R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 368

Moralism is Not the Gospel (But Many Christians Think it Is)

One of the most amazing statements by the Apostle Paul is his indictment of the Galatian Christians for abandoning the Gospel. “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel,” Paul declared. As he stated so emphatically, the Galatians had failed in the crucial test of discerning the authentic Gospel from its counterfeits.

His words could not be more clear: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed!” [Gal. 1:6-7]

This warning from the Apostle Paul, expressed in the language of the Apostle’s shock and grief, is addressed not only to the church in Galatia, but to every congregation in every age. In our own day — and in our own churches — we desperately need to hear and to heed this warning. In our own time, we face false gospels no less subversive and seductive than those encountered and embraced by the Galatians.

In our own context, one of the most seductive false gospels is moralism. This false gospel can take many forms and can emerge from any number of political and cultural impulses. Nevertheless, the basic structure of moralism comes down to this — the belief that the Gospel can be reduced to improvements in behavior.

Sadly, this false gospel is particularly attractive to those who believe themselves to be evangelicals motivated by a biblical impulse. Far too many believers and their churches succumb to the logic of moralism and reduce the Gospel to a message of moral improvement. In other words, we communicate to lost persons the message that what God desires for them and demands of them is to get their lives straight.

In one sense, we are born to be moralists. Created in God’s image, we have been given the moral capacity of conscience. From our earliest days our conscience cries out to us the knowledge of our guilt, shortcomings, and misbehaviors. In other words, our conscience communicates our sinfulness.

Add to this the fact that the process of parenting and child rearing tends to inculcate moralism from our earliest years. Very quickly we learn that our parents are concerned with our behavior. Well behaved children are rewarded with parental approval, while misbehavior brings parental sanction. This message is reinforced by other authorities in young lives and pervades the culture at large.

Writing about his own childhood in rural Georgia, the novelist Ferrol Sams described the deeply-ingrained tradition of being “raised right.” As he explained, the child who is “raised right” pleases his parents and other adults by adhering to moral conventions and social etiquette. A young person who is “raised right” emerges as an adult who obeys the laws, respects his neighbors, gives at least lip service to religious expectations, and stays away from scandal. The point is clear — this is what parents expect, the culture affirms, and many churches celebrate. But our communities are filled with people who have been “raised right” but are headed for hell.

The seduction of moralism is the essence of its power. We are so easily seduced into believing that we actually can gain all the approval we need by our behavior. Of course, in order to participate in this seduction, we must negotiate a moral code that defines acceptable behavior with innumerable loopholes. Most moralists would not claim to be without sin, but merely beyond scandal. That is considered sufficient.

Moralists can be categorized as both liberal and conservative. In each case, a specific set of moral concerns frames the moral expectation. As a generalization, it is often true that liberals focus on a set of moral expectations related to social ethics while conservatives tend to focus on personal ethics. The essence of moralism is apparent in both — the belief that we can achieve righteousness by means of proper behavior.

The theological temptation of moralism is one many Christians and churches find it difficult to resist. The danger is that the church will communicate by both direct and indirect means that what God expects of fallen humanity is moral improvement. In so doing, the church subverts the Gospel and communicates a false gospel to a fallen world.

Christ’s Church has no option but to teach the Word of God, and the Bible faithfully reveals the law of God and a comprehensive moral code. Christians understand that God has revealed Himself throughout creation in such a way that He has gifted all humanity with the restraining power of the law. Furthermore, He has spoken to us in His word with the gift of specific commands and comprehensive moral instruction. The faithful Church of the Lord Jesus Christ must contend for the righteousness of these commands and the grace given to us in the knowledge of what is good and what is evil. We also have a responsibility to bear witness of this knowledge of good and evil to our neighbors. The restraining power of the law is essential to human community and to civilization.

Just as parents rightly teach their children to obey moral instruction, the church also bears responsibility to teach its own the moral commands of God and to bear witness to the larger society of what God has declared to be right and good for His human creatures.

But these impulses, right and necessary as they are, are not the Gospel. Indeed, one of the most insidious false gospels is a moralism that promises the favor of God and the satisfaction of God’s righteousness to sinners if they will only behave and commit themselves to moral improvement.

The moralist impulse in the church reduces the Bible to a codebook for human behavior and substitutes moral instruction for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Far too many evangelical pulpits are given over to moralistic messages rather than the preaching of the Gospel.

The corrective to moralism comes directly from the Apostle Paul when he insists that “a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus.” Salvation comes to those who are “justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” [Gal. 2:16]

We sin against Christ and we misrepresent the Gospel when we suggest to sinners that what God demands of them is moral improvement in accordance with the Law. Moralism makes sense to sinners, for it is but an expansion of what we have been taught from our earliest days. But moralism is not the Gospel, and it will not save. The only gospel that saves is the Gospel of Christ. As Paul reminded the Galatians, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” [Gal. 4:4-5]

We are justified by faith alone, saved by grace alone, and redeemed from our sin by Christ alone. Moralism produces sinners who are (potentially) better behaved. The Gospel of Christ transforms sinners into the adopted sons and daughters of God.

The Church must never evade, accommodate, revise, or hide the law of God. Indeed, it is the Law that shows us our sin and makes clear our inadequacy and our total lack of righteousness. The Law cannot impart life but, as Paul insists, it “has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” [Gal. 3:24]

The deadly danger of moralism has been a constant temptation to the church and an ever-convenient substitute for the Gospel. Clearly, millions of our neighbors believe that moralism is our message. Nothing less than the boldest preaching of the Gospel will suffice to correct this impression and to lead sinners to salvation in Christ.

Hell will be highly populated with those who were “raised right.” The citizens of heaven will be those who, by the sheer grace and mercy of God, are there solely because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Moralism is not the gospel.

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

This is based upon a previously published essay by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

 

 

Transcript: The Briefing 04-07-14

The Briefing

 

 April 7, 2014

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

 

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

 

The ouster last week of Brendan Eich as the CEO of Mozilla is the latest example and, to this date, the clearest example of the scale and the velocity of the moral revolution we are now experiencing on the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Mr. Eich was out last week because back in 2008 he had given a $1,000 contribution to what was known as Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment passed by 52% of the voters of California to identify marriage as the union of a man and a woman. That one statement, that one check for $1,000 in that one year, 2008, now years ago, for a proposition that was adopted by the majority of California’s voters and later reversed by the courts, that was enough for Brendan Eich to find himself right in the center of a target and eventually to be ousted because he could not do his job as CEO of Mozilla. And those were his own words and also the words that were echoed in the press release by Mozilla.

 

Now joining the conversation in the most interesting aftermath of this situation, Farhad Manjoo, writing at The New York Times, suggests that what was really going on here is the fact that Mozilla is an organization unlike most corporations. As he writes:

 

Mozilla is not a normal company. It is an activist organization. Mozilla’s primary mission isn’t to make money but to spread open-source code across the globe in the eventual hope of promoting “the development of the Internet as a public resource.”

 

And after Brendan Eich had spent just a few days on the job, Mozilla came to the conclusion that it’s community and its mission were endangered by having him remain as CEO. But what’s truly interesting in terms of Farhad Manjoo’s essay is the language he uses in this paragraph. He writes:

 

In such an environment, it isn’t out of bounds to consider how a certain leader’s political views might affect employees’ passion for their mission. If the community’s cohesiveness is Mozilla’s primary advantage over its rivals, the fact that Mr. Eich’s views on gay marriage might have posed some danger to that community was almost by definition disqualifying. If his job was to motivate people, and he was instead causing people to question the community’s ethic—well, at the least, you can say he wasn’t doing a good job.

 

A very revealing paragraph and we need to take it apart and consider it. What Farhad Manjoo is writing here is that that the organization known as Mozilla is so intently and unanimously committed to the legalization of same-sex marriage that it cannot allow any breach in that wall of unanimity. It cannot allow a CEO who merely back in 2008 wrote a $1,000 check to an effort that was supported by the majority of California’s voters. That is a very revealing statement, and the use of the word danger here is incredibly revealing. Going back to his statement, he said that Mr. Eich’s view on gay marriage “might have posed some danger to that community.” Danger: a very interesting word. It implies, on the one hand, that there is such a brittleness to that unanimity that it causes a danger to the community if this CEO had back in 2008 just written that $1,000 check.

 

Responding to Farhad Manjoo is Ramesh Ponnuru writing for Bloomberg View in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He writes:

 

That’s a frustrating argument [that is, the argument by Mr. Manjoo], because the question is whether people, even if they favor same-sex marriage themselves, ought to tolerate those who oppose it or should instead judge them lacking in public-spiritedness and cast them out of the community.

 

In other words Ramesh Ponnuru goes right at the word that was used by Farhad Manjoo—the word community. If the community is endangered by having Brendan Eich as CEO after he had made every indication that he was fully supportive of homosexual employees, what in the world does that community consist of? On what foundation is it established? And the use of the word danger? Ramesh Ponnuru goes right at it. He suggests that that word is simply alarming because, as he says, the question is whether people, even if they favor same-sex marriage themselves, are now even going to tolerate those who oppose it or, to use his words, “should instead judge them lacking in public spiritedness and cast them out of the community.” In other words, the community is only a community if everyone in the community agrees with the legalization of same-sex marriage. That is an incredibly revealing statement and it’s made by Farhad Majoo in The New York Times and it is very clearly understood by Ramesh Ponnuru at BusinessWeek Bloomberg View.

 

But the most important article appeared yesterday in the pages of The New York Times. Frank Bruni, an openly gay columnist for The New York Times, wrote an article entitled “The New Gay Orthodoxy.” He began that article with these words:

 

To appreciate how rapidly the ground has shifted, go back just two short years, to April 2012. President Obama didn’t support marriage equality, not formally. Neither did Hillary Clinton. And few people were denouncing them as bigots whose positions rendered them too divisive, offensive and regressive to lead.

 

But that’s precisely the condemnation that tainted and toppled Brendan Eich after his appointment two weeks ago as the new chief executive of the technology company Mozilla. On Thursday he resigned, clearly under duress and solely because his opposition to gay marriage diverged from the views of too many employees and customers.

 

Something remarkable has happened — something that’s mostly exciting but also a little disturbing, and that’s reflected not just in Eich’s ouster at Mozilla, the maker of the web browser Firefox, but in a string of marriage-equality victories in federal courts over recent months, including a statement Friday by a judge who said that he would rule that Ohio must recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the state.

 

The he continues with these very important words:

 

And the development I’m referring to isn’t the broadening support for same-sex marriage, which a clear majority of Americans now favor. No, I’m referring to the fact that in a great many circles, endorsement of same-sex marriage has rather suddenly become nonnegotiable. Expected. Assumed. Proof of a baseline level of enlightenment and humanity. Akin to the understanding that all people, regardless of race or color, warrant the same rights and respect.

 

Making his point, he continued with these words, “Even beyond the circles, the debate is essentially over, in the sense that the trajectory is immutable and the conclusion foregone.” That entire argument needs to be looked at very closely. Frank Bruni is writing with the wind at his back, in terms of this moral revolution. The moral revolution he has called for, been an activist for, and is now celebrating, is taking place and it is, to use his own words, “immutable and the conclusion foregone.” In other words, they are the victors.

 

But how are they handling their victory? That’s where Frank Bruni writes with very considerable insight and honesty. He says that the endorsement of same-sex marriage in a great many circles has rather suddenly become nonnegotiable, to use his words, “expected, assumed,” and then consider these words again: “proof of a baseline level of enlightenment and humanity.” Well that’s really where we stand or, at least, that’s where Brendan Eich stood. And that’s where the public conversation now stands and that’s where we find ourselves facing a very interesting moment, a very strategic moment in this moral revolution. Because, as Brendan Eich was the first in this kind of role to be ousted simply for writing a $1,000 check in 2008, he will not be the last.

 

Later in his article, Frank Bruni writes this: “Increasingly, opposition to gay marriage is being equated with racism — as indefensible, un-American.” He quotes Jo Becker, a New York Times writer who has a book entitled, Forcing the Spring, on this issue coming out later this month, and she said, “What was once a wedge issue became wrapped in the American flag.” Bruni then explains:

 

Becker mentioned what she called a rebranding of the movement over the last five years, with two important components. First, gay marriage was framed in terms of family values. Second, advocates didn’t shame opponents and instead made sympathetic public acknowledgment of the journey that many Americans needed to complete in order to be comfortable with marriage equality.

 

That’s another very important argument. In this new book, Jo Becker’s going to argue that the gay rights movement on the issue of same-sex marriage won because they made two changes in the trajectory in the strategy of their movement. First, they frame the issue of same-sex marriage in terms of family values, but secondly, she writes they didn’t shame their opponents and instead they wrote sympathetically of the journey that Americans, in their words, needed to make in order to be comfortable with marriage equality. That’s a very important insight and it points to the momentum of this movement; a momentum that has shifted into a very fast acceleration just in recent months and weeks. The proof of that is the fact that Jo Becker has a book coming out later this month in which she talks about a change in the strategy of the movement, but clearly the ouster Brendan Eich indicates that that change is changing again. In other words, that acknowledgment of the fact that many Americans need to make some kind of journey to the legitimation and legalization of same-sex marriage, well now that tolerance is gone; just read the headlines about Brendan Eich.

 

And that alarmed even Frank Bruni. He cited Andrew Sullivan, one of the world’s most influential gay theorists and writers. In response to the ouster Brendan Eich, Andrew Sullivan said that it should disgust anyone who is “interested in a tolerant and diverse society.” Concluding his own essay, Frank Bruni wrote this:

 

Sullivan is right to raise concerns about the public flogging of someone like Eich. Such vilification won’t accelerate the timetable of victory, which is certain. And it doesn’t reflect well on the victors.

 

Well at this point, one of the most important observations that those who oppose same-sex marriage can make about this conversation is that we’re really not a part of it. This is now shifting to a conversation mostly within the community of those who favor, ardently favor, the legalization of same-sex marriage. The most interesting conversation right now is not taking place among those who are on the losing side of this cultural and moral revolution, but those who are on apparently the winning side. And those on the winning side are now divided into two very specific and well-identifiable camps: those who want to allow no voice whatsoever contrary to their position, who want to allow for no one to be in any position other than public, ardent advocacy of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and those, on the other hand, you say that’s a fanaticism that we simply should not accept in our movement and that does not reflect well on us in victory. But as these articles and the conversation makes clear, it is those who hold to the first position who are right now driving the momentum and not those who are registering concern.

 

Shifting to another very interesting story that emerged in recent days, the MIT Technology Review, that is the technology journal published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, released last Friday an article entitled “How the Internet is Taking Away America’s Religion.” The subtext in the title said this:

 

Using the Internet can destroy your faith. That’s the conclusion of a study showing that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use.

 

As the article makes very clear, back in 1990, only 8% of the US population had no religious preference. By 2010, it was more than doubled to 18%. That’s a difference, in terms of raw population numbers, of about 25 million people. As the article in MIT Technology Review said, evidently these 25 million people, all of them, have somehow lost their religion. That raises an obvious question, the article says: how come? Why are Americans losing their faith? And then they turned to Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. He’s analyzed the data in detail. He says that the demise is the result of several factors, but the most controversial of the factors he brings to fore is the rise of the Internet. He concludes his MIT Technology Review that the increase in Internet use in the last two decades has caused a significant drop in religious affiliation.

 

Allen Downey used a massive sample of about 9,000 people, and as the background information, he drew his data from the General Social Survey—that’s a very authoritative sociological analysis of the American population. He looked at data related to religious preference and religious identification and then, tracing this secularization trend in the United States, he correlated it with other factors. Those factors include, for instance, about 25% of the rate was probably due to the fact that there are fewer people in America who are experiencing a religious upbringing. Allen Downey’s exactly right. The most likely indicator that an individual will have a strong religious preference is the fact that he or she was raised in a household with parents who had that very same religious identification. But he says that massive increase in secular Americans, only about 25% of that increase can be attributed to this factor. What about increasing education? It’s well attested that increasing education, that is, increasing numbers of college graduates and those who go on to graduate programs beyond the baccalaureate, are correlated with a falloff in terms of religious identification. Might that be the issue? Downey comes back and says, well, it certainly is involved, but given the increase in college education over the same period, it can only account for about 5% of that doubling increase. In other words, 25% can be attributed to the fact that fewer Americans are being raised in religious households, about 5% can be attributed to the fact that there are increasing numbers of Americans who are obtaining higher education and all the experiences that that will bring, but that leaves about 70% of this massive doubling of the American population identified as secular. And then he asked the question, “What might explain that?” What happened in our society over that twenty-year period that would be correlated with this kind of increase in secularization? He came to the conclusion that the one thing that might well explain the vast majority of those who are now identifying as secular would be some relationship with the Internet. The MIT journal then explained, “It’s also straightforward to imagine how spending time on the Internet can lead to religious disaffiliation.” They cite Downey, who said:

 

For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to
find information about people of other religions (and none), and to interact with them personally. Conversely, it is harder (but not impossible) to imagine plausible reasons why disaffiliation might cause increased Internet use.

 

In other words, Downey suggests that there are good reasons to understand why the use of the Internet might lead to secularization, but there’s no causality he could imagine that would lead secular people to have a radical increase in their use of the Internet. In other words, he said the argument works, the theory works, only one way. That’s where the article gets even more interesting. As the technology journal writes:

 

If this third factor exists, it must have specific characteristics. It would have to be something new that was increasing in prevalence during the 1990s and 2000s, just like the Internet. “It is hard to imagine what that factor might be,” says Downey.

 

Now this raises a very important issue about how to read this kind of research, and the MIT Technology Review, to its credit, gets right to the heart of this issue. There is a significant difference between causation and correlation. Most of these studies—and that includes studies done in medical journals as much as a technology journal—they can’t prove causation because causation often takes place within a black box of what is unobservable. What they can trace is correlation. Most Americans, for instance, are not aware of the fact that the medical studies done in terms of the approval of medicines are based upon correlation not causation. How do some medicines work? Not even medical authorities know. All they have to prove is that they do work, that there is a correlation between the use of the medication and its efficacy in patients. But causation is often just outside the limits of our investigation, but we need to acknowledge that there is a difference. You can prove correlation, but that doesn’t automatically prove causation. This is where the MIT Technology Review has a very important paragraph, and they write this:

 

At this point, it’s worth spending a little time talking about the nature of these conclusions. What Downey has found is correlations and any statistician will tell you that correlations do not imply causation. If A is correlated with B, there can be several possible explanations. A might cause B, B might cause A, or some other factor might cause both A and B.

 

Are you tracking with me? In other words, what this study in MIT Technology Review demonstrates is that there is a correlation and, by the way, any fair-minded person who can read the math has to acknowledge that correlation. There are two trend factors from 1990 to 2010 and what do they demonstrate? They demonstrate that two things happened at the same time and at an incredibly similar velocity. They are the increase in secular Americans and the increase in the use of the Internet.

 

But does correlation in this case indicate causation? That’s where their argument about a third factor becomes very important. Could there be a third factor that could explain this, such that it’s simply an accident that the Internet and secularization are correlated in this way? The authors of the MIT journal come down to this:

 

So that leaves us with a mystery. The drop in religious upbringing and the increase in Internet use seem to be causing people to lose their faith. But something else about modern life that is not captured in this data is having an even bigger impact.

 

“What can that be?” they asked. They then invite readers to write in their suggested answers. Well I have a suggested response. I have a trajectory, a trend that I believe is even more correlated and more easily understood in terms of causation, in terms of this rapid increase in the number of secular Americans, and I think that third factor is nothing less than that great moral revolution we’ve been discussing already in this program. In other words, I think that moral revolution, a moral revolution that is both causing and caused by a radical secularization, is more likely to be the kind of third factor that doesn’t show up in the data in the General Social Survey that is tracking the kinds of things that in this study are believed to be correlated between the Internet use and the rise of secularization.

 

Now is the increase in secular Americans in some way tied to the Internet? I have no doubt that there is some relationship, but just as the editors of the MIT Technology Review, I’m suspicious that in this case correlation and causation are not the same. Correlation is interesting and it’s also an alarm to us, just in terms of the effect of the Internet in the larger society. You can’t really even talk about the moral revolution we’re talking about, in terms of the normalization of homosexuality, without the rise of social media and the digital age because those have become enormous engines for events such as the toppling of Brendan Eich as the CEO of Mozilla. But it appears to me that the moral issue, from a Christian worldview perspective, is far more fundamental than the technology issue. Technology is not neutral and Christians must understand that, but it is rare that a technology can have this kind of moral effect. It’s more likely that there is a moral cause that is now being accelerated by technological means. I’m going to suggest that to the MIT Technology Review.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. 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 04-07-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Mozilla CEO ouster clear example of scale and velocity of moral revolution

Why Mozilla’s Chief Had to Resign, New York Times (Farhad Manjoo)

Mozilla’s Gay-Marriage Purge, Bloomberg View (Ramesh Ponnuru)

2) Endorsement of same-sex marriage has become non-negotiable

The New Gay Orthodoxy, New York Times (Frank Bruni)

3) Is the internet taking away American religion?

How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion, MIT Technology Review

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 04-05-14

1) How should we think about slavery in the Bible? Why was it allowed?

2) Where should someone begin pursuing interest in classical music?

3) Is online schooling going to replace traditional schooling? What are the pros and cons?

Call with your questions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: 1-877-505-2058

Transcript: The Briefing 04-04-14

The Briefing

 

 April 4, 2014

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

 

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

 

Brendan Eich is out as CEO of Mozilla. That’s the organization behind the popular Firefox web browser. Why is he out? Because of a controversy that erupted over the fact that he had given back in 2008 a contribution of $1,000 to the effort to pass Proposition 8. That was the constitutional amendment that was passed by 52% of California’s voters, defining in that state marriage as between a man and a woman. Of course, that proposition was overturned by federal court decisions and the United States Supreme Court basically allowed that decision to stand back this past June. But the furor over Brendan Eich points to the big pattern in terms of the change in this society in the wake of this massive moral revolution normalizing homosexuality. As Alistair Barr reports for The Wall Street Journal:

 

The record of that donation appeared on the Internet soon after Mr. Eich, who invented JavaScript and helped start Mozilla in 1998, was appointed as [chief executive office just a few days ago]. After he was named, some Mozilla employees took to Twitter to call for his resignation. Mr. Eich then apologized for causing “pain” and made a commitment to promote equality for gay and lesbian individuals at Mozilla.

 

But that simply wasn’t enough. They called for his resignation and eventually, yesterday, they got what they called for: Mr. Eich resigned as CEO of Mozilla. In a statement Mozilla released yesterday, Mr. Eich said:

 

I have decided to resign as CEO effective today, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.

 

Also yesterday, Mozilla’s executive chairwoman, Mitchell Baker, apologized to the world and especially to Mozilla’s employees for Mr. Eich’s appointment. She wrote:

 

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public…But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

 

But what this points to, of course, is the closing of the American mind on the issue of the homosexual revolution, and the fact that those who at any point had resisted that revolution will now find themselves facing public controversy if they take on any public role; in particular, in the corporate world. Roger Kay, president of technology research firm Endpoint Technologies told The Wall Street Journal:

 

CEOs are now held to a higher standard than they used to be. Some of that is because of the Internet. All this information is out there and that can be shared through social media.

 

But the most important sentence yet written about this controversy was written by Alistair Barr. He wrote:

 

The controversy around Mr. Eich’s appointment demonstrates how gay marriage has grown to be seen as a bedrock civil-rights issue by many. In Silicon Valley, many see it as a nonnegotiable issue. Failure to support it is akin to tacitly backing the old race-discrimination laws of the 1950s and 1960s.

 

That is a profoundly important sentence. Alistair Barr gets right to the heart of the issue. As it turns out, it is exactly the case that those who have opposed at any point the celebration and normalization of homosexuality or the legalization of same-sex marriage now find themselves being painted as bigots, as prejudice homophobes, who have no place in polite society and certainly not in public policy, nor, emphatically in this case, in the corporate world, especially in Silicon Valley.

 

The lead sentence in the report on Mr. Eich’s resignation in The New York Times was equally emphatic. Written by Nick Bilton and Noam Cohen, they write:

 

In Silicon Valley, where personal quirks and even antisocial personalities are tolerated as long as you are building new products and making money, a socially conservative viewpoint may be one trait you have to keep to yourself.

 

As Bilton and Cohen report, the furor on the Internet over Mr. Eich’s appointment had led to the boiling point. One online dating service known as OkCupid set up a letter visible to those visiting its site on Firefox that took its aim at the chief executive officer. According to that letter:

 

Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

 

But the letter at OkCupid, which has since been taken down, also said:

 

Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

 

If nothing else that kind of language demonstrates the vehemence of those who are now opposed to anyone like Brendan Eich serving in a role such as CEO of Mozilla, and, again, remember that all he did was to give $1,000 to the campaign to support Proposition 8 back in 2008.

 

But let’s think for just a moment. Back in 2008, who supported the definition of marriage as exclusively the union of a man and woman? They would include such political figures as Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton both changed their positions in or after the 2012 presidential campaign, but back in 2008, they agreed with Brendan Eich in terms of the definition of marriage. So why are they now celebrated in the culture and Brendan Eich was forced to resign? It’s because both the president and the former secretary of state have publicly apologized for having held the previous position; something Brendan Eich said that he would not do. He said that he would stand for the full inclusion and equal treatment of Mozilla’s gay employees, but he refused to go back to 2008 and he refused to speak of his own considered opinion on the issue of same-sex marriage now. That was a fatal mistake, at least in terms of retaining his post. He’s out and the point is emphatically made.

 

Even some proponents and theorists of gay rights are alarmed at the development. Andrew Sullivan, among the most influential gay writers in the world, expressed his own outrage over Mr. Eich’s resignation. He said that Mr. Eich had been “scalped by some gay activists.” He then continued:

 

If this is the gay rights movement today — hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else — then count me out

 

Another brave voice of protest came in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. Columnist Debra J. Saunders wrote this:

 

Winning has made some advocates less tolerant, not more so. It’s not enough that they won, they have to make opponents grovel in penance.

 

She’s writing here, of course, of those who are the proponents of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and, as she says, winning hasn’t made those proponents more tolerant, but less so. And she goes on to say that what they now require is that their opponents—and these are her words—“grovel in penance.” As she says at the end of her article, all hail tolerance and diversity.

 

Brendan Eich is now out as CEO of Mozilla and that tells us a very great deal because he will not be the last to be either hounded out of such a post or excluded from consideration for such a job simply because at some point in the past, even many years ago, the individual had taken such a small step as giving a $1,000 contribution to a political campaign to support the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, when the then Democratic president of the United States and so many others in the Democratic Party and on the left shared that opinion then. The difference is some have since groveled and others have not.

 

This is one of the most ominous developments in our culture in recent years because what it demonstrates is the fact that those who are now pressing the agenda for the legalization of same-sex marriage and the normalization of homosexual behavior and relationships are now going to accept absolutely no dissent. They’re going to purge public ranks wherever they have influence of anyone who had the temerity or the conviction, even years ago, to take even a minor step against their agenda. That tells us a very great deal, and as Alan Bloom wrote many years ago a book famously entitled, The Closing of the American Mind, what we now see here is nothing less than the closing of the American heart. Brendan Eich is now the first and most public casualty in this kind of effort to eradicate all dissent. He will not be the last. We do not know yet who will be next, but the bigger issue here is the signal that his resignation sends. The signal that it is now quite possible in a short amount of time to hound someone out of office and out of influence for having held such a position or having taken such an action even many years ago. In that sense, his resignation yesterday will become one of those landmark days in terms of the moral revolution. We’ll remember this day for many years to come.

 

There was another very ominous development yesterday and it was on the opposite coast. In New York, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court ruled just yesterday that New York City can constitutionally bar religious groups from holding services in school buildings. That reverses a lower court decision that had given these congregations at least some time in terms of their use by rental of New York City’s public schools. The background of this is very interesting. There are so many of these schools that are empty, of course, on Sunday. Many of these schools in New York have auditoriums and those auditoriums are available for rent by community groups. Over the last several years, those auditoriums on Sunday have been rented by a large number of congregations, especially evangelical congregations and, most specifically, evangelical church plants. There has been a kickback in terms of the church’s use of these facilities. On the one hand, there have been secularists led by those, including the American Civil Liberties Unio,n who have gone so far as to argue that allowing church groups to meet in these auditoriums sends a signal that those schools are giving some kind of public endorsement to specific religious groups. On the other hand, there’s been a specific targeting of many of these evangelical congregations on the part of those who have complained about the teaching of these churches, specifically, you will not be surprised, their teachings about the sinfulness of homosexuality. As Benjamin Weiser and Sharon Otterman report for today’s edition of The New York Times:

 

The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — reversing Judge Loretta Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan — comes almost three years after it held that the city’s ban on worship in public schools did not violate the First Amendment right to free expression.

 

The judge, writing for the 2 to 1 majority on the panel, that was Judge Pierre Leval, wrote that the city’s ban on the church’s use of the facilities was “consistent with its constitutional duties.” He went on to argue that the ban did not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of a right to the free exercise of religion. Donna Lieberman, identified as executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union—it filed, by the way, a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the city’s ban—called the ruling a victory for religious freedom. She said, “When a school is converted to a church in this way, it sends a powerful message to students and to the community at large that the government favors that particular church.”

 

Now one of the interesting things reported in the national media is the fact that of the nation’s 50 largest public school systems only one—and that is New York—bans or intends to ban the use by churches of such public school facilities. That also tells us a very great deal. The future use of these New York public school auditoriums by many of these churches, numbering now in the dozens if not in the hundreds, is now very much in question. The church that appealed to the lower court decision, that church is identified as the Bronx Household of Faith, announced that it would appeal the panel’s ruling. That appeal can go to the Full Circuit Court or, eventually, all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

 

What we’re looking at here is a very serious infringement of basic religious liberties, and in a way that demonstrates something of the closing of not only the American mind and heart, but of the American public space when it comes to evangelical Christianity. And make no mistake; the churches that are targeted in this case are almost exclusively evangelical Christian congregations. But we’ll have to watch this case very, very carefully because if it stays where it is with this panel’s decision, it endangers not only the availability of such space for congregations in New York, but everywhere in the United States, because this is after all a US Court of Appeals and it will have a direct impact only within its area, its own circuit, but it will set a precedent that will eventually inform the entire nation. And that, we should note, is the truly dangerous development of the ruling that was handed down yesterday.

 

Earlier this week, we reported on those first legal same-sex marriages within the United Kingdom, including both Britain and Wales. We also discussed the fact that this has put the Church of England in a very precarious position. But we also noted that the Church of England had basically put itself in this very precarious position by sending such an uncertain sound on larger theological issues before the issue of same-sex marriage, but specifically on the issue of same-sex marriage. The Church of England officially even now defines marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman, but some of the church’s top leaders, including at least several bishops, are calling for an open defiance of the church’s ban on the performance of same-sex ceremonies. Furthermore, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby announced on the eve of those first legal same-sex ceremonies in England that the Church of England would drop its public opposition to same-sex marriage.

 

Then comes a report published in Religion News Service, a report by Trevor Gundry, indicating—and this is not coming as a surprise to us at this point—that attendance figures released by the Church of England show that Sunday worship attendance continues its downward slide and now stands at about half of where it was 45 years ago. This leads to a very important insight. Those churches that accommodate their theology, moving in a more liberal direction, hoping to retain their membership and attendance or, perhaps, even to achieve some outreach into the secular community, find that their numbers consistently decline. As Trevor Gundry reports, the report from the Archbishops’ Council Research and Statistics Department, released just days ago, shows that on average in 2012, 800,000 adults or about 2% of Britain’s adult population attended church on Sunday. That’s 2%, and that’s down from 1.6 million just in 1968. As so many observers of the church have noted, those churches and denominations most determined to make themselves relevant at any cost find themselves increasingly irrelevant.

 

Finally, I want to note that a week ago today, an American hero died. He was Commander, later Admiral and Senator, Jeremiah A. Denton, Junior. As a Naval aviator, he was shot down over enemy territory in Vietnam and taken as a celebrated prisoner of war. As Robert D. McFadden reports The New York Times:

 

The prisoner of war had been tortured for 10 months and beaten repeatedly by his North Vietnamese captors in recent days, and there were threats of more if he did not respond properly when the propaganda broadcast began. Haggard but gritty, Cmdr. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. slumped in a chair before the television cameras.

 

Pretending to be blinded by the spotlights, he began blinking — seemingly random spasms and tics. He answered interrogators’ questions with a trace of defiance, knowing he would be beaten again and again, but hoping that America would detect his secret message in Morse code.

 

To a question about American “war atrocities,” the captured pilot said: “I don’t know what is happening in Vietnam because the only news sources I have are North Vietnamese. But whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it, I support it, and I will support it as long as I live.”

 

The North Vietnamese, who had lost face in terms of what they hoped to be a propaganda victory, were infuriated when they learned that Commander Denton, in the Japanese-taped interview broadcast on American television on May 17, 1966, had blinked out the letters T-O-R-T-U-R-E. It was the first confirmation that American prisoners of war were being subjected to torture and atrocities during the Vietnam War. This heroic American put himself at further risk, even after he had been tortured several times, through the ingenious mechanism of overturning, indeed, reversing a North Vietnamese propaganda effort and simultaneously coming up with the ingenious method of sending a signal by Morse code through the blinking of his eyes, knowing that eventually Americans would observe what he was communicating.

 

Jeremiah Denton spent seven years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war. Upon his return, he became a rear admiral in the United States Navy. Later, he was elected by the citizens of Alabama to a term in the United States Senate. He died on Friday of last week at the age of 89. As the editors of The Wall Street Journal noted, even though he ingeniously and courageously sent that message by blinking his eyes, in the moral sense, Jeremiah Denton never blinked. And as they concluded their editorial statement, they quoted the statement that he made after he was released after seven years as a prisoner of war. His statement was this:

 

We are honored to have had the opportunity to serve our country under difficult circumstances. We are profoundly grateful to our commander-in-chief and to our nation for this day. God bless America.

 

His death and his courageous moral example should not go without our consideration and our comment. Individuals like Jeremiah Denton, along with their example of courageous service and leadership, are those who purchased American freedom and defend it even still. At the website for today’s edition of The Briefing, you will find a link to the video of Commander Jeremiah Denton’s heroic appearance on television back in 1966. You will see the blinking of his eyes; the blinking of his eyes, as The Wall Street Journal rightly said, of a man who didn’t blink.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember that tomorrow will bring another release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Remember to call also with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. 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’m speaking to you from Destin, Florida, and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

The Briefing 04-04-14

1) CEO of Mozilla resigns amid outrage over 2008 Proposition 8 donation

Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich to Step Down, Wall Street Journal (John Kell)

Mozilla’s Chief Felled by View on Gay Unions, New York Times (Nick Bilton and Noam Cohen)

The Internet is tolerant. Don’t agree? Keep out, SF Gate (Debra J. Saunders)

2) Appeals court rules New York City can bar religious services from public schools

Court: NYC can ban church service in public school, Wall Street Journal (Associated Press)

New York City Can Block Religious Services in Public Schools, Appeals Court Says, New York Times (Benjamin Weiser and Sharon Otterman)

3) Relevance at any cost becomes irrelevance: Church of England attendance slides

Church of England Sunday attendance continues downward slide, Religion News Service (Trevor Gundry)

4) War hero Jeremiah A Denton dies at 89

Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., 89, Dies; With Blinks, Vietnam P.O.W. Told of Torture, New York Times (Robert D. McFadden)

Denton Jr. Blinking Morse Code ‘T-O-R-T-U-R-E’

The Briefing 04-03-14

1) Supreme Court lifts ban on aggregate campaign donations

Supreme Court lifts ban on aggregate campaign donations, USA Today (Richard Wolf and Fredreka Schouten)

2) Why is Mississippi religious freedom law controversial? It shouldn’t be.

Mississippi religious freedom law could bar gay people from businesses, The Guardian (Jon Swaine)

Mississippi: Bill to Shield Religious Practices Passes, New York Times (AP)

3) Boy Scout “halfway policy” now backfires as gay troop leader is fired

Boy Scouts Dismiss a Gay Troop Leader in Seattle, New York Times (Erik Eckholm)

4) American courts increasingly adopt European interpretation of religious liberty

How Europe defines religious freedom, Economist

5) A moral trend: Denmark couples not having babies

Sun, sex and a baby: the unusual package holiday for Danes, The Guardian (Michael Booth)

Transcript: The Briefing 04-03-14

The Briefing

 

 April 3, 2014

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

 

It’s Thursday, April 3, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

In a 5-4 split decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled yesterday that aggregate campaign contributions in federal elections could not be capped. As Richard Wolf and Fredreka Schouten of USA Today reported:

 

The justices ruled 5-4, in a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that limits on the total amount of money donors can give to all candidates, committees and political parties are unconstitutional. The decision leaves in place the base limits on what can be given to each individual campaign.

 

Campaign spending has been a controversial issue in the United States going all the way back to the earliest years of the Republic. The balancing of rights and responsibilities and the fear of government corruption have led to this continuing conversation. The balancing issues are these: on the one hand, there is a clear First Amendment right to the freedom of expression, to free speech, and the courts have ruled, pervasively and comprehensively, that this refers to political speech and that campaign contributions are a form of political speech. On the other side of the issue is the recognition that we do not want to live in a country in which campaigns can be simply bought and sold. Over the last several years, there’s been a cycle, rather now predictable: Congress passes legislation, the legislation itself controversial; the legislation seeks to put some kind of limits either upon individual campaigns or, in the case of the law just struck down, in the aggregate amount, the total amount that any citizen can give to all federal election campaigns combined; then comes the inevitable court challenge and the courts, leading all the way up to the US Supreme Court, have often modified or reversed or, in this case, struck down Congress’s attempt to put these limitations upon campaign spending. Much of this is simply due to the messiness of having a Democratic Republic, a form of government in which citizens can participate in the election of fellow citizens to public office, ranging all the way from local office to the office of President of the United States. But the balancing act is very delicate, not to mention controversial, and it is almost impossible to know how Congress can adopt constitutionally-valid legislation that will actually have an effect.

 

There’s another more immediate background to this, and that is the incredible escalation in the cost of elections, especially at the federal level. Congressional elections, in terms of spending, now are quantum multiples of what they were just a few generations ago, even in real dollars. Much of this is actually due to the explosion of the media culture. The rise of television is one of the most potent means of electoral campaigning, comes with a tremendous cost. Television cost for advertising and public messaging have been incredibly high and they’re showing no signs of abating, even as other forms of media now supplement what campaigns do through the television medium. The reality when you look at this is that television has made federal election campaigns hugely expensive. Then we’re left in a very interesting position. If we do not allow campaign contributions, rather generous and widespread campaign contributions, then those who run for office will be limited to those who can self-fund their campaigns. In recent years, this has become more prominent than ever. Even generations ago, the United States Senate was sometimes cynically referred to as “The Millionaire’s Club” because only millionaires could afford to run. But we do not want a government of those ruling by virtue of wealth. That kind of oligarchy is exactly what the United States Constitution was intended to prevent.

 

In the United States, campaign contributions at the federal level come from many sources. One of those, generally allied with the left, is the political power and the economic power of labor unions and similar associations. On the right, corporate giving has been a major issue, but in recent years, corporate support for federal elections has been rather evenly spread between both Democrats and Republicans. The ability of individual donors to participate in federal elections is key to the essential integrity of our democracy, but, of course, it also comes with grave risks. Those with enormous amounts of capital can buy their way into political influence. The decision handed down by the court yesterday does nothing to modify the $2,600 limit on individual contributions to specific federal campaigns. What the court struck down yesterday was the law that had established a limit of $123,200 on the total amount that any individual could spend on all federal campaigns in a given cycle put together. The court ruled, again by 5-4 majority, that that was an unconstitutional limit upon the political participation of individual American citizens. The decision handed down by the court yesterday puts an end to that cap and an end to that law, but, as we all know, it did not put an end to the conversation or to the controversy. Those you can count on will continue.

 

On Tuesday of this week, the legislature of the state of Mississippi adopted a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That was a very important step and one taken not without controversy. The situation in Mississippi was immediately compared to the controversy that occurred several weeks ago in the state of Arizona where a law there, also establishing a model on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was not signed by Governor Jan Brewer, but was instead vetoed. This led to appreciation and celebration on the left, and yet left many wondering the fate of religious liberty in the state of Arizona and beyond. It also lead many libertarians and even some on the left wondering if the left’s response to that particular legislation had not been overblown; indeed, even endangering their own constitutional rights and religious liberty. The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act was adopted overwhelmingly by Congress in 1993 in response to a Supreme Court decision in 1990 that had set limits on religious freedom. Congress responded overwhelmingly. In the entire Congress, adding both the House and the Senate together, there were only three dissenting votes. In other words, it was legislation that crossed the political spectrum, overwhelming support of both the left and the right, among both Republicans and Democrats. In the Senate, cosponsors of the legislation had been Democratic liberal Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican conservative Orrin Hatch.

 

The legalization of same-sex marriage has changed the terrain and has changed the discussion about this law, but the controversy in Mississippi points to something very interesting. The reality is that religious liberty is being threatened from many different sources, and when the state of Mississippi receives this kind of controversy for adopting legislation that basically mirrors a law overwhelmingly adopted by the United States Congress and signed into law by the president of the United States, then Bill Clinton, it tells you that something serious is afoot and that the terrain on the larger issue of religious liberty is genuinely changing. And those who are concerned for the perpetuation and protection of religious liberty have to see what has happened in Mississippi as a very positive and healthy development and the controversy about it as very alarming. Under the leadership of those in the legislature there in Mississippi, such as Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, the Mississippi legislature adopted legislation that avoided many of the problems associated with the proposed law in Arizona. The fact that so many now find this law controversial is itself an ominous development.

 

Just a few months ago, the Boy Scouts of America changed its long-standing policy and announced that it would no longer discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation for members of scouts, that is, for the boys and young men involved in the scouting organization. This was itself a moral revolution. The Boy Scouts had for years fought, going all the way to the United States Supreme Court, in order to defend its right and its responsibility to establish membership criteria for those boys involved in scouting that excluded the participation of openly gay scouts. Just two years before the change of policy a matter of months ago, the national leadership of the Boy Scouts of America had established that it would not change its policy and also revealed that the vast majority of the parents of the young men and boys involved in scouting fully expected the Boy Scouts to maintain that policy, but they did not maintain it and in a very controversial move just months ago, they reversed themselves. But they did not change the policy that excluded the participation of openly gay scouting leaders, of adult leaders in the scouting organization. The New York Times reported yesterday that the Boy Scouts had now dismissed a gay troop leader in Seattle, Washington. Writing for The New York Times, Erick Eckholm reported:

 

Nearly a year after announcing that it would admit gay boys but still prohibit openly gay leaders from its ranks, the Boy Scouts of America has dismissed a gay scoutmaster.

 

The dismissed scoutmaster is named Geoffrey McGrath. He’s an Eagle Scout and software engineer in Seattle, who is reported to be married to his longtime companion. The troop is sponsored by the Rainier Beach United Methodist Church, described by Eckholm as “one of hundreds of reconciling congregations in the national Methodist Church that performs same-sex marriages and promotes equality for gays and lesbians.” The fact that this story of the dismissal this openly gay leader made the pages of yesterday’s edition of The New York Times confirms the analysis that we offered when the policy change was announced almost a year ago. In changing its policy in the halfway measure of accepting openly gay scouts, but not openly gay scouting leaders, the Boy Scouts national organization effectively adopted a policy that would please no one. This kind of halfway-house or compromise policy was adopted by the scouts in order to avoid the kind of criticism they were getting for many national sources, including some board members of the national organization who were CEOs of major American corporations, who threatened to pull all support from the Boy Scouts of America if the policy was not changed. The Boy Scouts have been targeted in terms of this kind of policy for some time. The organization was under incredible pressure to change its policy and to accept openly gay scouts and openly gay leaders, but the policy, as was adopted almost a year ago, went halfway and that halfway policy now has the Boy Scouts again totally in hot water. Responding to the controversy over the fired openly-gay scouting leader, national organization authorities said that the issue only became public because the man had stated in a public announcement in the media that he was openly gay. This leads to another set of circumstances that the Boy Scouts of America had hoped to avoid in terms of controversy. Just how openly gay must a person be in order to be recognized as too openly gay to serve as an adult leader in the scouting organization.

 

There are several lessons to be learned by all of us as we look at this situation. In the first place, we need to understand that there is no refuge in a halfway policy. This kind of morally-compromised policy puts the Boy Scouts in the position of saying it’s okay to be openly gay as a scout, but not as a scouting leader. People on both sides of the national controversy over the normalization of homosexuality recognize that that is an untenable position. It simply cannot long stand. The second thing to recognize is that those who are pressing for the normalization of homosexuality, not just the legalization of same-sex marriage but the normalization of homosexuality writ large across the culture, will not be satisfied with the kind of policy change that the Boy Scouts adopted just months ago. They will press until the Boy Scouts eventually accommodate themselves to the total normalization of homosexuality. The very fact that this story found its way into The New York Times tells us that those who are pushing this agenda now want this to become a new cause in order that the Boy Scouts find themselves under increased pressure to go ahead and change the second part of their policy; now to accept openly gay scouting leaders as well. We can only predict that that change will be relatively fast in coming. The untenable position the scouts had put themselves into in the present will lead to even further changes in the future and, as many will predict, it will lead to the eventual redefinition of the scouting organization writ large. But this is a culture-wide controversy. It did not begin with the Boy Scouts and it profoundly will not end there.

 

Shifting to a different font on the issue of religious liberty, the Erasmus column in The Economist published in London, ran an article entitled, “How Europe Defines Religious Freedom.” The point of this column is very important. It distinguishes between the view of religious freedom held in United States, at least in terms of our political and legal heritage, and the view of religious liberty held in Europe. As The Economist points out, the fundamental right of religious liberty in the United States is respected by the United States Constitution, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”—that statement, of course, from the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment. As The Economist states:

 

This elegant form of words, on whose interpretation millions of words have been expended, has no precise equivalent in Europe. The “free exercise” of religion is guaranteed [in Europe], albeit with qualifications, by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

 

That document reads:

 

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

 

The European statement goes on to say that freedom of religion can be limited in the interests of what is identified as “public safety, the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” As The Economist states, that seems quite a broad range of exemptions. So in theory, at least, there’s a vast distinction between the way religious liberty is defined and defended, relatively defended at least, in the United States and Europe. There is no parallel in Europe to the No Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. That’s because several European nations continue to have established state churches. But there is also no precise equivalent to the Free Exercise Clause because the religious liberties that are stated within the document of the European Convention on Human Rights do not have the precise equivalent of what is found in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

 

But the point being made by The Economist is that even though Europe and the United States now differ in theory, they are increasingly not differing in practice. And as the article makes clear, this is not because Europe is moving towards the American example, but because American courts are increasingly moving to the European example. And that European example leads to an ongoing negotiation of religious rights between those who argue for the free exercise of religious liberty and, on the other hand, those who say their religious liberty has to accommodate itself to the interposition and the promotion of other rights. In the United States, as I have said, this has led to the situation in which we have a conflict of liberties. We have the new and very assertive power of erotic liberty being put over against religious liberty, and increasingly in the courts and in at least many arenas of public opinion, erotic liberty is triumphing over religious liberty.

 

Perhaps the most important insight from the Erasmus column in The Economist is that it is hardly good news that American courts and the court of American political opinion are now trending towards an agreement with the European settlement on religious liberty. That settlement is not the equivalent of the American tradition of religious liberty and we had better understand that. But it is very helpful to know, as we analyze the current situation with the threats to religious liberty in our own day, that American courts are increasingly thinking European on these issues. This is something we will have to watch, and we’ll have to watch it very closely.

 

Finally, a very revealing article appeared recently in The Guardian, a left-wing paper published in London. But the article isn’t about something going on in Great Britain, but rather something that is taking place in Denmark. But in order to understand this new development we have to understand what’s not taking place in Denmark, and what’s not taking place are Danish couples having children. The birth rate in Denmark is now so low that virtually everyone there understands that the future survival of the Danish civilization is very much at stake. Now note carefully, the Danish are known for their very liberal and permissive sexual morality, but the moral separation of sex from the institution of marriage has led to a breakdown in terms of the childbearing among Danish couples. Danish couples are simply not having babies. The current birth rate in Denmark is as low as ten for every 1,000 people. The new development is that there is a tour company in Denmark that is offering a rebate to couples who on holiday will actually begin the process of having a baby. The tour company’s advertising this as “an ovulation discount.” But here’s a prediction: once you have the separation of sex from the institution of marriage and the inevitable fallen birthrates takes place, an ovulation discount or whatever you want to call it is not going to reverse that trend.

 

This is a moral trend, not first and foremost an economic trend, and, as governments around the world have discovered, you cannot reverse a moral trend even with economic incentives. When marriage is not protected and respected at the very center of the civilization and the society, the birth rate will fall, and that’s because that is a moral issue not first and foremost a financial issue. As Christians must well understand, this is fundamentally a worldview issue, and the worldview problem is not going to be reversed with an ovulation discount offered by a tour company.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. 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’m speaking to you from Destin, Florida, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

Transcript: The Briefing 04-02-14

The Briefing

 

 April 2, 2014

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

 

It’s Wednesday, April 2, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

Same-sex marriages became legal in the United Kingdom (that is, Britain and Wales) on this past Saturday. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said that the Church of England would drop its official opposition to that legalization, and political leaders on both sides of the political spectrum in the United Kingdom voice their support for the new celebrations of hundreds of same-sex marriages that took place beginning on Saturday. British Prime Minister David Cameron said, “Congratulations to the gay couples who have already been married and my best wishes to those about to be on this historic day.” This development puts Britain in that very small list of countries that have now legalized same-sex marriage. Viewed worldwide, those nations are a very small minority, but they tend to be in the advanced industrial economies of the West and they tend to be in the parts of the world that are influencing the rest, especially as many of these nations are putting increased pressure on others to follow in their example. But as the social affairs commentator for the BBC remarked, this puts Britain in a very unusual situation. It is a country that now has two official definitions of marriage. One, a definition that includes same-sex marriage is now held by the government. The other, a view that defines marriage as only the union of a man and a woman, is held by the established church in that nation, the Church of England. One bishop of that church, that is the Right Reverend Graham James commented, “The Church of England believes marriage is between one man and one woman for life.” He went on to say, “It’s untidy for the law to have two definitions, but I think we can live with the untidiness.”

 

On the other hand, there are many within both the government and the church who are suggesting that this situation of having two definitions of marriage, however untidy it may be at the present, is not going to last very long. Inevitably, the argument now goes, the Church of England will have to come to accept same-sex marriage and at least some within the Church of England are already championing that cause. Dr. Jeffrey John, who is the Dean of St. Albans, a major role the Church of England, and a man whose previous nomination to be a bishop led to a nationwide controversy because he is an openly gay cleric, told the Gay News Service in Europe, “Along with many Church of England people, in fact I think most of them despite the impression that is given by the official spokesman, I am overjoyed that marriage is now possible for gay people and I wish those who are getting married today and in the future every happiness.” Dr. John then went on to say this, “I don’t doubt that God is rejoicing too because when two people love each other and commit themselves to one another in this way, they are expressing the deepest part of themselves, the part that is closest to God’s own nature as love.” He concluded, “I hope and pray the day will soon come when the church will give its official blessing to all couples equally. Meanwhile, I’d ask all gay newlyweds please not to judge God by the official church. Whatever it says, you have God’s blessing already.” That’s a very interesting, indeed, troubling statement from an official of the Church of England, but it reveals something very important in terms of our contemporary understanding. There are those who in defiance of both Scripture and the authoritative teaching of the church are stating that God is pleased with same-sex marriage.

 

How can they make such a statement? The actual wording of Jeffrey John’s statement makes very clear that he has abstracted a God who is not the God of the Scripture nor the God who has been affirmed, confessed, and worshiped by the Church of England. That is exactly what is taking place not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States, where there are many who are arguing that God is pleased with gay marriage. But even as they make that argument, at least we should press for the honest assessment that the God to whom they refer is not the God of the Bible, and in this case, we notice that the language is increasingly making that very clear. This is a God who has to meet our current expectations, in terms of the larger secular culture. This should remind us of a statement made several months ago by retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who said that he wouldn’t worship a God who had a negative moral judgment on homosexuality and those who are engaged in. That reveals the real theological contours of the current debate. What we’re looking at here are two radically different renderings of the entire theological scheme. We’re not looking at a head-to-head confrontation, in terms of people operating out of the same theological paradigm or understanding, who are arguing over merely the issue of same-sex marriage or even the issue of human sexuality. We’re looking at two radically different deities. We’re looking at two radically different understandings of Christianity. We’re looking at two radically different understandings of humanity and the gift of sexuality. What the statement here reveals is that this is not a confrontation over same-sex marriage, but a theological collision between two comprehensively different theologies. One that has a conscious and intentional continuity with the Christian tradition rooted in Scripture and the other that has a prior commitment to a theological accommodation with the current moral demands of the secular world.

 

Dr. Jeffrey John is not alone in terms of leaders of the Church of England making this kind of case. For instance, the Right Reverend Alan Wilson, who is the Bishop of Buckingham, said that priest should get, in his words, “creative” to get around restrictions in the law of both the nation and of the church for same-sex couples to be married and gay clergy who wish to marry should do so in defiance of the official line. This comes in a report from The Telegraph, a major London newspaper, and John Bingham, the religious affairs editor for that paper, begins by saying, “Gay clergy should follow their conscience and defy the Church of England’s restrictions on same-sex marriage.” He reported that this was said by the prominent bishop, the Right Reverend Alan Wilson, and this is proposed as “the most radical change ever made to the legal definition of marriage in Britain.” That is, of course, no overstatement. But the Bishop of Buckingham went on to say, according to The Telegraph, that several current serving bishops of the Church of England are themselves in gay partnerships, and the bishop urged them to publicly acknowledge their status for the sake of what he called “honesty and truthfulness” and he also suggested they should consider marrying in order to make the point graphically clear.

 

A major news analysis by Damian Thompson, also published in The Telegraph, is headlined, “Gay Marriage Will Change the Church of England Forever.” He writes, “As of today, their power is broken.” He continued, “The first British gay weddings today face the Church of England with a perfectly simple question to which it can only reply with embarrassed throat-clearing.” The question, he said, comes down to this (the question faced by the church): “Do we go along with this or not?” The legislation passed by Parliament that authorized the legalization of same-sex marriage, permitting those marriages that began last Saturday, made same-sex marriage legal by the government of Great Britain. But that same legislation prohibited the established church (that is, the Church of England) from performing same-sex ceremonies. In the odd political mixture, the situation of having an established church that turns out to have little political authority within the state, Britain now finds itself asking the question as to whether or not it can continue with the government defining marriage one way and the church the other. There were protections, supposedly called protections, for the Church of England written into the legislation, but as Damien Thompson indicates, with so much dissension within the Church of England and with its weakness to prevent same-sex marriage from happening, it seems untenable, perhaps even inconceivable, that the Church of England can continue its stance. Add to that the evidence that on Friday night, just on the eve of these first same-sex marriages in Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, as I said earlier, said that the Church of England will drop its political opposition to same-sex marriage.

 

The actual legislation adopted by the Church of England included what British Prime Minister David Cameron called a “triple lock,” a threefold set of legal strictures that, on the one hand, prevents the Church of England from performing same-sex marriages and also, supposedly, protects the Church of England from any legal requirement that it perform same-sex marriages. A third provision in the law extends this protection from churches being required to perform same-sex ceremonies to churches other than the Church of England, but legal observers in Great Britain believe that that protection is very legally thin. Damien Thompson then writes this:

 

Here’s my prediction. As of today, pro-gay clergy will begin to unpick [the prime minister’s] “triple lock” banning parishes from holding gay weddings; during the next Parliament it will cease to exist. Priests who want to marry same-sex couples, or indeed marry their own gay lovers, will just do it. Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical parishes that reject the whole notion won’t be forced to host such ceremonies, but both these wings of the [Church of England] are moving in a liberal direction, and in the long run demographic change will finish the job.

 

We can certainly understand the logic of Damien Thompson’s argument. He appears to have the current cultural winds at his back when he writes that the caving in of the Church of England is virtually inevitable and the accommodation of Parliament to the same-sex marriages being performed by the Church of England is just a matter of time, and, as he predicts, a very short amount of time.

 

But it is the conclusion of Damien Thompson’s essay that really should have our attention because it applies not only to the Church of England, but to any church or denomination. He writes this:

 

It’s hard to overestimate the weakening effect this will have on the central structures of the Church. The General Synod’s deliberations will be rendered irrelevant. The fiction of the “Anglican Communion” will be abandoned. Conservative provinces in Africa will repudiate the [Church of England]; the last Lambeth Conference’s disciplinary action against the anything-goes American Episcopal Church will cease to mean anything.

 

In the 1990s, when I started reporting on Anglican affairs, gay marriage was regarded as a non-negotiable horror by most clergy and churchgoers. The shattering of that consensus has happened far more quickly than even the most optimistic Christian gay campaigners thought possible.

 

His last sentence demands our full attention:

 

And if the centre cannot hold, one has to ask: what is up for negotiation next? Belief in an afterlife? The divinity of Jesus of Nazareth? After today, one thing is uncomfortably clear: the Church of England has lost the power – and even the inclination – to draw a line in the sand.

 

That is a profoundly important statement and it appears to be self-evidently true. The Church of England actually long ago stopped drawing lines in the sand. It began on issues of outright heresy, allowing bishops of the church even to become practical atheists. It refused to censure leaders of the church, teachers of the church, and bishops of the church who defied the creedal consensus of that church. And now on the issue of same-sex marriage, the church says that it opposes it, but will drop the political opposition, and some of the church’s own bishops are calling for the bishops who are living with openly gay partners to get married in defiance of the law. Damien Thompson is profoundly right. This situation leaves the Church of England in an untenable position, but if we think that this untenable position is new, we fail to learn the lessons of the past. The trajectory that is now experienced by the Church of England was established by an infinite number of theological compromises that preceded it. The refusal to draw the line on any number of important theological issues has now left the Church of England with no moral authority and apparently, as Damien Thompson writes, without even an inclination to oppose these forces. As he writes, “The Church of England has lost the power—and even inclination—to draw a line in the sand.”

 

Sadly enough, the Church of England is not alone in this predicament. By and large, the mainline Protestant denominations in the United States are in the very same predicament. But that predicament is not first of all nor even most fundamentally defined by the same-sex marriage issue. It’s defined by the issue of truth, and a church that will not stand for the truth wherever the truth is denied will find itself without both the power or the inclination to stand against the cultural tide that now pushes so much support and demand for same-sex marriage.

 

Shifting to the United States and what our entertainment culture tells us about our larger culture, The New York Times last Thursday ran an article by Alessandra Stanley entitled, “When We Were Young, and Dads Were Men.” Alessandra Stanley is a television reviewer for The New York Times, and in this article she writes:

 

There is a search on for the non-nurturing father. The primal paterfamilias who hollers, never helps with homework, doesn’t consider soccer a sport and goes on camping trips with his buddies, not his sons, is in demand.

 

 

What Alessandra Stanley is addressing here is the fact that Hollywood, with three different programs debuting in recent months, is trying to go back to a previous era in order to find a father who is authoritative. As she writes, current fathers, especially fathers portrayed in Hollywood, are anything but authoritative. Speaking of authoritative fathers, Stanley writes:

 

Those kinds of dads do not exist anymore, not at least among the sitcom writers in Hollywood, who are evidently immersed in prenatal co-parenting and Lamaze class couvade. So television is turning into a time machine, taking viewers back to an earlier age, when moms mostly stayed home, and dads came home to read the newspaper, not to take their offspring to Daddy & Me cake decorating classes. Those were the days when college cost a lot less, and not everyone expected to go.

 

What Alessandra Stanley is suggesting here is that the world has changed utterly and with it has changed, what Hollywood at least considers, an acceptable form of modern fatherhood. Authoritative fathering is out. The permissive fathers who now exist in the sitcoms and dramas of primetime television America are not authoritative in any sense, and yet, as she writes, there is a hunger in America to go back to that model of fatherhood, at least to watch it if not to experience it.

 

With great perception, she writes that many in the generations known as Generation X and the Millennials are longing to see that kind of father and they want to see it on the television screen even if they don’t get to see it in everyday life. But in order to see it, they have to go back in American history; back at least a generation. She writes of one program on the Fox Network known as “Surviving Jack.” It stars Christopher Maloney, formerly of “Law and Order SBU.” She writes, “It is the latest recovered-memory comedy, a series that begins in 1991” and is told by a man looking back at his adolescence and life with his father, and you’ve figured out by now, his father was named Jack. She writes also of ABC’s program, “The Goldbergs.” It stars Jeff Garland, formally of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” who plays a grumpy, disengaged dad in what she describes as “a period coyly described as 1980-something.” She also writes:

 

The Goldberg father is fat and choleric, the kind of man who takes off his pants the minute he gets home and nestles into a reclining armchair. Jack [of “Surviving Jack] is more of a “Great Santini” figure, a strict father who is busy, intense and formidable. At heart, of course, he is a loving husband and father; he just keeps it mostly to himself.

 

In an age in which many families simply do not even have fathers and many children live all or part of their childhood and adolescence without any father it all, Alessandra Stanley writes that there are many Americans who long to see this kind of picture. And, yet, the polarity she demonstrates is between authoritative and permissive. But what’s missing from her analysis are the insights that have been drawn from recent studies of fatherhood and, larger than even the issue of fatherhood, of parenting in general. Researchers are demonstrating over and over again that the spectrum actually runs from authoritarian to permissive. In the middle is authoritative. Amanda Ripley, in her work on how some students succeed in schools and others do not, points out that the model of parenting that brings the best results is that of authoritative parenting. It’s not authoritarian in which the father in this case or the parents in general lord authority over the children merely for the sake of authority, but rather steward that authority in an authoritative sense in order to guide and discipline, nurture and encourage their children toward defined goals; the main goal being to grow into a mature and moral adulthood.

 

Her article is actually a very sad commentary on America today and the state of so many families. But it is extremely telling that even Hollywood recognizes that what’s missing is the authoritative father. Of course, in many cases, there is a hunger for a father of any form that frames the experiences of many children and teenagers, even young adults. But what makes her analysis so very interesting is that the father-need that is now represented, at least by the interests of Hollywood with these programs, is a father who is genuinely authoritative, who loves his family, who loves his children, but operates from a basis of parental, indeed, of fatherly authority. That tells us a great deal. It also tells us much that in order to get the picture of this father Hollywood has to go back in time, simply believing that either these fathers now do not exist or that they are so out of step with our contemporary moment that portraying them in the present would be inconceivable, untenable, perhaps even unbelievable.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. 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’m speaking to you from Destin, Florida, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 04-02-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Same-sex marriage legal in United Kingdom as Anglican church drops opposition

Same-sex marriage now legal as first couples wed, BBC

Get used to gay marriage, Philip Hammond tells Tory critics, The Telegraph (Christopher Hope)

Gay marriage will change the Church of England forever, The Telegraph (Damian Thompson)

2) Hollywood attempts to portray real, authoritative fathers of a bygone era

When We Were Young, and Dads Were Men, New York Times (Alessandra Stanley)