Volume 33:Issue 4
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CONTENTS:
04 From the Editor
The Normalization of Premarital Sex: Satan’s Master Stroke?
06 Effective Evangelism
“You Shoulda Put a Ring on It”: Witnessing to Cohabiting Couples
08 Practical Hermeneutics
Was the Early Church Communist?
10 Self-Esteem from a Scalpel: The Ethics of Plastic Surgery
by Richard J. Poupard
Ethical-Cultural Discernment: The number of patients seeking plastic surgery has skyrocketed in the past decade, and this practice has found increasingly uncritical acceptance. Should all forms of plastic surgery be condemned? If not, how can we discern when it is appropriate?
20 Should Christians Be Environmentalists?
by Dan Story
Doctrinal Discernment/Ethical Apologetics: Since the beginning of the modern environmental movement, secular environmentalists have claimed that historic Christianity is largely responsible for today’s environmental problems. The issue, however, is not what Christians think or how they behave, it’s what the Bible teaches with regard to environmental stewardship
28 Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s “Divine Genocide” Claims
by Clay Jones
General Apologetics: The “new atheists” call God’s commands to kill the Canaanites “genocide.” A closer look at the horror of the Canaanites’ sinfulness, however, reveals that God’s reason for commanding their death was not genocide, but capital punishment
36 Margaret Sanger: “No Gods, No Masters”
by Bob Perry
Philosophical-Cultural Apologetics: From the pro-choice perspective, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a feminist hero who strove to offer underprivileged women a more humane alternative to abortion: birth control. Conversely, pro-life advocates point out the negative causes to which her work contributed: abortion, eugenics, and population control
44Television as the New Literature: Understanding and Evaluating the Medium
by Robert Velarde
Cultural Apologetics: The average American spends some five hours a day watching television. As a dominant cultural medium, television deserves serious attention from apologists who wish to demonstrate the differences between ideas promoted in popular culture and those within the Christian worldview
54 Reviews
A Summary Critique: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed with sidebar review of her Eat, Pray, Love…Brett McCracken’s Hipster Christianity
60 Viewpoint
Quitting Christianity in the Name of Christ?
62 Ask Hank
Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian?
