Tag: www.chalcedon.edu

My ‘Bell Mountain’ Interview

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of bell mountain by lee duigon

It was eight years ago, but I think this is still the best interview I’ve had–largely due to the thoughtful questions asked by Chalcedon’s Andrea Schwartz. Here’s the audio for the whole thing, about 23 minutes long. I apologize, in advance, for my slow way of talking. As for my voice, it’s ideally suited for mime.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/audio/lee-duigon-bell-mountain-notable-people

At the time, I had three Bell Mountain books in print, with No. 4, The Last Banquet, ready to go to press. Here in 2018, I’m waiting for No. 11, The Temptation, to come out, and writing No. 12, His Mercy Endureth Forever. 

How many more to come?

As many as God gives me to write.

More Left-Wing Pseudo-Christianity

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of jim wallis

Back in 2006 I reviewed socialist Jim Wallis’ The Call to Conversion. It’s as revolting now as it was then.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-the-call-to-conversion-why-faith-is-always-personal-but-never-private

Wallis was much more prominent in 2006 than he is now. Back then, he still clung, however feebly, to Biblical sexual morality. But after he took the plunge for “gay marriage,” that made him just another liberal with no distinguishing marks; so his stock as an oracle has gone down.

This little book of his is a spectacular example of the leftids’ use of straw men in an argument. Wallis has a black belt in the martial art of knocking down opinions that no one actually holds.

False prophets abound. This is one of them.

Does God Tell Us to Love Our Children ‘Unconditionally’?

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

In this latest installment of Chalcedon’s (www.chalcedon.edu) Homeschooling Help, Andrea Schwartz and Nancy Wilk tackle a question that’s a lot stickier than it looks: Does the word of God instruct us to love our children unconditionally? It’s about 30 minutes long, and I guarantee you’ll find it thought-provoking.

The stumbling-block is the word “unconditional,” which presupposes something that does not, in fact, exist: “All love is conditional love,” as Andrea and Nancy make clear. Like, my wife loves me; but if I did certain things, you can bet she wouldn’t love me anymore. So I don’t do those things!

I find myself on tenterhooks (what exactly are tenterhooks? anybody know?) because Andrea and Nancy do not rule out the occasional spanking as a legitimate, appropriate tool of parental discipline. Ooooh! To think it actually takes courage to say that…

Andrea is Chalcedon’s homeschooling mentor. You wouldn’t believe how hard she worked, trying to teach me to perform certain computer functions. I can personally testify to her patience!

Thomas Sowell vs. ‘Intellectuals’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of thomas sowell

In 2010 Thomas Sowell blasted The Smartest People in the World with his book, Intellectuals and Society, delving deep into the question of just how stupid these people are. I reviewed the book for Chalcedon.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-intellectuals-and-society

As you will have seen from my review (if you’ve read it), Dr. Sowell didn’t devote any effort to discovering why intellectuals have such asinine beliefs. I would have liked to have asked him why he didn’t get into that, but he wasn’t available at the time. I admire Dr. Sowell and I would love to have interviewed him.

The question not having been addressed by the author, it remained for the reviewer to do his best with it.

 

I Review ‘Fawkes’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of fawkes by nadine brandes

In 1605 there was a plot to blow up the English Parliament, with King James I, and replace the Protestant government with Catholics. The idea was to hide many barrels of gunpowder under the Parliament house and blow it sky-high. This has come to be known and memorialized as the Gunpowder Plot. One of the plotters, Guy Fawkes, was actually caught just before he could light the fuse.

Sounds like it’d made a great historical novel.

But Nadine Brandes has written it as a Young Adults fantasy novel, and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I just don’t get it.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/book-review-fawkes-by-nadine-brandes

We love to read, we want to pass that on to our children: there’s no limit to what the voracious reader can learn. But we don’t want to be reading a load of baloney, just so we can say we turned a lot of pages.

I think the reason this fantasy didn’t quite make it is because there was no reason to write it as a fantasy in the first place.

Too bad. We would like to understand how the conditions of religious life in England in those days, ostensibly Christian religion, could have led to the Gunpowder Plot. We would like to use its history as a guide to avoiding those mistakes!

But we’ll need other books for that.

He Just Won’t Stay in the Tomb!

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of Christ's empty tomb

Back in 2009 this was just the latest “study” intended to prove that “religion”–what they really mean is Christianity–is on its way out, thank Darwin, imagine there’s no heaven, imagine there’s no hell, blah-blah-blah (“Blather Bingo!”)…

I took some pains to cover the American Religious Identification Survey and found it somewhat less than–well, pick the word. Honest? Candid? You decide.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/survey-that-says-christianity-is-failing-gets-failing-grade-from-critics

In reality, we find that the Christians who are leaving liberal feel-good churches are not ceasing to be Christians; and that Jesus Christ, who was crucified and shut up in the tomb, yea, He lives! They keep putting the stone back, and He keeps rolling it away.

I will never understand what motivates anybody to devoting his or her excuse for a life to “proving” that there is no God and convincing others to shed their religious faith.

I don’t think I even want to ask what it is that they have faith in.

‘The Lost Tomb’ Should Stay Lost

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of the lost tomb of jesus 2007

The Lost Tomb of Jesus was 2007’s entry in the media’s annual Easter-time festival of Christianity-bashing. I reviewed the film for Chalcedon.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/lost-tomb-of-jesus-the-agenda

It’s a long review, but it took time to refute so many errors–not honest mistakes, but an agenda-driven attack on the divinity of Jesus Christ by a Zionist film-maker, a Hollywood big shot, and a so-called “theologian” who’s a heretic. Other than that, it was swell.

I didn’t watch whatever Christian-bash they resorted to this year. I was too busy celebrating Our Lord’s resurrection from the dead.

Education’s Galley Slaves

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of frantic student

I reviewed this book for Chalcedon back in 2006: The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. The horror of it is more palpable today than it was back then.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/a-review-of-the-overachievers-the-secret-lives-of-driven-kids

By then it was already easy enough to see that a college education, for most, wasn’t anywhere near worth what you had to pay for it. But the kids in this book are the elite, the cream of the crop, Advanced Placement, they are the idols that their parents worship. They are also slaves chained to the oars, with no hope of escape.

It’s horrible.

Now it’s 12 years later. The nudity of the college emperor is even more glaring  than it was.

We have only just begun to imagine that instead of allowing “college” to devour whole generations of our offspring, we just might free ourselves from bondage to it: we just might be able to build it down instead of up.

The sooner, the better!

Q&A with Martin Selbrede: ‘A New Martyrdom Issue?’

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Chalcedon’s ministry takes questions from listeners all over the world, to be answered on our own website (www.chalcedon.edu), on Facebook, and on Youtube by our vice president (and my mentor) Martin Selbrede. You might want to advance this video to 7:00 before you start listening to the questions, and Martin’s answers.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/videos/q-a-with-martin-selbrede-43-july-29-2018

The first question is a hot one.

With governments insisting that we all go along with discarding “Male and female created He them” and adopt “the new truth” that “gender is a spectrum,” and start calling males females and females male because this is what these misguided persons demand of us, “Could this become a new martyrdom issue?” After all, people have lost their jobs for refusing to do this, and in some jurisdictions, using “the wrong pronoun” can get you tossed into prison.

Do we grin and bear it, or do we draw the line at this?

Martin summons Biblical arguments to explain why we must draw the line before we get pushed back any farther. “The Kingdom of God becomes a ghetto,” he warns, if Christians fail to exert a godly influence on society.

The Q&A is about an hour long, and there are three more questions answered after this one.

Plenty of food for thought!

Children and Paganism

Posted By: leeduigonPosted On:

Image result for images of linda harvey

Here’s a book review I did back in 2008–Not My Child: Contemporary Paganism and the New Spirituality by Mission America’s Linda Harvey.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/a-review-of-not-my-child-contemporary-paganism-and-the-new-spirituality

The main thing that’s changed, over the eight years since this was published, is the near-frantic promotion of “transgender” by our pop culture bigwigs, so-called “educators,” and liberal politicians. They push it like their lives depend on it.

Why? What’s to gain by it? Search me.

St. Paul told us to arm ourselves against “spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). Ms. Harvey’s book stresses the point that spiritual wickedness, perpetrated by God’s enemies both natural and supernatural, is real.

As someone who covers the news every day, I’m convinced that’s true.