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Senator Specter replies to letter to vote no on the hate crimes bill April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Government , add a comment

Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 4:14 PM

Subject: Re: Hate Crimes

Dear Mr. Balliet:

Thank you for contacting my office regarding hate crimes. I appreciate hearing from you.

A hate crime is typically defined as an act of violence against an individual motivated by the victim’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. Current federal law covers only those crimes of violence motivated by racial, religious, or ethnic bias. Moreover, the law only covers instances where the victim is engaged in a “federally protected activity,” such as voting, serving on jury duty, or attending school.

The current federal laws do not provide sufficient protection. That’s why in 1998 I became the lead Republican co-sponsor of the first hate crime bill introduced in the United States Senate. Most recently, I co-sponsored the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act in the 109 th Congress - commonly known as the “Hate Crimes bill.” I continue to serve as a leader

of the effort to toughen hate crime laws by expanding the protection they afford through: the removal of the “federally protected activity” requirement, the addition of more protected categories, and strengthening the ability of state and local law enforcement authorities to investigate and prosecute hate crimes with both the assistance of the federal government and grant monies.

The concerns of my constituents are of great importance to me, and I rely on you and other Pennsylvanians to keep me informed of your views and opinions. As a former District Attorney myself, I am confident these much needed changes to the current laws will ensure that Pennsylvania’s law enforcement officers have what they need to more effectively combat the problem of hate-motivated violence.

Should you have any further questions, please contact my office or visit my website at http://specter.senate.gov . Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Arlen Specter  

---

While I certainly disagree with Senator Specter, neither Senator Bob Casey or US  Representative John Peterson replied , though Peterson typically will respond personally by US Mail.  I had corresponded to all three before posting this article .

The irony of Kinism April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Ethnicity, Theology , 2comments

The irony of kinism never ceases to amaze me. Let me repeat what I have said several times recently as a preface. I have no disdain for kinists, and I do not live in a Utopian world where I believe that people will overcome racial or stereotypical views-ever. And I firmly believe they will remain ingrained with all of us to some extent for our earthly existence. There is in fact something “natural or human” about it, but most likely based in our fallen humanity.

My interest in Kinism is basically two-fold, sociological and then theological.  I have stated my theological differences in the past and that is not my current focus.  My current focus is sociological, and in fact to try and develop a parallel into how this theological movement has grown due to political and sociological factors in America today.

So this will be a series , spread over time ,examining some interesting correlations I have found in this quite interesting research of behavior patterns. I will also note another real irony, one that I must address. When I was involved in starting a particular youth group and then thereafter a website (which has remained static) to encourage our youth to rise up and to fight the status quo when they contradict biblical principles, basically a semper reformanda theory in practice, and to encourage a new reformation, since I feel the reformation of the 1600’s is either dead or on life support, here I find kinism.

In fact, there are many problems that kinism address that I agree are problems in our society that if not addressed will be the demise of our culture, a demise I blame on the Christian, not on the pagan. Much of it has to do with the ingrown nature of the church and that our Christianity has tuned into scholaticism, religiosity, debating societies and churchianity, rather than applied Christianity that will in turn affect our culture and fulfilling our Kingdom duties and purpose.

I agree with many of the concepts of the home being paramount in the Christian life, and the import of family and for the man to be the priest of his home. I firmly believe we should influence culture because of our very presence in it, because we are called out for a kingdom purpose. I believe in the biblical command not to mix with people who have another God/religion and that we as parents need to stand firm on this. A house divided against itself can not stand and two religions in a home will create a confusion and make the responsibility of raising your child in the ways of the Lord difficult if not impossible because the parentage is not in agreement. 

I agree that our government has become corrupt and that we must not as Christians follow the government blindly and confuse this as a Christian nation or a Christian government , and in fact recognize that the government is antithetical to Christianity itself, as it is a god, the perceived savior and cure for all social wrongs, and people have wrongly put their faith in trust in it, rather than Christ.  In fact, I agree that we are under a tyranny of our own making, and the parallel to this (though we don’t term our oligarchical rulers kings) is unmistakable as recorded in Judges and Samuel, especially what the definition of a tyranny is (ten percent). We are so far past a tyranny because so many have looked to the government as their god. even Christians, who are worshipping another God, the United States government.

This “Christian nation” is under more more severe judgment than those people were. What percentage of our wages go to the tyrannical government? Graduated income taxes make this a personal answer, but a tenth would be a tax break for most and the lifting of a yoke, yet, today, we see Christians stating tithing is past, willing to give endless amount to the state passively and resisiting our Lord. Much of this can be traced back to the willingness of the church to give up deaconal assistance to its members to the state, and never trying to reclaim it, because for some, it was relieving a burden of the church . Likewise, many have put their faith in an institutional church and abandoned faith in Christ.

I encourage Christians to stand up and say there is a problem when they perceive a problem, and we should not mute or discourage ones who see a problem. We should look at the problems, or perceived problems brought to us and see if they are in fact a problem. Most people when they denote a problem, also try to identify a cause for that problem and a solution for the problem. This is laudable. 

However, many times what happens is the problem identification, or at least parts of it are valid. Ones that reasonable people could agree. But the perceived core of the problem or the solution are not agreed upon. And then you have people who generally agree on a problem, but vehemently disagree on the solutions because the core of the problem is not agreed upon. It is at this juncture that we create even further hostilities among one another because many perceive the solution to be gasoline on the fire, or worse than the problem itself.

Many times, as in the case of kinism, very genuine, well intentioned men start out, and what attracts recruits is the solution to the problem, and in this case separatism of the races. This is especially attractive among the southern culture. This is not unique to kinism, in fact, John Calvin addressed this among my people, the Huguenots, that many were attracted to the movement for different reasons than the ones of the reformers. One has to squarely face those issues. Read some of the blogs (many are now blocked , or have been shut down due ,so this is in theory), and while there is a denial of racism, it reflects negatively upon those who are not in fact racist, per their confession/testimony.

There is some Utopian leanings in any separatist movement, that if we were all like in kind, everything would be better, if only this and that, but it fails to recognize the reality of life in the world today and even more-so why we are called to Christ, to be workers in His kingdom and fulfill our kingdom purpose. Just look at families-how many actually get along in even extended families? How many families themselves are different religions? And whose feet is this blame to be laid? Cultures? Other races? NO, the home and the church.  One must honestly ask themselves would they be happier in this situation, a non-Christian or different religion partner for your child who was “kin”/shared ethnic identity so your grand-babies would be the same ethnicity or a like faith partner that may be of a different skin tone who raised the family in the faith and had a Christian home.  It may well be neither of the aforementioned, but how many are willing to settle with the former hoping for conversion (how many of you have unsaved children or children who have unsaved partners of the same race for instance and remain mute?), but would disown their child for the latter?

If we were all one skin-tone we would divide my hair color, eye color, what hand we use (remember left handed people were evil?), body types, personality types, attractiveness and even more-so, social classes.  All one has to do is look at modern day protestantism and see the perpetual division even among the basically very similar cultures and classes. In fact just look at Presbyterianism itself. Just take a look at the group WARC, who holds the WCF as a common confession, yet how many reject it?

I posted a article, Jewish Dreams,  a few months back that I got many comments (private messages) of disagreement. It hit hard on the eschatological correlations between post millennialism and Jewish eschatology.Since that time I have posted many articles where I insinuate that kinism is in fact stealing Jewish concepts, yet detests Jews. Again, I state, the rejection of the Christ and the marriage to a Jew or being in a business partnership with a Jew, who has a different religion is prohibited. But kinism is a distinctly Jewish concept, and in research I came across the article beneath that I could not help draw the conceptual parallels to. Even if you do not agree, it would not be a waste of your time to familiarize yourself with their concepts and draw your own conclusions.

Jewish Political Thought Kinship and Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses Daniel J. Elazar Politics is, in many respects, the Cinderella of Jewish studies. Much attention has been lavished on the development of Jewish religious, legal, and social practice; probably even more has been written about the history of Jewish Gentile relations. By comparison, the study of the Jewish political tradition — with all that it entails for an understanding of Jewish modes of self-government, Jewish political perceptions, and Jewish political responsibilities — remains an almost uncharted area. This omission is surprising. Concerns of an intrinsically political nature, have, after all, constantly lain at the very heart of much Jewish thought and practice. Traditionally, indeed, the validity of Jewish teaching has always been considered to find best expression in a political setting, through a polity in which Jews bear the responsibility for creating the “kingdom of heaven” (Hebrew: malkhut shamayim — the good commonwealth) on earth. Hence, the Bible is replete with examples of political behavior and contains seminal ideas concerning political organization and obligation. In turn, these are reflected and quoted in later texts of Jewish law. Furthermore, and as the entire chronicle of the Jewish diaspora experience indicates, Jewish political practice did not come to an abrupt end with the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent Exile of the Jews from the Holy Land. Throughout their dispersion, the Jews continued to develop and embellish distinctive patterns of communal government, and it was in accordance with these that communal authority was conferred and accepted. Total uniformity was, of course, impossible. Geographical, temporal and cultural circumstances compelled individual communities to develop in different ways. What is remarkable, nevertheless, is the extent of the similarities and continuities in the political practices of the Jewish people, and the degree to which those practices remained faithful to a commonly acknowledged source. A survey of legal, homiletic and philosophical literature reveals the preservation of a shared Jewish political terminology, a distinctive Jewish political outlook, and a common approach to political institution-building. In short, it confirms the existence of a specifically Jewish political tradition, with all that the term implies in the way of a continuous dialogue regarding proper and common modes of political behavior, accepted institutional forms, and authentic political norms. There exists a sad irony in the fact that the very existence of a Jewish political tradition should have gone virtually unrecognized in our own time. It might have been expected that the Jewish national revival of the twentieth century would have generated attempts to enhance public awareness of the political tradition of which it forms a part. In effect, the operational resurgence of the concept of a Jewish polity in the modern State of Israel has not been accompanied by an awareness of its historical parallels and roots. Concentrating their focus on what is novel in the present Jewish institutions in Israel and the diaspora, past and present; equally obscured is the evidence which indicates that contemporary Jewry functions — for the most part unconsciously — in the political arena in no small measure on the basis of certain fundamental beliefs and practices which are embedded in Jewish culture. There has been very little regard for the fact that the present behavioral patterns of the Jewish political world, revolutionary though some of them might seem, are in essence extensions and modifications of a tradition which possesses deep roots in the entire course of Jewry’s long and eventful history. Attempting to correct this situation has initiated a systematic effort to recover the several dimensions of the Jewish political tradition.1One purpose of this venture is, clearly, scholarly: the desire to demonstrate the extent to which the Jewish political tradition constitutes an integral segment of the entire fabric of Jewish tradition, a sine qua non of that tradition given Jewry’s hallowed commitment to peoplehood and the attainment of Divine redemption through the creation of the “kingdom of heaven” — the good commonwealth — on earth. No less compelling, however, is the contemporary communal importance of the Center’s enterprise. As is often acknowledged, an increasing number of Jews find themselves expressing their Jewish identity principally or substantially through their identification with Jewish political issues — support for Israel, the struggle for the emigration of Soviet Jewry, and the like. In this respect, they may be described as neo-Sadducees, Jews who find their principal means for expressing Jewishness through the public institutions and affairs of the Jewish people. For such people, linkage to the Jewish political tradition may constitute a primary medium of linking them to Jewish tradition in its entirety. Awareness of the tradition, and an understanding of its resonance, promises in effect to enhance and buttress Jewish self-consciousness in our times, and thereby to play a crucial role in contemporary Jewish life in both Israel and the diaspora. It is in the light of such considerations that it is appropriate to build a comprehensive and fully integrated program in the Jewish political tradition and its contemporary uses. Drawing upon the vast storehouse of accumulated Jewish historiography, and utilizing the methodologies more recently developed in the political and social sciences, such a program can arouse contemporary awareness of both the importance and relevance of the topic. This is a venture which must, of necessity, engage the attention of Jewish political and communal leaders, as well as academics. Such a program will not only fill a scholarly lacunai, but also should make a contribution to the continuing development of a tradition of enduring worth. Jewish political studies emphasizes the organization of the Jewish community as a polity — a corporate entity whose structure, institutions and processes have reflected the continuing effort of the Jewish people to govern itself under a variety of conditions. As a field, it is designed to recover and enrich the political dimensions of Jewish life in all its manifestations. The subject matter of Jewish political studies falls into three major divisions: Jewish political institutions and behavior, Jewish political thought, and Jewish public affairs. At least nineteen areas of concern have been identified on the basis of these divisions as reflected in the literature currently available. They include: Civic Education Contemporary Issues Country, Community and Area Studies Defining the Boundaries of Jewish Society External Relations Intercommunity Relations Israel Jewish Organizations and Interest Groups Jewish Political and Communal Institutions Jewish Political Behavior Jewish Political Culture Jewish Political Organization Jewish Political Thought Jewish Public Law Public Personalities Religious Movements, Ideologies and Public Persuasions Research Approaches and Methods Subdivisions of the Jewish People The Course of Jewish Public Affairs There are four primary tasks that should occupy the field: (i) Investigation - research into Jewish political theory and practice, past and present, and the development of Jewish attitudes towards the exercise of political prerogatives. (ii) Interpretation - the analysis of Jewish political behavior and its meaning in light of the constitutional bases and divisions of the Jewish polity. (iii) Policy Application - the utilization of scholarship in Jewish public affairs. (iv) Presentation - the dissemination of the fruits of ongoing research to a variety of audiences — academic, professional, and general. Ultimately, therefore, the selection will not only include immediately appropriate citations from biblical and Mishnaic sources; it will also incorporate quotations from the vast literature of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud; the great halakhiccodes; the entire tradition of rabbinic responsa; various communal and synodal takkanot (ordinances); modern rabbinic pronouncements; communal manifestos; organizational directives; and — in the case of the State of Israel — governmental decrees. Even thus baldly to recite the potential source literature is to reveal the magnitude (and importance) of the undertaking. Few of these sources have been mined from a political perspective — even though research has already dispelled all possible doubts that they might profitably be so mined. Simply rescuing such materials from the obscurity to which they have hitherto been condemned, and attaching to them discreet explanatory notes and short biographical profiles, will make an important contribution to Jewish scholarship. 3. The Structure and Functioning of Jewish Communities. Notwithstanding the vast number of community studies to have appeared during the past century, there still exists a need for a systematic historical examination of the institutional and political dynamics of Jewish life throughout the course of its evolution based on the canons of political science. No less necessary are analytical examinations of the contemporary Jewish world, which might throw light on the nature and form of present Jewish government in both Israel and the diaspora. What most studies to date have provided consists, in effect, of little more than raw materials — and even then, much of the data is lacking and what there is, is still being collated. The information presently available has now to be reexamined and then restructured, in order that it might present a consolidated picture of the functions and services performed by various agencies within and across Jewish communities throughout the world.5 4. The Jewish Language of Politics. The absence of a lexicon of Jewish political terms constitutes yet another lacuna of the field. The omission is particularly deplorable, since it is the language of political discourse — the manner whereby key terms are coined, adapted, and sometimes discarded — which provides one of the most important keys to an understanding of the concepts which they attempt to transmit. Consequently, a historical dictionary of such terms promises to provide a mirror to the development of the Jewish political tradition in its entirety. Some initial steps have been taken in this direction. The Jerusalem Center has compiled a file index of some fifty major Jewish political terms, noting their frequencies, contexts and connotations. Making use of this information, The Jewish Polity further listed Jewish political terms (old, new, changed, foreign derivatives) epoch by constitutional epoch. Among the initial works in this field are Lawrence Berman’s Lexicon of Medieval Terms(Stanford, 1973), and Gordon Freeman’s The Heavenly Kingdom, Rabbinic Political Thought (University Press of America/Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1985).6Here, too, however, scholarship can claim to have done no more than scratch the surface of a very deep mine. Yet to be explored in a systematic fashion are the vast storehouses of the Jewish tradition: the Bible, the Talmuds, the great halakhic codes, and the responsa. Now that many of these materials can be computerized, students of the field can look forward to both mastering them and examining them for their specifically political content. In this connection, the Responsa Project at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, is a vital resource. 5. Studies of Jewish Political Personalities. Who have been the principal architects of Jewish constitutional development throughout the ages? Who have played roles as statesmen, leading the edah and its subdivisions within the constitutional framework in which they find themselves? Who have cast their eyes upon Jewish constitutional materials and their implications for the polity, acting as influential commentators on what they see rather than as either a shaper or moulder of constitutional developments? The Jewish Politywas probably the first work of its kind to ask such questions, and to present such a categorization. the findings there presented have now to be tested and pursued. What this involves is far more than individual studies of whoever is deemed to have been a “prominent personality” in Jewish history. The need is for essentially political biographies, which stress — not only the ‘life’ of their subjects, but also the “constitutional times” within which such lives were lived. 6. Jewish Political Parties. Whatever the truth in the conventional notion that the Jews have always been a factious people, there is no doubt that the formation of particular parties (and in some epochs entire ‘camps’ of parties) has constituted a particularly dominant characteristic of Jewish constitutional history. Indeed, it can be claimed that the great turning points of that unfolding story can be traced almost entirely to the divisive effect exerted on the entire Jewish polity by crucial questions of essentially constitutional import. For example, one need only examine the history of the division of the two kingdoms after the death of King Solomon; the break between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; the Rabbanite campaign against the Karaites; the conflict between Hassidim and Mitnagdim; and the rift caused by the appearance of political Zionism. Full article If you are not familiar with what a Kinist or Kinism in here may be some brief helpful links: Kinism What is Kinism? - Harry Seabrook On Kinism and what it is If one would no know better you would think they stole many of their philosophies and methods right out of the Jews own playbook. Our problems are not created because of any race, and I still posit Americas problem stem from God’s judgment on the Christian for his failure to fulfill his Kingdom purpose but instead be worshipping at the altar of the government and prosperity, in effect, worshipping other Gods before Him.

Southern Fried Presbyterianism April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Theology , add a comment

You may ask, “What is Southern Fried Presbyterianism?”  Great question.  You see, a huge number of Reformed folks in America are Southern Fried without knowing it.  Their theology is more shaped by the nuances and perspectives of Robert Lewis Dabney and James Thornwell (19th century Southern-American / post-revivalist theologians) than John Calvin and John Knox (16th century continental / Scottish theologians). For example, what is “the” Reformed understanding of children in the covenant?  Calvin’s view was that we should rest in the covenant promises of God and believe that they have a “seed of faith,” are presumed regenerate, and should be nurtured as God’s children.  In contrast, Thornwell’s view was that covenant children are unregenerate souls in need of evangelism and conversion. 

When people appeal to the Westminster Standards, it is important to understand what lens they are reading it through - a Calvinian or a Southern Fried lens?  If you read through a continental lens, you see continental theology - if you read through a Southern Fried lens, you see Southern Fried theology.  That’s the way it goes.

Look, this isn’t about Calvin and Knox always being right, and Dabney and Thornwell always being wrong.  Not at all.  There are differences and we should admit them.  What gets me is that some Southern Fried Presbyterians won’t admit that their perspective on certain of these matters is unique to their lens, not to the Bible or the confessional standards themselves.

I once heard some folks talk about certain positions not being in accord with “PCA Presbyterianism.”  At the time, I laughed and then got a bit perturbed.  Looking back, I think they were on to something.  I just would prefer to call it “Southern Fried” instead of “PCA.”  Whether or not its finger-lickin’ good - well, I don’t think Colonel Sanders would go that far.

Trends…Muslims killing one another April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity , add a comment

Stupid is as stupid does. One has to wonder just what are we thinking about-what are we doing? Don’t our leaders or worse yet, our people read the papers. Just read what one muslim scholar has to say and ask yourself  just what are we doing ?????

Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, head of the IUMS  (International Union for Muslim Scholars) stressed the illegality of in-house fighting between Palestinians, calling upon brothers in Fath and Hamas to stop the Palestinian bloodshed.

“What is happening? How can a Palestinian kill his Palestinian brother? What are you killing each other for? For authority? For government? What authority? What government?” exclaimed Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi in his sermon last Friday, at `Umar Ibn Al-Khattab Mosque in Doha.

“Do you think you have authority, possess sovereignty, or self-rule? Your enemy is the one who controls your lives. He imprisons, releases, and besieges anyone he likes,” he added.

Al-Qaradawi also warned against the danger of internal conflict on the Palestinian cause, saying, “Dissension is a disaster at any rate, but in the case of our brothers the Palestinians, it is even more disastrous… Distress is supposed to divide people, and we are experiencing one distress after another.”

Addressing Fath and Hamas, Al-Qaradawi said, “I call upon all of you! I implore you in the Name of Allah to stop the bloodshed! It is unlawful! Unlawful! It is unlawful to shed Palestinian blood with Palestinian guns! All weapons must be pointed at the enemy who neither keeps promises with you nor respects your sanctities.”

Somalia – Land of Affliction

The prominent scholar, Al-Qaradawi, began his speech stating that the real celebration will be on the day when the nation is united, when the land of Islam is freed, and when Aqsa mosque is liberated. Then, he outlighted the features of rejoicing that have disappeared for several years, saying that the true celebration is when the nation becomes independent.”

After that, the head of the IUMS spoke about the latest developments in Somalia believing that, “…this country is worn out by war, war traders, and the advocates of strife. For so many years, there has been neither safety nor security in this country. Then, when some honest men, the men of the Islamic courts, found their country in this condition, they took over and people accepted them willingly.”

Then, Al-Qaradawi commended the stability which Somalia witnessed under the rule of the Islamic courts, saying, “Security was established in each village or town they entered: crimes decreased and the people were safe.”

Furthermore, Al-Qaradawi criticized Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia and accused the United States of being behind it, saying, “Immediately, the United States took action, employing all its cunningness, double-dealing, and intelligence. So it moved those whom it was able to move; it prompted the Ethiopian crusader army to invade Somalia with its tanks, planes, and armored vehicles. But Somalians are poor: they have limited quantity and quality of weapons. That was why they could not face that army.”

Darfur: The Land of the Qur’an

As regards Sudan, Al-Qaradawi said, “The forces that waylay Arabs and Muslims cannot live without working to wreak havoc on Muslims… For many years, Sudan lived in the tragedy of its south, and has been sacrificing many martyrs, and great wealth and equipment, which have seriously affected its economy and the condition of its people. When the problem was solved at last, they began looking for something else, so that Sudan would never be peaceful. So they instigated the Darfur issue, and wanted to intervene to worsen the problem, not to solve it.”

“Darfur is the land of the Qur’an, the reciters of Qur’an, and the teachers of Qur’an. They are the ones who taught Chad and other neighboring countries the Qur’an. How can the reciter and teacher of Qur’an be a non-Arab? An Arab-African conflict was stirred up. How can the African who memorizes the Qur’an be a non-Arab?” he added.

He then cited the hadith reported by Ibn `Asakir and other narrators which states, “Being an Arab is not by having an Arab mother or father, but rather by speaking Arabic.” Thus, whoever speaks Arabic is an Arab. He added, “I said this to the people of Darfur when I visited them in El-Fasher, and explained, “You are Arabs. In Egypt, we are Africans. What makes us Arabs? We learned Arabic. Anyone who learns Arabic is an Arab, regardless of his race. Race is unimportant in Islam.” He added that the enemies of Islam want continuous warfare in Sudan, and the Sudanese people refused external forces to enter because they suspected that such forces might lead to more evil and conflict. So they said they wanted African forces.

Iraq: A Horrifying Condition

Next, Dr. Al-Qaradawi spoke about Iraq in 2006, expressing his horror at what is happening there and considering it ‘beyond description.’

“No one can describe what is really happening there such as killing according to identity and displacing people from their homes in Basra and Baghdad. From what is happening in Iraq and the available detailed information, one feels that Iraq is about to experience a serious disaster: it is on the verge of a ferocious civil sectarian war, which is exactly what we have previously warned against from this very pulpit,” he added.

Referring to the IUMS’s stance regarding the situation in Iraq, Al-Qaradawi said that the IUMS issued a statement ten days ago warning against the consequences of the alarming conditions and afflictions taking place in Iraq that are beyond comprehension.

“People of power must intervene… The Arab League must intervene. The Organization of Islamic Conference must intervene, as must the United Nations. The least that the latter could do is to send fact-finding committees. Are these facts? If they are, then the issue is truly serious. It means that there is a contrived war to annihilate the Sunnis. Immediate actions must be taken to prevent this,” he added.

In a strong closure to the issue, Dr. Al-Qaradawi said, “We have frequently implored the great Shiite scholars and religious authorities to which people listen. These authorities are responsible; they must not remain apathetic.”

“We call upon Tehran; we call upon Iran; we call upon the greatest scholars there; we call upon the Supreme Leader Khomeini to break the silence and speak, or else people will accuse them of being connivers, exporters, or financers of these conflicts,” he warned.

He further said, “Actions must be taken to stop what is happening in Iraq. The situation portends a grave danger that can divide the entire nation. At times silence is not wise. We will speak frankly, and if we do so, there is serious danger.”

An Abominable Execution

Regarding the execution of the ex-president, Saddam Hussein, on the day of `Eid Al-Adha, Al-Qaradawi described it as “an abominable act”, stressing that this denial is according to Islam and that he does not believe in the infallibility of rulers, but he calls for  ‘the rulers’ to be tried by their people, not by occupiers.”

Then, he added that the door of repentance is open and no one can claim that Allah has closed it. Allah says, “Say: My slaves who have been prodigal to their own hurt! Despair not of the mercy of Allah, Who forgiveth all sins. Lo! He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.” (Az-Zumar: 53) He explained that all sins can be forgiven, even disbelief and associating others in worship with Allah. However, repentance does not disclaim people’s rights. He explained this saying, “If Allah knows that one of His servants has honestly repented from the depths of his heart, will He refuse him? No! He will accept that person and make his antagonists pleased with him in any way Allah pleases.”

In addition, Al-Qaradawi denounced what some people did to give this execution a sectarian image and considered it a situation that confirms the sectarian tendency. “We deemed our brothers, the Shiites, far removed from this situation and deemed they would not provoke their brothers, the Sunnis, and even those who do not like Saddam. This is bitterness and spite even at the time of death!” he said.

Al-Qaradawi saw that we are living the American and the Zionist era, substantiating that by mentioning how Israel is controlling our lives and our countries: killing and destroying as it pleases. According to him, the United States also appears to be controlling our destinies: ordering whom it pleases and issuing its commands in our countries as if we are again colonized. The United States has become deified, especially in our countries; it is neither questioned about its actions nor is it accountable for what it says.

A Point of Truth

Dr. Al-Qaradawi also talked about the profit and loss account of the nation in 2006. He said, “The debit account is heavy, while the credit account is light. We incur loss after loss. However, there is one thing that needs to be mentioned: the victory of the resistance in Iraq over American arrogance and deification.”

“They have aborted American intrigues. They have turned the poisoned arrows back to their own chests. The United States thought that entering Iraq would be like a walk in the park, but the Iraqis met them with bullets, not with roses. The Americans found determination from the honorable Arab Muslim Iraqi people to stand in the face of American deification. The Iraqis did not give them a chance to rest. In spite of the enormous amount of hi-tech weapons on land, sea, and air, the Americans have not been able to conquer the Iraqi people. The Iraqis have conquered the Americans, just like the Afghans who have not surrendered to American tyranny,” he continued.

Now see how he ends this–the Iraqis have defeated the Americans. Tribal peoples are tribal peoples and if they dont want to enter the 21st century, freeing them ain’t going to do a thing. 

Must a Presbyterian be Presuppositionalist? April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Theology , 1 comment so far

 Conservative “Presbyterian and Reformed” thought has given much attention in this century to the philosophical issues of “epistemology,” which is the subject of how we know things and the definition of faith, largely in response to the growth of “liberal” theology and its definition of knowledge, which borrows heavily from existentialism. Modern Reformed thought is divided into two predominant schools, called “Presuppositionalism” and “Evidentialism,” the former represented by authors such as Cornelius van Til, John Frame, and Alvin Plantinga, and the latter represented by authors such as John Gerstner, Francis Schaeffer and R.C. Sproul. Some presuppositionalists have gone so far as to declare their views the only orthodox view and to declare all other views, specifically evidentialism, to be heresy. I argue, first, that this debate is a worthwhile one, since it affects how we teach, preach, and present the Gospel; I then present some of the points of debate, some of the history of the debate, and a brief critique of presuppositionalism. I end by discussing whether the Reformers such as Calvin would have adhered to modern presuppositionalism. I myself fall into the Reformed evidentialist school and argue that this view is certainly within the bounds of orthodoxy.

click here for the article

Theocracy as a Parlor Game April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Uncategorized , add a comment

Psychological literature is chockablock with case histories of people who suffer from irrational fears, and the run-up to midterm elections in a lame-duck presidency is a fine time to add another one to that collection. Some people fear George W. Bush not because his policies keep them up at night, but because the Christianity he brings without guile or apology to an under-dressed public square marks him as the chief scout for what they imagine is a theocracy coming soon to the United States. Anyone trying to confront this fear must come at it on two fronts, the personal and the political.

When a dear friend described this malady to me, my initial reaction was perhaps more sarcastic than it should have been: if George W. Bush is the harbinger of a theocracy, then the American Christian bench isn’t as deep as we sometimes like to think it is. Whatever his merits as president, everything that the current occupant of the Oval Office has said publicly about his faith suggests that it gives him comfort and strength rather than the kind of paint-by-numbers direction his detractors would prefer to be scandalized by. On the evidence available, one may speculate that the unremarkable religious pedigree bequeathed to George W. from his father was revivified some years ago by a recovering alcoholic’s confidence in a Higher Power. One may also suppose that the evangelical Protestant theology of his loving wife helped the president recognize Jesus as that higher power. The point of these speculations is that nothing in the character of this president’s faith implies the kind of fondness for ecclesiastical authority that ought to mark a proper harbinger of theocracy.

Evangelicalism’s Insecure Calvinists April 27, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Theology, Uncategorized , 1 comment so far

Evangelicalism’s Insecure Calvinists

The Proliferation of the Evangelical Self-Critique Book at the End of the Twentieth Century

by Gregory Johnson

fter half a century of unprecedented growth in both evangelicalism’s adherents and its cultural visibility, and after the development of a vast network of evangelical seminaries and colleges, publishing houses and periodicals, parachurch organizations and churches, an increasingly vocal cluster of evangelical leaders is questioning whether American evangelicalism can survive its success.¹ Nestled among the devotionals, bibles and self-help books of the evangelical Christian bookstore, one notices a recent spurt of books criticizing the evangelical movement from within.

Almost all of the authors of these evangelical self-critique books are confessional Calvinists, conservative in their evangelical faith. All perceive a theological declension within American evangelicalism in which the movement’s historic theocentric theology has been replaced by an anthropocentric and experience-driven faith without a theological grounding. This “club” of Reformed authors illustrates the declension in various areas of evangelical faith and practice, warning of impending catastrophe unless American evangelicals return to the theologically grounded, God-centered faith of evangelicals past. These volumes—all written since 1991—demonstrate a pronounced insecurity about evangelicalism’s successes within the movement’s Calvinist branch, an uncertainty that is noteworthy considering that the movement’s modern incarnation began in the 1940s among a small group of northern Calvinists.²

1. Join the Self-Critique Club: On Recommending Each Other’s Books

If one is fortunate enough to find a collection of these evangelical self-critique books with their original dust jackets intact, one is quickly struck by the recommendations on the back covers of these volumes. The same handful of names keeps recurring in each volume: Anglican theologian J. I. Packer, Presbyterian minister and former head of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy James Boice, historian Mark Noll, founder of Reformation & Revival Ministries John Armstrong, New Testament scholar D. A. Carson, Prison Fellowship founder and Templeton Award winner Charles Colson, biblical counseling advocate David Powlison, Baptist leader John F. MacArthur, Presbyterian theologian and founder of Ligonier Ministries R. C. Sproul, evangelical sociologists James Davison Hunter and Os Guiness, Reformed theologian David Wells, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Albert Mohler, and Reformed theologian and founder of Christians United for Reformation (CURE) Michael Horton, who also serves as vice-chairman of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE), of which many of these authors are a part. It would appear that when one of these figures composes a book, the others provide the recommendations.

One is also struck by the number of these books that are multiple author compilations. Four of the eight works central to this study are compilations, and this same pool of authors—with additions or subtractions depending on the volume—provides the essays within each of these books. The names read like a who’s who of modern evangelical Calvinism. With the odd Lutheran thrown in from time to time, these figures are the most recognized confessional Calvinists within Presbyterian, Baptist and Christian Reformed circles, and not a few oversee large Christian radio, publishing and multimedia ministries. These self-critique authors are writing in consultation with one another; they are reading each other’s works. Their concerns represent the uncertainties of the theologian’s club of American Calvinism.

2. The Evangelical Theological Declension Observed

These authors perceive a declension within American evangelicalism, a decline from a theocentric world and life view to an anthropocentric one, a turn from a life grounded in theology to a life grounded in the personal experience of the divine and the benefits such experience brings. Perhaps the earliest of these contemporary Calvinist jeremiads is Michael Horton’s 1991 Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism.³ Here Horton lays out the program for the works that follow. Horton speaks of a crisis of truth in the evangelical churches, a crisis badly needing a return to classic Protestant theological orthodoxy. He writes, “The crisis of truth in our time, even in the evangelical church, is indeed serious. And it is due in part to our cultural accommodation.”⁴

Horton criticizes the American tendency to want to “make God safe for democracy,” targeting in particular the tendency to market God and Christianity as means toward an end rather than ends in themselves. This fundamental idolatry, which Horton terms the “How To” gospel, paints sinful humanity as consumers and God as a product, reversing in Horton’s view the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and making humanity–not God–ultimate. Evangelicals, Horton argues, are more concerned today with their “felt needs”–self-esteem over salvation, religious feelings over religious truth, and individual prosperity over the health of the institutional church. This narcissistic turn in conservative Protestantism, Horton warns, has made the Christianity of many churches into an idolatrous religion in which Christ is eclipsed by concern for self. With personal passion, Horton protests:

I’m tired of hearing sermons on “How to Have an Effective Quiet Time” or “How to Get More Out of Your Christian Life.” Don’t offer me another list of “Four Steps to Victorious Christian Living.” I’ve tried them all and not only do they fail to answer the deeper questions; they don’t even work for the superficial ones. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”⁵

Horton credits a shift away from the theocentric theology of the Reformation with providing the background for the modern evangelical church’s decline into narcissism. He writes:

When we tipped the scales from celebrating God’s glory and grace to human happiness and capacity for good, hedonism was an inevitable consequence. When evangelicalism left the soli (only) out of Deo gloria (to God be the glory), so essential to the Reformation and Puritan faith, and became a product to be used by consumers in “the pursuit of happiness,” it not only failed to restrain the “Me generation”; it helped foster it. This is why the theological shift from Reformation realism (God-centeredness) to Arminian optimism is so decisive.⁶

The other authors follow Horton in these same core concerns of cultural accommodation, perceiving behind such compromise a theological shift away from a God-centered Protestant orthodoxy toward a narcissistic recasting of the biblical message. Indeed, Horton himself would bring other authors into the battle a year after his Made in America with the publication in 1992 of Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?⁷ This project, initiated and edited by Horton, brought to the discussion Boice, Armstrong, Carson, Powlison, Colson, Packer, Sproul, and others, the authors arguing that power had become the idol of American evangelicals—power politics, power evangelism, power church growth, power within, power preaching.⁸ The volume concludes with two essays, the first by R. C. Sproul arguing that theology, as the study of God, is of ultimate relevance, though evangelicals have traded the contemplation of God for lesser things of no ultimate value. The final essay, by Horton himself, calls evangelicals back to the Christocentric gospel as the final and ultimate enemy of the religion of power.

Also in 1992, Os Guiness and John Seel brought together another eight authors in a single volume No God But God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age.⁹ Again laying down a strong critique of evangelical faith and life in contemporary America, this volume begins by likening the current state of the movement with the immediate pre-Reformation period, an image of veiled gospel and unbridled idolatry. Guiness and Seel write:

It is time once again to hammer theses on the door of the church. As on the occasion of Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses in the sixteenth century and Soren Kierkegaard’s single thesis in the nineteenth century, Christendom is becoming a betrayal of the Christian faith of the New Testament. To pretend otherwise is either to be blind or to appear to be making a fool of God.¹⁰

They continue:

The main burden of this book is a direct challenge to the modern idols of evangelicalism. But this idolatry is only part of the wider cultural captivity of evangelical churches in America. We therefore look beyond idolatry to the broader need for revival and reformation within evangelicalism. Our greatest need is for a third Great Awakening.¹¹

Indeed, the volume ends with a lone Arminian voice, Methodist Thomas C. Oden’s essay “On Not Whoring after the Spirit of the Age,” a stern warning to theologians against picking up modernity’s lust for novelty just as modernity itself collapses.

Guiness and Seel’s group effort was joined that same year by David F. Wells’ widely recognized No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?¹² Wells argues that the evangelical church in recent years has “cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy.”¹³ Wells describes a theological declension within the movement since the 1950s. He writes:

Those who had marched gladly under the banner of evangelicalism and had affirmed the truths of historic Protestant orthodoxy now began to look sideways. As the theological center began to give way, there arose a multitude of evangelical amalgams with, among other things, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, special interests such as feminism, the pieties of the World Council of Churches, and radical politics. The most important thing that this potential movement needed—theological unity—grew ever thinner and more insubstantial.¹⁴

Also in 1993, the Calvinistic independent Baptist leader John F. MacArthur entered the field of these evangelical critiques, having spent much of the previous decade beleaguered with evangelical infighting over lordship salvation, a debate over whether or not is was possible for a Christian to be genuinely saved without pursuing holiness in daily life. MacArthur’s new volume, Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World,¹⁵ stressed the same themes as had Horton, Guiness and Wells, but MacArthur, with his popular radio, book and tape ministry Grace to You, brought a wider audience than the Presbyterian, Anglican and Congregationalist authors before him. MacArthur’s primary metaphor for the current state of the church was the English Baptist Downgrade Controversy a century earlier, a debate which pitted Calvinistic preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon against theologically moderate leaders who hoped to soften the “harsh” and “offensive” Calvinism and Biblicism that had previously characterized the English Baptists. The evangelical church in America today, MacArthur warns—with its reigning pragmatism, user-friendly methods, and low view of God—is in the midst of a theological downgrade as well.

MacArthur followed up Ashamed of the Gospel in 1994 with Reckless Faith: When the Church Loses its Will to Discern.¹⁶ With heavy emphasis on the need for theology and for rational reflection on the Bible as the standard by which truth is discerned, MacArthur criticizes both evangelical emotionalism and the Roman Catholic notion of infallible church authority, here targeting two newly perceived enemies: the joint statement Evangelicals and Catholics Together on the one hand, and the laughing revivals sweeping charismatic churches in mid-decade on the other. But in targeting the theological “fuzziness” of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, MacArthur was firing upon some of his former allies, mentioning by name Charles Colson who co-authored the statement with Richard John Neuhaus, MacArthur mentioning co-signers Os Guiness and J. I. Packer as well.¹⁷ Though substantial peace over evangelical-Catholic relations would come a year later, Colson, Guiness and Packer would not be found in any later evangelical critique books.¹⁸

By the middle of the 1990s, a new leader had arisen within the club of evangelicalism’s Calvinist critics, John H. Armstrong. Armstrong edited the last two major evangelical self-critique volumes, The Coming Evangelical Crisis: Current Challenges to the Authority of Scripture and the Gospel in 1996,¹⁹ and The Compromised Church: The Present Evangelical Crisis in 1998.²⁰ The former volume stresses the importance of classic evangelical theology as the definitive characteristic of authentic evangelicalism, documenting a declension in evangelical attitudes to Scripture and the authority of the gospel. Michael Horton concludes the volume with a call to “recover the plumb line” of biblical authority. In The Compromised Church, a companion volume to the former work, Armstrong explains, “The crisis that the earlier book spoke of as ‘coming’ is clearly here.”²¹ By 1998, these authors saw not merely a severe theological declension and resulting anthropocentric evangelicalism, but a crisis needing immediate attention.

3. The Evangelical Theological Declension Further Observed

Other analysts of the evangelical movement (both from within and from without) have noted a marked change in the nature and centrality of evangelical theological life. Nathan O. Hatch demonstrates a shift within evangelicalism since 1942 from a theological emphasis characteristic of fundamentalism to a more relational emphasis today. This shift from a theological to a relational grounding, Hatch suggests, may be due to evangelicalism’s success. The movement’s subculture, he explains, may not be as deep as it once was (with distinctions between evangelicals and non-evangelicals being less clear), but the movement’s current theological “fuzziness” gives it a much broader appeal.²²

The observations of these conservative Calvinists have also been made on an academic level by sociologist James Davison Hunter, himself an evangelical in the Reformed tradition. In Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, Hunter examines the changing theological viewpoints among the faculty of major evangelical seminaries and liberal arts colleges.²³ Hunter demonstrates extensive cultural accommodation among these evangelical academics, themselves considerably to the theological left of their students and having less concern for affirming traditional evangelical doctrines and practices. Hunter explains, “The symbolic boundaries of Protestant orthodoxy are not being maintained or reinforced.”²⁴ He suggests that such reinforcement may now be impossible due to an evangelical “ethic of civility” which makes conservative Protestants want not merely to be tolerant of others, but be tolerable to others. Hunter writes:

To be sure, there is good reason to believe that conservative Protestantism may be incapable of adequately reinforcing these boundaries…. The first [reason for the inability] has to do with the “ethic of civility.” …Evangelicals generally and the coming generation particularly have adopted to various degrees an ethical code of political civility. This compels them to not only be tolerant of others’ beliefs, opinions, and life-styles, but more importantly be tolerable to others. The critical dogma is not to offend but to be genteel and civil in social relations.²⁵

Hunter continues:

While their adoption of this ethic expresses itself politically, it expresses itself as a religious style as well. In this latter sense, it entails a deemphasis of Evangelicalism’s more offensive aspects, such as accusations of heresy, sin, immorality, and paganism, and themes of judgment, divine wrath, damnation, and hell. Anything that hints of moral or religious absolutism and intolerance is underplayed.²⁶

Indeed, considering the continuing negative image evangelicals bear in American culture as “intolerant” and “harsh”—despite their characteristic deemphasis of socially offensive doctrines—Hunter deduces that the only way for American evangelicals to reinforce the symbolic boundaries of orthodox Protestantism would be for evangelicals “to operate defiantly against these social and cultural constraints.” He concludes, “They would have to publicly invoke and rigorously apply the ‘harsher’ and more ‘offensive’ symbols of their faith.” But, as Hunter notes, by reinforcing Protestant orthodoxy, evangelicals would alienate not only non-evangelicals, but “their own following as well.”²⁷ Indeed, Hunter observes that little consensus remains today among evangelicals as to the very nature of the symbolic (theological or practical) boundaries of evangelical orthodoxy.²⁸

Another recent study suggests this theological shift within American evangelicalism—and Protestantism generally—at a more local level. In All is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism, Marsha G. Witten analyzes the language of Protestant sermons, comparing mainline versions with their evangelical counterparts.²⁹ A scholar working from outside the Christian tradition, Witten discerns extensive cultural accommodation from evangelical and mainline sermons alike, albeit more pronounced among the mainline selection. She finds that in the great majority of the sermons in her sample, “God is portrayed exclusively or predominantly in terms of the positive functions he serves for men and women.” She continues, “Chief among these functions is one that can be labeled ‘therapeutic.’ God relieves negative feelings, especially anxiety and doubt.”³⁰ While almost all sermons speak of God as a benevolent father, only 16 percent of sermons centrally concerned with God speak of God as also being a transcendent judge. And even those few sermons in Witten’s study that do speak of judgment never place emphasis upon that judgment; the theme is mentioned only in passing, and even then God’s agency in judgment is downplayed—sinners pass judgment on themselves, God only witnessing the fact. She writes:

The connection between God’s function as judge and a sinner’s punishment in hell is made only by implication. The language here suggests that God’s judgment is responsible for the reward of heaven, but human beings alone decide on their course to hell.³¹

Discussing the almost complete lack of fearsome qualities in the God of Protestant preaching, Witten observes: “The transcendent, majestic, awesome God of Luther and Calvin—whose image informed early Protestant visions of the relationship between human beings and the divine—has undergone a softening of demeanor throughout the American experience of Protestantism, with only minor interruptions.”³²

The accusation that modern American evangelicalism is functioning with anthropocentric assumptions would appear to find confirmation in Witten’s study of American preaching, where evangelicals fare little better than more liberal Protestants. Humanity does not exist for God’s pleasure, but God for humanity’s pleasure. God is not transcendent, and when he appears so, the emphasis is upon his benefits. The God of the Bible has become a commodity that evangelicals seek to sell to consumers who find God personally useful. Given their commitment to Protestant orthodoxy, there is ample cause for insecurity among evangelicalism’s Calvinist theologians.

4. The Evangelical Theological Declension in Practice

Yet these critiques from within evangelicalism’s Calvinist branch do not merely restate orthodox Reformation doctrines. Rather they seek to demonstrate the cultural accommodation of the evangelical movement on a practical level by examining various spheres of church life and theology, this declension providing the context for a call back to the perceived theological and ecclesiastical seriousness of Reformation Christianity. As Wells argues, the evangelical acceptance of the values of modernity “has disordered the warp and woof of contemporary life. In the one hand it leaves a faith denuded of theology and in the other a life stripped of absolutes.”³³ Beyond the direct concerns for biblical authority (sola scriptura) and a high view of God (soli Deo gloria), several key areas of church life receive repeated attention.

The Psychologization of Christianity: A major concern within these volumes is a tendency among those seeking to integrate Christianity and psychology to make God a means toward a greater end of having positive feelings about oneself. This is a key theme in Horton’s Made in America. It is also the focus of two essays in No God But God, three in Power Religion, and one in The Coming Evangelical Crisis.

Emotionalism: The shift from biblical study and rational theological reflection to inner voices and feelings for guidance is a major focal point of MacArthur’s Reckless Faith. Horton devotes a chapter to the practice in Made in America. Three essays in Power Religion focus on the parallel infatuation with signs and wonders and the emotional power experiences they produce. An essay in The Coming Evangelical Crisis draws further attention to the question of continuing prophecy.

The eclipse of preaching in the evangelical church: Many of these authors object to the diminishing place of the pulpit ministry in evangelical churches. Congregations want therapists or administrators, they fear, more than preachers. Power Religion devotes three essays to the crisis in preaching, The Coming Evangelical Crisis and The Compromised Church one each.

The eclipse of worship and sacraments: A major concern within these volumes, evangelical worship is perceived to have shifted its purpose from blessing God to blessing the worshipper through entertainment-style formats. This “show-time religion,” as MacArthur describes it, is discussed at length in Ashamed of the Gospel, and serves as the object of two essays in The Coming Evangelical Crisis and another three in The Compromised Church.

The eclipse of the institutional church: Evangelicalism, these authors assert, while profiting greatly from the rise of parachurch ministries, has also suffered from a loss of popular respect for the institutional church, many individualistic American evangelicals believing that church membership and participation is optional, to the neglect of the Christian community. Horton hit on this theme early on in Made in America, and MacArthur devotes his concluding chapter to it in Ashamed of the Gospel. An essay is further devoted to church discipline in The Compromised Church.

Marketing techniques and business-like church administration: The evangelical church’s pragmatic reliance on human-centered marketing techniques for church growth received early attention from Horton in Made in America, and the theme continued in two of Power Religion’s essays. Two more essays of this kind appear in No God But God and a chapter in Ashamed of the Gospel. The theme also surfaces in The Compromised Church.

Protestant Distinctives over against Roman Catholicism: A major theme by the middle of the 1990s, Evangelicals and Catholics Together brought about renewed attention to the Reformation themes of sola scriptura and sola fide, the supreme authority of the Bible and justification by faith alone. MacArthur first stresses these themes in Reckless Faith, where they account for over half the book. These core Protestant distinctives are visible as a subtext for much of The Coming Evangelical Crisis. These authors oppose what they perceive to be a redefinition of key theological language (like justification by faith) in order to cover over serious doctrinal differences for the sake of unity in political activism.

Political Life: And these authors tend to see much evangelical involvement in politics, be it on the political left or right, as involving an idolatrous trust in human goodness or in political power. While none of these authors endorses a separatist withdrawal from public life, the concern over evangelical political involvement is the chief focus of three essays in No God But God and two in Power Religion, but receives much less attention in the latter part of the decade than in the former part.

It is ironic that Reformed evangelical leaders felt the need in the 1990s to accuse evangelicals of idolatrous political activism when fifteen years earlier it was one of their number, Francis Schaeffer, whose jeremiad had first called American evangelicals back into the political sphere after fifty years of perceived public withdrawal. Schaeffer had accused American evangelicals of exchanging the biblical, Reformed vision of all of life under Christ’s lordship for a self-centered idol of personal peace and affluence. Schaeffer and Presbyterian elder, physician, and later United States Surgeon General C. Everett Koop rallied evangelicals around the abortion issue in the late 1970s with their film series and book Whatever Happened to the Human Race?³⁴ This effort Schaeffer followed in 1981 with A Christian Manifesto in which he challenged evangelicals to a massive movement to re-establish the foundations of government, law, and western culture upon biblical, Judeo-Christian foundations.³⁵ By the 1990s, evangelicalism’s Calvinist caucus was objecting, “We’re up to their steeples in politics!”

Anti-Intellectualism: Parallel to the above concerns, many of these authors further object to an anti-intellectual mindset they perceive behind the popular evangelical distrust of theology. And this anti-intellectualism finds additional critique from the pen of evangelical historian Mark Noll in his 1994 Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.³⁶ Describing his perspective as that of a “wounded lover,”³⁷ Noll opens his volume with a powerful accusation, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”³⁸ While evangelicals have been strong on piety and evangelism, zealous in missions and mercy ministries and activism, they have neglected the serious life of the mind, a charge he repeatedly demonstrates by appeal to the continued lack of an evangelical research university fifty years into the movement’s modern incarnation. Indeed, evangelicals “have nourished millions of believers in the simple verities of the gospel but have largely abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of ‘high’ culture.”³⁹

Also in 1994, Os Guinness accused evangelicals of anti-intellectualism in Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do About It.⁴⁰ Blaming the eight ‘P’s of polarization, pietism, primitivism, populism, pluralism, pragmatism, philistinism and premillenialism—alongside what he terms the “idiot culture” of postmodern America—Guiness calls on evangelicals to think critically about all of life from a biblically-defined perspective. Both Guiness’ and Noll’s critiques find precedent in Harry Blamires’ 1963 classic The Christian Mind, in which Blamires disparages the Christian mind for succumbing to the secular drift of western culture at large.⁴¹ Indeed, the evangelical movement’s modern incarnation began with a self-critique book accusing fundamentalism of anti-intellectualism and cultural obscurantism, Carl F. H. Henry’s 1947 book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.⁴²

But in all of these contemporary criticisms of American evangelicalism, personal ethics and morality are nowhere targeted. Nor are evangelicals in these volumes called to new moral or political crusades in the culture at large. No new activism is called for. Rather, the focus is on reforming the theology of the churches with a renewed vision of God’s greatness, holiness, grace and sovereign power. And behind this emphasis on the highness of God stands a concern for the ultimacy of biblical authority, an authority these authors see attacked on every front, not from the outside, but from within the evangelical movement itself.

5. The Imminent Evangelical Catastrophe

These authors speak of the human-centered and a-theological quality of American evangelicalism not merely as one of many issues facing the movement today, but as the fountain from which all other errors flow. This will result, they warn, in a catastrophe for the American evangelical church. For Horton, the biblical doctrines of God, salvation, church and eschatology are all at stake.⁴³ David Wells writes that, “unless the evangelical Church can recover a knowledge of what it means to live before a holy God… theology will have no place in its life.” MacArthur warns that the church will be devoured and her spiritual stamina exhausted unless the churches heed the call to turn from worldly accommodation.⁴⁴ Indeed, warns Wells, the decline of evangelical theology is a sure sign of the movement’s “creeping death.”⁴⁵ If in 1996 John Armstrong and his contributors looked to a “Coming” Evangelical Crisis, by 1998, the crisis had arrived with The “Present” Evangelical Crisis. Such warnings, titles and subtitles bespeak imminent catastrophe.

Guiness and Seel call evangelicals to reformation and revival and to a humble but radical obedience to the revealed will of God if the evangelical church is to have a future in serving God’s purposes.⁴⁶ Sproul sees at the center of the crisis a popular misunderstanding of the character of God; one that he warns could keep even the most committed of evangelicals from truly knowing Christ. For Sproul, the question is one of eternal salvation. He warns:

Everything else can be correct apart from your doctrine of God and you are still a pagan. You are still an idolater. You may be an inerrantist; your eschatology might be right on target; you may never miss a quiet time or an opportunity to go to church. But if you do not worship the right God, you worship and serve a false one.⁴⁷

6. The Calvinist Jeremiad in Contrast

These authors paint a narrative of declension, one in which a once faithful evangelical movement has exchanged the serious study of God’s supremacy and a radical commitment to his Word for a pragmatic, human-centered and narcissistic emotionalism. It is worthwhile to take a closer look at this narrative of declension. In his Content of Form, Hayden White argues that the narrative genre, far from being an unbiased perspective, is in fact the most value-laden of literary forms. A particular set of assumptions guides what information in included within the narrative, and what information is shoveled off into the equally value-laden category of the “insignificant.” Data are thus organized at the service of a larger perspective that infuses them with meaning.⁴⁸

And narratives of evangelicalism vary. Not all evangelical assessments of the evangelical movement are so gloomy. Oxford’s Alister McGrath is positively buoyant in its evaluation of evangelicalism, though McGrath approaches the movement from within its more theological English context. McGrath’s Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity posits evangelicalism as the only future for Protestantism and as the rising center of Christianity globally.⁴⁹ His Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism,⁵⁰ departing from the pessimism of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, argues for the health and vigor of contemporary evangelical thought, qualifying its academic weaknesses as to be expected in a youthful movement experiencing the pains of rapid growth.

Another Anglican, John Stott, considered by many to be the dean of evangelical Protestantism today, is also positive in his assessment of the evangelical movement. In Evangelical Truth: A Personal Plea for Unity, Integrity & Faithfulness, Stott argues for a substantial theological common ground that unites the otherwise varied branches of evangelicalism. Stott lays out his argument for a core evangelical message in Trinitarian form: the supreme authority of the Bible as God’s Word, salvation by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ and justification by faith, and ministry in the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. While evangelicals may find themselves disagreeing on questions of secondary importance, Stott finds an implicit theology holding the diversity of evangelical branches together in unity, even where evangelicals on the surface shun “theology.”⁵¹

And even many negative assessments of evangelicalism are not couched within a jeremiad narrative of declension. Despite the volume’s title, Carl F. H. Henry’s Toward a Recovery of Christian Belief, his published 1989 Scottish Rutherford Lectures, while criticizing evangelicals for not adequately interpreting life in light of a comprehensive biblical worldview, nevertheless avoids the language of evangelical declension and the warnings of impending catastrophe.⁵²

Similarly, Millard J. Erickson’s The Evangelical Left: Encountering Postconservative Theology, while critical of recent developments within evangelical theology such as a lessening of the authority of scripture, and anthropocentric and experiential doctrines of God and salvation, still does not frame the debate within a narrative of declension. While Erickson notes the same cultural accommodation as Horton, Armstrong and Wells, Erickson does not warn of impending catastrophe.⁵³ The recent cache of evangelical self-critique books discussed in this essay sets itself apart from other evangelical assessments (positive and negative) of the movement by its narrative of declension and warning of impending doom. Mainline Protestantism has, however, seen a similar warning of impending doom recently in The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity by Thomas C. Reeves, an historian and Episcopal layperson.⁵⁴

For a movement that began its modern life among the Calvinists, the sometimes strong critique evangelicalism has received in the past decade from its own Calvinist caucus cannot be dismissed lightly. While most of these Calvinist voices have not distanced themselves from the movement they helped create, their accusations of doctrinal declension, human-centered worship and idolatrous narcissism stand in sharp contrast to the more upbeat boosterism found in a movement that has witnessed a remarkable resurgence in the modern era. Yet other scholars both inside and outside the evangelical tradition have confirmed their frequently negative observations, and the authors of these recent critiques are convinced that the cultural accommodation of popular evangelicalism has powerfully affected nearly every area of the churches’ ministry. Their warnings of impending catastrophe and their call back to a theocentric Protestant orthodoxy and Christ-centered gospel, while perhaps offensive within a pluralistic and narcissistic culture, reveal a deep insecurity about the future of the evangelical movement in America.

7. Postscript: A Question for Further Study

This group of literature could easily be overlooked in the spectrum of evangelical publications. Beyond indicating insecurity about the firmness of recent evangelical gains on the part of evangelicalism’s Calvinist branch, one key interpretive question remains open for further study. The question may be variously stated. Are these self-critique authors simply observing what Hunter and others have observed about American evangelicalism? Or is their jeremiad something more proactive, embodying a discursive power move, a move that in fact reinforces the classic boundaries of Protestant orthodoxy? Are these authors merely describing, or is their emphasis on the more “offensive” and “harsher” elements of classic evangelicalism (to borrow Hunter’s language) itself indicative of evangelicalism’s health, as a movement that is actively counteracting the deterioration of its symbolic boundaries?

Indeed, a look at the history of Calvinism reveals a history of jeremiads. From Beza and other immediate post-Reformation figures decrying the theological declension since the Reformation purity of Calvin’s Geneva to the American Puritans’ Halfway Covenant, Calvinists have often perceived a decline in Christendom generally and their own churches specifically. As Sacvan Bercovitch observes in The American Jeremiad:

From the start the Puritans had drawn their inspiration from insecurity; …crisis had become their source of strength. They fastened upon it, gloried in it, even invented it if necessary… Crisis became both the form and substance of their appeals.⁵⁵

The Calvinists’ strong language of idolatry and judgment has often proven a tool—perhaps knowingly, perhaps unwittingly—of shoring up the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy.

Are these modern authors in fact carrying out the program James Davison Hunter had predicted would be necessary a decade earlier? Are they making use of the harsher elements of their religious tradition to preserve the movement’s time-honored definition? The recent proliferation of conservative Reformed critiques of the evangelical movement may be a sign of the movement’s sickness, or it may be a sign of the movement’s health. For if the rapid resurgence of evangelical Christianity since World War II has also coincided with an even more rapid resurgence of confessional Calvinism among evangelicals—a resurgence this author has observed—then the Calvinists may find they have less cause for insecurity than they at first believed. Their declension may prove to be the foundation for a modern revival of confessional Reformation Protestantism.

Notes

1. For a brief survey of evangelical resurgence since the 1940s, see Nathan O. Hatch with Michael S. Hamilton, “Taking the Measure of the Evangelical Resurgence, 1942-1992.” In Reckoning with the Past, ed. D.G. Hart, 1995, pp. 395-412.
2. For discussion of the northern, Calvinist origins of the neo-evangelical movement in the 1940s, see Mark Noll & Lyman Kellstedt, “The Changing Face of Evangelicalism.” Pro Ecclesia IV.
3. Michael Scott Horton, Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991.
4. Ibid., 12-13.
5. Ibid., 57.
6. Ibid., 82.
7. Michael Scott Horton, ed. Power Religion: The Selling out of the Evangelical Church? Chicago: Moody Press, 1992.
8. Not the least of which, Alister McGrath, would put a more positive spin on the movement later. See below.
9. Os Guiness & John Seel, eds. No God But God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age. Chicago: Moody Press, 1992.
10. Ibid., 11.
11. Ibid.
12. David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1993.
13. Ibid., 4.
14. Ibid., 9.
15. John F. MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993.
16. John F. MacArthur, Reckless Faith: When the Church Loses its Will to Discern. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994.
17. Ibid., 119, for example.
18. Later moves to qualify their involvement in ECT brought peace to Calvinists who had been divided over the accord. By the middle of 1995, a group of mostly Calvinist evangelical theologians had prepared a five-point statement to elucidate ways in which Catholics and evangelicals were and were not together, particularly emphasizing the continued disagreement over justification by faith alone. See “Evangelicals Clarify Accord with Catholics,” Christianity Today, March 6, 1995.
19. John H. Armstrong, The Coming Evangelical Crisis: Current Challenges to the Authority of Scripture and the Gospel. Chicago: Moody Press, 1996.
20. John H. Armstrong, The Compromised Church: The Present Evangelical Crisis. Chicago: Moody Press, 1998.
21. Ibid., 16.
22. See Hatch with Hamilton, footnote 1 above.
23. James Davison Hunter, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
24. Hunter, 183.
25. Ibid. Italics original.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 184.
28. Ibid., 185.
29. Marsha G. Witten, All is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. All of the sermons in Witten’s selection are taken from the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 from pulpits in two large denominations—the Presbyterian Church USA as a mainline source and the Southern Baptist Convention as an evangelical one.
30. Ibid., 35.
31. Ibid., 49.
32. Ibid., 53.
33. Wells, 7.
34. Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1979.
35. Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1981.
36. An interesting exchange among four evangelical leaders—Mark Noll, Alister McGrath, Richard Mouw, and Darrel Bock—occasioned by Noll’s book can be found in the August 14, 1995 edition of Christianity Today, titled “Scandal? A forum on the evangelical mind.”
37. Noll, ix.
38. Noll, 3.
39. Noll, 3-4.
40. Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do About It. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994.
41. Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind. London: S.P.C.K., 1963.
42. Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1947. See Joel A. Carpenter, ed. Two Reformers of Fundamentalism: Harold John Ockenga and Carl F.H. Henry. New York: Garland, 1988.
43. Horton, Power Religion, 343-350.
44. MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, xx.
45. Wells, 301.
46. Guiness and Seel, 21.
47. R.C. Sproul, “The Object of Contemporary Relevance,” in Horton, Power Religion, 325.
48. Hayden White, The Content of Form. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
49. Alister McGrath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.
50. Alister McGrath, Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.
51. John Stott, Evangelical Truth: A Personal Plea for Unity, Integrity & Faithfulness. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999.
52. Carl F.H. Henry, Toward a Recovery of Christian Belief. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990.
53. Millard J. Erickson, The Evangelical Left: Encountering Postconservative Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1997.
54. Thomas C. Reeves, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity. New York: The Free Press, 1996.
55. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978, 62.

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