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:

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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.

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Does God Want Us to Change the World?

DOES GOD WANT US TO CHANGE THE WORLD?  And if so, how? If you’re in a hurry, let me cut to the chase:  a.) yes – and b.) by doing what the Clapham Circle did: proving their faith through works, mostly among the poor and powerless, and working among the rich and powerful. There’s a little more to it, but if you must run, there’s the nuance-free answer which, like a sack lunch, you may take with you.  If you can stay, I’ll begin by telling you about the night talkshow host Dick Cavett and I went to see Mickey Rooney perform. This is not a joke.  [To continue click here.]

A Video of My Conversion Story

A video of my conversion story

The Wall Street Journal Reviews BONHOEFFER!!

BELIEF IN ACTION
In Hitler’s Germany, a Lutheran pastor chooses resistance and pays with his life.

By JOSEPH LOCONTE

In April 1933, during the early months of Nazi rule in Germany, the “Aryan Paragraph,” as it came to be called, went into effect. A new law banned anyone of Jewish descent from government employment. Hitler’s assault on the Jews—already so evidently under way in his toxic rhetoric and in the ideological imperatives of his party—was moving into a crushing legal phase. German churches, which relied on state support, now faced a choice: preserve their subsidies by dismissing their pastors and employees with Jewish blood—or resist. Most Protestant and Catholic leaders fell into line, visibly currying favor with the regime or quietly complying with its edict.

To read the rest of the review, please click here.

To order the book, please click here!

Spectacular Piece at Foxnews.com

Lauren Green has written a SPECTACULAR piece on Bonhoeffer and my new book for Foxnews.com.  To read it, please click here. And please share this with your friends!

Pat Robertson Said WHAT!!!??

I’m sure you’ve heard about it:  Pat Robertson said that Haiti’s founders made a pact with Satan in 1791 and the nation’s ongoing woes are a direct result of that diabolical beginning.  Whoops! Um, what’s the Aramaic word for “retraction”?

Predictably, the condemnations have been thundering.  But let’s be honest.  It’s incredibly tempting to look for immediate answers to tragedies.   Why them and not me?  Did someone cause it?

Of course there is never a simple answer.  If God were in the business of punishing sin in obvious ways, NBC President Jeff Zucker would have been struck by lightning weeks ago — perhaps more than once.  But it rarely works out like that.   Bad people seem to thrive.  In the Psalms, King David even asks:  “Why do the wicked prosper?”  And King David didn’t even know about Jeff Zucker.   [To continue, click here.]

Anne Rice CBN Interview

An extraordinary interview with the author Anne Rice, in which she discusses her return to Christian faith.  To see it, click here.

My new book has arrived!!!

I just got my own copy in the mail and BOY does it look good.  It’s a hardcover and it’s super orange! 

ORANGE YOU GLAD?

To order your copy, click on the ORDER NOW link at the top of this screen!  Please post this on facebook and tell your friends.

It’s go time!

BOYCOTT MILEY CYRUS

I’m mad as hell.  Let’s start there.

I’m the father of a ten-year-old girl, and when someone threatens her in any way, I’m like the proverbial mother who picks up the car that’s pinned her kid.  Typing these words is my version of car-lifting.  Like the car-lifting mother, I don’t normally engage in this sort of behavior.  I despise moral grandstanding and I cringe at the thought of writing about dopey things like Miley Cyrus, or the “Teen Choice Awards”.   What could be more depressing?

But God help us all, today a line was crossed, because I actually found myself agreeing with — gulp — Perez Hilton.  He referred to Miley Cyrus’s stripper-pole performance at the aforementioned “Teen Choice Awards” as “the return of slutty Miley” and dude, he’s right on.  So I had to say something.

What I have to say is this:  if parents in America — especially those who call themselves Christians — don’t boycott Miley Cyrus now, after this despicably cynical slap in our faces, and in our daughter’s faces, we will deserve what we get.  If parents don’t say enough is enough, and refuse to buy anything with her name on it, the bad guys really will have won.

This is part of the reason Islamic jihadists hate America, and it’s why so many well-meaning  Americans can’t take Christianity seriously.   If Christians don’t speak out when public figures like Miley Cyrus — who dare claim to do all they do “for Jesus” — do things like this, then we are all guilty of extreme hypocrisy.  We cannot complain.

If you are a Christian who would like others to take you and your faith seriously, I beg you to take this seriously.  Otherwise, let’s face it, perhaps our faith really is a shallow faith, and perhaps others really shouldn’t take us very seriously.

And let’s be clear:  this is not about the perfectly clueless sixteen-year-old doing the singing and dancing. It’s about the unfathomably cynical pigs and pimps who are exploiting her and making millions as they do so.  It’s about the despicable middle-aged men at Disney and ABC — led by her dippy, jazz-patched, fright-wigged daddy-o — who are exploiting her and who exploit all women by their actions.

These men are trying to exploit your daughters.  They are leading our beloved children down the vulgar and tacky road that leads to Potterville and to the death of innocence and beauty and goodness and truth.  Let’s face it, we’re almost there as a culture.  This might be something like a “Last Exit Before Bridge” sign.   If it doesn’t get our attention, and prompt us to take a stand for our daughters’ sake, then God help us.

If we don’t have the small courage it takes to boycott those who do such things, and to send a message to the cynical marketing forces behind them, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Healthcare #2: You Can’t Legislate Love

FoxNewsChannel’s THE STRATEGY ROOM.  Eric Metaxas with Lauren Green.