Charity and care for the poor are nearly synonymous with the tradition on which the West is built. In ancient Israel, God commanded that the corners of the fields remain unharvested so that the poor would have food (Leviticus. 19:9). And the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) is a defining image of charity. Likewise, the apostle …
Contrary to Kevin Drum’s blog at Mother Jones hospitals, at least historically speaking, are not secular institutions. In fact, the modern hospital system owes its existence to people of faith. Christians have been leaders in medicine and the building of hospitals because their founder, Jesus of Nazareth, healed the sick during his ministry on earth …
“The rape of the soul.” That’s how Roger Williams (1603-1683)—at one-time Baptist minister and founder of Rhode Island—described government intrusions into an individual’s religious conscience. In fact, Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because he had left the established church of the colony, believing, instead, that the sanctity of the human conscience demanded …
Western civilization is indebted to the Judeo-Christian tradition for the ideas of human dignity and human rights, innovation in science and medicine, habits of humanitarian charity and universal education, and its rich contribution to the arts. As the prodigious Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner has written: “Religion has written much of the history of the West.” …
Eighty-four percent of unmarried Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 have already had sex according to a newly released, massive study, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marriage (Oxford, 2011) by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker. Regnerus is a sociology professor at the University of Texas at …
Meeting, Mating, and (Maybe) Marrying in America Read More »
This week’s New York Times Magazine’s lead story, “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,” was about yet another tragedy of our culture of reproductive control. “For all its successes,” the article points out, “reproductive medicine has produced a paradox: in creating life where none seemed possible, doctors often generate more fetuses than they intend.” In this case, 45 year-old …