politics ⁽⁶⁶⁾

Trump image by Michael Vadon, used under license (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Today’s “Morning Jolt...with Jim Geraghty” e-mail (free from National Review) contains an interesting passage on the latest Donald Trump controversy. Here it is, as it appears in my response to the sender: I have to admit, the dominant view of career pro-life activists on this issue has me baffled. If you hire a hit man and he accepts…

Believing true what one wants to be true rather than what actually is true may be a less prevalent phenomenon among conservatives than liberals, but it is certainly not unknown among conservatives. For instance, one needn’t watch Fox New, the Fox Business Network, or an economics-related conservative event for long to hear someone who has been successful in the free market argue that his experience is “proof” that all one has to…

I just read an interesting document, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and General Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church’s 2001 “Report of the International Theological Dialogue between the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches” (hereafter, the Dialog Report). As was the case with the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney, some evangelicals have (well, at least one evangelical has) seen the Seventh-Day Adventist faith of Ben Carson as…

Decorated Chaplain Wes Modder threatened by Navy - Take Action.

Mitchell, C. Ben, and D. Joy Riley. Christian Bioethics: A Guide for Pastors, Health Care Professionals, and Families. B&H Studies in Biblical Ethics. Daniel R. Heimbach, Series Editor. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2014. 207+xiv pages. ISBN 978-1-4336-7114-2. Christian Bioethics: A Guide for Pastors, Health Care Professionals, and Families, by C. Ben Mitchell (Ph.D. and professor of Moral Philosophy) and D. Joy Riley (M.D. with Bioethics M.A.), is described by its publisher (B&H Academic)…

Geivett, R. Douglas, and Holly Pivec. A New Apostolic Reformation? A Biblical Response to a Worldwide Movement. Wooster, OH: Weaver Book Company, 2014. 254 + xvii pages. ISBN 978-1-941337-03-5. In my reviews, I generally try to avoid hyperbolic statements like, “every Christian should read this book.” In the case of R. Douglas Geivett and Holly Pivec’s A New Apostolic Reformation? A Biblical Response to a Worldwide Movement, that statement could be merited.

Sunukjian, Donald R. Invitation to James: Persevering Through Trials to Win the Crown. Wooster, OH: Weaver Book Company, 2014. ISBN 978-1-941337-25-7. Invitation to James is part of a series on “Biblical Preaching for the Contemporary Church,” with current or forthcoming titles on James (the present volume), Philippians, the life of Jacob, Galatians, Mark, and Joshua. As such, its official purpose “is to offer models of the principles presented in the textbook” by…

Introduction Having decided to waste no more effort sending letters to my local paper, the U-T San Diego, I’ve no longer needed to formulate quick responses to “the latest.” This has freed me to indulge my preference for prolonged reflection (also known as brooding) about news items. Two sets of articles have especially caught my attention this past month: articles related to homosexual “marriage” and miscellaneous other “gay” (or more broadly sinful…

Image: California State Capitol, courtesy Wikipedia user Coolcaesar (Creative Commons license). The local paper today informed me of my state’s passage of an interesting bill to formally define, in the context of sexual assault investigations on college campuses, what does and does not qualify as “consent” to sexual activity (Fenit Nipappil [Associated Press], “State Ban on Plastic Bags OK’d; Bill Moves to Senate,” U-T San Diego, A1-A2; among “In other action, lawmakers...”…

Government as morality-corrupting, anti-Christian influence, San Diego County edition: El Cajon Library hosts celebration of sexual aberrance

No sooner had I recovered sufficiently from an illness to watch some news than I was greeted by a story highlighting once again the sorry state of our dieing culture. Members of the homosexual lobby (known in corrupt contemporary English as “gays”) apparently read GQ, since their (as always) loud and emotional condemnation of public statements unfriendly to their irrational and unbiblical worldview has gotten Phil Robertson, patriarch of the hugely popular…

Christians active in the battle against pornography have lately been excited by news of a not-yet-peer-reviewed Cambridge study popularly reported to prove that “porn addiction” is as real as addiction to drugs or alcohol. When I first heard about this (in an email from Breakpoint), I was skeptical, since I recalled (or thought I recalled!) from a couple Physiological Psychology courses that alcohol and drugs don't just prompt certain patterns of brain…