We have repeated Francis Schaeffer’s warning about ‘personal peace and affluence’ often at Blue Kennel, but it’s time to do it again. He declared, back about 1970, that the ‘Silent Majority’, a term Nixon had begun to use, was composed […]
Evangelicals
Do We Have Something to Offer Working Class Whites? An Open Letter to the CCDA Leadership
In the last couple of years there have been a number of stories about an increase in the death rate of working class whites that has not been paralleled among their African American and Latino counterparts. At the same time, […]
Authoritarianism is a Hot Subject Nowadays
There is a lot of intellectual fuss about ‘authoritarianism’ nowadays, because of the rise of Donald Trump and what appears to be the overthrow of traditional ‘fusion’ conservatism. A long essay by Amanda Taub in “Vox” is the most thorough […]
Richard Nixon: A Precedent for Donald Trump?
It occurred to me that a possible precedent for Donald Trump might be none other than Richard Nixon. Now I think that Nixon was a far more intelligent man than Trump, and, for all his sins, a person of superior […]
Christians May be Decreasing in Number in America, But Not Because of any ‘War’
Jay Michaelson, in The Daily Beast, proclaimed on Christmas Day that there is a decrease in the numbers and influence of Christians in America, but that the “war” on Christianity is a myth. I’m not sure the war on Christianity […]
More on the Whole ‘Judeo-Christian’ Meme
In my post four years ago, “9/11, Ten Years Later” I talked a little bit about the concept of ‘Judeo-Christian’. I’d like to expand on it. As my source says, the meme ‘Judeo-Christian’ originated in the United States after World War […]
James K. A. Smith and the Pentecostal World View
Is there such a thing as a ‘Pentecostal philosophy’? James K. A. Smith says there is. They don’t necessarily talk about it in ways we are accustomed to, but he says they have one. And here are its major elements […]
Does Jesus Oppose the Death Penalty?
For some reason it is hard for people, including even most evangelicals, to imagine Jesus supporting a death penalty for any sort of crime. On the other hand, if He claimed to be God the Son, “I and the Father […]
Heterosexual Cohabitation and The Church – After Obergefell
The historic church, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox, has taken a dim view of ‘cohabitation,’ which used to be called ‘shacking up’ or ‘living in sin.’ The faithful churches in fact generally try to deny the Sacrament to those in cohabitation. […]
Our Adventure in Ethiopia
In March of 2015, our family and some friends took a 3½ week trip through Ethiopia, one of the most unusual of sub-Saharan African countries. Ethiopia is exceptional in two ways; It became a Christian culture in the 300s, whereas […]