The gospel that unites us

Trevin Wax reminds us to keep things in perspective. Among those things which are important there are levels of importance. It is a significant error to confuse those issues that divide Christians with those that define us as Christians. At Kingdom People:

When we makes gender issues a first-order matter and go so far as to call this a “gospel issue” (whether for or against women in pastoral ministry), we are exaggerating a distinction.

When we make formal Bible translations (over against the dynamic-equivalent translations) a test of fellowship and go so far as to express our hatred and derision for other translations, we are exaggerating a distinction.

When we decide that those who do not hold to the doctrines of grace (i.e. Calvinism) don’t truly understand the gospel, we are again exaggerating distinctions, providing rationale for our own existence at the expense of Christian fellowship.

I am convinced that much of our in-house squabbling over theological matters and our smug “pat-ourselves-on-the-back” attitude that says, Thank God I’m not like the egalitarians, the Emergents, the liturgical, the Arminians, the charismatics and the Catholics is actually a subconscious attempt to exaggerate the distinctions that provide us a reason for existing. We think of this exaggeration as a survival mechanism, but actually, it will kill our effectiveness. ....

Let me be clear on something. I do not believe we should do away with doctrinal distinctives. I am a Reformed-leaning, complementarian, Bible-driven minister who holds tightly to the fundamentals of the faith.

But I will not confuse second-order doctrinal distinctives with first-order doctrines. Once we journey down that road, we’ll eventually start confusing third-order doctrinal distinctives with first order doctrines, and we’ll wind up as isolated, irrelevant, and shrill as our independent friends.

We should not locate our Christian identity in what separates us from other believers, but in the gospel that unites us with other believers, the gospel that calls us out of the world to serve the world.

Kingdom People: The Fundamentalist Survival Mechanism

Holier than the Bible

Michael Spencer at Internet Monk posts about a controversy among Missouri Southern Baptists. The issue appears to have been whether to adopt total abstinence from alcoholic beverages as the position of the convention. The comments section after the post raises most of the issues that usually arise in this debate, which is reminiscent of the debates our grandparents used to have about card playing [Rook was OK], dancing [square dancing was alright], movies, etc. All of these issues involve making inferences from Scripture since, unlike things like murder and sexual immorality, there is no clear Scriptural authority prohibiting them. There is, in fact, just the opposite in the case of the moderate use of alcohol - Our Lord both used it and provided it. Internet Monk provides a link to a good article on this subject, "Alcohol and the Bible" by Daniel Whitfield. I have found the book God Gave Wine: What the Bible Says About Alcohol, by Kenneth Gentry pretty thorough on the subject and effectively refuting the idea that teetotalism, whatever its other virtues, can be justified through Scripture.

One of the comments quotes C.S. Lewis:

I strongly object to the tyrannic and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership. Apart from the more serious objection (that Our Lord Himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), it is so provincial (what I believe you people call “small town”).

Obviously, we don't earn salvation by any of our works, and certainly not by marking off a checklist of behaviors. We do hope to grow into Christ - to become more like him as He enables us to understand what that means. It is a question of relationship. We love because He first loved - and love wishes to please - to know what He to whom we owe everything desires in us.

At a recent Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, Paul Manuel provided a useful guide to evaluating the rules we make for ourselves:

...[Y]ou must be careful about assuming a stance that is unequivocally confident (dogmatic). You must recognize that there are different degrees of assertiveness for the positions you hold, and you must be able to gauge (and identify) the strength of your convictions appropriately.

Although I do none of these (i.e., peas, wine, idols), I do not avoid them with the same degree of conviction.

• If someone invites me to dinner and serves peas, I will probably eat some to be polite. But I would decline a second helping, because that is my personal preference.
• If my host offers me a glass of wine, I will decline, because I do not drink wine as a general principle. But if I am taking communion in a church that uses wine, I may accept, because my conviction is not based on a scriptural prohibition against it.
• If a Hindu acquaintance invites me to offer incense to Krishna, I will decline, because my conviction is based on a biblical precept. To violate that precept would damage my relationship with God.

Likewise, if you do not make such distinctions, if you accord all your convictions the same status (whether or not they have the same support of Scripture), you will either feel unnecessarily guilty when you fail to keep them or you will impose an unwarranted expectation on others to keep them.

• If you accord an issue less status than Scripture gives it (e.g., permitting idolatry), you will fall short of the mark. You will not be holy, as the Bible prescribes.
• If you accord an issue more status than Scripture gives it (e.g., prohibiting wine), you will overshoot the mark. You will be holier than the Bible prescribes.

I found that very helpful.

internetmonk.com » Blog Archive » Riffs: 11:03:07: Missouri Baptists and The Battle of the Booze

What is a "Baptist"

One of the disadvantages of congregational polity [see below] is that there is no authority that can discipline a local congregation or define who can call themselves what. Lots of people don't understand that - so someone like Fred Phelps can affect the public reputation of Baptists generally.

GetReligion discusses what it means to be a "Baptist" and why we have difficulty protecting our brand name:

There’s no doubt about it. The Rev. Fred Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., is a Baptist — because he says so.

Then again, so is Bill Clinton. So is Al Gore, Jr., now that you mention it. Ditto for the Rev. Bill Moyers, Dr. Harvey Cox and the Rev. Jesse Jackson (last time I checked).

What’s the point? Well, one of the big stories of the week was that verdict up here in Baltimore in which a federal jury delivered a $10.9 million verdict against Phelps and his Westboro congregation, due to its ugly protests at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, who died in Iraq. ....

How would you like to be a Baptist minister in Kansas right now? How would you like to have the same brand name on your church sign as the Westboro crew? Duin [of the Washington Times] wrote this, focusing on the efforts of other Baptists to disavow Phelps and his church:

Although the 75-member church led by the Rev. Fred Phelps uses the name “Baptist,” it is an independent congregation not affiliated with any known Baptist convention or association.

“It’s a little bit frustrating,” said a ministry official at First Baptist Church of Topeka, who asked that his name not be used.

“People want to know why Baptists allow it,” the First Baptist official said. “Every church is locally autonomous, and anybody can call themselves ‘Baptist’ if they want to.” Speaking of the Westboro congregation, he said, “Their views don’t reflect anything at all of our church.”

One of Westboro Baptist Church’s most vociferous opponents has been the Southern Baptist Convention, chiefly because Mr. Phelps was ordained an SBC minister in 1947 at age 17. It is not clear when he left the denomination, but Westboro was founded in 1955 as an independent church. .... [more]

Define ‘Baptist,’ give three examples » GetReligion

"For the authority of Scripture"

Christian bodies of believers have several modes of organization. Baptists and some others have what is known as a "congregational" polity in which the local congregation calls its pastor, owns its property, and determines its affiliations. Others are more centralized, with the most centralized placing most authority in a hierarchy. There are advantages to centralized authority, but the disadvantages are most evident when the central authority is itself heterodox.

American Episcopalians who insist on the authority of Scripture and orthodox doctrine, and who are no longer willing to cohabit with those who don't, are apparently in for a fight. From the New York Times:

By more than a two-to-one vote, members of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted Friday in favor of separating from the national church because of a theological rift that began with the consecration of an openly gay bishop in 2003.

The vote sets the stage for what could become a protracted legal battle between the diocese and the Episcopal Church U.S.A., which had warned Pittsburgh’s bishop not to go forward with the vote.

After passionate appeals from both sides of the debate, clergy members and lay people voted 227 to 82 to “realign” the conservative diocese. ....

“What we’re trying to do is state clearly in the United States for the authority of Scripture,” Bishop Duncan said after the vote, taken during the diocese’s annual convention in this city about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh.

The vote was necessary, he said, because the more liberal bishops now in the majority in the national church “have hijacked my church, and that’s how most of the people here feel.” ....

....Bishop Duncan said he was willing to face whatever action the national church takes.

“We may face more legal action, and I may face action myself, but it is clear from our leaders that they’re willing to pay the price of their position, and so am I,” he said.

Pittsburgh joins one other diocese, San Joaquin in Fresno, Calif., to have a preliminary vote to separate from the national church. San Joaquin’s annual convention is in December, when it could vote a second time to make its decision formal. At least one other diocese, in Fort Worth, is considering a similar preliminary vote. ....

Thanks to HolyCoast for the reference

Pittsburgh Episcopal Diocese Votes to Leave the Church - New York Times

How should we address God?

Paul Martin wonders whether we really should begin our prayers the same way we would start a letter. He reviews prayers in Scripture and can't find any that begin with "Dear."

Thanks to Challies.com for the reference.

kerux noemata: "Dear" Jesus? - What Words Should Start Our Prayers?

Scripture and exposition

Ignatius Insight, a Catholic site, quotes that portion of the Touchstone forum on "Evangelicalism Today" in which the participants respond to the question "What would you say to an Evangelical tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox?" The comments are interesting, but one of them in particular caught my attention and, insofar as it is the case, is a serious indictment of Protestant practice:

As one who has "swum the Tiber" from the Southern Baptist Convention, I must say that the notion that Catholic priests do not do a good job expounding upon the Word hasn't been true for me. Often, I think people mistake enthusiasm and rhetorical skills for substance. Coupled with the three scriptural readings on Sunday, plus the homily, I've heard more Biblical Christianity in the Catholic Church than I ever did in the "Bible Believing" Baptist Church of my youth.

Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: What to do if an Evangelical is roaming toward Rome?

"Aim at Heaven...."

InterVarsity has published a book by James Choung, True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In. The IV description of the book includes this:

Caleb has been a Christian for a long time. But he realizes that he can't bring himself to share his faith with anyone because it doesn't sound like good news anymore. Christianity's truth claims come across as hollow, arrogant and intolerant. Christians have a bad track record of hating and condemning those they disagree with. Worst of all, it feels like Christianity is just about "saving souls," giving people an escape ticket to heaven while the world falls apart. Is it only about Jesus forgiving our sins? There must be more to it than that...

The author has prepared a presentation [pdf] demonstrating what he apparently believes is a more effective and attractive gospel.

Stand to Reason finds this approach inadequate:

InterVarsity is trying to correct the next-world focus it sees in Evangelicalism by replacing it with a focus on this world, but both of these miss the mark. We ought to be God-focused. If God is the central focus of our lives, it makes sense that the most important part of the message we give to others would be forgiveness and reconciliation with Him. Our good works flow out of that reconciliation as a way to glorify God "so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God." God (our thanks for and our praise of Him) is always the focus whenever we are exhorted to do good in the New Testament.

So when I see Gospel presentations where Jesus seems to be promoted as the best means to an end (in this case, a good society) as one who "taught us a better way to live" and provides us with the Holy Spirit so we can have the "resources" we need to "join his movement to heal the planet," where He is not The Way, but instead He's the way to a utopian society, I see a group of people more focused on this world than on God.

Not only is this a tragic loss as people miss the most central point of being a Christian, but I honestly believe that this view can't sustain itself. If we focus on God, we are empowered and moved to serve others as we glorify Him in thanks and become merciful as He is merciful. If we focus on serving others as the end goal, we dishonor God and lose the sustaining relationship, power, and purpose that caused us to to serve others in the first place. Just as C.S. Lewis said, "Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

Stand to Reason Blog: Jesus' Message

"A pilgrimage of reason"

From Thinking Christian, some brief quotations and comment on a very interesting interview with Antony Flew - once perhaps the world's best-known atheist. An atheist no longer, neither is he a Christian - but he is at least considering the possibility.

Among other things, Flew, the distinguished, formerly formidable foe of all belief in God, now says,

I think the origins of the laws of nature and of life and the Universe point clearly to an intelligent Source. The burden of proof is on those who argue to the contrary.

For much of the 20th century, Flew was regarded as one of the most important philosophical spokespersons for atheism. He recently converted to a deistic form of belief in God, and continues to investigate various forms of theism, including Christianity.

I must say...that the journey to my discovery of the Divine has thus far been a pilgrimage of reason. I have followed the argument where it has led me."

Antony Flew: Converted Atheistic Philosopher

Francis Collins

The President has recently been awarding the Medal of Freedom wisely and well. Harper Lee, Benjamin Hooks, Henry Hyde and Brian Lamb were among those honored most recently. Christianity Today reports on another:

Christian scientist Francis Collins landed on President Bush's list of President[ial] Medal of Freedom awards, according to the Associated Press. The director of the National Human Genome Research Institute is being honored with the nation's highest civilian award for his leadership and for expanding the understanding of human DNA.

Collins is known for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project, which mapped and sequenced human DNA and determined its functions. He converted to Christianity after reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

Francis Collins to receive highest civilian award | Liveblog | Christianity Today

Testing ideas by argument

Another quotation from Theodore Dalrymple's essay addresses the argument that religious belief is simply the result of evolution and, consequently, its universality is explained by the conditions endured by our ancient ancestors but has long since outlived its usefulness.

Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is the least bad-tempered of the new atheist books, but it is deeply condescending to all religious people. Dennett argues that religion is explicable in evolutionary terms—for example, by our inborn human propensity, at one time valuable for our survival on the African savannahs, to attribute animate agency to threatening events.

For Dennett, to prove the biological origin of belief in God is to show its irrationality, to break its spell. But of course it is a necessary part of the argument that all possible human beliefs, including belief in evolution, must be explicable in precisely the same way; or else why single out religion for this treatment? Either we test ideas according to arguments in their favor, independent of their origins, thus making the argument from evolution irrelevant, or all possible beliefs come under the same suspicion of being only evolutionary adaptations—and thus biologically contingent rather than true or false. We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true.

If all beliefs are a product of biological evolution, then what is the basis for thinking that one rather than the other is true. All we can really say is that those beliefs that exist must have survival value - not that they are true. And non-belief in God would fall under the same stricture, for what would be the basis for asserting that it must fall outside the pattern? This reminded me of an argument C.S. Lewis made in several forms:

Every particular thought (whether it is a judgment of fact or a judgment of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained, without remainder, as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes.... It cuts its own throat....

By thinking at all we have claimed that our thoughts are more than mere natural events. All other propositions must be fitted in as best they can round that primary claim. (C.S. Lewis, "A Christian Reply to Professor Price.")

Thanks to Harrison Scott Key for the reference.

What the New Atheists Don’t See by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Autumn 2007

"When we all get to Heaven...."

Daniel Lockwood in Christianity Today offers an answer to this question:

Does the Bible teach that we will recognize our loved ones in heaven?

As the years pass, this question looms larger in my thinking. Last year, I attended three funeral services of godly saints who'd passed away. One was my 85-year-old father-in-law, whose exemplary life and witness is now just a cherished memory. For my wife, who loved her father dearly, this question is thus no idle theological speculation. Fortunately, the Bible speaks clearly to it.

The simple answer—yes—rests on two pillars of Christian belief. One is the blessed hope that we will see Jesus again (Titus 2:13). The other is the assurance that our present bodies will be raised from the dead, immortal (1 Cor. 15:12-57). Together, these pillars provide a basis for believing we will recognize our loved ones in heaven. After all, if we can recognize the Lord Jesus, possessing the perfectly restored and glorified bodies to do so, it follows that we will recognize other believers, including our loved ones. .... (more)

Until We Meet Again | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

The best response

Albert Mohler finds an approach to Halloween suggested by the fact that this is also Reformation Day:

The coming of Halloween is a good time for Christians to remember that evil spirits are real and that the Devil will seize every opportunity to trumpet his own celebrity. Perhaps the best response to the Devil at Halloween is that offered by Martin Luther, the great Reformer: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him for he cannot bear scorn."

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther began the Reformation with a declaration that the church must be recalled to the authority of God's Word and the purity of biblical doctrine. With this in mind, the best Christian response to Halloween might be to scorn the Devil and then pray for the Reformation of Christ's church on earth. Let's put the dark side on the defensive.

That passage is at the end of a very good essay about the origins of Halloween and Christian reactions to it. Read it all.

Christianity and the Dark Side -- What About Halloween?

The thinness of the new atheism

Theodore Dalrymple, an atheist, finds the "new atheists" intolerant, inconsistent, and blind to the benefits religion provides. From "What the New Atheists Don't See" at City Journal:

Lying not far beneath the surface of all the neo-atheist books is the kind of historiography that many of us adopted in our hormone-disturbed adolescence, furious at the discovery that our parents sometimes told lies and violated their own precepts and rules. It can be summed up in Christopher Hitchens’s drumbeat in God Is Not Great: “Religion spoils everything.”

What? The Saint Matthew Passion? The Cathedral of Chartres? .... It is surely not news, except to someone so ignorant that he probably wouldn’t be interested in these books in the first place, that religious conflict has often been murderous and that religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.

In fact, one can write the history of anything as a chronicle of crime and folly. Science and technology spoil everything: without trains and IG Farben, no Auschwitz; without transistor radios and mass-produced machetes, no Rwandan genocide. First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness. Since man is a fallen creature (I use the term metaphorically rather than in its religious sense), there is always much to find.

The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies. (read it all here)

What the New Atheists Don’t See by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Autumn 2007

Tolerance is not indifference

In the course of a good column about the Potter books, Michael Gerson points out that:

For many, tolerance does not result from the absence of moral convictions but from a positive religious teaching about human dignity.

Thanks to Cranach for the reference.

Michael Gerson - Harry Potter's Secret - washingtonpost.com

"Christian discipleship in the public square"

This past weekend The New York Times Magazine published an article by David Kirkpatrick titled "The Evangelical Crackup." Its thesis is that the Religious Right is in decline, superceded by leaders who put faith ahead of politics. Of course, genuine Christians always put faith ahead of politics. Faith is the motive for becoming involved in politics, as it motivates [or should] all our work in the world.

Richard John Neuhaus [who is not an Evangelical] puts it all into perspective at First Things in "That Evangelical Crackup." An excerpt:

Of course, the whole thing about an evangelical crackup is silly and would be easily ignored were it not that some of us are addictively amused by paying attention to the Times. And, let it be said in fairness, that there are others who still read the paper to find out what is happening in the real world. Let it be further admitted that there are divisions and conflicts among politically oriented evangelical leaders, especially with regard to the prospect of Giuliani being the Republican nominee. In the December issue of First Things, subscribers will find a very thoughtful analysis of that prospect by astute brain-truster of the pro-life cause Hadley Arkes. He carefully examines the troubling consequences for the cause if the Republicans are no longer the pro-life party, which, despite his more recent hedges, would be the case if Giuliani were the nominee.

But an evangelical crackup? Don’t believe it. The Times is whistling in the self-induced dark. They scare themselves by creating the boogeyman of a monolithic theocratic assault and then console themselves that the advancing forces are in disarray. Both the monolith and the crackup are fictions of their overheated imagination.

Since the most recent round of political activism by evangelicals in the late 1970s, there have been several times in which prominent leaders have called a retreat from electoral politics. Disillusionment comes readily to enthusiasts, and evangelicals tend to be enthusiasts. Mr. Kirkpatrick spoke to one minister who has thrown in the towel. “I thought in my enthusiasm that somehow we could band together and change things politically and everything will be fine,” he said. But electing his preferred politicians did not change everything. “When you mix politics and religion, you get politics.”

Anyone seized by utopian delusions about political action is bound to be rudely disappointed. The pastor is also right about ending up only with politics when you put religion in the service of politics. The organizing imperatives and urgencies of electoral politics, combined with its inevitable negotiations of competing ambitions for power, quickly overwhelm a church’s proper business of saving and nurturing souls.

Mr. Kirkpatrick spoke to a few disillusioned ministers. There are undoubtedly others. The well-documented fact, however, is that the great majority of evangelical clergy have never succumbed to the temptation to become politicians rather than pastors. Nor have they surrendered their right and obligation to point out the implications of Christian faith for public policy. Some call the exercise of that duty “mixing politics and religion.” Others call it Christian discipleship in the public square.

Nowhere is the understanding of those implications more deeply entrenched than on the “life issues,” meaning abortion preeminently but not exclusively. On no other controverted issue is there anything comparable to the theological and moral grounding found in, for example, “That They May Have Life,” the statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. The Frank Riches cheer on Jim Wallis and others associated with the “religious outreach” initiative of the Democratic party, wanting to believe that they will persuade evangelicals that the Iraq War, health care, global warming, and economic equality are more morally urgent than protecting unborn babies. With some evangelicals they have apparently succeeded. It is also worth remembering that in the 1970s the majority of self-identified evangelicals were Democrats. Many evangelicals, as well as Catholics, who have been voting Republican for pro-life reasons may return to old habits if the Republicans do not offer an unambiguous alternative, or they may simply sit this one out.

The reality is that, for millions of voters—evangelical, Catholic, and other—the number-one moral and political issue is the defense of the unborn. Join that to the defense of marriage and family and it seems certain that we are talking about no less than twenty million people. That is more than enough votes, or decisions not to vote, to decide a presidential election. It seems probable edging up to certainty that, if the choice is between a pro-abortion Republican, such as Giuliani, and a pro-abortion Democrat, such as any of the Democratic candidates, those millions will take it as an invitation not to be bothered with election day.

In sum, there is no evangelical crackup. Thirty years after the “religious right” appeared on the radar screens inside the liberal bubble, there is a normalization of conservative Christian activism in the public square. As on the left, organizations and activists on the right maneuver mightily to direct sometimes contentious constituencies toward their preferred political outcomes. In America, we call it democracy in action.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » That Evangelical Crackup

November 2007 Sabbath Recorder Online

The November, 2007, Sabbath Recorder is available online here as a pdf. Its theme is "What Happens When Your World Falls Apart?" From an article by Michael Graves:

We all have a story to tell about “thorns in the flesh,” as Paul shared in his letter to the church at Corinth (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

The “thorns” we carry may be physical, mental, or psychological, but the issue is still the same: Will our focus be on God or on our problems? How we handle these thorns will speak volumes about our faith in God and His deliverance.

God made it clear to Paul that His grace was sufficient, that His “power is made perfect in weakness.” ....

There are additional articles on that topic and others. An article that caught my attention was about the presentation of a Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society award to Oscar Burdick, who has done much good work on the early history of Sabbatarian Baptists.

Families

In the course of a review of What Democracy Is For: On Freedom and Moral Government, by Stein Ringen, Albert Mohler quotes a section describing some of what families do for children. Merely recounting those things makes obvious how much is lost when children grow up without that support, or without important elements of it. From the book:

Then families provide for those children. They feed, clothe, and give them a place to live. They give them a home, a place where they can usually be safe and protected.

Families tell children who they are: where they come from, who their grandparents and ancestors are, of what kind they are, where they belong, and what their identity is.

Families teach children values and norms. From parents and in the experience of family cooperation, children learn about the difference between good and bad and right and wrong and acquire the ability to believe in that knowledge.

Families teach children to learn. They teach them how to work and how to be social. The family experience is the basis for success in schooling and formal education. It is in the family that children first learn about discussions, negotiations, and shrewdness; about give-and-take, cooperating and fighting; about what it takes to get on with others; about the combined ability to be flexible and to stand one's ground. Each family is a political academy where children get their grounding experiences of citizenship, of rights and duties, of freedom and responsibility. It is in the family that children learn the elementary virtues of manners, politeness, civility, and charm (or do not learn it, as the case may be).

Families educate children. They teach them to walk and speak, to dress and eat, to wash and brush their teeth, to behave-the thousand and one skills that make up daily life and that all who have learned them perform with intuition and obviousness (and make those who do not know them intolerable people).

All these things these ordinary little institutions provide for. Different families do it in different ways, some do it better than others. They are not alone in these jobs. Families share the raising of children with kin and friends and the training of children with schools and nurseries. But to the question of what families are, one answer, also when we see families from the point of view of children, is that they are institutions of production.

AlbertMohler.com: Democracy and the Family - Setting the Record Straight

Evangelicalism Today

Touchstone has made available online its forum on the state of evangelicalism.

In this forum, a diverse group of Evangelicals discuss the state of Evangelicalism today and other matters. (We are planning to run similar forums on the Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline churches in the next year.) The answers begin with those of Russell Moore, as a member of our editorial board, followed by the others in alphabetical order. [the forum is here]

Touchstone Archives: Evangelicalism Today

A supposedly civilized society

David Mills at Mere Comments [Touchstone]:

In Like a slave, is an unborn child not a brother?, published in the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore reflects on the opening of a museum exhibition and slavery and asks how curators will see abortion in 200 years.

It is not hard to imagine how a future Museum of London exhibition about abortion could go. It could buy up a 20th-century hospital building as its space, and take visitors round, showing them how, in one ward, staff were trying to save the lives of premature babies while, in the next, they were killing them.

It could compare the procedure by which the corpse of a baby who had died after or during premature birth was presented by the hospital to the mother to assist with grieving, with the way a similar corpse, if aborted, was thrown away.

It could display the various instruments that were used to remove and kill the foetus, rather as the manacles and collars of slaves can be seen today.

He ends with an argument that "with the passage of time, abortion, especially late abortion, is slowly coming to be seen as a "solution" dating from an era that is passing. It will therefore be discredited." I hope he is right, but the drive (need/desire/addiction) for sexual license is so strong, and therefore the need for abortion so great, that abortion's coming to be seen as outdated strikes me as unlikely.

In the article Mills quotes, Moore notes:

As the slavery exhibition shows, something that one generation accepts readily enough is often seen as abhorrent by its descendants – so abhorrent, in fact, that people find it almost impossible to understand how it could have been countenanced in a supposedly civilised society.

Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: The Brother Many Ignore

Reformation Day

October 31 is the anniversary of the day, 490 years ago, on which Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. Trevin Wax prepares us for the day by posting some Luther quotations.

Famous Quotes from Martin Luther « Kingdom People