Volume 32 · Issue 1 · Winter 2026
Tag

Cultural Engagement

Showing 37 articles
Emperor Constantine (forefront) at the First Council of Nicaea, a convening of bishops to decide important dates for the Christian calendar and settle other debates.Confessing the Faith

Orthodoxy

Right belief or right worship? Doctrine or doxology? Drawing on Chesterton, Athanasius, and Calvin, Richard Burnett presents orthodoxy as a costly, moving equilibrium, never stuffy and never still, that has carried the church through every storm.

A Plan of the Road From the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, Adapted to The Pilgrim's Progress, 1821.Discipleship

Perseverance

Spiritual autobiographies remind us how the Spirit sustains faith through the long road. Drawing on Schweitzer, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Douglas F. Fletcher names ten weapons against evil and reflects on perseverance as a gift God himself secures.

malin k 1ul5a6YLapo unsplashTheology

For the Next Generation

At the close of his seventh decade, Burgess takes stock alongside the Bonhoeffer of the prison letters, asking the same question Bonhoeffer asked: who am I? The address is a meditation on identity, ministry, and what we hope to leave the generation that follows.

Confessing Church FoundersConfessing the Faith

“Live Not By Lies”

Ninety years ago a small group of pastors and elders in Barmen refused the Nazis' attempt to colonize the gospel. Working revisits Karl Barth's text and finds a confession that still names the temptation: any blood-and-soil ideology that asks the church to add another word to the one Word of God.

michael dziedzic ioIc2yH4xLU unsplashChurch and Culture

Struggling to “Live Not by Lies”

Crocco listens to a psychiatrist friend who can't say what she actually thinks about gender dysphoria treatment without losing her license. The conversation pulls Solzhenitsyn's plea to 'live not by lies' from the Soviet bloc into our own moment, and asks what costs Christians should expect.

Tmconference2021Theology

Running to the Sound of Gunfire

A 2021 conference address from Stephen Crocco on the courage Christians need to run toward the difficult places rather than away. The metaphor is military, the application is pastoral, and the audience is Reformed believers wondering whether to keep speaking at all.

Michał Parzuchowski | UnsplashTheology

The Juvenilization of American Christianity

Presbyterians prize mature leadership, but American Christianity has spent seven decades absorbing the values of adolescence. Bergler summarizes his award-winning book on how youth ministry shaped the wider church and what we lost by treating perpetual youthfulness as a virtue.

Reader-Supported

"Free to all who ask."

Theology Matters is sent free in print to anyone who requests it, sustained primarily by readers like you. Tax-deductible.

Give a Gift