Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson This is Christmas week, and I thought it might be worthwhile to spend a moment to reflect on the words to the hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It was written in 1867 by Phillips Brooks (an Episcopal pastor from Philadelphia). He had been in Israel two years earlier and had celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem. He wrote this song to reflect on what the night of the birth of Jesus might have been like. O little town of…

Kerby Anderson The carol “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is an English translation of a Latin hymn that is sung during Advent and Christmas. The text goes back to at least the 18th century (and perhaps much earlier) while the music put to it goes back to the 15th century. “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”…

Kerby Anderson It is estimated that Charles Wesley wrote over 6500 hymns. Perhaps his best-known hymn is “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” Over the years it has been edited slightly, but the meaning and theology remain as he wrote it more than two centuries ago. It begins with a proclamation of the birth of Jesus: “Hark! the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King; Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” The hymn reminds us why…

Kerby Anderson During this Christmas week, I have taken the time to discuss the theology of some of the Christmas hymns and carols that we sing. Today I would like to talk about The First Noel. It is an English song dating back to the sixteenth century. Some people believe that the First Noel was French because of the French spelling of Noel, but it is actually an English song. The French word Noël does mean “Christmas” and it is…

Kerby Anderson This is Christmas week, and so I thought we might reflect on the hymn, “O Holy Night” by John Dwight. “O holy night! The stars are brightly shining. It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Jesus came into the world to save us and so we feel valuable and our soul feels its worth. Perhaps the most quoted…

Penna Dexter The Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatly Foundation recently published a report about Americans’ attitudes regarding marriage and child-rearing. Its title is, “The Divided State of Our Unions: Family Formation in (Post-) Covid-19 America.” It shows the “desire to marry” has ticked up a bit overall since the onset of Covid, while “the desire to have a child” dropped. But, the study reveals deepening “economic, religious, and partisan divides in family formation” and describes the reasons “the…

Kerby Anderson We have all heard the phrase, “seeing is believing.” Unfortunately, that is no longer true due to the technological advancements that make deepfakes so convincing. Two years ago, I wrote about how you could put someone’s face on a video the way you can use Photoshop or Lightroom to put a face on a picture of someone’s body. In the past, it took cutting-edge video technology to accomplish this. Now, it is readily available and can even be…

Kerby Anderson University professors in the humanities and social sciences have been publishing open letters for years, but the latest one comes from some of the top scientists in the country warning about the assault on math in our schools. In previous commentaries, I have talked about woke math and woke science. It is sometimes easy to dismiss such bizarre statements by leftist critics. But this letter focuses on recent attempts to “eliminate standardized testing and lower standards in math…

Kerby Anderson George Barna has been interviewing Americans throughout this year and published his results in the American Worldview Inventory. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, he has concluded that most Americans have a syncretistic worldview, which is a cut-and-paste worldview. A very small minority of Americans have Marxism as their dominant worldview. But here is the interesting fact. A much more significant percentage of them do embrace ideas that could be described as Marxist views. For example, more…

Kerby Anderson Dennis Prager recently put together a “Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction” and provided 16 examples. He probably calls it a “brief guide” because he could come up with even more examples. He has said on numerous occasions that everything the Left touches, it ruins. It became clear to him years ago while talking about the Left’s war on the Boy Scouts. Then he wondered if the Left would replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts. He…

Kerby Anderson Two articles in the last few weeks raise serious questions about the effectiveness and efficiency of mail-in ballots. The first comes from a House election in Florida that was won by a mere five votes. That was a reminder of how close elections can be especially in a primary in a special election. But the more important issue was the nearly 1,400 mail-in ballots thrown out in a Democratic primary that was won by five votes. Most of…