Tag Archives: culture wars
Things I Would Say to My Grandchildren: The Tyranny of Good Intentions
One of our favorite shows used to be an action-packed TV series called 24. It followed counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer, who worked against the clock to thwart terrorist plots threatening the United States. Each season covered 24 hours in real-time, … Continue reading
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
One afternoon on Maple Street, in a fictitious neighborhood near you, a peculiar event, marked by a shadowy figure, a roar, and a flash of light, disrupted the peaceful neighborhood. Although initially dismissed as a passing meteor, the sudden power … Continue reading
Am I Stubbornly Prejudiced or a Deluded Cultist?
An old friend of mine recently said I was “either stubbornly prejudiced or a deluded member of a cult.” My sin? For saying that the “spirit of Trump wars against the Spirit of Christ, and I would have to deny … Continue reading
Reclaiming the Church’s Kingdom Mission: 95 Theses for the Present-Day Church
What if a single revolutionary idea could completely transform how we see the world? That’s the power of a paradigm shift, a concept first coined in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn, an influential philosopher of science. According to Kuhn, scientific progress … Continue reading
Six Graphs and Six New Year Reflections
Graph 1 – The two main political parties in America exhibit near equal distain for each other. Extreme partisanship amplifies this polarization even further. It’s worth spending time considering these data. Only 8% of Republicans believe Democrats are honest and … Continue reading
Modeling Christian Public Discourse
“All models are wrong, but some are useful” – British statistician George Box I first ran across this famous quote early in my science career while writing my thesis on the effects of habitat variation on recruitment of pink salmon … Continue reading
The Rise of the Nones
Have you ever heard of the nones? They are one of the latest hot topics in the area of faith and culture. Nones, or people who check “none” or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious affiliation, once comprised … Continue reading
The Sin of Winsomeness
I still remember the phone call which launched one of the key changepoints of my life. It was October 2002 and I was sitting along mom’s bedside in a Wisconsin intensive care facility. Dad was next door, still in intensive … Continue reading
Hope or Hopelessness
The division in America could swiftly change if the Christian church heeded the calling of 1 Peter 2:21 “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” Continue reading
The Indispensable Imperative of Virtue
“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character” – Albert Einstein So begins the opening line of a leadership paper a former colleague Doug DeMaster and I wrote a … Continue reading