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For many Protestant Churches across the world, Sunday was a tribute to Martin Luther and the Reformation. October 31st marks the anniversary date when Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. K. Konnie Kang of the Los Angeles Times, wrote a piece titled, “Protestants celebrate their heritage, the Reformation”. Kang also featured a quote that simply explains Protestant theology from the Rev. Nathan P. Feldmeth, who is a professor of medieval and Reformation history at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Feldmeth declared:

Read more on Reformation Faith & Representative Democracy…

On Saturday, October 27, at 7 p.m., BookTV (C-SPAN2) will air a taped Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) cosponsored debate on the topic, “Is Christianity the Problem?” The debate (which occurred Monday) will feature the author of the book What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza, and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is the author of God is not Great.

Read more on Debate: Is Christianity the Problem?…

Francis Asbury was so well-known in early America that letters addressed to “Bishop Asbury, United States of America” were delivered to him. During his life, Methodist Bishop Asbury (1745-1816) is said to have preached well over 16,000 sermons and traveled nearly 300,000 miles on horseback alone. The explosion of Methodism in the United States after the American Revolution, and during the Second Great Awakening is well documented in the history of the church. When Asbury arrived in the colonies, Methodists numbered at most a few thousand, but most likely were fewer than that. By the time of Asbury’s death, the Methodist Episcopal Church was the largest denomination in the U.S. with more than 200,000 members.

Read more on Francis Asbury & The Rise of American Methodism…

I’m preparing to travel to Minneapolis later this week to present a paper at the annual conference of the Sixteenth Century Society, which is a major academic society focusing on the study of the early modern period.

I’ll attempt to blog from the conference as I have opportunity and there is information of relevant interest to the PowerBlog audience. Posted after the jump is my tentative schedule, including which sessions I’ll be attending (full conference program is in PDF form here). These reflect my own scholarly interests as well as those that mesh with the focus of the Acton Institute and the Journal of Markets & Morality. My paper will be presented in the last group of sessions late Sunday morning, and is titled, “Wolfgang Musculus and the General Covenant.”

Musculus was a second generation Protestant reformer and a contemporary of John Calvin. His doctrine of the covenant is related to later developments of covenantal theology (which has important implications for political and moral thought in the post-Reformation period). Read more on Sixteenth Century Society 2007…

In my three and a half years as a student at Asbury Theological Seminary, I encountered more anti-capitalist rhetoric than I may have experienced in my entire life up to that point. Before Asbury, I attended a state and secular university, Ole Miss, where socialist propaganda was largely out of fashion.

Read more on The Religious Left and Class Warfare…

If you haven’t been following this story, now might be a good time to look into it – Belgium may be dividing into two separate entities sooner rather than later, with Brussels possibly becoming an independent city-state in the process:

Read more on Belgium No More?…

Max Goss, an alumnus of Acton programs and the purveyor of the weblog Right Reason, subtitled “the weblog for conservative philosophers,” has written a farewell post marking the blog’s “retirement.”

It’s not clear whether or how long Right Reason’s archives will remain publicly accessible, so avail yourself now of searching through their extensive archives. Here’s a sample of the sort of thinking you can expect to find from the site’s penultimate post, “The Executioner and the Torturer.”

Read more on Say Goodbye to Right Reason…

For those of you following the case of Paul Jacob, here’s a link to John Powers’ column in the Chicago Daily Observer.

For those of you catching up: Jacob, the Senior Advisor at the Sam Adams Foundation, has been indicted on charges related to his work leading a petition drive in Oklahoma. Jacob is charged with a felony of conspiring against the State of Oklahoma in collecting signatures in favor of a Taxpayer Bill of Rights by an out of state resident. After 300,000 signatures were gathered by Jacobs and others, signatures removed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court keeping the petition from making it to a ballot.

Read more on Prison for Paul Jacob?…

“The mission in Iraq may be on the way to being accomplished…” So says Bartle Bull in Prospect magazine (HT).

Maybe we should start thinking of the first declaration of “mission accomplished” (May 1, 2003, pictured above) as a sort of D-Day, and the imminent(?) “mission accomplished” as a sort of V-E Day (that’s also a common analogy used to describe the “already/not yet” dynamic of the times between Christ’s first and second coming.)

Read more on ‘Mission Accomplished’?…