Senator and presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris will address the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night. As the convention plans to nominate the oldest presidential candidate in U.S. history, Harris’ views and record hold greater significance than any running mate since Harry Truman in 1944. What does the junior senator from California believe on key issues? Here are the facts you need to know. Background: Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. Her...

From accusations of embracing socialism leveled at the Obama administration by the Tea Party movement to the rise of self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders as the second highest vote-getter in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party primaries, socialism has been an emerging movement and topic of conversation in the American body politic. While polling data suggests that socialism is generally still viewed far less favorably than capitalism or free markets overall, the younger Millennial and Gen Z generations are more...

The 2020 Democratic National Convention’s only viral moment to date plished something rare in any political season: It taught sound economic policy. The image of a masked Rhode Island delegate holding a platter of calamari during Tuesday night’s state roll call overshadowed the fact that he promoted the state’s official appetizer while praising deregulation. Further research shows the importance of reducing trade barriers and that high taxes destroy wealth. “Our restaurant and fishing trade have been decimated by this pandemic,”...

The 42nd Republican National Convention, the first virtual convention in GOP menced on Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its lineup of speakers highlighted the fact that the American dream is an enduring reality for minorities and immigrants, the harms that teachers unions inflict on students (and some teachers), and the patibility of socialism with Christian teaching. 1. Christianity and socialism are patible. Maximo Alvarez, the Cuban emigré who became a successful American businessman, recounted the way socialism came to dominate...

Karl Marx famously concluded in his 1845 Theses On Feuerbach with his eleventh thesis: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” How this change from analysis to activism can be justified in light of Marx’s own materialist conception of history is an enduring puzzle. Lester DeKoster, in his always insightful Communism & Christian Faith, states it is, “a problem more easily ignored than explained.” Marx’s tomb itself has literally etched this...

America is seeing a steady rise in secularization, pronounced by accelerating declines in religious identification, church attendance, and biblical literacy. As the norms of “cultural Christianity” continue to fade, the call to “be in but not of the world” is stirring new questions about how we live, create, and collaborate in modern society. In response, Christians are pressed by a familiar set of temptations toward fortification, domination, and modation – prodding us to either “hunker down,” “fight back,” or “give...

This is part two of our series, “The Political Theology of Global Secularism.” You may read part one here. Check back frequently for ing installments. – Ed. David Foster Wallace wrote of our secular age: [I]n the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. In the first part of this series, I distinguished different facets...

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has brought with it enormous costs. These include, first and foremost, an enormous cost in the terms of human life, with more than 178,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the United States alone, and at least 814,000 deaths worldwide, as of late August 2020. But also, with the pandemic e significant economic costs, fiscal costs, and personal costs to our happiness and quality of life. Why is living under quarantine so...

The birth of a child is life’s greatest joy – unless a dictator is asking you to have children to increase his personal power base, and he has destroyed the economy so badly that you can’t feed yourself. That is the situation in Venezuela. “Every woman should have six children for the good of the country,” said Bolivarian socialist Nicolás Maduro in March. He urged the nation’s women to “give birth, give birth” in order to “grow the country.” In...

Kellyanne Conway likely gave her last public speech in her role as White House adviser on Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention. The Conway clan’s political divisions mirror the growing bitterness that has e ingrained in families nationwide as America es more politicized, more secular, and less tolerant of philosophical diversity. The Conway family’s carnage has played out painfully on social media. Kellyanne Conway distinguished herself as a pollster before guiding Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. She has served...