Canadian National Prayer Breakfast

To see my recent speech at the Canadian National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa, click here! I reference William Shatner, Rich Little, and the phrase “Hey, Hoser!” in the first few minutes of my presentation. A good time was had by all. The speech begins about 25 mins into the video…  Hope you enjoy it, eh?

And after Ottawa I flew over to Toronto and shot three episodes of 100 Huntley Street to talk about my 7Men book, revealing that the real “Secret of their Greatness” was their common Canadian heritage. Click here for Part Un! Click here for Part Deux! And here’s Part Trois! But before that, I shot this episode, in which I spoke about my time at the Canadian National Prayer Breakfast…

The Golden Fish: How God Woke Me Up in a Dream

Christianity Today has published the story of my coming to faith. It’s never appeared in any magazine before and — coincidentally? — it all happened exactly 25 years ago this month. Click here to read the article.

My Speech to the Graduates…

On May 4th, I had the great honor of delivering the commencement address to the graduating 2013 Class of Palm Beach Atlantic University. Click here to see the VIDEO of my speech.

For the full TEXT of the speech, click here.

My new book SEVEN MEN is available!

AND HERE IS THE WEBSITE!!!

The Faith of Jackie Robinson

A NEW FILM about Jackie Robinson, titled 42—the number he wore during his historic career—tells the triumphant story of how the Civil Rights icon integrated professional baseball by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. But there’s a mysterious hole at the center of this otherwise worthy film.

The man who chose Robinson for his role, and masterminded the whole affair, was Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey, played by Harrison Ford. In their initial meeting, the cigar-chomping Rickey makes it clear that whoever will be the first African American in major league baseball will be viciously attacked, verbally and physically. So Rickey famously says he’s looking for a man “with guts enough not to fight back.” He needs someone who will resist the temptation to retaliate. Robinson agrees to go along with it.

But where did Rickey get that crazy idea and why did Robinson agree? The film doesn’t tell us, but the answers to these questions lie in the devout Christian faith of both men  To cont. reading, click here…

Speaking on Religious Liberty… w/Ben Carson!

I had the honor of speaking about Religious Freedom at CPAC today, followed by a GREAT Q&A with Dr. Ben Carson! To watch the video, click here! I recommend using the full screen option and turning up the sound. I enter the stage at 6:30 into the video and speak for about 14 mins. Then Dr. Carson speaks for about 25 mins.  After that — at 45:00 — there is my Q&A with him. You have to watch that last part!  For the full text of my speech, click here. For just the video of my 14 minutes, click here. Religious Freedom is hugely important and we’re not hearing anything about it.

If you want to know what you can do, please help spread the word by sharing this speech. Please sign and share the Manhattan Declaration. Please watch Os Guinness’s speech at SITC by clicking here. And finally, if you get into a discussion about Same-Sex Marriage, ask about how it will affect Religious Liberty. That is the real issue and no one is discussing it.

Here’s the Video of my Q&A with John Piper!

This is worth watching just for John Piper’s spectacular exegesis of Romans 13.  We also talk about the difference between killing and murder — and a host of other things. This took place after my Bonhoeffer speech at Dr. Piper’s church in Minneapolis. Here’s the link!

Testifying on Capitol Hill about Anti-Semitism

Yesterday at 9 a.m. I testified on Capitol Hill at a Congressional Hearing titled “Anti-Semitism: A Growing Threat to All Faiths.”  Click here for the video. It’s in Part One. My five-min. prepared remarks are at 51:00 and my extemporaneous remarks on Religious Freedom and the lack of resolve in the West to deal with these issues, etc., are at 1:33 and 1:49 respectively.  What an honor to testify on this important subject!

It’s the 10-City Bonhoeffer LIVE Event Tour!

I’m doing a 10-City Bonhoeffer Live Event Tour and YOU are invited!  Click here for details and registration! If you cannot make it to any of these ten events, you may join us for a special Simulcast Event on March 4th!

The National Prayer Breakfast Interview!

This year’s Nat’l Prayer Breakfast was simply amazing. I got to meet Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas and chat with Dr. Ben Carson.  And I got to hear Andrea Boccelli sing LIVE.  It was transcendent.  For some photos, click here.  Of course last year’s event, where I spoke, was fun too!  Actually, the amazing KLo of NRO recently interviewed me about that event and and my book about it, titled No Pressure, Mr. President: Real Faith in a Time of Crisis. I always have a TON OF FUN talking to KLo as you’ll see by CLICKING HERE!

Please sign up for my email updates!

I’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter/email update soon.  Please sign up by clicking here! No pressure! Speaking of which, I’ll be posting a link for copies of my new book, No Pressure, Mr. President! here soon.  And for my new Christmas book, Uncle Mugsy and the Terrible Twins of Christmas!  Please stay tuned to this space!

Here’s the video of Os Guinness at SITC!

If you care about America, Os Guinness’s talk at Socrates in the City last week was profoundly important.  Please click here to watch the video! SITC is thrilled to offer it to the general public at no cost for a limited time.  Please share it as widely as you like!  And please do get a copy of Os’s book, “A Free People’s Suicide:  Sustainable Freedom and the American Future.”  Finally, for my Breakpoint commentaries on the book, click here.

END OF THE WORLD ARRIVES: NYER Says “Hone In”.

Someone shoot me before the earth melts, which will happen any moment now.  How do I know?  Simple.  In the new issue of the New Yorker magazine, which once greatly (almost overweeningly) prided itself on its use of the English language, the writer Steve Coll in his opening piece for the “The Talk of the Town” uses/mis-uses/whatever, dude the phrase “honed in.”  For those of you scoring at home, this marks the final milestone in the decline of Western Civilization.

The grotesque boner comes in the second paragraph of the magazine, so it’s hard to miss.  As the New Yorker writers and proofreaders should know, the correct phrase is “home in”.  The image is that of a homing pigeon.  The popular misuse of “hone in” conflates “hone down” — which evokes a whetstone/hone used to sharpen a point, literally (blade) or figuratively (argument) — and “home in”.  This misuse is heard more and more, but to read it in the opening paragraphs of the magazine — and in that section of the magazine — for which the great E.B. White (Elements of Style – yes, I’m weeping now) wrote for decades constitutes something of an Agita Apocalypsiensis, since we are all now coining ugly pseudo-phrases.  But it seems The New Yorker may now think of correctness in English usage as a bourgeois/patriarchal/puritanical thing to be dispensed with.  After all, they’ve been oh-so-transgressively dropping the F-bomb for a couple of decades!  If fact, a couple of pages later in a piece about Penny “Hello, Laverne!” Marshall they cheerfully drop the daisy-cutter MF-bomb three times, just in case you thought they might not still be unbelievably hip.  But there’s a single doily-wrapped Victorian F-bomb tossed in too.  For old times’ sake.  And then, a few pages later, they “Jump the Snark” and publish a “humor” piece which is a 1000-word knowing eye-roll against that ultimate bourgeois/patriarchal/puritanical conceit known as “motherhood”.  Gotta stay at the forefront of these things, lest you backslide and start thinking Sarah Palin is not so bad.  All right, kids.  Thanks for listening.  I’m done.

Bonhoeffer Tour of Berlin

This past week I had the great pleasure of giving a two-day Bonhoeffer Tour of Berlin to a group of friends.  We stayed at the historic Adlon Hotel on Unter der Linden and visited many Bonhoeffer sites, including his parents’ home in Charlottenburg, where he was arrested in 1943, the Grunewald home where he grew up, the Zionskirche (pictured), the Bendlerblock where Stauffenberg and others involved in the Valkyrie plot were executed, the site of the former Gestapo Headquarters, the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Gedächtnis Kirche where Bonhoeffer preached, and other sites.  For more photos of the tour — along with descriptions and details — please click here. We also had great meals (yes, there are photos), including a farewell dinner at Lutter & Wegner in the historic Gendarmenmarkt. Anything in pork?

Nostradamus Foresaw This Dark Day

It is said that in this quatrain the medieval French mystic Nostradamus foresaw the dark day when beach volleyball would become an Olympic sport:

*  *

There by the Palace Horse Guards in Londinium
the four maidens leaping round a net, not blind but dumb.
On a beach with no ocean, only land
Coubertin weeps to see the rectangle of sand.

– Nostradamus  (Book VI) 1536

*  *

Did you hear today’s Breakpoint?

Did you?  And are you signed up to get the daily Breakpoint commentaries?  If you’re not, I’d like to think you’re really missing something.  To sign up, please click here! Or to go directly to the Breakpoint website to see all our commentaries, click here!

To read my recent Breakpoint on R.A. Dickey, click here. And to hear my recent BP on Chick-fil-A and “Breaking the Spiral of Silence,” click here. And there you have it.

FREE Excerpt from “Jesus Hates Dead Religion”

Click here for a FREE excerpt from my new e-book, Jesus Hates Dead Religion…  To purchase a copy, please see below…

Should Lifeway have pulled The Blindside?

Recently, Lifeway Christian stores — under pressure from a Florida pastor — made a decision to pull “The Blindside” dvds from their shelves because of some bad language in the otherwise worthy film.   I think that was a big mistake.   If you haven’t followed this controversy, please read my Breakpoint commentary (”Blindsided:  Heading for Cultural Irrelevance”) by clicking here. To listen to a radio interview I did on this with my BP colleague John Stonestreet, click here. And for John’s thoughtful BP commentary on Christians and the arts, click here.

If you’ve missed any of the previous BP commentaries and would like to get them as emails, please click here!

Hey, it’s the Phil Vischer Podcast!

I recently had a TON of fun in Wheaton with my pals Phil (VeggieTales creator) Vischer and Skye Jethani on Phil’s new podcast… please have a listen… I’m excited that Phil is doing these podcasts and even more excited about his new internet tv show, which will be airing soon.  I was one of his first guests…  Visit www.PhilVischer.com for updates…

“What’s So Amazing About Breakfast?”

Here’s an interview I did recently with SALVO magazine about my experience at the National Prayer Breakfast…

“Jesus Hates Dead Religion” is Now Available!

So many friends have asked for the text of my speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that Thomas Nelson decided to publish it — along with photos, my copious annotations of the speech itself (who is Ruth Buzzi?), and a 10,000-word essay in which I tell the full (and wacky) behind-the-scenes story of how I was invited, how I came to write the speech, and what it felt like to be there with the President and First Lady and Vice-President (and how my Nancy Pelosi joke backfired).  It’s all here and I hope the amazing price is a sufficient enticement to you!  Please click here to get this for your B&N Nook! And please click here to order your copy from Amazon.com for your Kindle! It’s also now available at this link on iTunes!!!

Joe Loconte at Socrates in the City!

This Wednesday the incomparable Joseph Loconte will once again be our special guest at Socrates in the City!  His tremendous NEW book (The Searchers:  A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt) has just been published.   It is simply spectacular and I couldn’t be more excited for him.  After a brief talk, I will interview him mano a mano, followed by a Q&A with the audience.  Anyone registering for this event will receive a free copy of the book (while supplies last), which Joe will be happy to sign and personalize at the end of the evening!  How do they do it??  To register, please visit www.socratesinthecity.com!

Rest in Peace, dear friend

I have just learned that my friend and hero, Chuck Colson, has died.  He was surrounded by his family as he went home to be with Jesus at 3:12 p.m. this afternoon.  For the World magazine obituary, click here. And for a link to the speech he was giving just three weeks ago yesterday click here. It was his last public appearance.   It was during this speech that Chuck fell ill and was soon thereafter taken to the hospital.   Rest in peace, dear friend. 

Minnesota Public Radio Interview

Click here for my interview on Minnesota Public Radio!

My time in the Twin Cities was simply extraordinary.  2,000 people came out to hear me last night at the Faith & Life series run by my new friend, Pastor Tim Westermeyer in Plymouth.  Bonhoeffer’s life is touching so many.  One woman (helmet in hand) told me she rode her motorcycle nine (sic) hours from Winnipeg to hear about him!   Soli Deo Gloria!

Please pray for Chuck Colson

This past weekend I had the privilege of emceeing my friend Chuck Colson’s annual Wilberforce Weekend in Lansdowne, Virginia.  After I introduced him last Friday, Chuck spoke, but within a few minutes he became seriously ill.  An ambulance took him to a nearby hospital and on Saturday morning, doctors operated to remove a pool of clotted blood on the surface of his brain.  The doctors are now “cautiously optimistic,” but Chuck is in critical condition and he desperately needs our prayers.

As Chuck recuperates, I have the honor of guest-hosting Breakpoint, the daily cultural commentary that Chuck has been doing for nearly two decades.   Chuck has been a hero and mentor to me for many years.  I love and respect him more than I can say, and I ask your prayers that I might do Breakpoint justice until he returns to the mike.  May it be as soon as possible.

For a Christianity Today update on this story, click here.  To visit the Colson Center website and for updates on Chuck’s condition, click here. To visit Breakpoint, click here. And for a superb column (”A Nixonite Redeemed:  Colson’s Rise and Fall”) written by my friend, National Review editor Rich Lowry, click here.

INTERVIEW: What is the Church’s Responsibility to the State?

Here’s a link to a recent interview I did with the Alliance Defense Fund on some of the parallels between Bonhoeffer’s day and our own…  To go directly to the video of the interview, click here.

Veep Snaps Apres Breakfast Pic of Prez, Metaxas

In case you thought I was kidding about the Vice-President using my iPhone to snap a picture of the Prez and me, here is hard evidence.  The First Lady is in the background.

Interviewing Tim Keller

At the New Canaan Society retreat a week ago I chatted with NYC Redeemer pastor Tim Keller for an hour in front of 500 close friends.  We talked about his life, about Adam and Eve and evolution, and about Hell.  He’s quite the cut-up!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO!

The Girl in the Norman Rockwell painting

Last night at an NYU Veritas Forum I had the privilege of interviewing Ruby Bridges, who as a six-year-old first-grader was chosen to integrate the public schools of New Orleans.  Her mother told her to pray for the people who were jeering and taunting her every morning, which she did.  (Click here for NYU News article.)

At one point some people brought a small coffin with a black doll inside to these daily protests, which eventually gave Ruby nightmares.  Her parents assented to her meeting with the Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles, who helped her and who continued to meet with her for three years and who wrote about it in Finding God at Harvard.  The iconic Norman Rockwell painting that depicts Ruby being escorted to school by Federal Marshalls today hangs in the White House, just outside the Oval Office. 

2012 National Prayer Breakfast

Today I spoke at the Nat’l Prayer Breakfast in Washington.  During my speech I gave the President a copy of my Bonhoeffer book…  Here’s the article from WORLD. Here’s one from The Baptist Press. Here’s the Catholic News Agency.  And here’s National Review.

FOR THE VIDEO, CLICK HERE!!!

My talk begins 35 mins in and ends with me leading the 3,500 assembled in singing “Amazing Grace”.  No kidding.

Guess who snapped this photo below?  None other than VP Joseph P. Biden, who of his own accord very graciously offered to take it for me!  Amazing.  I wonder how many photos there are of U.S. President’s taken by U. S. Vice Presidents?