Category: Christians & Culture

Commentary, from a Biblical perspective, on current events that are primarily cultural. There may be some overlap with politics and government, but the emphasis is on broader societal developments apart from politics, which also includes analysis of specific individuals.

Charleston: Tragedy, Hope, & a Warning

  

Most Americans, I believe, have been shocked and grieved by the murders in the Charleston AME church. Nine members of the predominately black church were simply attending a Wednesday evening Bible study/prayer meeting before they were killed. Among the dead was the pastor of the church, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a South Carolina state senator. From all accounts I’ve heard, he was a genuine Christian man. The consolation, of course, is that he and the others who were… Read more »

Lewis: Modern Man & the Sense of Sin

  

C. S. Lewis’s “God in the Dock” essay exposes one of the biggest obstacles we face in transmitting the Gospel message: the unwillingness of people to acknowledge they are guilty of anything and are in need of a savior. What Lewis says in this essay has become even more conspicuous in our day. He writes of what he learned when he spoke to Royal Air Force (R.A.F.) audiences during WWII. One of the first things he learned was that they… Read more »

Campolo’s Betrayal of Scripture

  

There may be those among my readers who are not familiar with the name Tony Campolo. He has been a sociology professor at an evangelical Christian university for many years. I believe he is now about 80 years old and has been in the limelight in evangelical circles for quite some time. In his earlier years, he wrote books that always pushed the envelope with respect to evangelicals’ more conservative view of culture. Then he began to be even more… Read more »

Lewis: Christianity & Education

  

I’m preparing to begin my twenty-seventh year of teaching college this fall. One of the joys I’ve had is the free hand to develop upper-level courses for history majors. Due to all my research on C. S. Lewis this year (and my still-hoped-for book on him), I will be teaching a course on him in the upcoming semester. Lewis and education go together. He had many wise and insightful comments on the aims and limits of education. For a good… Read more »

Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound

  

C. S. Lewis, in his essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” takes aim at the idea that evil behavior is only a disease that needs to be treated. No, he says, evil actions come from evil hearts and deserve punishment, not “treatment.” But that won’t stop the “conditioners” who want to rule society by somehow using therapy to make people better. As he puts it, To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard… Read more »

The Way Is Still Narrow

  

A flurry of news reports of late are touting polls that show fewer Americans identify as Christians. Good. We’re finally being honest. I mean, let’s get serious—more than 70% of Americans are really Christians? Don’t misunderstand me. I’m just as concerned about the decline in public profession of Christian faith as anyone, but there’s a clear difference between some type of acknowledgement of a vague definition of Christianity and the real thing. In the past, it always helped to call… Read more »

National Day of Prayer

  

Today is the National Day of Prayer, not government-sponsored, but called by Christian leaders throughout our nation. Only in calling out to God will anything going wrong in this country be reversed. In the spirit of this day, I offer the following prayer. Lord, we are in trouble as a nation, as You well know, even better than we do. The problems aren’t all at the top politically; there is a culture that has not only accepted sin but has… Read more »