Alan Dershowitz As a supporter of the two state solution and an opponent of many of Israel’s settlement decisions, I regard myself as a moderate on these issues. That was apparently too much for the national office of Amnesty International to tolerate. They demanded that the Columbia chapter of Amnesty International disinvite me.  They did not want their members to hear my perspective on human rights. http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/11/10/dershowitz-amnesty-international-has-become-an-apologist-for-terrorism-and-enemy-of-democracy/ Read more

Sociologists want to present themselves as objective scientists of the social order, but when Christian Smith looks at his discipline he doesn’t see science. He sees the Sacred Project of American Sociology, sociology constituted as a project that he is even willing to describe as “spiritual.” He applies a “sociology of religion” to the discipline of American sociology itself. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/11/sacred-sociology   Read more

Mark Tooley It is often claimed that conservative religious voters, especially white evangelicals, are going the way of the dinosaur, consigned to demographic irrelevance. But they were a key component of the Republicans’ 2014 midterm victories. According to exit polls, Conservative religious voters made up as big a percentage of the electorate as ever, and they backed Republicans at least as strongly as ever. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/conservative-christians-still-key-republicans_818326.html?page=1 Read more

Ellen White Who is Asherah? What is asherah? The reference may be to a particular goddess, a class of goddess or a cult symbol used to represent the goddess. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish what meaning is intended (cf. Judges 3:7). http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/asherah-and-the-asherim-goddess-or-cult-symbol/   Read more

Louis Markos As for Ehrman’s 400,000 variants, Blomberg explains, they are “spread across more than 25,000 manuscripts in Greek or other ancient languages. . . . This is an average of only 16 variants per manuscript” (17). And of those variants, only “about a tenth of 1 percent . . . are interesting enough to make their way into footnotes in most English translations” (27). http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/10/ehrman-errant Read more

William Carroll The traditional pillars of religion that support a view of God as transcendent Creator remain unshaken by the discoveries of modern science. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/10/13912/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=9f6e3d59ed-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-9f6e3d59ed-84107317 Read more

Mark Tooley Pope Francis expands on Church opposition to capital punishment. http://spectator.org/articles/60823/%E2%80%98life-imprisonment-hidden-death-penalty%E2%80%99 Read more

John Lomperis Staffers can one day talk about seeing women and children “as children of God with sacred worth” and see no contradiction with the next day making very clear that an unborn child has no sacred worth, and is utterly unworthy of God’s or the church’s compassion, if s/he is guilty of the Unforgivable Sin of being unwanted by his or her mother. http://juicyecumenism.com/2014/10/27/churches-address-political-issues/?utm_source=flocknote&utm_medium=email&utm_term=11&utm_content=churches-address-political-issues&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Wrap%20Up%2010-31-2014 Read more

Christianity is hard to control in China, and getting harder all the time. It is spreading rapidly, and infiltrating the party’s own ranks. The line is blurring between house churches and official ones, and Christians are starting to emerge from hiding to play a more active part in society. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21629218-rapid-spread-christianity-forcing-official-rethink-religion-cracks?frsc=dg|a   Read more

Doug Mainwaring For me, same-sex marriage has simply been rendered a non-issue, because I recognize the irrefutable nature and irresistible truth of complementarity. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/11/13998/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=f22fc4f329-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-f22fc4f329-84107317 Read more