Today in 1991, Latvia declared their independence from the Soviet Union. Congratulations, Latvia, on 17 years of rugged survival in a dog-eat-dog world!
May you have a long and lustrous future as an independent nation, especially so that Dawn can get back.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. 2003. The Reformation: A history. New York: Penguin.
I've been reading MacCulloch's history of the Reformation. It's a thick book, some 680 pages, and in a small typeface. So slow going but quite interesting.
I go to a Reformed church, and used to be a deacon in the PCA. I've studied a bit about the Reformation and thought that I knew a bit. But MacCulloch brings several strands together in a way that strikes me as relevant today.
Perhaps the Emergent (Protestant) Christians and their (Protestant) foes are correct and this "new way" is really revolutionizing the way that we think about faith.
Except that it's really just a reverse Reformation.
Not that it's a Counter-Reformation: that's a Roman Church's response to the original Reformers. (See the Encyclopædia Britannica article on the Counter-Reformation or the entry at the Catholic Encyclopedia.) It's not a reaction so much as the reverse of the original Reformation.
Take a look at MacCulloch's description of the Humanist's obsession with textual analysis:
Here's a picture of me conducting the encore at the final band concert of my ninth grade year at Unnamed Jr. High School. The piece was "Night Train" and it was recently recalled by a high school friend who was in that Jr. High band with me.
Ninth grade: that was a fun year. Of course, if you really want to see something embarrassing, see the video of my awfully overbearing performance at the senior show my senior year. (Oddly, I had big roles in the senior show for all three years I was in the high school.)
