“Let the transient things be the ground on which my soul praises you, God creator of all.” —Augustine
I am not trying to honor people when I write their obituaries. That’s a common misconception I hear from both readers who love what I do and those who are offended and feel betrayed.
The job of an obit, as I understand it, is different from a tribute, reminiscence, or eulogy. An obit tries to explain the significance of the recently deceased and the role that person played in shaping the world we live in.
Sometimes I think about the readers who have never heard about the person I’m writing about. Is the obit useful to them? Does it help those people see how the deceased impacted their communities and maybe even their own lives? Then I think I’ve done my job.
Most readers of a CT obituary, of course, will know something about Chuck Girard, James Dobson, John MacArthur, or whomever. I assume they want to know more. And I assume that most readers will pass judgment—deciding for themselves if they want to confer honor in some way, dishonor, or something else. I don’t think they need my help to make that moral evaluation. What they need from me is a fair, full, complicated account of the life that was lived, including the ways that person was praised and the reasons that person was criticized.
This is part of my disciple of a journalist/historian/obit-writer that has been really good for me, personally. It has become an important part of who I am. I tell true stories and leave judgement to readers and to God.
Recent Work
Chuck Girard, who shaped the sound of the Jesus people movement with Love Song, Maranatha! Music, and solo hits including “Sometimes Alleluia,” has died at 81.
Do you know the standard way that speed limits are set? I explain it to my pastor on the podcast where I explain current events to my pastors, along with stories about massive protests in Israel and a strike that shut down Air Canada.
CT subs are on sale right now: $36 for a year for first-time subscribers.
Building Up the Church
It’s interesting that annual spending on church construction is going up in America after a 20-year downward slide. In the last few years, from 2021 to ’25, spending has increased 48 percent—even though rates of regular church attendance appear to continue to decline.
Reporting in The Wall Street Journal suggests the growth is in “auxiliary religious buildings,” like gyms, fellowship halls, and Sunday school classrooms. One consultant told the paper that post-pandemic congregations are asking themselves, “How do we re-create some of that third space, how do we meet some real needs in our community again?”
Some of it is probably that. Maybe people read my piece about church kitchens and decided it was time for some serious investment. But I’d guess a bigger portion of this new construction is actually deferred maintenance that can only be deferred for so long. That would fit a story of religious observance leveling off in America. That seems right to me—but we’ll see.
What Are Creeds For?
People regularly say the idea of “no creed but Christ” is nonsense because “everyone has a creed, everyone has things they believe.” So, the argument goes, you might as well write them down and be clear.
But that’s a basic misunderstanding. That’s not what the reformers who rallied around that slogan “no creed but Christ” meant by “creed.” For Barton Stone, at least, the issue was not with articulations of things believed, but the use of those articulations as a test for fellowship. He meant, no test of fellowship but Christ. I.e., if you believe Jesus is Lord (which no one can say, but by the work of the Holy Spirit), I will accept you as part of the new family.
“Of private opinions,” Stone wrote, “every man has a right; to deprive him of this is to deprive him of thinking, and to make him a slave. But no uninspired man has a right to impose his opinion on others and compel him to receive them on pain of excommunication.”
Elsewhere: “They may have a dozen creeds if they do not impose them on others as authoritative.”
There are, of course, arguments the creeds should be authoritative and act as tests for fellowship. But it’s not nonsense to believe a bunch of things and also hold “no creed but Christ.”
How to Practice Hope
I’ve been thinking about this passage from N. T. Wright’s book, Paul: A Biography: “You practice the virtue of hope through worship and prayer, through invoking the One God, through reading and reimagining the scriptural story, and through consciously holding the unknown future with the unshakable divine promises.”
Some of this, I do on my own everyday. Some of this requires a faith community.
I appreciate your BWS quotes near the end; I’ve recently noticed myself making the more cynical take that you call out, and I like the fuller context you set for what it first meant to set “No creed but Christ.” My personal impression is that his words are often applied to lump the many “secondary” items of thought/conviction into what it means to “cling to Christ.” Kind of like a parent who asks a kid to confess without naming the misdeed because they “know what they’ve done,” I’ve picked up on communities whose vibe is “You shouldn’t need to ask what we believe or what’s most important; our only creed is Christ and we just preach the gospel.”
I’m in favor of having a few key things in writing even if just to make otherwise invisible boundaries, visible (I enjoy the creed recitations in Presbyterian churches, for instance), but I appreciate the original spirit of Stone’s words even more. Your comments on Stone pair well with your own approach to obituaries, too—laying out the core things and allowing God and others to make their own evaluations.
"I am not trying to honor people when I write their obituaries... An obit tries to explain the ... the role that person played in shaping the world we live in." Thanks for posting this, Daniel! I am so appreciative of your work at CT, and really appreciated, e.g., your work on James Dobson's obit, even if it put you in the crosshairs of some.