Tried With Fire

I finished A Fiery Gospel and hope to write a review soon. As I posted before, Julia Ward Howe was a Unitarian whose bad hermeneutics and bad theology became the perfect combination to create a vaguely religious and nationalistic poem to claim "God" for our side. There were some who realized the contradiction between Howe's beliefs and Christianity, but they found a way around it. This is an excerpt from Moody Bible Institute's Christian Workers Magazine from 1917. They published The Battle Hymn as part of their "patriotic duty." The editors were fully aware of Howe's theological problems, but they "reassured their readers that "The Battle Hymn" could be made safe for Bible-believing Christians." 1 Mrs. Howe was not an evangelical Christian, her strongest sympathies being with the Unitarians, and yet as one reads the hymn, he is impressed with the fact that the Unitarianism it represents is almost more orthodox than the so-c...

I came across this Reformed Forum podcast with Dr. Richard M. Gamble, historian and member of the OPC. Dr. Gamble has just published a book, A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War. This book covers the background of the familiar "hymn," which was eye-opening to me. In a nutshell, a supposedly Christian song was written by a Unitarian who was influenced by German liberalism. The podcast is very interesting and points out how easily we are swayed by Christian-ish lyrics that sound vaguely biblical. Perhaps the vagueness is the reason The Battle Hymn endured and became part of American civil religion. I requested A Fiery Gospel through the public library, which I am hoping to read. In the meantime, I looked up Dr. Gamble's other books. His main area of research is American civil religion, a topic that I find grimly fascinating. I was able to find a copy of this book - In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an A...

pg. 272, Please don't try this at home. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism , Matthew Avery Sutton, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014, 459 pages. About 10-11 years ago, I underwent a major theological shift from Arminianism to Calvinism and eventually becoming confessionally reformed (if LBC 1689 counts.) Because of this change, I felt compelled to find the answer to this question, "Why did I believe what I used to believe?" So I began to read church history specifically of the late 19th and 20th centuries. But the more I read, I realized that other forces shaped the formation of American Christianity. So my reading broadened beyond the history of the church to the history of the nation. American Apocalypse is the latest of these books that I have fondly categorized as -  grimly fascinating.  Different historians have looked at the rise of fundamentalism and evangelicalism from different angles such as the Scopes trial 1 or the ...

I can't remember when I purchased this used copy of Michael Horton's Made in America . I think it may have shown up in the "other customers purchased this" section on the web site after I got Christless Christianity . I probably flipped through it and then shelved it until last night when I picked it up in light of Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s recent interview at the Washington Post. This book was first published in 1991 and the paperback in 1994. It's remarkably appropriate for today but in a sad way. It would have been better if we had heeded this call 25 years ago. The Bible commands, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). While much fuel has been spent on trying to get people to act like Christians, the Bible insists that we must first think like Christians. The transforming of our minds takes place not through magic, superstitious techniques, or superficial devotions,...