The last two weeks have been very busy. I taught a class on Introduction to Reformed Theology in Baltimore during the week of June 7-12, and this week another minister and I represented our church to the Synod of the United Reformed Churches of North America meeting in Calgary. So there has been little time to blog.

Most of Friday, June 11, I spent driving through the northeastern part of Maryland, driving through small towns and farmland, listening on the car radio to the Reagan funeral. I wonder if we will every hear anything like it again. Of course, it was a funeral in the very best tradition of what was once American state religion, broadly evangelical and protestant, although a catholic priest helped officiate, something we would not have seen in the 19th century dominance of our state religion.

There has been an unending assault on our state religion for the past 65 years or so, using a revised version of American history and interpretation of the First Amendment. There may be even more changes in the next few decades, because of the change in the demographics of America, with a large influx of Hispanics, Eastern Europeans, and Asians. The vitality seems to be going out of evangelicals as they lose their sense of the inerrancy of Scripture and justification by faith.

The bright spot on the horizon, small as a man's hand, is the revival of high calvinism which is taking place throughout the world. The consistent theology and world view of calvinism is greatly feared by humanism of all stripes, but an integrated biblical faith is the only real answer to consistent humanism, whether of the virulent variety of militant Islamism or the seemingly benign form of New Age irrationalism.

It certainly appears that we are in for a ride that will include a lot of change in the next few years. The funeral of Ronald Reagan may well have signalled the end of an age, an age that some may remember with nostalgia, but one that is likely never to come again.