Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Over the last two decades, Christian Smith has helped us understand what is in the heads and hearts of young people. He is the coauthor of such books at Soul Searching, Souls in Transition, and Lost in Transition. In his books, he coined the now famous term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” The term came up in a discussion on my radio program with Kara Powell about her book, Growing Young. She and her coauthors have identified a number of…

Kerby Anderson Economic inequality is one of the themes that ran through the presidential election and congressional races. Edward Conard has been challenging many of the myths surrounding this debate. That is why I had him on my radio program to talk about his new book, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class. Four years ago, he wrote the controversial bestseller Unintended Consequences, which attempted to set the record straight on the 2008 financial crisis. He…

Penna Dexter The feminist Left may not admit it, but the #MeToo movement is a sign that the sexual revolution has failed women. Accounts of real sexual assault and harassment are pouring in, resulting in heavy costs to the perpetrators. But there’s also a simmering discontent among women with the sexual culture as a whole. A recent account of a date-gone-bad resulted in the very public humiliation of comedian, Aziz Ansari. An anonymous woman called “Grace” accuses him of violating…

Kerby Anderson You have probably seen campaign yard signs popping up in your neighborhood. That is a vivid reminder that we are headed to another election season. The general election isn’t until November, but party primary elections will be taking place in the next few months. What will be the agenda for the candidates for these political parties? The Republican agenda should be fairly easy to predict. Incumbents will point to the recently passed tax reform bill and ask to…

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…