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Writing for the God's Politics blog, Diana Butler Bass offers a few kind words about Kennedy. But mostly she exhorts readers to bury American Christendom with Kennedy, who she says, "mixed evangelicalism with classical Reformed theology and a kind of soft Christian Reconstruction, creating the spiritual fuel for a right-wing political and media empire that meshed with the longings of a certain age."

Butler Bass says younger evangelicals do not recognize the Protestant America of Kennedy's youth. Thus, "as the Christendom generation passes away, a post-Christendom faith will, most probably, take its place," she writes. "That may take some time, but it will eventually recreate Christian political theology in America."

Many will recognize Stanley Hauerwas as a leading Christian critic of attempts to reclaim America. Can Hauerwas (born in 1940, 10 years after Kennedy) divorce American Christians from their proprietary love for America? Will legions of Duke Divinity School graduates lead the way? Do I detect the seed of postmillennial optimism in hopes that Christian America will vanish with the Greatest Generation?

Convergent Conference

When: Sept. 21-22, 2007

Where: Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina

Cost: $30

Speakers: Mark Driscoll, Danny Akin, Ed Stetzer, and others

Subject: "The emerging church is, by nature, difficult to categorize. Is it a divergence from orthodoxy or the extension of it? What is the litmus test for orthodoxy anyway? Has the traditional church lost touch with culture or has the emerging church become saturated with it? Is it a question of methodology or theology—or both?"

What They're Saying: Driscoll promises, "For the record, I will not be drinking, cussing, or sprinkling infants and calling it baptism but do hope to honor Jesus with my message."

Contact Southeastern Seminary for further information. Registration deadline was September 7.

• Baptist blogging strikes again. An anonymous seminary professor targets leading Southern Baptist theological educators Al Mohler and Paige Patterson. (Responses have been swift.)
  
  
• Reclaiming the Mind Ministries posts hundreds of Evangelical Theology Society papers. "The goal of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries is to make theology accessible," says C. Michael Patton. "I hope these papers will go a long way in doing so."
  
  
• Danny Akin explains "Why Theology Matters." "When you wed solid theology to a commitment to the Great Commission, you will bring a balance to your theology that will be healthy and fruitful," says Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary. "We must remember that the best missionaries are capable theologians, and the best theologians are passionate missionaries."
  
  
• Christian scholars debate C.S. Lewis on gender roles. Charges of Arianism ensue. The dialogue between Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen and Adam Barkman (available in print only) illustrates how the Trinity has become a key front in the gender wars.
  
  

"Theology can be a coat of mail which crushes us and in which we freeze to death. It can also be—this is in fact its purpose! —the conscience of the congregation of Christ, its compass and with it all a praise-song of ideas."

Helmut Thielicke in A Little Exercise for Young Theologians

Collin Hansen is a CT editor-at-large.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The first Theology in the News column was "From the Seminaries to the Pews."

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September (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51