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 →
Culture Stuff
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 →
“Oppressor” Narrative Plays A Role In Growing Number of Teen-Related Gender Identity Issues
Patricia (a pseudonym) is the mother of a teenage girl who in recent years has come to identify as transgender. She lives in California, considers herself progressive, votes Democrat, and leads a group for parents of children with rapid onset gender dysphoria . . . Continue reading →
Gender Ideology Is The New State Religion
As a tax-paying district parent since 2008 who has sent her two children to the district Elementary, Middle and High School, I am aggrieved to find myself excluded from a very important conversation with my child, who I have loved since before . . . Continue reading →
Where Have All The Good Men Gone?
Every generation thinks they have it the hardest when it comes to finding love, but it’s hard to look at mine and conclude that we don’t have a good case. Never before have young people been having so little sex—at least not . . . Continue reading →
Religious Freedom Watch: 1994 RFRA Under Attack?
An op-ed Wednesday in The Washington Post laid out how the left is attempting to dismantle what Congress once unanimously recognized as “undergird[ing] the very origin and existence of the United States”: religious freedom. Specifically, Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues . . . Continue reading →
Reinventing Pronouns Aids The Deconstruction Of Language
There is far more to pronoun usage than someone’s personal preference in how he or she wishes to have others refer to him or her. The woke tyranny affects all pronoun usage because it de-constructs our entire language. A pronoun must have . . . Continue reading →
Pronouns And The Destabilization Of Thought
When Vice President Kamala Harris announced her pronouns while introducing herself to pro-abortion disability rights activists, she also described what she was wearing: “I am Kamala Harris. My pronouns are she and her. I am a woman sitting at this table wearing . . . Continue reading →
Orwell: Social Orthodoxy And The Silencing Of Unpopular Opinions
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to . . . Continue reading →
Critical Theory Is Not Critical Enough
I argue that if Christians are to respond fully and properly to Critical Theory, such a response must be rooted in a truly Christian biblical-theological framework. Such a Christian response will recognize that Critical Theory is in effect an alternative theology or . . . Continue reading →
The Subjectivity Of Niceness
I fell into the trap that ensnares many souls today: believing that if a person has a pleasing personality, is affable, attentive, and “accepting” (whatever that means), then the person is good. Somewhere along the line, Catholics began making crucial judgments based . . . Continue reading →
The Holy Spirit’s Identity Politics
It is pretty common nowadays, especially on the political left, to hear people talking about “identifying” as or with different things. Some people “identify” with whatever ethnic, national, cultural, or gender identity they were actually born into (although doing that usually doesn’t . . . Continue reading →
Rosaria Butterfield On AGR About Lies Of The Anti-Christian Age
Side-B gay Christianity believes that the sin of homosexuality is not in the desire but in the practice, as though sin were not an ethical and moral problem but really just a physical one. In a Roman catholic soteriology, that all makes . . . Continue reading →