The meaning of evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s downfall needs to be well understood by religious conservatives, lest the tragedy be compounded. The pain that has befallen the man — now resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals — along with his family and church is the consequence of his poor decisions. What would be worse than his personal destruction, however, Read More ›
A provocative challenge to religious conservatives has been lodged by Time magazine blogger Andrew Sullivan in his new book, “The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.” A very publicly gay, self-identified conservative and former New Republic editor, Sullivan thinks conservatism in general and the Republican Party in particular have been ruined by “fundamentalists” and “Christianists.” Read More ›
Is a politics infused with faith “un-American”? Recent books, including Kevin Phillips’ best-seller “American Theocracy,” have given serious cover to liberals’ argument that religiosity in political life is pushing us ever closer to theocratic rule. Lately, for example, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) HAS warned against the threat posed by religious believers. “There is a group of people of Read More ›
With Rosh Hashanah upon us, inaugurating 10 days of repentance dedicated to freeing ourselves of negative personal habits, it seems an appropriate time to ask if fundamentalist Islam can be freed from its most bloody and aggressive tendencies. Is the enmity between many Muslims and the West destined to remain a feature of world history until the end? That question Read More ›
Some members of America’s political and cultural elite have been having a tough time lately distinguishing between the political philosophy of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and that of our country’s religious conservatives. Ahmadinejad is a classic theocrat whose regime subjects his country to religious law. Can we say the same of a Christian like George W. Bush? Perhaps so, according Read More ›
The weeks preceding the saddest of Jewish holy days, Tisha b’Av, have seen remarkable displays of anti-Jewish sentiment, from the deadly to the merely despicable. As Israel was slammed with long-range rockets from Hezbollah, the world’s “civilized” nations (with a few exceptions, including the United States) condemned the Jewish state for striking back in self-defense. In Seattle, where I live, Read More ›
BETRAYING SPINOZA: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us ModernityBy Rebecca GoldsteinSchocken, 287 pages$19.95 WITH most people, if they know anything about the philosopher Benedic tus Spinoza, it’s his sensational-sounding excommunication by the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656 at age 24. But Jewish-style excommunication sounds more awesome than it was. Its impact was merely social. Until the excommunicated person changed his Read More ›
If you’ve seen Al Gore’s global-warming scare movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” you may have come away as I did, wondering about the highly partisan nature of the climate-change debate. Why is it partisan at all? If carbon-dioxide emissions are perilously raising global temperatures, surely that’s a problem which can be left to scientists and other non-ideological experts. That’s a big Read More ›
David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow in Discovery Institute’s program on Religion and Civic Life, and a frequent writer on other topics, including evolution, is a First Place winner of the prestigious Rockower Awards for journalism excellence, it has been announced. Founded in 1980 to encourage Jewish media to improve their publications and to promote high quality journalism by Jewish writers, Read More ›
The fast-emerging Religious Left contrasts sharply on many issues–from homosexual marriage to socialized medicine–with its longer established competitor, the Religious Right. Yet these two Bible-citing political movements equally have woken up to the realization that there is something intrinsically American about using the Bible as a guide to practical politics. That’s good news, and a blow to secularist orthodoxy. As Read More ›