Signs and Wonders 03.12

Stock market correction? When the Dow fell more than 200 points last Tuesday, lots of people said the long-awaited correction in the stock market may finally be happening. That day saw the largest single-day drop in nearly three months. The drop was not unexpected since equities have been up significantly since the first of the year, and troubles in Europe, China, and Brazil persist. But then a peculiar thing happened: The markets rebounded. The S&P 500 registered another week of gains, its fifth in six weeks. Friday also marked the three-year anniversary of the S&P 500's plunge to a 12-year low, a move that was followed by a sharp rally. The S&P 500 is up 102 percent from that low. Lots of people, including me, believe the economy has major structural problems-including a daunting federal debt-but for now at least, the stock markets seem to be ignoring these problems. How long they can continue to do that is a question on which hangs billions of dollars.

Church foreclosures. Last year, WORLD reported that church foreclosures would likely reach an all-time high in 2011. Sometimes I just hate being right. According to the real estate information company CoStar Group, 2011 foreclosures did indeed reach an all-time high. About 138 churches were sold by banks. CoStar said small- to medium-sized churches represented the bulk of this number. That's no surprise since the overwhelming majority of churches in America are small- to medium-sized. By comparison, only 24 churches experienced foreclosure sales in 2008, and only a few per year for the entire decade preceding 2008.

It's the primaries, stupid. Conservative activists Richard Viguerie has borrowed James Carville's old war cry and is telling Tea Party activists: "It's the primaries, stupid." He's trying to rally conservatives to run against moderate Republicans in the primaries. "There is still a window of opportunity … to get on the primary ballot," he said. "The filing deadlines have not passed for approximately 75 percent of the states." In some key states, like Florida, the districts have yet to be set and the deadline is months away. Download a Federal Election Commission pdf to see all of this year's deadlines. Viguerie cites the Ohio primary as an example. "While the national media attention was focused on the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, establishment Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (OH-2) lost her Ohio Republican primary to veteran Tea Party activist Brad Wenstrup," he said. "Schmidt had the backing of the Republican establishment and outspent Wenstrup more than 3-to-1, yet Wenstrup won handily, beating Schmidt by six points."

Terrible textbooks of college composition classes. Freshman composition class at many colleges is propaganda time, according to Mary Grabar, writing for Minding the Campus. She said college textbooks confer "early sainthood on President Obama and lavish attention on writers of the far left," including Howard Zinn, Christopher Hedges, Peter Singer, and Barbara Ehrenreich. She singled out The Norton Reader for particular disdain, saying that not only were leftists works included and conservative works omitted, but that discussion questions often focused on getting students to find evidence of their arguments rather than counter-arguments. Minding The Campus is a project of the conservative Manhattan Institute.

A death in our family. I hope you'll indulge me a point of personal privilege: I am just now getting word that Lynn Boykin died Jan. 24 in Atlanta after battling cancer for 15 years. Lynn and her husband, Don, were long time supporters of our World Journalism Institute (WJI) and its mission to equip young Christian journalists. Don was a prominent journalist and editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before he retired to spend time mentoring journalists. He taught at WJI on numerous occasions, delivering the closing dinner speech at WJI's first high school workshop in 2004 at Covenant College. The Boykins went on short-term mission trips to Zimbabwe for 10 years. According to a statement released by WJI, "Their testimony of selfless sacrifice leaves the staff of WJI with a wonderful example of Christian charity and faithfulness."