The Humanitas Forum

“We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us” wrote communications expert Marshall McLuhan in the early 1960s.  His assessment of the various communications media (radio, television, movies, telephones, and computers) was simply, “We become what we behold.”…

Theologian J. I. Packer recommends reading this book three times—once a month for three months in a row is his suggested ideal. 

The spiritual disciplines are “really a restatement and extension of classical Protestant teaching on the means …

Hearing is one of our natural senses, but listening is more.  Listening requires focus and attention.  In fact, good listening is just another way of talking.  It speaks clearly—it says, you’re important.  What you have to …

Starting again with G. K. Chesterton: “If the characters are not wicked, the book is.”

We still live in the shadow of the enormous cultural change that Chesterton wrote about almost exactly one hundred years ago.  While his …

Why is God so often silent, so often hidden?  This question, frequently voiced in cries of anguish and despair, has been uttered by numerous believers down through the centuries.

It was recorded in the oldest book in the …

Karl Marx pointed out that Martin Luther “turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests.”  Marx was surely right in his observation—regardless of all that else flowed from his pen as an atheist.

Marx’s remark, along …

We all know that we are knowers, but we seldom think about knowing itself.  For the most part, knowing is taken for granted until we encounter some really difficult problem.

What we may need is some “epistemological therapy,” …

‘Awesome’ is probably the most overused—and most abused—word in the English language.  The awesome tag gets attached to anything and everything: to a Grunge band, to a worship band; to cheese cake, to Jennifer Lawrence; to a friend’s new …

Young adults are leaving the church in droves! The past one hundred years in North America have brought dramatic changes to how young people approach becoming an adult. Today, on many measures, this stage of life represents the least religious …

Soul Searching has been described as an “illuminating and disturbing exposé of the faith of American youth.”  But, more significantly, for those of us committed to the teachings and practices of orthodox Christianity, Soul Searching is good sociology in …