Twenty-five year ago, give or take, I asked myself a rather straightforward question: “Why is it seemingly impossible to have peace in the Middle East?” After expending a quarter century in research, shedding blood, sweat and tears in the process,…
Trump is only the latest in a line of social Darwinists
When President Donald Trump claimed about his tariffs, “Only the weak will fail,” he revealed a philosophy — or theology — of the most perverse and evil magnitude. Trump demonstrated he’s not the ringmaster in a circus of clowns. The…
Trump 2.0: 100 days of Orwellian Newspeak
Every presidential administration uses messaging to manipulate facts and explain inconvenient truths. But Trump 2.0 rivals the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984 in its assaults on language, logic and memory. Winston Smith and the other dedicated messengers who…
So Paula White’s a complementarian? Really?
While many express concern about Paula White’s leadership in the White House Faith Office due to her adherence to the prosperity gospel and her bizarre, tongue-speaking prophecies for Donald Trump, one of the surprising developments of this past week was…
Banned Together documentary challenges ‘book burnings’
Amid a plethora of culture war issues dividing America today, book bans are among the most visible and controversial. From Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth banning books at the U.S. Naval Academy to parents attempting to ban books in public…
Imagine this great cloud of Baptist witnesses around the Resolute Desk
Two images crowd into my mind. One is of President Donald Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, surrounded by a group of evangelical leaders. The other image is the cover artwork of Margaret M. Mitchell’s The…
Shirtless J6er spews white supremacist lies about Texas teen’s killing
White supremacists are attempting to make the tragic murder of a North Texas teenager about Black-on-white crime, and the grieving father of the white victim isn’t playing along. What began as a bizarre tragedy that made headlines all across the…
Elon Musk dismantles evangelical ‘family values’
“Family values” have returned to eugenics, the practice of selective breeding of humans to improve their genetic composition. The new champion of eugenics, now known as the pro-natalist or genetic-determinist movement, is Elon Musk. “Family values,” a political weapon of…
Aaron Renn’s Three Worlds and the Negative World of conservatives’ own making
There are two sides to every breakup. This includes the split between Christianity and American culture. Conservative commentator Aaron Renn has created a taxonomy for understanding the country’s transition from what he terms Positive World, where being a Christian was…
If Republicans harm Social Security, they will pay for generations
The American public is having economic nightmares. Anxiety grows over the price of eggs, uncertainty about tariffs, inflation and tens of thousands of workers being fired. At the apex of the anxiety sits the proposed 2025 federal budget. If the…
Remembering the ‘People’s Pope’
My reflections on the papacy of Pope Francis, who died at the age of 88 in Rome on Monday, April 21 — less than a day after delivering brief Easter Sunday greetings to worshippers in St. Peter’s Basilica — are…
Trump, Harvard and Bob Jones University: The resurrection of racism
Donald Trump’s threat to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard University may be novel, but it is not new. It is, in fact, a resurrection of a previous kind of discrimination. There’s one other time in American history when a…