In 1973, Karl Menninger wrote Whatever Became of Sin? He was responding to a cultural move away from any concept of moral transgression. The sociologists and psychologists of the day redefined what Western Christianity had always considered as sinful fruit of dark and hardened hearts. Instead, they argued that those effects, whether individual or corporate, […]
The Cosmic Border Crisis
Cities. For some the word evokes thoughts of skyscrapers, taxi cabs, subway systems, and an integrated nexus of life, lifestyle, and labor. For others the word brings to mind a hurried pace they would better off avoid, a cultural environment where people are reduced to business machinery and secularism rules from an unimpeachable iron throne. […]
Naming the Void
In the recent article, “The Three Hebrew Words that Describe Our Time,”[1] opinion writer Martin E. Marty puts his finger on the underlying issue in our current climate of cultural chaos. What are those three Hebrew words? Tohu wa-bohu. This is the phrase that appears in Gen. 1:2, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was […]
The Speech Police Are at the Door
The Speech police are at American doors, especially in the case of same-sex marriage. As someone has said, liberal public opinion promoting same-sex marriage is “evolving in the direction of both theological certainty and illiberal intolerance.” Expressing their own ideological prejudice, liberals want opponents to have absolutely no place in their godless utopia.
BEYOND CAPES AND COWBELLS: How a Christian Approach to Law and Virtue Transcends Both Autonomy and Authoritarianism
Law often functions as the proverbial executioner’s sword to deter unlawful action. But can it also serve as a sculptor’s chisel to help form a more virtuous public? A positive answer to that question has a long and diverse pedigree in Western culture. For Aristotle, a “chief concern of political science is to endue the […]
From the Blog
EQUALITY = LEGAL PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS?
by Dr. Peter Jones | June 19, 2019Progressives are constantly seeking ways to silence Bible-believing Christians. Their most recent is “The Equality Act,” which was passed by Congress with the help of eight Republican congressmen. According to James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, this Act will “spell disaster for Americans…[for it] is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to finish off religious […]
Cultural and Theological Stockholm Syndrome
by Joseph E Torres | May 6, 2019Stockholm Syndrome can be defined as the “psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands.”[1] Much of the compromise we observe in orthodoxy are a result of what I call cultural and theological Stockholm Syndrome. Contemporary unbelieving culture is our captor. […]