Free Republic

For a long time now, secularists have been trying to come up with reasons why people believe in God. If you take a strictly naturalistic view of the world, after all, it can be pretty difficult to understand how anyone would put their faith in an invisible supernatural being. And yet, generation after generation continues to hold to do just that. It’s a question that has puzzled and fascinated some of the most prominent minds of our time. Now there’s an intriguing new explanation for religious faith. Paul Bloom, a Yale professor of psychology and linguistics, argues in the Atlantic...

This week, more than two months after President Bush nominated him, the Senate will finally vote on Judge Samuel Alito’s elevation to the Supreme Court. In a final, all-too-typical move, the vote was put off a week at the behest of Alito’s opponents. Why? Nobody seriously expects another week to make a difference. With a few exceptions, senators probably knew how they were going to vote before the hearings. So, why put off the vote? The most likely answer has nothing to do with Judge Alito or even the Supreme Court. Instead, it’s about what the former Speaker of the...

This Sunday marks the thirty-third anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision—a day Americans should mark with sadness and shame. Forty million babies have been sacrificed on the altar of personal choice and autonomy. When Roe came down, many of us argued that it was the beginning of a slippery slope, that once we devalued life in the womb we would devalue life—and endanger life—at all stages. After all, we had just established, as a matter of law and social priority, that individual choice trumps even the right to life. Tragically, we have been proven right. The so-called “right to...

Fifty years ago, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and the three other American missionaries dared to make contact with the most violent society ever documented by anthropologists. This week End of the Spear, the story of their martyrdoms, hits the theaters, and the film makers hope contact will be made with another violent and spiritually blind society—our own. It is a story that should be told in this age of ethnic cleansings, gulags, holocausts, genocide, and riots. When the film’s director, Jim Hanon, traveled to Ecuador to get permission from the Waodani (formerly Auca) Indians to make the movie, the tribe...

A New Year's dream: nightmare or prophecy?Jan 3, 2006 by Chuck Colson Something very strange happened to me this past week. I was seated in my library chair, mulling over current events, trying to make a few New Year’s predictions, which is the custom for commentators. I was concentrating hard, when suddenly, I saw before my eyes a headline from the New York Times. It read, “Congress Votes to End War; Troops Ordered to Abandon Iraq.” The view changed. Just as in Vietnam three decades ago, I saw Americans clinging to helicopters, trying to get themselves out of Baghdad along...

In 1987 Charles Colson published Kingdoms in Conflict, a book which discussed the relationship of the Christian faith to politics. One chapter of that book has some disturbing relevance for today. It is a fictional account of the political triumph of the "Christian Republican Party": Republican majorities in Congress and an Evangelical President in the White House. Colson notes that this President even opens his cabinet meetings with prayer and Bible study. Written at the midpoint of Ronald Reagan's administration, the chapter represented the dream scenario of many Evangelicals in the 1980s. But Colson's dream scenario quickly becomes a nightmare...

My wife, Patty, and I had a disturbing reminder of why the truth matters when we visited our autistic grandson's special-needs school one afternoon... ... As I was standing in the classroom, alone for a moment, an unwelcome thought came to mind. A question really. Why do we as a society take such trouble with these kids? Why does the school system spend as much as $65,000 per year to tend kids like Max? Max is never going to graduate and go to college and get a productive job. Likely, he will always be dependent on his family and the...

“Slave traffickers around the world have rediscovered how profitable it is to buy and sell people. Women are lured into modern-day slavery, hoping for a better life. They could all be your sister, or your best friend, or . . . your daughter. . . . Modern slavery exists only because we choose to ignore it.” Now, that probably sounds to you like a quote from Ambassador Miller, who is the director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons—but he is not the one who said it. Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino did. This isn’t another...

AS SPECIAL COUNSEL to President Richard Nixon Charles Colson was known as Nixon's hatchet man and one of the most hated men in America. After he left the Nixon administration he was caught in the snare of Watergate. Although he was only peripherally involved in the scandal, he pled guilty and served seven months in prison on an attenuated criminal charge related to the Ellsberg break-in.In 1976 Colson published Born Again, a best-selling account of the conversion experience that followed his government service but preceded his incarceration. When Nicholas von Hoffman reviewed the book for the Washington Post that year,...

As we approach the fourth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the obvious question is: What, if anything, have we learned since then? We have learned a great deal about the threat posed by radical Islam, but not enough about what gives it its vitality. Before September 11, 2001, most Americans had never heard of Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. While they may have known about the existence of Islamic terrorism, they thought that it was something that happened “over there,” not here at home. Well, that has changed. Americans not only understand...

A key goal in the war on terrorism is the promotion of democracy and pluralism in the Islamic world. It’s expected that these Western ideals will cripple radical Islam by reducing the number of potential terrorist recruits, and by making the Middle East more like the West. Apparently, someone in Blacksburg, Virginia, didn’t get the word. Blacksburg is home to Virginia Tech, Virginia’s largest public university. This past summer, Virginia Tech was paid $246,000 to host a program in “faculty development” for King Abdul-Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. Such arrangements aren’t unusual, but what was unusual was the Saudis’ request...

When a notorious “shock jock” threatens to send strippers to your house to harass you, you know you’ve gotten his attention. But in this case, his threat results from his fear. The truth is, shock jocks and other supporters of broadcast filth are shaking in their boots. And the person they’re afraid of? An attractive young wife and mother of two named Penny Nance. What has the shock jocks up in arms is that the Federal Communications Commission has just hired Mrs. Nance as an advisor and liaison to Congress on issues related to the cable and broadcast industry. I...

There’s an issue that refuses to go away even though many politicians wish it would. Since it engenders great passion on both sides of the political divide both parties view it as a “no-win” issue: For every one potential voter you please, you’re likely to alienate another one. While many Americans oppose what is happening, most have come to rely upon it and probably wouldn’t want to live in a society where it’s eliminated altogether. The issue I’m referring to is illegal immigration. There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The majority of these come...

“Can you set your own work hours? Pick your clients? Keep all the profits?” That job description sounds great, doesn’t it? Except the line of work referred to is prostitution. In an article titled “Prostitution Gives Me Power,” the fashion magazine Marie Claire praised the lives of three “sex workers” in Holland for “using their bodies to foster trust, compassion, and happiness in the world.” One woman said that working for a brothel or escort business allowed for a connection because “you’re there for a couple of hours” and “talk much more.” Of course, any sort of “connection” she may...

There’s an issue that refuses to go away even though many politicians wish it would. Since it engenders great passion on both sides of the political divide both parties view it as a “no-win” issue: For every one potential voter you please, you’re likely to alienate another one. While many Americans oppose what is happening, most have come to rely upon it and probably wouldn’t want to live in a society where it’s eliminated altogether. The issue I’m referring to is illegal immigration. There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The majority of these come...

President Bush sent reporters into a tizzy this week by saying that he thought schools ought to teach both evolution and intelligent design. Students ought to hear both theories, he said, so they “can understand what the debate is about.” Well, the usual critics jumped all over the president, but he’s absolutely right. Considering all competing theories was once the very definition of academic freedom. But today, the illiberal forces of secularism want to stifle any challenges to Darwin—even though Darwin is proving to be eminently challengeable. Take biochemist Michael Behe’s argument. He says that the cell is irreducibly complex....

The current brouhaha over faith-based programs perfectly illustrates the old adage about the person who wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Liberals, it seems, like our work—so long as we leave out the religion part. Consider the recent New York Times editorial slamming President Bush’s faith-based initiatives. The Times attacked the president for channeling “billions of taxpayer dollars to churches” that allow proselytizing and that insist on Christian employees. Sadly, this assault is typical of what’s been happening in the press and in Congress. Year after year, a Senate minority blocks votes on faith-based legislation. They demand...

Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll announced that both political parties—Republicans and Democrats—are now held in low regard by the American people. Usually if the fortunes of one party decline, the other party increases—sort of a zero sum game. Now, however, for the first time in polling history, both parties come up in negative territory. Why would this be? Well, the driver who took me to do a CNN broadcast recently gave me a hint. He didn’t know who Karl Rove was, and he didn’t know who all the people up on Capitol Hill were who were calling for his...

In a well-known urban legend, college students simultaneously flush all the toilets on campus and break down the town's sewage system. While this story about overtaxing a sanitation system may be a myth, real-world Germans have learned what happens when you don't tax the system enough. It's a vivid example of the damage caused by the "birth dearth." The "birth dearth" is what demographers call plummeting birth rates in most of the industrialized world. Throughout Western Europe and East Asia, the birth rate is well below 2.1 births per woman; which is the minimum needed to maintain a stable population.

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. Washington this week looks like the base camps of two attacking armies, as the left and right prepare for the battle over confirming a successor to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. As columnist Jonah Goldberg puts it, “Conservatives and liberals are quietly loading up on drinking water, D batteries, and extra ammo, in preparation for the coming battle over judges.” Goldberg exaggerates only a little. One of the most important legacies any president leaves is his court appointments. But what many activists don’t think about are the people who, in...

Could last weekend’s “Live8” event, rock concerts worldwide raising the awareness of poverty in Africa, be considered a success? That depends on how you define success. Putting aside my misgivings about the self-congratulatory nature of the event, Sir Bob Geldof and company did indeed focus the world’s attention on the desperate needs of the African people. And the organizers were determined to put pressure on the G-8 nations meeting today in Scotland to pump billions into Africa. Now, I don’t want to rain on Geldof’s parade. But as good as his intentions are, I doubt that his approach would work....

A few weeks ago I participated in “Justice Sunday,” a nationwide simulcast urging Christians to lobby their senators against the Senate’s filibuster on judicial nominations. The next day, I appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews. I argued that justice was getting judges appointed to the court who would interpret the Constitution instead of making up laws. On the other side was Albert Pennybacker, a minister representing the Clergy and Laity Network United for Justice. He argued that we need justices who “serve the well-being, particularly of minority people and people who are in jeopardy.” We both appealed to the same...

Over the last few years, there’s been increasing political and cultural pressure to keep Christian influence out of public affairs. We’ve seen it in restrictions on prayer at public events, on posting of the Ten Commandments and the recent Supreme Court case. We see it when politicians or the media describe evangelical Christians as “bigots.” One of my greatest worries is that the Church will oblige the secularists by retreating into our safe sanctuaries. I’ve had religious leaders tell me that all we need to do is lead people to Christ and keep them in our churches, and that’s the...

A couple I’ll call Tim and Janet flew off on their honeymoon, blissfully happy. Each thought the other was the perfect mate. But just three months later, this couple was on the brink of divorce. They fought constantly over money. Janet wanted more attention, but Tim felt suffocated by Janet’s demands. They even fought over whose turn it was to feed the dog. The tension had become unbearable. Tim and Janet aren’t alone. In his book Marriage Savers, Mike McManus explains that before the wedding, most couples experience a glow of romantic enchantment. Bride and groom see each other as...

Earlier this month, “advocates of embryonic stem-cell research” from “academia, politics, health care, and medicine” met in Houston. Not to share the results of their research, but to plot strategy, specifically, how to beat the political opposition and “get the research money flowing.” As has been the case since the start of this debate, the preferred tactic is to promise the public the moon. Paul Mandabach, who helped convince California voters to spend billions on state-funded stem-cell research, summed it up: “As the realities of these cures become clear, the morality arguments will be lessened.” Set aside the inconvenient fact...

Will it never go away; will Deep Throat not peacefully fade into the sunset? It’s over—the greatest political mystery of modern times solved. But, alas, no. According to the Washington Post, Mssrs. Woodward and Bernstein, the investigative reporters who won Pulitzer prizes for bringing down the Nixon administration with the cooperation of Deep Throat, have a book coming out on July 6. These reporters are really something! I mean, I take a couple years to write a book; they have done it in a few weeks. Why would you hurry a book like this, or was it all written in...

The children are huddled together in one bed, trying to keep warm. The gas and electricity have been turned off; the last of the milk is gone. What stands between these children and complete disaster? Their father. That their dad would do almost anything to save his family is the ultimate message of Cinderella Man, a wonderful new film starring Russell Crowe. Based on the life of legendary boxer James J. Braddock, the film is a celebration of a man who models sacrificial love for his family. Braddock was born into a blue-collar, Irish Catholic family in 1906. Like most...

Cinderella Man A Father’s Day Message BreakPoint with Charles Colson June 17, 2005 The children are huddled together in one bed, trying to keep warm. The gas and electricity have been turned off; the last of the milk is gone. What stands between these children and complete disaster? Their father. That their dad would do almost anything to save his family is the ultimate message of Cinderella Man, a wonderful new film starring Russell Crowe. Based on the life of legendary boxer James J. Braddock, the film is a celebration of a man who models sacrificial love for his...

When you’re packing for vacation this summer, I recommend you take along: "A Travel Guide to Heaven" by Anthony DeStefano. It is a solidly orthodox, fast-paced, and fun-to-read book. Now, I was skeptical about this little book when it first came out, and I said as much on “BreakPoint.” I was afraid it would pander to our inborn narcissism. But then I went back and looked at it again and realized that I was wrong. The book is solid, and DeStefano builds his case for the wonders of heaven, relying only on biblical passages and church tradition. Life on earth,...

You see them at night in big cities: men dressed up as women, complete with makeup, jewelry, and high heels. Despite their best efforts, it’s not a pretty sight. Nor is the sight of men who take a more drastic step: undergoing so-called sex-reassignment surgery. When these surgeries were first performed at Johns Hopkins University in the early seventies, one psychiatrist—Paul McHugh—started asking questions about the wisdom of this. After all, the outcomes were not women, but grotesque caricatures of them. When McHugh became psychiatrist-in-chief in 1975, he decided to test the claim that men who underwent sex-change surgery were...

....Three years ago, on Watergate's 30th anniversary, an ABC News poll found that two-thirds of Americans couldn't explain what the scandal was, and no one was racing to enlighten them this time around. Vanity Fair may have taken the trouble to remind us that Watergate was a web of crime yielding the convictions and guilty pleas of more than 30 White House and Nixon campaign officials, but few others did. Watergate has gone back to being the "third-rate burglary" of Nixon administration spin. It is once again being covered up.. The current administration, a second-term imperial presidency that outstrips Nixon's...

Who would have thought, when Roe v. Wade was decided, that we’d all get used to living in a culture of death? But every once in a while, a story comes out of that culture that breaks your heart and makes you realize just how far we have fallen. Like the story of baby Rowan. Rowan’s mother, Angele, is a divorced mother of two who, in her words, had been “terrorized.” Like many women, she thought abortion was her best option—but she wanted the method that was “most painless” for the baby. She wanted to hold him and “grieve him.”...

Is it possible to reconcile one’s faith with a belief in the right to abortion? A group called the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice thinks it’s more than possible; it’s needed. Not long ago, the coalition held an event at the Capitol to promote its new book, Between a Woman and her God: Clergy and Women Tell Their Stories—A Sourcebook for Legislators, Clergy, and Activists. In the book’s foreword, Reverend Howard Moody, founder of the group’s Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, writes, “If ‘right to life’ is simply a crusader slogan and what is really meant is the ‘right to...

The primary mission of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is to “promote the highest quality care for individuals with mental disorders . . . and their families.” To that end, it provides its nearly 36,000 members with continuing education on the latest treatments. It also represents the interests of psychiatrists before the various federal and state agencies that might affect their practice. This is what you would expect from a professional organization. What you wouldn’t expect is for doctors to recast one of the most important moral and cultural issues of our time as a medical issue. But that’s what...

The Talk Shows Sunday, June 5th, 2005 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Amnesty International USA Executive Director William Shulz; former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, Watergate figure and radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman. FACE THE NATION (CBS): former Washington Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.(he's back!); former Washington Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee; rock star Bryan Adams.LATE EDITION (CNN) : Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Christopher...

Do you believe that the Bible should be taught in schools? If so, you might be surprised to hear that quite a few English teachers agree with you. In a survey commissioned by the Bible Literacy Project, Dr. Marie Wachlin interviewed forty-one top English teachers from American private and public schools. The Washington Times reports, “Nine out of 10 teachers who participated argued that knowledge of the Bible is crucial for a good education; 40 of the 41 teachers said [Biblical] literacy is an educational advantage.” You see, these teachers realize just how great the Bible’s impact on our world...

Last year, researchers at South Korea ’s Seoul National University became the first scientists to successfully clone a single human embryo. And just days ago, the team in Seoul raised the stakes again. They announced that they had found a way to clone embryos in bigger batches: eleven this time, possibly more in the future. But instead of being chilled by the prospect of producing people on a kind of assembly line, many of our leaders have decided to throw all moral caution to the wind. As soon as lead researcher Hwang Woo-suk announced the results, many in the media...

By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the latest attempt to use biology to justify homosexuality. It started as an attempt to prove the existence of human pheromones: chemicals, that is, associated with sexual attraction in animals. Swedish scientists exposed men and women to possible male and female pheromones, respectively. When women were exposed to male pheromones, their “hypothalamuses lit up.” Likewise, male hypothalamuses reacted when exposed to female pheromones. Now, to put it in lay terms, this is the “smell test.” Males sniffed women and were attracted, and vice versa. But gay men were exposed to both types of...

Now a few affluent evangelicals are directing their attention and money at some of the tallest citadels of the secular elite: Ivy League universities. Three years ago a group of evangelical Ivy League alumni formed the Christian Union, an organization intended to "reclaim the Ivy League for Christ," according to its fund-raising materials, and to "shape the hearts and minds of many thousands who graduate from these schools and who become the elites in other American cultural institutions." The Christian Union has bought and maintains new evangelical student centers at Brown, Princeton and Cornell, and has plans to establish a...

You’ve seen on television in recent weeks the scenes of the helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy rooftop in Saigon. Military action in Vietnam came to an end just thirty years ago last month. Unfortunately, for one loyal American ally, it marked just the beginning of even greater troubles. In the 1960s, the United States needed a way to keep North Vietnam from re-supplying its troops in the South through neighboring Laos without violating Laotian neutrality. So, it recruited an ethnic group called the Hmong to fight the Communists. By 1969, more than 18,000 Hmong soldiers had been killed. They...

Letting our friends down Chuck Colson May 19, 2005 You've seen on television in recent weeks the scenes of the helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy rooftop in Saigon. Military action in Vietnam came to an end just thirty years ago last month. Unfortunately, for one loyal American ally, it marked just the beginning of even greater troubles. In the 1960s, the United States needed a way to keep North Vietnam from re-supplying its troops in the South through neighboring Laos without violating Laotian neutrality. So, it recruited an ethnic group called the Hmong to fight the Communists. By 1969, more than 18,000 Hmong...

The notion of gratitude is hot these days. Search the Internet, and you’ll find more than a million sites about thankfulness. For example, university psychologists recently conducted a research project on gratitude and thanksgiving. They divided participants into three groups. People in the first group practiced daily exercises like writing in a gratitude journal. They reported higher levels of alertness, determination, optimism, energy, and less depression and stress than the control group. Unsurprisingly, they were also a lot happier than the participants who were told to keep an account of all the bad things that happened each day. One of...

Same-sex “marriage” advocates know better than to try to push their cause on all of the people all at once—two-thirds of Americans oppose it. In most places, they are now taking it one little step at a time. Maryland has taken its first step in that direction. After a fierce battle, the Medical Decision Making Act of 2005 passed the Maryland legislature. The bill allows unmarried couples to register with the state as “life partners,” in order to visit each other in the hospital and make medical decisions for each other. The bill may sound innocuous on the surface. But...

Americans believe in fair play. If a football or baseball team doesn’t show up, it forfeits the game. If the defense lawyer in a trial puts on no case, the judge is likely to declare a summary judgment to the plaintiff. You play by the rules, or you don’t play. So why have so many evolutionists apparently decided that the rules don’t apply to them? This pattern is surfacing once again in Kansas, where you may remember a huge controversy broke out a few years ago, and the evolutionists squashed any other teaching in Kansas. This time the new state...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. One of the most devastating things any parent can hear is that their child probably will not survive past birth. But that’s the news Susan and Saqib Ali received when they were expecting their first child. Their unborn daughter, Leila, was diagnosed with a brain condition called holoprosencephaly, or HPE. Most children with this condition die in the womb; those who survive birth usually die before they reach six months. And the condition causes severe physical and mental problems. According to the Washington Post Magazine, the number of HPE...

Over two hundred years ago, a man who wrote under the name of Publius was hunched over his desk one evening. He was attempting to convince New Yorkers to ratify the proposed United States Constitution. After a moment of thought, he dipped his quill into the ink and wrote the following: The President “is to nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court.” Publius, of course, was the pen name used by three of our nation’s founders when they wrote the eighty-five newspaper essays now known...

Dear Friend: A day of decision is upon us. Whether it was the legalization of abortion, the banning of school prayer, the expulsion of the 10 Commandments from public spaces, or the starvation of Terri Schiavo, decisions by the courts have not only changed our nation's course, but even led to the taking of human lives. As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism. For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the ACLU, have been quietly working under the...

In all our contemporary conflicts over the teaching of evolution in schools, there’s one question that nobody asks: To what does the embrace of Darwinism lead? Historian Richard Weikart explores that topic in a book called From Darwinto Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. Despite that provocative title, Weikart is no sensationalist. He’s not out to prove that Hitler and the Nazi party were directly inspired by Charles Darwin’s theories. But what Weikart does demonstrate, through exhaustive research, is that Darwin’s ideas about the origin of species helped create a culture that devalued human life. And in that...

Some deaths can rightly be called “fitting.” That is, in dying, the person embodied what his life stood for. John Paul II’s death was fitting. For those of us who believe that God is always speaking to those who have ears to hear, Karol Wojtyla’s dying two days after Terri Schiavo wasn’t a coincidence: It was Providence. It seems unfair to remember a towering figure like Pope John Paul II mostly in terms of the last few weeks of his life. After all, this was the man who, along with Reagan and Thatcher, brought down the Iron Curtain. It’s difficult...

In all our contemporary conflicts over the teaching of evolution in schools, there’s one question that nobody asks: To what does the embrace of Darwinism lead? Historian Richard Weikart explores that topic in a book called From Darwinto Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. Despite that provocative title, Weikart is no sensationalist. He’s not out to prove that Hitler and the Nazi party were directly inspired by Charles Darwin’s theories. But what Weikart does demonstrate, through exhaustive research, is that Darwin’s ideas about the origin of species helped create a culture that devalued human life. And in that...