Category: Christianity
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The Commandment Americans Keep Admiring Instead of Obeying: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ — Matthew 22:36-39 There is something unsettling about how…
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A Moral Response to Putin’s War Crimes and The Kidnapping of Children in Ukraine
Why Christians Must Respond Why the language of war crimes—and, for some, genocide—keeps returning to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and what the fight over words reveals about law, evidence, and the politics of witnessing. A parent whose child has disappeared into the war does not start with a courtroom word. The parent starts with…
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Why Sexual Assault and Rape Are Moral Issues the Church Must Speak On More Forcefully
Sexual assault and rape are not only criminal acts, though they are profoundly that. They are not only social problems, though they tear through families, communities, and institutions. They are moral horrors. They are violations of human dignity, breaches of trust, expressions of domination, and direct assaults on the image of God in another person.…
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The Moral Case for Prison Reform
How we run prisons and treat prisoners is not only cruel and inhumane, it fails to rehabilitate inmates. Introduction Prison systems around the world stand at a crossroads, and the choices we make carry real human consequences. For many people, incarceration is not an abstract policy debate—it is a son or daughter missing from the…
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What American Evangelicals Forgot
The Trees and the Forest Too many Christians become so focused on the details of faith—what I call the “trees”—that we lose sight of the forest. We argue about the proper way to believe, the precise mechanics of salvation, the exact formula of baptism, the correct style of worship, the right vocabulary for prayer, and…
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Muslim Americans Are Among the Least Likely to Support Violence—And Political Violence Can Be Higher in Some U.S. Subgroups, Including White Evangelicals
In the United States, fear often speaks louder than evidence—especially when it comes to Muslims. Public discourse continues to imply that Islamic belief is uniquely linked to violence, an assumption reinforced by selective media coverage and political rhetoric. Yet decades of empirical research tell a very different story. If Americans are serious about religious freedom…
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What Trump’s election is teaching our children (including Christian kids)
I’m not writing this to debate policy. I’m writing about what kids learn when adults say one thing about character and then reward another thing at the ballot box. When a public figure can behave in ways we’d punish in our own homes—mocking opponents, spreading misinformation, bragging, name-calling, and dodging accountability—and still be celebrated as…
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Hospitality Toward Foreigners
A Christian Call to Welcome the Stranger in an Age of Fear In times marked by fear and division, God’s people are tempted to draw tight circles—our people, our culture, our comfort. Scripture consistently interrupts that instinct with a clear command: welcome the stranger. Christian hospitality is not social politeness or political signaling; it is…
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A Christian Argument Against Anti-Muslim Prejudice
Christians can—and should—reject anti-Muslim prejudice for explicitly Christian reasons. While Christianity and Islam make competing truth claims, disciples of Jesus are commanded to treat every neighbor with dignity, honesty, and mercy. This means refusing stereotypes, resisting fear-based rhetoric, opposing discrimination and violence, and pursuing respectful, peaceable relationships with Muslim people in our communities. 1. Every…
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A Christian Argument Against Anti-Gay Prejudice
This essay offers a Christian case for rejecting anti-gay prejudice. Christians hold a range of convictions about sexual ethics, but prejudice—contempt, dehumanization, scapegoating, or mistreatment of people because they are gay—conflicts with the heart of the gospel. The question here is not, “What is my view of sex?” but “How does Jesus require me to…
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A Christian Case Against Antisemitism
Antisemitism is incompatible with historic Christianity. The God Christians worship first revealed himself in covenant with Israel, Jesus and the apostles were Jewish, and the New Testament forbids contempt, slander, and violence toward any people—especially toward the people through whom God brought the Scriptures and the Messiah. A Christian case against antisemitism is therefore biblical,…