When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
These are not normal times. We seem to be living through times the Pauline prediction that “what can be shaken will be shaken” (see Hebrews 12:27). I use a Bible text advisedly, because so many people of faith seem to have committed themselves to shaking the system of secular laws to bring about moral renewal.
READ MOREJames Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” gratifyingly concluded his role with an amendment-less Constitution in September 1787, then headed for New York to work on The Federalist Papers. Yet it was only the next summer when he would voice to his Virginian constituency a promise to propose a bill of rights at the First
READ MOREOn March 21, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that protects freedom of speech on college campuses. Perhaps no one understands the need for this executive order better than Matthew Vitale. A student at the University of California at Riverside, he was verbally and physically accosted by another student who was offended by
READ MOREThe Christian Right is not a monolithic movement but one with diverse expressions and voices with no one single representation. Some years ago Paul Weyrich, one of the chief architects of the Christian Right, voiced his assessment of the “culture wars.” He feared that the war was lost and that Christians should establish their own
READ MOREOn the evening of March 26, 2018, on CNN’s 360, a group of evangelical Christian women were asked to respond to the most recent allegations of marital infidelity against the president of the United States. Speaking as a Bible-believing Christian pastor, with many of the same moral convictions as those women, I found my heart
READ MORESurrounded by many of the leading figures of the Christian Right, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13831, establishing the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. In their eyes, he was acting as a modern-day Cyrus; a secular ruler come to rescue the downtrodden faithful. But is it that simple or beneficial for all parties?
READ MOREJust a few weeks ago, it appeared to many knowledgeable observers that Americans’ religious rights had received a death sentence. And ironically, it came in a case involving a literal death sentence. Domineque Ray, a Muslim man in Alabama facing execution, requested an imam to be by his side in the execution chamber, but the
READ MOREDuring the past 50 years the public face of religion has morphed into a private affair. Electronically interconnected opinions easily reduce the idea of religious faith to a positive and negative feedback system. This reduced form says people reward themselves when they can convince themselves that doing good makes a self-fabricated deity happy, while doing
READ MOREPity poor Queen Elizabeth II of England. She tried to give presidential visitor Trump a little background history of the long relationship between the mother country and the still somewhat new republic birthed by the once British Empire. Towering over the longest-serving monarch in modern times, Trump kept some decorum, but showed little sign he
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