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Featured Touchstone article of the day: 04/28/2016
Emotion Sickness: C. R. Wiley on the Big Thing That
Pixar's Inside Out Left Out

Touchstone May / June 2016
God's Word Uncut • Left-Right Populism versus American Elitism • In Praise of Wheaton's Biblical Witness

Editorial

The Master's Voice

Our Choice Is Obedience or Jesus as Anti-Christ

by Anthony Esolen

Thomas Jefferson, that freethinker with an odd and persistent strain of conservatism, fashioned his own New Testament by removing from it all of the accounts of Jesus' miracles. That was his piety at work, such as it was, as also when he attended services on his plantation, and the tears welled up in his eyes when he heard the old hymns he could no longer sing. For well over a hundred years, even Unitarians were "Christian" in this sense: they believed in the Fatherhood of God, and they believed that the moral teachings of Jesus Christ were the highest and noblest ever to be revealed to man. . . . Continue ➡

Commentary

Flailing Democracy

Left-Right Populism versus American Elitism

by James Hitchcock

The principal conservative argument against democracy is the claim that "the people"—ill-educated, vulnerable to mere emotion, susceptible to demagoguery—cannot be trusted. A well-governed state must depend on some kind of aristocracy to rise above such fatal weaknesses. The flaw in that classical argument was identified by Winston Churchill in his paradoxical comment that "democracy is the worst of all systems, except for the others.". . . Continue ➡

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Surgical Fantasy

On Biblical Compassion for Sex-Change Confusion

by Robert Hart

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints. (1 Cor. 14:33) The invention of a new "civil right" is being forced upon us. I believe that if the great martyr of genuine civil rights could see what is being done in the name of his cause, he would be displeased—that is, if the things he actually believed in his lifetime are taken into account. . . . Continue ➡

Communiqué

It's Not Your Hijab

It's the Theology: In Praise of Wheaton College's Stand

by J. Daryl Charles

It was an issue that would not easily go away, and only intensified last winter. Aside from murder and mayhem in our streets and, of course, global warming, what galvanized CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Time, NPR, USA Today, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Salon, and even news sources like Business Insider? Presidential primary madness? Gay "rights" and same-sex everything? Christian "homophobia" and conservative "hate crimes"? Gun control? Medicalizing marijuana? Perhaps pro-life "fanaticism"? Alas, it was none of these. What aroused the ire of all these outlets—as we've all surely heard by now—was the "scandal" (so Time) that engulfed the Evangelical college in suburban Chicago and leading member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), Wheaton College. . . . Continue ➡


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Touchstone March / April 2016
The Paschal Lamb of God • On the Confession of the One True God • On Cutting Christ Down to One Size Fits Whatever We Want

Feature

Family Phases

The History of Family Strength in America May Reveal Good News

by Allan C. Carlson

There are three ways in which historians have tried to make sense out of the history of the family in America. The oldest of these is the liberal interpretation. First offered in Henry Sumner Maine's mid-nineteenth-century book, Ancient Law, this thesis holds that the change in all "progressive" societies—including the United States—is "from Status to Contract." In pre-modern societies, rulers or legislators only reached to the heads of families. These patriarchal males then governed the women, children, and servants within their domestic domain. The status of each person—male or female, parent or child, free or servant—was fixed by custom and law. Political entities were composed of patriarchal households, not of individuals. . . . Continue ➡

Editorial

The Only Lord We Know

On the Confession of the One True God

by James M. Kushiner & Patrick Henry Reardon

Every Easter Season, Christians read about the Apostle Thomas kneeling in worship before the Risen Christ and confessing him as "My Lord and my God." How could a Jew say this to a man? The man before whom Thomas knelt bore scars from a crucifixion. What sort of God is this that we Christians worship? . . . Continue ➡

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The Little Jesus Who Would

On Cutting Christ Down to One Size Fits Whatever We Want

by Robert Hart

On July 7, 2015, former President Jimmy Carter said the following in an interview with the Huffington Post: "I believe Jesus would. I don't have any verse in Scripture. . . . I believe Jesus would approve gay marriage, but that's just my own personal belief. I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don't see that gay marriage damages anyone else." . . . Continue ➡


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Touchstone September / October 2015
Remembering Angka & the Idolatry of the Khmer Rouge 40 Years Later • The Dramatic Life, Faith & Films of Cecil B. DeMille • An Interview with Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church

Touchstone July / August 2015
In Memoriam: Father Thomas Hopko • The Life of Richard John Neuhaus • On a Rabbi's Love for Mere Christianity

Touchstone May / June 2015
Describing Human Ends & Our Limitations Is Neither Futile Nor Unloving • Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism • The End of Comfortable Christianity

Touchstone March / April 2015
Echoes of Samaria: Finding Jesus & Neighbors in the Holy Land • Neo-Pagan Family Policies Doom Any Recovery • The Icon of Materialism

Touchstone January / February 2015
Five Reasons Why Freedom of Religion & Conscience Is in Peril • State Impositions & Church Acquiescence • The Unevangelized May Be Better & Worse than Savages


Explore back issues below, and at The Touchstone Archives

Touchstone November / December 2013
The Great Epics Are Theological & Mark the Hard Path to Beatitude • The Ministry of an Orthodox Army Chaplain in Southwest Asia Post-9/11 • The Cutting Edge of God's "Peace on Earth"

Touchstone September / October 2013
Reflections on the Sabbath in Time & Eternity • On the Holy Wisdom at the Roots of Philosophy • The Perils of Pragmatism in Christian Attitudes Toward the Liberal Arts

Touchstone July / August 2013
Hilton Kramer's Life of Cultural Discernment • A Christian Reflection on the Attractions & Shortcomings of Buddhism • An Ancient Greek Drama Awakened a Powerful New Longing in Its Audiences

Touchstone May / June 2013
On the Un-humanitarian Charity of Martin de Porres • The Legacy of the Mission of Cyril & Methodius 1,150 Years Later • Testing John Loftus's "Outsider Test for Faith" Shows Why There Are Billions of Christians Today


Touchstone March / April 2013
Believers Are No Longer Credible as Public Citizens • On Clarity, Mystery & Their Demands on Preachers & Hearers • Whittaker Chambers, Potemkin Villages & the Ongoing War


Touchstone January / February 2013
Manly Chastity, Hedonism & the Law of Non-contradiction • The Alternate & Alternative Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft & C. S. Lewis • On Abortion as a Matter of National Welfare



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Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom
—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox.

The mission of the journal and its publisher, The Fellowship of St. James, is to provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church.


Get Religion

The Manhattan Declaration

Touchstone

Idols of the State

Secularists Want All Religion Out of the Public Square, Except Theirs

Salvo

Capital Losses

Nietzsche on Losing English Morality

Touchstone

Family Phases

The History of Family Strength in America May Reveal Good News

Salvo

Failed Operations

Medical Malpractice in an Age of Gender Denial Disorder

Touchstone

Dumb Sheep

On the Truth About a Slanderous Accusation

Salvo

Faith Removal

Militant Science & Apostle Krauss


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