"I Believe in God, Family and McDonald's. . ."

![“ArtIm:](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artim-20090727-bible-authority-foundation-civil-government-mcdonalds-christians-in-office-priorities.jpg" ““ArtIm:”) In terms of Christian theory, privatization means that the grand, global umbrella of faith has shrunk to the size of a plastic rain hat. Total life norms have become part-time values. In terms of C [...]

The Trap of Neutrality

![“ArtIm:](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artim-20090702-politics-culture-liberals-religion-christians-activists.jpg" ““ArtIm:”) According to a radio editorial some years ago, “a man’s religion and the strength of his conviction are his own personal matter” and therefore “religion should not interfere with politics.”[1] Of course, this too is an expressi [...]

Why Young People are Leaving the Church

Ken Ham, who believes in a literal six-day creation that happened around 6,000 years ago, says the church opened a door for the exodus of youth, beginning in the 19th century, when it began teaching that “the age of the Earth is not an issue as long as you trust in Jesus and believe in the resurrection and the Gospel accounts.” Ham concedes that “salvation is not conditioned on what you believe ab [...]

Moral Polytheism

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june16.jpg" ““Article”) A number of articles have been published about the demise of the church in America. Newsweek, copying the cover design of the April 12, 1966 of Time magazine’s “Is God Dead?” cover, carried an article on The Decline and Fall of Christian America in its April 13, 2009 iss [...]

Media Matters

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june09.jpg" ““Article”) For years, liberals have been telling us that screen scenes depicting gratuitous sex, sadism, nihilism, despair, violence, militant secularism, and blasphemy have little or no effect on the opinions and behavior of viewers. Those who make these claims are some of the sam [...]

The Terror Legacy of the Left

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june03.jpg" ““Article”) In the July 11, 1968, issue of The Village Voice, Marvin Garson, the pamphleteer of the Free Speech Movement, recounted with pride the bombings which had been the calling card of campus radicals from Berkeley and its environs: The series of successful and highly popular [...]

Are You a Doughnut-Hole Gazer?

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009may06.jpg" ““Article”) American Vision receives a number of books for review purposes from numerous publishers each week. Some of the books are unsolicited with no note or letter telling us who the author is or why we might be interested in the topic. Some books are so poorly written and design [...]

Antonio Gramsci Wears Prada

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009apr20.jpg" ““Article”) “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” —From Aldous Huxley’s Foreword to the 1 [...]

Legalizing Slavery in America

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-031709.jpg" ““Article”) The world is in a mess, and Christians know it. Too many of us believe that we have not been called to change the world. What if centuries ago Christians had taken a similar position? What would the world be like today? John Newton (1725–1807) was an infamous slave trader. T [...]

Shilling for Dollars at the SPLC

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-030409.jpg" ““Article”) American Vision received a phone call from an NPR station yesterday (3.3.2009) asking me to appear on one of their shows to answer the charge by the Southern Poverty Law Center that our organization is a “hate group.” (For the record, I don’t do interviews with media outlets [...]

Premillennialism and Politics Don't Mix

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-022409.jpg" ““Article”) What is so troubling about Christian involvement in politics? Christians like John MacArthur, Cal Thomas, and Ed Dobson have written on the subject. MacArthur’s Why Government Can’t Save You includes the following subtitle: An Alternative to Political Activism. While MacArth [...]

Popular Culture as a Worldview Wedge

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-012709.jpg" ““Article”) The roads in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are always in need of repair. In fact, anyone living in a city that gets large amounts of snow fall and encounters daily thaws and nightly freezes knows what I’m talking about. The snow falls and afternoon temperatures rise just enough [...]

Who's Watching the Soothsayers?

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-122908.jpg" ““Article”) For decades, the National Enquirer and other tabloids have published predictions about famous people and events. Few people ever go back to check on their accuracy. Here are a few from 1996: Jay Leno will lose his Tonight Show job to Johnny Carson. O. J. Simpson will become [...]

Get a Horse and Sterilize Yourself

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-120208-b.jpg" ““Article”) When people are pushed to live consistently with their worldview assumptions, all kinds of revelations come to light. Toni Vernelli was sterilized at age 27 to “reduce her carbon footprint” and “protect the planet.”[1] If pressed, I wonder if Vernel [...]

The Beat Generation Comes to Power

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-111108-b.jpg" ““Article”) Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) defined a generation with his book On the Road and its “spontaneous prose” writing style. What was Kerouac searching for? What was he saying that gripped so many young people and sent them on a similar transcendental road trip? Kerouac never unders [...]

My 40th High School Reunion

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-102808.jpg" ““Article”) The city of Pittsburgh**[1]** is the jewel of Western Pennsylvania. This wasn’t always the case. On some of its “better” days more than a generation ago, Pittsburgh was noted for its smoke-filled skyline. While the steel industry brought prosperity to the region, it also bro [...]

Pluralism's Trojan Horse

With the leveling of religion, we are seeing the leveling of morality. All lifestyles are permitted in the name of diversity and pluralism. In nearly every case, Christians are the losers. Pluralism is the bait for Christians to embrace a distinctiveless Christianity. The call for Christians to adopt pluralism is just another way of diluting the truth. Pluralism becomes a club to pound out the the [...]

So What's Special About Christianity?

We at American Vision are hearing rumblings from a number of people in the Christian community that Christians are being told not to engage the culture with a distinctly biblical approach to social and political issues. So what standard is a Christian to follow when evaluating the moral boundaries of society? Some Christians will claim that we aren’t to bother with what goes on in the world. Let t [...]

The Gloucester Cuckoos

When I heard about the 17 students at Gloucester High School who are expecting babies, it reminded me of the movie Village of the Damned, based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos, written by English author John Wyndham and published in 1957. The title of the novel refers to the way brood parasite cuckoo birds place their eggs in the nests of other birds that do not notice the “invasion.” Even after [...]

The Rotten Fruit of the Destructive Generation

A report has shown that 25% of teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease. Surprised? We shouldn’t be. After it was learned that Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, had been going to prostitutes for the past six or ten years, Alan Dershowitz, his former professor at Harvard, came to the governor’s defense. “I feel terrible for Eliot and his family,” Dershowitz said. “But I feel [...]