Believe

Andrew Camenga, the executive for the Seventh Day Baptist Board of Christian Education, has been playing with Wordle. He entered the Seventh Day Baptist Statement of Belief and his result can be found here. The most prominent word by far is "believe" (which does not indicate any affinity with a particular Presidential candidate) because each section begins with "we believe." I decided to enter the same words, play around with the format, and see what came up. My result is on the right and at Wordle. Click on the image for a larger version.

"Wordle," Wordle says, "is a toy"...

for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Sayers on Hell

John Piper quotes Dorothy L. Sayers on Hell

There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,” or “the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms.” ...

But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not “mediaeval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “mediaeval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it.... It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ. [Dorothy L. Sayers, A Matter of Eternity]

Pinnock and Sayers on Hell :: Desiring God

I'm back

I spent the last few days with my brother in Milwaukee attending Summerfest. Pretty good weather, good food, and relaxing with good music. I've spent at least a few days attending Summerfest almost every year since the early 1970s. I have much less stamina now. It's good to be back.

Hell

Perhaps because I was a teacher, I enjoy presentations that can get past the "watchful dragons" of skepticism. I think Tim Keller does this. His recent book, The Reason for God, is a wonderful example and I eagerly anticipate reading anything else he writes. Tim Keller on The Importance of Hell:

In 2003 a research group discovered 64% of Americans expect to go to heaven when they die, but less than 1% think they might go to hell. Not only are there plenty of people today who don't believe in the Bible's teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it an unreal and a remote concept. ....

In this short essay Keller elaborates on four reasons the doctrine matters:

1. It is important because Jesus taught about it more than all other Biblical authors put together.
2. It is important because it shows how infinitely dependent we are on God for everything.
3. It is important because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself.
4. The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us.

In point 2 Keller asks "What is hell, then?" and answers:

It is God actively giving us up to what we have freely chosen - to go our own way, be our own "the master of our fate, the captain of our soul," to get away from him and his control. It is God banishing us to regions we have desperately tried to get into all our lives. J.I.Packer writes: "Scripture sees hell as self-chosen . . . [H]ell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshipping him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves." (J.I.Packer, Concise Theology p.262-263.) If the thing you most want is to worship God in the beauty of his holiness, then that is what you will get (Ps 96:9-13.) If the thing you most want is to be your own master, then the holiness of God will become an agony, and the presence of God a terror you will flee forever (Rev 6:16; cf. Is 6:1-6.)

And later:

I believe one of the reasons the Bible tells us about hell is so it can act like 'smelling salts' about the true danger and seriousness of even minor sins. However, I've found that only stressing the symbols of hell (fire and darkness) in preaching rather than going into what the symbols refer to (eternal, spiritual decomposition) actually prevents modern people from finding hell a deterrent. Some years ago I remember a man who said that talk about the fires of hell simply didn't scare him, it seemed too far-fetched, even silly. So I read him lines from C.S. Lewis:

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others...but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

To my surprise he got very quiet and said, "Now that scares me to death." He almost immediately began to see that hell was a) perfectly fair and just, and b) something that he realized he might be headed for if he didn't change. If we really want skeptics and non-believers to be properly frightened by hell, we cannot simply repeat over and over that 'hell is a place of fire.' We must go deeper into the realities that the Biblical images represent. When we do so, we will find that even secular people can be affected.

He concludes:

The doctrine of hell is crucial - without it we can't understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is possible to stress the doctrine of hell in unwise ways. Many, for fear of doctrinal compromise, want to put all the emphasis on God's active judgment, and none on the self-chosen character of hell. Ironically, as we have seen, this unBiblical imbalance often makes it less of a deterrent to non-believers rather than more of one. And some can preach hell in such a way that people reform their lives only out of a self-interested fear of avoiding consequences, not out of love and loyalty to the one who embraced and experienced hell in our place. The distinction between those two motives is all-important. The first creates a moralist, the second a born-again believer. We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you, Jesus - I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Surely that should give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

Thanks to Alex Chediak for the reference.

The Importance of Hell - redeemer.com

When we notice the dirt

Trevin Wax quotes the perfect C.S. Lewis passage on overcoming temptation.

"Unwed fathers"

From the new National Review:

Bill Cosby continues to do a world of good. With his longtime collaborator Alvin F. Poussaint, he took to the pages of USA Today for some very straight talk. “Why do we persist in blaming the black family crisis on ‘unwed mothers’?” he asked. What about “unwed fathers”? An inspired phrase. Even to hear acknowledgment of “the black family crisis” is refreshing. Cosby said, “Real men do not walk away from the mothers of their babies.”

"They had many more things on their minds."

Richard John Neuhaus reflects on the complicity of the German people in the crimes of the Third Reich. He is commenting on Ian Kershaw’s Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. Neuhaus summarizes Kershaw as saying about ordinary Germans that "many of them knew more about what was happening to the Jews than they would later admit, but they [Kershaw says] 'had many more things on their minds' than the fate of an unpopular minority." Neuhaus:

The Third Reich is rightly viewed as an icon of evil. This does not mean, as Ian Kershaw reminds us, that the ordinary Germans of the time are the icon of moral indifference or complicity in great evil. Then it was the Jews, the Slavs, and the gypsies. At other times, it is another class of human beings. Given the requisite mix of circumstances, which is not beyond imagination, it is an idle conceit to think that ordinary Americans would behave more nobly than did the Germans of Hitler’s day. Among any people of any time, moral courage is the exception and not the rule. There are heroes and heroines who contend against the great evils of their time, but even they must be selective. You may be devoting your life to helping the people of Sudan, but what are you doing to help prisoners of conscience in China, or to stop international sex trafficking, or to feed the hungry of Zimbabwe, or to relieve the loneliness of old people in the nursing home within an easy drive from your home? The list goes on and on.

“They had many more things on their minds.” And so do we all. Contemplating monstrous evils, such as the Third Reich, is not an occasion for preening in our supposed moral superiority but for humility, for self-examination, for renewed discernment of our duty, and for more earnest prayer for the coming of the promised Kingdom. [more]

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Understanding the Third Reich and Other Great Evils

Civility

In the course of responding to a certain inconsistency in Jim Wallis's political commentary, Peter Wehner says this:

....[M]any of us who are Christians and in the political and policy arena struggle with how to allow our faith to animate our political and philosophical views without allowing it to become merely an instrument to advance a narrow political agenda. Our faith, while it certainly ought to be relevant to our public lives, should be trans-political and trans-ideological. And while faith can deepen one’s commitment to certain issues, the danger is that a passion for those commitments can sometimes manifest themselves in words that cross boundaries and are meant to wound. Tough and spirited exchanges are fine; mean and ad hominem ones are not.

I have found that it can sometimes be a delicate and difficult balancing act.

We could all benefit from more examples of, and more encouragement to strive for, authentic grace and civility in our public debates. .... (more)

Faith should animate our politics - both the causes to which we commit ourselves and how we behave as we pursue our poltical goals. Religion should never be placed at the service of political goals.

The Corner on National Review Online

Lord God

Greg Gilbert at The 9Marks Blog calls attention to a new rather fun program, which he describes here:

There are lots of people out there playing with Wordle, a program that creates "word clouds" out of large sections of text, giving prominence to the words that are used more often. Endless fun to be had with this. (HTJT)

• Here's the entire ESV Bible.
• The Psalms.
• The ESV New Testament.
• The Psalms in Hebrew.

The image on the right is of The Psalms as done by Wordle. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Church Matters: The 9Marks Blog

No other way

In another report about the Pew survey I referred to below, Fox News reports that:

America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise.

The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.

Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attenders said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.

In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

"The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep," said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion. ....

If by "their religion," the evangelical attenders mean their own denomination or church, the view expressed is defensible - they are merely saying that there are other Christian traditions that remain within orthodoxy. But if they mean something broader than that....

Rick Moore at HolyCoast, quotes the only person whose opinion matters and then suggests why believers may be ill-informed about their own faith:

Although he wasn't surveyed by Pew, someone else had an opinion on the subject of how to find eternal life:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. [John 14:6, KJV]

Even in The Message, the most watered down paraphrase Bible out there the text still seems pretty clear:

Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. [John 14:6, The Message]

I think you can probably chalk up the confusion demonstrated in the Pew poll to the wishy-washy feel-good preaching that has taken over many of our evangelical churches. Everyone is trying so hard to be "relevant" and "topical" that their teaching has become pretty useless. Various seminar-tested church models build churches with lots of people, but don't build people with lots of actual spiritual knowledge.

Update: Get Religion weighs in on what question "evangelical attenders" may have thought they were answering. First, the question that Pew asked, and then the concern:

[IF RESPONDENT HAS A RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION, ASK:] Now, as I read a pair of statements, tell me whether the FIRST statement or the SECOND statement comes closer to your own views even if neither is exactly right. First/next: My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life, OR: many religions can lead to eternal life.

I am being a bit picky here, but I suspect that if you asked a lot of people that Pew Forum question today, they would think of the great world religions. But many Christians would think more narrowly than that. Not all. Not many, perhaps. But some. What is your religion? I’m a Baptist, a Nazarene, an Episcopalian, a Catholic. Can people outside of your religion be saved? Of course. This is not the same thing, for many, as saying that they believe that salvation is found outside faith in Jesus Christ. There are others who might have a “dual covenant” view of Judaism, but not apply that belief to Islam, Hinduism, Wicca, Buddhism, etc.

Other Christians may believe that, somehow, all people will — in this life or the next — face some kind of spiritual decision about Jesus being “the way, the truth and the life.” But if you asked them if that means that only Christians will “be saved,” they will say that only God can know that. It is highly unlikely that they will say that the Bible is wrong or that centuries of Christian teaching are wrong. Yet it is unlikely that all of them — even Billy Graham — will be strictly dogmatic about what THEY know about eternity. How do they answer this Pew question?

FOXNews.com - Americans: My Faith Isn't the Only Way to Heaven - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News, HolyCoast.com: 3,000 Miles Wide and 3 Inches Deep, Pew views: Questions about Oprah America » GetReligion

"Irrationalist on the big questions"

Michael Novak is interviewed by First Things about his new book, No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers. It would seem to complement the kind of argument for the faith Tim Keller makes in Reason for God. Novak on why atheism seemed inadequate:

At times in my life I have been driven toward atheism, wanted to become an atheist. Was left in the dark about God, felt nothing, nada. But none of the various sorts of atheism I encountered (and these were many) seemed intellectually satisfying. All felt—to me, at least—like dodges. Any line of questioning that brought pressure on atheism was simply defined out of existence or at least treated as irrelevant. For example, the question “Why is there something, not nothing?” was ruled out as a question that cannot be answered by science, therefore meaningless. That is much too easy. And so with other questions.

Many of the books responding to the new atheists emerge from evangelical or other traditions that root their belief in feelings, sentiments, or experiences of conversion. I have never found this approach helpful in my own case. I want to go as far as reason will take me. This is the principal difference between my book and others. I seek a reasoned path, a way rooted in reason—a path through the very structure and constitution and methods of human understanding.

To my mind, our understanding of God emerges from our questions about our own understanding.

It certainly seems like our conscience comes from a light over which we are not master, a light greater than ourselves, which often faults our own behavior down to its roots far below the surface of our rationalizations. It certainly seems as if the questioning of our own long-held assumptions, and the relentless probing of our comfortable beliefs about ourselves, comes from somewhere within ourselves—but greater than ourselves and not subject to our own self-deceptions. Thinkers since Plato have discerned this, quite rightly—you can test it in your own experience.

So mine is a book about reason’s path to God. Whether at this task reason succeeds—or fails.

The thing that makes me most curious: Why do you find atheism unsatisfying? Take the typical atheism of a university professor or of the literary world. Why doesn’t it grab you?

To me it seems a contradiction to insist that all things flow from blind chance and then to go on calling oneself a rationalist. Irrationalist on the big questions, rationalist on the things amenable to science, and something like “emotivist” on matters of practical choice and ethics. In the perennial inquiries of the human race, this mix doesn’t add up.

I can understand why atheists invent a heroic image for themselves—Bertrand Russell’s Prometheus, or Dylan Thomas’ raging against the night, or Sisyphus, or even Milton’s Lucifer refusing to “serve.” But all this seems to be striking a literary prose to cover up the emptiness of meaning in human life. .... [more]

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » No One Sees God

Theistic atheists?

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Pew survey has found that:

Americans overwhelmingly believe in God and consider religion an important part of their lives, even as many shun weekly worship services, according to a national survey released today that also found great diversity in religious beliefs and practices.

Ninety-two percent of those interviewed for the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey said they believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit, and 58% said they pray privately every day. ....

In the same survey, though, we learn that even among atheists, 21% believe in God [see below] and 6% believe in a personal God. It would seem that many atheists are as shaky in their self-identification as are many of those who identify themselves as Christians.

92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew survey finds - Los Angeles Times, Hot Air » Blog Archive » New Pew survey: 21% of atheists believe in God

"Euthanasia of the weak and the sensual"

Michael Coren in the National Post reviews an exhibit at the Canadian War Museum about "those scientific ideas that gave a grimy intellectual veneer to the Nazi genocide." Among them:

The most vociferous and outspoken of the socialist eugenicists was the novelist H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. He argued in best-selling books such as Anticipations and A Modern Utopia that the world would collapse and from this collapse a new order should and would emerge.

"People throughout the world whose minds were adapted to the big-scale conditions of the new time. A naturally and informally organised educated class, an unprecedented sort of people." A strict social order would be formed. At the bottom of it were the base. These were "people who had given evidence of a strong anti-social disposition", including "the black, the brown, the swarthy, the yellow." Christians would also "have to go" as well as the handicapped. Wells devoted entire pamphlets to the need of "preventing the birth, preventing the procreation or preventing the existence" of the mentally and physically handicapped. "This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and the sensual is possible. I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved." ....

In the United States socialist writer Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the mother of the abortion movement, called for a radical eugenics approach as early as the first years of the 20th century. She wrote of the need for "a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization." .... (more)

I recall that when my denomination was first considering taking a firm position against abortion, some of those most emotionally against adoption of the resolution were theologically liberal. I vividly remember one of them recounting his visit to a nursing home for the retarded and physically disabled with the implication that it would have been better if they had not been born. An elderly gentleman wrote me a letter informing me that my grandfather certainly would not have agreed with my anti-abortion views. He may have been right about that. Turn of the 20th century theological and political liberalism (Progressivism) seems to have been perfectly compatible with racism and eugenics. Witness, for instance, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Buck decision.

Socialists made eugenics fashionable

"All Christians believe all this...."

Reading the interview referred to in the last post sent me back to The Reason for God. Keller spends the first half of his book raising doubt about the usual objections to Christianity - asking the skeptics to be skeptical about what they take for granted. The second half is called "The Reasons for Faith." In between, in what he calls an intermission, he defines what he means by "Christianity." Here is part of what he says:

From the outside the various Christian churches and traditions can look extremely different, almost like distinct religions. This is partially because the public worship services look so different. It is also because…Christianity is the faith that is most spread across the cultures and regions of the world. Therefore it has assumed an enormous number of different cultural forms. Another reason that Christians look so different from one another is the great theological rifts that have occurred over the centuries. The first great division was between the eastern Greek and western Roman church in the eleventh century. Today these are known as the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The second great schism was within the Western church, between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

All Christians who take truth and doctrine seriously will agree that these differences between churches are highly significant. They make a major difference in how one's faith is held and practiced. Nevertheless, all Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians assent together to the great creeds of the first thousand years of church history, such as the Apostle's, Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds. In these creeds the fundamental Christian view of reality is laid out. There is the classical expression of the Christian understanding of God as three-in-one. Belief in the Trinity creates a profoundly different view of the world from that of polytheists, non Trinitarian monotheists, and atheists, as I will show in Chapter 13. There is also a strong statement of the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ in these creeds. Christians, therefore, do not look upon Jesus as one more teacher or prophet, but as Savior of the world. These teachings make Christians far more like than unlike one another.

What is Christianity? For our purposes, I'll define Christianity as the body of believers who assent to these great ecumenical creeds. They believe that the triune God created the world, that humanity has fallen into sin and evil, that God has returned to rescue us in Jesus Christ, that in his death and resurrection Jesus accomplished our salvation for us so we can be received by grace, that he established the church, his people, as the vehicle through which he continues his mission of rescue, reconciliation, and salvation, and that at the end of time Jesus will return to renew the heavens and the earth, removing all evil, injustice, sin, and death from the world.

All Christians believe all this—but no Christians believe just this. As soon as you ask "How does the church act as vehicle for Jesus's work in the world?" and "How does Jesus's death accomplish our salvation?" and "How are we received by grace?" Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians will give you different answers. Despite the claims of many to be such, there are no truly "generic" nondenominational Christians. Everyone has to answer these "how" questions in order to live a Christian life, and those answers immediately put you into one tradition and denomination or another. ….

This is very much like C.S. Lewis's "mere Christianity" or what many of us would call "orthodoxy." The doctrinal differences that divide us into separate denominations are important (or, at least, many of them are), but their importance is in addition to – not instead of – what make us all Christians, and separates us from those who hold other creeds.

"Believe it because it's true."

Christianity Today interviews Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, which has reached the New York Times non-fiction, best-seller list. I've been reading it and like it a lot. CT says "Many readers are saying that the book provides satisfying answers to the questions that churched and unchurched people commonly raise about Christianity." Two exchanges from the interview:

You reject marketing apologetics like, "Christianity is better than the alternatives, so choose Christianity." Why?

Marketing is about felt needs. You find the need and then you say Christianity will meet that need. You have to adapt to people's questions. And if people are asking a question, you want to show how Jesus is the answer. But at a certain point, you have to go past their question to the other things that Christianity says. Otherwise you're just scratching where they itch. So marketing is showing how Christianity meets the need, and I think the gospel is showing how Christianity is the truth.

C.S. Lewis says somewhere not to believe in Christianity because it's relevant or exciting or personally satisfying. Believe it because it's true. And if it's true, it eventually will be relevant, exciting, and personally satisfying. But there will be many times when it's not relevant, exciting, and personally satisfying. To be a Christian is going to be very, very hard. So unless you come to it simply because it's really the truth, you really won't live the Christian life, and you won't get to the excitement and to the relevance and all that other stuff. ....

Many Christians say that the rationality of Christians' faith is not the obstacle for unbelievers; they reject Christianity because of what they see as bad behavior and toxic attitudes.

There are always three reasons people believe or disbelieve: the intellectual, the personal, and the social.

It's typical of postmodern people to say belief is all cultural, conditioned by your community.

Perhaps there was a day in which Christians thought that you evangelized largely through intellectual argument, but now I hear people saying, "No, it's all personal. If you're going to win people to Christ you just have to be authentic. You have to just reach out to them personally. You can't do the rational." In other words, Christians are saying the rational isn't part of evangelism. The fact is, people are rational. They do have questions. You have to answer those questions.

Don't get the impression that I think that the rational aspect takes you all the way there. But there's too much emphasis on just the personal now.

Maybe you know I'm a 57-year-old man. You'd say, "Of course you'd say that." But I'm knee deep in 20-somethings. So it's not like I don't know how people are today. (more)

Thanks to The Christian Mind for the reference.

Tim Keller Reasons with America | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

God and King

Joe Carter offers "Six Thoughts about Jesus" and they are interesting thoughts. One of them:

"Jesus is not a Republican or a Democrat," said John Mark Reynolds, "He's probably a monarchist." When I first heard that at GodBlogCon several years ago I thought it was clever; now I find it to be a profound insight. Jesus constantly talked about the Kingdom of Heaven. So why do so few Christians talk about it? One reason, I believe, is that we are now all republicans and democrats (small-R, small-D) and simply don't understand what Jesus is talking about. We may use the term "Lord" and "King of Kings" but — unlike the vast majority of people throughout history we do not comprehend what it means to live under the reign of a king. We need some remedial training on how to live as subjects in a kingdom. We may be justified in rejecting the divine right of kings to rule but we cannot be justified if we reject the rule of our divine king.

Monarchies have subjects, not citizens. Subjects don't vote for their leader; they obey him. In human polities, this is risky because our leaders, whether elected or not, are fallible, sinful beings. "Put not your trust in princes." As Churchill noted, the advantage of democracy is only in comparison to all other forms of government. When your King is God, the only risk in obeying Him is temporal and temporary.

Six Thoughts About Jesus - the evangelical outpost

Freedom from religion

Intolerance once again raises its ugly head in my city - a city whose university once celebrated "sifting and winnowing." From the Journal-Sentinel:

A group that promotes the separation of church and state has asked Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) to end the state Assembly's 160-year-old practice of opening sessions with a prayer.

In a letter to Huebsch today, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation said the prayers often "proselytize and advance the Christian faith" and exclude non-Christian and non-religious legislators, aides and members of the public. The group said that an analysis of videos of 16 prayers led by representatives over a one-year period showed that 15 were explicitly Christian. As a result, the prayers are unconstitutional, the group said.

"Legislators and clergy routinely invoke the Christian diety, ‘Jesus Christ,' as well as the ‘Holy Spirit' and Christian prophets and saints," the letter said. "Many of these ‘prayers' are nothing less than sermons meant to proselytize and advance the Christian faith to the Wisconsin general public."

Huebsch spokesman John Murray said Huebsch hadn't seen the letter yet, but would look at it and consider the request.

The Assembly has opened its meetings with a prayer since the state was founded in 1848, .... [more]

I have never understood how hearing someone pray coerces the hearer. I have lived in Madison almost all of my adult life. Consequently, I have heard any number of people, in private conversation and speaking publicly, express views on politics and religion with which I strongly disagree. And yet, somehow, they have failed to change my mind. If the Freedom from Religion group are right about the potential influence of just hearing something expressed, then there must be an extraordinary number of feeble-minded people about with very weak religious convictions. Thomas Jefferson voluntarily attended regular Christian worship services held in the new United States Capitol, and yet retained his distinctly heterodox theological views.

I am convinced that the anti-religious among us are less interested in protecting people from "proselytizing" than in prohibiting the "free exercise" of those who do believe in God. The secularizers will not stop until the public expression of orthodox belief is silenced. Liberals, especially Wisconsin Progressive Liberals, once believed that the cure for speech they disagreed with was more speech, not less.

Thanks to Badger Blogger for calling my attention to this story.

Group asks Assembly to stop opening with prayers, calls them unconsitutional - All Politics

Sabbath Recorder July/August 2008

The July/August, 2008, Sabbath Recorder is available online here as a pdf.

This month's issue of The Sabbath Recorder includes an article by Jim Goodrich of North Loup, Nebraska, about public service. Two quotations:

I believe strongly that everyone has some civic responsibility. It may not be to hold office, but those of us who are eligible should at least vote.

It may be your vote that enables Christians to hold positions of authority in government. It may be your vote that prevents those with a “humanist” agenda from gaining power. It may your vote that defeats laws that undermine the church and family in your community and nation. [....]

Positions of service should never be taken lightly. Wherever you find your place in public life, it is important to focus on the directive from Paul to the Colossians: “And whatsoever you do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Col. 3:17).

There is also a fine article by David Gushee, from the Associated Baptist Press, titled "How are Christians accountable to each other?"

And much else.

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

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Creation or chaos?

Insight Scoop discusses a book containing Pope Benedict's discussion of issues raised by evolution with several of his former students. It quotes him on the fundamental issue:

Ultimately it comes down to the alternative: What came first? Creative Reason, the Creator Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, strangely enough brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason

Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: Reuters praises "Pope Benedict's evolution book"