April 25th marked the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's annual Day of Silence, described by the Network's website as a "student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment--in effect, the silencing--experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies." Not surprisingly, the nationwide event elicited a range of responses from evangelical Christian groups at both the national and local level, and therefore offers promise as an occasion for further reflection about what form Christian witness should take in a pluralistic democratic society.

Boycott, in the form of students staying home from school that day, was advised by both Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association. This strategy was often joined to protest, as seen at Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie, Washington (an eastside suburb of Seattle). According to a Seattle Times article, not only were 495 out of 1,410 students not at school for the day--"including 85 athletes whose parents had asked that they be excused for their personal beliefs"--but "about 100 people joined the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, a prominent anti-gay-rights activist, in prayer and song that questioned the dedication of a school day to what they said was a controversial political cause." The week before, Hutcherson, pastor of the local Antioch Bible Church, had called for 1,000 "prayer warriors" to join him in an ad in a local paper.

A form of protest was also displayed by Alexander Nuxholl, a sophomore at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. Nuxholl was granted the right to wear a shirt that read, "Be Happy, Not Gay" on the Day of Silence by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court also ordered the school district not to discipline him for wearing the shirt. Nuxholl's case was litigated by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian nonprofit legal alliance based in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The ADF also sponsored a countermeasure or alternative to the Day of Silence, a second common strategy for Christian witness. The annual Day of Truth, which came three days after the the Day of Silence, was, according to its website, "established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective." Christian students are encouraged to wear T-shirts and pass out cards (outside of class time) that read:

I'm speaking the Truth to break the silence.
True tolerance means that people with differing--even opposing--viewpoints can freely exchange ideas and respectfully listen to each other.
It's time for an honest conversation about homosexuality.
There's freedom to change if you want to.
Let’s talk.

This year marked the fourth for the Day of Truth (roughly 7,000 participants), and the thirteenth Day of Silence (roughly 500,000 participants).

In addition to boycott, protest, and the creation of an alternative, the Day of Silence saw another response from evangelical Christians--participation. The Golden Rule Pledge is promoted by Grove City College Psychology Professor Warren Throckmorton as an option for "straight Christian and conservative students [who] are conflicted about this day. They do not affirm homosexual behavior but they also loathe disrespect, harrassment or violence toward any one, including their GLBT peers." This response urges Christian students to act in accordance with the message on the cards they are urged to give out:

This is what I’m doing:

I pledge to treat others the way I want to be treated.

Will you join me in this pledge?

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31).

The Golden Rule Pledge website features first-hand accounts from Christian students who participated in this year's Day of Silence, including Jordyne Krumroy of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, who convinced ASU's Campus Crusade and InterVarsity Fellowship ministries to support Christian students such as her who chose to duct tape their mouths shut for a day.

Evangelicals are by definition a gospel-proclaiming people. Part of our becoming a wise people is learning to match our proclamation both to the manner of the Christ we proclaim, as well as to the occasion before us. Gospel wisdom, then, means not just learning when to speak, but what part of God's good news to speak first, and how that news should be delivered. On occasion, we may even find the best way to begin to "speak" this marvelous news is to remain silent.

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Posted by Derek Keefe at May 2, 2008 | Comments (16)

Evangelizing persons of other faiths, or even committed atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers, is tricky business in our pluralistic and increasingly politicized religious landscape. In Western cultures where tolerance is preeminent among public virtues, such efforts are generally met with scorn, chastisement, and much journalistic gnashing of teeth. In other parts of the world, interfaith gospelers are subject to far worse than a tongue-lashing from the cultural gatekeepers. Such activity may win them spots in jail, or cost them and their families their livelihood, if not their lives.

Recently we have dipped our editorial toes into the chaotic waters of interfaith relations, whether they take the form of a dialog, as touched on in Richard Mouw's piece, or conversion-seeking proclamation, as argued for in Stan Guthrie's recent editorial on evangelizing the Jews. Having read both pieces, it's clear that Mouw shares the evangelistic imperative born of love highlighted by Guthrie, and that Guthrie shares Mouw's firm belief that whatever the form of interfaith communication, it should be marked by "convicted civility," a term Mouw borrows from venerable church historian and cultural commentator Martin Marty.

With regard to the issue of evangelizing the Jews, I'm also pleased that in response to the World Evangelical Alliance's recent statement that ran in The New York Times, "The Gospel and the Jewish People: An Evangelical Statement," we've decided to host an exchange between Stan Guthrie and Rabbi Yehiel E. Poupko, Judaic Scholar at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, on the very topic of Christian Evangelism and Judaism. Outside of this exchange, WEA's ad has generated very little public comment, except for this critical response from the Anti-Defamation League, and an angry article in The Jerusalem Post.

Yet the kerfuffle surrounding a recent public statement on Christian-Jewish relations from Christianity's largest global communion, namely Pope Benedict's revision of the Good Friday prayer for the Jews, has not abated. For those who have not followed the story, here's the portion of the prayer judged offensive by some:

Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men...Almighty and everlasting God, you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that, with the fullness of peoples entering into your church, all Israel may be saved.

Several weeks on from Good Friday, the news is still abuzz today with reports of:

1) Continuing critique from those who thought the revision offensive: Agenzia Italia, AFP, Anti-Defamation League.
2) Vatican response and attempts to mend relations with Jews: Catholic World News, United Press International, Catholic News Agency, JTA, AFP, The Times, Reuters, Catholic News Service.
3) Indications of how this situation is shaping the Pope's upcoming visit to the U.S.: New York Times, Zenit, Catholic News Service.

As the world gets smaller, the challenge of interfaith relations only gets bigger, and the need of wisdom greater still...especially for those who are, by definition, gospel people.

Posted by Derek Keefe at April 4, 2008 | Comments (5)

Two of the hottest issues in evangelical theology right now are the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament and evangelical textual criticism. Peter Enns’s 2005 book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, aimed to pose difficult questions about the human aspects of Scripture. It received both praise and criticism from noted evangelical scholars.

And it made things difficult for Enns at his school, Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary. A battle over whether the book undermined or contradicted the Westminster Confession of Faith has been raging for some time now, and apparently came to a head Wednesday at the meeting of the school’s board, which decided to suspend Enns.

This note is now circulating from board chairman Jack White:

Thank you very much for your prayers for the special meeting of the Board of Trustees that was held on March 26 to address the disunity of the faculty regarding the theological issues related to Dr. Peter Enns' book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. After a full day of deliberation, the Board of Trustees took the following action by decisive vote:

"That for the good of the Seminary (Faculty Manual II.4.C.4) Professor Peter Enns be suspended at the close of this school year, that is May 23, 2008 (Constitution Article III, Section 15), and that the Institutional Personnel Committee (IPC) recommend the appropriate process for the Board to consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary. Further that the IPC present their recommendations to the Board at its meeting in May 2008."

In order to provide the entire Westminster community with a more complete understanding of the Board's decision and to offer an opportunity for questions and dialogue, the Chairman and Secretary of the Board will join the President on campus for a special chapel on Tuesday, April 1 at 10:30 am. Students and staff are encouraged to attend and participate. Following that special chapel, they will hold a separate meeting with the faculty.

Our concern is to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and assure a faithful witness for Westminster for years to come. To that end, please pray for everyone involved during the next two months.

The campus politics are particularly sensitive, since the seminary faculty had voted 12-8 to support Enns. In the meantime, both supporters and opponents of Inspiration and Incarnation had framed the debate as a battle for the future of the school.

We’ll have more on this story and its implications soon.

Posted by Ted Olsen at March 27, 2008 | Comments (39)

Will Higgins's report on attendance levels at Holy Week services at a military base in northern Iraq is intriguing on several levels. First, although there are some 4,000 soldiers stationed at the base, the chaplains deemed 150 chairs and 3 Easter services more than sufficient to accommodate the number of soldiers inclined to attend. A Good Friday screening of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ drew only four soldiers, two of whom snoozed their way through it.

While such anecdotal evidence from a solitary military base is by no means enough to establish statistical significance, it does at the very least challenge conventional wisdom that there are no atheists in foxholes. Looking around for other media coverage of Easter services among American military in Iraq, I found little of interest save a small collection of photos that revealed services most notable for their sparse attendance (Be sure to click on the third photo to see if you can identify the gun at the foot of the praying soldier's feet). Sergeant Christopher McFadden of Indiana National Guard’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team finds the low attendance "dumbfounding." "If you saw the possibility of dying in front of you," he continues, "now would be the time to open the door and at least look inside."

Although I tend to share McFaddens' surprise, low attendance levels at Easter services is not the only aspect of the article I find intriguing. For one, the article points out that McFadden, an ardent Christian, carries around a metal-bound Bible printed during World War II for distribution to American soldiers, a Bible whose carrier in three previous tours of duty--in WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq--has returned home safely. McFadden had hoped this Bible and its 3-0 record would provide an entry point for evangelizing his comrades. Instead, he sincerely laments that for them this Bible is "more of an artifact, a good-luck charm, than a symbol of God's power." McFadden's comments raise interesting questions about the locus of God's power, and how we associate that power with particular material objects. Where does the power of Bibles--metal-bound or otherwise--reside? Is it in the "thing" itself and indifferent to the disposition of its carrier, or do its readers, hearers, and heed-ers know the power of God to save from death via receiving the Living Word that is not limited to any one particular copy of the Bible?

Second, the article contains a sidebar indicating that Franklin Delano Roosevelt included a foreword to the special-issue Bible "commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States." Operating in a cultural climate sensitive to questions of church and state, such words at first sounded odd to me--from another time with different sensibilities. But when I read the words of McFadden's pastor just a few lines down, I was reminded that these sensibilities are still with us. Apparently, just before McFadden departed on his tour of duty, his pastor told the congregation to think of McFadden as any other missionary, "except this one's paid for by the government."

Most intriguing of all, however, is the cryptic quote from "missionary" McFadden that closes the article. In an attempt to make sense of the war and his place in it, McFadden employs an oft-used interpretive lens in reflecting on the mysteries of divine providence: "We're in the desert for a reason. God has put us here to find ourselves." McFadden's quote shows us that for at least one soldier, making sense of the war is a "bottom-up" affair that begins with personal experience and plays out in the terrain of the heart rather than the combat zone of northern Iraq or the landscape of contemporary geopolitics.

Sgt. McFadden leaves me wondering which is more notable--the apparent lack of faith among the military, or the theological ruminations of one of the faithful.

Posted by Derek Keefe at March 24, 2008 | Comments (12)

I don't pick up The Chronicle Review--an insert in The Chronicle of Higher Education--expecting to be spurred to reflection on the emerging movement. And I'm quite sure that was not what author and UCLA history professor Russell Jacoby intended. Nevertheless, his intriguing article, "Not to Complicate Matters, But...," collided with other reading from my week to produce that rare but welcome guest--a helpful insight. In short, Jacoby is frustrated with scholars' growing penchant to "complicate," "problematize," or "complexify" issues and think in so doing that their work is complete. To make his point, Jacoby cites mock and actual examples that will sound familiar to anyone who's laid their hands on a peer-reviewed academic journal in the last decade:

"I hope today to complicate our notion of cahiers — grievances — and the role they played in the States-General of 1789." The professors and graduate students at the symposium nod appreciatively. They have heard or read similar justifications untold times before. The author explains that he or she will "complicate" our understanding of some event or phenomenon. "In this article," writes an ethnic-studies professor, "I seek to complicate scholars' understanding of the 'modular' state by examining four forms of indigenous political space." Everyone seems pleased by this approach. Why? The world is complicated, but how did "complication" turn from an undeniable reality to a desirable goal? Shouldn't scholarship seek to clarify, illuminate, or — egad! — simplify, not complicate? How did the act of complicating become a virtue?

Towards the end of the article, Jacoby approaches territory that sounds more like an apologetics classroom at a Christianity liberal arts college than what one would expect from a professor at a large state university with works such as The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians to his credit (although, to be fair, Jacoby is also Honorary Vice President for Life in the American Pessimist Society, so maybe he's just cranky as a rule):

The new devotion to complexity gives carte blanche to even the most trivial scholarly enterprise. Any factoid can "complicate" our interpretation. The fashion elevates confusion from a transitional stage into an end goal. We celebrate the fact that everything can be "problematized."...We revel in complexity. To be sure, few claim that the truth is simple or singular, but we have moved far from believing that truth can be set out at all with any caution and clarity.

It's Jacoby's claim that current academic devotion to complexity "elevates confusion from a transitional stage into an end goal" that provides the link to the emerging movement. The very fact that this amorphous movement moves under the designation "emerging"--coming into view or existence--suggests a critique parallel to Jacoby's.

In late 2003, Peter Rollins, whose book How (Not) to Speak of God, has been described by Tony Jones as "the best bloody book on the emerging church yet," responded this way to an interviewer's question, "What would your 'emerging church survival kit' contain?"

An empty space… really. I think that if you want to survive Christianity, and I am not sure if its possible yet, you need one of those cartoon tunnels, something that can create a womb-like space in the being of your beliefs and religious services, a virgin space where the word of God can impregnate you...

The problem with using a metaphor of gestation--or even the designation emerging for that matter--to describe a movement is that it necessarily entails a coming birth, a definitive coming into existence. In order for the complicating, complexifying, and problematizing work of the emerging movement to prove fruitful to the Church, it will have to move beyond this transitional stage at some point, and deliver the greater goods of illumination and clarity. Here's hoping for a healthy baby.

Posted by Derek Keefe at March 7, 2008 | Comments (9)

Controversial biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has a new book out, but this time he’s not bent on tackling issues of scriptural discrepancies, as he did in his most (in)famous work, Misquoting Jesus (see Books and Culture’s review from 2005). This time, Ehrman founds his agnosticism on the Bible’s seemingly equivocal answers to the question, How can a loving God allow terrible things to happen to people?

“I realized I couldn’t explain any longer why there could be such pain and misery in the world that was supposedly ruled by an all-powerful and loving God,” the religion professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told the San Diego Union-Tribune over the weekend. The problem of suffering “put me over the top," says Ehrman. "So, I became an agnostic.”

God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (HarperOne) traces Ehrman’s change in convictions about God and Scripture based on his inability to reconcile the goodness of God with the suffering of man. Ehrman explores and ultimately disputes the way suffering is handled in biblical accounts: as punishment for wrongdoing (Genesis), as an outcome of others’ wrongdoing (throughout the Psalms), as part of redemption (the Gospels), or as part of the mystery of God (Job).

Ehrman finds these varied explanations problematic, as he does chalking the question of theodicy up to something beyond human knowledge: “If you say it’s a mystery, then what you’re saying is there’s no answer.” And having no answer is apparently insufficient for Ehrman.

For other agnostics, though, encountering believers who have profound hope and peace despite suffering is enough to at least crack a window open for belief. This is what happened to John Marks, a former 60 Minutes producer who traces his journey into and out of faith in his new spiritual memoir, Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind (Ecco). In a striking interview in this weekend’s Boston Globe, Marks tells of a close friendship with an evangelical couple, the McWhinneys, that emerged from Marks’s research for his book:

When I first met the McWhinneys, [I thought] they were almost walking caricatures of the evangelical Christian. They believe in the Rapture, that when the end time comes, people will be taken up into the air, and the nonbelievers will be left behind on earth to suffer. There was a cardboard quality, I thought, to their belief.

When I met them the second time, after we'd done the "60 Minutes" piece, they told me about their bipolar son, roughly my age, who had tried to kill himself [and] had disappeared and was believed to be living in a homeless shelter in Dallas and whom they had decided to commit. They spoke with great sorrow. They didn't say he was possessed by the devil. They resented that characterization - and remember, these are Christians who believe there is a living Satan. We agreed I would join them for church [the following] Sunday.

Five hours later, their son walked up the onramp of a highway and was killed by a car. On Sunday, I got in the car, we were having a chat, and then Don suddenly told me their son had been killed. [He said] his son was not gone - he was walking the streets of the heavenly city, and we know from Revelations that that city has walls made of pure jasper - describing this world that, for nonbelievers, is just pure fantasy. I became aware of the way this sense that God is real, that there is this heavenly kingdom - it is not window-dressing. In moments of grief and deep sorrow, people like the McWhinneys do reach for this, and it is the consolation.

While believers may not be able to give a thoroughly coherent reason for why God allows his followers to suffer—and debates about theodicy will likely continue among theologians until Judgment Day—we may at least be able to provide a glimpse into “the peace that passes all understanding” as we respond to crises in our own lives and come out praising the Creator for his unbounded goodness.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at February 18, 2008 | Comments (8)

Lost in the media storm preceding and following Super Tuesday, and the actual storms that debilitated or devastated much of the US that same day, was media coverage of the start of Lent, arguably the most recognized of the exclusively Christian seasons on the Church's liturgical calendar. In reviewing English-speaking coverage of this turning of the seasons, I was struck by the difference between US media reports and those issuing from across the pond in the UK.

US stories were generally conventional—though sometimes oddly technical or whimsical—and documented an approach to the season that was consistently pious, yet often private in scope, focusing on interior spiritual attitudes or individual struggles of the will in forgoing chocolate, coffee, alcohol, or insert-your-weakness-of-the-flesh-here for the 40-day period. (Jane Hawes's article is notable in its attempt to balance both the private-public and negative-positive dimensions of the season.)

Stories from the UK, on the other hand, conveyed a theological posture toward Lent that emphasized the public dimension of Christian commitment. Most notable is the Tearfund carbon fast mentioned by Tim Morgan in an earlier blog, which was launched by the Anglican bishops of London and Liverpool, and backed by Archbishop Rowan Williams, as well as scientist Sir John Houghton, an evangelical who formerly chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific assessment. The proposal received considerable coverage in UK press (Daily Telegraph; The Guardian; BBC News; New Consumer), though its only mentions in the US were on one or two blogs, a university newspaper, and an ezine.

Also worth mentioning is the Lent Endurance Challenge issued by the UK organization Church Action on Poverty, and backed by several Anglican bishops, as well as Catholic, Methodist, and Baptist church leaders in the UK. The Challenge is to live the life of a refused asylum seeker for one week, which involves donating one’s normal weekly food budget in exchange for £3.50 and the typical food parcel supplied to the homeless by local charities. The hope is to give participants a glimpse into the life of these “living ghosts,” who are “essentially airbrushed out of existence as ‘failed’ asylum seekers,” but, lacking money to return home, remain in the UK, unnoticed or ignored by society at large.

These constructive and creative public applications of Christian theological commitments make my own internal ruminations about whether I should give up coffee or fried foods for Lent seem, if not entirely inconsequential, unimaginative and blatantly disengaged from my neighbor and the world. If Lent is about submitting to suffering for the sake of identification with our Lord, whose own suffering was always for the sake of carrying forward God’s redemptive intent for the whole world, navel-gazing US Christians like me may want to look across the seas to spark our flickering theological imaginations.

Posted by Derek Keefe at February 8, 2008 | Comments (1)

The Wheaton College student newspaper, The Record, reports today that the influential evangelical college’s president, provost, and chaplain have removed their names from a letter to Muslim leaders that has attracted criticism in some quarters.

“Loving God and Neighbor Together” was published in the November 18, 2007, New York Times as a response to an October statement from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics calling for interfaith cooperation. Wheaton College president Duane Litfin and provost Stanton Jones were among the signatories, along with pastors Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson, Youth With a Mission chairman Lynn Green, Frontiers mission founder Greg Livingstone, theologians Miroslav Volf and John Stott, and Christianity Today Media Group editor-in-chief David Neff.

“I signed the statement because I am committed to the business of peace-making and neighbor-love,” Litfin wrote in The Record. “I did not savor the document’s unnuanced apology section, but swallowed that in order to be a part of reaching out a hand to these Muslim leaders who had courageously taken the initiative. Though the statement was not written in the way I would have written it, it seemed to me that I could sign it without compromising any of my Christian convictions.”

But in the last month, the statement has been sharply criticized by several other evangelical leaders, including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler, pastor John Piper, and Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink newsletter.

(A Christianity Today news report on the statement and its critics appears in the March issue of the magazine; we’ll post it online shortly.)

Such critiques, Litfin said, prompted him to rethink his signature. “[O]n this occasion my eagerness to support the statement’s strengths caused me to move too quickly,” he wrote. Rereading the statement, he says, he found it was

not carefully enough crafted to avoid encouraging that basic premise of civil religion, i.e., that we are all worshiping the same God, climbing the same mountain, just taking different paths. It appears to me that the statement could have been written so to avoid this problem while still reaching out a gracious hand to these Muslim leaders. … To speak unqualifiedly of “our common love for God,” as if the Quran's Allah and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ are one and the same, and as if what it means to “love God” in these two faiths means the same thing, is to say more than I am willing to grant. I do not criticize others who do not share these qualms. But as for me, I needed to back away.

Litfin emphasized that he was not pressured or even encouraged to take his name off the statement. “No one had suggested it or even knew I was taking this step,’ he said. “It was simply a matter of conscience, combined with the fact that I had put the College on the line in a way I was no longer comfortable in defending.”

And in fact Litfin implicitly answered some critics who had argued that interfaith dialogue undercut evangelism:

As to the related question this incident raises of evangelism and inter-faith dialogue, surely the best answer is a balanced one. If we truly believe the Gospel and love our neighbor, evangelism will lie near the core of our relationships without occupying the whole of it. Our friendships with non-Christians transcend evangelism in the sense that those friendships continue even when Christ is not received. In other words, our friendship is not contingent upon that reception. But nor can any genuine friendship with non-Christians exclude an evangelistic concern. Our relationship may be in pre-evangelistic phase, or evangelistic phase, or a post-evangelistic phase, but a desire to see our friend find Christ must never disappear from the frame. If our love is genuine, we will always retain sight of our friend’s deepest need and stand ready to serve it if the opportunity arises.

Jones and Wheaton College chaplain Stephen Kellough said they agreed with Litfin’s conclusions, and similarly withdrew their names to further distance the college from the statement. Roy Oksnevad, director of Muslim Ministries at Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, kept his signature on the document, and told the Record, “I still agree [with the statement]. I don’t have reservations.”

Also of note in the Record this week: presidential candidate Mitt Romney had wanted to hold a rally on the campus two days before Super Tuesday, but was turned away. “Only in extraordinary circumstances do we open the college community to Sunday activities,” Jones told the student paper. “Particularly a political event at noon on Sunday is very incongruent with our religious identity.”

More articles on the Muslim statement, “A Common Word Between Us and You” and the Christian statement include:

• An early call from Fuller Seminary’s J. Dudley Woodberry for a Christian response to “A Common Word.”
• NAE president Leith Anderson on why he signed “Loving God and Neighbor Together”
• Mike Edens of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on why he signed.
• Rick Love, International Director for Frontiers, responding to John Piper’s concerns.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 8, 2008 | Comments (15)

Nathan Gibbs has a sad story on his blog about the death of his childhood friend, Benson Krause, and a remembrance of the music they made together. Their band, "The Third Half," included many of the guys I grew up a few years behind, and Nathan's post recalls an infamous moment at our church, though I was too young to remember it as much more than folklore.

One Sunday morning, his father Jim was preaching. He spoke about being corrupted by the world and used his youngest son Timothy’s innocence as an example. He said Tim was sitting in the pew making gestures with his hands and wound up being fascinated with his middle finger. Jim explained how it meant nothing outside the context of the world’s negative influence. What he did next is something no one in the audience that day will forget. He rested both wrists on the pulpit with two middle fingers extended upward. “Does this offend you?” he asked.

My childhood church was part of the Church of Christ denomination, which is, coincidentally, on the opposite end of the theological spectrum from the ultra-liberal United Church of Christ. No music with worship, no women in leadership, no heaven without baptism. And for many people the answer was obviously yes, and it led to the Krauses unceremonious return to Chicago.

The congregation's response does not surprise me years later -- many Americans, regardless of religion, would be bothered by such a display -- but it makes me wonder why we find certain words, or more aptly, certain gestures, offensive? Who decided that pointing at someone with your middle finger was a greater curse than wagging your index at them?

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at January 27, 2008 | Comments (13)

Can one believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and the Triune nature of God and not be an evangelical? That’s a key issue behind efforts officially introduced today to amend the doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS).

“Right now, someone can deny the humanity of Christ and still be a member of ETS,” said Ray Van Neste, professor of Christian studies at Union University in Jackson. “This is about safeguarding the evangelical character of the organization.”

However, Van Neste says he does not see an onslaught of ETS members who hold heretical beliefs, and does not want a revised statement to launch dozens of challenges against theologians’ memberships. He sees the effort as a long-term strategy to ensure commitment to evangelical essentials.

The society was divided during several meetings earlier this decade over whether to expel theologians Clark Pinnock and John Sanders from the group for their views of God’s foreknowledge. The votes to expel them failed in 2003. Twenty years earlier, in 1983, Westmont College New Testament professor Robert Gundry was expelled for arguing that some events in the gospel of Matthew, such as the visit from the Magi, were not historical.

At issue in all of the cases was whether the scholars violated ETS’s doctrinal basis, which reads in its entirety: “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.” The language on the Trinity was added in 1990.

Questions over the society’s doctrinal basis surfaced again earlier this year when ETS president Francis Beckwith converted to Roman Catholicism. He resigned from his position, but repeatedly noted that he could still affirm the society’s doctrinal basis without reservation.

Van Neste and Dennis Burk, professor of New Testament at Criswell College, want to add further language to the doctrinal basis by attaching the belief statement of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship in the U.K. The change would take the doctrinal basis from 43 words to 339.

The effort faces an uphill battle. Amending the ETS constitution requires 80 percent approval from the society’s members, and already opponents are talking about ways to postpone the vote, which is scheduled for next year’s annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. Some, including members of the executive committee, are concerned that lengthening the theological basis would effectively turn it into a theological statement. Others are concerned that the changes would change the group’s identity.

“It would change the sociology of ETS,” said Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. “And nothing in this would have stopped anything we’ve gone through in the last 10 years.”

Van Neste and Burk say their biggest obstacle isn’t opposition. “The question now is how many people know about the effort.” To garner support they have set up a website, AmendETS.com, and are discussing their proposal on a number of theology blogs.

See also:

Postcard from San Diego: Fighting 'Bibliolatry' at the Evangelical Theological Society | Talbot's J.P. Moreland warns that evangelicals are “over-committed to the Bible.” (Nov. 14)

State of the Society | Acting president of Evangelical Theological Society talks about 'momentary crisis,' previews annual meeting (Nov. 9)

Inerrancy Is Not Enough | A proposal to amend the doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Theological Society (Van Neste and Burk, Criswell Theological Review, Fall 2007)

Correction: An earlier version of this post misquoted Van Neste as saying someone could deny the divinity of Christ and still be a member of ETS. He said that someone could deny Christ's humanity and still be a member. I regret the error.

Posted by Ted Olsen at November 15, 2007 | Comments (14)

While the ballroom sessions of the first day of the Evangelical Theological Society meeting had more attendees, no session was as packed as J.P. Moreland’s “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.” While the average breakout session seems to be attended by fewer than 50 people, easily more than 200 packed the room to hear Moreland’s talk, with dozens standing and more listening outside the door.

It’s little wonder why so many people attended. ETS membership has only two doctrinal requirements: you must affirm the Trinity and the inerrancy of Scripture. The first part has not been controversial of late, but the second was the focus of the society’s recent fight over open theism and was named as a reason why Francis Beckwith could not remain as ETS president after his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

In short, to accuse evangelicals of over-commitment to the Bible at ETS would be like accusing environmentalists of talking too much about climate change at a Sierra Club meeting. But Moreland, who has gained some prominence as a philosopher and apologist, wasn’t pulling any punches.

“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.”

Suppose an archaeologist discovered a portion of the ancient city of Jerusalem that was specifically described in the Old Testament, Moreland said:

Could the archaeologist have discovered the site without the use of the Old Testament? Once discovered, could the archaeologist learn things about the site that went beyond what was in the Old Testament? Clearly the answer is yes to both questions. Why? Because the site actually exists in the real world. It does not exist in the Bible. It is only described in the Bible and the biblical description in partial.

Likewise, Moreland argued, “because the human soul/spirit and demons/angels are real, it is possible, and, in fact, actual that extra-biblical knowledge can be gained about these spiritual entities. … Demons do not exist in the Bible. They exist in reality.”

By not researching how demons work, how to fight them, and other such issues by, for example, working with exorcists, Christian scholars are harming the church, Moreland argued. In a similar vein, he thinks evangelical scholars and the movement as a whole are rejecting “guidance, revelation, and so forth from God through impressions, dreams, visions, prophetic words, words of knowledge and wisdom.”

“We shut that down because of charismatic excesses,” he said. “Because of abuses, we fear teaching people how to use it. We think it’s all going to be Benny Hinn or something like that.”

A third area where Moreland critiqued evangelical over-commitment to Bible was in the scarcity of evangelical appeals to natural theology and moral law in their political and cultural discussions.

“The sparse landscape of evangelical political thought stands in stark contrast to the overflowing garden both of evangelical biblical scholarship and Catholic reflection on reason, general revelation, and cultural and political engagement,” he said. “We evangelicals could learn a lesson or two from our Catholic friends.”

That wasn’t as provocative a statement coming a few months after the ETS president became one of those “Catholic friends.” Catholicism is on the agenda here, and Catholics are both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the meeting’s many discussions of justification. But Catholicism doesn’t seem to be the “new open theism” at ETS.

No, more provocative was Moreland’s argument about why evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren’t allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they’re not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they’re engaged in “private language games and increasingly detailed minutia” and “we’re not seeing work on broad cultural themes.”

There are, quite frankly, a number of papers here that reflect private language games and increasingly detailed minutia. There will be in a few days, too, at the joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. And there are at just about every other major academic conference I’ve ever attended. But I think Moreland’s critique stung here perhaps more than it might elsewhere. This is a group torn between its desire to do respectable scholarship and its desire to serve the church. Moreland’s jeremiad hit them on both fronts.

(Note: Moreland’s paper isn’t online, but many of his themes appear in his Kingdom Triangle, released earlier this year by Zondervan.)

Posted by Ted Olsen at November 14, 2007 | Comments (123)

In a Virginia court yesterday, a judge began a trial of certainly one of the biggest church property fights in American religious history.

The Episcopal Church, represented by the Diocese of Virginia and the national office in New York City, has filed suit against 11 congregations that have dis-affiliated with the denomination following the 2003 appointment of V. Gene Robinson, a "partnered homosexual," as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire.

Part of what amazes me is the lack of national media attention of this crucial case. It's important not only for the number of defendants, but also because it will test key concepts regarding how a state's judicial system applies civil law to matters normally relegated to the church.

The Washingon Times' Julia Duin provides a competent, newsy overview, reporting:

The case is informally referred to as "57-9" in many documents because the coming hearing is based on Virginia Code Section 57-9. This says when a diocese or a denomination experiences a "division," members of a congregation may determine by majority vote which side of the division to join, along with their property.

"This case is literally historic, because it's based on a statute enacted by the Virginia legislature during the Civil War," said Mary McReynolds, one of 24 lawyers involved on CANA's side of the dispute. "The Virginia division statute is unusual, and my understanding is there are not many situations in the country that allow this."

This morning, checking my Outlook inbox, I received the message, quoted below, from the conservative Anglican District of Virginia, the body of Anglicans now linked to CANA, an organization with direct oversight from the Anglican Province of Nigeria and Archbishop Akinola.

“Although we remain confident in our legal position, we call upon the leaders of both The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia to embrace the recommendation of the Primates and withdraw their lawsuits. We did not choose this path. Even today, our churches remain open to negotiating a reasonable solution with The Episcopal Church and the Diocese. The legal proceedings have been an unfortunate distraction from all the good work our churches are doing to advance the mission of Christ,” said Jim Oakes, vice-chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, an association of Anglican congregations in Virginia and a part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). All 11 churches named in the lawsuit are members of ADV.

“At the core of this case is that The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia claim they have a ‘trust’ interest in the congregations’ properties. But the Virginia courts have held time and again that denominations cannot claim an ‘implied trust’ in member congregations’ property. The Episcopal Church even admitted in its complaint that it does not hold title to any of these eleven churches and that the churches' own trustees hold title for the benefit of the congregations.

“The Episcopal Church has continually walked away from the scriptural foundation of the Anglican Communion. When we objected, they chose intimidation through lawsuits as their solution. Regardless of the actions of The Episcopal Church, ADV members will continue to hold steadfast in their faith, based on the authority of Scripture. We continue to pray for The Episcopal Church and its leaders.”

So regardless of who wins at the state level, it makes me wonder how long this case will be dragged through the courts. Could it end up before the US Supreme Court?

Posted by Tim Morgan at November 13, 2007 | Comments (11)

Reinhold Niebuhr may not be Bono, but he might come close. Ever since President Bush declared a war on terror in 2001, intellectuals and religious leaders have invoked Niebuhr’s politics, Atlantic Monthly reporter Justine Isola writes in her piece “Everybody Loves Reinhold.”

“[B]y now a well-turned Niebuhr reference is the speechwriter’s equivalent of a photo op with Bono,” she quotes Paul Elie.
Niebuhr thus came to be associated in many people’s minds as much with the politics of power as with the tenets of Christianity, Isola writes.

But those who invoke Niebuhr tend to ignore his religion and focus on his political concerns, Isola writes after interviewing Paul Elie, author of November Atlantic piece "A Man for All Reasons."

Niebuhr’s conclusions, Elie reminds us, were thoroughly informed by what Elie calls a ‘biblical perspective’—a long sense of human history as reflected in the stories and lessons of the Bible—and by his view of human nature as ‘rooted in human sinfulness.’

For Elie, the brushing aside of Niebuhr’s Christian dimensions is symptomatic of a greater problem: our intellectual and political leaders have largely lost touch with the biblical perspective that once guided our country’s founders and continues to profoundly influence the lives of most people living in the world today. In an age in which intellectual discourse in this country is increasingly secularized, and religion tends to inform our national politics in only a superficial way, Niebuhr stands out as a man whose Christian beliefs provided a deep well of insight.

Isola asks Elie: What, in your view, are the implications of having politicians in power who lack a biblical perspective?

As Niebuhr characterized it, the biblical tradition brought to America a sense of a long history which our relatively young country lacked, Elie answers.

If you take that biblical sense of history away on both sides, you’re left with a fairly ahistorical secular liberalism and a fairly ahistorical religious conservatism, and that’s a recipe for shallowness in our political life.

The Atlantic Monthly’s piece is a compelling read. Also, consider dipping into New York Times’ archives for its 2005 piece “Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr”:

“In the midst of this religious commotion, the name of the most influential American theologian of the 20th century rarely appears - Reinhold Niebuhr.”

Perhaps we should examine Niebuhr’s theology more closely if it truly has this impact.

Related Elsewhere:

What's Law Got to Do with It? | Recovering a lost heritage.

The Prophet and the Evangelist | The public "conversation" of Reinhold Niebuhr and Billy Graham.

Obama's faith, his pastor, and his foreign policy | The NYT explores the Senator's faith and his pastor, while David Brooks deciphers how it might affect his foreign policy.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at October 24, 2007 | Comments (2)

Apologetics.Com
Features a variety of solid apologetic resources, including several related to the Gospels. Check the “Articles” link.

Apologetics Index
Indexes a vast number of apologetics websites of varying worth. Using the index on the homepage, one can look for specific articles. See “Jesus,” for example.

Bible.Org
One of the top Bible websites. The bibliology section (under “Theology: Articles and Studies”) has ample resources for Bible study, including some fine pieces on canon and textual criticism.

The Moorings
An apologetics site run by Ed Rickard. While not flinching from taking controversial doctrinal positions, this free site offers well-researched sections devoted to the reliability of the Gospels.

N. T. Wright
This unofficial site contains much more than apologetics, though several articles are relevant, such as “Five Gospels But No Gospel: Jesus and the Seminar” and “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins.”

Ben Witherington
Includes writings on many topics by a top New Testament scholar. Often rebuts current attacks on Jesus and the Gospels (for example, an excellent series on the supposed tomb of Jesus). Lacks an index, so use the “Search Blog” function at the top.

Probe Ministries
Filled with apologetics resources. Check the “Reasons to Believe” section for well-researched articles on the Gospels, or use the search function with “Gospels.”

Lee Strobel
Features apologetic video clips. “Investigating Jesus” section includes helpful materials on the Gospels.

(This originally appeared on p.109 of the October 2007 issue of Christianity Today)

Posted by Susan Wunderink at October 17, 2007 | Comments (1)

Last week, Opinion Journal's Naomi Schaefer Riley attended a public debate between Darwinian biologist Richard Dawkins, most (in)famous for his recent work, The God Delusion, and mathematician–Christian apologist John Lennox. The debate focused on the question, Does God exist?

What’s newsworthy is not so much that the debate occurred or that it received so much press; it only takes a monthly glance at the New York Times bestseller list to see that this question, and the atheistic rants that often ensue, get our attention. According to Riley, the debate between the two Oxford scientists, which took place at the Alys Stephens Center in Birmingham, Alabama, on October 3, had been sold out for weeks prior, and received more buzz than Alabama football, which apparently is saying something.

What may be surprising to some about the debate, not least of all Richard Dawkins himself, is that many believers are eager to attend such events and to heartily engage the intellectual conclusions of each side. To watch two brilliant scientists construct arguments, and, in good English fashion, throw in some rhetorical punches along the way, is both entertaining and instructive. Dawkins and other atheist-apologists might envision Christians running away from such challenges, afraid and dejected. What they may be horrified to find out is that such debates actually spur many Christians to ask big questions, examine their beliefs, and arrive at even more robust reasoning for accepting the gospel as “gospel truth." As Riley quotes apologist Jonalyn Fincher as saying, “If our God is the God of truth, what are we afraid of?”

As a counterproposal, would Dawkins and the rest of the New Atheist league be willing to sit in for a session at next month’s Apologetics Conference, featuring J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and Gary Habermas? Just a thought.

*Look for our review of fellow Oxford scholar Alister McGrath's response to Dawkins in the November issue of Christianity Today.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at October 15, 2007 | Comments (8)

Minneapolis pastor John Piper notes that staff from Bethlehem Baptist Church and Desiring God ministry frequently crossed the bridge that collapsed yesterday. He offers theological reflection in the context of speaking with his young daughter about the tragedy.

Update: Piper's comments are now on YouTube, with footage of the bridge.

Posted by Collin Hansen at August 2, 2007 | Comments (7)

Even those being satirized have to admit some of these motivational poster parodies are pretty funny.

More here. And the Pyromaniacs site links the images to "random samples of the kind of rhetoric that inspired these posters."

It beats suggesting they're in bed with bin Laden.

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 27, 2007 | Comments (27)

Zimbabwe's state paper runs an op-ed today saying that the country's independent media aren't sufficiently criticizing Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube. (The archbishop, who has been the chief critic of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's extensive human rights abuses, was accused last week of adultery.) In The Herald, Caesar Zvayi writes that Zimbabwe's independent media, are "punishing the innocent while letting Barabas go scot-free."

Hmm. So if Mugabe's newspaper wants to call Ncube Barabbas, then that would make Mugabe...

It wouldn't be the first, or most egregious example, or Mugabe's cronies comparing him to Jesus. As Chenjerai Hove wrote in Pambazuka News earlier this year,

In the quest for glory and grandeur, the presidential palace is full of charlatans, praise-singers and flatterers. First they used to call him 'the son of God', and then one minister publicly said 'Mugabe is our Jesus Christ'. Next the minister of education and culture has recently designed and installed a 'throne' in parliament, for 'king Mugabe.' Then the minister of local government would not be outdone. He has decided to build 'a shrine' in Mugabe's home village. A shrine is a place of worship. So the president has become a god who deserves a 'shrine.' Thus, from VaMugabe ndibaba' (Mugabe is our father) to 'the son of God' to 'Jesus Christ' to a 'shrine' a place of worship, God.

Perhaps the most famous example is deputy minister of local housing Tony Gara calling Mugabe "the other son of God." In a 2002 African Sociological Review article, Ezra Chitando describes how the words of Christian songs were changed for political ends. "I will never cry when Jesus is there," for example, became, "I will never cry when Mr. Mugabe is there."

All of this might be confusing. If you're trying to remember the difference between Jesus and Robert Mugabe, here's a helpful tip: Jesus is the one who fed the 5,000. Mugabe is the one starving millions.

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 24, 2007 | Comments (5)

From Frank Pastore's latest column:

If those in the emergent “we’re-a-missional-not-an-institutional” church had their way, American church buildings would be just like European church buildings – empty. And the church, the people themselves, would be so intellectually, morally, emotionally, and spiritually lost, confused and uncertain, that they would be incapable of doing hardly anything more than inviting their Muslim oppressors in for a cappuccino and a good conversation about the sociology of knowledge, the absurdity of propositional truth, and the misplaced certitude of the Muslim metanarrative. All the while, no doubt, nodding in agreement that America probably deserved to die and mumbling something about carbon footprints. ... The whole point of terrorism is to destroy the will of the enemy to fight. Whose side are they on, anyway?

I'm no fan of Emergent, but a demagogic, counterfactual column like this sure makes me more friendly toward it. Maybe Pastore, a former major league pitcher, is just mad about Tony Jones's argument that there's no such thing as a strike zone.

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 23, 2007 | Comments (27)

Michael Glatze, former head of Young Gay America, says he's no longer interested in a "gay identity" and has been healed from homosexual desires. He also says he was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) earlier this year.

The Christian Post, a website affiliated with the World Evangelical Alliance, this week published an editorial saying that its rejoicing over the former outweighs its concern over the latter.

"The story of change should be used by believers to open the eyes of others like him and to lead them out of the homosexual lifestyle into a more godly one. And doing so is not an endorsement of the Mormon church," the publication said. "Glatze should be accepted for who he is -- not the result of Mormon conversion, but one of the latest and most prominent examples of former homosexuals who came to acknowledge homosexuality as sin and made the decision to turn away from the sinful lifestyle. And because Glatze's conversion is more likely to pull people away from homosexuality than draw people towards the Mormon church, believers should be more concerned about Glatze returning to homosexuality than him joining the Mormon church."

Ex-Gay Watch's Eugene Wagner says the Christian Post is essentially telling its readers the ends justify the means. "One wonders if ex-gay Scientologists would receive a similarly warm welcome," he writes.

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 19, 2007 | Comments (51)

A critique of Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and the rest of the new atheists makes the key point that these authors, in attempting to tear down all religious belief as toxic, have failed to distinguish the good from the bad. And they haven't even come up with any new and particularly compelling arguments. For a movement that provides itself on its supposed intellectual superiority, that's quite an indictment.

According to reviewer Peter Berkowitz in today's Wall Street Journal:

"In making his case that reason must regard faith as an enemy to be wiped out, Mr. Hitchens declares Socrates's teaching that knowledge consists in knowing one's ignorance to be 'the definition of an educated person.' And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions.

"Mr. Hitchens is by far the most erudite and entertaining of the new new atheists. But his errors and his excesses are shared by the whole lot. And these errors and excesses have pernicious political consequences, amplifying invidious distinctions among fellow citizens and obscuring crucial differences among believers world wide.

"Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction."

Memo to the angry atheists (and I know many atheists are calm and reasonable): Not all religion is alike.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at July 16, 2007 | Comments (31)

Debates rarely shed fresh light on their subject, but they are nevertheless diverting. Last night's debate between Tom Flint and William Hasker ("Does God Know the Future?") was no exception to this rule. Flint earned high marks for coming to a setting in which almost everyone in attendance disagreed with him--and keeping his equilibrium and his sense of humor. Hasker delivered the best line of the night, which came near the very end of the question period. Flint had objected that God as depicted by open theists might end up with a world in which the uncoerced choices of his creatures reached a sort of critical mass of darkness and despair. Hasker's riposte was to wonder if what Flint had in mind was a world almost in as bad shape as the world really is. Round two of the Melee at ENC will take place next Tuesday night when Karen Winslow and Randall Tan debate the same question from the perspective of biblical studies rather than philosophy. Meanwhile, in the ongoing seminar, Philip Clayton will speak later this morning on "Where It All Begins: Cosmology, Creation, and Open Theism."

Posted by John Wilson at June 20, 2007 | Comments (2)

I wish that many of the combatants in the open theology wars could be sitting in on this conversation at Eastern Nazarene College, which started this week and will run until July 6. Of course, some of them ARE here, not least John Sanders and Greg Boyd, along with a nicely varied group of theologians and philosophers and odds and ends (myself included), invited by Tom Oord of Northwest Nazarene University. It's a conversation mostly between people who to some degree or another are sympathetic to the open view, with some guests who hold other views. Today, for instance, Tom Flint from Notre Dame presented the Molinist ("middle knowledge") position with clarity, humor, and a fine sense of proportion. After all, what we share as believers is more important than what divides us. Tonight he'll debate Bill Hasker on the subject, "Does God Know the Future?" Clark Pinnock (whom I first read when I was in high school) is a participant as well, and it has been a pleasure to meet him and his wife Dorothy. If most of the participants share some affinity with the open view, they nevertheless differ in many other ways. Some are quite sympathetic to--but not uncritical of--process thought. Others--I am one--are allergic to that movement. Vocabularies are quite different too. Can the analytic philosopher and the Wesleyan theologian and the philosopher of science find a lingua franca? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is no mushniness--disagreements may be quite sharp--but neither is there any huffing and puffing. Altogether this is--so far--a model conversation.

Posted by John Wilson at June 19, 2007 | Comments (9)

It's evident from Francis Beckwith's Ignatius Press interview that the former Evangelical Theological Society president has spent the last few weeks thinking about how to articulate his journey back to Rome. He explains the decision by appealing to one typical reason for why some Protestants find refuge in the Roman Catholic Church. "I thought to myself that if sola scriptura can result in everything from the philosophical theology of Calvinism to the Open View of God, from Nicean Trinitarianism to social trinitarianism to Oneness Pentecostalism's rehabilitation of Sabellianism to 19th-century Unitarianism, then sola scriptura is not a sufficient bulwark for sustaining Christian orthodoxy." Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, might be surprised to see that Beckwith has employed him to bolster this argument.

Beckwith also reveals plans to write a book next year about his experience. In the meantime, Cambridge University Press will release his latest book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice.

Posted by Collin Hansen at June 6, 2007 | Comments (11)

This week I attended the inaugural one-day conference of the Gospel Coalition. This consortium of more than 50 evangelical pastors have united around a common confessional statement and theological vision of ministry. Organizers hope this short conference, hosted by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and attended by 500+ pastors and other ministry leaders, will propel a long-term effort to renew and reform evangelical thought and practice. D.A. Carson, a New Testament scholar at TEDS, and Tim Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, organized the group, which has met privately for three years now. Other speakers and workshop presenters included Crawford Loritts, Phil Ryken, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper.

I thought a couple statements stood out in the Gospel Coalition's founding document:

From the preamble: "On the one hand, we are troubled by the idolatry of personal consumerism and the politicization of the faith; on the other hand, we are distressed by the unchallenged acceptance of theological and moral relativism."

From the theological vision of ministry: "If we seek service rather than power, we may have significant cultural impact. But if we seek direct power and social control, we will, ironically, be assimilated into the very idolatries of wealth, status, and power we seek to change."

The Gospel Coalition's core group of pastors plans to meet yearly. Leaders have tentatively planned a national conference for April 2009. A website, www.thegospelcoalition.org, will be forthcoming in June with video of all the conference sessions and loads of links to resources that promote the Gospel Coalition vision.

As Carson told me today, this group could not have come together five years ago. Make of that what you will, but something's stirring in the evangelical movement. The Gospel Coalition seeks nothing less than a return to the theological consensus enjoyed in the days of neo-evangelicalism, led by Billy Graham, Carl Henry, Harold John Ockenga, and many others. That might be a goal more difficult to achieve than pioneering evangelicalism in the post-war Protestant scene, split as it was between fundamentalism and liberalism.

Posted by Collin Hansen at May 25, 2007 | Comments (7)

Last night I attended (and played the organ for) Bob Webber’s memorial service. (You can read Bob’s Christianity Today obit here.)

The memorial service was wonderful in many ways, but I want to point to one thing in particular. It wasn’t about Bob.

Well, yes, it was about Bob, it couldn’t help being about Bob, but as someone who has written a multitude of pages and taught innumerable students about worship, Bob insisted that his service focus on the great saving acts of God.

Here is part of what he wrote for the worship leaflet:

As a Christian I have always believed in Christ as the Victor over sin and death. I believe that Christ was the Second Adam, sent to this earth as God Incarnate, suffered death, was buried and rose from the dead to restore the entire creation. I believe that it is God who narrates the entire world and creation, from start to finish. Consequently I have no fear of death although I do fear the process.

Today, there are literally hundreds of different styles one can follow ... for a funeral. However, historic Christian funerals were always about God. I ... truly want [my own funeral] to be about God who created this world, defeated Satan at the cross and rose victorious over death and the grave.

Today we begin with several eulogies, then when those are done, the real funeral begins and it’s all about God. I want my funeral to be a testimony to the God who raises us from hopelessness and blesses us with new life in Him. ...

And that is the way it was last night. As a large crowd of mourners packed into Christ Church of Oak Brook, we heard the eulogies first, and then we focused on God, remembering Christ’s death and resurrection and looking forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

This is the way it should be, because there is no greater comfort than the gospel. Too often funerals play down the reality of death with sentimental poetry such as these lines from Shelley: “he is not dead, he doth not sleep -/ He hath awakened from the dream of life.” We don’t need romanticism, but redemption—especially at funerals.

Posted by David Neff at May 17, 2007 | Comments (3)

If the debate on this website between Doug Wilson, a a pastor and educator, and atheist pundit Christopher Hitchens has whetted your appetite for more, you'll want to check out "Nightline" tonight. Evangelist Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron will debate two members of the so-called "Rational Response Squad."

The RRS, as you may know, has organized the Web-based "Blasphemy Challenge" to encourage people to blaspheme the Holy Spirit as a way to declare their freedom from and lack of fear over all religious beliefs. The founder of the movement, Brian Sapient, equates theism with belief in the tooth fairy, saying, "There isn't any good reason to believe in God."

This debate, which will be available online at 1 p.m. Central today on ABC News Now, promises to be interesting. I've heard Comfort, a bold street evangelist, speak, and I expect him to do well. I am concerned, however, over the parameters of this debate. Comfort promises to "prove" God's existence scientifically and without reference to the Bible or faith. First, while faith in God is eminently reasonable (the world's greatest minds, including everyone from C.S. Lewis to Isaac Newton to Francis Collins, have affirmed Christian faith), faith is still required, for "without faith it is impossible to please God." Second, while Christian faith made scientific discovery possible and many of the world's first and greatest scientists have been Christians, restricting the debate to things scientific unfortunately plays into the current prejudice that the only "facts" that are real or valiid are based in science. But there are many fields of inquiry that are not open to the scientific method (history being one of them). Thus, the terms of the debate will only take us so far.

I remember the time my wife and I sat down with a friend who had lots of questions about Christianity. At the onset I asked him if he would become a Christian if we answered all his questions. He said yes. Then we talked and we answered his questions, one by one. But he still declined to become a Christian. It was not for a lack of facts. It was a lack of will. As the Bible says, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" I don't think a debate restricted to scientific facts, however it goes, will change that.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at May 9, 2007 | Comments (15)

Updates: Francis Beckwith, who rejoined the Roman Catholic Church and resigned over the weekend as president of the Evangelical Theological Society, has also withdrawn his membership. And moments ago the ETS executive committee released the following statement:

Statement of the ETS Executive Committee regarding
Dr. Frank Beckwith’s Resignation as ETS President
May 8, 2007

On May 5, 2007, Dr. Frank Beckwith resigned as President of the Evangelical Theological Society. This resignation has come as a result of his decision to be received into full communion in the Roman Catholic Church, which he did on April 29, 2007. Dr. Beckwith has informed the Executive Committee that this was a decision he came to “after much prayer, counsel, and consideration.” Subsequently, after further prayer and reflection, Dr. Beckwith has voluntarily withdrawn his membership from the Society as well.

The members of the Executive Committee wish Dr. Beckwith well in his ongoing professional work. We have come to appreciate him as a scholar and a friend. On behalf of the Society, we want to express our gratitude for his work organizing and coordinating the 2006 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., with the theme, “Evangelicals in the Public Square.” No one, perhaps, appreciates how much labor is involved in such a task, except those who have undertaken it in the past, as is the case with most of the members of the Executive Committee. And so, we thank Dr. Beckwith for his service to the Society.

At the same time, the Executive Committee recognizes Dr. Beckwith’s resignation as President and subsequent withdrawal from membership as appropriate in light of the purpose and doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Theological Society and in light of the requirements of wholehearted confessional agreement with the Roman Catholic Church.

The work of the Evangelical Theological Society as a scholarly forum proceeds on the basis that “the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.” This affirmation, together with the statement on the Trinity, forms the basis for membership in the ETS to which all members annually subscribe in writing. Confessional Catholicism, as defined by the Roman Catholic Church’s declarations from the Council of Trent to Vatican II, sets forth a more expansive view of verbal, infallible revelation.

Specifically, it posits a larger canon of Scripture than that recognized by evangelical Protestants, including in its canon several writings from the Apocrypha. It also extends the quality of infallibility to certain expressions of church dogma issued by the Magisterium (the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church), as well as certain pronouncements of the pope, which are delivered ex cathedra, such as doctrines about the immaculate conception and assumption of Mary.

We recognize the right of Roman Catholic theologians to do their theological work on the basis of all the authorities they consider to be revelatory and infallible, even as we wholeheartedly affirm the distinctive contribution and convictional necessity of the work of the Evangelical Theological Society on the basis of the “Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety” as “the Word of God written and . . . inerrant.”

In recent years, Evangelicals and Roman Catholics have often labored together in common cause addressing some of the critical social and moral issues of our contemporary culture. We welcome this and fully expect it to continue. A number of publications have appeared comparing Evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism. Certainly, the two traditions share many common Christian doctrines. However there are important theological differences as well. We expect that the events of these days will bring a renewed discussion of these matters. We welcome and encourage this as well.

Finally, regarding the Presidency of ETS, Dr. Hassell Bullock, President-elect will also serve as acting President until the annual meeting at which time elections for the officers for 2008 will take place.

We are grateful for Dr. Beckwith's past association with ETS, and we pray that God will continue to use his considerable gifts.

C. Hassell Bullock, President-Elect
(Wheaton College)

Bruce A. Ware, Vice-President
(The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Edwin M. Yamauchi, At-large member
(Miami University)

Craig A. Blaising, At-large member
(Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Gregory K. Beale, At-large member
(Wheaton College)

David M. Howard, Jr., At-large member
(Bethel Seminary)

James A. Borland, Secretary-Treasurer
(Liberty University)

Andreas J. Köstenberger, JETS Editor
(Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Posted by Collin Hansen at May 8, 2007 | Comments (12)

How many “base communities” are there in Brazil? And how healthy is the liberation theology that spawned them?

The New York Times run-up story to Pope Benedict’s visit to Brazil wants you to believe that reports of liberation theology’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Despite official attempts to suppress this Marxist version of politicized Catholicism, says the Times, there are 80,000 active base communities in Brazil’s vast territory.

The Associated Press is more conservative. It estimates the number that have been active in the past at about 60,000.

Neither the Times nor the AP sources its numbers.

The Economist, a news magazine that is supposed to be good with numbers, does not offer an estimate. It only reports that the notably pro-liberation 1968 Medellin conference of bishops “spawned innumerable ‘base communities,’” and reports that their numbers are now in decline.

The numbers the Economist does cite show an overall decline in the Roman Catholic market share in Brazil, a point also made in the AP report.

In Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, the church has lost adherents at a rate of 1% a year since 1991, mainly to Pentecostal churches. Fewer than three-quarters of Brazilians are now Catholics while 15% are Protestants (known locally as “evangelicals”).

For the sake of comparison, the World Christian Database estimates more than 80% of the overall population of Latin American is Roman Catholic.

The shifts are not only in the direction of Pentecostal Protestantism, says the Economist, but also in the direction of charismatic-style Catholicism. At least half of active Catholics in Brazil have gravitated toward the charismatic movement. “The Catholic response to the Pentecostal challenge is to imitate it.”

Posted by David Neff at May 7, 2007 | Comments (2)

I've seen more surprising news, but Francis Beckwith's decision rejoin the Roman Catholic Church will send some kind of tremors through the Evangelical Theological Society, which he served as president. Beckwith, associate professor of church-state studies at Baylor University, has resigned as ETS president but said he will maintain his membership. Anyone reading the comments on Beckwith's blog can attest: No, the Reformation is not over.

Posted by Collin Hansen at May 7, 2007 | Comments (18)

Newsweek had Rick Warren vs. Sam Harris.

Beliefnet had Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan.

Next week, ABC’s Nightline has Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort vs. the BlasphemyChallenge.com guys.

No. Really. Nightline has tapped Kirk Cameron to be fidei defensor.

I suppose we could have asked Cameron, too. Or maybe Lisa Whelchel, Mr. T, Willie Aames, Justine Bateman, or Gavin McLeod.

Instead, we’d rather hear from Douglas Wilson, author of the new book, Letter from a Christian Citizen (American Vision). Wilson is senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College and minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is also the editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and has written (among other things) Reforming Marriage and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. His Blog and Mablog site inevitably makes for provocative reading.

Wilson will be corresponding with Christopher Hitchens, author of the new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books). Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," Letters To a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters. He was named, to his own amusement, number five on a list of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

You'll enjoy the discussion regardless of whether you're already familiar with Wilson and Hitchens. But if you are familiar with their work, you'll know that it promises to be anything but boring.

Posted by Ted Olsen at May 4, 2007 | Comments (11)

Martin Marty's Sightings column is typically worth reading. After the decades he has spent as a religion scholar, his columns will educate nearly every reader.

Unfortunately half of Sightings columns are written by guests, and these tend toward infuriating rather than instructive. Today's column (not yet online [Update 5/4: It's up now]) by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore is about spanking. She leads with the story of parents at Remnant Fellowship Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, who spanked their child, Josef Smith, to death and are now serving life sentences.

She says Remnant's "religious leader Gwen Shamblin encourages parents to spank their children, describing corporal punishment as a 'time-tested, ancient teaching of the Bible' necessary to shaping adherence to God's authority." Miller-McLemore fails to note that Remnant Fellowship is not a mainstream evangelical church, but tends toward aberrant Christian sect.

Miller-McLemore then criticizes critics of spanking, who call such disciplinary methods child abuse. She notes that sociological research "documents increased affection and paternal involvement as positively related to an emphasis on children's submission to parental authority and use of corporal punishment." And she says Christians should be wary of both the anti-spanking and pro-spanking groups. Miller-McLemore is right when she concludes, "For Christians, discipline means fostering conditions that induce a desire to love God and seek the good of others."

But Miller-McLemore is confused when she writes,

News about Josef Smith's death powerfully reminds us just how hazardous careless use of Christian proclamation can be, especially as it impacts those least able to protect themselves and most dependent on adult benevolence. Fervent promotion of doctrines about sin, obedience, and bending the will to God have had and can have devastating consequences.

Miller-McLemore does admit, "seeing children as sinful does not de facto lead to their harsh punishment." And she says Calvin and Augustine did not condone coporal punishment but found spiritual capacity in children.

Yet, she seems to see these examples as exceptions from the rule that "doctrines about sin, obedience, and bending the will to God" lead to abuse. In fact disregard for such doctrines has had far worse consequences. The idea that all people are sinful, children included, does not lead to abuse. If parents fail to apply the doctrines to themselves or find in them an excuse to abuse their children, it's no condemnation of the doctrine.

Miller-McLemore concludes, "For children in particular, what people believe about Jesus or God -- whether God demands obedience or offers love -- matters." She seems to be unable to consider that God both demands obedience and offers love. Parents too can demand obedience and enforce their demands with discipline while also tenderly loving their children.

Child abuse may be tied to bad or heretical doctrine, but it is not the result of classic Christian doctrines of sin and obedience to God. Ignoring those doctrines (especially when professing not to) is dangerous not just for children but for us all.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 3, 2007 | Comments (12)