When I lived in New York and Philadelphia, I was cautious about publicly disciplining my children, since I knew mothers in liberal northeastern cities differed greatly with my approach. For example, I once was chided by a mom in a library for getting on to my daughter for wandering off while I was trying to check out her books. “You get back over here,” I said quietly, and my daughter began to throw a bit of a fit. In my... Read more
Brad Paisley’s hilarious song “Online” talks about how easy it is to have romantic adventures online — even sci-fi fanatics (mild asthmatics) can suddenly lose weight and grow an extra foot by logging on and creating false profiles. You can forgive the girls with whom this George Costanza–character corresponds. He tells them he lives in Malibu and drives a Maserati, instead of revealing that he lives in his parents’ basement and drives a clunker on pizza deliveries. Even that loser... Read more
I distinctly remember the days when I believed that salvation was a sales job. I grew up in a church that placed a premium on achieving “decisions for Christ” and that believed those decisions directly depended on my behavior. First, there was the apologetics. I always had to have a “ready answer” for those who questioned my faith—and by that, my elders meant a snappy response to virtually any challenge, whether about the origin of scripture, the origin of the... Read more
n a way, it was far more discouraging to see the New York legislature pass a gay-marriage bill than it was to see the now-familiar rogue judicial declarations, like those in Massachusetts, California, and Iowa. While constitutionally preferable to judicial imposition, New York’s statute is far more culturally distressing, a symbol not of a judicial overreach but of a more fundamental cultural change. The democratic process (yes, I know there was horse-trading and money involved) worked, and the elected legislature of... Read more
My ACLJ colleague Jordan Sekulow’s Washington Post piece making the case for Christian support for immigration enforcement reminded me of a disturbing but very real trend in American evangelicalism — a perceptible drift left on economic freedom, immigration, and the environment. The drift is obvious amongst Christian young people. In recent years, I’ve spoken to thousands of young evangelicals, and skepticism of free market economics is at an all-time high. Many have read books by Ron Sider or Shane Claiborne or have seen Jim Wallis... Read more
Then it turns out you’ve got a lot in common with the secular Left. At Commentary, Jonathan Tobin breaks down a recent Gallup Poll showing that 22 percent of Americans won’t vote for a Mormon: Still, in an era when religious pluralism is an unquestioned element of American culture, it is somewhat baffling that Mormons remain the object of hate. Some may put it down to the rigid beliefs of conservative evangelicals who think Mormons are not Christians, but considering the... Read more
How did Jake Pavelka – the shy, polite, rock-ribbed 31 year old – end up on a show known mostly by its steamy hot tub scenes? In a way you’d never expect — his fellow Methodist church members nominated him. “They asked me ‘if we sent a letter into casting, would you consider going on there?’” Apparently, they were sick of all those bachelors going on the show, drinking too much, and making the most of the “overnight” dates. The... Read more
The French Revolution
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