The church is faced in the postmodern age by several distinct apologetic challenges. Internally, the church must defend the faith against ignorance, against compromise, against doctrinal apathy, and against denial. The church now suffers from a breathtaking deficit of doctrinal instruction and biblical truth. In some churches, the great truths of the Christian faith are unknown, and in others, these truths are left dormant and untaught. Beyond this, the very real dangers of doctrinal corrosion and heresy threaten.

Christians today are called to serve the cause of Christ at one of the crucial turning points in human history. This is a very strange time to proclaim and defend the Christian faith. Evangelism is difficult in an age when most persons think their most basic problems are rooted in a lack of self-esteem, and when personal choice is the all-determining reality of the marketplace. In the same way, the task of apologetics is complicated by the postmodern condition. How does one defend the faith to persons unwilling to make any judgment concerning truth?

Senator Barack Obama [D-IL] is one of America’s most articulate political leaders. The freshman senator is already openly discussed as a presidential prospect, and his personal story is a reflection of the American dream.

The liberal government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is moving to grant certain “rights” to apes. These rights are to include recognition as part of a “community of equals” with humans, according to press reports.

We live in a day of almost unlimited confidence in scientific progress — or what is advertised as scientific progress. The incredible developments of modern science have reshaped our lives and expectations.

Week by week, Lee Siegel of The New Republic offers some of the most insightful cultural analysis to be found anywhere. In this week’s issue, he considers the meaning of Oprah Winfrey, arguing that Oprah represents the apex of television as a culture-shaping medium. In his words, “Oprah Winfrey is to television what Bach is to music, Giotto to painting, Joyce to literature.” The saddest commentary on that assessment is that most of Oprah’s viewers would have no idea what Siegel means. But, who needs to read Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, or Ulysses when you can just tune into Oprah?

Newsweek introduces its readers to the movement it calls the “Lohasians” in the magazine’s June 5, 2006 edition. According to Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.com, “Lohasian” is an acronym for “Lifestyles of Heath and Sustainability.”

On November 3, 1921, J. Gresham Machen presented an address entitled, “Liberalism or Christianity?” In that famous address, later expanded into the book, Christianity & Liberalism, Machen argued that evangelical Christianity and its liberal rival were, in effect, two very different religions. Howard P. Kainz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Marquette University, offers a similar argument–warning that it is now modern secular liberalism which poses as the great rival to orthodox Christianity.

The Guardian [London] is one of the most liberal of Britain’s major daily newspapers, and it is often one of the most interesting. On Good Friday, the paper unleashed an attack upon orthodox believers that breaks new ground in secular intolerance disguised as tolerance.