Joshua Pauling
Joshua Pauling is a classical educator, furniture-maker, and vicar at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, North Carolina. He studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University. In addition to Modern Reformation, Josh has written for Areo, FORMA, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Public Discourse, Quillette, Salvo, The Imaginative Conservative, Touchstone, and is a frequent guest on Issues, Etc. radio show/podcast.
You Are What You Believe: How the Creed Defines Our Identity in Relation to God, Ourselves, and Others
Ancient Christian confessions like the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed define the boundaries and content of the Christian faith in accordance with Scripture. But they also function as essential identity formation. These creeds are much more than checklists of personal beliefs [...]
Going Upstream of Streaming Worship: Embracing Creaturely Limits in an Age of Autonomy and Disembodiment
Online worship. Zoom church. Streaming services on Facebook Live (if you can get it to actually work). We’re all used to this strange new world by now. But it can get stranger […]
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So wrote English historian and politician Lord Acton in an 1887 letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton. It was a few years earlier in 1883 when, across the Atlantic, prominent American writer and orator Robert Ingersoll encapsulated a similar sentiment: “nothing discloses real character like the use […]
The Power of Story in Forming the Moral Imagination: A Conversation with S. D. Smith, Author of The Green Ember Series
Joshua Pauling (JP): Thank you, Sam, for agreeing to discuss the power of story, and your stories, too. You’ve written a best-selling adventure series The Green Ember, (which my children love, by the way) and now a new book Jack Zulu and the Waylander’s Key, co-authored with your son, Josiah. To start, tell me a […]
In the Teacher’s Lounge with Melanchthon, Luther, and Calvin: Exploring Education with the Reformers
In 1533, Philip Melanchthon gave a speech entitled “On the Miseries of Teachers.” Melanchthon, a Reformer well-versed in educational philosophy and honored by his contemporaries with the title of “Praeceptor Germaniae” (the Teacher of Germany), bemoaned the attitude of students: “they insult us, they wrinkle their noses, they make faces behind our backs when we […]
“Reclaiming the Reformation: Christ for You in Community,” by Magnus Persson, translated by Bror Erickson
*** 1517 Publishing | 2021 | 224 pages (paperback) | $21.85 Magnus Persson, a successful pastor in the charismatic church for many years, is now a minister in the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church. How did that happen? In Reclaiming the Reformation, Persson answers that question en route to offering a larger call to reformational Christianity. […]
We Christians love to talk about ideas and their consequences. Take R.C. Sproul’s The Consequences of Ideas. Or Richard Weaver’s 1948 classic Ideas Have Consequences, which has remained quite popular among conservative Christians ever since its publication. As one who was a high school history teacher for many years, I absolutely love the history of […]
As Romans 8 builds to the crescendo that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39), Paul inserts a jarring Old Testament quotation: “for your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (Ps. 44:22). […]
Why is Christianity true? Considering the language frequently used to describe what it means to be Christian, we might conclude that it is true because I believe it is true. I asked Jesus into my heart. I accepted Jesus as my personal savior. I made Jesus Lord of my life. I believe in Jesus with […]
“I pledge allegiance.” Three words that immediately bring to mind the American flag and that daily classroom ritual from kindergarten through twelfth grade. When my youngest sister started kindergarten, I remember her coming home the first week and asking the family at the dinner table if we all knew “the incredible agents.” We were befuddled. […]
Yet another round of social commentary has been unleashed in the aftermath of Lia Thomas’ recent victory at the NCAA swimming nationals. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Lia is a biological male, who, until last year, swam on the men’s team at Penn. But this year, swimming in the female category as […]
What is a trickster tale? According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, “the trickster-tale genre of folklore appears in some form in every culture” and usually features “a protagonist (often an anthropomorphized animal) who has magical powers and who is characterized as a compendium of opposites.” The trickster-hero frequently “serves as a sort of folkloric scapegoat onto which […]
There is a nostalgic allure associated with the family farm and home industry of yesteryear, where once upon a time families labored together towards a common goal, with achievements physically manifested in the world; a field plowed, a fence mended, a crop harvested. It’s easy to romanticize this pre-industrial norm, overlooking its challenges and difficulties: […]
*** Just and Sinner Publications | 2021 | 241 pages (paperback) | $24.00 With his Union with Christ, Jordan Cooper adds a second publication to his “Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology” series. This publication is projected to be volume six in the overall series, by which Cooper is attempting to rejuvenate seventeenth-century Lutheran Scholasticism, a high […]
“To me, everything that is is magical and mysterious,” explains Byung-Chul Han in a recent interview. He continues, “I would say that I am not a romantic, but a realist who perceives the world the way it is. It simply consists of magic and mystery.” Intriguing words from a philosopher who has written numerous precise […]
