Category: Heresies

Summer is the time for lazy fishing in the hot sun.  That calls for a fish story.  And what follows is no tall tale, although I think the moral of the story is quite significant.  For I am now willing

This September marks 16 years since the fateful day we simply call 9/11, when 19 Islamic jihadists caused the deaths of some 3,000 people in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania.  Less than a month after that horrible day, Operation Enduring

“In Europe and America
There’s a growing feeling of hysteria.”
—Sting, “Russians” (1985)

Are the Russians guilty of trying to undermine American democracy?  The answer may surprise you.  But first the “news.”

As I write, Business Insider is neatly summarizing

Mitch Landrieu and his growing coalition of disgruntled minorities and public-school-educated leftists give us an idea of where a divided, majority-ruled America is heading.

In May, the mainstream media sacrificed valuable airtime and column space normally devoted to unsourced White

Randy teenage boys and hyphenated man-loathing feminists can agree on one thing: Prom is no place for patriarchal body-shaming.

In this context, by body we must read cleavage, midriffs, thighs, and intergluteal clefts; and by shaming, we are to

And it came to pass that fear did grip all of the Swamp, from Foggy Bottom to DuPont Circle; and it did spread unto all of the region beyond the Potomac.  For behold, Steve Bannon had come.

Or, if we

The world will little remember what Barack Obama said during his disappointing presidency, despite his messianic promise and his reputation as rhetor par excellence.  His words were not memorable to begin with.  (Try to recall a quotation, apart from

Donald Trump has shattered the false consensus of the Republican Party, the hitherto unrecognized tautology that GOP is conservative because conservative is GOP, and vice versa.  In the process, we’ve been confronted by an embarrassing reality: We really have no

The timing of Omar Mateen’s shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub was rotten for the Obama administration, because Secretary of State John Kerry had just published his carefully worded Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), in which the word religion

My great-grandparents loved music.  When I look through old sepia-toned pictures from hog-killing day—here’s one of my great-uncles dangling a fat pig into a 55-gallon caldron of boiling water—I always see a guitar or two in the background.  The natural

When Glenn Beck took the podium at his Restoring Honor rally, he began by listing off the names of American heroes and identifying their motivation to fight for their country: “You cannot coexist with evil.”  If evil has reared its

America is special. America has a mission.  America is a beacon of liberty.  America, God shed His grace on thee.

We call it American exceptionalism—the belief that, from among the countries of the world, the United States of America has

Pastors are sinners in need of redemption, like everyone else.  A pastor must forgive and be forgiven, and this is something that the flock must be taught and must embrace, or subtle Donatism will creep in with the latest gossip.

What is a school? Today, we think of school as an institution or even as a building.  But school comes from the Greek skho­le, “leisure”—i.e., clear your schedule of mundane tasks and make time to contemplate what

Can you imagine the FDA approving a drug that, say, increased the risk of blood clots, hypertension, stroke, heart attacks, breast cancer, and migraines for women?  And fathom, if you will, the absurd notion that such a drug could be

As I write, April 15 is still fresh in the mind, and the sting of death remains, combining the current pangs of tax extraction with the promise of a greater burden to come, thanks to the Barack­i­fi­cation of heathcare.

So

The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East.  Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty.  Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. 

So, thanks again

for the love in the cradle

and all of the changes that kept me dry.

And thanks again

for the love at our table

and tannin’ my bottom when I told you a lie . . .

The amoeba.  You remember it from biology class; it’s your long-lost relative.  Don’t believe it?  Well, you’re probably one of those pro-life Christian homeschooling losers.  You don’t play nice with others.  You are socially maladjusted.

“Amoeba are essentially everywhere and

“The true meaning of Christmas gets lost when we believe contrary worldviews,” the prisoner writes.  “Our beliefs determine our views in a world where absolutes are fading away.”  The prisoner is dictating this for his newsletter.

Come-to-Jesus (or -Allah) experiences

C.S. Lewis wrote about the “death of words.”  In essence, he suggested that, whenever we feel compelled to append a noun with the adjectives true or real, it is safe to say that the noun has lost its meaning,

When Miss California’s assets were revealed to be fakies, I immediately thought of a line from Roland Bainton’s excellent and concise history The Medieval Church:  “The real point,” he wrote, “was . . . ”  Well, first, the story.

It’s Lent, so naturally I’m thinking about Barack Obama.  Well, specifically, about his inauguration.  You remember, don’t you—the day that hope became sight?

I don’t want to be overdramatic, but it now seems obvious to me that President Obama’s inauguration

Twelve long months ago, America was in the throes of Holiday Shopping Season ’07.  It was a simpler time.  The Dow was safely over 10,000, and we were all wondering whether it would be Hillary or Giuliani in the White

This is an age in which news of a tragedy garners a response such as this: “Well, our thoughts are with you.”  Happy thoughts full of Pelagian grace.  It is therefore with some reservation that I now examine Rocky Twyman’s

My grandfather has congestive heart failure.  I hate to say it, but I probably won’t see him this time next year. “Gramp,” as I’ve called him since I can remember, taught me how to shoot and hunt, taught me how

Americans are a people of deeply held religious conviction.  If any has doubts, let him look on the most serious of our sacred holidays and believe.

Naturally, it is a federal holiday, but that fact alone does not convey the

Harold O.J. Brown fell asleep, as Our Lord puts it, on July 8, just two days after his 74th birthday.  This magazine’s religion editor since 1989, he was a contributor before that.  The title of this column was inspired by

“Lord, he looks so peaceful,” Miss Alice said tearfully.  I braced myself for a long two hours at my post—and that was before the funeral started.  Interrupting my thoughts, she looked up at me and spoke in a whisper that

Here’s a heresy for you.  A grave danger is lurking among us, caused by certain people who are spreading lies—and in the name of Christianity!  So grave is this danger that it threatens our very way of life.  And, as

’Twas the middle of that sacred time of year when all Americans pause to remember what is most important—Christmas Shopping Season.  I had just walked through the automatic doorway of MediaPlay, out in what was then the edge of Rockford’s

“For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace,” declares the LORD, through his prophet Isaiah, “and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that

Like the French, we Americans live in, to borrow from Claude Polin, a “me-first” society.  Each and every man is the measure of all things, his own arbiter of that which is beautiful, true, and of good report.  Reared on

These are the days of shame for American Christians.  Not the sort of shame, like Isaiah’s, that results from coming face to face with a holy God.  (“Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.”)  Instead, it

Just before the December 7, 2005, premiere of Walt Disney Pictures’ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a tiny bomb was dropped on Christians in America and Great Britain who were desperate to see