Showing results by author "Douglas Wilson" in All Categories

The gloves come off in this electric exchange, originally hosted by Christianity Today, as leading atheist Christopher Hitchens (author of God Is Not Great) and Christian apologist Douglas Wilson (author of Letter from a Christian Citizen) go head-to-head on this divisive question. The result is entertaining and provocative—a glimpse into the ongoing debate.

The so-called New Atheists have a great deal of moral indignation at all the evil in the world, but, as apologist and theologian Douglas Wilson cheerfully points out, they have no moral basis for it whatsoever. If we are merely the result of billions of years of matter in motion, then why do we feel that concentration camps, genocide, apartheid, and the like are so obviously wicked and despicable, if in fact such events are just time and chance acting on matter?

In Rules for Reformers, Douglas Wilson poaches the political craft of radical progressives and applies it to Christian efforts in the current culture war. The result is a spicy blend of combat manual and cultural manifesto. Rules for Reformers is a little bit proclamation of grace, a little bit Art of War, and a little bit analysis of past embarrassments and current cowardice, all mixed together with a bunch of advanced knife-fighting techniques. As motivating as it is provocative, Rules for Reformers is just plain good to hear.

Trusted by Classical Conversations for thousands of CC Challenge students. Paul requires Christian fathers to provide their children with a "paideia of the Lord." To the ancient world, the boundaries of paideia were much wider than the boundaries of what we understand as education. Far more is involved in paideia than taking the kids to church, having an occasional time of devotions in the home, or even providing the kids with a Christian curriculum.

Published almost 20 years ago, Douglas Wilson’s Case for Classical Christian Education is a call for parents and educators to do more than just teach kids how to read or to do math and science. Instead, parents and teachers need to educate children’s minds, hearts, and imaginations. Both homeschooling parents and Christians seeking to build schools will find a lot of guidance from this book. Wilson explains the benefits of an education that is both distinctively classical and distinctively Christian, and explains what such an education might look like.

One rainy day, years ago, a little girl named Lucy discovered that the back of a wardrobe isn't always just the back of a wardrobe. Sometimes, it's a door into another world. In Lucy's case, that other world was called Narnia, and though she was among the first to enter it, she was by no means the last. Millions of children (young and old) have followed her there and met its strange but wonderful inhabitants - Mr. Tumnus, Reepicheep, and Puddleglum, among others.

Reforming Marriage, by this same author, began the discussion of covenant headship. This collection of essays, Federal Husband, continues that discussion in greater depth, dealing with more specifics of federal husbandry.

It’s two decades in the future, and a Christian college student named Ace Hartwick has just destroyed his neighbor’s so-called “wife”—actually a sexbot named Sally—in a trash compactor. Soon, Ace will be on trial for murder. Unfortunately for Ace, everyone despises his kind of “radical” Christianity, and, in the fragile America of the future, all the juries are fixed.

Fatherlessness is a “rot that is eating away at the modern soul,” writes Douglas Wilson, and the problem goes far beyond physical absence. “Most of our families are starving for fathers, even if Dad is around, and there’s a huge cost to our children and our society because of it.” Father Hunger takes a thoughtful, timely, richly engaging excursion into our cultural chasm of absentee fatherhood.

Thirty years ago, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning was published so that Christian parents instead of fretfully wringing their hands at the deterioration of American culture would actually do something to resist it. Pastor and school-founder Douglas Wilson called on parents to reject public schools and to give their kids a completely different type of education, with the Lordship of Jesus Christ at the center.

In Five Cities that Ruled the World, theologian Douglas Wilson fuses together, in compelling detail, the critical moments birthed in history’s most influential cities—Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York.

In this audiobook, Douglas Wilson combines G. K. Chesterton-like prose with the Apostles' Creed and explains such doctrines as the trinity, creation, fall, salvation, Scripture, and the church with clarity and imagination. Rather than seeing fundamentalist doctrines as a narrow and confining straitjacket, Wilson sees them as the only way for people to find true freedom and joy.

Christians believe that the Bible is the "word of God." But to what text does this refer? Is it the Bible translation I hold in my hands? Is it a textual family behind the King James Version? Is it a modern critical text, with its attempt to recover a single "original"? Or is it something else? In this lively debate about the world's most influential book, two Christian intellectuals confront this subject head-on. Both participants come from a conservative evangelical tradition, and yet passionately disagree about what version of the New Testament is truly God-breathed.

Evangellyfish is a ruthless, grimly amused, and above all, honest look at one of the darkest corners in the western world. Douglas Wilson, a pastor of more than 30 years, paints a vivid and painful picture of evangelical boomchurch leadership...in bed. Chad Lester's kingdom is found in the Midwest. When Lester is (falsely) accused of molesting a young male counselee, his universe begins to crumble. He is a sexual predator, yes. But strictly straight. Detectives, reporters, assistant pastors, and old lovers and pay-offs all come out to play.

Christianity presents a glorious vision for culture, a vision overflowing with truth, beauty, and goodness. It's a vision that stands in stark conflict with the anemic modern (and postmodern) perspectives that dominate contemporary life. Medieval Christianity began telling a beautiful story about the good life, but it was silenced in mid-sentence. The Reformation rescued truth, but its modern grandchildren have often ignored the importance of a medieval grasp of the good life. This audiobook sketches a vision of Medieval Protestantism, one that embraces the fullness of Christian truth.

The repetition of Christmas traditions can appear to dull the powerful nature of the holiday. God Rest Ye Merry is meant to rekindle the Christian's understanding of Advent on every front, from politics to shopping to uproarious celebration.  

Even though America is fiercely divided between the left and the right and protests are becoming increasingly violent, both sides of the political aisle remain committed to secularism and increasingly to looser standards of sexual propriety. If we want to understand contemporary American culture wars, we must first come to grips with the culture wars of the 19th century. In this book, Douglas Wilson explains how our nation's failure to remove slavery in a biblical fashion has led us to many of the quagmires we find ourselves in.

Once captured and enslaved in Tripoli, Thomas Watson has escaped at last and vowed never to return. Susannah Wilcox secretly longs for adventure and is thrilled when she is sent to Naples to finish her education. Jules Monroe is freeborn but longs to prove to himself and the wider world that he is a man, out on the sea with his cousin Samuel. Their stories all meet in 1803 aboard the Philadelphia, a 36-gun frigate. Unfortunately, the ship has fallen into the hand of Barbery pirates, and such a powerful weapon will allow them to decimate the United States’ fledgling navy.

Music is far more central to our lives than we perhaps assume. We come into contact with music all the time—sometimes explicitly as in worship, and sometimes implicitly as with the background music in restaurants that you scarcely notice, and other times explicitly (but still thoughtlessly), as with the music that many have loaded on their iPhone.

This thoroughly enjoyable new commentary, The Pillar of the Truth, gives background for the three letters, brings out parallels between the Apostolic age and Israel's time in the wilderness, and, in step-by-step fashion, shows how the Apostle Paul was preparing the nascent Church for institutionalization.