Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson The Hill is considered the top U.S. political website read by the White House and more lawmakers than any other site. A recent op-ed in it had the arresting title: “US Courts: Can’t pray at work, can’t pray at home.” Kelly Shackelford and James Ho were the authors. They make their case by citing two appeals court decisions. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals told Mary Anne Sause, a public housing resident, “that two officers could force her…

Kerby Anderson Even a devastating hurricane can provide some positive lessons. News outlets and commentators have been pointing to so many great “feel good” stories of people who stepped up to save people from the floodwaters and to provide for them once they were rescued. At least for a short period of time, the racial divisions were set aside as people from different ethnic backgrounds stepped up to help people of various ethnic backgrounds. We didn’t know if the people…

Penna Dexter I live in Texas. There’s a gaping wound in my state and nation. It needs care and prayer as it heals from Harvey’s devastation. Still we can be grateful for the lessons learned and applied well from another devastating Gulf storm, Hurricane Katrina. We learned to get ready. One can always hope a hurricane will weaken or change course. But as Hurricane Harvey formed, state and federal authorities assumed the worst and made detailed pre-storm preparations. Two hundred…

Kerby Anderson Members of Congress are debating fiscal issues, but unfortunately they often are debating the wrong issues. On the table are two issues: the debt limit debate and the tax reform debate. As important as they are, they pale in comparison to a bigger issue. Justin Bogie and Chase Flowers say, “America is Heading Straight into Its Most Avoidable Crisis Ever.” In fact, they compare it to the familiar story of the sinking of the Titanic. The crew of…

Kerby Anderson So often we hear that the “vast majority of Muslims are peaceful.” While that is certainly true, the claim doesn’t go far enough. Many years ago, William Kirkpatrick wrote about “The Vast Majority Myth.” He countered this idea with three propositions. The first proposition is that “the vast majority of people are peaceful, until they’re not.” It is easy to find examples of people who were peaceful for a long time and then quickly turned violent. The vast…

Kerby Anderson Hate labels have been thrown around quite a bit lately. Much of that started with the Southern Poverty Law Center. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, the group used to provide a valuable service but now throws the hate label around irresponsibly. Their “Hate Map” identifies groups that deserve the label (white supremacists, Neo-Nazis) with many others that do not (Family Research Council, American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom). Unfortunately, too many other organizations take them seriously….

Kerby Anderson Although I rarely write about who is leaving a government post, I wanted to make an exception with the departure of Sebastian Gorka. He served as a deputy assistant to President Trump and left the White House in late August. I wanted to talk about him first because he seems to understand the threat of radical Islam much better than many people who write about it or work in the government. That was evident in his book, Defeating…

Kerby Anderson Today is Labor Day. Although this day was set aside to honor trade and labor organizations, I believe it is a day when Christians can also consider how they view work and labor. The Bible has quite a bit to say about how we are to view work, and so I devote part of a chapter in my most recent book to a biblical view of work. First, we are to work unto the Lord in our labors….

Penna Dexter A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that a school may ban a coach from praying silently, alone, on the field after a game. Coach Joe Kennedy served our country as a Marine. Upon retirement he went to work as a football coach for Bremerton High School in Washington State. After games, he would wait until the players had cleared the field and then walk out, take a knee, and…

Kerby Anderson Even if it won’t pass anytime in the future, we need to give credit to Senators David Purdue and Tom Cotton for drafting the RAISE Act and starting a needed discussion about immigration reform. Their bill would change some of the problems with our immigration policy that was implemented in 1965. The 1965 law gave preference to relatives of U.S. citizens over just about everyone else. At the time, it was thought that the beneficiaries would be small…

Kerby Anderson If the younger generation wants to know the keys to success, they need to follow the success sequence published by Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang. They say that the millennial generation is “more likely to flourish financially if they follow the “success sequence.” They say, you need to get at least a high school education, work full-time, and marry before having any children, in that order. Their recent study at the American Enterprise Institute has the title, The…