Election Free for All

Election Free for All Lots of interesting commentary on What's His Name this week. Here are some of my favorites. Some of these disagree in parts with my analysis, which is fine. I don't think any of us completely know what's up with the Trump phenomenon. We're all trying to figure out what it means for America, and readers of this Report, for evangelicalism. - Michael Horton on "The Theology of Trump" - Historian Stephen Prothero's "The Huge Cultural Shift That's Helping Trump Win Evangelicals" - Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post on "Why Donald Trump Is Tearing Evangelicals Apart" - Rod Dreher on "A Hard Case, For Trump" And if you're sick and tired of Trump commentary (as any sane person would be by this point), check out this fine piece on John Kasich, who seems to be that rare breed in politics these days, a sincere and humble Christian. You don't have to agree with his politics to see how his faith informs him.

Making Students Read Porn I'm unclear about how large a phenomenon this is, but this article by Jenni White in The Federalist suggests it's a problem in a number of school districts: making high school students read material that graphically depicts incest, sexual assault, and rape. The other problem is this: when parents argue that they should be informed when a class is going to read such stuff (and asked that their child be excused from that assignment), the response is to ignore them and call them book burners. As is often the case, our reigning paradigms make it difficult to make common sense decisions. To suggest that high schoolers should not be reading some books (like Beloved by Toni Morrison, among others) is not to suggest the books should be burned. I've not read the book, but I can only assume that it is a book with many redeeming features. That doesn't mean it's appropriate for teachers to require high schoolers to read it—or that parents who agree are literary Neanderthals.

Beautiful Evangelism I'm writing a book on Beautiful Orthodoxy, in particular how the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful sums up so much of what it means to live out the Christian life today. I bumped into this quote of St. Augustine that talks about one effect beauty can have, especially in a culture that doesn't want to hear a formal gospel presentation any more. But there is another type of "presentation" that is even more powerful.

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli Editor, Christianity Today