by Kirk Spencer In the summer of 2001, I visited the Philippines. My first day in Manila was spent with the children that roam the streets and tin shanties, along the banks of muddy drainage channels. Their faces were dirty and their hair streaked red-blond from vitamin deficiencies. Though they were very poor, they were friendly and playful. They gathered round me asking questions, wanting to know about me, wanting … Continue reading
By Winston Hottman What keeps the poorest of the poor stuck in poverty? In an article at First Things, George Weigel summarizes four root causes, as identified in a book by Paul Colliers, The Bottom Billion: Collier, who studied the varying impacts of development assistance at the World Bank before teaching economics at Oxford, lists four traps that hold the bottom billion down. There is the natural resource trap, in … Continue reading
*Guest post by Michael Cooper. Michael serves as Assistant to the President at Criswell College where he is alsopursuing a degree inBiblical Studies and Languages. In a 2012 New York Times article entitledStrong Marriages and Economies an intriguing point was made: The bottom-line message is that what happens in the home does not stay at home; rather, the size of families, and their stability and quality, has important implications for … Continue reading
*Posted by Joe Wooddell In answering a question about gun legislation at his press conference January 14, 2013, Barack Obama stated, If theres a step we can take that will save even one child from what happened in Newtown then we should take that step. Does he really mean this? I hope not. Relatively few children are killed each year due to gun violence (not that every single one isnt … Continue reading
*Posted by Barry Creamer There are two kinds of people in the world begins the old, common, and variably-concluded saying. Conclusions range from the comical those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who dont to the true but trite those who are saved and those who are lost. The longer I live and the more earnestly I try to grasp what separates people-what … Continue reading
*Posted by Kirk Spencer As Americans, we are held together by our common life, our shared fortunes and the sacred honor of being part of such a great country. Beyond these ties, we have the strong political bands of our constitution. This certainly does not mean that we dont have our differences. We certainly doas we always have. This is especially clear during election cycles. But even in the midst … Continue reading
*Posted by Winston Hottman At Christianity Today, Mark Regnerus makes a case for early marriage. He argues that many of the efforts to reduce high rates of premarital sex among Christian young people have failed because of unbiblical views and attitudes about marriage, among them the idea that marriage needs to wait in most cases: Still, the data from nearly every survey suggest that young Americans want to get married. … Continue reading
