Ecumenical unity
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On Historical Memory
by Alexei Laushkin I’ve been reading a pretty interesting book Church and State in American History by John F. Wilson. It’s written in 1965 and has a wide range of primary source documents on how Christians (evangelicals, Protestants and Catholics of a wide range of backgrounds) in the United States have thought about their relationship with…
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Re-imagining Christian Unity
by Alexei Laushkin John Calvin had a particular good insight that has always stuck with me. The idea was that the church was both visible and invisible, known and partially known because Christ himself ruled the church and governed it. Consider this passage from the Institutes: The judgment which ought to be formed concerning the…
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A Different Take on Ecumenism and Racial Unity
by Alexei Laushkin It is a hard task to cultivate ears and eyes and especially hearts that are open to different expressions of Christianity. Most of the cultural momentum in the Christian church worldwide flows in the opposite direction. Why are we Calvinist, why are we Roman Catholic, what makes us Greek Orthodox, these questions…
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Christianity, Grief, and Deep Suffering
February 18 2016 by Alexei Laushkin There is one unifying problem that theologically conservative Christians in just about every culture struggle with: how to deal with grief, pain, and suffering. It’s odd for a tradition that devotes so many pages to the suffering of Christ to essentially learn very little about the nature of grief…
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Worship in a Secular Age, Schmemann on Time
February 12 2016 by Alexei Laushkin Alexander Schmemann has an excellent essay on the nature of secularism titled “Worship in a Secular Age” (click here to read). Well worth the read, when a lot of Christianity can seem overly politiczed especially as we go deeper into 2016 it’s worth asking what is the substance of…
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Trump, Plato, Advent and Doubting Thomas
December 9 2015 by Alexei Laushkin This was an ugly week on the Presidential campaign trail. As a conservative it’s not my habit to call out a GOP candidate this early in an election, but this week one of the candidates was so vile it’s hard not to speak up. In case you missed it…