Gene Edward Veith

Dr. Gene Edward Veith is academic dean of Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, and director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.

  • When Christianity Shaped the Arts by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | August 2007

    Christians today often talk about influencing the culture through the arts. This often means, in practice, Christians letting themselves be influenced by the culture through the arts. In the seventh century, though, we see Christianity as a powerful imaginative and …Read More

  • Cultural Evangelism, Seventh-Century Style by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | August 2007

    Christians today often talk about evangelizing the culture, transforming the culture, and finding ways to communicate with people of another culture. What that looks like can be seen in seventh-century English literature. J.R.R. Tolkien was as great …Read More

  • Angels and Demons Go Pop Culture by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | July 2007

    “I believe there are angels among us,” sang the pop-country group Alabama to the accompaniment of a children’s choir. And most Americans agree. According to a 2005 Fox News poll, 79 percent of Americans believe in angels. This belief …Read More

  • Prayer and Culture by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2007

    I recently headed the translation committee for our church body’s new hymnal and worship book. Our previous hymnal included the choice of a modernized version of the Lord’s Prayer. We found, though, that no one used it. Even …Read More

  • The Consequences of Truth by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | May 2007

    Readers of Tabletalk over the last 30 years have learned a lot about theology. But they have also learned a lot about history, philosophy, and the arts. The various writers of the “Truth and Consequences” column have been writing …Read More

  • A Tale of Two Funerals by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    A young man I knew died in a tragic traffic accident. His death was utterably sad. At his funeral, his friends were all wearing T-shirts adorned with his picture. At the front of the church were heaped up flowers, footballs …Read More

  • Family vs. Culture by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | March 2007

    The family is the foundation of culture. This is not a bromide of the Christian right, but plain fact, as every anthropologist will tell you. Families associate with groups of families, forming networks of social interdependence as families make a …Read More

  • Feeling Good about Ourselves by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | January 2007

    We tend to underestimate the magnitude of sin, in particular, our own sin. And our failure to confront our sinfulness in an honest way — our tendency rather to revel in how good we are — can have devastating consequences in …Read More

  • Changing the Past by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | December 2006

    Some cultures have no central government. Their only social organization is the family, including the extended family that constitutes a clan, and the organization of clans into a tribe. So in the absence of laws, a police force, and a …Read More

  • This Is My Body by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | November 2006

    As far as I know, I am the only Lutheran who writes regularly for Tabletalk, so please bear with me. Inviting a Lutheran to write about the Lord’s Supper is like asking a grandmother if she has any pictures …Read More

  • Covenant and Culture by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2006

    The word covenant is a theological term. But it is also a cultural term. It has to do with God’s primal design for how human beings, fallen though we be, can live together and form a society. Social philosophers …Read More

  • The Protestant Work Ethic by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2006

    The Protestant work ethic promotes excellence. But what is the connection between Protestantism, work, and excellence? The pioneering sociologist Max Weber was the first to draw attention to the Protestant work ethic. In his book The Protestant Ethic and the …Read More

  • Back to Barbarism by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | August 2006

    We Western Christians have been sending missionaries to spread the Gospel to cultures throughout the world. We sometimes forget that, unless we have a Jewish background, our cultures too were originally evangelized by missionaries. This is certainly true for those …Read More

  • A New Paul? by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | July 2006

    Liberals have been attempting to separate Paul from Jesus at least from the time of the nineteenth-century agnostic Matthew Arnold to today’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. “Paul is the true founder of Christianity,” they say, not seeing …Read More

  • Bringing Christ Into the Problem by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2006

    Charles Darwin finally gave up his belief in God not because he discovered evidence for evolution by natural selection (a theory he developed some years earlier) but because of his anguish at the death of his ten-year-old daughter. When he …Read More