South & Southwest Fort Wayne Indiana News
Before I moved to Indiana for graduate school at Anderson University, I grew up in none other than West Monroe, Louisiana, the home of lots of ducks and the dynasty they spawned. After grad school I married my sweetheart from Fort Wayne and for twenty years it’s been a second home and birthplace
With record breaking cold temperatures in the Mid-West it seemed a good time to turn people’s thoughts to a warmer part of the country and make a personal admission at the same time. Though my wife grew up in Fort Wayne and it’s been a second home of mine for over twenty years, I admit
Ten years before 9-11 the world witnessed an historic event of a different kind when the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union fell. Unlike 9-11, the fall of the oppressive Communist regime involved very little loss of life as millions of people filled the streets of Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Bucharest and
The clouds of a new Middle Eastern conflict have started gathering on the horizon. This time there is no question that the storm brings chemical weapons with it. In August hundreds of people–including many boys and girls–died in Syria from the effects of Sarin nerve gas. Thousands more
Years ago my Dad, known as Darvis or “Bill” to friends, joined me on an afternoon hike along the White River in Indiana. Colorful autumn leaves lined the trail making the walk pleasant. Smells and sounds of everything around us had a golden feel in the rich Indiana sunlight. We quietly
Among the ever twisting and turning mountains, hills and vales of the Russian Caucuses live dozens of Muslim ethnic groups. Since the fall of the Soviet Union many of these have either agitated for independence or launched an outright rebellion to separate from the Russian government. Countless Russian
The so-called Arab Spring that brought tens of thousands into the streets of Egypt, Libya, Algeria and other Arab countries occurred because the people had grown weary of secular-leaning dictatorships that had made deals with Western governments to curb Islamic radicalism and keep peace with the state
Ball State University physics professor Eric Hedin made national news recently after a complaint was made against him by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in response to his honors level course “The Boundaries of Science.” Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago
This is an age of uncertainty. The country band Little Texas made this clear with their lyrics, “the only thing I’m sure of/is I don’t know what I’d do without your love.” Politicians on both sides of the fence tell us to “believe” or “hope” or
When President Carter sought reelection in 1980, the Islamic Republic of Iran not only held dozens of Americans hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran, they wielded powerful influence over Carter’s reelection hopes. Having ordered an attempted rescue of the hostages that ended in a tragic
Two books have caught my attention lately. From the title of this article you may be able to guess which two. A young boy resuscitated from death has his story recorded by his father in a book about heaven. In the second book, a young pastor apparently challenges the traditional Christian belief in
Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned physicist tells us there’s no heaven. This is hardly an original thought. The Buddhists and Hindus and other religions have opted out of having a coherent theology of heaven since the beginning. The ancient Jews didn’t really have a clear idea either,
For five years I lived in southern Kazakstan, walking some of the same places where Alexander Solzhenitsyn lived during his days of exile in the Soviet Gulag Archipelago. The Soviets had a decisive way of dealing with dissidents, they either killed them or locked them up and threw away the key. Having
With Easter just past many folks have paused to think about the story of the Passion of Jesus. The story says that a first century Jew from the northern Palestine province of Galilee became a folk hero through his moral and spiritual teaching, purported miracle-working, unjust death on a Roman cross
This spring brings not only budding trees but budding revolutions sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East. The latest to join the revolutionary movement are the countries of Ivory Coast and Syria. The pattern has repeated again and again in the past weeks. Countries dominated by an entrenched
Ten years ago just after the bombing of the USS Cole on October 12, 2000 in the port of Aden, Yemen, I had a short business trip to Cairo. The bombing claimed the lives of several US sailors and heightened tensions between various Jihadist groups and the West. My trip to Egypt coincided with the bombing
At last, after eight years of Bush, a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States not only elected a president who would listen to, talk with, and even bow to the heads of other countries, including those openly hostile to the U.S., but as a cherry on top, his middle name was Hussein. Almost as
In 1948 the country of Israel was founded on an unusual idea, that a certain ethnic and religious group could maintain a majority to preserve their political system. From the outset it had the support of key world powers, including the United States and the United Kingdom, who had seen the Nazi attempt
The past week or so witnessed what the New York Times described as history quietly passing in Turkey when police officers fanned out to make dozens of arrests of chief active and retired military personnel. For Turkish citizens, the newspaper images were unforgettable: young police officers,
FROM FOSTER PARK TO CENTRAL TURKEY
Central Turkey and Foster Park have many miles between them. One is in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the other on the opposite side of the world. Fort Wayne is surrounded by lush farmland, some of the best in the world, lots of freshwater lakes and relaxing hardwood
“Tea With Hezbollah”
A new book just out from Ted Dekker and Carl Medearis entitled Tea With Hezbollah takes an unusual approach to the question of how address the problems in the Middle East. Carl, a friend of mine from some time back, and his friend, the bestselling fiction writer
In April 2002 my family moved from Fort Wayne to Istanbul, Turkey on a work assignment. This is not the first time we have lived outside the United States. In 1993 we worked in the former Soviet Union in the newly formed republic of Kazakstan, a vast country of mostly empty Asian steppe whose few