In his book “What Americans Believe,” George Barna points out that 87% of non-Christians and 77% of self-described born-again believers agreed with the statement “People are basically good.” In other words, our culture, by and large, has discarded the idea of original sin.

The sophisticated among us roll our eyes at the concept of innate human corruption. We snicker at the notion that certain actions, thoughts and behaviors are still deemed to be sinful.… Continue Reading

The flame of wokeness — intolerance in the name of tolerance — wasn’t lit recently. It has been smoldering under the flag of liberalism for the past 100 years or so.

“These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own,” G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1928. At the time, moral relativism was already making its long, slow march through the institutions that impart cultural values, including liberal church denominations.… Continue Reading

Can we agree that words mean something? All of us know that there is great power in our words and that civilizations are built and cultures are conquered not so much by armies and navies, but by speeches and lectures, blogs and books — in other words, by the power of our words more so than the threat of bullets and bombs.

This was Huxley and Orwell’s message. They warned of dystopias where the manipulation of words would be used as a means to total power and total control.… Continue Reading

It’s June, and for the next 30 days, we will be inundated with our country’s monthlong celebration of pride.

We will see it everywhere. It will be pervasive. The rainbow’s ever-increasing colors will be inescapable. We will see it in the news. We’ll see it at Target. We’ll see it in Walmart. We’ll see it in our public parks and at our schools. We’ll see it in our theaters. We’ll see it on T-shirts, umbrellas, bumper stickers, and even at our churches.… Continue Reading

What is it with Republicans who try to fight the culture war with one hand tied behind their backs? They shift to a defensive crouch even when their position is clearly right.

G.K. Chesterton mocked this tendency years ago. Some politicians, he wrote, would loudly oppose the deadly mugging of a grandmother in a city park not because it’s immoral but because it would be a “waste of a perfectly good grandmother.”… Continue Reading

Over the past several weeks, as the average American watched in stunned silence as the world burned, the lead story that seemed to have entirely escaped the attention of the mainstream media is our culture’s near-universal degradation of women and their rights. Consider the following headlines:

NCAA championship swimmer Riley Gaines is assaulted at San Francisco State University. She is punched multiple times by a man wearing a dress. Why?… Continue Reading

One thing I’ve learned by living in the reality of rural America as opposed to the concrete and neon of Washington or New York City is that freedom can be deceiving. Or maybe better said, freedom is often the opposite of what it appears to be.

For example, when I drive through the ranches of Kansas and see cattle roaming freely in the fields, they are always surrounded by a fence.… Continue Reading

“Socialism,” said Richard John Neuhaus, “is the religion people get when they lose their religion.” While that might have been true in Neuhaus’s day, many young Christians are now attempting to have their faith and socialism too.

I never got the opportunity to meet Fr. Neuhaus. He died in January 2009, two months before I started working as the web editor at the magazine he founded, First Things. I suspect, though, that the staunch advocate of democratic capitalism would be surprised and dismayed to find his publication now has editors who identify as socialist and columnists who claim capitalism is inimical to Christianity.… Continue Reading