Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, those of us of a particular bent loved the word “freedom.” The word was featured in the lyrics of many popular songs of the era, and the case could be made that hippies were called freaks as a pun on their oft-chanted “free” mantra. Heck, there was even a band named Free, which captivated the zeitgeist with a classic song about a man angling for a little “free” love with a woman too savvy...

Entrepreneur Jane Chen and artist Drue Kataoka met in 2012, and while their areas of expertise are quite different, they both wanted their work to have a meaningful impact. Working together through Embrace (Chen’s start-up), they have designed blankets that will save babies lives. They have designed swaddlers and blankets for parents in the developed world to purchase, a line of products called Little Lotus. These products help regulate babies’ body temperatures in the first few weeks of life. Meanwhile,...

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide – a systematic, murderous campaign carried out by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian population, killing 1.5 million and leaving millions more displaced. Though these atrocities have been verified through survivor accounts and historical records, to this day, not all countries have recognized the atrocities as “genocide” – the foremost being Turkey, along with others, including the United States. In a Huffington Post article, “The United States Should Remember Raphael...

“If we put our neighbor first, we are putting man above God, and that is what we have been doing ever since we began to worship humanity and make man the measure of all things. Whenever man is made the center of things, he es the storm center of trouble – and that is precisely the catch about serving munity.” –Dorothy Sayers In orienting our perspective on work and stewardship, one of the best starting points is Lester DeKoster’s view...

I grew up in a very small town. Our fashion purchases were limited to the dry goods store (yes, it still went by that name) which carried things like Buster Brown shoes and sensible sweaters, or the grain elevator, where you could buy durable overalls for farm work. As someone who eagerly awaited Seventeen magazine every month and witnessed the birth of MTV, you can imagine my fashion dilemma. The closest mall was 70 miles away. I needed Calvin Klein...

Today is tax day, the day when individual e tax returns are due to the federal government. Here are seven figures you should know about tax day: 1. The average federal tax rate for all households (tax liabilities divided by e, including government transfer payments) before taxes is 18.1 percent. 2. Households in the top quintile (including the top percentile) paid 68.8 percent of all federal taxes, households in the middle quintile paid 9.1 percent, and those in the bottom...

The recent pushback against state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts has sent a signal that, as Utah legislator Stuart Adams say, “the landscape of protecting religious liberty has changed. Permanently.” Many Christians are drawing similar conclusions about the cause of religious liberty being all but lost. I think this view is premature and that, to paraphrase John Paul Jones, we have not yet begun to fight. But our arguments aren’t for religious liberty certainly aren’t as persuasive as they should be....

In the latest video blog from For the Life of the World, Evan Koons recites Rainer Maria Rilke’s powerful poem, “Go to the Limits of your Longing” from Book of Hours. “In this poem is the whole of what it means to live for the life of the world,” Koons explains. “God speaks to each of us as he makes us.” The poem offers plement to the conclusion of the series, in which Stephen Grabill reminds us that the “church...