Ah, Autumn in an even year. The crisp smell of approaching winter, the exploding color on the trees, and the sound of the desperate mad dash for votes. As I was travelling a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a copy of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, a play Flannery O’Connor claimed was “good if you don’t know it, better if you do.” It is the story of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of...

Michelle Malkin has a report up at HotAir on how God’s been edited out of our favorite cartoon veggies. Mostly a poke at NBC, but apparently Big Idea is running out of big ideas too. Is it time for a write-in campaign from all you Christian vegetarians out there? Here’s Big Idea’s explanation for the whole thing: Recognizing that we are making a difference to Saturday morning TV by bringing programming that is “absent of bad and has a presence of good”...

S.T. Karnick, who also blogs at The Reform Club, has some pretty solid and informative musings on popular culture. One of his most recent es along with the news that Fox has created a new religion and family friendly division for its movie studios, named FoxFaith. It also looks like Disney is phasing out its plans to make R-rated movies. As Karnick writes, “The best way for Christians to affect Hollywood is not to protest but to go to more...

…to go with this one, folks! In Malibu, talk of septic tanks, leach pits and the ubiquitous foul stench known as the "Malibu smell" is hardly new. After rainstorms, officials often must post signs on Malibu beaches urging swimmers and surfers to steer clear because of health dangers. Celebrity residents Pierce Brosnan and Ted Danson are among many who have championed the cause of better water quality… In May, Malibu suffered a black eye in the annual statewide beach survey...

Today’s Grand Rapids Press has an article with some background on tonight’s debate between Ron Sider and Rev. Robert A. Sirico. More details are below. If you live in the West Michigan area or are in town tonight, please stop by. Wealth and Poverty in Light of the Gospel: How Can Christians Work Together if We Disagree? Mon — October 2, 2006 Grand Rapids, MI Calvin Theological Seminary Auditorium 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm Ronald J. Sider, professor of theology...

Reading through the narrative of king Saul in 1 Samuel, it occurs to me that it is in part an object lesson of Lord Acton’s dictum about the corrupting influence of power, in this case political. The story begins in 1 Samuel 8, when Israel asks for a king. When Samuel was old and had passed on his rulership of Israel to his sons, who did “not walk” in Samuel’s faithful ways, the people of Israel clamor for a king....

Just one week after the public release of the Catholic High School Honor Roll, positive reactions are streaming in. Many schools have let us know that they have observed a noticeable change because they were named to the Honor Roll. Other schools have used already used this occasion to jump start their advancement engines. Rev. Ronald Schwenzer, President of St. Thomas High School in Houston, TX, observed the usefulness of the Honor Roll. “Last year we had an inquiry from...

Mark Whitehouse reported in the September 25th issue of the Wall Street Journal that the living standards of average Americans will have to be adjusted downward ing years because a larger share of our national debt is going to debt-service. He writes, That means Americans will have to work harder to maintain the same living standards—or cut back sharply to pay down the debt.” Catherine Mann, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics notes, “Our net international obligations...

Anyone familiar with the history of conservative thought and politics in the United States knows that there have always been tensions among various strains of the “movement,” not least that between traditional Christians and secular libertarians. See, for example, George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America. (To simplify severely, the Acton Institute can be seen as straddling this tension, often taking up policy positions that are shared by libertarians but hewing to Christian tradition with respect to the existence...

With the latest news announced yesterday that British scientists are planning to create rabbit-human chimeras in the attempt to “find a ready source of ‘human’ embryonic stem cells without the ethical problems of tampering with human life,” it seems fitting to plug last week’s series of posts containing a biblical-theological case against chimeras. The following from Herman Bavinck underscores my basic approach: …man constitutes among all creatures a peculiar kind and occupies a unique place. He is indeed related to...