Month: March 2019

My father used to relate the story with considerable affection and humor. The date was Sunday, December 7, 1941, otherwise known as the “day of infamy.” Pearl Harbor Day. My father’s mother called her two sisters in Bethlehem, PA to tell them her husband, my grandfather, had died suddenly of a heart attack in Virginia. He had been scheduled to preach that morning at the dedication of a new church.

Aunt Lucy, my great-aunt, received the news somberly, and then offered this memorable gem, a line that lives on in family lore: “Oh dear,” she sighed heavily, “the cat died today too!”

Nothing like keeping things in perspective. God bless her.

My grandfather is pictured above, a photograph from the cover of the Messenger, the flagship publication of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (now part of the U.C.C.).

Continue reading “Acts 6”

I know what you’re thinking. This post is about the recent “Varsity Blues” scandal involving wealthy parents (including at least a few Hollywood stars) bribing elite colleges and universities to admit their children.

But it’s not about that, really.

It’s not even about the broader scandal of college admissions in general (such as race-based and legacy admissions) or the scandal of easy access to federal loan money which not only has left countless students with crushing debt, but has led to steep increases in tuition (well above the cost of living) and directly abetted the vast expansion of campus building projects and high-end amenities (in order to compete with other colleges similarly flush with this same loan money). And don’t get me started on the consequent and exponential increases in staff and faculty!

The real scandal, I would submit, is how colleges and universities have all but lost their original purpose, their very reason for being.

Continue reading “College Scandals”

For decades I’ve listened to well-meaning people in the church (mostly pastors) tell me we need to change. Change, change, change. It’s all the rage, I tell you. And it’s presented as if it’s pretty much the solution to all that ails us.

And what is it that ails us? The implosion of the Protestant mainline church, for one. As these churches have struggled for decades with diminished numbers, stressed budgets, and an increasing loss of public relevance, the default solution is…change.

Often such change is foisted on long-standing church members who aren’t quite sure what all this change-talk is really about.

Years ago, I served as interim pastor at a historic downtown church. As the fortunes of the city declined over the years, as people fled in great numbers to the suburbs, and as the weed of secularism spread its tentacles over ever-larger swathes of America, the church was struggling.

Continue reading “Cut Flowers and Mighty Oaks”

G.K. Chesterton, referencing the Modernist era, once said: “A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason.”

As you may recall, Modernism, beginning with the Enlightenment, sought to replace tradition with Reason. All human problems would thus be fixed. Me thinks Chesterton was on to something.

Today we live in a bifurcated culture. One might even call it schizophrenic. Which is to say there exists two camps where never the twain shall meet: socialism and capitalism. Both, believe it or not, are kissing cousins.

Capitalism, in a generalized sense, is the Enlightenment’s idea of the free market which sought to empower the individual over and against the feudal system of land owner and serf.

Continue reading “The Empty Shrine”