Exactly five hundred years ago (Oct. 31, 1517), German Catholic priest Martin Luther nailed his historic ninety-five criticisms of Catholicism to a local church door. But success of the earth-shaking Reformation that his protest spawned was hardly foreordained.      Luther was simply railing about the scriptural errors and practical excesses of the […]

In the past 40 years, some 6.5 million babies have been born unnaturally. Which is to say, with the help of science and medical skill in tandem. The variations on this fertility-added process are staggeringly diverse and often mind-numbingly named. They include fertility-enhancing drugs, surgery to correct physical obstacles to fertility, intrauterine insemination, intracytoplasmic sperm …

Embedded vanishingly deep in America’s ongoing abortion war are private Christian assumptions. These beliefs obscure the real source of the conflict and vastly complicate any reasoned discussion of practical resolutions.
Religion aside, most people likely view the concept of abortion warily. It’s manifestly life-and-death but not black-and-white. It is the purposeful ending of a life form, …

It’s disappointing enough that our local newspaper only publishes a weekly “Religion+News” page and never a “Humanism+News” page, as though religious doctrines are so irreproachable that any contrary opinion is clearly irrelevant and need never be entertained. What’s worse is that many debatable ideas broached on that page then necessarily go undebated.