by Managing Editor | Oct 4, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Fight Featured Post, Politics
By Jesse Sumpter A lot of people turned off Twitter and Facebook when the Kavanaugh hearings were going last Thursday. It was just too much for them to handle. People on social media were threatening each other. Death threats were tossed around like emojis. I’m sure...
by Jason Farley | Jul 26, 2018 | Abortion, Culture, Fight, Jason Farley, Politics, Theology, Uncategorized
What happens if Roe vs. Wade is overturned? That would be, no doubt, a good thing. We should rejoice when it happens. But how much of America’s difficulties are centered in the decisions of the Supreme Court? As a law, it is a judicial tragedy. But it is not enough to...
by Jason Farley | Jun 13, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Fight Featured Post, Jason Farley, Politics
I was recently sitting in on a lecture from a local university professor on the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Whitworth University’s Dr. Van Inwegen explained that there are stories from history, “that help us understand the world we are in.” One of...
by George Grant | Jun 13, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Culture, Current affairs, Fight, Fight Featured Post, George Grant, History, Politics, The Bible, Theology, Theology, Worldview
In his Confessions, Augustine (354-430) describes mankind’s universal sinful bent as “concupiscence.” The Greek word epithumia (ἐπιθυμία) occurs 38 times in the New Testament. It describes the utter enfeebling of mankind’s freedom of will through the bondage of sin....
by Rhett Burns | May 23, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns
Last week was crazy. The United States moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Hamas greeted the move in their usual manner, which means with bombs and human shields. Major media outlets portrayed Hamas in their usual manner, which means referring to them as...
by Rhett Burns | Apr 23, 2018 | Blog, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns
Last week, I posted my article on just war and the ascendance of foreign policy hawks in the White House on the same morning President Trump tweeted this: Two days later, President Trump, along with his British and French counterparts, ordered a limited missile strike...
by Rhett Burns | Apr 11, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
Three weeks ago, I wrote a response to Michael Gerson’s essay in The Atlantic about evangelical support of President Trump. I found it hypocritical that Gerson, a senior policy advisor to President Bush and a member of The White House Iraq Group, was lecturing...
by admin | Apr 5, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Politics, Theology
Idaho Senator Bob Nonini has come under fire recently for nodding his head in agreement with the view that those who murder a baby in the womb should face criminal charges. CrossPolitic hosted a live show interviewing three of the Republican candidates for Lt....
by Rhett Burns | Mar 19, 2018 | Blog, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns
Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, published a takedown of Trump-supporting evangelicals in the latest issue of The Atlantic. Gerson attempts to answer the question of how a once confident and influential cultural movement became an...
by Rhett Burns | Feb 26, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns
The news cycle following a mass shooting is predictable. Thoughts and prayers are offered, outrage and demands are expressed, and the cable news stations fill up time with people yelling for or against gun control. The week after Parkland has been no different. Yet,...
by Toby Sumpter | Feb 17, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Fight Featured Post, Politics, Toby Sumpter, Uncategorized
As you have no doubt heard, there’s been another school shooting, and seventeen people are dead. An evil man took lives he had no right to take. His actions were full of hate and spite. These were human beings made in the image of God, most of them young people, lives...
by George Grant | Feb 10, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Culture, Fight, George Grant, Politics, Uncategorized
All leaders are controversial. They invariably risk the ire of others. Because they stand for certain things, they necessarily stand against certain things. This causes them to stand out. It makes them more than a little peculiar in this plain vanilla world of...
by George Grant | Feb 5, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Culture, Fight, Fight Featured Post, George Grant, Politics, Religion, Theology, Theology, Worldview
It is one of the great ironies of our day that Christians can pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,” and not actually mean anything by it. Indeed, it is a stunning paradox that we can live as if such a prayer could not be answered. Even worse, we can...
by Rhett Burns | Jan 24, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Fight Featured Post, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
It has been two weeks since President Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti and some African nations as “s***hole countries” in a meeting with congressional officials discussing immigration policy. In the wake of these comments, his detractors offered their...
by Jason Farley | Jan 14, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Jason Farley, Politics
In 1652 John Milton went completely blind. His eyes had been waning, the world fading, for some time. The darkening was complete the same year his first wife and only son died at one year old. He was a published poet, but he had spent his energy in English politics...
by Rhett Burns | Jan 3, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns
Iran is once again embroiled in national protest. The demonstrations started a week ago as an economic protest, but have taken on an increasingly anti-government tone, resulting in twenty-one deaths and over 450 citizens imprisoned. This protest marks the largest...
by George Grant | Jan 3, 2018 | Blog, Culture, Fight, George Grant, History, Politics
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson “I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I...
by Luke Dickson | Dec 11, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Fight Featured Post, Politics
The estate tax (or death tax, or silver spoon tax, depending on who you ask) is the state’s attempt to redistribute the money of the wealthiest families in America. In recent months, it has seen support from Bernie Sanders, and has been sharply criticized by President...
by Rhett Burns | Dec 11, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Fight, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
After another dismal football season, the University of Tennessee has now fumbled its coaching search. Last week, the Volunteers had reached an agreement to hire Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano as its head football coach. However, the deal was dropped...
by Moses Bratrud | Oct 26, 2017 | Fight, Politics
Vice President Mike Pence is one heartbeat, or resignation, away from the top job. But with Trump’s robust health and seeming immunity to the effects of scandals that would have sunk a normal presidency, Pence’s accession is unlikely–certainly not unless the...
by Moses Bratrud | Oct 16, 2017 | Culture, Fight, Politics
Like a sniper in a war zone, Stephen Paddock found a defensible position 400 yards from his target, and set to waging his little war on the Route 91 Harvest music fest in the early morning hours of October 1. From the killing fields of the darkened concert ground it...
by Luke Dickson | Sep 12, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
We must move toward serious welfare reform not by simply pressuring people to work, but rather by supporting the pursuit of higher-wage employment. The ultimate goal would be to get rid of welfare entirely, or at least reduce it to being a last safety net for those...
by Rhett Burns | Sep 8, 2017 | Blog, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
I’ve always wanted to watch an extended political interview where the host stubbornly refuses to allow the politician to retreat to pat answers and stump speech talking points, where he interrupts evasive techniques and forces arguments to their logical ends. Sure,...
by Luke Dickson | Sep 5, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
When we think about states’ rights, our minds often go straight to the Civil War. Few of us recognize that the debate is actually still quite alive. Events like those in Charlottesville draw our minds back to unresolved animosity of the War Between the States, but we...
by Ben Zornes | Aug 30, 2017 | Blog, Politics
There’s a world of difference between a just war and just war. There is war for a just reason, and there is war just to be able to say you did something while in office. Wars can serve to boost patriotism, nationalism. and For the GOP, it often bolsters the “rah, rah,...
by Jason Farley | Aug 29, 2017 | Arts, Blog, Culture, Feast, Fight Featured Post, Jason Farley, Laugh, Politics
Editing is an art form. My son Cedric was coming in the front door a few days ago when his sister asked, “Did you eat an ice cream sandwich?” He replied, “Malachi had two.” That was, strictly speaking, true. Malachi had eaten two ice cream sandwiches. The...
by Luke Dickson | Aug 28, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
After the Charlottesville riots, America was thrown into a fit of iconoclasticism. Tearing down statues of Confederate leaders, demanding the renaming of streets named after “white supremacists.” When did American history become so binary? I always thought that there...
by Rhett Burns | Aug 21, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
One of the central plays the Left is running is to paint Christians and conservatives with the same dirty brush as they do the alt-right white supremacists. They have been calling conservatives Nazis for years, a standard retort to such offenses as budgetary math and...
by Seth Bloomsburg | Aug 18, 2017 | Blog, Book Reviews, Politics, Science, Theology
Most of us have been pulled over by a cop. Imagine for a moment that this happens to you. The cop flashes his lights, you dutifully pull over, hand over your license and registration. He informs you that he pulled you over because you didn’t stop at the stop sign. You...
by Luke Dickson | Aug 16, 2017 | Blog, Politics
As long as Trump is in office, he will be the center of media attention. But something different is happening now: the media is beginning to fixate on an issue that is actually important. This time Trump isn’t just tweeting about a talk show host, or calling Rosie...
by Luke Dickson | Aug 7, 2017 | Abortion, Blog, Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics, Science
Abortion pill reversal has been a point of serious contention lately, with some states even mandating that abortion providers inform their patients that the effects of the abortion pill on the baby may be reversible. And yet this is an issue that many pro-life people...
by Rhett Burns | Aug 3, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
I recently returned from vacation where I swore off keeping up with the news in favor of logging lots of swim time with the kids and diving into some fun books. Two of the books were fascinating memoirs, and, though seemingly unrelated, they coalesced in my mind once...
by Luke Dickson | Jul 29, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
In a series of three Tweets on Wednesday July 26th, President Trump announced that “transgender individuals” would no longer be allowed to serve “in any capacity” in the military. This ruling is clearly intended to garner support from much of his base, which voted for...
by admin | Jul 25, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics
In the light of various Supreme Court decisions—Roe, Obergefell, and other mutants—where they have sought to sanctify things that God has declared unholy, confused and abominable, our ongoing responsibility as Christians is to think through a biblical understanding of...
by Luke Dickson | Jul 23, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
If there’s one thing the Left hates, it’s corporate America meddling in politics. Well not all of corporate America, but, like, Hobby Lobby and stuff. And not all politics: fighting against those wicked Southern Christians is okay. So maybe the Left isn’t actually...
by Rhett Burns | Jul 17, 2017 | Blog, Fight Featured Post, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
Last week I posted an interview with my friend Emily Buchanan of the Susan B. Anthony List, a political organization based in Washington, D.C. We talked about abortion politics and the SBA List’s efforts to end the abortion carnage. I greatly appreciate Emily taking...
by Luke Dickson | Jul 17, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
France and the United States have been politically linked since the Revolutionary War. The American and French Revolutions, while wildly different in ideology, were products of the same age, occurring within fifteen years of each other. In our respective revolutions,...
by Rhett Burns | Jul 12, 2017 | Blog, Politics, Rhett Burns, Uncategorized
Recently I sat down with my friend Emily Buchanan to talk about abortion politics and her work as executive vice president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life organization in Washington, D.C. RB: Hi Emily, thanks for joining us. Can you introduce us to the SBA...
by Benjamin Alexander | Jul 11, 2017 | Culture, Politics
As Christians, we are to be salty. Christians are to be winsome, but we’ve become increasingly unsavory. Let’s face it, most Christians are not known by what they are for, but by what they are against. Relentless criticism is never a good platform to persuade...
by Seth Bloomsburg | Jul 6, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Theology
What should Christians think of building “The Wall”? Conservative think-tank PragerU has produced a video giving some very practical reasons for building a border wall between America and Mexico. But, as Christians, we should not be...
by Moses Bratrud | Jul 4, 2017 | Politics
At a “Celebrate Freedom Rally,” at the Kennedy Center in D.C. earlier this week, the First Baptist Church of Dallas choir premiered a new song. It’s called “Make America Great Again,” and it riffs off the campaign slogan of America’s 45th president. You can watch the...
by Jason Farley | Jul 2, 2017 | Arts, Culture, Feast, Fight Featured Post, Jason Farley, Politics
Everyone has to have an overarching story. A mythos that holds what they see and hear together. When I lived in California, I did evangelism on Wednesdays. I hoped to do it other days as well, but Wednesdays I did my sermon prep at the neighborhood park. I introduced...
by Luke Dickson | Jul 1, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
News broke on Tuesday that a young boy in Britain would be denied access to further healthcare in the United States. Charlie Gard, a ten-month-old boy from London, was born last August with an incredibly rare genetic condition called infantile onset encephalomyopathy...
by Rhett Burns | Jun 28, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Uncategorized
Georgia’s food stamp program provides an interesting case study for thinking about the current debate surrounding social welfare. In good fiscal news Georgia has seen a sixteen percent drop in food stamp usage over the last four years, saving tens of millions of...
by Luke Dickson | Jun 23, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
“Believe in equal pay for equal work? Put your money where your mouth is.” So reads the website of the most comically unfair product I’ve ever seen. I first ran across the EquiTable app about six months ago. At first, I thought that their advertisement video was a...
by Rhett Burns | Jun 20, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Uncategorized
Graduating senior Moriah Bridges was chosen by her class president to provide the closing exercise at Beaver High School’s June 2nd graduation ceremony in Beaver, Pennsylvania. Bridges, a Christian, included a prayer in her remarks, but the Beaver School District...
by Luke Dickson | Jun 16, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
Stephen Harper served as Prime Minister of Canada for nine years. While few would say that Trump and Harper are similar leaders, there are some things that we can learn from the genesis of the former Canadian Prime Minister that tell us about the current American...
by Brian Points | Jun 15, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
If you haven’t noticed, a new form of Refer Madness is sweeping the nation. Starting with full legalization of recreational marijuana use in Washington and Colorado in 2012, numerous other states have loosened regulations in subsequent years. At the time of writing...
by Moses Bratrud | Jun 14, 2017 | Politics
After the election on June 8, millions of Britons woke up and scratched their heads. Though it was the third exhausting nationwide vote in three years, with millions of new voters casting their ballots for the first time, the result was…inconclusive. Theresa May...
by Toby Sumpter | Jun 13, 2017 | Abortion, Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics
“The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk. 16:8). Modern conservative Christians are cowards. We are cowards by many different measurements, but one will suffice. We have almost entirely lost a culture war...
by Rhett Burns | Jun 13, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
Last week Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders transformed a rather mundane confirmation hearing for the deputy director for the Office of Management and Budget into high political theater, pronouncing the nominee unfit for office due to his religious beliefs. Sanders...
by Benjamin Alexander | Jun 12, 2017 | Culture, Politics
We all know America is changing… Over Christmas break I took my W.A.S.P (white anglo-saxon protestant) blond children to the local outlet mall in the east bay area of northern California. Besides my children, I think we counted about three blond heads in a room of...
by Luke Dickson | Jun 10, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Uncategorized
Thursday, former FBI director James Comey testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding the details of his relationship with Trump. Though the viewership numbers haven’t been released yet, some are projecting it to be the most watched political...
by Ben Zornes | Jun 5, 2017 | Blog, Politics, Science
Climate Change Catechism If you want a peek into what sort of moral value system the public schools of America have catechized our children with look up the #ParisAccords. There, especially amongst the young folk, you will see ample apologies to the world for our...
by Luke Dickson | Jun 2, 2017 | Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics
Why can’t Americans reach across the aisle like they used to? This question becomes more and more relevant every day, as we see the American political and media establishments retreat to the fringes, leaving the chasm between left and right ever wider. Americans have...
by Rhett Burns | Jun 1, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Uncategorized
Matt Walsh joined the CrossPolitic podcast this week to talk about his new book The Unholy Trinity, in which he takes aim at the Left’s “assault on life, marriage, and gender.” One point Walsh raised is that one of the Left’s strategies to make minority positions...
by Moses Bratrud | May 30, 2017 | Politics
There is a certain schadenfreude in watching the missteps of countries other than our own. This year in particular, I have been drawn to events outside the morass of American politics. But ours is not the only democracy that seems sometimes to be heading hellwards in...
by Brian Points | May 26, 2017 | Culture, Politics
About three years ago while on a business trip, a colleague and I arrived late into Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. It was one of those days where tens of hundreds of flights were delayed, re-scheduled or cancelled due to inclement weather, resulting in...
by Rhett Burns | May 25, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics, Uncategorized
Venezuela is continuing its slide into disorder and mayhem. Protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government have continued for almost eight weeks, and they are growing more violent each day and showing no signs of slowing down. At least fifty-five...
by Luke Dickson | May 19, 2017 | Culture, Politics
Who is Emmanuel Macron? Three years ago, most French citizens would not be able to tell you. Macron’s rise has been described as terrifying by some and salvific by others. For a country wavering between isolationist populism and globalism, this election was historic....
by Moses Bratrud | May 18, 2017 | Politics
Remember when Trump was supposed to be “our boy?” He won a plurality of the vote among American evangelicals. Our portion of American society clearly thought he was worth casting a vote for. But now, with a new Trump scandal every five minutes, it’s worth revisiting...
by Rhett Burns | May 17, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
Last week city workers removed a statue of Jefferson Davis from a prominent city thoroughfare in New Orleans. This action marked the second removal of a Civil War era structure in the city; statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard are slated...
by Seth Bloomsburg | May 16, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
Recently, my alma mater New Saint Andrew’s college announced that it would be purchasing a property in downtown Moscow, ID. It is affectionately known as the “CJ’s” building (meaning Cadillac Jack’s) and for many years has been a bar and dance hall. NSA...
by Brian Points | May 15, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Theology, Uncategorized
Recently President Trump delivered welcome news to defense contractors across the country when he announced that the Department of Defense (DoD) budget would increase by $54 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, representing a 10% increase in military spending (Cohen,...
by Luke Dickson | May 12, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics
At the America’s World Voices Festival in New York last Thursday, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards set off a media frenzy, saying, “Being a woman is going to be now a pre-existing condition in this country” (Bryant 2017). Since then protests and hashtags...
by Luke Dickson | May 5, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Science
The other day I stumbled across a new series on Netflix: Bill Nye Saves the World. Now I, like millions of public school children, grew up watching Bill Nye, so I figured I’d try out this new series. At the forefront, he told the audience that this was not going to be...
by Moses Bratrud | May 4, 2017 | Fight Featured Post, Politics
During the last election cycle, even up through the first half of election night, every major media outlet predicted a comfortable victory for Hillary Clinton. Here you can see one much-referenced election calculator, timed out like a broken stopwatch, displaying the...
by Rhett Burns | May 3, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics, Uncategorized
Recent attacks on Christian florists, bakers, and pizza-pie makers opened the Church’s eyes to the threat against our religious liberties. By refusing to rise and applaud today’s favored sexual perversions, Christians risk heavy fines and business foreclosures. In...
by Seth Bloomsburg | May 2, 2017 | Blog, Politics, Science
CNN reported on the so-called “March for Science” on April 22nd, 2017 in an article titled “March for Science: Protesters gather worldwide to support ‘evidence.'” The article states, “At the main March for Science, demonstrators gathered...
by Ben Zornes | May 2, 2017 | Blog, Politics
Trump opted to skip out on this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, and instead held a rally in Pennsylvania. Now, remember it was really Obama who set the precedent for being “Campaigner-in-Chief”. So if Democrats would like to criticize Trump...
by Luke Dickson | Apr 29, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
“I’m against the Right of money, and the Left of money. I’m the candidate of the people!” Sound familiar? You may think this is a quote from a Trump rally, and you’d have good reason to. Trump ran on a platform of “draining the swamp” of corrupt...
by Rhett Burns | Apr 26, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Politics
Earlier this month United States attorneys charged a Detroit doctor with female genital mutilation (FGM), the first prosecution of this crime since the U.S. outlawed the practice in 1996. Authorities accused Jumana Nagarwala, an emergency room doctor, of performing...
by Rachel Sebourn | Apr 24, 2017 | Abortion, Culture, Politics
This year’s celebration of International Woman’s Day was innovative. On the eighth of last month, women around the world pulled a laid-back version of self-immolation: A Day without a Woman. From strikes in Australia, marches in India, and free museum tickets in Italy...
by Luke Dickson | Apr 19, 2017 | Culture, Politics
Recently I watched a National Geographic documentary with Katie Couric called Gender Revolution. Couric was working on this special program exploring America’s changing view of gender. Couric sat on the front porch of sixteen-year-old Gavin Grimm, a transgender high...
by Rhett Burns | Apr 18, 2017 | Blog, Culture, Fight Featured Post, Politics
Back when he was mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, once famously quipped that democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you get to your destination, then you step off. Well, after Sunday’s constitutional referendum, democracy has exited...
by Rachel Sebourn | Apr 13, 2017 | Culture, Politics
Betsy DeVos is known for her support of “the voucher system” for public education (Nazaryan 2017, 39; Disare 2017, 49). In this system, parents are given a certain amount of voucher money for child tuition which can be used at the school of their choice, regardless of...
by Seth Bloomsburg | Apr 11, 2017 | Politics, Theology
CNN reported on April 7th, 2017, that “The United States launched a military strike Thursday on a Syrian government airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians earlier in the week. On President Donald Trump’s orders, US...
