Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter Last February, in a one-hour radio interview, Jeff Younger told me the story of his battle to save his then-six-year-old son James. When James was 3 his mother, Jeff’s ex-wife, began dressing and treating him as a girl. She began taking him to a transgender-affirming therapist. And she obtained a court order enjoining Jeff from dressing James as a boy for school, from teaching him that he is a boy, and from providing religious teachings about sexuality and…

Kerby Anderson You may have heard the term “cultural appropriation.” But I have found that many of our listeners were unfamiliar with the term and how it is used to criticize anyone who is not deemed to be “politically correct.” The online cultural appropriation police were in full view recently when a young woman decided to wear a traditional Chinese dress to her school prom. Since Keziah Daum is not Asian, this infuriated people on social media when she posted…

Kerby Anderson The crime rate is up in many cities, so maybe it’s time to consider a solution rarely suggested. Let’s see what faith-based organizations and people of faith can do. The evidence is that they can reduce the crime rate and the recidivism rate in our prisons. This is the argument Baylor University criminologist Byron Johnson makes in his book, More God, Less Crime. Sadly, most social scientists and even criminologists seem reluctant to make the connection between faith…

Kerby Anderson Economist Thomas Sowell filed his last column a while back. At the age of 89, he certainly has earned his retirement. We will miss his insight, but benefit from the books and columns he has written over the years. One of his last few columns had the engaging title “Football and Fallacies.” As is so often the case, he takes on one of the fallacies of the liberal left. He talks about the reaction from the players in…

Kerby Anderson A report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) finds that teenage virgins are healthier than other students who are sexually active. At first, you might think that is merely an obvious conclusion since virgins are not likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD). But the conclusions are based on many other factors as well. Students who are virgins actually rate significantly and consistently better in nearly all health-related behaviors and measures than their sexually active peers….

Kerby Anderson A question Joni Eareckson Tada has been asking over the years is “When Is It Right to Die?” That is the title of her book which has recently been updated. She understands this issue for many reasons. One of the most significant is the fact that she has spent more than 50 years in her wheelchair. She was on my radio program recently to talk about the latest edition of her book. She is concerned that society is…

Penna Dexter It appears that a United Nations agency is blocking pro-life groups from registering for a population conference set to take place in Nairobi, Kenya in mid-November. The conference is co-hosted by the UN Population Fund (commonly known as UNFPA) along with the government of Kenya. This conference marks the 25th anniversary of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development. Its organizers aim to “accelerate implementation” of the Cairo Plan of Action. At the Cairo conference, delegates agreed on…

Kerby Anderson Dr. Anne Bradley has been on my radio program and in one of her articles, she talks about her first trip to the Soviet Union. Even as a teenager she could see through the attempt to make Russia look more prosperous than it was. In fact, her visit was one of the reasons she became an economist. She ends her article by telling the true story of what happened when Boris Yeltsin visited the United States. He was…

Kerby Anderson Americans in general, and even evangelicals in particular, seem confused about important details of their faith. A study done by Lifeway Research found that Americans don’t know much about theology, and many evangelicals seem confused as well. Tyler O’Neil wrote about the “12 Lies American Evangelicals Believe.” Here are a few of them. Americans generally believe that their personal salvation depends on good works. The survey found that three-fourths (77%) agreed with the statement that people must contribute…

Kerby Anderson If you think about it, your life is the culmination of lots and lots of decisions. Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, argues that people make 10,000 to 20,000 small decisions every day. If you multiply this by the US population you end up with one quadrillion decisions. This is one of the points Jeff Myers makes in his book, Understanding the Culture. The legacy you leave is the sum of all of these decisions. Many are inconsequential. Others…

Kerby Anderson No doubt you have heard the phrase, “politics is downstream from culture.” It is a way of explaining that what is at stake in our world often begins upstream in the culture. Popular culture is all around us and delivered to us through broadcast media and social media. We perceive the world through news reports, through movies, through entertainment programs, and through music. Every form of communication has a message. Sometimes it is blatant and intentional. Often it…