Recent Viewpoints

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…

Kerby Anderson Two months ago, I interviewed and wrote two commentaries on the book by Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies. I wanted to revisit this book for a number of reasons. More Christians are making positive comments about the book and encouraging others to read it. John Stonestreet recently did a Breakpoint commentary on it and says it is a vital book for Christians to read. Kelly Shackelford of First Liberty Institute and his wife are doing a Bible study on…

Penna Dexter Millions of America’s students may have fallen behind during months of remote schooling. But parents have learned a lot. Some have discovered the benefits of homeschooling. Others found out how hard it can be and are jubilant when their schools reopen. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the findings of a non-profit organization called Northwest Evaluation Association. NWEA looked at online test results for 4.4 million public-school children in 3rd through 8th grades and found that students…

Kerby Anderson Earlier this week I talked about a study by Dr. Robert Epstein who documented that Google bias may have shifted at least 6 million votes to Joe Biden. It turns out that this is not the first instance in which technology was used to rig an election. This happened in the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes. Back then, we didn’t have the Internet. But we did have the telegraph, and Western Union had a monopoly on communications…

Kerby Anderson Most of us are aware of how pervasive social media censorship has become over the last few years. But a recent commentary by Daniel Gelernter illustrates how bizarre some of the censorship has become. He talks about a Facebook post about World War II that was appended with the “false information” tag. His comment was about the impact of gun control policies in Germany and how that could have led to the Holocaust. He had these relevant comments…