COMMENTARY

Clapham Institute Blog

Welcome to the Clapham Institute Blog. You may have followed us previously at doggieheadtilt.com or come across us through a corporate event, church gathering, or online outreach. However you arrived here, we're glad to have you. If you have any questions about the content we're presenting, please feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Misguided Math

Not in the numbers What’s the right number of kids for a family? How often should you kiss your spouse? Some questions require a mystical answer, not a mathematical one. This is why the proposal by college presidents to lower the drinking age is misguided. In fact, if finding the best drinking age is a…

Horizontal Faith

Thinking horizontally You’re smart to take Labor Day lying down. Being horizontal is holy, since God tells us to periodically kick up our feet and take a break (Leviticus 23:3). But there’s another reason to ‘go horizontal.’ Today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings think horizontally. Those who communicate a horizontal faith will connect better with younger…

Rear View Mirrors – Part Two

A false virtue Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew within a month that he had made a mistake. Arriving in New York in 1939 to accept a position at Union Seminary, he wrote to a friend: “I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share…

Rear View Mirrors – Part One

A false virtue… Christians are to “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (I Peter 3:15). Has anyone recently asked you to give the reason for your hope? If the research is right, few Christians are asked and few can answer.1…

Doggie Head Tilt?

Arf??? Henri Poincaré’s flash of insight arrived as he boarded a city bus. Albert Einstein’s epiphany came as he imagined a boy riding alongside a light beam. When C. S. Lewis arrived at Whipsnade Zoo, he got a surprise – he believed in Christ as the Son of God.1 In each case, insight started with…

Frogs and Flight Paths

Praying for China They say if you throw a frog in a kettle of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. But if you throw it in a pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, it’ll boil to death. If Japan’s economy is a frog, it’s already boiled, says Shumpei Takemori, a…

Most Sacred Place?

Family and home. “I don’t care what they do in their private life… as long as they can get the job done.” A lot of people today see no problem in disconnecting their private life from their public one. But it disturbs many Christians. Rightly so. Yet believers might be contributing to this dilemma. Beginning…

Loving Your First Enemy

The most immediate adversary On the twenty-fourth of May 1844, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse tapped out a four-word message before a hushed gathering in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court in Washington: “WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT.” It was the first telegram sent over Morse’s invention, the telegraph. Yet for all the fanfare,…

The Ends Justify the Means

Two questions Do you imagine the world is getting better or is it going to hell in a hand basket? Second, do you imagine your church is getting progressively better or declining? These are broad questions, but my hunch is that nineteen out of twenty American Christians would say the world is deteriorating while their…

Architecture and Faith – Part Two

I received little of my dad’s DNA. He was an engineer and every time he tried to explain to me what he did for a living, my eyes glazed over. The same thing can happen when we talk about “connecting Sunday to Monday.” Too often it’s a fog of abstractions. But that’s not the case…