Recent Viewpoints

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…

Kerby Anderson For decades, sociologists have documented the phenomenon of extended adolescence. This is where someone who is an adult still acts like a teenager. One classic example would be a 35-year-old who has part of their rent and bills covered by parents and continues to take college classes. Jean Twenge in her latest research on the trailing edge millennials (who she calls iGen) are extending this phenomenon even further. She documents that teenagers are becoming adults even later than…

Kerby Anderson Americans don’t know much about the Constitution, and it apparently is getting worse. Nine years ago, I wrote and recorded a commentary about constitutional illiteracy. Back then I quoted John Whitehead (Rutherford Institute) who testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the rule of law. He provided some alarming statistics based upon a survey done about ten years ago. They found that only one in four Americans could name more than one of the freedoms…

Kerby Anderson Jean Twenge has been researching generational differences for a quarter-century. But she noticed in 2012 abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. Up until that time, there were gentle slopes of line graphs. Suddenly they became steep mountains and sheer cliffs. That year is when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent. Her article in The Atlantic asks the ominous question: “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The generation she is thinking about would be…

Kerby Anderson Pastor Rick Stedman asks, “Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?” He says it is because of zombies, superheroes, music, sports, and science. That is his premise in his book, 31 Surprising Reasons to Believe in God. He begins his book by telling a true story of a family on a rural property in northern California. They found a rusted can by a tree. They ended up finding eight cans containing 1427 gold coins worth an estimated…

Penna Dexter Parents across the nation are learning that their K-12 children are being indoctrinated in critical race theory and some are responding to protect their kids. Teachers and administrators have been known to deflect questions from parents about CRT — explaining that, ‘yes of course, we teach history, we teach the Civil War and the civil rights movement.’ Some don’t even know that their curriculum is filled with CRT. One historian and educator wrote a helpful article entitled, “How…

Kerby Anderson You have probably heard comments about certain people living in a bubble. They live in affluent communities cut off from some of the realities that most Americans face. Due to the research by Charles Murray, we can now identify where these bubble communities are located. In his book, Coming Apart, he argued that a high-IQ, highly educated upper class was formed over the last half-century that is disconnected from the culture of mainstream America. Charles Murray put a…

Kerby Anderson The Bible gives us a story of the world told from God’s perspective. That is why the Christian worldview provides the best explanation of the world. It answers questions like, “Why am I here?” and “What is my purpose in life?” Greg Koukl provides a big-picture introduction to the story of the Bible in his new book, The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important That Happens in Between. He was on…

Kerby Anderson Throughout the years, John Stossel has been trying to find ways to simplify economics and illustrate the benefits of free markets. He has found that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is often invisible to his viewers. Friedrich Hayek’s “spontaneous order” is clearer but still hard to show. That is why he began to use some of the ideas found in the article, “Rinkonomics: A Window on Spontaneous Order.” It inspired him to rent a skating rink in order to…

Kerby Anderson Your children are facing an onslaught of profanity through the media. Movies are one place where profanity reigns. One survey has been tracking profanity in movies from the first swear word on film (1939’s Gone With the Wind) to The Wolf of Wall Street, which holds the record with 798 swear words. There has been a 500 percent increase over these many decades. The Parents Television Council has documented the fact that the number of expletives on television…

Kerby Anderson No doubt you have heard the phrase, “politics is downstream from culture.” It is a way of explaining that what is at stake in our world often begins upstream in the culture. Popular culture is all around us and delivered to us through broadcast media and social media. We perceive the world through news reports, through movies, through entertainment programs, and through music. Every form of communication has a message. Sometimes it is blatant and intentional. Often it…