Most Read from past 24 hours
Much ink is spilled every December over the “War on Christmas”—a perceived assault, led by secular folk, on the public acknowledgment of the holiday. But in fact, public-spirited “warfare” against Christmas goes back a long way in our history, and it was carried out by very religious people. The New England Puritans’ hostility to the
READ MOREAt this time of year our thoughts naturally turn to the Pilgrim Fathers—those who came to the New World in order to escape religious persecution at home. Yet rarely do we stop to consider the logic of the persecutors. That last phrase seems to ring a false note; it’s commonly assumed that religious persecution has
READ MOREConventional wisdom holds that Halloween is essentially a secular and pagan holiday, the result of the Christian Church appropriating an ancient Celtic harvest festival. But one strain of critical opinion tends to the view that the holiday was thoroughly Christian from the start. In the church calendar, Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve) is the beginning of
READ MOREIn The Mind of the Maker, her brilliant book about theology and art, Dorothy L. Sayers discusses the differences between the biblical and modern attitudes toward life as revealed in the language we use. Sayers provides an illuminating quote from a Unitarian minister named L. P. Jacks: “I am informed by philologists that the rise
READ MORE