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Exploring Books, Life, and Writing

Category: Evangelicalism

Remembering J. I. Packer

July 20, 2020 by Andy Le Peau

Over my forty years at InterVarsity Press I crossed paths with J. I. Packer a number of times. This soft-spoken and steady British theologian, who died this past week, became something of an accidental celebrity when his substantive book Knowing God suddenly became a best seller. When, as a newly minted InterVarsity campus staff member …

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Putting Our Faith at Risk

August 8, 2019 by Andy Le Peau

When Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster, predicted that Christ would return on May 21, 2011, he made national news. Many of his followers paid for billboards, took out full-page ads in newspapers, and distributed thousands of tracts about this day of reckoning. One engineer spent most of his retirement savings, well over a half-million …

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As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (4)

July 18, 2019 by Andy Le Peau

Conversionism is one of the four main characteristics of evangelicals that British historian David Bebbington has identified.* Salvation must be appropriated through personal faith that comes via repentance. This event which takes us to an entirely new level spiritually looms large in the evangelical psyche—so much so that the continuing journey of sanctification often takes …

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As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (3)

July 16, 2019 by Andy Le Peau

I was recently having lunch with a Catholic priest who leads retreats and is a spiritual director. He works out of a nearby conference center with about ten other spiritual directors who meet regularly with over a hundred people. As we were enjoying our meal he said, “Well, maybe you can answer this question. It …

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As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (2)

July 11, 2019 by Andy Le Peau

Catholics and Protestants (especially evangelicals, who have maintained certain historically Protestant distinctives) have certain habits of mind, culture and world view that affect the way each thinks and acts. I generalize here, of course, and not every Catholic or every Protestant will recognize themselves in the descriptions I offer. Yet the differences can often be …

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As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (1)

July 9, 2019 by Andy Le Peau

When Phyllis and I got engaged, I found out just how different Catholics and Protestants were. I had been raised Catholic, served as an altar boy, ate fish on Friday, said the rosary, memorized the catechism, prayed the Stations of the Cross, sang Gregorian Chant in the choir, and had twelve years of Catholic education …

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The Enemy of Faith

May 29, 2019 by Andy Le Peau

We often consider unbelief and doubt to be enemies of faith. After all, if we perpetually embrace them, we never embrace God. But a very different response can also be the enemy—certainty. As Tobias Wolf said, “Certainty is one of the greatest spiritual problems of our time.”* When we are absolutely sure of what we …

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Bad Religion

August 23, 2018 by Andy Le Peau

Heresy has always been with us, and, as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat tells us in Bad Religion, that has not necessarily been a bad thing. Heresy can stimulate orthodoxy to clarify itself and perhaps help correct an imbalance in the church. What is different now is that heresy is no longer at the …

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James W. Sire, 1933-2018

February 7, 2018 by Andy Le Peau

James Sire was a keystone in the intellectual renewal of evangelicalism in the 1960s and 70s, championing the work of Francis Schaeffer and contributing his own landmark books on world views. Joe Bayly, publisher at David C. Cook, once called Sire “the Maxwell Perkins of contemporary Christian publishing.”

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The Life of the Mind

January 28, 2015 by Andy Le Peau

The history of evangelicalism and the life of the mind is both well-chronicled and checkered. While Jonathan Edwards is hailed by some as the greatest intellect (not just evangelical intellect) in American history, suspicion and anger has often boiled over from within evangelicalism against the university world. The 1925 Scopes Trial, for example, set off …

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