Sabbath Recorder, January 2009

The January, 2009, Sabbath Recorder is available online here as a pdf.

This is a missions issue of the Sabbath Recorder with several articles about Seventh Day Baptists in Nicaragua, Congo and Lebanon, and in the US in Alaska, Washington state, and on the Oglala Sioux reservation.

There are, as usual, a variety of other articles and columns including one by 2009 Conference President, Ed Cruzan. His Conference theme is "Pray" and this month he reflects on how peace is found in prayer. He concludes:

As believers, we already have the peace of God dwelling within us. Jesus gave it to us; it is part of the fruit of the Spirit.

Let God’s peace be released in you through prayer so you may truly and continually experience the peace of God that transcends all understanding through Christ Jesus!

The Sabbath Recorder is the magazine of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference and has been regularly published in some form since 1844.

Emergent before it was cool

Trevin Wax interviews Timothy Stoner, author of The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditation on Faith, about what he likes and doesn't like about the "Emerging" Church. I like the distinctions:

Trevin Wax: You write about being “Emergent” before it was cool, but now that Emergent is cool, you no longer consider yourself “Emergent.” What aspects of the Emerging Church do you appreciate?

Timothy Stoner: I appreciate Emergent’s critique of a tendency within certain streams of fundamentalism and evangelicalism toward a divisive, narrow intolerance of those it considers enemies, and a mean-spirited, fear-based rejection of culture which it considers synonymous with “the world”.

I affirm its emphasis on wholistic and integral mission and its priority for justice and mercy.

I also believe its call to affirm the goodness of the creation, the value of listening to and respecting those who hold divergent opinions to be a very healthy and helpful corrective.

Trevin Wax: So why would you distance yourself from the movement today?

Timothy Stoner: I disagree with its equating authority with oppression, eliminating the element of wrath from God’s character, deconstructing the gospel so that it centers around politics (Jesus died to subvert a cruel, violent oppressive system) and ethics (the purpose of the cross was to give us an example to follow) rather than being essentially about man’s sin, God’s mercy, justice and glory in paying for man’s redemption and appeasing His wrath that rebels might be forgiven and restored. I also find no biblical warrant for its denial of an eternal hell for unrepentant sinners who persistently reject God’s love in Christ.

Most troubling is its universalist trajectory which denies the exclusivity of faith in Jesus and provides a back door to salvation for the sincere who do good. This is, of course, an utter denial of the necessity of the Cross. [more]

Interview with Tim Stoner 1: Emerging’s False Dichotomies « Kingdom People

Stalin

The AP is reporting that a whole lot of Russians still admire Stalin:

MOSCOW – Television viewers have voted Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — who sent millions to their deaths in the Great Purge of the 1930s — Russia's third-greatest historical figure. ....

The project, called "The Name of Russia," culminated with the announcement Sunday night that Russian medieval leader Alexander Nevsky had been voted the greatest Russian, with more than 524,000 Internet and SMS votes. Stalin garnered more than 519,000 votes, and even led in early voting.

Nevsky defeated various European invaders during his 13th-century reign and was subsequently canonized.

In second place was Pyotr Stolypin, a prime minister early in the 20th century under Czar Nicholas II. Stolypin was recognized for land reform but gained notoriety for his brutal quashing of leftist revolutionaries. He saw to it that thousands were hanged for attempting to overthrow the imperial rulers. Stolypin received more than 523,000 votes.

At a time when the current Russian government is increasingly authoritarian, large-scale popular approval of one of the most brutal mass-murderers in world history [Saddam Hussein's idol and model] ought to be a matter of considerable worry.From Gordon Chang at Commentary:

...[T]he clear message for us is that we should start seeing Russia as it sees itself. The Russians obviously hold values we find abhorrent. That should, at a minimum, make us rethink the nature of our cooperation with them and their government.

We should remember we tried working with Stalin once. Maybe Putin is no communist dictator, but he is reasserting hardline rule when he is not trying to destabilize the international community. It’s time to take a fresh look at him and his Russia.

Dictator Stalin voted third-greatest Russian - Yahoo! News, Democide in Totalitarian States, Commentary » Blog Archive » Stalin Comes in Third

Humility

Christianity Today gives us another very good article by Tim Keller. This one is about the central importance of the virtue of humility - a virtue which, as soon as you think you have it, you probably don't. The full article is here. Two excerpts:

Christian humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less, as C.S. Lewis so memorably said. It is to be no longer always noticing yourself and how you are doing and how you are being treated. It is "blessed self-forgetfulness."

Humility is a byproduct of belief in the gospel of Christ. In the gospel, we have a confidence not based in our performance but in the love of God in Christ (Rom. 3:22-24). This frees us from having to always be looking at ourselves. Our sin was so great, nothing less than the death of Jesus could save us. He had to die for us. But his love for us was so great, Jesus was glad to die for us. ....

There are two basic narrative identities at work among professing Christians. The first is what I will call the moral-performance narrative identity. These are people who in their heart of hearts say, I obey; therefore I am accepted by God. The second is what I will call the grace narrative identity. This basic operating principle is, I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore I obey.

People living their lives on the basis of these two different principles may superficially look alike. They may sit right beside one another in the church pew, both striving to obey the law of God, to pray, to give money generously, to be good family members. But they are doing so out of radically different motives, in radically different spirits, resulting in radically different personal characters.

When persons living in the moral-performance narrative are criticized, they are furious or devastated because they cannot tolerate threats to their self-image of being a "good person." ....

But those who understand the gospel cannot possibly look down on anyone, since they were saved by sheer grace, not by their perfect doctrine or strong moral character..... (more)

We are saved by grace. Obedience earns nothing. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (Jn 14:15, ESV).

The Advent of Humility | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Plowing on Sunday

The Free Library has placed online "A Rock and a Hard Place" by Nick Kersten of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society. It recounts the particular difficulties seventh day Sabbath observance has sometimes created for those of us with that conviction.

Seventh Day Baptists observe the fourth commandment (Ex. 20:8-11) literally. In addition, they take seriously the prohibition from work, though in keeping with Baptist principles, they leave it to individuals to be convicted on the specifics of observance after careful study and prayer. Seventh Day Baptists worship collectively on the Sabbath (Saturday) and observe the day as a period of rest, consecrated to God. The purpose of this article is not to explore the specifics of Seventh Day Baptist theology, but to understand this basic foundational conviction is necessary in order to understand what follows. Seventh Day Baptists must be kept distinct from other Sabbath observing groups, which perhaps are better known because of their larger size. While Seventh Day Baptists may share some common Sabbath convictions with other denominations, they are the only denomination that also explicitly adheres to Baptist beliefs

For nearly as long as Baptists have searched the scriptures for direction, Sabbath-keepers have been represented in their number. In England, like other Baptists, the Sabbath-observing Baptists suffered various persecutions at the hands of the government and of the religious authorities because of their convictions. In those days, they were also singled out for their Sabbath observance. The experience of Francis Bampfield, an early Seventh Day Baptist leader, was typical of those early English Seventh Day Baptists. He was imprisoned on a nearly yearly basis between 1660 and 1684 for both his Sabbath and Baptist convictions, and he died in Newgate prison. Another Seventh Day Baptist leader, John James, was hung for treason in 1661 because of his political and religious convictions. ....

In the American colonies and the United States, laws intended to enforce Sabbath observance on Sunday punished those who, having rested on the Sabbath [Saturday - the seventh day], worked on Sunday. For example, in Pennsylvania:

.... The Nottingham church suffered greatly as a result of the Sunday laws of 1794, which enforced Sunday as a day of rest. Because of their convictions, these Sabbath-keepers were forced into hardship because of their unwillingness to work on Sabbath and their legal obligations not to work on Sunday. One member of that church, Richard Bond, was selected for jury duty, and when he refused to serve on Friday night and Saturday because of his conscience, the presiding judge labeled him and his congregation as "a set of hypocrites." Many of the Pennsylvania congregations eventually migrated to West Virginia in order avoid the restrictive nature of the Sunday laws. This experience of the Seventh Day Baptists in Pennsylvania was not unique, and none of the Philadelphia area churches survived, although most of the members of those churches did move to places where Sabbath observance was tolerated, including New Jersey and Rhode Island, or to the frontier where laws that challenged Sabbath-keeping were not enforced.

The greatest obstacle faced by Sabbath-keepers in colonial America were the blue laws, which were set forth as early as the 1610s. These laws affirmed both the state and local governments as institutions ordained by God and set out what specifically was demanded of citizens. .... [T]he blue laws enacted in Pennsylvania...limited Sabbath-keepers, including article 36 (1686), which read: "That according to the good Example of the Primitive Christians, and for the ease of the Creation, every First Day of the Week called the Lords Day, People shall abstain from their common daily Labour, that they might the better dispose themselves to Worship God according to their Understandings."

Clearly, the freedom to worship in Pennsylvania was first contingent on the acceptance of the First Day as the day of rest, a concession no Seventh Day Baptists could make in good conscience. Because of the existence of blue laws, Pennsylvania remained a difficult place for Sabbath-keepers into the twentieth century, and legal action continued to be brought against those who attempted to work on Sunday.

In 1846, German Seventh Day Baptists at Snow Hill, Pennsylvania, were in their fields on a Sunday working to get their crops in before a storm arrived. The church's neighbors reported a group of "lewd fellows of the baser sort" to the authorities for harassing the Snow Hill church's meetings, and the "lewd" group was punished. In retribution, those same "lewd fellows" reported several church members for their violation of the state's 1794 Sunday law, and the members were arrested. The same neighbors of the church who reported the harassment earlier then counseled the arrested church members to appeal their sentence. The neighbors wrote letters to the judiciary asking for the Seventh Day Baptists to be excused from keeping that portion of the law. The legal battle continued for the next two years until the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania finally decided against the Seventh Day Baptists in Specht v. the Commonwealth, upholding the fine and sentence imposed. In 1848, the Sabbath Recorder reported that three members were again imprisoned under a similar set of circumstances, noting that "Had they been nominal observers of Sunday, they might have been acquitted on the plea of necessity, as provided by the act of 1794. But they were connected with a Society which observes the Sabbath; hence the law is enforced with all its rigor and these three men have paid the penalty of its violation by suffering imprisonment six days." .... [more]

A rock and a hard place: Seventh Day Baptists, religious liberty, Sabbath-keeping, and civil authority. - Free Online Library

The best St. Nick

Of all the portrayals of the modern St Nicholas - Santa Claus - this is my favorite. From the cover of St. Nicholas magazine, December, 1916:

God rest you merry

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, with David Willcock's arrangements of God Rest You Merry and the Sussex Carol:
Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All others doth deface:

O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy.


All out of darkness we have light.
Which made the angels sing this night:
"Glory to God and peace to men,
Now and forevermore. Amen."

This single Truth

No love that in a family dwells,
No caroling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

John Betjeman

Unique among gods and men

Dorothy L. Sayers:

...Jesus Christ is unique—unique among gods and men. There have been incarnate gods a-plenty, and slain-and-resurrected gods not a few; but He is the only God who has a date in history. And plenty of founders of religions have had dates, and some of them have been prophets or avatars of the Divine; but only this one of them was personally God. There is no more astonishing collocation of phrases than that which, in the Nicene Creed, sets these two statements flatly side by side: "Very God of very God.... He suffered under Pontius Pilate." All over the world, thousands of times a day, Christians recite the name of a rather undistinguished Roman pro-consul—not in execration (Judas and Caiaphas, more guilty, get off with fewer reminders of their iniquities), but merely because that name fixes within a few years the date of the death of God.

From Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to be King, 1943.

Too nice not to

From: Robert L. Short, The Gospel According to Peanuts

King's College

The New York Times this morning describes King's College, a Christian college in Manhattan: "In a Worldly City’s Tallest Tower, a College With a Heavenly Bent."

Out of the myriad and random tenants that fill the Empire State Building, there is one that seems both perfectly situated, yet jarringly out of place.

It is the King’s College, an evangelical Christian school that is all but hidden in plain sight, occupying three of the building’s floors — two of them subterranean — since 1999. On the one hand, it seems apt that a school claiming close adherence to God’s word would occupy New York’s tallest skyscraper. ....

Its setting, college leaders say, was a deliberate move. They wanted students to be exposed to new ideas and hone their intellectual chops far from the “holy huddle,” places that are religiously and ideologically sealed off from the rest of the world.

“There are pockets of Christians in America that don’t combine rigorous thinking with Christianity,” said David Lapp, 22, a senior from Lancaster, Pa. “But you can be a rigorous thinker and a very serious Christian as well.” ....

The college’s mandate, Mr. Mills said, is to encourage students to engage people with differing viewpoints, and ideally to shape public discourse “in a way that is winsome, and not screechy from the Christian right.”

The college’s main offices are on the Empire State Building’s 15th floor, flooded with light and home to a grandfather clock that gongs every 15 minutes. The two basement levels are windowless and cozily lighted, and house classrooms, a student lounge and the library. ....

For the most part, the college imposes few strictures on its students. Beyond abiding by a basic honor code — to not lie, cheat or steal — “you’re basically on your own,” said Hope Hodge, 21, who is from Waltham, Mass., and is the editor of the school paper. “If you want to see the seedy underbelly,” she said, “it’s right there.”

There is no on-campus housing; instead, most freshmen live, unsupervised, in nearby college apartments. Nor is there any religious service on campus, though many students attend “Tent,” a student-run service dedicated to Bible readings and Christian songs. [more]

The American Spectator published an article describing the college this past September. A couple of excerpts:

The skittish insularity of many self-professed Christian colleges is entirely absent, replaced by a confidence and openness that is rare if not unique. The discussion is well versed and polite, never devolving into demagoguery or dismissive invective, but at the same time firm and grounded. “The secular world shouldn’t be allowed to think we’re hiding or intimidated,” Oakes said. “If secularists do a better job of winning over the country, well, they’ve earned the right to set the national agenda. We plan to train our side to compete vigorously, though.” ....

...King’s College boasts one of the thinnest residential life books in the history of higher education: Don’t lie, cheat, or steal. Otherwise, do what you know is right.

“This isn’t the typical stereotype of a Christian college where guys and girls can’t hold hands after seven or aren’t allowed to watch certain movies or listen to certain songs,” recent graduate Anthony Randazzo said. Yet, the school is hardly slouching toward Gomorrah. There is no mandatory chapel, yet students have a robust faith life with attendance at student-generated worship services and Bible study sessions rivaling or exceeding those at other religious schools. The student living quarters in high-rises—“Houses” with names like Bonhoeffer, Churchill, Reagan and Susan B. Anthony, “like Hogwarts from Harry Potter” one young woman explained—are student-run. However, they are Animal House-esque only if some director’s cut exists with scenes of John Belushi mentoring under-privileged youth and moderating intra-house theological debates. [more]

It sounds ideal. If I were in high school and looking for a college, this one would be very appealing.

Empire State Building Journal - An Evangelical College in Manhattan, Where the Sin Is - NYTimes.com, American Spectator: King's of New York

Harsh, stern and stifling

Stephen Nichols has been reading "Apostasy Lit" - books by those who have rejected the faith of their parents - and has found that the experiences they describe may contain some important lessons:

...[A]postasy lit is valuable for those Christian parents who care for their children and hope that their children embrace and not run away from the faith. Among the many potential teaching moments apostasy lit provides, two stand out: the warning against sternness or harshness and the warning against creating a stifling environment. And herein lies the lesson that should not be ignored by readers of apostasy lit. If harshness and sternness coupled with a stifling environment are what make a piece of literature apostasy lit, then those two may be guilty of causing the apostasy in the first place. ....

Perhaps this harshness and sternness derive from a desire, albeit well-intentioned, to control. Christian parents, and I readily identify with this since I am one, desperately want their children to be at peace with themselves and at peace with their world, and they know that such peace will only come when they are at peace with God. They want to, in the words of Jonathan Edwards to his daughter, meet there at last in heaven as a family. And this desire can be strong, so strong that it morphs into something precariously close to ugliness. I'll drive it into them, and it will be for their own good, becomes the impulse. This inclination towards sternness, towards doling out justice over grace, is inched along as a reaction to the cultural pressures of an acceptance-no-matter-what value. Christian parents should be able to fret over their teen-ager's sexual activity. Christian parents do believe that actions have consequences and that some actions shouldn't be overlooked. Nevertheless, sometimes the sternness overtakes otherwise good intentions. No doubt, this gets complicated. Only God has mastered the dance between grace and mercy and justice and wrath. All we can do is strive to approximate it.

The second teaching moment of apostasy lit concerns the Christian environment. Thankfully, correcting the stifling environment is far less challenging than responding to the sternness problem. This is, after all, God's world. His kingdom does not stop at the gated entrance to the Christian camp or the security detectors at the doors of the Christian bookstore. Can the rest of the radio dial also be tuned in from time to time? Christians, despite there being some good ones out there, aren't always the best writers, painters, and musicians. Beauty, justice, even truth may live in those seemingly dark corners untraversed by the Christian family. Even non-Christian friends may turn out to be not sired by the devil after all. Finding one's way here could, admittedly, be tricky at times. But it's not as treacherous as we think. .... [more]

Thanks to Justin Taylor for the reference.

Apostasy Lit: Why Do They Leave? - Reformation21

Joy shall be theirs in the morning

From The Wind in the Willows, Christmas at Mole End:

"What's up?" inquired the Rat, pausing in his labours.

"I think it must be the field-mice," replied the Mole, with a touch of pride in his manner. "They go round carol-singing regularly at this time of the year. They're quite an institution in these parts. And they never pass me over—they come to Mole End last of all; and I used to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford it. It will be like old times to hear them again."

"Let's have a look at them!" cried the Rat, jumping up and running to the door.

It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the forecourt, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little fieldmice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry streets to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.

CAROL

Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morning!

Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet—
You by the fire and we in the street
Bidding you joy in the morning!

For ere one half of the night was gone,
Sudden a star has led us on,
Raining bliss and benison—
Bliss to-morrow and more anon,
Joy for every morning!

Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow—
Saw the star o'er a stable low;
Mary she might not further go
Welcome thatch, and litter below!
Joy was hers in the morning!

And then they heard the angels tell
"Who were the first to cry Nowell?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morning."

The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged sidelong glances, and silence succeeded—but for a moment only. Then, from up above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately travelled was borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of distant bells ringing a joyful and clangorous peal.

"Very well sung, boys!" cried the Rat heartily. "And now come along in, all of you, and warm yourselves by the fire, and have something hot!"

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Chapter Five: Dulce Domum

Let no tongue on earth be silent

Michael Mckinley at IXMarks Church Matters recommends:

...[T]hree songs about the incarnation that I particularly like to use in corporate worship this time of year:

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendour
Of The Father's Love Begotten

I'm unfamiliar with the second, but "Of the Father's Love Begotten" has become one of my favorites. Selected verses:

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!

Church Matters: The 9Marks Blog

We Glorify Thy Name

Sometime in the mid-1940s the American Sabbath Tract Society decided to publish "a collection of Seventh Day Baptist hymns and songs." The Tract Society was the predecessor of the current Tract and Communication Council of the Seventh Day Baptist denomination. It was the then publisher of the Sabbath Recorder, as well as denominational tracts, pamphlets and books. My uncle, Rev. Victor W. Skaggs, then the Secretary of the Tract Society, along with Rev Lester G. Osborn and Howard Savage, the organist for the Plainfield, New Jersey, Seventh Day Baptist Church, comprised the committee responsible for producing the collection.

The result of their work was published in 1946. Titled We Glorify Thy Name, it was only thirty-two pages long and contained only twenty-five hymns and songs. The committee explained their intention in a Foreword:

.... Seventh Day Baptists have shown their interest in worshipful song in their compilations of others' songs and in the composition not only of hymns and songs related to the Sabbath, but also of hymns and songs of Christian faith and life. This present collection does not purport to be exhaustive or complete. It is a selection from the available works of Seventh Day Baptists of the past and of modern times. We present it to you with the hope and the prayer that it may inspire us all with the message of our faith—Christ and His Holy Sabbath Day.

For many years there has been no explicitly denominational hymnbook. Each church chooses whatever they believe will enhance their own worship style. So far as I know, there has been no new collection of distinctively Seventh Day Baptist worship music. We Glorify Thy Name remains one of the best collections of songs and hymns by Seventh Day Baptists. It is probably time for another committee to prepare another collection, but until that happens I thought it might be a service to make this one available. We Glorify Thy Name can be downloaded as a pdf here or through the cover image above.

There are three Stennett hymns, including "Another Six Days Work is Done" by Joseph Stennett (on the left - click on it for a larger image), and Samuel Stennett's two most famous hymns, which can be found in many hymnbooks. Others include some still well-known to Seventh Day Baptists, for example "God of the Sabbath" and the "Young People's Rally Song" (with its original wording), as well as some that probably should be. The music for several was composed by J.M. Stillman, a long time music instructor at Milton College who achieved some prominence in his time. There are a few choruses, including "To Know Him!" which some older Seventh Day Baptists will remember from campfires. Others may deserve to rest in obscurity.

In any event, here is We Glorify Thy Name.

Liberty requires virtue

December 9 was the 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth and this has occasioned recognition of his literary contribution more than of his Christian convictions and political thought. Theo Hobson thinks, instead, that "Milton ought to be celebrated as England's greatest religious thinker, and one of the truly great Protestants, who points beyond the arid opposition of 'religious' and 'secular' and invites fresh thinking about both." At openDemocracy in "John Milton’s vision" he argues that Milton's view of the proper relationship between church and state has been realized much better in this country than in his own.

It is far more accurate to say that Milton was a key founder of the American liberal tradition, than of the British one. This is not just because of his republicanism: even more important to him than republicanism was his aversion to religious establishment. During the interregnum (1649-60) he worried that England's revolution was uncertain until Oliver Cromwell had clearly separated church and state, and instituted an explicitly secular liberal state (which Cromwell never quite did). This was the ideological obsession of Milton's life. ....

The ideological cause of his life was not simply "liberty" but a specific story about liberty. True political liberty, he believed, was rooted in a common acknowledgment that a new form of Christianity had emerged, by God's grace. This new form of Christianity was not simply "Protestantism", for that word points in various directions, most of them wrong. It was a specific version of Protestantism that was only now coming into being - a politically mature form of Protestantism. ....

So was he an early "secular liberal"? Not in the dominant contemporary sense, which assumes that politics should be post-religious. He thought it should be post-ecclesial, but that liberal Protestant Christianity was the necessary foundation of a free society. This must be the national ideology, but it must not be identified with any religious institution. In effect, he was inventing the American approach to church-state relations.

So those who claim him as a secular radical, or a great British liberal, must be sharply told: no, he wanted a constitutional revolution, on Christian grounds. He wanted a revolution in Christian identity, away from church allegiance. The enlightened Christian should affirm the authority of the liberal state. ....[more]

John Milton on liberty:

[S]tories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.

John Milton’s vision | open Democracy News Analysis, Milton on Liberty’s Sharp and Double Edge (Harper's Magazine)

Reconceptualizing Jesus

Russell Moore quotes and then comments on Christopher Hitchens reaction to a new book:

“The second essay is a review by Mark Tooley of a terrible-sounding book called Jesus for President by a terrible-sounding person named Shane Claiborne. You know the sort of thing very well: Jesus would have been a ‘human shield’ in Baghdad in 2003; the United States is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire. It’s the usual ‘liberation theology’ drivel, whereby everybody except the inhabitants of the democratic West is supposed to abjure violence. (To the question of whether the plan to kill Hitler was moral or not, Claiborne cites no less an authority than the Führer’s own secretary to claim that “all hopes for peace were lost” after the 1944 attempt. That, as should be obvious even to the most flickering intelligence, was chiefly because the attempt was a failure. What an idiot!)”

Now, Hitchens’ response doesn’t tell us whether or not Claiborne is right about Jesus. If the Bible did give us the Jesus as Che picture some of our friends present (or the Jesus as Rush picture some of our other friends would prefer), Hitchens would still hate him. ....

But that’s just the point.

I suspect Hitchens’ response to warmed-over liberation theology is quite similar to the majority report. It appeals to disaffected religious people who want to keep Jesus, but have the vibe of whatever Utopian movement is the order of the day. Those who think politically reconceptualizing Jesus is going to make him more attractive to unbelievers are as naive about human nature in apologetics as they are about…well, how to stop Hitler. ....

Christopher Hitchens on Jesus for President

"If God is dead, so is reason."

Michael Novak explains the dependence of scientific reasoning on belief in the God of the Bible in "Science and Religion" at FIRST THINGS. Excerpts:

According to the conventional narrative, science and religion have been at war for some three hundred years. But the reality is deeper and more complex. The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his Science and the Modern World (1925) that without devotion to the God of Israel, modern science would not have come into being. When humans learned that the God of Israel was the fountain and origin of all that is, and of all the stunning intelligibility within every part of creation, they had a motive for dedicating their whole lives to unlocking the secrets hidden in creation. More important, they had great confidence that this search would not be in vain. .... In the cultures shaped by the Bible, human beings had confidence that all questions can be answered if diligently pursued. They had confidence that all those disparate answers would point to a coherence and almost mathematical beauty that is breathtaking to contemplate. ....

Of course, many today hold that all this talk about God, Creator, Prime Intelligence, and the Act of Existence is gibberish. Yet even they must admit that it was to their good fortune that, in a small family of cultures, a decisive number of inquirers, scholars, and copyists of ancient manuscripts did learn to expect pervasive intelligibility in the universe because of their faith in an ordering Intelligence. That is why they were willing to invest most of the hours of their humble lives in preparing the way for modern science.

In other words, the belief shared by (at first) a few million of the Earth’s inhabitants that a light emanates from the Creator of the world, and suffuses all things, gave them a strong motivation for devoting their lives to scientific efforts. They wanted to learn more about God by studying the world He made. ....

This idea of a transcendent Creator assures us that in examining and experimenting with nature, we are violating no taboo, and not defiling God. It is through experimentation that we come to understand and to appreciate the work of His creative genius. By contrast, those peoples who identified their God with some creature within creation—the serpent, the jaguar, the rain—were afraid, lest by inquiry or experiment they might arouse His anger. It is by experiment that, today, many who do not believe in an intelligent Creator encounter the intelligibility that suffuses all things. Even unbelievers, by their actions if not their words, show their confidence in the unified intelligibility of all things. This confidence is the cultural patrimony bequeathed them by generations of believers.

Today, roughly half of all scientists are atheists. Yet, insofar as they are scientists, they share the same confidence that the sacrificing of one’s whole life to the pursuit of asking questions is a noble and worthy vocation. In this conviction, they act as if they believed in God. .... [more]

FIRST THINGS is a superb magazine. If you are the least bit interested in the intersection of religion with politics and the culture, it is indispensable. Subscribe here [I get the electronic version]. The website and blog also always have interesting material.

The image is of an older issue, February, 2007. The mix of articles in this issue is fairly typical, and, since it is an older issue, they are accessible to non-subscribers. A subscription would not be a bad Christmas gift to yourself or someone else.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Science and Religion

Never surrender!

Thanks to Joe Carter for the reference.

The Confabulum » Blog Archive » An Inspired Video

The Chronicles

I was somewhat surprised to discover that the university in my city offers online courses with continuing education credit [CEU] about The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. The teacher is David Werther, a Ph.D. in the Department of Liberal Studies and the Arts. Good for the University of Wisconsin even if they are non-credit.

Online theology/philosophy course: C. S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe