There are millions of Bible-believing Christians in the United States, people who affirm their faith in the infallibility of the Bible. Yet it is obvious to anyone that the United States is dominated by the forces of secular humanism.

What should we call the events occurring in the American colonies between 1776 and 1783? The American Revolution? The War for Independence? The American Counter-Revolution? The English saw the period as a true revolution, and so did the colonial loyalists. The Patriot Party saw it as a war for colonial independence and a return to traditional English liberties.

Secular historians are interested in the wider impact of Puritanism in Anglo-American history.They are interested in Puritan theology only insofar as this theology explains the origins of Puritanism’s wider impact.

What’s wrong with Reformed evangelism? Something certainly appears to be wrong. When we look at the growth of Arminian Baptist churches and compare this growth with the various Reformed Baptist and Presbyterian denominations, the numbers are very discouraging. When J. Gresham Machen left the old Presbyterian Church of the USA, he believed that his newly formed Presbyterian Church of America would grow rapidly as a result of its commitment to biblical inerrancy and the fundamentals of the faith. Instead, it suffered a split the next year (June 1937), and the two new denominations, the Bible Presbyterians and Orthodox Presbyterians, have not grown much in membership since 1937. Much the same has been true of the various Dutch-based Reformed denominations. They grow only if the birth rate increases, and the death rate decreases within the respective groups. As I noted (at age 21), the Dutch churches seem to have substituted procreation for a Board of Home Missions. (I wasn’t tactful in my youth, the way I am today.) So what’s the problem? As you might expect, there is more than one problem. There is a whole pile of problems, such as: 1) not systematic evangelism programs; 2) imitation Arminian evangelism programs; 3) ineffective evangelism programs; 4) a message geared to confrontation, not conquest; 5) the humanism of our era; 6) lack of capital; 7) lack of confidence; 8) lack of past successes to serve as precedents; 9) seminaries that don’t emphasize evangelism; 10) too much concern for the rigors of theological speculation, and not enough for the demands of applied theology; 11) an inability to recognize and emphasize the strong points of the Reformed heritage (relevance, concrete answers for social problems, scholarship, organization; 12) fatalism regarding stagnation and defeat; 13) ignorance of the warfare between Christianity and humanism; 14) compromised apologetic methodology (rationalism); 15) a constricted view of the Kingdom of God; 16) incompetence in the area of communication; 17) a failure to tithe. One of the criticisms that has been aimed at the Christian reconstructionist movement is that it has not been concerned with evangelism. An odd charge, coming from pastors who have never demonstrated that they have had any grasp of evangelism techniques, given their tiny churches and invisibility in their communities. The Christian reconstruction movement is less than a decade old. It has little capital. Yet despite its youth and its lack of capital, it has been influential enough to become a force in American thought and culture. When Newsweek identified the source of the “religious right’s” ideas, it listed Chalcedon, and only Chalcedon (Feb. 2, 1981, p. 60). But this is not “evangelism” in the eyes of the critics. This doesn’t count. So what does count? Not sheer numbers, certainly; the critics cannot point to their own success using this criterion. What is the nature of legitimate evangelism? The latest issue of The Journal of Christian Reconstruction addresses itself to this important question. But more than this: it offers specific, affordable suggestions to struggling congregations about how they can grow, become more influential, and count for something within their communities. We need both a theory of evangelism and a practical program for evangelism. The “Symposium on Evangelism” offers both. There has been an enormous waste in virtually all popular programs of evangelism. They have not been cost-effective. They have not targeted their audiences properly. They have not been geared to repeated contacts. They have not been structured in terms of long-range objectives—objectives stretching out two or more generations. The evangelism programs popular (if that word can even be used) in Reformed circles have generally been warmed-over versions of Arminian evangelism. These techniques have not worked for Reformed churches, yet the pastors have not been willing to scrap them and rethink the whole question. Is there a distinctively Reformed evangelism? Are its techniques fundamentally different from those employed by Arminian churches? Is there a distinctively Christian reconstructionist evangelism—a type of evangelism unavailable to the majority of Arminian denominations and congregations? The answer to all three questions is the same: Yes. The Journal provides the evidence. Far from being unconcerned with evangelism, the Chalcedon movement is vitally concerned with evangelism. It is a small movement at present, and it needs capital. How can it expect to become a world-wide force for social change if it neglects evangelism? How can its perspective spread to the decision-makers of this age, except by evangelism? Everyone needs evangelism; the Arminians, the introspective Reformed groups, the traditional conservatives, the Roman Catholics, the universities, the heathen seats of power, the media, the Iron Curtain nations, and all points in between. But the average pastor faces more immediate problems. He has to build up his struggling congregation. He needs to take the first steps. That’s why we have devoted an issue of the Journal to evangelism. What distinguishes the Chalcedon movement’s view of evangelism from the rival varieties that are common today, is the scope of evangelism. We are convinced that no evangelism program can hope to succeed unless it is driven by a vision of universal conquest. The three strongest political forces in the world today are Marxism, militant Islam, and modern science. All three are predestinarian. All three are officially optimistic. All three believe that they possess the key which will unlock the door of history. All three believe that they have access to the true law structure which will give them power over the world. All three see themselves as agents of historical and social change. All three see the whole world as their proper and required domain. Until Christians can match them, doctrine for doctrine, vision for vision, we will sit on the sidelines of history, cheering for no one in particular. Waiting for the “game” to end so that we can go home. That’s what most Christians are doing now. This produces an ineffective evangelism. It produces a socially irrelevant witness. It produces the kind of witness the Roman emperors would have preferred to see the early church proclaim. The “emperors” of our day can live with this sort of witness, too. It is time to change both our strategy and our tactics.—Gary North

In terms of the daily lives of the world’s population, no institution is more central than the family. The society which sees the demise of the family does not survive.

The Handbook of Computational Social Science is a comprehensive reference source for scholars across multiple disciplines. It outlines key debates in the field, showcasing novel statistical modeling and machine learning methods, and draws from specific case studies to demonstrate the opportunities and challenges in CSS approaches. The Handbook is divided into two volumes written by outstanding, internationally renowned scholars in the field. This second volume focuses on foundations and advances in data science, statistical modeling, and machine learning. It covers a range of key issues, including the management of big data in terms of record linkage, streaming, and missing data. Machine learning, agent-based and statistical modeling, as well as data quality in relation to digital trace and textual data, as well as probability, non-probability, and crowdsourced samples represent further foci. The volume not only makes major contributions to the consolidation of this growing research field, but also encourages growth into new directions. With its broad coverage of perspectives (theoretical, methodological, computational), international scope, and interdisciplinary approach, this important resource is integral reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers engaging with computational methods across the social sciences, as well as those within the scientific and engineering sectors.

Perceptively explores the shifting intersections between algorithmic systems and human practices in the modern era. How have algorithmic systems and human practices developed in tandem since 1800? This volume of Osiris deftly addresses the question, dispelling along the way the traditional notion of algorithmic “code” and human “craft” as natural opposites. Instead, algorithms and humans have always acted in concert, depending on each other to advance new knowledge and produce social consequences. By shining light on alternative computational imaginaries, Beyond Craft and Code opens fresh space in which to understand algorithmic diversity, its governance, and even its conservation. The volume contains essays by experts in fields extending from early modern arithmetic to contemporary robotics. Traversing a range of cases and arguments that connect politics, historical epistemology, aesthetics, and artificial intelligence, the contributors collectively propose a novel vocabulary of concepts with which to think about how the history of science can contribute to understanding today’s world. Ultimately, Beyond Craft and Code reconfigures the historiography of science and technology to suggest a new way to approach the questions posed by an algorithmic culture—not only improving our understanding of algorithmic pasts and futures but also unlocking our ability to better govern our present.

First published in 1984, this work explores the issues surrounding the industrialisation of the Third World at the beginning of the 1980s. The expectation that Newly Industrialising Countries would facilitate industrial growth via an outward-orientated strategy had begun to be the combination of growing recession, growing protectionism and the diffusion of radical microelectronics-related technical change. In addition, the high indebtedness of developing countries made them increasingly dependent on assistance from the IMF and IBRD, whose policies increased the tendency towards de-industrialisation. The papers in this volume explore all of these issues and their implication for LDC industrial strategy in the 1980s.