Joe Carter

Studies show that a child’s perception of God is influenced by their parents : When parents are more supportive of a child’s autonomy– giving her a sense that she is control of her own life – a child is more likely to see God as a more forgiving God. God is an authority figure . . . . Continue Reading »

Greg Forster argues that the Tea Party movement taps into the full social and cultural power of transcendent moral appeals in a way that social conservatives have never been able to do: I expect social conservatives would generally agree that what’s most fundamentally wrong with our society is . . . . Continue Reading »

Jim Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern, explains how the concept of separation of church and state became part of the law of the First Amendment : 6. The phrase “Separation of Church and State,” as Philip Hamburger establishes in his classic book on the subject, is not in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Only Nixon could go to China. And only when a Democrat is in the Oval Office can we admit that culture can be a cause of poverty : For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be . . . . Continue Reading »

A leading proponent of evolutionary psychology—the phrenology of of modern times—claims Thomas Aquinas as one of their own : In 1975, Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson created a firestorm when, in his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, he argued that human nature might be explainable in . . . . Continue Reading »

Ginny Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, may be willing to forgive, but she doesn’t forget. A few weeks ago Mrs. Thomas called Anita Hill and left this message on her voicemail : Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years . . . . Continue Reading »

I am probably the only Baptist on the planet that looks forward to the pop cultural pronouncements of the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano . I sit by the internet for months waiting to see what they’re going to come up with next. Seriously, I love those guys. Their . . . . Continue Reading »

For five days in the summer of 1979 I was an expert on the Bible. Although I was humble about my status, my fellow pre-seminarians attending Vacation Bible School at East Cisco Baptist Church Vacation were awed by the agility with which I wielded my knowledge. We would sit restlessly through the flannelgraph-aided stories of Noah, Joseph, and David, waiting for the event that would put my considerable skills to the test … Continue Reading »

Last month First Things columnist David Hart raised some eyebrows with his tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the nominee for “Greatest Nation on Earth” might just be Bhutan . While that country may have clean rivers and a dearth of strip malls, it’s sorely lacking religious liberties . . . . Continue Reading »

Msgr. Charles Pope continues his instructive series with a post on the problem of polygenism : There is also another matter which the Theory of Evolution gives rise to that a Catholic must be aware of and realize that he or she cannot give it uncritical acceptance. This is the usual premise in . . . . Continue Reading »