The cover of TIME is one of the most coveted showpieces in journalism–indeed it is one of the most potent indicators of the culture. Therefore, when TIME puts stay-at-home mothers on its front cover, you know something significant is being signaled.

The trial of Rev. Karen Dammann will go down as one of the saddest chapters in the long history of Methodist Christianity. Her acquittal–which effectively undermines the order and teaching of the Methodist Church–indicates that mainline Protestantism is infected with a theological disease from which recovery is most unlikely.

The church’s engagement with the culture involves a host of issues, controversies, and decisions–but no issue defines our current cultural crisis as clearly as homosexuality. Some churches and denominations have capitulated to the demands of the homosexual rights movement, and now accept homosexuality as a fully valid lifestyle. Other denominations are tottering on the brink, and without a massive conservative resistance, they are almost certain to abandon biblical truth and bless what the Bible condemns.

When the constitutional framers established the Supreme Court as the third branch of America’s government, they left the role of the Court largely undefined and unfinished. In recent years, the Court has taken on an entirely new importance, with a majority of justices pushing an activist agenda that now assumes a legislative responsibility–encroaching on the constitutional powers of Congress and the President.

“Diversity” has become one of the central themes of higher education, and incessant calls for intellectual diversity are standard fare on America’s academic campuses. Nevertheless, diversity is evidently in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to conservative points of view, the diversity agenda hits a blind spot.

Piece by piece, America’s famed and cherished principle of religious liberty is being dismantled. The demolition crew includes activist courts increasingly hostile to the principles upon which this nation was established. The latest evidence comes in a decision handed down in early March by the Supreme Court of California. In a 6-1 ruling, the California high court ordered Catholic Charities of Sacramento to include payment for contraceptives in its health insurance program offered to employees. In other words, California’s highest court ordered Catholic Charities of Sacramento to violate Catholic moral principles.

The late Earl of Shaftesbury once quipped, “I know what constitutes an Evangelical in former times . . . I have no clear notion what constitutes one now.” Lord Shaftesbury is hardly alone in his confusion.

The postmodern world is filled with shamans, gurus, and hucksters, but few can hold a candle to Neale Donald Walsch. Author of the best selling Conversations with God series, Walsch is now back with Tomorrow’s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge. Given the fact that at least two of his books have hit the New York Times bestseller list, Walsch’s Tomorrow’s God is likely to be tomorrow’s bestseller as well.

If you haven’t caught on by now, you must have some psychological illness. No kidding–at the very center of our postmodern culture is an inflexible belief that all of us are either in therapy or in denial. We have finally arrived in the age of universal psychosis, when every malady, mood, or misunderstanding is rooted in some syndrome that must be cured by therapy or by psychotropic drugs.

When the editors of Baylor University’s student newspaper, The Baylor Lariat, published an editorial endorsing same-sex marriage, they set loose a controversy that offers considerable insight into the current student generation’s thinking on moral issues. Likewise, the controversy also brought out all the predictable battle lines of academic conflict.