Diponegoro Indonesian Christian Church (GKI), Surabaya Center Pentecostal Church, and Santa Maria Tak Bercela Catholic Church—all in Surabaya, the second-largest city in the island-chain nation—suffered bombings carried out by six members of the same family, who are believed to be affiliated with Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), an Indonesian terrorist cell aligned with ISIS.   Suicide bombers launched... Continue Reading

Moving the embassy may or may not be a great political move. I’m not qualified to speak into that. But I would like to press on Christians supporting this move purely from a redemptive-historical (God’s plan of redemption over history) point of view. God has one plan for one group of people, the church.  ... Continue Reading

When “political leadership” undermines the government, then the church must intervene and become the state’s conscience. There goes separation of church and government. And to avoid the call to keep politics and theology distinct, the authors invoke not the Bible but Martin Luther King, Jr.    Yet another evangelical statement is seeking signatures. Reclaiming Jesus is a... Continue Reading

Do today’s anti-liberals believe that the core problem is an ideology of radical autonomy, one that preaches liberation in the name of “tolerance-respect-diversity” while simultaneously shoving unscientific gobbledygook like gender theory down our throats? Or, do they also regard what I’ll call “liberal institutions” as antithetical to the good life? To put it more crudely: are particular... Continue Reading

According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, 70% of those who receive large cash windfalls lose them within just a few years. Winning a large amount of money can be physically, emotionally and behaviorally dangerous because money, at it’s core, can be spiritually dangerous.   Not long ago, a single ticketholder won the Pennsylvania Powerball jackpot valued at 456.7 million... Continue Reading

Religious freedom, freedom of speech, and the freedom of the press, along with the other rights recognized and respected within the Bill of Rights, are all threatened even as other rights are marginalized. Even more distressingly, a new regime of invented rights threatens to replace the rights that are clearly enumerated within the text of... Continue Reading

“Questions abound about these unconventional couplings. What effects will they have on older adults’ health and well-being? Will children from previous marriages accept them? What will happen if one partner becomes seriously ill and needs caregiving?”   Three years ago, William Mamel climbed a ladder in Margaret Sheroff’s apartment and fixed a malfunctioning ceiling fan.... Continue Reading

“The review of the department’s rules relating to faith-based institutions comes after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last June in the Trinity Lutheran case. In that case, the court ruled that a Missouri law that prohibited a church from receiving funds as part of a secular aid program simply because it was a church was unconstitutional.”  ... Continue Reading

What about my pain-pleasure culture? What voice, for example, do millennials have speaking inside their heads? Not an inner lawyer, not an inner grandmother. I think the inner voice of the millennial is an inner therapist. And what does the inner therapist say? “Go for it, you’re worth it, it feels good.”   At St... Continue Reading

In February of last year Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded the Obama Administration’s 2016 Dear Colleague guidance letter to public schools, which said that students must be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they self-identify and threatened to withhold federal funds if schools did... Continue Reading