Joe Carter

When I first heard about Dinesh D’Souza’s theory that President Obama can best be understood through the framework of Kenyan anticolonialism I thought it was a joke. It seemed like it’d make a clever, table-turning satire of pseudo-academic pretensions. But the D’souza turned . . . . Continue Reading »

If I told you that an American church was having a Dr. Seuss themed supper and communion, how many guesses would I have to give you before you figured out it was Episcopalian church? Just one? That’s what I thought. Who else would have a “Seusscharist”? Here’s the announcement . . . . Continue Reading »

Msgr. Charles Pope, of the archdiocese of Washington, wrote a helpful post yesterday titled, ” Can a Catholic Accept Evolutionary Theory Uncritically? ” Although he addresses it to Catholics, I think most of my fellow evangelicals would agree with his approach: It is common to . . . . Continue Reading »

1. A Promiscuously Permissive, User-Friendly Jesus It is odd that we have made even Jesus into such a quivering mass of affirmation and oozing graciousness, considering how frequently, unguardedly, and gleefully Jesus told us that we were sinners. Anyone who thinks that Jesus was into . . . . Continue Reading »

A couple of months ago I asked whether William Wilberforce, the eighteenth century abolitionist and hero to modern evanglecals, was complicit in the practice of slavery in Africa. Today, Ted Olsen at Christianity Today follows up on the story and provides more details: Every successful . . . . Continue Reading »

CNN’s Belief blog has some good quotes from the co-authors of the book Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture . Carson Mencken says conservative Christians tend not to think too much about UFOs and Bigfoot: The people . . . . Continue Reading »

[Note: Every Friday on First Thoughts we host a discussion about some aspect of popular culture. Have a suggestion for a topic? Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com] Some people think the internet was created for dirty pictures and political arguments. But the true reason is that people . . . . Continue Reading »

(Via: SMBC ) . . . . Continue Reading »

Who holds the biggest part of our national debt? China? Japan? No, the bulk is owned by the Federal Reserve . Now,  the central bank owns over $808 billion in treasuries . And it still has over $1.086 trillion of MBS in its portfolio left to sell. Since the middle of August,  the Fed has . . . . Continue Reading »

Every day thousands of people in America have accidents that endanger their lives—and yet they don’t capture our imaginations in the same way as the thirty-three miners in Chile. Why is that? Andrew Belonsky proposes and intriguing explanation: [W]hy do we care so much about  . . . . Continue Reading »