Past, Present, Future: Christian Belief, Life, and Expectation

God’s Sabbath with Creation: Vocations Fulfilled, the Glory Revealed   James W. Skillen Wipf & Stock Publishers 368pp Reviewed by Charles Strohmer During the 1970s, the combined influence of books by Francis Schaeffer, the presidency of Jimmy Carter (the first self-described “born again” Christian), and the rise of the moral majority motivated many Christians to […]

Care for the Cradle of Christianity

Several months ago I spent an evening with a dozen Christian friends in a home near Knoxville, Tennessee for dinner and conversation. We spent part of the time talking about the plight of the two-thousand-year-old Christian communities in Iraq and Syria that have been deliberately devastated by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS militants), who are […]

Swords into Plowshares

I recently ran across a biblical truth about peace from the book of Isaiah powerfully imagined via art. I offer it as a visual aid to invite us into Christmas meditations about the incarnation and ministry of Jesus Christ as Prince of Peace.

A Roomful of Very Damaged People

A Roomful of Very Damaged People: More of Us Should Say We’re Sorry Wow! I just experienced the most moving story of forgiveness I think I’ve ever heard (apart from that of Calvary). It takes place in a small roomful of very damaged people. If these people can say they are sorry, can’t we forgive […]

Jesus, Political Wisdom, and Human Flourishing

Is President Obama’s “worldview” Christian? Forget about pointing the finger. How consistently do we ourselves see political life through the eyes of Jesus? How much of our political wisdom, to put it in the words of Colossians 2:8, depends on the basic principles of this world rather than on a philosophy based on Christ? A […]

American Evangelicals

Many prominent Evangelicals have begun to decry publicly the rigid, sectarian fundamentalism of the religious right and to call for profoundly increased interfaith dialogue and wiser approaches to U.S.-Mideast relations.

First published in the Turkish Daily News, July 7, 2008.

Christian Zionism & Foreign Policy: Irony & Tragedy

A news article by Michele Chabin in the December 14, 2010, Christian Century has reinforced my view about the irony & tragedy of the Christian Zionist movement – now well over 100 years old, yet stronger and more influential than ever.

Commanding Nature

Commanding Nature by Charles Strohmer The seventeenth century was an extraordinary period in Europe. Changes occurred on the Continent that shoved the entire western world into a different orbit. In a revolt against the prevailing intellectual paradigms of Aristotelianism and Scholasticism, philosophers such as Locke, Descartes, Newton, and Pascal virtually created the modern western mind. […]