Senator Hillary Clinton has been widely viewed as a front-runner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. But I have long held the view that however much she is loved among Democrats, she lacks the appeal necessary to win the general election.
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The Way Forward in Iraq
About a year ago, I had a conversation with an old friend who had just returned from an 18-month tour of duty in Iraq. I asked Patrick if he thought the prospects for success in Iraq were really as bleak as American news reports make them out to be. His response was clear: “We can’t win unless the Iraqis want to win, and they are not taking responsibility.” A year later this still appears to be the case. The U.S. has the brute force required to pacify Iraq and could bomb the country into submission if it wanted to. But, of course, the U.S. prefers a political solution over a…
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McCain’s Baggage Going in to 2008
Senator John McCain has always been sort of a gadfly within the Republican party, and I think this fact will create some difficulties for him as he runs for President in 2008. Many conservatives have had persistent questions about his conservative bona fides, and Hugh Hewitt writes about what may very well be the heaviest baggage that McCain carries into 2008:
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Is the Apostle Paul Anti-American? (Part 4)
Today is the last day of the 58th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, and I will be presenting my paper on the “Fresh Perspective” on Paul. For a limited time, I am going to make that paper available here. If you would like to download and read the entire presentation, you can do so at the following link: “The ‘Fresh Perspective’ on Paul: A Theology of Anti-Americanism” – by Denny Burk
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Is the Apostle Paul Anti-American? (Part 3)
In two of my previous posts I have been discussing what N. T. Wright has dubbed a “Fresh Perspective” on the apostle Paul. What we have seen is that the Fresh Perspective (FP) reads Paul’s gospel as a confrontation with the Roman Empire. This confrontation implies a confrontation with all empires, including the so-called American empire of the current day. Today I want to consider whether this reading of Paul’s letters finds any resonance in evangelicalism and whether it will provide Evangelicals with a more faithful way to interpret the Bible.
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Is the Apostle Paul Anti-American? (Part 2)
In yesterday’s post I introduced the so-called “Fresh Perspective” (FP) on Paul and some of the antagonistic things that these scholars are saying about America. Today, I want to explain why it is that these biblical scholars say what they say in opposition to the United States. The FP holds as axiomatic at least two assumptions, with a third assumption being increasingly advocated in the literature. First, it is assumed that emperor worship was pervasive in Paul’s missionary context. FP interpreters note that the emperor cult of Paul’s day was the ideological glue that held the Roman empire together.
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Is the Apostle Paul Anti-American? (Part 1)
Is the Apostle Paul anti-American? This is the question that I will be addressing in a paper that I am presenting this week at the 58th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in Washington, D. C., the theme of which is “Christians in the Public Square.” Theologues who are familiar with the latest fads in biblical interpretation are familiar with what is known as the “New Perspective” on Paul. There has been so much ink spilled over this way of reading Paul’s letters, that I hardly need to rehearse that discussion here.
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The End of Conservatism?
Paul Krugman of the New York Times is at least a little bit “giddy” about the results of last Tuesday’s elections. Krugman feels this way not just because the results marked the end of a Republican “reign of error,” but also because he believes “that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party” (see Krugman’s Op-Ed, “The Great Revulsion“). I’m not convinced, however, that Krugman’s analysis of the election results is on target.
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The Politics of Jesus and the New Majority
Two thousand years ago, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, reproached Jesus’ silence with the following words, “You do not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify you?” Jesus’ response to Pilate’s challenge was clear and direct, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:10-11).
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George W. Bush: God’s Whipping Boy?
I am fast becoming a big fan of S. M. Hutchens of Touchstone Magazine. Mr. Hutchens’ writes with an uncommon wit and insight that you just don’t see very often. In a recent post on Touchstone’s “Mere Comments” blog, Mr. Hutchens argues that liberals hate George W. Bush because they view him as a proxy for God. The essay is titled “God’s Whipping Boy,” and it says,