Free Republic

Pardon me, please, if you’re familiar with this terrific story, but I never knew it: Former astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the moon 44 years ago, on July 20. Aldrin was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church near Houston. According to London’s Daily Mail, a Presbyterian General Assembly gave Aldrin permission to administer communion to himself on the moon, using a small plastic container of wine and some bread.

...The (AP) article quoted nine people, all ecstatic about the new gay right. Queens teacher Eugene Lovendusky was typical: “I am spellbound. I’m so exhausted and so proud that the New York State Senate finally stood on the right side of history.” Reporter Karen Zraick even quoted one official saying the new law is “good news” for city tourism. But what about the AP’s “Statement of Ethical Principles”? The first sentence under the heading “Integrity” states, “The newspaper should strive for impartial treatment of issues and dispassionate handling of controversial subjects.” Impartiality and dispassionate handling were nowhere in evidence yesterday...

Marvin Olasky spoke at the Discovery Institute yesterday and I had the opportunity to bounce off him a small heresy I've been cultivating. Olasky is the editor of World Magazine, a conservative Christian biweekly that I admire, and provost of King's College, a Christian college headquartered in New York City's Empire State Building. In his speech he made the case strongly that conservatives and especially conservatively inclined religious folks make a strategic error when they retreat from combat and engagement with the world and seek instead to wall themselves off in monasteries, figuratively speaking -- communities isolated from the sin-tainted...

Since 9-11, I've received numerous letters like this recent one: "What can be done to help educate people on the dangers that radical Islam poses to Western civilization? I don't think this ideological conflict will go away." No, it won't. It is likely to be for the first half of the 21st century what the Cold War was for the last half of the 20th -- a long, subtle struggle with occasional days of fire. How to educate folks? Use of all media will be needed, but here's a list of books I've read and found useful. There are many...

TRINITY CHAPEL in suburban Atlanta’s Cobb County is hardly the picture of a revolutionary outpost. It’s a stylishly modern Church of God—a denomination that, though conservative, is certainly mainstream. Parishioners are drawn from a community whose average income is a comfortable 35 percent above the national norm, whose tree-lined country roads intersect McMansion subdivisions....Reconstruction—an obscure but increasingly potent theology whose top exponents hold that Christian crusaders must conquer and convert the world, by the sword if necessary, before Jesus will return....Reconstruction has slowly absorbed, congregation by congregation, the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (not to be confused with the progressive...

If you can only read one book on the immigration issue, read Mexifornia (Encounter Books, 2003), which author Victor Davis Hanson accurately describes as "part melancholy remembrance of a world gone by, part detached analysis by a historian who knows well the treacherous sirens of romance and nostalgia, and part advocacy by a teacher who always wanted his students to be second to none." Those students are mostly immigrants or children of immigrants from Mexico, and Professor Hanson—a fifth-generation Californian who runs a family farm—teaches them about ancient history and civilization at California State University-Fresno. He is also the author...

COVER STORY: In a White House interview, President Bush discusses his faith, his role in the battle against homosexual marriage, and his determination to fight terrorists "who conveniently use religion to kill" By Marvin Olasky BATTERED BUT not beaten, President Bush met with eight Christian journalists on May 26 and said terrorists "want to sow fear so that we'll withdraw. I will not yield to them, to their blackmail, to their murders." The "I" was not an anomaly. George W. Bush, taught to identify that one-letter word with ego, rarely used it in small groups while governor of Texas and...

COVER STORY: In a White House interview, President Bush discusses his faith, his role in the battle against homosexual marriage, and his determination to fight terrorists "who conveniently use religion to kill" BATTERED BUT not beaten, President Bush met with eight Christian journalists on May 26 and said terrorists "want to sow fear so that we'll withdraw. I will not yield to them, to their blackmail, to their murders." The "I" was not an anomaly. George W. Bush, taught to identify that one-letter word with ego, rarely used it in small groups while governor of Texas and during 2001. After...

THE WHITE HOUSE -- Battered but not beaten, President Bush met with several journalists here on Wednesday and said terrorists "want to sow fear so that we'll withdraw. I will not yield to them, to their blackmail, to their murders ..." The "I" was not an anomaly. George W. Bush, taught to identify that one-letter word with ego, infrequently used it in small groups while governor of Texas and during 2001. After 40 months in the Oval Office, though, he is sure about his presidential role and willing to assert it. "The job of the president is to help cultures...

Last week's big pro-abort march in Washington set off alarm bells in pro-life quarters: After several years of pro-life gains, is the culture swinging left again? No need to worry, for five reasons, with the most important reason last. 1. This was the first big pro-abort Washington rally in 12 years, so organizers could tap into a lot of pent-up gotta-move-my-legs sentiment, as well as some weird thinking evidenced in this Associated Press quotation from Carole Mehlman, a 68-year-old Tampa, Fla., woman who came to march: "I just had to be here to fight for the next generation and the...

AS THE NEW BASEBALL SEASON BEGINS, I'VE grouped some of the books read over the past four months into—what else?—innings. The creation/evolution debate of course comes first. Species of Origins: America's Search for a Creation Story, by Karl W. Gilberson and Donald Z. Yerxa (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), provides a sensible overview of the debate. Thomas Woodward's Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design (Baker, 2003) is a cleverly written history of the ID movement's rise. William Dembski's The Design Revolution(Intervarsity, 2004) answers tough questions about the theory that is blasting a hole in Darwinism. On to the second...

<p>A few years ago, I worked for a struggling dot-com in Manhattan whose work force was almost uniformly liberal. Given my conservative orientation, I saw little sense in getting involved in workplace political discussions. My silence was interpreted as acquiescence until I could stand it no longer and fessed up. One co-worker, who had served on the committee that hired me, felt betrayed.</p>

"The Lord of the Rings," with its subtext of God's providential guiding, and "The Passion," with its in-your-face text of Christ's suffering for us, have been the big movie successes of the past few months. Pastor Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life" was the No. 1 nonfiction hardback bestseller last year. Many churches report increasing attendance, and some observers even speculate that a great revival is underway. At the same time, The Wall Street Journal accurately noted yesterday that "Secular absolutism is becoming the most potent religious force" in America." The WSJ blasted the "effort by liberal activists and their judicial...

A year ago, just before the Iraq War began, Lexis-Nexis showed 800 articles over one month's time linking the words "Bush" and "cowboy," almost always in a derogatory way. This year, my search revealed "only" 610 -- so maybe reporters are getting tired of beating the drum. Or maybe European and American liberals who attack President Bush in this way (as they attacked Ronald Reagan) are realizing that for most Americans, "cowboy" is not a bad word. As one reader of this column who is a working cowboy, Bo Bowman of Montana, wrote last year, "A cowboy is someone who...

"In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." That's how the Old Testament book of Judges ends. These days, it seems as if there is no settled law in America: Judges and mayors do what is right in their own eyes. A Massachusetts chief justice orders her legislature to create gay marriage. A San Francisco mayor breaks state law by ordering that marriage licenses be issued to same-sex couples. Who are these audacious magistrates? Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court head Margaret Marshall, wife of New York Times columnist emeritus (and evangelical-despising)...

Western culture Like Gary Cooper in High Noon, President Bush has faced choices in which Eden was not an option IF LIKELY DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE JOHN KERRY BEATS President Bush in November, it may be because Americans don't watch 1950s Westerns any more. Liberals could agree with that statement and say, "Hurrah, we are more sophisticated." But my guess is that we don't understand what it is to be a tragic hero—and that's what a good president in an age of terrorism has to be. Here's a note from a student who's not a Kerry fan but is "very disillusioned about...

Today, Feb. 6, Ronald Reagan will turn 93. Liberal reporters, some still gnashing their teeth, will note the event. Many are remembering his Cold War leadership, but few know how the presidential fortitude that led to victory over the Soviet Union emerged from Reagan's Hollywood battle against communism. That saga began in the 1930s, when -- as journalist Oliver Carlson put it -- Hollywood's "drawing room tables were stocked with the works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin. ... The astrologers, spiritualists, mystics and fortune tellers who had so long adorned Hollywood salons were unceremoniously dumped overboard. In their places came spokesmen...

Stay the CourseFor all of the Bush administration's faults, it's good to have a president who knows about a set of rules "bigger than government rules" JOIN THE CLUB." THAT'S WHAT PRESIDENT-ELECT Bush said in December 2000, when I told him I was journalist first, Bush supporter second, and would probably be criticizing some of his decisions early and often. That's the way it has worked out, and it's easy to enumerate complaints. No vetoes of pork-barrel spending. No nationwide vouchers or tax credits to begin creating parental choice in education. Missed opportunities during the first year of the faith-based...

JOIN THE CLUB." THAT'S WHAT PRESIDENT-ELECT Bush said in December 2000, when I told him I was journalist first, Bush supporter second, and would probably be criticizing some of his decisions early and often. That's the way it has worked out, and it's easy to enumerate complaints. No vetoes of pork-barrel spending. No nationwide vouchers or tax credits to begin creating parental choice in education. Missed opportunities during the first year of the faith-based initiative. Etcetera. This magazine and now www.worldmagblog.com have criticized the Bush administration and will keep trying to tell the truth, regardless of partisan considerations. But, as...

As the 31st anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision arrives later this month, U.S. newspapers will run a few stories about America's quietly continuing abortion plague. But in India, where cars stop for sacred cows but abortion or infanticide of little girls is rampant, the problem is very visible on streets where young men without women prowl. Skewed birth statistics tell the story. For example, look at the district-by-district birth figures for areas surrounding the ancient pilgrimage region of Madurai in south India. Usilampatti in December 2002 had 910 male births and only 690 female ones. Chellampatti...