R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 309

The Briefing 05-18-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Death penalty given to Boston Bomber in right recognition of need for justice

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Given Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing, New York Times (Katherine Q. Seelye)

Death For Tsarnaev, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)

2) House passing 20-week abortion ban exposes institutionalized worldview division between parties

House votes to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Washington Times (Tom Howell, Jr.)

House Approves Revised Measure Banning Most Abortions After 20 Weeks, New York Times (Emmarie Huetteman)

An Abortion Ban’s Bogus Arguments, New York Times (Editorial Board)

Pain-capable opponents ignore science, Washington Times (Diane Black)

 

The Gathering Storm: The Eclipse of Religious Liberty and the Threat of a New Dark Age

Remarks Delivered Friday, May 15,  2015:

Mister Attorney General, Mr. Sears, and distinguished guests, it is a great honor to accept the Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty. That honor is greatly magnified by the presence of Attorney General Meese and by the fact that this award bears his name. He is one of America’s most courageous defenders of human freedom and the American experiment in ordered liberty.

I am also honored to receive this award from the Alliance Defending Freedom and its President, Alan Sears. I have known Alan for many years, and I know him to be one of the most powerful advocates of virtue and liberty of our age. The work of the Alliance Defending Freedom is essential, singular, and urgently vital. This battalion of defenders fights most of all—and most effectively—for our “first freedom,” religious liberty.

I am deeply, and always aware that I could not be here without the constant support and love of my wife, Mary Mohler.

You will recognize that I borrowed from Sir Winston Churchill for the title of my remarks. In the first volume of his history of World War II, the great statesman looked back at the storm clouds that gathered in the 1930s, when he had bravely warned of a war that would determine the destiny of human dignity and liberty for untold millions of people.

We are not facing the same gathering storm, but we are now facing a battle that will determine the destiny of priceless freedoms and the very foundation of human rights and human dignity.

Speaking thirty years ago, Attorney General Meese warned that “there are ideas which have gained influence in some parts of our society, particularly in some important and sophisticated areas that are opposed to religious freedom and freedom in general. In some areas there are some people that have espoused a hostility to religion that must be recognized for what it is, and expressly countered.”

Those were prophetic words, prescient in their clarity and foresight. The ideas of which Mr. Meese warned have only gained ground in the last thirty years, and now with astounding velocity. A revolution in morality now seeks not only to subvert marriage, but also to redefine it, and thus to undermine an essential foundation of human dignity, flourishing, and freedom.

Religious liberty is under direct threat. Just days ago the Solicitor General of the United States served notice before the Supreme Court that the liberties of religious institutions will be an open and unavoidable question. Already, religious liberty is threatened by a new moral regime that exalts erotic liberty and personal autonomy and openly argues that religious liberties must give way to the new morality, its redefinition of marriage, and its demand for coercive moral, cultural, and legal sovereignty.

A new moral and legal order is ascendant in America, and this new order is only possible, in the arena of American law and jurisprudence, if the original intent and the very words of the Constitution of the United States are twisted beyond recognition.

These are days that will require courage, conviction, and clarity of vision. We are in a fight for the most basic liberties God has given humanity, every single one of us, made in his image. Religious liberty is being redefined as mere freedom of worship, but it will not long survive if it is reduced to a private sphere with no public voice. The very freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake, and thus so is the liberty of every American. Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator. The eclipse of Christian truth will lead inevitably to a tragic loss of human dignity. If we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one. I am a Christian, and I believe that salvation is found in no other name than Jesus Christ and in no other gospel, but I will fight for the religious liberty of all.

There is a gathering storm, and its threat is urgent and real, but there are arguments to be made, principles to be defended, rights to be respected, truths to be cherished, and permanent things to be preserved. We face the danger of a new Dark Age marked by the loss of liberty and the denial of human dignity. Thus, there is a battle to be joined and much work to be done. Together, may we be found faithful to these tasks. As Churchill would remind us, in every gathering storm there is a summons to action.

Remarks by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, upon receiving the 2015 Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Friday, May 15, 2015 in McLean, Virginia.

 

 

 

 

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 2015-05-16

1) Should Christians participate in snowflake embryo adoption?

2) How can a Christian overcome a struggle over assurance of salvation?

3) What is a pastoral response to people pursuing elective cosmetic surgery?

 

Call with your questions 24 hours a day, 7 days aweek: 1-877-505-2058

Transcript: The Briefing 05-15-15

The Briefing

 

May 15, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Friday, May 15, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Mobile games take advantage of unwillingness to delay gratification among many players

Two articles appearing in two different newspapers tell us a great deal about human nature. The first of them appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago; the headline, Mobile Game Makers Hunt For ‘Whales’. No, they are not looking for seafaring mammals, they’re looking for big spenders when it comes to online gaming, especially mobile gaming.

As Sarah Needleman reports for the Journal,

“Allen Sokol enjoys playing ‘Candy Crush Saga’ on a smartphone during his lunch break as assistant manager of a tire store in Grand Rapids, Mich., but often runs out of free turns.

“Rather than wait 20 minutes for one more free turn in the puzzle game, he presses a button on the screen to spend 99 cents for five turns. When he uses them up, he buys five more turns.”

Sokol said,

“I could get ahead without spending,”

But he goes on to say he has increased his spending on ‘Candy Crush Saga’ to about $50 a month during the past year. He says he could wait for the free games, but “then you have to wait.” This is one of those incredibly revealing articles about human nature, and of course it’s important it appears not in some page of the gaming magazine but on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. What does that tell you? It tells you the big dollars are at stake.

Where does the word ‘whale’ come from here, when it comes to the fact that these gaming companies are looking for whales as consumers? That goes back to the gambling industry where whales are those who enter into casinos and into gambling enterprises and are willing to spend a lot of money. It turns out that if you’re a casino operator you really can’t spend too much time getting people just to come in and spend a little bit of money, you’ve got to pay an incredible amount of attention to attracting and keeping the biggest gamblers of all, known as whales. And we shouldn’t be surprised that that is now being translated into the online gaming industry.

So what’s the importance of all this in the Christian worldview? It comes down to this, one of the things that is documented in this front-page article is the fact that there are people who are trying to build their entire business plan with billions and billions of dollars at stake on the fact that there are human beings who are unwilling to exercise what is called delayed gratification. It’s very, very interesting. We know, in terms of the human species, that what is called delayed gratification is one of the necessary signs of adulthood. The taking on of adult responsibility requires delayed gratification. We also know that children who show the capacity to delay gratification are the same children who tend to do so much better in school and so much better in other arenas of life.

A famous experiment was done years ago in which preschoolers were seated at a table. They were given one marshmallow. They were told that they could have that marshmallow right now, but if they could wait just a few minutes looking at that marshmallow they will be given another marshmallow as a reward. If they could just wait they would have not one marshmallow but two. They then divided the children between those who just couldn’t wait and immediately ate the marshmallow and those were willing to wait back and get the two marshmallows as a reward. The children who had waited, they were far ahead when it came to academic achievement, and they moved into adulthood – in terms of taking on adult responsibility – faster than those who had not developed the skill of delay gratification.

But as it turns out, it’s not just preschoolers who are at stake in this kind of experiment, here you have a man who is 29 years old and can’t wait for free games and has now increased his spending on online gaming on his smart phone to $50 a month – that qualifies him, says the Wall Street Journal, as a whale. And that’s where the online gaming industry is now directing their attention. They are looking for whales; they are looking for those who do not have the capacity of delay gratification.

There’s something else that becomes very clear in this article, the issue of the tie between this online video gaining and the gambling industry becomes clearer when it turns out that the same kind of pattern of response is operational here. It turns out that there are those who even have a medical explanation for what’s going on here. It turns out that being involved in certain repetitive activities brings about a certain thrill and that thrill even releases endorphins into the brain which can become an addictive phenomenon.

And so you have these customers who are buying these games over and over again on their phones, some of them to hundreds of dollars a month, because they are now accustomed to that jolts that comes by these hormones being released in the brain. And when you look at people who are sitting at slot machines hour after hour after hour, they are experiencing very much the same thing. And when you look at someone with a smart phone, looking at a break from working at a tire store, in order to spend what amounts to $50 a month now on this kind of gaming, you’re looking probably the same phenomena.

The article in the Wall Street Journal says that,

“Whales are a big deal because less than 3% of all mobile-game players make any in-game purchases. Buyers spend a rough average of $5 to $25 a month. Whales rank in the top 10% of all in-game spenders, and the mobile-game industry is scrambling to spawn and catch many more of them.”

And just in case you’re wondering if this is big business, the Wall Street Journal tells us that about 750 new videogames are added to app stores every day. Another little stat that is embedded in this is that it takes 15 hours of playing time on average before the typical mobile game user makes the first in-app purchase. So if they’ve got you for 15 hours, they probably got you to make a purchase. And if they can get you to make that purchase, they can probably get you to make more purchases. And what they’re trying to do is to create more and more whales.

The Wall Street Journal wouldn’t be giving attention to it if it were not a winning strategy, and again that tells us a great deal about how sin works within the human heart and in the human brain – even within our biochemistry. It tells us that the development of something like delayed gratification, which after all is very essential for Christian maturity, it turns out that there are all kinds of enemies of delayed gratification and some of them can be as easy as 750 new mobile videogames being added to app stores every single day. They are being added because somebody’s using them, somebody is spending a lot of time, and now we know, a lot of money, because they are effectively being hooked on the experience of these videogames.

2) Consumer debt linked to encouragement of easy credit on disregard self-control

But it’s not just that, even this very week in the same newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, on the op-ed piece there is an essay entitled This Is Your Brain On Easy Credit – that too tells us something very revealing. Peter C. Whybrow writing for the Journal tells us,

“The reward circuitry of the human brain is vital to our survival, but it wasn’t built to grapple with seductive credit card offers and no-money-down mortgages. Easy credit feeds our love of immediate gratification, distorts self-regulation and diminishes prudent market behavior, creating a destabilizing positive-feedback loop. Analysts trying to understand the explosion of consumer debt should look no further than neuroscience.”

Well, from a Christian worldview we do need a little bit deeper than neuroscience, but the neuroscience does tell us a great deal. So on the front page of the same newspaper you have an article about the mobile game industry looking for whales trying to hook them on buying videogames, and inside on the opinion page you have a complaint about the fact that easy credit is now becoming a form of the same kind of feedback loop when it comes to Americans – a lot of Americans are making easy purchases on credit for items they can’t afford, spending dangerously simply because the credit is easy and the experience is fun.

It tells us great deal that we are learning about human nature because even secular observers are somewhat concerned about it. Whybrow writes and I quote,

“Thanks to the seductive appeal of today’s consumer economy, perhaps for the first time in human history it is the affirmation of reward rather than the fear of punishment or failure that dominates the calculus of risk. We have become addicted to the quick fix, be that tasty junk food, the electronic cocaine of the Internet, or the painless ease of a credit card purchase.”

Finally, we point to another parallel to which we pointed several times on The Briefing and that is that the arguments for why pornography is so seductive, also comes back to many the same arguments. And of course there’s an entire industry trying to hook people on pornography – tragically, very successfully. And the same kind of techniques are now being used to sell Americans on easy credit they can’t afford, and for videogames as the makers are trying to create and keep new whales for their industry.

In one sense, a look at the book of Proverbs should be sufficient to understand the biblical priority on delayed gratification: wisdom, stewardship, thrift, maturity, common sense. But it’s important that Christians understand that every biblical virtue has enemies in the common world, some of them quite seductive, some of them not often recognized; a few of them here revealed in the most unexpected way in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

3) Alabama considers empty promise of gambling to resolve tax shortfall

Next, in recent days the New York Times has run an article telling us of the state of Alabama may turn to gambling in order to make up a shortfall from tax revenue. The article is by Campbell Robertson and the important thing about this article is the fact that it is datelined in Alabama, indeed in Montgomery – Alabama’s capital. Why is that big news? Because Alabama has been one of the state’s most resistant to any form of legalized gambling, and it has been so largely because Alabama has been so steadfastly rooted in an historic Christian biblical aversion to gambling as being reckless, as being a demonstration of forfeiting stewardship, and of preying upon the poor.

Robertson reports,

“After years of crackdowns, police raids, Bible Belt oratory and admonitions about corruption, Alabama lawmakers have had a change of heart. They are now seeking fiscal salvation at the casino.”

The article goes on to describe the Alabama state Senate president, a Republican, who is pushing a state constitutional amendment that would not only institute a lottery but also allowed traditional slots and casino table games at several horseracing tracks across the state. Meanwhile on the house side of the Alabama legislature, the Republican caucus,

“…while supporting an array of limited tax increases, is championing a stunning and unexpected offer from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the state’s only federally recognized tribe: In exchange for a compact giving the tribe exclusive gambling privileges in Alabama at its three casinos, as well as setting aside land for a fourth, the tribe would foot the bill for nearly the entirety of next year’s state budget deficit.”

The New York Times tells us that Gov. Robert J Bentley of Alabama continues to insist that gambling is not the answer to the state, but rather it needs to reform its tax code. But the article cites the Senate President as saying,

“Republicans, by and large, aren’t big advocates of gaming, but they sure…don’t like taxes.”

Now his statement was a little more salty than that, but we get the point. He is saying that Republicans don’t like gambling, but they don’t like taxes even more so they might turn to gambling. So let’s look at the argument that is being deployed there in Alabama. Anyone who has been following this issue for any length of time will recognize the argument exactly as we would expect it to come. The Senate President who is behind this,

“…acknowledged the surprising politics but pointed out that his draft bill includes language barring racetrack operators like Mr. McGregor from making campaign contributions (a similar bill was introduced in the House on Wednesday). And though, as the governor has pointed out, this plan might take some time to start paying dividends, Mr. Marsh insisted that it would create thousands of jobs while negating the need for tax increases.”

That is always the promise. Just consider the fact that in recent months we’ve covered the absolute collapse of some multi, and I mean multi-million-dollar casinos in places like Atlantic City, all the jobs that were promised simply evaporated. The same thing is taking place in the Delta of Mississippi where casinos have been closing because the market falls off as more casinos open elsewhere. And all those jobs that were promised, and sometimes almost immediately materialized, almost as immediately disappear.

And now you have the state of Alabama, that it is interesting to note the New York Times acknowledges has been held back largely by a Christian resistance to gambling. Well we now are beginning to see that opposition crumbles, at least in the legislature. The big question is going to be, is it crumbling amongst the people of Alabama? Eventually the people of Alabama are going to have their say – even the Senate President is trying to bring about what would require a constitutional amendment. The people Alabama better speak up on this issue.

But we also need to recognize that in many other states, those who have held out in terms of the morality of gambling for a very long time sometimes tend to crumble when they’re being told it’s either gambling or taxes. And look at the promise of all these jobs, well that’s a promise that has been made many times before. People Alabama: simply look at the data from the states around you. Simply look where casino gambling has had its way and ask, is that we want for our state? You see those who are pressing this kind of thing don’t go to the pawn shops and they don’t go to the places where those who have been financially wrecked by their addiction and their practice of gambling simply have to go to feed their addiction or to feed their practice – literally to feed their sin. I guarantee that the people who are pressing this kind of proposal aren’t going to show you the shuttered casinos of Atlantic City and elsewhere.

The Christian worldview has resisted gambling for the very reason that it subverts biblical virtues and it encourages vices at every conceivable turn. It doesn’t entice people to be good stewards of their resources, but rather to waste them. It doesn’t encourage people to rely upon an ethic of hard-working labor and its proper reward; instead it honors games of chance. And, as we know, eventually the state becomes a predator upon its own people. Just look at how states try to encourage their citizens with the lowest incomes to spend the most when it comes to the lottery. Any way you look at it, this is big news. The New York Times knows it is big news because if this can happen in Alabama, it can happen anywhere.

Of course finally, we need tie this back to the pew research study that came out earlier this week on the secularization of America and the fact that secularization is happening in all regions of the country and, to some extent, in all generations. This kind of story coming from a state like Alabama wouldn’t be possible if the buckle were still on the Bible Belt so to speak. It wouldn’t be possible if we still had a clear exceptionalism when it comes to states like Alabama, clearly dominated by the vast majority of a citizenry, that indicates that they are Christians of one sort or another. The binding power the Christian worldview is what is at stake here. It’s one thing for people to say, ‘I’m a Christian’ – to self-identify on a survey saying, ‘I’m a Christian’ or ‘I’m a member of this church or this denomination,’ –  it’s another thing to see how the binding moral authority of the biblical worldview begins to crumble right before our eyes.

Journalistically, it’s a coincidence that this article from Alabama appeared in just the same period of a few days when the Pew Research Center data was released. But coming from a biblical worldview it’s not really a coincidence, we understand that the moral change reflects a deeper spiritual and theological change. And if something like this form of gambling can become plausible in a state like Alabama, it can only become plausible because of more fundamental shifts that are taking place in the hearts and minds of the people of the state. That’s the real warning to us here: Christians who are committed to a biblical worldview have to understand that we are increasingly finding ourselves arguing against even some of our neighbors who believe themselves to be Christians, and who may even tell themselves they are Christians, but who no longer feel bound by the moral teachings of the biblical worldview.

4) Gay couples object to likely requirement of marriage in order to gain health benefits 

Finally, here’s another front page article from the Wall Street Journal that caught my eye. It appeared in Wednesday’s edition; here’s a headline: Wed or Lose your Benefits, Firms Warn Gay Couples. The article is by Rachel Emma Silverman and this is one of those stories we’ve been watching for a long time. It’s one of those in inevitable stories, and here it lands this week on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. What is it telling us? It’s telling us that there are some gay couples who do not want to get married, but they do want the domestic partner benefits that their companies have given them largely because same-sex marriage wasn’t yet legal.

You can tell what’s happening here, when same-sex marriage becomes legal, many corporations are saying, ‘okay, now you have to get married in order to get the domestic partner benefits – especially when it comes to insurance and other employee benefits.’ As Silverman writes,

“Wedding bells will ring later this year if the Supreme Court decides that gay couples are constitutionally entitled to marry. But health insurance, more than romance, may nudge some couples down the aisle.”

That’s an interesting lead, but that’s not the most interesting portion of the article. The most interesting portion of the article is gay couples who are saying that it’s not fair that they be required to get married. Here’s how Silverman reports it,

“Now, some employers who offer benefits targeting same-sex partners say it is only fair to require those couples to marry where legal, just as their straight co-workers must do to extend coverage.

“That is causing some consternation among gay and lesbian employees and their advocates, who say they could be vulnerable to discrimination.”

Well as you follow the logic going on, they are simply saying that they want to be able to get married or not get married and still get the same benefits as if they were married. Well here’s the issue: if equality is equality, as being defined in the current secular legal context, then how can same-sex couples get those marital benefits without marriage if heterosexual couples can’t get those marital benefits without marriage? You see this is how the argument gets immediately turned, and here is what is also very revealing. Even as these companies are now saying, ‘okay if same-sex marriage is legal, then you have to get married in order to get the benefits,’ and even as there are those who are saying, ‘we don’t want to get married, but we do want the benefits’ and even as heterosexual couples are then going say, ‘okay, then we don’t want to have to get married in order to get the benefits,’ you can see where this is going – some of these companies are simply deciding to avoid the issue of marriage altogether.

Silverman reports,

“Recognizing that some employees, gay or straight, simply prefer not to marry, a number of employers are taking marriage out of the equation for benefits. Large companies, such as Google Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are offering partner benefits to all unmarried couples,”

Well just imagine what that now means. Now we’re looking at the marginalization and subversion of marriage to the point that the confusion over marriage means that employers are simply say we’re not going to be able to look to marriage as a criteria at all. Look back at the words I just quoted from the Wall Street Journal, they say they are offering partner benefits to all unmarried couples. Let me just state the obvious, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that couples who are hooking up for a weekend are getting these benefits. I don’t believe that some romantic or sexual coupling taking place between two people is going to be recognized for these benefits. No, I can assure you these companies are coming up with some criterion for how they’re going to determine how a couple becomes a couple in order to be covered by these benefits.  In other words, they are trying to come up with something that isn’t marriage that they can recognize as being almost marriage – for now.

The most important issue from the Christian worldview is this: you can try to deny marriage, you can try to redefine marriage, you can try to reject and subvert marriage, but eventually you’re going to have to come up with something like marriage. But if it isn’t really marriage, in terms of God’s gift to humanity, then it isn’t going to work. The controversy over insurance policies that made the front page of the Wall Street Journal tells us that, but of course from a biblical worldview it also tells us a great deal more.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com. Tomorrow morning there will be a new edition of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition released. We are still collecting your questions. Call us with your question, in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

 

I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 05-15-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Mobile games take advantage of unwillingness to delay gratification among many players

Mobile-Game Makers Try to Catch More ‘Whales’ Who Pay for Free Games, Wall Street Journal (Sarah E. Needleman)

2) Consumer debt linked to encouragement of easy credit on disregard self-control

This Is Your Brain on Easy Credit, Wall Street Journal (Peter C. Whybrow)

3) Alabama considers empty promise of gambling to resolve tax shortfall

Alabama May Turn to the Gambling It Has Long Fought, New York Times (Campbell Robertson)

4) Gay couples object to likely requirement of marriage in order to gain health benefits 

Firms Tell Gay Couples: Wed or Lose Your Benefits, Wall Street Journal (Rachel Emma Silverman)

Transcript: The Briefing 05-14-15

The Briefing

 

May 14, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Thursday, May 14, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Utah anti-discrimination law already considered insufficient compromise by LGBT community

On Tuesday an antidiscrimination bill went into effect in the state of Utah. As Michelle Price for the Associated Press reports,

“A Mormon church-backed anti-discrimination law that protects gay and transgender people and religious rights took effect Tuesday amid skepticism from some LGBT residents over whether it lives up to its promises.”

As you’ll remember some months back on The Briefing we discussed the fact that this piece of legislation in Utah had come about given an unprecedented kind of negotiation between LGBT activists and the Mormon Church – which is so politically and culturally dominant in the state of Utah. It was declared to be a grand compromise whereby the LGBT community gained what it was demanding, in terms of antidiscrimination protections especially when it comes to public accommodations and to employment and other issues, and as legislate doors promise there in Utah at the time, it would also protect the religious liberty interests of all religious groups in Utah – including, most centrally when it comes to the Utah population, the Mormon church.

But now I want you to notice the introductory paragraph that came out, just this week when the law took effect, that paragraph from the Associated Press. The last sentence tells us that even as the law went into effect, it did so “amid skepticism from some LGBT residents over whether it lives up to its promises.” Going back to when the law was first passed, I pointed out that it would not last. It virtually cannot last and that’s because this supposedly unprecedented compromise is a very fragile compromise.

The LGBT community was looking for the support, or at least they were looking to end the opposition of the Mormon Church, to any form of antidiscrimination legislation. But it was promised that that antidiscrimination legislation would offer ample protections for religious institutions, churches, and other organizations. But now what we’re being told, in the very lead paragraph of this story, is that there are those within the LGBT community who are already pressing to eliminate those religious liberty protections on the very first day that the law went into effect; this was predictable, and now it’s actual.

Going back to the story by Michelle Price she writes,

“Gay rights groups pushed for an anti-discrimination law for years and finally succeeded during the 2015 legislative session with a deal that won the crucial backing of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

She goes on to say,

“LGBT residents say the law is a positive step, but they worry it still allows discrimination because religious organizations and their affiliates – such as schools and hospitals – are exempt.”

Now let’s just go back to the fact that when this legislation was passed this was the point that was being trumpeted as the achievement, and now you have an Associated Press story coming out the very week the law goes into effect in which those who had called for the law and had largely celebrated its passage are already indicating that it doesn’t go far enough. And how does it not go far enough? It doesn’t eliminate the religious liberty rights of religious organizations – specifically, as identified here, schools and hospitals.

As if that’s not ominous enough, consider the very next words in this article:

“One example they cite is Brigham Young University, which is owned by the Mormon church and can still evict people from student housing for being gay.”

In terms of religious higher education, specifically I will speak of Christian higher education, the big three issues are housing and admissions and hiring. And the issue of housing basically is a stand-in for the larger issue of student services. If indeed a school cannot operate on the basis of its own religious convictions in housing and in hiring and in admissions, then it is not at liberty to operate as a Christian institution. The same thing would be true for a Mormon institution such as Brigham Young University or an Orthodox Jewish institution or a Roman Catholic institution.

Now that we have LGBT activists in Utah openly declaring that they are dissatisfied with this law that went into effect just this week, we’re being served notice once again. Why once again? Well just a few weeks ago before for the United States Supreme Court the solicitor general of the United States, in response to a direct query from the Chief Justice of the United States, answered that the issue of housing in religious institutions would be in question. And now you have activists in Utah specifically identifying the problem they seek to solve as being the fact that Brigham Young University, as a Mormon institution, is operating by Mormon theological principles in terms of housing, most specifically here, but that can be expanded quite easily to the issues of hiring and admissions as well.

Going back to the article from the Associated Press Price writes,

“In endorsing the measure, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said it follows the principles set out in the faith’s call for laws that balance religious rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

We can understand why Mormon authorities would say that then, we have to wonder what they’re going to say now that the very religious liberty protections that they negotiated into this law are certainly going to be the subject of subsequent legislative review, and you can be sure almost immediate court action.

And speaking of the larger issue of that cooperation, Price also writes,

“LGBT critics of the anti-discrimination law said that cooperation is tenuous, and point to comments made by members of the faith’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles just weeks after the law was signed.”

And as the Associated Press report goes on to say, in that case members of the top leadership of the Mormon church had stated Mormon theological and moral principles in which they defined marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman. Now we just need to note the religious liberty implications of this controversy in Utah because even as there it is the Mormon church that is front and center in the controversy, elsewhere it will be any other believing community. And we need to note that even in Utah there are evangelical Christians, Roman Catholics, and others when it comes to those whose religious liberties will be at stake here.

The main point in my citing these latter words from the article is this, here you have the claim that cooperation exists between a religious organization and gay-rights activists when it comes to striking a balance, and yet that balance is coming undone as many gay-rights activist say the very accommodations that were put into place, the recognitions of religious liberty, are untenable and unviable and to be opposed. But you also have the problem that here that cooperation is supposedly now threatened by the fact that the Mormon church is stating Mormon doctrine when it comes to the definition of marriage for that faith. So what does that tell us? It tells us what we already knew – that religious liberty is very much at stake; that religious liberty is very much under threat. And it’s under threat not only when it comes to religious organizations, institutions and schools, but even when it comes to religious leaders articulating the theological and moral convictions of their own faith in public. That in itself is being complained of in this article and that tells us a very great deal indeed.

2) Concerns over religious liberty rise as liberals urged to be magnanimous in victory 

On this issue, by the way, just a few days ago The Economist, one of the world’s most influential magazines, in this case published in London, wrote an editorial entitled The New Culture War; the subtitle: “if gay marriage triumphs, liberals should take care not to rub it in.” It’s a very interesting article, I am cited within the article in terms of my response to the oral arguments of the United States Supreme Court, but the really interesting part of this editorial, coming from London, are these words,

“Alas, at the very moment when the public seems ready to move on, there are signs that gay rights could spark a new round of cultural combat. The alarm is being sounded by moderate legal scholars and theologians who have spent years pondering fights over religious liberty and how to protect it within a legal order built around equality.”

The most important aspect of this article is that it appears in The Economist, a secular, largely financially dominated, magazine. The second thing is that it identifies those legal scholars and theologians who are now concerned about the religious liberty implications of same-sex marriage with the word moderate. Coming in this context, that is journalistically signaling that these are legitimate and very ominous concerns.

And in the editorial they then shift to a meeting that took place on May 4 and to words stated by John Inazu of Washington University School of Law. He was speaking at something called the Faith Angle Forum, described as a twice yearly gathering of academics, religious leaders, and political journalists. Listen to the next words,

“A shadow hangs over traditional Christian colleges, non-profit institutions (including some large hospitals) and businesses run by those whose beliefs lead them to see gay marriage as a grave sin,”

That was the magazine’s summary of the words offered by John Inazu of Washington University School of Law. The editorial concludes with these words,

“America has a long tradition of protecting minority beliefs through rights of free assembly and speech. Such rights have in recent years protected Christian groups on liberal campuses and gay groups in conservative spots, and remain a valuable means of bridging deep divides. If the summer brings the nationwide legalisation of gay marriage, liberals should be magnanimous in victory.”

Well that’s a very interesting argument. It is coming down to the fact that The Economist is making the judgment, also being made by most others watching the Supreme Court, that the court is likely to declare that gay marriage is to be legal in all 50 states. The big question then is: what comes after when it comes to religious liberty? And specifically citing what the magazine acknowledges are legitimate religious liberty concerns, especially when it comes to Christian colleges and similar institutions, the magazine calls upon the side of victorious in this new moral revolution to be, here are the words, “magnanimous in victory.”

And yet, day after day, we’re having warnings that it will be exactly the opposite. The latest of those warnings comes in the very response to the law that took effect just this week in Utah. The really interesting thing, in terms of the current cultural moment, is that those who had insisted for so long that same-sex marriage would not come with infringement of religious liberty are beginning to say, ‘well maybe it will, maybe that is inevitable; maybe that’s a problem.’

3) Attack on conservative view of marriage conflates historic shifts with radical redefinition

Finally on this issue, the Washington Post ran a very interesting article by Trevor Burrus, identified as research fellow at the Cato Institute Center for Constitutional Studies. When it comes to the marriage issue, the headline on this articles interesting, Conservative Say Marriage has always been between a Man and a Woman. They’re Wrong; the subhead, “matrimony is a constantly changing social institution.” What I want us to note in this is the shift of argument. It’s a very interesting propaganda device and it takes place right within this article, even within the headline and the subhead. Conservative Say Marriage has always been between a Man and a Woman. They’re Wrong. The subhead is: “matrimony is a constantly changing social institution,” and the subhead is almost assuredly right. It’s truthful. Anyone who is looking at the situation of marriage over the centuries understands that in some sense of course it has been a changing social institution, and yet when you look at the headline that is over the subhead stating that the claim that marriage is always between a man or woman is wrong, well there you have a severe disconnect. But that tells us a great deal about the kind of arguments we face in the larger culture.

So are being told that marriage is a constantly changing social institution, well anyone operating from a biblical worldview understands that in terms of the legal structure, in terms of the culture of romance, in terms of what’s being called now companionate marriage, there have been radical changes. In terms of marriage even as a man and a woman being isolated from the larger extended family, that’s a rather recent development. Changes, in terms of the family unit and indeed the economic identity of the husband and the wife in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, those came. The culture of no-fault divorce effectively changed the institution of marriage. Even the contraceptive revolution and advanced reproductive technologies are changing the nature of marriage.

But what isn’t changing is the fact that marriage, everywhere throughout all times, has been – with exceedingly few exceptions – the union of a man and a woman. And those exceptions are so unique that they have to keep going back and citing the same ones. Such as Emperor Nero, anyone who would suggest that one of the most corrupt of the Roman emperors is somehow an indication of what was normal in the Roman Empire when it comes to marriage is making a ludicrous historical claim. And those who are making the claim rarely even make it in such a bold form, instead they just throw it out as if there has been a question throughout human history as to what marriages it. That’s why it’s important to recognize that there was a moment of sanity, of moral sanity and historical sanity, when the justices of the United States Supreme Court – well several of them – actually pointed to the fact that marriage has been the union of a man and a woman, to use the very words one of the justices, “for millennia.”

Trevor Burrus, writing from a very libertarian worldview makes the argument and I quote,

“Marriage has seen so many forms that it is almost difficult to give a universal definition of the term.”

That’s the kind of claim that fails on its very face. Imagine going society by society and asking what marriages is; is there any question that it is the union of a man and a woman? Even in some of those societies where there will be the exception of polygamy, is there any question the marriage is defined as being between male and female? If you go throughout time, if you ransacked your back issues of National Geographic magazine, if you go to the literature virtually every culture as long as literature has existed, is there any question that marriage is understood to be the union of a man and a woman? Or even where there are exceptions in terms of number, the union of male and female? Of course not. That just shows the fact that there is desperation in the kind of argument being made here.

But the really dangerous thing is that if this argument is made widely enough and often enough, people will believe that it’s true. But of course, finally if this argument is true, it leads to absolute moral anarchy and that’s absolutely affirmed in the last words of this essay. Burrus writes,

“Social institutions evolve faster than recalcitrant and reactionary governments. People are now FWB (Friends With Benefits) rather than ‘going steady,’ and they’re ‘Facebook official’ rather than ‘being pinned.’ When social institutions evolve, those who are stuck in the past often prefer to use the coercive power of government to keep things ‘the way they should be’ than to go with the flow. That ‘flow’ has already changed the institution of marriage, and the Supreme Court should go with it.”

Well we simply have to ask, go with it, how far? Go with it, what’s next? Go with it, until what? When he says the Supreme Court should simply go with the flow we have to recognize the flows not going to stop when it comes to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

4) Silicon Valley efforts to solve mortality right recognition of death as the Last Enemy

Finally, anyone operating out of the Christian worldview will also find very interesting, another article that appeared in the Washington Post. This one is about Silicon Valley’s tech entrepreneurs trying to solve a new problem. What’s that problem? Mortality. It is a very interesting article, especially interesting that it appeared in the Washington Post. It turns out that many of the richest Titans of Silicon Valley are now investing deeply, and we mean hundreds of millions of dollars, in technology they believe will defy death and achieve human immortality.

Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, is now estimated to be worth $2.2 billion, aged 47, is intending to spend a lot of that fortune investing in new biomedical technologies and new forms of engineering that he claims, and hopes, will solve the problem of human mortality and lead to the virtual everlasting life on planet earth. Speaking of the research he is funding he says quote,

“If you think you can only do very little and be very incremental, then you’ll work only on very incremental things. It’s self-fulfilling,”

He has indicated he doesn’t want to work on incremental things, he doesn’t want to solve small problems, he wants to solve the problem of human mortality – he wants to achieve everlasting life. This is a very serious article and it’s about very serious people. It’s being reported in one of the most serious newspapers in the United States, and these people are putting serious money into this project. They are funding researchers and scientist trying to come up with the promise of everlasting life. The researchers at work on this project seem to be driven by an incredible optimism when it comes to the capabilities of technology and they are also obvious being drawn by the quest for immortality – in this case to be delivered by science, something that has fascinated modern people ever since the advent of modernity.

Just look at the fact that so much science fiction is been predicated on this quest. But here we are not talking about science fiction; we are talking about well-funded scientific research. It has led to concerns even on the part of some secular scientists, one of them cited as Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University. In her estimation, some of these billionaires are obsessed with longevity and they may be driven, according to the Washington Post, as much by hubris is by a desire to do public good.

Zoloth said, and I quote,

“It’s incredibly exciting and wonderful to be part of a species that dreams in a big way, but I also want to be part of a species that takes care of the poor and the dying, and I’m worried that our attention is being drawn away to a glittery future world that is fantasy and not the world we live in.”

Going back to Peter Thiel, he said and I quote,

“I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing. I think that’s somewhat unusual. Most people end up compartmentalizing and they are in some weird mode of denial and acceptance about death, but they both have the result of making you very passive. I prefer to fight it.”

And then he made another statement that should particularly have our attention. As the Post reported,

“Peter Thiel is the embodiment of Silicon Valley culture at its individualistic, impatient extreme.”

He believes,

“…death is the ‘great enemy’ of humankind.”

Now here’s what’s really interesting, at one point and at one point alone, Peter Thiel’s worldview intersect with the worldview of Scripture because we are told in Scripture indeed that death is the great enemy. We are also told in Scripture that it is the final enemy that is defeated by Christ, and we’re being told that indeed there is the promise of everlasting life. But it’s never going to come from a laboratory; it’s never going to come by technology. It is highly revealing that you have so many incredibly rich, incredibly powerful, incredibly smart people, investing so much money believing that they will be delivered from the great enemy of death by technology. It is almost as if in the entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley a serpent appeared to some of these entrepreneurs and said, ‘I will deliver you, all it will take is technology. Eat of that tree.’

Here we simply have to come back to the fact that the biblical worldview alone adequately defines death and tells us what it really is. It isn’t less of an enemy than Peter Thiel thinks; it’s even more of an enemy. And when it comes everlasting life it’s never to come from a technology, it is not going to come from a test tube, and it is going to come only by the redemption that is accomplished for us in Jesus Christ. And it comes to those who believe in him and repent of their sins.

It took the Washington Post hundreds and hundreds of words to talk about this new initiative from Silicon Valley, it takes the Bible only a few words to give the only real answer: for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com. Remember we are taking questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Just call with your question, in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 05-14-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Utah anti-discrimination law already considered insufficient compromise by LGBT community

Some LGBT residents critical of Utah anti-discrimination law, Associated Press (Michelle Price)

2) Concerns over religious liberty rise as liberals urged to be magnanimous in victory 

The new culture war, The Economist

3) Attack on conservative view of marriage conflates historic shifts with radical redefinition

Conservatives say marriage has always been between a man and a woman. They’re wrong., Washington Post (Trevor Burrus)

4) Silicon Valley efforts to solve mortality right recognition of death as the Last Enemy

Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death, Washington Post (Ariana Eunjung Cha)

Children of the Day

“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” [1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 ESV]

To affirm the church is to affirm the Trinity. The church is a sign of the redemptive reciprocity of the Father and the Son, as the Father gives a redeemed people to the Son and as the Son will one day present the church without spot or blemish to the Father. The church exists by the power of the Holy Spirit and in the power of the Holy Spirit. These facts and these facts alone explain why the church has come to be, why the church has survived to this day, and why the church will be preserved throughout eternity to the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

To affirm the church is to affirm the gospel of Jesus Christ, for without that gospel there would be no good news, no message of salvation, no redemption of sinners, and thus no redeemed people of God. Every true church is a gospel church and without the gospel there is no church. The church has received from Christ the commission to make the gospel known to all people, everywhere, with the confidence that whoever hears the gospel and believes will be saved.

To affirm the church is to affirm the authority of the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God. As Martin Luther rightly noted, the church is where the Word of God is rightly preached. Where the Word is not rightly preached, there is no church, plain and simple. Where the church is found, the Word of God is honored, preached, taught, cherished, obeyed, and believed.

To affirm the church is to affirm the ministry. God has given ministers to his church in order that the redeemed people of God may be fed, taught, counseled, instructed, edified, encouraged, corrected, and led. The Christian ministry was not an organizational invention of the early church, but the gift of God. The New Testament reveals that God calls ministers for his church and gifts them according to his call.

As Charles Bridges put the matter perfectly, “The Great Head of the Church has ordained three grand repositories of his truth. In the Scriptures he has preserved it by his Providence against all hostile attacks. In the hearts of Christians he has maintained it by the Almighty energy of his Spirit—even under every outward token of general apostasy. And in the Christian Ministry he has deposited ‘the treasure in earthen vessels’ for the edification and enriching of the Church in successive ages.”

With a vast array of graduating ministers before our eyes, I want to amplify this affirmation of the church and the special calling of its ministers by turning to 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. This great text points us to the coming Day of the Lord — that great day of God’s perfect judgment that was known already in the Old Testament and is further explained in the New Testament. Today, I want to look from this text to three great truths that will frame the calling, the ministry, and the future faithfulness of Christ’s church, and, especially, of these who will serve as pastors, missionaries, church planters, and other workers in God’s vineyard.

 

Identity

The first of these great truths is identity. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are identified in this text as children of light, children of the day. We are not, says Paul, children of the night or children of darkness. It is hard to imagine a more basic or primary biblical metaphor than the contrast of light and darkness. In the beginning, God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. Jesus identified himself as the Light of the world, and he also described his disciples as lights in the world. The Psalmist declared, “The Lord is my light, and my salvation” [Psalm 27:1].

The Word of God is a light unto our paths. The promise of the Messiah was to a people who dwelled in deep darkness. On them would shine a great light. To be saved by the power of Christ is to be “called out of darkness into his marvelous light” [1 Peter 2:9] and to be delivered from the “domain of darkness” and transferred “to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [Colossians 1:13] God is light, and in him is no darkness at all [1 John 1:5].

In this text, Christians are described as “children of light, children of the day.” The contrast of the children of light and day with the children of darkness and night is as clear as any we might imagine. We are children of light, children of the day, precisely because in Christ we are safe on that great Day of the Lord. We are his, and he is ours. We are children of light because he is the Light of the world, and we remain in the world as lights for his glory — children of the day.

Much is expected of the children of the day. We are to be sober, ready, alert, aware, and, most of all, awake. Sloth and complacency and drunkenness mark the children of the night, the children of darkness. In this sense, we are not to sleep, at least not as others do.

The Christian minister, above all, must be awake and sober minded and serious — alert to the imperatives of gospel ministry and the needs of Christ’s people. Those who teach will be held to a stricter judgment, reminds the Apostle James. The children of the day must be served by ministers of the light, who are faithful undershepherds of the flock of God.

The calling of the Christian ministry is a call that comes to a child of the day to serve the children of the day. We cannot call ourselves, gift ourselves, transform ourselves, or even keep ourselves. But we are children of the day by God’s grace and for God’s glory, and we are called to serve the children of the day by the light of Christ. Our identity is clear — to belong to Christ is to be children of the day, so let us minister as children of the day.

 

Destiny

Here is the greatest news a human being can ever hear: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The children of the day are destined for glory, for salvation, for adoption, and for the eternal redeeming promises of God.

The great dividing line in humanity is not merely between the children of light and the children of darkness, but between those destined for wrath and those destined for salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in Christ will be saved, and this salvation is not our work, but the gift of God. The entire plan of salvation is the outworking of the eternal purposes of God, as Paul described in Romans 8:28-30: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

We are told in no uncertain terms that the only alternative to our destiny of salvation through Christ is to be destined for wrath. This should lead to the unceasing gratitude of the church throughout eternity, but it must also lead to the most eager preaching, teaching, and taking of the gospel to the nations and to all people everywhere.

Ministers of Christ’s church serve in the knowledge that we are serving those who are destined for salvation in Christ and that Christ’s church is not, thanks be to God, destined for wrath. We minister, knowing that our destiny, and the destiny of all those who are in Christ, is secured by God, and not by ourselves. Thus, nothing the world can do can thwart our ministry in an eternal perspective. The church is safe in the purposes of God, destined for salvation, and thus we preach.

 

Urgency

Back in my teenage years, a staple of youth ministry was the showing of the film, “A Thief in the Night.” Quite honestly, it remains one of the most sobering messages I have ever heard or seen. And yet, the real message of this text is not less sobering than the film, but much more so. Paul reminds the Thessalonian Christians of what they already know, and show themselves confidently to know, and that is that the day of the Lord, that great day of judgment, will come as a thief in the night.

Look at verses 2-4: “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.”

There is a biblical urgency to the Christian ministry. Jesus reminded his disciples with these words: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” [John 9:4]. While the world declares peace and security, sudden destruction will come — even like labor pains come upon a woman in childbirth.

The children of the day know the eschatological urgency that comes from knowing that the day of the Lord is coming, that the time is short, and that this age will end. This does not mean that we give ourselves to passivity in the light of Christ’s coming, but rather that we be found deployed and faithful when he comes. If this is true for all the children of the day, it is certainly most consciously true of those who are called as ministers for the children of the day. The times and the seasons cry out the urgency of our calling — most of all, the urgency of the preaching of the gospel.

A commencement day comes with a flood of reflection and the splendor of hope. The Spring 2015 graduating class of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is gathered here in space and time for one great moment. Right before our eyes, they are about to be flung to the four corners of the earth, sent into the churches and into the nations. On this sparkling day and on this historic lawn we see them in their graduating gowns and regalia. We rightly feel that they are ours, but they are not ours to keep.

Graduates, you have no earthly idea how loved you are and how many hopes are invested in you. The hopes and prayers of a host of Christ’s people go before you, with you, and after you. Go serve the children of the day, and minister so that Christ’s glory will be more evident in his church. Take the gospel to the nations and look together with all God’s people to that great marriage supper of the Lamb.

Take your place in line and fulfill your ministry with eyes wide open, knowing your destiny in Christ. Go into the world of darkness as brave children of the day.

This is the commencement address delivered by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, at the school’s 215th commencement ceremony, Thursday, May 14, 2015. The entire ceremony may be viewed live at www.sbts.edu/live

 

 

Transcript: The Briefing 05-13-15

The Briefing

 

May 13, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Wednesday, May 13, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Warp speed of American secularization evidenced in declining religious landscape

The secularization of America is one of the great facts of our time and it doesn’t come out of a vacuum because long before America began showing the explicit signs of the secularization we now see it was already evident in much of Europe – especially in northern Europe. The historical trajectory goes back to the enlightenment of the 17th century and then gains speed as you go forward – especially in the 20th century. By the time you got to the 18th and 19th century a very thin slice of the intellectual elites were showing already that they were being secularized, that they were exchanging the Christian worldview for a secular worldview. But it took the last half of the 20th century for this to gain much speed in the general population; first looking at Europe and then also at North America.

When secularization first began to appear it was largely a phenomenon of the elites. And those who showed the earliest evidence of this secularization amongst the elites, they didn’t just become nonbelievers, they became in general atheist or skeptics or agnostics. Now we have new evidence coming from the Pew Research Center that what’s happening in the United States is a very different phenomena and it’s happening very fast. We are watching millions of Americans shift from some religious affiliation to no religious affiliation – and the numbers are very stark. They are gaining headlines all over the world with the release of this study yesterday by the Pew Research Center.

For instance, perhaps one of the factoids that has led to the greatest conversation is the fact that according to this massive pew study the number of non-aligned, that is nonaffiliated – religiously speaking in America – now exceeds the number of American Roman Catholics. That’s a rather stunning development. For the better part of the last century Catholics have numbered about 25% of the American population. And even as those numbers are not falling in terms of the absolute count, they are falling behind in terms of the growth of the American population.

So if religious groups don’t gain new converts, given the fact that America’s gaining new citizens, eventually they become a smaller proportion of the total population. That’s happening across the board when it comes to American religion. It happened very quickly within American Judaism with of vast majority of American Jews identifying no longer with the theistic truth claims of Judaism, but rather with Judaism as a cultural identity. Then it also happened in mainline Protestantism where vast numbers of members of what had been the most establish churches and denominations in America began also to be highly secularized; first turning to a very liberal version of Christian theology, and eventually themselves or their children and grandchildren simply departing those churches and denominations altogether.

It is happening now in other sectors of the American population. Nate Cohn writing for the New York Times tells us,

“The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region,”

Then again citing the Pew Research Center,

“Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014,”

Now that is clearly a majority, but it’s a much smaller majority than what was true just a matter of a few years before 2014.  There is an absolute decline in numbers here of about 5 million but there’s a larger decline when it comes to percentage – a fall of about 8% since 2007. Alan Cooperman, the director of religious research at the Pew Research Center, the lead editor of this report, said,

“The decline is taking place in every region of the country, including the Bible Belt,”

Cohen then goes on to explain,

“The decline has been propelled in part by generational change, as relatively non-Christian millennials reach adulthood and gradually replace the oldest and most Christian adults. But it is also because many former Christians, of all ages, have joined the rapidly growing ranks of the religiously unaffiliated or ‘nones’: a broad category including atheists, agnostics and those who adhere to ‘nothing in particular.’”

In terms of this study, the biggest insight is the pace, or the velocity, of the change. Tamara Audi writing for yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal cites Greg Smith, one of the lead researchers for the project, as saying that the trends have “been underway for some time,” He himself went on to observe,

“I am struck by the pace at which that group [the religiously unaffiliated] continues to grow.”

According to the study, the share of Americans who are unaffiliated by their own self designation has risen to 22.8% from 16.1% – that’s from just 2007 to 2014. In terms of a massive social change this is something like warp speed, we’re talking about the kind of change that has generally only been experienced in a time of severe cultural crisis such as in various turning points in human history famine or war or poverty or plague. We’re talking about something that is explainable only by other rapid changes taking place in our society and as you’re looking at the great moral revolution, so many things happening around us, those developments only makes sense in light of this development.

One of the most important things to look at here is generational change and we will be taking a look at that in coming days. This massive study demands a lot of our attention and it tells us a great deal about the massive shift in worldview taking place around us. But in looking at this generational change one of the most interesting things is how successful – this is good news – how successful evangelical Christians have been in retaining millennials as over against virtually every other group – most importantly mainline Protestants and even Roman Catholics.

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra writing for Christianity Today points out that one of the insights from this study is that evangelical Christians convert many of their kids and then retain many of their kids. Pew found what it calls a remarkable degree of churn in the larger American religious landscape, but says Zylstra, evangelicals are the major exception to the national pattern of Christian decline. Evangelical Christians were the only major Christian group in the entire study that gained more members than evangelical Christians lost through religious switching. That again is a very important issue.

Now evangelical Christians could find some false confidence in this because even as we look at the fact that were doing remarkably well in retaining our own young people, as compared of virtually every other religious group in America, the reality is we’re not doing all that well when it comes to understanding that were losing at least an enormous percentage of our own young people. And one of the things the becomes clear as we look at this research is what we talked about all the time: how much theology matters, because the central truth is that it matters whether or not young people gain an active and eager convictional self -identity with the truth claims of the religious organization. That’s what’s clear; whether you’re looking at Judaism or mainline Protestantism or evangelical Christianity or Catholicism. And as it turns out, the less theology you have or the less theology you share and transfer, the less frequently it turns out the younger generation stays around.

So there’s a very clear message for us here about doctrine and theology, about the gospel and conversion – it’s not enough that evangelical young people come at some point to identify with the gospel of Christ and even with evangelical Christianity. If they do not come to an open intellectual embrace, a heartfelt embrace, of Christian truth, they are not going to continue to identify as the Christians their parents at some point think them to be.

One of the interesting facts that comes out of this study is the fact that 60% of those who identify as evangelicals were raised as evangelicals, 14% were raised his mainline Protestants, 13% as Catholics, 7% as the unaffiliated, 3% as black Protestants, and 2% as other non-Christian faith. So one of the things that it also tells us is that evangelical Christians, though more successful in retaining our own and that converting others than the other groups that are documented here, we honestly are not reaching as many of those outside our own evangelical circles as we might think we are. Let me just point to that last number – only 2% of those who currently identify as evangelical Christians in this study were in any non-Christian faith before they identify as evangelical Christians.

Finally, as I said, we will be looking at other facets of this study in days ahead. It is worthy of that kind of attention; it so effective in helping to explain the world around us. But finally, in terms of covering of this issue today, I want to point to what might be called a new Pauline Kael moment. Pauline Kael was the theater critic of the New York Times. In 1972, after Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide, Pauline Kael was famously quoted as saying, ‘it couldn’t have happened,’ because no one she knew had voted for Richard Nixon. There are questions as to whether she actually said that, although it’s been authoritatively traced to her, but she did say in her own newspaper just a matter of days after the election,

“I live in a rather special world. I know only one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know, they are outside my kin, but sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them,”

Now the reality of that Pauline Kael quote is that it doesn’t tell us anything about America, it tells us a lot about Pauline Kael. It tells us that even when Richard Nixon won 49 states, losing only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, she knew either no one or at least just one person who had voted for Richard Nixon. Which tells us what kind of world Pauline Kael lived in. And thus that quote has been famous ever sense because it points to the increasing secularization, the political isolation of those in the intellectual elites, including Pauline Kael.

But a similar moment came yesterday, in the aftermath of the release of the pew report, when Byron Tau, who is the White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, tweeted:

“From anecdotal experience, the number of people my age that I know who are Christians is close to zero,”

Now just step back for a moment and realize what was there communicated. Here you have a major young figure in the intellectual elite of America; after all he is the White House reporter, or at least a White House reporter, for the Wall Street Journal, one of the nation’s most influential newspapers. And he writes, in all honesty and candor, that so far as his own experiences concerned, let me repeat the words,

“…the number of people my age that I know who are Christians is close to zero,”

As I said, this is something of a new Pauline Kael moment because that statement made by Pauline Kael in the aftermath of the Nixon reelection is rather echoed in the statement made by a White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal. But I don’t raise the young man’s statement in order to criticize him for making it. Rather I simply want to point out that in all honesty, apparently he doesn’t know any Christians, or at least he doesn’t know anyone who identifies as a Christian, who identifies as a Christian to any extent at least that Byron Tao would know that that individual is a Christian. That tells us again what Pauline Kael statement has told us about the New York Times, those who have these kinds of jobs tend to be rather isolated from the rest of the country. That’s made clear even in the pew report.

But this also tells us something else, here you have a young man in one of the most privileged media positions in America who is honestly just reflecting upon this report saying, ‘I don’t know anyone my age who is a Christian,’ in his words,

“…the number of people my age that I know who are Christians is close to zero,”

Without any doubt, that makes a certain statement of reflection upon Byron Tao. Without a doubt it also makes a certain statement about Christians.

2) Calls for full coverage of contraception evidence of pervasive nature of moral revolution

Next, two articles that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times tells a great deal about the revolution taking place around us, about the worldview significance of the headlines that just pop up in the newspapers. In the first place, in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, page A12, you find the headline: White House Warns Insurers about Surcharges and Gaps for Contraception. This has been widely reported in the media, the New York Times tells us along with others, that the White House has been issuing directives to insurance companies – this has to do with authority granted under the ObamaCare legislation – telling these insurance companies that they have to cover all forms of contraception without any kind of copayment required from anyone that has the coverage.

As Robert Pear reports for the New York Times,

“The Obama administration on Monday put health insurance companies on notice that they must cover all forms of female contraception, including the patch and intrauterine devices, without imposing co-payments or other charges.”

This comes after group such as the National Women’s Law Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation; it issued reports indicating that there had been gaps in the coverage from several of the insurance companies. One of the most important sections in this article by Robert Pear includes these words and I quote,

“The new guidance also makes clear that insurers should cover preventive services for transgender people when a doctor finds that the services are medically appropriate.”

That gets into the whole transgender revolution and it tells us here that you can expect this moral revolution, on the issue of gender and sexuality, to be translated – this article also makes clear – into an insurance revolution. Another sign that the Christian worldview affirms, and that is if you make a moral change, it inevitably realigns the entire society. So people who were thinking about the transgender issue probably aren’t first thinking about how this will impact insurance coverage, but now you have the Obama Administration saying not only must insurers cover all forms of female contraception without any copayment, but also these insurers should cover transgender or sex reassignment surgery when advised that such surgery is medically appropriate by a physician.

Now we enter into a whole new terrain in terms of insurance coverage, we enter into a whole new conversation about what medically appropriate means, we enter into a whole new conversation about the economic effects not only on those who are seeking this kind of surgery, but for the rest of the insurance pool paying for it. We now look at the fact that the Christian worldview reminds us that we live in a social whole, we live in a situation in which worldview always works its way out. And we operate from a biblical understanding that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. The biblical worldview starts out with a very clear understanding that if you change the most basic framework of thinking, you’re eventually go to change everything. You are going to change law; you’re going to change social custom.

Yesterday we looked on The Briefing at the fact that people are trying to come up with Mx as a way of replacing Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. and Miss simply because in the transgender revolution, in a denial of what’s being called the binary separation of human beings into male and female, we got an absolute confusion about how to even to address one another. Every portion of the society will be changed. What happens in the school room is going to be changed. What gets published in the textbooks is going to change. How children’s books are published, what kinds of pictures appear in them, that is going to change. And the rules of insurance coverage, that’s going to change too. The entire economy will eventually be changed as well. The biblical worldview affirms what Christians must understand. If you change the way a society thinks morally, eventually you will change everything about that society.

3) Gov. Cuomo attempts to strengthen thin sexual morality of consent on campuses

The second article also appeared in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, this time on page A18, the headline: Cuomo Taking Aim at Campus Sexual Assaults, Calls for a Stricter Law. In this case the Cuomo is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and as Elizabeth Harris reports for the Times,

“[The] Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, appearing at a Manhattan college with Representative Nancy Pelosi, on Monday called for the passage of ‘the toughest law in the nation’ on campus sexual assault, a message aimed at state lawmakers who have expressed some reservations about his proposals.

Harris goes on to tell us that the Gov.’s proposed policies, which are already in place in New York’s public colleges, would require the states private colleges to adopt so-called affirmative consent policies as the standard of student behavior. As Harris says,

“…putting the burden on an accused student to show that the other person had agreed to the sexual activity, rather than making accusers prove that they had said no; silence or lack of resistance would not be considered consent.”

Now the point we’ve made over and over again on The Briefing is that when you deny, when you try to eradicate, a Christian morality based on Scripture when it comes to sex, you’re going to replace it with some morality and this is the sole insufficient, the very thin morality that is left as all a secular society can eventually muster. And that is a morality of sexual consent.

But you’ll notice how this consent has to be renegotiated and redefined all the time. There is something absolutely ludicrous and heartbreakingly tragic about a law that says sexual morality just comes down to consent and that consent now has to be affirmative consent where both parties have to somehow affirmatively consents to a specific act or no consent is given. There is no definition you may note about what that might represent, there is no legal definition yet of what affirmative consent might require. And whether or not the governor gets the law he calls the strictest in the nation, what is abundantly clear is this: it won’t settle the issue, it will not resolve the problem – it can’t.

Oh, and by the way, there are some other incredible moral insights in this article. Let me just read to you this paragraph,

“Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has also proposed that students reporting sexual assaults must not be punished if they were violating a campus policy on drinking or drugs, with the goal of removing the fear that by coming forward, those reporting might be reprimanded, administration officials say.”

So, now students coming forward – and the only morality here is consent – now they are going to be forgiven any alcohol or drug offenses that might have been combined with the incidents simply because that might prevent someone from coming forward. Once again, we just see the confused morality when you have the absence of a coherent biblical ethic.

Just a couple of other quick insights, at least some legislators are complaining about the language of the bill because it defines the two people, the first person as victim and the second as accused. But as some legislators a pointed out, just using common sense, if one is identified as a victim, it is then impossible to say that there is merely an accusation. If one is the victim, then evidently something happened. This is a problem that has already shown up in the media and now you have at least some legislators, undoubtedly some of them attorney, saying these words simply don’t work when put together.

On the other hand, the last insight from this article comes in these words,

“In a statement after the speech, Mr. Cuomo said, ‘As a father of two college-aged girls, with a third on the way next year, this isn’t just an important issue for the state, it’s a personal issue for me as it is for many parents who every fall say goodbye to their children with an expectation that their schools are doing everything they can to keep them safe.’”

Now I close by speaking not only as an observer of the governor’s statements but also as a father. Does any father actually think, in any honest way, that the adoption of these policies will make daughters safe? Safe from what? Presumably so-called safe sex? What we’re looking at here is the meltdown of morality once a Christian biblical ethic is abandoned and denied. Once that biblical ethic is displaced something is going to take its place and this is very sad evidence of evidently the best a secular society can do in trying to come up with some replacement.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com. Remember we are taking questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Just call with your question, in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 05-13-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Warp speed of American secularization evidenced in declining religious landscape

America’s Changing Religious Landscape, Pew Research Center (Staff)

Big Drop in Share of Americans Calling Themselves Christian, New York Times (Nate Cohn)

Americans Unaffiliated With Any Religion Outrank Catholics, Study Says, Wall Street Journal (Tamara Audi)

Pew: Evangelicals Stay Strong as Christianity Crumbles in America, Christianity Today (Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra)

2) Calls for full coverage of contraception evidence of pervasive nature of moral revolution

White House Warns Insurers About Surcharges and Gaps for Contraception, New York Times (Robert Pear)

3) Gov. Cuomo attempts to strengthen thin sexual morality of consent on campuses

Cuomo, Taking Aim at Campus Sexual Assaults, Calls for a Stricter Law, New York Times (Elizabeth A. Harris)