• Culture,  Politics

    James Taranto on Media Bias

    James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal compiles a summary of left-leaning media bias in reports on last week’s Hamdan decision. I think the summary deserves our attention: “The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration’s plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law. . . . The decision was . . . a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration.“–New York Times “The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of…

  • Culture,  Politics,  Theology/Bible

    Where Atrocity Is Normal

    Patrick Stone’s essay in Christianity Today is powerful and poignant. In “Where Atrocity Is Normal: Understanding Christian soldiers who have seen the horrors of war,” Stone recounts his own experience in Vietnam and reminds us of the atrocities of war and the impossible moral choices that face Christians who participate in them.Not only are the war stories tragic, but so also is his description of what his experience has been since coming home from Vietnam: Following my return from Vietnam I spent most Sunday mornings in a church pew wondering, “What does this have to do with what I saw and did in Vietnam?” . . . Since leaving Vietnam…

  • Culture,  Politics

    Don’t Get in Peggy Noonan’s Doghouse!

    Readers of this blog know that I am a big fan of Peggy Noonan’s weekly column in the Wall Street Journal (previous posts). I look forward to it every Thursday.Her piece this morning is a wry, free-wheeling commentary on sundry topics in the news and pop culture. One thing I take away from this article is that I never want to be in Noonan’s doghouse. She takes a whack at several personalities who she thinks are attempting to “spin” and manipulate Americans. Here’s a sampling: On Hillary Clinton: “Hillary . . . doesn’t have to prove she’s a man, she has to prove she’s a woman. No one in America…

  • Culture,  Theology/Bible

    XXX ‘Church’ Is Back in the News

    The XXX ‘Church’ is back in the News this week. I wrote a series of posts on the XXX ‘Church’ last summer and questioned the wisdom of attending porn conventions in order to do evangelism.On Wednesday, Dr. Albert Mohler raised the same question about the XXX ‘Church’s’ ministry methods at this summer’s erotica convention in Los Angeles. On the program, Dr. Mohler said, “I can tell you, I don’t think I could be at this convention without sin. Think I can pretty much promise you that” (source).

  • Culture,  Sports,  Theology/Bible

    Just When I Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse

    Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the fact that the Mavs lost last night, I came across this story in the Dallas Morning News: “Pastor turns service into pep rally for God, Mavs.”Apparently, this pastor in this Dallas area doesn’t know the difference between a worship service and a pep rally. Can you guess what his justification is for profaning Sunday morning worship? It’s pretty predictable. “We put God in a box. Why can’t we bring life into the house of worship? More people will come to church if you have these kinds of things.”

  • Culture,  Politics,  Theology/Bible

    It’s a Baptist Thing, and E. J. Dionne Doesn’t Get It

    Actually, it’s not just E. J. Dionne who’s offering an incorrect analysis of Frank Page’s election to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Dionne and others are mistaking the dark horse for a trojan horse that would signal the beginning of the end of the conservative movement in the SBC. In a Washington Post editorial today, Dionne writes: Page’s upset victory could be very significant, both to the nation’s religious life and to politics. He defeated candidates supported by the convention’s staunchly conservative establishment, which has dominated the organization since the mid-1980s. His triumph is one of many signs that new breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical…

  • Culture,  Theology/Bible

    TIME Magazine Credits Bloggers for New SBC President

    Have you seen TIME Magazine’s analysis of Frank Page’s election to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention? Here’s the headline and the lead of the story written by David VanBiema: The Bloggers’ Favorite Southern Baptist: The upset victory of a non-anointed candidate to lead America’s largest Protestant denomination signals the growing power of online activists, even in old-line churches . . . For those who follow the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention . . . the most interesting news out of their annual meeting, held this week in Greensboro, N.C., is that bloggers elected a president (source). I don’t think that this analysis of the election is…

  • Culture,  Music,  Theology/Bible

    Derek Webb & CT on “Christian” Music

    Readers of this blog know that Derek Webb and I are not on the same page politically and sometimes theologically (previous posts). Nevertheless, in an interview with Relevant magazine Webb has some salient reflections on the so-called “Christian” music industry. Here are the money lines: The whole secular/Christian thing is a total fiction. Don’t let your local Christian bookstore do your thinking for you and believe that everything they have there for sale is good and spiritually beneficial to you. If anything, we have proven that the Church unfortunately is identified with really poor art. The Church certainly does not have the market cornered on beauty. A lot of what…

  • Culture,  Politics

    Ann Coulter Needs to Repent

    I haven’t read the context of Ann Coulter’s remarks; her book won’t be released until tomorrow. So all I have seen so far are the excerpts in the Associated Press.According to the AP, Coulter’s new book has some pretty nasty things to say about a certain group of liberal-leaning 9-11 widows. The AP contains the following description of Coulter’s remarks: Coulter writes in a new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” that a group of New Jersey widows whose husbands perished in the World Trade Center act “as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them.”She also wrote, “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much” (source). Like…