Amid occasional stories of success (a personal friend who had previously been unable to afford health insurance can now afford a subsidized plan in California) the disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act has revealed itself to be life-upending disaster for millions who are discovering that—thanks to the narrowest, and thus most easily negated of “Grandfathering” provisions—policy holders who liked their insurance cannot keep their insurance. If they like their doctors and hospitals, they cannot keep their doctors and hospitals, either. . . . Continue Reading»
Benjamin Disraeli was one of the main architects of modern conservatism. He made it a successful political movement during the Victorian era. American conservatism is quite different from the English version. But we can learn from Disraeli’s success… . Continue Reading»
I do not possess the gift of healing, nor have I ever spoken in tongues—although when I was a high school student a charismatic Methodist friend of mine prayed that I would do so. Back then, in the 1960s, the charismatic renewal was still a new phenomenon in the mainline Protestant churches and virtually unheard of in the Southern Baptist Convention to which I belonged. Of course, the historic Pentecostal churches had been around since the Azusa Street revival of 1906, but the lines between them and other evangelical Christians were fairly hard and fast. . . . Continue Reading»
Among the many government shutdown stories that came over the wire in recent weeks was one about billionaire Houston philanthropists Laura and John Arnold, whose foundation gave $10 million to the National Head Start Association to keep the program for low-income children running after the shutdown forced it to close in six states… . Continue Reading»
The Washington Redskins football team is under great pressure to change its name to stop offending Native Americans. The ongoing coverage of that imbroglio got me to think about another commonly used epithet that demeans the most powerless among us, and yet remains in widespread use without attracting significant criticism… . Continue Reading»
Christians can learn from Jews. We can learn how to thrive in the secular world that no longer regards faith as central. So argues Rabbi Jonathan Sacks at the 2013 Erasmus Lecture. Speaking to more than five hundred people on the evening of Monday, October 21st at the Union League Club in New York, Sacks outlined a vision in which religious communities—Jewish and Christian—can function as creative minorities. . . . Continue Reading»
The well publicized problems of Obamacare are a sign of both opportunity and a danger for conservatives. The dysfunctions of Obamacare (the premium increases even more than the website problems) will give conservatives a wider hearing for their ideas on health care policy. But there is a danger: If conservatives fail to offer alternatives to the failures of Obamacare, the left will be able to offer single-payer as the only viable alternative to the problems caused by Obamacare. Whether or not conservatives can offer an alternative will determine if Obamacare is the high point of government control of medicine or just another step toward a complete public takeover… . Continue Reading»
This July, vigilantes snuck into bookstores and the public library in San Francisco, pasting stickers over the old heterosexual definition of marriage in the Oxford American Dictionary with their proposed new one: “the formal union of two people by which they become partners for life.” The vigilantes, under the revealing banner “HACKmarriage,” posted an online video depicting their clandestine activities, along with a downloadable sticker for any would-be imitators. … Continue Reading»
There exists a great deal of confusion regarding the popes’ social encyclicals. The problem is threefold: they span over one hundred years in changing political and social milieus; the language that is used is inconsistent; and, finally, there are competing tensions contained in the documents. This book navigates the reader through the confusion… . Continue Reading»
Each issue of the admirable ecumenical journal, Touchstone, includes a department called “The Suffering Church.” It’s a title that Catholics of a certain age associate with purgatory; in Touchstone’s vocabulary, however, “the Church suffering” is the Church being purified here and now by persecution. It’s a useful reminder of a hard fact… . Continue Reading»
