Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Big government isn’t working, according to Newt Gingrich. He doesn’t ask you to accept his conclusion but encourages you to check it out for yourself. Here are his suggestions. “Go to your local gas station and ask folks filling up their gas tanks if they think things are working. Go to the grocery store and watch people coping with the rising cost of food and ask if they think things are working. Go to small businesses whose shipments…

Kerby Anderson The US economy is not in good shape, and inflation hasn’t been this high since 1982. You wouldn’t expect to hear so many pundits try to convince you that everything is just fine. But that is just what we have seen from the establishment media, along with some economic cheerleaders on financial shows. Charles Cooke provides a list of these cheerleaders, from writers at the New York Times and the Washington Post to broadcasters at MSNBC and CNBC….

Penna Dexter My prayer for 2022 is that Christians across America would have courage. When a person chooses to be the best person he or she can possibly be when the consequences for doing that could be very harmful to them — that’s courage. Principled Christians can be cancelled, lose jobs, even face criminal penalties for standing against evil and for truth. Authoritarian leaders engender fear and foster a culture of victimhood and dependence. But Christians who are not mastered…

Kerby Anderson This is Christmas week, and I thought it might be worthwhile to spend a moment to reflect on the words to the hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It was written in 1867 by Phillips Brooks (an Episcopal pastor from Philadelphia). He had been in Israel two years earlier and had celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem. He wrote this song to reflect on what the night of the birth of Jesus might have been like. O little town of…

Kerby Anderson The carol “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is an English translation of a Latin hymn that is sung during Advent and Christmas. The text goes back to at least the 18th century (and perhaps much earlier) while the music put to it goes back to the 15th century. “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”…

Kerby Anderson It is estimated that Charles Wesley wrote over 6500 hymns. Perhaps his best-known hymn is “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” Over the years it has been edited slightly, but the meaning and theology remain as he wrote it more than two centuries ago. It begins with a proclamation of the birth of Jesus: “Hark! the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King; Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” The hymn reminds us why…

Kerby Anderson During this Christmas week, I have taken the time to discuss the theology of some of the Christmas hymns and carols that we sing. Today I would like to talk about The First Noel. It is an English song dating back to the sixteenth century. Some people believe that the First Noel was French because of the French spelling of Noel, but it is actually an English song. The French word Noël does mean “Christmas” and it is…

Kerby Anderson This is Christmas week, and so I thought we might reflect on the hymn, “O Holy Night” by John Dwight. “O holy night! The stars are brightly shining. It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Jesus came into the world to save us and so we feel valuable and our soul feels its worth. Perhaps the most quoted…

Penna Dexter The Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatly Foundation recently published a report about Americans’ attitudes regarding marriage and child-rearing. Its title is, “The Divided State of Our Unions: Family Formation in (Post-) Covid-19 America.” It shows the “desire to marry” has ticked up a bit overall since the onset of Covid, while “the desire to have a child” dropped. But, the study reveals deepening “economic, religious, and partisan divides in family formation” and describes the reasons “the…

Kerby Anderson We have all heard the phrase, “seeing is believing.” Unfortunately, that is no longer true due to the technological advancements that make deepfakes so convincing. Two years ago, I wrote about how you could put someone’s face on a video the way you can use Photoshop or Lightroom to put a face on a picture of someone’s body. In the past, it took cutting-edge video technology to accomplish this. Now, it is readily available and can even be…

Kerby Anderson University professors in the humanities and social sciences have been publishing open letters for years, but the latest one comes from some of the top scientists in the country warning about the assault on math in our schools. In previous commentaries, I have talked about woke math and woke science. It is sometimes easy to dismiss such bizarre statements by leftist critics. But this letter focuses on recent attempts to “eliminate standardized testing and lower standards in math…