Darryl Hart has a bit of a go at “the hyperventilation that goes on in some neo-Calvinist circles when folks talk about the power of the gospel to redeem all of life,” using the woes of the city of Detroit as a trump card. Hart wonders why he hasn’t “seen too many posts from the transformers about Detroit’s decline and bankruptcy.” I don’t know if The Gospel Coalition is going to have anything say about Detroit’s bankruptcy, but Tim Keller...

It sounds like a late-night tv scam: make tens of thousands of dollars and don’t work at all! And yet, it turns out that the U.S. government is offering just such a deal. For instance, a welfare recipient in the state of Connecticut can make up to $38,761, according to a new Cato Institute study. In Hawaii, the figure is $49,175, over 200 percent above the Federal Poverty Level. As The Heritage Foundation has pointed out, nearly half of Americans...

Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., in an essay for The Catholic World Report, offers some points worth pondering regarding Christianity and poverty. Entitled “Do Christians Love Poverty,” Schall insists that we must make the distinction between loving the poor – actual people – and loving “poverty” in some abstract way. For that to happen, we have to be holistic, realistic and concrete in our intentions and actions. It would seem that our love of the poor, in some basic sense,...

Near the top of my long and ever-growing list of pet peeves is articles titled, “The Conservative Case for [Insert Proposal Usually Rejected by Conservatives Here].” It’s almost an iron-clad rule that before you even read the article you can be assured of that the case being made will use words that appeal to conservatives while being based on principles that are contrary to conservatism and/or reality. Take, for example, a recent op-ed in the New Statesman by British Conservative...

At the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney writes (HT: The Transom), “When liberals talk munity, conservatives are too quick to raise the Gadsden Flag and shout, ‘Leave me alone!'” He goes on to examine “the reactions to catchphrases made famous by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — ‘You didn’t build that’ and ‘It takes a village.'” Despite the negative reaction from many conservatives, says Carney, Obama’s statement in its full context, ‘you didn’t build that’ is true. Obama’s line began this...

Egypt: Coptic church cancels Sunday mass for 1st time in 1,600 years “We did not hold prayers in the monastery on Sunday for the first time in 1,600 years,” Priest Selwanes Lotfy of the Virgin Mary and Priest Ibram Monastery in Degla, just south of Minya, told the al-Masry al-Youm daily. He said supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi destroyed the monastery, which includes three churches, one of which is an archaeological site. “One of the extremists wrote on the...

What do Doug Wilson, William Evans, and I have mon? We’re all puzzled by the intramural attention D.G. Hart and Carl Trueman are paying to Tim Keller, Abraham Kuyper, and the “problem” of “transformationalism.” Trueman links Hart while raising concerns: I was struck by [Hart’s] account of Abraham Kuyper. Here was a (probable) genius and (definite) workaholic who had at his personal disposal a university, a newspaper and a denomination, and also held the highest political office in his land....

Over at The Gospel Coalition, Elise Amyx of IFWE offers encouragement to those who may feel their work is useless: Though some work may seem useless, Christians understand that all work is God’s work. Our work only seems insignificant because we fail to grasp the big picture. This is what economists refer to as the “knowledge problem.” The knowledge problem means we can’t always see the big picture because knowledge is dispersed among many people; no one person knows everything....

Our right to religious freedom is best grounded in the universal duty to seek ultimate truth, says Joshua Schulz, and not in human autonomy. Here e to the fundamental paradox of modern liberalism. On the one hand, liberalism in all its stages has always treated human freedom as sacred. On the other hand, modern liberals also believe that in order to guarantee their freedom, they canin practiceuse the state’s coercive power pel others to do whattheybelieve is wrong. This is...

Did you wake up one morning and think, “I wish I had a phone that would not only allow me to text and call, but play games, get directions, read books, allow me access to all social media and take pictures?” Not likely. You wanted an iPhone because Apple put it on the market. Jim Clifton, CEO at Gallup, says this is no small point. Our economy isn’t waiting for consumers to want to start purchasing things again; it’s waiting...