RealClearReligion Articles

A few weeks ago, a friend of my fiancée and me passed away. He was only 33 years old.  Out of respect for his family, I’ll keep his name private. But I pray — and firmly hope — that his name is written in the Book of Life spoken of in Revelation.  He was an affable, joyful man. With childlike curiosity, he immediately welcomed me into a young adult Catholic group. Together, we would discuss movies, sports — particularly baseball and basketball — and naturally faith. He often invited me to Sunday night basketball (of which I now regret not...

Four brave American soldiers, who lost their lives in service in the Middle East last week, were brought home and honored Wednesday at a dignified transfer, attended by the president, secretary of war and other administration officials.  “Yesterday, we saw the President of the United States and many others at Dover Air Force Base presiding over a ceremony that is very sacred to those of us who served, and that is a dignified return of remains from the war zone, and that process happens beginning in the war zone through Dover to the hometown of our fallen heroes,” Former Navy...

In his 1855 poem “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wrote: “I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.” The line encapsulates his complex, ever-changing views about a creator, which were at once deeply spiritual and blazingly unconventional. One of America’s greatest poets didn’t adhere closely to any organized religion; instead, he envisioned God as an all-pervading presence that infuses every person, creature, and object in the universe.  These notions, though unique to Whitman, rhymed with the intellectual zeitgeist of...

Two months ago, the Trump-Xi Beijing Summit was paraded across the internet as a bastion of hope for the future of Chinese relations with the West. Many foreign policy analysts have, as usual, mistaken ceremony for substance.  The American state visit to China — the first since 2017 — produced honour guards, Boeing aircraft orders, and an invitation for Xi to visit the White House in September. On trade progress was made on everything from soybeans, to rare-earth metals. On Taiwan, Iran, technology, and the broader structure of the US-China relationship, there was no progress...

Meta is testing Instagram on television. Pinterest has acquired a connected-TV ad-buying platform. Social media content is becoming one of the most-watched video types on American television. And YouTube is leading the way, with tens of millions of Americans now watching YouTube on the biggest screen in the house.YouTube’s move into creator-led, 24/7 “Stations” points to something larger: digital and social platforms are no longer simply competing with television. They are becoming television.For nonprofits and ministries, this is not a passing media trend. It is a strategic...

I was privileged to be a guest again on the “American Sunrise” program of “Real America’s Voice.” The topic was a new report in the Christian Post about how Bible readership goes up among those facing crises. That makes sense. It’s like the old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. The interesting thing about Bible reading and America is how strongly influential the Scriptures were during the nation’s settling and founding eras. Consider just how the Book of books impacted some of America’s presidents alone. It helped provide moral...

As a competitor, you know what it feels like to hear, “Well done; that was fun to watch!” There’s deep satisfaction that comes from achieving something great and being recognized for it, an exhilaration that strikes at the heart. It feels like something deep within is being acknowledged. This longing for recognition runs through the very fabric of our being because God created us in His image. It’s a desire to be significant, to matter and when we achieve something remarkable, the recognition is invigorating. But here’s the reality: no matter how high you rise in...

Communism is enjoying a resurgence today, even in America. But communism is against each of the Ten Commandments and vice versa. How does communism violate all ten points of the greatest legal code ever revealed to man? Let me count the ways. In the first commandment, God says that He alone is God. Communism says there is no God. But the communists act like the state is God. Christian Freedom, International — led by Wendy Wright — has an article on their website on how Christians can’t be communists in China, noting, “To join the Party, you must give up your...

When Christians talk about prophecy, it tends to be in the context of the past — from the Bible, from Old Testament prophets, about the fall of kingdoms or the coming judgment. But I heard a prophecy, in real time, from my brother as he lay dying. This prophecy was about the life, or the death, of my son. And it may be about to come true.  How many times had I prayed for relief in that clinic, in those hallways? I was a little girl the first time I walked them. My brothers, Angelo and Antonio, were patients at this same Duchenne muscular dystrophy (“DMD”) clinic....

Over 2,500 pastors and lay elders in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, last week for their 53rd annual meeting. This is a record high number of attendees for this event – and notably, 34% were lay elders. These elders, called “ruling elders” in the PCA, are leaders in their churches not called to pastoral ministry, who shepherd their churches with the perspective of ordinary men. Tennessee pastor Sean Morris said that a high ruling elder number “is always a welcome trend, as well as a sign of  denominational health and...

“A specter is haunting America — the specter of communism.” That is a variation of the opening line of The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which states: "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism." Is it possible that the ghost of communism is indeed haunting America? How could that be? Didn’t we win the Cold War? In the late 1980s, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Eastern European nations threw off the yoke of Marxist bondage. Then in the early 1990s, the Soviet Union — the “evil empire” as Ronald...

America is exceptional — and must long endure well after the nation’s 250th.  That conviction deepened in early May when my father, brothers, brother-in-law, and I made a long-overdue pilgrimage to the Gettysburg battlefield. From Little Round Top to Devil’s Den to the Peach Orchard to the High Water Mark, visiting the sites where the Union and Confederacy clashed between July 1-3, 1863, contextualized what I only gathered in history books, paintings, and documentaries. To walk peacefully across the ground where more than 165,000 men fought — and where some 51,000...

Twelve score and ten years ago, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” When our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, delivered his famous speech on the Gettysburg battlefield on Nov. 19, 1863, he was harkening back to the Declaration of Independence. Score equals 20 years. Lincoln said, “Four score and seven years ago.” Subtract 87 from 1863, and it takes us back to 1776. The very thing we now celebrate 250 years of: the Declaration of Independence. The Gettysburg...

"Quo Vadis (Where are you going?), America?" With those unforgettable words, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen opened the very first episode of Life Is Worth Living, his network television show in the early 1950s. Week after week, millions of Americans tuned in because he challenged people to ask life's most important questions. His television program eventually reached nearly 30 million viewers and earned him an Emmy, but his greatest achievement was leading countless people to encounter Jesus Christ. As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, Sheen's question feels as timely as ever. Many...

Samal escaped China to her native Kazakhstan in 2018. It was there that she, amid bouts of sobbing, described night-shifts at a Xinjiang province detention center, removing intestines from corpses. Many bodies were still warm. Many bore the marks of torture. Samal worked assisting her friend, a Uyghur veterinarian, in a fortified compound of three medical clinics, four floors down from a massive detention center. In assembly line fashion, they would prep several corpses a night and send them on for further “cleaning” by a team of eleven Mandarin-speaking doctors.  Camp...

Juneteenth is a powerful reminder that the Democrats lost their war for slavery and secession. Yes, the glorious news of Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation finally made its two year trek to the great state of Texas. On June 19, 1865, U.S. Major General Gordon Granger delivered General Order No. 3 and proclaimed, in part: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” WHO IS JUNETEENTH FOR? This freedom was made possible by whites, blacks, Asians, and...

Ministers and the church should have nothing to do with politics. Or so we hear all the time. Thankfully, during the settling and founding eras of America, that was not the dominant opinion. In fact, ministers often helped lead the way to American independence. Christian educator Travis Witt of Virginia once remarked: “Every single one of the issues mentioned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence had been preached from the American pulpits in New England before 1763.” His remarks are well-documented in a 1928 (revised in 1958) book by Duke professor, Alice M....

Stephen Colbert built a TV audience with skills he picked up in writing, ad lib, standup, dance, mimicry, impersonation, singing, acting and even stunt fighting. He is well-schooled in acting, popular culture, various genres of literature, pop culture, film-making and movie history.  His friendship with co-producer Jon Stewart was always touching and fun, and the segments with his wife Evie were heartfelt and enjoyable. Sometimes, there were moments of brilliant banter, as with Brian Cranston (4-8-26) or when, in some pleasant early segments, Colbert lay on the grass looking at the stars...

I was a young boy, hiding in the closet, looking at a magazine given to me by a family member. He was almost as young and had no business looking at or sharing the magazine; neither of us truly grasped what was in our hands. The images are burned into my  memories all these years later, and it started an unhealthy objectification of women that would haunt me for decades.   Today, as a pastor, I regularly speak with men and couples struggling with pornography. Many stories resemble my own. One congregant told me she discovered a stack of sexually explicit magazines as a child,...