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Hannah Montana

Even if you go around with one or several fingers stuffed into each ear, you will not be able to exclude the words “Hannah Montana” from your field of consciousness, especially now that the number one movie in the United States bears that name. No American citizen is permitted to be . . . . Continue Reading »

Slavery, Christianity, and Islam

It has become a feature of today’s atheist chic to shy bricks at Christianity for its record on slavery. This is part of a larger assault on Western history and society, which, by accident or design, plays into the hands of those who are today mounting on a global scale a sweeping and explicit . . . . Continue Reading »

Paved with the Skulls of Bishops

That’s a grim metaphor, maybe too grim. It’s from an endorsement of Philip F. Lawler’s book, to be published next week, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture (Encounter). The endorsement is by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, who says: “Lawler’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Grade Incomplete

A couple of weeks ago I dreamed I lost my place.It started simply enough. I dreamed I was in the administration building, robing for graduation¯a natural enough dream for the late spring. As I had for twenty years, I was putting on the robe, the hood, the velvet hat . . . but the odd thing was . . . . Continue Reading »

My Church, My Strip Mall

Read Richard Mouw’s “Spiritual Consumerism’s Upside,” recently made available online at Christianity Today ‘s website. In it Mouw defends the idea of church shopping as not only inevitable given our diverse religious culture but even exciting and positive. It’s more . . . . Continue Reading »

Atheism and Violence

Books advocating atheism have recently been enjoying a modest boomlet. Sales are solid, book readings are sold out, and their authors grace the highbrow talk shows and op-ed pages in prestigious newspapers and periodicals. But their arguments are shopworn, stale hand-me-downs and threadbare . . . . Continue Reading »

Lutheran Again

Yesterday was the 476th anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession¯an explanation of the proposed Lutheran reforms of the Church, written by Philip Melancthon and approved by Martin Luther¯to Holy Roman emperor Charles V, who, facing attack from without, was eager for . . . . Continue Reading »

Waking Up to Springtime

It’s a good day to be thinking about the Christian mission, this Day of the Conversion of Saint Paul. Today is also the close of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an observation that has, regrettably, become more anemic in the last decade or so. In 1990, John Paul the Great issued the . . . . Continue Reading »

From the Provinces

Poor Omaha. I’ve been noticing my adopted hometown cropping up more and more frequently as shorthand. Fargo is “out there” (or, more accurately, “up there”) as a place of unimaginable isolation. Buffalo represents postindustrial irrelevance made all the more poignant by the . . . . Continue Reading »

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