Albert Mohler has summed up the “predicament” that is Rick Santorum’s candidacy. Rick Santorum is still a long shot for the Republican nomination, but his candidacy and its coverage in the mainstream media tell us a great deal about the fate of conservative candidates and conservative convictions in the public square… You do not have to agree with the way Rick Santorum chooses to argue on all issues to recognize the central predicament he represents. Far more Americans than we would like to think agree with Maureen Dowd than with Rick Santorum. The moral convictions Santorum articulates are deeply rooted in the Christian inheritance of Western civilization, but the denial…
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My Review of the Oscars
Light. Weightless. Ephemeral. The best line of the night came from Billy Crystal: “Enjoy yourselves, because nothing can take the sting of the world’s economic problems like watching millionaires present each other with golden statues.”
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President Obama’s Christianity
Cathleen Falsani has recently republished the full transcript of an hour long interview with candidate Barack Obama about his faith. The information is not new, but it is relevant to recent conversations on the topic of President Obama’s Christianity. The interview took place in 2004 when Obama was still a state senator in Illinois. It was a couple days after Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won, and four months before he was introduced to the rest of the country in his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The interview focuses entirely on Obama’s faith, and I think it opens a…
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What is a Christian?
Franklin Graham, Jr. scandalized the talking heads on “Morning Joe” earlier this week when he appeared on the program and suggested that President Obama might not be a “Christian” (see video below). I appreciate Rev. Graham and his bold commitment to Christ, but I think there was much in what he said that was muddled and inconsistent and that probably did very little to win folks over to his position. I for one wish that the conversation had gone differently. Having said that, one item that needed to be clarified was exactly what is meant by the term “Christian.” It was very clear that Graham and his interlocutors were operating…
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Do You Have $3.5 Million in Your Attic?
I was an avid comic book collector as a kid. I had a notion that the rags I was collecting might someday be worth something, so I stored them all in little plastic bags. I don’t know what they’re worth today, but I’m sure that it’s far less than I was hoping when I was a kid. But that wasn’t the case for Michael Rorrer who recently found 345 comic books neatly stacked in a basement closet as he cleaned out his great-aunt’s Virginia home after her death. He didn’t know that they were collector’s items and sat on them for a long time. He mentioned something about them to…
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Recovering Drug Addict Finds His Way Back to Pulpit
Six years after stepping down as senior pastor of Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, Rev. Skip Ryan is now returning as an associate pastor. His story is appeared in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News. Here’s a bit of it: Outwardly, Ryan seemed a model of success. Park Cities Presbyterian was formed in 1991 as a more conservative offshoot of Highland Park Presbyterian. Ryan was called to be the new church’s first senior minister. And in just a few years, the church had grown from 1,000 to 5,000 and had purchased the former Highland Baptist Church facilities on Oak Lawn Avenue. But inwardly, Ryan said, he felt less and less…
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A Summer Youth Camp Like No Other
Boyce College and Southern Seminary will be hosting a youth camp this summer that is unlike anything you have seen before. It is called “D3: Leadership, Worldview, Missions.” Here’s a brief description:
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Santorum Loses Douthat
If Ross Douthat is any kind of bellwether, Santorum’s candidacy for the GOP nomination is in trouble. Douthat shares Santorum’s communitarian and social conservative instincts, but now even Douthat sees Santorum as too hot-headed and undisciplined to win in November. He writes, In the (still-unlikely) event that Santorum captured the nomination, then, his campaign would probably be to social conservatism what Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign was to small-government conservatism: A losing effort that would inspire countless observers to declare the loser’s worldview discredited, rejected, finished. In the longer run, a Santorum candidacy might suggest a path that a more electable pro-life populist could follow, much as Reagan ultimately followed Goldwater.…
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Why I’m Thankful We’re Keeping Our Name
I think I may be in the minority among those of my generation in the SBC. But I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the news last night that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) would be sticking with its name. The task force appointed by SBC President Bryant Wright recommended last night that “Southern Baptist Convention” remain our legal name and that “Great Commission Baptists” be adopted as our nickname. I am fine with the nickname, but I have been mainly concerned that our official name stay the same. So I couldn’t be happier about this result.
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Joe Scarborough’s Rant against Rick Santorum
Joe Scarborough tells candidate Rick Santorum to shut-up about “the stupid side issues” saying, If you want to debate those issues, let’s have a Bible study…but if you’re running for the President of the United States, talk about how you’re going to reform the tax system, how you’re gonna save entitlements, and how you’re going to bring jobs back to America. And if you can’t be focused enough to do that, go home!”