Daycare Manager Fired for Refusing to Call Girl a Boy; America's Exurbs Are Booming...more

A.S. Haley: Credit Where Credit Is Due  
It becomes progressively more and more difficult to find worthwhile stuff about which to blog or comment these days. My erstwhile denomination, the Episcopal Church (USA), has sunk into the mire of blasphemy and irrelevance, and is not even worthy any more of notice. My country is headed by an utterly self-absorbed, pusillanimous and law-breaking President, whom neither his friends nor his enemies will rein in. It has a Congress consisting largely of people so absorbed by their need to get re-elected that they are afraid to have any principles, and consequently are beneath contempt. And it has five Supreme Court justices who simply mock the law and their function as the tribunal of last resort in a putative democracy, and see nothing wrong with making up the law as they go, while openly flouting their contempt for the rule of law.

There remain, I am glad to report, a few voices of sanity in this chaos of lawlessness and cowardice. These voices have the courage to say what they know to be right, to be heedless of the consequences of their standing up for the right, and to press their case for unvarnished truth without ceasing, all in the teeth of implacable hatred and opposition...

Daycare Manager Fired for Refusing to Call Girl a Boy   A manager of a daycare in Texas has been fired because she refused to refer to a girl as a boy as the child’s parents requested.

The parents of the six-year-old child requested that Children’s Lighthouse Learning Center refer to their child as a boy and use the new name they provided. The parents also cut the girl’s hair to make her look like a boy.

Madeline Kirksey, a Christian who is the manager of the Center, did not feel comfortable referring to a child she had known as a girl, as a boy.

Kirksey said the child had been having issues with her gender identity...

Parents, keep paying $50,000 per year so your kids can become intolerance thugs ...This is our future, folks. And it's scary...

J.I. Packer: An Evangelical Life  ...The publisher’s description does a good job of describing what you’ll encounter in the book’s pages: “Over the last sixty years, J. I. Packer has exerted a steady and remarkable influence on evangelicalism. In this biography, well-known scholar Leland Ryken acquaints us with Packer’s life, heart, and mind, tracing the outworking of God’s sovereign plan through his childhood, intellectual pursuits, and professional life. Filled with personal anecdotes and little-known facts, this appreciative volume sheds light on the key themes that have given shape to Packer’s life and thought, highlighting his enduring significance for Christians today.”

This is, as the description says, an appreciative biography, written by someone who knows Packer and who has long been an admirer. In that way it is quite typical of other biographies of still-living individuals—it describes the subject’s life and influence, but without much emphasis on his weaknesses....book review by Tim Challies

So Much For The Death Of Sprawl: America's Exurbs Are Booming  It’s time to put an end to the urban legend of the impending death of America’s suburbs. With the aging of the millennial generation, and growing interest from minorities and immigrants, these communities are getting a fresh infusion of residents looking for child-friendly, affordable, lower-density living.

We first noticed a takeoff in suburban growth in 2013, following a stall-out in the Great Recession. This year research from Brookings confirms that peripheral communities — the newly minted suburbs of the 1990s and early 2000s — are growing more rapidly than denser, inner ring areas.

Peripheral, recent suburbs accounted for roughly 43% of all U.S. residences in 2010. Between July 2013 and July 2014, core urban communities lost a net 363,000 people overall, Brookings demographer Bill Frey reports, as migration increased to suburban and exurban counties. The biggest growth was in exurban areas, or the “suburbiest” places on the periphery....