Featured Essay / On This Day
Donald Bloesch is a theologian whose name rhymes with "keep it fresh," "nativity creche," and "word made flesh." Born on May 3, 1928, Bloesch has been an important theological voice for decades. He published the widely-used two-volume Essentials of Evangelical Theology back in the early 1980s, and his Christ-centeredness has…
Essay / On This Day
Donald Grey Barnhouse (March 28, 1895, died 1960) is best remembered as the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and his most far-reaching ministry was through the radio show “The Bible Study Hour” (later re-named Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible). Among his many books,
Essay / On This Day
Francis Nathan Peloubet (1831-March 27, 1920) decided the most strategic thing he could do as a pastor was to train Sunday School teachers how to teach the Bible to their students well. So he travelled and lectured, wrote books and articles about it, and networked
Essay / On This Day
Dawson Trotman (born March 25, 1906, died 1956) was the founder of the Navigators, a Christian ministry that is famous for Scripture memorization and one-on-one discipleship. Both of those emphases seem to have flowed directly from the personal charisma of Daws, as his friends called
Essay / On This Day
Fanny J. Crosby (born March 24, 1820, died 1915) was the prolific blind hymn-writer who captured the ethos of late nineteenth-century evangelicalism and set it to music. We had to wait until just a few years ago for a substantive critical biography of Crosby: In
Essay / On This Day
Gregory the Illuminator is the man who persuaded the king of Armenia to renounce idolatry and accept Christianity. That was in the year 301, making Armenia the first nation to become officially Christian. According to Armenian legends, the gospel had come to them long before
Essay / On This Day
On March 22, 1758, Jonathan Edwards died in Princeton, New Jersey, from complications that set in after a smallpox vaccination. It was a surprising turn of events, right when Edwards thought he was starting an exciting new phase of his life’s work. He had moved
Essay / On This Day
March 21, 1748 is the day that John Newton (1725-1807) would look back on and commemorate for the rest of his life as the beginning of his conversion. But it wasn’t much of a conversion, in some ways: He was pumping water out of a
Essay / Culture
Today is the birthday of Fred Rogers (March 20, 1928-2003), whose first name was not Mister, but whose middle name actually was McFeely, and who actually wrote the line, “It’s a neighborly day in this beauty wood.” Mister Rogers cranked out that sweater-wearing, sneakers-changing, trolley-riding
Essay / On This Day
Thomas Ken (1637-1711), bishop of Bath and Wells, was one of the non-juring bishops who stayed loyal to the Stuart line during the reign of William and Mary. His greatest work is probably his Practice of Divine Love, a kind of extended devotional treatment of
Essay / On This Day
Today is the day we commemorate Patrick of Ireland, an amazing missionary who accomplished so much, and has been so beloved down through the ages that vast quantities of legendary material have stuck to him. I don’t want to get into the arguments about whether
Essay / Culture
According to Blake’s Alamanac of the Christian Church, March 16 is the day Robert Bowman was born in 1915. Bowman was one of the co-founders of Far East Broadcasting Company in 1945. He was the baritone voice in the Haven of Rest quartet, and parlayed
Essay / Culture
I know this day is most famous for the death of Julius Caesar, but I did not come to bury Caesar or to praise him. Instead, I want to point out a writer for whom every day was the Ides of March. Howard Phillips Lovecraft