R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 310
May 8, 2015
The Briefing 05-08-15
1) Anniversary of V-E Day should not be neglected as opportunity to thank veterans of WWII
V-E Day, 70 years later, and memories abound in France, USA Today (Bill Hinchberger)
2) NSA phone collecting ruled illegal as court weighs moral goods of liberty and privacy
N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Is Illegal, Appeals Court Rules, New York Times (Charlies Savage and Jonathan Weisman)
3) British elections present surprising success for Conservative Party
Election 2015: Exit poll puts Tories close to majority, BBC
4) Survival of increasingly premature babies underlines fact all fetuses are babies
Premature Babies May Survive at 22 Weeks if Treated, Study Finds, New York Times (Pam Belluck)
5) Researchers ponder whether advantage of loving parents is unjust in equal society
Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?, ABC National Radio (Joe Gelonesi)
May 7, 2015
“Whoever Would Save His Life Will Lose It” — A Charge for Graduates
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:34-38 ESV
The things we choose to surround us often define us. We choose to put before our eyes those objects that are meaningful to us, even if they strike others as odd. My library is filled with many objects that visitors find reassuring, no doubt. But other objects might give visitors pause.
There are several large ship models in my library–all but one from the great age of sail. The one exception is a long scale model of Titanic. That beautiful ship is a parable before my eyes. Titanic stands alone as a symbol of human pride and arrogance; the unsinkable ship sinking on the morning of April 15, 1912 with a loss of 1,500 lives. This very weekend marks the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of another great ship, the Lusitania, torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, with a loss of almost 1,200 lives, including an unprecedented number of children and infants. Titanic struck an infamous iceberg, but the Lusitania was sunk by a ruthless torpedo.
What both ships have in common is the fact that in the first class sections of these liners some of the wealthiest people on the planet went aboard with some of their finest objects — dazzling jewels and even fine art. Those who died took their wealth only as far as the ocean bottom. Some were dancing on the deck just shortly before disaster struck.
All this may seem to be a rather depressing introduction to a charge for graduates of Boyce College. This is a momentous day and a day of genuine joy. Why bring up Titanic and the Lusitania?
Well, because Jesus did. Not exactly, of course. But in Mark 8:34-38 we read our Lord’s warning that those who would save their life will lose it. Those who look for full satisfaction in this life will never gain it. Those who demand their best life now will forfeit life with Christ.
As a matter of fact, what Jesus said was this:
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
In the larger context, Jesus had issued a call to discipleship — “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus is not looking for mere believers, though belief is the first command. Christ has called for those who believe in him to serve him and follow him and obey him — even to take up our own cross as his disciples. The servant, Christ also told us, is not greater than his master.
I was recently looking at a book of commencement speeches. They were mostly unremarkable, but the general tone was that college graduates were told to seize the day and believe in themselves. Well, go seize the day and believe in yourselves. Get a good job and a lot of stuff and smell the roses and develop be happy attitudes. Where does that get you?
Make a fortune and waste it wantonly. Make a name for yourselves and get your name listed at your favorite charity. Bloom where you are planted. What does that gain you?
This really is a great day, and we all feel the promise of it. The promise is genuine. We are marking a major achievement here — one so valuable that people have sacrificed a great deal to make this possible. Professors and teachers have dedicated their lives to this calling — the high calling of Christian scholarship. The graduates before us today have completed major programs of demanding scholarship and have earned the degrees awarded today and the diplomas that will soon hang on walls. Hours upon hours of reading, study, teaching, writing, and learning are represented today by academic gowns and engraved diplomas and honest smiles.
A college degree is no small thing. Today, it is a major dividing line in the economy. The graduates who cross this stage and receive these degrees are not receiving trophies given out without regard to achievement and distinction. Boyce College represents the finest traditions of Christian scholarship, teaching, and learning.
None of these graduates arrives at this moment alone. Parents, grandparents, congregations, and a host of others stand behind the achievement recognized today. But, even if these graduates have not produced themselves, they have produced hard academic labor, and they will cross the stage alone.
Of course, they also mark this day as the object of our prayers and love and expectations. They embody so many of our hopes and we feel their day of commencement as if it were our own.
Graduates, enjoy this day to the fullest, but enjoy it with those who helped bring you to this day. Accept hugs and give hugs as tangible expressions of what cannot be put into words. Look at your fellow graduates and realize that you will never again sit together in this life as you sit together now.
But, this is not just any college, and this cannot be just any charge. This is a school committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. This is a college founded in the name of Christ in service to the church for which Christ died. This cannot be just any charge, for this is not just any college on just any commencement day.
Jesus called the crowd and his disciples to himself, and then called for them to follow him. The logic of Christian discipleship is unlike any other logic you will ever hear. He who would save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for the sake of Christ and his gospel will save it. If anyone is ashamed of Christ and of his words in this generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
That is a lot different than bloom where you are planted. Christ has issued a call to put everything on the line for the sake of following him, and to follow him with the logic of discipleship, not the logic of this world. Seen in light of that logic, this day does not look smaller, but larger, precisely because it now appears in the calendar of God’s sovereign purpose.
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?”
Those questions can be asked–and answered–only in light of the gospel, only in the light of Christ.
Graduates of Boyce College, follow Christ with all your heart for the length of your days. Lose your life to save it. Take up your cross in the name of the One who died on a cross for you. Use the education you have earned for the glory of God and for the sake of the church and for the furtherance of the gospel. You go with our hopes, with our prayers, in our hearts. Be not ashamed of Christ, and he will be unashamed of you. Live every day in anticipation of the coming of the Son of Man in the glory of his Father and with the holy angels.
As Christ himself has reminded us all — What do you have to lose? For the sake of Christ, count it all gain . . . count it all joy.
A Charge to Graduates delivered by R. Albert Mohler, Jr. to the graduating class of Boyce College, May 8, 2015 in Alumni Chapel at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
A special note: This graduating class includes Christopher Albert Mohler, the first son or daughter of a president of Southern Seminary to graduate from this institution. Mary and I are very proud, and for the first time in our many years here, we gladly stand as parents of a graduate. Congratulations, Christopher.
Transcript: The Briefing 05-07-15
The Briefing
May 7, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Thursday, May 7, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) British elections reflect decline of clear British cultural identity
As we said earlier this week about the United States, a major election is not only a worldview contest when it comes to the candidates, it is also very revealing of the worldview of the electric. Keep that in mind when you remember that today is Election Day not in the United States but in the United Kingdom, in Britain. And the election there has vast stakes when it comes to the future of that nation. It also may play a role in indicating the future of politics in this country as well.
That’s because at least in recent decades there has been an interesting parallel between political developments on that side of the Atlantic and this side. The parallels have to do with the fact that for example in the late 1970s Margaret Thatcher came to powers as the Prime Minister of Great Britain, indicating a conservative revolution. That was later to sweep Pres. Ronald Reagan into office in a landslide election in the United States in 1980.
The parallelism between Reagan and Thatcher was matched at least in part with a parallelism that overlapped between American Pres. Bill Clinton and the British Prime Minister then, Tony Blair. And then of course you have the election coming up today in Great Britain and the big question is whether or not the conservative government headed by Prime Minister David Cameron will remain in office.
One of the things that Christians must keep in mind is that the structure and system of government of a people indicates, in terms of the long view, the worldview that has produced that society. That is to say the political system reflects the values and the worldview of the society it would represent. And when it comes to a Democratic system of government that is especially the case, and in United Kingdom we have a parliamentary system of government.
Let’s look at the differences between the election taking place today in the United Kingdom and the election that will take place in 2016 in the United States of America. What is the basic difference between a parliamentary system of government and the system of government here in the United States headed by a president in terms of the chief executive? One of the things to keep in mind is the fact that the British Prime Minister is the head of government, not the head of state. The head of state in the United Kingdom is the Queen, or the reigning monarch of the time. Britain is a constitutional monarchy, the government serves in the name of the monarch and the government is elected by the people. But the parliamentary system of government is very different than what we know here. The head of state is not the head of government, the head of government is not directly elected by the British people.
The British people, when they go to the polls today, will make a single and very significant electoral vote. They will elect their own Member of Parliament. The United Kingdom is divided into 650 parliamentary districts and in every one of those districts the local voters will vote for their Member of Parliament. They will not vote for Prime Minister, they will vote effectively for their own Member of Parliament and for the party that winning candidate will represent.
And then we go to the Parliament itself, remember that there are 650 elected Members of Parliament, they are, virtually every one of them, identified with one of the political parties. The political party that is able to put together 326 seats will eventually form the government. The government is constitutionally formed when the individual who heads the party that is able to assemble at least 326 seats is asked by the monarch to establish the government in the monarch’s name.
Here in the United States the president is directly elected by the people, almost. Actually, the people of the United States here do vote for the president, but they’re actually voting for the electors who will eventually constitute the Electoral College who will elect the president. But in almost every case that means that when voters go into the polling place here in the United States and they vote for a candidate for president, the one who assembles the most votes will eventually be elected by the Electoral College and become president of the United States. But in United Kingdom it is very different with a parliamentary system of government. There, today, when voters go into the voting booth they are going to be voting only for Members of Parliament.
And that leads to a different point, the actual Prime Minister is the individual backed by the coalition or the party that comes up with at least 326 votes – and that can change between elections. So, parties can change Prime Minister because the dominant party can elect a new head of that party who would, if the party is in power, become the new prime minister. If that sounds complicated, it’s because it is. Driven by our own political expectations Americans are likely to wake up on Friday or even to go to bed on Thursday night wondering who was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, when that’s actually not the logical question. The logical question is: which party is gaining dominance? And when it comes to that magic number 326, if not one of the parties has 326 seats, what kind of coalition has to be put together in order to form a government?
That’s where the Christian, especially in the United States, watching the election in Great Britain needs to pay very close attention because even as in our own election we understand that we have two major political parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. And even though there many issues that do not divide them by a chasm of significance, there are many issues that do. Those include moral issues, they include foreign-policy issues, and they include issues related to the economy. But when it comes to Great Britain the difference is separating the parties, especially in recent years, have been even more acute.
The current British government is headed by Prime Minister David Cameron; he heads the conservative party – popularly known in Great Britain as the Tories. But that party did not gain 326 seats in the last election, so it had to enter into a coalition with the Liberal Democrat party. On the other hand you have a second major party in the United Kingdom and that is the Labour Party. The Labour Party has been, at least in terms of its dominant history, a socialist party. That was changed somewhat under the leadership of Tony Blair, and yet after Tony Blair’s departure from the scene that party has swerved even more to the left.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the conservative side, to the Tory party, David Cameron has not been a leader who has followed the pattern of previous conservative Prime Minister’s including Margaret Thatcher. Even though he has put forth what has been called austerity budgets, he has not been a small government leader of his party. And on social issues he has swerved that party, the so-called conservative party, rather wildly to the left as well.
The five major parties on the British ballot tomorrow include the conservatives, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats who had joined with the conservatives to form a coalition government five years ago, the Scottish national party, and the United Kingdom independence party. That’s especially important because as you look to the election today the conservative party has 302 seats – remember it takes 326 to form a government. It is expected that that number will fall to about 276. The Liberal Democrats, with whom the Tories are in power, they are expected to be decimated in today’s election. They currently have 56 seats, that is expected by polling to be reduced to three. The Labour Party, the more liberal party, currently has 256 seats – that’s expected to rise to 272. If you’re doing the math, that means that no party is expected to gain anywhere near enough seats to form a government. So whichever government is eventually formed will be the coalition of parties that most quickly comes up to 326 seats.
It is even more complicated when the party that is expected to gain the most in terms of the election today, that is the Scottish national party, is a party that will take those seats not from the conservatives but rather from the Labour Party and the Labour Party said that it will not form a government with the Scottish national party. Which means that the United Kingdom may have more or less the same kind of government it has now – a government that is headed by the current British Prime Minister David Cameron. But then again, all that can fall apart if the numbers are even slightly off.
From a Christian worldview perspective here’s the big thing we need to note, what we’re witnessing right now is the decline of the United Kingdom, the decline of Britain, made very clear in the fact that Britain no longer knows who it is as a nation. This particular election, and the fact that neither the two major parties is expected come even close to being able form of government, demonstrates a deep social, cultural, and spiritual weakness at the very heart of Britain. After all, just consider the fact that the party that is expected relatively to gain the most in today’s election is a party that represents Scotland wanting to leave the entire nation.
The election today has a great deal to do with the relative place of the United Kingdom in Europe and elsewhere in the world. And as the Financial Times reported just a few days ago, the big concern in the United States is that one of our closest allies – the United Kingdom – is simply falling out of a major player role on the world scene. The headline in the Financial Times was, United States Decries Britain’s Waning Global Influence. The same thing was made clear by columnist Michael Wolff writing in USA Today when he said that the American indifference, generally true about the election taking place today in England, is understandable. He then said,
“Almost every possible election outcome will make Britain less relevant to the United States and less significant in the world. It really is an-end-of- Britain-as-we-know-it sort of moment”
The really concerning thing for us in the United States is that the relative weakness and the decline of one of our closest allies is not good news for the United States. The so-called special relationship that has existed between the United States and Britain ever since the Second World War is now threatened by the fact that Britain seems no longer to know what Britain is, who they are as a nation. And as the influence of Britain is receding on the world scene, that leaves the United States without one of our key allies. And the weakness that is going to be demonstrated in the election today is a weakness that will register in capitals all over the world.
The Christian worldview significance of the election taking place today has to do with the parliamentary system of government as well in Great Britain. One of the strengths of a parliamentary system of government, contrasted with our own, is that the government in power, in accordance with a parliamentary system of government, can’t lose a vote. That means that the government in power has a great deal of forward momentum in terms of accomplishing its own policies. But when you look at the weakness of the parliamentary system, one the most immediate things we see is that when you have the weakness of Britain right now, the kind of coalition, the bargaining that is going to have to take place between the parties to come up with 326 votes, it will almost surely weaken the government and it will weaken the nation. That’s a warning to us.
Both the American constitutional system and the British parliamentary system are deeply rooted in the Christian worldview. Two different applications of what it means to recognize the inherent rights of citizens to determine the shape of their own government. But as we look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of their system versus ours, today is likely to be a significant civics lesson for voters in the United States and for Christians in the United States.
Our constitutional system of government with the division of powers and into three branches in checks and balances, checking the power of each, it has its weaknesses. But as contrasted with the British parliamentary system and the British election taking place today, my guess is that the very few Americans would trade our Constitution for there’s.
As Christians understand , every election is a test of worldview and when it comes to voters in Great Britain the election choice they may face is for a member of Parliament, but the election will actually reveal a great deal more. The election will reveal the worldview of the British people. What do they actually believe, even when it comes to the question: what do they believe about Britain?
2) Secularists note gap between liberal and conservative voters reflects gap in moral values
Next, when it comes to the interaction between worldview and politics it is hard to come up with an article that’s more insightful and important than one that appeared recently at Bloomberg News. The author of the article is Cass Sunstein, who is a law professor at Harvard University. And Sunstein is also the director of the Harvard Law School’s program on behavioral economics and public policy. The most important thing I can do is simply quote from how he begins his article because he’s explicitly talking about worldview and politics. He writes,
“What separates conservatives from liberals? In the past decade, the most illuminating answers to this question have come from Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychologist whose research bears directly on the emerging 2016 presidential campaign — even if his answers might not be quite right.”
Sunstein goes on to write,
“Haidt’s basic finding is simple. Throughout history, human beings have operated under five sets of moral commitments: (1) avoidance of harm, (2) fairness, (3) loyalty, (4) authority and (5) sanctity. Conservatives recognize all five, but liberals recognize only the first two.”
Now if you’re thinking about the importance of a worldview understanding of politics, how could there be anything more important than this? Even if both Haidt and Sunstein are way off in their analysis here, this much is important: they are recognizing that the worldview of an individual directly relates to the electoral decisions made in the polling booth. And as they are now looking, from a secular and rather liberal perspective on how people make these decisions, their understanding is that there are five different issues that conservatives tend to think about when they make their electoral vote. But when it comes to liberals – I’m not saying this, they’re saying this – there are really only two.
Let me quote again from Sunstein’s article. He writes,
“Conservatives and liberals agree on the importance of avoiding harm. If someone assaults someone else, people of every political stripe object. The two sides also agree on the importance of fairness. People who cheat one another, or break promises, meet with bipartisan disapproval — even if people often disagree over what fairness requires.”
Sunstein then writes,
“According to Haidt’s research, what separates conservatives from liberals is that they also care a great deal about loyalty, authority and sanctity. Suppose that people have betrayed their family, or that they have acted disrespectfully toward their parents or their bosses, or that they have engaged in a disgusting act. Conservatives are far more likely than liberals to feel moral outrage.”
What we have here is an extremely revealing analysis. And as I said, the source is not inconsequential to the importance of the article. We’re talking here about a law professor at Harvard University who says, if you want to look at why moral conservatives and moral liberals think differently and vote differently, they are separated, as we have said, by an increasing gulf when it comes especially to moral values. One of the most important things about this article is that both Jonathan Haidt and Cass Sunstein understand that those moral issues are real.
But the most fascinating part of the analysis here is that liberals operate on the basis of two moral criteria and conservatives generally on the basis of five. Liberals and conservatives are agreed on the importance of avoiding harm and the importance of fairness even if sometimes they define these issues differently – that’s important. But the most important aspect is where Haidt and Sunstein now tell us that when it comes to conservatives not only are there the moral criteria of avoiding harm and fairness, but also loyalty and authority and sanctity.
Now let’s look at those three words. Let’s look at the fact that these two political theorists are saying that when it comes to conservatives, moral conservatives, these three issues pertain, they serve as criteria for decision-making, whereas they do not among moral liberals. That is a very interesting analysis because let’s look at those three issues more clearly. First of all, loyalty. This would include, but isn’t limited to what we might call tradition – that is loyalty to a moral tradition that has held a certain moral understandings throughout time. Generally speaking, even if you listen to today’s controversies, there are those on the left who say that what we need to do is to break from tradition in what they would call a progressive arc of moral development, whereas conservatives are saying in that tradition is a moral wisdom we dare not abandon.
The second word here is authority. And that’s really, really revealing, and that’s where time and again we come back on The Briefing to discuss the fact that the issue of biblical authority in particular is the most crucial issue among moral conservatives when it comes to such a thing as the redefinition of marriage or the establishment of sexual morality. The authority here is almost, in every case, explicitly a theological authority. And now we are being told that authority doesn’t even factor as a major issue when liberals are doing their political and moral decision-making.
The third issue that conservatives think about, but liberals don’t according to this analysis, is the issue of sanctity. And just hearing that word sanctity refers by its very essence to holiness. There are certain issues – certain realities – that we believe are sacred simply because we believe there is a god who is established that they should be and that they are good. For instance, the meaning of every single human life – and this includes the issue of abortion or other issues in biomedical ethics – that the sanctity of every human life is established not merely by the fact that it is human, but that every single human life is the creation of a divine creator who has declared that life is his gift.
When it comes to the issues that separate Americans, whether in electoral contest or a public controversy, Jonathan Haidt, according to Sunstein, makes the claim that a cross partisan lines people often fail to understand one another because a moral concern that strongly motivates one group may be obscure or unintelligible to another. Now the point being made by these authors is that when you look at liberals looking at conservatives, liberals are often dumbfounded as to why moral conservatives believe what they believe – and that is generally because liberals aren’t basing their own moral and political analysis on some of the criteria that are most important to conservatives.
Cass Sunstein doesn’t buy all of Jonathan Haidt’s analysis at face value; nonetheless he says he has amassed a mountain of evidence to make the basic structure of his argument very sound. He then writes,
“There’s a big lesson here for those who aspire to public office, including the White House: If they neglect the values of loyalty, authority, and sanctity, they’re not going to speak to the moral commitments of a large segment of the American electorate.”
Now as Christians operating out of a biblical worldview look at this analysis we should be the least surprised people on earth. We should understand that those three words that are so important by this secular analysis of moral conservatism, the words loyalty and authority and sanctity, those are indispensable words to our moral vocabulary. Not only that but when we look to the first two criteria, the criteria conservatives and liberals supposedly share – that is the avoidance of harm and fairness – moral conservatives, Christians in particular, have to understand that we understand those first two issues actually in light of the next three: loyalty and authority and sanctity.
As I said, it is hard to imagine an analysis of moral decision-making and of American politics that is more significant from the perspective of worldview development than this. And what makes it even more important is that it appeared from two secular thinkers operating from a secular worldview, asking the question: what really divides people? And their answer: it is worldview. That’s not the word they use, but that’s exactly the point that they are making.
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. We continue to take questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. 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 05-07-15
1) British elections reflect decline of clear British cultural identity
British Parliamentary Elections 2015, New York Times (Steven Erlanger, Katrin Bennhold, Stephen Castle and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura)
White House no longer sees anything special in UK relations, Financial Times (Geoff Dyer)
Why Britain’s election is such a big deal, USA Today (Michael Wolff)
2) Secularists note gap between liberal and conservative voters reflects gap in moral values
What Conservatives Care About, Bloomberg BusinessWeek (Cass Sunstein)
May 6, 2015
Transcript: The Briefing 05-06-15
The Briefing
May 6, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Wednesday, May 6, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Pressure for religious groups to conform to culture on sexuality opposes biblical fidelity
Before you can have a massive moral change in a society, you have to have a more fundamental change that comes first – that is a worldview change and, at its very base, that’s going to be a spiritual change. It’s going to be in its essence a theological change. The theological convictions that establish the plausibility structures of a society have to change before the definition of marriage can change, before the prevailing sexual morality can change.
We’ve been witnessing for the better part of the last five or six decades a sustained effort to transform America’s sexual morality – it didn’t begin with same-sex relations and it certainly didn’t begin with same-sex marriage. Those are the presenting issues now, but the larger sexual revolution that began in the 1960s was both a sign of, and a driver of, and was itself evidence of, the kind of fundamental spiritual change that had to come before. But on the other side of that moral revolution there has to be a theological argument that buttresses the revolution and helps to keep it in place, that helps to create in the minds of the public the plausibility structures that make the new moral revolution appear to be just the commonsensical morality.
So here’s a pattern that we need to watch. On the other side of this great sexual revolution, in particular on the other side of the normalization of same-sex relationships, and on the other side of the legalization of same-sex marriage, there is going to be intense pressure to reform theological conviction to match the new cultural reality. And the evidence of that comes in an unexpected place, and that is the editorial page of the New York Times. And it comes not from a theologian, at least not explicitly so, but from a law professor at Yale Law School. The law professor is William N. Eskridge Jr., he’s the author of the book “Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Law in America, 1861-2003.” He has been one of the major legal theorist when it comes to the moral revolution around us, and we need to note that in the larger cultural conversation in which we are all a part we are facing not only moral issues, and legal arguments, we’re also facing theological arguments as well. Rarely in such an undisguised form as that found in this article that appeared just a few days ago in the New York Times.
Eskridge begins by looking back last week to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the same-sex marriage case and he says that the plaintiffs in that case were, in his words, committed gay couples who were seeking the right to marry and they had the opportunity to bring their case to the Supreme Court. And as they did so, various groups filed supporting arguments known as amicus briefs before the nation’s highest court. As he points out, those brief were offered by American corporations, by a good number of American law professors and other academics, by players in the NFL, and as he says, by a past chairman of the Republican national committee. But the real point of his article comes in the second paragraph when he writes,
“Religious groups are on their side, too. While several prominent religious organizations have filed briefs in opposition, leaders in the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the official organizations of conservative and reform Judaism, and more than 1,900 theologians signed a brief urging the court to legalize same-sex marriage.”
The importance of this article that appeared in the New York Times by a law professor at Yale is that you have in the larger culture, even on the other side of this moral revolution now progressing so far and at such velocity, the apparent and explicit need for them to make theological arguments. To put the matter bluntly, they need the church to get in line.
And their examples of churches that have gotten in line with the new moral revolution are, at least in part, the very churches that professor Eskridge notes: the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Episcopal Church, and the United Church of Christ. He also points to other religious groups that you would think would oppose same-sex marriage, at least if you’re looking at the names on the groups, including conservative Judaism. But the point to think about when it comes to conservative Judaism is that that is not Orthodox Judaism. The conservative Jewish movement is not theologically conservative in this sense. Reform Judaism is the most liberal of the organized major branches of Judaism, and it has been in support of the legalization of same-sex marriage and the normalization of homosexuality now for some time.
Writing as if all of this is a surprise, this law professor says,
“That’s not where religion is supposed to fall. American religion is, in the view of many, stubbornly wedded to traditional one man, one woman marriage and is at war with efforts to expand civil marriage.”
But his whole point here in this paragraph is that’s what you’re supposed to think is going on but he argues that’s not what really is going on. Instead he says there is a great theological revolution taking place and he’s pointing to the trajectory that American churches and synagogues and mosques, American religion in general, is going to get in line with this new moral revolution. He then writes,
“The faith traditions supporting marriage equality are telling the court that religions, like American families, are diverse. An increasing number of Bible-based faith communities have an inclusive attitude toward gay families and marriages.”
Now on what authority does a law professor at Yale, whose been a major legal theorist for the gay-rights movement, have – in arguing – that it is “Bible-based religions” or as he says here “bible-based faith communities” that are joining the revolution? Well let’s just say that that requires a radical redefinition of the phrase Bible-based.
When you look at the very organizations and denominations that William Eskridge cites, he’s pointing to those denominations that are decidedly not Bible-based in any sense of understanding the Bible as the revealed word of God. Rather they are Bible-based only in the sense that they claim some continuing allegiance to the stories and to the narrative of the Scriptures. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about on Monday in the article that appeared in the Washington Post on Christianity without Christ. Evidently you can also add Judaism without torah. At least without the torah understood as the revealed word of God.
Now we ought to pay attention when an article like this appears in the pages of America’s most influential newspaper, and we should also note the irony, indeed the oddity, of a law professor at Yale instructing us on theology when it comes even to the exegesis and interpretation of the New Testament. This is what he writes and I quote,
“In his teachings, Jesus emphasized love for one’s neighbor and tolerance for the many kinds of people in the world. Jesus instructed his followers, ‘Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.’ These are not lessons that ought to inspire disrespect for two women in a committed partnership who have four adopted children — two of whom have special needs — as one of the plaintiff couples in Obergefell v. Hodges do.”
My point, he says,
“…is not that the Bible must be read in a gay-friendly way; it is simply that the Bible is open to honest interpretations that refuse to condemn or that even embrace such families. I am doubtful that Scripture speaks with one voice about how to define civil marriage.”
Now those are some complicated sentences, but the bottom line in all of this is that here we have a law professor at Yale who has been a major theorist for the gay-rights movement instructing us about how we are to understand the teachings of Jesus. And yet, what’s even more important is that he feels that he needs to. And what’s equally important is that the New York Times felt that it was important to its cause to run this article. That really tells us something.
When we look closer at the argument he is going back to where Jesus says, ‘judge not and you shall not be judged,’ it is clear that Jesus is not telling his disciples not to make moral judgments. After all this is the very same Jesus who is revealed throughout the New Testament and especially for instance in a passage such as in the gospel of Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount in which he is teaching his disciples how to make moral judgments. He is making a very clear statement that we are in no position as sinners to condemn other sinners to damnation – that is God’s business. He is not telling his disciples that we are not to make moral judgments. And when it comes to the definition of marriage, Jesus was abundantly clear in the very same gospel, in the gospel of Matthew, he pointed out that through Moses God gave the definition of marriage in the law as a man and a woman and it was always intended to be so. Jesus, by the way, doesn’t root the authority for that definition of marriage in the law, but rather in creation as he says, ‘from the beginning.’
In a really interesting section of this law professors article he says,
“Assume that I am wrong and that the Bible unequivocally demands that marriage be defined as one man, one woman. Does that require people of faith to disrespect and exclude gay couples? No, it doesn’t. A recent example is telling.”
He then goes to the Bible’s very clear condemnation of adultery and to Jesus’ very clear condemnation of divorce. He then writes,
“A generation ago, many Christian churches followed these biblical admonitions and would not sanction what they viewed as ‘adulterous’ second marriages. Today, in large part because of the power of changing social norms, it is no longer common for most Protestant churches to refuse to marry a woman to a man who had divorced his previous wife. And few churches would exclude or disrespect a couple because either spouse had married before.”
Well is what he says true or false? Well to a considerable extent what he says there is true and we need to note exactly what he’s arguing. He’s arguing that America’s Protestant churches in the main joined the moral revolution when it comes to divorce, and in that sense evangelical Christians simply have to concede guilty as charged. Far too many American churches and denominations have done exactly what this law professor accuses us of doing, and that is accommodating morally to the divorce culture long before the issue of same-sex marriage or the normalization of same-sex relationships came along.
And yet before we draw a one-to-one correlation between that issue and the arrival of same-sex marriage, we need to recognize that even when it came to a marriage after a divorce, even when it came to a marriage after adultery, the Christian church never said that those marriages themselves cannot be a marriage – instead they said that those marriages are disordered marriages. That’s a fundamentally different argument, and that’s where the Christian church now, on biblical authority, cannot then look to same-sex couples and declares them to be married even in disordered marriages. That’s because if you have a biblical definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, you can then understand that there are some marriages between a man and a woman that are disordered, according to Scripture. But they are not, by that definition, not married.
But when it comes to same-sex a couple, that is a fundamentally different argument. It’s also interesting here that when you have this law professor making this argument, he’s pointing mostly to liberal mainline Protestant denominations. He can’t say this about the Catholic Church because it has not changed its position on this, at least in terms of its doctrinal teaching, and he completely misconstrues the issue when he draws a one-to-one correlation between the kind of marriages he says that most Protestant denominations have come to accept and same-sex marriage. The acceptance of which he is clearly arguing will be in evitable by most churches. The argument he is making is that if we could fast forward in history just a few years, he suggest you will find most religious groups having come to terms with the moral revolution and with the legalization of same-sex marriage.
But we need to note two other paragraphs in the law professor’s article. In one he writes,
“Some congregations will double down, not only reaffirming their understanding of traditional marriage but denouncing gay people even more fervently. The First Amendment gives them the right to react this way.”
One thing we need to note there is that he is equating those who hold to a traditional biblical understanding of marriage and what he calls the denunciation of gay people. Now we need to remember that what’s being demanded is not just the legalization of same-sex marriage, but the celebration of same-sex relationships – that’s embedded in that paragraph. He then writes and I quote,
“But if all 50 states issue marriage licenses on an equal basis, more same-sex couples will choose to wed. Some religious communities will take this as an opportunity to reconsider their views of those committed unions, and quietly welcome these families into their houses of worship.”
He’s onto something in that paragraph and he points to the way that some churches and denominations will surrender on this issue without ever publicly declaring that they are doing so. They will just quietly make their piece with same-sex couples and except those in same-sex relationships into the fellowship of their churches and denominations without any kind of public statement.
The most important thing that those operating from a biblical worldview need to understand from this article is the very fact that it happened. And that it comes from a law professor at Yale University, a major legal theorist for the gay-rights movement, it isn’t even coming from someone who is a theologian or anyone from within the world of the mainline Protestant denominations and the more liberal groups that he’s describing here. His real target audience is the larger culture and what he’s saying is, ‘just wait, most religious groups will get in line and make their peace with this revolution.’
That raises a big issue for biblical Christians, is it going to be true? And this is where we have to understand that the cultural pressure will be enormous. We have to understand that the coercive power of the society around us will be pervasive, and we have to understand that there is only in the end one authority that will keep us from surrendering on this issue from advocating an understanding of marriage the Christian church is held for two millennia, and that is the authority of Scripture itself.
If the Bible is not the revealed word of God, then we can indeed join the revolution – and there is no fundamental reason why we would not. But if the Bible is the word of God, and if God defined marriage in the Bible as he does, then we have no choice but to obey and to receive that definition of marriage and to understand that we are not merely bound by biblical authority – as Martin Luther made very clear – it is biblical authority that liberates us to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is on the authority of Scripture and Scripture alone that we even know what that gospel is.
Before leaving this issue, Daniel Burke at CNN has written another article; the headline is, Poll Shows Growing Religious Support For Same-Sex Marriage. This too doesn’t really come as a surprise. He writes for CNN,
“In 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court became the country’s first to legalize same-sex marriage, less than 30% of religiously affiliated Americans supported gays’ and lesbians’ right to wed.”
That’s back in 2003, let’s just remember that’s not ancient history, we’re talking about 12 years ago. He then says,
“By 2014, that number had climbed to 47%, according to a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute. That’s more than the 45% who said they opposed same-sex nuptials.”
The margin he says is small, but statistically significant. And he says that is true not only because the survey included such a large pool of respondents, but because of the generational pattern that it reveals. That generational pattern especially has to do with the fact that as you go younger in the American population the percentages in favor of the legalization of same-sex unions and the normalization of homosexual relationships go up tremendously – and they do so in a very clearly identifiable pattern.
So the argument being made now by many is that inevitable American religious organizations are going to join the revolution because the younger adherence of every one of these faith traditions, as they are called in the secular media, will force this to happen. Once again we have to ask the question, will that be true? Well obviously time will tell. But what will really be revealing here is what younger evangelical Christians believe about the Bible and about the nature and authority, the inspiration and inerrancy, of the Scripture. And we come back again and again to the fundamental bedrock issue and that is this: it is always the bedrock question of whether or not God has spoken in his word because if God has spoken in his word, then we have his revelation in the Scriptures, in the Bible, and we have the definition of marriage and God’s pattern for human sexuality.
And even though we can understand, and indeed sympathize, with the fact the younger evangelicals are under even greater pressure than many on the other side of the age divide, the issue always remains, and it will ever be so until Jesus comes. The issue is do we believe the Bible to be the word of God? If we do then we simply have no option of exchanging the Bible’s definition of marriage for any other.
2) Journalist notes traditional religious convictions are the new moral sin of American society
Finally, just a few days ago Charlotte Allen wrote the houses of worship article for the Wall Street Journal and it has a very interesting headline all to its own: Modern Sin: Holding Onto Your Beliefs. She writes that the way to sin, in terms of contemporary postmodern American culture, is to hold onto religious convictions – at least any religious convictions that are tied to what the Christian church has taught for 2000 years and what is revealed in Scripture.
She writes about the moral revolution particularly on the issue of same-sex marriage, and she points out how the argument on the other side has changed just in the last several years – in the span of far less than a decade. She writes,
“The irony is that only a few years ago, when the legalization of same-sex marriage didn’t appear so inevitable, gay-marriage advocates eagerly assured a skeptical public that scenarios like those above would never happen. Typical was since-retired California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who wrote in the 2008 decision legalizing gay marriage in that state: ‘Affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person.’”
Well as Charlotte Allen says, that’s already happening contradicting what was promised just back in 2008. She then writes,
“The victors have dropped their conciliatory stance. Bubonic plague-level hysteria surged through the media, academia and mega-corporate America in March after Indiana passed a law—modeled on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993—that would enable religious believers to opt out of universally applicable laws under some circumstances.”
She points out that in the face of enormous cultural pressure the law was changed by the Indiana legislature at the request of the Indiana Governor. But she points out that when we look at the oral arguments that took place just last week – and you’ll recall that in that exchange just last week you had justice Samuel Alito ask the solicitor general the United States, if religious institutions opposing same-sex marriage might lose their tax exemption, and the solicitor general conceded it will be a question. She then writes,
“…in today’s mood of vengeful triumphalism among the progressive elites who rule public opinion, don’t count on many compromises.”
That’s a very important expression. Charlotte Allen has stated the situation exactly right, she’s done so with crystal clarity. She writes about what she calls the vengeful triumphalism now amongst the moral and intellectual elites, and she says if you just look at the concession made by the solicitor general of the United States in the Supreme Court chambers last week you will see that triumphalism. And when you look at the national media, such as the article I just cited earlier in The Briefing by the law professor at Yale, William Eskridge, you notice that same triumphalism. She says, and let me just repeat her words,
“…in today’s mood of vengeful triumphalism among the progressive elites who rule public opinion,”
Her final words are haunting,
“…don’t count on many compromises.”
As we have to say so often, we cannot say we were not warned.
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.
I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 05-06-15
1) Pressure for religious groups to conform to culture on sexuality opposes biblical fidelity
It’s Not Gay Marriage vs. the Church Anymore, New York Times (William N. Eskridge, Jr)
Poll shows growing religious support for same-sex marriage, CNN (Daniel Burke)
2) Journalist notes traditional religious convictions are the new moral sin of American society
Modern Sin: Holding On to Your Belief, Wall Street Journal (Charlotte Allen)
May 5, 2015
Transcript: The Briefing 05-05-15
The Briefing
May 5, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Tuesday, May 5, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Value of democratic process as a national worldview test enhanced by increase of candidates
As of this morning there are five, as of later today most likely six, in coming weeks certainly more – we’re talking about declared candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2016. As of last week there were three United States senators that were declared candidates: Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul. The timing of the announcement made by those senators is at least in part due to the rules of the United States Senate when it comes to campaigning.
At the end of last week retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson added his name to the mix, announcing in an interview with the media the he would also be a candidate for the Republican nomination. In yesterday’s news he released a video announcing his campaign. But Carson’s video released yesterday wasn’t the only an announcement. Similarly former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, who would also run previously for the United States Senate from California, announced that she would be an official candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016.
Later today it is expected that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will also make his announcement. As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, both Carson and Fiorina are hoping to build support among voters disenchanted with Washington and the Republican leadership. Ben Carson was world-famous as a neurosurgeon; he is one of the most famous pediatric neurosurgeons in world history – long before he did anything that would promise any future in politics. In 2013 he spoke at the national prayer breakfast and in so doing he made very clear that he was concerned about the nation’s morals and what he called its moral decay – speaking of the larger culture. The Wall Street Journal had responded then with an editorial entitled, Ben Carson for president, speaking of the boldness with which the neurosurgeon had spoken at that national prayer breakfast. But that was then and this is now.
Now as the 2016 race has begun in earnest, there will be an increased media attention upon Dr. Carson and even as he is being championed by many for his stand on social issues, the glare of national attention will now come to his positions on a number of issues that he has not had to speak to in the past – including foreign-policy and domestic affairs, including the economy.
Carly Fiorina has been a major figure in American corporate life, most famously including her tenure as the chief executive officer of the computer giant Hewlett-Packard. But when it comes to national politics, or for that matter state politics, even local politics, neither Dr. Carson nor Carly Fiorina arena has ever held an elective office. That points to one of the very interesting aspects of the American electorate when it comes to both parties, at least in cycles. Voters in both parties tend to say they want an outsider for President of the United States, but when it comes to actually voting those same voters who say they want an outsider to the political system, they virtually never choose the outsider they say they prefer. Businessman Ross Perot ran as a third-party candidate and a corporate businessman like Herman Cain who did run in the Republican primaries did not make it all that far.
The Washington Post yesterday ran a very interesting editorial to this point. In one sense the Washington Post is something like the consummate insider media guide because it is after all the Washington Post. The editors of the Post point out that the last time a major American political party nominated an individual who had neither held elected office nor won a major war was in 1940 and that candidate was the failed candidate Wendell Willkie. It was in 1952, that was the last time either the major parties nominated as President of the United States an individual who had not held previous elected office, and that of course was the Republican candidate Dwight David Eisenhower – who had after all been the supreme commander of allied forces in Europe during World War II and was generally considered to be the most respected man in America at the time.
When it comes to Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, they’ve got a rather awesome mountain to climb, but this is after all the political process that they have decided to enter, and this does give voters a genuine choice. One of the most interesting things that will happen over the next several weeks and months is that Americans, first in places especially liked Iowa and with the media focus the rest of us looking over the shoulders of Iowans, are going to gain a keen insight into who these candidates are, how they handle the pressure, what their positions are on an array of issues, and whether or not when Americans look at these candidates they see a President in the making.
The editors of the Washington Post make the rather obvious assertion that the presidency is generally not considered to be a starter job, but they end their editorial yesterday with these words and I quote,
“As of today, Ms. Fiorina and Mr. Carson are politicians on the national stage; we look forward to seeing what they can do.”
That’s the attitude we should all take when it comes to any of these announcements made by any of these candidates. Let’s indeed see what they can do. Once they made the announcement that Fiorina and Carson made just in the last couple days, they are the Washington Post editorial board stated, politicians on the national scene and we’re going to find out indeed what they’re made of.
That’s where Christians looking at an election process like this have to understand that the dance of democracy is a very important process. More than anything else we understand that it is an exercise in the fact that a candidates worldview will eventually come out. In that sense a national election is perhaps one of the most regularly scheduled worldview tests not only for candidates but also for the electric. We find out what their worldview is inevitably, but the electoral results don’t really reflect their worldview so much as ours. Since this is a democratic republic, in short order we’re going to find out not only a great deal about the candidates, we’re to find out a great deal about the American people and what the American people actually believe. Their worldview, our worldview, will also assuredly come out.
Finally on the topic of the 2016 elections, later today it is expected that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will also make his announcement that he will be a candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016. Back in the 2008 presidential cycle on the Republican side Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses and then went on to win seven other states in terms of a race for the Republican nomination. The eventual nominee of course in 2008 was Mitt Romney. Since leaving the 2008 race and the governorship of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee has gone on to be a rather successful conservative speaker and commentator on Fox News with his own program until he had to leave Fox news in preparation for this expected announcement.
When it comes to having run for the republic nomination back in 2008, the good news for Mr. Huckabee is that a good many of voters know a great deal about him – and the fact that he actually won the Iowa caucuses and seven other states. Of course when it comes to that political calculation there is also the fact that it was back in 2008 that he won the Iowa caucuses and those seven other states, and in terms of electoral politics that’s an entire generation ago. In other words, the profound reality at the end of today begins where it left off and leaves off where it began.
By the time the sun goes down tonight there will be, by all reckoning, six declared candidate for the Republican nomination and it is likely that at least one Governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and a former Governor, Jeb Bush of Florida will also join the fray. There could well be others. The bottom line is that the race for the Republican nomination is wide open and the worldview questions of course are wide open as well.
2) Texas gunmen exposes collision between honor religion of Islam and gospel religion
Yesterday on The Briefing we talked about the late breaking news that had to do with the killing of two gunmen outside a cultural center in Garland, Texas outside of Dallas. The two gunmen had been shot by Dallas police after they had opened fire and the big question was, was this some kind of random incident or was this part of the larger challenge of Islamic terrorism? And yet, as the New York Times reported yesterday, as we had feared, the story was bigger than may have at first appeared.
Reporting from Garland, Texas the New York Times writes,
“One was an extrovert drawn to basketball as well as to Islam, who had been identified by the F.B.I. as a jihadist terrorism suspect and was once a regular at Friday Prayer at a mosque near his Phoenix apartment. The other was more quiet, ran a carpet cleaning business in Phoenix and often prayed at the same mosque, sometimes accompanied by his young son.”
As reporters Manny Fernandez, Richard Pérez-Peña and Fernando Santos tell us, it is not entirely clear what led the two men identified as Elton Simpson, age 30, and Nadir Hamid Soofi, age 34, who lived in the same apartment complex in Phoenix, to come to the Dallas suburb and open fire on Sunday outside a gathering that showcased artwork and cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. The shootout, according to the Times, during which Mr. Simpson and Mr. Soofi dressed in body armor, fired assault rifles at police officers left both of them dead. But then the Time states the most important of the revelations,
“What has become clear, however, is that what took place in a suburban Texas parking lot near a Walmart has pointed up the volatile tensions between the West’s embrace of free expression and the insistence of many Muslims that depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is a sacrilege. It served as a grim reminder of the attack 16 weeks ago on the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper.”
Now, the story coming out of Garland is decidedly still somewhat confused. It isn’t known if this is part of a larger conspiracy for a network of Islamic terrorism. It is known that one of the men was known as a terrorism and jihadist suspect by the FBI. As the Times reports,
“Mr. Simpson, an American-born convert to Islam who was adored by the young men who frequented the Islamic Community Center in northwest Phoenix, was convicted in 2011 of lying to F.B.I. agents — denying that he had made plans to travel to Somalia when in fact he had. Federal prosecutors charged that he wanted to go ‘for the purpose of engaging in violent jihad,’ but a judge ruled that the government had not proved that part of the charge, and sentenced him to three years’ probation.”
Just several months ago, according also to national media, the FBI and local law enforcement in Phoenix had opened a new investigation into Mr. Simpson, but it appears that there had been no federal investigation of Mr. Soofi. This points to the fact that even though we have a vast law enforcement network, even though we have a vast system of intelligence even when it comes to terrorism threat, there is no way that every single person who might be involved in jihadist efforts can be identified – much less tracked. And as the action of the federal judge in the case of Mr. Simpson makes clear, even when someone is at least accused by prosecutors of being a potential jihadist, if the government doesn’t prove its case according to American law, then the case falls apart. And in this case the man was simply given probation for lying to the FBI.
What is abundantly clear to anyone looking at this situation is, as the New York Times has suggested, the situation at Charlie Hebdo has now come to the United States and it comes with the full force of all the worldview issues that are at its very base. There is a direct collision between the Western ideal of the free expression of ideas and the Muslim understanding that it is a sacrilege that ought to be punished – indeed often by violence – to depict the prophet Mohammed, much less than a way that is satirical. Islam in that definition is an honor religion, and time and again we have to point to the vital contrast between Islam, a religion that teaches the duty of every faithful Muslim to protect Islam from any dishonor and especially the prophet Muhammad from any dishonor, even the dishonor of being graphically depicted. And on the other hand Christianity which is not an honor religion – or at least it isn’t an honor religion when it comes to the disciples of Jesus Christ being assigned the responsibility to defend his honor. It was he who would be despised and rejected of men. He took our dishonor, he bore human scorn on our behalf, he does not call his disciples to protect his honor.
Now the book of Revelation does make clear that he will vindicate his own name, and as the book of Philippians tells us, when that Day of Judgment comes every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father. But that is brought about by divine judgment and by the divine will, not by the disciples of Jesus Christ because we are not assigned that responsibility nor do we have that authority. Rather we are to be witnesses of the one who is identified in Scripture as the suffering servant. We are to be witnesses of the gospel of the one who laid his life down willingly for his own. We are to preach the gospel, not to defend the honor of Jesus. And now that we have this that even the secular worldview understand as a direct collision between the Western ideal of free expression and the Muslim understanding of the honor of the prophet Mohammed, we as Christians have to understand that that’s not the only collision we are witnessing. The even more profound collision is between Islam as an honor religion and Christianity as a gospel religion. Let us remember the instructions that Jesus gave to Peter when Peter was tempted to try to act to defend the honor of Jesus. As Jesus told Peter, put away your sword.
3) Fascination over Nepali deities reveals distance between secular and Eastern worldviews
Finally as we are thinking about the clash of worldviews, our hearts continue to go out for the people of Nepal, even as the death toll in terms of that nation’s recent earthquake has now exceeded 6,000. As we are praying for the people of Nepal, and we need to continue to pray because the rebuilding of that nation and the grieving of those families will surely continue for many months to come, we also have a bit of display of the differences between the majority religious faith of Nepal on the one hand and Christianity on the other.
One testimony to this came over the weekend in a cover story that appeared in the Financial Times, the headline; Houses Of Nepal’s Child Goddesses Stand Intact Amid Quake Devastation. As reporters Victor Mallet and Binod Bhattarai report from Kathmandu,
“Amid the devastation of Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, where the old royal palace and Hindu temples were reduced to rubble by last week’s earthquake, one house …stands almost unscathed: the home of the Kumari, the city’s living child-goddess and the nation’s protector.”
One of the members of the family that guards the 10-year-old girl revered by Nepal’s Hindu said,
“We believe that it was her powers that might have protected the place, although there are some cracks inside…”
That man, who was one of the protectors of the child goddesses, stood outside the intricate wooden doors, says the Financial Times,
“…of the Kumari House, leaning on one of the brightly painted stone lions that guard the entrance and watching troops and rescue teams sift through the debris of the historic square with their bare hands,”
As the Financial Times reminds us, it was a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in central Nepal a week ago this past Saturday that killed more than 6,000 people; including tourist who were then visiting fragile Hindu temples, villagers in whose homes were destroyed in the foothills of the Himalayas, and climbers swept away in an avalanche that tore through Everest base camp. But in the aftermath of the earthquake we also have the support in the Financial Times telling us about Kumari, identifies as the 10-year-old girl who is Kathmandu’s child goddesses and the protector of the nation.
The Financial Times goes on to tell us that Matina Shakya, who is Kathmandu’s Kumari, is the most prominent of the child goddesses who represent the fearsome Hindu goddess Durga and are worshiped in the poly towns until they reach puberty and are replaced. When the earthquake struck says the Financial Times, demolishing most of the older structures in the square, she was upstairs in the house where she is revered and had just finished eating. The Time says it isn’t clear how the Kumari, as she is known, reacted to the earthquake, although the selection process for the position is so severe that she might have been less frightened than other girls her age. Now I read directly from the Financial Times again when I read,
“…not only must a Kumari have a body like a banyan tree and a neck like a conch-shell; she must also calmly endure a test of nerve in which the young candidates are confronted in the dead of night by men in demon masks and a roomful of severed buffalo heads.”
Now when we talk about a clash of worldviews, often we’re talking about something that is far more subtle than this. It tells us a great deal that this appears on the front page of one of the most influential newspapers in the world, the Financial Times published in London, and the very placement of this new story in the Financial Times tells us that the editors of that paper, along with the reporters behind this story, understood that here you have something that would interest Western readers precisely because of that clash of worldviews – although they almost certainly wouldn’t put it that way.
There certainly is a direct contrast here between biblical Christianity as we know it and the fact that here you have in Nepal 10-year-old girls who are child goddesses and especially child goddesses who are considered to be protectors of the people over against a very fearsome Hindu deity – in this case a Hindu goddess. That tells us a great deal about the contrast between Christianity and a different belief system, in this case very specifically Hinduism. Hinduism being at least in this senses a subset of an Eastern worldview with its cyclical pattern and within this case of Hindu a very polytheistic worldview.
But what we also need to note is that the placement on the front page of the story in the Financial Times tells us that the editors of this paper almost assuredly looked at the very existence of the Kumari in Kathmandu as pointing to something that is quite obviously different than the worldview of most of the readers of the Financial Times. But that raises an obvious question, what do the editors of the Financial Times think that the default worldview of their own readers might be? If it’s one that would find as absolutely astonishing the existence of the Kumari in Kathmandu, what would the editors of the Financial Times think that the default worldview of their own readers might look like?
Well, when it comes to the Financial Times it’s pretty indicative of the worldview of the Western elites, a highly secularized worldview. It should tell us something that in Kathmandu the existence of the Kumari, understood to be a 10-year-old girl, makes sense and to the editors of the Financial Times and others in the Western elites, the modern secular worldview simply makes sense, it is simply obvious because it’s the most prevalent and accessible worldview.
But Christians must always keep in mind that worldviews are never quite so obvious and that’s why we have to give such careful in strategic biblical attention to developing a worldview that is indeed Christian rather than simply picking up the default worldview around us. It is easy to see when it takes place on the part of others; it takes far more discipline to make sure that it doesn’t happen in our own thinking and in our own hearts. To be a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ in obedience, is to develop a worldview that is genuinely Christian and genuinely biblical. And the Bible itself is our only rescue from the worldviews of the age around us.
4) Hindu pyres following quake reminder of significance of Christian doctrine of resurrection
Finally, another article from Kathmandu that demonstrates the consequences of worldview thinking; Chicago Tribune newspapers reporter Julie Makinen reported a story with the headline, Hindu Funeral Pyres Line the River. As she reports, the funeral pyres are now following the rivers outside Kathmandu. She describes a scene whereby one family stacked the body of one of its victims on a funeral pyre and hired a professional body burner to stack logs of the salwood, a teak-like timber, onto a small platform and then laid packets of ghee, a clarified butter amidst the timbers to ensure the flames would take light.
One by one, we are told, the women’s three sons prostrated themselves at her feet, their weeping uncontained by the surgical master stretched across their faces. Then we are told the eldest son performed an ultimate responsibility of the eldest son, laying the flaming stick that started the funeral pyre that consumed her body. I will not going to further detail from the story, but as Makinen ends the news report she says,
“Ideally, the dead are cremated on the day of death or the day after. But like many Nepalese men, [this woman’s] sons were working overseas and had to fly home for her funeral, so her rites were delayed until Monday.”
But as is reported, with the death toll now exceeding 6,000, the funeral pyres continue to burn especially along the rivers of Nepal. One of things we need to note very quickly is the reason why this kind of very formal cremation is very much a part of the Hindu understanding of death is because they understand the necessity of freeing the spirit from the imprisonment in the body. This is not something that is unique to Hinduism and it’s a rather complicated belief. But it comes down to a direct contrast with Christianity and to the reason why Christianity throughout its history, along with Judaism, has traditionally disfavored cremation.
It is because cremation in the societies of most cultures is understood to be tied to a worldview in which there is some necessity of the spirit gaining release from the body – often understood as an imprisonment in the body. To put the matter squarely, here we have another glaring contrast from which we ought to learn a great deal. Biblical scriptural Christianity doesn’t hold in any sense that we are spirits trapped within a body, rather we are a psychosomatic unity – as evangelical theologians have affirmed – body and soul together. The spirit in the body combined, even in the sense that we are saved by the power of the resurrected Christ who was, we remind ourselves, bodily resurrected and as he is now so we shall one day be. Not liberated from our bodies, but instead experiencing by God’s grace, a glorified body.
We will not inhabit this earthly body, first Corinthian 15 tells us that it must pass a way, but we look forward to a resurrection body. That is the promise, not liberation from the body, but a glorified perfected body as a part of the promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As he is now, in terms of this body, so one day we shall be. He is the first born of many brothers.
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.
I’m speaking to you from Pompano Beach, FL, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 05-05-15
1) Value of democratic process as a national worldview test enhanced by increase of candidates
Three New GOP Candidates to Enter 2016 Race, Wall Street Journal (Reid J. Epstein and Elizabeth Williamson)
Ben Carson for President, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)
Enter the un-politicians for 2016, Washington Post (Editorial Board)
2) Texas gunmen exposes collision between honor religion of Islam and gospel religion
Gunman in Texas Was F.B.I. Suspect in Jihad Inquiry, New York Times (Manny Fernandez, Richard Pérez-Peña and Fernando Santos)
3) Fascination over Nepali deities reveals distance between secular and Eastern worldviews
Nepal earthquake fails to shake child goddess from her home, Financial Times (Victor Mallet and Binod Bhattarai)
4) Hindu pyres following quake reminder of significance of Christian doctrine of resurrection
Hindu Funeral Pyres Line the River, Chicago Tribune (Julie Makinen)
May 4, 2015
Aftermath
This message was originally delivered as a breakout session at The Gospel Coalition 2015 National Conference
Transcript: The Briefing 05-04-15
The Briefing
May 4, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Monday, May 4, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Gunmen killed at anti-Islamic Texas art show raise question of international involvement
As morning broke on Monday it was clear that a new story that broke late Sunday night will require further information. As Reuters reported, two gunmen opened fire Sunday evening at an art exhibit in Garland, Texas – that’s near Dallas. The art exhibit had been organized by an anti-Islamic group and it featured caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. The gunmen were themselves shot dead at the scene by police officers. As Reuters reported, the shooting was an echo of past attacks or threats in other Western countries against art depicting the prophet Mohammed. It took place in the parking lot of the Curtis Colwell center there in Garland, located northeast of Dallas.
At this point it is not clear exactly what was taking place in this incident, though as a spokesperson for the police said,
“I have no idea who they are,”
Speaking of the dead gunmen,
“…other than that they’re dead and in the street,”
As a precaution, Dallas-area police were examining the suspect’s car for any explosives that might be in the vehicle. As I said, this is one of the stories that will require a great deal of further information. At this point police in Dallas and the law enforcement and national security officials elsewhere are aware of the fact that this may be a major story – then again it might not be. This might be a story with major international repercussions; then again it might be basically a local law enforcement story there in the area of Dallas. Time will tell.
2) Baltimore officers charged with Freddie Gray death, illustrating value of judicial system
In the meantime the headlines alone serve to remind us that a major story can interrupt virtually anywhere, anytime, without any kind of warning. Often we simply have to wait for more information to be available in order to put the story into context and to know just how big a story this might be.
Meanwhile, the nation knows the city of Baltimore is Ground Zero of a very big story and over the weekend it was announced that six law enforcement officers will face charges in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray – the young man, an African-American young man, who died after being taken into custody by Baltimore police. The death of Freddie Gray led to widespread protests in the streets of Baltimore that turned violent, leading not only to the arrest of many protesters but to the torching and looting of several Baltimore area businesses and to the serious injury of the least about a half-dozen Baltimore police officers.
But as the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday morning, six police officers were charged on Friday in the death of Freddie Gray, as Baltimore’s top prosecutor acted with what the Post described as, ‘surprising swiftness’ in a case the paper described as one that ignited protests and rioting in Baltimore. As the Post also reported and I quote
“Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby publicly delivered her stunning, detailed narrative of extensive police misconduct in the latest of several cases nationwide that have fueled anger over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics in low-income communities.”
But the paper went on to say that her decision to file charges that brought joy and relief to low income West Baltimore and beyond at least temporarily, had also brought a great deal of criticism. According to the paper she described in her indictment how Freddie Gray,
“…allegedly was arrested illegally, treated callously by the officers, and suffered a severe spine injury in the back of a police van while his pleas for medical help were ignored.”
Mosby’s decision, coming in the very heat of this urban conflict, including rioting and protesting along with the defense of the officers offered by others, well the action of the state attorney itself drew a great deal of attention.
As the Baltimore Sun’s reporters Liz Bowie and Michael Dresser reported,
“The decision of Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby to file charges of murder and false imprisonment against police officers in the death of Freddie Gray was both bold and novel, according to legal analysts — but some said they will be challenging to prove in court.”
The paper’s reporters cited Steven H. Levin, a former federal prosecutor, as saying, “she has overcharged.” He went on to say that the state’s attorney could lose credibility with the jury because she brought the charges so quickly,
“…making it more difficult to obtain a conviction on any of the charges,”
Meanwhile, other legal authorities disagreed with Levin, saying that it was impossible, as the paper reports, for them to judge the strength of the state attorney’s case without seeing the evidence. A. Dwight Pettit, a defense attorney, said the prosecutor “is going to have a rough road to travel,” but he says the charges are at least, and this was his word, reasonable. As he said,
“At least the public will be able to see that battled out in the courtroom. For the first time, it is not swept under the rug.”
That’s something of an incendiary comment by itself, but let’s look little closer at the situation. Here we have a state’s attorney who brought charges against six police officers and did so very, very quickly. Too quickly? Well, once again we simply have to say, time will tell.
One of the things we need to keep in mind here – whether the story is datelined Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland or anywhere else – is that we actually only have the legal system we have. The legal system that is in place in the United States is decidedly imperfect. On the other hand, even those who are currently arguing about the fallacies and frailties of America’s legal system, whether they are addressing local or state wide or more national issues, even they generally would not want to scrap the justice system altogether. Furthermore, the most responsible on any side of this kind of controversy understands that the only way to achieve justice – any kind of genuine justice, any approximation of justice – is actually to go through the legal system that we have.
Conservatives and liberals on these issues, not to mention those divided by ethnic identity, often find themselves looking at apparently the same facts with a completely different analysis of the moral and legal situations at stake. Even as there were many who were saying that we should trust the legal system in Ferguson, Missouri when the prosecutor there decided not to bring charges the same kind of logic should mean that we extend to the states attorney there in Baltimore, the understanding that even as she has filed charges in these cases she will have to prove them in court.
The checks and balances, the protection for anyone arrested for a crime in the United States in any jurisdiction, these are very important parts of our legal system. And an indictment does not lead in any way necessarily to a conviction. It could lead on the other hand to a plea bargain agreement – that’s what’s going to be very interesting to watch here. Many people looking at this in terms of the immediate aftermath of the handing down of these charges in Baltimore are pointing to the fact that it would probably take at least a year for these charges ever to reach the form of a trial in a courtroom. Furthermore, given our system of justice at several points between here and there something else could intervene. Whether that is the prosecutor at some point dropping the charges or, as might be the case, we can have a grand jury’s involvement, or we can have one or all of the officers charged in the case reach some form of plea agreement with the prosecution that would be acceptable to the courts. This is going to be a very interesting case.
But at this point what this prosecutor has done is unlike what has been done in other recent cases. As the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, there locally looking at the issue very closely, have both pointed out – both of them very liberal newspapers – that this is not a departure from recent patterns, but it also means that now, as the prosecutors has filed these charges, the issue now very clearly goes through a defined legal process.
Christians understand, operating out of a biblical worldview, that that defined process is itself, though very imperfect as anyone must admit, it is itself a testimony to the American understanding of human rights and human dignity – an understanding that is deeply rooted in the Christian worldview and in Western jurisprudence. What we have to do now is hope that peace will return to the streets of Baltimore. That’s a beginning, a very necessary beginning. That’s not the end of this process however, we do understand that what this case in Baltimore has revealed, in terms of a series of other events that didn’t just begin in Ferguson, Missouri, this nation faces a powder keg in so many of our urban areas. And that is something that isn’t going to be alleviated by one prosecutor bringing charges – or even by a court bringing convictions, or any other single legal issue.
This presents the country with a huge moral challenge, and a moral challenge that isn’t reducible to just the city of Baltimore and isn’t reducible just to issues that are the presenting question here of whether or not the police acted rightly in arresting Freddie Gray. What we’re looking at here is a much larger picture and it’s going to take some time for America to sort out these issues. But even as peace, we must pray, will return quickly to the streets of Baltimore, this is an issue that simply will not be swept clear of the nation’s agenda – nor should it be.
But we do know that the way to deal with this is through the defined legal and political process, even the reform of that process has to take place not in the streets but rather in the courtrooms and the legislatures of this nation. The alternative to working through the system in order to achieve the best approximation of justice and righteousness is nothing less than anarchy. And at times we’ve seen that anarchy breaking out on the streets of America, most recently in Baltimore. And anarchy is not just the enemy of order; it is the enemy of human dignity. That anarchy endangers everyone.
3) Journalist argues for a cultural Christianity without Christ as way of saving Christianity
Speaking of the Washington Post, yesterday’s edition of the post included an article that should be listed amongst those that one has to see in order to believe. The headline of the article is, Taking Christ out of Christianity. And it didn’t appear in a theological Journal, it didn’t appear in a Christian magazine, again it appeared on the editorial pages of the Washington Post in its Sunday edition. The article is by Alana Massey and she writes,
“When I tell my socially progressive, atheist friends that ‘I’m culturally Christian,’ they’re momentarily concerned that I have a latent preoccupation with guns and the Pledge of Allegiance. Using the term with devout believers gets me instructions that I just need to read more sophisticated theology to come around. I’ve tried hard to accept my fully secular identity, and at other times I’ve tried to read myself into theistic belief, going all the way through divinity school as part of the effort. Still, I remain unable to will myself into any belief in God or gods — but also unable to abandon my relationship to the Episcopalian faith into which I was born and to the ancient stories from which it came.”
What Alana Massey is up to here is a very audacious argument. She’s arguing that she can remain culturally Christian while abandoning virtually the entirety of the Christian truth claim – beginning with the fact that she doesn’t even believe in God. She goes on to write,
“And though I am without a god, I am not alone.”
She points to the rise of the so-called Nones, that in n-o-n-e-s, that’s the fast-growing segment of the American population that when asked to identify themselves by religious affiliation they respond ‘none.’ Now as we recall, the pew data indicates that about one out of five Americans responding to the survey instruments now identifies himself or herself in this way, and that rises to about one out of three when it comes those aged 29 or younger. But the amazing thing here is what Alana Massey argues in the article.
She argues exactly as the headline in the article indicates, that what she wants and thinks she has achieved, is Christianity without Christ. Now we need to note, even before we look at her argument, that this has been tried before. In one sense this is the great experiment of liberal Protestantism beginning first in Germany in what became known as cultural Protestantism. And that was the belief held by many in the German elites in the mid-and late 19th century – well into the 20th century. But of course it quickly evaporated into absolute secularism. Alana Massey argues, not without evidence, that much of what calls itself formal or organized religion in the United States is increasingly non-doctrinal, non-theological, and has no reference to beliefs.
She writes about the large number of American Jews who identify themselves as secular and she writes about the incredible number of Roman Catholics who report, in terms of their own responses to surveys and polls, that they do not hold the crucial Catholic teaching in terms of doctrine or in terms of morality. But then she writes about liberal Protestantism and she says that in many ways liberal Protestants don’t fare much better. She cites Connor Wood, a PhD candidate in religious studies at Boston University who wrote,
“Liberal Protestant churches, which have famously lax requirements about praxis, belief, and personal investment, therefore often end up having a lot of half-committed believers in their pews,”
That statement is marked by a profound obviousness. What we have in liberal Protestantism is exactly what Alana Massey calls for – increasingly Christianity without Christ. Would there be any surprise therefore that these churches often end up, as Connor Wood said, having a lot of half committed believers in their pews? The question is, why would they be even half committed?
In another statement of the obvious Connor Wood said and I quote,
“The parishioners sitting next to them can sense that the social fabric of their church isn’t particularly robust, which deters them from investing further in the collective.”
That’s an example of academic jargon. What he’s saying is that those who are sitting in the pews of these mainline liberal denominations look to each other and recognize they don’t believe very much and on that basis they have a hard time making any kind of deep or robust commitment. But Alana Massey goes on to argue that we should take an example from the secularizing trend within Judaism and understand that even as she reports the majority of younger Jews in America indicate that they are culturally Jewish rather than theologically Jewish, Episcopalians and other Protestants should choose to move in the same direction. And furthermore she invites Roman Catholics and evangelicals to take a very similar kind of direction.
She cites Rabbi Miriam Jerris of the Society of Humanistic Judaism who said,
“These people are looking for communities and for memories from their background, but they want to do it in an intellectually consistent way.”
That means intellectually consistent, by her definition, with the fundamental worldview of secularism. Alana Massey argues that the rather infamous new atheists are simply too harsh, furthermore she castigates them for throwing out Christianity without understanding that they – according to her logic – can have Christianity without Christ. She cites as an authority Daniel Maguire, a theologian at Marquette University who is also a former Catholic priest, who in a book entitled “Christianity without God” claims that we can reclaim the Bible’s epic moral narrative, in her words, and leave behind its theistic elements – that is in other words, its belief in God.
Alana Massey is indeed bold in making her argument of Christianity without Christ and she’s bold in suggesting that this should be the future for American religion – if not of Christianity than of some other variety. She also says the evangelical leaders in what she calls the convergence movement have stated commitments to save places, she says, for theological discussion and effort in inclusivity – she’s apparently here referring to the so-called emerging church and it’s branded by some as convergence. But the example she cites is that of All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa. She says,
“…that inclusivity is lived out every Sunday: The building hosts Protestant, Pentecostal and humanist services under one roof.”
Whether she intended to associate the convergence movement with Unitarianism – after all Unitarianism is an ancient Christian heresies – that’s unclear, but in any event she did. She concludes her article by writing,
“Believing Christians need not water down the fact that God is at the root of their commitments and traditions to accommodate nonbelievers. And nonbelievers need not make a point of telling their believing brethren that general goodwill or humanism is a better motivation for good works…Though families will quarrel over what they don’t have in common, they are meant to come together for what they do: an ancient story of a new family formed in a place most of us will never go and a call to peace in the world that none of us can ever entirely live up to. And that is worth keeping alive for its radical, enduring and miraculous love.”
Well what we have here is a perfect example applied to liberal Protestantism of what Malcom Muggeridge called the great liberal death wish – arguing that the way to save Christianity is by destroying it. It is almost as if Alana Massey is unaware of the fact that she is almost perfectly becoming a parable of what the novelist Flannery O’Connor wrote as the fictional holy Church of Christ without Christ.
Alana Massey’s article is striking for at least three reasons. First of all, that it appeared on the front page of the review section of Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post. The second striking factor is the audacity of her argument. Alana Massey is simply saying out loud what many people in a liberalizing direction are simply doing – trying to have Christianity without Christ. Most are just not nearly so bold in making argument. The third striking feature is specifically that she claims that she can continue her Christian identity without any belief in God, or any other Christian doctrine, while remaining formally attached to and faithfully within the Episcopal Church – claiming, as she says, her Episcopalian roots and tradition, going all the way back to her parents and beyond.
But the most striking thing of all, the key insight from this story, is the fact that here we have an argument that falls flat on its own face. Why in the world would anyone attribute any compelling power to stories that are untrue? As C.S. Lewis pointed out about half-century ago, if one actually reads the New Testament one cannot come to the conclusion that the stories about Jesus are merely stories about Jesus – they are direct truth claims made by Jesus and the apostles as recorded in Scripture. There is no way to rescue Christianity from Christ, there is no way to have Christianity without Christ, there is no way to come up with any compelling reason to be a Christian but for the fact that Jesus Christ is very God of very God, and that he accomplished all that is necessary for our salvation by his death, burial, and resurrection from the dead. There is no point at all to Christianity without Christ.
She cites Daniel Maguire as pointing to church buildings saying that they are poems in stone and glass. Well if they are that, they are nothing. It was none other than the apostle Paul himself, who in first Corinthians defending the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, made clear if you’re looking for meaning in this life only, in terms of the Christian truth claims, than we’re are of all people – to use his very words – most to be pitied.
The route of cultural Christianity leads not only to doctrinal disaster, it leads to denominational implosion and theological death. The ample evidence of that is all around us, mostly in the fact that the denominations that have been most keened to take the very advice that Alana Massey is now bringing, advice that liberal theologians have been offering for almost 200 years, it’s those denominations that have been imploding in terms of membership most disastrously. Cultural Christianity isn’t the way to save Christianity; it is the way to destroy it.
There is one final question as we come to the end of The Briefing today: why in the world did the editors of the Washington Post decide that this was an article that merited the front page of its opinion section yesterday in the Sunday edition? That is a question only the editors themselves can answer.
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.
I’m speaking to you from Pompano Beach, FL, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
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