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Christian Counterpunching
It’s profoundly unsettling for devout Christians to contemplate the possibility that the faith they practice might be defective in any major particular. I’m not referring to orthodox belief, which is a criterion of being Christian in the first place, but to a specific Christian outlook that leads to an entire way of life, or as Continue reading
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Boisterous Irrelevance
Theological hyper-specificity and theology without Christian worldview are two hazards leading to irrelevance during the great battles of the time. Our calling is to fight where the “battle rages,” where “the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battle-field.” Continue reading
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Mandatory Masks, “Shelter at Home,” and (Anti-) Social Distancing: A Christian worldview analysis and a brief theology of the state
During the COVID-19 crisis, many biblical Christians have been resistant to the ethics and legal guidelines dictating mask wearing, “sheltering at home” (euphemism for virtual house self-arrest), and (anti-)social distancing, even if the reluctance is more intuitive than reasoned. In this brief post, which lays out a Christian worldview response to these COVID-19 edicts, I Continue reading
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What About Mask-Wearing as Christian Charity?
My CultureChange e-newsletter “Mandatory Masks, “Shelter at Home,” and (Anti-) Social Distancing: A Christian worldview analysis and a brief theology of the state” raised several valid questions. One of them is whether wearing a mask during COVID-19 as a Christian fulfills our obligation to love our brothers and sisters. We should not insist on our Continue reading
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Unaddressed Insensitivity Will Doom MLB Mascots
Now that the NFL’s Washington Redskins, shamed by their many-decades’ racial insensitivity, are unveiling their new mascot, it is clear that Major League Baseball cannot avoid the virtuous mascot-toppling that will make our world a safer, kinder, gentler, more understanding place. Continue reading
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America’s Exceptional Greatness
In hearing the increasingly pervasive and sometimes hysterical and violent criticism of the United States, it might be helpful to consider the other side of the ledger. No nation or country in the history of civilization has: Gotten the gospel of Jesus Christ to more people; Preserved and perpetuated so much religious liberty; Devised such Continue reading
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A July 4 Worldview Clash
During no July 4 of my lifetime have the cultural stakes been as momentous as they are in 2020. The Leftist protests of the late 60s, motivated by the Vietnam War, by Martin Luther King’s colorblind social vision, by the rise of vocal feminism, and by the Sexual Revolution are unforgettable, even to those of Continue reading
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“We Are the Destroyers”
Several years ago my wife Sharon and I were visiting our son Richard at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he was launching his Ph.D. program in philosophy (he graduated this past May). Touring the campus, we approached the Department of Modern Art. I’ll never forget the description emblazoning the entrance: “We Are Continue reading
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Crusading Christianity
Where there is ungodly peace, we are called to be troublemakers. Where there is great peaceful evil, we’re not called to be peacemakers; we’re called to be peace-breakers. Where there are families filled with peaceful pornography and abortion and homosexuality, we are called to disrupt the peace. Where husbands abuse wives and children, we are Continue reading
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Cultural Gravediggers
The paradox of free societies is that they carry in their DNA the capacity for their own destruction. Free speech and press and assembly; religious, political, and economic liberty; and the encouragement of unhindered intellectual exchange permits ideas inimical to free societies to take root and, if not overcome by equally deep-rooted but contrary ideas, Continue reading
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The Marxism in the Mayhem
Behind the violent riots in the wake of the reprehensible killing of George Floyd is a pernicious web of ideas known as Cultural Marxism. Not that one in a thousand of the recent terrorists has ever read Marx or even consciously considers Marxism a guiding principle. But perhaps one in a hundred has heard of Continue reading
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Religious Exclusivity Is Inescapable
We live in a time that champions tolerance above virtually every other virtue, but there have been few times in recent memory marked by more fiery divisiveness. How do we explain this seeming contradiction? Today’s tolerance isn’t genuine tolerance, but is much closer to what the apostle Paul in Romans 1 calls the approval of Continue reading
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Coronavirus and Culture
What we see playing out before our eyes is a response of rival religions to a lethal virus. Continue reading
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The Great(est?) Easter Poem
Seven Stanzas at Easter John Updike (1932–2009) Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the Continue reading
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Jesus Christ in Three Acts
The sin-bearing, weary, suffering, grief-filled, and broken Jesus of Nazareth was transformed the first Easter Sunday into the splendorous, Spirit-supercharged, evil-crushing, risen and reigning King of kings and Lord of lords. Continue reading
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COVID-19 and Technology: An Interview with Kevin D. Johnson
The epidemiological models that have been used to estimate the impact of the virus have received a lot of criticism in the last few weeks mostly because of the consistent overestimating that has been done in terms of the suggested mortality risks to the United States and the rest of the world. However, the models… Continue reading
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Our Lord’s Crucifixion as Exaltation
It seemed that Jesus was one lowered and humiliated at the crucifixion. What the watching world — and Satan himself — did not yet know is that it was Satan and his entire usurping empire that was dispossessed and humiliated at the Cross. The Cross inaugurated the new (and final) world order. Continue reading
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COVID-19 and Theology: An Interview with Brian G. Mattson
Christians … are equipped to understand that God has purposes; that he is not a cold, distant, silent, and mute machine dispensing what we’ve got coming, but a merciful Father who calls us to cry out to him in our need; and that in Christ Jesus we have no ultimate existential fear of death. I… Continue reading
P. Andrew Sandlin 