Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson In a normal world, it would be newsworthy when the Attorney General of the United States gives an impassioned speech about religious liberty. But we don’t live in that world, so the speech by William Barr has been either ignored or ridiculed. When he spoke at Notre Dame, he reminded the audience that the founders of this country had a “supreme test as a free society.” That test was “whether the citizens in such a free society [could]…

Kerby Anderson Should the federal government start pulling the tax-exempt status of religious organizations? Most Americans reject the idea, even though it was floated by a former presidential candidate who argued that “no reward, no benefit, no tax break” should be given to certain religious institutions. Unfortunately, you can find a significant number of other Americans who agree with his sentiment. That is why I think it is time to have a discussion about the tax-exemption given to churches and…

Kerby Anderson David Limbaugh was on my radio program last week to talk about his new book, Guilty by Reason of Insanity. He devotes a significant portion of the book and a recent column to socialism. He is as concerned as I have been about the trend in young people to prefer socialism over capitalism. A 2015 YouGov poll found that 43 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 years of age had a favorable opinion of socialism and preferred…

Penna Dexter The Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order that serves the elderly and impoverished, were again in court recently asking for protection from the ObamaCare mandate that tells them they must include contraceptive coverage in their employee health plan. In 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services, plus the Labor and Treasury Departments, adopted rules which allowed exceptions to ObamaCare’s mandate that employers provide birth control to their employees as part of their health coverage. Many…

Kerby Anderson When the Apostle Paul made it to Athens, he was able to present the Gospel to the Greek philosophers in a place known as the Areopagus. The Romans referred to it as “Mars Hill.” It was a place where various perspectives and ideas could be expressed. Today we call it the marketplace of ideas. When I was in Athens, I was struck by the fact that you could see the Parthenon from this adjacent hill where Paul spoke…

Kerby Anderson A significant percentage of Americans have little or no retirement savings. That means that future debates about Social Security may become even more contentious than they have been in the past. As I have discussed in previous commentaries, the only thing in the Social Security trust fund are IOUs. Sometime in the future, the government may not have the necessary funds for all the Baby Boomers who are currently retiring. A report from Northwestern Mutual found that one…

Kerby Anderson We love our smartphones, but many of us wonder if they are controlling our lives in ways that may not be healthy. Markham Reid responds to this question in his commentary in Time magazine: “You Asked: Should I Ditch My Smartphone?” He rehearses much of the evidence I have discussed in previous commentaries. Dr. Brian Primack, professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh explains how “the little wobble of the emoticon, or the A-flat ding that stimulated the…

Kerby Anderson Whenever I speak to an audience about the influence of the media on children, I quote from a survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation concerning electronic media. When you add together the amount of time children spend with television, cell phones, iPads, video games, and computers, it essentially becomes a full-time job of more than 53 hours. This is a dramatic increase from over a decade ago. The findings of the survey of over 2,000 young people…

Kerby Anderson We often talk about worldviews, but do we know how they were formed through history? Professor Glenn Sunshine wrote a great book entitled Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home.It helps us see the influence of worldviews through history. He defines worldview as “the framework you use to interpret the world and your place in it.” He begins by discussing the worldview of Rome. By the end of the…

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…