Campus stalwart has spent decades helping students see beyond the shadowlands.

“Honor your father and mother.” The commandment is unambiguous, but we’ve seen notorious cases of dishonor in which kids get rich by slashing their celebrity parents’ reputations.

We are now in the intermission of this year’s biggest judicial drama. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on same-sex marriage (SSM) in late March—Act One—and will rule by the end of June. Before the actors in their black robes come back on stage, I’d like to drink some orange juice and chatter about three items.

We interrupt the annual joke column for a special announcement: For three years I’ve tried to relieve tax time depression and exhaustion by offering some humor, but this year a sad 70th anniversary trumps lightheartedness.

I’d like to start off this column about apologetics with an apology. I apologize to all the people I’ve sat next to on airplanes, occasionally exchanging a few words about going to Atlanta but nary a mention about going to heaven. To be precise, I’m no master of evangelism.

Once more the hills are alive with the sound of musings. Maybe that’s because so many Republicans have fled the plains since the November drubbing and sought solace from political oracles: National Review recently had in its pages one of the greatest gatherings since Delphi.

Fifteen years ago, after special prosecutor Ken Starr questioned President Bill Clinton about his involvement with Monica Lewinsky, Starr—overcome with a “sense of gloom”—shambled into his Virginia home, collapsed into bed, and asked himself, “How could a sensible and sane government come to this?”

I’m pretty good about the little things. If I start to slip or trip but then right myself, I’ll say or think, “Thank you, Lord.” But I recently had an opportunity to be thankful about a big thing, and blew it utterly.

Abraham Lincoln, deeply troubled by four years of Civil War bloodletting, gave a great second inaugural address in 1865. By then Lincoln saw slavery as a terrible stench in God’s nostrils, so he mused about why God was taking so long to blow it away with His mighty breath.

Our first issue of the year is usually my time for announcing contests tied to WORLD’s goals—and for 2013 we have three for those who care about fighting poverty or improving journalism, plus a fourth opportunity.

Moody Radio producer Julie Roys wrote recently, “I’m incredibly grateful for WORLD magazine. It plays a vital watchdog role in the evangelical world. If it weren’t for WORLD, the National Association of Evangelicals would probably still be taking money from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy; no one would know that Sojourners took money from George Soros; and D’Souza would still be president of King’s.”

The second book of Kings in the Old Testament is a usefully depressing history on national decline. It starts with fire coming down from heaven to convince a king, and Elijah ascending to heaven via chariots of fire. It ends with the former king of Judah taken into captivity and dependent on the ruler of Babylon, who condescends to give him an allowance.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in uptown Manhattan, the fourth largest church in the world, and unfinished 120 years after its construction began in 1892, is a hodgepodge of Gothic, Romanesque, and Byzantine styles. It’s also a hodgepodge of theologies, like many Episcopalian churches, but it has groovy celebrations such as the blessings of bicycles in April, bees in June, and animals generally (from a tortoise to a yak) early in October.

A good restaurant, Corner Kitchen, sits one block from the WORLD offices in Asheville, N.C. Barack Obama ate dinner there in April 2010, and the eatery owner reported the event on a website page he headlined, “A Night to Remember” (with apologies to Walter Lord).

One WORLD subscriber, Thomas Sandlin, describes himself as “just an old retiree living in the backwater small town of Liberty Hill, Texas.” But any community with Liberty in its name is not a backwater. Liberty is not a backwater concept. It’s the high-water mark for politics in America, where our Liberty Bell exhorts us, in the words of Leviticus 25:10, to “proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.”

Say you’re driving along on Friday morning, Aug. 31, and hear good ol’ National Public Radio telling us what’s what. Host Jeremy Hobson tells us that a Mitt Romney ad about welfare “has been called false by independent fact-checkers.” He then says correspondent Chris Farrell will “join us now for a little history lesson.”

Sip Mouden, CEO of Community Health Centers of Arkansas, says FQHCs are the best kept secret that shouldn't be a secret. When WORLD intern Kira Clark asked 37 charitably minded Americans what they thought about FQHCs, she found that not one had heard of them.

Octavious Bishop, 37, did not need a television to learn about gangsters, pimps, and prostitutes: He only had to look out his window. Growing up without a dad in poor areas of Milwaukee, Memphis, and Houston, with gangs all around him, prisons or coffins were his likely resting places.

Fellow promotion committee members: Let's go through the checklist on Assistant Professor of Sociology Bob Woodberry's request to receive tenure at the University of Texas at Austin.

With most unmarried evangelicals in their 20s apparently having occasional or frequent sexual intercourse, some say pastors should offer contraceptives, and others say they should merely offer louder "Thou Shalt Nots." Belden Lane's Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 2011) suggests an alternative.