Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, a U.S. war veteran who lost both arms in Iraq, is suing Oscar-winning director Michael Moore for $85 million, saying television clips were used without his permission in the anti-war documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” and gave a false impression that he opposed the war. I wish him well in his suit. Damon reminds me of Harold Russell’s character in the 1946 movie The Best Years of [...]

Nearly every social commentator appeals to the conservative Christian community to be tolerant of other religious traditions. After all, we live in a religiously pluralistic society. The assumption is that religion is a benign choice, little different from picking one car model over another. Therefore all religious traditions should be tolerated and accepted as valid expressions of faith. Of cours [...]

Many who advocate keeping drugs illegal maintain that poverty and environmental conditions (e.g., neighborhood, quality of schools, intact family, etc.) often “force” people to make bad decisions. One comes away with the impression that only the poor and uneducated take drugs. But we know that this is not the case. People with fine educations and lots of money indulge in drug taking. “Ecstasy” is [...]

Now that The Da Vinci Code has had its opening weekend and the Bible is still intact, God is sovereign, and Jesus is Lord and Savior, it’s time to get back to business. The Da Vinci Code is a symptom of a greater problem. Worldviews are seen as vehicles for cultural transformation. Many in the entertainment field, for example, believe that they are the nation’s conscience and the only true guiding [...]

I received the following email from Diana: “The Bible tells us not to judge one another and yet here you are judging those who live differently than you. You may not live the way they do but this does not mean that you have to hate them for it, nor does it mean that you should hate them for it. Before you spew your narrow minded, hateful opinions I would ask you to listen to the other side. [...]

The world seems morally directionless. Dr. Robert Foote of Cornell, in his testimony before the federal Ethics Advisory Board on in vitro fertilization, opened with the following statement: “In some of this research, I am reminded of a story where the pilot came on and said, ‘This is your captain speaking. We are flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet and the speed of 700 miles an hour. We have some [...]

By the time the United States entered World War I, Theodore Roosevelt was a private citizen. Though no longer president, the nation continued to look to him for advice and wisdom. In 1917, when American troops were preparing to sail across the Atlantic for the battlefields of Europe, the New York Bible Society asked Roosevelt to inscribe a message in the pocket New Testament that each soldier woul [...]

Nikita Khrushchev described a period in the Soviet Union’s history when petty theft was a problem, especially in the government-owned plants. Guards were placed at the factory entrances to scrutinize the laborers as they entered and departed. At the Leningrad timberworks, one of the guards spotted Pyotr Petrovich leaving the yard with a wheelbarrow filled with a bulky sack. With the notice of thie [...]

“The story you are about to hear is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” So began the prologue to the popular television series “Dragnet” (1952–1959), starring Jack Webb as Joe Friday who often used the phrase “All we want are the facts, ma’am” when questioning women in the course of a police investigation. But are the facts always enough when dealing with issues related to [...]

Anti-Christians are out in force. Richard Dawkins says that teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse.[1] The video “The God Who Was Not There” is making the rounds on the Internet. Iraq-war combat veteran Paul Hackett, who is running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, describes religious conservatives as not “a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of other religious nuts ar [...]

The opening line of the Apostles’ Creed tells us that God is the “Maker of Heaven and Earth,” of a creation that Scripture describes as being “very good” (Gen. 1:31) even in its fallen state and condition: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude” (1 Tim. 4:4). The Bible makes a distinction between God and the world. God did not make t [...]

Worldviews are comprehensive. No cultural stone is left unthrown in the battle against competing ideologies. Secularists who write their screeds against Christians who engage in politics have history on their side, and it’s not a very good history. Under Nazism, churches were “confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this narrow sphere were su [...]

The controversy over the role that religion plays in politics is an old one. Jesus was accused of subverting the political order by “misleading [the] nation and forbidding [people] to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King” (Luke 23:2). Christians were accused of promoting the idea that there was “another king, Jesus” (Acts 17:7). The designation of Jesus as “Lord” had s [...]

The editors and writers at Mother Jones claim that they are “religiously neutral,” even religiously indifferent. Their special edition attack on conservative Christians in the December 2005 issue should be viewed as a wake-up call to the church. The goal of the anti-Christian Left is to rally anti-Christians everywhere to put down the effectiveness of the gospel in the world even though it their o [...]

“Theists often assert that popular belief in a creator is instrumental towards providing the moral, ethical and other foundations necessary for a healthy, cohesive society.” Gregory S. Paul, writing in the Journal of Religion and Society (2005), takes issue with this claim. He argues that a religious nation like the United States is actually worse off morally than the newer secular nations of Euro [...]

Simon Wiesenthal died on September 20, 2005. Wiesenthal made it his mission in life to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. He is best known for his role in tracking down SS leader Adolf Eichmann. “Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and hanged for crimes committed against Jews.”[1] Wiesenthal was after justice not revenge. This is an important distinction. B [...]

“When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endur [...]

Those who demand that people with religious views should keep their beliefs personal and private are inconsistent in the way they apply the principle. I’ve noted on various occasions how the anti-slavery and civil rights movements grew out of Christian political involvement. The self-righteous left praised ministers and congregations who led the way to overturn unjust segregation laws. But now tha [...]

I know you’re as shocked as I am that the Pentagon confirmed for the first time that a U.S. soldier deliberately kicked a Guantanamo prisoner’s copy of the Koran—the Muslim “holy book”— in violation of the military’s rules for handling the “sacred” text. Personally, I can’t believe that many Americans are concerned about this. The usual suspects in the media are stoking the flames in o [...]

Today we remember those who have fought and died in wars to defend America. Most Christians would generally agree that fighting a defensive war is morally justified. Some Christians take issue with America’s war with Great Britain in what has been described as the “Revolutionary War.” America’s “revolutionary war” was neither anarchistic nor revolutionary in the modern sense. The [...]