Free Republic

John Kennedy in 1960 and John Kerry in 2004 both pledged not to let their Catholic standing affect their policy decisions. Reporters this year are pushing Mitt Romney regarding his Mormon beliefs. But Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor who now seeks the GOP presidential nomination, says he is “appalled” when candidates separate their religion from their policy positions. “At the heart of my governing is my faith,” Huckabee told WORLD on Jan. 26, the morning before he announced on Meet the Press that he was setting up a committee for a run to the White House....

"When it's third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time." That's the authoritative word from Green Bay Packers legend Max McGee, who died on Oct. 20 at 75 after he fell raking leaves from his roof. Many old-time athletes and sports writers have felt the same way. Didn't Babe Ruth set records while satisfying his voracious appetite for hot dogs, booze, and sex? Character counts, but runs count more, right? That's what the Colorado Rockies thought until 2004, when fastballer Denny Neagle was arrested for soliciting a prostitute. The Rockies, who had finished...

In WORLD's pages we often describe man's desperate need for the saving grace brought by Christ's sacrifice. But theologians also talk about common grace, the grace that, like rain, falls on nonbelievers as well as believers. When the cravenness of some Christians shames us, it's a good time to look for evidence of God's mercy in unlikely places. Last month's largest cowardice report came from the Netherlands, where a Catholic bishop said that Christian-Muslim animosity could be reduced through one simple measure: "Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will call God Allah?" Sure—and shouldn't we also wear...

Last week, when Karl Christian Rove, born on Christmas in 1950, announced that he was ending his White House life, pundits eager to punch back had the best of all possible worlds: They could write the summing-up lines characteristic of an obituary without the constraints of courtesy to the deceased. The New York Times was typical in referring to Rove's "infamously bare-knuckled political tactics." Many of the living obits were front-pagers because Rove had the advantage and disadvantage of sitting at the right hand of the recent political god most often deemed dumb by reporters. Journalists who saw Rove as...

Should biblical churches host gay-glorifying funerals? Should evangelical politics move leftward? Many news organs give us one answer: Yes! The lead of an Aug. 11 Associated Press story seemed to expose a clear case of homophobia: "A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay." The story stated that officials at High Point Church in Arlington, Texas, offered to host the service for a gay janitor who wasn't a church member but had worked there -- only to say no when his obituary listed a life partner....

I defended George W. Bush's intelligence to journalists in 1999 and 2000. I still do, but with some nuances related to Joel Belz's observation in last week's WORLD that the president does a poor job of explaining why he does what he does. I used to explain that Bush was business-management-smart rather than graduate-student-smart, a la Bill Clinton. When I knew Bush during the 1990s—and reports indicate that he hasn't changed—he did not like bull sessions. He wanted practical options laid out without wasted words. He did not want to talk about his decisions. His goal was to make them...

Barring a last-minute switch, Cardinals shortstop David Eckstein will not be at next week's All-Star Game -- but Sports Illustrated gave him a more important recognition this spring. The magazine asked 413 Major League Baseball players, "Which player gets the most out of the least talent?" -- and Eckstein received 77 percent of the votes. No other player received more than 3 percent. Eckstein, the MVP of last year's World Series and also the shortest athlete on the field, at a generously measured 5-foot-7, is not without talent: He can hit a curveball, which Michael Jordan, a foot taller, could...

As our article on the recent rash of atheistic best-sellers in this week's issue notes, the hills are alive with the sound of musings about the purportedly increased role of religion in American public life. But, contra the alarmists, George W. Bush and others have merely tried to return Washington to the principles enunciated by George Washington. The earlier George had two excellent, bedrock principles regarding religion and public policy. First, as he wrote in 1789, "Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping...

Books: Notable anti-religion and anti-Christian books of the past year—particularly Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great—make something out of, well, nothing. Nineteenth-century novelist Gustave Flaubert used to joke about archaeologists discovering a stone tablet signed "God" and reading, "I do not exist." His punch line had an atheist then exclaiming, "See! I told you so!" These days, nothing stops atheistic caissons from rolling along the bookstore aisles. Maybe that's because atheists on average have small families and lots of discretionary doubloons jingling in their pockets. Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf), Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell (Penguin), and...

CHINA -- The government here tells Westerners to stay away from the illegal "house churches" spreading like wildfire throughout this officially atheistic country. But through contacts I was able to visit two churches made up of urban professionals this month, with the agreement that locations of meeting places remain unspecified and individual participants unnamed. A word of definition: All Chinese churches are supposed to register with the government and place themselves under its authority, so "house church" means a non-registered church and not necessarily one that meets in a home. Most do, but some in the countryside meet in caves...

Gnosticism is probably hotter now than it has been since—well, over 1,500 years ago. As The Da Vinci Code hits movie theaters and probably extends its three-year run on the New York Times bestselling fiction list, Gnostic books like The Gospel of Judas and The Lost Gospel are also prominent on nonfiction bestseller charts. Peter Jones, professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary California and director of Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet (cwipp.org) is the author of The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back and other books that critique anti-Christian doctrines, including Cracking Da Vinci's Code (Cook Communications) and the newly...

"A long, long time ago I can still remember ..." That's how Don McLean's No. 1 hit from 1971, "American Pie," begins. The news earlier this month was that William Sloane Coffin Jr., America's most famous liberal minister from the 1960s through the 1980s, had just died at age 81. Obituaries noted that Coffin, recipient of an elite education in New England and Paris, had thought of a career as a concert pianist, but became Yale University chaplain in 1958. "February made me shiver, With every paper I'd deliver, Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step."...

Virginia Beach, Va. -- These should be diamond days for Pat Robertson. He'll be 76 next month. The 45th anniversary of the first Christian Broadcasting Network telecast is coming on Oct. 1. Next week, he was supposed to be the main speaker at the closing banquet of the National Religious Broadcasters convention. But instead of basking in the renown that could be his as the founder of five major Christian institutions, he has received enormous criticism for statements such as his recent contention that Ariel Sharon's stroke was God's punishment. When I interviewed Robertson earlier this month in his CBN...

Some people ask how I became a Christian. Here's a World column from nine years ago that shows how God's action is central. It began, "I grew up Jewish in New England, a regular synagogue attendee until age 14, a self-declared atheist thereafter. Since Satan abhors a vacuum, I began worshiping idols made of paper: political writings on which I floated leftward. In 1972, when I was 22, I joined the Communist Party, USA." Party activities were uninspiring, but I had faith in socialist things unseen, and there were immediate payoffs as well. In 1973 I worked at the Boston...

Time did well in selecting Bono plus Bill and Melinda Gates as its charitable Persons of the Year, but I wish it had also put a non-celebrity -- maybe a volunteer Katrina relief worker -- on its cover. It would have been good to honor one of the 9,000 Southern Baptists from 41 states who volunteered 120,000 days during the two months after the hurricane hit. During that time, they served 10 million meals and pushed forward cleanup and recovery efforts. Or how about someone from the Salvation Army: Those folks served nearly 5 million hot meals and over 6.5...

Last week, I wrote about the racism of the liberal media's Katrina coverage -- but that's only half the story. As I've been assessing press accounts of what was clearly the story of the year for 2005, it's become clear that press hysteria delayed rescues, prodded some politicians into making mega-billion dollar promises and may have created a long-term backlash. How bad was the reporting? You probably saw and heard stories of mayhem at the Superdome and the Convention Center, and on the streets of New Orleans. You may have missed the admissions weeks later by NBC, the New Orleans...

Rodney Stark's latest book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005), is scheduled for publication next Tuesday. It's a useful corrective for folks in Austin, Boston, and other blue spots who think of Christianity and rationalism as opposite historical forces and philosophical concepts. The veteran Baylor professor discussed with WORLD how the Christian sense of progress led to political, technological, and economic advances. WORLD: How is Christianity unique in emphasizing the idea of progress? STARK: The other great faiths either taught that the world is locked in endless cycles or that...

Rodney Stark's latest book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005), is scheduled for publication next Tuesday. It's a useful corrective for folks in Austin, Boston, and other blue spots who think of Christianity and rationalism as opposite historical forces and philosophical concepts. The veteran Baylor professor discussed with WORLD how the Christian sense of progress led to political, technological, and economic advances. WORLD: How is Christianity unique in emphasizing the idea of progress? STARK: The other great faiths either taught that the world is locked in endless cycles or that...

We now have trench warfare on the Miers nomination between two opposing armies, both conservative. In one set of trenches, machine guns blazing away, are National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, conservative columnists led by Michelle Malkin, anonymous Judiciary Committee staff members and many constitutional law theorists. In the opposite trenches sit evangelical leaders such as Chuck Colson, James Dobson and Jay Sekulow, bloggers led by Hugh Hewitt, White House staff members, law professors Ken Starr and Lino Graglia, and many lawyers in private practice. From each side comes an occasional sortie, yet barring sensational developments we...

Question: What does Harriet E. Miers, a highly successful lawyer, longtime member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas and confidant of the president of the United States, want more than anything else? Answer: The approval of the faculty of Yale Law School. Or at least that is the fear among conservatives. They worry that although Miers is believed to be a pro-life evangelical conservative, she -- like David Souter and Anthony Kennedy before her -- will be seduced by liberalism. As former Bush speechwriter David Frum noted after Miers was nominated, "The pressures on a Supreme Court justice to...