Free Republic

The Republican primary race in Virginia’s 7th district was a David and Goliath story from the beginning. [snip] Brat’s spiritual life has long been as central to his identity, even though it has also been difficult to pigeonhole. He currently attends a Catholic church, but he also identifies as a Calvinist, and he lists four churches as affiliations on his resume: St. Michael’s Catholic, Christ Church Episcopal, Third Presbyterian, and Shady Grove Methodist. He earned his bachelors from Hope College, a Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Mich., which is historically affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, a Protestant...

Yes and no. As I have argued here, there are some fine reasons why Christians should be a constant presence at their local abortion mill. It is true that different believers, even different churches have different callings. Trouble is, too often we “feel called” to that which is most comfortable, most respectable. If there are ten churches within a five mile radius of the local mill, and everyone of them supports Bible study programs for successful businessmen something is wrong. Just remember that both the priest and the Levite had some thriving ministries to get to back in Jerusalem...

VATICAN CITY — In a surprise move, the Vatican announced late Thursday that while priests cannot marry, they can date. “We invite priests to test the singles market, as long as they keep it above the neck and don’t make long-term commitments,” says a spokesman. A dozen priest-dating sites with names like EverDating.com sprung up immediately, with tens of thousands of priests offering photos and descriptions of their likes and dislikes to potential paramours. Most offered a disclaimer that said they could develop a significant platonic relationship, but marriage was off limits. “It’s completely natural for men and women to...

Seven years ago this fall, a young journalist named Collin Hansen wrote a cover story for Christianity Today titled "Young, Restless, Reformed: Calvinism Is Making a Comeback—and Shaking Up the Church." In it he remarked: Partly institutional and partly anecdotal, [the evidence for the resurgence] is something a variety of church leaders observe. While the Emergent "conversation" gets a lot of press for its appeal to the young, the new Reformed movement may be a larger and more pervasive phenomenon. Two years later, Hansen released his movement-defining book Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists (Crossway, 2008). Traveling to destinations like the Passion...

An ‘Error Message’ on the Screen of Western Civ? The Most Important Question Facing us in 2012 is more than an Election The most important question of the coming year is not “who will be the next occupant of the White House?” The single most important matter before us all is a question of value. It is a question that may be stated, “Will the Western world embrace the very thing that holds it together. Or will it continue the denial of the obvious and seal its inevitable decline?” Let me explain. In historiography – the study of history –...

A statement by a non-Calvinist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has launched infighting within the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and tensions are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans. ..The May 30 document, "A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God's Plan of Salvation," aims "to more carefully express what is generally believed by Southern Baptists about salvation." But both Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler and George W. Truett Theological Seminary professor Roger Olson, in separate blog posts, said that parts of the document sound like semi-Pelagianism, a traditionally heretical...

Two of Buffalo's most venerable mainline Protestant churches are in discussions to share space, staff and ministries -- with one of the congregations possibly selling off its buildings and moving into the landmark structure of the other congregation. Leadership of Trinity Episcopal Church on Delaware Avenue revealed the surprising proposal, which also involves First Presbyterian Church, in a letter this past weekend to Trinity church members. The proposal calls for First Presbyterian, the city's first congregation, dating from before the War of 1812, to sell its buildings on Symphony Circle and move to the Delaware campus of Trinity, which was...

It is remarkable that anyone who claims to be Reformed let alone a Calvinist would ever countenance the exercise of such corrupt and false piety as is called for by the idolatrous ‘Season of Lent.’ Yet, examples of such absurdities are not hard to find. In obedient submission to the Sacred Scriptures, Calvin taught that nothing may be called true worship or piety which is not first required of us by God in His Word. Let us hear Calvin. 20. Then the superstitious observance of Lent had everywhere prevailed: for both the vulgar imagined that they thereby perform some excellent...

When still an earnest Calvinist I saw the Anglican church as the proper heir of Swiss Reformed thought, or even Calvinism, for that matter. It was largely the accident of Knox having published in Geneva his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women without Calvin’s consent or knowledge – - or so Calvin claimed in a letter to Elizabeth’s secretary, William Cecil – -that had put Geneva on the outs with Elizabeth. Consequently, not Geneva, but Zurich became the primary court of appeal for the English Protestants in the first decades of Elizabeth’s reign, and the...

Reformation Day is a religious holiday celebrated on October 31st or the last weekend in October in remembrance of the Reformation. Martin Luther posted a proposal at the doors of a church in Wittenberg, Germany to debate the doctrine and practice of indulgences. This proposal is popularly known as the 95 Theses, which he nailed to the Castle Church doors. This was not an act of defiance or provocation as is sometimes thought. Since the Castle Church faced Wittenberg's main thoroughfare, the church door functioned as a public bulletin board and was therefore the logical place for posting important notices....

The pulpit of Saint Andrew's Chapel isn't off to one side in deference to the altar, as it is in a Catholic church. It isn't a lectern wheeled onto the stage after the Christian rock band sits down, as it is in many nondenominational megachurches. The pulpit that conservative evangelist R.C. Sproul ascends every Sunday is a large, imposing wooden centerpiece in a church designed to embody his throwback theology. Opened a year ago, Saint Andrew's Chapel is modeled after the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, just as Sproul's preaching is a return to the days of John Calvin and Martin...

CHAPTER II. THAT THE CHURCH IS AN INFALLIBLE GUIDE FOR OUR FAITH. THAT THE TRUE CHURCH IS VISIBLE. DEFINITION OF THE CHURCH. Now is it not reasonable that no private individual should attribute to himself this infallible judgment on the interpretation or explanation of the Holy Word? -otherwise, where should we be? Who would be willing to submit to the yoke of a private individual? Why of one rather than of another? Let him talk as much as he will of analogy, of enthusiasm, of the Lord, of the Spirit,-all this shall never so bind my understanding as that, if...

Once when Absalom wished to form a faction against his good father, he sat in the way near the gate, and said to all who went by: ”There is no man appointed by the king to hear thee…O that they would make me judge over the land, that all that have business might come to me, and I might do them justice.(2 Kings xv.). Thus did he undermine the loyalty of the Israelites. But how many Absaloms have there been in our age, who, to seduce and distract the people from obedience to the Church, and to lead Christians into...

Not to be confused with the thread Reformation Reading Room (aka Calvinist Swarm Links) started by by myself way back in 2003. _______________________________________________  In bringing you this list, it is our hope to bring honor to God by exalting Jesus Christ in providing the biblical and theological works (both contemporary and classic) that we believe best reflect the Scriptires' teaching on grace and the Christian life. Below I've put together this concise guide to Reformation Theology literature which hopefully will be beneficial to all who want to do some deeper investigation of where we are, where we’ve come from and...

John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision. Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction...

DALLAS -- Matt Chandler doesn't feel anything when the radiation penetrates his brain. It could start to burn later in treatment. But it hasn't been bad, this time lying on the slab. Not yet, anyway. Chandler's lanky 6-foot-5-inch frame rests on a table at Baylor University Medical Center. He wears the same kind of jeans he wears preaching to 6,000 people at The Village Church in suburban Flower Mound, where the 35-year-old pastor is a rising star of evangelical Christianity. Another cancer patient Chandler has gotten to know spends his time in radiation imagining that he's playing a round of...

Attendance at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston would decline rapidly to the point that the property would be sold back to the city of Houston to pay off ministry debts. It would then be re-converted into a basketball arena.

John Calvin was a Frenchman, but he is being remembered in Geneva this week because it was here that he built Calvinism. Invited to reform the city in 1541, almost as what would now be called a management consultant, he formed an alliance with the city fathers. Over the next 20 years of preaching and pastoring they turned this tiny city, with a population then of only 10,000, into a model of church government and theology which has changed the world. His followers now form the third-largest Christian grouping in the world. The world alliance of reformed churches claims 75...

Do you believe in bringing children up with a strict education, in avoiding sumptuous food and unnecessary expense, and in holding to the values of hard work? If so, you have a good chance of being a Calvinist, according to an online quiz offered by a Dutch newspaper. The 25-question test on the Web site of Trouw was first launched in Dutch in January. It is now available in English and German and is one of the numerous projects and activities in the Netherlands and beyond to mark the 500th anniversary in 2009 of the birth of French-born Protestant leader...

Dutch people in their 20s are more likely to have a Calvinistic approach to life than any other age group, according to research by Trouw. Calvinism, named after the French religious reformer John Calvin, is associated with a sober, hardworking approach to life and stresses the rule of God in all things. Young people are more conservative than older people, they are more orthodox in their approach to religion and voted for the Calvinist CDA party at the last election, researcher Joke van Saane of Amsterdam's VU university told the paper. 'It is back to basics. Young people feel the...