The Grand Old Party should lose this year. The first Tuesday in November should be the greatest Republican rout in recent history. America is in a recession, in the middle of an unpopular war, and the incumbent Republican President, who has the highest disapproval ratings on record, is at the end of his second term.
Yet national polling shows Republican John McCain in a dead heat, and at times with a slight lead, over either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Incroiable! (more…)
Tonight Hillary finally realized that my vote was vital if she wanted to win, so she stopped at the Mayfair Diner a block and a half from my apartment. (more…)
I would rather watch the news on CNN than on FOX.
No, I am not a liberal. I’m a dyed in the wool member of the Religious Right (the metaphor thus being particularly appropriate). (more…)
In 2007 Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, released a documentary entitled Friends of God. She, and a television crew from HBO, toured American evangelical hotspots, mostly in the South and Inter-Mountain West including Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas, Ted Haggard’s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Jerry Falwell and Liberty University.
Pelosi presents an Evangelicalism that is pervasive, politically engaged, passionately partisan, single (or simple) minded, and kinda tacky. (more…)
Last week the Board of Westminster Theological Seminary voted 18-9 for the suspension of Dr. Peter Enns from the faculty effective at the end of the schoolyear. The Board passed the issue to the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) reccommending that Dr. Enns’ tenured position be terminated. (more…)
Tonight my friend Michael was applying to Westminster Theological Seminary, a school of great importance to modern church history because of its connections to Machen, Ockenga, McIntyre, and Van Til. It is unsurprising that the Masters, Th.M., and Ph.D. at Westminster are generally focused on church history rather than secular history; it is a seminary after all.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am currently attempting to earn a graduate degree focused on modern church history, but I believe a nearly exclusive focus on church history can create an (more…)
Mrs. Smith was a contented housewife, that is until she realized that the amount of time she could spend watching her favorite 4-D shows could increase from 8.00 hours to 8.25 hours per day if she upgraded her Acme Self-Cleaning Carpet from version 7.5 to 8.0.
Now, Mrs. Smith is normally a very patient woman - and it’s a good thing too! - since Mr. Smith never buys her the latest kitchen robots. Imagine her embarassment (more…)
Several decades ago, the incumbent governor of a Southern state was visited during his reelection campaign by a poor mother, three young children in tow. The woman asked the governor to please pardon her husband who was doing time in state prison. The governor saw a chance to win a vote and maybe some time on the evening news, so he asked the woman what her husband had been jailed for. “Stealing a pig,” she said. The governor then inquired, (more…)
Recently Mark Dever’s 9Marks ministry published a forum of conservative evangelicals and moderate fundamentalists. 9Marks asked the panel “What Can We Learn from Fundamentalists?”
The participants gave a list of both positive and negative lessons they thought could be learned from Fundamentalism. A basic problem reared its ugly head and my debater background reacted; few of the participants ever offered a workable definition of Fundamentalism, with the exception of Mark Minnick. (more…)
Over the past weekend various conservative blogs have been in a tizzy about the implications of a recent appellate ruling in California concerning homeschooling. The court upheld the decision that homeschooling teachers must be qualified by the state. Since a significant number of California homeschooling parents are not, they are understandably worried that they might be prosecuted for educating their children as they see fit.
The significance of the ruling depends upon who you ask, ranging from the coming of the apocalypse to the technical upholding of an unenforcable law. (more…)
