A Burning Lampstand on Capitol Hill |
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I only spent about six months at the church that reinvigorated my understanding of church. At the time, I was a fresh college graduate working in Washington, D.C. And I was looking for a change, having soured on a previous church that tested the limits of the proposition that public worship need not look conventionally churchy. |
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A few friends recommended Capitol Hill Baptist Church, located just a few blocks from the houses of Congress. The lead pastor there, Mark Dever, is known for launching the ministry 9Marks, which labors to proclaim the non-negotiable features of authentic church fellowship. |
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Career winds soon blew me back outside the Beltway, somewhat to my relief. But the seriousness that CHBC brought to defining and pursuing the Bible’s blueprint for local congregations left an indelible impression, as it has for so many others. |
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How has one defiantly non-trendy congregation emerged as an ecclesial lodestar in certain evangelical circles? Caleb Morrell, a member of Capitol Hill Baptist’s pastoral team, considers this question in A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation’s Capital Influenced Evangelicalism. |
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Eric Smith, a church history professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reviewed the book for CT. |
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"As a CHBC staff member, Morell documents this history with love, not hiding his own commitment to the church’s theology, methods, and leadership," writes Smith. "But if he credits Dever with prescient pastoral vision, he also maintains that Dever’s ministry comprises only one chapter in a far more significant story: one of the Lord keeping the Capitol Hill lampstand burning for a century and a half. |
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"Dever has repeatedly asserted his own dispensability, but perhaps never so dramatically as on the Sunday after 9/11. Just days after terrorists attacked the Pentagon, Dever insisted that seminary student Bert Daniel keep his preaching appointment rather than yield the pulpit to Dever in a historic moment. For Morell, this decision illustrates Dever’s core approach to ministry: Rather than build a movement around himself, he empowers younger pastors who will continue to serve Capitol Hill Baptist and other local churches after he is gone. |
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"For this reason, Morell is convinced that the light on the Hill will keep burning after Dever’s tenure has concluded. ‘I look forward to being reassured of how much the Lord has done here is not dependent on Mark Dever,’ observed associate pastor Jamie Dunlop. ‘I’m quite confident it’s not person dependent, and yet a lot of people think it is. And I look forward to that assumption being vindicated, and it being evident that the church really is built on Jesus and not on Mark Dever.’" |
A Christian Defense of the Conservative Political Tradition |
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One common observation about people embracing the "conservative" political label is that, today at least, they often seem more radical than conservative. Plenty of prominent Republican officeholders and right-wing influencers specialize in iconoclastic bombast, exemplified by calls to drain the swamp, dismantle the deep state, or turn the tables on woke enforcers. Such figures can appear oddly unindebted to longstanding features of the conservative political tradition, like limited government, constitutional safeguards, and old-fashioned moral norms. |
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John Wilsey, the church history department chair at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, rises to defend this older tradition in his latest book, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer. Wilsey doesn’t write to bind any Christian’s conscience to conservative views of political culture or public policy. But he suggests that conservatism, at its best, embodies habits of thought and affection well suited to Christian public witness, on America’s "first freedom" and beyond. |
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John Brown University political science professor Daniel Bennett reviewed the book for CT. |
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"Wilsey is a conservative, but he is also (indeed, first) a Christian," writes Bennett. "It should come as no surprise that his defense of conservatism is therefore grounded—subtly at times and explicitly at others—in the Christian faith. Christians, Wilsey argues, are well suited to act in defense of the conservative tradition, due in large part to a shared commitment to the God-given dignity of every human being. Moreover, just as conservatives are prone to worry about the excesses of state power, Christians are called to resist putting our trust ‘in princes, in human beings, who cannot save’ (Ps. 146:3). They respect the government but fear only God (1 Pet. 2:17). |
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"Because of how Wilsey defines conservatism, he does not argue that Christians must defend today’s Republican Party to advance the broader conservative project. Indeed, readers might sense that Wilsey wrote this book precisely to protest how the GOP has co-opted and abused conservatism in recent years. Christians, he might say, have a chance to defend the conservative tradition from the impulses of the secular left—but also from the excesses of the post-Christian right. |
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"Defending the conservative tradition does not make one a Christian. But for Wilsey, one of the most important things today’s Christians can do—outside of boldly claiming the gospel, of course—is to ‘stand athwart history’ in support of a robust and rooted framework for our political and social lives. Christian faith, though adaptable to different cultures and social challenges, is grounded in tradition. Our doctrines, customs, and worship practices rest atop nearly two millennia of shared experience. Conservatism, as Wilsey defines it, is not the only framework through which Christians should see the world, but its reverence for the past runs parallel with basic Christian intuitions." |
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"She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue." Proverbs 31:26 |
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This Mother's Day, honor her wisdom with the gift of spiritual nourishment. Christianity Today's 2025 Moms, Dads & Grads Gift Guide curates books that become faithful companions in the midst of a busy life. These aren't just books—they're doorways to understanding, wonder, and transformation. |
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In 2010, The Gospel Coalition’s website posted a video of a roundtable conversation about multisite churches between three well-known pastors. At the time, two of these pastors, Mark Driscoll and…
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There are few terms more prone to misinterpretation today than religious freedom and conservative. Religious freedom could mean constitutional safeguards for practicing sincerely held religious beliefs, or it might mean…
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CT Partners are making a global impact through the One Kingdom Campaign |
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So much has already been accomplished since the launch of the One Kingdom Campaign in September 2024. From beautiful storytelling that lifts our eyes to Jesus working in our midst to global reporting that reminds readers of the cost of following Jesus around the world, God is at work through our generous CT Partners.
See what God is doing through the One Kingdom Campaign and how you can participate in this important community. Learn more. |
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Even amid scandals, cultural shifts, and declining institutional trust, we at Christianity Today recognize the beauty of Christ’s church. In this issue, you’ll read of the various biblical metaphors for the church, and of the faithfulness of Japanese pastors. You’ll hear how one British podcaster is rethinking apologetics, and Collin Hansen’s hope for evangelical institutions two years after Tim Keller’s death. You’ll be reminded of the power of the Resurrection, and how the church is both more fragile and much stronger than we think from editor in chief Russell Moore. This Lent and Easter season, may you take great courage in Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:18—"I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." |
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