When we make moral judgments, we implicitly and unavoidably acknowledge that there are objective standards of right and wrong to which we ought to conform our feelings and actions. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/05/13119/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=1a6779bd52-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-1a6779bd52-84107317 Read more

Activists accuse Communist Party of ‘barbaric’ campaign against Christianity after demolition teams and police descend on a church that became a symbol of resistance http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10792386/China-accused-of-anti-Christian-campaign-as-church-demolition-begins.html?utm_source=Weekly+May+2+2014&utm_campaign=Weekly+May+2%2C+2014&utm_medium=email Read more

For Israeli lieutenant Aharon Karov, life has always been unpredictable. In December 2008, Karov was celebrating with his wife, Tzvia, at their wedding. Twelve hours later, the member of Paratrooper Brigade 890 was on the ground in Gaza as Operation Cast Lead began. http://www.cjnews.com/news/idf-paratrooper-survives-despite-odds Read more

People with same-sex attraction do not need to be “fixed”—they need genuine, authentic friendship. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/04/13097/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=c7562d5a14-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-c7562d5a14-84107317 Read more

Professor Yang is a leading expert on religion in China. He has projected that the number of Christians will reach around 160 million by 2025. If this happens, it could put China ahead of the United States. http://juicyecumenism.com/2014/04/24/china-might-soon-become-largest-nation-of-christians-in-the-world/?utm_source=flocknote&utm_medium=email&utm_term=17&utm_content=china-might-soon-become-largest-nation-of-christians-in-the-world&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Wrap%20Up%204-29-14 Read more

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has based her conclusions on her own and other Muslim women’s experiences of trauma and torture, forces us to confront uncomfortable facts. Brandeis’s treatment of Ali represents a troubling trend that limits freedom of speech on college and university campuses. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/04/13075/ Read more

Civic freedoms come hand-in-hand with responsibilities. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has the right to criticize Islam, but she fails to fulfill her responsibility to do so without resorting to sensationalism and overgeneralizations. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/04/13071/ Read more

When it comes to the big issues of the day it is tempting to try to silence those who disagree with you and who complicate a question that you wanted to see as obvious and simple. And the easiest way to silence someone is to portray him as some kind of lunatic or extremist, a person outside the consensus of ‘reasonable’ opinion, and beyond the pale of rational argument. But the true extremist is the one who argues in that... Read more

Public Lecture Sunday night, April 27, 6:30 PM St John Lutheran Church, Roanoke In this lecture, I will discuss three things: 1. the Bible’s portrait of marriage; 2. marriage in the Western cultural tradition; and 3. today’s new revisionist view of marriage. gerry Read more

With May a little more than a week away, the Great Lakes are still a third ice-covered at a time of year when they were often entirely ice-free or very nearly so. This is the largest ice cover so late in the season observed in the satellite era — since the 1970s, basically. The frozen Great Lakes and persistent cold air in that region, the Northeast and northward into Canada is part of a large-scale pattern that is keeping severe... Read more