John Loeffler: January 20, 2014

John’s boralogue kicks off the show with an extensive examination of the profound paradigm change that has occurred in the Middle East since the onset of the Arab Spring. This puts us in the post-post-Oslo peace process period, the key to which is a collapse of an entire century of pan-Arabism, followed by the reemergence of regional, ethnic, and religious identities. This places Christians in the region in severe difficulty. Then we’ll pursue this thread by means of a conversation with former Afghani businessman, Nasir Shansab (www.shansab.com) author of Silent Trees, A Novel of Afghanistan, to examine why it seems impossible to get capitalism and free societies established in many countries of the Middle East. Then onto examining the rising influence of New Age beliefs being widely promoted in evangelical circles through books, publications and churches. Warren Smith returns to the program to discuss his new book, Another Jesus Calling. During all of our discussion on emergency preparations, one of the areas overlooked is problems created by human interaction, when people are forced to group together in order to survive. How do you handle those? We’ll talk to filmmaker Sprague Theobald, (www.spraguetheobald.com), author of The Other Side of the Ice. Sprague packed together six people onto a 51-foot boat and sailed from Rhode Island to Washington through the Northwest Passage. Important lessons can be learned from their interactions in potentially life-threatening situations.