The United Church of Christ and Homosexual Marriage

The United Church of Christ is about to sanction homosexual marriages, if the president of the errant denomination gets his way. The Rev. John H. Thomas, addressing about 200 UCC delegates, made an emotional appeal that called for “full civil and religious equality for same-sex couples.” The article reports that many “of the people in attendance wept during Thomas’ speech.”[1] I went to the UCC we [...]

Murder in Iraq and America

“Shots rang out across the city Saturday night and Sunday morning—from the Far North Side to the Far South Side—with preliminary reports of nearly two dozen people shot. The overnight tally—which is unofficial—included two shootings on the same corner, a fatal shooting near the Taste of Chicago and several on the West Side, where detectives were swamped. ‘We’re just spinning up here,’ one de [...]

Is America About to Follow Europe's Example?

Will America suffer the same fate as Europe and the rise of what Karen Armstrong calls “secular fundamentalism”? We seem to be headed in similar direction with the secularization of our schools and courts. Christianity in America, like Christianity in Europe, is under attack. We see it every day. Judges are being scrutinized for their religious beliefs, especially on abortion and homosexuality, an [...]

The Hate of "Anti-Hate" Groups

American Vision must be doing something right. We have been targeted by a number of anti-Christian groups because of our stance on homosexuality. We find ourselves in the company of Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Alliance Defense Fund, Coral Ridge Ministries, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Family Research Institute, and other pro-family groups. The Souther [...]

Dick Durbin Wants Sergeant Schultz to be in Charge of Gitmo

Dick Durbin, a Democrat Senator from Illinois, has compared the prisoner-of-war conditions at Guantanamo to Pol Pot’s murder of about 1.5 million Cambodians, Adolf Hitler’s genocidal madness that left 9 million dead throughout Europe, and Stalin’s Gulag where about 20 million met their death in order to bring about a more equitable society. These were not enemy combatants hell-bent on destroying A [...]

Pre-Born Babies: Persons or Property?

Ed Buckner, the Southern director of the Council for Secular Humanism, writing in the Marietta Daily Journal, attempts to use the Bible to prove that a pre-born baby is not a human being.[1] This is a rather curious way for an atheist to argue his case. If he makes his point, he has to claim that the Bible is authoritative for his case to be valid. If the Bible is valid on the issue of personhood, [...]

Jesus and the Air Force Academy

It seems that Jesus is alive and well at the Air Force Academy. For some people’s tastes He’s too alive. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes that there is “a culture of militant Christianity, of intimidation and outright bigotry” at the Academy. One former chaplain called it a “‘systematic and pervasive effort’ at religious proselytizing in which both students and faculty participated.” [...]

Segregating the Church from the World

There are some Christians who take themselves out of the battle over worldviews by using the Bible to make their case. They believe the Bible teaches that Christians should stay above the fray of social involvement. I’ve dealt with many of the arguments for this position in Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths.[1]A pastor in Auburn, Alabama, takes an approach that secularists have used to silence the chur [...]

The Privacy Argument

I received the following in an email message from someone who does not like the idea that laws have a religious foundation: Scott: “What 2 people do in their bedroom is not my business or yours.” Dear Scott, I don’t know anybody who wants the state to invade the bedroom in all cases. (Rape, incest, and even murder take place in bedrooms, so obviously there are some exceptions.) As long as ho [...]

These Doctors are Nuts

Representatives of the American Psychiatric Association, the nation’s top psychiatric group, approved a statement on May 22, 2005, urging legal recognition of gay marriage. These guys are nuts. Tom Minogue, who is on the medical faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a practicing psychiatrist and an APA member, sees some “disturbing trends” in psychiatry. Everything is [...]

The Libertarian Dilemma

Libertarianism is the fashionable political system du jour. Here’s a definition of Libertarianism taken from the Preamble to the Libertarian Party Platform: “Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their [...]

Al Gore Blows a Gasket and Loses His Memory

Former vice-president Al Gore attacked Christian activists in a speech sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn’s political action committee. “This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry,” Gore bellowed, “is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.” Actually, attacks on “religious zealotry” are actually a throwback to the rhetoric [...]

Only Liberals Can Use Religion and Other Lies of the Left

If there was ever an event to drive liberals mad, it was the “Justice Sunday” event. The political Left just can’t believe that Christians are using churches to get their message out about what’s happening in the Senate over the choice of judges and what’s taking place in the courts in general. If the fashionably outraged were consistent, they would have voiced simila [...]

Religion and "Justice Sunday"

The Family Research Council sponsored “Justice Sunday—Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith” (April 24, 2005) as a wake-up call to Christians that judicial nominees are being filibustered because some of the nominees consider religious beliefs to be important in judicial decision making. The claim is being made by liberal Democrats that these nominees are “radical”—outside the political [...]

The Destructive Generation - Why the Nation is a Mess

Those nurtured on the radicalism of the 1960s have been described as the “destructive generation.” The advance of drugs into middle-class culture made its entry through the doorway of the progressive 1960s. Doses of “free love” and “free sex” were passed around as easily as a shared marijuana cigarette. “If you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with”[1] is a line from a 1960 [...]

An Editorial Writer Without a Clue

Editorial writers have an advantage over journalists. Journalists, at least in the days when fact checking was an honored part of the profession, had to get their stories straight. Writing an opinion column that reads like a news story has become fashionable. Opinion trumps facts. The latest entry into fantasy land is an article by Leonard Pitts who writes for the Miami Herald. He takes on the so- [...]

Judges Have Lost Their Minds - But We Knew This

In March 2000, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the death sentence in a murder case because an assistant district attorney urged jurors to follow certain biblical mandates related to the death penalty. “During closing arguments in the penalty phase of the trial, D. Brandon Hornsby, the assistant district attorney, cited passages from the books of Romans, Genesis, and Matthew, telling jur [...]

Does God Care About Nations Today?

Question: The other day, in a discussion about God’s covenant promises and their application to the United States, a guy told me that 2 Chronicles 7:14 had no application. This didn’t sound right to me and I was wondering what your thoughts were. Answer: How could this verse not apply today? Are not Christians God’s people? The Bible also says “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LO [...]

Is Terri Schiavo Jeb Bush's Mary Jo Kopechne?

In case you’ve forgotten or you’ve never heard the story, Mary Jo Kopechne was a “friend” of Senator Ted Kennedy. Coming back from a cook-out for campaign workers on Chappaquiddick Island, Kennedy was accompanied by Mary Jo Kopechne who had worked for Robert Kennedy. Things went terribly wrong as they crossed a narrow bridge close to midnight. The car left the bridge and plunged into the deep pond [...]

If I were King (Solomon) for a Day

I can remember when there were only three television networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC and their local affiliates. Reception was so bad in our area that we had a tough time pulling in the NBC signal at night. This meant that I never saw an episode of Bonanza or Star Trek until I went off to college. But during the day, the NBC signal (channel 11 in Pittsburgh) came in as clearly as the other two. [...]