Nancy Reagan passed away Sunday at the age of 94. It’s like the end of an era. The students I teach now were born after Ronald Reagan left office; they have no personal knowledge of him or how he impacted our country. Lacking knowledge of perhaps the greatest president of the twentieth century, they obviously know nothing about his wife either. Nancy Davis was a Hollywood actress in the late 1940s who was falsely accused of being a communist, her… Read more »
This will be my final installment detailing the results of the Wade Center survey I conducted to find out how C. S. Lewis has influenced Americans of our generation. My previous post dealt with whatever further comments respondents wanted to make. Here are the rest of those for your edification. Perhaps you may identify with the sentiments expressed. Beyond the purely intellectual appeal, Lewis and his writings also have impacted the emotions and encouraged Christians in their various struggles. “I… Read more »
This is going to be a calmer post than I originally intended. My emotions ran high Saturday night with the results of the South Carolina primary. Make no mistake, I am deeply disturbed by political developments in the Republican party, but I will attempt to offer a reasonable commentary to explain my deep concern. While Trump’s victory, in itself, is disturbing, it’s the way he won that bothers me more—with the apparent backing of a plurality of evangelicals. According to… Read more »
For the past five Saturdays I’ve shared results of my survey with the Wade Center on how C. S. Lewis’s life and writings have influenced Americans of our current generation. The earlier questions were quite specific, but at the end of the survey, I gave an opportunity for the respondents to add anything else they thought worthy of sharing. Here are some of those reflections. A number of respondents credit Lewis with halting their slide into unbelief while in college…. Read more »
Every time famous people die, cartoonists depict them entering into heaven. I’m usually put off by those cartoons because of the underlying assumption that heaven is everyone’s destination after death, which is categorically untrue. I’ve made exceptions in the past: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher come to mind. I loved what cartoonists did with their entrance into heaven because of my assurance that they had a genuine faith. I feel the same with the passing of Antonin Scalia, a faithful… Read more »
News of the death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia stunned the political world over the weekend. Scalia, a stalwart defender of the Constitution, will be sorely missed, especially in this era of constitutional ignorance and/or apathy. His firm conviction that one must look to the Founders’ words and their original meaning kept the Court from straying more often than it did. Nominated to the Court by Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the Senate unanimously, Scalia was considered a legal… Read more »
This week, I’m sharing some of the comments respondents to my Wade Center survey gave regarding the movie versions of Narnia. For the sake of brevity here, I’m excluding comments on earlier productions, such as a 1979 animated Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe and BBC productions of four of the Narnia books back in 1988-1990. So here is the amended question I asked: Have You Viewed Any of the Narnia Hollywood Productions? If So, What Is Your Opinion of Them? Some… Read more »