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Theses on Denominational Life
Posts related to life in the Christian Reformed Church (and other related thoughts).
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE REFORMED? THE REFORMED ACCENT
A few weeks ago (it’s been a busy season for me), I started a short series of posts posing the question: what does it mean to be Reformed? This question is much mooted these days. I noted, for example, that the Calvin Theological Seminary promotional magazine, forum (yes, that’s how they write it), gave over its…
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE REFORMED?
What does it mean to be Reformed? For several reasons—reasons I will lay out in a subsequent post—it’s an odd question. But if you hang around in the ecclesiastical circles which I frequent, you will hear it asked. Often. I recently received a promotional magazine from Calvin Seminary, a school I once attended. featuring that question:…
ONCE, ONLY
ONCE ONLY War was in the air. It was the leadup to the First Gulf War. Armies were poised to invade Kuwait, and the news was alarming for many of us. What would happen? Would it spread? Would war come to us? At that point in 1991, we were blessedly innocent of the prospects of…
QUESTIONS AND CONVERSATION: READING THE AKEDAH
One task in literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. –Susan Sontag, quoted from The Best American Essays 2023, edited and with an introduction by Vivian Gornick; Robert Atwan, series editor, p. ix. The Bible…
I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION: TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE CHRIST STORY
Louise Erdrich’s novel LaRose is a Christ story. Erdrich does not say so, but she hints at it. And such a strange story it is. The story begins with a killing. Dusty, the young son of Peter and Nola Ravich jumps down from a tree just as Landreaux, Dusty’s uncle, pulls the trigger to take down a…