HillFaith Blog: Good News for Hill Staffers
Welcome to HillFaith:Good News for Hill Staffers! This is where you’ll find two types of content:
First, fact-driven, thoroughly researched and often highly personalized Christian apologetics. Second, news and analyses about working on the Hill, including things like who's being promoted, what are the best (and worst!) offices to work for, salary information, and much else.
Here at HillFaith, we appreciate the importance, the challenges and the complexities of the work you do we are passionate about being a positive, informative resource for those in the trenches.
Most importantly, we want to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is alive and He is "the way, the truth and the life." He is also the key to living the abundant life. Not materially, but in the Truth that sets you forever free.
WORKING ON THE HILL: Is the Ideal of Bipartisanship Always a Virtue?
In a country deeply divided, bipartisanship seems a ready solution to bridge differences. After all, placing the stamp of bipartisanship on something in Washington is tantamount to the seal of approval. But does it always indicate the best we have to offer? While bipartisanship can be a good thing, it isn’t the objective. Instead, we…
Study Finds Having Friends Makes for a Healthier Life (And Poses a Question About the Existence of God)
Having a lot of friends makes for a happier life experience, but there is also strong evidence that having extended social connectedness also helps improve an individual’s physical health, including improving odds against suffering major diseases. And, while the study’s authors don’t say it, I will suggest that the link between a multitude of friends…
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY: Doesn’t Religious Freedom Protect Violent Extremism?
Defend religious freedom in the public square these days and odds are you will, sooner than later, be told that protecting religious freedom and freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is just a mask for encouraging political violence and extremism. A familiar illustration of this fallacy is being told that…
EXPLAIN THIS: If the Disciples Made it All Up About Jesus, Why’d They Make Themselves Look So Bad?
It’s difficult to read the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — without coming away thinking Jesus’ disciples were, before His resurrection from the tomb, dense, stubborn, lacking in faith, and outright cowardly on more than a few occasions. After all, Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times before the cock crowed as…
STAFF NEWS: House Appropriators Include Big Increase in Member’s Office Budgets
House Appropriators are including in their version of the 2022 legislative branch funding bill a substantial increase in the Members Representation Allowance (MRA), the account from which personal and committee staffers are paid. The draft bill boosts the MRA by $134 million, to a total of $774 million. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) had…
STAFF NEWS: Look Who’s Movin’ Up On The Hill This Week
Courtesy of Legistorm: Ben DeMarzo moves up from his slot as Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to Chief of Staff for Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL). Ben’s Master of Public Policy (MPP) was earned at Rutgers University, as was his BA in Political Science and Government. Rep. Mike Johnson…
No, Quantum Physics Doesn’t Explain How the Universe Was Created
Right off the bat, allow me to make it clear I am a journalist by training, not a physicist, so I don’t claim any expertise regarding quantum mechanics. But as a journalist, I do have a fair amount of experience assessing the credibility of claims, including the one often posed by atheists that the universe…
The ‘Minimal Facts’ Evidence for the Truth of Jesus’ Resurrection
Philosopher Gary Habermas surveys the best scholarship, from scholars on both sides of the issues, on the evidence for and against the resurrection of Jesus as a literal, historical event and offers what he calls “the minimal facts” case. The minimal facts are those that just about everybody on both sides of the debate agree…
EXPLAIN THIS: Core Gospel Claims Were Made Soon After Jesus Death, Resurrection, Not Decades Later as Myths and Fables
It is among the most common claims of skeptics who reject the literal resurrection of Jesus. It was all made up, they argue, many decades later by church leaders who relied upon unverified rumors, their imaginations, and pagan myths to invent what we know today as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, as philosopher…
Here’s the Key To Less Stressful Decision-Making on Capitol Hill or Anywhere Else
You work for a senator or a representative and he or she depends upon you to provide your best, most carefully considered advice on issues big and small, day in and day out. You take this responsibility seriously because you know the issues involved quite often are supremely important. But making decisions about such advice…