Last April, Kirsten Powers went on Focus on the Family to talk about her watershed column shaming the media into covering the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. In that interview, she also shares her own story about coming to faith in Christ through the ministry of Tim Keller’s church in New York City. It turns out that Eric Metaxas also had a role in her conversion, and she is surprisingly candid about the whole thing.
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Saying goodbye to Bill Cutrer
Today I attended the funeral of a colleague and friend, Dr. Bill Cutrer. I can’t say enough about how much I admire and appreciate this man. He was a medical doctor turned seminary professor. He ran a successful OB-GYN practice in Dallas, Texas before leaving that behind for a ministry of teaching and writing. I knew him before he knew me because of a book that was given to me during my engagement to my wife. Little did I know then how much of a personal impact he would have on my family in just a few short years when I became a student at Southern Seminary.
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Christianity and “The Daily Show” Distortions
Last May a producer from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” contacted me about being interviewed for the program. He said that he wanted me to talk about my perception of anti-Christian bias in the mainstream media as it relates to “homosexual marriage and gay acceptance in America.” It was to be a produced piece in which they interview people from different perspectives, and then after that Stewart would do his thing. From the get-go, I couldn’t see any upside to doing this. For starters, I had no interest in turning a serious topic into a laugh-line for Stewart’s show. Also, even though I am not a regular viewer of…
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The damning euphemism called “selective reduction”
The video above features a woman named Amy Richards telling her story about “selective reduction” (HT: @drmoore). If you are unfamiliar with the term, it’s a euphemism for killing one or more unborn babies when there are multiples in a womb. In Richards’ case, she found out that she was pregnant with triplets. In the video above, she describes her fateful decision to have two of her triplets killed. In a 2004 Op-Ed for The New York Times, she describes why she refused to allow all of her children to live:
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Civility, bullying and same-sex marriage
Ryan T. Anderson has a helpful OP-ED in The Kansas City Star about gay marriage and civility. Among other things, he writes this: The principal strategy of the forces that have worked for 20 years to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions has been cultural intimidation – bullying others by threatening the stigma of being “haters” and “bigots.” Marriage re-definers don’t tend to say what many opponents have said, that this is a difficult question on which reasonable people of goodwill can disagree. No, they’ve said anyone who disagrees with them is the equivalent of a racist. They’ve sent a clear message: If you stand up for marriage, we will,…
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Street preachers assaulted and beaten at gay pride rally
Two street preachers were assaulted and beaten at a recent gay pride rally in Seattle, Washington. The entire confrontation was caught on video (here), and a local news station reported on the story (see above). Some thoughts worth noting:
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William Lane Craig: Putting the fear of God into atheists
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a feature length profile of Christian apologist William Lane Craig. Craig is a keen intellect and a fierce debater. He takes on all-comers, including any of the four horsemen of the new atheism. This is a fascinating article, on a number of levels, but my favorite line is how atheist Sam Harris describes Craig. Harris says Craig is “The one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.” Great article. Read it here.
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Peter Leithart on the DOMA Decision: “A call to martyrdom”
Peter Leithart’s response to last week’s Supreme Court decision on gay marriage is a must-read. He rightly points out that the decision faces Christians with a new reality, which likely include a loss of religious liberty. He concludes: All this means that Windsor presents American Christians with a call to martyrdom. In Greek, martyria means “witness,” specifically witness in a court. At the very least, the decision challenges American Christians to continue to teach Christian sexual ethics without compromise or apology. But Windsor presents a call to martyrdom in a more specific sense. There will be a cost for speaking the truth, a cost in reputation, opportunity, and funds if not in freedoms. Scalia’s…
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Prosperity Preachers featured in new reality show
The Oxygen network is about to launch a reality show featuring six prosperity preachers from the Los Angeles area. The trailer above reveals a group of men who are completely under the spell of the prosperity gospel, which is no gospel at all (Gal. 1:6-7).
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John Piper on gay marriage and the Supreme Court
About nine years ago, John Piper preached a message about “Discerning the Will of God Concerning Homosexuality and Marriage.” The message made an impression on me, and for many years now I’ve been reading a portion of this sermon every semester to my hermeneutics students. I share the message now because it is astonishing to me how prophetic it is in light of the decisions handed down from the Supreme Court earlier this week. You can read the manuscript excerpt below, but I recommend that you listen to the audio. There is much more in the audio version than in what appears in the manuscript. Keep in mind that this…