Blog - Page 99 of 318 - John H Armstrong

How Shall We Deal with Our Religious Identity Crisis?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:09-05:00October 21st, 2011|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Civil Rights, Culture, Current Affairs, Missional-Ecumenism, Religion|

The success of what Professor Ken M. Schultz has called “tri-faith America” there remain problems. One is the identity crisis I wrote about yesterday. Catholics and Protestants are no longer sure why they are Catholic or Protestant, at least to a significant degree. Few understand the theological debates and most do not live in the tensions of the past. How do Catholic and Protestant institutions self-identify when they have been so successful that they are losing their way? This question is as old as antiquity if you know the Old Testament.

The religious right has posed serious opposition to this new version of public expression Schultz calls “tri-faith.” But, he rightly concludes, “the success of the tri-faith idea shaped American life during the second half of the twentieth century and has continued to do so well into the twenty-first” (Tri-Faith America, 208).

This new public expression of faith in America helped to formulate new principles of group communalism, group rights, and religious privacy. While some conservatives debate the ultimate value of these principles I am one that welcomes them as a better way than that of our pre-civil […]

Putting America’s Religious Change Into Perspective

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:09-05:00October 20th, 2011|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Culture, Religion|

Yesterday I gave a few observations about a new book, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (Oxford, 2011). Author Kevin M. Schultz has done a major new analysis, as well as a critical update, of the thesis religious sociologist Will Herberg wrote on the impact of religion upon American culture.

Schultz demonstrates that religious pluralism and civic secularism were increasingly being wed before and after World War II. By 1962, when the Supreme Court outlawed prayer in public schools, Protestantism, and religion in general, was being disestablished in American life. This decision formalized that which had already been taking place for decades. Following this decision very conservative Protestants wanted to take back what they saw as “their country.” At first this response came from fringe voices but before long it became a vital part of Protestant evangelical Christianity in America. In 1963 Jerry Falwell got the idea to build a Christian school after the Supreme Court ruled against enforced Bible reading […]

Exploring Catholicism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:09-05:00October 19th, 2011|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

My good friend Chris Castaldo, author of Holy Ground, is hosting a special event at Wheaton College next Tuesday evening, October 25th. The subject is “Exploring Catholicism.” If you are in the Chicago area I encourage you to consider attending. It will be well worth your time I am quite sure. Chris is a former Catholic who does not represent the far too common anti-Catholic spirit of many evangelicals. You may disagree with him, especially if you are a devout Catholic, but you will still love him as a brother filled with Christ’s Spirit. I hope you will check this out and/or follow Chris on his blogs and teaching. Few evangelicals can express their differences with Rome as well as Chris and in the spirit of genuine love and respect.

Tri-Faith America

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:09-05:00October 19th, 2011|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Culture, Race and Racism, Religion|

Kevin M. Schultz, assistant professor of history and Catholic studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, demonstrates in his newly published study, Tri-Faith America (Oxford University Press, 2011), that the central drama of twentieth-century American religion was a tense, complex and successful course of change that ultimately led to mutual accommodation between America’s religious traditions. Schultz follows the lead of Will Herberg (1901-1977) that was popularized in his famous book, Protestant, Catholic and Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955). Herberg, who was brought up in a secular Jewish family and became a communist, eventually turned away from Marxism and became a religious conservative. During the 1960s Herberg became the religion editor of the National Review, the conservative magazine begun by William F., Buckley (1925-2008), a devout Catholics. (I prize a small signed photo of Buckley, taken with me outside Edman Chapel at Wheaton College, when we met at a event to honor and study Malcolm Muggeridge.)

In Herberg’s most famous aforementioned work, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, […]

Peron’s Argentina or Ancient Rome: How Should We Respond to Time’s of Great Unrest?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:09-05:00October 18th, 2011|Categories: Current Affairs, Economy/Economics, Politics|

The more I watch the young idealists (yes, some of them are my age for sure) who occupy Wall Street in protest the more I “listen” to their cobbled together assumptions about life and modern society. This supposedly spontaneous movement, now four-weeks old, continues to grow in other major cities around the world.

One of the striking facts about this movement was recently heralded through its occasionally published newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal. (The irony here is delicious I know.) The paper said, “In the great cathedral of capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.” Who are they kidding?

Gordon Crovitz, writing in the Monday (October 16) Wall Street Journal, seriously asks, “How did protestors manage to take over Zuccotti Park, a half-acre plot a few blocks from Wall Street?” (This is where they camp and live.) It seems that this land-use by the protestors came about through old fashioned crony capitalism, not the social media. The occupiers selected a park […]

The Debt: A Sobering and Tense Thriller

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:10-05:00October 17th, 2011|Categories: Film, Forgiveness|

Each of us has secrets that we keep to ourselves. We know this even though we often try to avoid it. Some of these secrets haunt us profoundly. Sometimes we are able to make a semblance of peace with them over time. This is why confession is so vital to true spiritual and emotional health. The ancient traditions of Orthodoxy and Catholicism have an established means for direct confession that involve a spiritual guide who hears and responds to our sins with a word of grace. Still, many of us act as if sharing our secrets will destroy us. The truth is the exact opposite.

This reality came home to me rather powerfully as I watched the new film The Debt. Based on an acclaimed 2007 Israeli film called Ha-Hov [The Debt], this new film—directed by Oscar-winning director John Madden, is a taunt and suspenseful story that will go deep into the mind and soul of the viewer who has a conscience.

In The Debt the viewer […]

The Battle of Franklin

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:10-05:00October 16th, 2011|Categories: America and Americanism, History, Personal, Race and Racism|

I recently spent some time in the Nashville (TN) area. I was about 15 minutes from Franklin, Tennessee. I had an appointment with a good friend in Franklin so I did some reading about the Civil War significance of this town. I was astounded by what I learned. I decided, after my brief research, to spend several hours visiting the Civil War sites. (I have visited more than a few Civil War battlefields and sites since I was trained in American history and retain a great interest in the subject.)

On November 30, 1864, the bloodiest and fiercest five-hour battle in the Civil War was fought in this town, which had only 750 residents at the time. In terms of the number engaged it was clearly the most destructive in the entire war. And of the five hours of combat more than four hours was fought in the dark of night, something that almost never happened. General Isaac R. Sherwood (111th Ohio Infantry) later wrote, “At midnight on […]

The Debate in the SBC About a Name Change

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:10-05:00October 15th, 2011|Categories: Southern Baptists|

The Southern Baptist Convention is once again discussing a name change. I hope they do it this time.

The president of the SBC, Bryant Wright, recently told the SBC executive committee in a Nashville meeting that he had appointed a task force to look at a possible name change. Giving up a 166-year old name for this denomination will not be easy to do. But make no mistake about it—this should be done for the sake of the gospel and the witness of the SBC to Americans.

Wright said the SBC name represented a region of the country when the denomination is now scattered to every part of America. What this means, quite simply, is that the name SBC is simply not accurate. It wasn’t accurate forty-one years ago when I pastored a little SBC congregation in suburban Chicago but it is really not accurate in the 21st century. SBC churches are now in all 50 states and thousands of missionaries have taken the gospel all over the planet. […]

9/11: Did America Overreact?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:10-05:00October 14th, 2011|Categories: America and Americanism, The War on Terrorism|

The Wall Street Journal offered an op-ed response to this question in their Friday, 9/9, issue. The responses were extremely varied. Some suggested that invading Iraq was a huge mistake. Some disagree. All thought a response to Afghanistan was called for militarily. You could predict the responses in advance if you knew their personal stance on international engagement and the use of military force. Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman were OK with the wide-scale use of force while Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert McFarlane were not. One commentator, the author Mark Helprin, argued that we should have invaded the countries that held terrorists in them, brought down the dictators, and then left! He argues that “reforming” the Arab world will never work so why should we have begun a course that has led to failure. Hmmmm.

What is the right answer? I have no idea. And if you do then I think you will believe in your own view of the world regardless of the complications involved in holding […]

Major Demographic Shifts Will Require a New Christianity in the Coming Decades

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:10-05:00October 13th, 2011|Categories: Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, The Church, The Future|

Serious scholars now claim that the biggest change in the history of Christianity is underway as the center of the Christian faith decidedly shifts to Africa, Latin America and Asia.

"The story of Christianity as a worldwide faith is being written before our eyes," said Dr. Dana Robert, of Boston University School of Theology, to the Global Christian Forum (GCF) in Manado, Indonesia, October 4-7. The gathering, which I was invited to attend at the eleventh hour but sadly could not do, brought together leaders from major church traditions, theological perspectives, and world communions. These included the Anglican Communion, the World Council of Churches, the World Evangelical Alliance, the Pentecostal World Fellowship, and the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Peter Crossing, of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, noted in Manado that in 1910 about 66 percent of the world's Christians lived in Europe; a century later it was only 26 percent. Crossing, a researcher for the […]