R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 316

The Briefing 03-17-15

1) Gordon College affirms biblical view of sexuality, still faces challenge of perseverance

Gordon College Reaffirms Sexuality Policy, Launches Taskforce, The Gospel Coalition (Joe Carter)

Gordon College reaffirms its policy prohibiting homosexual behavior on campus, Boston Business Journal (Mary Moore)

Life & Conduct, Gordon College

2) Elton John boycott of Dolce & Gabbana affirms basic human dignity of IVF children

Elton John is boycotting Dolce and Gabbana for calling children conveived with IVF ‘synthetic’, Washington Post (Soraya Nadia McDonald)

Elton John’s Dolce and Gabbana boycott is not as simple as good versus evil, The Telegraph (Graeme Archer)

3) Rising number of Bible-based shows still fall short of power of actual biblical accounts

More Networks Jumping on the Biblical Bandwagon, New York Times (Neil Genzlinger)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-16-15

The Briefing

 

March 16, 2015

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

 

It’s Monday, March 16, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Failure of human trafficking bill over abortion issue reminder of deep division in nation

Sometimes a progression of headlines itself tells the story. For instance, on last Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times the headline on page A-17, Trafficking Bill Hits a Snag in the Senate. Then the same newspaper on Friday, headline on page A-17 once again, Senators Remain at Impasse Over Bill’s Abortion Provision. And then the headline that came over the weekend at Politico, How abortion politics scuttled a human-trafficking bill.

If we go back to the story that appeared on Wednesday, Emmarie Huetteman, writing for the New York Times, tells us that:

“A bipartisan effort to fight human trafficking hit an unexpected obstacle on Tuesday [that’s Tuesday of last week] as Senate Democrats objected to an abortion provision Republicans had attached to the bill.”

Then ensues one of those soap operas that can only take place in Washington, DC – but this is a soap opera with a very big moral lesson. As Huetteman reports, this was a bill that was entitled The Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund. It had wide bipartisan support and as of Tuesday of last week virtually everyone expected that the Senate would pass it in a massive bipartisan way. But then on Wednesday everything fell apart and it fell apart because some Democratic staffer – that is a staffer for a Democratic Sen. – finally read the bill and noticed that embedded in the bill, especially as it was sponsored by Texas Republicans Sen. John Cornyn, was a provision that would not allow the funds confiscated from sex traffickers and used to help those who had been trafficked, to be used for the payment of abortion.

Now if you go back in legislative history you’ll be reminded that for several decades now there’s been a bill on the books known as the Hyde Amendment. It is an amendment that makes very clear that no federal funds are to be used to pay for abortion. So you might think that the Hyde Amendment would cover this legislation, after all this is a matter of federal legislation – it is now a bill before the Senate. But as this controversy makes clear, among the Democrats there is a majority of members who are so ardently pro-abortion in the Senate that they will not now support a bill intended to help the victims of sex trafficking if that bill will explicitly not pay for abortion.

That’s right; the issue is whether or not the bill would allow these funds to be used to pay for abortion. There is no legal restriction on the women getting an abortion, only the fact that the funds that would’ve been confiscated by federal action through this bill and used to help those who had been trafficked couldn’t be used to pay for abortion. The reason the provision is necessary is because some will claim that since this money has been confiscated from sex traffickers, it isn’t actually federal tax money and the Hyde Amendment wouldn’t apply. That’s why those who sponsored the bill very carefully wrote it into the bill. As of the middle of last week at least some Democratic senators were saying that they had been ambushed, that the provision wasn’t originally in the bill. But they later had to admit it actually was there.

That situation is well described by Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim of Politico, who wrote,

“It’s a cause any politician would have a hard time opposing: cracking down on human trafficking. Instead, in a breakdown sensational even by Senate standards, a bill to address the issue is set to go down in a partisan firefight. The cause of the row? [This is the explicit language of the Politico report] Democrats didn’t read the 68-page bill to discover its provisions dealing with abortion, and Republicans didn’t disclose the abortion language when Democratic staffers asked them for a summary of the legislation.”

When I first read the story as it appeared in last Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times, I was fairly certain that some kind of resolution would come out of the confusion of that day’s report. There will be some kind of sanity among those even who were pro-choice to understand that this was simply a bill to help the victims of sex trafficking and that they should support it even if it didn’t pay for abortions – after all remember what we’re talking about is paying for abortions.

The great moral divide on the issue of the sanctity of human life is made very clear in that Wednesday report in a comment from Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, who said,

“The Republicans are trying to pull a fast one here on human trafficking bill but it is absolutely wrong and honestly it’s shameful,”

Well on the other side of the divide, what’s shameful – even shocking – is that there are Democratic senators who simply will not support a bill they had previously and enthusiastically supported in order to assist the victims of sex trafficking simply because the bill will not pay for abortions. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said,

“You can blame it on staff, blame it on whoever you want to blame it on, but we didn’t know it was in the bill.”

The big point is, regardless of whether or not they knew it was in the bill or when they found out that it was in the bill – or as Politico says, when they bothered to read the bill – the fact is that the issue is simply, once again, the fact that the provision will not allow for the funds confiscated to be used to pay for abortion. And that shows the real depth of the moral divide in this country, even over an issue as fundamental as the sanctity of human life. This is not a new realization; this is just a very new illustration. And as Politico made clear, this one is sensational even by the standards of the United States Senate.

It’s is because rarely do you have a situation like this in which you had legislation that was supported by the vast majority members of both parties and all the sudden falls apart. And it falls apart in this case not because there’s any effort to restrict abortion in the United States or in any state, not because there is any provision that would not allow the women who’ve been sex trafficked to eventually get an abortion if they are determined to do so, but simply will not allow the funds confiscated to be used to pay for those abortions.

By the weekend Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was speaking of the bill: this specific provision is,

“…a very restrictive measure that is antithetical to the goals of the bill.”

Now wait just a minute, antithetical to the goals of the bill? The goal was to help the victims of sex trafficking and to further shutdown sex trafficking in America. Why is paying for abortion necessarily something that was central to the bill in the first place? Obviously, to put the matter simply, it wasn’t.

There are several things to note in this controversy. Observation number one: the deep moral divide in America over the sanctity of human life is not growing more shallow, it is going deeper; that chasm is not growing narrower, it’s growing wider. I can’t think of anything in recent American political history that draws attention to that point so clearly as the breakdown of the Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund. Observation number two: the moral divide on this issue is increasingly a partisan divide. The very possibility of bipartisan cooperation on this bill broke down over the question of abortion. Observation number three: both of these parties are being pulled on the issue of abortion by very powerful political forces. On the Republican side is pro-life forces that are very watchful of any slippage on the issue the sanctity of human life on the part of Republican senators or for that matter, Republican members of the House of Representatives.

But when it comes to the Democratic Party, that party is being pulled further to the left; further toward the extreme of the pro-abortion movement. That’s seen in the fact that these Democratic senators are running as fast as they can from a bill that was originally designed to restrict human trafficking and help the victims of that trafficking – a bill that they had previously overwhelmingly supported – just because that bill will not pay for abortion.

Often times when it comes to the issue of the sanctity of human life we are told that there are not two polarizing groups in America, but there’s some kind of possible middle group or possible middle ground. The controversy over this bill shows that there is no such middle group or middle ground in the United States Senate and that should tell us something, because when you actually have to get down to policy there really is no middle ground. Not only in the case of this legislation, but also in the 2014 platforms of the Democratic and the Republican parties you see this divide. You see one party saying that abortion is itself the killing of an innocent human life and is immoral and you see the other party saying not only is it something society should support, it is something that government must pay for. If you’re wondering how worldview issues get translated into everyday headlines just look at the sequence of headlines. The headlines themselves tell the story.

2) Evolution of term ‘evolution’ reveals importance of letting yes be yes

When it comes to matters of worldview, matters of truth and matters of morality, words always matter. That’s why I really appreciate an article that appeared yesterday in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times; an article by Mark Leibovich entitled Better Beings. He writes, you and I change our minds all the time, but not so our politicians. To avoid being branded as flip flopper’s they ‘evolve.’ There’s that word, we’ve talked about it many times. But it’s one thing for it to be discussed among Christians attempting to think through these issues from a Christian worldview. How exactly would someone from a secular worldview consider these same issues? The importance of the issue is demonstrated in the fact that this showed up as a major article in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times magazine.

Leibovich writes,

“As a general rule, it is difficult for people in public life to change their minds. There is an immediate rush to portray politicians as ‘flip-floppers’ when they shift position on anything, even if they do so following a careful consideration of an issue rather than a meeting with a pollster. The hecklers will reliably accuse them of lacking the ‘courage of their convictions,’ of being ‘typical politicians,’ even though the typical politician actually tries to change his mind as rarely as possible, to avoid the hecklers.”

Now, what Leibovich is looking at is the fact that when those politicians do change their minds on an issue of basic concern, especially moral concern, they very rarely admit that they’ve changed their minds. Instead they claim the language of evolution; they claim they have evolved. And on this point Leibovich has some priceless insights. He says and I quote,

“Whereas ‘changing my mind’ invites an immediate question of motive and suspicion of opportunism, ‘evolving’ carries the tone of a solemn and thoughtful seeker, of someone striving for a better self.”

Well there you have the attempt to gain the moral high ground by using the language of evolve rather than ‘I changed my mind.’ He says,

“More than any other issue, same-sex marriage has occasioned the most dramatic evolution of the word “evolution.””

Leibovich quotes Pres. Obama, who as he said famously said in October 2010, “attitudes evil including mine.” But as Leibovich makes very clear, President Obama said that in 2010. That’s when he was against same-sex marriage before he changed his mind and was for it in 2012. But that was after he’d been for it already in 1996.

Looking at that statement made in October 2010, “Attitudes evolve including mine,” Leibovich says that he had said that to group of liberal bloggers to clarify his position on the issue of same-sex marriage. He then says this wasn’t the first time Obama said he didn’t support same-sex marriage, “though a 1996 questionnaire he reportedly completed during his campaign for the State Senate suggested he once did support it.”

The most important sentence then follows,

“But Obama’s use of the word “evolve” became a rhetorical benchmark for how public figures talk about changing their public positions on the topic. John Kerry, Bill Clinton, the Republican senators Rob Portman and Lisa Murkowski, among others, have all spoken of their evolutions toward support of the practice. (A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declared the issue to be “in a state of [you guessed it] evolution” as far back as 2003, though Clinton herself did not achieve that state for another decade.),”

he notes. It’s really helpful that Leibovich has traced the evolution of especially President Obama on this not so much as a critique of President Obama but as an illustration of how the word “evolve”has evolved in this particular worldview issue. He says,

“Obama and his surrogates often accompanied references to his “evolving” position with reassurance that he was “wrestling with” the subject, as if to portray his as a vigorous journey. But embedded in the word “evolving” is more than a hint of self-congratulation. “Evolve” derives from the Latin evolvere, which means unroll or unfold. It implies that you are headed somewhere better.”

But coming from a secular perspective there’s a really keen insight here, because he goes back to the etymology – the origin of the word – demonstrating the when modern people say they are evolving on an issue they’re not using the word ‘evolve’ merely to mean ‘change,’ they’re supposedly meaning change that is understood to be in a better direction. There is progress that is implied here.

Again looking at President Obama’s evolution on the issue of same-sex marriage, Leibovich writes,

“As the two-year reality show that was Barack Obama’s evolution on same-sex marriage unrolled to its logical conclusion, watching the process, with its various updates and teases, became akin to following the birth of a baby panda. The arrival was inevitable; it was just a question of when.”

This is an exceedingly well-written and insightful article.

President Obama said in October 2011, “I’m still working on it,” when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked for an update. “By that point,” Leibovich writes, “the outcome was so obvious that Obama was even becoming meta in his responses.”

He said to George Stephanopoulos then (that’s 2011), “I probably won’t make news right now.” In other words, Leibovich says, “I have news to make, and I’m just choosing to make it some other time.”

Leibovich makes reference to something I had not seen before, and that is that in 2011 when gay journalist Dan Savage went to a White House reception he wore a button addressed to the President that said ‘Evolve already.’

Language always matters. That’s why I thoguht it was important to look this article coming from a secular authority published in one of the most important secular media outlets, to make very clear that were not the only people the noticing the evolution of the word evolve when it comes to a change of position on same-sex marriage. And, as he notes, it can be applied to other issues as well. But there is no question that Leibovich is precisely right that nothing has prompted so much evolution and so many political references to evolving as has the question of same-sex marriage. And as his article certainly implies, we are nowhere near the end of the evolution of politicians on that issue.

But when it comes to language Christians understand that one of the most important things we can do is call things by their right name. To name things for what they really are. One of the hallmarks of Scripture is that it never euphemizes sin. It never calls sin by some kind of delicate name that is intended to blur the moral distinction. It calls things what they are. And as Christians we are to let our yea be yea, and our nay be nay. We are also to speak with specificity without the attempt to blur anything by language when we speak of matters not only of right and wrong, but true or false. We are when speaking in general, to call things by their proper name.

3) Courage to call a war ‘war’ points to value of truthful descriptions of reality

That’s why want to draw attention to another article on a very different matter (also related to politics and the matter of language) that appeared in USA Today: an op-ed piece by Ross K Baker, who is a political science professor at Rutgers University. Baker writes,

“President Barack Obama recently asked Congress to support his efforts to defeat the brutal Islamic State. What he asked for was not a declaration of war but rather an “authorization for the use of military force” (AUMF, for short).”

Baker’s point is not really partisan at all. He’s not even writing about the merits of President Obama’s proposal. He’s writing about the merits of calling war something other than war. He writes,

“ Perhaps instead of using a euphemism — AUMF — he should have just called our fight against ISIL what it is.

“Is the use of the word “war” so terrifying to the public or so politically fraught that the unleashing of U.S. military power is reduced to a euphemism? Are those killed or maimed in carrying out an AUMF somehow lesser victims than those who fought in a war? And were our past leaders being more honest with us when they voted 11 times from 1812 through 1942 [That’s again, 11 times from 1812 to 1942 –  that’s 130 years] to declare war on foreign enemies?”

“The answer to the first question is unquestionably, “No.” The answer to the second is less clear-cut.”

He points to the fact that the American political class first found a refuge or an escape hatch when it came to a declaration of war when it came to what became known as the police action in Korea. That was June 25, 1950 when Congress authorized a use of military force in the Korean Peninsula. But not a declaration of war. But it was – as any veteran of that war can tell you – a war. That same pattern of euphemism – of calling something other than what it is was practiced again in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that basically gave legal authorization for what we commonly and rightly call the Vietnam War. Even in 1967, three years later, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was, “the functional equivalent of a declaration of war.”

Well, if it was the functional equivalent why wasn’t call the declaration of war? It’s because the people who adopted legislation didn’t have the courage to call it a war. Ross Baker acknowledges a very tangled political background to the adoption of this kind of language, but his point is not so much political as it is moral. If we are calling upon people to put their lives on the line for their country in an organized military effort against an enemy it is a war what we call it that or not.

In a situation like this language matters because lives matter. And if we’re putting lies on the line we at least ought to call what we’re doing by its proper name.

4) Controversy over Tokyo noise ban exposes worldview hostile to children

Finally we been experiencing some warmer weather here in Louisville, Kentucky, and is now not unusual to hear the voices of children playing outside. And it’s been sometime since those wonderful sounds have been heard. But that leads me to draw attention to an article that recently appeared in the Financial Times published from London. The headline is this; “Tokyo looks at allowing children to be seen and heard.” Robin Harding, reporting in Tokyo, says,

“By law they should be seen and not heard, but Tokyo children may soon find their voices as the city rethinks rules demanding a library-like hush in residential areas.”

This is one of those articles that reveals a worldview issue of great significance, but one in a very unexpected way. Harding writes,

“For years residential suburbs in Tokyo have at a strict 45 dB noise limit – roughly the level allowed in a library without any trouble. But despite a rapid decline in the number of children, there has been a surge in complaints about noise from parks and kindergartens forcing the city to consider a change in the law.”

He goes on to,

“Tokyo’s problem reflects an added difficulty of turning around a low birth rate and making it easier for Japanese women to work as the increasingly elderly population becomes hostile to facilities for children.”

Now let’s just point to the obvious; if you become hostile the children you are signing the death warrant of your entire civilization. Harding says that Tokyo city government is now receiving more and more complaints from elderly citizens the children “are too loud, please stop them.” The effort to change the law also the children can actually use their voices in play (or for that matter even in school) has met staunch opposition within Tokyo where at least one person said, “Children’s voices should certainly be covered by noise regulations.”

At present to operate a kindergarten in Tokyo requires extremely expensive soundproofing equipment. Now remember we’re not talking about safety equipment, we’re talking about soundproofing equipment, because as it turns out many citizens in Tokyo simply do not want to ever have to hear the voice of a child.

There are few issues that greater reveal the actual contours of a worldview then how one sees children, and how a society values children. One Tokyo citizen said “to play and cry and make a big noise is a child’s right.” Another one said, “I agree with the city’s plan. To treat children’s voices like the noise from a machine is outrageous.” But as commonsensical as though statements might be, they could well be drowned out by the opposition that says we don’t want to have to see children and we especially don’t want to have to hear them, ever.

Robin Harding is certainly onto something when the article concludes,

“Regardless of the noise rules the attitudes toward children revealed by the debate will be harder to change.”

Yes, Robin Harding, you’re right and the point’s well-made. But a further point also needs to be made. Even as attitudes towards children may be harder to change, the reality is attitudes toward children are eventually harder to hide. Worldviews always have a way of coming to light.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler.  For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

Remember we’re receiving questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2059. That’s 877-505-2058.

 

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

 

 

 

The Remaking of a Modern Mind: A Conversation with Thomas Oden

The Briefing 03-16-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Failure of human trafficking bill over abortion issue reminder of deep division in nation

Human Trafficking Bill Hits a Snag in the Senate, New York Times (Emmarie Huetteman)

Senators Remain at Impasse Over Bill’s Abortion Provision, New York Times (Emmarie Huetteman)

How abortion politics scuttled a human-trafficking bill, Politico (Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim)

2) Evolution of term ‘evolution’ reveals importance of letting yes be yes

You and I Change Our Minds. Politicians ‘Evolve.’, New York Times (Mark Leibovich)

3) Courage to call a war ‘war’ points to value of truthful descriptions of reality

Why reduce war to a euphemism?, USA Today (Ross K. Baker)

4) Controversy over Tokyo noise ban exposes worldview hostile to children

Tokyo’s children could find their voice if noise ban is reformed, Financial Times (Robin Harding)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-13-15

The Briefing

 

March 13, 2015

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

 

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

1) Two Ferguson officers shot as breakdown of trust in Ferguson continues

Once again Ferguson, Missouri is front and center in the nation’s headlines. Once again it’s because of tragedy and controversy. Yesterday in the wee hours of the morning two police officers in Ferguson were shot; they were shot during what had been described as a peaceful protest up until the officer shooting. They were shot as they were guarding the police station there in Ferguson and they were shot, police authorities now say, from a distance of about 125 yards. That distance, as law enforcement authorities have made very clear, means that the shooting was not an impulsive act. It was, as one official said, an assassination attempt – a carefully planned and premeditated assault upon the two police officers.

Both of the officers received nonfatal wounds. And as news was breaking late yesterday, police had swarmed at least one house believing that they may have identified some suspects. As Kate Munsch of Reuters reports,

“Long-simmering tensions between African-Americans and Ferguson’s mostly white police force came to a boil in August when a white policeman killed an unarmed black teenager. The shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown led to a coast-to-coast wave of demonstrations last year.”

Now Reuters is right about that, but even the way such a sentence is written can be a matter of controversy unto itself. Additional background, in terms of what happened yesterday in Ferguson, has to do with the fact that a grand jury did not indict the police officer involved in that shooting. Eventually the Justice Department, though having announced it was launching a major investigation, also announced that it was not bringing any charges against the police officer. But those protests heretofore described as being peaceful took on a rather un-peaceful reality yesterday.

I think one of most important responses to what took place yesterday in Ferguson and the controversy that will now ensue, has been brought by Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. He writes, and I quote,

“This is likely the end of Ferguson, Missouri,”

As he writes,

“They shoot cops in the face in Ferguson. For many in what is left of the middle class there, this will be read as a signal to get out. There is no future there.”

He goes on to say,

“Let us recall that this all began with a white Ferguson police officer shooting an unarmed black man. That officer was exonerated by at least two official investigations, one by the US Justice Department, which found, as the state investigation did, that witnesses who said Michael Brown had his hands up were lying, either consciously or unconsciously.”

Now that’s a very important issue because in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown there was an investigation launched and announced by the Atty. Gen. of the United States, Eric holder, who seemed to insinuate that the officer was guilty of some kind of crime. And yet in the last several weeks it has become abundantly clear that the Justice Department is not going to charge the officer with any crime; not only not with a crime directly related to the shooting, but not with a crime that is related to some form of pattern of discrimination in terms of African-Americans. But that has led not to increase peace in Ferguson, Missouri, but increased unrest.

The shooting of the two police officers also comes after Department of Justice investigation demonstrated what it did call systemic injustice on the part of police authorities there in Ferguson, Missouri. Furthermore, they made very clear the fact that they were accusing not only the police but the entire justice system in that city and County of being complicit in a pattern of unjust actions toward African-Americans. It was a revelation that was hugely embarrassing to local officials there; leading to the fact that at least a few have resigned their posts subsequent to the release of the report.

Rod Dreher writing from a conservative perspective go so far as to suggest that the Ferguson city government seems to have been run as a kind of shakedown operation and he writes about what that represents as a failure of an entire system of justice. He writes,

“As for the rest, it is hard to know from the outside to what extent the overwhelming number of police stops of African Americans reflects systemic racial bias (as distinct from anecdotal instances of racial bias), and to what extent they reflect the unpleasant fact that young black males commit a vastly disproportionate number of crimes in this country. Whatever the truth, news that a small-town city government abuses its police powers to get more revenue is appalling, but hardly the Symbol Of Race Relations In America that the media narrative has it. The reality is more complicated.”

That’s a responsible approach to the situation. The reality is certainly very complicated. I, speaking to you today, I do not know enough about this situation to draw any firm moral judgment about any of the individuals involved. There is no reason for me to believe that the Justice Department has released something that it believes to be untrue. And that means that there must have been at least the suspicion that African-Americans are being treated differently than other Americans in Ferguson, Missouri. But as Rod Dreher argues, we simply don’t know enough to know exactly what’s going on in Ferguson. We do know this: what’s going on, just in terms of the facts on the ground with the shooting of these two police officers and the resignation of some city justice officials, is that what we’re witnessing is the total breakdown of a civilization there.

With great perception Rod Dreher writes,

“My sense is that the reality of Ferguson doesn’t fit either the progressive [he means by that the liberal] or the conservative narrative. I have been reluctant to comment on the DOJ report because frankly, I have lacked the interest to parse it, and to separate what’s true from what’s spin. That’s the frustrating thing about ‘Ferguson’: it long ago ceased being a real place, except for the people who live and work there, and instead became a pseudo-place through which our competing narratives about race in America are vindicated. I think it is entirely possible that black people have been unfairly treated by the police and city government of Ferguson, but that bias does not tell the whole story about race and crime in Ferguson.”

But the point that Rod Dreher makes here, and the one we need to consider very carefully, is that Ferguson (in terms of national symbolism) has ceased to be a place. It has now become a symbol; it’s become a symbol to be argued by either liberals or conservatives in America depending upon what lesson they want to draw from this largely symbolic characterization. But for the people who live and work there, Ferguson is a very real place. It’s a real place in space and time, and it is increasingly a very sad and dangerous place.

Now I want to step back from Rod Dreher’s article to say that from a Christian worldview perspective one of the big issues we confront here is the necessity in civilization of trust. If you eliminate trust the very idea of civilization becomes untenable. You can’t have a working society when you have working police officers shot at the distance of 125 yards in a premeditated assassination attempt in the middle of a protest. You can’t have civilization if the people on the ground living in those homes and working in those shops don’t have confidence that the justice system is, if imperfect, at least committed to justice. You can’t have civilization if people don’t trust their neighbors. You can’t have civilization when your town becomes a national symbol and ceases to be a real place and instead becomes a battering ram for social and political arguments.

Those on the left have to learn the hard lesson over and over again that you can’t have civilization without law and order. You simply can’t have a functioning civilization in a fallen world without a police force and without prosecutors and offenders and judges and the entire justice system. But conservatives need also to be reminded that we often do face systemic injustice in the United States of America. And when you look at the facts on the ground there in Ferguson, Missouri, even imperfectly and at a distance, it’s clear that what we’re looking at is a breakdown of trust. A breakdown of trust not only between white Americans and African Americans, not only a breakdown of trust between the police and many people in the community, we’re looking at a breakdown of trust that threatens whether there can be a community there in Ferguson, Missouri. And one of the things that I believe very fervently is that there will not be a community there, there won’t be a healthy community, so long as Ferguson is treated as a political football and as a symbol – not as the community of real people.

The biblical worldview would have us look at the people there as being made in the image of God; people who are owed the basic reality of justice, people who are also called to live in accountability under law and order. And people who right now don’t need to be treated as a national controversy, but rather as people. People in need of a functioning government, people in need of functioning families, people in need of functioning neighborhoods, people who need what every society requires – trust. And that trust is going to have to be rebuilt and it’s probably going to take some time, time away from the national glare controversy.

2) Contraception discussion exposes need to understand immorality of eugenics movement

Next, I point to an article that appeared Wednesday at Christianity Today. It’s written by Rachel Marie Stone who writes, at least in part, based upon her experience as a doula in Malawi. What she’s writing about is contraception and this is an article that sparked a major controversy Wednesday night on Twitter. I was a part of that conversation and I draw attention to this article now because of its fundamental importance in raising some of the most important issues when we’re dealing with contraception, abortion, birth control, and the issue of eugenics – not to mention the name of Margaret Sanger.

Stone writes,

“The young nurse was one of eleven living children — one of eighteen, if you count the ones that didn’t make it. Eighteen pregnancies, seven ending in death, in twenty-two years. That’s what the young nurse’s mother endured, before dying of tuberculosis at age 49.”

She goes on to say,

“Seeing her mother suffer and die was what inspired the young woman to become a nurse, and, specifically, to care for pregnant women.”

The nurse she’s writing about is none other than Margaret Sanger. As Stone writes,

“And that’s what [Sanger] did. As she worked among the largely immigrant working poor in New York City, she saw unspeakable suffering. Later, she would tell the story of the moment her vocation took a fateful turn.

She writes about Margaret Sanger’s visit to the apartment of Sadie Sachs, a poor woman extremely ill, after, says Stone, attempting to perform an abortion on herself. Sadie had begged the doctor to tell her how she might avoid future pregnancies. The doctor, says Stone, simply told the young woman to abstain from sex entirely. But not long after this Margaret Sanger found herself back at Sadie Sachs apartment, the same scenario was again unfolding. But this time the young woman died from her attempt to abort her unborn child. Stone then writes about Margaret Sanger saying that she,

“Threw her medical bag across the room in fury and vowed that she could not go on nursing until she had helped to make effective birth control widely available to working class and poor women.”

Stone then writes about her tour at the Zomba Central Hospital in Malawi. She says she lived there from 2012 to 2014 and she came to know an older nurse midwife named Lena who told her that she had visited New York City to study at the Margaret Sanger Center in lower Manhattan. Lena said of Margaret Sanger,

“A great woman, Margaret Sanger!”

Stone then said she wasn’t sure how to reply. That’s because Sanger had founded Planned Parenthood, which is now the largest provider of abortions in the United States. Stone argues that Sanger had not intended for her organization to perform abortions and that she had oppose abortion herself saying,

“…no matter how early is performed it was taking a life,”

But the article takes this most ominous turn when Stone writes,

“But Sanger, like many medical professionals in her day, did hold eugenicist ideas. Eugenics were enshrined into compulsory sterilization laws in many U.S. states and supported by organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. I do not mean to excuse Sanger for holding these views, but I do want to give the charge of ‘eugenicist’ a more complete background.”

I want you to hold that sentence in mind because as Stone continues she writes that Lena’s world, that is that older midwife in Malawi, her world is much closer to Margaret Sanger’s than to Stone’s own. In Malawi Stone says, women are more likely to bear more children than they want to and they are many more times likely to die from complications of childbearing than in modern America. Stone goes on to say that the pattern now known in Malawi would be far more similar to that in urbanized New York City during the time of Margaret Sanger.

It seems that the major point of Stones article is to argue for the more widespread availability of birth control – in particular, artificial birth control that would come in the form of contraceptives. She argues that the more widespread availability of birth control would save millions of lives. She suggests a greater access to birth control would actually prevent abortions. She writes,

“A single leading cause of maternal mortality globally is complication from unsafe abortion.”

Now that’s a very interesting argument just on its own, arguing that birth control prevents abortion. Well logically the use of a contraceptive would indeed make it impossible to have an abortion. But what the problem is here is that when you’re looking at the actual claim – when you look at correlation – the rise of abortions has often been correlated positively with access to birth control. It simply isn’t arguable that greater access to birth control will mean lower rates of abortion. Just look at the skyrocketing rates of legal abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade which came just a few years after the invention of the pill and the availability of the very birth control that Stone is calling for.

She cites a study that says if every woman one of birth control was able to obtain it there would be 25 million fewer abortions. But I would simply point out that that’s impossible actually to prove. And the correlated data indicates that it simply isn’t true that abortion always goes down or will necessarily go down if birth control is widely available. The United States is certainly not a good test case for that argument, though some will argue that some European nations do show the kind of pattern she is suggesting. Trying to convince evangelicals that we need to support widespread availability of birth control she writes,

“What we do know, with a high degree of certainty, is that wider access to birth control — domestically and globally — has the potential to prevent millions of abortions, millions of maternal and infant deaths, and to drastically improve the lives of women and children in the most vulnerable areas in the world.”

Now time will prevent me from actually taking on the issue of birth control in this context. That’s the central issue she writes about, that is her major point. It’s not the major point of my concern. I have written about birth control, I will continue to write about it, but my major concern with this article is how she treats Margaret Sanger and how she puts the issue of eugenics and the charge of being a eugenicist in what she calls “a more complete background.” I just want to suggest that if you are operating from a biblical worldview, certainly as an evangelical Christian, we ought to avoid at all costs any attempt to try to put eugenics in any better moral light because it deserves all the moral outrage that it brings about.

If you look back to the history of eugenics you come to understand that what it means is, well, good genes; meaning good verse, meaning that somehow social policy would encourage more birth from people who seem to be genetically superior and less births from those who seem to be genetically inferior. There is simply no way to rescue eugenicism out of any kind of racial context; it is deeply racialist to the very core. Its very essence is the argument that certain people ought to have babies and others ought not to. Certain people ought to be encouraged to have children and other people ought to be discouraged from having children.

Now morally speaking you might say that there are thick and thin or hard and soft forms of eugenics. There is positive eugenics in which it’s a question of who is encouraged to have children, but there’s also negative eugenics in which sometimes even coercion and sterilization have been used to prevent people seen as genetically inferior or even sociologically disadvantaged from having children. The issue of eugenics in the United States has a horrifying and embarrassing history. It is humiliating when we understand that there were those at the very highest echelons of the American government and the American intellectual elites who supported the use of eugenics – either positive or negative eugenics or both – in an attempt to have more children born from those seen to be fit and less from those seen to be unfit.

This article at Christianity Today actually quotes this woman in Malawi as saying,

“A great woman, Margaret Sanger!”

And the author of this article, Rachel Marie Stone, though not arguing for eugenics in any sense, tries to argue that there is a wider background to the fact that Margaret Sanger was a proponent of eugenics and that there is a wider background to the eugenics movement. Well of course there is a wider background, but that doesn’t make the situation any more morally palatable. It simply can’t rescue eugenics from the fact that it is, on its face, deeply racist and horrifyingly insulting to the image of God that marks every single human being at every stage of development – born and unborn.

Margaret Sanger herself had a very complicated worldview that included socialism and some flirtation with the free sex movement before she became primarily known as a feminist and as a major pioneer of the birth control movement. She was indeed opposed to abortion, but she was an ardent eugenicist. It was Margaret Sanger herself, who arguing for birth control, said,

“Birth control is nothing more than a weeding out of the unfit,”

One of the mottos of the eugenics movement supported by Sanger is that the movement sought,

“…to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit,”

Now when you start separating human beings between the fit and the unfit, and when you tie it to the issue of genetics, there is no way that this cannot become a targeted effort to reduce certain racial populations. That is the very essence of the eugenics movement. And negative eugenics didn’t target people merely on the matter of race, but also of intelligence; specifically targeting through negative eugenics those who are defined as the feeble minded.

When I was in California just last week one of the headlines had to do with the fact that California was having to deal with the long-term legal and moral consequences of the fact that early in the 20th century some who were regarded as feebleminded experienced forced sterilizations by the mandate of the state. The issue of birth control, the main point of Rachel Marie Stone’s article, will simply have to wait a different conversation. When she raises the name of Margaret Sanger and when she raises the very issue of eugenics and then writes that sentence in which she says,

“I do not mean to excuse Sanger for holding these views but I do want to give the charge of eugenicist a more complete background,”

what we’re looking at is the implicit, if not the explicit, argument that somehow putting the issue of eugenics into a larger more complex background can put it in a different light. Well there certainly is a more complex background and it will put it in a different light, but not a better light. The more you look at eugenics movement and the closer you look at the character of Margaret Sanger, the more tragic and immoral the moral context clearly becomes.

Evangelicals may and will disagree on some issues of birth control; we’ll have to talk about a different time. We’re talking about Margaret Sanger and eugenics movement because this article ensures that we cannot, morally, not talk about them. Not talking about them is what allows the culture of death to march forward unmolested and undeterred. Talking about them is a major Christian responsibility in our times and biblically minded Christians have better know exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about Margaret Sanger and eugenics movement.

There are several other issues I wanted to talk about this week, even today, but these two new stories seemingly just swept all those aside; by their importance and by their urgency. That’s just the way it works some days, indeed that’s how it works most weeks. But the culture of death marches forth on silence, we as Christians are responsible not only to confront the culture of death but to celebrate the culture of life. That’s part of the great good news of the gospel and one of the central affirmations of Scripture. But there’s no way to celebrate the culture of life without looking at the real and present dangers posed by the culture of death. And some days Christians find themselves talking about these issues simply because we have to.

 

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 on Monday for The Briefing.

 

 

The Briefing 03-13-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Two Ferguson officers shot as breakdown of trust in Ferguson continues

Police seek suspects in Ferguson, Missouri, police ‘ambush’, Reuters (Kate Munsch)

The Death of Ferguson, The American Conservative (Rod Dreher)

2) Contraception discussion exposes need to understand immorality of eugenics movement

Contraception Saves Lives, Christianity Today (Rachel Marie Stone)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-12-15

The Briefing

 

March 12, 2015

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

 

It’s Thursday, March 12, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Fallout from OU fraternity racist chant reveals confusion of hate speech and speech crimes

We have to return to the controversy that emerged over the weekend after a video was released showing fraternity members – at a fraternity that is now shut down at the University of Oklahoma – singing a racist song and repeating a racist chant. The aftermath of the video was an immediate international controversy and once you see the video you can see that is for good reason. It’s very hard to believe; it’s shocking to see these privileged young white men singing a song that is on the one hand so racist and on the secondhand so threatening.

That’s what leads to the kind of conversation that comes days or perhaps even weeks after an incident of this kind of importance. You have people asking questions about what the event meant in retrospect. Was it overblown? Did administrators of the University of Oklahoma overreact? Just days after the University’s action in expelling two students for their leadership in the chant, there have been immediate questions asked about the First Amendment and about the freedom of students to say anything – virtually anything at all – in a public context.

There are a couple of things we need to note here quite carefully. First of all, there are particular obligations upon a public university, as a public institution, when it comes to the First Amendment. Let’s raise a basic question: is it within one’s First Amendment rights to say such racist and horrible things as those fraternity students did in that bus? The answer to that is probably yes; almost every legal expert that seems to be quoted in the media seems to say that the First Amendment – if it means anything – means the right to say the most horrifying things, even if they run right into the face of society’s moral convictions.

So one of the realities we need to reflect upon in terms of the aftermath of this story is that most Americans would not support, and the Constitution almost assuredly would not uphold, any attempt to arrest these students for a crime. One of the things we need to watch very carefully from a Christian worldview perspective, with religious liberty very much on the line, is that we do not support the criminalization of what is called the hate speech. We should not support an idea that has been gaining ground in constitutional circles on the left; arguing for instance in many arguments you now find rather regularly in law schools, that there ought to be laws on the books against moral statements against people even based upon their behavior.

For instance, there are claims that making any kind of statement of a negative moral judgment upon same-sex relationships and attractions should be considered a form of harm against individuals that would constitute a crime. We need to think carefully and make a distinction between hate speech and speech crimes. There is no doubt that the biblical worldview affirms the fact that speech can be filled with hate. Hate speech is a reality, and one that we need to take with absolute moral seriousness. But the moment you begin to criminalize speech you begin to draw a line that suggests that societies are deciding which messages are going to be the subject of a criminal prosecution and which are not.

This is no easy matter, but it has been very clear that the trajectory of American constitutional law has been to protect speech in terms of First Amendment rights and to resist, in terms of our First Amendment freedoms, any attempt to criminalize speech. But that doesn’t mean that you have to accept all speech as being within moral boundaries. And this is one of the issues that Christians need to think about very seriously.

The University’s response in the aftermath of the video was to shut down the fraternity – that’s the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at the University of Oklahoma – and to expel two students. Now there were a good many more than two students on that bus – there were more than two students who were seen to be singing that racist chant on that bus – but there were two students identified as leading the chant and they were expelled. In the action from the University, President David Boren wrote letters to the two students, now former students, writing,

“This is to notify you that, as president of the University of Oklahoma acting in my official capacity, I have determined that you should be expelled from this university effective immediately,”

He went on to write,

“You will be expelled because of your leadership role in leading a racist and exclusionary chant which has created a hostile educational environment for others.”

Now at this point Christians need to think very carefully because there are those who would argue that any kind of moral statement concerning same-sex relationships might fall into the category of creating a “hostile learning” or “hostile educational environment” for others. But we need to note that the specific chant, the specific song that was being repeated by the students included an overt physical threat. They were threatening to lynch African-American students; not only did they say they would not ever allow an African-American young men to be a member of their fraternity, they went on and used language in which they positively stated that they will be quite willing for one to be lynched. That not only harkens back to one of the darkest days of America’s racist history, it also can be fairly understood to be the substance of a threat.

Some conservatives very concerned about the marginalization of free speech on America’s college campuses have suggested that Pres. Boren of the University of Oklahoma overreacted by expelling the two students. There are even some who have suggested that there may be legal action on behalf of the two students subsequent to their expulsion. I can’t speak to the likelihood of that kind of legal action, but I will speak in defense of the University of Oklahoma’s President. In this case I believe he made a very justifiable distinction between some speech that would merely establish a moral sanction and other speech in which there is an actual mention of physical harm.

Those who are concerned about the infringement of free speech on America’s college and university campuses are seeing a real problem, a very ominous development. Furthermore, those who are concerned about the language that Pres. Boren used, speaking of a hostile educational environment for others, are well aware of the fact that that language can be misused and misapplied. But I think we have to be very, very careful here. When we listen to that now infamous video of those fraternity members at the University of Oklahoma as they are chanting that song, we’re not only hearing a message of horrifying racism, we are also seeing an historical reference to lynching; something that wasn’t merely hypothetical – for lynching is one of the saddest chapters in American history, and the victims of all those lynchings were not hypothetical, they were all too real.

To speak of lynching African-Americans simply cannot be understood as merely the exercise of one’s First Amendment rights on American college and university campus. It is still the case that gaining admission to a college or university in America, even a public college or university, comes with certain responsibilities. And even if free speech is only free, if it extends freedom to language that we find reprehensible, morally reprehensible, that does not mean that all speech is commensurate with the privilege of being a student in college or university. The decision to expel those two students made by the President of the University of Oklahoma may be constitutionally debated, but in my view it is morally right.

2) UC Irvine student government attempts to ban American flag for sake of tolerance

Next, speaking of what’s going on at least some American college and university campuses, a recent headline from the Los Angeles Times, “UC Irvine group bans US and other flags in its lobby.” It may not appear to be a big story but as you look at the substance, it’s bigger than might first appear. Nicole Shine writing from Los Angeles Times says,

“In a push for what has been described as cultural inclusion, the student government at UC Irvine has voted to ban the display of all flags — including the American flag — in an area of the campus.”

She goes on to explain,

“A resolution adopted Thursday by the legislative council of the campus’ Associated Students calls for removing all flags from the common lobby area of student government offices.”

The story then quotes Matthew Guevara, he is the student who brought the motion. The resolution he brought says,

“The American flag has been flown in instances of colonialism and imperialism, [he went on to say in his resolution that flags, including the American flag] construct paradigms of conformity and sets homogenized standards.”

Now the resolution was passed 6 to 4 by the student legislative council. There were two abstentions. As Nicole Shine indicated the measure was likely to be short-lived and it was. The next day’s edition of the newspaper included the headline, Move to Ban Flag Display Vetoed. As she reported just a day later,

“[The] five-member executive cabinet overseeing UC Irvine’s student government on Saturday vetoed a decision to ban the display of all flags, including the American flag.”

And so the executive council stated,

“We fundamentally disagree with the actions taken by ASUCI Legislative Council and their passage of [the ban] as counter to the ideals that allow us to operate as an autonomous student government organization with the freedoms of speech and expression associated with it. “It is [speaking of these flags they wrote,] these very symbols that represent our constitutional rights… and our ability to openly debate all ranges of issues and pay tribute to how those liberties were attained.”

Now looking at the math (if math still matters), when you look at the 12 members of the legislative council and you consider the five-member executive committee, the reversal or veto of the action by the council by the executive committee can easily be overridden because all it takes is a two thirds vote of the legislative council. In other words, expect a third headline any day now.

But the reason I’m bring this story to our attention is because in terms of worldview there really is some pretty big significance here because this offers a window into the kind of thinking that is now becoming rather standard fare on America’s college and university campuses – especially the leading and most influential of those campuses. One of the first things you might think when you look at a headline like this is that these are simply college students who might be expected to do the kinds of things college students do. And this might be one of those things. But the second thing you need to recognize is that this kind of thinking doesn’t come from the college students, it comes now, rather regularly, from at least some members of the college faculty.

Many professors who are overwhelmingly on the cultural and political, the ideological left, they had been teaching this kind of message for some time now. It goes all the way back to the 1960s on many campuses and as many cultural observers have noted, those who were the protesters of the 1960s largely grew up and got tenure. They are now the professors of the current generation.

The language that was brought by this student referred to all national flags, but as all the media reports have made clear, the national flag of interest was he flag of the United States of America. And as many people noted, and there was considerable push back to this story, it’s pretty hard to claim a First Amendment right citing a constitution, the symbol of which you simply do not want to acknowledge. The self-contradictory nature of the student’s message was something that was caught at least by their own executive committee.

But the most important section of that resolution, that remember passed by six-four vote of the legislative council, was the section in which the young man wrote,

“Freedom of speech in a space that aims to be as inclusive as possible can be interpreted as hate speech,”

There is the danger in the misuse and the abuse of that hate speech category. You simply can’t look at that video coming from those fraternity members and not see it as hate speech. There is no other way to describe it. And while attorneys arguing about the first amendment can come to different conclusions in terms of constitutional law, there’s no one who see that video that can come to any other moral conclusion than that it is horrifyingly reprehensible.

But our attention to the misuse of that kind of argument points back to something happened just a few days before, states away, at the University of California Irvine where a student making an accusation that merely flying the American flag can be a form of hate speech; and making the argument that free speech and inclusion can be contradictory. These are arguments we’re going to have to watch very, very closely. And those of us who are committed to religious liberty are going to have to watch them especially closely.

3) ‘Homeland’ producers see Islamic State as too evil to represent on entertainment television

Next, when we’re thinking about the intersection of the Christian worldview and America’s entertainment culture, an important story appeared in the London newspaper, The Telegraph, yesterday; the headline, Islamic State deemed ‘too evil’ to appear in Homeland. As Colin Freeman reports for that British newspaper,

“The makers of the hit TV drama Homeland have ruled out featuring Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in any future storyline, saying the group is ‘too evil’ to be portrayed on television.”

Well, that’s a very interesting statement. After all, you’re looking at a program that is “Homeland,” that bills itself as a realistic though fictional depiction of the challenges faced in the war on terror. That’s the very premise of the show “Homeland.” But is Colin Freeman reports,

“The producers [of ‘Homeland’], which depicts the CIA’s battles against terrorist foes, believe that dramatising the lives of the likes of Jihadi John would be unwise as it would give the group a ‘platform’.”

The word platform is the very word they used. Alex Gansa, who is the executive producer of “Homeland” said,

“… the group’s actions in beheading aid workers and journalists were also so unfathomable that it would be impossible for his script-writers to create characters with convincing back stories or motivations.”

From a Christian worldview perspective, this is a hugely important article. At the first level it tells us that even reality television can’t actually handle reality. That’s an important issue for Christians to understand. The entertainment culture may seek, may even claim, to present realistic depictions but real and Hollywood simply cannot go together. There is no way that any kind of entertainment product can actually represent a realistic depiction of something as important as the war on terror.

This new story comes as one of the most graphic affirmations of that point because right now one of the chief enemies in terms of terrorism of the United States is undeniably the Islamic state. And here you have a program that is seeking a realistic depiction of the struggles of the Central Intelligence Agency against terrorism that says they can’t actually feature any characters in the Islamic state because that would be to give the group a platform. Then they go on to explain that one of their great challenges would be to create “convincing back stories or motivations” for any character that would be represented as being from a group known as the Islamic state. From a moral perspective, from a Christian biblical worldview perspective, that’s hugely important. One of the things it tells us is that an entertainment program such as “Homeland” that characters are only meaningful to the audience if the character is inexplicable in some kind of moral terms. Here you have the executive producer of this program saying we can’t find any way to explain a sufficient back story or a set of motivations that would explain what someone like Jihadi John is doing in those videos.

Now at this point we have to step back and ask the question, is he being honest with us? Is it really true that they can’t come up with a convincing back story, they really can’t get into the motivations? Or is it true that they do not want to? That there will be no way they can offer any politically correct understanding of those motivations because to do so would raise a host of theological issues – which is to say they would have to confront the Islamic part of the Islamic state. My guess is that on this particular point there not being fully honest because there is plenty of evidence out there even in terms of mainstream media reports that would offer the back story and, when it comes to the videos that are being put forth by the Islamic state, they are absolutely explicit about their motivations. But the television program “Homeland” probably, in terms of our political culture, probably can’t be that explicit. That’s probably the real problem – that too is telling.

Speaking at a television festival at the Paley Center in Los Angeles that executive producer said,

“It’s very difficult to do because what they are doing on the ground feels so medieval and so horrible that you give them a platform on television I’m a little wary of,”

Well that’s a morally respectable statement; I can respect a television producer who says there are simply some things I don’t want to depict on television because they’re so immoral. But let’s be honest, it’s rather hard to take that argument coming from someone of the mainstream Hollywood culture. Because what they do represent, in terms of their entertainment products, is what can only be described as a routine immorality. It’s just an immorality they are more comfortable with depicting than other forms of immorality. And when it comes to the Islamic state they say that group feels “so medieval and horrible” that they don’t want to give that group of platform.

Now again, just taken it at face value: that is a respectable moral statement. One of the things we can respect is that at least someone in Hollywood seems to be acknowledging that they have the stewardship of the kind of platform. That’s a morally reassuring statement. Again, it just doesn’t seem to represent any kind of consistent moral responsibility on the part of Hollywood. I can’t speak about this executive producer, I can simply say that virtually every single major television channel, whether it’s on cable or broadcast, broadcast many narrative storylines that are on their face filled with immorality.

Speaking of the Islamic state in this potential storyline, Mr. Gansa said,

“Maybe this is too soon, maybe we don’t understand them well enough. It may be that they are just too evil to dramatise on television.”

Well that’s a very interesting statement when he says ‘maybe we don’t understand them,’ my guess is that’s not fully honest. I think the problem is we certainly do understand them. But when he says,

“It may be that they are just too evil to dramatise on television.”

Well, that’s also a very interesting statement and there may be some great moral truth in that. But that then raises the question, ‘what in the world are you doing with this program in which you are claiming to depict the actual challenges faced by the CIA and the American government? You can’t say maybe we don’t understand them well enough and then say they’re just too evil to dramatize on television. You can mean one of those things; you really can’t mean both of those things.

But before leaving this story there is another very important angle because as this executive producer is explaining his program, he points back to characters who had been depicted as terrorists in previous years, previous seasons of the program, and he says,

“There was a real effort to make their concerns and their lives understandable,”

He went on to say this is very hard to do with the Islamic state. His final words on the subject,

“I think to humanise or to create a sympathetic member of Isil right now is a very tall order, that I would be nervous about doing; I really would.”

Now once again, that can be a morally respectable statement. But how do you square that with what he claims as the achievement of his team in creating understandable stories of terrorists in previous seasons. What would those understandable stories be? He acknowledges that those terrorists were also about killing people in the name of their own terroristic agenda. How does that differ from the Islamic state? How does he create a moral scale in which one motivation for terrorism is morally superior to some other? He doesn’t exactly put it that way, but there’s no escaping that’s the evitable consequences of the moral equation he’s drawn here.

I’ll simply have to end with an even more important point from a Christian worldview. Those in Hollywood are morally responsible for what they produce, but we can’t leave moral responsibility there. We are equally responsible for what we watch. In a very real sense the true test of our worldview is what we find entertaining. For most of us, that’s a far more immediate question, a far more in evitable test.

 

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.

 

Theological education is essential to Gospel ministry. Where you receive training is really important. As you consider God’s call on your life, we want to give you the opportunity to experience Southern Seminary at Preview Day on April 24th. For just $25 we will cover your two nights of lodging, as well as all of your meals on preview day.  For information visit sbts.edu/preview

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I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

The Briefing 03-12-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Fallout from OU fraternity racist chant reveals confusion of hate speech and speech crimes

It’s not Unconstitutional to be Racist, Huffington Post (Byron Williams)

Is University of Oklahoma frat’s racist chant protected by 1st Amendment?, Los Angeles Times (Matt Pearce)

2) UC Irvine student government attempts to ban American flag for sake of tolerance

American flag, others banned in UC Irvine student area, Los Angeles Times (Nicole Knight Shine)

Ban on American flag at UC Irvine reversed, Los Angeles Times (Nicole Knight Shine)

3) ‘Homeland’ producers see Islamic State as too evil to represent on entertainment television

Islamic State deemed ‘too evil’ to appear in Homeland, The Telegraph (Colin Freeman)

The Integrity of Words and Our Confession of Faith

In the beginning was the Word. Christians rightly cherish the declaration that our Savior, the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, is first known as the Word — the one whom the Father has sent to communicate and to accomplish our redemption. We are saved because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Believers are then assigned the task of telling others about the salvation that Christ has brought, and this requires the use of words. We tell the story of Jesus by deploying words, and we cannot tell the story without them. Our testimony, our teaching, and our theology all require the use of words. Words are essential to our worship, our preaching, our singing, and our spiritual conversation. In other words, words are essential to the Christian faith and central in the lives of believers.

As Martin Luther rightly observed, the church house is to be a “mouth house” where words, not images or dramatic acts, stand at the center of the church’s attention and concern. We live by words and we die by words.

Truth, life, and health are found in the right words. Lies, disaster, and death are found in the wrong words. The Apostle Paul warned Timothy, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.” [1 Timothy 6:3-5]

Later, Paul will instruct Timothy that sound words come to us in a revealed pattern. “Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” [2 Timothy 1:13-14]

Theological education is a deadly serious business. The stakes are so high. A theological seminary that serves faithfully will be a source of health and life for the church, but an unfaithful seminary will set loose a torrent of trouble, untruth, and sickness upon Christ’s people. Inevitably, the seminaries are the incubators of the church’s future. The teaching imparted to seminarians will shortly be inflicted upon congregations, where the result will be either fruitfulness or barrenness, vitality or lethargy, advance or decline, spiritual life, or spiritual death.

Sadly, the landscape is littered with theological institutions that have poorly taught and have been poorly led. Theological liberalism has destroyed scores of seminaries, divinity schools, and other institutions for the education of the ministry. Many of these schools are now extinct, even as the churches they served have been evacuated. Others linger on, committed to the mission of revising the Christian faith in order to make peace with the spirit of the age. These schools intentionally and boldly deny the pattern of sound words in order to devise new words for a new age — producing a new faith. As J. Gresham Machen rightly observed almost a century ago, we do not really face two rival versions of Christianity. We face Christianity on the one hand and, on the other hand, some other religion that selectively uses Christian words, but is not Christianity.

How does this happen? Rarely does an institution decide, in one comprehensive moment of decision, to abandon the faith and seek after another. The process is far more dangerous and subtle. A direct institutional evasion would be instantly recognized and corrected, if announced honestly at the onset. Instead, theological disaster usually comes by means of drift and evasion, shading and equivocation. Eventually, the drift accumulates into momentum and the school abandons doctrine after doctrine, truth claim after truth claim, until the pattern of sound words, and often the sound words themselves, are mocked, denied, and cast aside in the spirit of theological embarrassment.

As James Petigru Boyce, founder of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argued, “It is with a single man that error usually commences.” When he wrote those words in 1856, he knew that pattern by observation of church history. All too soon, he would know this sad truth by personal observation.

By the time Southern Baptists were ready to establish a theological seminary, many schools for the training of ministers had already been lost to theological liberalism. Included among these were both Harvard and Yale, even as Yale had been envisioned, at least in part, as a corrective to Harvard. Theological concessions in theological seminaries had already weakened the Baptists of the North. Drawing upon the lessons of the past, Southern Baptists were determined to establish schools bound by covenant and constitution to a confession of faith — to the pattern of sound words.

Confessional seminaries require professors to sign a statement of faith, designed to safeguard by explicit theological summary. The sad experience of fallen and troubled schools led Southern Baptists to require that faculty members must teach in accordance with the confession of faith, and not contrary to anything therein. Added to this were warnings against any private understanding with a professor, or any hesitation or mental reservation. Teachers in a confessional school not only pledge by sacred covenant to teach “in accordance with and not contrary to” the confession of faith, but to do so gladly , eagerly, and totally.

We are living in an anti-confessional age. Our society and its reigning academic culture are committed to individual autonomy and expression, as well as to an increasingly relativistic conception of truth. The language of higher education is overwhelmingly dominated by claims of academic freedom, rather than academic responsibility. In most schools, a confession of faith is an anathema, not just an anachronism. But, among us, a confession of faith must be seen as a gift and covenant. It is a sacred trust that guards revealed truths. A confession of faith never stands above the Bible, but the Bible itself mandates concern for the pattern of sound words.

Theologian Russell Reno has noted that confessions of faith serve a dual purpose — to define truth and to isolate falsehood:

“The impulse behind confessions of faith is doxological, the desire to speak the truth about God, to give voice to the beauty of holiness in the fullest possible sense. However, the particular forms that historical confessions take are shaped by confrontation. Their purpose is to respond to the spirit of the age by re-articulating in a pointed way the specific content of Christianity so as to face new challenges as well as new forms of old challenges. As a result, formal confessions are characterized by pointed distinctions. They are exercises in drawing boundaries where the particular force of traditional Christian claims is sharpened to heighten the contrast between true belief and false belief…. As they shape our faith, confessions structure our identities.”

Confessions structure our identities. If not, they are useless. Within a theological seminary, the confession must function as a living commitment, not as a dead letter. As Reno notes, confessions are characterized by pointed distinctions. They are exercises in drawing boundaries, addressing new heresies and new forms of old heresies. False teachings are always around us. Our task is to make certain that they do not take hold among us.

For many denominations, churches, and seminaries, confessions of faith are kept as references to a faith once believed, but available only in the present as a remembrance of things past. Among us, the confession must guard the faith once for all delivered to the saints as a living faith.

Southern Baptists learned these lessons the hardest way, and we have paid the price of theological controversy for the sake of recovering that which was lost. By God’s grace, we have been granted a recovery, if we will keep it. Now, a new generation must take up this responsibility in the face of new challenges, knowing that these challenges, like the denial of biblical inerrancy, will require the full force of conviction to confront, and the full force of confession to contain.

We must look to a new generation of teachers who will gladly teach in accordance with and not contrary to all that is affirmed in our confession of faith, without hesitation or mental reservation. We must pray for an army of theological teachers ready to do battle with the spirit of the age and, at the same time, to offer a glad defense of the hope that is in us, with gentleness and respect. We must look to professors who will be determined to stand with the apostles and the saints of God throughout the ages in the sacred democracy of the dead that points to doctrinal fidelity.

Faithfulness will be found in the stewardship of words, in the pattern of sound words revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and in the teaching that accords with godliness. There can be no lasting fidelity without confessional integrity.

The ultimate purpose of confessional integrity is indeed doxological — to make certain that we rightly worship and love God. The confession guards the sound words of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and is thus essential to missions and evangelism.

As Fanny Crosby taught us to sing: “Tell me the story of Jesus, write on my heart every word; tell me the story most precious, sweetest that ever was heard.

In the end, theological education–and preaching–is all about the stewardship of words. So it was when Paul commissioned Timothy. So is it now.

“Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” [2 Timothy 1:13-14]

May those words serve as the Magna Carta of theological education and the teaching ministry of the church.  May the church faithfully teach, even as it is faithfully taught, until Jesus comes.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

For more information on Southern Seminary, visit SBTS.edu and for more information on Boyce College, visit BoyceCollege.com.

Transcript: The Briefing 03-11-15

The Briefing

 

March 11, 2015

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

It’s Wednesday, March 11, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Erskine College criticized by students, others, for making Christian convictions explicit

Yesterday I talked about the embarrassing predicament faced by the Roman Catholic schools in San Francisco. It turns out that after the Catholic Archbishop had ruled that all the teachers in those Catholic schools had to uphold Catholic doctrine that 80% of the teachers – that’s right, eight out of 10 – protested the Archbishop’s decision. As I suggested yesterday, this is a humiliating embarrassment for that diocese. What in the world were they doing hiring teachers, eight out of 10 of whom wouldn’t support Catholic doctrine when it was required of them? My point was to hold up the controversy in San Francisco over the Catholic schools to serve as a warning and as a message to evangelical Christians that we had better be very serious and unapologetic about hiring on the basis of our own conviction in our own schools, or eventually we won’t have schools that matter.

But as a recent report in the New York Times makes clear, it’s not just about the hiring of teachers, it’s about the entire set of convictional expectations that will mark a campus. Because what is happening in San Francisco is being mirrored, in a very strange way, by a controversy that also made the pages of the New York Times – this time not from California, but from South Carolina.

Jeré Longman reporting for the New York Times tells us from Due West, South Carolina about a controversy has erupted at Erskine College. That’s a college affiliated with the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church – that’s a rather conservative form of American Presbyterianism; very conservative when compared to the mainline Protestant denomination known as the Presbyterian Church USA. The ARP, as it’s commonly known, is far more similar to the Presbyterian Church in America. But when it comes to the school there in Due West, South Carolina known as Erskine College it appears that the same kind of messaging – that is, that it intends to take its doctrinal convictions seriously – has met with a sense of shock, not on the part so much of faculty but of students on the campus.

Longman reports,

“It has been a year since Juan Varona and Andrew Davis, volleyball teammates at Erskine College, a conservative Christian school, came out as gay in an interview with Outsports.com.

“During that time, Mr. Varona said, he has been embraced by teammates, coaches, teachers and fellow students. The president of Erskine’s student government association called Mr. Varona and Mr. Davis ‘some of the most-liked guys on campus’ at the rural liberal arts college, which has about 600 undergraduates and was founded 176 years ago by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.”

So Longman writes, and this is one of the crucial paragraphs,

“So it was jarring to many last week when Erskine publicly condemned same-sex relationships, calling them sinful, in what was widely interpreted as a direct or indirect response to the two volleyball players.”

About a week before the story made the pages of the New York Times it made the pages of the Washington Post, and as Longman reports, Erskine’s President said last week that the private colleges position on sexuality was developed over the past two a half years and,

“…had everything to do with the Bible and nothing to do with the volleyball players,”

As Longman tells the story, students on the Erskine campus seem to be surprised on the one hand and at least some of them very outraged about the convictional statement made by the Board of Trustees with the support of the school’s President. There’s a story here of course and the bottom line of that story is that Erskine College has elected a President in recent months and they have charged that Pres. to return the school to its very clear convictional roots. Roots established by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, roots that are very biblical in terms of their theology and moral teaching and would ground them consistently in a biblical standard of sexuality. And yet the coming out of these players on the school’s volleyball team has demonstrated the fact that the school has at least in the past recruited a large number of collegiate athletes who evidently aren’t with the program and aren’t with the convictions when it comes to the schools understanding of the biblical standard of human sexuality.

As Longman reports,

“Erskine has drawn widespread attention and criticism in juxtaposition to increasingly tolerant public attitudes in the United States.”

Before going any further, one of the issues that biblically minded Christian should note is that evidently you don’t have to be in San Francisco to get national attention on this kind of issue. The New York Times found this story all the way down in rural South Carolina in a little town called Due West. And it’s a big story, and they know it. Longman reports that the two volleyball players at the center of the story have both left the college or are no longer going to play on the volleyball squad. Longman reports last week, Erskine said on its website that the student services and athletic committee of the Board of Trustees has submitted a statement on human sexuality. The statement said,

“We believe the Bible teaches that monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is God’s intended design for humanity and that sexual intimacy has its proper place only within the context of marriage.”

Now at this point we simply have to note that that’s a very standard statement of a biblical understanding of human sexuality. There’s nothing at all unusual there. Furthermore, it’s not an elaborated statement, but it was enough to get Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina in due trouble with the national media.

The school statement went on to say,

“Sexual relations outside of marriage or between persons of the same sex are spoken of in Scripture as sin and contrary to the will of the Creator.”

Again, we simply need to note absolutely standard biblical teaching. The final section of the statement according the Longman read that those in Erskine College were expected to adhere to scriptural teachings about sexuality and that,

“…institutional decisions will be made in light of this position,”

Now just to ask the obvious: on what other basis would even a secular newspaper assume that a Christian school would establish its policy decisions? But in reality, we can answer that question by saying that the controversy both in San Francisco and in South Carolina demonstrates that huge numbers of Americans, especially those in the media and secular elites, find it rather incomprehensible – shocking at the very core – that there would be religious institutions that intend to operate by their own religious convictions.

At this point the article in the New York Times gets even more interesting,

“Pete Savarese, the student government president at Erskine, said that while college officials had the right to state their position on sexuality, the statement seemed unnecessary, given that everyone at the college knew what the Bible said. He echoed others in expressing regret that a college that considered itself inclusive had suddenly gained a reputation for intolerance.”

That’s one of those sentences you simply have to unpack. And I’m going to give this young man the credit that perhaps the national media has misconstrued his words. But he appears to be saying that the college didn’t need to make a statement because, after all, everyone knows what the Bible teaches already and he’s now embarrassed that his school, since everyone knows what the Bible teaches, is now saying that what the Bible teaches is supposed to be the policy. That’s a very strange predicament, but it doesn’t appear to be out of keeping with where other students of the college may well be.

As the article continues, Longman tells us that Erskine, believing that it’s position had been misunderstood, issued a secondary statement saying that it’s stance on sexuality was,

“…not intended as policy, and no students would be barred from attending or asked to leave because of their sexual orientation, the statement said.”

That’s the wording from the New York Times summarizing the statement. Erskine, according to Longman, does not discriminate against,

“…any protected categories of individuals,”

He’s citing there that secondary statement. And Longman also tells us that the school’s current policy means that,

“…all types of students are welcome,”

Well I’ll admit as an academic president I’m not at all certain what that language is supposed to mean. But again, I’ll allow for some confusion on the part of the national media reporting the story. According to the Times Erskine stated that its position shouldn’t be considered unusual or unexpected for an evangelical Christian college. According to Longman the school insisted it had simply establish

“…a point of reference for discussion that should be conducted with civility and respect,”

Again, I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure exactly now where this policy stands. But I do know this, a school that announces its open and welcome to all kinds of students – including students who oppose and resist the convictions of the school – is a school that set itself up for an inevitable disaster. While it’s certainly true that a Christian College or University will find it very difficult to know exactly what every student believes, at least the students shouldn’t have any difficulty understanding what the school believes, affirms, teaches, and expects. That should be abundantly clear. It should be virtually impossible for a student body to be surprised when a Christian college declares its Christian convictions. What else would they have expected?

At this point in his very important article, Longman leaves Erskine College and goes to Baylor University where for several years Brittney Griner was a famous member of their women’s basketball team. Soon after graduating from Baylor she announced that she was a lesbian and had been during the time she was at the Baptist affiliated university. As Longman writes,

“A number of private Christian universities have instituted policies on sexuality that have caused tension within their athletic teams. During the 2011-12 basketball season, Ms. Griner, an all-American center, led Baylor to an N.C.A.A. title and a 40-0 record. But she said she felt pained as a lesbian by having to remain publicly closeted for appearances’ sake.

“In her memoir, ‘In My Skin,’ Ms. Griner wrote that Baylor seemed to want to have it both ways, a charge that might carry broader resonance in light of the situation at Erskine.”

He then cites Brittney Griner as writing,

“They want to keep the policy so they can keep selling themselves as a Christian university, but they are more than happy to benefit from the success of their gay athletes. That is [she says], as long as those gay athletes don’t talk about being gay.””

In taking the action that has brought them this kind of national news coverage, the Board of Trustees of Erskine College has done the right thing, as has its President. But the responsibility of the college is now to stick by its guns and by its convictions. And the New York Times article makes very clear, not only Erskine college or at Baylor University, we can find Christian schools running into direct conflict with athletic programs, their own recruiting, and the expectations of intercollegiate athletic groups perhaps very soon including the NCAA.

In this day of such pressure from a secular society no genuinely Christian school, that is a school that intends to operate by Christian principles on Christian truth, is going to be able to – as they say – fly under the radar. Every single one of these schools is going to pop up on the radar screen of a secular society just by virtue of its convictions and its intentions to teach and to operate by those convictions. When that in evitable moment of controversy comes – and make no mistake, it will – let’s make certain, let’s make absolutely certain, that at least there is no surprise on our own campuses. If the secular world is surprised, well we’ll leave it to them. But if our own students and faculty are surprised, the responsibility undeniably is ours.

2) Ohio eyes legal marijuana, as awkwardness between state and federal government increases

Next, several news stories that we ought at least to note: one appeared recently in USA Today; an article by Don Campbell in which he writes about Ohio asking if Ohio’s going to be the next trendy pot state. He writes knowledgeably that the Midwest is not overwhelmingly friendly to the legalization of marijuana. And yet he says there’s big money behind an effort to bring legal, medical, and recreational marijuana to the state of Ohio. And he also makes clear that at least some groups are already intending to commercialize the sale of marijuana; ready to build big warehouses in order to facilitate that sale. Campbell then writes about what he calls the elephant in the room. In his words,

“How can state and local jurisdictions continue to make something legal that is patently illegal under federal law?”

That’s a hugely important question and Don Campbell writing at USA Today takes this point logically further – and I’m very thankful he did. He writes this,

“In December, Congress approved and President Obama signed a spending bill that defunds federal prosecution of medical marijuana sales, yet a U.S. attorney in Oakland continues a campaign to shut down California’s largest medical marijuana dispensary.

“Obama [according to Campbell] has not only instructed the Justice Department to not interfere with state laws legalizing marijuana, he also has even encouraged more states to ‘experiment’ with such laws. So what happens if a Republican is elected president in 2016 and he or she orders a new attorney general to stamp out marijuana wherever it is found?”

That’s an interesting political question, but there’s a huge constitutional question here. The President took the oath of office swearing to uphold the laws of the land. Those laws, at present, include – undeniably – a very clear criminalization of the use, possession, or sale of marijuana at any quantity, for any reason. And yet the President of the United States has not only ordered federal prosecutors not to prosecute cases in those states that have legalized marijuana, but he has also openly invited governors of other states to experiment with their own laws.

How is it possible that a President of the United States, sworn to uphold the laws of the nation, can encourage the governors of the respective states to experiment with laws that violate the law that he has taken an oath to uphold? That’s the kind of question we’re asking in this very strange age. Campbell, by the way, doesn’t seem to be at all opposed to legalizing marijuana, he just thinks the law needs to be clarified and he’s calling upon the Supreme Court to make the clarification. But he also raises a point in his column that deserves some very close worldview scrutiny. He writes, and I quote,

“Doesn’t it just make sense, really, to control and profit from transactions that will otherwise be engaged in illegally by those who have a yearning for pot?”

That’s a rather convoluted sentence but he says, ‘shouldn’t the states basically take tax money and legalize what people are going to do anyway, even if it illegal, simply because they yearn for pot?’ Now, that’s one of those very interesting questions that simply have to be resoundingly answered from a Christian worldview in this way. Every single society decides to sanction, to make it illegal, even to criminalize, some things that other people want to do. You can’t simply make the argument that because people want to do it, and maybe even make the argument that inevitable they are going to do it, and then say that you ought to legalize it, tax it, and profit by it. Of course, even those who are making the argument to legalize marijuana don’t want to take the argument that far. But the point is they want to take the argument as far as the legalization of marijuana – for now. We simply have to ask the question, how long is ‘for now’?

3) Addition of Muslim holidays to New York public schools a victory for religious liberty

Next, a good number of Christians have noted that the Mayor of New York City has announced that that city schools will become the very first in the nation, in terms of major school systems, to observe two Muslim holidays – that is, as public holidays for the schools. As reporters Michael Grynbaum and Sharon Otterman explain, New York will become the nation’s first major metropolis to closes its public schools in observance of the two most sacred Muslim holy days; that was announced last week by New York’s Mayor Bill De Blasio. And a good number of Christians, both in New York and far beyond, are asking, ‘is this a good thing or is it a wrong thing?’

The quick answer to that question is that this is basically a good thing; Christians should support this. Why? It’s because we do not believe that Christian holidays that are observed by the public schools in New York City or elsewhere are an establishment of religion. Furthermore, we don’t actually believe – or at least we shouldn’t believe – that the New York City public schools observes holiday such as Christmas because they are somehow going to be institutionalizing or establishing Christmas as an official holiday because the schools are in some way Christian. No, these are public schools and the secularization of those schools is a different matter than the fact that the argument used for why the school should observe those Christian holidays isn’t a because the school should be Christian in that sense but because they should recognize that millions of New Yorkers are. It’s out of respect for the convictions, the religious convictions of those New Yorkers and for their family traditions, that the public schools are closed for what we might call the Christmas holidays. They’re not closed because the New York City public schools are observing Christmas per se.

The same is also true in New York City as the mayor has made this announcement about Muslim holidays. There may be some question about the population of Muslims and when that particular tipping point is reached, but I’m going to support the mayor in saying that at this point there must be – in New York – a sufficient number of Muslim families that it would make sense, out of equal respect for their convictions, to close the schools on their two most holy days. Frankly, I don’t think many schoolchildren in New York are going complain about the holidays. It’s probably true when it comes to those who are non-Christians who will also enjoy that break at Christmas time.

From a Christian worldview perspective of the rights and responsibility of government and respecting the religious convictions of citizens, it would make sense that if there is a sufficient number or percentage of Muslim families in a community for the public schools to recognize in the school calendar those holidays as holidays. There’s nothing there that is an establishment of religion and there is nothing there that should cause Christians the slightest concern on constitutional grounds. And we better be very careful about that because we are certainly not arguing that the respect of the public schools for our holidays is somehow based on an establishment of our religious convictions.

And by the way, if we do make that argument, we’re destined to lose in court because that’s not a winning argument. But if it’s not a winning argument for us, it’s also not an argument to be used against others. If there would be a sufficient number of any religious minority to allow for the reasonable plausible suggestion that it ought to be reflected in the school calendar, it’s not that big of a practical problem. And from a constitutional perspective, this is something we should support rather than something we should oppose. And from a missiological perspective, armed with the Great Commission, the fact that there is a significant number of Muslim families in New York City – sufficient to justify this decision being made by the mayor – then we need to note how great our challenge is, how this underlines our Great Commission challenge in an increasingly diverse America. Because when we hear a report like this our first response shouldn’t be constitutional, it shouldn’t be legal, it should be quite explicitly theological – grounded in our understanding of the gospel and our responsibility by the Great Commission.

Oh, and by the way, we as evangelical Christians have better be very careful about how many issues in the news we decide are issues in which we need to take a stand; certainly some kind of stand of complaint. In this case, neighborliness – as in love of neighbor – is commanded by Christ, should mean that we respect our Muslim neighbors when it comes to their holidays, even as we ask them to respect outs. Oh, and when it comes that Great Commission responsibility, one good way to start a conversation with our Muslim neighbors might be to ask them to explain to us their holidays. That just might be a very good way to begin a conversation that we certainly hope and pray will end with the gospel.

 

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 information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

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