Changing America's Prisons

Posted: Sunday, October 1, 2000
What do you want to do with guys who are hurting people?" said the corrections officer with some frustration. He was escorting a group of us through the Security Housing Unit (SHU--or in everyone's parlance, the "shoe") of Pelican Bay State Prison in California, one of the grimmest maximum-security zones of any prison in the United States. Prisoners are mostly kept one to a cell (they tend to murder each other too often when stuck together) in total isolation from other prisoners and indeed from virtually any other human contact.  [Full Story]

China's Search for Its Soul

Posted: Wednesday, March 1, 2000
For a Chinese Communist regime that has prided itself on a materialist philosophy for half a century, the mid-January ceremony it orchestrated in Lhasa, Tibet, was not without irony.   [Full Story]

The World's Most Brutal, Least-Known War

Posted: Monday, June 28, 1999
Yei, Southern Sudan-As the chartered Twin Otter carrying an American congressional delegation begins its descent over the lush green scrub-covered plain, the mood on board becomes quiet. The plane has entered a combat zone and is about to land on a narrow dirt strip in Yei, the capital of "New Sudan." Yei was once a humming Sudanese border town rich in customs revenue from trade with neighboring Uganda and the Congo. Today, it is a taut, frightened place, a bombing target for Russian-built Antonov-32 transport planes, sent by the government of Sudan in Khartoum.   [Full Story]

Persecutors, Beware

Posted: Tuesday, December 1, 1998
WASHINGTON, D.C.-It was a long, hard struggle, and, as in all political battles, there were compromises along the way. Those in the U.S. Congress championing the rights of persecuted Christians worldwide did not get everything they wanted with the Religious Freedom Act. In the end, just days before Congress concluded its pre-election business in October, the bill was passed by both Senate and House and awaited the signature that President Clinton promised to give it.  [Full Story]

China's Best and Bravest

Posted: Sunday, November 1, 1998
Have you ever wanted to travel back to the days of the book of Acts to see how the early Christians really lived? Have you ever wondered how ordinary people could set on fire entire regions of their native land? I've wondered many times. Now, after several days of visiting China, I think I have some answers.  [Full Story]

A Church Grows in China

Posted: Monday, September 28, 1998
From the externals you couldn’t have guessed that the gathering was in any way remarkable. The dozen or so participants came one by one, over several days, to a spacious, sparsely furnished suburban house in one of China's most populous provinces. Most of them were men, in their forties or older. They were dressed in simple slacks or shorts, with well-worn open-necked shirts and sandals. Several carried cell phones, the ubiquitous sign of serious business in China. Only the presence of two American reporters was unusual. We had come to observe the deliberations of seven key evangelical leaders and their assistants, representing by their estimate some 15 million Chinese Christians.  [Full Story]

Why God Loves the Media

Posted: Tuesday, September 1, 1998
Can God love journalists? Many evangelical arid charismatic preachers do not seem to think so, and their reasons have nothing to do with theology.   [Full Story]

Standing with Israel

Posted: Wednesday, July 1, 1998
What do Christians and Jews have in common? Some of the answers are obvious: the Bible-especially the Ten Commandments, the Psalms, the historical and prophetic writings; the belief that God revealed Himself to and through the Jewish people to the human race for all time, and that at a future date He will reveal Himself again through the Messiah. Other answers are less obvious and more painful to enumerate.  [Full Story]

India's Spiritual Battle

Posted: Friday, May 1, 1998
Bangalore, India. There may not be many parts of the world where Christians heave a sigh of relief when a politician promises to adhere to "secular values," but India is certainly one of them. When the leading candidate of India's Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, opened her campaign in India's general election in Bangalore last January, she used this phrase to mean one thing: If her party came back to power it would protect India's minority religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, from persecution by Hindu nationalists.  [Full Story]

Please Pray for Europe

Posted: Tuesday, July 1, 1997
Nice, France. The Sunday morning service in the French Reformed Church on Boulevard Victor Hugo, just across from the Holiday Inn, was brief and pithy: an introductory prayer read aloud by the bow-tied young pastor, a few sung psalms, some hymns by 16th-century French Protestants and a brief, well-judged sermon from John 15. The sparse, largely elderly audience seemed attentive and appreciative.  [Full Story]