Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter As we enter 2021, many scholars I respect warn that things are becoming quite different in America. What’s being described as a ”soft totalitarianism” is taking hold in American public, economic, and academic life. People are being canceled, losing jobs, educational opportunities, and the ability to express ideas that have Christian and conservative roots. If you’re a believer, you will be tested. To respond to testing well, each of us must decide beforehand how we will react. Princeton…

Kerby Anderson On this Christmas day, I think it would be good to reflect for just a moment on the Incarnation. God became man and took on human flesh. This is a great theological wonder and mystery. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote this to describe the importance of the birth of Christ. “Thanks to the great mercy and marvel of the Incarnation, the cosmic scene is resolved into a human drama. A human drama in which God reached down to relate Himself…

Kerby Anderson On this Christmas week, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on the coming of the Messiah. The Old Testament contains hundreds of prophecies that give specific detail about the “anointed one” who is the Messiah. The prophets proclaimed that He would come to save the people. The Bible is unique in many ways, especially when it comes to fulfilled prophecy. At the time when it was written, 27 percent (1800 verses) of the Bible was prophetic. Large…

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 remains 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 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…

Penna Dexter Election battles have not delayed the rollout of the left’s agenda on abortion. Last week a hearing before a subcommittee of the powerful House Appropriations Committee considered a repeal of the Hyde Amendment. The title of the hearing was “The Impact on Women Seeking an Abortion but are Denied Because of an Inability to Pay.” The Hyde Amendment, which has been renewed annually since 1976, protects taxpayers from being required to foot the bill for most abortions. Rep….

Kerby Anderson Our world has changed significantly since the November election, and that raises the reasonable question of whether we have been “played.” Victor Davis Hanson provides a few examples in a recent commentary, and I will add some others. For example, perhaps you have noticed the disappearance of all the protests? Where are Antifa and BLM? A week or two before the election, the flood of violence in cities subsided, perhaps for fear that it might affect the election….

Kerby Anderson The finance minister for Louis XIV once explained that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.” Unfortunately, many liberal politicians don’t seem to know where the line is between plucking the Golden Goose and killing the Golden Goose. That is certainly true of political leaders in Seattle and San Francisco. Two years ago, I wrote how liberals were sleepless…

Kerby Anderson The mainstream press has done a very poor job of covering the pandemic. That is the conclusion of one research paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Scholars from Dartmouth College and Brown University analyzed the tone of COVID-19-related news articles since the start of this year. They found a significant difference between the way the US media covered the pandemic compared to how media in other countries covered it. For example, more than nine out…

Kerby Anderson One of the stories that keeps surfacing is how politicians who set down stringent rules for dealing with the coronavirus end up breaking their own rules. This has been standard fare for various conservative hosts. But even CNN hosts have been criticizing political leaders who cannot seem to comply with mandated guidelines. Brianna Kellar, for example, came down upon Democratic leaders like California governor Gavin Newsome, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, San Francisco mayor London Breed, and Denver…