Faith • Grief • History • Hope
Faith • Grief • History • Hope
Before we decide what to think about the Puritans, we should first understand what they believed they were trying to build. This opening essay invites readers to set aside modern assumptions and enter the world of seventeenth-century Massachusetts on its own terms, where covenant, community, and faith shaped every aspect of public life.
An old house. A New England meetinghouse. A village green. A pastor named Samuel West. What do they have in common? More than two centuries separate us from the American founding, yet the questions facing the Church remain remarkably familiar. This essay is an invitation to recover the patient discipline of beginning with God, listening before speaking, and remembering that the pulpit is not a stage but a sacred trust.
One discovery quietly leads to another until you stop seeing a place simply as somewhere you live and begin seeing it as somewhere you belong.
The figures on my dining room wall and the pencil marks of an unknown reader reminded me that history is not silent. The past still speaks, if we are willing to listen.
We stand on a threshold between those who entrusted this nation to us and those who will one day receive it from our hands. The question before us is not simply what kind of nation we have inherited. The deeper question is what kind of ancestors we are willing to become.
What if the debate over church and state is older—and richer—than our modern political arguments suggest? Before we settle into today's slogans, perhaps we should return to eighteenth-century New England, where faithful Christians wrestled with conscience, covenant, liberty, and the Gospel itself. The questions they asked may be exactly the questions we still need to ask today.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, I thought it might be worth reflecting not only on the events that shaped the nation’s birth but also on the ideas, convictions, and theological traditions that…
Our ancestors in faith believed that God had created a moral universe in which actions had consequences and justice mattered. This created a framework in which tyranny was not merely a political problem; it was a moral and spiritual violation.