In 1908, Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer wrote “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” though neither had attended a game before writing the song. Today, it is considered one of the three most-recognized songs in the US, along with “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Happy Birthday.”

The first known time it was played at a ballpark was in 1934 at a high school game in Los Angeles. It was played later that year during the fourth game of the World Series. Over time, it became a beloved and universal baseball tradition for fans to sing the chorus during the seventh-inning stretch of baseball games.

Then came 9/11.

When Major League Baseball games resumed six days later, stadiums began playing “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch, replacing or supplementing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” They still do the same on Sundays and holidays, and during postseason games, though Yankee Stadium plays it at every game.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Does God establish nations? →

Hantaviruses, named after a river in South Korea, are a family of more than twenty different viral species. Almost all are linked to infection by rodents, typically rats and mice, through dried urine and droppings.

One strain, however, known as the Andes virus, is thought to spread by human-to-human transmission, although rarely. In late 2018, an outbreak in Argentina was traced back to a single person who is thought to have unwittingly spread it to thirty-four confirmed cases, with eleven deaths.

As I’m sure you know, a cruise ship called the MV Hondius has made headlines this week because of another suspected hantavirus outbreak onboard that has killed three people so far and made several others very sick. Health officials in at least a dozen countries are now monitoring dozens of passengers who disembarked from the ship before the outbreak was fully understood; at least seven of them are Americans who returned home.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Should you be concerned about hantavirus? →

A biblical response to the Correspondents’ Dinner attacker’s manifesto

A gunman who entered the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25 left behind a “manifesto” that framed his actions as consistent with Christian belief. In a note included in a criminal affidavit filed in U.S. District Court, he anticipated objections, responded to critics, and apologized to his family, colleagues, and others.

Cole Thomas Allen, 31, a California resident, was charged on April 27 with multiple offenses, including attempting to assassinate the president. His manifesto outlined grievances with the administration and identified officials as targets, though the president was not named.

In this 1,000-word document, he quotes Scripture, talks about Christian behavior, and ends it by thanking his family “both personal and church” for their love.

Continue reading Denison Forum – How should Christians respond to violence justified by faith? →

It’s been said that we should believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts, but many of us doubt our beliefs and believe our doubts. I know the feeling. If you do as well, please continue reading.

We’ll begin with what must seem like a non sequitur: the results are in from Indiana’s Republican primaries.

As Politico reported yesterday, these primaries were “the first big test for whether the president still has an iron grip over his party.” The reason: last December, despite the president’s strong urging, nearly a dozen GOP state senators refused to redraw Indiana’s congressional maps. Seven of these lawmakers were targeted yesterday as Mr. Trump’s allies spent nearly $10 million combined against them; the president also endorsed a candidate running for an open Senate seat.

In election returns last night, five of the seven lost to challengers backed by the president; a sixth race is too close to call, and Mr. Trump’s candidate for the open seat won as well.

Here’s my point: Not in living memory has a single politician so unified both parties as Donald Trump does.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What last night’s elections tell us about President Trump →

Last Friday, a federal appeals court blocked the mailing of mifepristone prescriptions, restricting access to one of the most common means of abortion in the US. On Monday, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily restored broad access to the drug, suspending the lower court’s ruling for one week so the full Supreme Court can consider emergency appeals and decide how to proceed.

Pro-life advocates like me celebrated in 2022 when Roe v. Wade was finally overturned, but we grieve that a majority of Americans still think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And since the majority of abortions in the US are obtained through medications, if the court’s latest action stands, millions more babies will die.

In our highly secularized, post-Christian culture, it seems like it’s one step forward, two steps back. But there’s an antidote to the discouragement many of us feel.

“Everyone’s obsessed with ‘grandma things’”

I don’t typically read House Beautiful, but their recent headline caught my eye: “Psychologists Explain Why Everyone’s Suddenly Obsessed with ‘Grandma Things.’” Meghan Shouse reports:

From the renewed interest in vintage and antique-inspired design to celebrities openly embracing slower, more traditional pastimes like knitting, gardening, and needlepoint, there’s an unmistakable shift toward a more ‘grandmotherly’ way of living—particularly among young people.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Justice Alito temporarily restores access to abortion pill →

The FBI and prosecutors have released new footage of the man charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. If you’re like me, however, this news is not how you prefer to begin your week.

It would be more fun to discuss Golden Tempo’s come-from-last-place victory in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, making Cherie DeVaux the first female trainer to win the most famous horse race in America. If you’re a basketball fan, you might want me to write about yesterday’s Game 7 wins by the 76ers, the Pistons, and the Cavaliers.

I’m with you. I have chosen in recent days not to focus on the latest assassination attempt, beyond the event itself, for two reasons. One is that the story makes me feel helpless. The other is that avoiding it makes me feel empowered.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why I’m reluctant to discuss the latest assassination attempt →

NASA chief Jared Isaacman was on Capitol Hill recently for a meeting with the US Senate Committee on Appropriations. After more than an hour of testimony, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas asked Isaacman about his thoughts on Pluto. Isaacman replied, “Senator, I am very much in the camp of ‘make Pluto a planet again.”

While that statement was interesting, NASA’s chief administrator went on to add that his agency is currently working on several papers that will attempt to get the scientific community to re-examine the former planet’s candidacy. And earlier this year, he told the Daily Mail, “I 100% support President Trump making Pluto great again.”

Ultimately, the decision will rest with the International Astronomical Union (IAU)—the organization that demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet in the first place. However, a bit of added pressure from the leader of the world’s largest space agency can’t hurt.

As someone who grew up with Pluto as the final planet in our solar system (and someone who may or may not take far too much pleasure in largely pointless debates), I’d love to see it restored to full planetary status. It wasn’t until I looked into Isaacman’s comments a bit further, though, that I realized how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Continue reading Denison Forum – NASA chief wants to make “Pluto great again” →

The unimaginable joy of being fearfully and wonderfully made

Sunday’s London Marathon resulted in a barrier-breaking accomplishment that, until recent years, would have been considered unthinkable. Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe ran the first sub-two-hour marathon, finishing in 1:59.30.

Sawe’s time is over an hour faster than the legendary three-hour run of Pheidippides, the Greek soldier who ran from Marathon to Athens with the proclamation of military victory over the invading Persians (490 BCE). Though likely a mythical account, his achievement is considered the inspiration for the sport of marathon running.

While the difference between Sawe’s and Pheidippides’s times is significant, more telling is the fact that, for nearly 2500 years, there was negligible improvement in the posted times of marathon winners. For example, Johnny Hayes, the 1908 Olympic marathon champion, won the gold medal with a world-record time of 2:55.18, which would not even meet today’s Boston Marathon qualifying time for men in the same age group.

While pundits would argue that Sawe’s record run was the result of advanced footwear, ideal race conditions, and a predominantly flat course, what cannot be dismissed is the immeasurable capacity of the human spirit, the physical body, and the trained mind; a scale of possibility that continues to reveal itself in myriad ways across the vast panorama of the human dilemma.

The limits God would have us reach

We’ve seen this trend at work in nearly every sport. The 1908 Olympic springboard diving event, for instance, included the forward one-and-a-half somersault not as a compulsory dive, but one of the 20 higher-risk options from which a diver might choose. Today, the four-and-a-half forward somersault is a standard, frequently performed competitive dive.

Whether it’s the four-minute-mile, the sub-10-second 100-meter dash, the perfect 10 in gymnastics, long jumping over 28 feet, or scoring 100 points in an NBA game, sports history is filled with declarations from experts, medical doctors, and sports commentators deeming certain barriers to be not only “unbreakable” but physically impossible.

Sabastian Sawe, however, would not be deterred from his quest by the pundits of his sport.

Beyond the sign of the cross and the folding of his hands in prayer after his victorious run, all accounts indicate that Sawe possesses a strong, foundational faith passed down by his family. Before the race, he promised to help finish building the church where his family in Kenya attends, and his parents were quick to praise God for their son’s victory.

Perhaps he understands that a gift received must be stewarded, nurtured, developed, tested, pushed, and expanded to the limits God would have it reach. It is in such a pursuit as this that God is glorified.

The pursuit of the imperishable

That we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14), being made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), crowned with glory and majesty (Ps. 8:5), has broad application to the unimaginable potential and possibilities of humankind as an expression of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God; perhaps even in and through athletic competition.

In recent years, there have been a substantial number of books, articles, and story lines that place the convergence of faith and sports in a negative light. While it’s important to acknowledge the potential for conflict when these two intersect, there are positive connections that, when rightly understood, prompt, inspire, and encourage us forward in the journey of faith.

Throughout the New Testament we find athletic metaphors utilized to highlight the development of a victorious faith (2 Tim. 2:5), how to fight the good fight (1 Tim. 6:12), and what is necessary to endure to the end (Heb. 12:1). Conceding that bodily training is just slightly beneficial (1 Tim. 4:8), the apostle Paul, nonetheless, observes in athletic competition a level of commitment and sacrifice that must be pursued with even greater fervor in the life of faith (1 Cor. 9:24-27).

Surely, the Corinthians recognized in Paul’s correspondence an allusion to the Isthmian Games, held every two years in Corinth as one of the four Panhellenic Games celebrating Greek athleticism. His acknowledgment of these athletes and the process by which they came to compete at the highest level—their determination, focus, discipline, self-control, and purposeful intentionality—implies that if such dedication goes into the attainment of a perishable wreath, should not the followers of Christ be even more diligent in their pursuit of the imperishable?

A desire to run well

From my observation as a football team chaplain for nearly forty years, I would offer to those critical of faith in sports that those athletes for whom faith truly matters and informs their life, the desired expression of their faith isn’t to crush an opponent, win at all costs, or entertain the crowds to gain their adoration. In fact, their preoccupation isn’t the next opponent or game but, rather, how they can best develop this unique gift God has entrusted to them, that they might maximize the possibilities of this gift. For these, their greatest opponent is the man in the mirror, and he is the one with whom they compete daily.

This mindset of faithful stewardship is most evident not on game day, but in the choices, decisions, and sacrifices made in their every waking moment. From what they eat, with whom they associate, where they go, their training effort, their studies, to what time they go to bed, to what time they awaken, it is all done heartily as for the Lord and not for man (Col. 3:23).

Because they were committed to Jesus being Lord of all, these few not only put themselves in a position to perform well in their tasks on gameday, but also became witnesses of the Faith, inspirational role models, respected voices, and leaders in the locker room.

In recent interviews, the humble Sabastian Sawe has acknowledged the downturns, challenges, and obstacles he has faced throughout his career, but he simply credits his disciplined, rigorous training for putting him in a position to run well. And from a desire to only run well emerged the unimaginable.

The race to which the followers of Jesus are called will undoubtedly be a course filled with difficulties and hardships, some bringing forth a degree of pain that could not have been anticipated, a pain that may well push some to the point of despair. It is in these moments most of all that we must recover the touchstone reality of who we are in Christ Jesus, that we are the children of God, fearfully and wonderfully made. By this, we persevere and endure to experience the unimaginable of what God has in store.

Denison Forum

The unhappiness of our culture and the path to abiding hope

The New York Times has named Taylor Swift one of America’s “greatest living songwriters.” American Idol recently had each of its singers perform from her songbook.

What is the secret to her abiding popularity?

Consider this anecdote: In her Times interview, she explained that she wrote her hit song “Love Story” at the age of seventeen after her parents wouldn’t let her date an older man. “I have this very strong opinion that when you’re young, you feel things on such an intense and detailed level,” she said.

According to Time, her ability to connect with the frustrations and sadness so many people feel makes them “feel seen.” If the latest research is to be believed, the audience for such empathy is only growing these days.

 “Unusually adrift and dissatisfied”

University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman recently documented “a sudden, sharp, and historically unprecedented decline in self-reported happiness in the US population.” Journalist Derek Thompson cites Peltzman’s work and adds that the Federal Reserve’s measure of US worker satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level since the survey began in 2014. Consumer sentiment has also fallen to the lowest level ever recorded in the seventy-year history of the survey.

Here’s what these indexes have in common: they began to plunge in 2020 and have not recovered.

According to Thompson, the explanation is simple: “As a cultural-political force, the 2020 pandemic never ended.” He is calling the COVID-19 pandemic the “permademic.” He explains:

American sadness this decade has been forged by the fact of, and the feeling of, a permanent, unrelenting economic crisis, amplified by a uniquely negative news and media environment, and exacerbated by the rise of solitude and the declining centrality of trusted institutions. Inflation has made today’s life harder to afford, while the ambient awareness of other people’s triumphs on social media [has] made tomorrow’s success feel harder to achieve.

The ongoing collapse of confidence in the establishment has made Americans feel unusually adrift and dissatisfied with institutions outside their control, while the chosen self-isolation of modern life has demolished communal trust, as we increasingly experience other people’s minds through the toxic surreality of our screens rather than through the embodied reality of strangers.

The yearning of our hearts for hope

It is hard for humans to live without hope: a sense that our lives are progressing along a trajectory that will make the future better than the present.

We go to school in the hope that we will learn and achieve in ways that will position us for careers of success and significance. We take jobs in the hope that the money we earn and the tasks we perform will give our lives meaning and security. We marry and begin families in the hope that we will forge homes of mutuality and joy.

But we somehow know that we are in ourselves insufficient to this yearning of our hearts, that we need the help of others if we are to grasp the hope we seek.

Consequently, for many centuries those who inhabited the Christendom of the West believed that their faith in God expressed through participation in the sacraments and traditions of the Catholic Church would ferry them forward and into eternity. Protestants refocused their hope on the Scriptures and their promise of personal salvation in this life and the next. For multiplied millions, secularism supplanted both with the confidence that unbridled human reason and scientific advances would open the way to a more utopian present.

A poster in a roadside café

Then came the pandemic.

For the first time in living memory, none of us was safe and all were at risk. A virus with no vaccine or cure could infect and kill us. We watched in horror as makeshift morgues were erected to house too many corpses to count. Nearly everyone lost someone they knew or knew someone who had experienced such loss.

My wife and I recently took a road trip, stopping at a café for breakfast. As we waited for a table, my attention was drawn to a laminated poster near the door depicting a smiling, bearded middle-aged man. According to the explanation beside the picture, this was the founder and owner of the restaurant, a man who loved his family, his employees, his customers, and his life. He died of COVID-19 in 2021 at the age of sixty-four.

Such posters could be posted in businesses and homes all across the land. Neither faith in God nor trust in secularism insulated millions from death. Those of us who survived learned that we are just as mortal as those we lost, our lives and futures just as frail as theirs.

“Sensing which choice will carry you forward”

But perhaps we have learned the wrong lesson from the pandemic. Rather than abandoning hope in a future that can be so easily taken from us, we can choose to refocus our hope in a different dimension altogether.

Rosie Sultan is the author of a beautiful and moving narrative of divorce, disease, and healing titled “The Art of Letting Go.” She tells of her divorce, life as a single mother, and her leukemia diagnosis. She employs the Boston Marathon as a metaphor for her journey, writing that marathon runners “let go of their doubt at mile twenty, their exhaustion at mile twenty-three, their need to look graceful as they cross the finish line. They hang on to their next step, and the one after that—but they let go of everything else.”

After watching this year’s race, she reports: “I walk home under the trees and think that the answer isn’t to hang on. It isn’t to let go. It’s the art of sensing which choice will carry you forward, step by quiet step.”

Let’s reframe her eloquent reflections within the encompassing grace of Jesus. We do not “hang on” to him—he is holding onto us and will never “let go” (John 10:28). When we consciously practice his abiding presence, he carries us through this day—the only day that exists—“step by quiet step.”

As we turn our thoughts to him, his Spirit fills our thoughts with peace (Philippians 4:6–7). As we spend our moments in glad gratitude for his manifold gifts, every moment becomes his gift to us (James 1:17). Even (and especially) in the hardest places and darkest days, we find that our Savior suffers with us, grieves with us, and sustains us with his unconquerable love (Romans 8:37).

And we find our hearts filled with hope, not just for a blessed future we cannot yet see, but with a joyful present we can embrace today.

The fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich assured us, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Do you agree?

NOTE: For practical ways to experience the presence of Christ each day, please see my new website article here.

Quote for the day:

“If you have been reduced to God being your only hope, you are in a good place.” —Jim Laffoon

Our latest website resources:

• Why AI can’t replace God’s plan for community: Reclaiming biblical fellowship in an age of algorithms
• Will we all be driving Chinese cars someday? A “top ten” list for walking in God’s will
• How should Christians think about America’s 250^th anniversary?
• How the SPLC charges reveal a dangerous dependence on hate
• A biblical response to the stress epidemic: Practical help for when you’re overwhelmed and don’t know why

Denison Forum

King Charles III addressed a joint session of Congress on Monday afternoon. Watching on television as he entered the chamber to a standing ovation, I wondered what our Founders would have thought as the British monarch was welcomed into our highest cathedral of independent governance.

The king expressed solidarity with our nation, bringing “the highest regard and friendship of the British people to the people of the United States.” As he noted, our “democratic, legal, and social traditions” stretch back to Magna Carta, showing that “time and again, our two countries have always found ways to come together.” He added that our defense and military alliance is “measured not in years but in decades.”

The king also stated that “for many here—and for myself—the Christian faith is a firm anchor and daily inspiration that guides us not only personally, but together as members of our community.” He then spoke to our shared duty to “value all people, of all faiths, and of none.”

His remarks illustrated the balancing act a British monarch must perform daily. On one hand, he is the sovereign of the United Kingdom, the leader in whose name the government is formed and acts. On the other hand, he is constitutionally bound to remain above politics. His role is to represent the UK rather than to speak for its government. The monarch often gives political and practical advice to prime ministers and other leaders, but always in private.

As the English poet Tennyson once noted, Britain is a “crowned Republic,” one in which the monarch reigns but does not rule.

“America’s greatest secular saint”

By contrast, the American president embodies both the performative and the practical. He is head of state as well as commander in chief. He engages with the British monarch and other visiting dignitaries in symbolic and ceremonial ways, but he also leads an administration responsible for enforcing the nation’s laws, among other executive functions.

The president and vice president are the only political leaders elected by the entire country. As a result, the Founders were especially concerned to strike a balance that empowered the nation’s leader without giving him unaccountable authority. Accordingly, he can veto legislation but he cannot write it. He can nominate justices to the courts, but he cannot confirm them. He is elected by the people, but he can be impeached by their elected representatives.

As Joseph Ellis writes in His Excellency: George Washington, our first president remains “America’s greatest secular saint.” But the “father of our country” took great pains to ensure that the precedents he set would reinforce his role as the servant of the republic rather than its monarch. If he surrendered his military authority after winning the Revolutionary War, King George III said he would be “the greatest man in the world.” And that is just what Gen. Washington did, resigning his commission and returning to private life.

When he was unanimously chosen by the Electoral College to be our first president, he visited every state in the infant nation, including sixty towns and hamlets. He consistently refused all trappings of monarchy, dressing and comporting himself as an ordinary citizen.

The true power of the country, he insisted, lay in its people. And their power, he asserted, is derived not from government but from the “indispensable supports” of “religion and morality.” What’s more, he noted, is that morality cannot be maintained “without religion.”

As my friend, the retired Congressman Frank Wolf, has observed, politics are downstream from culture, which is downstream from religion.

“Ill-equipped to govern and convert”

In a brilliant and complex article for American Reformer titled “Whither the Reformation in America?”, the political theorist Joshua Mitchell surveys the religious worldviews that are especially dominant in American history and culture. He then asks which, if any, can guide us into a perilous future.

In his view, Catholicism is too hierarchical, in ways akin to Europe and the Old World, to capture the heart of American individualism. Progressive Christianity calls for national repentance and redemption from white supremacy, racism, and other historic oppressions, but without a consequent call to transformation through personal faith in Christ. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes in his reflection on Mitchell’s article, this version of Christianity “believes in sin but not God.”

According to both Mitchell and Douthat, evangelicals are unable to shape the future because we are fundamentally anti-worldly: “strong enough only to fortify the walls” against a “hostile external world” (according to Mitchell) and “ill-equipped to govern and convert beyond [our] bastions” (according to Douthat).

But this is a misreading of evangelicalism at its biblical best.

We proclaim a gospel of personal salvation because only persons can be saved. Nations have no souls for which Jesus could die, no existential reality that can live eternally in paradise. But we also proclaim a gospel that transforms persons so they can be catalysts for further transformation.

The moment Andrew met Jesus, he had to tell Peter (John 1:40–42). The moment the early Christians were “filled with the Spirit,” they had to witness to the crowds at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–41). Before long, they were building a culture centered on biblical morality and compassion (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–37; 5:12–16). Everywhere they went, they became change agents for society as well as souls (cf. Acts 17:6; 19:18–20, 27).

The problem with “Friend Sunday”

But there’s more. Neither Mitchell nor Douthat discuss the eschatological impulse of evangelicalism by which all we do in this world prepares us for all we will experience in the next. We are not merely waiting for Jesus to return and make things better: we are preparing for his return (Matthew 24:14) by meeting needs in his name and advancing his kingdom through our glad obedience (Matthew 6:33).

This is truly a rising tide that raises all boats.

Or it should be.

The problem comes when we settle for the evangelicalism Mitchell and Douthat describe, content to know that our souls are saved and busy inside the “bastions” of our counter-cultural social monasticism.

As a young pastor many years ago, I wanted our church to conduct a “Friend Sunday.” The idea is simple: each church member invites a non-churched friend to church. I preach the gospel as simply as I can, and we follow up with our guests as effectively as we can.

When I introduced the concept to our deacons, they seemed to be in favor, though a bit reluctant. Then one of them spoke for the rest: “But pastor, we don’t know any non-Christians to invite.”

If I were your pastor, how would you respond to my idea today?

Quote for the day:

“A sign of a culture that has lost its faith: moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.” —C. S. Lewis

Our latest website resources:

• How the SPLC charges reveal a dangerous dependence on hate
• A biblical response to the stress epidemic: Practical help for when you’re overwhelmed and don’t know why
• Are 1 in 5 Americans exposed to hazardous drinking water?
• Why Americans aren’t having kids, Apple CEO steps down, Iran ceasefire & NFL Draft names to watch
• Is the Church losing relevance—and what can we do about it?

Denison Forum

The most terrifying history series I’ve watched, by far, is Chernobyl—a dramatic re-creation of the collapse of the nuclear power plant in Soviet Russia. The most gut-wrenching and mortifying parts of the show are the way radiation is invisible to all the senses. Suddenly, without any warning, the person’s skin starts to melt, and they die horribly. Or maybe they die of cancer a few days, months, or years later.

If your stress levels went up reading that paragraph, your reaction makes sense on one level. But, of course, this happened decades ago and poses no real threat to you, personally, now.

Consider this headline from CNN: “1 in 5 Americans may have a dangerous toxin in their tap water.” Let’s unpack this finding and consider a bigger perspective to help peace win over anxiety.

What are the risks of dangerous toxins in tap water? 

A new report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that more than 3 million Americans are exposed to nitrates at levels exceeding 10 milligrams per liter in their drinking water (the federal safety limit is 10). The CNN article also points out that as little as 3 mg/liter has been connected to health risks. More than 62 million people have this level of water in their taps.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Are 1 in 5 Americans exposed to hazardous drinking water? →

Shortly after the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner began Saturday evening, a thirty-one-year-old man approached, running past a Secret Service security checkpoint. Guests heard shots outside the ballroom. President Trump said later that he initially thought a tray had been dropped on the floor, but his wife worried that it was more serious.

A moment later, the president was pulled off the stage by law enforcement officials, a huddle of agents forming around him as he was removed. Vice President JD Vance was ushered away in the opposite direction, and others on the stage were taken into the wings.

Agents spread out across the ballroom, standing on tables and holding weapons. Agents with long guns and helmets stationed themselves on the stage. Cabinet secretaries were rushed out of the room. Attendees hid under tables; wine spilled and serving trays clattered to the ground. People screamed and sobbed.

A waitress cried out in Spanish, “I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die in this room.”

An assassination every other year

The suspect is expected to be arraigned in federal court today. He identified himself in a message sent to family members minutes before the attack as a “Friendly Federal Assassin.” Authorities uncovered what one official described as numerous anti-Trump social media posts. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the man was trying to “assassinate” President Trump.

This is tragically unsurprising; the list of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots includes every recent chief executive. Eight out of forty-five presidents, more than one in six, have died on the job, four by assassination.

This is by no means a uniquely American phenomenon. The list of heads of state and government across history who were assassinated or executed, beginning in 2270 BC and continuing to the present, is shockingly long. One study reported that, between 1875 and 2004, there were fifty-nine assassinations of primary national leaders, averaging approximately one every other year.

It’s hard to see how such attacks can be fully anticipated and thus prevented. The suspect in the shooting outside the WHCA dinner is a graduate of Caltech, one of the most academically rigorous schools in the country, and recently won a “teacher of the month” award. He appears to have legally purchased two guns he had on him Saturday.

Motives behind previous assassination attempts have been widely disparate. Among them:

• Ryan Routh attempted to shoot President Trump in September 2024, reportedly because he wanted to ensure that Mr. Trump would not be reelected that fall.
• John Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to impress the actress Jodie Foster.
• Theodore Roosevelt was shot in 1912 by a man who said William McKinley visited him in a dream and told him to avenge his assassination by killing Mr. Roosevelt.
• James A. Garfield was shot and killed by a man who was angry at being passed over for appointment as Ambassador to France.

Nor are the rest of us immune from mortality. For example, five people were injured in a shooting early Sunday morning near Indiana University. The gunfire apparently resulted from a fight between two women at the event.

An American millionaire died on a hunting trip in Africa when he was charged by an elephant herd. A film portraying the life of Michael Jackson was on pace to collect more than $200 million in its opening weekend; the movie does not tell how he died of a drug overdose at the age of fifty.

“The safest road to hell is the gradual one”

And yet, there’s something in us that doesn’t want to admit that we could be next. Of course we know we are mortal, at least in a logical sense. None of us has any plausible hope that we will be the first humans to escape death forever.

But dying somehow doesn’t feel as real as all that.

Perhaps we’ve been desensitized by violence in movies and on television and by video games in which we die only to start another game. Hospitals and hospices, rather than homes and bedrooms, are often where people die these days. I’ve only witnessed the actual death of one person, an elderly man in my first pastorate who died in his bed as we prayed for him. My mother died while I was in her hospice room, but I did not see her last breath.

Even though we know someday will be our dying day (unless the Lord returns first), we don’t really believe it could be this day. We would have been shocked if President Trump had been killed Saturday night but not truly surprised, given the frequency of assassination attempts we’ve been discussing. But most of us would be both shocked and surprised if death were to meet us today.

In one sense, such denial is necessary to insulate us from anxiety that would otherwise paralyze us. Who could go through their day if they were in perpetual mortal fear of their pending demise?

In another, however, our unwillingness to admit our personal mortality is a ruse of the enemy intended to keep us from being ready when death comes. The chief tempter in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters advises his understudy, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

“It’s closer to my house than to yours”

The antidote is to walk so closely with the living Lord Jesus that we are ready to step into his eternal presence today, secure in the knowledge that death is but the door to a life more blessed than we can possibly imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9).

The days when death is most disconcerting to me are the days when, quite frankly, I don’t feel prepared to stand before my holy Lord (2 Corinthians 5:10). They are also the days when I don’t think my work is yet done and grieve the separation from my loved ones that death would entail.

The days I’m truly walking with Jesus, by contrast, are days when I sense his grace and know I would be welcomed into his paradise. They are days when I know he will not call me home until my work is complete, so I can trust that his timing is perfect. And they are days when I feel deeply his love for those I love and know I can trust them into his omnipotent hands.

In Genesis 5 we read that “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (v. 24). A pastor preaching on this text imagined it this way: “As Enoch and God were walking along, the day drew to a close and the Lord said, ‘Enoch, it’s closer to my house than to yours. Come on home with me.’”

So it can be for any of us today.

This is the promise, and the invitation, of God.

Quote for the day:

“He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.” —Matthew Henry

Our latest website resources:

• Why Americans aren’t having kids, Apple CEO steps down, Iran ceasefire & NFL Draft names to watch
• What is the “shadow docket” and why does it matter?
• Is the Church losing relevance—and what can we do about it?
• The birth rate crisis is looming: Where do we go from here?
• Is the war with Iran just?

Denison Forum

A government affairs attorney and Christian apologist named Jay Atkins recently asked a popular AI engine to evaluate the world’s major belief systems and determine which one makes the most sense. He used a two-step framework: which worldview best explains reality, and which one does so while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions.

In other words, which has the highest explanatory power with the lowest evidentiary burden?

The worldviews in question were atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. In seconds, the AI engine concluded that Christianity offers the most reasonable view of the world. Atkins explained the AI’s reasoning:

[Christianity] offers a comprehensive explanation of reality, why the universe exists, why it is ordered, why we are rational and moral beings, and why we long for meaning. At the same time, it concentrates its evidentiary burden into a relatively small number of claims, most notably the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That matters because a worldview that explains everything but requires you to believe a thousand fragile claims is not rational. The most reasonable worldview is the one that explains the most while assuming the least.

On that metric, Christianity wins.

As the “America Reads the Bible” emphasis has continued across the week in Washington, DC, we’ve been thinking about relating God’s word to our secularized culture. We’ve discussed the power of Scripture to change hearts and lives when we submit to its truth in accountable community. Yesterday we focused on that truth in the context of our gravest moral challenge.

Let’s close by exploring the urgency of biblical truth for eternal souls, including the next one you meet today.

“There is salvation in no one else”

The New Testament consistently states that salvation comes only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The apostles declared to the religious leaders of their day, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Our salvation “is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9).

This is only logical. Our sins separate us from our holy God, the only source of eternal life (cf. Psalm 36:9; Acts 17:28; John 14:6), and thus lead to eternal death (Romans 6:23). Only a sinless person who has no sin debt to pay can pay ours vicariously by dying in our place. And there has been only one sinless person in all of human history. Muslims do not claim this for Muhammad, or Buddhists for Buddha, or Jews for their rabbis.

Jesus alone is our sinless Savior (Hebrews 4:15), the “good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

In addition, Jesus is the only person in history to die and rise from the grave, never to die again. This is also a claim Muslims do not make for Muhammad, or Buddhists for Buddha, or Jews for their rabbis. Of all the great religious leaders of history, only Jesus is alive and active in our world today.

If only Jesus has died to pay for our sins and risen from the grave, only Jesus can forgive our sins and grant us salvation (Ephesians 2:4–5). No matter how fervent Iranians might be in their Shiite Islam, or Buddhists in their Buddhism, or Hindus in their Hinduism, their faith and works cannot save their souls (cf. Romans 8:9).

Scripture also teaches that only those saved by Christ are included in the “book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8), and that “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).

All this to say, we must be “born again” (John 3:7). The most urgent need in all humanity is the need for humans to turn to Christ as Savior. Stated bluntly, every non-Christian you and I know is in danger of eternal separation from God in hell.

“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes”

Here’s the problem: most lost people don’t know they are lost. Unlike those who are lost with regard to directions, they are convinced that they are on the right path, or they would change.

A woman died mid-flight recently when she suffered a medical episode and lost consciousness. Members of the panicked cabin crew connected an oxygen mask to her face but failed to connect the mask to the oxygen tank. They sincerely thought they were saving her life, but they were sincerely wrong.

Through many conversations with lost people over the years, I have found that convincing them that they are lost is often the hardest part of the process. They have attached their “mask” and are certain it is working for them.

This is not only because our postmodern culture convinces secularists that their “truth” is just as valid as any other. It is also because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

Solomon observed, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 21:2). As a result, the sinner “makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made” (Psalm 7:15) and now cannot get out.

As Oswald Chambers warned, “The penalty of sin is confirmation in sin. It is not only God who punishes for sin; sin confirms itself in the sinner and gives back full pay. . . . the penalty of sin is that you get used to it and do not know that it is sin.”

What we owe “every lost person”

The good news is that the Holy Spirit can do what you and I cannot by convicting the lost of their sin and drawing them to salvation. Our part is to share the gospel with them and pray for them (Acts 1:8; cf. Leviticus 5:1).

In her latest blog, my wife writes: “Pray for the opportunities to be an evangelist this week. God wants to answer that prayer and use your life for his kingdom purpose.” As has been said, “Salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit. Sharing God’s word is the work of every Christian.”

I’ll conclude our weeklong discussion of Scripture and secular culture with a statement by David Platt I often quote:

“Every saved person on this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person on this side of hell.”

Do you agree?

Quote for the day:

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” —Charles Spurgeon

Our latest website resources:

• What is the “shadow docket” and why does it matter?
• Is the Church losing relevance—and what can we do about it?
• The birth rate crisis is looming: Where do we go from here?
• Why did Sonia Sotomayor apologize to the public?
• Is the war with Iran just?

Denison Forum

You read that headline correctly. Organizers in Israel are planning “Pride Land,” a four-day event this June at the Dead Sea to promote the LGBTQ community and to highlight the region as a destination for LGBTQ tourists.

The fact that the Dead Sea is the likely area of Sodom and Gomorrah has not gone unnoticed by commentators across the cultural spectrum.

As the “America Reads the Bible” emphasis continues in Washington, DC, this week, we’re thinking together about relating God’s word to our secularized culture. We’ve discussed the power of Scripture to change hearts and lives when we submit to its truth in accountable community.

Today, let’s apply this discussion to the most crucial moral issue of our time. Despite the constant attention our culture gives to LGBTQ issues, today’s topic is even more urgent, not just for millions of lives but for the very future of our nation.

Four reasons for the popularity of abortion

According to Guttmacher data, 1,125,930 abortions were performed by clinicians in the United States in 2025. So-called “medication abortions” account for 63 percent of all abortions in our country. A recent Pew Research Center study adds that nearly four years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a majority of Americans continue to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Israel to promote LGBTQ festival near Sodom and Gomorrah →

The “shadow docket” refers to the way the Supreme Court decides whether to issue emergency rulings, often determining whether a lower court’s decision can take effect while it’s being appealed to a higher court. The practice has become far more common in recent years, and a recent New York Times story has shed new light on how its rise began.

Why it matters: While the Supreme Court is intended to be the least politicized branch of government, it has faced increasing accusations over recent years that it has lost its independence. The litany of shadow docket decisions in response to appeals from the Trump administration and others are a big reason why so many have sought to discredit the Court over that time.

The backstory: How the shadow docket works

Maybe I’m just paying more attention to it now, but it feels like the Supreme Court has been in the news a lot more often over the last few years. Court insiders like Sarah Isgur have called it the “last branch standing,” but its members have also come under fire for appearing to be overly partisan and—especially over the last year—beholden to President Trump. That description is flawed for a number of reasons, but a recent story from the New York Times shed light on one of the Court’s most pressing problems: the shadow docket.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What is the “shadow docket” and why does it matter? →

New data confirms the continuation of a nearly 20-year decline in births

According to CDC data from earlier this month, the birth rate in the United States continued its historic decline, with a 1 percent decrease in births in 2025, a trend that began in 2007. Last year’s rate of 53.1 births per 1000 women in the 15-44 age bracket fell from 53.8 in 2024. The total fertility rate is now 1.57 births per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Financial insecurity is the most consistent factor in historical birth rate trends. With continued economic concerns and instability, it is no surprise that 2025 did not produce a baby boom.

Another clear explanation for the continued decline is a sharp reduction in teen births. Sociologists attribute this to decades of educational initiatives aimed at the topic. The birth rate for women between the ages of 15 and 19 was just 11.7 last year, an all-time low and 72 percent lower than in 2007.

Continue reading Denison Forum – The birth rate crisis is looming: Where do we go from here? →

“America Reads the Bible” began Saturday at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. Over seven days, nearly five hundred participants will read the Bible aloud from Genesis to Revelation. Daily readings are scheduled from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

If you wonder whether America needs a spiritual and moral awakening, you need only read the news. Yesterday’s mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, in which a father fatally shot eight children, including seven of his own, is enough to break your heart. There was also a shooting early Sunday on a pedestrian mall near the University of Iowa, injuring five people.

I could go on, which makes my point.

In such a broken world, how does reading the words of an ancient book out loud help? There are no plans to preach or teach from the biblical passages being read. The words themselves will simply be read publicly across the week.

Is this merely a performative gesture, perhaps with political motives?

The answer is more relevant to our souls and national future than one might think.

“Bind them as a sign on your hand”

From its beginnings, the Judeo-Christian worldview has promoted the public declaration of biblical revelation. In Deuteronomy 6, the Jews were instructed with regard to the “commands” of God: “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (vv. 6, 8–9).

This led to the tefillin (also called a “phylactery”), a small box containing Scripture verses that orthodox Jews still bind to their hands and foreheads during worship. And to the mezuzah (Hebrew for “doorpost”), a small, decorative case containing a scroll of Scripture that Jews affix to the doorposts of their homes.

When I led more than thirty study tours to Israel, we stayed in hotels adorned with mezuzot on each doorpost. Observant Jews often touched them on their way into the rooms.

In Christian terms, the reading of Scripture is a central part of our public worship services. Some see this as merely the prelude to the sermon to be preached on the text, but many churches read the Bible, often responsively, as an act of worship unto itself.

Why is this more than performative religiosity and ritual?

“I did nothing; the Word did everything”

In Isaiah 55, God makes a remarkable promise:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (vv. 10–11).

Here we discover that the words of Scripture possess intrinsic agency and authority. This makes sense when we consider their origin: “No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).

The same Spirit who inspired Scripture also knows every human mind and heart and can use biblical truth to guide us into “all the truth” (John 16:13). This is why “the word of God is alive and active” still today as it “judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NIV). The Bible is therefore “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

For example, Martin Luther explained his role in the Protestant Reformation this way:

I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word; otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

The “secret” that changed Billy Graham’s ministry

Billy Graham explained his ministry in similar terms. His most famous, oft-repeated phrase was simply, “The Bible says…” Over and over, we heard him say this as he quoted God’s word.

This was intentional. During the 1948 Los Angeles Crusade that made national headlines and promoted him to the forefront of American culture, Dr. Graham “discovered the secret that changed my ministry.” As he began quoting Scripture over and over, he said, “I felt as though I were merely a voice through which the Holy Spirit was speaking.”

A crusade scheduled for three weeks stretched into eight, with hundreds of thousands in attendance. Dr. Graham explained:

The people were not coming to hear great oratory, nor were they interested merely in my ideas. I found they were desperately hungry to hear what God had to say through his Holy Word. I felt as though I had a rapier in my hand and, through the power of the Bible, was slashing deeply into men’s consciences, leading them to surrender to God.

He added:

I found that the Bible became a flame in my hands. That flame melted away unbelief in the hearts of the people and moved them to decide for Christ. The Word became a hammer breaking up stony hearts and shaping them into the likeness of God.

I can attest personally to the truth of the great evangelist’s experience. The most transforming thirty minutes of my life each day are the time I spend each morning reading Scripture. Not to prepare an article or write a book, but simply to let God’s Spirit speak from God’s word to my mind and heart.

The esteemed theologian J. I. Packer called the Bible “God preaching.” When last did hearing your Father’s voice change your life?

Why not today?

Quote for the day:

“The Bible is the book of my life. It’s the book I live with, the book I live by, the book I want to die by.” —N. T. Wright

Our latest website resources:

• Why did Sonia Sotomayor apologize to the public?
• Is the war with Iran just?
• Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales resign from Congress: Four ways to strive for justice
• The most moving two minutes of my life: Yom HaShoah and the solidarity of our souls
• Are we turning to AI instead of real help for mental health?

Denison Forum

Is America’s war with Iran just?

The feud between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV continued on Thursday, when the pope decried that “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” in what many took to be a thinly veiled shot at the president. Given that Pope Leo was speaking in Cameroon, where real tyrants have plunged much of Africa into a perpetual state of war, it’s possible that the pope’s comments were intended solely for his immediate context. However, few find that suggestion convincing.

After all, given the extent to which their feud has permeated the larger culture, it would be quite an oversight to say something so potentially incendiary without giving some thought to how others might perceive it. And, at least thus far in his time as pope, Leo does not seem like a man given to that level of oversight.

But how did we reach the point where the leader of the free world and the leader of the world’s largest church are publicly tearing one another down?

Continue reading Denison Forum – In President Trump’s feud with the pope, who is right? →

Four ways to strive for justice

Tony Gonzales is a US Navy veteran and, as of Tuesday, April 14th, a former member of the US House of Representatives. He resigned. As of Tuesday, Eric Swalwell is also a former member of the US House of Representatives. He also stepped down.

One is a Republican, the other is a Democrat. But the reason why each of them stepped down transcends political parties or policy, and that’s my point today. We should not choose representatives as though they were robots, selecting or deselecting policies, but as moral agents and models—people we believe exemplify the character of a good American citizen.

Politicians don’t need to be perfect. The ballots would be blank if they did. Nevertheless, given the heated, divisive political climate of the states, I’ll argue character is even more important, not less.

Tony Gonzales’ adultery 

Let’s cover the fallout of Gonzales’ failings first. He represented Texas’s 23rd congressional district for five years and has a family with six kids. Gonzales committed adultery with a political aide named Regina Santos-Aviles. Her life fell apart when her husband found out.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales resign from Congress →