Month: November 2014

Lewis: Faithful Correspondent

  

It’s been both a revelation and a joy to be able to sit in my study and systematically go through C. S. Lewis’s collected letters, concentrating on the correspondence he had with Americans. He became quite personal with a good number of regular correspondents, sharing tidbits of his life and offering whatever advice he could when they asked questions regarding the Christian life. One of those letters, from January 1954, may provide a perfect example of how he combined the… Read more »

Personal Accountability & Ferguson

  

The smoke (literally) has not cleared totally on the Ferguson riots. Since I wrote my blog a couple of days ago, protesters/criminals have continued to cause problems. The National Guard, which was conspicuously not called in by Missouri governor Nixon on the night of the grand jury decision, has helped calm the area, working in tandem with the police and state law enforcement officials. That’s probably not what most National Guardsmen signed up for. Our military is supposed to protect… Read more »

Ferguson & the Rule of Law

  

At about 9:15 last night, I, along with countless other Americans, started listening to St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch provide the factual information that led the grand jury to refuse to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. McCulloch went to great pains to explain that decision. He also went into the kind of detail that prosecutors don’t normally go into publicly in an attempt to appeal to the reasonable portion of… Read more »

Sabbatical Update: Lewis Edition

  

Many of my regular readers know I’m on a sabbatical this year, and I’ve been alert to provide periodic updates on the progress of my various endeavors. Recently, I posted photos of my time at the Reagan and Nixon libraries and the Reagan Ranch as I research on the topic of spiritual advisers to presidents. The hope is that will turn into a series of books with my Southeastern colleague, Dr. Robert Crosby. I’m also deeply involved with a study… Read more »

Lewis: Screwtape on Liberty

  

If one book can be said to have introduced C. S. Lewis to the world on a wide scale, it would be The Screwtape Letters. They are witty and full of insight, as a senior devil gives advice to a junior devil on how to tempt his human into disobedience to God—who was termed “the Enemy” in the book. Lewis, though, says it was the hardest book he ever wrote, and I can understand why. He explained it this way:… Read more »

King Philip’s War & History’s Most Basic Truth

  

The New England colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay suffered through a terrible war with the natives in 1675-1676. It is called King Philip’s War and, percentage-wise, a higher portion of the population died in that war than in any other American war since; not even the Civil War or WWII suffered as high a casualty rate. What caused it? Who is to blame? We must take a balanced look at it. When we do, we see that there is… Read more »

God Save Us

  

It is now confirmed that another American has been beheaded by ISIS. Peter Kassig, a former Army Ranger who then became an aid worker in Syria, is the latest Westerner to die trying to help people in dire need. ISIS then released a statement saying that it intends to bring the war to the streets of America. Is it an idle threat? Not in their minds. And if we dismiss it as fantasy, we will regret that cavalier response. Too… Read more »