Kresta in the Afternoon – March 3, 2010 – Hour 1

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    First Topic – Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports

    In recent years the United States has seen an influx of Christian athletes and coaches into big-time sports, as well as a heightened importance placed on sports in church programs and enormous platforms for intercollegiate sports at Christian schools and colleges. However, as Shirl Hoffman critiques, a Christian vision of sport remains merely superficial, replete with prayers before free throws and praises after touchdowns but offering little if any alternative vision from the secular sports culture. Far from being the kind of life-affirming, faith-affirming events that they could be, games played in Christian college gymnasiums, for example, too often end up as mockeries of the faith statements given prominence in their mission statements. Here, in this thoughtful, narrative-driven exploration, Hoffman retells numerous fascinating stories from the world of ancient and contemporary sports and draws on the history of the Christian tradition as he seeks to answer the question What would it mean to think Christianly about sport?

    Second Topic – Supreme Court Weighs Chicago's Strict Gun Ban

    Otis McDonald, 76, is afraid for his life in his crime-saturated Chicago neighborhood and he is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his city's strict ban on handguns in the home. "In my home, this is the only time I worry," McDonald said. "There's more guns coming into this city than the police can take away from them. So if I've got a gun, and if others have guns in their homes to protect themselves, then that's one thing that police would have to worry about less." For nearly 30 years, Chicago has banned possession of handguns and automatic weapons inside city limits, one of the most stringent gun laws in the country. McDonald's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court comes a year and a half after the Court stunned gun-control advocates in another case declaring for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual's right to own a gun in his or her home. Second Amendment expert John Lott is here to discuss it.

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