Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99 Over the past few months, I have recommended Biblical Critical Theory to more than a few fellow believers. Almost every time, I was met with a dubious look. The phrase “critical theory” carries negative connotations for many Christians. More than once, a diatribe began against […]
Friday, 01 September, 2023 by Stephen Roberts
Tom was a young pastor on a large pastoral staff. There were decisions being made by the senior pastor that he found concerning. When he spoke up, he was maligned. Ruling elders would harangue him. He was occasionally pulled from preaching duties even though his name was in the bulletin. He sought out help from […]
Thursday, 22 June, 2023 by Stephen Roberts
I knew of six seminarians who shared a house—all of them eager to serve the Lord and his church. Ten years after graduation, three of them were broken and wounded, having left churches after prolonged spiritual abuse from a senior pastor. Sadly, such experiences are far too common for the people of God. They come […]
Thursday, 15 June, 2023 by Stephen Roberts
The battle of ideas is over. We no longer live in an age of reason but an age of narratives. The battle of stories is just beginning. While the church wrestles with the ship’s wheel and tries to navigate this new current, we need faithful pastors to give us our bearings. David Murray proves an […]
Wednesday, 14 December, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
It often feels like the church is dividing along political lines. When we declare a church to be conservative or liberal, we are often not referring to theological stances (as J. Gresham Machen did in his classic Christianity and Liberalism), but to political ideology and cultural stances. Those who try to hold these parties together […]
Tuesday, 01 November, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
While in seminary, I often distinguished between those who read John Calvin and those who read Calvin on the john. For some, theological reading is a matter of business; for others, pleasure. It certainly hasn’t helped that many of our greatest thinkers lost their charm as soon as they applied pen to paper. The uninspired […]
Monday, 24 October, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
I keep a strict code of conduct on my Facebook feed. Well, maybe not so strict. I ask that all comments be charitable. If people can’t be decent, they can’t comment on the feed. Sadly, I delete more comments from Christians than non-Christians. Why is this? It’s not that Christians always behave worse than non-Christians. […]
Monday, 04 July, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
The recent exposure of hundreds of cases of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the Southern Baptist Convention is only the most recent dramatic example of such behavior within the church. David and Nancy French exposed similar abuse and cover-ups at Kannakuk Camp—one of the most popular Christian youth camps in the country. While it seems […]
Friday, 17 June, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
Intro: A Season of Repentance In our last piece, we reflected on how we succumbed to the fears and idols of our age. One of the casualties in the Age of COVID is the need and joy of repentance. There is always need for repentance—sin is that treacherous. Over the past two years, however, our […]
Wednesday, 11 May, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
Intro: Considering the Problem In March of 2020, COVID-19 hit American society with the force of freight train. Both the economy and the education system were shut down, and left with the ensuing loneliness, mental health plummeted and at-risk behaviors soared. The church suffered the same whiplashed effects as the rest of society. In general, […]
Wednesday, 20 April, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
How do you write a review of books dealing with pornography without highlighting the toll that pornography has taken on modern society? One recent perusal of The Drudge Report caught two headlines dealing with porn—one on French attempts to ban certain websites and another on how porn diminishes sexual performance. Protestations of pornography are no […]
Wednesday, 23 March, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
There is no more timely issue for a theologian to address than “fear,” surrounded as it is by the frantic and hyperbolic rhetoric of our culture. Some are living their lives in fear of COVID-19, we are told, while others are living their lives in fear of revisionist history within our education system. It is […]
Wednesday, 16 February, 2022 by Stephen Roberts