The evolving meaning of words
Words change meaning over time, usually measured in decades or generations. It is important that we notice the shifting nuances of vocabulary to avoid serious misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Richard D. Land
Christian Post Executive Editor
Dr. Richard Land, BA (magna cum laude), Princeton; D.Phil. Oxford; and Th.M., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) and has served since 2013 as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. Dr. Land has been teaching, writing, and speaking on moral and ethical issues for the last half century in addition to pastoring several churches.
Social media and the internet sowing racial discontent
As racial and ethnic tensions become ever more tense, even some of the progressive left are now expressing deep concern about media’s role in “fanning the flames” of racial and ethnic hostility among their fellow Americans.
Ask Dr. Land: Should President Biden be described as 'devout' Catholic?
This debate over President Biden’s fitness to receive communion and whether he is a devout Catholic accentuates the hierarchical nature of Catholic authority, an authority the church leadership, at least in America, is to varying degrees uncomfortable exercising.
Easter: The promise of an eternal sunrise
Why would Christians commemorate such a grievous miscarriage of justice as the crucifixion of God’s Perfect Son?
Mass shootings: Serious answers to a serious problem
These ongoing shootings are violent eruptions symbolizing the extreme social malfunctions, seething and boiling just below the surface in America, and “gun control” is far too simple an answer. Such a simplistic answer is equivalent to putting a Band-Aid on a severed artery and expecting the bleeding to stop.
Is the national media obsessed with racial conflict?
What all of these reporters have refused to see in their single-minded obsession with ethnicity, is that this young man was in the grips of a far more prevalent evil in our society – pornography.
Chants and incantations to Aztec gods of human sacrifice in California’s public schools?
The idea that a tax-supported public school system would, or could, be used to unleash this vicious cultural and spiritual poison into our young people’s consciousness is both extremely offensive and quite possibly illegal.
A powerful voice from the past
I am not surprised that Mrs. King said that “if there’s one book that Martin . . . has written that people consistently tell me has changed their lives, it is Strength to Love.” She explained that this book embodied the foundational force behind Dr. King and his ministry — “the transcendent moral ethic of love.”
Ask Dr. Land: Should we still celebrate presidents' birthdays?
The fact that in the year of our Lord 2021 various public officials in varied local school districts have taken it upon themselves to rip President Washington’s and President Lincoln’s names off of public schools because they don’t meet some amorphous standard of “wokeness” is the equivalent of civil blasphemy.
Ask Dr. Land: Why do many progressive public policy initiatives seem to hurt the poorest?
It would seem to me that the lesson we should learn from the unintended consequences of these recent progressive policies is that we must look with a hard eye at what are the human consequences of “progressive policies".
Ask Dr. Land: What is President Biden’s pro-abortion blitz doing to America?
The continued mass slaughter of our unborn citizens, approximately 25 to 30% of babies conceived each year in America, now for almost half a century, has devalued all human life, born and unborn, in America. It has brutalized us and made every human life less sacred.
Ask Dr. Land: What does President Biden’s pro-abortion blitz say about America?
Of the 12 nations ahead of America on the list, 11 of the nations are former or current communist regimes, which tells you something about the life-denying philosophies of these atheistic systems. By the way, the least abortive country in the world per capita is Mexico with an abortion rate of .1 per thousand women aged 15-44.
Ask Dr. Land: How is Catholic Church's view of President Biden?
When the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issues a statement representing 75 million American Catholics (23% of the total U.S. population) concerning the first Catholic president since JFK’s inauguration six decades ago, it is an important event.
Ask Dr. Land: Why is Trump’s Advisory 1776 Commission so important?
Be advised that the 1776 Commission shreds the 1619 Project for the dangerous historical fantasy that it is. It is dangerous because it undermines our unity as Americans of differing ethnicities and perpetuates racial and ethnic division in perpetuity.
An evangelical leader’s open letter to President Biden
And, make no mistake, we accept you as our president. You will not hear from us the dangerous nonsense, “He will never be our president.”
How critical is this moment for Americans?
Many people have blamed President Trump for this increasing level of incivility, but he was more a symptom and a product of the dissatisfaction and unrest of many citizens, rather than its progenitor.
Americans must reject violence in pursuit of political goals
Americans must always reject the resort to violence in pursuit of political goals. It is literally “un-American” to engage in, or resort to, violent disregard of the law.
Ask Dr. Land: Why are people so excited by the arrival of a New Year?
When, in spite of our best intentions, our New Year’s resolutions most often falter and fail, I believe we should heed the advice of the pastor of the church in which I grew up in Houston: “When the Devil reminds you of your past failures (and he will), remind him of his future!”
Ask Dr. Land: Why do we exchange gifts at Christmas?
So then Christian, I want to ask you this question, “What does Jesus want for Christmas?”
Ask Dr. Land: Is there a difference between the ‘letter’ of the law and its ‘spirit'?
I don’t think I’ve ever thought as long or prayed more earnestly over an Ask Dr. Land column than I have this one.
