RICK PERRY: LIBERTARIAN, THEOCRAT, OR NEITHER? Dana Millbank argues for theocrat. Brian Lee argues, against Millbank, that Perry is neither.

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MORE THAN YOU MIGHT THINK: “What Does Hip-Hop Teach Us About Faith and Society?”

If the church chooses to hold rappers accountable for their words and actions, then the church must also listen to the stories conveyed by rap artists and understand there is a need for them to play a constructive role in the lives of people who live in poverty and in strife. A better approach to addressing the issues we are concerned about in rap lyrics is listening to what they are trying to tell us about life, learning about what young people are dealing with and then creating positive, practical alternative life choices for them without being judgmental, thus enabling these young men and women to live up to their true potential.

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A DIFFERENT NARRATIVE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: “Why Muslims are still mad at America.”

Muslims believe that they are on a different path than the West.  This path is central to their notion of their freedom to practice their religion.  When they feel that America is threatening their religion and their aspirations, they grow resolutely hostile.

On a related note: “Website aims to show post-9/11 discrimination against Muslims, Sikhs.”

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AND BY TARGETING, THEY MEAN KILLING: “Targeting Down Syndrome by Regulation.”

Prenatal testing for Down syndrome should not be labeled as preventive medicine—an inaccurate and misleading description of a procedure that may prevent Down syndrome births, but certainly does not prevent Down syndrome. A regulation should not be allowed to target a portion of our society for elimination without public debate by accountable elected officials. If the regulation is to remain in place, then additional funding should be provided for all the information required to respect a woman’s choice following a prenatal diagnosis. The President and the Congress should see that the new HHS requirements for preventive care expressly exclude coverage of prenatal testing for Down syndrome unless and until there is public debate and balanced funding for the needed resources.

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IDEOLOGY & BIBLE TRANSLATION: In “Battle for the Bible Translation,” the editors of Christianity Today rightly take to task the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent criticism of the NIV’s new gender-neutral translation:

One SBC concern is ideology, a commitment to complementarianism, the view that men and women have different, divinely appointed roles in church and home. We all should be concerned about any translation that lets an ideology shape its language. But we should not let ideology—egalitarianism or complementarianism—determine whether a translation is valuable or not. The only criterion for a good translation is this: Does it accurately convey what the authors said and what the original listeners heard?

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A POINT OF CONSERVATIVE/LIBERAL CONSENSUS? “The Marginalization of Marriage in Middle America.”

The fact is that children born and raised in intact, married homes typically enjoy higherquality relationships with their parents, are more likely to steer clear of trouble with the law, to graduate from high school and college, to be gainfully employed as adults, and to enjoy stable marriages of their own in adulthood. Women and men who get and stay married are more likely to accrue substantial financial assets and to enjoy good physical and mental health. In fact, married men enjoy a wage premium compared to their single peers that may exceed 10 percent. At the collective level, the retreat from marriage has played a noteworthy role in fueling the growth in family income inequality and child poverty that has beset the nation since the 1970s. For all these reasons, then, the institution of marriage has been an important pillar of the American Dream, and the erosion of marriage in Middle America is one reason the dream is increasingly out of reach for men, women, and children from moderately-educated homes.

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OH, THE IRONY! “Judeo-Christian America: The Fall of ‘Christian America.’”

Another fascinating element of Schultz’s work is an irony he discovers along the way. The drive to embrace tri-faith America, it turns out, helped institutionalize and legislate a trend toward secularization in American life. In the process of vying for places and protections in the United States, Catholics and Jews helped make it possible for the legal revolution of the second disestablishment and for Barack Obama to say in 2009 that the United States was not a “Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

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BUTTS IN THE PEW: “What size are most congregations?” Approximately 9 million Americans attend 177,000 Protestant churches that have fewer than 100 members. Those churches account for 59 percent of the total Protestant churches in American. By contrast, approximately 12.7 million Americans attend 7,120 Protestant churches that have more than 1,000 members—churches which account for 2.5 percent of the total churches. Interesting!

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HUH? “Morality Is Absolute—and Evolving.”

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HEAVEN’S SOCIAL NETWORK: “Jesus’ Facebook fans are ‘most engaged.’”

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AN ATROCITY, NOT A TRAGEDY: “Draining 9/11 of meaning.”

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FROM MY MAGAZINE: Gary Tyra, “Defeating Pharisaism: Jesus’ Critique of Pseudo-Holiness.”