Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson What does the word “Christian” mean these days? It doesn’t seem to mean very much. The last few reports from George Barna’s Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University reveal that a very small percentage of American Christians have a Christian worldview. Nearly seven in ten (69%) of Americans self-identify as Christian. Yet only about 4 percent of Americans have a Christian worldview. George Barna explains, “Christian has become somewhat of a generic term rather than a name…

Penna Dexter The Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce engagement has some people wondering: Will marriage by the world’s most famous millennial feminist accelerate the recent, modest reversal of the decline in marriage rates? The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman wrote recently of a marriage “comeback.” He cites data that “suggests that the decades-long decline in the proportion of Americans who are married may have reached its low point.” Having hit that nadir during the pandemic, the 2023 marriage rate “was higher than…

Kerby Anderson Tanita Maddox is the national director for generational impact for Young Life and author of the book, What Gen Z Really Wants to Know About God. She was on my radio program recently to share her research and insights. Her investigation began when she began to ask if she was being effective in ministry anymore. She saw panic attacks at events, students filled with anxiety, and open hostility to faith she had never seen. Ministry she had done…

Kerby Anderson Now that students are back in school, there is something missing in the classroom. What is missing are cell phones. Last month, the public schools in the District of Columbia banned cell phone use during school hours, joining many other school districts who have done the same. The reason for these new rules should be obvious but are worth mentioning. More than 95 percent of teenagers have access to a cell phone and would be inclined to use…

Kerby Anderson Matt Taibbi worked for many years as a contributing editor for Rolling Stones and now is the publisher of Racket News. After the horrible news of the school shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school, he made an insightful comment about the way the media covers such issues. “You don’t know who’s crazier, the shooter or some of the people who are talking about the shooter.” His comment seemed to sum up all the media commentary that occurs after…

Kerby Anderson I have two neighbors that illustrate what is happening and will continue to happen in the housing market. One neighbor just sold their house for a much lower price than anyone in the neighborhood would have expected. The other neighbor bought two homes and used them as rental properties. They now live in one of the homes. People living in the other rental home haven’t paid their rent in four months, and they had to go to court…

Kerby Anderson The National Assessment of Educational Progress is often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. For most of the states, this hasn’t been a report card you would want to show anyone. But four southern states stand out because they have shown improvement. Alabama and Louisiana had math and reading scores higher than they were in 2019, before Covid. Mississippi fourth graders topped the country in math and reading. If you look at recovery statistics, Alabama was first…

Penna Dexter To address what they see as the problem of social inequities between students, education bureaucrats have implemented “reforms” in grading practices aimed at promoting ”equity” in student outcomes. In a new survey conducted by the Thomas Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank, 52 percent of teachers said their school or district had adopted at least one of these so-called  “equitable” grading policies. The survey reveals a distinct lack of enthusiasm among teachers for these policies. One of the…

Kerby Anderson Yascha Mounk has been watching the battle over the impact of social media on young Americans. On one side are psychologists, like Jonathan Haidt, who has written about this for many years and has published his book, The Anxious Generation. On the other side are the skeptics who remind us that we tend to exaggerate the impact of new technologies. Mounk says, “In this battle, I have until now chosen to be a non-combatant.” What changed his mind?…

Kerby Anderson Kenneth Rogoff is a Harvard University economics professor. On an X post, he identified himself as the Harvard economist who predicted back in 2018 that “A decade from now, Bitcoin is more likely to be $100 than $100,000.” He obviously, got that prediction wrong since Bitcoin has consistently been at or above $100,000 for months. He explained his mistake by saying that he was far too optimistic about the U.S. coming to its senses about sensible crypto regulation. As…

Kerby Anderson David Brooks writes in The New York Times about “America’s New Segregation.” He isn’t talking about racial segregation but instead is focusing on class segregation. Essentially, we are talking about self-segregation. He quotes the book Diminished Democracy which observed that Americans used to join cross-class community organizations like the Rotary or the Elks clubs. But gradually, highly educated people left them for professional organizations filled with others more like themselves. Dan McLaughlin agrees with David Brooks but then…