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A MEDITATION ON TRUST: TRUSTING EACH OTHER IN A TIME OF DISTRUST
What you have done here by ceasing debate is incredibly harmful to what sense of trust the minority has in this body. (Cara DeHaan, from the floor of the synod of the Christian Reformed Church, June 2023) . . . [Vitalik] Buterin [founder of Ethereum and cryptocurrency theorist] argues that one of the most valuable properties…
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A WORD FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT BELIEVE: FAITH AS ENCOUNTER
In the Bible “faith” rarely means “belief”—at least, not in the sense that “belief” has come to have in popular Christianity: what I will call “belief about.” We are not saved by belief. This is not what the Bible teaches. But if my experience is at all representative, this is what many in church think…
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PASSION
When I arrived in Grand Rapids in the middle 60’s, the locals called him “Littlefaith.” His name was Duncan Littlefair. Littlefair, the Reverend Duncan Littlefair, was for 35 years, from 1945 to 1979, pastor of Fountain Street Church in downtown Grand Rapids. Fountain Street was a large and flourishing congregation under Littlefair’s leadership, filled with…
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Retrieving the Words of Faith
LOSING THE THREAD: HOW BAD THEOLOGY THREATENS THE CHURCH Lately, some people—I, among them—have despaired as the churches we grew up with have slid into right wing politics. It’s not just that a vast majority of people who identify as evangelicals voted for Donald Trump (according to exit polls, it’s somewhere between 76% and 81%),…