A Tale of Elephants and the Mouse: Presbyterians, 10-A, and the World Church
The recent decision to change our (PCUSA) ordination standards is a rejection of Scripture and tradition as understood by more than one billion Roman Catholics. It is also an offense to more than 300 million Eastern Orthodox in their various communities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and around the globe…1.2 billion Muslims will shake... Continue Reading
Protecting the Protectors – Federal judge rules a New York law regulating pregnancy care centers “offensive to free speech”
Pro-life advocates hope the ruling will help defend unborn children in a city where 41 percent of pregnancies end in abortion—a rate nearly twice the national average. In a stinging rebuke to opponents of pregnancy care centers, a federal judge on July 13 barred New York City officials from enforcing a law aimed at mandating... Continue Reading
Does Presbyterianism Work and Does It Matter?
First, the church must take itself more seriously… Second, we as parents must communicate and transfer to our children our convictions. It is difficult for Presbyterians to avoid asking whether our faith works with our children and young people. The usual pattern we observe is that children are baptized as infants, then sometime in childhood... Continue Reading
How to Land Your Kid in Therapy
Why the obsession with our kids’ happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods. A therapist and mother reports. If there’s one thing I learned in graduate school, it’s that the poet Philip Larkin was right. (“They XXXX you up, your mum and dad, / They may not mean to, but they do.”) At the... Continue Reading
Steers Queers and Social Engineers
…at University of South Florida the administration wants to make it easy for those who are experiencing gender identity confusion. Those assigned at random to live with a transgendered student are in for a big surprise. A transgender student at University of South Florida (USF) has now conclusively shown that once people become sufficiently open-minded... Continue Reading
What Are We to Make of the Casey Anthony Decision?
What are we to make of the Casey Anthony decision? Nothing. A little girl died. She might have been murdered. It might have been an accident. It might have been somewhere in between. Her mother may be a murderer, or she may merely be a slightly more dramatic sinner than most of us. She came... Continue Reading
Does it matter if only 1.4% of people in the U.S. are gay?
For the clear majority of males (as well as women) who report gay encounters, homosexual activity appears to represent a passing phase, or even a fleeting episode, rather than an unshakable, genetically pre-determined orientation. The nation’s increasingly visible and influential gay community embraces the notion of sexual orientation as an innate, immutable characteristic, like left-handedness... Continue Reading
Is it Okay for Christians to Believe in the Doctrine of Hell But Not Like It?
To admit that God says hard things is admirable honesty. But to profess our dislike for what he does or wish that he were a different kind of God who did things in a different way–even if we come around to accept these ways in the end–is not the right kind of humility. It takes... Continue Reading
The Coming Crisis in American Missions
This is one reason why America’s young people will not become the missionary force of the future; they will be paying off their student loans until they are middle-aged.,,,Today the epicenter of Christianity is found in the “Global South.” Today, the Christianity of the Global South is expanding while the Christianity of the West is... Continue Reading
Taking the Wheels – Saudi women are driving up the heat on ‘Arab Spring’ protests
One Saudi cleric tried to solve that by having women breastfeed their drivers (he later clarified that he meant giving them breast milk from a cup) because under Islamic law a male is a blood relative of the woman who breastfeeds him. I know a woman in Iraq who became the first female driver in... Continue Reading