Students, families may choose not to be contacted by military recruiters through schools

We are a nation at war. Afghanistan. Iraq. More than 2,000 service personnel have died and thousands more have been wounded. Combat leads to a need for new recruits. Yet, this need for new recruits did not catch the Bush administration by surprise. Instead, as part of the administration’s preparations for war in 2001, the government gave military recruiters more access to high school students through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

Americans pride themselves on living in a democracy—and almost alone in the world see themselves as having a special responsibility to spread democracy. Iraq is the latest in a long list of countries the United States has sought to help become democratic, and it will not be the last. Indeed, doing so has become a primary justification for our current engagement in Iraq.

Some issues seem so contemporary, but turn out to have a pedigree dating centuries. The “evolution or intelligent design” argument is one such topic. Close to half of American adults reject evolution in any form. This summer, President Bush weighed in on the matter as well, advocating that a theory of intelligent design (ID) should be included in public school science curricula. It is worth considering a bit of history in this matter.

On October 29, MB Biblical Seminary will release the book Out of the Strange Silence: The Challenge of Being Christian in the 21st Century. The 220-page book, published by Kindred Productions, features chapters by twelve of the Seminary's faculty members representing its three campuses in Fresno, California, Langley, British Columbia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Is Iraq another Vietnam? The question is being asked more often as the numbers of fallen U.S. soldiers steadily increases, and it appears to some that a quagmire is in the making. There are important differences, however, in Vietnamese and Iraqi history and society, which make these conflicts unique and their outcomes likely to be quite different.

In June Marcus Wesson was convicted of murdering nine of his own children, children he fathered with his daughters and nieces, and at the end of summer Fresno city and county police, prosecutors, public defenders, jailers and judges are still counting the financial cost.

The money—well over $1 million and including everything from the $31 per hour for a jail guard to more than $595,000 for attorneys and their staffs—will come from discretionary funds usually used to hire police, repair parks, build sidewalks and other constructive purposes.

My first encounter with public school dress codes was in fall 1997, when the Sanger Unified School District initiated new policies and my son Jeff had to completely change his wardrobe to meet the requirements. From a purely practical standpoint, our family was not very happy at the outset.

Women labor every day in all fields for their families, communities and nation

On May 27th, 2005, six years after the release of Mark D. Baker's book Religious No More: Building Communities of Grace and Freedom, a Spanish revision entitled !Basta de religion!: como construer comunidades de gracia y libertad is now in print.

During ten years serving as missionaries in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, Mark and his wife Lynn developed a special relationship with Amor Fe y Vida, a church in a squatter's community. Through conversation and questions during a study of Galations, the idea for a book was born.

In April, an article by MB Biblical Seminary professor Pierre Gilbert was awarded top honors in the Evangelical Press Association (EPA)'s Higher Goals Contest. The article, entitled "The Relentless God: A reflection on Jonah," was published in the February 2004 edition of the Christian Leader, a publication of the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.