Last week I published a column here titled “Donald Trump and the Great Evangelical Compromise.” It created something of a stir. Studies suggest that people only read headlines or a paragraph or two, but seldom do they read whole articles and, well, I believe those studies are on to something Read more…
On January 6th, St. Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland, hosted a guest reader for this Scottish Episcopal Church’s Feast of the Epiphany worship service. The reader was neither clergy nor Christian layman. Indeed, the reader was not a Christian at all. Moreover, the reading was not from the Bible, the Read more…
While Charles Schumer weeps and lawyers are deployed; as protesters protest and accusations fly — amidst all of the general hysteria about President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, let’s pause, take a deep breath, and for a moment consider the apparent purpose of the order itself: To keep Americans Read more…
At this moment, I am on assignment in Europe, a continent that, like America, seems more screwed-up with every visit. To escape the insanity that threatens to engulf us all, this morning I decided to work remotely from a small French town. Hammering away on my laptop, I sat down Read more…
In a 1934 speech before the House of Commons, Winston Churchill said this: “Germany is arming fast, and no one is going to stop her. I dread the day when the means of threatening the heart of the British Empire should pass into the hands of the present rulers of Read more…
At home it’s a show trial. What about the rest of the world? “Your graphic of the Flag of this great Nation is unacceptable,” began @ronwilliamswv’s tweet blasting me. “UnAmerican. To be cute, it is depicted as flying upside down? Awful.” “It’s not meant to be ‘cute’ or ‘unAmerican,’” I Read more…
Recently I was asked to speak to a civic organization on the topic of diversity. Diversity, in the current vernacular anyway, is one of those concepts that defies a simple definition. I was looking over my notes beforehand in Starbucks trying to think of concrete examples when I saw a Read more…
Islam is not a religion of peace. This seems obvious to any sensible person. I said it in this article for USA Today. I said it again last year in a televised debate with Imam Zaid Shakir on Al-Jazeera America. The data bears this out. A Pew Research survey found Read more…
If you are a sports fan then you know that we are in the midst of “March Madness,” that is, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. A committee picks 64 college teams and over the course of a few weeks those teams play until the field is whittled down to the Read more…
Herman Melville, a travel writer of sorts, was not impressed with Lima. In his classic Moby Dick, Melville says of the city: Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas: nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight Read more…