“The culture wars are being fought in virtually every sphere of life—government, business, law, politics, commerce, education, the sciences, media, the arts, entertainment, religion, marriage, family, health care, and popular culture to name just a few. Each of these spheres produces seemingly unrelated instances of cultural conflict. Yet, it is in the accumulation of such present-day moments of conflict that we gain an understanding and direction of the cultural drift. The purpose of these posts and the books I have written is to participate in the redemption of culture in all institutions of American life through sharing the truth of the biblical worldview which was at the heart of the nation’s founding and formed the central cultural vision by which it is to be governed.
Over the last 15 years I have written and posted many articles about American culture from the perspective of the biblical worldview. Therefore, I have selected a few of the posts that continue to offer time-tested answers to the questions of life and the turmoil found in modern society that we encounter every day.”
Larry G. Johnson
The American Church – 8 – Escape to Beulah Land 1620-1865
Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah…[Isaiah 62:4. KJV] For all of its history, a principal battle for the Christian church has been the preservation and defense of biblical truth. For centuries the European church fought among themselves and with their respective governments or kings all the while accumulating wealth, power, and worldliness. Following centuries of neglect, compromise, and corruption of the sustaining power of pristine biblical truth, the decline of the church worsened as it came under the influence and eventual domination of eighteenth century Enlightenment thought and its religion of humanism. For many of the faithful, Europe and the state churches had become wicked […]
The American Church – 7 – Reformation – Europe and the British Isles 1517-1688
The Reformation churches establish themselves in Europe The outworking of the Reformation was unique within each country in continental Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. The extent of reform depended on the strength of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and the attitudes of the populace toward the church in each of the affected countries. It also depended on which branch of the Reformation churches became the most influential in the affairs of reforming the church. Some may have been directly influenced by the work of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other early reform leaders while other late-comers to the Reformation were influenced by the followers of those early leaders. Although the reformers readily affirmed their allegiance to “the scriptures alone” as the authority of the […]
The American Church – 6 – Reformation 1517
Calls for reformation within the church occurred over several centuries and produced a complex series of events that challenged the authority of the church hierarchy. Calls for reformation began with the Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteen centuries and continued with Wycliffe, Hus, and the Brethren of the Common Life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When Luther nailed the ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in 1517, he called into question certain practices of the church and sought to change them. Initially his actions were not meant to divide the church but to rid it of the practices that many in the church felt were doctrinally contrary to the tenets of the New Testament. What many define as the beginning of […]
Owasso Assembly of God at 75
[The first half of this article with a picture of the first church building was published in the Owasso Reporter on September 23, 2015. The second half was published on September 30, 2015.] In the late summer of 1940, Owasso was what many would call a wide spot in the road, a sleepy little town of 200 to 300 citizens. The town was little more than two blocks wide and four blocks long plus a school on the east side, all residing at the northern edge of the perennially-flooding Bird Creek bottom lands. The two-lane concrete road was Highway 75 and doubled as Main Street as it passed through town before it took a sharp right at the south end of town on its way […]
The American Church – 5 – The Church divides – Middle Ages 1054 -1517
The papacy in the second half of the Middle Ages The popes from the fifth century to the Reformation in the sixteenth century were not unlike the judges and kings of ancient Israel. The papacy contained both saints and scoundrels, and the witness of the church rose and fell accordingly just as God’s people did in ancient Israel under the judges and kings when they intermittently experienced seasons of blessing through obedience to God or languished in wilderness because of rebellion. However, an examination of the papacy’s history is beyond the scope of our inquiry. That said, we should note the general trends of the church under the papacy in the second half of the Middle Ages that led to the Reformation. Innocent III was […]