R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 346

Transcript: The Briefing 09-10-14

The Briefing

 

September 10, 2014

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

 

It’s Wednesday, September 10, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Roman Catholic ‘evolution’ on gay marriage shows adding to Scripture subverts its authority

Will the Catholic Church evolve on the issue homosexuality and same-sex marriage? Or, on the other hand, will the Catholic Church split over the same questions? Two very important articles, in two very different periodicals, have appeared on the question. The first article appeared in Time magazine, the second in the Spectator published in England; and they’re asking the same question in essence – where is the Catholic Church going on the question of homosexuality, and the related question of same-sex marriage? The headline in the Time magazine article is this, “Is the Catholic Church ‘Evolving’ on Gay Marriage?” The author is Christopher J. Hale. He writes,

 

Last week New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan gave his okay to the St. Patrick Day Parade Committee’s decision to allow a gay group to march in the 2015 parade under their own banner. This was [says Hale] a remarkable shift from one of Dolan’s predecessors Cardinal John O’Connor who in 1993 declared that to allow a gay group to march in the parade would be a slander to the Apostle’s Creed.

 

Hale has a very interesting point to make in his article. There certainly does appear to be some kind of evolution on the issue of homosexuality taking place, at least among some very high ranking Catholic leaders. In the bull’s-eye of Time magazine’s article is New York’s Cardinal Archbishop, Timothy Dolan. Dolan had been known as a very clear opponent of same-sex marriage, and as the former head of the Catholic bishops in the United States, he had been running point in terms of the Catholic church’s teaching on homosexuality. That teaching, by the way, according to the official Catholic catechism, defines all homosexual behaviors as “intrinsically disordered” and furthermore sinful in any context. But all that appears to be changing, and not just with the Cardinal Archbishop of New York City. The question of where the Roman Catholic Church is going on this issue is prompted by statements coming from the man who heads the Roman Catholic Church – and that is none other than Pope Francis the first.

 

In the Time article, Hale suggest that this has been a rather remarkable summer in which several high ranking Roman Catholic officials have signaled, in his words, that Pope Francis is more open posture on gay issues has permeated throughout the Catholic world.

 

In May [he writes], a top-ranking Italian bishop said that the Church should be more open to arguments in support of same-sex marriage. And [he also records] just a few weeks ago, one of Pope Francis’s closest friends [that is] Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes said in an interview that he “didn’t know” whether Jesus would oppose gay marriage.

 

To its credit, Time magazine has another very important reason for running this article with the headline asking such a question. After all, next month prominent Roman Catholic leaders from around the world are going to be gathering in Rome for synod to ask questions about the church’s teachings on these very issues – issues not limited to homosexuality, but to human sexuality in general, and to marriage, and to the family. The very fact that Pope Francis is called the synod has led to a very open speculation, in Roman Catholic circles, about whether or not there’s going to be a major turn in Roman Catholic teaching. Hale seems to be suggesting that there already are very clear indicators of this kind of evolution – and he’s exactly right. The indicators go all the way back to Pope Francis, who shortly after his election as pope, raised the question as to whether or not there should be any Christian judgment made on homosexuality. An a flight back from Central America in 2013 the Pope said to reporters, and I quote,

 

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?

 

Hale’s article, and the larger picture of what’s going on in the Roman Catholic Church, raises a host of issues – not just the question raised in the title of the article. There is abundant evidence of the Roman Catholic Church, or at least very prominent Roman Catholic leaders, are indeed evolving on the question of same-sex marriage and of homosexuality.

 

And of course the use of that term evolving goes back to the fact that major political leaders, most specifically former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, have defined their own positions on these issues as evolving – and of course they evolved in a very clear direction, from the fact that when President Obama ran for president in 2008, he clearly defended marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. All that changed when he ran for reelection in 2012, when he became the nation’s most prominent defender of the legalization of same-sex marriage. Of course in the background of President Obama’s evolution on the question, stands the fact that years before he ran for President, when he was running for a seat in the Illinois state Senate, he had indicated on a form that he was in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage; when he ran for president, he was opposed to it – until he ran for reelection as president, when he was in favor of it. So he was for it, before he was against it, until he was again for it. When she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, then Sen. Hillary Clinton was against same-sex marriage. She continued in that posture without any clear indication to the contrary when she was the Secretary of State of the United States. Shortly after leaving that position, preparing presumably for a 2016 run for president, Mrs. Clinton indicated that she had evolved on the question, and now is in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage.

 

All that points to the fact that this so-called evolution is a familiar pattern now; but it’s a pattern that we really have come to expect out of politicians. But is this kind of pattern what we should expect from the leader of a massive religious denomination? That gets to the question raised by Damian Thompson in his article the Spectator. The title of that article is another question; “Could homosexuality split the Catholic Church?” Thompson’s article was actually prompted by Hale’s article in Time magazine, but he writes in response, and I quote,

 

The Church insists that homosexual acts are sinful and, although it may eventually ditch the insulting label ‘intrinsically disordered’, it has no authority to change Christ’s teaching that sex outside marriage is always wrong. The magisterium of the Catholic Church is immutable on the big questions. You couldn’t reverse [he writes] Paul VI’s absolute ban on artificial contraception or John Paul II’s declaration that women priests are a theological impossibility without, effectively, abolishing the office of Pope. [Thompson then conclude,] And neither of these rulings is as blindingly obvious, from the perspective of ‘natural law’, as the sinfulness of homosexual genital acts.

 

Thompson suggest that the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church are actually confusing their own church members, and quoting American Catholic writer Deal Hudson, Thompson suggest that the Catholic Church under current leadership is becoming, to use Hudson’s words, “the church of blurred boundaries.”

 

I make reference to the articles by Hale and Thompson in order to get to a bigger point – you don’t have to have these articles in Time magazine and the Spectator to understand that something major is happening in Roman Catholic circles. The clearest signal was, of course, the words that came from the Pope himself; and it looks in this case, like Deal Hudson is exactly right when he suggest that under this Pope, the Roman Catholic Church is becoming the church of blurred boundaries. But from an evangelical perspective, there are huge lessons here. First of all, what we’re watching in the Roman Catholic Church is a divergence between the church’s official doctrinal teaching and its pastoral practice. As is often been pointed out with other controversial questions, the Roman Catholic Church, through it sacramental ministry, claims the right to be able to teach one thing but to apply those truths in a pastoral situation, leading to a very different kind of verdict. A very embarrassing example of this kind of dynamic occurred earlier this year when it became known that Pope Francis had placed a phone call to a woman in Central America, who had been forbidden entrance to the mass because she had married a divorced man. Now, that is exactly in keeping with Roman Catholic doctrine, and that doctrine is routinely applied to Roman Catholic situations globally. But Pope Francis gave her, what is in effect, a special dispensation. In her pastoral situation, the Pope said she could receive the mass, even if she had married a divorced man in contradiction of church teachings. So what you have here is just that kind of example that Deal Hudson and others are pointing to. The Pope claims to uphold Roman Catholic teaching, and in this case Damian Thompson’s exactly right, if he were to reverse that Roman Catholic teaching, he would effectively abolish the authority of his own office. But instead of doing that, the Pope, and following his lead, presumably other Catholic bishops as well, will simply signal the priests that they can bend or apply church teachings in a way that fits a local pastoral situation.

 

From an evangelical perspective, this is an absolute impossibility. The evangelical understanding of the church, of the Scripture, and of the gospel, reminds us that our doctrine and our practice have to be one in the same. We deny the Roman Catholic claim to dispense grace and the forgiveness of sins and the absolution for those sins through a sacramental or priestly ministry. Evangelicals also deny that Christ established His church in terms of a magisterial teaching authority – that’s exactly what the Roman Catholic Church claims, and of course at the head of that magisterial authority is none other than the Pope. There’s a third lesson here, and that has to do with natural law. Evangelicals do not deny the reality, nor the truth content of the natural law, but evangelicals believe that in the end, for that matter at the beginning and in the middle, the only authority that matters is the authority of Holy Scripture. We do not believe that natural law argument, detached from Scripture, will be either compelling or effective in public argument; nor is it compelling or effective in private devotion – instead, we are a people of the Scripture. In the final analysis, the so-called evolution now taking place or appearing to take place in the Roman Catholic Church sets up evangelicals to be further separated from the society and further isolated and at the crucial point of evangelical conviction. That’s what exactly matters; because as it turns out, if the Roman Catholic Church continues in this trajectory of so-called evolution, evangelicals will be standing in even smaller company as defenders of marriage as it is revealed in Scripture and of human sexuality as commanded by God. And our authority will be Scripture. At the end of the day, if nothing else, this controversy points to the fact that when you attempt to add something to Scripture or to the gospel – such as a sacramental ministry, priestly authority, and a magisterial teaching office – you do not add to the authority of Scripture, you inherently subvert it. From an evangelical Christian perspective in the biblical worldview, that’s what makes this debate about the future the Roman Catholic Church and its evolution on the question of homosexuality so important. Evangelical Christians, bound by conscience to Scripture and to the authority of Scripture as the word of God, cannot evolve on this question – not that is, if we are truly going to obey Scripture.

2) Evolution on homosexuality looms as generational challenge to evangelical integrity

But that takes us to yet another article that recently appeared in the pages of Time magazine. A young man by the name of Brandan Robertson has written an article entitled, “Evangelicals for Marriage Equality: The Story Behind Our Launch.” In Time magazine, this young man tells the story of how he, who identifies as an evangelical Christian who believes that the Bible is God’s word, has evolved in his own way on the question of same-sex marriage, and has now, joined forces with the group known as Evangelicals for Marriage Equality. He defines the group in these terms,

 

A new initiative launching Tuesday that seeks to change the hearts and minds of evangelicals about civil marriage equality.

 

Now remember that Mr. Robertson claims to be an evangelical who holds to a high view of Scripture and biblical authority, but in his essay in Time magazine he includes this paragraph,

 

Many evangelicals believe the Bible describes same-sex relationships as sinful; others disagree.

 

Robertson concludes his essay by writing,

 

Evangelicals who want to support marriage equality currently face the false choice of either remaining faithful to their tradition by opposing same-sex marriage, or being accused of watering down their commitment to Christ by standing in support of their gay and lesbian friends. I believe [he writes] that the best way is the middle path that both compels evangelicals to stand for civil marriage equality as an overflow of our love for our lesbian and gay neighbors, while allowing us to have space to wrestle with and remain faithful to our beliefs.

 

As is so often the case, what is argued as a so-called middle way is actually not a middle way at all. As I have written, and often discussed, on a question like same-sex marriage, there really is no third way – a church, or an individual Christian for that matter, will either support and affirm legal same-sex marriage or not. In his larger argument, Brandan Robertson suggested there should be a severe division between the church’s moral understanding of homosexuality and same-sex relationships on the one hand, and the government’s recognition of marriage on the other. But, as his article also makes clear, Mr. Robertson appears to be very unclear about what the Bible teaches on this issue in the first place.

 

I draw attention to his article for two reasons. First of all, its juxtaposition alongside those articles on the issue of the Roman Catholic Church’s evolution on the question and the fact that his article in Time magazine appeared within just a matter of days, alongside the Hale article on the Catholic Church. But there’s another important issue here, and that is this – you can count on the fact that there will be not only prominent Roman Catholic leaders who will appear to evolve on the question of homosexuality, there will be those who identify as evangelicals who will, and even are now, doing the same. In our generation it’s hard to conceive that there will be a greater challenge to the church’s faithfulness, not only on the authority of Scripture, but the integrity of the gospel than this question. And the question may soon be published in Time magazine – an article with the headline, “Are Evangelicals Devolving on the Question of Same-Sex Marriage?” Given all that has taken place in just the last several weeks and days, this much is clear – when that article appears, we won’t be able to say that we were surprised.

3) Response to ChickFilA owner Truett Cathy’s death indicates moral shift during his lifetime

I’m currently in Atlanta, Georgia and headline news here, as well as across much of the United States, was the death early on Monday morning of S. Truett Cathy, the founder of the restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A. I had the opportunity and the honor of knowing Mr. Cathy. He was, as a matter of fact, a former member of the Southern Seminary Foundation Board. Mr. Cathy founded his business – even as he had been raised in the context of poverty. He died Monday at age 93, and he left behind an incredible legacy of Christian generosity and of Christian conviction. Truett Cathy was not only a generous man; he was a very bold witness for Christ. He intended to witness to Christ even in the way he operated his business. As he said over and over again, he saw no conflict between his Christian faith and doing good business. And he did intend to do good business. He was very public about his Christian commitment, and he was a very active Southern Baptist churchmen. Truett Cathy had a great concern for youth and young people – that was made evident in the policies by which his company employed so many teenagers and young adults; policies that included a very generous scholarship opportunity. He founded missions and ministries for underprivileged youth, and of course his company was very well-known for the fact that it was never open on Sunday. Mr. Cathy believed that Sunday as the Lord’s Day, was a day that should be reserved for his employees for their worship, not for their work.

 

But the national response to the death of Truett Cathy tells us a very great deal about the moral revolution that came during his lifetime; but not just during his lifetime, during the last decade of his lifetime. Just consider the obituary on Mr. Cathy that ran in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times. The obituary was written by Kim Severson, and in it she states this,

 

But as the founder of the Chick-fil-A fast-food empire, he was also a billionaire several times over and, as a conservative Christian who ran his business according to his religious principles, he was at once a hero and a symbol of intolerance. Many admired him for closing his outlets on Sundays and speaking out against same-sex marriage. Others vilified his restaurant chain as a symbol of hate.

 

Actually the New York Times obituary included a mistake the paper later corrected. The statement against same-sex marriage was not actually said by Truett Cathy, but by his son and successor as chairman of the board, Dan Cathy. But to be fair Dan Cathy’s comment certainly shared the moral sentiment and convictions of his father; and that’s what makes this story really interesting. Here you have a man, who started in poverty, believed in the American Dream, began at age 8 selling soda and by age 12 was trying to run his own business. But the story, so far as many in the national press were concerned, is the fact that by the time Truett Cathy died, the very convictions he stood for, the convictions that represented what virtually all Americans believed during most of his lifetime, left him accused, to use the words of the New York Times, as being “a symbol of hate.”

 

The bottom line of this story comes down to this, Truett Cathy lived long enough, he died Monday at age 93, to have seen his own character assailed, along with the character of his company, simply because the Cathy family made one public statement about the fact that they believe that marriage is exclusively the union of a man and a woman, and that this was important for human happiness and for the flourishing of humanity. The obituary of S. Truett Cathy that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times arrives as an alarm for us all. Someone like Truett Cathy could live 93 years, contribute so much to American culture, and so much to the lives of so many, and at the end of the day be accused in one single paragraph of being a symbol of intolerance and a symbol of hate. In Truett Cathy’s life we find a tremendous testimony, in his obituary in the New York Times, we find a warning – almost like a parable.

 

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 Atlanta, Georgia and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

Commonweal Luncheon with R. Albert Mohler Jr.

It is hard to come up with any arena of human endeavor that is any more classically tied to these major worldview, ideological, theological and biblical concerns than the intersection economics with lived Christian theology. It is no accident that this is where most faithful Christians will spend their lives.

The Commonweal Project is sponsored by the Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more information on the Carl F.H. Henry Institute visit henryinstitute.org. For more information on Southern Seminary, visit sbts.edu.

The Briefing 09-10-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Roman Catholic ‘evolution’ on gay marriage shows adding to Scripture subverts its authority

Is the Catholic Church ‘Evolving’ on Gay Marriage?, TIME (Christopher J. Hale)

Could homosexuality split the Catholic Church?, The Spectator (Damian Thompson)

2) Evolution on homosexuality looms as generational challenge to evangelical integrity

Evangelicals for Marriage Equality: The Story Behind Our Launch, TIME (Brandan Robertson)

3) Response to ChickFilA owner Truett Cathy’s death indicates moral shift during his lifetime

S. Truett Cathy, 93, Chick-fil-A Owner, Dies, New York Times (Kim Severson)

Transcript: The Briefing 09-09-14

The Briefing

 

September 9, 2014

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

 

It’s Tuesday, September 9, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Momentum of Scotland referendum gentle reminder of transience of political realities

We are accustomed to the map staying relatively stable; certainly very stable when it comes to the most important nations on earth, the most long-lasting and intact nations over the last several centuries. Among those, without question, is the nation known as the United Kingdom. Americans often referred to the United Kingdom as Britain, or using the shorthand often as England. But the United Kingdom includes not only England, but Scotland and Wales – at least for now. But next week the population of Scotland is set to vote in a referendum about whether or not to remain in United Kingdom. And even as observers in London and elsewhere had expected that the vote would be a resounding no, the tables appear to have turned in the last several days before this historic referendum.

 

Now, people on both sides of the vote believe that it’s up for grabs. And there are polls indicating that there is a surge of momentum for the yes vote – that is for the people of Scotland voting to leave the United Kingdom. Now to put this in perspective, just imagine the fact that England and Scotland have basically been united ever since they were united under one monarch and that took place in the monarchy of James I. He was James VI of Scotland, but upon the death of Elizabeth I, he became King James I of England. He continued as King James of Scotland and thus became the King of the same realm. And in unifying those realms under one crown, that was a major historical achievement. And even as most Americans know King James I because he was the king who authorized – what in Britain is known as the Authorized Version, known in the United States is the King James version of the Bible – James I basically set the stage for the unification of England and Scotland – two nations that had often been at war of the centuries into one realm. But that is all now threatened by a vote coming in just a matter of days. And if indeed, as the polls indicate, the people of Scotland vote to leave the United Kingdom, the map is going to change. And not just the map, but the nation of England – it will be forever changed.

 

Losing Scotland would be tantamount to a major portion of the United States deciding in one vote to leave. Scotland has been so incorporated into the United Kingdom that most people living today cannot even imagine, the inhabitants, that is, of either Scotland or England, what it would mean for the two nations to be separate. The reasons for the urge toward separation of Scotland basically come down to nationalism; and that requires us to think pretty carefully, because if the nation is the United Kingdom, then nationalism would mean Scotland and England and Wales remaining together. But if nationalism refers to Scotland as an independent nation, that redefines the terms. That’s why this is of urgent importance to the world; because even as there so many nations that are now understood to be basically artificial constructs, the reality is that we consider the United Kingdom to be a very natural constructs – to be a natural political gathering together of one people, united by one language, even though there may be regional interest in regional variations, the fact is that the United Kingdom has been considered just that – a political fact, a fact of life, a fact of the map, a fact of geography, and a fact of politics, a fact of culture as well. That’s now all very much threatened.

 

Now why should Christians find this of interest? Well because, even when we look in the Scriptures, for instance at the table of the nation’s – neglected by so many Christians – found in Genesis 11 we find the dispersion of human beings after the flood, according to clans and families and tribes and nations, but the nations defined in the table of Nations in Genesis 11, are not geopolitical nation-states, they are ethnicities. When missiologist now talk about unreached people groups, we’re talking about those ethnicities, and those are how the peoples of the earth are defined in Scripture. Scripture really doesn’t know any such entity as the nation-state. The nation-state is a modern development, and for the most part, the development of the nation-state has led to greater security and greater stability for people, and that’s why the nation-state has become the preferred model of political existence in the 20th and 21st centuries – but now that’s being threatened right in the very heart of Western civilization, right in the nation that gave the United States at least its first beginnings. We’re talking about England, we’re talking about Scotland, we’re talking about the United Kingdom. And we’re talking about a United Kingdom that, in a matter of days, may become profoundly un-United.

 

What should Christians think about seeing this issue in the news? Well for one thing, we should be reminded of the fact that the nation-state is a rather modern development in terms of human history. And we also need to understand that human beings, at the very core of our common existence, define ourselves in terms of some kind of community – eventually that community defined by culture, society, language, economy, and politics, becomes a collective, a collective large enough to be called a country. But the nation-state is not as stable as often we assume it to be, and that’s a very important Christian understanding. We tend to look at the map, we look at the nations as they’re colorized on the globe, and we tend to do believe that that simply the way things are, and the way things always will be.

 

But all you have to do is look at a succession of historical maps to understand that those maps have been rewritten time and time again. Just go back to the end of the 19th century, that’s barely just over hundred years ago, at that time most of the peoples of the earth were ruled over by crowned heads, that is by monarchs. Furthermore, most of those political realities were included within larger interest groups, commonly known as empires. There was, of course, the German empire centered in Prussia, the Hapsburg empire centered in Austria and Hungary, the British empire centered of course in United Kingdom, the Russian Empire defined by Russia and all the countries included within its orbit, and that’s just speaking of course of the landmass now called Europe. But what we’re looking at when we look at the world scene, whether it’s a map or a globe, is something that has been changing all throughout human history. One of the facts of living in a fallen world is that all of these political realities are extremely transient. Sometimes these political realities known as nation-states are so artificial that they simply do not hold together. The Soviet Union was an example of an empire, calling itself a nation that fell apart as soon as the political will to hold it together began to falter.

 

But no one in recent decades has look at the United Kingdom and seen something like the USSR, instead when we look at United Kingdom we see something more like the United States of America.

 

But wait just a minute; could the same thing that is now threatening to happen in the United Kingdom ever happen in the United States? The answer to that may be shocking to many people. The United States is held together by an act of political will, by a Constitution that holds together 50 different states in a compact. And, of course, after the Civil War, it was made impossible, constitutionally speaking, for a state to secede from the union. But the lesson to be learned right now from the United Kingdom is this – if the nation-state ever loses its plausibility from within, if the cause and the commonality that brought the nation-state together ever begins to falter and fall apart, the very existence of the nation-state is then called into question. It happened to the USSR, it is happening now routinely in many of the parts of the world marked by such intense conflict, it might happen next week in the United Kingdom. But Christians also need to look at this news and recognize the profound biblical truth that no country, no nation, no nation-state, is forever – no empire stands forever. To put in the vernacular, the powers that be, quite too soon become, the powers that were. This should lead Christians in every place and in every generation to understand, that we cannot identify Christianity or the church of the Lord Jesus Christ too closely with any nation-state, because that is to confuse the kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world, and as for the kingdoms of this world, whether Scotland decides to leave United Kingdom next week or not, every single one of those kingdoms, one day, will be no more.

2) Loss of political hope impacts Russian mortality rates

Staying on the issue of the nation and the nation-state, but shifting from the United Kingdom to Russia, we need to note a very ominous and sad article that has recently appeared in the New York Review of Books, that is one of the most prestigious intellectual journals published in the United States of America, and the most recent issue features an article by Masha Gessen entitled “The Dying Russians.” The article really is remarkable, it points to the fact that Russia now has a lifespan, a life expectancy, which ranks it among the least developed countries on earth. As documentation Masha Gessen points to the fact that a 15-year-old boy in Russia today has a life expectancy that compares unfavorably to the life expectancy of a 15-year-old boy in Ethiopia, Gambia, or Somalia. Gessen cites demographer Nicholas Eberstadt who is written,

 

overall life expectancy at age fifteen in the Russian Federation appears in fact to be lower than for some of the countries the UN designates to be least developed […], among these, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Yemen.

 

So a 15-year-old boy, according to this research, alive in Russia today has a life expectancy that is now lower than a 15-year-old boy in Ethiopia, Gambia, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Yemen – and as for older Russians, the life expectancy is collapsing, and at the same time the birth rate is collapsing. So Russia is now caught in a double vise, it has one of the lowest birth rates found on planet Earth, a birth rate the doesn’t even come close to maintaining the current population numbers. And as for the death rates, they are just absolutely unprecedented in the modern age. If anything, the life expectancy the average Russian appears to be rushing back to something like that of the 17th and 18th centuries, not lunging forward as in other advanced Western nations. As Gessen writes,

 

In the seventeen years between 1992 and 2009, the Russian population declined by almost seven million people, or nearly 5 percent—a rate of loss unheard of in Europe since World War II. Moreover, much of this appears to be caused by rising mortality. By the mid-1990s, the average St. Petersburg man lived for seven fewer years than he did at the end of the Communist period; in Moscow, the dip was even greater, with death coming nearly eight years sooner [than just a few years previous].

 

The combination of collapsing birthrates and collapsing life expectancy point to an ominous crisis that Russia now cannot avoid. Demographers looking at the situation in Russia now speak openly of the new term: ‘depopulation.’ What would be the reasons for the collapsing life expectancy? Russians drink more than those in almost any other nation, smoking rates are high, accident rates are high – but as Nicholas Eberstadt and others point out, there are nations with higher drinking rates, higher smoking rates, worse air pollution, and all this points to the fact that there is no easy health explanation for why life expectancy in Russia is collapsing. Instead, and this is what is really interesting – given the fact this article appears in the New York Review Of Books – virtually everyone looking at the situation now begins to believe there has to be some kind of spiritual explanation for the collapsing birthrates and the collapsing life expectancies taking place when no one should expect them to happen, where no one should expect them to happen. The one thing even secular observers are now pointing to, is the fact that Russia appears to be affected by a profound collapse of hope. And from the Christian perspective here is something really important – nations, as well as individuals, live, at least in part, on hope. If you take hope away, an individual begins to experience a shorter lifespan; that’s documented across the board. If you take hope away, birthrates also begin to collapse – indeed precipitously to fall; the reason for that is also understandable. The decision to have a child is itself a very profound statement of hope. And falling birthrates, at least in this kind of category, certainly point to a profound hopelessness.

 

One of the issues addressed in this article in the New York Review of Books is whether or not that hopelessness is tied to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Did the collapse of the communist dream and the myth of the revolution of the proletariat, lead inevitably to a delayed fuse of this kind of hopelessness? That’s certainly a plausible possibility. Certainly it also points to something else, if anyone places ultimate hope in any nation, in any culture, or in any political regime, that hope will soon turn to hopelessness – because there is no regime, there is no country, no empire, including the United States of America, that can be invested in that kind of hope. If we tie our hope to any earthly reality, if we believe that ultimately our security, our hope, our confidence in the future, is grounded in a political reality, whether it be a political reality established in democracy or the Communist dictatorship of the former Soviet Union, the reality is those hopes will inevitably collapse; and when they collapse, well just look at the evidence in Russia – collapsing with that hope, collapsing with that confidence, is the birth rate and the life expectancy. A very strange parable, found in a rather unexpected place, but one that should immediately resonate in the Christian mind, because this tells us what we should already know – those who trust in horses and chariots, in empires and nation states, will find those hopes ill-founded and collapsing, often with calamitous effect.

3) Georgia ethics commissioner corruption shows limitations of human government against sin

I am currently in Atlanta, Georgia, and it’s very interesting to note that there had been two successive days, with two headline news stories on the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution having to do with one story. That story is this, the head of the state ethics commission has been suspended because of unethical behavior. This is going to be a convoluted, and it is already a controversial case here in the state of Georgia, twists and turns and multiple complexities are found within this story, as you would imagine, but it reminded me of the consideration that came to me as a young child.

 

I can remember thinking this, ‘My parents are there to make sure that I behave, but then who make sure my parents behave?’ Well, ultimately I knew that it was God, but I also knew that there were policemen, and judges, and others, but who would make sure that they behave and that they do what is right? Well I knew at least that there were higher officials, there were those who were in Washington, DC. Growing up in Florida, I knew that there were those in the capital of Tallahassee. I knew that somewhere, there was someone, who could make sure that those, under their authority, were behaving and doing right, punishing the evildoer, rewarding the one who does well. As a child I found security in the fact that my parents were watching over me, and even though I didn’t think my parents needed much watching, I at least knew that someone was watching over virtually everyone. But here’s this front-page story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution – what happens when the one who is supposed to be doing the watching, quite clearly, needs to be watched?

 

This is one of the quandaries of life in a fallen world. We do have the gifts that God has given us in terms of the structures of creation, we do have marriage, the family, we do have, of course, government, along with courts, and magistrates, rules, and laws, we do have oversight. As the apostle Paul made very clear in Romans 13, government does not exist on its own terms – it is indeed one of God’s gifts to us. But every government is led by fallen people, who act in a predictably fallen manner. And as so many cases of recent political corruption have made clear, just because someone holds a position of authority, doesn’t at all mean that they are without the propensity to sin – to often misuse their office. And what could be a more glaring example of that than the fact that, here you have the state of Georgia, the head of the state ethics commission, whose now been suspended for unethical behavior. But how is the state ethics commissioner suspended for unethical behavior? It’s because even as the ethics commissioner is supposed to be watching the ethics of other government officials, someone has be watching the ethics commissioner. But who is then watching the one who is watching the ethics commissioner? And who is watching the one who is watching the one watching the ethics commissioner? Or watching you? Or watching me?

 

The Bible reveals, and the Christian worldview certainly affirms, that the gifts God has given us in terms of the structures of creation, including the gift of government, are for our good. Human flourishing is found when those institutions that God has given us, are respected and acknowledged and obeyed as God had intended. But the problem with the government, the problem with parents, the problem with any authority, is that no human authority is perfect – every single human authority who shows up at any part in this process, from the citizen to the President of the United States, is according to Scripture, a sinner; and sinners will act, unsurprisingly, like sinners. That’s why we need these structures, but that’s also why in a fallen world, none of these structures of protection can actually keep sin from happening. They may ameliorate sin, that’s the old Christian language, that is they may minimize sin, cut down on the effects of sin, but no government, no ethics commission, can make anyone ethical; can make anyone behave morally. In reality, the law has a fundamental purpose. We should be so thankful that the law restrains human evil. We should be very thankful that government, in terms of magistrates, and judges, and police officers, grand juries, and all the rest, uphold justice. But they uphold justice only so far, even when they watch themselves or even when they’re watching us. Because as it is proved over and over again, the watchers fail miserably at watching each other. A headline like this, like so many headlines in the news, simply reminds us of the last verse in the Bible, “even so Lord, come quickly.”

 

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 Atlanta, Georgia. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 09-09-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Momentum of Scotland referendum gentle reminder of transience of political realities

Britain faces storm as giant global investors awaken to break-up dangers, The Telegraph (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard)

Scottish independence: everything you need to know about the vote, The Guardian

2) Loss of political hope impacts Russian mortality rates

The Dying Russians, New York Review of Books (Masha Gessen)

3) Georgia ethics commissioner corruption shows limitations of human government against sin

Georgia ethics commission fires director, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Kate Brumback)

In Deal case, a coverup of a coverup of a coverup, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Jay Bookman)

Transcript: The Briefing 09-08-14

The Briefing

 

September 5, 2014

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

 

It’s Monday, September 8, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) InterVarsity ejected by California University system over creedal basis of group

“America’s college and university campuses are increasingly resembling closed countries.” By referring to closed countries, of course, the author of the article published over the weekend at Mission Network News points to the reality that there are many countries in the world that are officially declared to be closed to missionary activity. Now Julie Oosterhouse, writing for Mission Network News, tells us that at least some of the most important state university systems, as well as some of the leading private universities in America, are becoming, as it were, closed countries when it comes to Christian witness and Christian ministries on their campuses.

 

The specific reason for Oosterhouse’s article in Mission Network News has to do with the fact that the entire University of California system has now derecognized the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Just days ago, we discussed the fact that Vanderbilt University had done the same. Effectively derecognizing InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and casting them off the campus and out of bounds – in terms of ministry to the college and university students there at Vanderbilt. But now we’re talking about the University of California, and not just one university – but all 27 campuses of the University of California system. And we’re not talking about a private university – we’re talking about America’s largest network of public universities. What we’re looking at here is a major closing of the American heart and the American mind; starting where the mind is most concentrated in terms of its formation, that is on the American college and university campus. But as Julie Oosterhouse writes,

 

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be a missionary in a closed country? Well, that situation is actually not too far from your front door. College campuses continue to derecognize any religious organizations requiring leaders to hold a set of beliefs.

 

That’s a very crucial way of stating the case – and it is exactly right. What we have here is not the case of a university saying that it objects to this or that belief, but rather to the fact the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, or any Christian organization for that matter, would require any beliefs whatsoever – any beliefs at all.

 

As we saw in the case of Vanderbilt University, the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s cardinal sin there was that it was identified as creedal, in other words holding to a specific set of beliefs – a very short set of beliefs – that were required of all in leadership. These beliefs are not required of all students who participate, as a matter fact all are welcome according to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. But in terms of leadership, it simply makes sense. It’s only rational that for a Christian organization to continue to be Christian, it must require certain core Christian beliefs of those who will be in leadership. At Vanderbilt University the administrators made very clear that any requirement of any beliefs whatsoever would be so problematic as to disqualify the group from official recognition.

 

But make no mistake, the key issues here are related to sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, and sexual preference. What we’re looking at here is the very fact that the requirements of biblical authority, of Christian orthodoxy, required by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship just might – the argument by the politically correct administrators go – make some moral judgment that would be negative towards someone, or anyone’s, sexual practices or sexual orientation. According to the new thought police on America’s college and University campuses, that simply unacceptable. In a statement on the website of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship related to the California State University system, the ministry, one of the most respected in terms of college ministry in American history, states this – and I quote:

 

In 2012, shortly before retiring, the chancellor of the California State University system issued a new policy that requires recognized student groups to accept all students as potential leaders. Our chapter leaders are required to affirm InterVarsity’s Doctrinal Basis. This new CSU policy does not allow us to require that our leaders be Christian.  It is essentially asking InterVarsity chapters to change the core of their identity, and to change the way they operate in order to be an officially recognized student group.

 

The InterVarsity statement went on with these words,

 

While we applaud inclusivity, we believe that faith-based communities like ours can only be led by people who clearly affirm historic Christian doctrine. The policy affects 23 chapters within the California State University system, such as Cal State Northridge. The policy exempts sororities and fraternities from gender discrimination; we believe there should be a similar provision for creedal communities.

 

That excerpt from the statement issued by InterVarsity concerning the California State University system is itself rather clever, and very interesting. Linking the rights of sororities and fraternities to discriminate on the basis of gender, after all they received an exemption for that kind of discrimination, to the right of faith-based, specifically Christian organizations, to discriminate on the basis of religious belief. At both Vanderbilt University and in the California State University system, exemptions were given up front to sororities and fraternities. And while we’re being honest about the situation, the kind of discrimination, in terms of both membership and leadership, that you see in America’s college fraternities and sororities, this goes far beyond anything that might be contemplated by a Christian organization. After all, fraternities and sororities in their rush process, do not even have to give any reason at all why anyone is denied membership in either the fraternity or the sorority. But, notice right up front, the very use of the words fraternity and sorority makes very clear that sororities are limited by gender to women and fraternities limited by gender to men. But both Vanderbilt University and the California State University system banned any kind of discrimination on the basis of gender. But, as it has already been said, exemptions were given up front to sororities and fraternities. One reason for that, no doubt, is the political power held by alumni of those organizations. But what we see here is a very clear double standard, and what we also see is the specific targeting of organizations established on the basis of Christian belief in terms of this kind of discrimination.

 

Just like at Vanderbilt University, the leaders of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on the California State University campuses have indicated that they will do their very best to perpetuate their ministry now – even though they are derecognized by the University. This means that they will not be allowed the kind of access to campus facilities that they’d had in the past. As in the case with Vanderbilt, they cannot use the names of the universities in terms of their own promotion. And what we’re looking at here is not only the “derecognition” of these organizations, but the stigmatizing of evangelical Christianity.

2) Public schools end relationship with Gordon College evidences rise of new thought police

Back in July controversy erupted at another college, this time a Christian college. The college was Gordon College in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. You may recall the controversy over the fact that its president, Michael Lindsay, had simply signed a letter – a letter signed by about two dozen other college and university leaders, asking for President Obama to allow for a religious exemption in terms of the employment nondiscrimination policy that he handed down in the middle of the summer. President Obama refused to extend that exemption. But the specific controversy in Boston this summer had to do with the fact that the city, and its intellectual elites, were completely outraged that the president of Gordon College – very clearly established as a Christian college – would claim the right to a religious exemption to operate in terms of its own hiring admissions on the basis of Christian doctrine and Christian truth. That outrage was overwhelming, leading to a series of articles and editorials in newspapers such as the neighboring Boston Globe.

 

But in recent days there have been other announcements – the city of Salem, very close to the Gordon College campus, had announced earlier in the summer that it would immediately cease allowing Gordon College to have access to one of the city’s historic buildings that the college had not only used by lease for a period of time, but was also basically maintaining and improving because of its historical status for the entire community. The leadership of the city of Salem simply said that it was unthinkable that the city would allow any of its facilities to be used by an organization that discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation or sexual behavior in this way. Just in the last few days, another announcement has come – you might say, another shoe has dropped. In this case, it is the neighboring community of Lynn, Massachusetts that announced in the pages of the Boston Globe that it would no longer allow Gordon College students to work as volunteers in that city’s public schools. As Oliver Ortega for the Boston Globe reported,

 

The Lynn public school district this week severed an 11-year partnership with Gordon College, citing the college’s opposition to federal hiring protection for gays and lesbians. The move ended a partnership that had sent dozens of Gordon [College] volunteers into the city’s public schools.

 

Now, we need to notice a couple things right up front. There is no insinuation in this article that there is anything that is ever happened, related to a Gordon college student, that wasn’t entirely in line with what the Lynn public schools had hoped these students would perform in terms of their volunteer work. There’s no complain about the students whatsoever. The complaint is about the university – and not just about the university, but about the fact that the university’s president signed a letter, along with many other American college and university presidents, asking President Obama to grant this limited exemption. That was simply a bridge too far for the Lynn public schools. But in this article by Oliver Ortega there’s actually more that demands our attention. Ortega tells us that during the school board’s deliberation of this issue, one member the board – school committee member Charlie N. Gallo – said,

Gordon needs to say, ‘I’m sorry for the request in the letter,’ [He went on to say,] It “shouldn’t be incumbent upon Lynn public schools to train people in Gordon College not to discriminate,”

 

If you were looking for evidence of the rise of a new thought police in America, it’s hard to come up with any better proof positive than that statement coming from the school committee board member in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts. Sounding more like one of Stalin’s show trials in the Soviet Union during the 1940s and 1950s, this school board member now demands, in effect, that Gordon College officially, in writing, repent. And of course what this article makes abundantly clear is what the college is now demanded to repent of, is not merely the fact that its president signed a letter asking for a limited religious exemption to a hiring antidiscrimination policy, but that the college repent of its own Christian identity and of its commitment to Christian truth and of any policies in hiring admissions, housing, or anything else, that would discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or sexual behavior – even if, as the community seems well to recognize, Gordon College was established as a Christian school and the Christian churches historically understood same-sex behaviors to be sinful. All that simply has to give way now to the new thought police, and to their new demands.

3) Judge dismisses all argument s against moral revolution of same-sex marriage as bigoted

These articles, all covering developments just in the last several weeks and days, point to the radical shift in the intellectual and moral culture all around us. We’re looking at a fundamental change in the contours of America – of America’s moral landscape, of the way most Americans think. Increasingly, evangelical Christians committed to the Scripture and other people of deep beliefs, related to their own theological convictions, are now being treated as outlaws – not only as politically incorrect outlaws, not only as intellectual outlaws, but as moral outlaws. And in one sense, it’s not just Christians who are being singled out; it’s the entire history of our own civilization.

 

That became abundantly clear just in recent days when a three-judge panel of the seventh US circuit Court of Appeals based in Chicago, struck down bans on same-sex marriage in Wisconsin and Indiana. The oral arguments for these two cases were held only in recent weeks, and this was a stunningly quick decision handed down by the three-judge panel. Writing for the panel was Judge Richard Posner, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Posner generally defies any easy description as either conservative or liberal, in this sense he is mostly, rightly understood, as libertarian. But as many other judges have pointed out, this widely published judge is, if anything, mostly confident in his own decision. And in a sweeping statement in the decision handed down just last week, judge Posner dismissed the moral wisdom of two millennia as based in nothing more than discrimination and invidious prejudice. Celebrating judge Posner’s opinion, Mark Joseph Stern writing at Slate.comwrote,

 

Posner isn’t interested in making new law: The statutes before him are so irrational, so senseless and unreasonable, that they’re noxious to the U.S. Constitution under almost any interpretation of the equal protection clause.

 

Mark Joseph Stern means, as he celebrates Judge Posner’s decision, that the judge found that the laws of Indiana and Wisconsin, defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, to use the phrase here, are noxious to the U.S. Constitution – irrational, senseless, unreasonable. And, I have to state, that looking at Judge Posner’s opinion, Mark Joseph Stern’s description is rather accurate. That is exactly what Judge Posner is arguing. But just consider what he’s actually doing here; he is overthrowing two millennia of moral wisdom – suggesting that, if at any point, any society had limited the legal definition of marriage to the union of a man and a woman, it was acting irrationally, senselessly, unreasonably, noxiously. Judge Posner’s opinion, by the way, includes some very unusual language. Consider this section,

 

Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure.

 

Well, that “Go figure.” statement basically turns two millennia of human wisdom on its head; linking marriage to procreation and the raising of children. The fact that some heterosexuals do that badly is, in judge Posner’s decision, to be set alongside the fact that heterosexual couples, since they

 

[…] do not produce unwanted children

 

Actually have what, in his view, is evidently a morally superior demand for entrance into legal marriage. On the other hand, a critic of Judge Posner’s opinion, Ed Whelan, writing at National Review said, and I quote,

 

In judicial rulings against marriage laws, the ratio of hubris to reasoning has been very high. It’s no surprise that Seventh Circuit judge Richard Posner’s ruling … against Indiana’s and Wisconsin’s marriage laws increased that ratio.

 

One of the things we need to note in this Seventh Circuit decision is the fact that Judge Posner is attempting to do something rhetorically. He is attempting to use the force of his words and the force of his argument to make any argument on behalf of natural marriage appear to be silly, irrational, wrong, prejudice, intolerant, and to be discarded by any right minded person. As Judge Posner sees it, and he states this quite emphatically, there are not two opposing arguments here –with the argument for same-sex marriage coming out on top – he doesn’t even recognize there is any argument on the other side. Any argument put forth, even one that is consistent with 2000 years of civilizational experience, is simply dismissed as being nothing more than a silly form of dangerous prejudice. According to the count at National Review, there have been at least now 30 decisions by court, at one level or another, since the US Supreme Court’s decision in Windsor, handed down in 2013 that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act – whereby our federal government defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

 

What we’re looking at here is a very clear moral shift in the society – a moral revolution that will leave no part of our society and culture untouched. But it’s not just that this revolution will leave no square inch untouched, it will leave none of us unaffected. It now affects InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a venerable Christian ministry that did not intend to enter the culture war. It now affects just about anyone who enters the space of America’s colleges and universities. It now affects anyone who, in public, would make an argument on behalf of marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman. Increasingly, we’re going to be seen as moral outlaws. Given the kind of argument found in Judge Posner’s decision, we’re not even going to be allowed to make our arguments – or at least are arguments are going to be dismissed as nothing more than silly nonsense, dangerous prejudice, noxious and irrational arguments. The fact that human beings in Western civilization have held to this unitary understanding of marriage for 2000 years, is simply now been dismissed as nothing more than a long nightmare of institutionalized prejudice. And what we’re looking at here is a change that will affect every church, every family, and every student arriving on a college and university campus. There are many Christians today who think they can be conscientious objectors to this particular moral battle, who believe that they don’t want to enter culture war, they don’t want to enter any kind of public debate, they’re not even trying to make an argument – all they want is to be left alone.

 

Well will just ask InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on the California State University campuses how the strategy of just being left alone worked for them – they did everything they could to cooperate with the University. They did everything they could to make very clear that their discrimination was simply as a Christian organization, determined by its very essence, to continue to be Christian. They made every effort to try to meet any reasonable expectation by the college and its administrators – that simply wasn’t enough; first Vanderbilt, other universities, and now California State University – the entire system. And then comes, just in the same week, this decision handed down by this three-judge panel, the Seventh Circuit, in which the judge writing the decision, Judge Richard Posner, simply says, any argument against this moral revolution is silly. Anyone who would stand in the way of this particular revolution is simply going to be rolled over by the force of condescension and outright rejection. You know there are no doubt many Christians, many people in our own churches, who, looking at these developments, simply look back and wonder and say, I don’t remember signing up for this. And our response has to be very simple; yes you did, and I can tell you when you did sign up for this – you signed up for this when you were baptized.

 

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

 

The Briefing 09-08-14

Podcast Transcript

1) InterVarsity ejected by California University system over creedal basis of group

College campuses resemble closed countries, Mission Network News (Julie Oosterhouse)

California State University System, Intervarsity

2) Public schools end relationship with Gordon College evidences rise of new thought police

Lynn public schools sever relationship with Gordon College, Boston Globe (Oliver Ortega)

3) Judge dismisses all argument s against moral revolution of same-sex marriage as bigoted

Judge Posner’s Gay Marriage Opinion Is a Witty, Deeply Moral Masterpiece, Slate (Mark Joseph Stern)

Posner’s Sloppy Sophistry—Part 1, National Review Online (Ed Whelan)

Posner’s Sloppy Sophistry—Part 2, National Review Online (Ed Whelan)

 

Transcript: The Briefing 09-05-14

The Briefing

 

September 5, 2014

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

 

It’s Friday, September 5, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Displacement of any typical family structure in America reflects decline in marriage

Everyone knows that family structure in the United States is changing and has changed, but now proof positive of that fact has become very clear in report released yesterday by an organization known as the Council on Contemporary Families. The bottom line of that report is this, the 1950s, stable, intact, nuclear family that was the basis of the identification of the American family in that era and throughout most of the rest of the 20th century has been displaced. But the bottom line is also this; it has not been replaced by any other family form, but rather to a rather anarchic distribution of diverse family forms. As you look at the report that came out yesterday, it points back to the fact that in 1950s the average household was made up of a mother and a father married to each other – the father working outside, the home the mother identified as a homemaker inside the home, and they gave primary tension during years children were in the home to raising those children from infancy until launched as successful young adults. And now everything about that picture is fundamentally changed. As Brigid Schulte of the Washington Post reports today,

 

The iconic 1950s family of the breadwinner father going off to work and caregiving mother taking care of the homefront, has been described by economists as the most efficient family structure. Everyone has a distinct job to do in their “separate spheres” of public and private life. And in the 1950s, the majority of children were being raised in such “typical” families.

 

Then Brigid Schulte writes,

 

We all know that’s not true anymore. But perhaps what we haven’t fully understood yet is that today, there is no one “typical” family.

 

Now one of the most interesting things about this report, and even more interesting about the Washington Post coverage of it, is just how much affirmation there is of the importance of the natural family; described here as the traditional family. Because in a way you don’t often find in the secular press, you have here a very clear affirmation in the Washington Post that the distribution of labor between a father working outside the home and a mother concentrating mostly inside the home, is recognized by economists as being, in the words of this report, the most efficient family structure. There’s also something else here, you have a very clear affirmation that for most of recent human history, and that’s not talking about going back years or decades, but centuries, this has been the family form that has worked best; especially since the Industrial Revolution came at the midpoint and at the end of the 19th century, in which fathers who had largely been working inside the domestic sphere on the farm, or with some kind of workplace almost attached at the home, then began going to work – as in going to a factory.

 

As Brigid Schulte a reports, the breadwinner, homemaker family, the norm since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, is being replaced by a new norm of diversity. Again the group that put out the support is known as the Council on Contemporary Families, and speaking to that report Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland said,

 

There hasn’t been the collapse of one dominant family structure and the rise of another. It’s really a fanning out into all kinds of family structures, different [he said] is the new normal.

 

Cohen pointed out that in the 1950s 65% of all children under age 15 were being raised in traditional breadwinner and homemaker families, today only 22% are. So if you go back to the 1950s, 65 out of 100 kids under age 15 being raised in homes – dad working outside the home mom working primarily inside the home, identified as a homemaker. Now, looking at all American children under age 15, only 22 out of 100 are living in that kind of a home. So does that mean that now most children are being raised in the context in which both father and mother, married to each other, are working outside the home? That’s where you might jump in terms of your imagination, but as this report demonstrates – that’s not the new normal either. As a matter fact, if you look at all the children being raised right now under age 15 in homes where you have the father working outside the home, the mother working primarily inside the home, that’s 22 out of 100, but if you take where both mother and father, married to each other, are now working outside the home, it’s just 34 out of 100 – we’re hardly at that point just over 50% of all children. What about the rest? Here are a couple of very interesting statistics; 23 out of that 100 are now being raised by a single mother – and of those single mothers, only half have been married at any point. 7 out of 100 now live with a parent who cohabits with an unmarried partner, that category, the report indicates, was so rare in the 1960s that our own Census Bureau didn’t even ask the question or track the data. I think it’s important to go back to a comment made by Philip Cohen, the sociologist at the University of Maryland who, speaking about the support, said:

 

The big story, really, is the decline of marriage.

 

That is a profoundly important sentence. The big story, undoubtedly, is the decline of marriage. He went on to say,

 

That’s what’s really changed. From the 1950s to 2010 [as the report states], married couple families dropped from two-thirds of all households to 45 percent […]

 

In other words, so dominant that it was at least two thirds, now to being less than one half.

 

Quite frankly looking at this report through the lens of a Christian worldview, this is a very confusing picture that comes in the focus. For one thing, a report like this is almost never done without some kind of ideological preconditions. The people who put the report together have an agenda; the report may be surprising to them in terms of what the data will reveal, but the reality is almost no one looks at something like this out of a totally dispassionate interest. The interest of the Council on Contemporary Families is, at least in part, to demonstrate the diversity of contemporary families. And in this research project they have thoroughly documented that claim, but there’s more to it– there’s more behind this. Philip Cohen again, remember he’s a sociologist at University of Maryland speaking to the report, he said speaking of marriage and divorce, acknowledging that the problem of the decline of marriage is the big picture here and revealing the fact, which just about every report will indicate, that single mother headed households are the most vulnerable in every way – especially economically. He then says,

 

Truthfully, we don’t know what the ‘right’ level of marriage is for people to be happy. Likewise with divorce [he says]. Everyone acts like divorce is bad news. But if there were no divorces, it would mean that no one took a risk. Or changed. What’s the ‘right’ level of divorce? We don’t know.

 

Well, yes we do Professor Cohen – we do know what the right level divorce is. As the author Pat Conroy said in one of his novels, every single divorce is the death of a small civilization – indeed the smallest of all civilizations; and the death of that small civilization weakens the entire civilization. Even if you are not looking at this though the lens of the Christian worldview, any objective pragmatic understanding of the decline of marriage would lead to disaster in terms of human happiness and human flourishing. But when you look at this, you recognize that even many, who are now looking at the situation of family structure, are doing so having jumped in their own worldview so far past the stable intact natural family of the past, that they now can’t even imagine that there could be a new normal. And as it turns out, the data revealed there probably isn’t a new normal.

 

But this is where Christians have to speak to the issue out of genuinely Christian conviction. Even if our society does not recognize a new normal or any normal at all, we have to recognize that there is a norm revealed in Scripture. And without regard to whose working where, or what responsibility’s undertaken by whom, the responsibility of parents together to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, the responsibility of a man and a woman before they have children to enter into marriage together in the monogamous, covenantal, fidelity that is marriage, and the responsibility they assure to the larger society as they take those public vows together and then keep them, we understand that that is the Bible’s very clear norm – that that is what points to the only way that human beings will actually flourish. And as many people will look at this report and find new evidence, or new arguments, about how America should simply give up on any norm of family life, well this demonstrates is that when you abandon the norm, what you get is not human flourishing but as even the data in this report will make clear, you get disaster.

2) Decline of family radically affects education system in New York

Now keep that in mind when we look back just a couple of days to Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times in an op-ed piece written by Clare Huntington, a law professor at Fordham University, she’s the author of new book entitled Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships. She writes an article entitled, “Help Families from Day 1.” The background to her argument is the fact that Mayor Bill de Blasio, there in New York City, is pushing for universal pre-K preschool for all children in New York, arguing that that’s the way that will lead to the flourishing of those children. But even as the Mayor has been pretty successful just in the last several weeks in opening admission and access to pre-K preschool for a good number of children in New York City, this particular writer Clare Hungtington says it’s not going to be enough. To quote from her article she says,

 

 

I don’t want to rain on the pre-K parade, but we can’t pretend that school preparation begins at age 4. Four is better than 5, but zero is far better than 4.

 

What is arguing for? She’s arguing for governmental intervention in the raising of children and getting them ready for school from, in her words, year zero – in other words, from the moment they are born. Her articles really interesting because she affirms this pre-K expansion undertaken there in New York City, but she points out that by the time a child reaches the age of three or four, much ground has already been lost. And so what she’s calling for here is government intervention, changes in reforms in the law, and many other kinds of innovations that go all the way to neighborhood development, and the way that parks are designed, in order, somehow, to make certain that these children have greater opportunity in years ahead to be ready for school.

 

But the fundamental issue in her article was this, it goes back to the very thing we talked about repeatedly on The Briefing – when the family is strong, the government can be small, but when the family is weak the government has to be huge. And the report that came out just yesterday by this Council on Contemporary Families, showing that there is now a de-normalization of family life in the United States, it explains why just one day earlier in the New York Times an article came out saying that changes in family life have left so many children vulnerable, that government intervention to get them ready for school can’t now be limited even to pushing back the age of beginning formal school programs to age 3 or four, it has to begin at age 0. The fundamental thing to recognize here immediately is, when you have had families in tact raising children effectively and, use the language of the Washington Post, efficiently, you didn’t need for this kind of program. As a matter fact, you can simply look at two parallel lines you may never had conceived as being parallel before; line one, the decline of the family, line two, the absolute restructuring of American school education for children beginning at younger and younger ages. Those two parallel developments are parallel for a reason – the one has brought about the other. And it wasn’t the fact that changes in the educational system impacted marriage and family, it’s that the de-normalization of the natural family has led to the fact that the schools now take on, not only the responsibility of education – that was their original purpose – but the responsibility of parenting children, and taking care of children, and protecting children; feeding children, nurturing children. And we just have to point out that schools at their very best, government at its very best, is just not up to that task. We certainly must want every good thing to happen to every vulnerable child, but we can’t solve the problem if we can think that it any point government can step in and fill the gap left by the displaced family.

3) Decline of English Methodists reminder secular world has no place for secular denominations

Developments in the world point us back, time and time again, to the fundamental process of secularization that is reshaping Western societies. As these societies move further and further into the modern age, they appear to becoming less and less religious – in particular, less and less theistic; that is actual belief in a personal God is declining and secular worldviews are increasing. And that explains also why more liberal denominations are crumbling, because in a secularizing world, when denominations begin to secularize themselves, they really lose any purpose whatsoever. It turns out that secular people don’t need denominations or churches at all – even secular denominations and churches. Headline that appeared this week in Religion News Service says this, “Methodists in England ‘like an iceberg … crumbling into the sea’.” Trevor Grundry reporting for Religion News Service in Canterbury, England says,

 

The Methodist Church in Britain is hemorrhaging members and has been described by a leading religious affairs commentator as “a bit like an iceberg that’s just crumbling into the sea.”

 

 

The researcher who made those comments is Linda Woodhead, a sociologist at Lancaster University. She’s responding to the publication of a report entitled Statistics for Mission, it shows the Methodist Church is dramatically collapsing in its membership to about 200,000 in the United Kingdom in this time, and that’s just over the last decade – a fall of about one third of the church’s total membership. And it’s not just church membership that’s collapsing; it’s also attendance in the churches. Where there has also been about a 30% drop in attendance just over the course of the last decade. Professor Woodhead said,

 

It’s totally dying out. On current trends, they (the Methodists) will disappear, very soon.

 

Trevor Grundry reporting again for Religion News Service writes,

 

The brothers Charles and John Wesley were ordained Anglicans who defied the Church of England’s stuffy establishment by holding open-air meetings and writing more than 6,000 hymns urging industrial and agricultural laborers to turn their backs on alcohol and gambling. In America, Methodists were popular because they helped fill a spiritual vacuum created by Anglicans who deserted their flocks at the time of the American Revolution.

 

 

He says Methodim “around the world number between 70 million and 80 million people.”

 

Well looking at his report, I simply have to say, he misses the point about the theological origins of Methodism. I think both John and Charles Wesley, who would be offended by the way he describes the origins of their movement, but as you look at it, you do recognize this – Methodism was once one of the most vital Christian movements in the English-speaking world. And as you look across, for instance, the Bible Belt, even as Baptist churches may have been more numerous, Methodist churches were right behind them. And for the longest time, the denomination that became the United Methodist Church was the largest non-Catholic denomination in the United States of America. In the US, Methodism, like other mainline Protestant denominations, has been in decline for about four decades now. But what’s taking place in the United Kingdom in Britain is huge, their actually talking about Methodism disappearing within the lifetimes of those reading this report.

 

There is a lot to be observed here – the failure of a church to respond missiological to the challenge of the culture around it, the secularization of a denomination, theological liberalism, and the loss of evangelistic fervor, those are all things that certainly play a part. But the reason I draw attention to this article is because of a comment made in response to this report by the former vice president of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Richard Vautrey, who said, “Let’s not dwell on our pain, but instead celebrate each God-given day we have left.”

 

And all I have to say to that is this, if your response to a report about the demise of your church is that you shouldn’t dwell on the pain, but instead “celebrate each God-given day we have left,” you don’t deserve any days left.

 

Jesus Christ commanded his church to be people on mission, and that means reaching people with the gospel that saves. And any church that says we’re simply going to celebrate each God-given day we have left, rather than looking at a secularize culture and seeing it is a great evangelistic opportunity, that’s a church, that for any number of reasons, doesn’t have many days left.

4) Berkeley requirement of free pot for low-income residents the extremity of moral insanity

Finally, an article that quite frankly defies the imagination. But it’s not satire, it’s real and it’s published – not in a satirical newspaper but in the New York Times. The headline is this, “Berkeley Pushes a Boundary on Medical Marijuana.” The Berkeley, you now already know, is Berkeley, California. As Ian Lovett reports for the Times,

 

Since the birth of the Free Speech Movement half a century ago, this city has prided itself on its liberal values and policies, be they generous benefits for the needy or a look-the-other-way attitude toward marijuana use. Now, the city is bringing those policies together with a new amenity for the poor here: The marijuana will be free. Beginning next August, medical marijuana dispensaries in this city will be required to donate at least 2 percent of their cannabis to low-income residents. The City Council approved the requirement this summer — unanimously no less — with the hope of making the drug, which can sell for up to $400 an ounce at dispensaries, affordable for all residents.

 

The Mayor of Berkeley, Tom Bates says,

 

The city was simply trying to ensure equal access to a drug he emphasized was medicine

 

It may well be that there is some justification for medical marijuana, but that justification would have to be proved by medical authorities and not by politicians – especially politicians that have already acknowledge of the reasons whereby they want to legalize marijuana. But this article in the New York Times on Berkeley California’s mandate for free marijuana for low income residents cites as one great moral authority none other than an undergraduate, a young man at the University of California Berkeley who told the interviewer for the New York Times

 

I believe in living a certain kind of lifestyle that’s very stress free. I’ve noticed that just from smoking, everyone calms down.

 

Ian Lovett for the New York Times says that as this young man was interviewed he was,

 

Smoking marijuana that he said had been prescribed to him for insomnia.

 

Well in this case, here you have a young man who describes his medical problem as the fact that he needs marijuana to,

 

Live a certain kind of like that’s very stress-free.

 

And speaking of the indigent men who were gathered around him there in Berkeley, California he said,

 

These people deserve it. A lot of these guys have the same problems I have.

 

I bring your attention to this article just to point to the extremity of moral insanity in this generation. What is really, truly, striking about this article is that it clearly makes moral sense to somebody. This mandate in Berkeley was passed by the city government unanimously, and presented to the country as a model that other community should follow. And just imagine the complications that will come out of this, obviously the biggest complication in California is that medical marijuana doesn’t stay medical. Furthermore, medical marijuana limited to adults doesn’t end up being restricted to adults. In the state of California for a 15-year-old teenager the first cigarette that teenager smokes is far more likely to be marijuana than tobacco –  because after all, people in California will tell you,  tobacco is bad – marijuana, it’s medicine.

 

One of the complications is security. You’re going to love this statement in terms of complexities from the New York Times,

 

Dispensaries, which are prohibited by California law from turning a profit, will also have to hire security guards to patrol nearby, in order to deter crime (though, true to Berkeley’s character, the guards will not be allowed to carry firearms).

 

In other words, they’re going to have to persuade people not to do bad things.

 

Once again, the mayor of Berkeley, California is rather honest about where he thinks this is headed. He says the city’s mandates is just another step toward legalization for recreational use, and the mayor said so much the better; “I think what we’re seeing now is an evolution towards full legalization. It’s coming. It may not be in the next few years, but it’s coming.”

 

So what we have here is moral insanity, at least what I think most Americans will still recognize as moral insanity. But the question is for how long. Mayor Bates of Berkeley, California says that it’s in evitable that legalized marijuana is going to be coming, and he says the sooner, the better. And he just might be right – because this is the kind of moral insanity that spreads like a contagion. Given the pace of moral change all around us, a new story that appears to look ludicrous coming from Berkeley, California can soon be headline news in your town as well.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information to my website 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.

 

If you’re struggling with whether or not God has called you into the Christian ministry, we would look forward to an opportunity to discuss that with you at an upcoming  Seminary Preview Day at Southern Seminary. The next is coming up on the 17 of October, for just $25 we’ll cover your two nights of lodging as well as your meals on preview day. For more information, go to www.SBTS.edu/preview. Remember this – a call to preach is a call to prepare.

 

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

 

The Briefing 09-05-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Displacement of any typical family structure in America reflects decline in marriage

Unlike in the 1950s, there is no ‘typical’ U.S. family today, Washington Post (Brigid Schulte)

The ‘Leave It to Beaver’ Family Has Been Left Behind, U.S. News & World Report (Tierney Sneed)

Family Diversity Is the New Normal for America’s Children, Council on Contemporary Families (Philip Cohen)

2) Decline of family radically affects education system in New York

Help Families From Day 1, New York Times (Clare Huntington)

3) Decline of English Methodists reminder secular world has no place for secular denominations

Methodists in England ‘like an iceberg … crumbling into the sea’, Religion News Service (Trevor Grundy)

4) Berkeley requirement of free pot for low-income residents the extremity of moral insanity

Berkeley Pushes a Boundary on Medical Marijuana, New York Times (Ian Lovett)

The Briefing 09-05-12

Podcast Transcript

1) Displacement of any typical family structure in America reflects decline in marriage

Unlike in the 1950s, there is no ‘typical’ U.S. family today, Washington Post (Brigid Schulte)

The ‘Leave It to Beaver’ Family Has Been Left Behind, U.S. News & World Report (Tierney Sneed)

Family Diversity Is the New Normal for America’s Children, Council on Contemporary Families (Philip Cohen)

2) Decline of family radically affects education system in New York

Help Families From Day 1, New York Times (Clare Huntington)

3) Decline of English Methodists reminder secular world has no place for secular denominations

Methodists in England ‘like an iceberg … crumbling into the sea’, Religion News Service (Trevor Grundy)

4) Berkeley requirement of free pot for low-income residents the extremity of moral insanity

Berkeley Pushes a Boundary on Medical Marijuana, New York Times (Ian Lovett)