Welcome to the Newsletter
What to Expect and Where We’re Going
Hello, Dear Reader. What should you expect when you open this newsletter?
1. It will be unapologetically Reformed, irrespective of outside influences. This is the trouble with what we call “Big Evangelicalism” or the “Evangelical Industrial Complex.” Book sales, donations, politics: all these eventually affect convictions. Popularity and Principle do not make good bedfellows. Something has to give, and the Christianly response is to ditch popularity.
Here, and everywhere, I will stand on the Five Solas. My local church loyalties ensure that I must. Here, I stand.
2. It will contain worldview analysis that will help you a) interpret the times and b) respond Biblically and effectively to the times. As a former missionary trained to look carefully at worldviews and how they impact behavior, I can’t help but take huge steps back and look at the big picture. It is muscle memory at this point. So we are going somewhere together. When big things happen, we’ll take a good hard look at it.
3. I want us to begin to treat the term “TheoBro” with admiration. Chris Hohnholz of Voice of Reason Radio first embraced this moniker a few months back, and I admire him for it. We will “Redeem TheoBro” to put it in Christianise. Let’s begin to think of it as colloquial name for culturally-informed, Berean-like men who love Christ enough to study Him obsessively.
To be sure, women will want to sign up here as well. They are integral in the life of the church and they too must discern the times. But as the men go, so goes the church. My priority begins there.
“TheoBro” is, of course, a pejorative term used by those on the Religious Left to describe a certain segment of Christians who love, study, and discern the world and the Bible with a set of “rigid” theological principles.
Indeed, TheoBros have certain principles they abide by. You know, actual convictions. Strong, Biblical convictions require a worldview that is saturated with the truth claims of the Bible.
These convictions are considered bad and suffocating by the Woke-leaning. Indeed, to the unsaved who have helplessly-darkened minds and sorely-seared consciences, they should feel bad and suffocated when their claims are held up against the Word of God. This is a grace that may lead to repentance.
Christians are called to do: “test everything (1 Thess. 5:21).” This weekly-ish newsletter is dedicated to just that, testing everything. “TheoBro culture” is, by definition, Biblical culture. Real truth leads us to a real God. Real men are men of conviction. Real truth leads to a real God, which leads to real conviction.
The church needs more of these men. The church should want more of these men. Local churches would be better off if pews were full of them.
Those are my commitments to you, my readers. This is simply my response to our times.
And these are incredible times.
A revolution is happening right in front of our eyes. Everything we’ve “known” — our assumptions as a culture — isn’t actually being questioned anymore (questions assume rationality and logic; a basic agreement on what words mean and the reality we are in).
Nothing is being questioned. There is no debate happening. Everything is simply being thrown away before we get a chance to sniff the contents and talk about an expiration date. The revolution we’re seeing in our society today isn’t just counter-culture. Woodstock was counter-culture. Goths were counter-culture. The revolution happening in the West today, particularly in our context in America is anti-culture, a term I was introduced to by Carl Trueman.
“To engage a culture there must first be a culture to engage. And, as the ever-incisive Anthony Esolen has pointed out on numerous occasions we no longer have a culture. What we really have is an anti-culture.”
We’ll look more at this next time, along the concept of “Death Art” that has exploded “literally” on the scene within the last few years. We’ll lean heavily on men like Carl Trueman, Neil Postman, and C.S. Lewis: these are/were truly brilliant men who help us identify where we are and how we got here.
Let me close with this: Christians are living in dangerous times, but the fields are more ripe than they ever have been before. Why? Humans can’t live in a culture-less society. It’s impossible.
Humans are searching for culture. Out of the rubble of an anti-culture, a Biblical culture can begin to rise, starting our churches. The local church’s love for the Gospel, the Christ of the Gospel, the Bride of Christ, and Theology will be the vehicle through which God brings revival. And I feel like we’re real close.
Under the oversight of their elders, TheoBros must take begin to take the wheel, and right now. May this newsletter be a small part of God’s work in the world.
In Christ,
Justin Bullington