R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 350
September 10, 2014
The Briefing 09-10-14
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)
September 9, 2014
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
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)
September 8, 2014
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
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)
September 5, 2014
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
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
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)
September 4, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 09-04-14
The Briefing
September 4, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Thursday, September 4, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Obama draws clear red line against Russia’s aggressive ambitions
Standing and speaking in Tallinn, Estonia, the President of the United States spoke not only for the United States but also for NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, when he declared, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
It was not the government in Kiev that destabilized eastern Ukraine; it’s been the pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia,
The background of this is itself very interesting. President Obama has found himself being criticized in terms of ineptitude and caution in foreign-policy, not only by his more conservative Republican critics but also now by an increasing number of voices from within his own party – and even some within the Pentagon and his own administration. Speaking just a few days ago, Dianne Feinstein, the California Senator, a prominent Democrat who is herself the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described President Obama as
Very cautious — maybe in this instance too cautious
That’s been a rather mild criticism of the President, many have voiced even stronger criticisms and the President now appears to be gaining at least some voice in terms of drawing a line in the sand that is going to be very difficult to ignore. The President drew what he called a red line on Syria, a matter of about a year ago, and yet he didn’t stand by his own line; Bashar al-Assad crossed it, and not only that, it has been crossed by many others thereafter.
But standing in Tallinn, Estonia, the President made comments that ought to have our attention. The big question, of course, is whether it has the attention of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Intelligent Christians trying to understand this will want to get a couple of facts straight. Number one, President Obama was speaking at a NATO meeting in Tallinn, Estonia – Estonia is one of the three breakaway Baltic Republics that left the Soviet Union in its crackup in the early 1990s. And of these particular countries, one thing has been absolutely certain – Russia has never been satisfied with the fact that they left the former Soviet Union. Just as Vladimir Putin, in terms of his vision of greater Russia, has looked to Ukraine with a sense of very greedy ambition, the same fear is now upon the leaders of the Baltic nations that they may well be next. But we need to understand a very crucial distinction, the three Baltic republics – not only Estonia, but also Latvia and Lithuania – all three of them are now member states of NATO – Ukraine is not.
Many of us are old enough to remember when the world was divided during the Cold War between two great power blocks, as they were known – on the one hand the Soviet Union and its allies known as the Warsaw Pact and on the other hand, the United States and its allies known as NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But NATO still continues to exist and it exists for good reason. Many people have felt that NATO had fallen into a certain sort of disuse, or perhaps even irrelevancy, as the Cold War was understood to come to an end. But if anything is come to light in recent years and months it is this – the reason for NATO’s existence still continues to persist, and it persists because of the persistence of those who would threaten freedom; in this case the enemy of freedom and democracy and self-determination is an old enemy of those things, and that is Russia.
Russia, in this case, are turning not only to the kind of autocracy that was represented by Soviet communism in the 20th century, but also by old-style Russian autocracy that goes back to the imperialistic ambitions of the czars. Speaking to fellow NATO leaders in Tallinn, Estonia, President Obama yesterday said,
An attack on one is an attack on all, and so if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘Who’ll come to help?’ you’ll know the answer: the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America.
Now there are red lines and there are red lines; the red line that President Obama drew months ago in Syria was one that could easily be overcome and the President, at least hoped, easily forgotten. This is not one of those lines. The President here has drawn a line in the sand that is one of those lines that is indelible. When the President of the United States says to the people of Estonia, when you ask who will come to help, and the answer comes with these words
You’ll know the answer: the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America.
Something is happening, and that something is the very real threat of war.
On Tuesday in this program we asked the question, if a world war was on the near horizon, would we see it coming? Well if the answer to that is yes, this is one of the signs we would expect to see. We would expect to see the President of the United States, pressed against the forces of reality, to have to say words no President wants to state. To declare, for the entire world to hear, that if one of these states, Estonia Latvia and Lithuania, is invaded, not only will NATO respond in terms of economic sanctions but as he said the Armed Forces of the United States of America. President Obama, compared to most recent inhabitants of the Oval Office, has been particularly reluctant to use this kind of language. And now, as the last two years of his administration, his time in office looms before him, he finds himself in a position he did not seek – and yet, it is a position he cannot now avoid.
This point was made graphically clear in an editorial that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. It’s one of those editorials that should go down in history for being well timed. Because the editorial is entitled “Deterring a European War;” we need to note that title very carefully – this isn’t about calling for a European war, nor merely warning about the possibility of a European war, it is about the logic and the argument of deterring a European war. As the editors write,
This week’s NATO summit in Wales is being billed as one of the most important in its 65-year history, and with good reason. The Atlantic alliance needs to prove it is serious about deterring the no longer unthinkable prospect of another major war in Europe.
And as they went on to say,
Lest you think we overstate, on Monday the Italian newspaper La Repubblica quoted Vladimir Putin telling European Commission President José Manuel Barroso that “if I want, I can take Kiev in two weeks”—a statement the Kremlin did not deny…Mr. Putin is talking openly about “New Russia,” with specific mention of the cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine as well as Odessa on the Black Sea.
Well the editors of the Wall Street Journal are getting right to the heart of the matter. Going back to the end of the 1930s, one of the things we now see very clearly in retrospect is that Adolf Hitler announced exactly what he was going to do. And yet, most people, many people, tried their very best to believe he didn’t mean it. When it comes to Vladimir Putin, just ask the people in Crimea if he meant what he said. And now when he holds up a map, featuring a country the he invented out of thin air, Novorossiya, what we’re looking at is a threat – a threat made openly, and a threat made more blatantly than many people could have even imagined when he told the leader of the European commission, ‘if I want to take Kiev, I can take it in two weeks.’
That’s a statement that goes beyond most of the comments made by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. The words written by the editors of the Wall Street Journal deserve very close attention when they continue to write, “Wars happen when aggressors detect the lack of will to stop them.”
The editors went on to say that this was the case in 2008 after Russia invaded Georgia; when NATO warned that Ukraine, which has been pushing Russia to move its Black Sea Fleet headquarters, could be next. The editorial in the Wall Street Journal demands our attention also because of the moral and historical clarity of a couple of the things that are clearly cited within this essay. In the first place, the editors write,
Wars happen when aggressors detect the lack of will to stop them.
The history of the 20th century, taken as if it were the only history we know, would make that point graphically and clearly. But then they end the editorial with these words and I quote,
The temptation of democracies is to believe that autocrats treasure peace and stability as much as we do. Europeans in particular want to believe that their postwar institutions and economic integration have ended their violent history. But autocrats often prosper from disorder, and they need foreign enemies to feed domestic nationalism. This describes Russia under Mr. Putin, who is Europe’s new Bonaparte. His goal is to break NATO, and he’ll succeed unless the alliance’s leaders respond forcefully to his threat.
One of the challenges faced by anyone who speaks about world affairs is the fact that many people, in particular many Americans, have a limited attention span for foreign-policy. But if that attention span is short, that’s a part of the problem. And even if it’s short, it better be directed to this problem and directed very fast.
2) Federal judge breaks trend by upholding Louisiana same-sex marriage ban
Shifting back to the United States, a federal judge in Louisiana yesterday upheld that state’s ban on same-sex marriage. This ended a run of about 20 straight successes for the proponents of same-sex marriage in federal courts since the United States Supreme Court handed down its Windsor decision in 2013. Ryan Reilly reporting for the Huffington Post writes,
Bucking a nationwide trend, a federal judge in Louisiana upheld a state ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, writing that “any right to same-sex marriage is not yet so entrenched as to be fundamental” [he also pointed out] that gay marriage was “inconceivable until very recently.”
This judge may find that his decision, which does end 20 decisions in the opposite direction in the federal courts since 2013, will be overturned. It might be, at either the appellate court level or by the United States Supreme Court, but in any event, he deserves credit for making a very serious argument. In this case, this federal judge has had the courage to point out, that even if some court were to find that there is a right to same-sex marriage, it would not be a right described in the law as fundamental – so fundamental as to trump every other issue in the law. Furthermore, as he writes, if it is a right, it has been, as he writes, inconceivable until very recently. That’s an important piece of moral clarity brought to this, often unclear, issue when it comes to the court’s deliberations. This judge, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, wrote and I quote,
“The Court is persuaded that a meaning of what is marriage that has endured in history for thousands of years, and prevails in a majority of states today, is not universally irrational on the constitutional grid,”
That is an extremely important sentence. Here you have a federal district judge who points out, that even right now, in the month of September in the year 2014, a majority of states in the United States of America by democratic processes have bans, either in the law or in their state constitutions, against same-sex marriage. And thus as he writes, it’s not, to use his words, universally irrational on the constitutional grid; these states, acting in a way that they believed was constitutional took an action that they intended to serve to protect marriage. Furthermore in his decision, the judge says that he “hesitates with the notion that this state’s choice could only be inspired by hate and intolerance.”
That’s a response directly back to the Windsor decision, which also points back to another decision 10 years earlier in the case Lawrence v. Texas, in which the same Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion, in both cases, it was Justice Anthony Kennedy when he pointed out that this kind of law had to be rooted, in his judgment, in the fact that there are some animus against gay Americans. This judge said that isn’t at all apparent in the actual legislative and political history of the ban on same-sex marriage in the state of Louisiana. Instead he says, Louisiana
Has legitimate interest whether obsolete in the opinion of some, or not in the opinion of others, in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents.
Again a very important sentence, because just imagine the moral courage that this judge brought to that statement. He declared, after making clear the state is not acting irrationally in defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, by coming back to the fact that the legitimate interest of the state is, to use his words,
In linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents.
In other words, asserting that it does make a difference as to whether or not the family is defined as having both a mother and a father. That is a very important statement, and it’s a statement that no previous generation, or any previous culture, would’ve found, in any way, controversial to the very least.
A couple of things are going to be immediately interesting, the state of this judge’s decision, as undoubtedly the case is appealed to the US appellate court and eventually upon appeal probably to the United States Supreme Court, the only real question with the Supreme Court is which one of these cases it decides to take. That will frame the issue actually going into the court’s deliberations, expected to be this fall, within eventual decision by the U.S. Supreme Court likely to come early next summer.
But the second thing that’s going to be very interesting is to see how the national press deals with this judge’s decision. This does break a string of over 20 decisions in the federal courts thus far since Windsor. And it does break it in a very decisive way because this judge did not merely rule that the state of Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional, he gave an argument for why it should be understood as constitutional, and a legitimate state interest, and one that recognizes the needs of children – to live in an intact family with their biological parents, otherwise known as a mother and a father. The very fact that that judge’s ruling will be considered wrong by some, controversial by many, and perhaps even shaky in terms of future appeals by most, that just points to the reality of the moral rebellion we are now experiencing, and the scale of the moral revolution that is now utterly reshaping the entire world around us.
3) Osteens’ prosperity cannot be preached in Mosul, should not be preached in Houston
Yesterday on my website at Albert Mohler.com I posted an article entitled “The Osteen Predicament — Mere Happiness Cannot Bear the Weight of the Gospel.” My essay was prompted by controversy over comments made by Victoria Osteen, the wife of Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen – she’s also identified, by the ways, as one of the pastors of the church – when she stated in terms of the video that’s been circulating on the Internet and I quote,
I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God–I mean, that’s one way to look at it–we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we are happy. . . . That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. . . .”
She continued by saying,
So, I want you to know this morning — Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. . . . When you come to church, when you worship him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”
As you might expect, the congregation responded with a very loud “amen,” and in that amen what you heard was the entire theological logic of the Bible turned absolutely upside down – telling us that the purpose of our living is not about God, and the ultimate purpose of life is not the glory of God, but rather our own happiness, which is, Victoria Osteen says: God’s greatest happiness as well, if we’re just happy, he will be happy.
There are monumental problems with this argument and most of you have figured that out a long time ago. The first problem is the word ‘happiness’ simply doesn’t even work here. The word ‘happiness’ is an emotive state used by most people in the United States in terms of the English language, and certainly that’s exactly what Victoria Osteen was talking about. The kind of happiness the she pointed to quite explicitly was not the joy that the Puritans and Reformers spoke about, nor the joy that the psalmist will refer to, but rather happiness as an emotional state. And the happiness that she’s talking about is one that she mentioned explicitly in the furtherance of her message, and that was a message about material benefits, about promotions at work, about the health and wealth that she claims – along with her husband Joel – are promised to believers. What we’re looking at here is a revival of the persistent old American heresy known as prosperity theology.
The Prosperity Theology movement, or the prosperity gospel, immerged out of Pentecostalism – especially in the first decades of the 20th century. And it was directly addressed to those who were identified at that time as the dispossessed, the very poor, those who had difficulty even having a roof over their heads and food to feed their families. In the context of that kind of poverty, the early proponents of the prosperity theology, or the word of faith movement, suggested that what God wants for all people is to bless them with innumerable, or to use Joel’s phrase: immeasurable blessings, including the blessings of health, of wealth, of prosperity – and it was a message that sold. It’s also a message that fails every conceivable test, it fails the biblical test, not only is that not taught in Scripture, it’s untaught in Scripture. Not only does it fail the biblical test, it fails the theological test, it isn’t compatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is, in contrast, a false gospel. It sits alongside the gospel as that which draws people away from the cross and resurrection of Christ, and certainly away from the biblical summons to faith in Christ and repentance toward God for our sins.
Furthermore, it’s the kind of message that very clearly fails a practical test; because those who preached the health and wealth gospel, well to be honest, many of them have become wealthy – but those who follow the gospel generally, have not. And when it comes to health, well even the proponents of prosperity theology tend to die right on time; afflicted with all the same illnesses and physical problems as the rest of us. The health and wealth gospel, the prosperity theology fails the biblical test, the theological test, it fails the gospel test, and it fails the practical test – but it is popular. As one recent historian of the movement pointed out, what you see in the Osteen’s is the repackaging of an old message, what you see is a new softer version of prosperity theology – but scratch under the surface, it’s the same old prosperity theology, the same old false gospel.
I refer you to my essay for the argument in full, but I want to point to the title. “The Osteen Predicament” – why that title? It is because of this – it’s hard to believe with any straight face, with any moral sense of gravity whatsoever, anyone can preach this kind of message in a world in which recent headlines of Christians being evacuated from the Middle East, of Christians being beheaded in the city of Mosul, of Christians being assaulted and killed by forces such as Boko Haram in Africa. How can anyone preach the gospel of prosperity theology saying that God is obligated to give us health and wealth if we will only name it and claim, if we’ll only conceive it and believe it, when there are Christians who are paying the price of their Christian testimony with their lives, with their blood going into the sand in places such as Mosul in Iraq. The point of the Osteen Predicament is this, if you can’t preach that gospel in Mosul, you shouldn’t be preaching it in Houston. A reminder to us all, less we find ourselves in a similar predicament; if we can’t preach our gospel to the persecuted church, we shouldn’t be preaching it anywhere.
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.
Are you or someone you know considering college? I would really look forward to introducing you to the work of Boyce College. I would love to tell you more about Boyce at our Preview Day that comes up on October 31. Come learn how we are preparing the next generation of Christian young men and women to serve the church and to engage the culture. Learn more by going to Boyce College.com/preview
I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 09-04-14
1) Obama draws clear red line against Russia’s aggressive ambitions
Obama Calls Ukraine a ‘Moment of Testing’ for NATO, The New York Times, (Julie Hirschfeld Davis)
Sen. Feinstein: Obama may be ‘too cautious’ in dealing with Islamic State, Washington Post (Josh Hicks)
Deterring a European War, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)
2) Federal judge breaks trend by upholding Louisiana same-sex marriage ban
Louisiana Gay Marriage Ban Upheld By Federal Judge, (Huffington Post) Ryan Reilly
Federal judge upholds La. gay-marriage ban (Associated Press)
3) Osteens’ prosperity cannot be preached in Mosul, should not be preached in Houston
The Osteen Predicament — Mere Happiness Cannot Bear the Weight of the Gospel, AlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler)
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