“Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the murder of the helpless.” Theodore Roosevelt Teddy Roosevelt was convinced that the family was the fundamental cornerstone of society. Anything that eroded the family’s strength or vitality, anything that sought to undermine its authority or integrity, and anything that subverted its holy purpose or virtue was …
Love: A Manifesto of Optimism
As affecting as is the image of terrorists crashing into buildings in an effort to take as many lives as possible, the image of firemen rushing into those same buildings in an effort to save as many lives as possible is more affecting still. The worst that evil can do is no match for the best that love can do.The …
Christianity: A Dangerous Idea
This past November, as part of Australian TV’s “Festival of Dangerous Ideas,” an episode was broadcast from the Sydney Opera House. Peter Hitchens, the lone conservative and Christian amongst a panel and audience of “progressives,” was laughed at, mocked, and pilloried for an hour. At the end of the broadcast, the panelists were asked: “Which of the so-called dangerous ideas …
Vatican: Obama’s Policies Hostile Toward Christianity
The Vatican’s chief justice has asserted what Christians in America have long understood: President Obama’s policies, domestic and foreign, are hostile toward Christianity and Christian civilization. In an interview with Polonia Christiana Magazine, Cardinal Raymond Burke affirmed the all too obvious reality that Obama “promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.” “It is true that the policies of the president of the United …
Creed or Chaos
During the Second World War, the English woman of letters, Dorothy Sayers, gave a stunning address on the importance of doctrine. Published after the war as Creed or Chaos, the central argument of the book remains remarkably prescient: “Something is happening to us today, which has not happened for a very long time. We are waging a war of religion. …
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Throughout all of human history this is a truth that men have taken into account as they have dealt with one another, as they have conducted business, as they have passed laws, and as they have built civil societies. It is the first and most basic insight of both anthropology and sociology. Evil exists. It wrecks havoc on our best …
Theological Lint-Pickers
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In 1813, Thomas Chalmers wrote in “The Christian Instructor” bemoaning the compulsion to internecine warfare amongst the Reformed, Paleo-Conservative, Theological Lint-Pickers, and Nomenclature-Saber-Rattlers in the Scottish Church. He described the tendency as “that mingled sentiment of fear and aversion with which they listen, even to opinions that are evangelical and …
Favorite Churchillisms
“We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average …
The “Solas” of Chalmers
Thinking about the “Five Solas of the Reformation,” on this eve of Reformation Sunday, I couldn’t help but also think of the reformational way Thomas Chalmers has shaped my thinking about life, grace, mercy, the Scriptures, and the beauty of the faith that the magisterial reformers bequeathed to us. It struck me that like them, Chalmers’ influence has also produced …
Working (and Waiting) for Justice
“Men have never wearied of political justice; they have only wearied of waiting for it.” G.K. Chesterton