At the Intersection of Faith and Culture

Recently, I experienced no small measure of disappointment when an article that I submitted to a little known “conservative” website was rejected.  It wasn’t the rejection, however, from which my dissatisfaction stemmed but, rather, the reason for it.  You see, I challenged the conventional bi-partisan orthodoxy that the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution…

Not too long ago, I was interviewed on a radio show.  Shortly before my interview ended, and before I could really say much more, one of the two hosts affirmed the conventional, bi-partisan orthodoxy that America was founded on an “idea.”  Presumably, this idea is the “self-evident” principle famously enshrined in the Declaration of Independence…

It is nothing short of a foregone conclusion that the life of a graduate student will be anything but enviable.  But when the graduate student is a staunch critic of the leftist, “politically correct” dogma that pervades the Liberal Arts and Humanities departments of America’s colleges and universities and also happens to be majoring in…

Closing in on his second master’s degree in biblical studies, a good friend of mine is about to defend his 60-page thesis on the creation accounts in the book of Genesis.  In the eleventh hour, though, he has run into a problem: his advisor has informed him just one week outside of his defense that…

As of late, many on the right have been filled with dread that the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden will increase Barack Obama’s chances of being re-elected.  On the one hand, this concern is legitimate enough, for bin Laden’s is the face of  the world’s most infamous terrorist, a monster that, in spite of…

Ours is a generation obsessed with “principles.”  That the morality of the age is centered in principles accounts for why we tend to characterize the morally admirable person as a man or woman of principle.  Principles are critical to any morality, for sure, but it is just as critical for us to recognize that these…

Contrary to atheistic boilerplate, Christianity is anything but a crutch for the weak minded and timid hearted.  Christians have gone to great lengths over the centuries to show that, while reason is no substitute for faith, and while it can never occupy anything other than a subordinate position with respect to the latter, reason can…

From Michel Montaigne and Blaise Pascal to David Hume and Edmund Burke, some of Western civilization’s most insightful philosophers have long noted the ease with which people mistake the longevity and stubbornness of habit with nature itself.  While the expression “second nature” as a characterization of habit is common enough, the great difficulty of severing…

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