Another well-known minister has resigned from his pastoral office due to a previously undisclosed inappropriate relationship. The twist in this grimly familiar tale is that he had largely built his ministry around his struggle with homosexual temptation and his advocacy for celibacy. . . . Continue reading →
Culture Stuff
On Humanizing and Dehumanizing
In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis worried about the effects of replacing sin and forgiveness with disease and therapy. His chief concern is that we would lose our humanity. This remains a great concern. Recently, one of the Supremes, not Diana Ross . . . Continue reading →
Justification By Faith And Social Justice By Works (Part 3)
The late German-American political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) observed that history is marked by recurring attempts to divinize a fallen created order as a way of escaping the anxiety of fragile and finite existence. He identified in the early church heresy of Gnosticism a paradigm for understanding how private spiritual ambitions are transposed into public political projects—from Constantinianism and medieval Christendom to the totalitarianisms of the modern left and right. Continue reading →
Your AI Lover Is An Idol
You have probably seen the recent television commercial starring Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson in which Davidson is talking to an AI bot about whether he should change his name. He floats a couple of possibilities to the bot but ultimately decides . . . Continue reading →
Justification By Faith And Social Justice By Works (Part 2)
The gospel can be turned into law—even into new religious laws, especially when sweeter fruit is available to stave off the bitter taste of judicial conviction. When fallen creatures turn down contracts with part or all of the moral law, the door invariably opens to various forms of religious innovation, new orders for spiritual justice. Continue reading →
Justification By Faith And Social Justice By Works (Part 1)
Artificial intelligence (AI) stands at the forefront of technological advancement, representing a simulation of the real—a virtual reality. AI systems and bots can imitate humans, even fulfilling aspects of the cultural mandate. Continue reading →
Young Men Seduced Online To Murderous Nihilism
Early on January 1, 2025, as everyone else in Los Angeles was still ringing in the new year, Jonathan Rinderknecht hiked into the Santa Monica Mountains and, with his cigarette lighter, allegedly set some paper or brush or both alight. The flames . . . Continue reading →
Jesus And The Kiss Cam
It’s all over every social media platform. I saw it on the late news last night and on the early news this morning. Everyone laughing. Everyone mocking. Many glad that ‘those cheaters’ are getting their comeuppance. Not only are they cheating, but . . . Continue reading →
Dreher On The Woke/Anti-Semitic Right
I knew that the left had succumbed to the soft totalitarianism of wokeness. It was part of the reason that I moved to the former Eastern bloc country of Hungary—not to escape wokeness so much as the fact that, through the research . . . Continue reading →
Charlotte IHOP To Pay $40K To Christian Cook Over Refusal To Grant Him A Sabbath
A Charlotte IHOP franchise will pay $40,000 to settle claims of religious discrimination and retaliation. Suncakes NC, LLC, a North Carolina-based company, and Suncakes, LLC, a Texas-based company doing business as IHOP, will pay $40,000 and provide other relief to settle a religious . . . Continue reading →
Study: Biden-Harris Education Office Targeted Christian Colleges
This month, voters chose to turn the page on the Biden-Harris Administration and re-elect Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. This was an enormous win for the American people. It’s clear that Trump’s vision for freedom, populism, . . . Continue reading →
What The Hoodie Means
I was driving home from work yesterday when I saw a teenager walking down the street in 80-degree weather with a hoodie pulled over his head. It’s July! I wish I owned the patent on the hoodie design, if such a thing . . . Continue reading →
Wasteful Gaming, Providence, And Being Truly Counter-Cultural
In 2024 when we see the participle gaming, we are likely to think of computers and headsets, but for centuries the word signified gambling. It still does. Several state governments in the USA have “gaming commissions” or the like. One of the . . . Continue reading →
What Happened To The University (And Is It A Safe Place For Rational People)?
As I was driving to Bakersfield last week, it occurred to me that it was thirty years ago this year that I began my academic career as a teacher. In 1993 I was serving as the pastor of what was then Walnut . . . Continue reading →
Expressive Individualism, The Associated Press, Reality, And Lunacy
The AP Stylebook was, until recent years, one of the most respected and influential authorities for American journalists. Undergraduate journalism students are regularly directed to the AP Style as the “bible” for journalists. It functions similarly to the way the Chicago Manual . . . Continue reading →
Meet A Wise Guide To Fairy Tales That Can Help Illuminate The Meaning Of Life
One of great literature’s living guides includes Vigen Guroian, a now-retired professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. Earlier this year, Oxford University Press released his second edition of “Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s . . . Continue reading →
Clinging To Nostalgic Tradition May Be A Symptom Of Golden-Age Thinking
A lot of things are trad right now—tradwives, tradlife, tradcaths (in theory, pre-Vatican II Catholics; in practice, zoomer converts with a flair for ornamental aesthetics). In each case, tradness refers to the ambiguous yearning for an idealized version of the old days, . . . Continue reading →
Queer Culture Destabilizes, Subverts, And Excludes
In a recent New York Times opinion column, Pamela Paul makes an impassioned argument for why we should continue to use the word “gay” rather than “queer.” Not all gay people identify as queer, she correctly claims, and the Q-word’s rise to dominance thereby . . . Continue reading →
Addicted To Autonomy
In Western history, as in Scripture, it never goes well when man defies God—as Adam, Cain, Pharaoh, Achan, Uzzah, the boys at Bethel (2 Kings 2:23), Judas, or Ananias and Sapphira. Yet, in Modernity, the West has defied God for centuries. Continue reading →
A Sociological Note To Pastors About Boys
Today, undergraduate enrollment has flipped—female enrollment is at 58 percent. Women are awarded 53 percent of PhDs, and they make up the majority of law students. Whole professions, like psychology and veterinary medicine, are becoming overwhelmingly female. Forty percent of American women . . . Continue reading →