Can the gospel and social activism co-exist? Should Christians involve themselves in the world by participating in politics, pursue advanced degrees in education, medicine, science and law, produce films on a wide range of subjects, some even for entertainment value, seek a career in journalism, and develop non-governmental programs for long-term social reform based on a well thought out biblical [...]
Gary discusses a short video clip that reveals how people seldom connect what they believe about one thing and how it affects (and contradicts) other things. Slavery is still very much with us in the last years of the 20th century. The most notable example is communism, which has enslaved vast portions of the world. In the United States, large groups of people have approached the national governme [...]
After doing a little shopping, my wife and I stopped to take in a late lunch. With the bill, we each received a fortune cookie. My “fortune” read, “When in doubt, follow you heart.” I read it out loud to my wife and quickly added “Adolf Hitler.” She had a good laugh since I’m always pointing out apologetic verities that Christians can use in debates. It was sadly funny. Given the operating assumpt [...]
Gary weighs in on Pastor Loran Livingston’s claim that Earth is not his home, as well as his own thoughts about adding extra material to printed Bibles. The form of civil government the Founders developed was decentralized and specifically designed to limit political power. As Thomas Jefferson stated in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confide [...]
Gary continues speaking on the cultural muzzling of Christians. The study of any subject must be placed within the limits of a biblical worldview. The third principle of the Biblical covenant is that God lays down the law to man. Man is supposed to exercise dominion by means of biblical law. To speak of justice, or anything else for that matter, as isolated from a biblical covenantal structure, is [...]
Gary discusses several recent news stories about Christians trying to have “dialogues” with leftists on various topics. Any social movement that is serious about changing the shape of history must have at least two features. First, it must have a doctrine of the possibility of positive social change. If men don’t believe that history can be changed through concerted effort, then they a [...]
Some recent news stories caught my attention. The first is about Michael Cassidy, a conservative Christian and former Navy pilot who tore down a Satanic altar in the Iowa State Capitol during Christmas in 2023. There was also a Nativity scene. He was originally charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief. Tearing down the Satanism display was later designated a hate crime. The next news story is [...]
Gary comments on several recent news stories about people railing against Christianity. Atheism and socialism are literal dead ends. They are destroyers of people and societies. If there is no God, then Lennon’s death at the hands of Mark David Chapman was the result of the survival of the fittest, the fittest being Chapman. We don’t have to imagine what our world would be like without religion. V [...]
Gary concludes his response to a recent Wallbuilders show with Mark David Hall on the influence of R.J. Rushdoony. In the worldview known as historicism, the laws of history are derived from history and change with history. Law becomes a function of history. There is no unchanging metaphysical order above history or outside of history that somehow provides structure to history. History and its law [...]
In my three-part podcast (see here and here for the first and second) about the impact of Rousas Rushdoony (1916-2001), I mentioned, contrary to some, that his writings have had a significant impact on much of Christian thought today, directly and indirectly. As a sort of hero of Christian education, Rushdoony’s basic ideas have directly or indirectly affected many conservative Protestants in Nort [...]
Gary continues his response to a recent episode from David Barton featuring historian Mark David Hall. The establishment—and here I include the secular media—cannot grasp just how much impact that fewer than a dozen men with word processors can have. (In the case of Rushdoony, not even a word processor, which did not exist when he wrote his major works. He uses only an ink well, a steel-tip pen wi [...]
Gary begins a series of three podcasts that respond to a recent show from David Barton’s Wallbuilders organization on Christian Nationalism. Can you imagine a young Jewish man coming up to Jesus and saying, “You know, Jesus, if you would just drop some of your outrageous claims and your moral indictments based on the law as it is written, I might just follow you. The rest I could do without. [...]
The Christian Right got involved in politics late. In fact, they got dragged into the process kicking and screaming. For decades they were told that “religion and politics don’t mix” and “we should only preach the gospel.” That worked at a time when there was something of a general Christian consensus. But those days were long gone by the 1970s with the Roe v. Wade pro-abortion decision that turne [...]
Gary discusses the economic and the biological differences between men’s and women’s sports. Christian apologetics begins by establishing an authoritative starting point. Like Archimedes (287?–212 B.C.), who once boasted that given the proper lever and a place to stand, he could “move the earth,” the Christian apologist seeks to base his defense on a secure foundation to move the heart [...]
In this episode, Gary discusses recent health issues, as well as giving a few hints and tips about getting and staying in physical shape. For nearly 2000 years the church has believed in the life-transforming power of the gospel, the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, the sufficiency of Scripture as “an Instruction Book on how to live,” the Sovereignty and Providence of God in time and in hist [...]
Gary discusses recent logic being dropped regarding abortion on the daytime TV show, The View, by resident theologian Whoppi Goldberg. Secularists says human life is expendable if the cause is good enough. Who defines “good enough”? We kill animals for food. Man is only a highly evolved animal. Therefore man can be killed for any number of “socially acceptable reasons”: over-population, high medic [...]
Gary discusses tactics of Christian resistance that can be learned from Saul Alinsky. When students graduated from the Academy in Geneva, they were assigned various posts, sometimes in France. These were dangerous trips; so dangerous that when the permanent ministers of Geneva went to France they left their families behind, and the city allowed those families to keep the ministerial house and even [...]
The passing of Ronald Sider in 2022 presented an opportunity for Gary to tell the sad history of Christian socialism in America. The mark of a Christian movement is its willingness to submit to the demands of Scripture. Not, mind you, merely to “principles” abstracted from their context and loaded with new content; but rather the actual, concrete, explicit statements of God’s wor [...]
Every time American Vision promotes the 1864 book The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States on Facebook, the historical know-it-alls come out of the woodwork. They spew the typical cliches. • The United States was founded as a secular nation. • Our nation’s founders were deists, and they used deistic language instead of biblical language. Long before 1776 and [...]
Gary continues his talk about teaching history and how to make it relevant and interesting. Probably the most famous product placement story is how Reeses Pieces got an advertising boost from a loveable alien. “Stephen Spielberg asked the makers of M&Ms if they would grant him permission to use their product in the 1982 film E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, but was turned down. Spielberg then turne [...]
