Moral issues

Same-Sex Marriage: How Did We Get Here? And Where Are We Going?

Fr. Lev Semenov
Fr. Lev Semenov
by Archpriest Lev Semenov –
President Barack Obama recently affirmed his personal support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. For a perspective from Russia on this momentous development, we offer the following commentary by Archpriest Lev Semenov, Dean of the Faculty of Further Education at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University and cleric of the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuznetskaya Sloboda, both in Moscow.

The political heavyweight of the Western world has taken a step towards the abyss. If we are to believe the news report broadcast on the radio, and later confirmed in the press, President Barack Obama has made his first public statement in support of the legalization of same-sex marriages.

One can only sympathize with the citizens of this country who hold the Christian faith, just imagining how they must have felt when they heard this statement from their head of state. [Read more…]

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Motherhood is a Life Given Up in Love

Motherhood Life Given Up in Love by Randy Sly –
Sacrifice is the great virtue of motherhood
Nothing speaks more highly to me of this self-sacrifice than the witness of a mother, who daily gives of herself for her own. Often depriving herself, she offers to others; often preferring others, she offers herself. Motherhood is a call to stay firm in the face of uncertainty, despair, sickness, poverty, and even danger, where her children are concerned. One could almost say that as the father is the sword, she is the shield. A mother lays down her life by taking it up on behalf of these precious ones entrusted to her care. …

Once upon a time there was a young woman who loved her Lord. There was nothing she withheld from Him. Her life was always “yes” to Him, the proverbial “fiat” – “let it be to me as you have said.” She fell in love and, hearing the “Divine Yes,” married the man whom she loved. They grew in Him as one in the sacramental mystery.

A child was born and she loved the child. The child brought something out of her that had always been a part of her yet never expressed. Like a hidden stream now discovered, rivers of love flowed out of the woman to her child. [Read more…]

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What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

Bible Capitalism America Freedom by Rabbi Aryeh Spero –
Who would have expected that in a Republican primary campaign the single biggest complaint among candidates would be that the front-runner has taken capitalism too far? As if his success and achievement were evidence of something unethical and immoral? President Obama and other redistributionists must be rejoicing that their assumptions about rugged capitalism and the 1% have been given such legitimacy.

More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective. We call this the Judeo-Christian ethos, and within it resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor. [Read more…]

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Without Justice, What Else is the State But a Great Band of Robbers – St. Augustine

St. Augustine Without Justice State is a Great Band of Robbers by Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq. –
In his book City of God, St. Augustine famously said, “without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”  This statement seems to be a favorite of Pope Benedict XVI, and he has recruited it in warning lawmakers, particularly lawmakers in the Western nations with Christian heritage, of the way to which they are headed.

He referred to these words in his address to the German Parliament or Bundestag when he visited Germany.  Some years earlier, in his encyclical Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI referred to those very same words.

It is useful from time to time to recall these words of St. Augustine and the deep truth that they convey. [Read more…]

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Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Support the Welfare State

Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Support the Welfare State by Larry Elder –
As a candidate for the presidency, George W. Bush took heat for supposedly saying something like, “God wanted me to become president.” He never said that. But no matter. Here comes another yet another Bible-banging religious conservative “taking his marching orders from God.” Apparently, if you feel God endorses a particular path, God wants you to keep the news to yourself.

Religion, to many liberals, is a sign of weakness, a demonstration of the inability to reason for oneself. With the Bible telling him what to do, how to think, what to believe — why, such a person is downright scary. Recall Obama explaining how small-town Midwesterners deal with difficult economic times: “They get bitter,” as the then-presidential candidate put it. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations.” [Read more…]

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A Nation Addicted to Government – Getting Sober

Big Government addiction by Peg Luksik –
Anyone who has ever known a recovering alcoholic has probably heard the story of what finally caused that person to face his addiction and get sober. They also have probably heard that after the physical withdrawal symptoms have subsided, the emotional withdrawal process begins. Many recovering alcoholics find the emotional process much more arduous in the beginning, and much more freeing as they move further into sobriety.

They have to actually experience all the emotions and challenges they either deadened or escaped through the alcohol. They report that it’s almost a knee-jerk reaction to say, “I can’t do this!” and reach for the nearest bottle. It’s only when they begin to say, “With God’s help, I CAN and WILL do this!” that freedom from addiction begins.

Americans are now a nation of addicts. Only we are addicted to government. [Read more…]

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A Society That Persecutes Christ is Heading for Terrible Trouble

Christian Persecution in the West by Charles Moore –
Politicians in the West – and atheists – ignore at their peril the benefits and power of organised religion.

This week before Easter, I chanced upon the following two quotations. The first says: “Not for 2,000 years has it been possible for society to exclude or eliminate Christ from its social or political life without a terrible social or political consequence.” The second says: “Religion taught by a prophet or by a preacher of the truth is the only foundation on which to build a great and powerful empire.”

The first is by Margaret Thatcher, opening her foreword to a book called Christianity and Conservatism, which appeared in 1990. The second appears in Tom Holland’s outstanding new book In the Shadow of the Sword (Little, Brown), which traces the rise of Islam from the ruins of the Roman and Persian empires. It comes from Ibn Khaldun, the great Muslim historian and political counsellor of the 14th century. [Read more…]

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Charles Colson: 1931-2012. May His Memory Be Eternal

Charles Colson Memory Eternal by Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
Charles Colson died today. He was 80 years old. I first met Colson at a conference at Washington, DC and was struck by his magnanimous character and intelligence. Everyone knows his story. Colson was a ruthless political operative in the Nixon administration, got caught up in the Watergate imbroglio during the Nixon administration and went to jail.

I heard him explain his experience in prison during one of his talks. It was the lowest point in his life where he had lost everything and began to question purpose, decisions, and direction. He was visited by a friend (former Minnesota Governor Al Quie) who shared with him how Jesus Christ came into the world to redeem man. Colson listened, cried out to God for help and, as his life would later prove, God heard him. His repentance was deep and lasting.

Prison opened his eyes not only to God, but the desperate conditions of other prisoners. He founded Prison Fellowship, an organization they helped prisoners while incarcerated, after they got out, and their families. The Russian Orthodox Church called on Prison Fellowship after Communism fell to help them build viable prison ministries in Russia. [Read more…]

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Remembering Chuck Colson: 1931-2012

Chuck Colson Memory Eternal
Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most eloquent and influential voices today with the death of Charles W. “Chuck” Colson. The Prison Fellowship and Colson Center for Christian Worldview founder died at 3:12 p.m. on Saturday from complications resulting from a brain hemorrhage. Colson was 80.

A Watergate figure who emerged from the country’s worst political scandal, a vocal Christian leader and a champion for prison ministry, Colson spent the last years of his life in the dual role of leading Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, and the Colson Center, a teaching and training center focused on Christian worldview thought and application. [Read more…]

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Religion in the Public Square: Russia Yes, America No!

Russian Orthodox Church Education by Eric Metaxas –
Two years ago, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced a pilot program in which Russian public school students would be required to take classes in either religion or ethics. The plan is part of an effort to re-moralize Russia after seventy-plus years of atheistic Communist rule.

Under the plan, students would study the history of one of the four religions termed “traditional”: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. Or they could take a course in secular ethics.

The two-year trial involving twenty percent of Russia’s schools went so well that, according the Asia News, Vladimir Putin, the next president of Russia, plans to expand the program to every Russian school later this year. [Read more…]

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