R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 351

Are Christian Missionaries Narcissistic Idiots? — A Response to Ann Coulter

In an ominous development Wednesday night, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its highest level alert for a response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, even as reports came in indicating that the crisis may now not be limited to West Africa. Centers for Disease Control Chief Tom Frieden posted on Twitter: “Ops Center moved to Level 1 response given the extension to Nigeria & the potential to affect many lives.”

According to Doug Stanglin of USA Today, Level I means that increased staff and resources will be devoted to the outbreak. He also said it is the first time the agency has invoked its highest level alert since 2009, then over a deadly influenza outbreak. Meanwhile, reports come in indicating that a Nigerian nurse, who had treated the country’s first fatality from Ebola two weeks ago, has herself now died from the virus that has claimed 932 lives as of last night in the latest outbreak.

To put this into perspective, Ebola has been recognized as a disease only since the first outbreak was identified 40 years ago. One third of the total fatalities caused by Ebola have occurred in the most recent outbreak—and the toll is rising. Health authorities in Nigeria have said that five other Nigerian health workers, who also had treated AIDS patients, have been diagnosed with the disease. One American, Patrick Sawyer, a financial expert of Liberian descent, died on July 25 arriving in Lagos on a flight from Liberia. Meanwhile, according to USA Today, a Saudi man being tested for the disease has died in Jeddah. If indeed it turns out that he died of the disease, it will be the first fatality outside West Africa during the latest outbreak. Every medical authority on the planet is on the alert.

And yet from a Christian concern we cannot leave the issue of the Ebola outbreak without turning to another kind of atrocity. In this case the atrocity was an opinion piece published just yesterday by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Her article caught immediate attention with its title: “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded to ‘Idiotic.” Coulter wrote:

“I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered. What was the point?” She continues, “Whatever good Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charity Samaritans Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets specially equipped with medical tents and to care for them at one of America’s premier hospitals.”

Further:

“There is little danger of an Ebola plague breaking loose from the treatment of these two Americans at the Emory University Hospital, but why do we have to deal with this at all? Why did Dr. Brantly have to go to Africa? The very first ‘risk factor’ listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola — an incurable disease with a 90% fatality rate — is: “Travel to Africa.”

She then asked this question: “Can’t anyone serve Christ in America anymore?”

“No” she suggests, “because we are doing just fine. America, the most powerful, influential nation on earth is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.”

In Ann Coulter’s view, Kent Brantly should never have gone to Africa in the first place. He should have spent his time and energies saving America. As she writes:

“If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood powerbroker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything you could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola, “she writes,” kills only the body. The virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world. If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers, and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World”

It is hard to believe she actually wrote this, but she did. And she not only wrote the column, she published it. She actually suggested that going to serve in a place like Liberia will gain a Christian the respect of the secular media, singling out columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times:

“Which explains why American Christians go on mission trips to disease ridden cesspools. They’re tired of fighting the culture war in the United States. Tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists, and bigots so they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream. America is the most consequential nation on earth and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls it will be 1,000 years of darkness for the entire planet.”

So Christians who go to far off lands to serve others in Christ’s name are “slinking off” to Third World countries. These Christians are not heroic, they are idiotic.

Christians, she says, “need to buck up, serve their own country, and remind themselves every day of Christ’s words: ‘If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.’ There may be no reason for panic about the Ebola doctor, but there is reason for annoyance at Christian narcissism.”

Well the real annoyance here, indeed outrage, is not over the service of these two missionary doctors. It is over this kind of column that flies in the very face of everything Christ taught his disciples. The logic of the Christian church and of Christian missions has nothing to do with American nationalism. Some parts of Ann Coulter’s article where she speaks especially of Africa come very close to racism, but she certainly falls directly into nationalism when she says that American Christians need to “serve their own country.”

American nationalism of this toxic variety flies right in the face of the gospel of Jesus Christ and in the command of Christ given in the Great Commission. Coulter has written a very sad and infuriating article–an article that should lead to outrage in Christian circles. It reveals a radical nationalistic and libertarian worldview that is fundamentally incompatible with evangelical Christianity, with the Scripture, and with the command of Christ.

American evangelical Christians did not come up with the Great Commission because we were frustrated with losses in the culture war. American Christians are not “slinking off” to foreign countries in order to escape the United States; they are going in obedience to the command of Christ. True gospel missionaries—those faithful to the command of Jesus Christ—are not driven by “narcissism” to use Ann Coulter’s word, they are indeed heroic. More than heroic, they are simply faithful.

We should also note the common sense realization that many of the modern medical facilities we know today were founded by Christians who did so out of a humanitarian impulse driven by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, we need to note that the Christian church, when it has been faithful, has been obedient to the Great Commission and when it has not been obedient to the Great Commission it has been profoundly unfaithful. Christians are under the obligation to be obedient to Christ long before we should enter into any kind of calculation about whether or not it is good for the United States of America.

In a strange irony, a contrast to the position taken by Ann Coulter was indeed taken by columnist Nicholas Kristof in the editorial pages of The New York Times. He writes about Dr. Brantly and about his nurse, Nancy Writebol, and suggests that they are fighting Ebola for us all. Just as Coulter predicted, Kristof writes about them in heroic terms:

“Some people have blamed Brantly and another American missionary infected, Nancy Writebol, for bringing the danger to themselves, even objecting to their return to Atlanta to be treated for the disease at Emory University Hospital. For Example, Donald Trump argued that Brantly and Writebol should not be brought back to the US because of the risk involved ‘People who go to far places to help out are great but must suffer the consequences!’ Trump said on Twitter.”

Kristof comments, “This Ebola outbreak underscores why we have not only humanitarian interests in addressing global health, but also a national interest in doing so. Brantly and Writebol are moral leaders in this effort and underscore the practical imperative of tackling global contagions early on. They deserve our gratitude and admiration.”

Kristof argues that we should be very appreciative of these two American missionary doctors and others from the western world who are fighting this contagion in Africa because if the disease is not stopped there, it will indeed come here. That is an argument that is certainly superior to the argument of Ann Coulter, but it is also an argument that is far short of the Christian worldview. These two American missionary doctors did not go merely as humanitarians. They did not just join some kind of merely humanitarian effort. They were sent by American Christian missionary organizations. Their concern was not just the bodily health of those they would serve through medicine, but the spiritual condition and indeed the spiritual fate of those they would meet as they went to West Africa. We certainly should appreciate all of those that were fighting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa because it is certainly true: if it is not contained and the outbreak continues, that Level 1 alert may be for the United States one day, not just for West Africa.

But that is hardly the point. On moral terms, Nicholas Kristof’s essay is infinitely superior to the column by Ann Coulter, but it also falls short of the true Christian reality. These two missionaries and all the others who have gone as authentic missionaries in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ have not been driven by a mere humanitarian impulse. They have not just gone to help those who are victims and patients. They have gone because they believe that every single human being on the planet is an individual made in God’s image. And they also believe that every single individual on the planet is a sinner in desperate need of salvation. They believe that every single human being on the planet, whether in West Africa or in the advanced Western nations including the US, are in great need of the gospel of Jesus Christ–and that what hangs in the balance is not just the outbreak of a contagion or the future of health but indeed the eternal realities of heaven and hell.

What is missing from both of these analyses are the final words of the gospel of Matthew. We know these words as the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:18-20 —  “And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, ‘all authority has been given to me on heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.’” Those words may have escaped the attention of both Nicholas Kristof and Ann Coulter, but they had better be at the forefront of our minds and on our hearts at all times.

Times of urgency and danger seem to bring out the best and the worst in human response. It didn’t take long for this lethal Ebola outbreak to produce both.

 

I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler

Ann Coulter, “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded to ‘Idiotic,‘ Wednesday, August 6, 2014. http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/201...

Nicholas Kristof, “Fighting Ebola for Us All,” The New York Times, Wednesday, August 6, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/opi...

Transcript: The Briefing 08-07-14

 The Briefing

 

August 7, 2014

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

It’s Thursday, August 7, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Treatment of Ebola brings a morality of personal autonomy into conflict with a plague

In an ominous development late last night, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued its highest level alert for a response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, even as reports came in indicating that the crisis may now not be limited to West Africa. Late yesterday, Center for Disease Control Chief Tom Frieden said, “Ops Center moved to Level 1 response given the extension to Nigeria and the potential to affect many lives.”

He made that statement on Twitter.

According to Doug Stanglin of USA Today, Level I means that increased staff and resources will be devoted to the outbreak.  He also said it is the first time the agency has invoked its highest level alert since 2009, then over a flu outbreak.  Meanwhile, reports came in indicating that a Nigerian nurse, who had treated the country’s first fatality from Ebola two weeks ago, has herself now died from the virus that has claimed 932 lives, as of last night, in the latest outbreak.

To put this into perspective, Ebola has been recognized as a disease since its first outbreak was identified 40 years ago.  Over all of that time, if you take all the fatalities from the disease, at this point, over one third of the fatalities caused by Ebola have occurred in the most recent outbreak, and at that point, limited to three West African nations. Health authorities in Nigeria have said that five other Nigerian health workers, who also had treated AIDS patients, have been diagnosed with the disease.  One American, Patrick Sawyer, a financial expert who was of Liberian descent, who lives in Minnesota, died on July 25 arriving in Lagos on a flight from Liberia.  Meanwhile, according to USA Today, a Saudi man being tested for the disease has died in Jeddah.  If indeed it turns out that he died of the disease, it will be the first fatality outside the four now West African countries during the latest outbreak.

The World Health Organization has convened a two-day emergency meeting of its health workers to discuss the crisis in Guinea, Liberia Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.  USA Today also reported that next week the WHO will convene a panel of medical ethicists to explore the use of experimental treatments in the latest outbreak in West Africa, and that leads to a very interesting and important moral debate over the issue of medical treatment and the Ebola virus.

We now know that the two American missionary medical personnel who had been evacuated from West Africa to the United States for medical treatment – Dr. Kent Brantley and his colleague, Nancy Writebol – that both of them had been treated with an experimental and non-approved drug to fight Ebola.  The drug is known as ZMapp. The huge issue of worldview and moral significance is reported on by Laura Seay in The Monkey Cage Column of the Washington Post. She writes,

Monday brought news that to many seemed miraculous: the Americans being treated at Emory seemed to have been revived – and possibly saved – from Ebola thanks to an experimental serum, ZMapp, that was secretly transported to their bedsides in Monrovia. Dr. Kent Brantly, who had sensed that he was in the end stages of Ebola and about to die when he ingested the serum, was so much improved that he was able to walk from his ambulance into Emory with only minimal assistance. Missionary Nancy Writebol’s symptoms also improved, although it took two doses of ZMapp for her to experience improvement, whereas Brantly only required one.

That’s a very interesting setup for the big issue that then comes:

The news of a possible cure for Ebola is heartening, but it left many observers with mixed reactions. Why were Brantly and Writebol the only Ebola patients to receive ZMapp? The optics of the situation were already bad enough: at great expense, two white Americans were whisked away to safety and a level of health care that simply cannot be provided on the fly in a Liberian hospital. The black Liberians they had been treating were left to see whether fate would save or kill them under the same substandard health care system they have always lived under.

She continues,

That what now looks like a miracle cure was only given to the white Americans looks even worse. Why hadn’t anyone reached out to try the serum on Ebola patients sooner, especially if its potential to heal is so promising? Is the world of global public health really so biased toward the privileged that Americans get help while everyone else suffers? If nothing else, can we at least start giving ZMapp to as many Ebola-infected West Africans as possible?

At this point Laura Seay takes us into a very deep worldview consideration, when she deals with the morality of this question.  In a very careful and thoughtful report, she gets to the fact that in United States, medications and medical treatments are allowable only if they have been found to be effective, and thus approved. This comes after a long period of study and experimentation, and it also comes when all of those human subjects involved in the experimentations can give what is defined in the United States as informed consent.  They must know about the potential dangers of the medication or treatment. They must be in a position in which, under no duress or urgency, they are able to make an informed rational choice as to whether or not they want to participate. In most of these medical trials  there are not only those who are given the medical treatment or drug, but also a control group given a placebo in order to measure the distinction between the efficaciousness or effectiveness of the drug or treatment against the placebo.

As it turns out, under the circumstances now operational in West Africa, no one in the United States, committed to the regime of informed consent, believes the people there can give such an informed measure of consent.  Furthermore, Laura Seay also rightly reports that there is no knowledge of the long-term effects of the serum, even though it appeared to have near miraculous results on these two American patients, the reality is no one knows if the drug may be a carcinogen, or if it may lead to dementia years ahead, or any number of other very negative consequences.

But this gets to a big issue in terms of the worldview of the West. The West is now so committed to the ideal of personal autonomy that informed consent is simply taken for granted as a notion of moral significance. But the reality is that almost all of these patients and their loved ones in Africa would be very glad to surrender this notion of personal autonomy. They would be glad to surrender any notion of informed consent in order to have access to what might be and now even appears to be a miracle drug. These are very complicated moral questions.

These two Americans were able to give informed consent not only because they are Americans, but also because they are medical personnel. They were in a much better position to judge whether or not they should take the risk of using the serum. Both did, and at least at this point, to rather remarkable effects.

Laura Seay’s report is a very insightful, detailed, and careful. But the one thing she does not explore is the fact that the American, indeed the Western, affirmation of personal autonomy over virtually any other moral principle now runs into face-to-face conflict with a deadly outbreak, a disease and a contagion. At this point perhaps we need to note that the idea of informed consent does have a very rational basis in Western culture, Western medicine, and in Western law. But when it comes face-to-face with the plague, it’s hard to believe that human autonomy and informed consent are any kind of an even match with the deadly virus and the urgency of questions of life and death.

At this point, even as the CDC announced last night that it is raising its concern to Level 1, it just might be that at least some Americans will come face-to-face with the fact that a morality of personal autonomy is simply not enough.

2) The Great Commission far greater than American nationalism or humanitarianism

And yet from a Christian concern we cannot leave the issue of the Ebola outbreak without turning to another kind of atrocity. In this case the atrocity was an opinion piece published just yesterday by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. She wrote in a piece headlined, “Ebola Doc’s Condition Downgraded to ‘Idiotic’”:

“I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered. What was the point?” She asked. “Whatever good Kent Brantley did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charity Samaritans Purse and SIMUSA to justify him and his nurse home and separate Gulfstream jets specially equipped with medical tents and to care for them at one of America’s premier hospitals.”

Coulter also says, “There is little danger and Ebola plague breaking loose from the treatment of these two Americans at the Emory University Hospital, but why do we have to deal with this at all?”

She then asks these questions; “Why did Dr. Brantley have to go to Africa? The very first risk factor she says listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola — an incurable disease with a 90% fatality rate is travel to Africa.” She then asked this question: “Can’t anyone serve Christ in America anymore? No–because we are doing just fine. America, the most powerful influential nation on earth is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.”

At this point we need to note that Ann Coulter’s argument is that this missionary doctor and his nurse colleague should not have gone to Africa in the first place. They should have minded their own business and stayed in the United States. Later in her column she writes:

If Dr. Brantley had practiced at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood powerbroker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything you could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola, she writes, kills only the body. The virus of spiritual bankruptcy moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world. If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers, and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World.”

It is hard to believe she actually wrote this, but she did. And she not only wrote the column, she published it and she continued in it saying:

…Which explains why American Christians go on mission trips to disease ridden cesspools. They’re tired of fighting the culture war in the United States. Tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists, and bigots so they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream. America is the most consequential nation on earth and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls it will be 1,000 years of darkness of the entire planet.

She suggests that the efforts of these two Christian missionaries in the United States, these efforts were not heroic, but in her words “idiotic.” She then concluded with words that include these:

Christians need to buck up, serve their own country, and remind themselves every day of Christ words:  “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”… There may be no reason for panic about the Ebola doctor, but there is reason for annoyance at Christian narcissism.

Well the real annoyance here, indeed outrage, is not over the service of these two missionary doctors. It is over this kind of column that flies in the very face of everything Christ taught his disciples. The logic of the Christian church and of Christian missions has nothing to do with American nationalism. Some parts of Ann Coulter’s article where she speaks especially of Africa come very close to racism, but she certainly falls directly into nationalism when she says that American Christians need to “serve their own country.” And when she says that America is the most consequential nation on earth and implies that Christians should simply give all their attention, especially American Christians, to trying to save this country and by that she means our culture, those are very consequential issues.

But American nationalism flies right in the face of the gospel of Jesus Christ and in the command of Christ given in the great commission. Coulter has written a very sad article. It is an article that should lead to outrage in Christian circles. It reveals a radical nationalistic and libertarian worldview that is fundamentally incompatible with evangelical Christianity, with the scripture, and with the command of Christ. American evangelical Christians did not come up with the Great Commission because we were frustrated with losses in the culture war. American Christians are not “slinking off to foreign countries in order to escape the United States”; they are going in obedience to the command of Christ. True gospel missionaries—those faithful to the command of Jesus Christ—are not “narcissistic” to use Ann Coulter’s word, they are indeed heroic. More than heroic, they are simply faithful.

We should also note the common sense realization that most of the modern medical facilities we know today were founded by Christians who did so out of a humanitarian impulse driven by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, we need to note that the Christian church, when it has been faithful, has been obedient to the Great Commission and when it has not been obedient to the Great Commission it has been profoundly unfaithful. Christians are under the obligation to be obedient to Christ long before we should enter into any kind of calculation about whether or not it is good for the United States of America. That is an entirely extraneous question.

In a strange irony, a contrast to the position taken by Ann Coulter is taken by columnist Nicolas Kristof in the editorial pages of the New York Times. He writes about Dr. Brantly and about his nurse, Nancy Writebol, and suggests that they are fighting Ebola for us all. He writes about them in heroic terms:

“Some people have blamed Brantly and another American missionary infected, Nancy Writebol, for bringing the danger to themselves, even objecting to their return to Atlanta to be treated for the disease at Emory University Hospital. For Example, Donald Trump argued that Brantly and Writebol should not be brought back to the US because of the risk involved ‘People who go to far places to help out are great but must suffer the consequences!’ Trumpsaid on Twitter.

Kristof comments, “This Ebola outbreak underscores why we have not only humanitarian interests in addressing global health, but also a national interest in doing so. Brantly and Writebol are moral leaders in this effort and underscore the practical imperative of tackling global contagions early on. They deserve our gratitude and admiration.”

Kristof writes that we should be very appreciative of these two American missionary doctors and others from the western world who are fighting this contagion in Africa because if the disease is not stopped there, it will indeed come here.

That is an argument that is certainly superior to the argument of Ann Coulter. But it also is an argument that is far short of the Christian worldview. These two American missionary doctors did not go merely as humanitarians. They did not just join Doctors Without Borders as some other kind of very valid humanitarian effort. They were sent by American Christian missionary organizations. Their concern was not just the bodily health of those they would serve through medicine, but the spiritual condition and indeed the eternal fate of those they would meet as they went to West Africa. We certainly should appreciate all of those who are fighting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa because it is certainly true: if it is not contained and the outbreak continues, that Level 1 alert may be for the United States one day, not just for West Africa.

But that is hardly the point. On moral terms, Nicolas Kristof’s essay is infinitely superior to the column by Ann Coulter, but it also falls short of the true Christian reality. These two missionaries and all the others who have gone as authentic missionaries in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ have not been driven by a mere humanitarian impulse. They have not just gone to help those who are victims and patients. They have gone because they believe that every single human being on the planet is an individual made in God’s image. And they also believe that every single individual on the planet is a sinner in desperate need of salvation. They believe that every single human being on the planet, whether in West Africa or in the advanced Western nations including the US, are in great need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that what hangs in the balance is not just the outbreak of a contagion or the future of health but indeed the eternal realities of heaven and hell.

What is missing from both of these analyses are the final words of the Gospel of Matthew. We know these words as the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:18-20, “And Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, ‘all authority has been given to me on heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.’”

Those words may have escaped the attention of both Nicholas Kristof and Ann Coulter, but they had better be at the forefront of our minds and on our hearts at all times. It turns out that the news about Ebola that lead to the beginning news story of our consideration lead us straight to the heart of the gospel. Other issues, though pressing and urgent and important will simply have to wait.

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

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing

 

 

The Briefing 08-07-14

1) Treatment of Ebola brings a morality of personal autonomy into conflict with a plague

CDC issues highest-level alert for Ebola, USA Today (Doug Stanglin)

Ebola, research ethics, and the ZMapp serum, Washington Post (Laura Seay)

2) The Great Commission far greater that American nationalism or humanitarianism

Ebola doc’s condition downgraded to idiotic, AnnCoulter.com (Ann Coulter)

Fighting Ebola for Us All, New York Times (Nicholas Kristof)

Transcript: The Briefing 08-06-14

The Briefing

 

August 6, 2014

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

 

It’s Wednesday, August 6, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Federal circuit courts begin considering state same sex marriage bans

Massive moral and cultural shifts generally take a great deal of time. Indeed, moral shifts on huge issues of ethical and cultural importance generally take centuries, at least generations. But the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the first nation on the entire planet, was the Netherlands – where same-sex marriage became legal in the year 2001. The first American state to legalize same-sex marriage was Massachusetts, where the first same-sex marriages took place in the year 2004. So in the space between 2001 and 2014, that is just 13 years, the momentum for the legalization and the normalization of same-sex marriage has been nothing less than lightning speed, in terms of its velocity. Keep that in mind as today in a courtroom in Cincinnati a US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals will consider, in just one day, challenges to the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage in the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. As Amanda Lee Myers reports for the Huffington Post, challenges on the issue of gay marriage are now flooding the federal courts, and not just the federal court to the district court level but the US circuit courts of appeal. As she writes,

 

Federal appeals courts soon will hear arguments in gay marriage fights from nine states, [now just keep in mind here, that represent almost 20% of the United States, she concludes her sentence] part of a slew of cases putting pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a final verdict.

 

She then explains,

 

If the appeals judges continue the unbroken eight-month streak of rulings in favor of gay marriage, that could make it easier for the nation’s highest court to come down on the side of supporters. [But she says,] If even one ruling goes against them in the four courts taking up the issue in the coming weeks, it would create a divide that the Supreme Court also could find difficult to resist settling.

 

Well we need to observe that both of her points are very valid. Her first point – that the unanimity of all these recent court decisions increases the chance that the Supreme Court will find it easier to take up the case – that’s valid point. But it’s even more valid when she makes her second point, and that is that if even one court rules in the opposite way – upholding a state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage or even a law prohibiting same-sex marriage – that will put the Supreme Court in the position of looking at split verdicts in terms of the US Circuit Courts of Appeal and that is something that the Supreme Court generally cannot abide. It can hardly resist the responsibilities the nation’s highest court, to settle an issue that has a divided question at the level of the appellate courts.

 

But is not just what’s going to be taking place today in Cincinnati at the sixth US circuit Court of Appeals, we need to note also that there will be similar hearings August 26 at the Seventh Circuit in Chicago – that will cover bans on same-sex marriage in Wisconsin, and Indiana. On September 8, the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, the nation’s most notoriously liberal court, will take at the same question for bans in Idaho and Nevada. The Fifth Circuit, seated in New Orleans, is expected to set a date in the very near future to consider challenges to the ban on same-sex marriage in the state of Texas. And then as Myers notes,

 

The flurry of arguments means an upcoming spate of rulings, possibly all issued this autumn, that could profoundly alter the nation’s marriage laws.

 

Well, if her previous statements were valid, this is not only valid but an extreme understatement. Not only will this set of hearings set up a set of decisions that will likely reset the nation’s marriage laws – we’re talking about a virtual avalanche of court decisions that will cover so many states that it will mean that the likelihood of same-sex marriage nationwide grows that much more seemingly inevitable.

 

That takes us back to the United States Supreme Court in June of last year when in the Windsor decision the majority opinion, written by justice Anthony Kennedy, set the stage for this avalanche of cases. This was indeed the prophetic warning offered in his scathing dissent by justice Antonin Scalia, who said that given the Windsor decision all that remains is for the other shoe to drop. And even as we consider that issue today, we recognize that the other shoes is about to drop at the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati even today.

 

I made reference back to the Netherlands legalizing same-sex marriage in 2001, the first nation on the planet to do so, and Massachusetts doing so in 2004, the first American state to do so, just to make clear how recent this phenomena is. Indeed you may remember that in the oral arguments for the Windsor case, it was Justice Samuel Alito who pointed out just how recent same-sex marriage is in terms of human history. He pointed out the marriage has existed for millennia but same-sex marriage, he says, isn’t even as old as the cell phone or the Internet. Pointing out just how modern and innovation same-sex marriage actually is. And of course even our language betrays us, because in previous generations the language of same-sex marriage wouldn’t even make moral sense, for that matter, it would make linguistic sense. It doesn’t make any kind of sense – moral, legal, linguistic, or otherwise – for those who understand that marriage isn’t simply some kind of human invention, some kind of sociological technology to which human beings arrived in our accumulated wisdom, but rather the gift of a loving God who gave it to us for human flourishing, for human good, for the solidity of human society, for the raising of children, and all the other gifts and goods that marriage provides – by God’s hand. We recognize then in when we talk about same-sex marriage what we’re really thinking about is something that might be described as so-called same-sex marriage or what others call same-sex marriage. But as existing court precedents made clear and as these looming cases now threaten even to expand, our government is going to be increasingly defining same-sex relationships in terms of same-sex marriage – and that is a fundamental change in society’s most foundational and fundamental institution. And so in this case, as in so many others, a seemingly small change in the nomenclature leads to a massive change in the moral reality.

2) Vast shifts in social values a massive missiological challenge for Christians

Monday’s edition of the New York Times included an article by John Harwood entitled “Democrats Seize on Social Issues as Attitudes Shift.” Our interest is not primarily the partisan angle of this article, but rather the attitudinal shift that is the occasion for why the article is written in the first place. John Harwood writes that what is taking place in America, in terms of the trajectories undertaken by the Democratic and Republican parties, reflects a massive shift in the attitudinal structure of the American people. In his reading, a very valid reading I think, back in the 1980s the American people shifted in a rather conservative direction on social and moral issues that benefited the Republican Party. With candidate such as Ronald Reagan running against crime, running for a clear distinction between right and wrong, running for a sense of cultural righteousness as demonstrated in the sanctity of life, in the stability of the family and in any number of other moral and cultural issues. But now as Harwood writes, the momentum is shifted in the precise opposite direction, and the Democratic Party (rather than the Republican Party) is now poised to benefit by this title, “attitudinal shift.” At one point in his article he explains the shifts this way,

 

Now the values wedge cuts for Democrats. Demographic change keeps shrinking Nixon’s “Silent Majority.” President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress overhauled welfare. Fear of crime has receded enough that members of both parties propose more lenient sentencing. American households have changed significantly. Nearly half of adults are unmarried. Fully 10 percent of opposite-sex married couples are interracial or interethnic. Acceptance of same-sex marriage has expanded with astonishing speed.

 

 

He goes on to point issues such as the rapid normalization, and legalization in some jurisdictions, of marijuana. He then writes,

 

Democrats profit politically — among young voters, college graduates, single women, blacks and Latinos — from the sense that they welcome these cultural shifts while Republicans resist them.

That’s a very interesting analysis. The most important issue here is of course that massive attitudinal shift. And we didn’t need the New York Times on Monday to tell us about this shift. The shift has been documented and well demonstrated in terms of massive sociological and empirical research – the kind of research reported by the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Organization, NORC at the University of Chicago and so many others – but more fundamentally, that attitudinal shift is something that most Christians, most Christian families, and most Christian congregations, have already noted. That massive attitudinal shift represents not only a cultural and moral challenge, of course the issue in this article is really a political challenge, but for the Christian church it’s a missiological challenge – add to that, that it’s a public engagement challenge, a theological challenge and an apologetics challenge. We face the challenge of looking at a vast change in our culture, a vast change in the way the people in that culture think and believe, feel and emote, and understand that our responsibility to be the people of the gospel, to teach and preach and share the gospel, to represent the gospel and teach the implications of the gospel, to be very clear about issues of truth that we believe are not only important because first of all they are true but also because their the means of leading to human flourishing.

 

What we are looking at is a massive challenge that hasn’t been faced by this generation of Christians now living. In order to look for precedents in Christian history – for this kind of massive challenge, this kind of unprecedented set of challenges – we have to look at massive shifts in the past; such as the challenges presented to the Christian church by the fall of the Roman Empire, or by the dawn of the modern age. And as we look to those epics of Christian history, we understand that there were massive failures, there was mass confusion, but there also was a continuing remnant to those who were faithful. But that faithful remnant had to learn very quickly how to think biblically, how to think Christianly, how to operate out of what we would call a Christian worldview, and Christians had to learn very quickly how to demonstrate true Christianity, authentic Christianity, in a time of massive change in confusion, even chaos. That’s exactly the challenge Christians in so many parts of the world now face. Once first sure step is knowing what we’re up against.

3) Surrogate motherhood exposed as presenting great moral danger and injury

A frankly horrifying story appeared in recent days in the pages of The Guardian, a major newspaper published in London, England. The reporter is Suzanne Moore, and she takes us to a 21-year-old surrogate mother, Pattaramon Chanbua, she already has two children as she lives in a seaside town southeast of Bangkok; her children her age 6 and 3. It is an extremely hard existence that she lives, she was offered $16,000 American dollars to become a surrogate mother for an Australian couple and in that offer she saw way out.

 

The money that was offered was a lot for me. In my mind, with that money, one, we can educate my children; two, we can repay our debt.

 

But as Suzanne Moore makes very clear, we only know about her because of a baby boy named Gammy, one of the twins that she carried for an Australian couple. Seven months ago she gave birth to twins, one a girl in one a boy, for the Australian couple who hired her. Well Gammy, the little boy has Down syndrome and congenital heart condition and according to this surrogate mother, the Australian parents took Gammy’s twin sister but left him. Suzanne Moore then writes

 

All of this is heart-rending: fertility tourism at its worst. In countries where there is very little regulation I suspect there are a lot more stories like this. Many couples travel to Thailand for IVF and surrogacy, which the Thai authorities are now saying is illegal but has clearly been thriving. Surrogacy [she says, rightly] is a moral and legal minefield. In the UK [that is Great Britain] it is legal, but [as she says] with the vague and strange proviso that no money other than “reasonable expenses” should pass hands, with an agreement drawn up by individuals.

 

She goes on to explain that many European countries ban it outright. In the United States laws vary dramatically from state to state; California maybe the most surrogate friendly state in the United States, but the reality is that the United States is known as the Wild Wild West of advanced reproductive technologies and in most states surrogate motherhood is in some sense a legal reality. If it is not a legal reality, in terms of state law, there are other states very nearby where Americans, or people from elsewhere in the world, can obtain a contract for surrogate mothering.

 

The Guardian is perhaps Great Britain’s most liberal major newspaper, and that makes it all the more interesting that Suzanne Moore, in the pages of The Guardian, summarizes this story with this sentence,

 

This is the liberal ideology in full flow, with a baby as a consumer choice.

 

She goes on to explain that this is become popular among many celebrities; Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick used surrogates, as did Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. Kidman, in “bizarre celeb speak,” she says, expressed her gratitude to “In particular our gestational carrier.” Suzanne Moore than writes,

 

Yes, that makes me queasy. A woman as mere gestational carrier: the renting of wombs.

 

In her piece in The Guardian, Suzanne Moore goes on to say that when you look at this issue, you’re looking at a baby that was left behind as “damaged goods.” She then says trading wombs and babies on the free market devalues women – it devalues life. She also says

This is a twisted version of slavery in which the bodies in impoverished women are disposable receptacles for the privileged

 

This is something that is been troubling the Christian conscience, or at least should of been troubling the Christian conscience, from the beginning and yet even as many of us have argued that surrogate parenting violates most basic Christian principles, there been those who tried to argue for it simply on the basis that there is nothing in Scripture that explicitly prohibits it. But even as the United Nations is looking at the whole issue of surrogacy, raising the question as to whether surrogate mothers, or gestational carriers is some try to call them, are actually sex workers. Christians need to understand that their basic principles of Christian thought, of Christian truth and Christian thinking, that need to come in to play here. One of the most basic principles of Christian moral understanding drawn from Scripture is that when God gives his human creatures goods, he intends those goods to be received as he gave them. In other words, the gift of reproduction is to be understood as being most holy most sacred and most right within the context of marriage. And when you’re looking at the gift of how children are given, through the biological process of reproduction between the man and the woman – in  the Christian that understanding the husband and the wife – you  understand that to, even in the one flesh union, points to the perfection of God’s gift. The Christian moral understanding has always been that when one tampers with this gift that God has given tries to divide the goods or tries to deliver these moral goods, in terms of an artificial context, great moral injury and moral danger then enters the picture. And that’s exactly what we are looking at here.

 

But what’s really interesting in this article is not just what’s there but what’s missing: there is no affirmation here of the fact that this baby isn’t “damaged goods.” This little baby is a human being in full, made by the creator in his image, and to him is been given the gift of life, and he is been given as a gift to all of humanity. The fact that this Australian couple left him behind as

“damaged goods,” seems to be appalling at least by the implication of this article because the context of surrogacy. But actually it’s appalling because the context of human life and the sanctity of every single human life and it is an insult to the creator and not only to this child that the child is described as “damaged goods.” Only the Christian worldview can affirm why every single human being, in every condition, at every single point of development, is made in God’s image and why thus every single human life deserves full protection – is understood to have the full measure of the sanctity of human life,  and  is understood to be in every single case: a gift.

4) Former Presidents Carter and Robinson call for recognition of Hamas as legitimate political actor

Finally, there is yet another cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip appears now to be holding tenuously. We need to recognize that this morning a major article appear by former United States President Jimmy Carter and former Irish President Mary Robinson. In their article release this morning they argue that the international community, including the United States and Israel, must recognize Hamas as what they call a legitimate political actor. In their article the two former presidents write,

[Hamas] cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognising its legitimacy as a political actor – one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people – can the west begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the west’s approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result.

 

This is an absolutely morally reprehensible argument. The 1988 charter for Hamas states that the organization “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” The Hamas charter, also known as the Hamas covenant, also states that its members are to be Muslims who “Fear God and raise the banner of jihad in the face of their oppressors.” The charter also states “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” the charter also calls for the creation of an Islamic state in what the organization calls Palestine, and for the elimination of Israel as a state. The charter also includes language like this “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them, until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees which will cry ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’” Earlier this year the deputy chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau said, “Hamas will not recognize Israel. This is a red line that cannot be crossed.” For many years now, continuing right up to the present, the United States, the European Union, and many other nations identify Hamas is a terrorist organization – and rightly so. Something has gone horribly wrong when two former presidents, of Western nations, the nations of the United States and Ireland call for a terrorist organization like Hamas to be recognized as “a legitimate political actor,” that in itself is an outrage.

 

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

The Briefing 08-06-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Federal circuit courts begin considering state same sex marriage bans

Gay Marriage Arguments Are Flooding Federal Courts, Huffington Post (Amanda Lee Myers)

2) Vast shifts in social values a massive missiological challenge for Christians

Democrats Seize on Social Issues as Attitudes Shift, New York Times (John Harwood)

3) Surrogate motherhood exposed as presenting great moral danger and injury

The case of baby Gammy shows surrogacy for the repulsive trade it is, The Guardian (Suzanne Moore)

4) Former Presidents Carter and Robinson call for recognition of Hamas as legitimate political actor

Gaza blockade must end, The Guardian (Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson)

Transcript: The Briefing 08-05-14

The Briefing

 

August 5, 2014

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

 

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

1) Cohabitation has become replacement for marriage in a massive moral shift

Cohabitation is become the norm among American young people. This is become increasingly the case, and as recently as three years ago became very clear that the first co-residential arrangement for most American young adults comes in the form of cohabitation with marriage nonexistent, and perhaps even not on the horizon. Back during the 1990s when rates of cohabitation began to rise remarkably, it was noted that cohabitation generally lead to marriage. In a vast majority of cohabiting relationships the cohabiting phase actually preceded the advance to marriage, but now as research is coming out and becoming more and more clear, cohabitation is become the replacement for marriage rather than a precursor to marriage. The most recent evidence for this development comes in a major study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. It was released just this month and research undertaken by professor Karen Benjamin Guzzo of Bowling Green State University. Her research reveals a wealth of information that should be of interest to Christians interested in the future of American young people, and of course the future of marriage. Professor Guzzo points to two contrasting trends, the first is this: it remains true that for most marriage now undertaken by young adults, that marriage is preceded by a period of non-marital cohabitation. In other words these are young people who live together for some time before they are married – now the majority of young people who marry were living together before they got married. But the second data point, the second trend which she points is this: increasingly cohabitation is not leading to marriage at all. Indeed, in a majority of cases it turns out the cohabitation is the relationship itself – it never actually moves forward to marriage.

 

The eclipse of marriage as the central institution of human society has to be of grave concern to any American concern for the future of our society. But it must be a special concern for Christians who understand that the institution of marriage is not merely a sociological arrangement, it is indeed one of the greatest gifts that God has given to His human creatures, a gift that points both to His glory and to the path of maximum human flourishing. It is bad news for us all when we consider the fact that a majority of American young adults are now cohabiting rather than getting married. It was of great moral concern that cohabitation was preceding marriage and when this became the norm. But now the norm is that the marriage actually never happens. There are a couple of other data points that are of grave concern in this research undertaken and published just this month. The reality is that young adults, as she says, are actually forming what she calls “co-residential couplings” as early as they did before.

 

This is a very interesting point because we been noting for recent decades the fact that the age of marriage has been increasing. The average age of what is called “first marriage” for white young people in America, is now at about age 27 for young men (approaching 30 in some studies) and about the same now for American young women. Both are now edging towards 30 in terms of the age of first marriage. But the reality is that for an enormous number and percentage of American young people, marriage simply isn’t on the horizon. But as her research indicates, that doesn’t mean that the romantic couplings are waiting as marriage is waiting. No, indeed, they are forming those cohabiting arrangements as early as previous generations formed marital unions. Another indication of cohabitation is replacing marriage.

 

Furthermore, she makes very clear that the vast increase in children born to unmarried mothers is taking place in the context of cohabitation. What we now know, and the study now verifies, is that this mass surge in the number of children born outside wedlock is due to this pattern of cohabitation. Most of the women to whom these babies are born, were involved in some kind of cohabiting relationship when the baby was both conceived and born. But the research also points to another very significant downside, even sociologically speaking, of cohabitation as a replacement for marriage. She points to additional trends that are very clear in the research. One is this; young people are not only cohabiting at greater rates, their cohabiting at a greater rate of cohabiting units. In other words, they are forming unions over and over again. And we also know that cohabitation, as she makes very clear, is not only not leading the marriage, it is also leading to a situation that can be affirmed only as the tenuous of all romantic relationships. They’re being involved in romantic, what she calls, co-residential and sexual relationships, with no responsibility of marriage, with marriage not even on the horizon. They are making and breaking these unions at an unprecedented rate. Cohabitation is, in one sense, replacing dating. As professor Guzzo makes clear, dating and courtship have basically been replaced in the lives of American young people by co-residential, that is cohabiting relationships. The falloff in marriage after cohabitation is documented in her research, she writes:

 

Fewer cohabitations are transitioning to marriage, a pattern that implies a delinking of marriage and cohabitation. In 1995, 58% of first cohabitation had transitioned to marriage within three years. That rate fell to 51% in 2002 and to 40% in 2006 to 2010.

 

She implies in her research that the rate is falling even further in terms of the period between 2010 and 2013-14. In her concluding section, professor Guzzo writes,

Cohabitation is become quite common in the United States in recent decades. Given that most people will cohabit outside of marriage is some point in their lives. The majority of today’s marriages are preceded by cohabitation even as fewer cohabitations are transitioning to marriage and marriage rates are declining.

To her credit professor Guzzo deals with the question of causation, she asked why it is that these trends have now taken place and are so clearly documented in American lives. She raises the issue of economics, asking whether the economic recession and the high unemployment rates among young adults are causing this problem, are causing the increasing rates of cohabitation and the decline of marriage as an institution. She raises the issue and says that undoubtedly there are economic factors that are at stake, but she points to the attitudinal, cultural and moral issues as well. As she makes clear in her conclusion, the attitude of young adults, and indeed of most Americans, towards marriage and cohabitation reflects a vast and massive moral shift. Most Americans, she indicates, and certainly most American young people, by the way they are cohabiting, reflect the fact that they do not see this as a significant moral issue. The morality of marriage, a moral wisdom, that has been accepted and embraced by virtually every society in history humanity, has now been replaced, at least in the lives of many American young people indeed most American young people, by a mere morality of consent. And as professor Guzzo makes very clear, it is evident that consent isn’t enough to hold these cohabiting relationships together. And this explains the rapid dissolution and multiple character of so many these cohabiting relationships among American young people, with cohabitation effectively replacing dating and courtship, as well as marriage.

 

This kind of research is important for the Christian understanding of our contemporary moment and of the challenge of our contemporary culture. We look at this and recognize of the replacement, indeed the displacement, of marriage in our society will have evitable consequences, devastating consequences, in the lives, not only the society at large but of the individuals, who are a part of this pattern. Furthermore, we also recognize the biblical wisdom of the fact the God has given us the gift of marriage for His glory and for human flourishing. Thus we recognize that all the pathologies documented in this research point to the fact that the displacement of marriage comes with severe consequences for all involved, and for the society at large. Furthermore, when we look at this we recognize that that morality of consent that replaces the morality of marriage, is actually pointing to the fact that God’s institution and gift of marriage that involves a covenant, that takes the shape of a covenantal pledge, is something that is far more stable, far more enduring, by its very character than the kind of relationship that is established only on the temporal, and very evanescence, reality of consent.

2) British government-funded sperm bank reflects shifting understanding of nature of family

Along similar lines, another form of moral alarm arrives in the form an article that appeared in Sunday’s edition of The Times, London’s most esteemed newspaper. As The Times reports, Britain is now announcing it will have its first  NHS, that is National Health Service funded sperm bank and it’s going to take place largely because of a shortage of donor sperm, donor sperm that is demanded by mostly single, that is to say unmarried women, and increasingly unmarried women in relationships with other women. As Elizabeth Beynon of The Times reports, couples with fertility problems, lesbian couples, and single women trying to start a family will be among those who may benefit from the national sperm bank, which is to be based in Birmingham, England’s Women’s Hospital.

 

For about £300, half the cost at a private clinic, users will be able to search an online database and find an anonymous donor on the basis of ethnicity, height, profession and hobbies. Figures [she says] from the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority show that during 2011 [the last year for which there are complete results] a total of 4,101 cycles of donor insemination were carried out in Britain. Out of that figure, a total of 1,271 — more than a quarter of all recipients — were for women registered with a female partner.

 

So the documentation here is that as recently as 2011, at least a quarter, indeed she says more than a quarter, of all of those who went through the so-called cycles of artificial insemination were lesbian couples. The article cites Laura Witgens, who is the executive director and chief executive of what is known as the National Gamete Donation Trust, she said,

 

The [demand from] same-sex couples and single women has grown exponentially. It’s become socially acceptable to say: I haven’t found a guy yet, don’t want to wait for him, still want a child. [she concludes] The aim is we will have enough surplus sperm . . . to set up a service for people [such as] single women and same-sex couples.

 

When you’re looking for documentation of this vast moral revolution we are experiencing in terms of marriage, morality, sex, same-sex relationships, and family, it’s hard to come up with anything more startling than this. The nation of Great Britain, through its official National Health Service, is now setting up the sperm bank because of what is described here as the exponential rise in the demand for donor insemination from single women and from lesbian couples – it says same-sex couples at one point in the article but the body of the article makes very clear the vast majority of these same-sex couples are same-sex couples made up of women. And if you’re looking at this kind of documentation you recognize that this story, which included just a few paragraphs in Sunday’s edition of The Times, is actually a massive piece of information. It reflects a seismic moral change, not only in the way Great Britain handles issues of artificial insemination, but the way human beings are relating to one another – the very conception of family. The statement that is quoted here from Laura Witgens, again the chief executive of the National Gamete Donation Trust, is that it is now in Great Britain, and by extension we know in the United States as well, socially acceptable to say:

 

I haven’t found a guy yet, don’t want to wait for him, still want a child.

 

Indeed, in Great Britain as the demand reflected in this article is making very clear, there is this vast change in what is so-called “socially acceptable” that’s the language of this kind of moral shift. That is the language that is expressed in purely secular terms, but we get the point. We get the point emphatically, we get the point clearly. The vast change in the definition of family is so clear, it’s so evident in this article that in the actual body of the article it says that this exponential demand for artificial insemination by single women and same-sex couples is in order that they may, to use the words in the article quote, “try to start a family.” So without any further editorial need, without any further explanation, without any recognition of the moral seismic shift that is reflected here, the family simply redefined in terms of whatever anyone, at any point may want it to be and thus the natural human language, used by human beings throughout millennia, a language that is made sense in every previous generation, language referring to such words as “having children,” that language is now completely transformed, such that “having children” can involve artificial insemination, any number of advanced reproductive technologies, and any number of individuals who can simply demand, either as individuals or as partners, access to artificial insemination.

 

This one of those articles that appears in a newspaper and is likely largely overlooked and, on the most part, quickly forgotten. But it should not be forgotten among Christians, who should look at an article like this from the lens of the Christian worldview and understand that nothing less than a vast moral earthquake is reflected here in just a space of a few paragraphs.

3) Opposition to truth of biblical stories actually opposition to notion of divine revelation

While we’re speaking of research and what it reveals, there has been a great deal cultural conversation in recent days over two articles that appeared in a journal known as Cognitive Science. As Mark Joseph Stern at Slate.com reports, these two studies presume to tell us that children were raised in Christian homes, defined here is religious homes but all of them are Christian’s of one denomination or another, that children raised in Christian homes at very young ages have more difficulty than children raised in secular homes in understanding the difference between fact and fiction – especially when it comes to characters and marriages. The studies presumed to tell us that when children are raised in Christian homes they have an increasing difficulty understanding which stories are factual, which stories are fictional, which are indeed fantastical. The studies included this statement,

 

Religious teaching, especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible – that is a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.

 

Well if you’re shocked, it’s simply because here you have a secular set of researchers indicating that they’re absolutely shocked, not only shocked but appalled that children raised in Christian homes believe that something other than the naturalistic worldview may be at work. Their open, not only, to the knowledge it comes to us empirically in terms of what we learn from nature and the world around us, but there also open to reality and true knowledge that can come to us by divine Revelation. They understand that stories found in the Scripture are to be undertaken as true, ought to be taken as telling us the truth. These include stories about biblical characters and miracles; characters such as Jonah and Joseph and Noah and miracles such as those that are revealed in the four Gospels of the New Testament. Responding to the studies Stern writes;

 

If you’re surprised by these findings, you probably haven’t attended a church service lately. Religions tend to be founded on miracle stories—exactly the thing religious kids had trouble distinguishing from reality. When you’ve been told that a woman was created from a man’s rib, or that a man reawakened three days postmortem little worse for wear, your grasp on reality is bound to take a hit. Religious children are told these stories from an early age, often as though they are unquestionably true.

 

Now as you hear that statement, keep in mind that several of the leading so-called new atheists, indeed some were not even characterize with that label, are charging that raising children in the Christian worldview and on the basis of Christian truth is a form of child abuse. These kinds of reports are no doubt going to give fodder to the fire of those who say that Christian parents raising their children on the basis of the Scripture and Christian truth, are doing their children a disservice, perhaps even abusing them, by raising them in something other than the purely naturalistic and materialistic worldview that is the sum and substance of modern secularism.

 

Oddly enough a similar kind of warning comes to us in the form of an editorial that appeared in August 1 edition of the Courier-Journal, the newspaper Louisville, Kentucky. The editorial board is downright outraged that Kentucky tourism authorities have granted preliminary approval for tax abatements for a new tourist attraction to be built in Kentucky – a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark. This is to be a major tourist attraction the Commonwealth and it comes by the group Answers in Genesis that is already built one of the state’s leading tourist attractions, The Creation Museum, located near Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. But what I want to draw our attention to are the two closing paragraphs in the editorial that appeared in newspapers, the editors write

 

The story of Noah is terrifying. If you believe it as told in the Bible, none of us would have been on the boat. We would have been off the boat. As it was written (New International Version), “Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth.” [the editors then write] Are they going to show that, too? Hard to see how that might attract out-of-state guests and have a positive impact on the state budget.

 

In other words, for the editors of the Courier-Journal, it is simply beyond imagination that any kind of person would want to buy a ticket to see a replica of Noah’s Ark because the stories simply so unbelievable, that no intelligent person could accept it is true, much less buy a ticket in order to see a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark. Well it turns out the Noah has his enemies. Not only in the pages of the Journal known as Cognitive Science but also on the editorial page of the Louisville Courier-Journal. But of course it’s not really Noah that here faces his enemies, it is the very notion of divine Revelation and that indeed tells us a great deal about the secular worldview that is simply taken for normal in much of America.

 

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

The Briefing 08-05-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Cohabitation has become replacement for marriage in a massive moral shift

Moving In and Moving On, Family Studies (Scott Stanley)

Trends in Cohabitation Outcomes: Compositional Changes and Engagement Among Never-Married Young Adults, Journal of Marriage and Family (Karen Benjamin Guzzo)

2) British government-funded sperm bank reflects shifting understanding of nature of family

New NHS sperm bank to help single women, The Sunday Times (Elizabeth Beynon)

3) Opposition to truth of biblical stories actually opposition to notion of divine revelation

Is Religion Good for Children?, Slate (Mark Joseph Stern)

Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds, Huffington Post (Shadee Ashtari)

State helps ark park defy science, Louisville Courier-Journal (Editorial Board)

Transcript: The Briefing 08-04-14

The Briefing

August 4, 2014

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

 

It’s Monday, August 4, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

In the book of Revelation 6 we read to the four horses, indeed of the Four Horsemen, known throughout Christian history as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. They have been identified with the four great enemies of humanity: war, famine, death, and pestilence (or plague). And when you think about what we’ve learned over the last several weeks, it is very clear that those four horsemen are running loose in this fallen world. Just think of what’s happening in terms of West Africa with the outbreak of Ebola that is now the worst known in human history. This disease, which has been identified only for the last 40 years, is considered one of the most deadly every to of confronted the human species. And when it comes to the mortality rate, it run of the most conservative end at 50% and yet it is estimated by some medical experts to run closer to 90%. The outbreak in West Africa, in the nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea has now claimed at least 826 lives, as the Financial Times reports this morning, and the fear is that the additional hundreds or perhaps even thousands have been exposed to the disease.

 

Speaking on ABC’s this week on Sunday, Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, said the Ebola virus is now out of control in West African countries, but he also said that he believes it can be contained with certain tried-and-true public-health measures. “The plain truth is that we can stop Ebola. We know how to control it,” but even as Dr. Frieden made that confident statement, speaking on Friday, Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization’s director general, warned “If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socio-economic disruption and a high rate of spread to other countries,” she concluded, “[this outbreak is] moving faster than our efforts to control it.”

 

Our deep-seated human fear about this kind of contagion, about the plague, is rooted in a deep historical reality. Just in the 20th century  infectious diseases and outbreaks of those diseases have killed upwards of millions – beginning of course in 1918 with the awful spread of influenza that killed so many millions, not only in the United States but in Europe and beyond. Furthermore, there is the reality that during the medieval period, Europe itself was hit with successive waves of the plague that wiped out a great deal of the population, indeed wiping out entire cities, villages, and generations in terms of many families and nations. But when you look at what is happening in these three West African nations right now, you see the danger of a world that believes that it has conquered infectious agents, that believes that it has control over such things with modern medical technologies and of course the development of antibiotics. But when it comes to disease like Ebola, there is the great humbling reality, the realization that comes to any sane human being looking at the data, looking at the horrible suffering in the death of West Africa, that this kind of thing simply cannot be controlled (not at least simply and solely by human ingenuity and human technology.

 

Of course, even as we are very thankful for the advent of modern medicine, we should remember by the way that germ theory itself is younger than the United States of America. We should keep in mind that even we have conquered many diseases or claimed to do the same, it turns out that we have not been quite so efficient as we had claimed. For instance, in recent years there’s been the claim that we of wiped out smallpox – one of the most was horrifying, infectious diseases to plague humanity. The belief was that in the last 10 years the disease had been completely eradicated, with vials of the disease left on deposit for medical research only in very restricted laboratories identified as only two: one in the United States and one in Russia. But then in the month of July, it was discovered that samples of the smallpox virus were kept in an unguarded closet in Washington, DC in one of the nation’s research laboratories. During the same period the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta was embarrassed to have to acknowledge that several of its leading experts had acted carelessly with infectious agents (including anthrax) leading to a potential dispersal of at least some of the infectious agent far outside of the contamination zone.

 

In those three West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia we need to keep in mind the chief Ebola doctors in Liberia and Sierra Leone have, in this outbreak, contracted the disease, and both of these doctors have died. And then at 11:00 AM on Saturday at Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia, a medical evacuation plane landed caring Dr. Kent Brantley, an American Christian doctor working with a Christian ministry there in West Africa. In treating the Ebola patients, he had himself contracted the disease. Being brought to the United States, and not without some controversy here in this country, he became the first Ebola patient ever to be treated in the United States. He is being treated under the care of medical authorities in Atlanta under the supervision of the center for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Brantley and his colleague, Nancy Writebol another American Christian serving and medical missions there in West Africa, have become examples of Christian heroism. Writing in the secular news site the, Daily Beast, Michael Daly wrote, “What Brantley did was what Jesus also would’ve done after the doctor’s worst fears became real and he was infected along with a fellow health worker. Only one dose of an experimental serum was available and Brantley insisted that it be given to his colleague, Nancy Writebol.” Daly is exactly right. What we see in the example of Dr. Kent Brantley and Nancy Writebol is an example of Christian heroism, both the hero and heroine in this case, who demonstrate true Christian service, ministry, and compassion. In serving those, many others would abandon. We need to keep in mind that the Christian church has struggled with this responsibility throughout the centuries. In the early church, the church fathers reminded Christians of the responsibility to stay among the sick, even at risk to themselves. During the Reformation, the same issue arose with successive waves of pestilence and plague in Europe and Reformers such as Martin Luther, reminded ministers and those who were treating the sick, of the responsibility to stay rather than to flee.

 

Christians must be rightly humbled and chastened by the reality that the leader of the World Health Organization is warning that this outbreak is still out of control and that at this point the outbreak is running faster than medical attempts to contain it. But as we rightly pray for an end to this outbreak of Ebola and an end to the death and suffering there in West Africa, even as we pray for Dr. Kent Brantley and Nancy Writebol, even as we pray that they will not be in outbreak of this contagious plague in other West African nations and in the larger continent, even as we pray for these things in must remember the totality of what we read in Revelation 6. Those four horsemen are not extinguished by humanity. Humanity simply does not have the power to put an end to pestilence and death and famine and war. Those enemies are put to death only by Christ and until Christ puts those things to death, we will face plague after plague, and war after war, which takes us to the other reminder of just how dangerous are world is.

 

The Horseman of war is also loose among us, leaving many in the international community to believe that we are now living in one of the most destabilized times of recent human history. Not looking back just to the last several decades, but looking all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century. A very haunting realization when you consider that this month marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. Furthermore, as we shall see, the outbreak of the kind of uncertainty and the lawlessness, the tribalism and the terrorism that is taking place now has haunting reminders to us of exactly what did bring about World War I and the deaths of some 37 million people there at the beginning of the 20th century. But as we look at what’s going on in Ukraine with the involvement of Russia, as we look at what’s going on in Israel and Gaza, as he looked what’s going on in so many places of the world, we recognize that the world is not marked by what appears to be increasing stability but rather increasing instability.

 

The instability in Ukraine amounts to nothing less than war, a war that is aided and abetted, if not absolutely directed and funded, by Russia trying to destabilize Ukraine in the name of a greater Russia. All of this is let of course by the vision and the autocratic leadership of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin appears to style himself after one of the old Russian tsars, someone like Alexander the great. And his despotism and imperialism appeared to be largely unchecked. Furthermore, even as Time magazine this week declares the beginning of Cold War II, we have to reflect upon the fact that Russia was complicit in the downing of a commercial airliner with over 200 deaths as Russian supported forces there in eastern Ukraine used a Russian supplied surface-to-air missile to pull down the massive Malaysian airlines jet. Perhaps no one caught this disaster in terms of words more eloquently than Simon Schuster of Time magazine who wrote:

 

The scene was almost too horrible to take in, and yet in a world of bristling threats no scene has been more revealing: under the baking July sun of eastern Ukraine, hundreds of bodies lay rotting as pro-Russian militiamen, some of them apparently drunk, brandished their weapons to keep European observers away. A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 bearing 298 souls–AIDS researchers, young lovers, eager children–had been blown out of the sky, apparently by a Russian-made missile, and the dead fell in a gruesome storm. One voice, and one voice only…

 

Wrote Schuster,

 

…could put an end to this indecent standoff over the innocent victims. But Vladimir Putin merely shrugged and pointed a finger at the Ukrainian government and, by extension, its Western allies. ‘Without a doubt,’ Putin told a meeting of his economic aides on the night of the disaster, ‘The state over whose territory this happened bears the responsibility for this frightful tragedy.’

 

And yet as many people around the world can only wonder, had Vladimir Putin gone too far? With the political reality in Russia is that Putin’s position is only stronger as the Russian people seem to be rallying to his imperialistic nationalism, even at such a horrific price. Western nations appear to be largely impotent in terms of responding to Putin’s threat. The economic sanctions put against Russia in the aftermath of this most recent atrocity are not going to change Putin’s mind, nor are they going to dissuade his people from supporting him in terms of this kind of imperialism.

 

And then the scene shifts to the Middle East where on the Gaza Strip Israel and the Hamas organization are locked in what appears to be a battle to the death. This has been one of the ugliest outbreaks in terms of violence there in the Middle East in recent decades. And this one is being played out over against a very interesting background. Hamas is a radical Islamic organization, it is in control the government there in Gaza and it has a declared purpose to put an end to the state of Israel and furthermore it is rallying behind the motto of death to the Jews. Hamas is one of those organizations that has set itself to the total destruction of Israel, and in the course of the last several weeks it has been discovered that there’s been a massive pattern of tunnels dug under the Gaza land right into Israel, these tunnels being used for massive terrorist purposes. Furthermore, Israel had to respond to the firing of rockets upon its own civilian population from Gaza, and as the military efforts have escalated on both sides, it has led to massive death. According to some news organizations this morning the death toll among Palestinians is now approximately 1,600 persons – almost all of them rather innocent civilians innocent, innocent in the sense that they were not combatants.

 

This leads to a very important worldview issue that Christians must look to with great attention. When you look at the situation there in the battle between Israel and Hamas, we need to keep in mind that one of the most of various aspects of this is that Hamas routinely puts its own military installations, its own military weapon stockpiles, in the midst of where there are concentrated civilian populations. In other words, Hamas uses its own people as intended victims in order that they can become martyrs for the cause. This includes children and families and even facility such as those that are supervised by the United Nations.

 

In one of the most interesting twist in this current situation, we should note that the traditional allies of the Palestinians (the Arab nations) have been strangely and remarkably silent in terms of support for Hamas. This is explained in a cover story in last Thursday’s edition of The New York Times when David Kirkpatrick reports that Arab nations appear to be all too willing for Israel to battle Hamas because they also see Hamas as an enemy. This is especially true in terms of the nation of Egypt, which has been battling its own Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, and which has been involved in nothing less than an internal war there that is involved, military experts believe, far more casualties than the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. Egypt appears to be standing back, allowing Israel to fight Hamas in the hope that Israel be able to weaken the organization. One of the things also to keep in mind is that even as Israel is making issue of the 30 odd tunnels that have been discovered between Gaza and Israel, Egypt discovered over 70 from Gaza and the Palestinian territories into Egypt, also used for military and terrorist purposes.

 

Aaron David Miller a scholar the Wilson Center in Washington, he’s also been involved as a negotiator in the Middle East for the United States State Department, said “The Arab states loathing in fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” he went on to say “I’ve never seen a situation like where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummeling of Hamas – the silence is deafening.” In the last several days, an attempted 72 hour truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed in the even greater violence. And as the morning dawns today in that very conflicted part of the world, no one knows where this is headed. Israel appears to believe that is now gone so far, including the ground incursion into Gaza, that it simply must destabilize or destroy Hamas in order to put an end to the threat. On the other hand, Hamas understand that it actually build its prestige and its power by being seen in conflict with Israel and given the fact that in this fallen world, both sides in this conflict appear to think that the conflict is actually to their advantage, no end is foreseeable.

 

Needless to say, here in the United States there are plenty of issues we are also concerned about. For instance, last Friday’s edition of Investor’s Business Daily reported that a lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation asserted that the Internal Revenue Service ignored complaints about churches violating their tax exempt status by routinely promoting political issues, legislation, and candidates from the pulpit. What the Investor’s Business Daily story gets to is the fact that the IRS has reached some agreement with the FFRF, that’s the Freedom from Religion Foundation, pledging that it will, as a federal agency, scrutinize the preaching taking place in evangelical churches to determine if pastors and churches are violating IRS regulations and federal law by speaking to political issues. Investor’s Business Daily is right to immediately ask the key question: will the IRS considered to be politicking when Christian pastors preach on moral issues that will have a political consequence speaking in defense of marriage of the sanctity of human life or speaking to other moral issues oppressing biblical concern? The editorsof Investor’s Business Daily rightly state,

 

Congress can make no laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion. So it’s not clear where the IRS gets off doing just that – by spying on religious leaders, less they comment on issues and activities by government that are contrary to or impose on the religious consciences. Our country,

 

Said the editors,

 

was founded by people fleeing this kind of government monitored and mandated theology last practiced in the Soviet Union.

 

The announcement is the week ended of this agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and the Freedom from Religion Foundation is alarming enough, but it comes on the heels of a series of developments that are all directed at the constriction of Christian influence in Christian speech. Not only in terms of speech in the public square, but as this agreement makes very clear, even speech within the worship space, even within the church the congregation itself, even by Christian pastors.

 

So as the 2014-2015 season of The Briefing begins we note that the list, indeed the stack, of issues to be discussed appears to be also insurmountable and still growing. Indeed that appears to be an almost permanent condition, Christians in this generation are being called the think through so many issues, so quickly, simultaneously, and our responsibility is to think in biblical terms, to think as thinking Christians, thinking Christianly and biblically. We are called to bring every thought captive to Christ and that means in this world we have to be those who think through a Christian worldview, who consider these things as Christians based upon the totality of Christian truth, reasoning from Christian first principles in our consideration of these issues that are coming to us in almost machine-gun rapidity. It seems to be no exaggeration to believe that this generation of Christians faces a unique, if not unprecedented, responsibility to confront so many these issues simultaneously, and more importantly faithfully. We will try to think of these issues faithfully together.

 

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, just go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 08-04-14

Podcast Transcript

1) West African Ebola outbreak reminder that man has not conquered pestilence

CDC Director Says U.S. ‘Surging’ Efforts to Stop Ebola Outbreak, ABC News (Kari Rea)

Ebola outbreak: We’re heading towards a catastrophe, warns top medic, The Telegraph (Colin Freeman)

‘He Could Have Brought Ebola Here’: Minnesota Widow on Her Husband, Daily Beast (Michael Daly)

2) Global conflicts fill world with uncertainty and lawlessness that only Christ can end

In Russia, Crime Without Punishment, TIME (Simon Shuster)

Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent, New York Times (David Kirkpatrick)

Israeli airstrike kills militant leader before unilateral cease-fire, Washington Post (Sudarsan Raghavan, Griff Witte, and Daniela Deane)

3) IRS agreement to review Christian worship follows trend constricting Christian speech

IRS Strikes Deal With Atheists To Monitor Churches, Investors’ Business Daily (Editorial Board)

 

‘Get with the Program’ — The Church of England Votes to Ordain Women Bishops

Writing about the age of John Milton, the British author A. N. Wilson once tried to explain to modern secular readers that there had once been a time when bishops of the Church of England were titanic figures of conviction who were ready to stand against the culture. “It needs an act of supreme historical imagination to be able to recapture an atmosphere in which Anglican bishops might be taken seriously,” he wrote, “still more, one in which  they might be thought threatening.”

Keep that in mind as you read the news that the General Synod of the Church of England voted yesterday to approve the consecration of women as bishops of the church.

The votes came less than two years after a similar measure failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote before the same synod. The election of women as bishops had sailed through the bishops and the clergy, but opposition from lay members of the synod had blocked the measure late in 2012.

What few even in the British media are now mentioning is the massive pressure brought upon the church by the larger British culture and, most specifically, from the British government.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday was “a great day for the Church and for equality.” Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that the vote was a “big moment” and Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labor Party said that the vote was “wonderful news.”

As for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the church’s chief cleric, Archbishop Justin Welby said that the measure adopted Monday would mark “the start of a great adventure of seeking mutual flourishing while still, in some cases, disagreeing. The challenge for us will be for the church to model good disagreement and to continue to demonstrate love for those who disagree on theological grounds.”

That “adventure” will leave conservative evangelicals in the Church of England increasingly out in the cold, despite all the talk of “mutual flourishing.” The measure approved by the synod means that women bishops will be bishops in full, with mandatory recognition of their episcopal status by all within the Church of England. This will leave conservative ministers under the authority of bishops they do not actually believe to be bishops in fact. It is hard to imagine “mutual flourishing” in that circumstance. The measure also called for the appointment of one conservative evangelical male bishop in coming months — which means that the church has just committed itself to appoint a bishop who does not believe that at least some of his colleague bishops will meet the biblical requirements.

This is the kind of “compromise” that pervades mainline liberal Protestantism. It shifts the church decisively to the left and calls for mutual respect. Conservatives are to be kindly shown the door. Ruth Gledhill of The Guardian [London], one of the most insightful observers of religion in Great Britain, recognized the plight of the evangelicals, though she celebrated the vote: “In the last 69 episcopal appointments, there have been evangelicals but not a single conservative one.” In this context, “conservative” means more concerned with doctrinal matters and opposed to a change in the church’s teachings on gender and human sexuality. But, as Gledhill recognized, “This wing of the church is where so much of the energy is, giving rise not just to growth, but also that necessary resource, cash.”

Yes, there is another pattern to recognize — evangelicals have the growth and the cash, just not the votes. The talk about mutual flourishing is really an argument to remain in the church and keep paying the bills.

Ruth Gledhill is profoundly right about another aspect of Monday’s vote as well. It won’t stop with women bishops. “Now the church can move into the 20th century, although perhaps not the 21st,” she wrote. “A change on gay marriage would be needed to do that.” Well, stay tuned, as they say. The same church now has bishops living and teaching in open defiance of the church’s law on sexuality as well.

There is a very real sense in which Monday’s vote was inevitable. Once the church had decided to ordain women as priests, the elevation of women to bishop was only a matter of time. But the Church of England explicitly claims apostolic succession back to the earliest years of the church, traced through bishops. That is why virtually every major media outlet in Britain acknowledged, at least, that the vote reversed 2,000 years of Christian tradition. They also tended to note that the vote came after 20 years of controversy.

Evidently, 2,000 of years of tradition was no match for 20 years of controversy.

And much of that controversy was driven by cultural and political forces. Back in November 2012, when laity in the General Synod defeated a similar measure, Britain’s head of government pitched a fit. Prime Minister Cameron told Parliament that the Church of England needed “to get with the program.” He added, “You have to respect the individual institutions and the way they work, while giving them a sharp prod.” A sharp prod, indeed.

Cameron told Parliament, “I think it’s important for the Church of England to be a modern church in touch with society as it is today and this was a key step it needed to take.” There is the modern secular imperative with its teeth bared: Be a modern church in touch with society as it is today, or look out.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, responded like a chastened child, acknowledging the Prime Minister’s point and stating that “it seems that we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that larger society.” There was no mention of obedience to Scripture.

Maria Miller, the British government’s minister for equalities openly threatened the church. In a rather contradictory statement, she provided a “prod” of her own: “Obviously, it’s for the Church of England to run its own procedures and processes, but I hope that they have heard, loud and clear, the strength of feeling on this, and that it acts quickly.”

Some members of Parliament threatened to disestablish the church and to remove its bishops from the House of Lords. There can be no doubt that the refusal to elect women as bishops put the church far out of line with Britain’s secular culture — now one of the most secular societies on the planet.

There are a great many issues of importance in this situation. These include the very idea of a state church (much less, a state church in a hyper-secular society), the definition and role of bishops, the role of women in the church, the importance of doctrinal tradition, and, most of all, the authority of Scripture and the integrity of the Christian Faith.

But the public conversation about Monday’s vote reveals issues of urgency and importance that go far beyond Britain and the Church of England. The Prime Minister’s command that the church “get with the program” and “be a modern church in touch with society as it is today” is a command that is now addressed in every modern culture to every church.

One key question is that raised by A. N. Wilson. Can we even envision a day when Christian leaders might be taken seriously as committed to biblical Christianity? Or, to use his very words, “still more, one in which they might be thought threatening?” If not, Christianity in the West will continue its slide into compromise and eventual surrender.

The Very Rev. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the early 20th century, once famously remarked: “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” Now, that is a word from an Anglican we all need to hear.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler

Ruth Gledhill, “Joy and Relief at Display of Unity for Vote on Ordination of Women Bishops,” The Guardian [London], Monday, July 14, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014...

Patrick Wintour and Lizzy Davis, “David Cameron: Church of England Should ‘Get on with it’ on Female Bishops,” The Guardian [London], Wednesday, November 21, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012...

Aida Edemariam and Lizzy Davis, “Pressure Piles on Church to Vote Again in Female Bishops,” The Guardian [London], Friday, November 23, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012...