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Christianity blog
Galileo, Mendel and a Belgian priest, the myth of faith at war with science The idea that religion and science have always fought is a nineteenth-century story more than a fact, and the record shows a different picture. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the church that would not bow to the Reich A Lutheran pastor opposed Nazism from 1933 and was hanged in April 1945, and his life shows what faithful resistance asks of believers. Loving your country is not idolatry, a believer's case for patriotism Christians and Jews can love their country without worshiping it, and Scripture commands care for one's city; here is where patriotism ends and idolatry begins. Washington's 1789 and Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving proclamations side by side Two presidents, seventy-four years apart, called a nation to thank God, one at the founding and one in civil war, and their words still teach gratitude. Why newsrooms cover believers like a tribe they have never met Coverage often treats religious Americans as a bloc to be explained, not people with reasons, and fair coverage is not hard to describe. How a small church can put its beliefs on paper before it is ever sued A step-by-step guide for congregations to document beliefs and policies now, because courts weigh what a church wrote down before the dispute began. Work as a Calling, What Scripture and the Reformers Said About an Ordinary Job The idea that a plumber's or a clerk's work can be holy service is a great inheritance of the West and a quiet source of the American work ethic. What Jewish and Christian teaching says about defending your own life The Judeo-Christian tradition holds that defending the innocent, yourself included, is permitted and sometimes a duty. That is older than any statute on arms. The Sabbath is the oldest labor protection on record, so why do we mock it? The commandment to rest, extended even to servants, strangers and animals, is the first weekly limit on work, and a free people should prize it. William and Catherine Booth, the Salvation Army and soup, soap and salvation A Methodist preacher and his wife built a charity run like an army, and it reached America in 1880 and proved that faith can feed millions without Washington. Made in God's Image, the Idea Behind Every Claim to Human Dignity Genesis 1:27 gave the West its belief that every person has equal worth no ruler grants or removes. Here is the argument, and why secular rivals fall short. Chuck Colson Went From Watergate to Prison to a Ministry Behind Bars Charles Colson served time for a Watergate-era crime, then spent his life arguing that prisoners are redeemable and responsible, and that both halves matter. Desmond Doss Refused to Carry a Rifle and Saved About 75 Men on Okinawa A Seventh-day Adventist medic who would not carry a weapon became the first conscientious objector to earn the Medal of Honor. C. S. Lewis Warned About Men Without Chests in a Book About Schoolbooks Lewis's 1943 lectures began with a dull English textbook and ended with a defense of objective moral values that every school still needs. Sergeant York Captured 132 Germans in the Argonne and Went Home to Tennessee Alvin York asked the Army to excuse him from killing, was refused, ended a machine-gun ambush on October 8, 1918, then turned down fame and built a school. Solzhenitsyn's Line Through Every Human Heart Is Where Conservatism Starts A prisoner of the Soviet camps found that evil does not sort people by class or party, and that finding is the root of the conservative distrust of utopias. Missouri's 1838 extermination order and what Latter-day Saints endured Missouri's governor ordered Mormons driven out or exterminated in 1838, and the order stayed on the books until 1976, a lesson in liberty for unpopular faiths. Chesterton Called Tradition the Democracy of the Dead, and He Was Right Chesterton's line in Orthodoxy gives our ancestors a vote against the oligarchy of the living, and it survives the objection that the dead were wrong too. Pulpits, boycotts and the church roots of the civil rights movement The civil rights movement was organized in churches and argued in Scripture and the Declaration, and conservatives have good reason to honor that inheritance. The 1688 Germantown protest and the believers who started abolition Four Quakers wrote the first colonial protest against slavery in 1688, and the religious argument they began ran straight to the Thirteenth Amendment. The Boston sermon of 1750 that taught colonists when to resist a king Jonathan Mayhew's 1750 sermon read Romans 13 as a limit on rulers, and a generation of colonial pulpits carried that reading into 1776. The Underground Railroad and the Quakers Who Broke an Unjust Law in the Open The conductors of the Underground Railroad show when conscience may defy a law and how to do it openly, accepting the cost. Six principles, one fair objection. Jerusalem and Athens, the two cities every free society still lives in Western liberty rests on biblical moral law and Greek reason, and either alone falls short. The argument, the strongest objection, and the conservative answer. Pharaoh, the Red Sea and the Great Seal design Franklin and Jefferson wanted In 1776 Franklin and Jefferson proposed Exodus scenes for the national seal. The story shows why a tale of liberation fits America. Thomas Paine, a deist, argued for independence from the Book of Samuel Common Sense made its case against monarchy from Gideon and Samuel, and the choice of sources shows how biblical the language of American liberty was. Seven Christmas claims about the public square, checked against the law Most of what people believe about Christmas being banned from or required in public life is wrong in both directions. Seven claims, tested. The Cold War cathedral case where the Court sided with Moscow's archbishop Kedroff (1952) struck down a New York law that took a cathedral from Moscow's archbishop. A state may not decide who governs a church, even an unpopular one.