Dennis Prager on the Authority of The Book

I listen to Dennis Prager when I get the chance. He is a Jewish Conservative talk show host who is calm, articulate and gracious. He column today in Jewish World Review speaks to the issue of the culture wars and does the best job I have seen in quite some time in defining what the culture wars actually are.

I have grown a bit weary of the secular press characterizing the culture wars as an attempt for a few narrow, fundamentalist, right-wing zealots to impose a theocracy on the rest of the culture, a culture which we are told has been secular since the days of Thomas Jefferson. I am growing more weary of the tendency of many evangelical Christian authors and bloggers to essentially say the same thing, that Christian involvement in politics (read conservative Republicanism) is unbiblical and damages the church. More on that in a later post.

Prager does a great service by providing a bit of clarity. What the culture wars are about is not religion per se, but morality based on a text that is shared across many very different viewpoints:

Is Jesus the Only Savior?

Taking a break from Calvinism for a moment, I have to plug a great book. James Edwards was a mentor to my nephew Troy, who became a Presbyterian pastor, (and leans in the Calvinist direction - but we're still very much on speaking terms!) I had not read anything by Edwards prior to reading Is Jesus the Only Savior? I have to admit I didn't know what to make of the title at first, but after reading it, I suspect it is a book that ought to be looked at by a lot of young college age men who need mentoring, and maybe ought to be a study for high school seniors heading to college.

His book is calm, scholarly, but readable. He takes on the various phases of the "quest for the historical Jesus" by exposing the naturalistic assumptions underneath them. He takes the question further showing that there is a great deal of reason to trust the historical reliability of the New Testament with easy to read, cogent arguments and a judicious choice of compelling evidence. There was new material here that I had never encountered. Josh McDowell and others have produced a volume of information in this regard, but I found items in Edwards book very exciting. Having established the reasonableness of trusting the New Testament, he tackles the central issue - "did Jesus believe himself to be God?"

But what sets the book apart is how he links the rebuttal of "modern" skepticism of the historicity of Christianity with the "after-modern" skepticism about whether Christianity has the right to make exclusive truth claims. This is the epistemological question of the age my sons will have to deal with and I hope I can get them to take a good look at a book like this one.

The one caveat for more conservative evangelicals is that Edwards admits that it is difficult for him to reconcile every detail of the gospels into a perfect harmony, so he does not identify himself as being in the strict inerrantist/fundamentalist camp. Then again, C.S. Lewis was not exactly a fundamentalist and most evangelicals are quite comfortable learning from him.

This is an important, credible and readable book. I hope it gains a wide audience.

Why I am Not a Calvinist - Part 5: Eternal Security

An acquaintance told me the other day that her child was planning to leave a Christian College for another Christian College because of the overbearing nature of the chapel services. She explained that in the denomination with which this college is associated, "they don't believe in 'once saved - always saved'. To this lack of belief in eternal security in part, she attributed what unfortunately sounded like a daily bludgeoning of the students from the pulpit to confess sin and get their spiritual lives straight.

Having spent some time in "holiness movement" circles, I can certainly sympathize. Revivalism, left in the hands of men to create the revival by tactics of mass persuasion, can be a destructive thing. Presumably, by going to a different institution where Christians are "eternally secure", this abuse might be avoided.

I find that the average lay person is often drawn to a Calvinist viewpoint because of the belief in eternal security, the belief that a Christian, once saved from the consequences of sin, can never again be lost. I, if truth be told, have always believed in a slightly limited form of eternal security, but for very un-Calvinistic reasons. In fact, as a young layman, had no notion that eternal security was in any way related to Calvinism.

Why I am Not a Calvinist - Part 4: Logical Possibilities

"The decree, I admit, is, dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree...Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so it belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand" (Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.xxiii.7)

Here is a question. If it is true that God can do anything that is logically possible, that is He cannot create a square circle for example, and if it is true that evil is not the opposite of good but rather the absence of good, and if it is true that goodness is defined as that which corresponds to the character of God, then the following two scenarios are submitted for consideration.

It is not possible for God to create a world where there are beings who have true freedom and no possibility that those beings will choose evil. Hence the free-will defense of the existence of evil makes a certain amount of sense.

It is, however, possible for God to create a universe where beings are NOT free, and where, as a result, none choose evil. Given that scenario, why did God not create such a universe? Why does evil exist? Why did God create a universe in which He decreed that certain men would choose evil?

The answer most Calvinist put forth is that it is beyond our knowledge and wrapped up in the justice and wisdom of God. But once again, if "God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it" then what meaning can words like justice and wisdom have?

Why I Am Not a Calvinist - Part 3: Justice

I noted in my last post that from my own personal perspective, Calvinism suggested a God with a completely different character than the one I had long believed in, and for that reason, it caused a huge crisis of faith. As long as the debates about grace and free will were primarily about how works relate to salvation, it always seemed to me that this was one of those debates that could be discussed quietly over coffee and was not worth making a fuss over. But when it came to the point where it appeared God was, by his eternal decree, the "author" of evil, I fell into a state of anguish.

It was in my short stint in seminary that I was introduced to the idea of "compatibilism". This is the suggestion that free will is compatable with determinism, based on the idea that individuals freely choose what they are predisposed to choose by their character, circumstances, psychology, etc. In other words, if I choose A as opposed to B under a given set of conditions, then I will have freely chosen A and will always choose A given the same set of conditions. My own nature, combined with the set of conditions in which I am found, produce a specific result.

In Calvinism, this makes it possible for some to say that God accomplishes his sovereign will by creating human beings with a specific makeup and placing them in the right set of conditions to insure that what they freely choose will be exactly what His design predicts they will choose. The distinction then is between "free choice" - meaning that one chooses between two or more options, as opposed to voluntary compliance - meaning that a person "voluntarily" chooses one and only one possible option.

Why I am Not a Calvinist - Part 2: Are Critics of Calvinism Fair?

Before I go any further on this topic, two points.

First, this issue is a very personal one for me. Calvinism calls into question, in my mind, the very character of God. As much as I have tried over the years to leave this question in the realm of "mystery", one of those unanswerable questions we'll understand someday in the sweet bye and bye, I find I cannot. I keep finding myself confronted with Calvinist assumptions that most evangelicals don't think much about and don't follow through to their conclusions. Most lay evangelicals accept Calvinist ideas regarding eternal security and total depravity and at the same time argue that evil exists because of the free-will of man. They are Cal-minian, even though that is, according to many Calvinists, not logically permissible.

Second, I want to be fair. I have Calvinist friends. (Maybe not many after this series of ramblings). It is my impression that most serious folks in the Reformed tradition find themselves there because they believe the Scripures require them to be. And they are not insensitive to the objections critics raise. So the question comes up as to whether critics of Calvinism misrepresent what Calvinists actually believe. Primarily, this falls into the area of whether God is responsible for evil and whether God arbitrarily creates some expressly to be condemned for all eternity.

So before I go further, I need to document why I believe Calvinism opens itself up to criticism, not on the basis of Arminian characatures, but from particular statements of faith in the Reformed tradition.

Why I am not a Calvinist - Part 1

Jesus wept.

Those two words in John 11:35, aside from being the famous shortest verse in the Bible, are one of the primary reasons I am not a Calvinist. The fact the Jesus wept at the tomb of a friend is to me one of the most powerful images in all of scripture and speaks volumes about the way Jesus viewed death and human suffering. And the more I think about this event, the more I see that I can’t fit it into a deterministic-Calvinist framework. Let me explain.

(My understanding of Calvinism, by the way, comes from several seminary level courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Most notably, it was stressed that it is not logically consistent to be a Cal-minian, to believe in absolute sovereignty and free will without redefining free will to mean "willingly doing only what God decreed we would do before the foundation of the world". It was stressed in that context, that a free-will defense of the existence of evil cannot be squared with Calvinism, meaning that the existence of evil in the world cannot be attributed to the free-choice of man without threatening the absolute sovereignty of God. If God is sovereign, all events are part of his plan from before the foundation of the world, without exception.)

The passage in question deals with the raising of Lazarus. Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus and weeps. What does his weeping imply? To get at that question we have to take a step back into the context of the chapter.

Evangelical Catholicity - Simon Chan

I heard Simon Chan on the radio a few weeks ago. He is Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, and has written a new book called Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community. There is an intriguing article in Christianity Today, Stopping Cultural Drift, with and accompanying interview with Chan, More Than Saving Souls

His key points, that Evangelicals have no overaching ecclesiology, rather a view of the church as a utilitarian and voluntary association of people who unite to pursue a purpose, such as evangelism, and that as a result, evangelical worship and practice are too easily accommodated to the trends of culture. On the one hand these are not new observations, but Chan's foundational assumptions are different from most, very "paleo-orthodox".

The article and interview by Mark Galli points out Chan's view that "...the church cannot be understood as the creation of the devout, something that is merely the most efficient and effective way to organize ourselves to do mission."

Legitimacy Part 2

Since I raised the question, I’ll make an attempt at an answer.

Even though many independent denominations have roots in the view point that Christians should have “no book but the Bible” and “no Creed but Christ”, it is clear that virtually all denominations feel it necessary to compose a statement of faith. It becomes a requirement very quickly that the doctrinal ideas that led to the formation of the individual denomination be written as a standard of how the Scriptures are to be understood within that subgroup and to prevent individuals from getting sidetracked from the original vision and mission of the group.

These doctrinal statements usually tend to at least be Trinitarian. They tend to emphasize the authority of scripture over tradition and tend to highlight certain distinctives that separate that group from other groups, such as pre-millennial eschatology, eternal security, or the independence of the local church. In other words, while tipping the hat to historic orthodoxy, these statements of faith serve to emphasize not the unity of the faith, but the differences between groups, even though on the central issues of the Nicene Creed, the groups may all tend to agree.

So we find the curious situation that denominations unwittingly identify themselves first and foremost by what separates them.

Legitimacy

This will almost certainly not come out the way I intend it. I am a believer, a committed Christian who is convinced of the truth of Christianity and the scriptures. But I want to ask a question, not about the faith, but about the legitimacy of the faith in the eyes of a pluralistic and post-Christian culture.

Some Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped by today and dropped off a pamphlet. It loudly proclaimed, “The End of False Religion is Near!” It went on to define false religions as those that meddle in war and politics, which spread false doctrine and which tolerate immoral sex. It identified true religion as the practice of love across cultural barriers; trust in God’s inspired Word; and the upholding of the family and of high moral standards. It even had an eschatological section about the great harlot of the book of Revelation, eerily similar to the popular end times scenarios I read as a teenager.

What strikes me is how similar this all sounds.

Greg Boyd

So I happened to be at North Park University this weekend on a college visit for my middle son and the speaker both Sunday night and Monday morning was Greg Boyd. I have to admit when you are evaluating a college for your child and the chapel speaker is one who embraces Open Theism and writes a book called The Myth of a Christian Nation , you wonder "what were they thinking?"

Boyd is a likeable character from the pulpit. He is animated, talks a mile-a-minute, has a self-deprecating sense of humor and doesn't appear to have a huge ego. As my wife and I listened, we found much to agree with in the general drift of his messages. But we also sensed a "taking it too far" tendency that I suspect is the source of his troubles with the evangelical community.

Post and Future Calvinism

Been ruminating on the one and only issue that has ever caused me to question my faith - the Calvinist TULIP. It started when I saw the article in CT, Young Restless and Reformed a couple of weeks ago. It documents a trend among twenty-somethings to embrace Reformed theology.

My initial reaction was "oh no!". More on that later. Second reaction was that it makes a certain amount of sense. Young people looking for a more robust theology, something deeper than the inoffensive seeker-driven relevancy of many of the mega-church, have to turn somewhere. Many have turned to history, liturgy, creed and confession. I guess I should not be surprised to see many turn to robust Reformed theology.

The article credits some of the trend to the books and preaching of John Piper. I had opportunity to hear Piper once and found his message on that day to be engaging and appreciated his humble and self-deprecating delivery a nice counterbalance to his obvious intensity. But the article also revived some old ghosts. The author, Collin Hansen recounts his own experience:

Randall Ballmer, Reason and the Pope

Randall Ballmer has a new book out, called Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament

I have not read the book, and I am not sure that I will. So I won’t take much issue with things that I have no direct knowledge of from the text. On the other hand, I can take a look at what Ballmer has said in interviews. My primary concern is related to Ballmer’s statement in World Magazine related to faith and reason and the hot button issue of Intelligent Design. Odd that I find Ballmer in the opposite corner from Francis Schaeffer and Pope Benedict on that one… but I must digress momentarily.

Ballmer tips his hand on the theme and tone of his book in an iterview in the Star Tribune with Pamela Miller. If the Title doesn’t say enough, try this:

I am a traditional evangelical; it is the right-wing zealots of the religious right who have hijacked my faith. They have taken the gospel, the "good news" of the New Testament, which I consider lovely and redemptive, and turned it into something ugly and punitive.
What is ugly and punitive about the “religious right” one can probably guess. One key passage in his book, quoted extensively on NPR by Linda Wertheimer, is the “Abortion Myth” which is described as “the fiction that the religious right has propagated that it was formed in direct response to the Roe vs. Wade ruling of 1973, when in fact it galvanized as a political movement to defend Bob Jones University”

Obsession

I watched the documentary Obsession last night. It is an important film to see. No charge to view it. Whatever one might wish to agree with or disagree with in the interviews, one will have a hard time disputing the footage. Just watch it.

The Pope and Islam

There has been much attention paid to the allegedly insulting words of Pope Benedict toward Islam in a speech titled "Faith, Reason & The University" at the University of Regensburg. The offending remark is one particular line, a quote from 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos in conversation with a Persian scholar, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Of course few of the news articles give any context whatsover to the the quotation. More on that below.

Most of the attention has been paid to muslim denunciations of the Pope's comments.
According to the article from the AP by Benjamin Harvey:

Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict's remarks were either "the result of pitiful ignorance" about Islam and its prophet or, worse, a deliberate distortion. "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades," Mr. Kapusuz told Turkish state television and radio. He said Benedict will go down in history for his words, "in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini."

The Path Back to 9-11

So I watched The Path to 911. It appears that whether the general drift of the story is correct or not, some of the details were not. This is unfortunate, because the inaccuracies become the focus and any central truths get lost. Reaction from the left was predictable, and I believe Dennis Prager hit the nail on the head. Clinton administration defenders who decry the film are being hopelessly narcissistic. The film was NOT about them. It was about the terrorists and the fact that we as a nation, collectively, were inexcusably blind to the threat, including the early days of the Bush administration.

What the film portrayed accurately was that Islamic radicals attempted and failed to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993 and continued through the entire eight years of the Clinton administration to plot and execute terrorist attacks. It did document the acknowledged fact that numerous inadequacies made the attacks possible, from lack of communication and outright competition between agencies as well as clueless indifference. It also documented that there were opportunities to get Bin Laden, though the details may have been condensed and “fictionalized" in the film.

As I watched, my one hope was that people would remember who the enemy is. My hope was that folks would understand once again that there is a significant threat from individuals and groups who wish to see a Taliban-like regime instituted worldwide, with Sharia law as the norm and they are willing and ready and willing to commit mass murder to see this goal accomplished. That was my hope. I fear it is a false hope.

Reading today that Rosie O'Donnell can compare Christian fundametnalists to the Islamic terrorists on network television was disturbing enough, though nothing surprises me anymore.
Her specific words included,

“Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state."

“…as a result of the attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people we invaded two countries and killed innocent people”

When challenged that Christians are not threatening mass murder on anyone here or abroad, she continued “…we are bombing innocent people in other countries. True or false?"

Reading the words online was maddening. Watching the clip was worse. Because the studio audience applauded! Significant numbers of Americans apparently agree that “radical Christianity” is equivalent to radical Islam!

Clearly, there is no clue out there what the war on terror is really about. Yes there have been isolated cases of folks who claim Christianity doing destructive things like bombing abortion clinics and killing abortion doctors. But there is absolutely nothing else that comes close to a comparison between Islamic terrorism and Christianity. There are no Christian church leaders that I am aware of advocating mass murder. Nor does the U.S. Government or the U.S. Military target civilians and no major Christian leader of ANY denomination would dream of advocating such things. That such a point even needs to be made is infuriating. The terrorists behind 9-11 intentionally targeted civilians with the intent of killing as many civilians as possible. Nothing in anything any legitimate Christian group teaches or represents compares to this. In the 9-11 attack, there was no distinction between the killing of women, children, men or military personnel, white, black, Arab, European, multi-ethnic, gay or straight. Any death was seen as a victory for Allah. This in no way compares to any American military action or the support of the war by conservative Christians.

In many places across the world those Muslims who did not participate in the attacks, supported, cheered and celebrated them. Almost no one in the Muslim community, particularly among the Muslim clergy have been willing to publicly repudiate the goals or methods of the terrorists.

There is no evidence or even any rational reason to believe that any civilian deaths caused by the war in Iraq or Afghanistan by our military were intentionally targeted, deliberate, or celebrated in this country. And the fact that the terrorists make a point of not identifying themselves by uniform as military combatants, and instead hide among civilians and use them as shields demonstrates both that they have no regard for human life that would resemble anything we have long held dear and also that they are counting on the fact that we won’t target civilians to make such hiding places effective.

What in the world is behind this moral equivalency lunacy? What is it that Rosie and others on the left fear from Christianity?

The answer, I think, is absolutes. More precisely, absolutism. Those who crave absolute (!) pluralism fear any viewpoint that suggests it is true and all other views false. They fear that anyone who believes in absolute, objective truth will eventually, inevitably resort to violence, coercion, force, and state power to make sure that everyone else accepts that view. I guess they really believe that conservative Christians want to establish a militant theocracy, (which we don’t) and that we, like radical muslims, want to murder anyone who disagrees with us, which is ridiculous.

Christianity, as I have argued here before, balances absolute moral standards with compassion and forgiveness. High standards, plus unlimited grace. Christianity also values free will, even in the most Calvinist circles. Individuals are responsible and cannot, must not be coerced. Faith that is coerced is not faith. Protestant Christianity, in particular, fears absolute power as much as any other worldview in history. The fears Rosie spews are completely unfounded.

And even then, why would Rosie or anyone else fear Christianity even half as much as the extreme form of Islam, which treats women as a fraction of the value of a man, which doesn’t merely disagree with homosexuals but would execute them, and which would tolerate not a whit of the pluralism and free speech she uses to its full extent? I don’t understand how such blindness can be held with such fervency. But I guess rationality is out of style these days.

But the end result, I fear, is that we as a nation will not have the will or the understanding to defend ourselves against this threat that is more dangerous than communism or Nazi ideologies. Communists were willing to kill for their cause. Islamic radicals are willing to commit suicide for their cause. I fear 9-11 will be repeated. The terrorists will continue to be emboldened. Pluralism and multi-culturalism will continue to bend over backward to be fair to the

Khatamis of the world and will insist that pluralism and democracy mean a place at the table for Sharia law. I fear everything Western Civilization has been for centuries may well disappear within the lifetimes of our children.

There was much furor over the “Path to 9-11” For all the wrong reasons. And the main point of the film, that there is a real enemy out there and it is not our own government, has already been lost.

The Death of Truth

So there is much buzz about ABCs new miniseries The Path to 911. I hope to find time to watch it, but that may or may not be possible. ABC is under immense pressure from Democrats and Clinton supporters, (free speech champions all) to cancel the series. The reason is for certain events being "conflated" so that multiple statements from a variety of sources are attributed to single individuals, implying that they said specific words that they didn't actually say.

The AP report by David Bauder indicates:

"A cut of the film distributed to TV critics depicts a team poised in darkness outside bin Laden's cave fortress in Afghanistan, while an actor portraying Berger in Washington stalls on giving the final go-ahead to carry out the seizure. He confers via video phone to CIA chief George Tenet.

"'Look, George," Berger says, "if you feel confident, you can present your recommendation to the president yourself.'

"Tenet responds angrily, then Berger's screen goes blank. He has hung up."
Madeline Albright is also upset:

"Albright objected to a scene that reportedly shows her warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan, which resulted in bin Laden's escape. She said the scene was false and defamatory.:"
And Richard Clarke:

"Another scene in the movie depicts counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke explaining to FBI agent John O'Neill that he doesn't believe Clinton will take chances to kill bin Laden at a time Republicans were pressing for impeachment."

So because the film takes liberties with the association of certain statements with specific people who weren't the ones who made them, Clinton's people and much of the Democratic party is crying for the film to be edited if not scrapped entirely (that is, censored, isn't it?). Sandy Berger, best known for stuffing secret documents in his pants in the defense of truth and justice claims: "You can't fix it, you gotta yank it."

On the one hand, I am uncomfortable with the "docudrama" genre. By its very nature, it is difficult to compress a mountain of "docu-" into even five hours worth of "-drama" in a way that is watchable. There were plenty of complaints about the liberties Peter Jackson had to take with The Lord of the Rings. Had he not conflated certain passages, the film would either have been unwatchable, or key elements would have been left out completely. Certainly writer/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh faced those sorts of decisions. Still, attributing specific words to individuals when they didn't say them, even though they said or did things consistent with the words is problematic. So I don't entirely blame Albright, for example.

But I have to say, there is considerable hypocrisy in the outrage.

How many Democrats were outraged by the inaccuracies and outright lies of Michael Moore, whom Christopher Hitchens', in his demolition of Farenheit 911, referred to as "beneath contempt".

Is anyone in the Democratic alternate universe upset about charges that President Bush let people die in New Orleans based on economic status or race?

The fact that we should even be wasting time having to debunk 9-11 myths is an indication of how useless the words "journalism" and "objectivity" have become, but nobody in Bill Clinton's party seems to be concerned about fairness there, much less serious about actually fighting the terrorists who were responsible. Frightening how willfully blind to the needs of the hour these people are.

And aside from "conflation" of events, the events that implicate the Clinton administration in failing to comprehend any sort of threat appear to be worthy of examination. Powerline documents the long string of Islamic extremist attacks during the Clinton years, attacks that were rarely, and completely unsuccessfully responded to.

And now, the Senate Intelligence Committee once again insists there was no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, an unfortunate conclusion apparently in search of evidence from the start. There appears to be a fair amount of evidence in documents recoved in Iraq that would contradict such a conclusion, but presumably this evidence was dismissed. Thomas Joscelyn's article in the Weekly Standard notes at least a couple of pieces of evidence available to the general public that were apparently conveniently ignored in the report:

"One of Saddam's senior intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, was questioned about his contacts with bin Laden and al Qaeda.

"Hijazi admitted to meeting bin Laden once in 1995, but claimed that "this was his sole meeting with bin Ladin or a member of al Qaeda and he is not aware of any other individual following up on the initial contact.

"This is not true. Hijazi's best known contact with bin Laden came in December 1998, days after the Clinton administration's Operation Desert Fox concluded. We know the meeting happened because the worldwide media reported it. The meeting took place on December 21, 1998.

"There is a voluminous body of evidence surrounding this December 1998 meeting between Hijazi and bin Laden--yet there is not a single mention of it in the committee's report."

No president in history has been treated with the personalized contempt that G.W. Bush has. See this as just one example. Sorry Mr. Clinton. While I wish the film had attributed specific words or events to the right people, the idea that you and your staff are being treated unfairly rings a little hollow. I actually agree that docudrama's should be accurate, even if it means they are more "docu" than "drama". But the hypocritical and calculated moral outrage over this, under the circumstances, is rather sickening. The president famous for the line "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is." has no place complaining about a lack of truthfulness, even if he has a point about the details.

The Once and Future Anglicanism

A rather amazing document was published yesterday by David Virtue. It is a petition drafted by Bishop John Rucyahana, Anglican Bishop of Rwanda, representing and organization called SPREAD, or "The Society for the Propogation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine, along with Rev. John H. Rodgers. It is 45 pages in length, but the long and short of it is this - Bishops Rucyahana and Rodgers suggests in no uncertain terms that remaining in fellowship with heretical factions of Anglicanism is no longer acceptable.

This is significant on one hand bacause of the turmoil that the Anglican world has been in since the recent convention of the Episcopal Church here in the United States, in which the TEC refuse to turn from the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop and elected a pro-gay female presiding bishop. It is also significant because Rucyahana leads the Anglican Mission in America, the first American Anglican group to declare itself out of communion with the Episcopal church and to ordain bishops under the authority of other Bishops outside of the Episcopal church's jurisdiction, crossing jurisdictional lines.

But the text of the petition is the real story. The stated goals of the petition are to:

1) affirm and encourage the preservation of the Anglican faith, which holds, as a major expression of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, that the Church is subordinate to Scripture's sovereign authority;
(2) protect the churches and individual members in the Communion which adhere thereto; and
(3) prevent millions of souls from being lost.

Then comes the real kicker:

The petition seeks to encourage the Primates of the Global South to continue to exercise leadership in the Anglican Communion by continuing to build on the groundwork laid at the Third Global Anglican South to South Encounter in Egypt in October 2005.

Conservative, orthodox bishops in the Global South, in short, have been taking the lead to encourage repentance from the Episcopal Church and appear primed to go further, assuming even greater leadership in coming days. Lest this be seen as a mere power struggle, one should note the meticulous detail of the reasoning, the actions already taken, and the documentation of the responses. First, the reasoning:

(1) Scripture is God's Word written and therefore true;
(2) the Church is subordinate to the sovereign authority of Scripture; and
(3) the Church and its members are obligated to obey the commandments and follow the teachings of Scripture.

While the media and revisionists have pushed the issue of same-sex blessings and ordinations as the primary conflict, conservatives insist that issue is a symptom of a larger problem, a refusal to submit to or even accept the authority of scripture. Repeatedly the document insists on the Reformation principle that the church is subordinate to scripture. It also insists that the proper role of a bishop includes to "with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word"

Cash

I enjoyed this Breakpoint article on Johnny Cash by Alex Wainer. He was many things, but he was, as an artist, honest. If you have seen the film Walk The Line you only got part of the story. Far better to read the book The Man Comes Around by Dave Urbanski. It shows not only Cash's spiritual side far more lucidly than the film, but also reveals his intelligence. The book makes the observation in passing that Cash may have had an influence, through his early TV series, on early 'Jesus Rock' musicians like Larry Norman.

Cash could sing about ordinary things, life, love, heartache, sin and depravity, and in the next breath honestly sing gospel songs of redemption. And for him it wasn't a contradiction. That turned out to be his genius. There was no artificial wall between the sacred and the secular. Says Wainer:

"Compare Cash's approach to the model of the Contemporary Christian Music industry. The standard approach has been to take various rock and pop music styles and insert Christian lyrics. This began in the 1970s as young musicians found Christ and sought to reach their friends by using the music they loved to deliver the gospel message they now believed. When Christian record companies began signing new artists, the eventual result was a marginalized category sold mostly in Christian bookstores or restricted to the 'Christian' bin in music stores thus blunting the artists' original evangelistic intent."

Another "Call" from Bob Webber

Robert Webber is at it again. This Call to an Evangelical Future is intriguing. It understands the postmodern setting without swallowing the whole paradigm. Webber convened the internet discussion, but enlisted as "Theological Editors" Hans Boersma, Howard Snyder, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and D. H. Williams.

I like Webber, although I find too much emphasis on "story" a bit too friendly to the view that "foundationalism" is a dead fossil. Still the following excerpts resonate with me.

"...we call evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God's story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning."

"Individualistic evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies, and judgmental attitudes toward the church. Therefore, we call evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic."

"...we call evangelicals to turn away from methods that separate theological reflection from the common traditions of the church. "

"...we call evangelicals to turn away from forms of worship that focus on God as a mere object of the intellect or that assert the self as the source of worship. Such worship has resulted in lecture-oriented, music-driven, performance-centered, and program-controlled models that do not adequately proclaim God's cosmic redemption."

The whole declaration is only six points and can be read in just a few minutes. It is worth the read.

The Difference Between Christianity and Islam

Ran accross this article which describes stoning for adultery as a brutal affair in some Islamic countries. Human rights groups are drafting a resolution to protest the practice. Quoting the article, regarding the case of one Malak Ghorbany,

"Lily Mazahery, president of the Legal Rights Institute in Washington, D.C., had the lead role in drafting the San Francisco resolution, telling WND: 'Malak is receiving the penalty of death for having committed 'adultery,' which, under the Sharia legal system includes any type of intimate relationship between a girl/woman and a man to whom she is not permanently or temporarily married. Such a relationship does not necessarily mean a sexual relationship. Further, charges of adultery are routinely issued to women/girls who have been raped, and they are sentenced to death.'"

I notice that it is only the women who are stoned and that, according to the article, the testimony of the woman only counts for half of that of the man.

Vacation

My excuse for few posts in recent days is - vacation. The primary evidence is as follows. 

This is Mohlman Lake, about 7000 feet up in the mountains of Western Montana.

It was a last chance to get away with my boys, age 19, 17 and 15. One will be a sophomore in college, the second will be a senior in high school. We are not far from the empty nest. They had never had the opportunity, and the five hour climb turned out to be worth every step. (Must give credit to my brother-in-law, and his son-in-law, for getting us up there and back in one piece, and for knowing how to fish.)




Our campsite, sleeping on rocks, unable to build campfires due to fire danger, armed with extra-strength pepper spray to ward off grizzlies. What a way to relax!

I've always felt like the mountains of Montana were like Narnia and I've always felt a sense of awe there. Cartoonist Stan Lynde once did a strip where a cowboy rides through such scenery for several frames. The final box has him saying something to the effect of "anybody who can see this and not believe in God, just ain't payin' attention".



Then we hiked about 8 miles in Glacier Park. Need I say more...

...And I Agree Completely

Jim Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy writes in the Weekly Standard about the breakup of the ECUSA and the struggles in the PCUSA. The article is titled Religion Without Foundations.

I've been writing quite a bit about subjectivism in matters of faith, the lack of adherence to both scripture and the consensus of church history. Tonkowich says of the mainliners:

"In contrast to Christians through the ages, the denominational left has substituted sentiments for facts, passions for authority, and subjectivity for reason. Their belief seems to be that if they "create space for dialogue" it will allow them to emote and vote with the result that a simple majority determines the new revised standard version of God's truth and will."

Those Dangerous Dispensationalists

Interesting art exhibition by one Jill Greenberg who has caused a sensation by making a political statement out of photos of crying babies. To get the photos, she had to get the kids to cry, ususally be giving the kids a lollypop and then taking it away. One might argue this does no permanent harm to the kids, but it does seem rather - shall we say - insensitive? But that isn't the gist of this post.

Quoted in the press release for the exhibition is Bill Moyers' 2005 piece There is no Tomorrow, which gently savages evangelicals and all politicians who are supported by evangelicals.

"For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The offspring of ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. And that is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. "

Outreach, Worship and Sunday Mornings

Been busy of late, not a lot of time to think, much less write. I found a great little article in Touchstone, where one John Parker writes some gentle and prodding thoughts in his Guide for the Cineplexed, Parker is an Orthodox Priest, but obviously has some evangelical influence in his past. One small point that immediately stuck out is that while so many megachurches are meeting in theaters, warehouses, theaters, schools and anyplace else that will hold lots of people and won't feel too "churchy", almost everyone wants to get married in a place that feels - like a church. The church in which he once served, went so far as to construct a "wedding chapel" precisely because of this conundrum. "Until now, this church has never had a place 'suitable' for 'that special day.' Who wants to get married on a stage? In a warehouse? In a theater? "

The reason for the "neutral" atmosphere of the seeker service is to make the service comfortable and inviting for the "unchurched". And in America, not only have the inherently "religous" trappings been removed, but also all symbols that smack of authority. We are egalitarian, at least in the image we try to present. But I think Parker puts his finger on the real issue that seeker churches have maybe not considered fully enough.

Over the Edge

In all honesty, I have had a hard time knowing exactly what to think after the whirlwind events of the last couple of weeks in both the PCUSA and ECUSA conventions. I had expected the revisionists in the ECUSA to hold their ground. I did not expect them to stake out new territory. (Much reporting on the convention can be found at David Virtue's news site here.)

In the ECUSA, now simply “The Episcopal Church” or TEC for short, delegates were somewhat stunned at the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, bishop of Nevada, to the post of Presiding Bishop. Since most Anglican provinces do not ordain women as deacons or priests, much less bishops, this was hardly a conciliatory move to engender trust from other provinces – this was a defiant act of autonomy. On top of this, Schiori is on record as supportive of the consecration of Gene Robinson, the openly Gay Bishop of New Hampshire.

Incredibly, in the Episcopal convention, the House of Deputies voted down a resolution that affirmed Jesus Christ as the "only name by which any person may be saved” by a vote of 675 to 242. Apparently such exclusive language was politically incorrect.

Why I Am Not Emergent - Part 3

"Within Emergent are Texas Baptists who don't allow women to preach and New England lesbian Episcopal priests. We have Southern California YWAMers and Midwest Lutherans. We have those who hold to biblical inerrancy, and others trying to demythologize the scripture. We have environmental, peacenik lefties, "crunchy cons," and right wing hawks." (Tony Jones)

Emergents generally don’t like to be categorized, and there is enough diversity within the movement that any attempt to categorize, including my own, will be inadequate. What I have attempted to show in parts 1 and 2, is that on two key assumptions of a philosophical trend which is categorized as postmodernism, the leaders of the emergent movement tend toward viewpoints which mirror those assumptions.

Assumption 1: There is no such thing as objective knowledge - knowledge unaffected by bias.Emergent leaders Tony Jones and Brian McLaren protest that they do believe in truth, yet they seem to fall back on the notion that objective knowledge of that truth must be held in supreme suspicion, making the concept of truth essentially meaningless.

Assumption 2: Language is a construct of society – words do not signify reality, but a cultural perception of reality.The propensity to want to find new ways of looking at Scripture allows emergents to comfortably remain in dialogue with those of wildly varying viewpoints, and to be suspicious of anyone who would not be open to wildly varying viewpoints.

This leads me to the third assumption, to which Emergents may not actively ascribe, but will tend to fall in line with in practice:

Assumption 3: Language is a mask to power. Those who control the language have the power.
a. History then, reflects the interpretations of those who controlled the culture at the expense of those who did not.
b. Justice means standing against the oppressor and with the oppressed, allowing alternative constructions of reality to be heard.
Emergents are very concerned about the poor and the oppressed, and this good and is consistent with much of scripture. But this seems to include a tendency to assume that all who are disenfranchised are victims and all who are successful by definition oppress. This leads to a corresponding suspicion of traditionally orthodox and established views of the faith and an openness to new and marginalized views.

I have back track to call attention to Brian McLaren’s open letter to Chuck Colson at this point. I think he honestly tried to explain the distinctions between radical postmodern craziness and the more nuanced views with which he is more comfortable, claiming that Colson’s view of “Postmodernism” is itself a straw man.

It is certainly possible to take the worst statements of adherents to a philosophy and string them together in an unfair way. But it is also possible to protest that one does not believe something and then turn around and make numerous other statements that prove otherwise. McLaren's protests about being misunderstood are betrayed by his own confusing and noncommittal statements.

But it is the concept of the metanarrative that is the critical point for this post. The metanarrative, the all-encompassing, totalizing world-view that explains everything in a certain way and as a result, crushes everything that does not conform. This is the key topic which McLaren attempts to explain to Colson.

Why I am Not Emergent - Part 2

So in my last post, I opined that one of the problems with many in the Emergent “conversation” is a significant capitulation to one the central tenets of the postmodern, that objectivity is myth and that all knowledge is determined by experience within a culture. Tony Jones, in challenging Chuck Colson, did make a distinction between truth and objectivity, for example, saying that Stanley Fish did not deny the possibility of truth, but of objectivity. This in itself is an example of the problem, however, because if ALL objectivity is impossible, then the word “truth” can only refer to subjective interpretation, which is the issue Colson was trying to refute.

I argued, essentially, that though no one can be perfectly objective, for most things in ordinary life, we are dependent on the common sense understanding that any two individuals can refer to an object and both can be sufficiently objective to be confident they are referring to the same object. Communication can occur.

But I must move on. A second key element of the general “postmodern” view of reality, which I believe many emergent leaders have uncritically accepted, is:

1. Language is a construct of society – words do not signify reality, but a cultural perception of reality.

And as a subset of the the above, come two other related assumptions.

a. Texts do not reflect objective realities, but interpretations of facts and events within a particular culture.

b. Readers of texts cannot enter into the culture of the author, so the text can only be understood as an interpretation by the reader within his own language and culture.
This leads many to the conclusion that it is the reader who gives meaning to the text.

Why I am not Emergent - Part 1

I've fallen into a bad habit of reading the "Out of Ur" section of the CT website. Out of Ur is billed as "Conversations hosted by the editors of Leadership Journal" and has a subheading of "Following God's Call in a New World". As such, it leans heavily in the direction of "Emergent" Christianity, which is an extremely loose and difficult to define collection of approaches to communicating Christianity in a post modern context.

In recent months, there have been a few controversial exchanges. Brian McLaren started a firestorm when one of his posts implied rather strongly that he could not affirm a traditional view of homosexuality as a sin. Later Tony Jones laid out a feisty apologetic as to why the Emergent movement should not have a clear statement of faith. More recently, Jones, in responding to critics who equate emergent with a new Christian left, directly took on Chuck Colson for his criticism of Emergent as not accepting the notion of objective truth.

Knowing full well that Emergent does describe a broad collection of folks with a lot of views, it has been my impression that most of the key leaders of the movement are influenced greatly by a set of philosophical assumptions. And I find those assumptions troublesome.

Silver Lining and a Dark Cloud

I'm not a political blogger, just a guy who writes for cartharsis and to think and I leave the heavy political stuff to the guys with the time, resources and background. Still, I read a few political sites and blogs, and Iraq and Iran loom large.

Occasionally there is apparent good news. Like the report in the Washington Times about significant numbers of Kurds converting to Christianity. According to the article, Retired Iraqi Gen. Georges Sada, the same guy who claims Saddam flew WMD out of Iraq into Syria before the war, says Kurds are converting to Christianity "by the hundreds" in northern Iraq.

I guess it rings true. Particularly in light of the Al Jazeera interview in which Ahmad Al Katani laments that as many as six million Muslims convert to Christianity in Africa each year. Of course Al Katani unfortunately argues that evangelism is OK as long as it doesn't involve evangelizing Muslims. Still, seeing Christianity having an impact in Muslim countries is encouraging in light of the other, darker stories.

Rating Your Church...

Been thinking for a few days about a CT article by Leith Anderson called "7 Ways to Rate Your Church: How to measure your church's ministry.” It was a well-intentioned and fairly sensible list of characteristics of churches people, and specifically unchurched people, tend to find attractive. The article is a reprint from 1999, so it is a few years old.

The list is as follows, with excerpts of the summaries taken directly from the article:

1. Sensing the presence of God
Experiencing the supernatural dwarfs everything else as people rate a church's atmosphere.
2. Others-centered
The others-centered church talks little about its programs or its people unless that is truly helpful to the newcomer.
3. Understandable terminology
Blessed are those churches where everyone can understand what is being communicated!
4. People who look like me
Seeing one person who looks and dresses "like me" up on the platform or ushering or pictured in church publicity can communicate an open and inviting atmosphere.
5. Healthy problem handling
What makes a healthy church is not the absence of problems. It's how problems are handled.
6. Accessibility
High ratings go to churches that are "barrier free" in every sense of the term.
7. Sense of expectancy
Most healthy churches are hopeful churches.

Of course there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this list. It is fairly common-sense stuff. I have nothing against Leith Anderson and attended his church a few times years ago. But I have to wonder, isn’t there something missing from this list? Notice that none of the seven items have anything in them directly related to biblical or theological concepts. Sure, sensing the presence of God is a religious element, but not specifically Christian. Being others-centered recalls a biblical principle, but lots of non-believers accept a form of the golden rule.

It seems to me, prior to the megachurch era, few if any of these items would have occurred to anyone seeking to “rate” a church. Granted, Anderson is probably assuming from the outset that Christians know enough to consider biblical orthodoxy before evaluating the seven points he stresses. And it is definitely true that many churches can be theologically correct while being cold and dead to the world around them.

Such an assumption seems ill advised these days. But rather than just being critical, I would suggest an addendum to such a list, one that accounts for some things perhaps more critical. So here’s my list:

1. Cross Centered
Does your church begin and end its ministry with a focus on the central event of human history, the death of Christ for the salvation of the world?
2. Biblical
Does your church take scripture seriously? Is scripture read aloud, understood to be the living voice of God? Is there a sense that God condescended to use human language to communicate things to us that we dare not ignore, revise, edit, or distort?
3. Orthodox
Is your church committed to those essentials of the faith that have been held by the vast majority of Christians for most of twenty centuries? Does the Trinity matter? The incarnation? The virgin birth? Does your church take seriously the clear understanding of whom God is?
4. Confession
In deference to the emphasis of being friendly to the unchurched and avoiding the negative, I have to ask, is there opportunity for us as human beings to face up to our failings? Is there opportunity to see ourselves against the measuring rod of God’s moral standards? Is there opportunity to see our need?
5. Redemption
Perhaps this reiterates point one, but is there real opportunity to connect with the personal meaning of redemption? In some churches steeped in revivalism and personal decision, this has taken the form of an altar call, but in most of Christian history this opportunity for renewal of the New Covenant takes place at the Lord’s Table. Does worship allow the worshiper to walk away with a renewed conscience and a sense of being forgiven?
6. Hope
Does the final reality of the church service leave people with a sense of hope, refreshing, purpose for the future? Is the good news really good news?
7. Ecumenism
I do NOT mean here ecumenical in the sense of the World Council of Churches, where no distinctions can any longer be made between Christianity and paganism. Rather, I mean non-sectarian. Is it possible to affirm essential Christian doctrine as expressed in Nicea and Chalcedon and accept those from other perspectives who also hold to those definitions?

Lists always have their limitations. I could add a few more items, so could you, but you get the point. Is it not possible to be sensitive to the concerns of the seeker and be theologically sound and thorough at the same time? I believe that the tendency to quantify, measure, program and perhaps even manipulate God is a hyper-modern trait the evangelical church has thoroughly embraced. We are too often in love with what seems to work in the short term and are unaware of what long-term ramifications might be. I just want to call attention to what is often forgotten in the process.

Phil Keaggy Speaks Out

Nice CT interview with Phil Keaggy today. I've been a huge Keaggy fan since I was a teenager, and he has influenced my guitar playing ever since. Aside from being a phenomenally versatile guitarist, Phil has always been a genuine nice guy, which makes a couple of comments in CT a little surprising. In context, he is not bashing anything or anyone, just being honest about some minor annoyances. Says Phil:

What irks me most about the Christian music business is the model on which they built the whole thing. It's based on the world's model of taking songs and masters from artists and owning it, when they make you pay back the production budget based on your royalties' percentage and then they end up owning it. It's like making 30 years of payments on a house that the bank never gives you!

Gnosticism

Marvin Olasky has good interview with Westminster Seminary New Testament professor Peter Jones on Gnosticism. Two key exchanges.

"WORLD: Even though The Da Vinci Code invents a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, it seems that Gnostics have something against heterosexual activity . . .

JONES: The goal of Gnostic sexuality is androgyny, the blending of male and female in one human being. The distinction of male and female is the result of the Fall, and so to undo the effects of the Fall one must join the opposites and make the two one. The "Jesus" of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas declares, "when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female . . . then you will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Saying 22). How interesting that this is happening in our own day, and that this is a definite developed theme in The Da Vinci Code."

I suppose it is no surprise that gnosticism is undergoing a bit of a revival in this time and culture...

The Fill-in-the-blank Creed of Emergentville

Poking around on the Emergent Village Blog today I found a fairly intriguing post. It seems certain critics of the vagueness of statements from emergent leaders have asked those leaders to produce a statement of faith. This would seem a reasonable request so that we can all know at least what sort of historic Christian doctrines emergent leaders consider essential.

Tony Jones, the National Coordinator of Emergent-U.S. provided a bit of a response by deferring to the statement of LeRon Shults, a former professor of Theology Bethel Seminary and author of The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology and Reforming the Doctrine of God. Jones writes:

"Yes, we have been inundated with requests for our statement of faith in Emergent, but some of us had an inclination that to formulate something would take us down a road that we don't want to trod. So, imagine our joy when a leading theologian joined our ranks and said that such a statement would be disastrous..."

Even given the opinion from Scott McKnight at Jesus Creed that since Emergent is not a denomination, no creed is necessary, one wonders why a simple statement of what doctrines emergent finds essential would be disastrous.

D.H. Williams on the Creed

I enjoy D.H. Williams. His book Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism ought to be required reading for evangelical pastors.

Williams has an article in Christian History regarding the Nicene Creed. It is titled "Do You Know Whom You Worship?" and has the subtitle "Did the Nicene Creed distort the pure gospel, or did it embody and protect it?"

Given the fascination with spurious writings like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas as well as the worldwide phenomena of "The Da Vinci Code", this is a timely article. The accusation is leveled these days that the church which defined the creed and the Canon was already relatively corrupt, owing to the marriage of Roman imperial power with a hierarchical structure. In a way, some Protestants have made the very case Dan Brown attempts to make with his book.

"At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, some Protestant historians regarded the Council of Nicaea and its creed with the same suspicion as they did the church of Rome. The esteemed German scholar Eduard Schwarz, for example, depicted the conflicts between pro-Nicene and "Arian" opponents as in reality a struggle for power within the church which was disguised as a theological dispute. The council's decisions represented a victory for those who wielded the most influence over the emperor. This meant too that the creed was an unfortunate capitulation of the church to imperial politics and an emblem of the new merger between the Roman empire and Christianity. "

Frightening Things Confirmed

Adding to the concern that Bin Laden may have nuclear capabilities is this report of a British Intelligence confirmation of such a terrifying prospect. Not that anyone on the left side of the political spectrum will believe British Intelligence after the Iraq WMD hoopla. But we would be crazy not to at least take the possibility seriously.

Gay Adoption and Religious Liberty

Chilling story in the Weekly Standard today, regarding the decision by Catholic Charities of Boston to get out of the adoption business because of Massachusetts law that would tolerate no discrimination for same-sex couples seeking to adopt. The story, by Maggie Gallagher explains that Massachusetts law has prohibited "orientation discrimination" for about a decade. But more recently, beginning in November 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court insisted on sanctioning gay marriage. As a result, Catholic Charities faced a conflict between official church teaching and state mandate. The church lost.

Gallagher spends more than a few collumn inches seeking the viewpoints of legal experts on the issue. A couple of key quotes stand out, such as this from Anthony Picarello, president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

"In times of relative peace, says Picarello, people don't even notice that "the church is surrounded on all sides by the state; that church and state butt up against each other. The boundaries are usually peaceful, so it's easy sometimes to forget they are there. But because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter."

Futile Care - Code for Duty to Die?

This is the sort of thing pro-life folks have been predicting for years. It is called futile care theory. The slippery slope has become a crumbling cliff.

Update
I'm sure one can find plenty of ammunition to make the case that the euthanasia movement remains committed to no death on demand. This April 27 weekly Standard Artical by Wesley J. Smith is one example. Quoting philosopher John Hardwig,

"A duty to die is more likely when continuing to live will impose significant burdens--emotional burdens, extensive caregiving, destruction of life plans, and yes, financial hardship--on your family and loved ones. This is the fundamental insight underlying a duty to die.
"A duty to die becomes greater as you grow older. As we age, we will be giving up less by giving up our lives . . . To have reached the age of say, seventy-five or eighty years without being ready to die is itself a moral failing, the sign of a life out of touch with life's basic realities."

Did you get that? To not be willing to die at age 75 is a "moral failing". And we thought these folks didn't believe in morality.

Frightening Things

I saw United 93 last night. It was a pretty flawlessly executed production, truly respectful to those individuals involved in the tragic events and fairly devoid of political statements. My wife cried through much of it. I left feeling solemn and a tad angry, not at the film, but at how quickly we have forgotten.

Shortly after 9-11-2001, we were a nation united behind the proposition that we had been attacked and that we were willing to do what was necessary to win the war on terror. Then things slowly changed, partly due to election year politics and an double-talking anti-war candidate in the Democratic ticket. Evidence of weapons of mass destruction, attested to by intelligence agencies in multiple countries and multiple US agencies and administrations somehow became an issue that only President Bush lied about, and many in the masses bought the conspiracy theory. Evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam have been routinely downplayed, as if no “operational” connection in the 9-11 report means no connection at all and no threat. There is evidence now that Bin Laden and Zarqawi have some degree of alliance in Zarqawi’s current efforts to destabilize Iraq.

Now, while Islamic protesters in New York speak of mushroom clouds over Israel and
Cindy Sheehan, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton lead anti war marches where folks carry signs claiming Bush is more evil that Bin Laden. I seriously doubt we have the collective stomach to sacrifice much of anything to prevent a greater evil. Which leads to the frightening possibilities...

One has to be careful to read things with a skeptical eye, but I’ve been seeing speculation about Al Quaida acquiring nukes over and over again for the past few years and I don't know what to make of them. WorldNetDaily reports that Al Queda has not only sought, but obtained suitcase size nuclear weapons and that those weapons are already in the United States. Furthermore, the same online paper claims that there is real proof of this to be presented at a national Press Club terror symposium in Washington. They add that Iran has received a shipment of missiles from North Korea that would make striking Europe by Iran a real possibility.

Skeptics suggest that any suitcase nukes Bin Laden may have obtained would likely not be effective any longer, due to decay of components and the need for replacement by highly skilled technicians. Others doubt how far Iran's nuclear program has really progressed, but given the anti-war climate, nuclear blackmail seems likely to be successful if Iran goes much further.

But others counter that Bin Laden is not so dumb as to not plan for maintenance of suitcase nukes if obtained. Considering the patience and sophistication of previous attacks, I tend to think this guy could figure out ways to pull it off.

Whether any of this really is verifiable, I don’t know. What I do know is that it makes sense. Radical Muslims have been increasingly vocal and bold of late. Iran has made no secret of its plans for Israel and has shown no hesitation to provoke the West. One wonders if the reason for the boldness is that these jihadists have something up their sleeve. One wonders if there is a quiet confidence that we will be weak, we will continue to back down, continue to capitulate, and at the right moment, mushroom clouds over Washington, New York, L.A., Chicago, and Dallas will remove the main obstacle to global Islamization.

What I do not understand is why so many in this country do not take the threats seriously after three decades of Islamic terrorism and the death of 3000 civilians five years ago. Clearly radical Islamic terrorists have stated intentions of wiping out both Isreal and the United States, they have a history of carrying out attacks and have no qualms about killing civilians. To me that is all we should need in the way of evidence and motivation to keep the resolve we had on 9-12 or 9-13 of 2001, and to make silly criticisms of “pre-emptive war” irrelevant. War began on 9-11 and was not started by us. To back out of Iran now and pretend we live in a pre 9-11 world is a plan for suicide. If we are unwilling to battle Zarqawi in Iraq, where then would we battle him?

One can always hope that films like United 93 will help us to remember what this is about, but I am not optimistic.