When President Obama signed a defense spending bill into law on Jan. 2, he included a statement suggesting that his administration might ignore a provision in the law providing religious liberty protections to service members. Obama called the law’s conscience clause, designed to shield military chaplains from being forced to conduct same-sex marriages, “unnecessary and... Continue Reading

When he was awarded the Series MVP, he thanked the presenter in English, then immediately spoke in Spanish, blessing his family, thanking his parents, and asking for their blessing as well on “the most important day of my life.” It was a moment all Latinos who saw remember with pride and emotion—and still moves anyone... Continue Reading

If you love the Heidelberg Catechism and have for a long time, read it again this year. If you learned the Heidelberg Catechism years ago and dismissed it as cruel and unusual punishment, give it another chance. If “Heidelberg” sounds like a disease to you and catechism sounds as thrilling as detasseling corn, try it... Continue Reading

With the inauguration only days away, the Presidential Inauguration Committee has asked for a back-up third-string pastor to be ready to give the benediction should Luis Leon be pressured out. Sources close to the committee gave the IRD a sneak peak at the written version of a prayer to be given by an unnamed Emergent... Continue Reading

If confessional congregations determine that a denomination is not presently confessional or if groups that find themselves alienated from the confession and unable to subscribe honestly to the standards, if all churchly efforts have been exhausted, and that there is no reasonable expectation of a return to the confession (theology, piety, and practice) in future,... Continue Reading

For the record, tyranny—arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power, despotic abuse of authority—cloaked in socialist sentiment is still tyranny. The Obama administration is considering 19 “executive actions” against our right to keep and bear arms. So-called assault weapons bans, universal background checks, and ammunition restrictions move us that much closer to a kingly denial of... Continue Reading

A congregation should also be able to expect certain theological precision and convictions from its leadership based upon the denomination’s stated beliefs and theology. In this way, a congregation is protected from a pastor who would come in and change the church in drastic ways (i.e. from an infant baptizing church to a believer’s only... Continue Reading

The letter said that the PCUSA has made changes in several areas that reflected a “significant turning away from the traditional confessions of our faith and from the historically orthodox understanding of the authority and interpretation of Scripture outlined in the brief ‘Statement of Faith’ that was unanimously adopted by session in 2011 and 2012.”... Continue Reading

The issue here is not a matter of religious morality. Christian teaching, like that of other major religions, is as condemning of heterosexual immorality (i.e., sex outside of marriage, unnecessary divorce) as it is of homosexuality. But the French remind us that this is not really what the political debate should be about. It should... Continue Reading

Because I refuse to allow anyone to bind my conscience on their own terms, I have occasionally stopped a person in mid-sentence when I hear the words, “You cannot tell anyone what I am about to tell you.” My reasoning goes like this: if you cannot trust my judgment regarding what to do with the... Continue Reading