It appears that the conventional wisdom is that the Iraq War was a mistake. One of the striking things about Michael Moore’s much publicized joust with Wolf Blitzer is that Blitzer seems to just concede the point that now everybody agrees that the Iraq War was a mistake. The conventional wisdom even prevails at CNN. I for one don’t agree with that analysis, and neither does Peter Wallison over at the Wall Street Journal, who writes about what would have happened if Sadam Hussein had remained in power. He writes:
-
-
So the Pope Is Catholic
Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church because it is the only one that can lay claim to a legitimate apostolic succession. A writer from the Associated Press has figured out the significance of the timing and the content of Benedict’s move:
-
Can a public servant call homosexuality a sin?
I don’t look to the editors at the New York Times to agree with Christian teaching on sexuality, but neither do I expect them to advocate a policy that effectively excludes Christians from government service. Yet that is precisely what they have done today in an editorial about President Bush’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. James Holsinger. They argue that Dr. Holsinger’s adherence to his church’s teaching on homosexuality should exclude him from being the Surgeon General. They write:
-
Tony Jones: A Gobbledygook “Orthodoxy”
If Brian McLaren is the author of A Generous Orthodoxy, then Tony Jones is certainly the author of gobbledygook “orthodoxy.” And, yes, the scare quotes are necessary because, as you will soon see, Jones’ “orthodoxy” is anything but orthodox. Tony Jones is the National Coordinator of Emergent Village (a network of emerging churches that constitutes the theological leftwing of the emerging church), and he is not so happy that his plenary address will be excluded from the published volume of essays from the 2007 Wheaton Theology Conference.
-
JBMW Articles Available
The contents of the Spring 2007 issue of The Journal for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood are posted on the journal’s website. You don’t want to miss the two articles that are available for download right now: Russell D. Moore, “O. J. Simpson is Not a Complementarian: Male Headship and Violence aganist Women” Jason Hall, “A Review of Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity by Kevin Giles” If you are not already subscribed to JBMW, you need to be.
-
Mark Driscoll on Women in Ministry
I wrote last month about an article that Jim Hamilton and I have written for the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In our research for this article, we obtained Pastor Mark Driscoll’s position statement on church leadership, which was published as a little booklet titled Church Leadership. According to Mars Hill Church’s website, this booklet and others from their “Theology Series” are slated to be published by Crossway in 2008. So you can no longer download Church Leadership from the church’s website. You’ll have to wait for the book. In any case, we were interested in Driscoll’s book because we were trying to figure out…
-
Schoolhouse Rocks the 4th of July
Now this is nostalgic. I used to watch “Schoolhouse Rock” every Saturday morning. This is where a whole generation learned about manifest destiny (“Elbow Room”), English grammar (“Conjunction Junction”), how a bill becomes a law (“I’m just a bill”), and much more.
-
America: My Home away from Home
America is my home away from home. I am a sojourner here, just like everyone else, passing through on my way to eternity. “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). Nevertheless, I regard it as a smiling Providence to have been born here, and I give thanks today. I have been to Washington, D.C. since my last 4th of July post. One of the highlights of my trip was a visit to the Lincoln Memorial. My favorite political speech is inscribed on the wall inside the memorial. The speech is Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
-
Google’s Patriotic Graphic
Google always has a special graphic on its search engine on holidays. Pictured at the right is the one for this year’s 4th of July.
-
Scooter Libby, Politics, and the Rule of Law
I’ve written too much about Scooter Libby over the last two years to let today’s big news go by without comment (see previous posts). Today, President Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s two and half year prison sentence. Bush didn’t pardon Libby, he merely said that Libby would not have to go to jail. Libby will still have to serve probation, pay a $250,000 fine, and identify himself as a convicted felon. I have always held that if someone commits a crime, then they should pay their debt to society. But the sound and fury that you are hearing from the left side of the talking head class is disingenuous outrage.