James Q. Wilson’s prophecy By Scott Walter | 25 Mar 2012 | 219 views Most social scientists slight ordinary men and women in favor of statistics and grand theories. Not James Q. Wilson. A prominent political scientist who recently died, Wilson cared enough about the ordinary Joe to ponder his life and his community keenly. [...]

If nothing else comes out of President Obama’s plan to force employers, including faith-based organizations, to provide free pregnancy prevention and termination coverage for employees, let’s hope it’s the realization that government is not a benevolent, godly force, but a potential threat to both religious and personal freedom. It is highly unlikely that the Patient [...]

March 9, 2012 By Kayla Reeves Reporter Baylor researchers are bringing biblical history to life in Vatican City this Easter season. Dr. Scott Carroll, research professor in manuscript studies and biblical tradition at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, is the director of a 5,000-square-foot exhibit of rare religious artifacts at the Vatican. The [...]

March/April 2012  In Victorian times, an Anglican rector was once traveling in southern Italy. Mistaking him for a Catholic priest, a group of peasants begged him to give spiritual succor to a famous bandit who lay dying in a nearby inn. The rector offered what prayer and consolation he could, as the grateful bandit acknowledged [...]

February 23, 2012 By Joel Wells | Guest columnists Another entertainer died prematurely due to substance abuse, this time the beloved Whitney Houston. I always imagined that she was exactly like the role she played in “The Preachers Wife,” and I believe that is how the public wanted to see her. Unfortunately, that is not [...]

From the perspective of one who values freedom of choice, individualism, and the market, the proliferation of new translations and paraphrases of the Bible must seem, on the whole, a good thing. From a perspective that places a greater value on theological probity, spiritual understanding in the laity, and coherence in the witness of the [...]

by Patrick Allitt | February 1, 2012 Is it true that the Bible teaches peace and the Koran war? Only if you approach the books selectively, taking the gentlest of Jesus’ teachings and setting them against the harshest of Muhammad’s. Philip Jenkins’ challenging new book Laying Down the Sword shows that the Bible contains incitements [...]

February 15, 2012BY PHILIP JENKINS Although I have never claimed to be very statistically oriented, one number in particular fascinates me as a way of understanding the world, and that is: 2.1. Specifically, that is the crucial figure when looking at a society’s fertility rate, the average number of children that a typical woman will [...]

by Ken Camp Published: February 15, 2012 Philip Jenkins told a gathering at Baylor University.”Most religions have somewhat bloody scriptures, and the worst thing we can do is forget they are there,” said Jenkins, who recently joined Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion as distinguished professor of history and co-director of the program on historical [...]

February 10, 2012 More God, Less Crime by Kerby Anderson   Faith-based organizations and people of faith can make a profound impact on the crime rate and the recidivism rate in our prisons. This is the argument that renowned criminologist Byron Johnson makes in his book, More God, Less Crime. He is a professor at [...]