All Current Topics
Beer Bash or Pentecost?
…There is a high like no other, with never a letdown or a swordsharp afterkick. First, a look at binge drinking in clear-sighted reality. Alcohol abuse—and binge drinking in particular—are plainly serious problems at Yale and many other campuses.
New Historicism: Revisionism as Dogma
[based on actual correspondence] I have a question for you, or frustration with academia. I am taking a seminar this semester in minority groups and am finding that it is a very political topic and that the questions that seem to interest scholars are the construction of ethnic identity and questions of who is oppressing whom. But there is something that bothers me about the way that colonialism and imperialism are over-used to criminalize any majority or powerful group. Does this make sense? Any thoughts?
Returning From China
I just returned from two years in China as an English teacher. This gives me somewhat of a unique perspective on what’s going on in America…. Frankly, I’m seriously worried about America. It seems that values and institutions that have been long-cherished are under attack, a systematic, wide-ranging attack unprecedented since the 1960’s.
Radical Reform
A consensus has been growing, among young people especially, that certain evils and injustices in the social order demand swift, possibly convulsive, change. Certain conditions clearly cannot continue without disastrous consequences. The question remaining is what road do we take?
Healing for the Nations: God’s New Deal for the Youth
We live in a new day because God is doing a new thing in America, and in her youth. It is a whole new deal. The horizon for the youth is changing. Jesus, the Son of God, has arisen with glory and healing. He has brightened the horizon. He is bringing in a new deal: a way out of self-destruction and ruin.
Revival Kindles Laymen’s Faith
A nationwide Christian revival, spread primarily by church laymen, has broken out in Canada and is moving into the United States. From its beginning in a small Baptist church in Saskatchewan, the revival, sparked by two 39-year-old evangelists, has reached as far east as Toronto and as far west as Vancouver.
Columbia’s Founders: They Left the Lights On
As Columbia University celebrates its first quarter millennium, the heart and mind of its founders seem a quarter-universe away. Reaching to embody the convictions and hopes our founders held for their infant institution, Samuel Johnson, the first President of King’s College, reached into the Bible and drew out a declaration revealing the core of education itself: “In Thy Light Shall We See Light.” (Psalm 36:9)
It’s Half Past 9/11: Do You Know Where Your Future Is?
It’s been more than six months now since terrorists turned New York’s twin towers into pillars of fierce fire and smoke. We’ve lived through six months of war and rumors of war, six months wondering whether that nightmare morning delivered an era of trouble, or just one terrible jolt. We’re calmer now; it’s a good time to ask ourselves some questions.
What’s Wrong With Atheism?
It may surprise many people that God has a lot to say about atheism. Throughout its pages, the Bible affirms again and again one fundamental truth: atheism as a condition results from a deliberate choice of the heart, rather than from purported loyalty to open-minded intellectual inquiry.
A Heart for Abortion’s Lost
As students we face many decisions while at Yale. Some are imminently important and demand our best attention, while others seem less consequential. One of the gravest to handle is how to counsel a friend who is considering an abortion.
Famine Alert: Millions May Die in Drought
A drought that is now in its sixth year has brought West Africa to the brink of one of the greatest disasters the world has ever known. Millions are now in danger of death by starvation. The lack of rain has left vast stretches of land bleached and brittle, unable to produce anything but dust.
Is Their Famine Ours? Famines Claim 12,000 Lives Daily
Forty-thousand people are believed to have died in the drought that has ravaged Somalia and Ethiopia in recent months. Relief workers in Bangladesh say that at least a million have perished from starvation since the 1971 war. The United Nations has a list of 33 countries considered to be close to widespread starvation, where over 500 million people have suffered acutely from malnutrition.
Born Again: A New Birth of Liberty for America
Americans generally assumed that the well-educated people who occupied these positions would somehow make the right decisions—at least until the troubles of Vietnam and Watergate. Education, it seemed, carried with it an element of infallibility. That notion, however, was shattered as revelation after revelation showed young, college-educated men enmeshed in moral and political morasses.
Campus Stirrings
Nothing quite like it had occurred at Yale for at least the last 30 years. Bearing two guitars, a banjo, accordion, violin, and a few tambourines, a 20-member crew bunched behind a microphone on Cross Campus lawn late this past summer. Mostly former or current Yalies, they sang and spoke openly about what, to them, matters most.
Ex-Mafioso Testifies at Taft
“Come hear a former drug lord,” read the fliers scattered around The Taft School, the traditional New England prep school in quiet Watertown, Connecticut. Even though it was also opening night for the school play, 60-70 students filled the Choral Room by the time Rex Duval the featured ex-Mafioso arrived.
When, Not Whether, Lies Will Fail
In the floodtide of comment and dispute over Mr. Clinton’s recent impeachment, truth itself seemed run aground on some distant spit of land, as if irrelevant. Speakings and writings were presented for and judged by their intended effect, not their contribution to what may be known of objective truth.
A Legacy of Columbine: Teenagers Turn to God
In his account of the Great Awakening, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Jonathan Edwards wrote, “At the latter end of the year 1733, there appeared a very unusual flexibleness, and yielding to advice, in our young people.” In the wake of the tragic shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, there seems again to be an unusual flexibleness among young people in this nation.
JFK Jr.’s Flight, and Ours
On July 16, 1999, the search for John F. Kennedy Jr.’s airplane began. The previous night, JFK Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law took off to attend a family wedding. The family called the authorities later that night to report that the plane had not arrived. It had disappeared, and chances of finding it were slim.
Luis Palau, Evangelist to Speak at Yale
If someone told you, “There’s a man I know who has maxed-out major stadiums around the world from Bogotá to Bucharest!” you’d probably think, “Big deal. Just another rock star on world tour, right?” But if you heard then that the man can’t sing for beans, that he got his first break as an Argentinean banker . . . Are you curious yet?