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 for the video of my speech!

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!

Do you know anyone with a Birthday???

Ladies and Gentleman!  The BRAND NEW Uncle Mugsy website is up!  Huzzah!!!

If you don’t agree that Tim Raglin’s illustrations are GORGEOUS, see an optometrist immediately!

But seriously, these three books represent my most concerted effort at “creating culture” — at making something “good and beautiful and true” — at “lighting a candle instead of merely cursing the darkness.”  I hope you’ll agree that the books themselves are physically of “heirloom” quality — oversized and sumptuously produced, just as books like these should be.  And oh yes, I wrote them.  Please visit and please tell your friends about this!  It’s taken us years to get this to where it is now and I’m very, very excited we’re launching this website today!!!  SDG.

Light a Candle for Newtown this weekend

Below is my Breakpoint Commentary.  This weekend, please take your family to a theater that is playing the two movies mentioned and light a candle for Newtown and against over-the-top film violence.  I suggest holding candles along with signs that simply say Remember Newtown or Against Violence or Please don’t see “Texas Chainsaw Massacre “or “Django Unchained” and you may also wish to hand out copies of this commentary so people can understand why you are doing what you are doing.  God bless you.

**

Light a Candle Against Violence
See You at the Theater

Just weeks after Newtown, the top box office movies in America are “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” and “Django Unchained,” two grotesquely violent films. That’s a problem.

In the days following the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, there were those who spoke of a “turning point” in American politics and culture. Surely, they reasoned, the horror of what happened would alter the trajectory that, in their estimation, had led to the death of twenty little children and eight others.

Just weeks later, events have proven such sentiments to be wishful thinking. That’s when “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” knocked “The Hobbit” out of first place at the box office. In second place was Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”

What both films have in common is that they are unspeakably, disturbingly, sadistically violent. In fact, their sole aim is the depiction of the killing of people. Period.

“Django Unchained” is a revenge fantasy featuring extremely cruel characters who inflict torture and death on their enemies. Let’s face it; Tarantino’s films are infamous for their extreme violence.

The “Texas Chainsaw” movies, like all “slasher” films, are not-even thinly disguised exercises in vicarious sadism. Human bodies are treated like carcasses in a slaughter house. Filming the movie in 3-D only serves to cynically heighten the sense of participatory slaughter.

The idea that such movies are playing so soon after the Newtown tragedy is beyond the pale. And what does it say about us? The fact that they are playing to packed houses is itself a nightmare. Hollywood has set an ugly tone and has aided and abetted the worst in our national character.

I’m happy to report that Django star Jamie Foxx has said that Hollywood cannot “turn its back” and deny the impact of violent films; good for him. But Tarantino is unrepentant. When pressed on this matter by NPR’s Terri Gross, he called the suggestion “disrespectful” and expressed annoyance at the line of questioning. To her credit, Gross continued to press him on the subject. And the church should follow her example.

While we may not have the chance to confront Tarantino or others involved in making these films, we can still express our horror and concern. And folks, we must.

And here’s something else we can do. I am today calling on everyone, but especially on Christians and churches, to gather outside theaters where these two films are playing and to politely (and legally) protest these gratuitous displays of violence. Perhaps hold a candle-light vigil for the victims of the violence in Newtown. I grew up ten minutes from where those events happened, and if you think those parents aren’t upset by films like these, you’re wrong.

Also, be sure to invite your non-believing friends and neighbors to join you. Every American has a stake in the kind of culture we live in. And by the way, this would be a great opportunity to get teachers and school students involved in an important, real-world exercise in free speech and civic responsibility.

Folks, this is one sure way to get the attention of the studios, distributors, theater chains, and the news media who should be covering this.

The other way is, for heaven’s sake, don’t spend your money on such movies. Instead reward responsible film makers and go and see quality films like “Les Miserables.”

President Bill Clinton once said “there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America.” I don’t, to put it mildly, always agree with the former president, but he’s absolutely right about this. Protesting the glorification of violence is something that Christians and non-Christians can and must do together for the common good.

It’s time for us to make our voices heard.

END  (To listen to this commentary, click here.)

“No Pressure, Mr. President!” is HERE!

My new book is now OUT!  CLICK HERE! It has the complete text of my NPB speech, along with my full behind-the-scenes account of the crazy events leading up to and including that amazing day.  There are even footnotes explaining the jokes and references, some of which will surprise you…  Plus photos!  One of them taken by Vice-President Joe Biden.

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!

40 Days of Fasting & Prayer for America

Please click here for the Facebook Page on this subject! This past Thursday I was at an event in Castle Rock, Colorado with my friend and Breakpoint colleague John Stonestreet.  Before I went up to deliver my speech I had a keen sense that I should call on those gathered to join me in 40 days of prayer and fasting, starting this coming Thursday (Sept. 27th).  We often worry and/or complain about what’s happening in our nation, but can we doubt that God wants us to pray about it in a concerted way?  Can there be a time more conducive to focusing our attentions than the 40 days before this extremely important election?   Exactly how we do this is up to each of us — perhaps you could fast one day per week, or gather with friends to pray once per week — but won’t you join me in this, believing and knowing that God longs for His people to take their concerns to Him — to be anxious “for nothing” and to pray boldly and with faith and trust Him with the results?  So many people wonder:  “What can I do?”  We can do this.   If the church has forgotten that God answers prayers, there really is no hope.  Jesus said:  “Ask and it will be given unto you.”  So won’t you join me in asking?  And please tell your pastors and friends about this.  God bless you.  And may God bless America for His purposes — so that we can be a blessing to the rest of the world.   Please click here to join the Facebook Page for this effort.

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

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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.

DAVID BLOOM (1963 – 2003)

Exactly ten years ago today — on April 5th, 2003 — our friend David Bloom died in Iraq at the age of 39. Nine years ago I wrote this essay:

* *

BUT SWEET WILL BE THE FLOWER: The Life And Death Of NBC’s David Bloom
At twelve o’clock stood New York Governor, George Pataki. At one o’clock , White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher. At two o’clock was former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani. At three o’clock , just across the aisle, were Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, and Ann Curry. Everywhere one looked were pundits and anchors and government officials, so many of them that you thought you had fallen into your tv set. There was Tom Brokaw and there was Tim Russert and there was Andrea Mitchell. And there was Chris Mathews and Lester Holt and Campbell Brown. And there was Dominic Dunne and there was General Barry MacCaffrey and there was Peggy Noonan. And there we were, my wife and I, at our friend’s funeral.

The scene was St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, just over a year ago, and the sad occasion was the funeral of David Bloom, the former NBC White House Correspondent and Weekend Today Show anchor whose good looks and brilliance and ebullience had recently brought him the greatest fame of his famous life. For several exhiliarating and tense weeks the entire country had watched him and prayed for him as he bounced along in his modified tank, which someone had dubbed the Bloom Mobile, windswept and typically enthusiastic, the best-known embed in the Iraq War, updating us from the ever-changing middle of it all, and somehow reassuring us by his very presence, by his inherent and ineffable upbeatness, that everything — despite everything — was okay.

[To continue reading, 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.