Blog - Page 222 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Political Ads and the Role of MoveOn.org

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:37-05:00August 13th, 2008|Categories: Politics|

Everyone understands that MoveOn.org is a very liberal 527 organization. It can say and publish anything it wants. And it seems to have endless money to do so. While people on the political left will tell you again and again that the other side runs dirty campaign ads, MoveOn.org will outstrip them all, hands down. Non-partisan groups that monitor this stuff agree. This is not conservative rant or crying.

Take for example Mike Conaway, a Republican Congressman from Texas. He will safely and easily win re-election. In fact, he doesn’t even have a Democrat running against him this November, only a Libertarian. So why would you attack him and spend lots of money to do it?
Ask MoveOn.org since they recently did it. Here is the ad they ran against Conaway:

"Why is Mike Conaway grandstanding in Congress instead of […]

Ben Witherington on The Shack

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:37-05:00August 12th, 2008|Categories: The Trinity|

One of the very best, if not the absolute best, theological, social and political blog spots on the Internet is that of Ben Witherington, III. Witherington is a highly-esteemed New Testament professor at Asbury Seminary (Wilmore, Kentucky) and the author of numerous academic and popular books that are always of superb quality. I only read a few blogs regularly, mostly because of my personal time constraints. This is one blog that I try to get to as often as possible. After I wrote my simple critique of The Shack last week I was linked to Witherington’s blog (go to the archives and then go to July 22 and there you will find the review), by a friend. He asked me to comment on Dr. Witherington’s review of The Shack. I told him that Witherington’s review is a thorough and extremely helpful critique. For all the hyper-conservative rant about this book, this particular blog offered a serious reflection with some helpful theological insights that I […]

The Story of a College Football Hero You May Not Know

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:37-05:00August 10th, 2008|Categories: College Football|

John Mark Stallings, the son of former University of Alabama head coach
Gene Stallings and one of the most beloved members of the Crimson Tide football family, died Saturday, August 2, in Paris, Texas, at age 46. Most of you do not know anything about John Mark Stallings. But he happens to be a true hero of the sport of college football.

John Mark was the last of five children and the only son born to Gene and Ruth Ann Stallings. John Mark often joined his father on the practice field, at coaching stops from Texas A&M to the Dallas Cowboys to the St. Louis/Phoenix Cardinals and back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where after the 1989 season, Gene Stallings became the head coach of my beloved Crimson Tide.

"There weren’t any lives he (John Mark) touched that weren’t made better by his influence," said Linda Knowles, Stallings’ secretary at Alabama. "He loved life, and he loved Alabama […]

Values and Culture Seen Through Comedy

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:37-05:00August 10th, 2008|Categories: Culture|

Sometimes a movie gives us a humorous, but quite serious, overview of some pretty important cultural issues. Such is the case with the wonderful comedy Spanglish. John Clasky (Adam Sandler) is a devoted father with amazing culinary skills that land him one of the biggest jobs possible as a master chef. His family lives well and represents a great deal of what wealth affords to people in our culture. His wife (Cloris Leachman) is so into herself that you are not sure whether to laugh or cry at times. The great performance, however, is that of Flor (Paz Vega), a housekeeper who comes from Mexico with her daughter to start a new life in the U.S. (We are not told if she is legal or illegal in the movie.)

Flor eventually learns English and becomes wise to the values of upscale American families. She longs to protect her daughter and to help her get ahead, without compromising her values and simple roots. […]

Thinking Back on My First Obama Post in 2006

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:37-05:00August 9th, 2008|Categories: Politics|

A careful reader of this blog sent me an email last week and reminded me that I wrote a blog on Barack Obama on June 1, 2006. I had to look at the date more than once to imagine that I had actually written about Obama in this way at that point in time. Now I am not generally so able to judge what might happen, but it seems that I did in this case. My friend urged me to post this blog again in August of 2008. After some reflection I agreed. I felt Obama would be the nominee long before he entered the race for all the reasons that have proven true. Now I wonder if he will finish the deal and become the president. He should enjoy a big lead right now, but does not. I think voters are still learning about him. I hope they take the time to really study his record, or lack thereof, and get to know […]

Ministry in San Francisco

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:37-05:00August 8th, 2008|Categories: Personal|

I am in San Francisco this weekend, or north of the city to be more precise. I am speaking to the elders and pastoral staff of City Church in San Francisco. City Church is one of the truly great churches in the U.S. It began about 13 years ago as a church plant right in the center of the most secular city in the United States.

It has been noted by one recent poll that less than 4% of the people in San Francisco attend any kind of religious gathering even twice monthly. I can’t believe that any major city in the U.S. could compare to that low number, and the figure includes the practices of many who are not Christian in any sense of the term. Put into the equation the numbers of people attending churches that are not even remotely orthodox, and the percentage of people actually attending confessional churches could be less than 1%. Anyone who thinks about […]

The Shack

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:41-05:00August 7th, 2008|Categories: Books|

I think I have been asked one question more than any other, at least in terms of popular culture, in 2008: "Have you read The Shack yet?" The Shack, for those of you who are not paying attention, is the number one best-selling novel in America right now and it is written by a Christian author with an overtly Christian storyline. This in itself is amazing. Perhaps more amazingly, the theme of The Shack is not prophecy, or some strange speculation about the modern world, but rather it is story, a "parable" as the author describes it, about the nature of God as Trinity. Regardless of what you think about the book and whether you have read it or not, tell me, when was the last time a book dealing with the nature of God, that sought to reveal biblical truth in the process, became a number one bestseller?

Even more astounding is that The Shack is not published by a mainstream […]

A Compelling Story

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:41-05:00August 6th, 2008|Categories: Film|

There is a whole genre of films that one critic has called “the inspiring-teacher-as-unappreciated-martyr” movie (e.g. Dead Poet’s Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Mr. Chips). The Emperor’s Club, starring Kevin Kline as Mr. Hundert, a professor of Greek and Roman history at a boys’ prep school, fits this category. As much as I enjoyed the other three films mentioned I think I enjoyed this one slightly more.

Kline is a dedicated and selfless teacher, though a bit too moralistic for my tastes. The prestigious East Coast school holds an annual “Mr. Julius Caesar” contest in which the boy who can survive the competition and prevail wins the honor of being the campus Caesar for the year. The conflict in the story comes when Cedric Bell, a 15-year old son of a West Virginia U.S. Senator, appears in Mr. Hundert’s class. Bell is both smart and humorously rebellious, so he decides to change the school one way or the other.

The […]

Weigh the Issues When You Vote

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:41-05:00August 5th, 2008|Categories: Politics|

The Wall Street Journal recently compiled an extremely useful series of charts that deal with the major ideological and political positions articulated by the two major candidates for the presidency. In an attempt to promote non-partisan discovery of the actual positions of both candidates I encourage you to look at these charts. You will learn a lot if you haven’t studied the views of the two men.

I am never surprised to find I agree with one candidate at a certain point that I would not have expected, at least based on stereotypes, while at another I am radically opposed to his views. Neither one, in this race, lines up my views on several issues but there are striking differences between them that anyone can see if they bother to look
at the candidates carefully. I would predict that very little you now see in their views will change significantly before November 4. While the rhetoric
will heat up, and the debates will take place, these views are likely to
remain the positions of the two men. Rather than get caught up in
election […]

Who Is Governor Bobby Jindal?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:41-05:00August 4th, 2008|Categories: Politics|

Governor Bobby Jindal has been mentioned, usually at the end of a long list, as a possible running mate with John McCain in November. Governor Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) was born on June 10, 1971, which makes him less than two years older than my own son, who was born March 26, 1973. That also makes it hard for me to think of him as a Vice-President, but then my son is the kind of bright young leader that I could vote for in a heart beat.

The most frequently mentioned reason for John McCain to not choose Bobby Jindal is his age. But Bobby Jindal has just as much experience as Senator Barack Obama, at least if you look at his experience objectively. And he has already accomplished far more as a real leader than Obama could imagine. Like you, I have heard Jindal’s name a great deal in the news recently so I decided to check him out. Would McCain shock […]