Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Bible and Theology

March 30, 2012

No ‘Impersonal’ Christian Love

From the first chapter, titled “Preparation for Lent,” of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s Great Lent: Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself. Continue Reading...
March 21, 2012

The Mission of Business

Over the past decade the model of Business as Mission (BAM) has grown into a globally influential movement. As Christianity Today wrote in 2007, the phenomenon has many labels: “kingdom business,” “kingdom companies,” “for-profit missions,” “marketplace missions,” and “Great Commission companies,” to name a few. Continue Reading...
March 14, 2012

Integral Human Development

The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. Continue Reading...
March 13, 2012

Is Work a Curse?

Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Continue Reading...
March 12, 2012

When Christianity Was Still Friendly With Science and Art

Phillip Long is a professor of Bible and Biblical Languages at Grace Bible College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and blogs over at Reading Acts. Phil does not normally review this kind of book, but was drawn to it due to Abraham Kuyper’s popularity and his contribution to worldview issues today. Continue Reading...
March 07, 2012

The Temptations of Poverty

Galatians 2:10 reads, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.” This is the conclusion to the Jerusalem Council, in which Paul and the leaders in Jerusalem are reconciled and unified, and where is decided that Paul and Barnabas “should go to the Gentiles, and they [James, Peter, and John] to the circumcised” (v. Continue Reading...
March 06, 2012

On Call While the Sun Shines

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. — Matthew 5:45b (NIV) This morning, did you greet the sun with thankfulness to God that he sent the warmth and light at the end of a long night? Continue Reading...
March 01, 2012

Bonhoeffer on ‘the view from below’

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. Continue Reading...