Today marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision. 50 million unborn babies have been killed by abortion since 1973. Last year, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on a procedure called partial-birth abortion, but abortion is still legal up until the moment of birth in all 50 states as determined by Roe vs. Wade. I believe that many people are able to dodge this issue in their own consciences because they have been conditioned to do so by a culture of death and because the unborn themselves are silent and out of sight. One way to cure this indifference is by making images…
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Letter from a Birmingham Jail
On Saturday, John Piper exhorted pastors to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to shine the light of the gospel on racism. He also quoted at length from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Dr. King’s description of Jim Crow South is one of the most gut-wrenching things you’ll ever read. It’s hard to believe that people once spoke so openly in racist terms, but they did. Here’s Dr. King in his own words:
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MLK Day: “I have a dream”
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Church Discipline Gets Chastised in WSJ
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story about the practice of church discipline in American evangelical churches. On the whole, the story is negative, focusing on cases which are less than exemplary. A church here in Dallas is mentioned in the article, Watermark Community Church, as well as First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, Alabama. The article says,
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First Human Clones Created in California
The Associated Press and NBC News reports that a group of scientists in a California lab have recently created embryonic clones of two men. The embryos were created in a lab using a donated human egg and DNA material from human skin cells. What’s the value of this new technology? According to the AP report, “Scientists say stem cells from cloned embryos could provide a valuable tool for studying diseases, screening drugs and, perhaps someday, creating transplant material to treat conditions like diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.” The ethical questions raised by this development are manifold. It is a staggering devaluing of human life. These human beings are being created with…
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Caitlin Flanagan’s Remarks on Teenage Sexuality
Anti-feminist Caitlin Flanagan writes in the New York Times about what she would do if her teenage daughter became pregnant out of wedlock. The column is inspired by the movie “Juno” (which produced 3 Golden Globe nominations), and here are some of Flanagan’s observations: “The bitterly unfair truth of sexuality: female desire can bring with it a form of punishment no man can begin to imagine, and so it is one appetite women and girls must always regard with caution.”
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Is Your Online Privacy Compromised?
The Nation magazine has recently published a provocative story that opens with this paragraph: ‘When one of America’s largest electronic surveillance systems was launched in Palo Alto a year ago, it sparked an immediate national uproar. The new system tracked roughly 9 million Americans, broadcasting their photographs and personal information on the Internet; 700,000 web-savvy young people organized online protests in just days. Time declared it “Gen Y’s first official revolution,” while a Nation blogger lauded students for taking privacy activism to “a mass scale.” Yet today, the activism has waned, and the surveillance continues largely unabated.’ The “surveillance system” in question is the ubiquitous Facebook networking site. Chances are,…
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Abortion and China’s Brutal One-Child Policy
The brutality of China’s one-child policy is infamous. Supposedly forced abortions no longer exist there, but this heart-rending report says otherwise. Read this. Weep. And pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” ‘A Chinese woman who was forced to have an abortion despite being nine months pregnant is suing the authorities for their actions.
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Hypocrisy in the Anglican Communion?
According to the Associated Press, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., Katharine Jefferts Schori, says that the only difference between gay clergy in the American church and those in other churches in the world is that the Americans are now open about it. Speaking of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Bishop to be elected in the Episcopal church, she says this: “He is certainly not alone in being a gay bishop; he’s certainly not alone in being a gay partnered bishop. He is alone in being the only gay partnered bishop who’s open about that status.”
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Normalizing Same-Sex “Marriage” through Divorce
The Washington Post has a disturbing article about the legal challenges facing same-sex couples who were married in Massachusetts but are now seeking divorces in other states. The basic quandary is this. Whereas states have laws providing for the division of assets, custody of children, payment of alimony, etc., states that do not recognize same-sex unions have no legal provisions for the dissolution of same-sex “marriages.” A case in point appears in the first paragraph.