The Day of Religious Liberty
The recent legal and legislative history of religious freedom in America can be described in many ways, but ping-pong comes to mind
One of the sad ironies in how this has developed is the question of animus. The Smith decision requires complainants to show actual animus towards them for their religious beliefs. On the gay question, however, federal judges and Justice Kennedy have held that religious opposition to gay marriage is on its face evidence of animus... Continue Reading
Don’t Destroy This Family
Germany persecutes homeschoolers, with an assist from the Obama administration.
Homeschooling terrifies the Left because the Left is at its core totalitarian, seeking to bring political discipline to every aspect of life — and control of education is essential to that project. The public school is in miniature what the Left believes the world should look like: Everybody arranged in orderly rows and moving about... Continue Reading
State-level Surge
Last year was a good one for pro-life politics in America’s state capitals
Gallup’s most recent values poll found that 48 percent of Americans call themselves pro-life while 45 percent call themselves “pro-choice.” In 1996, the year of then President Bill Clinton’s first veto of the partial-birth abortion ban, 56 percent said they were “pro-choice” while 33 percent regarded themselves as pro-life. NEBRASKA, KANSAS, OKLAHOMA, and TEXAS—Mia... Continue Reading
There Will Be No Sea in the New Heaven and New Earth
A hint of the quality of the new heaven and new earth is found in the somewhat cryptic words, “Also there was no more sea”
But the Jews feared other problems from the sea besides turbulent storms. Their traditional archrivals, marauders who beset them countless times, were a seacoast nation. The Philistines came from the direction of the sea. The Jew looked to a new world where all the evils symbolized by the sea would be absent. The new earth will... Continue Reading
Understanding Right and Left, Part 2: Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
Defining the political right and left
Levin has succeeded rather well in demonstrating that the impulses we call Right and Left in America have a long and rich history. The Left, with its utopian preoccupations with the abstract ideals of individual autonomy and equality, and its sanguine confidence in the power of government to achieve these goals, reflects convictions articulated at... Continue Reading
Gambling with God: Ryan Bell’s Atheist Bet
Without having lost his belief in God, Bell wants to explore atheism as an alternative faith system
Bell was an adjunct teacher at Azuza Pacific University and Fuller Seminary. His contract was not renewed this semester after the project started, and along with the suspension of a project he had undertaken with another church, this caused him to conclude on his blog that “Those who “come out” as atheist face serious consequences... Continue Reading
Obama Moves To Weaponize IRS
IRS is attempting to double down on conservative groups
Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel Action – one of the many conservative organizations to be silenced – commented on the breaking scandal: “One of the core liberties in our constitutional republic is the right to dissent,” he said. “But desperate to force his radical agenda on the American people, Barack Obama and his chosen... Continue Reading
The Biggest “Contradiction” in the Bible
Does James contradict Paul on faith and works?
In Romans, the context is our standing before God, God’s view and verdict upon us. In that sense, God justifies us by our faith, He counts us as righteous because of the faith that He alone can see. In James, the context is our standing before people, their view and verdict upon us. In that... Continue Reading
A Few Good Men, Not a Few Good Yes Men
Every minister needs good local elders
In the meantime, every minister needs good local elders, men whom he has not chosen, who see him each Sunday, who hear him preach and pray, who connect with him during the week, who see how he treats his wife and his children, who observe how he speaks to visitors, who know how he relates... Continue Reading
Speak of the Trinity Often
When we speak of God in the pulpit, we should speak of the Trinity.
If you commonly reference the Trinity in your pulpit ministry, your hearers will naturally pick up an orthodox view of the Trinity, which will provide them with a foundation on which to answer the various false gods, false religions, and cults in their surrounding communities. The Trinity is one of the most essential distinguishing doctrines... Continue Reading