8/16/2010 – Jeremy Meister –
The “Me Generation” was cute until it got in charge.
The “Greatest Generation” came home from fighting and suffering in World War 2 and gave birth to the “Baby Boom.” Like most children, these “Boomers” rebelled against their parents’ values, like honor, duty, and sacrifice. It was the ’60s, and the old fuddy-duddy ways of doing things were frowned upon by the new generation. The “Boomers” were going to have a good time regardless of the consequences. [Read more…]
The threat to religious freedom in this country is not a hypothetical threat. It’s real, and real people are suffering as a result.
When we wrote the Manhattan Declaration last fall, we warned about “the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership.”
An example of this decline is on display currently in Georgia. Jennifer Keeton, who is a 24-year-old studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University, has been threatened with expulsion. The grounds for the threatened expulsion are not poor grades or misconduct – they are Keeton’s beliefs.
Specifically, they are Keeton’s beliefs about the morality of homosexuality. In written assignments and classroom discussions, Keeton has said that people’s sexual conduct is “the result of accountable, personal choices,” and not “a state of being.” [Read more…]
8/13/2010 – Brett McCracken –
‘How can we stop the oil gusher?” may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.
As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment. [Read more…]
8/12/2010 – Larrey Anderson –
Liberals are not insane, as many conservatives believe. Most liberals (I am not speaking here of the political or intellectual class) are ordinary human beings pursuing everyday human lives — just like the rest of us. Here is a brief summary of why most liberals are liberal and what we can do to help at least some of them understand conservative thought:
1) Indoctrination, not education
Polls consistently find that over 70% of college professors identify themselves as liberal. The percentage of liberal faculty members is even higher if one removes responses from those teaching the “hard” sciences. In our prestigious universities, the figure approaches 90%. Both of these reported percentages are probably lower than the real figures [i]. [Read more…]
8/11/2010 – Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
I used to preach at the end of the Liturgy.
It was a pragmatic decision. A good portion of my congregation didn’t arrive until after the Gospel reading. The sloppy behavior was ingrained in parish life for decades and wasn’t likely to change soon no matter how strongly I exhorted them to arrive on time. Better to hear the teaching later then never at all I reasoned.
Did some people benefit from the arrangement? Probably. Did it implicitly encourage the sloppy behavior? Most likely. But short of a full-blown renewal in the parish, the late-comers were like to keep on coming in late and what would they remember if I preached earlier? The announcements?
Since moving from a large parish to a mission parish I’ve changed my ways. The sermon is always after the Gospel reading. I used to think that the rubrics required it because the reading was fresh in the minds of my hearers. While this is true, I’m no longer convinced this is the primary reason. I see something new: The timing of the sermon vivifies – breaths life into – the Eucharistic half of the Liturgy. [Read more…]
8/3/2010 – Barbara Bradley Hagerty –
One of the hot debates in academia is now reaching the courts. The question: Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives? Some professors and students say they do, but it’s not an easy charge to pin down.
When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a “closeted faith.” [Read more…]
8/10/2010 – Pamela Geller –
It seems that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg invokes certain freedoms only when they serve his 2012 agenda — and freedom of speech is not high on his list. Doing away with term limits wasn’t enough (which is why we are still suffering under his no-salt, no-trans-fat regime). He is now widening his ayatollah-like power-grab to imposing blasphemy laws (Islamic sharia laws) on the secular marketplace. Bloomberg’s frenzied Ground Zero mosque push may have inspired al-Azhar clerics to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque, calling it a “a zionist plot.”
Last month, I signed a contract with CBS Outdoor to run a “Preservation of Ground Zero” bus ad campaign. The campaign was paid for in full.
Here is the ad I submitted:
[Read more…]
8/9/2010 – Terence P. Jeffrey –
U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who ruled last week that a voter-approved amendment to California’s constitution that limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, based that ruling in part on his finding that a child does not need and has no right to a mother.
Nor, he found, does a child have a need or a right to a father.
“Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted, and having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted,” the judge wrote in finding of fact No. 71 in his opinion. [Read more…]
Greek-American Conservative Republican Candidate for Congress in the First District of New York George Demos appeared on Fox News recently. Demos called on The Port Authority’s Executive Director Chris Ward to immediately stop his bureaucratic roadblocks and that the rebuilding of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at Ground Zero must be a top priority.
Demos stated that it was disgraceful that the Port Authority of New York/ New Jersey reniged on a deal with Church officials and for over a year has refused to meet with the leaders of the only house of worship actually destroyed on September 11, 2001. Demos noted that our government is spending billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure of Ground Zero, yet no plan exists for rebuilding the Church. Demos reiterated that our Judeo-Christian values are under attack in our nation and that rebuilding the Church transcends any particular denomination. [Read more…]
Over at “The Observer“, the popular American Orthodox Institute Blog, Fr. Johannes Jacobse has posted some insightful observations in regards to the “gay marriage” issue. He correctly emphasizes that: “Christianity properly understood makes no distinction between wisdom found outside of the Church from that found within it.”
8/5/2010 – Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
From: Gay Marriage — and Marriage by Sam Shulman.
To me, what is at stake in this debate is not only the potential unhappiness of children, grave as that is; it is our ability to maintain the most basic components of our humanity. I believe, in fact, that we are at an “Antigone moment.” Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with “unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time.” I suspect, moreover, that everyone knows this is the case, and that, paradoxically, this very awareness of just how much is at stake is what may have induced, in defenders of those same “unwritten and unfailing laws,” a kind of paralysis.
By secular Shulman means non-religious, but Christianity properly understood makes no distinction between wisdom found outside of the Church from that found within it. [Read more…]
