I am not a prophet, not even a futurist. I do study trends, now and then, and I try to pay careful attention to popular culture. One thing I am quite sure about: global warming will be a central issue in public debates and political campaigns for some time e. It has e the Apocalypse Now issue of our generation. (Overpopulation, the nuclear threat and global cooling did it only a few decades ago.) The simple premise, virtually unchallenged in...

Time sure does fly. It’s been almost two years since I called Canada’s government-run health care system “The Sick Man of the Great White North” and wrote: Canada’s system may be the gold standard for government-run health care, but only if you’re looking for a system that can’t provide essential medical services in a timely manner. Sadly, nothing much has changed in the interceding time between that post and now. In fact, things are very much the same: Canadians still...

For your reading pleasure, I present you with a partial list of defendants from the case of Riches v. Bush et al: George W. Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, James Hoffa, , Pope Benedict XVI, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, John Deere, , Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party, Roc-A-Fella Records, Shawn Carter (doing business at Jay-Z), Japan’s Nikkei Stock Exchange, Gambino (crime family), Three Mile Island, Tony Danza, Islamic Republic of Iran, University of Miami, GEICO Insurance, Jewish State of Israel, Soledad...

There’s been a spate of stories lately in various media about the difficulty that evangelical denominations are having keeping young adults interested in the life of the institutional church. Here’s one from USA Today, “Young adults aren’t sticking with church” (HT: Kruse Kronicle; Out of Ur). And here’s another from a recent issue of my own denomination’s magazine, The Banner, “Where Did Our Young Adults Go?” I wonder if the push to be “relevant,” initiated largely by the baby boomer...

As one might infer from Lord Acton’s maxim, the question has been raised: Did proximity to political power corrupt Billy Graham’s chaplaincy to the presidency? GetReligion’s Douglas LeBlanc surveys the recent attention paid by the mainstream media to this part of Graham’s pastoral mission, and concludes in concord with Randall Balmer, “The gospel is better served when religious leaders keep a healthy distance from political power. The challenge for future presidents will be to find spiritual guidance and solace from...

Here are some book reviews of note from recent weeks that you may find to be of interest: Charles H. Parker. The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572-1620. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xv + 221 pp. Illustrations, map, tables, notes, sources cited, index. $37.99 (paper), ISBN 0-521-02540-0. Reviewed by Victoria Christman, Department of History, Luther College.Gertrude Himmelfarb. The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling. Chicago: Ivan...

People light candles below a wooden cross at a site south of Moscow where at the height of Josef Stalin’s political purges 70 years ago firing squads executed thousands of people perceived as enemies munism. (AP) “Martyrdom means a great deal to Orthodox people,” writes historian James Billington in “The Orthodox Frontier of Faith,” an essay collected in “Orthodoxy and Western Culture,” a volume of essays published in honor of Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005). The 20th Century’s...

To hear the NYT tell it (and Sojourners, for that matter), the family farm is facing severe threats. With no small degree of dramatic flourish, the NYT editorial linked above concludes: For the past 75 years, America’s system of farm subsidies has unfortunately driven farming toward such concentration, and there’s no sign that the next farm bill will change that. The difference this time is that American farming is poised on the brink of true industrialization, creating a landscape driven...

Many students who identify as Evangelical Christians and attend a state or public university are reporting severe bias against their beliefs in the classroom. “Tenured Bigots,” is the title of Mark Bergin’s article in World Magazine which highlights statistical proof of enormous prejudice by faculty members against evangelicals. Surprised? Of course not! The findings about attitudes toward Evangelicals actually turned up in a study designed to gauge anti-Semitism. The analysis was conducted by Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for...

No doubt feeding the fears of those who believe that global corporations pose the greatest threat to the future flourishing of humanity, such multi-nationals are beginning to hire their own economists, much like governments have their own financial and economic experts. See, for instance, this interview on the WSJ Economics Blog with UC-Berkeley economist Hal Varian, who has taken a position as chief economist with Google, Inc. Where will Varian be focusing his attention? In his words, “I think marketing...