Guest Appearance on Steve Brown Etc.

Stan and Steve discuss Red-Letter Christianity.

The Chronicles of Atheism

When The Golden Compass hits theaters, many will be introduced to the works of Philip Pullman, a writer who detests C.S. Lewis's fantasy world.
By Peter T. Chattaway

When Red Is Blue

Why I am not a Red Letter Christian.

Africa Unbound

God may be clearing the stage for the next act in his redemptive drama.
By Jonathan J. Bonk

A Duty to Kill?

This fall various groups, including the National Institutes of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control, are rallying behind the radical ideas that people with Down syndrome are valuable and deserve to live. Radical? Apparently. Thanks to new genetic testing capabilities, prospective parents are aborting those unborn children merely suspected of having three copies of the 21st chromosome instead of the usual two at a staggering rate of 90 percent.

Washington Post columnist Patricia Bauer thinks that’s a tragedy:

We cherish our friends and family members and think their unexpected extra chromosome is not the most important thing about them. And we worry that the relentlessness of genetic testing is amplifying stigma and bias against the 350,000 flesh-and-blood Americans who have the condition, as well as people who have other conditions that are now or soon will be prenatally discoverable.

In recent conversations with obstetricians and gynecologists, I've found that we family members aren't the only ones with these fears. Physicians say they're disturbed by mounting demands from prospective parents for nothing less than the "perfect" child, and by lawyers who troll for lawsuits against doctors who have the misfortune to deliver nonstandard babies. Not long ago, a Florida jury awarded a couple more than $21 million when their doctor failed to detect an obscure genetic condition prenatally.

Doctors are left to practice defensive medicine, ordering expensive tests and drowning patients in mind-numbing data, while parents labor under the misapprehension that they have a duty to terminate if the tests so dictate.

Bauer, who has an adult daughter with Down syndrome, has an information-packed website on disability-related issues. May such voices multiply in a society that increasingly looks at the less-than-physically perfect as not worthy of life.

Look at All the Lonely People

A radically old way to reach out to a friendless culture.
A CT editorial from 2006.

Answering the Atheists

A Reader's Digest version of why I am a Christian.

Missions Isn't Safe

Let's not learn the wrong lessons from the South Korean kidnappings.

No Sale on Stem Cells

New Jersey voters yesterday turned down a $450 million, 10-year plan to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Proponents, including Democratic governor John Corzine, argued that the measure would help lead to possible medical cures for a host of maladies. Oppopnents, including New Jersey Right to Life, said Public Question # 2 would finance "the creation, experimentation and then destruction of cloned human beings through the entire period of normal gestation." NJRL also criticized supporters for their "deceptive failure to disclose that the bonds will be paid through higher local property taxes if sales tax revenues are insufficient."

The outcome marks the first time since 1990 that New Jersey voters have rejected a statewide ballot initiative. The state has already committed $270 million in taxpayer money to pay for stem cell research facilities. New Jersey has the fourth highest debt of any state and the highest property taxes. Other states, however, are likely to pick up the financial slack for such research.

Several states are competing in the research. California previously approved spending $3 billion on stem cell research, Connecticut has a $100 million program, Illinois spent $10 million and Maryland awarded $15 million in grants.

It bears repeating: Embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of nascent human life. Adult stem cells have no such ethical issues. And just on a pragmatic basis, the choice should be clear by now. According to the website stemcellresearch.org, medical treatments derived from adult stem cells outnumber those derived from embryos 73-0.

Getting Back on Course

It's time to return to the priority of evangelism.
By Ajith Fernando