By all accounts, the very first catechism—a manual ofChristian doctrine drawn up in the form of questions and answers for thepurpose of instruction in thefaith—was compiled by the English scholar Alcuin sometime in the 8thcentury. It wa…
Quo Vadis?
Henryk Sienkiewicz was aninternational phenomenon a century ago–at the end of the nineteenth and thebeginning of the twentieth centuries. He was trained in both law and medicine. He was a respected historian. He was a successful journ…
Awaken
The Great Awakening touched every sectionof the colonial domains of England in the New World—from northern-most NewEngland to southern-most Georgia. And its impact was enormous. Interestingly, this cultural and spiritual phenomenon was enti…
Boring Is Good
In his masterful novel The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane traced the effects of war on a single Union soldier, Henry Fleming, from his dreams of soldiering, to his actual enlistment, and through several battles of the all too uncivil War between t…
The Covenanter and the King
The Marquess Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll (1598-1661) defied Oliver Cromwell’s English Protectorate and invited the exiled Charles II to return to Scotland to receive his crown on this day in 1650. A Scots Presbyterian, Argyll was the leader of…
Under Our Own Command
When the esteemed Senate Majority Leader of the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge, addressed his colleagues on this day in 1919, the nation was already in the midst of a “Great Debate” over its future foreign policy. What was then called the Great War–wh…
New Sermon Series: Genesis 1-11
Four decades ago Francis Schaeffer wrote, “The battle for a Christian understanding of the world is being waged on several fronts. Not the least of these is Biblical study in general, and especially the question of how the opening chapters of the Bibl…
Resting and Recovering in Vienna
Exhausted from his Herculean labors as a journalist, educator, statesman, theologian, pastor, and social reformer, Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) came to visit Vienna shortly after his first term in the Dutch parliament had come to an end on this day in 18…
The Wisdom of John R.W. Stott
“Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.””Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.””Good conduct arises o…
Cameron the Covenanter
On this day in 1680 a company of English dragoons surprised and surrounded a Scottish preacher and a small band of armed men. Deciding to fight to the death, their leader, Richard Cameron, prayed “Lord, spare the green and take the ripe.” The skirmish …