“Sorry if this is off topic,” the young woman stammered into the microphone, “but, um, I’ve searched for answers, and I can’t seem to find any, so I thought I’d come tonight and ask you guys. Where does Christianity, if it does at all, differ on homosexuality as opposed to other religions, and if so, how?” Her quivering lips and trembling hands revealed the magnitude of the … [Read more...]
Nancy Pearcey’s Love Thy Body and Integrating Truth about the Body
Have you heard of intersectionality? Unless you’ve been hanging around the rarified halls of academia lately, this may be a new term to you. Intersectionality theory was introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in a 1989 paper with the unwieldy title, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory … [Read more...]
Steeled Faith
A Review of Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism, by John Lennox In the early sixth century BC, four Hebrew boys, probably teenagers at the time, were forcibly deported from the tiny state of Judah in Israel to live out their lives in service to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. It would have been easy for Daniel and his three friends to … [Read more...]
Faith & Doubt: Science and Religion in the Search for Truth
A Review of Faith & Doubt: Science and Religion in the Search for Truth As a microbiology professor who also identifies as a Christian, Dave Wollert is personally aware of the struggles critically-thinking, science-minded individuals have when it comes to engaging with both science and religion. Can a scientist be a legitimate scientist and also believe in God? Can truth … [Read more...]
A Tale of Two Nazi Sons
A Review of What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Philippe Sands, an international human rights lawyer, was doing research for a book on the Nuremberg trials, when he met Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter. Niklas and Horst, both born in the spring of 1939, had known each other as boys. Their fathers were both prominent Nazis all through World War II, and this was the common … [Read more...]
Unfashionable History: The Untold Story behind the Rise of Western Civilization
Unfashionable History A Review of How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity by Rodney Stark Americans are becoming increasingly ignorant of how the modern world came to be what it is, says Rodney Stark. A generation ago, most college curricula included a course in Western Civilization that covered Western achievements in art, music, literature, … [Read more...]
Mining for God
--- on TV this Saturday --- Brandon McGuire grew up with a Midwestern American view of Christianity. After college, though, he lived for three months in Africa, where he saw a very different kind of lived-out Christianity. When he came back to America, he started to pay more attention to what people think about Christianity. As he asked questions, both online and on the … [Read more...]
Clearing up Cosmos
A Review of The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Science Series Douglas Ell became an atheist as a youth because of misinformation handed down in the name of science. It took him thirty years “to climb out of the atheist hole.” Sadly, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the 2014 series brought to you by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Family Guy’s … [Read more...]
A Queer Entanglement
The Codependent Conjunction of "Gay Christians" and the Gay-Affirming Church When Harvard sophomore Matthew Vines came out to his parents over Christmas break, both of them affirmed their unconditional love for him right away. But the news was hard for everyone. As Christians, they believed the same thing the church has held for 2000 years - that homosexuality runs contrary … [Read more...]
What a Girl Wants
A Word to the Guys With violent, abusive sex in the public eye right now thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey, there seems to be a lot of bewilderment among the male half of the population. What exactly do women want from men, anyway? Jerry, a thirty-something single man expressed it to me in an email this way: I think the real danger here is the message that the popularity of … [Read more...]