Blog - Page 82 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Righteous Mind

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:20-05:00July 13th, 2012|Categories: Culture, Current Affairs, Ideology, Psychology, Unity of the Church|

Author Jonathan Haidt has written one of the most intriguing, and potentially helpful, books that I have come across this year. The title intrigues me instantly: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Random House, 2012). I published a comment about this book, along with a clip from NPR, on my Facebook page several months ago. Finally I began to read the book yesterday. It is, so far, everything I hoped for and more.

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and a visiting professor of business ethics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He is the author of a previous popular book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. But Haidt is not just interested in psychology as science but in what he calls “moral psychology.” He says people who study something often come to the conclusion that their object of fascination is the key to understanding everything. Books have been recently been published on the transformative role of […]

Wherever I Wind Up: The R. A. Dickey Story

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:20-05:00July 12th, 2012|Categories: Baseball, Books|

My friends know that I am a huge baseball fan. I have loved the game since I was four or five years old. I got this love, like so many fans of the game, from my dad. There were many summer nights when my tired father would come home from work and take me “out to the ball game” because I begged him a great deal. One of my greatest remembrances was leaving a minor league game in Nashville before the ninth inning when the home team was down 10-1. Dad assured me it was OK to leave since Nashville could not win. As we drove home we listened on the radio as the hometown Vols rallied and won the game 11-10. I never let my dad forget that night. I hope he forgave me for reminding him so often over the years.

I introduced my children to the sport and at ages 39 and 35 they enjoy it too, especially my daughter! My son will watch a game in person but my daughter watches box scores, can keep score, and understands the nuances of the game […]

Focolare: A Catholic Movement of Love and Unity

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:20-05:00July 9th, 2012|Categories: Love, Missional-Ecumenism, Roman Catholicism, Unity of the Church|

A New York Times obituary described Chiara Lubich (1920-2008) as “one of the most influential women in the Roman Catholic Church.” Chiara passed away peacefully on March 14, 2008, at her home outside of Rome but the movement she began, almost six decades ago, continues to grow and mature around the world. During World War II, while bombs were destroying the famous Italian town of Trent, Lubich had a powerful religious experience that she described as “stronger than the bombs that were falling on Trent.” She shared this experience with her closest friends. After her friends heard her account they declared that, should they all be killed, they wished to have only one inscription carved on their tomb: “And we have believed in love.”

Until early 2012 I had never heard of Focolare, much less of Chiara Lubich. Now I have shared several evenings of wonderful fellowship over meals with Focolare members here in Chicago. Today I am an invited guest and speaker for their Midwest retreat being held at Valparaiso University (Indiana).

The Focolare Movement is […]

Muslim Attacks in Kenya: "Blessed are the Peacemakers"

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00July 6th, 2012|Categories: Islam, The War on Terrorism|

On July 1 International Christian Concern reported that suspected members of the Islamic radical group, Al-Shabaab, attacked two Christian churches and killed 17 Christians in Harissa, Kenya. These attacks took place during Sunday morning worship services. The news is now global and viral.

Pastor Ibrahim Magunyi, of the East Africa Pentecostal Church, confirmed the incident to ICC and said, “Many people were injured and rushed to Garissa Provincial hospital.”

The Islamists killed two policemen guarding the African Inland Church before entering and throwing grenades among the worshippers and shooting people randomly. This apparently coordinated attack also prompted grenades to be thrown at the town’s Roman Catholic Church.

Al-Shabaab has infiltrated Kenya over recent months and placed the nation, and especially Kenya’s Christians, on terror alert. I wonder if we even begin to imagine what it would be like attending worship with fear and terror surrounding us when we gathered? I wonder who would consider “forsaking the assembling of ourselves” to be a serious option in order to save our lives?

But there is another side to this horror story. The […]

What We Believe and Why: Theology the Way It Should Be

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00July 4th, 2012|Categories: Theology|

My good friend, Fr. George Koch, is an Anglican pastor who really gets it. He understands that theology is about knowing God and loving him in all that you do. He understands that having theological knowledge is good, but using that knowledge to live well is the real goal of good theology. To this end George has written a magnificent new book, What We Believe and Why. Check the book out at the website George has set up to explain his approach. You can find further vital information at the site. I confess that I have been looking for a book like this for a long time.

In a recent ad George sent me he used some “negative” marketing to tell why you should buy the book. Here is how he does it. I wish I was this clever.

SIX REASONS NOT TO BUY THIS BOOK:

1. IT’S TOO BIG Oversize: 7 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches. Almost an inch thick. Big. Won’t fit in your pocket.

2. IT’S TOO LONG Over 350 full pages. That’s a lot of reading.

3. IT’S NOT CHEAP Retail […]

We Must Begin Again

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00June 29th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Church Tradition, Current Affairs, Homosexuality, Religion, The Church, The Future|

I often wonder if a growing number of dedicated and well-taught Christians began to live a love-directed life with their neighbors what would happen to the churches of our land? America just may not see another great awakening. (I’ve been around revival movements for four decades-plus and I have to say we seem further from anything like true revival than ever.) Let’s face it, this republic may collapse much as ancient Rome did. But what would the City of God look like in the midst of such a major historical change? That is the question that ought to stir us as Christians, just as it did the famous Augustine of Hippo when he wrote about it in his time.

Having read Ross Douthat’s book, Bad Religion, and having commented on it here for several weeks now, I conclude today with his three positive prescriptions for what we can and should do to renew orthodox Christian faith and practice in America’s churches.

1. A renewed Christianity should be political but non-partisan.

This means that we should avoid the nationalist tendencies of Americanism that I wrote about yesterday. We should also […]

The Heresy of Nationalism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00June 28th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Current Affairs, Missional-Ecumenism, Religion, The Church, The Future|

Ross Douthat, in his much-discussed survey of American religion, exposes one of our most persistent and complex heresies in his final chapter, which bears the appropriate title: “The City on the Hill.” This particular heresy, which has reached across the entire social-political spectrum, is “the heresy of American nationalism” (Bad Religion, 244). Noting that “universal faiths are a relative novelty in human history” he correctly observes that there has rarely been anything like a separation between religion and politics in human history, at least until the formation of the United States of America. On one end of the spectrum societies have deified their rulers while on the other they have identified their unique practices and ideological beliefs with a tribal god. But local gods will go away when the cults and rituals associated with such a deity go away. History demonstrates this point.

The strange revelation, at the very heart of the Old Testament, is that the universal God actually entered into human history and became the champion of a particular race and people. And this universal God, in the Christian understanding, sent his one and only […]

Therapeutic Religion and the Sexual Revolution

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00June 27th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Culture, Current Affairs, Religion, Spirituality, The Church, The Future|

In James Frey’s book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible (Gagosian Gallery, 2011) the controversial best-selling author gives us one of most revolutionary readings of the gospels I’ve encountered in any form of modern writing. Amazon.com describes the author and his book with these words:

James Frey isn’t like other writers. He’s been called a liar. A cheat. A con man. He’s been called a savior. A revolutionary. A genius. He’s been sued by readers. Dropped by publishers because of his controversies. Berated by TV talk-show hosts and condemned by the media. He’s been exiled from America, and driven into hiding. He’s also a bestselling phenomenon. Published in 38 languages, and beloved by readers around the world. What scares people about Frey is that he plays with truth; that fine line between fact and fiction. Now he has written his greatest work, his most revolutionary, his most controversial. The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. What would you do if you discovered the Messiah were alive today? Living in New York. Sleeping with men. Impregnating young women. Euthanizing the dying, and healing the sick. […]

The God Within Emphasis in Modern Religion

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00June 26th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Culture, Current Affairs, Religion, Spirituality, The Church, The Future|

The God Within emphasis of so much modern religion is a serious challenge to orthodox Christian faith. By removing the tensions that exist between true faith and reason the distinction between the Creator and the creation is routinely denied, both subtly and intentionally. Devotees often feel complete freedom to obey their “inner promptings of Supreme Self or Highest Thought” (229). In Bad Religion, journalist Ross Douthat perceptively observes:

One thinks here of Orwell’s famous admonition that saints should be judged guilty until they are proven innocent. To be sure, often they are innocent: Christian orthodoxy doesn’t exclude the possibility that God might call someone to abandon what can seem like their immediate moral responsibilities. Certainly nothing in the literature of the God Within is as radical as this Gospel admonition: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (229).

Orthodoxy can embrace mysticism but it when it does it always places a hierarchy of goods and ordinary duties on the followers […]

How Gnostic Is the God-Within Movement?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:21-05:00June 25th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Current Affairs, Mysticism, Orthodoxy, Religion, Spirituality, The Church, The Future|

Ross Douthat, as I stated last Friday, believes that modern American Christianity has been co-opted by ancient Gnostic ideas. But his argument is actually better developed than that of many pop-evangelical apologists who make the same claim but with very little clear distinction.

Douthat writes:

The cult of the God Within owes a debt to the ancient Gnostics, clearly, but it takes their impulse in a more democratic and optimistic direction, shedding both the spiritual elitism woven into texts like the Gospel of Judas and the idea that the physical universe itself is corrupt and needs to be escaped. It accepts the Gnostic premise that we should seek after our divine spark, but it locates this spark both inside and outside the self. The human soul has God within it, but so does the entirety of the natural world as well (Bad Religion, 221).

I find myself in agreement with Douthat when he says that from Emerson to Elizabeth Gilbert, American God Within theology “blurs naturally into a kind of pantheism” (Bad Religion, 222). The appeal of this conception of God Within is sharpened by both materialism […]