Pictures from Oxford, Mississippi

Rowan Oak--William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi


Burial plot of Faulkner and his wife


Faulkner is thinking, "Another Benjamin, another idiot."


Nobel Prize Winners--Past and Future


A great bookstore, filled with Southern literature

Preparing for the Texarkana Calvin 500 Conference

Grace Covenant Church in Texarkana, Arkansas will be hosting a celebration of the five hundred year anniversary of the birth of John Calvin.

Our speakers will include Pastor Martin Rizley from Texarkana Reformed Baptist Church, Pastor Curtis Thomas, co-author of The Five Points of Calvinism, and me.

Preparing a talk for a conference is always a good excuse to buy some new books, pull out and review some older ones, and avoid chores around the house. So, the grass outside has gotten a little high, but the books about Calvin, Calvinism, and the 500 year history of Calvin's influence has been of foremost importance.

Here are the key points of my talk:

Time of Reformation--Calvin's work in bringing reformation to Geneva

Upheaval throughout Europe--the spread of Calvin's ideas

Limiting the powers of Church and State--the actions of Calvinists and reactions of their opponents.

Implications of Calvinism--the long line of Calvinist thinkers who have worked at rounding out this world-and-life view.

Perseverence of Calvinism--how Calvinism has survived and is thriving despite being disregarded, attacked, and pronounced dead many times in the past.

All together--that spells TULIP. Quite original, one might say. And, it looks like I will have almost an hour to cover 500 years of history.

Current Readings Include...

Edmund Morgan is a distinguished historian and expert on colonial America. This book is made up of book reviews he has done on other people's works/ But he does not simply tell what the given book is about; rather, he explores the themes and weaves in his own ideas. That is my own view of how best to review a book.



Alan Taylor's work explores the colonizing of America. He seeks to expand beyond the actions of the British. Many countries and many cultures merged and clashed to create the colonial experience.



I have read many of Faulkner's novels and some of his stories, but now am attempting to read--little by little--this entire collection of short stories.