A source of American religious consumerism:

In the churches of Puritan New England, "Sunday after Sunday, week after week, year after year, even generation after generation, the same underlying narrative provided the interpretative horizon for reading and hearing the Scriptures. The narrative of Scripture was found in the order of salvation. Salvation, however, was not understood as individual participation within the biblical narrative that told how the God of creation made a promise to Abraham that was fulfilled in Jesus in order to bring about a witness in the life of the church as a foretaste of the new creation. Instead, salvation was limited to a story of the individual moving from sin to salvation to service in preparation for eternity in heaven. The spiritual movement of an individual's life became deeply encoded as the meaning of Scripture within the emerging European-based North American culture."

-- John W. Wright, Telling God's Story, 55.

Reformation Then and Now, Here and There:

In a recent post at The Gospel Coalition, Dr. Dan Doriani of Covenant Theological Seminary, reflects on a recent trip to Singapore to speak for Reformation Day. He reflects on the cultural gap between the post-medieval Europe of Luther's day and modern Singapore. What is so helpful in this reflection is his honesty about his own cultural biases. "My meditation on the distance from Luther and Singapore led me to ask if the gap between Luther and America might be just as great." What was initially seen as a gap between "us" (descendents of Europeans) and "them" (non-Europeans) is really a gap between "us" (post-modern, global Christians) and "them" (our mutual Christian forebears). Additionally, and importantly, this new distinction preserves the nuance of cultural difference, and the lens of Singapore becomes a useful means of examining the cultural predispositions of modern American Christians. Meanwhile, the varieties of cultures which participated in the Reformation are seen in some of their diversity, helping to distinguish the multitude of ways God uses various cultures' assets to build His Kingdom.

Why Christians Should Celebrate Halloween:

Valerie Foucachon has written a very thoughtful and helpful post,"Why Christians Should Celebrate Halloween," which explores the history of the Church's interaction with the ancient European autumn harvest/death festivals. For both the Romans and the Celts, autumn marked a time to celebrate the harvest, and prepare for the oncoming long darkness of winter; the former by enjoying the abundance of food, the latter by offering sacrifices, performing incantations and, in some cases, dressing up to appease or ward off the evil spirits of death and darkness.

The Church stepped into this milieu with a message of hope: the God who had created all, and was therefore the source of all good things, had come into the world and defeated death! The darkness no longer need be feared for Christ's light had conquered it!

A Microcosm of American religion in one small town map:

In a recent post, Microcosm of American religion in one small town map, SIU:C political science professor Tobin Grant has made a study of the geography and demographics of Carbondale's churches. It is insightful, helpful, and convicting. Dr. Grant notes,

The membership of churches in green on the map [which are almost all located in the north east quadrant of the downtown, an area with 95% African American residence] are almost exclusively black; other churches in town are nearly all white. The town and community are integrated, but Sunday remains segregated.

This is a convicting call to our church communities to make real the call of Galatians 3:28, that in Christ ethnic divisions are done away with. Scripture doesn't deny ethnic differences, in fact it values them: as Tim Keller writes,

bundin er båtlaus madur

-- viking proverb ("bound is boatless man")

Belden Lane on Puritan sexuality:

Puritans from Francis Rous and Richard Sibbes in England to John Cotton and Edward Taylor in New England rang all the changes on the erotic language of the Song of Songs. They described spiritual devotion as a matter of “lusting” after Christ as bridegroom. They pictured the heart as a marriage bed prepared for the divine lover. The language of foreplay and orgasm became as common in Puritan preaching as anything found in the bridal mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux or Mechthild of Magdeburg and Teresa of Avila.

All this makes it clear, then, why the Puritans had to be so careful in cautioning themselves about the danger of sexual sins. It wasn’t that they were sexually repressed, straight-laced prudes—eager to put a bright red “A” on the dress of every Hester Prynne in the colonies. They simply had a spirituality which fostered so much interior passion that setting appropriate boundaries for their exterior behavior was absolutely necessary.

 -- Belden C. Lane, Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality, 19

Probably because I've spent so much time reading their works, I'm always a bit surprised when I encounter attitudes toward the Puritans which dismiss them as mindless prudes (immortalized by H.L. Mencken's definition: "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"). In reading travel guides about Boston, reading interpretive plaques, and even in talking to other researchers at a historical archive I'm consistently surprised by the way Puritan scholars used to paint, and popular understanding continues to paint, Puritan sensibilities. I think we tend to look back through the lens of Victorianism and confuse their reading of history with actual history. The Victorians saw a carefulness which they confused with their own prudishness, stripped that carefulness of its sexuality, and held up the Puritans as their prudish ideal. Belden Lane has done an excellent job here of overcoming some of the missconception.

Stephen Foster and the timelessness of pastoral complaints:

In the 1580s Nicholas Brownd criticized his congregation in Bury, England, not only for bringing their hunting hawks into church during the service, but also for the casual way members of a household would straggle into the service: "First comes the man, then a quarter of an houre after his wife, and after her, I cannot tell how long, especially the maidservants, who must needes bee as long after her, as the menservants are after him."  In Dedham, just to the south, the church elders found it necessary to call "all governors of household to come to worship in a body with their servants before the service began, as well as to sit through the entire proceeding"

 -- from Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism 
and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700, 34.

I came across this several months ago and it struck a chord as many friends who are elders and pastors complain about how late people come into church services. Often this gets tied to contemporary culture--but it's been a problem for a long time apparently...