Just Say No
As a child of the 1980s and 1990s, I was admonished regularly to avoid the use of drugs. First Lady Nancy Reagan championed the “Just Say No” campaign, lending it national credibility. Drug use couldn’t be depicted positively in cartoons or comic books, and warning labels were put on albums that glorified drug use. Afterschool […]
Brad Wilcox, Marriage, and Human Flourishing
In 1998, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention amended the Baptist Faith and Message to include a new article on The Family. The new article carried over into the fully revised Baptist Faith and Message (2000), which remains the Convention’s confessional consensus. The article is worth quoting in full: God has ordained the family as […]
A Just And Wise Decision
When most people think of intercollegiate athletics, they think of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which includes approximately 1,100 schools across three divisions. However, there are hundreds of other schools that do not compete in the NCAA. This includes the 250 colleges and universities that are part of the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics […]
The Soft Tyranny of Safe Spaces
In recent years, a growing number of colleges and universities have advocated the importance of providing “safe spaces” for students. This concern isn’t primarily related to students’ physical safety, though academic institutions take the physical safety of their students with great seriousness. Rather, safe spaces are primarily concerned with so-called emotional safety. It seems that […]
Christian higher education in the negative world
I was eager to read Aaron Renn’s highly anticipated new book, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture. The book is an expansion of his much-discussed 2022 essay for First Things titled “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.” Renn’s argues that American culture has been secularizing at an increasing rate since the 1960s. He breaks […]
Navigating Critical Theories Faithfully
A decade ago, few people had ever heard terms like critical race theory, queer theory, intersectionality, social justice, gender fluidity, hegemonic power, whiteness, DEI, or heteronormativity. The exceptions were those who had undertaken graduate studies in law, education, or the social sciences. That is certainly no longer the case. These days, it seems that everybody […]
Scholastic versus moms and dads
Four decades ago, I began my elementary school journey. I don’t remember many things about those years, but a few fond memories stand out. Every spring we tried out our skills at the 40-yard dash and tug of war during Field Day. We spent the last day of each term watching a movie like Old Yeller or Where […]
FIRST-PERSON: Commending classical evangelicalism
The evangelical label has fallen on hard times. A growing number of Americans treat it almost like a slur, especially on social media. The terms evangelical and evangelicalism are contested by scholars, controversial in the public square, and confusing to many churchgoers. Pundits, pollsters, journalists and many scholars are convinced evangelicalism is primarily a special interest group that skews […]
A popular but misguided idea
Americans are concerned with the state of our colleges and universities. Last summer, the Gallup organization reported that only 36 percent of those polled reported “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. Most were ambivalent or negative, with 40 percent of respondents expressing only “some” and 22 percent claiming “very little” confidence. […]
Carl F. H. Henry: Integrating Public Engagement and Personal Evangelism
Carl F. H. Henry (1913–2003) was arguably the most important American theologian of the postwar years. His best-known book likely remains his 1947 manifesto The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, which was recently republished by Crossway. I reflected on this important work in a previous essay for The Land Center. Henry is also known for […]