Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson The discussion earlier this month about the possible political future of Oprah Winfrey provides a commentary on America’s religious landscape. Ross Douthat reminds us that “We’ve heard about Oprah the entrepreneur, Oprah the celebrity, Oprah the champion of holistic medicine” etc. But the press usually ignores her place as a religious teacher to millions of Americans. He also says we need to understand that there are “three broad approaches to religious questions: one traditional, one spiritual, and one…

Kerby Anderson Most of us grew up believing that the life expectancy of Americans would increase every year. After all, advances in medicine should almost have guaranteed that to be the case. That is why it is so shocking that American life expectancy declined in 2015. It was even more shocking that it declined again in 2016. And I predict that it will once again decline in 2017, once all the facts and figures are in. Our lifestyles, in many…

Kerby Anderson In many of my commentaries I have talked about how some college campuses have been a center of intolerance. Many have even been repressive with speech codes and student protests inside the classroom and on the campus. There is mounting evidence some corporate cultures have become at least as intolerant, perhaps even more so, as college campuses. We now have abundant evidence of that in Google because of a class-action lawsuit filed by former Google employee James Damore….

Kerby Anderson Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. When the Supreme Court removed most state restrictions on abortion back in 1973, who could have predicted the world we live in today? When the ruling came down, few understood the long-term implications. I remember speaking on the issue in college classrooms a few years later and wondering when the Supreme Court would reverse its decision. By the 1980s, it seemed like only a matter of time that abortion would…

Penna Dexter A bill working its way through the California Senate would require the state’s public universities and colleges, including community colleges, to offer abortion drugs at their health centers. The bill’s sponsor, state Senator Connie Leyva, insists it’s necessary to relieve young women of the “burden” of traveling to obtain an abortion. She says, “Students should not have to travel long distances, pay out of pocket, or even miss class or work responsibilities in order to receive health care…

Kerby Anderson During the debate on tax reform, some listeners expressed their concern that the charitable deduction would be eliminated. Even after the bill was passed, one listener lamented that charitable deductions were dropped. None of that is true, but I kept wondering why people would believe this. Apparently some of the spokespeople for philanthropy expressed their concern that the tax bill would reduce the incentive for giving because it nearly doubled the standard deduction. That would mean few filers…

Kerby Anderson When it was announced that all of the 2017 senior class in a Washington, DC high school graduated with college acceptance letters, various news outlets called it a miracle. Teachers, students, administrators, and parents were celebrating. It turns out the miracle was cheating. Both NPR (National Public Radio) and the Washington Post ran stories about Frank Ballou High School boosting the graduation rate from 57 percent to 100 percent in one school year. It was too good to…

Kerby Anderson A new study by three political scientists concluded that concerns about the impact of fake news are overblown. You may have heard that fake news elected Donald Trump. Supposedly Trump voters were duped into believing false information and cast their vote on inaccurate facts. The recent study by professors at Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Exeter debunks that theory. The researchers collected tracking data from more than two thousand Americans and analyzed their news consumption. They sorted…

Kerby Anderson With all this talk about fake news, you might think this is a recent phenomenon. Jarrett Stepman provides a history of fake news in the US and the attempts government and other entities have used to try to stop it. He reminds us that the Founding Fathers were well aware of the power of the press. Many of them (such as Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine) were newspapermen and pamphleteers. That is why they were all…

Kerby Anderson As last year was ending and this year was beginning, we have seen tumult in Tehran. While Iranians have been protesting in the streets, there is another important story that is being missed. Mark Howard, writing in the Gospel Coalition, says the story can be summarized in two sentences. “Persecution threatened to wipe out Iran’s tiny church. Instead, the church in Iran has become the fastest growing in the world, and it is influencing the region for Christ.”…

Penna Dexter A survey recently released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that, over the past decade, the number of high-school-age teens who are engaging in sex has dropped dramatically with especially pronounced declines in the past two years. The report’s authors are particularly encouraged by the steep fall in the rate of sexual activity among ninth and tenth graders and also among black and Hispanic teens. In 2015, 41.2 percent of high school students surveyed…