Issues In Perspective

On 10 May 2011, the Presbyterian Church (USA) joined other mainline churches in opening the door to gay ordination. The constitutional change, which has received the necessary votes in the denomination, removes language that had required clergy to live in ?fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.?

It has been said that ?the one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.? This equally applies to those who should learn from church history. Throughout the history of the church, leaders have attempted to be specific about certain historical developments and relate those events to biblical prophecy, specifically the return of Christ.

In an extraordinary speech last Thursday, President Obama endorsed using the 1967 boundaries as the baseline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. He is the first American president to do so! [He also prodded Arab governments to carry out the democratic reforms their citizens have demanded in the so-called ?Arab Spring.?] In the 1967 war, Israel?s victory over Egypt and other Arab nei...

Pitzer College, a small liberal arts college in Southern California, will inaugurate this fall a department in secular studies. Classes taught by professors from the other departments of the college will include, ?God, Darwin and Design in America,? ?Anxiety in the Age of Reason,? and ?Bible as Literature.? This new department is based on the premise that studying nonbelief is as valid as studying...

With the death of Osama Bin Laden and what some are calling the ?Arab Spring,? a new Middle East is emerging. Its parameters are far from clear but there are some discernible characteristics. Most of them are rather troublesome.

The present administration in Washington is against school vouchers and even permitted the very popular and demonstrably effective voucher program in the District of Columbia to die. But Obama resurrected that program as a part of the deal he struck with the Republican Party over the 2011 budget. What evidence is there that vouchers serve students well and give parents a valid option for educating...

Over the last twenty years, the growth of the gambling industry has been staggering. Increasingly, more and more states are legalizing all forms of gambling. It is on several Indian reservations and the respective states are now utterly dependent on revenue from some form of gambling. The gambling industry is a huge, worldwide business. According to The Economist, in 2009, the total revenue from g...

I am on the advisory board of The Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research (NCER), which opposes the derivation and use of stem cells from human embryos. Such derivation and use involves the direct destruction of a human being in its embryonic stage of development and treats such humans as mere physical objects that can be harvested for their parts. However, NCER supports and applauds the use of st...

President Barack Obama invited President Bush to join him as he traveled to ?ground zero? in lower Manhattan last week. President Bush declined the offer. In issuing this invitation, perhaps President Obama recognized how much he truly owes to President Bush. In fact, one could probably argue that President Bush?s decisions right after 9/11 made the death of Bin Laden possible.

As I am writing this, the President of the United States just announced that Navy SEALS had killed Osama bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda. It will take some time before we know the ramifications of this momentous event but permit me a few preliminary observations...

I have a very dear friend who lives near Jerusalem. His name is Ronny Simon, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Defense Force, who serves as my guide when I lead my annual tours of Israel. He recently sent me a detailed email on his perspective about what is occurring in the Middle East today.

This weekend (8 May) we celebrate Mother?s Day in the United States. A recent article details the changing face of motherhood in the US. A summary of the findings:

Last week, Standard & Poor?s announced that it might need to downgrade the US government?s AAA bond rating for the first time in history, because of the dim prospects for serious debt reduction. This panicked investors, in the short term, who believe that Treasuries are the last safe haven in an uncertain world.

Last week, Iran and Egypt?s new government signaled they were moving quickly to thaw decades of frosty relations. Iran said it appointed an ambassador to Egypt for the first time since the two sides froze diplomatic relations more than three decades ago. Both the US and Israel are deeply concerned that such moves indicate that Egypt is reordering its foreign policy, which could further empower Ira...

With the advent of modern technology, humanity has sought increasing control with the goal being manipulation of nearly everything for the good of the human race. Since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, several historical developments have produced an openness in Western Civilization toward seeking to control and manipulate humans.

The four academic degrees that I have earned are in history and historical theology. Therefore, the historical perspective is quite important to me. In this Perspective, I seek to give an important historical perspective to the origin and development of 19th-century theological liberalism. When I am finished, I will make application to what is occurring within certain parts of current American eva...

Planned Parenthood is one of the most dangerous organizations in America right now. Its view of human life growing the womb is reprehensible. Basically, for Planned Parenthood, the baby has no value until it exists outside of the mother?s womb. It values the rights of the woman more highly than the rights of the child in the womb. It stands against everything I hold dear as a Christian. Planned Pa...

Social networks have provided one of the several sources of energy for the pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. Information technology is changing the global balance of power. ?The Facebook Generation? helped significantly to bring down Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. One of the heroes of this same revolution is the young Google executive, Wael Ghonim.

The economist, Robert Samuelson, has an interesting take on Social Security: He calls it ?welfare.? Here is why: First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it is pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people?s own savings pay their later benefits. Second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Let?s think abo...

The debate over the 2011 federal budget is presumably over. After taking the nation to the brink, even possibly facing a possible shutdown of the federal government, the congressional leaders cut the budget and finally passed the 2011 budget, which runs through 30 September. As I approach this Perspective on the 2012 federal budget, I find the words of the economist, Robert Samuelson, refreshing a...

I am not a medical doctor nor do I understand all the complexities of health insurance, but I have spent time in a hospital as both a patient and as someone who visits hospitals to comfort friends and those whom I care about. I also believe that there are several common sense principles that we are not following as a nation.

Jefferson was a child of the European Enlightenment and was certainly one of its more passionate advocates. Jefferson adopted the antisupernaturalism of the Enlightenment and used that bias when he reached his conclusions about Jesus. He revered Jesus as ?the first of human Sages? and regarded His ethical system articulated in the Sermon on the Mount as superior to all others. Lincoln was born int...

The significant changes sweeping through the Middle East will have acute implications for Israel. At this point, it is impossible to deduce those implications in their entirety but there are a few hints.

In 1798 a British clergyman named Thomas Malthus argued that human population growth would exceed the world?s ability to feed this growth in population. Robert McNamara in 1968, as president of the World Bank, spoke of ?the mushrooming cloud of population explosion.?

The wave of populist uprisings throughout North Arica and into the Middle Eastern nations necessitates that we step back and do a reality check. What is going on? Is there a difference between what occurred in Egypt or Tunisia, for example, and what is occurring in Libya? What are the available options for these nations currently undergoing turmoil? Let?s examine these questions in this Perspectiv...