Two Cautions for Conservatives

I am a conservative. I am a conservative in religion, politics, family values, and even fashion. I am an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, prefer less government to more government, believe marriage is to be between one man and one woman for life, and believe men should never be allowed to wear open-toed sandals. I am by all accounts, a conservative. I don’t wear it is a badge of honor or as my identity. I am happy to move from any position I hold if convinced by a contrary argument, whether it is considered a liberal, moderate, or conservative position (though, you will never convince me that men should show their hairy toes in public). However, having said this, I find that I am usually one of the more conservative people in any given room. This has led me to watch and observe others who tend to lean conservative. There are two cautions that I would offer to myself and others who tend to be consistently conservative.   Continue at Jason Helopoulos

Growing Up Gothard

"You may run from sorrow, as we have. Sorrow will find you." — August Nicholson in The Village

My wife and I (Ted) were in the mood for a '90s movie, so we rented M. Night Shayamalan's The Village, which actually came out in 2004 but is still a '90s movie in terms of its earnestness and desire to be deep. It succeeds (in being deep) inasmuch as it always makes me think about the church, and about trends in the church.

In a nutshell, it's about a group of academics—all of whom have been deeply wounded by life in a fallen, sinful world—who decide to follow one charismatic leader (William Hurt) into forming an 1800s-style commune on a nature preserve. The idea is that if you take away everything modern and broken and hurtful about the world and replace it with floor-length skirts, suspenders, chickens, and primitive farm equipment, then nothing can hurt you. The movie then spins out a wonderful narrative that illustrates how there is no fleeing from total depravity. It finds us because it is in our hearts to begin with.

Utopia will elude humans, because sin causes the dystopia. Yet we still long for utopia and sometimes try like crazy to create it.

Recently, my friend Derek shared about what life was like growing up inside the Bill Gothard movement in the 1980s and '90s. His account was utterly fascinating both in terms of how weird it was, and also how eerily similar it sounds (in some ways) to how some Midwestern Reformed families are rolling today with the homeschooling, chicken-raising, huge-family-having, government-disdaining, and so on. The Gothard movement, as far as I can tell, was part life-coaching, part para-church organization, part-homeschool curriculum, part-subculture, and part-arena show.   Continue at Ted Kluck and Derek Lounds

Enlightenment Fundamentalist Slays 80

At least 76 people are dead after Anders Behring Breivik massacred campers on an island off the coast of Oslo, Norway.

Finally, the media has a face and a name for making its heretofor unjustified claim of moral equivalency between conservative Christianity and Islam.  Religion may be fine as long as it’s private, and you don’t really believe the key teachings of any one in particular.  In any case, those who think they need to act on their confessional convictions in daily life—much less encourage other people to embrace them—are on the path to terrorism.  Finally, we can reassure ourselves that Islam is not the problem; it’s “Christian fundamentalism.”

But for anyone interested in the facts of the case, the secularist narrative has lost its poster-boy.  In an on-line manifesto, Breivik makes it clear that he is not a “fundamentalist Christian.”  He prefaces one comment with, “If there is a God…” and says that science should always trump religion.  So in terms of religious convictions, he sounds more like Richard Dawkins than Jerry Falwell.  Yet, unlike Dawkins, Breivik pines for the “good ‘ol days” of Christendom, especially the crusades.  “Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe…” Keep Reading...

Islam, Christianity, and the Wrath of God – Part 1

All We Need Is Love

In September 2006 the Pope received An Open Letter to the Pope from 38 Islamic scholars from around the world. In September 2007, 138 Muslim scholars complied a document entitled A Common Word Between Us and You. This document attempted to identify a point of agreement common to both Islam and Christianity, that being the summons to love God and to love neighbor. In November 2007, a favorable and welcoming response was drafted by Christian scholars at Yale Divinity School’s Center for Faith and Culture. Some of the signatories are unknown to me. I sadly recognize some others who don’t surprise me and there are others who I recognize upon whose motives for signing I want to put the best construction. I’ve found the contribution of Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe of The World Evangelical Alliance entitled We Too Want To Live In Love, Peace, Freedom And Justice (March 2008) to be a more biblically cogent response.

This present dialog brings me to ask some questions. We know that God is love (1 John 4:8). Is our God the God of Mohammed? We know in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). Can “love” be defined apart from the cross of Christ? Is “love” something we have in common with Islam? Keep Reading...

So, Why Is Incest Wrong?

There are certain questions now pressed upon us that previous generations would never believe could be asked. One of these is thrust upon us by events in New York City, where a well-known Ivy League professor has been arrested for the crime of incest. What makes the question urgent is not so much the arrest, but the controversy surrounding it.

David Epstein is a professor of political science at Columbia University, where his wife also teaches. He previously taught on the faculties of Harvard and Stanford. Last week, he was arraigned before a judge in Manhattan, charged with a single count of felony incest. According to authorities, Professor Epstein was for several years involved in a sexual relationship with his adult daughter, now age 24. Continue Reading>>>

Transforming Culture: A Pagan Ideal

Of late, there has been considerable discussion concerning transforming culture, world and life views, and the like by the neo-Calvinists/New Calvinists but what does that really mean when it comes down to it? What does one mean when they discuss transformation of society?
In the not so distant past, Judeo-Christian values (whatever they may be) held much sway in the West, especially in America. The Victorian ideals were decidedly a pan-Protestant view of culture and society holding to a general Protestant ethic. When this ethic was attacked or wavered from, the pastors and politicians raised the alarm. Cults and heretical bodies that try to spring up are allowed, but when the Mormons try to institute polygamy, the people are outraged and call for justice to be imposed (c.f. Paul Johnson’ A History of Christianity). While there is a general ethos of political civility when this ethic is adhered to, one cannot say the same when it comes to which actual doctrinal position will be followed by the general people. The ethic becomes the religion and the sincerity behind it (no matter the doctrine) becomes the litmus test, not only in civil courts but in ecclesiastical one’s as well. Continue Reading>>>