I am not a foreign policy expert. I am, however, just as concerned as anyone about the calamity unfolding in Ukraine. Since the invasion began last night, I have been listening to foreign policy experts compare Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Whether that comparison is apt, I leave to the experts to sort out. But it is more than disconcerting that a major European power has violated the territorial sovereignty of another European nation. Anyone who doesn’t see the possibility of other dominoes falling isn’t being realistic in my view. By any measure, this invasion is a world emergency that may portend a wider…
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The 2021 Word of the Year – “Allyship”
Dictionary.com has an annual tradition of naming a “word of the year,” and this year’s winner is the term allyship. Here is the definition: allyship (noun): the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership. At first blush, the definition appears to be a positive concept. After all, what decent person doesn’t want to lend a helping hand to those who need it? Didn’t even Jesus himself say something along these lines?…
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My Thoughts on “Woke Racism”
Over the weekend, I began and completed John McWhorter’s new book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. I will not offer a full review here but wish simply to offer some reflections on what I discovered there. The basic thesis of the book can be summarized as a syllogism, and it goes like this. All religions are irrational. Wokeness is a religion. Therefore, wokeness is irrational. McWhorter spends the rest of the book defining his terms and filling out the implications of this thesis. Religious beliefs are those convictions which are not subject to rational inquiry or empirical verification. The claims of religion are intellectually vacuous,…
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Buckle-up Pro-lifers. They will say anything to silence us.
The left is apoplectic about the shutdown of death-dealing abortion mills in Texas. Nothing is more catastrophic to them than that babies would no longer be subject to legal execution. And there is hardly anything they won’t say or do to get the abortionists back to the important business of killing the unborn. For that reason, you can expect to hear some crazy, wild claims in days ahead. You are going to hear downright asinine allegations about pro-lifers and their “sinister” motivations. Here is a case in point. Jeff Greenfield claims in Politico that evangelical opposition to abortion was merely a pretext for racial discrimination: It turns out that abortion…
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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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A Conversation with Aaron Renn
It was a real pleasure to speak with Aaron Renn on his podcast last week. He titled the episode “Complementarianism and Its Discontents,” and it was a wide-ranging conversation from personal testimony to the current landscape of complementarianism. Aaron is a fascinating guy who writes really stimulating material on what it means to be male and female. In fact, one of the reasons he invited me on the show is due to my recent interaction with an essay he wrote for the Masculinist a couple years ago. He made the case that complementarianism is a Baby Boomer theology that is likely to fade as the Baby Boomers age out. I…
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The Verdict
Earlier today, a jury in Minneapolis delivered three guilty verdicts against Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd. The jury deliberations were relatively short, which seemed to signal in advance that guilty verdicts were in the offing. And indeed they were. I was not able to watch the whole trial (who could?), but I did read news coverage as it progressed. I also caught some of the closing arguments from both the defense and the prosecution. From what I saw, it was clear to me that the prosecution was very effective at proving its case. The key features that the trial confirmed were cause of death and…
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Kentucky Doesn’t Need Slot Machines and Casinos
I want to share a letter that I just received about the Kentucky State Legislature’s plan to bring slot machines and eventually casinos to our state. Anyone who opposes this needs to speak up now by calling their legislators and making their views known. Please read the letter below, and use the information to call your legislator. We must not let this pass. ————— Dear Kentucky Baptists, My name is Andrew Walker and I’m a professor of Christian ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I also serve as the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s legislative agent in Frankfort, where I advocate for policies that Kentucky Baptists support. I’m writing with an…
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Can we eat the meat and spit out the bones of CRT?
I think Todd Pruitt is exactly right about the “eat the meat, spit out the bones” approach to Critical Theory and its offshoots. It’s not that you can never find the occasional insight. It’s that there is no insight there that can only be found there, and it’s a dangerous source to send people to. Pruitt writes: ‘Few (if any) would say that there are no true statements or insights to be found within Critical Theory or its offshoots. The question is whether Critical Race Theory offers unique and helpful insights without being laden with the profound errors of Critical Theory. I say no. Consider the prosperity gospel. Kenneth Copeland says…
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Taking on the Revolutionary Program of Ibram X. Kendi
Anyone reading this site over the last several years has probably noticed my growing alarm about leftist “social justice” ideologies. I had already become somewhat acquainted with queer theory while doing research for my book on sexual ethics in 2012-2013. A 2016 lecture on intersectionality at an ADF event, however, helped me to see that queer theory was but one strand of a multi-faceted leftist identitarian movement. I had heard of identity politics, but now I was beginning to understand some of its ideological underpinnings. More and more, it appeared to be a kind of religion. I began writing informally about intersectionality in this space in 2017 and began to…
