Two significant academic scandals from the past year underscore why the new book Critical Dilemma, written by Drs. Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer, is so timely and important. In my view, this book offers the definitive critique of critical theory from a Christian worldview. You can receive a copy for a gift to the Colson Center this month . (Just go to colsoncenter.org/October ). Eric Stewart, a former professor in the highly rated criminology department at Florida State University, is the principal...
Oct 11, 2023•5 min
A Texas professor has filed a lawsuit after he was allegedly fired for teaching that a person's sex is determined by chromosomes. Dr. Johnson Varkey said the administration at St. Philip's College, a community college, told him several students made complaints about his " unacceptable religious preaching " in his biology class. It's unclear exactly what they considered "religious" about his lesson: Was it when he said the word "male" corresponds to XY chromosomes and the word "female" correspond...
Oct 10, 2023•1 min
On Saturday morning, October 7 , in a highly coordinated attack on Israel, the Islamic terrorist group Hamas fired thousands of rockets, overwhelming the nation's Iron Dome defense system, and sent hundreds of heavily armed militants, breaching the border. In addition to soldiers at military outposts, civilians, including women and children, were also targeted, in neighborhoods, at bus stops, and at public events. By the end of the day, at least 900 Israelis had been killed and 100 kidnapped, ma...
Oct 10, 2023•7 min
Recently, a reporter with The Free Press attended something called " Secular Sabbath ," a Los Angeles-based club that meets occasionally to connect with a loosely defined "higher power." At this Secular Sabbath, people hung out in a sauna, meditated, and colored pictures. Human beings were made to worship, whether they know it or not. At a time when church attendance is plummeting , people are still looking for God, even if in all the wrong places. One of the Secular Sabbath-keepers stated plain...
Oct 09, 2023•1 min
Today marks the 770th anniversary of the death of Robert Grosseteste who, though from a humble background, rose to importance as a church statesman, theologian, educator, and eventually bishop of Lincoln, England. Among the few details known about Grosseteste's education and early career is that he was educated in a cathedral school, possibly at Hereford. He showed such promise in the liberal arts, canon law, and medicine that, in 1192, he was recommended for a position with William de Vere, the...
Oct 09, 2023•5 min
John and Maria discuss the hotly debated conference at Andy Stanley's North Point Community Church. How is boredom affecting American education? And science is facing a lack of trust over a series of questionable studies. - Recommendations - Lighthouse Voices: The Genesis of Gender with Dr. Abigail Favale Micah Mattix on Substack Section 1 - North Point Church's "Unconditional" Conference Andy Stanley's "Unconditional" Contradiction Andy Stanley's Unconditional Conference: Deep Dive Response A S...
Oct 06, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Recently, historian Joel Kotkin argued in Quillette magazine that History has moved to the front line of social conflict, but rarely has it been so poorly understood and sketchily taught. After decades of declining interest, only 13 percent of eighth graders achieve proficiency in the subject today. … When I show my students a picture of Lenin, barely one-in-ten of them recognize it. Students saturated by information technology have less encouragement to study the past and, in their classrooms, ...
Oct 06, 2023•1 min
Far from being an otherworldly religion, Christianity teaches both the importance and goodness of life in this world. In fact, from Jesus' healing ministry to the work of modern missionary doctors, a consistent feature of the work of the Church in the world has been to care for the sick and needy, and not just point them to the life to come. The early Church understood Jesus' ministry to be a paradigm for their own work. So, just as Jesus set believers free from their bondage to sin, early Chris...
Oct 06, 2023•4 min
Ireland only legalized abortion in 2018. At the time, a three-day waiting period between an initial consultation and the actual procedure was established, designed to help women considering abortion think through the implications of the life-altering (and life-ending) procedure. Five years later, pro-abortion advocates are pushing for its repeal, which may be because it has been so effective. As Right to Life UK reports, in 2022, 2,600 women in Ireland had babies instead of abortions after a thr...
Oct 05, 2023•1 min
Last year, Pew Research reported that only 29% of Americans now are willing to say they have a "great deal of confidence" in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public. That represents an 11% decline since 2020. This dramatic drop is both significant, given the historic importance of medical research in shaping public opinion, and understandable, given a growing crisis in the reliability of scientific research overall. A year ago, in a Breakpoint commentary, we described this ...
Oct 05, 2023•6 min
Under a military blockade since December of last year , Armenian residents of the Nagorno-Karabakh region have been deprived of food, fuel, and medicine by neighboring Azerbaijan. After an Azerbaijani military offensive killed 200 and the provisional government of Nagorno-Karabakh disarmed, the exit route to neighboring Armenia was clogged with 28,000 refugees trying to escape. Azerbaijani officials have long threatened Armenians with veiled threats of violence that watchdogs warn are genocidal ...
Oct 04, 2023•1 min
For the last few weeks, all eyes, at least evangelical eyes, have been locked on Atlanta. When North Point Community Church announced the " Unconditional " conference, held this past weekend, many noted that two of the speakers were men "married" to other men. Many of the rest were on the record as "affirming" same-sex relationships, recognizing LGBTQ as legitimate categories of human identity, and describing their work as hoping to convert Christians to their ideas about sex, identity, and marr...
Oct 04, 2023•6 min
The Titanic went down over 100 years ago, and the world remains fascinated by its story and its passengers. John Harper, a Scottish evangelist headed to preach in Chicago, was one such passenger who ended up witnessing in the moments before his death. Dr. Erwin Lutzer of Moody Church described his story, "Harper, knowing he could not survive long in the icy water, took off his life jacket and threw it to another person with the words, 'You need this more than I do!' Moments later, Harper disappe...
Oct 03, 2023•1 min
Christians who work in politics to end legalized abortion do so because innocent lives are at stake. That would be enough cause in and of itself. However, abortion isn't just one of the many issues that we should care about. In many ways, abortion, perhaps more than any other single issue, symbolizes our society's core beliefs. Simply put, Christian societies do not kill their smallest, most vulnerable members. Pagan societies, on the other hand, do. In a fascinating recent essay published at Fi...
Oct 03, 2023•5 min
In an article at The Guardian , theater director Abbey Wright described talking with 10,000 children and teenagers about the impact of pornography on their lives. She was careful not to tell young children more than they knew, asking them simply, "What is bad about the internet?" Still, she was shocked how many described pornography finding them . Children as young as six recalled popups and ads placed in otherwise innocent content. Some were shown porn by friends or siblings. Yet many parents r...
Oct 02, 2023•1 min
Fourteen-year-old Sage Blair had already been through a lot by the time she was legally adopted by her grandparents. When she entered high school, she began to experiment, as many of her friends were, with her "gender identity." All the while, the school deliberately withheld information from her adoptive parents. Sage was encouraged to adopt the name "Draco," claim male pronouns, and use the boys' bathroom. Only after Sage was physically assaulted by a group of boys in the bathroom did her pare...
Oct 02, 2023•4 min
John and Maria talk about Tuesday's Breakpoint Forum on Christian Nationalism and the latest examples of America turning its back on Christian refugees. - Recommendations - Colson Center National Conference 2024 in Arlington, TX! Section 1 - Breakpoint 's Forum on Christian Nationalism Breakpoint Forum: Unmasking Christian Nationalism Section 2 - America's Refugee Policy "German Homeschoolers Face Deportation After 15 Years in the U.S." "Admit Christian Refugees" "Closed Doors: Persecuted Christ...
Sep 29, 2023•57 min
In December 1938, British stockbroker Nicholas Winton canceled a ski vacation and instead traveled to Prague. There, as the German military began its occupation of Czechoslovakia , he worked with friends to save the lives of 669 Jewish children. When he returned to London, Winton raised money to purchase train tickets and passports, and cut through red tape so that the children could be placed in foster care once they reached Great Britain. According to his daughter's account, Winton never knew ...
Sep 29, 2023•1 min
In September, most U.S. states released their public school "report cards." These reports are intended to evaluate for parents, community leaders, and policymakers the quality of education being offered across the state. By federal law , report cards must measure academic performance and graduation rates. Of course, these assessments are only helpful if they make sense. Many don't. For example, Ohio's Department of Education, following a few other states, recently stopped using letter grades on ...
Sep 29, 2023•6 min
The Christian Post recently reported that the Bank of America closed the accounts of Indigenous Advance Ministries , a Christian nonprofit whose goal is discipleship and business training for young Ugandans. The bank denies closing the accounts based on the ministry's religious beliefs, claiming it instead closed them because of the kind of debt-collection business it has in Uganda. Still, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco points out that, under an Obama-era policy, many l...
Sep 28, 2023•1 min
Attempt to instruct a group of 12-year-old kids about the importance of duty, honor, perseverance, and friendship by means of a lecture, and the most likely result will be glazed eyes and tuned-out ears. If instead of a lecture, however, the lesson began with, "There once was a tiny creature called a Hobbit, whose name was Frodo. He had hairy feet and a magic ring, and whenever he put that ring on his finger, he'd disappear. But each time he put the ring on, the Ring exercised a dark power over ...
Sep 28, 2023•5 min
Abortion advocates are often dismissive on the question of fetal pain, but a recent article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics brought together pro-abortion and pro-life experts to clarify what we know about what the preborn feel: "We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self-reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally." According to resear...
Sep 27, 2023•1 min
Not long ago, most non-Christians treated pornography as a harmless expression of sexual freedom. For half a century, Hugh Hefner's Playboy philosophy dominated, teaching people to wink at porn use. Children discovering a relative's "stash" became a popular trope in TV and film and was played off for laughs. In the digital age, distribution and access became easier and instant, and the content grew darker. Finally, more people are admitting that, though it was never harmless, this content now po...
Sep 27, 2023•6 min
According to Cara Buckley with The New York Times , a growing number of "tiny forests" are appearing across urban areas in the U.S. In addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, reducing water runoff, and providing homes for wildlife, "[T]iny forests can help lower temperatures in places where pavement, buildings and concrete surfaces absorb and retain heat from the sun." The concept was pioneered by Japanese ecologist Akira Miyawaki and suggests that people are the best stewards of nature . What the...
Sep 26, 2023•1 min
Given our need for courage, this year, we've centered the entire Colson Center National Conference around the theme of Courageous Faith. Please plan by saving the date and registering today. The conference is May 30-June 2 at the Loews Hotel in Arlington, Texas . To learn more, go to colsonconference.org . ______ In 2020, January Littlejohn's daughter came home confused about her sexual identity after three of her close friends at school began identifying as transgender. Littlejohn, herself a li...
Sep 26, 2023•6 min
In a recent video that went viral, a 60-year-old New York trash thrifter shared how he makes a living reselling and recycling trash in the Big Apple. From bottles alone, he makes $400 to $800 a week, plus another $1000 from things he resells. He's found gold, cash, diamonds, and Cartier watches ... all in the trash. But his best find was Jesus Christ. As the interview goes on, the man shares how after being involved in human trafficking and drug markets, he lost everything—his wife, his kids, an...
Sep 25, 2023•1 min
Recently, the U.S. Senate held a closed-door meeting with the biggest names from the world of big tech, such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. Senate leadership informed the media that the purpose of the meeting was to have a conversation about how the federal government could "encourage" the development of artificial intelligence while also mitigating its "risks." Given that focus, it's more interesting who wasn't invited than who was: no ethicists, philosophers, or theologians, no...
Sep 25, 2023•7 min
John Stonestreet talks to Greg Koukl, the author of the new book Street Smarts, about effective ways to engage an increasingly hostile culture. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you a copy of Greg Koukl's book Street Smarts . To receive a copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges, visit colsoncenter.org/September . For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org...
Sep 22, 2023•50 min
Based on media reports, you might think the ocean is basically dead from pollution. But rumors of the ocean's demise are greatly exaggerated. Recently, a colleague from Florida received an email from a Christian mom: My son Christopher, 11, used to be super interested in SCUBA diving. But this morning he revealed that he thinks there's no point because the oceans are full of trash and there's nothing beautiful to see anymore. So, my colleague, who loves to SCUBA dive, sent underwater photos of s...
Sep 22, 2023•1 min
Research consistently shows that young people who wait until after the wedding have a better chance for a stable, fulfilling, happy marriage. They also do not have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. Though this does not fit with contemporary assumptions about human beings, obedience to the Lord's loving plan always works best, and brings incalculable benefits into our lives. While we may or may not hear this kind of moral clarity in church, it's been quite a ...
Sep 22, 2023•5 min
