A recent tweet from Jeremy Tate, founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test (CLT): Classical education is fundamental an educational [sic] it what it means to be fully human. It is not a politically conservative alternative to the already politically hijacked mainstream education. Instead, it is an education in...
A rain-filled mikveh (ritual immersion pool) at Korazim National Park, Israel. Photo © 2023 by Michael D. Bates, all rights reserved. Here are a couple of useful resources that I recently encountered, one very old, one new, in support of the view that Christian baptism is for those only...
John Byron Kuhner pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II as an exemplar of pietas -- not piety in the strictly religious sense, but dutifulness, after the fashion of Aeneas, hero of Vergil's Aeneid, the epic journey of the founder of Rome from the ashes of Troy. It is generally acknowledged...
Polls are open today until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Click to download a printable version of the BatesLine ballot card Click the link above to...
After I posted my tribute in memory of Bob Gregory, I received an email from his son, Jason Pitcock, who included a copy of the eulogy he wrote for his dad and delivered at his service. What an amazing life he led! Like Bob Gregory's work, Jason's tribute to his...
A little break from the political: I was intrigued a couple of months ago to receive an email announcing a new study edition of the Scriptures with notes highlighting the relationship between the land and people of Israel. The Israel Bible, published by Israel365 and Menorah Books (an imprint...
On the Map Scans Facebook group, someone posted a link to the Internet Archive's copy of the 1980 State Farm Road Atlas, which was a rebranded Rand McNally Road Atlas. That got me wondering about finding earlier editions, and I did a search for items published by Rand McNally. The...
Reformation begins with the rediscovery of God's Word: And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, "I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord." And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.... Then Shaphan the secretary told the king,...
I'll get back to the charter amendment proposals in a couple of days, but we have some historical commemorations that deserve our attention. There's the big one -- the semimillenial celebration of Luther's 95 Theses and the commencement of the Protestant Reformation -- but 100 years ago today there...
A message from the Prime Minister of Israel from the courtyard of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem: To all of our Christian friends around the world, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I send you these greetings from Jerusalem. I'm standing in the courtyard of this magnificent International...
I follow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Facebook page. While he often addresses grave matters like terrorism, many of his posts are about happier events relating to his responsibilities. For example, today he wrote about his speech celebrating the launch a plan to build 32,000 new housing units in the...
The headline quote is from the Grauniad*, the left-wing British newspaper, from an editorial pooh-poohing concerns about the marginalization of Christians in the officially Christian United Kingdom. Here's the context (emphasis added): They claim then that it would violate their consciences to do or say certain things which society as...
By now, the loyal readers that have bothered to hang around will not be surprised by long gaps between blog entries. Work and family obligations have been preempting time and energy to write for publication here or anywhere The most recent silence was about family, but much more joy than...
Polls in Israel closed about two hours ago, 3 p.m. Tulsa time. Actual vote counts are trickling in, but, as in the United States, the focus is on exit polling, which shows the current leading party, Likud, and their left-wing rivals, Zionist Union (which includes the Labor Party), each winning...
Ten years ago today, I awoke to radio news reports of a bus bombing in Haifa, Israel, killing 17 and injuring 53, including many school children. To us it was more than a report of a distant tragedy: Dear friends from MIT, working for the Baptist denomination in Israel, lived...
In case you missed it, here's the video of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, serving as Democratic National Convention chairman last week, presiding over a vote to amend the Democratic national platform on two controversial points -- the restoration of a reference to God and to Jerusalem as Israel's capitol...
I was trying to find out who came up with the threefold classification of American political cultures as moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic. (For moralistic, think English Puritans and Norwegian Lutherans -- think Minnesota and the upper Midwest. For individualistic, think Scotch-Irish, frontiersmen, and the Southwest. For traditionalistic, think big cities...
UPDATE: The films discovered by Currie Ballard, filmed by Rev. Dr. Solomon Sir Jones, are now available for viewing and download on the website of Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. More about the Rev. Dr. Solomon Sir Jones and his films here. A couple of years ago,...
UPDATE 9/6/2005: Bobby has reorganized and purged Tulsa Topics, so with his permission, I've taken his audio of the speech, reduced the fidelity to radio quality to get the size down, and uploaded it here (4 MB MP3). UPDATE 9/7/2005: Bobby has reposted the groundbreaking audio in both MP3 and...
From Blogs for Terri: She passed away at around 10 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. There is word that her parents were not allowed to be with her at the end. May the Angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs greet you at your arrival and lead you into...
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'Jerusalem'. [What is this?]