The Death of Good Journalism; Why Christianity Is Surging in the Heart of Islam...more

Metaxas: The Death of Good Journalism ...“Now the problem with this journalistic orthodoxy,” says Robert Case of the World Journalism Institute, “is that it is disingenuous. … The post-modern journalist subscribes to no external standard for her judgments. … With the post-modern loss of the quest for objective truth, journalistic judgment is subject to personal whim, and manipulation by the media elite who have their own perspective on truth.”

If you doubt this, just look at the venerable Indianapolis Star, which has just decided, in the name of what it calls “human rights,” not only to advocate on its editorial page for a new state law that “provides strong legal protections for LGBT citizens,” but to organize a massive public campaign...

 Why Christianity Is Surging in the Heart of Islam ...In Bahrain and Kuwait, Muslims can enter church compounds. In Qatar, guards allow only foreigners. Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti (the nation’s highest official of religious law) has called for all churches in the peninsula to be destroyed.

Surprising to many observers is how many of these churches there are.

“We don’t really face persecution; we face misunderstanding,” said Bill Schwartz, formerly with YWAM, now the Qatar-based priest responsible for the Anglican Church’s work in the Arabian Gulf. “But we are building churches in every country except Saudi Arabia, and have good relationships with all governments.”...

Clashes erupt on the Temple Mount ahead of Jewish New Year  Israeli police raided the plaza outside Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque on Sunday in what they said was a bid to head off Palestinian attempts to disrupt visits by Jews and foreign tourists on the eve of the Jewish New Year.

The Palestinian youths, Israeli police said in a statement, had intended "to disrupt the routine of visits to the Temple Mount on the eve of Rosh Hashana", the Jewish New Year, which begins at sunset on Sunday...

Church Prays Over Police Department
The congregation of the Fourth Avenue Church of Christ closed its worship service by praying over the Franklin, Tennessee Police Department.

Some 350 church goers made their way three blocks from the church building to the front steps of police headquarters on Columbia Avenue, where they were met by the chief of police and several on duty officers, who warmly received them.

Senior Pastor Patrick Mead explains why the church thinks it is important to pray for local police officers, two days after the fourteenth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks....

U.S. drops to 16th on 'economic freedom' list, behind Canada, Chile  The United States, ranked second in worldwide economic freedom as recently as 2000, has plummeted to 16th, according to a new report of world economies.

The Fraser Institute's annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, showed that the country's drop started in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration....

Wave of migrants will give Europe an extreme makeover 

The massive, ongoing surge of migrants and refugees into Europe has brought up horrendous scenes of deprivation, along with heartwarming instances of generosity. It has also engendered cruel remembrances of the continent’s darkest hours. But viewed over the long term, this crisis may well be the prelude to changes that could dissipate, and even overturn, some of the world’s most-storied and productive cultures.

Some may prefer to ignore the long-term impacts of huge migration from the often-chaotic developing world – where 99 percent of the world’s population growth will be taking place – to the more orderly, prosperous and low-fertility richer countries. Separated from the daily drama, the human movement from Syria, the rest of the Middle East and Africa can be seen as potentially changing European society forever by breaking its already-weak Christian foundations and threatening the future of Europe’s elaborate welfare states. In many ways this invokes the vision laid out in the 1973 French novel “Le Camp des Saints,” which envisioned a Europe overwhelmed by a tide of poor refugees.

These concerns, of course, are not simply European. The flow of generally lower-income people from Central and South America has emerged – largely courtesy of the demagogic Donald Trump – as a key political issue in the Republican presidential race...