Two friends. One will give you advice. Good advice. The other will pray for you right then and there and will keep praying for you. Which one do you want to talk with? “It depends.” Yes, it does. Sometimes you might want some good advice. If you want to buy a new car or find... Continue Reading

Brace yourself. This isn’t going to be pleasant. If you’re in a bad mood or get easily upset, you may wish to pass on reading this article. The country is in even worse shape economically than we thought. We awoke on Feb. 14 to find that this year’s federal budget deficit is going to be... Continue Reading

Religious colleges are being warned, observers say, to show their core purpose is to “propagate religious faith” or else be treated as a secular enterprise. That could pose a special problem for liberal religious organizations, which seldom require students and faculty to endorse specific creeds or doctrines. Manhattan College claims to be a Catholic institution,... Continue Reading

Literature and theology are complementary ways of putting us in possession of Christian doctrine. Neither is complete in itself. In this essay I propose to use the doctrine of justification as a test case of what I like to call the theological imagination–not the theological intellect but the theological imagination. The function of the literary... Continue Reading

A pastor friend of mine recently said that the best secular musicians are those who look straight into the beauty of the face of God, refuse to worship, and then sing about it. I think that’s about right. There is a kind of image-bearing genius and beauty in the performances of many of these musicians,... Continue Reading

Do libertarians and social conservatives with religious concerns have a relationship worth preserving? As a Christian with strong sympathies toward social conservatism, I can help address part of that question. My answer is that libertarians and social conservatives have a strong interest in seeing each other persist in the American polity As the standard bearer... Continue Reading

Surely, ambiguity will never be fully eliminated from human discourse and it is not always destructive of meaningful dialogue. Even so, ambiguous terms can lead to a failure of communication. In many cases, reasonable dialogue is stifled due to lack of clarity concerning key terms in a discussion. Consider the case of two disputants discussing... Continue Reading

Genuinely violent speech must be deplored, but the charges brought against Christians are weapons of mass distraction. The white noise created by such groundless accusations muffles the grinding screech of two tectonic plates; a revolutionary conflict of opposing worldviews, of Christian Two-ism and of rising pagan One-ism. We are not surprised to hear that political... Continue Reading

When Christina Beattie, a junior at Palm Beach State College, decided to start a Young Americans for Freedom chapter, she was not expecting to defend that freedom in court. But after the college banned her from setting up a recruitment table and then from distributing any literature at all, that’s exactly where she finds herself.... Continue Reading

Christians have a long list of daily priorities. Two of the most important priorities are voiced in these two questions: 1. How do I focus my life on God’s priorities in the midst of such a busy and complex life? 2. How do I grow in demonstrating deeper love to others in the midst of... Continue Reading