The American Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a longtime Mormon and songwriter, has written a song for Hanukkah. The story (and the video) are covered by Jeffrey Goldberg in the online magazine Tablet.
The song is simple and earnest, avoiding what Goldberg calls the “Adam Sandlerization of Judaism in America.” Hatch celebrates the story without post-modern self-deprecation [...]

In 2009, I began to use Twitter and Google Reader in a more concerted way. One of the things I have discovered by using these two tools is how many good writers there are out there. There are way more good writers who could write wonderfully helpful books than there will be a market or [...]

The problem with turning 500 is that you start to sound old. John Calvin, who was born 500 years ago today, will be remembered by many today as a dour old codger who loved to talk about sin and depravity, someone who was always in a bad mood. It’s true that Calvin [...]

Is there a “secret gospel” that tells the real story of Christianity? There’s not just one “lost gospel”; there are many contenders to that title, most of them describing alternate versions of Jesus and his teachings. None of these “lost gospels” poses a real threat to Christian belief, but that doesn’t stop us all from [...]

I first started thinking about this post last year during Advent, but I think it’s still relevant now as we look ahead a few months to Easter.  We know Advent is a time of longing for the fulfillment of God’s promises, and baby Jesus is gift we celebrate with an eye toward his death and [...]

Here’s a bit of bizarre but fascinating church history for you: the New Yorker has a detailed overview of the life and death of Giordano Bruno, a sixteenth-century heretic burned at the stake by the Inquisition for his strange (and in some ways scientifically prescient) understanding of the cosmos. One of his basic ideas was [...]

It’s not exactly Dan Brown material, but there’s now one less unsolved church mystery in the world:
An Anglican priest has unlocked the 270-year-old secrets of Charles Wesley’s coded diary, throwing light on the turbulent relationship that he had with his brother John in the early years of the Methodist movement they founded.
[lab]oratory has a [...]

Here’s a rather heavy item for you to ponder on a Monday morning: there’s a long and fascinating post at On the Square tracing the decline and fall of Protestant America—that is, the vanishing influence of mainstream Protestant denominations (Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran) on American society. The article is far too in-depth to summarize [...]

Stephan Fry hosts The Machine that Made Us, a show that aired on the BBC last year. It’s a fascinating (fascinating if you love books and/or history) look at Gutenberg and his press.
Here’s part one:

Watch the other parts: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Thoughts?
[HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi]

When you look at the history of the Christian church, or Europe, or the United States, or anything else you can think of, do you see the hand of God’s providence intervening at critical moments and steering history in a certain direction?
An article at Touchstone is raising these questions by looking back at The Light [...]