves for darker times ahead, and warning us about the possibility of seeing the effective death of Christianity in western civilisation, Dreher offers a ‘strategy that draws on the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church to embrace “exile in place” and form a vibrant counterculture’.

There are many early reviews of the book, including by Collin Hansen (here), Trevin Wax (here), Hugh Whelchel (here), Christopher Smith (here), Scott Aniol (here), Byron Borger (here), Jake Meador (here), Dan Edelin (here), Wyatt Graham (here), and the start of a series of posts by Douglas Wilson (here, here, and here).

Other reflections include those by Katelyn Beaty (‘Christians have lost the culture wars. Should they withdraw from the mainstream?’), Nathaniel Peters (‘Not Benedictine Enough: Rod Dreher’s Diagnosis and Prescription for American Christianity’), Michael Brown (‘Why I Have Mixed Feelings About Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option’), Christopher Cleveland (‘Theologians Were Arguing About the Benedict Option 35 Years Ago’), Jake Meador (‘The Benedict Option and Its Reviewers’), with some ‘Initial thoughts’ from Greg Forster (here), and some broader reflections by D.A.Carson (‘The Benedict Option and American Politics’), and Patrick Deneen (‘Moral Minority’).

Christianity Today asked four evangelical thinkers (Hannah Anderson, David Fitch, John Inazu, and Karen Ellis) to reflect on it, with a response from Dreher himself.

There’s a conversation here between David Kern and Rod Dreher.

In a review (here) James K.A. Smith couples it with other books which advocate what he calls ‘the new alarmism’. Dreher responds to Smith (here), in a piece in The American Conservative (where Dreher is a senior editor).

In another article, ‘The Benedict Option or the Augustinian Call?’, James K.A. Smith advocates Augustine’s eschatological caution in a call not to ‘live ahead of time’.

‘The Augustinian counsel of stability is an admonishment to stay in the mix of things, among those in error – to inhabit our callings in what Augustine called the permixtum of the saeculum, the mixed-up-ness of the time between the cross and kingdom come’. This provides a flavour of Smith’s own forthcoming volume on political theology in which he’ll argue for a hope that ‘we’ll answer an Augustinian call: centring ourselves in the life-giving practices of the body of Christ, but from there leaning out boldly and hopefully into the world for sake of our neighbors’.

Dustin Messer (‘Smith, Dreher, and the Prophet Daniel’) thinks Smith’s review is uncharitable, and yet does have concerns ‘that the BenOp may be used by believers as an excuse to evade the call to bring all spheres of life under the good rule of King Jesus’. With Chris Wright, he sees Daniel holding together two realities: ‘serving the city while rebuking the city’.

Takimg the metaphor of the body of Christ, Alan Jacobs (‘The Benedict Option and the Way of Exchange’) writes about a way of exchange as a principle where ‘Christian parents who teach their children at home should be grateful that other Christian parents are helping their children to bear witness in public schools’, that we should ‘learn from, and be enriched by, one another’s experiences’, which ‘can only happen... if each member assumes the integrity of the others’.

All of the above is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and it will be interesting to see how the discussion continues to unfold.

Lausanne Global Analysis 6, 2 (March 2017)

The latest issue of Lausanne Global Analysis, from The Lausanne Movement, is available online from here.

In the issue overview, editor David Taylor says:

‘In this issue we highlight the contextual challenges posed by the “third wave” of missions in contemporary India and the creative responses that have been found to them. We then examine medicine and its place in God’s mission to the world today; the values of honor and shame and how restoring honor and removing shame are core aspects of God’s mission and the role of the religious registration system in fuelling discrimination and violence against Christians in the Middle East.’