R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 327

Transcript: The Briefing 01-09-15

The Briefing

 

January 9, 2015

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

 

It’s Friday, January 9, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

The world continued to be transfixed by the events that took place this week in Paris and in the aftermath. A massive manhunt has now shifted in France to the north of that nation where two Islamic brothers – both French nationals –are still hiding from the police; one age 34, the other age 32. A third suspect, a teenager believed to have driven the getaway car, turned himself into French authorities late on Wednesday. Meanwhile, French intelligence and law enforcement officials released more about the two suspects, the two brothers. One of whom is now known to have spent several months in prison on a terrorism charge and was on virtually every watch list of Western nations.

 

Early this morning the New York Times reported that the brothers are now expected to have been trained by Al Qaeda; a very interesting development not completely unexpected. But the most frightening aspect of this news is that there is seemingly now some form of bitter rivalry in terms of extremism between Islamic terrorism groups; in particular between the group known as Al Qaeda in Yemen and the group known as the Islamic State.

 

Several Western authorities suggested that this may be at least one sign of two different things. On the one hand, the setting loose of a kind of lone wolf pattern that has shown up in Australia and in Canada and other nations and secondly this may be an indication of an increase rivalry amongst extremist groups connected to Islam in which groups such as Al Qaeda, in particular Al Qaeda in Yemen, are trying to prove that they have not lost the murderous agenda to groups such as the Islamic State. It’s a truly frightening development to think that we might be now seeing a form of public competition between Islamic terrorism groups and their cells as to who can kill the most; most brutally and most publicly.

 

In terms of the worldview dimension of the terrorism threat we now face, a very important article appeared yesterday in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. The article is by Daniel Henninger and it appears in the Wonderland column. As he writes and I quote,

 

“Terrorist attacks like Charlie Hebdo come and go. Mostly they go.”

 

He continues,

 

“For all the grief, pain and outrage of the past 24 hours—from as always President Barack Obama down to the streets of Paris—does any serious person doubt that by this time next week life in the West will be back to normal?”

 

Henninger asked a very important question because it relates to the fact that these terrorist attacks are now coming with such brutality and with such frequency that both outrage and public attention are gaining a shorter and shorter shelf life. He writes this,

 

“After each major terrorist act that catches the world’s attention—the four-day attack in 2008 in Mumbai…the 2013 assault on a Nairobi shopping center… the eruption of the Islamic State beheaders in Iraq this year—one thinks that this will be the event that causes the West’s political leadership to get serious about the global threat of Islamic fundamentalism, whose primary political instrument is homicide.”

 

He continues,

 

“But it’s hard to focus. Terrorist bombs set off in crowded places obliterate not only what were once people but obliterate awareness of what has occurred. One way or another, it’s mostly blood-soaked debris.”

 

Henninger’s making a point very similar to the one that I made on The Briefing yesterday: Western elites just will not, perhaps cannot, take the threat of Islamic terrorism with sufficient seriousness. They actually find themselves expressing outrage – the same outrage – over and over again without acknowledging the fundamental problem.

 

Daniel Henninger points back very prophetically to the end of 2014 on December 16 when, as he writes,

 

“Seven heavily armed men from the Pakistan Taliban entered the Army Public School in Peshawar, a city with a half-million more people than Chicago. Once inside, the gunmen killed 132 school children by shooting them in the head or chest.”

 

By pointing to the incident that took place still less than a month ago in Peshawar, Pakistan, Henninger’s pointing to the very short shelf life of moral outrage and indignation in the world today; especially in the West, especially in light of repeated terrorist attacks. What took place in Paris with the killing of 10 journalists and two policeman at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo is truly horrifying, absolutely horrifying, but Daniel Henninger openly asks just how horrifying our horror really is. And he points back once again to Peshawar writing this,

 

“The Peshawar massacre in December was different and more difficult to let drop from memory.”

 

He explains why when he writes,

 

“One can imagine seven adult men walking from one classroom to another, methodically executing boys and girls in white shirts and blouses at their desks.”

 

He then goes on to say,

 

“Rather than the act of a random insane person, Peshawar, in the minds of the Taliban, was a rational, well-planned military atrocity. A success. Just like every other terrorist act dating back to 9/11 and before.”

 

Daniel Henninger is actually onto something of incredible importance here. Not only are we witnessing a shorter and shorter shelf life to moral indignation and outrage, we’re also noticing the fact that the West is still obstinately refusing to acknowledge the war we find ourselves in. He points to the fact that many people in the West – including thousands of people in Paris, professional American athletes and others – have been wearing signs and shirts with the statement “I am Charlie” in various languages. But Henninger points out, those shirt are not likely to stay on for long. The same attention will spread to something else.

 

And furthermore he says, just remember the photos of all those people being held up with signs that said “bring back our girls” in the aftermath of the Nigerian Islamic Jihad group Boko Haram kidnapping 276 girls from a rural school. Well months later, the girls have not returned but the signs are down and so is the social media attention. The world has moved on, the outrage has been shifted to something else, and Henninger says this will simply happen again. And it will happen in part because the West, in shifting this kind of outrage and indignation, in shortening the shelf life of this kind of moral awareness, is actually demonstrating again an obstinacy – a refusal – to deal with the war in which we now find ourselves; a war that is truly a war of theological dimensions, a war that is being fought on the terms of Islamic extremists, not on terms of Western rationality.

 

That leads me to point to a very different article that also appeared yesterday, this time in USA Today. And the headline is actually even worse than the article. The article’s byline by Rick Hampson, it appears on page 2 of yesterday’s print edition of USA Today. And here’s the headline: “World Reacts with Universal Outrage, Universal Values.” Well let’s just state the obvious, the world has not responded with universal outrage and certainly not with universal values. The problem with that second part – universal values – is that they clearly do not exist. The problem with the first part – universal outrage – is that his own paper contradicts that headline claim. After all, also in the same edition of the paper – as we discussed yesterday – the paper actually runs an op-ed piece by a radical Muslim cleric in London supporting the actions undertaken by the murderers in Paris.

 

Furthermore, almost immediately after the attacks in Paris there was celebration on Islamic websites tied to terrorist groups worldwide. There is no way one can, with a straight face, say that the world has responded with universal outrage. Once again we see the kind of willful blindness that the Western elites simply seem to be addicted to; they simply can’t pull themselves away from the claim that the world is actually being run by a universal morality based upon a universal rationality that all right minded persons everywhere accept. That is clearly fundamentally not the case. And it demonstrates the fact, once again, that the modern Western secular worldview just can’t handle this kind of reality.

 

As I said, the headline is actually worse than the article but the articles bad enough. Hampson begins his article,

 

“This time, the terrorist target was not a state or a politician, not a commuter train, a subway station or a pair of giant office towers. The target was freedom of expression, a value [he says] so fundamental it’s recognized in the English Bill of Rights (1689), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), the U.S. Bill of Rights (1791) and the U.N. Universal Declaration of Rights (1948).”

 

His next sentence,

 

“And the world reacted commensurately, with a unity that was fierce, angry and rare.”

 

Well in the aftermath of this tragedy, of this horrible execution style murder in Paris, there was a great deal of common outrage. That’s both right and true. The problem is it certainly wasn’t universal. The United Nations may have ambitiously called it’s declaration of rights the universal declaration of rights but these rights are not universally respected.

 

As a matter fact, just to point to the obvious once again, this very same newspaper ran an op-ed piece by a radical cleric from London in the very same edition stating that so far as the Muslim world was concerned, in his explanation, Muslim responsibility trumps freedom of expression – therefore in terms of at least many millions of people in the world, this is not a universal value.

 

From a Christian worldview perspective looking at this very carefully we need to understand that every culture is embedded with a moral logic, every worldview has its own moral principles. We can certainly wish that there was a universal respect for human dignity, human rights, and such things as the freedom of expression, but this just isn’t the case. It’s fundamentally not the case. Freedom of expression simply doesn’t exist in many societies. And fundamentally it doesn’t exist in the Muslim world where blasphemy is often a crime, sometimes a capital crime. We’re speaking in terms of even a word of Christian witness can also be a capital crime.

 

We’re talking about a world in which there are so many different worldviews and a real, even if tragic, lack of common consensus on so many moral issues. But then again, just think of the American context where on issues as fundamental as the sanctity of human life there isn’t any basic universal agreement even within this culture on something that is so morally basic.

 

When it comes to something like universal outrage and universal values as found in this headline from USA Today, I simply remember what my grandmother told me many years ago – wishing it so doesn’t make it so. To that I would simply state, printing it so also doesn’t make it so. We are engaged in a deadly battle of worldviews, a deadly battle of ideas. Failing to recognize this, much less denying it, is not only dishonest, it’s downright dangerous.

 

Shifting to the United States where we have our own battle of worldviews, we also face a battle over religious liberty and that’s inevitably so. Anyone doubting that, and there are some who still openly deny it, need only look at a headline that appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times. Here it is, “Atlanta Ousts Fire Chief Who Has Antigay Views.” Richard Fausset reports,

 

“Mayor Kasim Reed announced Tuesday that he had fired the chief of the city’s Fire Rescue Department, Kelvin Cochran, after Mr. Cochran gave workers a religious book he wrote containing passages that condemn homosexuality.”

 

A closer look at the article is actually quite urgent. As Mr. Fausset writes,

 

“Mr. Reed had suspended Mr. Cochran for a month without pay in November, opening an investigation into whether Mr. Cochran’s authorship and distribution of the book to workers violated the city’s nondiscrimination policies. That move sparked a debate about religious liberty and freedom of expression,”

 

Chief Cochran, fired by Atlanta’s mayor for having written and published a book and having distributed to a handful of fire department employees, is a member of a Southern Baptist church in the Atlanta area. He had written a book entitled, “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” As Fausset reports,

 

“[it] counts homosexual acts among a number of ‘vile, vulgar and inappropriate’ activities that serve to ‘dishonor God,’ [that] according to excerpts obtained by the local gay news media and activists.”

 

They didn’t evidently have a copy of the book. As the New York Times also reports,

 

“Mr. Cochran held his own news conference Tuesday. He said that the city’s investigation found that he had not acted in a discriminatory way toward gay people, and said that he had asked for, and received, permission from the proper bureaucratic channels to write the book — an assertion [the Mayor’s] office disputes.”

 

So gay advocates are cheering the mayors decision, the mayor finds himself in something of a political controversy, but the fire chief is out. He’s out of a job for having written a book that was basically privately published and very narrowly distributed in which he stated something that is fundamental to evangelical moral conviction – something that basically amounts to nothing more, or least a little more, than actually quoting the Bible, quoting the Scriptures.

 

The mayor described the book, or at least this portion of the book, as having inflammatory content. But once again, looking at the material supplied by the media, the inflammatory content is what is drawn directly from Scripture – especially from very specific biblical verses dealing with homosexuality. So what we’re looking at here is an undeniable case in which religious conviction actually got the Fire Chief of Atlanta fired; fired simply because he dared to write a book in which he stated his Christian convictions.

 

This raises a host of very interesting and complex, not to say troubling, questions. Can anyone now be an evangelical Christian and serve as a Fire Chief or even in the fire department? This raises the question as to whether one can believe that homosexuality is a sin without discriminating against homosexuals. The clear implication of the Mayor’s decision is that the Fire Chief is out, not because he acted in any way, in any discriminatory fashion toward any gay member of the fire department staff or anyone else for that matter, but simply because he expressed his biblical conviction that homosexuality is a sin.

 

Now once again, this raises a host of very interesting questions the mayor and furthermore our culture is not going to be able to avoid. Is the Bible itself now going to be defined as hate speech because by any measure the language that the Fire Chief used is drawn, if not immediately from Scripture, then with language that is tantamount to it? Can anyone who holds to a biblical understanding of sexuality, anyone who is a member of an evangelical congregation serve in this kind of political and public role? Or does that moral conviction absolutely mean, in a categorical sense, that discrimination is the obvious outcome? Or is holding the belief itself, is holding that biblical conviction itself a form of discrimination; even if no discriminatory act ever follows?

 

Let’s just jump to the next understanding, is it possible that any Orthodox or traditional Roman Catholic can serve in such a position? Furthermore, could Pope Francis the first serve in such a position because after all, Francis the first is the head of a church that officially holds that all same-sex sexual activity is – to use the words of the Roman Catholic Church – intrinsically disordered; always and in every case a sin. You can almost be guaranteed that the mayor of Atlanta would fall over backwards to try to arrange a papal visit. How can he then arrange that kind of visit and celebrate the Pope when the Pope holds, at least in terms of the teaching of his church which he still affirms, that all same-sex acts and same-sex relationships are inherently disordered and always and in every case same-sex activity is a sin?

 

Or are we just looking at discrimination against an evangelical Christian? Is it the case that this would be overlooked in terms of Roman Catholic? Well in terms of consistency, we can only assume that the mayor’s going to have to determine in very short order just how secular, how much of an unbeliever anyone must be to be a candidate to be the head of the Fire Rescue Department of the city of Atlanta.

 

Let’s look at exactly how the mayor describe his decision as the New York Times reports and I quote,

 

“Despite my respect for Chief Cochran’s service, I believe his actions and decision-making undermine his ability to effectively manage a large, diverse work force. Every single employee under the fire chief’s command deserves the certainty that he or she is a valued member of the team and that fairness and respect guide employment decisions.”

 

Well let’s just look at that statement and imagine what the Mayor has now not only implied but openly stated by firing the chief. One can’t hold that all persons are of value, one can’t operate in terms of neutrality, in terms of personnel decisions, if one holds to traditional biblical Christianity. Some may argue that it isn’t the problem that the chief held these positions and convictions but it’s a problem that he published them, that he put them in print.

 

But as the world is supposedly universally affirming the importance of freedom of expression, are we now to be told that evangelical Christians – or for that matter Orthodox Jews and traditional Catholics – simply must hold their tongue and hold their peace? Never putting their biblical convictions into print or into some form of public statement? The action in Atlanta is not only ominous, it’s absolutely frightening. The religious liberty implications of the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage are massive, they are unavoidable, and they are now inevitable. And they’re showing up in this case not in New York City or Seattle but in Atlanta, Georgia – right in the heart of the South, in a city that the New York Times acknowledges includes millions of evangelical Christians and others who would also hold to the Chief’s conviction.

 

No matter how lavishly people may claim to believe in freedom of expression and no matter how much they may argue this isn’t an issue of religious liberty, the bare facts are simply unavoidable. The Fire Chief of Atlanta has been fired. Not because he acted in any way that was discriminatory, not because any employee brought any grievance against him for acting in a discriminatory manner, but merely for having stated, for having articulated in print, his biblical convictions on issues of morality. The book wasn’t even primarily about sexuality or about homosexuality – at least as reported in the media – but it did contain those sections that evidently were so offensive that the mayor of Atlanta had to say the chief is out. And the Mayor did so – let me remind you of his words – while saying,

 

“Despite my respect for Chief Cochran’s service, I believe his actions and decision-making undermine his ability to effectively manage a large, diverse work force.”

 

What were his actions? What was his decision-making? As even the New York Times has acknowledged, it was putting his Christian convictions into print and then giving the book to three – that’s right, count them, three – city employees the chief said he had come to know as fellow Christians. That was simply over the line. And the mayor of Atlanta has fired the chief.

 

This probably isn’t the end of the story, but it’s a tragedy already. And it’s a tragedy of epic proportions because this demonstrates not just what has happened in Atlanta, in the case of its Fire Chief, but what is already happening in far too many places by multiplying effect which will not get the kind of publicity that Atlanta got in firing its Fire Chief.

 

As I’ve warned again and again, what we are facing in this country is not only a conflict of worldviews but a conflict of liberties with the newly defined version of erotic liberty trumping religious liberty over and over again. We see that now in Atlanta, we’ve seen it in Arizona, we have seen it in Oregon, we’ve seen in California, we’ve seen it in terms of the contraception mandate of the ObamaCare legislation, we’ve seen it in terms of the California State University system casting InterVarsity Christian fellowship off-campus. These cases are multiplying and wherever you live, they’re getting closer to home – just ask the folks who live in Atlanta.

 

The public firing of Atlanta’s Fire Chief now makes abundantly clear that the alarm has been sounded and erotic liberty is now on the ascent and religious liberty is everywhere in danger.

 

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 boyecollege.com. I’m speaking to you from West Palm Beach, Florida and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

The Briefing 01-09-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Aftermath of Paris carnage continues to show secular elites inability to fathom religious war

Terror Come and Goes, Again, The Wall Street Journal (Daniel Henninger)

Paris attack: Universal values, universal outrage, USA Today (Rick Hampson)

 

2) Firing of ATL Fire Chief for Christian conviction pits erotic liberty over religious liberty

Atlanta Ousts Fire Chief Who Has Antigay Views, New York Times (Richard Fausset)

Theological Extremism in a Secular Age

This is an edited transcript of The Briefing podcast from early Thursday morning, January 8, 2015.

The war on terror took on a savage new face yesterday when two gunmen entered the headquarters of a French satirical newspaper known as Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing 12 people—10 people connected with the newspaper and two police officers.

The Washington Post reported this morning, “France’s deadliest terrorist attack in modern memory unfolded with chilling precision here Wednesday as gunmen speaking fluent French burst into a satirical newspaper’s weekly staff meeting and raked the room with bullets, leaving behind what one witness described as ‘absolute carnage.’”

Reporters Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola also reported, “After shooting dead their final victim, the exultant killers calmly fled the scene, sparking a manhunt that extended across this capital city and deep into its suburbs… France raised its security alarm to the highest level and mobilized teams on foot, by air and in vehicles seeking the three masked assailants, who carried out the assault shouting the Arabic call of ‘Allahu Akbar,’ or ‘God is great,’ amid the gunfire.”

Charlie Hebdo—which means “Charlie Weekly”— is well-known in French culture as a far left satirical magazine. In fact, at one point in its history Charlie Hebdo had been put out of business by the French government due to inflammatory comments made in the aftermath of the death of the late French President Charles de Gaulle. But the magazine re-started in 1992 and, in recent years, has become world-famous for running satirical cartoons—including cartoons against the prophet Mohammed.

The scene of carnage in the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo was yet another sign that the Islamic culture, at least as represented by these terrorists, is ready to take whatever steps necessary to put an end to what they consider blasphemy.

French President François Hollande very clearly indicated that he considered this “a terrorist attack, without a doubt.” The French president also stated, “Journalists and police officers have been assassinated in cowardly fashion….France is in a state of shock.”

The attack on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters was hardly unprecedented. In 2011 the headquarters were firebombed after running a similar cartoon satirizing the prophet Mohammed. As the Washington Post reported, “Charlie Hebdo’s iconoclastic style frequently pushed the envelope. The newspaper was already under regular police guard after being targeted in the past.”

As the news of the massacre unfolded, I immediately thought of an editorial that ran in the final edition the Wall Street Journal in 2014. That editorial, entitled “Progressives and Disorder,” pointed to the fact that Western elites are often relatively unwilling or unable to deal with the disorder that has now emerged on the world scene. Western elites believe and insist that humanity operates on basically rational terms. No one better illustrates this rationalist approach to world affairs than President Barack Obama. But as the Wall Street Journal editors made clear, those Western elites are relatively helpless when it comes to dealing with the world that will not operate by the same rules of rational order and rational discourse.

The massacre in Paris is yet another sign that a a good portion of the world’s population operates by a very different worldview and by a very different moral code. There is a form of rationality evident in the Islamic attacks, in the larger context of Islamic terrorism, and in particular in the attack upon the newspaper Charlie Hebdo. But that rationality is the rationality of Islam, not of the Western worldview; certainly not of the modern Western secular worldview.

An example of the West’s confusion is demonstrated in an article that appears in this morning’s edition of the New York Times entitled “‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow,” written by Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold. The article cites Olivier Roy, a French scholar of Islam and Islamic radicalism, who defined the Paris assault as “a quantitative and therefore qualitative turning point…This was a maximum-impact attack. They did this to shock the public, and in that sense they succeeded.”

But the New York Times article is notable for the fact that it lacks any moral clarity about how to understand this massacre. The article cites Andrew Hussey, identified as a Paris-based professor of post-colonial studies, who noted, “Politically, the official left in France has been in denial of the conflict between France and the Arab world. But the French in general sense it.”

One of the fundamental problems among Western elites is that they cannot understand a theological worldview—particularly the theological worldview of Islam. Being basically rational and secular in their own worldview, Western elites find it almost impossible to understand the radical actions taken by Islamic terrorists.

For example, Islamic teaching distinguishes the house of Islam (Dar al_Islam)—that part of the world which is under submission to the Quran and Sharia law—from the house of war (Dar al-Harb)—that portion of the world that is not yet brought under Sharia rule. That logic is simply something that the modern secular mind really cannot understand and the American government seems almost resolutely determined to ignore or even to deny.

Speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program yesterday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina indicated that he believes that what we are witnessing is a religious war. But that statement is not echoed by other sectors of the American government—in particular, the United States State Department and, even more pointedly, the American White House. President Obama continues to refer to the group that calls itself the Islamic State by the acronym ISIL—trying to do anything to avoid mentioning the word Islam.

Similar efforts have been undertaken, very categorically, by the United States State Department and by governments in Great Britain and also in France. Even though France has been on the front lines of the war on terror, in terms of its military engagement, French leaders have been unwilling to take on Islam as a cultural challenge, a theological challenge, and, more importantly, a worldview challenge.

In an absolutely stunning development this morning, USA Today ran an article by an extremist Muslim cleric in Britain, Anjem Choudary, who wrote, “Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.”

He went on to write, “Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”

Choudary went on basically to defend the massacre in Paris. He wrote, “Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, ‘Whoever insults a Prophet, kill him.’”

To my knowledge, this is the first time a major American newspaper has run an editorial column by a radical extremist actually calling for the death of those who insult the honor of the prophet Mohammed. In its tagline for the article USA Today actually stated that Choudary “is a radical Muslim cleric in London and a lecturer in sharia.”

But as the Washington Post reported on October 11, 2014, there is no doubt about Choudary’s actual ties to Islamic terrorism and the fact that he has proven very elusive to British authorities. In that article The Post reported, “Iraq and Syria, Choudary says confidently, are only the beginning. The Islamic State’s signature black flag will fly over 10 Downing Street, not to mention the White House. And it won’t happen peacefully, but only after a great battle that is now underway.”

The article cites Choudary as saying, “We believe there will be complete domination of the world by Islam. That may sound like some kind of James Bond movie—you know, Dr. No and world domination and all that. But we believe it.”

Witte then wrote, “With such grandiose proclamations, it is tempting to dismiss Choudary as a cartoonish hate preacher straight out of central casting. Many do. But harder to ignore is his record of inspiring impressionable young men to carry out violence in the name of Islam—both in Britain and overseas.”

I cannot think of a precedent whereby a major American newspaper has given this kind of extremist this kind of voice in the pages of its own newspaper.

Blasphemy and the Christian Worldview

From a Christian worldview perspective there are a couple of very crucial issues for us to consider. First is the issue of blasphemy. Islam considers blasphemy a capital crime and defines blasphemy as an insult to the Quran, to Islam, and most specifically and personally, to the prophet Mohammed. Christianity also has a concern about blasphemy, but as a spiritual crime—as a sin against God, not as a matter of civic law.

As a matter of fact, Christians recognize that Jesus Christ himself suffered insults and blasphemy on our behalf. Further, Christ deterred the church from pursuing violence when he told Peter to put his sword away. Christ did not revile those who blasphemed him by calling for violence, but rather he accepted the blasphemy as part of the suffering he was called to endure. That is a stunning difference between blasphemy in the Christian worldview and the understanding of blasphemy in the Islamic worldview.

As Choudary made very clear in his article in USA Today, Muslims have a basic responsibility to protect—by violence if necessary—any insult to Islam or the prophet Mohammed. After citing Mohammed to say, “Whoever insults a prophet, kill him,” Choudary wrote, in USA Today, “However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.” Indeed, as we saw quite murderously in Paris yesterday.

It is very important that Christians understand that it is not our responsibility to defend the honor of Jesus Christ. As the Bible indicates, Christ will do that himself. Our responsibility is to bear testimony to Christ and, in following his example, bear scorn where necessary in his own name. For this reason, Christians support freedom of expression; understanding that to be a basic human right and not one granted merely by the secular state. Rather freedom of conscience and freedom of expression is bound up in the fact that God has created us in his own image. Christians must therefore defend freedom of expression even while we engage in the public square and bear testimony to the lordship of Christ.

As Christians we understand that every word—indeed every blasphemous word—will eventually stand under divine judgment. There is absolutely nothing to celebrate in blasphemy. But, even as Christians understand the grave consequences of blasphemy, we do not consider it our responsibility to punish the blasphemer. That’s a very important issue and one that is in keeping with the example of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Theological Extremism and The Secular Worldview

Andrew Hussey’s insightful comment in the New York Times is worth repeating: “Politically, the official left in France has been in denial of the conflict between France and the Arab world. But the French in general sense it.”

The reality is that secular elites in general find it incomprehensible to discern why the events in Paris yesterday took place. The denial that this type of terrorism is tied to a theological worldview, present in so many Western intellectual circles, is going to be far harder to hold in light of this kind of massacre. Even as the manhunt for the two assailants spreads throughout France and into much of Europe, the reality is that French intellectuals, European intellectuals, and their American compatriots, are finding themselves hard-pressed to deny that this is indeed a religious war—there is a theological dimension here that simply must be accepted.

It is true, of course, that not all Muslims are radicalized or extremist. It is true that many Muslims, especially in the West, have nothing to do with these kinds of terrorist attacks—either in plotting it or in supporting it. It is also true that most of the Muslims around the world, even if they hold to a theological worldview that justifies these kinds of actions, will never be involved in them. But the other side of the equation is that the Western world now finds itself at war with at least a very large sector of Islam.

Indeed, there is evidence that Islamic terrorism is growing. Keep in mind the report in the Washington Post that over 2000 young Muslims in France have joined the jihad in the Middle East. To those numbers must be added similar figures of young Muslims joining the jihad from the United Kingdom and from other European countries. Further, there are reports of at least several hundred young Muslims leaving  the United States from cities including Minneapolis, Minnesota to join the jihad as well.

The Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris was known for satirically attacking just about every form of religious expression – including Orthodox Judaism and Christianity. But that newspaper did not have to fear any kind of terrorism from Orthodox Jews or from Christians. Both Jews and Christians take blasphemy to be a grave sin but not in the same sense as Islam. French elites and the French people have now been informed of exactly what kind of jihad has been declared against them as a nation, against them as a people, and against freedom of expression.

There is a role for satire in the Christian worldview, even within the Bible. Just think of Isaiah 44’s satirical description of the folly of human idolatry. But that is not warrant for Christians to enter into any kind of irresponsible and intentionally offensive form of satire. Consider the example of the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 who, standing at Mars Hill in the context of religious pluralism, did not resort to satire or ridicule. Instead, he boldly declared Christ and he did so in a way that was calculated to make a very clear distinction between the worship of Jesus Christ and the worship of idols. He did so in a way that should serve as an example to all Christians, especially in our contemporary context of radical religious pluralism.

We are living in a world growing more dangerous by the day. That world — the real world — is a world of clashing ideologies and conflicting worldviews. The real world is also a world in which theology always matters, and a world in which an empty secular worldview is no match for an Islamic theology set on conquest and driven by revenge.

 

 

Charlie Hebdo suspect said to surrender; two others at large after Paris terrorist attack, The Washington Post (Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola)

Progressives and Disorder, The Wall Street Journal (Associated Press)

‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow, New York Times (Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold)

People know the consequences: Opposing view, USA Today (Anjem Choudary)

In Britain, Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary proves elusive, The Washington Post (Griff Witte)

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Transcript: The Briefing 01-08-15

The Briefing

 

January 8, 2015

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

 

It’s Thursday, January 8, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

The war on terror took on a savage new phase when two gunmen entered the headquarters of a French satirical newspaper known as Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing eventually 12 people – 10 people connected with the newspaper and two police officers. As the Washington Post reports this morning,

 

“France’s deadliest terrorist attack in modern memory unfolded with chilling precision here Wednesday as gunmen speaking fluent French burst into a satirical newspaper’s weekly staff meeting and raked the room with bullets, leaving behind what one witness described as ‘absolute carnage.’”

 

As reporters Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola also reported,

 

“After shooting dead their final victim, the exultant killers calmly fled the scene, sparking a manhunt that extended across this capital city [that is Paris] and deep into its suburbs.”

 

“France raised its security alarm to the highest level and mobilized teams on foot, by air and in vehicles seeking the three masked assailants, who carried out the assault shouting the Arabic call of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” amid the gunfire.”

 

Charlie Hebdo is well-known in French culture as a far left satirical magazine. France is a culture that has thrived on both irony and satire. And Charlie Hebdo had been a newspaper that had been put out of business by the French government for some time due to inflammatory comments made in the aftermath of the death of the late French President Charles de Gaulle. But it re-started in 1992 and in recent years it had become world-famous for running satirical cartoons – including those against the prophet Mohammed.

 

Cartoons of a similar form have incited Islamic rage and terrorist attacks over the last decade. And the scene of carnage in the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo was yet another sign that the Islamic culture, at least as represented by these terrorists, is absolutely ready to take whatever steps necessary to put an end to what, in the Islamic mind, is considered as blasphemy.

 

As of last night an 18-year-old young man considered to have been the driver in the getaway car, surrendered to police after his name had been revealed on French social media. Interestingly, the name was made possible in terms of the knowledge of the police by the fact that the young man evidently left his identification in the car that was later abandoned by the terrorists.

 

French President François Hollande said that the attack Wednesday was “a terrorist attack, without a doubt.” He went on to say,

 

“Journalists and police officers have been assassinated in cowardly fashion. [His statement then followed] France is in a state of shock.”

 

The attack on the headquarters Charlie Hebdo – that means Charlie Weekly – was hardly unprecedented. Back in 2011 the headquarters was firebombed after a similar cartoon controversy having to do also with the prophet Mohammed. Video of the attackers making their escape made very clear exactly what was at stake when the attackers claimed that they had avenged the honor of the prophet Mohammed. As the Washington Post reported, there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack, but messages of praise appeared on websites and other online forums linked to Islamic militants.

 

As the Washington Post also reported,

 

“Charlie Hebdo’s iconoclastic style frequently pushed the envelope. The newspaper was already under regular police guard after being targeted in the past.”

 

As the news of the massacre unfolded I immediately thought of an editorial run by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal in the last edition of that newspaper for the year 2014. That editorial entitled “Progressives and Disorder” pointed to the fact that Western elites are often relatively unwilling or unable to deal with the disorder that has now emerged on the world scene. Western elites believe and insist that humanity operates on basically rational terms. No one better illustrates this rationalist approach to world affairs than the current President of the United States, Barack Obama. But as the Wall Street Journal editors made clear, those Western elites are relatively helpless when it comes to dealing with the world that will not operate by the same rules of rational order and rational discourse.

 

The massacre in Paris is yet another sign that a good bit of the world, a good portion of the world’s population, operates by a very different worldview and by a very different moral code. Of course there is a form of rationality that is very evident in the Islamic attacks, in the larger context of Islamic terrorism, and in particular in the attack upon the newspaper Charlie Hebdo. But that rationality is the rationality of Islam, not of the Western worldview; certainly not of the modern Western secular worldview.

 

An example of the perplexity of the West is demonstrated in an article that appears in this morning’s edition of the New York Times. Written by Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold, the articles entitled “‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow.” The article cites Olivier Roy, a French scholar of Islam and Islamic radicalism, who defined the Paris assault – noted as the most deadly terrorist attack on French soil since the Algerian war ended in the 1960s – as,

 

“… a quantitative and therefore qualitative turning point. [He went on to say] This was a maximum-impact attack. They did this to shock the public, and in that sense they succeeded.”

 

But the New York Times article is notable for the fact that it lacks any moral clarity about how to understand this massacre in terms of a worldview context. The article cited Andrew Hussey, identified as a Paris-based professor of post-colonial studies, who said,

 

“Politically, the official left in France has been in denial of the conflict between France and the Arab world. But the French in general sense it.”

 

The New York Times article also notes the fact that at least 2000 young French citizens have traveled the fight with militants in the groups known as the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations. But many among the Western elites seem to be far more concerned at this point about an overreaction in terms of their characterization of those in the West to this kind of action undertaken by Islamic terrorists.

 

One of the fundamental problems here is that these elites basically can’t understand a theological worldview in the form of Islam. Being basically rational and secular in their own worldview, they find it almost impossible to get into the mind of someone who would take such actions on behalf of a theological worldview. But Islam, if anything, has a theological worldview. And that worldview separates the world by official Islamic teaching between what is known as Islam, or the world of Islam – that world which is under submission to the Quran and Sharia law – and what is defined as the world of war, identified as that portion of the world that is not yet brought under that kind of Sharia rule. That logic is simply something that the modern secular mind really cannot understand and the American government seems almost resolutely determined to ignore or even to deny.

 

Speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program yesterday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina made very clear that this is a religious war. But that statement is not echoed by other sectors of the American government – in particular, the United States State Department and, even more pointedly, the American White House. President Obama, we’ve noted in the past, continues to refer to the group that calls itself the Islamic state by the acronym ISIL – trying to do anything to avoid mentioning the word Islam.

 

Similar efforts are undertaken, very categorically, by the United States State Department. Similar kinds of efforts have been undertaken by governments in Great Britain and also in France. Even though France has been on the front lines of the war on terror, in terms of its military dimension, French leaders have been unwilling to take on Islam as a cultural challenge, a theological challenge, an ideological and more importantly, a worldview challenge.

 

In an absolutely stunning development this morning, USA Today has run an article by an extremist Muslim cleric in Britain under the title of its opposing view column. Though in its own editorial, the newspaper called for there being no silence when it comes to free expression. The newspaper actually runs an article by cleric Anjem Choudary of Great Britain, who wrote,

 

“Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.”

He went on to write,

 

“Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”

 

Choudary went on basically to defend the massacre in Paris. He wrote,

 

“Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, ‘Whoever insults a Prophet, kill him.’”

 

To my knowledge, this is the first time a major American newspaper has run an editorial column by a radical extremist actually calling for the death of those who insult the honor of the prophet Mohammed. In its tagline for the article USA Today actually states that Choudary “is a radical Muslim cleric in London and a lecturer in sharia.” But as the Washington Post has reported, there is no doubt about Choudary’s actually ties to Islamic terrorism.

 

In a very important article published on October 11, 2014 the Washington Post made very clear that Choudary is an Islamic extremist who has proven very elusive to British authorities. Ironically enough, this article is by reporter Griff Witte – one of the very reporters who was combined in the article I just cited from the New York Times this morning. In that article The Post reported, and I quote,

 

“Iraq and Syria, Choudary says confidently, are only the beginning. The Islamic State’s signature black flag will fly over 10 Downing Street, not to mention the White House. And it won’t happen peacefully, but only after a great battle that is now underway.”

 

The article cites Choudary as saying,

 

“We believe there will be complete domination of the world by Islam. That may sound like some kind of James Bond movie — you know, Dr. No and world domination and all that. But we believe it.”

 

Witte then wrote,

 

“With such grandiose proclamations, it is tempting to dismiss Choudary as a cartoonish hate preacher straight out of central casting. Many do. But harder to ignore is his record of inspiring impressionable young men to carry out violence in the name of Islam — both in Britain and overseas.”

 

Again, I cannot think of a precedent whereby a major American newspaper has given this kind of extremist, this kind of terrorist, that kind of voice right in the pages of its own newspaper.

 

From a Christian worldview perspective there are a couple of very crucial issues for us to consider. First is the issue of blasphemy. Islam considers blasphemy a capital crime and defines blasphemy as any insult to the Quran, to Islam, or most specifically and personally, to the prophet Mohammed. Christianity on the other hand also has a concern about blasphemy, but as a spiritual crime – as a sin, not as a matter of civic law.

 

As a matter of fact, when Christians understand the reality of blasphemy we come to understand that Jesus Christ himself suffered insults on our behalf. He told Peter to put his sword away, he did not revile those who blasphemed him by calling for violence, but rather he accepted this. As the prophet Isaiah says, He was despised and rejected of men. He willingly bore our grief’s and our sorrows and He bore the open scorn of those who crucified Him, even at the foot of His cross. That is a stunning difference between the understanding – theologically speaking – of blasphemy in the Christian world and the understanding of blasphemy in the Islamic world.

 

As Choudary made very clear in his article in USA Today, Muslims have a basic responsibility to protect – even by violence if necessary – any insult to Islam or the prophet Mohammed. After citing Mohammed to say, “Whoever insults a prophet, kill him,” Choudary wrote, in USA Today,

 

“However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.”

 

Indeed, as we saw quite murderously in Paris yesterday.

 

It is very important that Christians understand that it is not our business, it is not our responsibility, to defend the honor of Jesus Christ. As the Bible makes clear, he will do that himself. Our responsibility is to bear testimony to Christ and, in following his example, bear scorn where necessary in his own name. For this reason, Christians support freedom of expression; understanding that to be a basic human right, not one that is granted merely by the secular state but one that is incumbent upon our understanding of what it means for God to have created human beings in his own image. And furthermore, what it means for Christians to claim freedom to bear testimony to Christ in the public square.

 

We must thus risk the kind of statements against Christ, claims against Christ, even the kind of scorn that comes from modern secular artists and others, without resorting to the kind of reflexive anger that is now considered to be a basic principle of Islam – and not just now, but from the very beginning of Islam as a world religion and as a worldview.

 

As Christians we understand that every word will eventually stand under divine judgment – even, as the Scripture says, every idle word. There is absolutely nothing to celebrate in blasphemy. But, even as Christians understand the grave sinful consequences of blasphemy, we do not consider it our responsibility to punish the blasphemer; that’s a very important issue, one that is in keeping with the example of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

 

Keeping in mind the statement cited in this morning’s New York Times by Andrew Hussey, again I quote,

 

“Politically, the official left in France has been in denial of the conflict between France and the Arab world. But the French in general sense it.”

 

The reality is that secular elites in general find it incomprehensible to imagine exactly what has taken place in Paris, – not the what, but the why. The denial is and that is now present in so many Western intellectual circles is going to be far harder to hold in light of this kind of massacre. Even as the manhunt for the two brothers identified as the primary assailants spread throughout France and now into much of Europe, the reality is that the French intellectuals, European intellectuals and their American compatriots, are finding themselves hard-pressed to deny that this is indeed a religious war – that there is a theological dimension here that simply must be accepted.

 

Trying to put this into an adequate context, it is true of course that not all Muslims are radicalized or extremist. It is true that many Muslims, especially in the West, have nothing to do with this kind of terrorist attack – either in plotting it or in supporting it. It is also true that most of the Muslims around the world, even if they hold to a theological worldview that justifies this kind of action, will never be involved in it. But the other side of the equation is profoundly true, and that is that the Western world now finds itself at war with at least a very large sector of Islam and a sector of Islam that the larger Islamic movement has been either unwilling or unable to limit in terms of its terrorist reach.

 

Indeed, there is evidence that Islamic terrorism is growing. Keep in mind the report in the Washington Post that over 2000 young Muslims in France have joined the jihad in the Middle East. To those numbers must be added similar figures of young Muslims joining the jihad from the United Kingdom and from other European countries. But we can’t stop there. Reports are of several hundred at least young Muslims leaving United States from cities including Minneapolis, Minnesota to join the jihad as well. There is a role for satire in the Christian worldview, even within the Bible. Just think of Isaiah 44’s satirical description of the folly of human idolatry. But that is no warrant for Christians to enter into any kind of irresponsible and intentionally offensive form of satire.

 

The Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris was known for satirically attacking just about every form of religious expression – including Orthodox Judaism and Christianity. But the newspaper didn’t have to fear any kind of terrorism from Orthodox Jews or from Christians. Both Jews and Christians take blasphemy to be a grave sin but not in the sense of Islam. And the reality that is now undeniable is that the French elites and the French people have now been informed of exactly what kind of jihad has now been declared against them as a nation, against them as a people, against freedom of expression – not just against Charlie Hebdo, but against all basic institutions of the West. Those institutions based upon the understanding of freedom of expression and the very important understanding of the marketplace of ideas.

 

Just consider the example of the apostle Paul found in the book of Acts chapter 17 when the apostle Paul was standing at Mars Hill in the context of religious pluralism and from a Christian worldview, abysmal religious ignorance. But the apostle Paul did not resort to satire or ridicule. Instead, he boldly declared Christ. And he did so in a way that was calculated to make a very clear distinction between the worship of Jesus Christ and the worship of idols. He did so in a way that should serve as an example to all Christians, especially in our contemporary context of radical religious pluralism – and beyond that, of worldview pluralism.

 

Senator Graham was right when he insisted yesterday that we now face a religious war. But this doesn’t mean a war between Christianity and Islam. It does mean a war between Western civilization and the challenge of a resurgent and terroristic inclined Islam.

 

From the 18th-century onward, the Western civilization’s elites have been determined to try to create a world order ruled by reason and rationality. There’s good reason to believe that in much of the world, that has succeeded. But the reality of what took place in Paris yesterday is a very cruel and undeniable reminder that the rest of the world isn’t going along – not just in terms of what took place in Paris, but what is taking place throughout the Middle East and furthermore, not only their but in the Pacific Rim and far beyond.

 

There were so many other important stories from a Christian worldview perspective that I had intended to discuss this morning. They all got swept aside by the story coming out of Paris, the horrifying news of the terrorist attack that took place in a newspaper’s headquarters. That’s just the way the world is these days. When you think you know what you’re going to be thinking about in the course of a day, you can find yourself – by force of events, by not only the headlines but the graphic images that cross our digital screens – you can find yourself having to face the reality you had not intended.

 

From a Christian worldview perspective, there’s no more important issue for us to get right than understanding from a Christian worldview perspective what’s really at stake. What these pictures and these headlines really mean. And what this will represent as a challenge for generations to come, it appears, a great conflict of worldviews and Christians had better be the first to understand what is at stake.

 

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 boyecollege.com. I’m speaking to you from West Palm Beach, Florida and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 01-08-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Heinous massacre in Paris is another grisly reminder Western society is in a worldview war

Charlie Hebdo suspect said to surrender; two others at large after Paris terrorist attack, The Washington Post (Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola)

Progressives and Disorder, The Wall Street Journal (Associated Press)

‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow, New York Times (Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold)

People know the consequences: Opposing view, USA Today (Anjem Choudary)

In Britain, Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary proves elusive, The Washington Post (Griff Witte)

Transcript: The Briefing 01-07-15

The Briefing

 

January 7, 2015

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

 

It’s Wednesday, January 7, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

Just hours after same-sex marriage became legal in the state of Florida the proponents of this moral revolution were declaring victory – not only in Florida but in the great cultural conflict this great moral revolution now represents. Columnist Michael Mayo of the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel was declaring that conservatives have simply lost the fight. He cited the Rev. O’Neal Dozier, an opponent of gay marriage, founder of the Worldwide Christian Center Church in Pompano Beach, who said,

 

“We’re feeling that it’s futile; we’ve lost this cultural fight.”

 

Mayo then wrote,

 

“That, as much as anything, is what made this historic day in Florida even more surprising”

 

Mayo’s column drew attention to the fact that there were few, if any, protesters about the arrival of same-sex marriage even as the ceremonies began shortly after midnight. Mayo was also making the point that even those who have opposed same-sex marriage are now accepting that it is a legal reality, at least in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Mayo openly speculates that cultural and moral conservatives are simply throwing in the towel.

 

Now that’s a very interesting analysis and there’s a great deal of truth to it, but his understanding of the underlying moral reality is what set him at odds with those who oppose same-sex marriage on deeply moral and theological grounds. Mayo celebrates the arrival of same-sex marriage as a clear demonstration of moral progress and he simply doesn’t understand why moral conservatives just won’t go along with the party. He does point to the irony as he writes,

 

“In the same County where Anita Bryant launched her anti-gay crusade in the 1970s, in the same Florida where 62% of voters – almost 4.9 million – approve the 2008 constitutional amendment, all the opposition seemingly vanished into thin air”

 

What Mayo doesn’t understand is that the opposition hasn’t simply faded away; it is now a new political reality, a new legal reality. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, an opponent of same-sex marriage, said the obvious when the courts refused to intervene in the Florida case simply allowing US District Court Robert Hinkle’s decision to overturn the constitutional amendment of the state – that is a constitutional amendment, that amendment cited in this article passed in 2008 that defines marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. But as Jeb Bush said, this is simply a matter of the fact that the courts have spoken. Moral conservatives are not raising up an army to oppose the American regime, moral conservatives – Christian conservatives among them – are not launching some kind of armed counterrevolution. But this doesn’t mean that the great cultural debate is over, it does mean that we’ve now entered a very different moral terrain. It’s a moral terrain that is made different especially by the intervention of the courts. The courts making this decision overturning even as Mayo’s article makes clear, a decision supported by 62% of Florida voters as recently as 2008.

 

Mayo’s column cites John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council, who said “America is still divided on this,” and America still is. He went on to say,

 

“The US Supreme Court is the final frontier and we haven’t heard from them. We’re in this for the long run – beyond my lifetime”

 

That’s a very prescient statement. It’s an absolutely important and vital statement. This is not a short-term battle, this is not a skirmish that is going to be begun or ended in the courts. The legal battle may be decided there but the long-term moral battle is something that is very different and one of the things we’re going to have to watch for is how this society actually adjusts to a new form of marriage – or at least what is claimed to be marriage. When same-sex couples are declared to be married, using the very same term –  implying the very same covenant that has been held by humanity for millennia to be the union of a man and a woman – were going to see what the long-term consequences of that moral revolution might be. There are good reasons to believe, given a biblical worldview, that those who have championed this revolution in the present are going to be very much scratching their heads in befuddlement when they see the results of this revolution play out in the future.

 

Mayo clearly understands exactly what is at stake in this debate in terms of the push for what is called same-sex marriage. It’s the push for legitimacy, moral legitimacy. As he writes,

 

“It means legitimacy. It means being on the same footing as heterosexual couples, not being second-class citizens, not having to explain to kids why their parents can’t get married.”

 

One of the most pathetic dimensions of this moral controversy is that the proponents of same-sex marriage won’t get with they demand – they simply won’t get the legitimacy that they crave for, even when the state legally declares that a man and a man or woman and a woman can be married, everyone understands that the word marriage has actually been transformed, it has been redefined. It is not simply the admission of new people into the union of marriage; it is a fundamental redefinition of marriage itself. So even though the same word may be used, it will no longer carry the same legitimizing effect in terms of its moral importance.

 

That’s one of the most interesting dimensions of all of this; there is even now the tacit admission amongst those who are the great marriage revolutionaries that what they’re actually doing is changing marriage fundamentally. That is exactly what at least some of those who are the proponents of same-sex marriage have been pushing for all along. Some gay activists admit openly, suggesting, that the legalization of same-sex marriage is just a halfway point towards relativizing marriage altogether – that’s what I discussed as marriage nihilism in the last couple of days.

 

One of the most important things for Christians to recognize however is that John Stemberger is exactly right. This is a generational battle, for that matter it’s going to include more than one generation. Marriage didn’t get into trouble in the last decade, or even in the last 20 years. The subversion and the redefinition of marriage didn’t begin with the claim that legitimacy had to be granted to same-sex unions. As a matter of fact, the arrival of no-fault divorce and rampant extramarital sexual activity, the legitimization of heterosexual sexual misbehavior preceded any demand for the legalization of same-sex marriage or at least any traction for that cause.

 

In reality we have already been in a battle over the issue of marriage, over the reality of what marriage is, for the last several decades and it’s going to continue for decades to come. Just remember that in 1973 when United States Supreme Court handed down the Roe V Wade decision declaring that the issue of abortion was effectively settled, we’re talking about what is now more than 40 years ago and abortion is, if anything, hardly settled in American culture. As a matter of fact, the headlines going into the year 2015 have already dealt with the fact that it is even more likely that the Supreme Court will take up abortion cases in this term than even issue of same-sex marriage.

 

Operating out of a biblical worldview, Christians understand what is at stake and we also understand that God has placed in history a providential display of his own judgment such that tampering with or rebelling against the institution of marriage as one of His good and most gracious gifts, is going to come with very damaging consequences. We don’t celebrate those damaging consequences, but we do understand that they are telling a story. They are revealing, even as the breakup and fracturing of the family is revealing in our present time, what happens when you subvert marriage and family. The inevitable damage upon the society is already abundantly clear and the arrival of same-sex marriage will just accelerate those trends.

 

The real test for Christians in particular is whether or not we continue to honor marriage; first of all in our own lives and then most especially, in our own churches, and then whether we had the continuing courage to bear witness to the reality of marriage as one of God’s most important gifts to humanity – publicly as well is privately.

 

Next, we often speak about the impact of demography of population trends on moral issues and societal changes and that’s why it’s important to note that as the year 2015 dawned, there’s a reshuffling of the states at the top of the population charts in the United States. Most importantly, New York State exchanged places with Florida; Florida moving into the number three slot and New York State falling to number four. The most populous state of course is California followed by Texas; now comes Florida and then comes New York State. That’s a fundamental re-shifting of the American equation. It will change Congress because congressional seats are apportioned according to the population of the states. In the next census, it is almost absolutely assured that Florida will gain seats and New York State will lose even more.

 

The Northeast and the so-called Rust Belt states have been losing population now for several decades. And the state of California is now also in danger of losing population, especially to neighboring states with lower taxes and more accessible middle-class lifestyles. Just about any analysis of the moral dimension of the demographic equation gets to the fact that in the United States the most progressive elites are coalescing on the two coasts; on the West Coast with California and Oregon and Washington carrying the league and then on the East Coast – particularly in the Northeast. Those also tend to be the areas in which the basic social patterns of the left are accelerated over those that are found in the South and in the Southwest. The great heartland of America is also a place where more conservative values prevail, thus when you look at electoral maps of the United States in a presidential election and you look at those states that are colored red versus those that are colored blue – with blue being Democratic and read being Republican – every one of those maps for the last half-century has looked as if Republicans have won in a landslide but that’s because the states are counted not as they are counted in terms of electoral votes.

 

The big population shifts of the last decade have been into the cities, meaning into a more cosmopolitan, a more liberal environment and towards the south, a contra indication in a more conservative direction. But the future of the nation, politically at least, and for a good matter culturally as well, will have a great deal to do with how the so-called swing states develop in the future. And Florida is one of the most important of those swing states.

 

And it’s not inconsequential that it now ranks number three in US population. Meaning, that in short order, the Florida congressional delegation will be ranking third. When you consider the top four, California and New York State are solidly liberal, very democratic – socially and culturally progressive. The state of Texas is solidly red – very morally conservative except for some isolated Metropolitan areas such as Austin which houses the University of Texas. But the state of Florida, as we said, it’s up for grabs. The latest state to have legal same-sex marriage is a state that may reflect in so many ways, the future of the country. For that reason and more, it bears very close watching.

 

Florida is of course also a very interesting laboratory for church life as evangelicals are understanding the complexities of reaching out to a highly complex and pluralistic, very diverse, society. Just as California was the great evangelical laboratory of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, it may well be that the state of Florida is the great interesting laboratory for evangelicals for the decade to come.

 

The influence of the cultural elites in America bears very close watching and that’s what makes an article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times yesterday nothing less than absolutely fascinating. The article is written by Robert Pear and it’s about the response of the faculty of Harvard University to changes made in their own healthcare plan necessitated as their own University administration is made clear by the ObamaCare legislation, the faculty overwhelmingly supported. As Pear writes,

 

“For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.”

 

Now, if you’re familiar with the old statement that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, but in this case the gander is made up primarily of tenured professors at Harvard University – a university that by its own reckoning and recording indicates that the vast majority, that is well over 95%, of the political contributions made by its faculty were to Democrats and have been in a similar pattern for recent election cycles. There are some departments in Harvard in which it’s virtually impossible to find a moral, political, or cultural conservative. Not only did the Harvard faculty overwhelmingly support Barack Obama for president, again that was documented, but they also were heavily involved with several key members of the Harvard faculty in the development of what became the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare. But now as Robert Pear writes,

 

“Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.”

 

It turns out rather unsurprisingly that Harvard University, one of the wealthiest institutions in the history of the world, has offered a premium benefits package to its employees – especially to its tenured faculty. But those days are over and the Provost of the University, who was himself an architect of the ObamaCare legislation, now says that it is virtually impossible for the University to continue that very premium benefits package. For one thing, the ObamaCare legislation demands a tax beginning in 2018 on so-called Cadillac programs – exactly the kind of program that Harvard now offers. Furthermore, the Affordable Care Act requires a form of cost-sharing between the employees and the employer, in terms of the healthcare package, and that’s something the Harvard faculty have avoided until now. Of course as Robert Pear makes very clear, the vast majority of employees in America have never had the kind of benefits package that the Harvard faculty has until now enjoyed. They are now, at least in a minimum way, in a similar position to most employees that also have an employer-based program.

 

But they don’t like it one bit, they are even claiming that it is unjust that the kind of cost-sharing that is now involved in Harvard’s new benefits plan – again the same thing found in most other employer plans – is unjust because it taxes the sick, making it less likely that some people will go to get medical care if they have to pay some of the cost. But that’s the very logic of ObamaCare, the very program that they championed. They were for it for others, but they’re not for it for themselves.

 

Now in one sense, hypocrisy is nothing new to the human condition. And conservatives are just as open to the charge of hypocrisy on some issues as our liberals. But on this kind of issue, it is a particularly ironic form of hypocrisy because on this issue they weren’t merely supportive of the ObamaCare act and of Pres. Obama himself, they were avidly supportive to the point that several of their own tenured faculty members were involved in the crucial policymaking decisions that went into the Affordable Care Act itself. In other words, they weren’t just for it; they were in large part represented by their own faculty members in bringing the act into the form by which it eventually passed Congress. And of course as we remember, it passed both houses of Congress barely and without a single Republican vote in either chamber.

 

One of the premier academics behind the Affordable Care Act was none other than Dr. Alan M Garber, who was then a professor at Stanford University, now irony of ironies he’s the Provost – or chief academic officer – at Harvard University. And now he is having to defend these very benefit changes to the people who said they supported it when it was for someone else, but not for themselves. And speaking of academics involved in the formation of the ObamaCare legislation and in its legislative passage, no one was more infamously involved than Jonathan Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology right next to Harvard University there in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the end of the year 2014, Jonathan Gruber became infamous for having publicly declared that the math behind the ObamaCare legislation was falsified in order to cook the books because, as he said, it was necessary to fool Congress by the numbers in order for the passage of the legislation to take place.

 

Jonathan Gruber appeared before a House committee by the end of 2014 and apologized for making the statement but his statement stands not only because he said it, but because it is verifiably true. The Congressional Budget Office was handed cooked books and they passed on those cooked numbers to Congress and those numbers were publicly used in the passage of the legislation. But as syndicated columnist Mona Charen notes, we should really be watching Jonathan Gruber – not so much for ObamaCare but for a different issue and that issue is abortion.

 

As she writes,

 

“Recall that the 2005 best-seller “Freakonomics” made a huge splash with the claim that Roe v. Wade was responsible for the drop in crime America experienced starting in the 1990s. The theory, [she said], was that fewer unwanted babies began to be born after 1973. These aborted babies did not turn 18 in 1991 and, accordingly, did not commit crimes, leading to the dramatic drop in crime.”

 

She goes on to say,

 

“It turns out that the study on which the ‘Freakonomics’ authors based their chapter on abortion and crime was authored by none other than Jonathan Gruber (and others). In their 1997 paper, Gruber and his co-authors concluded that ‘for the marginal child not born due to increased abortion access, the odds of living in a single parent family would have been roughly 70 percent higher, the odds of living in poverty nearly 40 percent higher, the odds of welfare receipt 50 percent higher.’ They continued, ‘From these results, we estimate that the legalization of abortion saved the federal government over $14 billion in welfare payments through 1994.’”

 

Mona Charen goes on to say, let’s suppose for a moment that Gruber is right – that abortion is somehow tied to a lower crime rate. Before she says that however she very effectively devastated the argument. She goes on to say,

 

“But let’s imagine that Gruber was right — that legalizing abortion eliminated a big cohort of the criminal element and led to a drop in crime. Did every one of those aborted criminals merit the death penalty? … Before trial? Before the crime itself?”

 

“Gruber’s thesis that abortion caused America’s crime drop is almost certainly false.”

 

Mona Charen also wrote,

 

“Considering that 30 percent of abortions are obtained by African-American women, though they constitute just 13 percent of the female population, Gruber was in effect arguing that reducing the number of poor black children was, not to put too fine a point on it, a positive good.”

 

She concludes her essay, and I quote,

 

“If it makes you uncomfortable that such a person helped design Obamacare, you’re not alone.”

 

But Jonathan Gruber is also not alone. That very interesting article that appeared on the front page of yesterday’s edition of the New York Times tells us that the Harvard faculty is overwhelmingly opposed to policies applied to themselves that they were quite ready to apply to the rest of the nation. And then Mona Charen comes back, pointing in a very similar way to MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, pointing out that the real problem is not so much that he cooked the books for ObamaCare but that his worldview makes abortion a positive good.

 

When you understand that one simple fact, everything else begins to fall in the place. And we begin to understand why some academics with outsized influence, with a worldview that is so distant from the rest of Americans, have an influence that is not only important in legislation but in matters of life and death. Justifying abortion by arguing that babies not born won’t be in poverty, won’t be raised in single-parent homes, and eventually won’t add to the crime rate. Most frightening of all, keep this in mind, those kinds of discussions, that kind of research, that kind of worldview and argument, won’t stay limited to a conference or seminar table at MIT or Harvard University. Inevitably, they make their way into public life and that’s why the battle of ideas is inevitably a matter of life and death.

 

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 boyecollege.com. I’m speaking to you from West Palm Beach, Florida and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 01-07-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Victory of same-sex ‘marriage’ in Florida shows fight for flourishing is generational battle

Mayo: Gay marriage foe says ‘We’ve lost this fight’, Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel (Michael Mayo)

 

2) Shift of most populated states finds Florida may be the next laboratory for evangelicals

Florida Passes New York to Become the Nation’s Third Most Populous State, Census Bureau Reports, United States Census Bureau

 

3) Harvard professors, who were integral to the Affordable Care Act, chaff under implementation

Harvard Ideas on Health Care Hit Home, Hard, New York Times (Robert Pear)

 

4) Jonathan Gruber proves battle of ideas is of the highest consequence — life or death

Who Had the Worst Year? Jonathan Gruber, Townhall (Mona Charen)

Transcript: The Briefing 01-06-15

The Briefing

 

January 6, 2015

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

 

It’s Tuesday, January 6, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

At the stroke of midnight this morning, Florida became the 36th state in the union to have legalized same-sex marriage. This came in the aftermath of a judicial decision made by federal district judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee last year; the hold on the judge’s decision expired at midnight tonight. Over the weekend the state of Florida abandoned its legal appeals to either continue the stay or to reverse Judge Hinkle’s decision. The state had appealed his decision to the fifth US circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. But as of midnight this morning, same-sex marriage became legal in the entire state of Florida. That is something of a technicality because several hours earlier in Dade County – the biggest city their being Miami – a local judge had lifted the stay hours earlier; meaning that same-sex couples in Miami could get married hours before same-sex couples elsewhere in the state.

 

The attention now turns to the various County clerks in Florida’s counties where same-sex couples were lining up at midnight and before to gain marriage licenses. Several of the County clerks were making extraordinary opportunities for same-sex couples, especially County clerks in southeastern Florida – several of whom announced that they would not only be eagerly opening their offices at midnight but would also be setting a stay on the state statutory three-day limitation between the granting of a marriage license and the marriage ceremony. The County Clerk in Palm Beach County announced that she’ll be doing so granting so-called hardship exemptions.

 

According to the Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock announced that she would preside over a group marriage ceremony of same-sex couples just after the midnight hour. She also announced that she would not only be conducting the ceremonies but she would be celebrating them,

 

“We will have wedding cakes and coffee. It’s an historic event and that is why we are celebrating it as such”

 

But the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel announced that not all County Clerks are going along with this celebration. The paper reports that at least five north Florida counties have chosen to stop performing wedding ceremonies entirely because of moral or religious objections. The paper cites Duval County Clerk Ronnie Fussell who told the Florida Times Union,

 

“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Personally it would go against my beliefs to perform a ceremony that is other than that.”

 

In a revealing moral twist to the developments here in Florida, the Sunday edition of the Palm Beach Post included the headline “Tourism Pros see Florida as Gay Wedding Mecca” The story is a very interesting account of how tourism officials here in Florida expect the advent of same-sex marriage to be a huge economic boon not only for the nation, but most particularly, for the state; already drawing much of its income from tourism dollars.

 

The article by reporter Jeff Ostrowski quoted Nikki Grossman, head of the greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau, she according the paper has been talking up South Florida as a same-sex wedding destination.

 

“We believe having marriage legal in Florida is really going to drive business our way. South Florida is poised to be wedding central.”

 

The paper also cited Shanie McCowen, identified as a wedding planner, who is opening a location for wedding planning business in Florida:

 

“Her Boca Raton company, Rainbow Bells, handled 52 same-sex ceremonies in New York last summer. With Florida opening to gay marriage on Tuesday, McCowen aims to expand. She’s interviewing potential employees, shopping for office space and bracing for the moment when she’s too busy to attend every wedding arranged by her company.”

 

McCowen appears again in the article in a very revealing way when the paper writes,

 

“Because weddings can be so expensive, they’re an ideal economic engine, wedding planners say. Rainbow Weddings charges as little as $500 for a simple ceremony, but the tab for a not-so-simple event is many times that. McCowen said she has arranged weddings in helicopters, on boats, even at a horse-racing track.”

 

She then says,

 

“There are no rules. It’s already against the grain of your traditional marriage, so I tell people, ‘Do whatever the [blank] you want.’”

 

From a Christian worldview perspective, that’s an incredibly revealing statement because this wedding planner, celebrating the commercial appeal of the arrival of same-sex marriage and looking to radically expand her business, says that when it comes to planning a same-sex ceremony the situation is already so outside the bounds of traditional marriage the couple should feel free to do whatever they may want.

 

The revealing part of that statement is the acknowledgment that same-sex marriage is so unlike “traditional marriage.” That is, marriage as it is has been known through two millennia and more of human experience as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. That union of a man and a woman has implied a certain form to the marriage ceremony itself, even in a more secular rather than a sacred context. The very fact that the marriage of a man and a woman is establishing a conjugal union in terms of human experience – again even in a rather secular context, even far outside where Christian revelation has any normative influence – there still has been a ceremonial understanding of what is taking place when a man and a woman make public vows to each other to form a monogamous marital union for not only themselves but for the generations that should follow. And not only as a private institution, but as an institution fundamental to society that has a most public importance.

 

The Christian worldview analysis of this also points to the fact that the world is quite ready to find an economic reality, an incentive, to the advent of something like same-sex marriage. The arrival of legal same-sex marriage in Florida is now being championed as a tourist opportunity, and a great opportunity for the state of Florida not only to increase its wedding business but its tax income from that business itself. The head of the Fort Lauderdale convention Bureau announced that she was going to be going to extraordinary lengths to try to attract same-sex marriage business; not only to her city but to the facility she supervises.

 

In another very interesting moral twist to the tale, divorce attorneys in Florida are also getting ready for an avalanche of new business as same-sex couples will not only be marrying but also divorcing. The Palm Beach Post cites Joseph Karp, an attorney in Palm Beach Gardens who said,

 

“Divorce, alimony, support —all of these issues from the negative side of marriage will come to the fore.”

 

The arrival of same-sex marriage is thus being championed as a great opportunity for capitalist gain, reminding us at least of the statement attributed to Lenin in which he said that when the time came to hang the capitalists, the capitalists would bid for the contract on the rope.

 

As the most basic molecular structure of civilization itself, marriage is being redefined before our eyes in a vast social revolution. It is extremely revealing that there are so many who are rushing to be on the front lines of profiting from this revolution – not only celebrating it, but profiting thereby. There are a couple of other huge developments on the same-sex marriage front and one of them could come before the end of this week. As Robert Barnes reports yesterday for the Washington Post, as gay marriages begin this morning in Florida, the Supreme Court is expected on Friday the justices to meet in their own private conference to decide whether or not they will take up the same-sex marriage issue in the 2015 term.

 

The reality is that if the justices do not decide to take up one of these cases by the end of January, they will not have time to hold oral arguments and decide the case by the end of this term in June 2015. The likelihood that the Supreme Court would take up the issue of same-sex marriage has increased dramatically when in the last part of last year, justices for the sixth US circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled in contradiction to other appellate courts finding that the states in their jurisdiction had a constitutional right to forbid same-sex marriages. The reality that there are now conflicting courts of appeal leads to the reality that the Supreme Court is almost certain to take up the case, and rather quickly. Observers on both sides of the issue expects that as early as Friday, or at least within the next two weeks, the Supreme Court is likely to announce that it is taking up at least one of the cases coming up from the states that have had judicial decisions against their legislation or constitutional amendments limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman.

 

Very interestingly, Barnes cites a study undertaken by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law that now says that 70% of Americans live in a jurisdiction where same-sex marriage is legal. That’s a moral revolution again we are witnessing at warp speed. Just back in 2013 when the US Supreme Court struck down the defense of marriage act in its now infamous Windsor decision, just nine states and the District of Columbia had legal same-sex marriage. The arrival of same-sex marriage in Florida this morning means that Florida is the 36th state – that’s an increase from 9 to 36 in the process of less than two years, indeed of just about 18 months.

 

An interesting analysis of the public response to this moral revolution comes from veteran political reporter Susan Page in a front-page story that arrived in the New Year’s edition of USA Today. Writing about seven trends that marked the year 2014, she identified the fourth as “on social issues: Americans shrugged.” She then writes,

 

“A wave of federal court rulings in 2014 allowed same-sex couples to marry in 19 additional states, more than doubling the number of states where gay marriage is permitted. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in the 35 states where gay men and lesbians are free to wed.”

 

But in the most interesting portion of her article she writes,

 

“The public reaction? What public reaction?”

 

“Opponents are pressing forward with a challenge that is likely to make it to the Supreme Court, but as a political issue, gay marriage seems to be fading even as the debate over another wedge issue, abortion rights, remains unrelenting.”

 

So Susan Page says that the vast majority of Americans have decided simply to go along with the revolution; by acquiescence if not by support. Of course Susan Page has also acknowledged even in her article that the reality that same-sex marriage has been legalized has been overwhelmingly by action of the court’s, not by action of the people.

 

It’s a very telling indication of the scope of the moral revolution we are now experiencing. Our society is now engaged in a vast headlong rush into what can only be described as one of the most radical social experiments ever undertaken by any society at any time. We can see in the future not only the current marital revisionism, but something like marriage nihilism in the future where marriage can mean virtually anything. Just think about the comment made by the wedding planner about a same-sex marriage ceremony: ‘just do anything because as traditional marriage recedes, all that is left is whatever anyone wants to determine that marriage is,’ and right now they’re doing so with the sanction of courts and judges.

 

Another very interesting dimension of the developments in Florida has to do with the response of ministers and churches. The arrival of same-sex marriage, legal in the state of Florida, means that in very short order everyone is going to know where every pastor stands, where every church stands, where every denomination stands. One interesting aspect of this has to do with churches that have allowed their facilities to be used by nonmembers for wedding ceremonies, usually with a fee. The reality is that if courts decide that those church facilities are thus public accommodations, they may fall under nondiscrimination or antidiscrimination laws. The church will then find itself in a legal position of great tenuousness if the church says it’s going to allow the nonmembers who are opposite sex couples to marry but not same-sex couples. The impact of this moral revolution is going to lead pastors and churches, virtually all Christians, to have to come to terms with exactly what our convictions are on marriage and sexuality.

 

But there’s more to this than first meets the eye because the reality of this moral revolution, with all of the religious liberty entanglements that will come with it, is likely also to underline the importance of ecclesiology. We’re going to find out where the church is, we’re going to find out where the churches are that will stand by the word of God. We’re also going to find where the churches are that understand the importance of regenerate church membership, of church membership that is meaningful and convictional – not just a matter of the church roll or convenience. We’re also going to find out how many churches are going to be able to sustain their ministries simply by their congregations, rather than relying on outside business from such things as weddings. Churches may have gotten by with that kind of business in an age of cultural Christianity, but with cultural Christianity evaporating before our eyes and the society around us growing increasingly hostile to evangelical Christianity, that’s a business that Christians just may not be able to afford.

 

From a Christian worldview perspective, another very interesting milestone passed last Thursday with the death of Mario Cuomo at age 82. The three term governor of New York State was one of the most formidable figures of American politics in the 1980s and into the 1990s. He is also, in himself, one of the most interesting cases of liberalism in American public life. He was a standard-bearer for Democratic liberalism in a day in which the society was actually turning more conservative. Mario Cuomo was a phenomenal orator. His keynote addresses and other presentations to Democratic national conventions often upstaged the nominee for president. You can ask Walter Mondale or Walter Dukakis just what it felt like to have Mario Cuomo steal the show in trying to endorse them. Liberal Democrats longed for Mario Cuomo to run for the office of President of the United States and he flirted with it in both 1988 and 1992, but in the end he decided not to run. The other standard-bearers for Democratic liberalism who did win the nominations – in 1984 Walter Mondale and in 1988 Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis – lost overwhelmingly. That left many Democrats in the position of wondering what might have been if Mario Cuomo had indeed decided to run.

 

Mario Cuomo saw himself as the quintessential American success story. Born to Italian immigrants, he went to college, graduated from law school, and eventually entered politics. After an unsuccessful run for mayor of New York City in 1977, he was elected governor and he served three terms before being defeated in the 1990s by George Pataki, a Republican – even as Cuomo was seeking a record fourth term. Ironically, Mario Cuomo died on Thursday, the very day that his son Andrew Cuomo was being sworn in for a second term as governor of the very same state.

 

Governor Cuomo also died even as the Democratic Party is being split between its liberal and even more liberal wings with the current front runner for the Democratic nomination for president – Hillary Rodham Clinton – being challenged, at least in theory, from the left with figures such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, someone who represents something more like the Cuomo tradition. There’s more than a little irony in this as well because in 1992 Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination with Cuomo’s support and was eventually elected not only to his first term but to two terms as president of the United States, running against Cuomo’s form of liberalism. Clinton presented himself as a new kind of Democrat, one who would fight taxation and cut the budget – which, interestingly enough, he did at least in part. But now the Democratic Party is headed more in Mario Cuomo’s direction, even as Cuomo’s passing marks a very historic milestone for that party and for the state of New York.

 

But from a Christian worldview perspective, there’s something more important here at stake. In 1984 Gov. Cuomo went to the University of Notre Dame, The Citadel of American Catholicism in order to deliver an address about religious liberty and political responsibility. The address was controversial even before Gov. Cuomo arrived at the University of Notre Dame. It was controversial for a very important reason; Gov. Cuomo was an avid proponent, politically, of abortion – a defender of abortion rights and a defender of the fact that the state of New York actually paid for abortions even as it is now by taxpayer subsidies.

 

The arrival of Gov. Cuomo on the campus of the University of Notre Dame was controversial because the Roman Catholic Church officially teaches not only that abortion is a grave sin but also that it is nothing less than murder. In his address, Gov. Cuomo famously declared himself to be personally pro-life. He said, and I quote,

 

“My church and my conscience require me to believe certain things about divorce, birth control and abortion. My church does not order me — under pain of sin or expulsion — to pursue my salvific mission according to a precisely defined political plan.”

 

What Gov. Cuomo was arguing quite transparently was the fact that he would claim to uphold the church’s teaching while, as governor of the state, doing precisely the opposite of what the church taught. He said, and I quote,

 

“For me life or fetal life in the womb should be protected, even if five of nine Justices of the Supreme Court and my neighbor disagree with me. A fetus is different from an appendix or a set of tonsils. At the very least, even if the argument is made by some scientists or some theologians that in the early stages of fetal development we can’t discern human life, the full potential of human life is indisputably there.”

 

But Gov. Cuomo went on to argue that as governor of New York his responsibility was not as a Catholic believer but rather as a secular public servant. And he argued that even as he was personally and privately opposed to abortion, he was publicly supportive of abortion for the reason he cited in the speech of religious liberty. He said that he had no constitutional authority to use Catholic teaching in terms of his responsibility as governor. Very interestingly Gov. Cuomo was hardly consistent in terms of this argumentation because when it came to capital punishment he claimed that as a Catholic he was opposed to it; citing that in terms of his political opposition to the death penalty as well.

 

In making this rather famous argument Gov. Cuomo was actually following a trajectory that had been set by politicians before him; notably, the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. Sen. Kennedy had made the same kind of argument; that he was personally opposed to abortion but that he saw it as an essential matter of women’s rights and thus he was politically supportive of it – we would add ardently in support of it. But the grounds for this kind of argument go even further back – particularly in the Kennedy family – back to the 1960 presidential campaign when then candidate Sen. John F Kennedy spoke to a group of southern Baptist pastors in Houston, Texas, assuring them – also very famously – that even though he was a Catholic, it really wouldn’t make any difference in terms of his political leadership.

 

The reality of the situation is not limited of course to Roman Catholics. Gov. Cuomo serves as a parable of those who in a liberal and secular age try to argue that religious conviction actually has no place in terms of the laws of the state. But as James Antle pointed out in This Week Magazine, this is an argument that falls flat on its face when applied to other areas of the law. Antle argues that there are ample places where the law intersects with official religious teaching and people see no apparent conflict. As he writes,

 

“Uncle Sam outlaws theft even though the Ten Commandments say thou shalt not steal. Homicide is illegal even though the Ten Commandments say thou shalt not kill. Many religions teach us to care for the poor. Cuomo would not argue that social welfare spending therefore violates the separation of church and state.”

 

The important lesson here from a Christian worldview perspective is in no way limited to Roman Catholic politicians and the Roman Catholic Church, but rather evangelicals must also take note of those who claim to be evangelical Christians but who try to separate their personal convictions and their public leadership; whether in politics or in some other arena of important human activity. Our convictions on a matter are fundamental as the sanctity and dignity of human life cannot be relegated and restricted to the private sphere. The issue of abortion is not something that is simply a theological dispute; it is a matter of life and death. It is absolutely not only hypocritical but murderously so for a politician to say that he believes that abortion is murder but that it must remain legal. That is absolute moral nonsense.

 

Even as millions of Americans weren’t even alive when Gov. Cuomo gave that address at the University of Notre Dame in 1984, the issues are still front and center in terms of our national life. Very interestingly Mario Cuomo once told the New Republic magazine “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” On the issue of the sanctity and dignity of human life, Gov. Cuomo’s prose was the problem.

 

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 boyecollege.com. I’m speaking to you from West Palm Beach, Florida and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 01-06-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Legalization of gay ‘marriage’ in Florida reveals economic underpinnings

Same-sex marriages begin in Miami-Dade County, Miami Herald (Patricia Mazzei and Steve Rothaus) 

Wedding planners, tourism officials see dollar signs from gay marriage, Palm Beach Post (Jeff Ostrowski)

 

2) Possible Supreme Court ruling on gay ‘marriage’ will certainly reveal where churches stand

As gay marriages begin in Florida, Supreme Court is set to meet on issue, The Washington Post (Robert Barnes)

No Kardashians: 7 stories from 2014 that matter most, USA Today (Susan Page)

 

3) Death of Mario Cuomo reminder that personal convictions cannot be separated from politics

Mario Cuomo, Ex-New York Governor and Liberal Beacon, Dies at 83, New York Times (Adam Nagourney)

What Mario Cuomo got wrong on abortion, The Week Magazine (W. James Antle III)

Mario Cuomo Had the Most Divided Mind in Politics, The New Republic Magazine (Sidney Blumenthal)

Mario Cuomo Had the Most Divided Mind in Politics

Transcript: The Briefing 01-05-15

The Briefing

 

January 5, 2015

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

 

It’s Monday, January 5, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

The first edition for The Briefing for the year 2015 begins as the year begins with a good many headlines, all of them demanding attention from a Christian worldview. The last edition of The Briefing for the year 2014 was dated December 19, the very next day in New York City two New York City police officers were gunned down in cold blood by an assailant. The man’s name was Ismaaiyl Brinsley, he committed suicide after killing the two police officers. The officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot at point-blank range as they sat in their car in Brooklyn. The man who committed suicide after killing them had traveled all the way from Baltimore, Maryland after he already vowed to kill police officers.

 

With Christmas approaching, the murder of the two police officers plunged New York City into both a moral and a political crisis. The moral crisis was caused by the realization that two New York City police officers had been killed in such a calculated and brutal killing. The cost was made very clear; Officer Ramos left not only a wife, but two teenage sons one 13 and one 17, Officer Liu was representative of the rising numbers of Asian Americans in the New York City Police Department ranks. Coming just as millions of New Yorkers were settling in to celebrate Christmas, the killing of the officers shocked the supposedly unshockable city of New York – representing a very clear reality of evil in an undeniable and unavoidable way.

 

The political crisis exposed the deep rift between the liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police force. At the funeral for Officer Ramos, thousands of New York City police officers turned their back on the mayor as his image was on a widescreen speaking at the funeral. According to the press, hundreds of New York City police officers did the same yesterday at the funeral services for officer Liu. Speaking shortly after the shootings, New York’s police Commissioner William Bratton said,

 

“Today two of New York’s finest were shot and killed with no warning, no provocation. They were [said the Commissioner], quite simply, assassinated — targeted for their uniform and for the responsibility they embraced.”

 

The killing of the two officers came in the aftermath of a national controversy over relationships between the police and minority communities. But the killings underscored more than anything else, the daily dangers faced by law enforcement officers and the grave danger embraced by a society that does not respect and honor those who protect that very society.

 

Just a few days later on December 28, death took a very different face when Air Asia flight 8501 disappeared from the radar. It disappeared with 161 souls aboard. And, once again, the world was facing the fact that an airliner connected with Malaysia had disappeared. Unlike the Malaysian airlines jetliner, this Airbus A320 disappeared on a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore. And it disappeared just shortly after the pilots had asked for permission to ascend to a higher altitude to avoid neighboring thunderstorms. Unlike the disappearance of the Malaysian airlines jet earlier in the year, news came rather quickly – in just a matter of days – that debris had been found in the Java Sea off the island of Borneo. Even though the wreckage of the jetliner is in what is considered to be relatively shallow water, the rough weather of the monsoon season has made retrieval efforts all but impossible.

 

An interesting twist to the story, the Indonesian government indicated that the airliner did not have permission to fly that route on the assigned day. As of yesterday, American aviation officials are raising very serious safety questions since it appears that the two pilots of the plane were effectively on their own in terms of understanding the weather challenges they may have faced. The actual cause of the crash brings to mind, in terms of many aviation experts, the crash several years ago of an Air France jet over the Atlantic; a crash that was blamed on the freezing of certain altimeter instruments that effectively caused the plane the stall.

 

In another very sad dimension to the event, the Wall Street Journal reported on the 1st of January that of those on the plane – that is 161 – 41 were actually members of one church, identified in some press reports as one Christian denomination. Taken together, these two new stories underscored during the Christmas season, the fact that we really do live in a very dangerous world; a world described by the hymn writer as one filled with dangers, toils, and snares. Headlines like these should cause Christians to develop the continual reflex of remembering that this is why the coming of the Prince of Peace is so urgently and eternally important. Even as Christians celebrated Christmas at the end of 2014, death was staring us in the face in the headlines.

 

But speaking of headlines, it was actually a cover story in Newsweek magazine that attracted so much Christian conversation as the year came to an end. The double issue of Newsweek is actually dated through January 9, but it hit newsstands just after New Year’s Day. However, internet editions of the article were available even before Christmas. The cover of Newsweek showed a Bible with the words, ‘The Bible: So Misunderstood it’s a Sin.’ The author of the lengthy multi-thousand word essay was Kurt Eichenwald, a reporter primarily known for reporting on economic and financial matters. The article is nothing but a hit piece upon the Bible and especially upon evangelical Christianity. The opening paragraphs of the Newsweek article made the point emphatically. Eichenwald wrote,

 

“They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation.”

 

Then he went on to write,

 

“They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch. They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words.”

With opening sentences like that, we were warned that a salvo of anti-Christian attack was coming and that’s exactly what is found within the article. As a matter fact, the article even exceeds the kind of ominous expectations one might have from both the cover and even those opening paragraphs. As I wrote in my own essay responding to the Newsweek article posted on December 29, it’s one of the most irresponsible articles ever to appear in a journalistic guise. In his article Eichenwald wrote, and I quote,

 

“Newsweek’s exploration here of the Bible’s history and meaning is not intended to advance a particular theology or debate the existence of God. Rather, it is designed to shine a light on a book that has been abused by people who claim to revere it but don’t read it, in the process creating misery for others.”

 

What’s really going on here becomes very apparent when the articles taken as a whole. Kurt Eichenwald is writing a scathing attack, not upon Christianity in its liberal form, but upon evangelical Christianity or upon any form of historic Christianity that is tied to any claim to biblical authority.

 

Eichenwald was very glad to cite far left Bible scholars and theologians such as Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, but he presented absolutely no balancing argument; representing no claim to even have spoken with any credible conservative scholars. No conservative scholar is even cited or referenced within the article. Instead the article simply repeats and rehashes liberal claims about the Scripture that have been made for the better part of the last 200 years; some actually older. He falsely claims that all we have are translations of translations of translations – an abundantly false article.

 

Christians certainly understand that the English Bibles they read are indeed translations, but the best translations available today are very credible translations of very credible text. The kind of political argument that Eichenwald makes is that the New Testament canon in particular was simply put together in some way to serve the cause of the Roman Empire – especially through the agency of Emperor Constantine. He pointed to the Council of Nicaea, held in what is now Turkey, in the year 325 as evidence of the fact that Constantine used that opportunity, politically, to settle the New Testament canon – that is the set of books officially recognized as the New Testament. But any credible historian would understand that the New Testament church and the apostolic church that followed had already begun to recognize those writings that are now recognized as the New Testament; using the standards of apostolicity, that is apostolic authorship, and catholicity, which is to say they were recognized by all the churches, and gospel content, the church had settled relatively early on understanding which of the many writings about Jesus were to be understood as being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the kinds of claims that Eichenwald makes about the Scripture – about its textual history, about the problems of translation – all of these things are either abundantly well-known or largely misrepresented.

 

Eichenwald’s misrepresentations go so far as to be absolute falsehood. Even when he’s right, and he says something that is abundantly true, it’s usually irrelevant. An example of this is when he cites, as a supposedly translation problem, the fact that the Greek language, in terms of its koiné Greek expression, is written without spaces between words and without normal conventions of punctuation. He suggests that the danger is that one can mistranslate the Scripture, misreading something for instance as ‘let’s go eat, mom’ as ‘let’s go eat mom.’ But as I wrote in my article, no mom has ever been in danger of being eaten because of a misunderstanding of punctuation. Context has always been determinative in terms of these kinds of readings and on no crucial point of any importance, not only in the Bible but in any fundamentally important ancient text, has this really been a problem – ever. He points to textual issues involved with the ending of Mark’s gospel and with the Johannine account that is in the gospel of John, about the woman caught in adultery, without recognizing that these are issues that no evangelical seminarian would be troubled by after an initial and responsible consideration.

 

Furthermore, when he looks at the Bible itself, he really gets to the point. When it becomes clear that his targets are actually not the translation and transmission of Scripture, but what is found within the Bible itself. For instance, as the article unfolds, it becomes very clear that Eichenwald holds a deep animus against the doctrine of the Trinity, and in particular, against any claim to the divinity of Christ. Also at the center of his target are those who believe in the divine creation of the universe and, here comes no surprise, anyone who holds the Bible’s teaching on sexuality is to be normative. My article published at AlbertMohler.com on December 29 goes into considerable detail in terms of the analysis of Eichenwald’s article.

 

The important thing to recognize here is that the Newsweek cover story is exactly what happens when a writer fueled by open antipathy to evangelical Christianity tries to throw every argument he can think of against the Bible and its authority. To put the matter plainly, no honest historian would recognize the portrait of Christian history presented in this essay as accurate; no journalist would recognize this screed as balanced.

 

But there’s a deeper point to be understood here in the context, not only of this article, but of similar articles and similar attacks upon the Bible. What do these things actually underline? These attacks underline the fact that the Bible is still very much a threat to a secular society; that the Bible still haunts even the secular mind, that not only the existence of the Bible but the clear teachings of the Bible continue to exert a formidable force upon the conscience of people even in the supposedly post-secular West. We should note the fact that a secular magazine and a secular journalist actually felt it was important to attack the Scripture in this way, and not only the Scripture but evangelical Christianity.

 

Finally we also need to note that the real scandal of evangelical Christianity, as made very clear in this article, is its claim to biblical authority. The real problem that Kurt Eichenwald has with evangelical Christianity, and this becomes abundantly clear, is the fact that evangelicals claim not only that God exists, but that he speaks and not only that he speaks, but he has spoken in a book, and not only a book, but in a book particularly known to be the Bible, the Holy Scriptures. The real animus that Kurt Eichenwald and Newsweek demonstrate against evangelical Christianity is the claim that the speaking God has spoken and that we are thus accountable to his words – the words that are found in the Bible itself.

 

But Kurt Eichenwald’s article also makes a very important link between biblical authority and Christology. How do we know who Jesus is, what he accomplished, why he came? Without the Bible as our trustworthy authority, we simply cannot answer those questions. That is the ambiguity openly and eagerly embraced by liberal theology. It’s the ambiguity that is forbidden by the apostolic testimony in Scripture, and that’s the real stumbling block. It’s not the Scripture that is the stumbling block – not in its essence – it’s not evangelical Christians, it’s Jesus Christ. That becomes abundantly clear. If you take away the Bible, you take away the knowledge of Jesus – the Jesus fully human and fully divine, whose birthday we just celebrated at Christmas and whose incarnation is the great dividing fact of human history. It was certainly no accident that it was on the day before Christmas Eve in the year 2014 that Newsweek decided to drop this article.

 

In this week’s editions of The Briefing we will look at several of the other major headlines in recent days, but we need to note as this edition comes to a close today that today in Boston, Massachusetts a major criminal trial is going to begin. It’s the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man arrested as the surviving assassin who planned the bombing of the Boston Marathon and carried it out; killing three people and injuring another 260 in the year 2013. On Saturday, two judges of the three-judge panel of federal appeals court, turned back an effort by Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys to have the trial postponed and moved out of Boston – claiming that there’s no way Tsarnaev could gain a fair trial in the city where the Boston, Marathon bombing took place.

 

Tsarnaev will face 30 charges in terms of the trial that begins today and federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the most serious of the charges, including intentional murder and terrorism. Prosecutors will claim that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, both from Chechnya, had plotted and planned the bombing of the Boston Marathon, intending to bring about as much death and mayhem as possible. They will link the two brothers to Islamic separatists and terrorist efforts and they will make very clear their claim that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an active plotter and participant in the terrorist act. Tsarnaev’s attorneys are expected to claim he was simply caught up in the web of conspiracy led by his older brother, Tamerlan. Tamerlan was killed in a police chase in the days after the Boston Marathon bombing.

 

From a Christian worldview perspective there are several important considerations here. First the fact that it is a civilizational achievement based upon the Christian worldview that grants to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the reality of the promise of a fair trial, of a jury trial; of the reality that he is not summarily to be convicted and simply punished by the state but rather that the state will go to the incredible expense and the excruciating difficulty of bringing its case and proving it before a jury – something that is made possible because of a certain understanding of human rights and human dignity. The very human rights and human dignity that the Tsarnaev brothers were seeking to attack when they bombed the Boston Marathon and they set in motion the events that would lead to three deaths and the horrible wounding of over 260 others.

 

The other thing to recognize is the fact that the human heart cries out for a kind of justice that can actually only be brought about by proving the case. This is something that many Christians fail to understand, a trial like this is not only important because of the rights of the accused – those must be recognized as very important to our legal system and to our understanding of human dignity and justice. But the justice our hearts cry out for is a justice that demands that the facts of the case be settled, that the evidence be presented, and that we come to understand this horrible act in all of its horrible reality and force us as an entire society to recognize that something like this happened. And that it happened not because of some kind of accident but because two individuals – one of them now on trial – plotted this in order to make a political statement. They consider the expense of human lives by this kind of deliberate attack as one that was justified by some ideological cause.

 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will have the opportunity to present the most robust defense. His defense team will be able to take every piece of evidence and try to find some way to get it excluded from the consideration. But the reality of the pleas made by his attorney in recent days to try to delay the trial and to move it out of Boston is an acknowledgment of the strength of the case against him. It’s also an acknowledgment of the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is trying to set in motion some foundation for a subsequent appeal – meaning he fully expects, or his defense team expects, that he will be found guilty.

 

A very interesting thing to watch in terms of this trial is whether or not the issue of Islamic terrorism is given an adequate understanding because federal authorities are very convinced that Tamerlan Tsarnaev became radicalized, in terms of Islamic extremism, after he had made a visit back to his native Chechnya shortly before he returned to the United States and began planning this attack. Federal authorities also said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had made very clear statements linking the act and his particular personal involvement to Islamic extremism. But during the court proceedings, or in the media attention to those proceedings, will the issue of Islam gain any kind of adequate hearing? That’s going to be a very interesting thing to watch. But this points to a very important final consideration: our quest for justice, our hunger for justice, is a hunger to know not just when, where, and what, but why. Why points to the motivation for such a murderous act. Why would anyone do such a thing? Why would anyone even plot such a thing? How can such an event, how could such a murderous act, become even conceivable? This reveals the unavoidable issue of worldview. What worldview would make this kind of murderous attack plausible? Well that’s where the issue of worldview and Islam and the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers are probably inextricable. But one of the most important moral achievements of this moment in American history and of this trial would be an adequate consideration, given to that question that simply must be answered, the question ‘why?’ It may well be that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is the only person alive who can answer that question. We should hope that in the course of these court proceedings the question is asked and answered.

 

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 boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.