Tried With Fire

A friend on FB posted a link to the Heidelblog -  Sola Scripture ≠ Nuda Scriptura . I wasn't familiar with the term, Nuda Scriptura , so I read the post, which says: Evangelical Christians in North America sometimes misunderstand the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura to mean that the Bible is the Christian’s only theological resource, that it can and should be denuded of its churchly context (hence nuda Scriptura ). Such an understanding is altogether incorrect. While believers should be Bereans and search the Scriptures for themselves, we don't do it in a vacuum. Our study of the Word is not disconnected from what has transpired through church history. Neither should it be divorced from the context of the present local church. So given the potential for deception if one is left to one's self, I wondered if any cults or erroneous teachings were conceived via  Nuda Scriptura . Well in my recent reading, I happened upon: - Caleb Rich "insisted that his...

Religious camp meeting Dr. Robert Godfrey mentioned the book,  The Democratization of American Christianity ,  during his talk at Ligonier 2012. As I was interested in learning why evangelical Christians think (or don't think) the way they do, I added the book to my stack, and I'm finally getting around to reading it. It looks like this may answer many of my questions. From the introduction: "The rise of democratic Christianity in the early United States is riddled with irony, unrealistic hope, and unfulfilled expectations. A central theme of the chapters that follow is the unintended results of the people's actions. Attempting to erase the difference between leaders and followers, Americans opened the door to religious demagogues. Despite popular acclaim, these leaders could exercise tyranny unimagined by elites in more controlled environments of the colonial era. Likewise, a deep sensitivity to audience resulted in values of the audience shaping the message...

Ever since I've come to the Doctrines of Grace, I've been curious how, when, and why American Christianity took a turn away from its reformed roots to where we are today. I've been trying to dig into the subject, so I was thrilled to find a used copy of  The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch.  Dr. Hatch examines how politics, culture, and religion came together in our fledgling nation and the result of that amalgamation. Dr. Robert Godfrey referred to this book during one of his talks at the Ligonier National Conference, and Nancy Pearcey also references it in Total Truth.  While I was flipping through the text, the title of the appendix caught my eye:  A Sampling of Anticlerical and Anti-Calvinist Christian Verse. Sounds like some fun reading, no?   Dr. Hatch writes,   "Better than any other source, popular poems and songs capture the force of the early republic's religious populism... Using biting sarcasm, a Jeffersonia...