By William B. Evans Although the jury is still out, we seem to be dealing with the most significant Presidential change agent since FDR, and perhaps in the history of the American Republic.  After a rather uneventful first term in office, one that surprised even his critics by its conventionality, Trump came into office again ..read more

By William B. Evans Painfully evident in the current American political context is the lack of a shared moral vision and vocabulary.  In his landmark 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, sociologist James Davison Hunter spoke of “competing moral visions” that characterized the discourse and politics of cultural conservatives and cultural liberals ..read more

This blog is entitled “The Ecclesial Calvinist.”  Readers will rightly surmise that I am self-consciously located in the Reformed tradition of theology and that I care deeply about the church (ecclesia is the NT Greek term for “church”).  This post is longer than usual and is also the most autobiographical post I have ever written ..read more

William B. Evans Well, Election ’24 is finally over, and it was a doozy! Let’s start with five reasons why Trump won: 1. Donald Trump is not a conventional politician (which led many on the left to underestimate him), but he’s a GREAT retail politician. When Joe Biden foolishly called Trump supporters “garbage,” Trump rode ..read more

William B. Evans Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (HarperCollins, 2023), 493 pp. I finally got around to reading Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory this week, thanks to the generosity of a former academic colleague who graciously loaned me his copy.  The title, as many will realize, is taken from the last portion of the Paternoster or “Lord’s Prayer,” as Christians recite “for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,” the ascription being to God rather than to Christians themselves.  Alberta ..read more

By William B. Evans Here are ten books (actually more than ten are mentioned) that I regard as theologically formative.  By “theologically formative” I don’t mean the most important or the most influential. Rather, I’m speaking of books that have been particularly significant, for a variety of reasons, for me personally. In some cases, they are widely regarded as theological classics; others are more niche, but all have stood the test of time. St. Irenaeus, Against All Heresies—This early patristic work is much more than a catalog of Christian Gnostic heresies; it articulates a redempti ..read more

By William B. Evans [Editor’s Note: This is the first EcclesialCalvinist post in quite some time. I’m hopeful that this will mark a return to more regular posting.] My friend Peter Schmiechen, prominent United Church of Christ theologian and former President of Lancaster Theological Seminary, has written a stimulating book on the decline of the Protestant Mainline (or what Martin Marty of the University of Chicago called the “Sideline” and Edward Farley of Vanderbilt termed the “Oldline,” both terms, of course, signaling an eclipse). As the subtitle indicates, Schmiechen’s Tradition in Crisis ..read more

It’s with considerable interest that I’ve been watching some people I know in the conservative Reformed community getting in line to endorse Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign for the Presidency. Evangelical Old Testament scholar Tremper “you need to read my book” Longman told us on Facebook that he was voting for Biden some weeks back, and more recently Sam Logan, the Associate International Director at the World Reformed Fellowship, posted this on Facebook: “Three of the MANY reasons why I, as an evangelical Christian who opposes abortion, will vote for Mr. Biden are: 1) the implicit warnings ab ..read more

Scientists tell us that the sun’s magnetic poles flip their orientation about every eleven years or so.  North becomes south and south becomes north, and then it flips back, completing the 22-year Solar Cycle.  Analogous flips occur in American politics, though not nearly as often and they take a lot longer to play out.  We seem to be in the midst of such a shift today—in important ways, the Democrats have become the Republicans and the Republicans have become the Democrats. Take the Democrats.  From Franklin Delano Roosevelt (really from the “Prairie Populist” William Jennings Bryan at the t ..read more

[Editor’s Note: For some reason I neglected to blog about the publication of this volume when it came out in May of this year.  Better late than never (and just in time for Christmas)!] A Companion to the Mercersburg Theology: Evangelical Catholicism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.  By William B. Evans This volume tells the story of a mid-nineteenth-century theological movement emanating from the small German Reformed Seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff taught. There they explored themes—such as the centrality of the incarnation for theology, th ..read more