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What’s Your Social Class?

Here is a fun quiz from the Christian Science Monitor that purports to identify one’s socioeconomic status. The questions are about psychology, tastes, and personality traits, not salary. For example, a few test how well one identifies emotions. Our readers should pay particular attention . . . . Continue Reading »

Taking a Back Seat at CPAC

Pot was in and social conservatism was out. That is the best single sentence summary I can give after three exhausting and sometimes mind-numbing days at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).The gathering is a media favorite partly for its colorful characters. One tall . . . . Continue Reading »

A Terrible Ruling Against a Terrible Film

It may seem hard to get upset that the Ninth Circuit recently demanded that YouTube take down The Innocence of Muslims, a poorly made, maliciously offensive, and aesthetically nil film that was the proximate cause for rioting and murder overseas. Little as I will miss it, the ruling has troubling . . . . Continue Reading »

Just War Revisited and Revitalized

Every once in a while, a truly special book comes down the theological pike: a book both scholarly and well-written, a book that stretches the imagination, a book that changes the state of a discussion, if it’s taken with the seriousness it deserves. The late Servais . . . . Continue Reading »

John Wesley and Religious Freedom

Lumping together the recently attempted Arizona religious freedom law with new criminal laws against homosexuality in Nigeria and Uganda, the United Methodist Church’s Capitol Hill lobby lamented that “legislation that denies the human rights of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and . . . . Continue Reading »

Escaping the Exemptions Ghetto

As the cases challenging the Health and Human Services mandate make their way through the courts, the main claim is that those who object to the mandate on the basis of religious conscience should be exempted from the law’s requirement of providing objectionable drugs and services. The goal is . . . . Continue Reading »

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