Bible Study Essentials

Anglican? Is that like Episcopalian? What's the difference? On one level, there is a general confusion as to what these words mean in their historical and grammatical sense. On another level, there is confusion surrounding how the meanings of these words have changed and taken on new semantic hues over time, especially since the beginning of the millennium.

This article was originally published in December of 2022. “Advent is for the few.” That’s one of the first things Rev. Fleming Rutledge said to me in our recent interview about the Advent season. This time of year, it’s easy to let our imaginations return to the sights, sounds, and smells of past Christmases, to

Did you attend church on Sunday? If so, you’re part of an increasingly rare minority. In fact, fewer people regularly attend church now than at any time in American history. Why is this? What follows is a testimony—a confession—of my five decades attending churches and how their liturgies affected me. I offer it as a

With the advent of the internet, we parents deal with a constant flow of parenting tips and tricks. Fresh data comes every week. Influencers tell us about new studies that should supposedly change how we parent. The ground beneath our feet feels shaky. We often feel overwhelmed. But can this increase in data make me or my children truly virtuous? I may know more facts and information, but am I parenting virtuously? And if data about parenting constantly changes, can we find lasting parenting principles?

Political theology refers to a discipline of theology dedicated to applying the resources of Christian theology to the interests or questions of politics, i.e., how society is organized. The article aims to offer some historical context for Christian political theology and outline common approaches to it, providing readers helpful resources for deepening their understanding of these issues.

What is Advent? Advent is a season in the church calendar that spans the four weeks leading up to Christmas and ends on December 24. Each Sunday coincides with the lighting of one of four candles—a purple one on the first, second, and fourth Sunday, and a pink one on the third Sunday. Each week

G. K. Chesterton claimed he never discussed anything except politics and religion stating there was nothing else to discuss. By this, he meant these two topics compass the whole of human activity and thought. I believed that valuing religion and politics with equal fervor, as Chesterton’s expresses, is precisely what’s wrong with so much of our approach to religion and politics. But I have changed. Christ desires the marriage of our liturgical life and political life, and what God has united man shall not pull asunder. You can only serve one master.

The Protestant Reformation marked an explosive turning point in church history, as it recovered and proclaimed the gospel of saving grace. Its message was that God justifies men in his sight by faith alone. To be saved, a person must place their trust only in what Christ has done for them. This quickly brought the

From the window of graduate student housing at Emory University, my mother recalls watching an older man carrying a heavy sack and placing a book at the doorstep of each of the apartments, one after the other. And then this St. Nicholas-like man came to her door, and he placed the mysterious book there and

When I first read about a large language model called ChatGPT from OpenAI, I knew that my life as the dean of the School of Theology at Colorado Christian University had forever changed. I understood that this would be yet another reason for revamping the way we prepare pastors and Christian leaders to serve in local churches. This article is not intended to offer the latest amazing facts of what AI is able to do, because the weekly advances in large language models would make such an article obsolete before publication. We know that people who are living through history cannot write history books in real time. Nevertheless, we do well to step back and think about the place of artificial intelligence in pastoral ministry and Christian higher education. In doing so, my goal in this article is to help Christians to think critically about AI, both encouraging pastors and Christian professors to explore its advantages even while reminding all to be wary of certain of its aspects.