This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
This great victory, the true defeat of death, I receive not by my thinking, willing, or working, but simply by believing.
This is an excerpt from chapter 6 of Scandalous Stories by Daniel Emery Price and Erick Sorensen (1517 Publishing 2018).
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
This is a companion article to “Johann Spangenberg on Dying Well”
Strasbourg’s hymnals are especially relevant to American Lutherans because much of what we experience in our churches comes to us from Strasbourg.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these early Lutheran hymns – and their physical availability in hymnals – in the piety of common people living in Lutheran towns and territories.
The Battle of Frankenhausen stands as a warning for what can happen when we abandon the Word God has given us and chase after some vision of our own imaginations.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.