One of the best books I’ve ever read on American history is Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer. I’ve always been an admirer of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by German American artist Emanuel Leutze. The painting of course has been criticized mentators for its inaccuracy. Fischer notes in the first chapter of his book: American iconoclasts made the painting a favorite target. Post-modernists studied it with a skeptical eye and asked, “Is this the way that American history...

If you are a parent, imagine your child is missing. You cannot find him or her. Gone. Nothing you can do. If you are not a parent, try to imagine how it must feel to have a loved one, the most loved one, taken from you. It is heart-wrenching. Gut-churning. Evil. The parents of 219 girls in Nigeria are living this. Their daughters were stolen from them two months ago, and they are still missing. Two months. Just imagine that....

Meriam Ibrahim gave birth to her daughter while her legs were shackled to the floor. The young Sudanese mother, who also raised her son in her prison cell, gave birth while waiting execution mitting apostasy from Islam by ing a Christian. A Sudanese high court delivered the sentence when Ibrahim refused to denounce her Christian faith. But after the case sparked international outrage, the Sudanese court appears to have reversed its decision. According to the official state news agency in...

Restorative justice is a theory of justice that emphasizes concepts such as reconciliation, forgiveness, and healing. There are, as Jordan Ballor has explained, a plurality of restorative justice movements. Yet one theme that is found in almost all forms is victim restitution, such pensation funds for those who have been victims of crimes. pensation rarely occurs, though. According to Justice Fellowship, less than 3 percent of violent crime victims ever receive monetary assistance from pensation funds for costs like medical...

There are virtually no Jews left in Iraq. There used to be Jews there – 130,00+, but most have fled, many to Israel. And now, one Christian leader in Iraq fears Christians will suffer the same (or a worse) fate. Baghdad’s Monsignor Pios Cacha made a grim prediction. He said that his Iraqi munity was experiencing the kind of religious cleansing that eradicated the country’s once-thriving munity half a century before. His rather prophetic words made headlines in Lebanon’s DailyStar:...

Last week the State Department released the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report, a congressionally mandated report that looks at the governments around the world (including the U.S.) and what they are doing bat trafficking in persons – modern slavery – through the lens of the 3P paradigm of prevention, protection, and prosecution. Here are seven figures you should know from the latest report: 1. The report estimates that only 44,758 victims of trafficking were identified in the past year, out...

Part 1 is here.] An economically free society doesn’t have to be hyper-utilitarian, materialistic and banal; and yet, here we are, living in a capitalist age marked by these very features. Some social conservatives who see capitalism as one of the main culprits argue that we should turn away from both socialism and greedy capitalism, toward a more humanitarian munity-based approach, toward a small-is-beautiful aesthetic of farmer’s markets, widespread property ownership, social responsibility and local, collective enterprise, a political and...

We know about climate change and global warming, right? After all, we’ve been talking about it for decades. The polar bears losing their homes, the wild swings in temperatures, too much snow, not enough rain, etc. But what do we really know? That’s the question Phil Lawler asks. He thought he knew about climate change as well. But now he is convinced that what we are talking about when we talk about climate change has shifted from being a scientific...

Did you watch the U.S. v. Portugal game last night? Did you cheer for the amazing play of American keeper Tim Howard? Did you howl in disbelief at the last minute goal by Portugal? Even if you’re not a soccer fan, it’s hard not to get swept up in the fun and rivalry of the world’s biggest soccer extravaganza. Unless you’re a victim of human trafficking. Every large sporting event in the world has e a red-light district. Where there...

Christian’s Library Press has released Integrated Justice and Equality: Biblical Wisdom for Those Who Do Good Works by John Addison Teevan, a book that seeks to challenge popular notions of “social justice” and establish a new framework around what Teevan calls “biblically integrated justice.” The term “social justice” has been used to promote a variety of policies and proposals, most of which fall within a particularly progressive economic ideology and theological perspective. Educated in economics, theology, and intercultural studies, and...