In recent years, Christians have become increasingly active in the fight against human trafficking and prostitution. We’ve reached out to the victims, helping them to take steps toward freedom, recovery, and new lives.

But what about the customers?

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At a recent gathering of seminary students who were engaged in ministry internships, one of the students began talking about her work as a children's minister. She was enjoying the experience, and the children all seemed to be enjoying their time with her on Sundays, but she expressed her concern that the curriculum she was using was not theological enough. "I don't want them just to hear Bible stories all the time," she said. "I want them to learn theology."

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In a recent issue of the Washington Post Magazine, Susan Baer wrote a very touching story, “A family learns the true meaning of the vow ‘in sickness and in health.’” It tells of the marriage of Page and Robert Melton, a marriage that was a happy one with two little girls and everything positive going for them. This all changed in 2003, when Robert had a heart attack and stopped breathing for at least 30 minutes.
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Being a different Worldview Perspective on Calvinism Old and New, from one who was himself a Five-Pointer for 30 years, but who 12 years ago reached the settled conclusion that four-and-a-half of the five points of TULIP are utterly bankrupt, and who now argues with his Reformed brothers, without apology, (ironic pun intended) for semper reformanda on the so-called “doctrines of grace” (he DOES, however, apologize for the ridiculous length of this subtitle).

Divisive? Well, Duh

It would not be difficult to demonstrate that a generous portion of the heat being generated in the resurgent debate, outlined in Shane Morris’s recent article, stems from the Calvinist’s very-often-offensive vocal insistence that “real Christians” are morally obliged to be Calvinistic.

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A debate is mounting over the increasing interest in theology among young Evangelicals—and how it has motivated many to embrace the doctrines historically known as Calvinism.

This sharpening exchange is drawing harsh words and battle lines within churches and even denominations. But while genuine disagreements in some areas are a given, a closer examination reveals that the “New Calvinism,” more than anything else, is drawing attention back to an old truth of the Christian worldview—and counteracting the growth of an equally ancient heresy.

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When I was a kid, one of my favorite Christmas gifts to receive was a calendar. This was due largely to my affection for posed portraits of puppies. But it was also because I loved the ritual of taking down one calendar and putting up a new, blank one every year. Not that the previous year’s calendar was full. No kid in elementary school has that much to put on a calendar, and I liked those puppy dogs way too much to risk smudging them up. Read More >

On Christianity Today's Her.meneutics blog, BreakPoint editor Gina Dalfonzo wrote a post about girls in India participating in a ceremony to rid themselves of names that mean "unwanted" in Hindi.

As families in India and other countries prefer boys over girls and abort female fetuses at high rates, the sex ratios are skewed. According to Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, by Mara Hvistendahl, India's ratio is 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the ratio is 121:100. And as the Her.meneutics story demonstrated, the girls who manage to live are made to feel rejected. Read More >

The Tree of Life (now available on DVD and stunning on Blu-Ray) is one of the rarest of film experiences, one that challenges our ideas of what movies can be and that forces us to think big, really big, about life’s great questions.

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I've been reading Eugene Peterson's insightful commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel, the part where he discusses King David's return to Jerusalem after his son Absalom's failed coup. Along the way, worn and weary David deals with a succession of people. Some he can trust. Others’ motives are ambiguous at best, self-serving at worst.

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You know the small wire hooks used to hang ornaments on the Christmas tree? Well, they’re out of them, at least where I live. Wal-Mart is out. Walgreens is out. So are CVS and the Dollar Store. Nada. I’ve made repeat visits. No hooks.

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Swedish author and journalist Steig Larsson’s day job centered on a campaign against right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis in Sweden and across Europe. At night, he wrote detective novels. Larsson died in 2004 of a heart attack and left behind the manuscripts for three novels and part of a fourth. The first book in what he called the Millennium series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was published posthumously in Swedish in 2005 and in English in 2008. The other two were published shortly thereafter, and Larsson’s novels became a sensation. When I was in an airport about a year ago, amusing myself with “book-spotting,” at least half the people I saw were reading or carrying a copy of one of Larsson’s novels.

And now The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has been made into an English-language movie, set for general release in theaters on December 21.

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“Celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. . . . Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger.” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Advent season is upon us. Although I have observed Christmas my entire life, I think this is the first year I am truly, deliberately celebrating Advent -- Christ’s appearing.

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On September 4, 1957, a young photographer named Will Counts snapped a photograph that would forever pose two women—one black and one white—as the faces of America’s fight for desegregation.

As recounted in David Margolick’s new book Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, the story begins on a landmark day in America’s civil rights journey—the first day an African American student tried to attend a white school. Actually, there were supposed to be nine, but the other eight were delayed from heading to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of rumors that a riot was brewing.

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“Is this Jessica?” a man’s voice said.

“This is Jessie,” I said. I got an automatic burst of bad energy up my back. Nobody ever called me Jessica except substitute teachers when they were taking roll. Or people who were about to tell me I was in trouble. Again.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1850, and readers and critics have been arguing ever since about the accuracy of his portrayal of Puritan culture and morals. Were the Puritans really as repressed and oppressive as Hawthorne’s book would have us believe? Or were they strong, godly heroes of the Reformation who attempted to live out their faith and to create a safe and orderly society for those who lived in Puritan New England?

Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke takes its inspiration from Hawthorne, and gives us a twenty-first century theocracy in which the adulterous woman is branded with red skin instead of a scarlet letter. Hannah Payne, the twenty-something protagonist of When She Woke, has not only committed adultery; she has also had an abortion and refuses to name the abortionist or her partner in adultery.
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