As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
I spend at least 40 hours a week working for a non-profit devoted to improving policing—mostly in the U.S. I’m also a former pastor of 13 years and a seminary graduate. That mix shapes how I look at the recently re-ignited controversies surrounding U.S. policing and leads me to four observations.
The Christian worldview recognizes some realities of human nature and society.
“The Biden administration proposes a global minimum tax on corporations to end the ‘global race to the bottom.’ Leaving aside the wisdom of letting France tax U.S.-based corporations, this phrase recalls one of the regnant canards of our time: Capitalism inevitably lowers living standards and grinds people down into poverty.” - Acton
“Armenian evangelicals praise first US president to formally use word to describe 1915 massacre by Ottoman Turks.” - C.Today
Related at RNS: “The Armenian genocide is a Jewish issue. More than you think.”
“…we have had a presidential task force that looked specifically at policing; a presidential commission that examined the entire criminal justice system; multiple investigations, reports, and assistance programs from the Department of Justice; and numerous joint efforts by police and civil rights organizations ….However, during this same time, a time of profound national need, the United States Congress has done nothing.” -
“Right now America is in a permissive mood that is legalizing controlled substances, legitimizing prostitution as ‘sex work,’ embracing gambling as economic stimulant, and accepting pornography as harmless pastime. This permissiveness will run its course, until its excesses will provoke a new more restrictive era. Social Puritanism may recede for a season but it never disappears.
Bahrain, the Central African Republic, and Sudan were dropped from the list of oppressive countries. - C.Today
“The contemporary environmentalist movement has often been flawed and clumsy and sometimes evil, as any movement made up of fallen sinners tends to be. But, at the core of it, is a concept Christians ought to recognize. It is that of creatureliness, and dependence, and longing for the permanent things.” - BPNews
“Pro-life activists have responded after Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson denounced the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger, and accused the head of the abortion giant of attempting to undertake a ‘fake reckoning’ regarding Sanger’s ties to the eugenics movement.” - C.Post
“In his short and very readable book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t, Australian pastor and blogger Stephen McAlpine sails into the contested waters of Christian cultural engagement with admirable calmness.” - C.Today
“I have been trying to understand their differing responses to Covid and abortion. Many evangelicals are pro-life on abortion, not on Covid. Secularists generally are pro-life on Covid, not on abortion.” - C. Post
Discussion