Blog - Page 83 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The God Within

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 22nd, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Current Affairs, Mysticism, Orthodoxy, Religion, Spirituality, The Church, The Future|

“The God Within” is the title of chapter seven in Bad Religion, New York Times columnist and Catholic author Ross Douthat’s important new book. Douthat suggests that if there is a representative religious pilgrim for our time it is magazine writer-turned-memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert. If you don’t know much about Gilbert you have missed a story that is, in so many ways, ‘the spiritual odyssey” of our time.

In 2001, at the age of 32, Gilbert had three books published. She had also won a National Book Award. (She is a great writer!) She had a rewarding day job as a travel writer, an apartment in Manhattan, and a big house in the gorgeous Hudson Valley. She even had a devoted husband and intended to begin a family with him. But after only five years she traded her marriage and houses “for a globe-trotting spiritual quest.” The result was a publishing phenomenon titled: Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. This book was a New York Times bestseller for an amazing […]

Think and Grow Rich

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 21st, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Religion, The Church, The Future|

The most influential book of popular theology published in the 21st century has had an amazing impact around the world. It has touched Christians in many languages and cultures and stands alone as the religious book of the decade. It has a glossy cover and a whole slew of celebrity endorsements. The book’s title: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential. The author is Houston’s mega-church pastor Joel Osteen.

Osteen has the highest-rated television show in America, a trio of #1 New York Times bestsellers, and an 18,000 seat home for his immense local congregation. Douthat adds, “Osteen comes as close to Billy Graham’s level of popularity and influence as any contemporary evangelist–and his cultural empire is arguably larger than Graham’s ever was.” But the similarities between Graham and Osteen are limited to popularity, not message. Graham preached a simple, basic gospel message of sin, forgiveness and new life. Osteen’s message is considerably “more upbeat. His God gives without demanding, forgives without threatening to judge, and hands out His rewards in this […]

Half-Educated Evangelical Gurus

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 20th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Current Affairs, Religion, The Church, The Future|

Mark Lilla, a lapsed Catholic and one of America’s leading scholars of religion, writes an interesting lamentation about what has happened in America. The shift that Lilla describes is a major theme of Ross Douthat’s book, Bad Religion.

A half-century ago, an American Christian seeking assistance could have turned to the popularizing works of serious religious thinkers like Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Courtney Murray, Thomas Merton, Jacques Maritain and even Martin Buber and Will Herberg. Those writers were steeped in philosophy and the theological traditions of their faiths, which they brought to bear on the vital spiritual concerns of ordinary believers. . . . But intellectual figures like these have disappeared from the American landscape and have been replaced by half-educated evangelical gurus who either publish vacant, cheery, self-help books or are politically motivated.

When I reread this quotation a few days ago, after hearing the famous Catholic public thinker, Michael Novak, speak on this very subject last week at Acton University, I was stunned by how accurate and discouraging this development really is for […]

The Empty Claims of Liberal Religion

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 19th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Religion, The Church, The Future|

Ross Douthat titles part two of his critique of American religion: “The Age of Heresy.” He opens with a description of the work of Professors Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman, the latter a once-upon-a-time evangelical who graduated from Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College seen in photo on the left, on the “lost gospels.” He refers to the two of them as the “prominent popularizers of early Christianity’s . . . revisionist story.” So they are. The blitz which followed the release of the Lost Gospel of Judas in 2006 provides the perfect contemporary narrative to show how far the radical denial of the orthodox account of Jesus of Nazareth had taken some scholars. Within six months of the dramatic release of this material Rice University professor April DeConick found that “several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field.” This, adds, Douthat, is an academic way for saying the National Geographic team had “botched their work.” The Gnostic heresy was once again at work […]

Sharing Life with Catholics at Acton University

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 18th, 2012|Categories: Uncategorized|

I love the Acton Institute. I especially love to see over 800 people, from over 75 countries, that gather each year for Acton University in Grand Rapids. Last week was another exceptional Acton University meeting. I hope some of you will try to come in June, 2013.

One of the most valuable parts of an Acton experience is to be with Christians from every part of the world and from every church tradition; i.e. Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. You sit with people from these backgrounds, you share meals together and then you gather at receptions and enjoy a glass of wine and some wonderful food. All in all it is a fantastic week! Even when a presentation is not up to par, at least for my tastes, I enjoy listening to the discussion and interacting with friends, old and new. You attend 12 seminars, four plenary evening sessions and several other unique gatherings, both formal and informal. Students often are subsidized and faculty and presidents can attend on scholarship if they qualify.

During the last year I personally recruited seminary presidents and deans, seminary faculty and […]

The Rise of Resistance

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 13th, 2012|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Church History, Current Affairs, Religion, Roman Catholicism, The Church|

Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium (ECT) was released in the spring of 1994. The document was signed by twenty leading Catholic intellectuals, theologians, and bishops along with a significant lineup of evangelical theologians, leaders and ministers. At first the document created very little interest but over time it caused a new dialogue about the relationship between America’s Catholics and Protestant evangelicals. A new appeal for unity, one never heard in America’s long history, soon emerged. The importance of this development cannot, at least in my view, be easily overstated.

I remember the months following the release of ECT in 1994 quite well. My initial response was one of frustration and opposition. I could not understand why such a statement was needed nor why evangelicals would form such an alliance with their Catholic peers. Within a year I was also caught up in the discussion, much of it negative. But as time passed, and as I listened more carefully to the evangelical signers explain their words and actions, I began to grasp the importance of this significant turn in American church history. Something […]

Accommodation: How the Church Responded to Cultural Change

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 12th, 2012|Categories: Church History, Culture, Religion, The Church|

Rather than resist the sweeping changes which began to aggressively challenge Christianity in the 1960s much of the historic Protestant church sought to “forge a new Christianity more consonant with the spirit of the age, one better adapted to the trends that were undercutting orthodoxy.” This approach would attempt to preserve the mid-century gains of the church by “adapting itself to the changing cultural circumstances.” Evangelicals, in the 1970s, insisted that more progressive Christians and denominations were adapting to the times in order to reach the culture. Progressive Christians saw these evangelicals as back-woods fundamentalists who resisted what famous theologian Harvey Cox had appropriately dubbed “the secular city.” In an April 1966 issue Time magazine’s cover story asked, “Is God Dead?” Time reported that Christianity was as strong as ever in America but the faith “was now confidently renewing itself in spirit as well as form.” The article suggested something far removed from the earlier neo-orthoodoxy of the 1940s and 50s by saying the church was becoming more sophisticated in its understanding of religion because it had “formulate[d] a new image and concept of God using contemporary […]

The Locust Years in American Christianity

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:22-05:00June 11th, 2012|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Church History, Culture, The Church, Uncategorized|

Author Ross Douthat, in his much discussed new book, Bad Religion, suggests that the end of the mid-century revival (culminating around 1957) brought about “The Locust Years.” To cite just one example, in 1960 the number of American converts to Roman Catholicism hit an all-time peak. But then, following the heady years of Vatican II, decline followed. Douthat believes numerous social events impacted both the culture and the church in the mid-1960s, events that hastened a profound change that has continued to adversely impact the church right down to the present time.

The social events of the 1960s and 70s included a number of revolutionary changes; e.g., the death of President Kennedy, Pope John XXIII, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. While segregation was being challenged, and legally brought to an end, Richard Russell, the arch-segregationist senator from Georgia, said the Civil Rights Act passed because “those damn preachers got the idea that it was a moral issue.” Writes Douthat, “With those words, and their foretaste of culture wars to come, we can leave the lost world of American Christianity behind.” The post-World War II revival […]

ACT 3: A Printed Treasury of Practical Theology

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:23-05:00June 8th, 2012|Categories: ACT 3, Personal, The Church, Theology|

The ministry of ACT 3 began in 1991. Four brothers met in my living room in Carol Stream to agree on forming a new non-profit ministry that would aim to positively impact the lives of church leaders. (One of those brothers is still on our board, one is still very close to me personally but lives out-of-state in retirement. One is quite elderly and no longer serving and one is with the Lord.) The original vision grew out of a ministry that had begun in 1981 called the Whitefield Ministerial Fellowship. That ministry had been directed exclusively at pastors. I first envisioned it in 1980, as a thirty-one year old pastor who wanted to serve the many friends in the pastoral ministry that I had made over the previous several years while I was pastoring in Wheaton. I made friends easily and saw a way to encourage and serve my growing list of friends in the ministry. It really was that simple. I led a monthly Whitefield Fellowship (except in the summer months) concurrently with my pastoral labors in a Baptist church that I had served […]

Jazz and Missional Living

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:23-05:00June 7th, 2012|Categories: Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Theology, Uncategorized|

I met a friend for breakfast this morning to talk about missional church. We both have a burning desire to see a local congregation that we mutually love grasp the profound importance of envisioning a new dream for this ecclesial community. After mowing the grass in the late morning, answering some email and spending a little time with this and that (and the grandchildren) I am now sitting at a local McCafe listening to my favorite trumpet player, Wynton Marsalis (on my iPad of course). I’m doing some reading and thinking while I listen to this amazing artist. The truth is I’m just “chillin’ out” on a warm day. I need to do this more often but I never took time for it in my earlier years.

Now and then I now take some time to do this, just for my own good. This afternoon is such a time. In a few hours I will meet a long-time pastor-friend, who has been through a terribly hard year, so we can share an evening at a minor league baseball game. But for right now I listen to the […]