Christianity facing Middle East purge within decade; Yale’s Little Robespierres...more

On the brink: Christianity facing Middle East purge within decade, says group The dwindling Christian population of the Middle East could vanish completely within a decade unless the global community intervenes, say alarmed aid groups who say followers of the Bible are being killed, driven from their land or forced to renounce their faith at an unprecedented pace.

The world has largely stood by as a dangerous tide of intolerance has washed over the region, according to a new study by the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. The study includes disturbing data about the plunging numbers of Christians in the part of the world that gave birth to the faith, and makes a dire prediction of what could happen...

Yale’s Little Robespierres-Yale Students berate faculty who try to defend free speech Someone at Yale University should have dressed up as Robespierre for Halloween, as its students seem to have lost their minds over what constitutes a culturally appropriate costume. Identity and grievance politics keeps hitting new lows on campus, and now even liberal professors are being consumed by the revolution...

Anne Kennedy-Taking the Merry out of Christmas: The Offense of the Gospel ...I am always interested in the timely intersection of the day’s cultural news items. I am sure that various unrelated events must somehow be talking to each other. I, therefore, watched, in horror, over the weekend, a clip of a young Yale student screaming at a professor. The professor had not done what she believed he should have done. She was offended beyond the point of coherence. She was screaming with anger. The professor stood on his heels with a baffled look on his face as the mob formed and she raged away. And then the clip ended.

Also, over the weekend, it was determined that Christians have been offended by the absence of the words ‘Merry Christmas’ on their Starbucks holiday coffees. I watched the clip of the guy who said we should all go in and say our names are Merry Christmas so that Starbucks will be forced to write those words on the cup and we will then have scored some tiny point. He smiled merrily and encouraged people to leave comments below the clip. His chief offense, as I can tell from reading this article in Huffpo, is, and it should be predicated with ‘shut up stupid Christians’, is that he is an ordinary beefy American who is ruining the gospel, which Huffpo knows all about, shut up shut up shut up...

It's not Starbucks' job to share the love of Jesus. It's your job. When We Love Outrage More Than People: Starbucks Cups and You...

Appeals court deals Obama immigration executive orders a huge blow Using strong legal language, an appeals court upheld a lower court ruling preventing the administration from implementing the president's executive orders that would have allowed the government to hand out work permits to millions of illegal aliens.

The president's executive orders would have granted at least 5 million illegals and their families 3 year green cards and allowed them to be eligible for government health and other benefits. A federal judge in Texas issued an injunction against the orders, which has now been upheld by the appeals court...

Underprogram Your Church
...The simple church follows the direction not of the shifting winds of the culture but of the surprising currents of the Spirit. Its attention is not first to the newspaper but to the gospel. Therefore, it is able to cast off that which entangles it, even the religious nets of its own devising for the fishing for men, and follow Christ wherever he may go. The simple church is missionally much more nimble than the attractional church...