Articles by Carl Trueman

Readers of this column will know the various chips I have on my shoulders. At least I hope they do. I try to wear my chips with a certain amount of unapologetic panache, after all. One of them is disco music. Another is the middle-aged pastor with the soul patch. And one of the more serious is my conviction that the savvy use of modern media has created a situation whereby the great pastoral role models of today actually bear little resemblance to the experience of most pastors and are often, in fact, biblically deficient. continue

Christmas is not what it used to be. At least that is the impression I have after reminiscing for a few moments with the Ghost of Christmas Past. The food is just as good, I admit; and the drink, of course, is vastly superior. But the music has clearly gone into decline. No doubt this year Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga will inflict some synthetic tripe upon the world in a last minute attempt to lower the average quality of the overall cultural contribution of 2011. continue

The death of John Stott has led to a veritable flood of accolades and uncritical adulation over the last few months. A recent example was the memorial service for him at Wheaton College which raised a number of questions in my mind. One was the issue of what Stott himself would have thought of it. I never met him but he seems to have been a modest and unassuming man by all accounts; it was thus probably a relief to him not to have to be there and listen to the hyperbolic claims being made for him and his ministry by others. continue

This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. To mark the occasion, well-known scholarly historian, Reformed pundit and OPC elder, D G Hart, has written a history of the years 1945 to 1990. Love him or hate him, everything Hart publishes is always provocative and well-written. continue

The recent book, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism has been stirring up some interest on the web. While I have not yet had the chance to read the whole thing, one aspect does strike me as of potentially particular interest to the Ref21 constituency: R. Albert Mohler's use of the term `confessional evangelicalism.' continue

One of the amusing things I have noticed in the last twelve months or so has been a shift in the rhetoric used by members of the older generation (40 plus) surrounding what twenty- and thirty-somethings will believe.  Five years... continue

(and reading Frank Schaeffer)As I read Frank Schaeffer's latest book, I kept hearing the sound of Thin Lizzy's `The Boys Are Back In Town' playing in my head.  Why, I wondered, was I being haunted at this moment by the... continue

Most Christians, if they have heard of Desiderius Erasmus at all, know of him as the man who helped put the Greek New Testament into the hands of churchmen in the sixteenth century and thus paved the way for the... continue

In his memoirs, Hans Küng describes giving a lecture at the time of Vatican II at which the church historians present sniggered. While he saw the Council as this great opportunity for real change, he considered the church historians' reaction... continue

Basic Advice on How to Interpret Luther Before addressing a particular element of Rob Bell's new book, I want to make sure that anyone reading this understands exactly what I am and am not doing. First, to avoid the usual indignant reactions... continue