Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a senior writer for The Gospel Coalition, author of The Life and Faith Field Guide for Parents, the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible, and coauthor of How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. He also serves as an associate pastor at McLean Bible Church in Arlington, Va.

Posts by Joe Carter

December 26, 2018

Explainer: What you should know about the 2018 partial government shutdown

What just happened? On Friday the federal government entered a partial shutdown after the Senate failed to pass a spending bill that includes border wall funding. President Trump refuses to sign any additional funding that does not include $5.1 billion in additional money to pay for an extension of the border wall, allowing him to fulfill his primary campaign promise. Continue Reading...
December 21, 2018

5 Facts about Christmas

Christmas is the most widely observed cultural holiday in the world. Here are five facts you should know about the annual commemoration of the birth of Jesus: 1. No one knows what day or month Jesus was born (though some scholars speculate that it was in September). Continue Reading...
December 19, 2018

Home to Bethlehem

Although the word nostalgia can be used to express a bittersweet longing for some pleasant remembrance of one’s past, it is safe to say that this is the time of the year when it is virtually unavoidable to drift into a sustained sense of nostalgia and where its experience is most intense.  Continue Reading...
December 18, 2018

How hyperinflation can make you a trillionaire

Note: This is post #104 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Imagine having to pay $417.00 per sheet of toilet paper. That actually happened in Zimbabwe. As Alex Tabarrok notes, around 2000, Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, was in need of cash to bribe his enemies and reward his allies. Continue Reading...
December 17, 2018

Explainer: Christmas 2018 by the numbers

$75 – Average amount U.S. consumers spent on real Christmas trees in 2017. $107 – Average amount U.S. consumers spent on fake Christmas trees in 2017. 27,400,000 – Number of real Christmas trees sold in the U.S. Continue Reading...
December 12, 2018

A way back from secularism

Secularism separates all things, says Rev. Anthony Perkins in this week’s Acton Commentary, even sacred ones, from their source and turns them into objects. These are difficult times that divide Christians from their neighbors and from one another. Continue Reading...