Gun Laws and Heroism after Las Vegas
Like a sniper in a war zone, Stephen Paddock found a defensible position 400 yards from his target, and set to waging his little war on the Route 91 Harvest music fest in the early morning hours of October 1. From the killing fields of the darkened concert ground it was impossible to see or […]
No Floor to Stand On: Hollywood Faces Sexual Assault Scandal
Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was outed as a sexual predator last week in a New York Times story. Or, more accurately, he was outed nationally and with corroborating evidence. His predations on young women have long been the rumor of the film industry. Thus far twenty-seven women have made public accusations against Weinstein, including Oscar […]
It’s Edited: Don’t be Duped by the Newsertainment
Editing is an art form. My son Cedric was coming in the front door a few days ago when his sister asked, “Did you eat an ice cream sandwich?” He replied, “Malachi had two.” That was, strictly speaking, true. Malachi had eaten two ice cream sandwiches. The difficulty is that Cedric had also eaten one. […]
Medical Abortions and the Contradictions of the Pro-Choice Crowd
Abortion pill reversal has been a point of serious contention lately, with some states even mandating that abortion providers inform their patients that the effects of the abortion pill on the baby may be reversible. And yet this is an issue that many pro-life people know little about. For example, few pro-life people realize that […]
Guest Post by Pastor Doug Wilson: Christian Disobedience
Guest Post by Douglas Wilson In the light of various Supreme Court decisions—Roe, Obergefell, and other mutants—where they have sought to sanctify things that God has declared unholy, confused and abominable, our ongoing responsibility as Christians is to think through a biblical understanding of our relationship to the state. It is a pressing responsibility. We […]
On Multiple Strategies in the Abortion Fight
Last week I posted an interview with my friend Emily Buchanan of the Susan B. Anthony List, a political organization based in Washington, D.C. We talked about abortion politics and the SBA List’s efforts to end the abortion carnage. I greatly appreciate Emily taking time to talk with CrossPolitic and for her organization’s continued pro-life […]
Marxism is Boring: The Hyper-Politicization of Public Art
Everyone has to have an overarching story. A mythos that holds what they see and hear together. When I lived in California, I did evangelism on Wednesdays. I hoped to do it other days as well, but Wednesdays I did my sermon prep at the neighborhood park. I introduced myself to people and invited folks to […]
Courage & Blood Money: A Proposal toward the Abolition of Abortion
“The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk. 16:8). Modern conservative Christians are cowards. We are cowards by many different measurements, but one will suffice. We have almost entirely lost a culture war in which we had the greater numbers, greater resources, […]
Bill Maher and the Impotence of the Tiny Heart-Obama
I make my children practice telling jokes at dinner. If I can help it, none of my progeny will have bad comedic timing. The girl that married me, lo so many zodiacal rotations ago, hoped to be a comedian when she grew up. The same skills, it turns out, apply to motherhood. (She has a […]
Made in Our Own Image
A profound shift in scientific philosophy has occurred in the last 100 years. Significant scientific breakthroughs are manipulated into a grasp for control. The theory of evolution fundamentally changed the character of the Christian pursuit of science, casting humans as the masters of creation and making nature into our image. We have decided that if there […]
Identity Politics and the Widening American Divide
Why can’t Americans reach across the aisle like they used to? This question becomes more and more relevant every day, as we see the American political and media establishments retreat to the fringes, leaving the chasm between left and right ever wider. Americans have slowly withdrawn from the candidates hoping to bring people together and […]
Reaping Calamity: Venezuela and Socialism
Venezuela is continuing its slide into disorder and mayhem. Protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government have continued for almost eight weeks, and they are growing more violent each day and showing no signs of slowing down. At least fifty-five people have been killed, including protestors, police, and bystanders. Violent protestors doused one young man with […]
Amazon and the Church of Secularism
As Millennials reject organized religion and leave the church to never return, many bluster about the implications of such trends. Some secularists take this as a signal of their victory over religion; while many Christians wring their hands and furrow their brows as to what we can do differently to attract millennials. Christians have largely responded to this crisis […]
Nobody Ever Said You Were A Pre-Existing Condition
At the America’s World Voices Festival in New York last Thursday, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards set off a media frenzy, saying, “Being a woman is going to be now a pre-existing condition in this country” (Bryant 2017). Since then protests and hashtags have been dedicated to attacking the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and […]
A Sense of Purpose, but no Sense of Place: The Media Will Always Get the 2016 Election Wrong
During the last election cycle, even up through the first half of election night, every major media outlet predicted a comfortable victory for Hillary Clinton. Here you can see one much-referenced election calculator, timed out like a broken stopwatch, displaying the best prediction the pollsters could give us: 71% chance of a Clinton victory, last […]
Packaging the Tribe: Selling More than Music
Netflix’ new documentary Hip Hop Evolution is a history of the development and rise of Hip Hop and Rap. In one of the interviews, Ice T, a primeval purveyor of Gangster Rap, talks about his early rhymes: “I was just writing about my reality.” He was trying to capture “the laid back vibe of reality.” The people in the neighborhood listened because they recognized their life in his words. According to Ice Cube, another early Gangster Rapper, Ice T wrote rhymes that “were our version of what a day in the life of Los Angeles was like.” They were not trying to create a new genre. They wanted to fetter their daily insanity with verse.
Stepping Off the Tram: Turkey, America, and Presidential Power
Back when he was mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, once famously quipped that democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you get to your destination, then you step off. Well, after Sunday’s constitutional referendum, democracy has exited the station, and Turkey is standing on the platform awaiting whatever comes next. […]