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John G. Stackhouse Jr. Biography

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“As I look hard at the Bible, however, and at the two thousand years of church history since the Bible's completion, it seems evident that God has accommodated himself over and over to the weakness and even the sin of human beings. He also has called his faithful ones to a similar accommodation. The 'already but not yet' tension is clear not only with the coming of Christ but also throughout the Old Testament story of redemption. God chooses a people as a vehicle for global salvation and then works with them in a convoluted trajectory of obedience and blessing, disobedience and punishment, first this way and then that way. God puts up with a compromised plan for the conquest of Canaan, blesses a monarchy he did not want, forestalls the prophesied judgment on both northern and southern kingdoms for generations, and even then preserves a remnant and reestablishes it in Jerusalem. God works not only through Israel but also through the empires of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Rome. God works not only through prophets and saints but also through Joseph's brothers, Balaam and his donkey, Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, Caiaphas and Pilate.”

GodBibleNew TestamentOld TestamentBiblical HistoryDivine Accommodation
Book:Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender
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“Beyond the family or particular Christian tradition, how much effort do we make to consider what the Mennonites or the Episcopalians, the Baptists or the Pentecostals, the Methodists or the Presbyterians have to say to the rest of us out of their DIFFERENCES, as well as out of the affirmation in common with other Christians? As I suggested earlier, our patterns of ecumenicity tend to bracket out our differences rather than to celebrate and capitalize upon them. Finding common ground has been the necessary first step in ecumenical relations and activity. But the next step is to acknowledge and enjoy what God has done elsewhere in the Body of Christ. And if at the congregational level we are willing to say, 'I can't do everything myself, for I am an ear: I must consult with a hand or an eye on this matter,' I suggest that we do the same among whole traditions. If we do not regularly and programmatically consult with each other, we are tacitly claiming that we have no need of each other, and that all the truth, beauty, and goodness we need has been vouchsafed to us by God already. Not only is such an attitude problematic in terms of our flourishing, as I have asserted, but in this context now we must recognize how useless a picture this presents to the rest of society. Baptists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics failing to celebrate diversity provide no positive examples to societies trying to understand how to celebrate diversity on larger scales.”

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Book:Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World
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“CRT poses, in essence, a sharply pointed question. What, really, were the chances that the white, propertied men of the early American Republic would set up a judicial and political and economic system that didn’t privilege...white, propertied men? Critical Theorists would say those chances would be, approximately, . . . zero.”

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Book:Woke: An Evangelical Guide to Postmodernism, Liberalism, Critical Race Theory, and More
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“Conservative” should not be used as a synonym for “evangelical.” Evangelicals have been only selectively conservative. Many evangelicals have also been progressive, and sometimes even radical—in doctrine, in ethics, in politics, in art, and more: whatever gets the job done.”

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Book:Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction
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“Especially in the cause of mission, Christians must be sensitive to language—every bit as much as foreign missionaries must be sensitive to language in their crosscultural contexts. How do we hope to win the attention and appreciation of others if we offend them on secondary issues? So keeping up with trends in polite (or “correct”) speech isn’t merely to be trendy. It might be just considerate.”

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Book:Woke: An Evangelical Guide to Postmodernism, Liberalism, Critical Race Theory, and More
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“Among those ways and thoughts of God, then, is the principle of accommodation. God works within human limitations - both individual and corporate - to transform the world according to his good purposes. To be blunt, God works with what he's got and with what we've got. He does not create a whole new situation but instead graciously pursues shalom in the glory and the mess we have made. The living water of the Holy Spirit pours over the extant topography of the social landscape and rarely sweeps all before it. The Spirit usually conforms himself to the contours he encounters. But as he does so, like an irresistible flow of water, he shapes them by and by, eventually making the crooked ways straight and the rough places a plain (Isa. 40:3-4).”

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Book:Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender
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“Evangelicals simply cannot be identified immediately with the political right. Non- Anglican Protestants in Britain were long aligned with the political Left, and Australia’s left-wing parties have also enjoyed a measure of evangelical support. Canada’s major left-wing political organization, the New Democratic Party, came to prominence under the leadership of a Baptist pastor, Tommy Douglas.”

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Book:Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction
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