Last week, I predicted on social media that if the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” ever makes it to the floor of the Senate for an up or down vote, there will be more than enough GOP support for the measure to pass. The fact is that a majority of Americans now support same-sex marriage, including a majority of those who identify as Republicans. The base of the Republican party is still largely against same-sex marriage, but everyone else is pretty much for it. That puts GOP senators in between a rock and a hard place. Should they vote to affirm gay marriage and offend their base? Or should they…
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God Is the Sovereign Designer of Sex
“God is the Creator of the human being, and simultaneously also the Inaugurator of sex and of sexual difference. This difference did not result from sin; it existed from the very beginning, it has its basis in creation, it is a revelation of God’s will and sovereignty, and is therefore wise and holy and good. Therefore, no one may misconstrue or despise this sexual difference, either within one’s own identity or in that of another person. It has been willed by God and grounded in nature. It was then, and still is, willed by God; he is the sovereign Designer of sex; man and woman have God to thank not…
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Parents, Don’t Be Gaslighted by Biased News Reports
One of the hardest things to read today are biased news reports aimed at gaslighting parents who are concerned about LGBT indoctrination at public schools. Case in point: A headline in The Washington Post yesterday reads “Claim that sex ed ‘grooms’ kids jolted Nebraska politics a year before it swept the nation.” The story goes on to describe the efforts of parents in Nebraska to push back against the state’s efforts to introduce LGBT propaganda into their children’s public school curriculum. Lest you think this an unbiased report on a bellwether social issue in Nebraska, the subtitle reads: The unsubstantiated claim led to a backlash against sex ed that helped…
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Sexual Immorality Driving a World Health Emergency
Rod Dreher wrote yesterday about the hypocrisy of public health authorities in 2020 who mandated lockdowns for COVID but who made exceptions for Black Lives Matter protests. Our ruling class’s inconsistency during the summer of 2020 was obviously not being driven by hard science but by social concerns. If you belonged to a favored group (like a BLM protest), then you were allowed to gather. If you belonged to a disfavored group (like a church trying to gather for worship), you were not allowed to gather. While churches were being harassed by local governments for continuing to meet, enormous BLM protests continued apace. The entire spectacle demonstrated in spades that…
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Study Denies That Depression Is Caused by Chemical Imbalance in the Brain
Science Daily reported yesterday on a new study calling into question long-standing views about what causes depression. The study was conducted by scientists at the University College London. Science Daily reports: After decades of study, there remains no clear evidence that serotonin levels or serotonin activity are responsible for depression… Lead author Professor Joanna Moncrieff, a Professor of Psychiatry at UCL and a consultant psychiatrist at North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT), said: “It is always difficult to prove a negative, but I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by…
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With whom is the Christian soldier meant to fight?
What a great word from Bishop Ryle. I needed it, and it did my soul good. Maybe it will be that way for you also. “With whom is the Christian soldier meant to fight? Not with other Christians. Wretched indeed is that man’s idea of religion who fancies that it consists in perpetual controversy! He who is never satisfied unless he is engaged in some strife between church and church, chapel and chapel, sect and sect, faction and faction, party and party, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. No doubt it may be absolutely needful sometimes to appeal to law courts, in order to ascertain the right interpretation of…
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How a Christian Patriot Might Love His Wayward Country
I love G. K. Chesterton’s reflections on what it means to be a Christian patriot. If you have never read it, I encourage you to read “The Flag of the World” in his classic work Orthodoxy. Chesterton contends that love of one’s homeland is not like house-hunting—an experience in which you weigh the pros and cons of a place and choose accordingly. He writes: A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential…
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The End of Roe in the Bright Light of June
On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade and its companion decision Doe v. Bolton effectively made abortion-on-demand a Constitutional right in the U.S. through all nine months of pregnancy. Since that time, the regime of Roe has presided over the legal killing of 63 million children. That is more than ten times the people killed in the Jewish holocaust. Roe formed the legal basis for what has become without question the greatest human rights crisis of our time—that a whole class of human beings have been excluded from the human community by our legal system. Today, all of that changed. The Supreme Court of the United States has spoken in…
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Non-Contradicton (not Subscription) Is the SBC’s Confessional Standard
If anything became clear at last week’s meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Anaheim, it’s this. The SBC has a confessional dispute in front of it, and it is not at all clear where it is going to go. The debate is occasioned by the ordination of female pastors at Saddleback Church in California. When Albert Mohler rose to speak against such a practice last week, it was very clear that the floor of the convention was overwhelmingly behind him. So much so that the Credentials Committee withdrew its proposal concerning Saddleback church’s female pastors. Nevertheless, in spite of that show of solidarity on the floor of the SBC,…
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Is Rick Warren Right about Gift vs. Office?
An unexpected thing happened this week at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) when Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, rose to make a statement that began with, “It’s customary for a guy who’s about to be hung to let him say his dying words.” He said it tongue-in-cheek, but we all knew that he was actually referring to something very serious—that his church is currently under scrutiny from the SBC for ordaining three women as pastors just over a year ago. Just recently, Warren also announced that his successors at Saddleback would be a husband and wife team, both of whom will be pastors leading the…
