I didn’t know the train would be like that. Seats across a table like something from a movie. But I’d never been on a French train before. I was twenty-one, so everything felt surprising and it was springtime. The winter had been more grey than I expected. I was a student on exchange for the…
My parents raised me to respect a solid work ethic and to appreciate the fruits of honest labour. As an adult, I realized the downside of all that is a tendency to confuse who we are with what we do. A visit to Boldt Castle years ago drove the point home for me. Hart Island…
What to make of the high percentage of evangelical Christian women continuing to support Donald Trump, even after a sexual assault conviction, the Epstein files and evidence of enriching himself from tax dollars? Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces the development of a particular notion of femininity and Christian womanhood in a book complementing her…
Perpetua, killed in 203 A.D., was her era’s most famous martyr. Her fame came from being regularly mentioned in sermons by well-known bishop Augustine, as well as other third and fourth century preachers. Sarah Ruden’s biography of Perpetua is part of Yale University Press’s “Ancient Lives” collection, a series exploring stories of ancient thinkers, writers…
I was a young doctoral student in my twenties when I first met someone from Palestine. Until then, I knew nothing about modern-day dynamics in this part of the world, even though I was a biblical scholar. Almost everything I read focused on the Palestine of the ancient past. All that changed when I was…
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of one of the great figures in Dutch – and arguably Western – history. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer was born in 1801 and was raised in a Netherlands undergoing significant change. When revolution broke out in France in 1789, it would unleash such instability as to…
The six years Brenda and I lived in Lansing, Michigan, were bookended by two training courses. Each, in their own way, helped me find a footing in that strange country. And now, as the world is full of confusion, I find the lessons I learned then more valuable than ever. The first course was in…
The simple beauty of the Shakers’ carefully-crafted buildings and furniture has left its mark on American design. But who founded this movement, one that included upwards of 6,000 followers at its height in the 1840s? This question compelled director Mona Fastvold to develop a biopic billed as a musical, The Testament of Ann Lee. The…
In 1790, one year after revolution had broken out across the channel, the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke wrote his now classic Reflections on the Revolution in France. Many of Burke’s compatriots, especially his fellow Whigs, thought that the French were finally rid of their absolutist government and were embracing the constitutional institutions which they themselves…
My grandparents, together with other post-WWII Dutch immigrants animated by Kuyperian thinking, immediately began building Christian schools in their new land of Canada. Eventually, they also built Christian universities. Redeemer College was established in 1981, just down the road from the Christian day schools my grandparents helped build. Reformed colleges had already been established in…
Harry van Dyke’s book was triggered by a conference commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Kuyper’s 1898 Princeton Stone Lectures on Calvinism. Centenary speakers presented Kuyper as unprecedented. In The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper, Van Dyke considers key individuals who influenced Kuyper and as many leaders whom Kuyper influenced. Significant influencers The book’s first part discusses…
Even before the bombs started falling on Tehran, many observers and pundits were saying that going to war with Iran (particularly under the present circumstances) would have disastrous consequences. Those people are almost certainly correct. From civilian deaths to the entrenchment (rather than replacement) of a hard-line regime in Iran and from global energy prices…
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