One of the best books I’ve ever read on American history is Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer. I’ve always been an admirer of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by German American artist Emanuel Leutze. The painting of course has been criticized mentators for its inaccuracy. Fischer notes in the first chapter of his book: American iconoclasts made the painting a favorite target. Post-modernists studied it with a skeptical eye and asked, “Is this the way that American history...

Restorative justice is a theory of justice that emphasizes concepts such as reconciliation, forgiveness, and healing. There are, as Jordan Ballor has explained, a plurality of restorative justice movements. Yet one theme that is found in almost all forms is victim restitution, such pensation funds for those who have been victims of crimes. pensation rarely occurs, though. According to Justice Fellowship, less than 3 percent of violent crime victims ever receive monetary assistance from pensation funds for costs like medical...

Christian’s Library Press has released Integrated Justice and Equality: Biblical Wisdom for Those Who Do Good Works by John Addison Teevan, a book that seeks to challenge popular notions of “social justice” and establish a new framework around what Teevan calls “biblically integrated justice.” The term “social justice” has been used to promote a variety of policies and proposals, most of which fall within a particularly progressive economic ideology and theological perspective. Educated in economics, theology, and intercultural studies, and...

Last week the State Department released the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report, a congressionally mandated report that looks at the governments around the world (including the U.S.) and what they are doing bat trafficking in persons – modern slavery – through the lens of the 3P paradigm of prevention, protection, and prosecution. Here are seven figures you should know from the latest report: 1. The report estimates that only 44,758 victims of trafficking were identified in the past year, out...

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that hospice is a good idea. The medical and emotional support offered by hospice workers to the terminally ill and their families is invaluable. And thanks to the Affordable Care Act, hospice is going away. Michigan Hospice of Holland is closing their doors. Their executive director explains: The biggest issue under the Affordable Care Act is…that we’re going to see cuts in reimbursement- it’s going to be at least 12 percent. We projected...

Every year the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing. Here are seven figures you should know from the latest report: 1. On the days they worked, employed men worked 53 minutes more than employed women. This difference partly reflects women’s greater likelihood of working part time. However, even among full-time workers, men worked longer than women–8.3...

We know about climate change and global warming, right? After all, we’ve been talking about it for decades. The polar bears losing their homes, the wild swings in temperatures, too much snow, not enough rain, etc. But what do we really know? That’s the question Phil Lawler asks. He thought he knew about climate change as well. But now he is convinced that what we are talking about when we talk about climate change has shifted from being a scientific...

If you are a parent, imagine your child is missing. You cannot find him or her. Gone. Nothing you can do. If you are not a parent, try to imagine how it must feel to have a loved one, the most loved one, taken from you. It is heart-wrenching. Gut-churning. Evil. The parents of 219 girls in Nigeria are living this. Their daughters were stolen from them two months ago, and they are still missing. Two months. Just imagine that....

There are virtually no Jews left in Iraq. There used to be Jews there – 130,00+, but most have fled, many to Israel. And now, one Christian leader in Iraq fears Christians will suffer the same (or a worse) fate. Baghdad’s Monsignor Pios Cacha made a grim prediction. He said that his Iraqi munity was experiencing the kind of religious cleansing that eradicated the country’s once-thriving munity half a century before. His rather prophetic words made headlines in Lebanon’s DailyStar:...

Meriam Ibrahim gave birth to her daughter while her legs were shackled to the floor. The young Sudanese mother, who also raised her son in her prison cell, gave birth while waiting execution mitting apostasy from Islam by ing a Christian. A Sudanese high court delivered the sentence when Ibrahim refused to denounce her Christian faith. But after the case sparked international outrage, the Sudanese court appears to have reversed its decision. According to the official state news agency in...