The Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t want Karen Kropf talking to its students. District leaders fear that what she says isn’t “balanced” and that she’s not a certified “expert” in the field. Really, though, they just don’t like her message about teenage sexual self-control . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s hot here in Tennessee and I’m thinking about Popsicles. I’ll get back to that.Last weekend, my wife, Janet, and I drove over to Hohenwald, seat of tiny Lewis County, Tennessee (pop. 11,000-plus). Although best known as the place on the Natchez Trace where Meriwether Lewis met his . . . . Continue Reading »
The outpouring of tributes to Tim Russert on his death at age 58 was both surprising and well deserved. There was a palpable sense of guilt in the many descriptions of him by his colleagues in the commentariat. They frequently seemed to be saying that he was such a genuine human being uncompromised . . . . Continue Reading »
Is there no hope? The special education section in the May 2008 issue of the New Criterion gave a pretty clear answer. The articles, focusing mostly on the state of higher education, provided something of a (perhaps justified) manifesto for giving up. Sensing this, and having chosen higher education . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s Christmas, so we’re singing carols. OK, it’s not Christmas, it’s really Advent, and “carol” has a particular set of musicological meanings that don’t have anything to do with Christmas—but we call almost any tune we sing in December a “carol” . . . . Continue Reading »
“Participatory” does a lot of work in Matthew Levering’s latest book, Participatory Biblical Exegesis , a contribution to the burgeoning contemporary interest in theological interpretation of Scripture. It refers, above all, to a conception of history that, Levering argues, should . . . . Continue Reading »
It may turn out to be the stuff worthy of mention in half a news cycle or it may be a lasting point of historical reference. In terms of its political significance, I expect it will be the former. In terms of the long history of evangelicals trying to situate themselves within what they view as the . . . . Continue Reading »
When Cyclone Nargis hit Burma a month ago, killing as many as a hundred thousand people, the French foreign minister invoked the “responsibility to protect” as a way to override the Burmese government’s intransigence and thus deliver live-saving aid. For weeks, aid trickled in as . . . . Continue Reading »
Let it be said at the outset that James Wood is a splendid literary critic, one of our best. One of the things that make him interesting is that he can’t get over the “God problem.” Wood is a product of what I have called the narrow escape syndrome. That is to say, he was reared in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Twenty-seven states in the United States have amended their state constitutions to limit marriage to unions of one man and one woman. Even before the recent decision of the California Supreme Court mandating that California allow same-sex couples to marry, many other states were considering similar . . . . Continue Reading »
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