Use this page to scroll back through over 800 previous entries across several topics and disciplines. See the various subject matter pages for content selected for specific disciplines.
Students can agree and disagree with well-known Christian writer Philip Yancey in his article, Paris and Beyond: J. Dudley Woodberry, a specialist in Islam at Fuller Theological Seminary, asks, Is the Muslim my enemy or my brother? His answer: both. A central difference exists between the two faiths. One, born at Pentecost, thrives cross-culturally and even […]
New from Oxford University Press (280 pages): The New Atheist movement uses Darwinism to diminish the authority of religious institutions and belief systems and have embraced it as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason. They have posed as harbingers of human progress, claiming the moral high ground, and rejecting with intolerance […]
Students in history, politics, and geography can use this brief article, The Church Under Putin: Nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy, to consider two-kingdoms themes in an important culture outside our own. The Orthodox Church aligns itself closely with the government. Yet its leaders have also offered some help to movements that challenge the status quo.
A student at Concordia St. Paul is demanding protections for gays and lesbians after she said her relationship with another woman cost her a leadership role with a student-led worship group. Nikki Hagan, 19, said the student president of Concordia’s “908 Student Ministry” asked her to resign her informal post as the group’s message coordinator soon […]
Asking Agonizing Questions at the End of Life: Now that California has joined other states with an “end-of-life option” law, palliative-care physicians are trying to come to terms with what it means for them and their patients. It’s not just a question of whether they support physician-assisted suicide or personally would ever help end a life. Doctors […]
From the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University: “OKWU is not a ‘safe place,’ but rather, a place to learn–to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with […]
Students can deliberate the pros and cons of market economics and decision making in these cases, one involving food banks, the other involving terrorism. Food Banks’ Pickle: Getting Food To The Right Place At The Right Time (3:30 min. audio clip) discusses an efficient way to allocate food donations where needed most. And in Reviving Payoff For […]
Law professor Brian Leiter’s Why Tolerate Religion? (published in 2013) proposes three affirmative reasons. The reviewer agrees with Leiter’s third conclusion, but for legal reasons argues to deny the first two: 1) singling out religion and 2) granting religious exceptions: “It is difficult, however, to appreciate them if one reduces religion to just a matter of religious conscience.” […]
The New Dignity: Gnostic, Elitist, Self-Destructive Will-to-Power: “Human dignity is grounded in our ability to defy nature—to go beyond natural limitations and thereby create ourselves anew. But in a world with no clear origin, no purposeful end, and no intrinsic meaning, human dignity is founded on nothing more than a self-creating will to power that […]
Forensic Pseudoscience – The Unheralded Crisis of Criminal Justice: No human endeavor is completely without error, and one might wonder just how systemic the problems of forensic science truly are. The claim of crisis is far from universally shared. But the problem is therefore not that forensic science is wrong, but that it is hard to know when it […]
