Friday, January 15, 2010

New 9Marks eJournal Now Available

The latest edition of 9Marks eJournal is available and the theme is Liberalism.  A number of the essays interact with the current emphasis on social justice and ask if this isn't the back door of liberalism (again!).  I confess that the increased emphasis I've seen on social justice has left me wondering if there isn't an imbalance in the making.  Along with these articles I would also point you to the article by Kevin DeYoung called A Modest Proposal.  Kevin cautions us on the vague, if not sloppy, use of a phrase like social justice.  His thoughts are worth pondering. 

A few of my favorite articles from the eJournal were:

How to become a liberal without attending Harvard Divinity School.
Is the God of the missional Gospel too small? 
Social Gospel Redux?

I've not read them all but they all look very interesting.  Also, the current issue of Christianity Today has an article by Richard J. Mouw entitled "Carl Henry was Right: Christianity Today's first editor grasped what I as a young theologian failed to understand about church involvement in social justice".  Mouw notes that "a constant theme in his [Henry's] writings was that the church as such has neither the competence nor the authority to address political or economic specifics."  Henry could allow for "emergency situations" like Nazi German but "in the normal course of things, the church should leave it up to individuals to take a very general mandate to think and act Christianly in the public arena."  Though Mouw had originally disagreed with Henry he now believes he was right after all (with a slight nuance).

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