Paul Tuns: According to Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group, one in seven Christians worldwide suffer persecution or discrimination due to their religious beliefs. The numbers for 2024 are stark. 380 million Christians suffer persecution or discrimination based on their religious beliefs. 50 countries are rated by Open Doors as having “high,” “very high,” or “extreme” persecution and discrimination – 13 are [...]
November is a solemn month, one which is marked by many memorials. On Remembrance Day, we commemorate not only the conclusion of the Great War, but all of the fallen who made the ultimate sacrifice in the course of Canada’s other military conflicts as well. To this annual anniversary, further occasions to reflect in a similarly somber way have been added. The [...]
Paul Tuns: During the Sept. 16 session of the House of Commons, three Conservative MPs rose to submit petitions from Canadians concerned about the All-Party Finance Committee’s 2024 recommendation to strip all religious and pro-life organizations and institutions of charitable status. In December 2024, the All-Party Finance Committee submitted more than 400 budget recommendations, including Recommendation 429 to amend the Income Tax [...]
Paul Tuns: Just 11 days after Charlie Kirk was killed, his widow Erika Kirk addressed the nationally broadcast memorial service with words of grace: “My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life … On the cross, our Savior said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That young man—that young [...]
Paul Tuns: James C. Dobson, a child psychologist who founded Focus on the Family after seeing first-hand the toll of the social tumult of the 1960s, died on August 21 at the age of 89. A cause of death was not provided by the family’s spokesman. Dobson was an evangelical Christian, the son of a preacher in the Church of the Nazarene, [...]
Paul Tuns: On Sept. 10, Charlie Kirk was killed during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University by a gunman opposed to Kirk’s political views. Charlie Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to advocate for conservative positions on high school and university campuses. TPUSA hosts annual conventions such as the Student Action Summit and Young Women’s Leadership Summit, and organized Kirk’s [...]
Special editorial: For Charlie Kirk, the event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 began like so many others. In front of a crowd of about 3000, the Turning Point USA founder and president engaged in spirited debate, fielding questions from all quarters, taking on all comers. Kirk’s responses were typical: Drawing on conservative values and, even more, on his sincere and [...]
From the editor's desk One of the necessary ingredients to reversing tanking fertility rates is restoring the vaunted place of motherhood and one way to do that is to make life easier for moms and families. Katherine Boyle, general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted some policy ideas on how to accomplish this: “Here’s some super easy things states [...]
Tanis Cortens: Sean Feucht, an American Christian rocker, is experiencing a wave of venue cancellations across Canada. He was scheduled to begin his “Revive in 25” Canadian tour with a performance at the York Redoubt National Historic Site near Halifax, N.S., on July 16. Parks Canada revoked his concert permit, citing “heightened public safety concerns.” According to the CBC, some residents living [...]
UN agencies use AI to spy on youth UN agencies are targeting adolescents around the world—India, Eastern and Southern Africa, the Philippines—by spying on them for their attitudes towards contraception, abortion access, and sexual identity. The agencies target youth with information to change their traditional, family views on these controversial issues. UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities) works in more [...]
Few incidents offer a better snapshot of modern discourse than the recent exchanges surrounding ordo amoris. That Latin phrase can be translated as “the order of love,” a concept which has had currency in Christian theology since it was formulated in late antiquity by St. Augustine, and was further refined, almost a millennium later, by St. Thomas Aquinas. In the 20th century, [...]
Victor Penney: Do you ever read T-shirts, hoping to unlock the deepest mysteries of life, faith, and philosophy? Yeah, me neither; but that’s how my life goes sometimes. I once saw a black tee with the phrase “Pro-Good Things” and “Anti-Bad Things” emblazoned on the front, and I’ve embraced the slogan ever since as a lens for analyzing politics. If you want [...]
Samara Douma: Ultrasound technology has advanced beyond the classic black-and-white 2D (two-dimensional) imaging to offer clearer and higher-quality images. Three-dimensional imaging, as the name suggests, displays a 3D image of the child, making their facial features distinguishable beyond an outline. A 4D ultrasound captures multiple 3D images and combines them to create a video of the child’s movement, possibly capturing a smile [...]
Samara Douma: Although the Bible never explicitly says that abortion is wrong, it does have a lot to say about how God values human life from conception. Many verses speak about how God formed us with a purpose from before we were born. In Psalm 139, David praises God for His omniscience and omnipresence not only in his life after birth but [...]
Unholy Kingdom: Religion, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia Malise Ruthven (Verso, $46, $368) BBC editor Malise Ruthven has written an expose of Saudi Arabia, the Unholy Kingdom, the alliance between the House of Saud – the royal family that ruled modern Saudi Arabia since its founding – and extremist imams who he labels a “sectarian Islamic cult.” Their extreme Wahhabism has become [...]