John Piper's short biography on William Wilberforce is available January 29 as a softcover book and immediately as a free PDF.Source: Alex Chediak Blog
...Nigerian Anglican Bishop Peter Akinola, speaking on the separation occurring within the Episcopal Church:The point here is not of separating from sinners . . . but objecting strongly to yielding to the . . . worldly spirit of a materialistic, secularist and self-centered age, which seeks to mould everyone into its own tainted image.This upholding of orthodoxy, as Chuck Colson refers to it, applies to every sin imaginable, not just homosexuality or other outward sin. Anyone who would mold themselves or try to mold others to an image other than that of the repentant person redeemed in Christ, as explicated in the Bible, is a deviant. Ouch. Yet such a person cannot be merely "written off"; with patience and prayers may we make room for their repentance. To write a person off is to assume the role of judge.
Our argument is that if homosexuals see themselves as deviants who have gone astray, the Christian spirit would plead for patience and prayers to make room for their repentance. When Scripture says something is wrong and some people say that it is right, such people make God a liar.
However, to accept a person into church fellowship without addressing their sin is to compromise the message of salvation, as it is to allow the unrepentant person into church fellowship. I know this goes against the grain of a lot of church practice, but I think the key word here is unrepentant. ...[more]
Alexandra Pelosi is a filmmaker, set to debut her newest documentary on evangelical Christianity on HBO January 25th. She is also the daughter of the first female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. And she, halfway anyway, thinks conservative Christians are on the right side of the so-called "culture wars."Source: Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Speaker Pelosi's Daughter Joins the Culture War
Pelosi, who previously made waves with her 2000 Bush campaign documentary "Journeys with George," describes herself, according to the New York Times, as a "lapsed Catholic who dislikes church." Nonetheless, the Times reports, she makes sure her new baby will be brought up in church so he will have "more than himself and capitalism to believe in."
According to the Times article, Pelosi fears that many evangelicals won't watch her documentary, simply because she's the Speaker's daughter. Nonetheless, she feels a strange pull toward some of the concerns of conservative Christians. "I believe in the culture war," Pelosi tells reporter Felicia R. Lee. "And you know what? If I have to take a side in the culture war, I'll take their side. Because if you give me the choice of Paris Hilton or Jesus, I'll take Jesus." ...
GRAND RAPIDS -- In a rousing three-hour gospel service, 1,400 worshippers praised Gov. Jennifer Granholm as a leader anointed by God to lead the state into a new era of justice and prosperity.Source: Governor held up as modern biblical heroine
At an inaugural prayer service, preachers compared her to the biblical heroine Esther, a Persian queen who saved her fellow Jews from slaughter.
Granholm may be God's instrument to help save the state from unemployment, poorly funded schools and other evils, ministers said in the packed service at Renaissance Church of God in Christ, 1001 33rd St. SE.
"Governor, I don't believe it was an accident. I believe it was the providence of God that you as a modern-day Esther were called to the throne at a time like this," said Bishop Nathaniel Wells II, head of the Church of God in Christ denomination in West Michigan.
The Rev. William Wyne, of Battle Creek, said she may even be a "modern-day Mary of Nazareth, who will give birth to a fresh vision, a fresh hope, a fresh renewal for all people in Michigan.
...President Chavez is considering a proposal that would establish him as the high priest of his own form of evangelical Christianity, convert his cabinet members into bishops of a lower rank, and submit church activities to the civil and military power of his government.
It is still unclear who is behind the proposal. Publicly, it has taken the form of a petition by leaders of "Centro Cristiano de Salvación" (Christian Center of Salvation). The association claims to represent 17,000 evangelical churches and 5,000,000 Venezuelans. Their request is simple: make their denomination the country's official religion, teach it in all public schools and pay the pastors from government coffers. In turn, they will make Chavez their head bishop and promise to submit absolutely to his authority.
Between Two Worlds calls attention to a short book by John Piper, which is described at his ministry site: Even the most faithful, focused Christians can encounter periods of depression and spiritual darkness when joy seems to stay just out of reach. It can happen because of sin, satanic assault, distressing circumstances, or hereditary and other physical causes. This book, which is an expansion of a chapter in When I Don't Desire God, aims to give some comfort and guidance to those experiencing spiritual darkness.
Readers will gain insight into the physical side of depression and spiritual darkness, what it means to wait on the Lord in a time of darkness, how unconfessed sin can clog our joy, and how to minister to others who are living without light. Piper uses real-life examples and sensitive narrative to show readers abundant reason to hope that God will pull them out of the pit of despair and into the light once again.
A packet of information pertaining to the Conference vote regarding SDB membership with the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty was sent out to each church as ‘Certified mail, Return Receipt Requested.’ This underscores the importance of this matter.Link to Seventh Day Baptist website
The cover letter explains the vote-by-church procedure. The packet then contains a brief summary of the BJC “hot button issues”; solicited letters from SDBs on both sides of the question (to withdraw or remain); the “Resolution of Recognition, Encouragement and Hope” from the BJC, recognizing the longstanding relationship between them and SDBs; several comments from the “One Eternal Day” blog; and comments from our current SDB representative to the BJC Board.
Many churches plan to discuss this at their annual meetings. Please read the material and be informed.
To say that Jesus is Lord is to renounce our natural instincts, several philosophical systems, and the constantly reinforced message of the culture, which upholds the primacy of the self and the supposed need to organize my life around advancing my interests. When I remind myself in prayer at the beginning of a day that Jesus is Lord, I am challenged to dethrone the All-Important Self, just as I was taught long ago. ...Source: Dethroned | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
Affirming Jesus as Lord relativizes all earthly attractions, pleasures, and goods. They all come a distant second to Christ himself. That's why we can hardly be reminded too frequently of the implications of his lordship.
... When I started getting interested in politics and national affairs, I once again was brought up short by the claims of Jesus. To affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord is to acknowledge that no political leader, party, flag, nation, or ideology can share lordship over my life. The one who confesses Christ alone as Lord cannot simultaneously affirm utmost loyalty to another idea or person. This realization has constricted my understanding of politics. I've learned to fear the seductive power of political ideologies, the temptation to idealize political leaders, and the amoral bloodlust of partisan politics. Perhaps I have overreacted. ...
In recent years, I have found the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord remarkably inconvenient in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. I am often asked to represent evangelicals in various settings. In such places, I choose to speak my native language, which includes an affirmation that Jesus is Lord. This sometimes evokes puzzled or even angry dialogue, as listeners ask why I must use such exclusivist language about God, faith, and ethics. I respond by saying I would rather engage in a richly textured dialogue involving native languages than a desiccated, thin exchange of inoffensive mush. These are uncomfortable moments. ... [more]
Intolerance in America does not come primarily from the "Religious Right." Book after book is being published the primary purpose of which seems to be to promote fear of Evangelicals and traditional Catholics. I read widely on Christian websites and am generally familiar with Christian involvement in politics. Christians are indeed concerned about issues like abortion and gay marriage and what they perceive as an effort to read them out of the body politic, but none of them are sympathetic to the idea of a "Christian dictatorship," and, except at the most extreme fringes [which I have never read - only read about], even a Christian domination of society. Most are extremely committed to religious liberty for themselves and others. In fact they are far more concerned about being marginalized than about "taking over;" more concerned about being taken seriously than about dominating anyone; far more interested in defending their views in the public square than in silencing other views. Part of the problem is that many seem to assume that any vigorously expressed opinion that falls outside liberal piety is by definition intolerant and dangerous.... In fact, the differences between today's Christian right and the movements led by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are greater than the similarities. Hitler was more pagan than Christian. Street violence was a key tactic of Mussolini's Brownshirts; the Christian right has focused on nonviolent demonstrations outside U.S. abortion clinics and on changing laws at the ballot box. And there's a big difference between supporting laws against gay marriage and putting gays in concentration camps.
Nevertheless, Hedges concludes that the Christian right "should no longer be tolerated," because it "would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible." What does he think should be done? He endorses the view that "any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law," and therefore we should treat "incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal." Thus he rejects the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech and religion, and court rulings that permit prosecution for speech only if there is an imminent threat to particular individuals.
Hedges advocates passage of federal hate-crimes legislation prohibiting intolerance, but he doesn't really explain how it would work. ...
Amazon.com has decided to make it much easier to buy Bibles from them. They categorize Bibles by translation, by publisher, and by other criteria. It will be easy to buy far more copies of Scripture than any actual believer would ever read. Synopsis: Christians have long differed with one another on both the meaning and the practice of water baptism. Using the classic Counterpoints forum of presentation-critique-response, this insightful book explores four prominent views of baptism held by different branches of Protestantism: Baptist, Christian Church/Church of Christ, Lutheran, and Reformed.Thirty years ago InterVarsity published a book titled The Water that Divides: The Baptism Debate, written by a proponent of infant baptism and one of "believer's" baptism, with chapters responding to one another. As someone who grew up in a Baptist church, it was especially valuable to me for its explanation of the justification for baptizing infants. I wasn't persuaded but it reduced my sectarian arrogance considerably. It is out of print and worthy of being re-published.
At Christianity Today's Books & Culture, a good, long, review of books describing the influence of Spiritualism - primarily a mid-to-late 19th century religious movement, but with echoes today. In the midst of much interesting material, there is this description of its origins: One night in 1848, the Fox sisters [see picture] and their parents and siblings heard loud knockings after going to bed in their family's cabin. Whatever was making the noises proved to be intelligent. It could respond to questions, one knock for yes, two for no. The resulting "conversations" became increasingly extravagant, such that the "raps" could knock on specific letters of the alphabet and enunciate entire sentences.
The sisters claimed their source was a certain peddler who had been murdered in that very house during a sales stop while traveling through selling his wares some years before. Quickly observers noted the raps occurred when either Kate or Maggie was present, but not otherwise. They were soon celebrities, given opportunities to speak and demonstrate their ability as mediums before large audiences in cities all over the United States and Europe. [More]
“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a wizard or a necromancer, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. (Dt 18:9 [ESV])Source: If Death Is No Barrier - Books & Culture
Source: OpinionJournal - TasteFor the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.
The faith that the new atheists describe is a simple-minded parody. It is impossible to see within it what might have preoccupied great artists and thinkers like Homer, Milton, Michelangelo, Newton and Spinoza - let alone Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, Goya, Cardinal Newman, Reinhold Niebuhr or, for that matter, Albert Einstein. But to pass over this deeper faith - the kind that engaged the great minds of Western history - is to diminish the loss of faith too. The new atheists are separated from the old by their shallowness. (more)
In a new column published at Townhall, ACLJ attorney Jay Sekulow uses the occasion of the upcoming Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation Supreme Court hearing to complain about those of us that would resist governmental promotion of religion by keeping church and state separate. A mixture of red herring and straw men with the usual blend of sky-is-falling hyperbole, Sekulow's piece hopes the Court will use the case to strike down the entire practice of granting taxpayer standing in Establishment Clause litigation.
For years, atheists and others who are antagonistic to religion and who want to remove every religious reference from American public life, have had a special privilege in federal court. . . . All they had to do was show that they were taxpayers. In essence, separationists have had a free reign to bring Establishment Clause lawsuits throughout the country just because they were "taxpayers." Simply put, that's unfair.I know what you're thinking - did he attend a special class to learn to squeeze so many offensive tidbits into a single sentence like that first one? And where do they teach that? But leaving some of them aside for now (like the idea that "separationists" are generally "atheists" and those "antagonistic to religion"), here's the obvious question which is of course not addressed in his column: Does the Establishment Clause have any teeth? And if so, who will police it if taxpayers are not allowed to bring suit? ...
Thanks to a 1968 ruling by the Warren Court — Flast v. Cohen — a citizen can challenge a federal faith-based initiative (for example) without asserting anything beyond his status as a federal taxpayer.Source: Walter M. Weber "Supreme Standing" at National Review Online
In years since, disgruntled church-state separationists have used Flast to challenge federal programs like Title I (education assistance), the Adolescent Family Life Act, the AmeriCorps Education Awards Program, and even the National Motto (“In God We Trust”). By contrast, equally unhappy taxpayers may not challenge federal programs that they allege violate other limits on the power of Congress (like massive social welfare spending).
Controversy over Flast was extant even at the time of the decision, and was given voice in a meticulous dissent by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Granting private citizens the right to object on behalf of the general public when they have not been personally injured treats them like “private attorneys-general” even though these citizens are “indistinguishable from any group selected at random from among the general population, taxpayers and nontaxpayers alike.”
In subsequent cases the Supreme Court has steadfastly refused to extend Flast rights to any area of law outside of the Establishment Clause. And even in that Establishment context the Court has insisted that the challenge be to federal spending, not to government action benefiting a religious group in other ways (such as the transferring of property, not money, to a religious college).
Flast itself, however, while confined to a limited (albeit important) set of applications, still stands. And that means the successors of Madalyn Murray O’Hair still enjoy a unique free pass to federal court to air their grievances.
The reason Flast was so essential to the vitality of establishment clause litigation was really twofold. First, ...a traditional hurdle had to be jumped with respect to the standing-to-sue doctrine, which holds that some particularized injury must be suffered by a plaintiff, not a diffuse complaint shared by countless others similarly situated (e.g., as taxpayers). Second, the tight focus on the standing issue in Flast permitted Chief Justice Warren to elide entirely the related issue of whether any and all litigation under the establishment [clause] raises political questions, unfit for adjudication. The standing doctrine and the political questions doctrine are close cousins, both animated by the Constitution's requirement that a real "case or controversy" come to the courts in a form they can resolve, involving actual rights, injuries, and remedies. In Flast, the political questions doctrine is the dog that does not bark (or at most, it whimpers quietly once or twice). Chief Justice Warren assumed throughout his opinion that if only he could shoehorn the litigants into a rewritten version of the standing doctrine, then the issue they raised was certainly not political but was perfectly "justiciable," in the legal term of art. But neither Warren nor anyone else has ever provided a reason for believing that the establishment clause poses anything other than a political question. How, after all, does "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" even begin to mark out the boundaries of a concrete individual right that courts can vindicate? No good answer has ever been given to that question. If Flast is overruled, it may also be the beginning of bigger things in reforming our understanding of judicial power under the Constitution.Source: Bench Memos on National Review Online
It is an exciting time to be a Seventh Day Baptist. There is much work that the Lord is calling for us to do. Each of us has been given a sacred responsibility to direct all our worldly assets - our time, talents, and resources - for the increased glory of the Kingdom of God and the spread of his Gospel. Each of us is important, because we aren't a big enough group to survive sloth from too many people. You and I must be what we wish Seventh Day Baptists to become. Luckily, none of us must take on this resolution alone, because we have a God who loves nothing more than to work through His people. All we need is to be honest about who we are, earnest in our efforts to carry the Gospel and be responsive to God, and to follow where He directs us.Source: SDB Exec: January 2007
Once on the island with only the supplies he had been able to salvage from the wrecked ship, Crusoe begins to make a new life. He is alone and entirely dependent on himself. When he falls ill there is no one to nurse him. He does however have a Bible, which he reads. He begins to see in his calamities the work of Providence. He repents and cries out “Lord, be my help!”
One of the prints hanging on my walls is “Marooned” by the American painter and illustrator Howard Pyle. The marooned sailor in the painting is alone like Crusoe, but with much less hope of physical survival. He has been left on a sandbar waiting for the tide to rise. I chose it because I like Howard Pyle, but also because it is a good representation of those times in life when we feel abandoned, alone, and despairing….[W]e rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance... If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. ... And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. ... For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.Romans 5:3; 8:11, 28, 38-39 (ESV)
