Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary’s Spring Banquet. Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, spoke at Calvin Theological Seminary’s Spring Banquet, endorsing the school’s Dutch neo-Calvinist heritage. “Calvin Theological Seminary is an underappreciated asset in the evangelical world. There’s nothing the evangelical world needs more than a bracing dose of Kuyperian theology,” he said. The speech also marked the announcement of the establishment of the Charles W. Colson Presidential Chair at the seminary. Thanks to a major gift from the Richard...

‘God Makes No Mistakes’ You may not know it, but Loretta Lynn is a pretty good theologian. She’s so good, in fact, that some contemporary theologians, open theists like Clark Pinnock, for example, could take some lessons in orthodoxy. The lyrics to a song off her most recent record, Van Lear Rose, that illustrates her high view of God. Here are the words to “God Makes No Mistakes”: Why, I’ve heard people say Why is this tree bent Why they...

In the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine, the article “Monkey Business,” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt examines economist Keith Chen’s research with capuchin monkeys and money. Here’s another case of science, in this case economics, being used to “prove” the continuity between (and therefore equivalency of) humans and animals. The implicit message is that we are really not all that different from our fellow creatures, nor that special. This seems almost absurd, but it’s...

Much has been written in recent weeks about Live 8, a series of concerts that will take place on July 6 in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Philadelphia. The name refers not only to the original Live Aid concerts that took place in 1985, but is also a reference to the G8 meetings that will be taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland at the same time as the concerts. G8 organizers are planning for massive protests which have been urged on...

Power corrupts…and upsets babies. Just in case anyone missed (or didn’t miss) my posting last week, I was on vacation following the birth of my first child, a son, on May 30 (Memorial Day). Owen Flynn Ballor 9 lbs., 2 oz. 20.5 inches 5/30/05 10:10 pm ...

Google recently surpassed Time Warner as the world’s top media stock. Google provides services to about 19 million users per day. People go to Google to find things, participate in discussions via online forums, to check and send email, driving directions, and a host of other services. That is a lot of information about a lot of people…where does it all go? Apparently, Google keeps it all! What is the cost of this data collection? How much of our own...

The Roundtable on Religion & Social Policy interviewed Acton’s Karen Woods, director of the Center for Effective Compassion (CEC) this week. Woods spoke about the work of the CEC, including the Samaritan Award, and also gave her perspective on the federal Faith-Based and Community Initiative. She says in part, With welfare reform in ’96, and certainly the waivers that preceded that in certain states, there was a change in the way that we looked at social services. Suddenly, work was...

A Dove Foundation report released this week shows a link between family-friendly movies and profitability. es away from the Dove report with a sense that the movie industry is beginning to recognize a profit opportunity in producing more morally robust movies,” writes Rev. Robert A. Sirico. Read the full text here. The Dove Foundation report is available here (PDF). ...

The article I referenced a couple weeks ago about the trends in conservative think tanks and philanthropy noted that the first phase was ushered in by F. A. Hayek. In some ways, the arc that Piereson sketches follows a change in the relationship that Hayek observed between what he termed “academics” and “intellectuals.” In his 1949 essay, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” (PDF) Hayek defines an intellectual in this way: The term intellectuals, however, does not at once convey a true...

In the spirit of C. S. Lewis’ classic The Abolition of Man ing available online, I pass along this story: Macho man is an endangered species…fashion industry insiders say. A study along these lines led by French marketing and style consultants Nelly Rodi was unveiled to Fashion Group International during a seminar Tuesday on future strategy for the fashion industry in Europe. Asks Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency’s managing director, “We are watching the birth of a hybrid man....

Two years ago the Head Start battle focused on effectiveness: Were low e kids truly better prepared for starting school because they had participated in the program? No solid answers emerged, but like so many other Beltway debates, the substance issues abate once the funding crisis is passed. Now Head Start is the focus of yet another brouhaha. Legislation attached to H.R.2123 by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) ensures faith-based organizations receiving federal Head Start early childhood program dollars are not...

This post at Davids Medienkritik, “Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung: One-Sided Attack Journalism as News,” gives us a perfect example of what can happen when the media es unmoored. And I’ll take it as a piece of concrete evidence supporting the conclusions of my earlier post today. ...