Christianity Without Salvation

Wall Street Opinion Journal | Joseph Loconte | May 11, 2007

The legacy of the “Social Gospel”–100 years later.

Within a few years of its publication in 1907, “Christianity and the Social Crisis” swept through America’s Protestant churches like a nor’easter, selling more than 50,000 copies to ministers and laypeople alike. In an age of social upheaval, Walter Rauschenbusch’s jeremiad was meant to rouse the church from its pietistic slumber. “If society continues to disintegrate and decay, the Church will be carried down with it,” he warned. “If the Church can rally such moral forces that injustice will be overcome . . . it will itself rise to higher liberty and life.”

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The Kennedy Catastrophe: Banishing Religion from the Public Square

Townhall.com | Ken Connor | May 6, 2007

For quite some time in America, frank public discussions about candidates’ religious views have been deemed verboten. The trend began in 1960, when John F. Kennedy found that his Catholic faith was proving to be a liability with Protestant voters. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to run for president since Al Smith’s landslide defeat in the 1920s, and throughout the campaign he met significant resistance from detractors who were deeply suspicious of the Catholic faith. Hundreds of anti-Catholic tracts were sent to millions of homes across America discouraging voters from supporting Kennedy. Many refused to vote for the young Senator from Massachusetts because they did not agree with his religious beliefs, and this created a crisis for the campaign.

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Can Jews debate Jesus dispassionately? Should they?

Wall Street Opinion Journal Jordana Horn Friday, May 4, 2007

Interrupting the Intellectuals

“What’s He Doing Here?: Jesus in Jewish Culture.” An unusual conference title, to be sure, for what proved to be an unusual event on a beautiful spring Sunday in New York. Writers, critics, filmmakers and scholars gathered at the Center for Jewish History to discuss the man whom Leon Wieseltier termed “the world’s most famous ex-Jew.” The gathering was an intellectually illustrious one. Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt and poet Robert Pinsky were speakers on a panel coyly titled “Why I Think About Jesus.”

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Christianity on Trial in Turkey

Zenti News | Father John Flynn | May 1, 2007

Killings and Persecution Continue

ROME, APRIL 30, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The blood of martyrs continues to be shed in Turkey. The April 18 killing of two Turks and a German at a Christian publishing house in Malatya, in eastern Turkey, renewed concerns over the fate of Christians in the country. The three victims were found with their hands and legs bound and their throats slit.

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True Unbelievers

Wall Street Opinion Journal | Christopher Orlet | May 1, 2007

A sectarian split among atheists.

A recent Associated Press story, headlined “Atheists Split on How Not to Believe,” has set fingers tapping throughout the blogosphere. The gist of the story as I read it is that there are soft atheists and fundamentalist atheists, and the softies are concerned that the fundies are becoming too outspoken, too uppity, indeed that they are giving unbelievers a bad name–a good trick that, like trying to give a bad name to an oil slick.

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Mass Murder, Martyrdom, and the Media

Townhall.com | Nicole Gelinas | April 25, 2007

Why did NBC News—as well as its competitors and print-media counterparts—show that video? Through the spectacular posthumous attention that the media have awarded him, Cho Seung-Hui has shown just how easy it is for an intelligent killer to manipulate sophisticated news organizations into serving as barely filtered propaganda pipelines.

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