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Mother Church or Uncle Sam

Wyoming ­Catholic College, of which I serve as ­president, recently ­determined that it has a duty to abstain from federal student-loan and grant programs. As a new college that received the accreditation necessary for federal funding only this year, Wyoming Catholic faced a stark choice for or . . . . Continue Reading »

A Good Word for Locke

The lecturer was setting forth a biblical perspective on the role of government, with special attention to the Pauline text in Romans 13. At one point he introduced a rhetorical flourish with a passing negative reference to John Locke. The Bible sees the authority to govern as coming from God—“and not,” the lecturer said, “from a human contract, as John Locke insisted.” Continue Reading »

Licensing the Kingdom

St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was one of the original communities f­ounded during the Depression by Dorothy Day and Peter ­Maurin. When I lived there a few years ago I observed up-close the often tense, sometimes funny interactions between the Catholic . . . . Continue Reading »

To Rend Is Not to Retreat

Does the call for Christians to separate matrimony from government marriage mean we’re retreating from the public square? Damon Linker thinks so: “First Things, the intellectually formidable monthly magazine that played a decisively important role in formulating the interdenominational and interreligious ideology that once galvanized the religious right, has decided to pick up its marbles and go home.” He calls it an “unprecedented retreat of theologically conservative churches from engagement in American public life.” Continue Reading »

The Myth of Government Neutrality

Should a government in a pluralist society such as the United States be neutral with respect to religious and secular ideas about the good life? Or should it promote a certain vision? Most Americans, recognizing that a government-sponsored philosophy would conflict with many citizens’ cherished beliefs (and possibly violate the establishment clause), would say that the government should be neutral… . Continue Reading »

Grateful

Thanksgiving Day, presently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863. It did not become a federal holiday until 1941. Thanksgiving was historically a religious observation to give thanks to God, but is now primarily identified as a . . . . Continue Reading »

I Respectfully Decline

So Joe posted a link to the new Manhattan Declaration which came out late last week, and in the comments it came out that I agree with the morals of the document but think this documents and others like it obscure the Gospel. Collin, my co-blogger here at Evangel, didn’t see what I meant . . . . Continue Reading »

What’s Holy?

This is Holy.Jen Zila says this over there: will love until it feels uncomfortable, and when i start to get comfortable with that, i’ll give until it gets uncomfortable again. because, a $25 check isn’t much of a stretch in our household it doesn’t really ‘cost’ us. but . . . . Continue Reading »

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