Puts things in perspective ...

​Joni Eareckson Tada, "Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of My Diving Accident" (TGC, July 30, 2017):

Recently I was at my desk writing to Tommy, a 17-year-old boy who just broke his neck body surfing off the Jersey shore. He’s now a quadriplegic. He will live the rest of his life in a wheelchair without use of his hands or legs. When it comes to life-altering injuries, quadriplegia is catastrophic.

Halfway through my letter describing several hurdles Tommy should expect in rehab, I stopped. I felt utterly overwhelmed, thinking of all that lies ahead for him. I’ve been there. And even though half a century has passed, I can still taste the anguish. Hot, silent tears began streaming, and I choked out a prayer, Oh God, how will Tommy do it? How will he ever make it? Have mercy; help him find you!

... Like Tommy, I was once the 17-year-old who retched at the thought of living life without a working body. I hated my paralysis so much I would drive my power wheelchair into walls, repeatedly banging them until they cracked. Early on, I found dark companions who helped me numb my depression with scotch-and-cola. I just wanted to disappear. I wanted to die.

What a difference time makes—as well as prayer, heaven-minded friends, and deep study of God’s Word. All combined, I began to see there are more important things in life than walking and having use of your hands. It sounds incredible, but I really would rather be in this wheelchair knowing Jesus as I do than be on my feet without him [emphasis added]. But whenever I try to explain it, I hardly know where to begin....

Ten words have set the course for my life: God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.

Read more >> This gets pretty deep.

When an Oxford Don goes rogue and comes out in support of traditional marriage and family values

I understand Oxford Don Richard Swinburne created quite a stir when he addressed the Midwest meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers last fall. "The difficulty," according to The Editors of First Things, was that in the course of exploring these topics, Swinburne characterized homosexuality as a “disability” and a condition that, while sometimes “to a considerable extent reversible,” in many instances is “incurable,” given the present state of medical research.

The Editors continue:

Given the current state of public life and the stringency of academic moral codes in favor of diversity and tolerance, it will be no surprise to our readers that the president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, Michael Rea, subsequently expressed his “regret regarding the hurt caused by” Swinburne’s paper, suggesting that Swinburne’s ideas were inconsistent with the Society’s “values of diversity and inclusion.”

Rea’s message has triggered a reaction on the other side. So far the situation has been commented on by Joseph Shaw, Edward Feser, and Rod Dreher, along with eighty-seven philosophers who signed a letter of protest against the principles implied in Rea’s apology. We at First Things were curious about the paper that prompted all the to-do, and so we asked Professor Swinburne whether he would be willing to let us make his paper available. He has generously agreed.

You can read it here [PDF download].

Here is a video of Swinburne's live presentation:

Society of Biblical Lit. bans InterVarsity Press from its conference ... for its BIBLICAL stand on sexuality

In case you missed this, like I did, here's the article: "InterVarsity Press faces book conference ban" (World, October 19, 2016).

[Hat tip to JM]

"The Courage of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship"

Rod Dreher, "The Courage of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship" (American Conservative, October 6, 2016):

We are so accustomed these days to one Christian church or ministry falling by the wayside when it comes to Christian orthodoxy on sexual matters. So it comes as a shock when one — especially a major one — takes a firm and uncompromising stand for orthodoxy. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has done just that. Excerpt:

One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says that it will start a process for “involuntary terminations” for any staffer who comes forward to disagree with its positions on human sexuality, which holds that any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral.

Staffers are not being required to sign a document agreeing with the group’s position, and supervisors are not proactively asking employees to verbally affirm it. Instead, staffers are being asked to come forward voluntarily if they disagree with the theological position. When they inform their supervisor of their disagreement, a two-week period is triggered, concluding in their last day. InterVarsity has offered to cover outplacement service costs for one month after employment ends to help dismissed staff with their resumes and job search strategies.

More:

InterVarsity has more than 1,000 chapters on 667 college campuses around the country. More than 41,000 students and faculty were actively involved in organization in the last school year, and donations topped $80 million last fiscal year. The group is focused on undergraduate outreach, but it also has specific programs for athletes, international students, nurses, sororities and fraternities, and others. InterVarsity also hosts the Urbana conference, one of the largest student missionary conferences in the world.

Read the whole thing.

Given how hostile colleges are, and how strongly young adults feel about this issue, taking this stand is likely to be very, very costly, but InterVarsity recognizes the stakes for the integrity of the Christian message. God bless InterVarsity for its impressive courage and steadfastness! ...

... Update:

A reader writes that InterVarsity has posted this on its Facebook page tonight:

You may have seen this evening’s article in TIME about InterVarsity.

We’re disappointed that Elizabeth Dias’ headline and article wrongly stated that InterVarsity is firing employees for supporting gay marriage. That is not the case....

... we believe Christlikeness, for our part, includes both embracing Scripture’s teachings on human sexuality—uncomfortable and difficult as they may be—as well as upholding the dignity of all people, because we are all made in God’s image.

... Within InterVarsity and elsewhere in the Church, there are LGBTQI people who agree with this theology, at great personal cost. We are learning together to follow Jesus.

Another reader, a lawyer and a liberal, writes:

This is a smart legal move on their part. Federal law makes it pretty much impossible to take a stance along the lines of, “This is what we believe, but out of compassion and pragmatism we’re willing to be flexible for a certain amount of time, with certain people, and/or in certain situations.” Either you have a blanket policy that applies to all people in all instances, or federal courts will rule that you don’t “really” have a principled position ....

I appreciate this comment for its honesty. I’ve talked to people in religious schools, both Catholic and Protestant, who are being advised by their lawyers to draw clear, bright doctrinal lines right now, and enforce them. If they don’t, the lawyers advise, they are going to have a hard time in court if they get sued.

[Hat tip to JM]

Spiritual vitality of today's youth vs. encultured sterility of older generations? A false dichotomy

Guy Noir, again, commenting this time on "Rah Rah T(eam) G(ospel) C(oalition)" (Old Life, September 13, 2016).

Noir writes:

SO the overheated rhetoric of "new" evangelization and new forms of discipleship is not just a postconciliar Catholic phenomenon. This critique seems not so much curmudgeonly as correct.

Let's have impassioned preaching (do we Catholics though have that?), but let's also have talk about faithful living that sounds adult in its tenor, and not like what sounds closer to either what Knox called Enthusiam or what I'd call very bad European ad campaigning.

Excerpts from the Old Life article:

[The so often] repeated contrast between the spiritual vitality of today’s young people and the enculturated sterility of the older generation is naive.... [...I]f spiritual renewal is to be a sustaining presence in the church at large, it must certainly go beyond what theologians, preachers, [...]officials, and other professional Christian workers do for a living. It must even go beyond what lay people do in devotion, worship, witness, and Christian social involvement.

Francis Schaeffer listened to Pink Floyd? Timothy Leary, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards read or studied with him??

A terrific article in many, many ways. Please do yourself a favor if you are the least bit interested in Christian intellectual culture, and read Jake Meador's "Francis Schaeffer and Christian Intellectualism" (Mere Orthodoxy, August 18, 2016).

The piece sets the stage by tolling the death knell of public Christian intellectual culture round about 1960. Like this:

In his recent essay on Christian intellectualism, Alan Jacobs dates the high point of the public Christian intellectual in America as being in the late 1940s. Citing the influence of thinkers like CS Lewis, WH Auden, and Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacobs argues that the movement began to fade in the 1950s and, by the 1960s, was largely a spent force. By that time Lewis, Auden, and Niebuhr were no longer as relevant in contemporary debates and the next generation had not yet emerged. By the time that generation of leaders did, Jacobs argues, the culture had moved past them and they had become more conversant in the intramural discussions happening in conservative religious circles rather than the broader cultural conversation.

... In dating the decline of the Christian intellectual, Jacobs cites, amongst other things, the evidence offered by major media coverage of prominent public Christians. He notes that both Lewis and Niebuhr made the cover of Time in the late 1940s with Lewis appearing on it in 1947 and Niebuhr doing the same in 1948. What’s funny about this is that Francis Schaeffer, who has been hailed by some as Lewis’s only equal amongst orthodox Christian apologists in the 20th century, also makes a prominent appearance in Time ... but in 1960....

Time‘s description of Schaeffer, however, tells us something about how things had changed during the 12 years between Niebuhr’s cover and Schaeffer’s. In 1960, Time presents Schaeffer as a missionary to the intellectuals, which he no doubt was. But this assumes that Christianity needs missionaries to the intellectuals because the intellectuals are no longer Christian. What had been conflict within the intellectual community 13 years before when they reported on CS Lewis has become an attempt to witness to the intellectual community by 1960. This suggests, in one sense, that Jacobs is right—the Christian public intellectual is dead by 1960, which is why Schaeffer was needed.

But it also raises a separate question: If that intellectual is dead, why is Schaeffer being covered by Time in the first place?Further, why does he have well-known figures from the various counter-cultures as well as popular icons of the era beating down his door to study with him at L’Abri? Timothy Leary, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards are just three examples of prominent 1960s figures who read or studied with Schaeffer. There are others....

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

The beautiful, amusing, profound banalities of Franky-the-Grouch Schaeffer

Franky Schaeffer has made a career of trying to get over himself and not succeeding. In Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace(2014), he has written just the kind of book to seal his place in the hearts of those whom Alasdair MacIntyre calls the "readership of the New York Times," or at least to that part of it which shares the biases of those who write "that parish newsletter of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment." Franky is clearly one of that readership's darling ex-fundamentalists.

On the one hand, he confirms their anti-religious biases by repeatedly savaging his fundamentalist parents as "deluded," mocking their belief in biblical miracles, and paying them backhanded complements like these:

[My parents] believed that to be kind is to be in tune with the way things are, or to be in tune with the way things would have been if there had been no fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. My evangelical parents were not stupid, so either they really didn't believe Eden existed, or some part of their otherwise intelligent brains snapped when they adopted the one-size-fits-all born-again version of American fundamentalist Christianity.

On the other hand, he confirms his liberal readership's moral superiority (and salves his own conscience) by showing a kinder, gentler side to his revulsion at their fundamentalism by looking for positive reasons to appreciate the practical effects of their 'indoctrination' of him in the biblical 'myths' of his childhood:

Ironically, although mom and dad may have been deluded by their fundamentalist certainties, I am mostly at peace in my home ... because I was indoctrinated in knee-jerk guilt. I realize now that my parents were often right for the wrong reasons. For instance, I feel guilt when I shout at Lucy and Jack. And when it comes to the "big sins" I would not have burned in hell for sleeping with the many women I've looked at longingly, but adultery would have ruined my marriage and the home where I play with my grandchildren.

Hence, although he mocks his parents' view of adultery as "derived from a tribal myth about God proclaiming the law from a mountaintop," he can still posture as exhibiting filial piety and gratitude for "sometimes liking the result of my parents' delusions" (emphasis mine).

What a stand-up fellow! His parents may have had ridiculously wrong reasons for the virtues they inculcated in him as a young lad, but they were right and praiseworthy insofar as their sentiments about those virtues conformed to those celebrated by his liberal readership. God help us. To see Franky as exhibiting the virtue of filial piety here would be like admiring the 'courage' of the terrorists who piloted their passenger jets into the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The mainstream reviews, of course, are predictably rapturous, cloying, fashionably liberal, and religiously obtuse: their darling ex-fundamentalist has seen the light, and his book is "extraordinary," "profound," "tender," "sensitive," "beautiful," "brilliant," "thought-provoking," "redemptive," "honest," filled with "great insight and unselfconscious humor" and "amazing grace."

Yet there is little if anything approaching real filial piety in this self-absorbed exercise in narcissistic therapy, even if there is much to admire artistically in this as in many of Franky's works (I, for one, superlatively enjoyed his autobiographical novel, Portofino, and would recommend it to almost anyone). Whatever artistic beauty and humor may be found in the present work, however, there is more than enough resentment, mockery and cynicism to make up for it.

What we see here is the Franky reflected in the image of his portrait on the cover of his book: an artist holding paint brushes and possessing many skills, yes; but a sad and bitter little old man who thinks he's being intellectually profound and beautiful (and witty) when he's really only wallowing self-indulgently in his own cynicism and depression. A "Christian atheist" or an "atheist Christian" is not a profundity. It is an absurdity. And that is a fact, no matter how much Franky may posture as intending to "give love, create beauty, and find peace."

One can only pray and hope that Franky's progeny will live to survive his legacy with more spiritual integrity, forgiveness, and joy than he has exhibited in his treatment of his parents. I feel genuinely sorry for him.

Christ of the Andes: a post Olympian reflection on Rio's South American icon

Jim Davis, "Rio's Christ statue: Washington Post adds a delightful angle to the Olympics" (GetReligion, August 10, 2016). This is a very stimulating and uplifting post: worth reading. The statue was built to combat secularism in the 1920s, when Brazil was solidly Catholic. Even in 1970 92% identified as Catholic. Which gives special meaning to the need for renewed evangelization today, as St. John Paul II saw in his day (each generation is faced with the need to appropriate its faith for itself):

The Olympics in Rio have already thrilled millions with the gold medal performances of champs like Michael Phelps and the Final Five gymnastic team. But the Washington Post takes the occasion to look even higher: at the statue of Christ who stretches his arms out over the city.

This delightful newsfeature, by the Post's veteran religion writer Michelle Boorstein, captures several sides of what she calls "the most recognizable Christian image in Latin America": the history, the sheer size, and the many meanings behind it.

Yes, meanings, plural. As Boorstein says, "Christ the Redeemer" stands high in that class of national symbols standing for many things to many people. And yes, religious and spiritual elements are on her list.

Her story smoothly blends background, color, humor and informed sources....

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

#blm

This just in from Guy Noir - Private Eye:

What believers might consider amidst the colors of wind.

A seasoned word from an African-American minister (Hampton U and Westminster grad!) about witness and cultural relevancy:

the original “BLM” ideology, which started as a rally cry and grew into an entity, has given rise to a cult with its own doctrines and demands for faith. It now extends beyond the original entity, blending with other belief systems in a syncretistic manner as it exports its own iconography, its own language, and its own heroes for veneration. Honestly, I am more concerned about this syncretistic subculture than I am about the original “BLM.” It is an infection that is finding its way into Christian communities.

"Reflections on Black Lives," (Prophets of Culture, July 16, 2016).

Secularizing the Meaning of the Sacred: A Telling Evangelical Assessment of Vatican II

Joseph F. Martin, "What He Saw at the Revolution" (Imprimatur, June 26, 2016):

You are forewarned: this is a theological post.

​I am reading this small book... a disturbing one for people of an evangelical mindset, and all-too unavoidably on target for those of us with comfortable ideas about Catholicism being the rock who now wonder exactly what's up with Pope Francis etc. Dave Wells wrote Revolution in Rome in 1972, and before Benedict XVIs supposed attempted retrenchment, before the conservative trophy moments of John Paul II and his Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also not long after Anthony Wilhelm's consequential doorstop of a book Christ Among Us (1967).

I remember seeing that brick in households of my Catholic friends well as in my Protestant youth pastor's office, of course, along with Hans King's On Being a Christian (those mainstream Protestants, did they have repressed Catholic-envy complexes back then or what?). Wilhelm looked to my naive eyes like the Catholic counterpoint to The Way, Reach Out, or The Living Bible. And I am sure it sold a zillion more copies than Wells' book, that went unnoticed and then out of print. too bad. Wilhelm is thicker -- mammoth, by comparison. But Wells manages far more cumulative clarity -- and, I'll add, as a Protestant also ironically ends up landing himself far more closely to something that sounds like what was known as genuine Catholic tradition prior to 1961 than the new wave of catechetical writers of which Wilhelm was precursor. By now, of course, we are perpetually reminded of the convenient if semi-oxymoronic coverall of 'Living Tradition,' so everything can simply be dismissed to the haze.​​

Revolution in Rome is both diagnostic and prescient as an overview of what happened at Vatican II, and how the theology inspired by conciliar winds enabled a revolution. The newness of Vatican II involved both medium and content. And it sparked a cycle that 50+ years later remains with us. In his preface to Wells' book John Stott wrote words that could deftly be applied to the reign of Pope Francis in our here and now:

Wells shows himself very sensitive to the acutely painful personal dilemma in which many contemporary Catholics find themselves. The Roman monolith, which for centuries  has appeared inviolable, has at last cracked open. Conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and radicals, are engaged in a fierce power struggle. Because the Council endorsed opinions  which oppose, contradict and exclude each other. The whole church is in unprecedented disarray.

Interestingly, A brand new (2015) book offers confirmation of just what Wells intuited decades ago. Msgr. Brunero Gherardini's book, Vatican Council II: A Debate That Has Not Taken Place, explains:

The rupture, before bearing upon specific matters, bore upon the fundamental inspiration. Certain ostracism had been decreed, ...not towards one or another of the revealed truths proposed as such by the Church [but towards] a certain way of presenting these truths. It thus attacked a theological method, that of scholasticism, that is no longer tolerated. With a particular energy against Thomism, considered by many as outdated and now very far from the sensibility and problems of modern man. One did not realize, nor did not want to believe, that rejecting St. Thomas Aquinas and his method would entail a doctrinal collapse. The ostracism had begun by making itself subtle, penetrating and all-encompassing.
It threw no one out the door, or any theological theory, and still less certain dogmas. [In fact, w]what it evinced was the mentality that in its [own] time [it was] defin[ing] and promulgat[ing] these dogmas.

[But it was] a true rupture because it was strongly wished for, as a necessary condition, as the only way that would allow an answer to hopes and questions that had up till then—since the Enlightenment, that is—remained unanswered. I ask myself if truly all the conciliar Fathers realized that they were objectively in the process of tearing themselves away from this multi-century mentality that until then had expressed the fundamental motivation of life, of prayer, of the teaching and government of the Church.

[Because i]n all, they proposed again the modernist mentality, that against which St. Pius X had taken up a very clear position, expressing his intention of "instaurare omnia in Christo," "restoring all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10). It was thus clearly a manifestation of gegen-Geist.

Today while jogging I had this thought, sparked by my reading and a recent family wedding... The Popes seem scandalized by the drift of the Church, but why? I am assured they are pastors, and not Ivory Tower academics, and so like to think they would be able to engage in some proactive foresight. Yet they seem to me like conflicted parents, ones who tolerate their child living with a boyfriend or girlfriend, possibly even do a bit of encouraging of them to be quietly avant garde, but are later then disappointed when the subsequent grandchildren opt out of getting married in any church ("Nature feels closer to God!"). They operate under what seems like a disconnect. Contra the impression given by Life Magazine spreads of a jolly Pope John waving to peasants, or National Geographic articles on the benevolent Pope Francis hugging teens, Catholic faith can survive only so manny cosmetic touchups for such social media moments before it begins to lose some of its defining edges. The Popes for decades now have been attempting a truce if not synthesis with the impossible-to-stem tides of Modernism, and their overtures continue to produce fundamentally  problematic results. Xavier Rynne's Letters from Vatican City do not stand as a testimony to nothing.

​ In an annotated bibliography Wells observes that in Joseph Ratzinger's commentary on the Council, the great Cardinal seems not quite "candid. One has the impression Ratzinger cannot quite bring himself to say what is really on his mind." Fifty plus years and a steady stream of Raztingerian books later -- some of the latter certainly inspiring -- that impression remains, as does a suspicion that the Council Fathers, even the moderate ones, sort of wanted it both ways. 

"... not despising the day of small things"

Sammy Rhodes, "Meet the New American Dream" (reformation21, January 2016): "Meet the New American Dream, Same as the Old American Dream: Thoughts after seeing Joy":

Movies are more than entertainment, date night venues, or after (during) work escapes. At their best, they are something closer to lay theology or therapy even. A place to take in entire worldviews, sifting their varied messages through one's own grid, taking the parts worth saving, and leaving parts unwanted behind.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

Excuse me while I Barth

Our underground correspondent from an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, stepped out of the mist and fog to tell me this a few week ago:

Barth is a huge inspiration for von Balthasar.

Over at this blog there is a piece on Barth ["What Should Evangelicals Make of Karl Barth?" (The Gospel Coalition, February 22, 2016)].

And then this comment [from a Dutch theology student, edited for grammar] ... It sounds a note Mark Bromley, Joseph Fessio, and others would do well to ponder as they spend their sweat pressing HvB on the world and simultaneously wringing their hands over Francis...

In general I’m baffled that so many evangelicals accept Barth and his theology more and more and so uncritically ... I’m from the Netherlands, so I can’t really speak for the U.S., but in the Netherlands it is certainly the case. But I’ve seen what Barthianism does to your church. His theology was in the sixties and seventies very influential in Dutch churches. More than it ever has been ... in the US. Those (local) churches that embraced Barthianism have almost totally disasppeared.

Was Barth a brilliant and intelligent thinker/theologian? Sure. Has he said good things? Of course. We have to interact with his theology.

But please beware, I’ve seen many theology students fly to Barth in reaction to modern theology. Ironically, they became mostly liberal, especially when it comes to ethics. Just because of Barth's vision on revelation and Scripture. At first sight Barth is orthodox, but the consequences of his theology are really big. I can know this, because I’m a theology student myself at a largely liberal theological demoninational university (but there are also orthodox students like me, because in my denomination there is a rather large number of orthodox-reformed churches). Particular in my denomination, which is the largest in the Netherlands, Barth's influence was enormous.

It’s a shame that the works of the Dutch theologian W. Aalders never have been translated into English. He was one of the most influential critics of Barth in the Netherlands. He has a depth in his critique and thinking that is often missed in orthodox responses/critics of Barth. He would show you the real problem with Barth's theology. Surely [Aalders is] one of the most brilliant theologians I know.

Los Angeles Churches Make Worship ... Hip?

Sheila Marikar, in the New York Times (December 12, 2015) enthuses:

Mosaic, a church that counts thousands of young people among its congregants, offering sermons rife with pop-culture references, musical performances that look like Coachella, and a brand cultivated for social media. (Church events are advertised on Instagram; there’s a “text to donate” number).

While Christianity is on a decline in the United States, at Mosaic and other churches like it in the Los Angeles area, the religion is thriving.

Sorry. Not a fan. Not for me. This flash-in-the-pan surrogate religious fare seems to offer a quick fix with shots of pure sugar and adrenalin that draws young people because it's like a free concert with fringe benefits. It's like taking LSD to attain Satori (enlightenment) rather that doing the hard work of Zen meditation. Kids will continue to go for several months, maybe even a couple of years, but then they will find themselves getting real jobs, kids of their own, and moving on; and the whole enterprise will just fade away into oblivion.

It looks like a huge shining lake of sparkling water, but turns out to be a shallow puddle of enthusiasm that cannot possibly sustain over the long haul because it is fuelled by the cult of personality and entertainment and lacks the benefit of deep theological rootage.

This is precisely what is killing AmChurch Catholic parishes attempting to ape these methods and cultivate a 'hip' ambience. Things turn out not to be 'hip' as hysterically pathetic, vapid and boring. By contrast, nothing revives the faith more than the solid meat of authentic Catholic teaching. To go deep into history is to cease to be vapid and boring, and to open the wellspring of the Living Waters of Life passed down from the Apostles and our Lord through Catholic tradition.

True our Lord says (Mt 11:30) that His "yoke is easy" and His "burden is light." But He also says (Mt 7:14): "small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and few are those who find it." There is no quick and easy path to sanctity or salvation. The consolations of Christ will lighten our burden, but the simple fact remains: faith is hard work. Faith is not a rock concert.

How did 8 years of a born-again President work out for Christians, here and in Iraq?

Tucker Carlson writes in Politico:

You read surveys that indicate the majority of Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch this: How could they be that dumb? He’s so obviously faking it.

They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What they’re looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How’d that work out for Christians, here and in Iraq?

And Rod Dreher comments HERE.

[Hat tip to JM]

"InterVarsity Seduced by Compartmentalized 'Justice'"

Derryck Green, "InterVarsity Seduced by Compartmentalized 'Justice'" (Juicy Ecumenism, December 31, 2015) - excerpt:

During InterVarsity’s Urbana missions conference, Michelle Higgins, director of Faith for Justice, a Christian advocacy group — and herself a member of #BlackLivesMatter — lectured listening Christians about the need to be involved in the fight against racial injustice. Fighting against racial injustice, in addition to all forms of injustice, is a Christian obligation that’s firmly rooted in the mission of the church. The body of Christ is — and should be — the vessel of racial reconciliation, predicated on Christ having overcome all superficial forms of division and separation, including those based on racial and ethnic considerations.

But for Higgins, or any Christian, to conflate the fight against racial injustice with supporting the agenda, intent, and behavior of #BlackLivesMatter is “chasing after the wind” — a fool’s errand that leads many sincere Christians astray. Christian leaders have a tremendous responsibility to be voices and examples of reason. Christian credibility is at stake. So it’s a cause for concern when Christians engage in negligent and questionable behavior. Here it involves using racial guilt to manipulate Christians into supporting a movement that perpetuates a secular social and political narrative that consists of lies and racial paranoia under the guise of fighting racial inequality.

During her speech, Higgins sought to religiously justify support of #BlackLivesMatter in a manner similar to the Christians and theologians that used Christianity to justify the black power movement of the past. Higgins said, “Black Lives Matter is not a mission of hate. It is not a mission to bring about incredible anti-Christian values and reforms to the world. Black Lives Matter is a movement on mission in the truth of God.”

That a Christian felt comfortable enough to say this with a straight face is disturbing. The fact that the audience was so embracing of her message, especially in light of the rhetoric and strategies used by #BlackLivesMatter activists is even more disturbing, reflecting poorly on Christians. The claim that #BlackLivesMatter is on ‘mission in the truth of God’ is about as true as the claim made at Michael Brown’s funeral — that he was “out spreading the word of Jesus Christ” before he was killed.

We Catholics, of course, have an infallible Magisterium. But how has that improved our performance the street level? Please tell me.

[Hat tip to JM]

When Rome gives Catholicism a bad name and apologists sound like odious windbags of optimism

One of our readers (call him Mr. Z.) must have been in a bad mood. Or something. He sent me an email referencing an article entitled "Why we'd all be Catholic if we really thought about it" (CWR, November 23, 2015). The article isn't bad, really. The writer is honest about how badly his piece is apt to be misunderstood. He says, for instance:

In the modern world, where we shouldn’t presume to tell others what’s true and false, good and bad, or right and wrong, saying we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it is sure to provoke scorn and ire. What about happy and generous Buddhists, Muslims, Lutherans, atheists? Didn't this sort of close-minded thinking go by the board a hundred years ago?

So perhaps it was just Mr. Z's indigestion. Or something. But at the same time, I think his rant is something that bears repeating here. Call it Food for thought in times like ours for odious windbags of optimism. He writes:

I am Catholic, but this piece rubbed me the wrong way. Given our current season, when the Church's claims so often seem like paper ones at best, I have to actively remind myself why I chose to convert. "We'd all be Catholic if we really thought about it..." Um, OK, but that zinger can easily boomerang as a rephrased "We'd all be Catholic if we insisted on thinking and thinking about it..." Against many presently hard-to-miss arguments to the contrary. The fact we seem to have the better case than jaded Nihilists (!) Moslem suicide bombers (!!) is hardly a consolation prize. Other versions of Christianity may have weaker historical claims, for instance, but few seekers are historians: most live in the present, where there are strong arguments against entering The Church currently being given strength by Rome's zany sounds.

And a line like "While Catholics reverence Scripture, they don’t believe the Bible is the sole source of Divine wisdom, or believe that everything in the Bible should be taken literally" simply dumbfounds, since I have met few if any souls who actually do. In fact, this is a canard the gay church movement would typically bring out.

I would not be a Catholic if I didn't believe the Church's claims. And yet, post-conversion zeal, I have gradually realized that yes, one can be a consistent and rational Protestant or Jew. We don't have the only argument game in town. In fact, I think it takes the grace of God to actually see the truth in some of the more detailed arguments for The Church, especially in the face of the drastic facelifts it has undergone in the past century. "What else is there?" seems not so much triumphalist as rather dourly reductionist. I'd join an easier-to-hang with church if the truth didn't compel me to stay. And if I hadn't unfortunately "thought about it." Only half tongue in cheek I say, "What else is there?" should be paired with "Come on in! The water stinks!" But yes, at least it's wet.

If any of you run into Mr. Z, be sure to invite him to a good Theology on Tap session, or to the Argument of the Month Club, or SOME place where being a Catholic doesn't make you feel like a moron or hypocrite for wanting to be Catholic but having some serious concerns about the state of the Church these days.

Being a Catholic. Making it hard. I remain, yours Pertinaciously, Papist.

Francis Beckwith on the Joys and Burdens of Being both Evangelical and Catholic

Francis J. Beckwith, "The Joys and Burdens of Being Both Evangelical and Catholic" (November 5, 2015):

...  I just like these people. They are serious about their faith in ways that annoy unsympathetic Catholics. You can actually discuss orthodoxy, heresy, and apostasy with them without first issuing a trigger warning. And contrary to the conventional wisecracking, “hate” never arises. In fact, what you experience is the kind of affection and brotherhood that emerges when serious people who respect each other purposely engage in an old-fashioned, knock down, drag out argument. 

Last year, for example, ETS’ president, Thomas R. Schreiner, in his banquet address at the annual meeting, singled out for critique my defense of the Catholic view of justification. (In fact, his new book includes a chapter based on the address, “Frank Beckwith’s Return to Rome”). Two days before the meeting, he emailed me and told me that he was going to do this. His note was kind, generous, and respectful. Was I offended, or tempted to write my friends to help orchestrate a campaign to stop the conversation? Are you kidding me? I was honored. 

Tom, like me, loves Christ. But he thinks I am wrong about justification. He cared enough to critique me in public in front of a room full of men and women I deeply respect. For an academic who wants to be taken seriously, I do not think it can get much better than that.

[Hat tip to JM]

How the plain man (or woman) sees it

Andrée Seu Peterson, "Fast-tracking annulments" (World, September 9, 2015):

Having absolved women for terminating unwanted pregnancies, Pope Francis yesterday announced the widening of absolution for couples terminating unwanted marriages. The instrument of this convenience, called an “annulment,” is the most bizarre invention since the Middle Ages practice of selling of indulgences. Annulment means, in a word, that the marriage never happened.

Why get a divorce when you can get an annulment? Why live with the shame of a failed union when for $800 you can buy a clean scorecard showing a union that never existed? Tuesday’s motu proprio papal initiative (much like an Obama executive order) waves all but small administrative fees while streamlining and expediting the burdensome procedure that previously required two tribunals to cosign.

All this reminds me of a movie I saw long ago about gypsies. In one scene, an attractive gypsy woman undergoes her annual rite to become a virgin de nouveau. She has been promiscuous all year but the ceremony purifies her, and afterward her relatives exclaim in joy, “Maria is a virgin again! Life is good!”

Before the pope announced his new annulment rules yesterday, a significant percentage of people who would begin the process didn’t follow through with it. This is partly because of the onerous expense and partly because of the lengthy questionnaire requiring one to find fault with one’s spouse in order to prove the marriage was flawed from the start. But, of course, all this folderol will be remedied by Tuesday’s papal decree. Especially the reduction of the questionnaire is all to the good, I’d say. After all, the act of rehashing your spouse’s faults on paper sounds to me like adding the sin of slander to the sin of splitting. 

Now, granted, this article is by a Protestant and full of a multitude of misunderstandings.  But honestly ask yourself: is it any wonder?  Has anything said and done by our church leaders in recent years helped to made it easier, for example, for those of us who are converts to explain all this to our evangelical brethren?  

[Hat tip to JM]

Evangelism and ecumenism: promise and the pitfalls

Tim Challies, "Fool's Talk" (Challies.com, September 15, 2015) - a review of a book on persuasion by Os Guinness, who thinks that we too often focus on "victory" as apologists for the Christian faith.

The reader who sends the linked article writes:

Perhaps this is the sort of thing Francis means to convey on evangelism? You have to be vary careful of drawing such parallels: John Paul II embraced Billy Graham, and yet they were quite different, even if both were gigantic religious leaders. Francis is similarly supposedly quite affirming of voices like Luis Palau... Regardless of those connections, Os Guiness here sounds the exact same notes Frank Sheed was groping towards decades ago. Two accomplishes writers both of who need to be more widely read.

[Hat tip to JM]

More Juicy Ecumenism ...

Mark Tooley, "Evangelical Focus on the Smart, Young & Beautiful" (Juicy Ecumenism: The Institute on Religion & Democracy's Blog, July 31, 2015) -- with relevance for German bishops and Vaticanistas too!  (And this time from a former CIA employee who is now president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.)

In recent years there’s been much understandable and laudable Evangelical conversation about expanding Christianity’s reach to attract diverse demographics through creative branding, especially but not exclusively Millennials.

These exertions have led to rhetorical, liturgical and sometimes theological innovations whose goals are greater persuasive power with the unchurched and unevangelized. Sometimes the tweaking is primarily about packaging, like the preacher shedding his shirt and tie for skinny jeans and t-shirts. Sometimes and more problematically it is about the substance of the Gospel, particularly sexual ethics but also about the exclusivity of Christ, the full authority of Scripture, and emphases on Christian social justice.

This ongoing conversation disproportionately focuses on reaching a particular kind of fairly narrow demographic: typically very educated, overwhelmingly Caucasian, white-collar, socially liberal, urban-minded and upwardly mobile young people. Not in-coincidentally, this well-heeled and fashionable social subset is also a preoccupation for secular commercial advertising. It’s an important group, as its members wield or will wield influence over our culture for decades to come, influencing millions. But does this demographic merit preoccupation to the near exclusion of others in Evangelicalism’s public conversation?

There are other major, often unreached for the Gospel demographics that are maybe not as prestigious but no less spiritually important and in some cases far more numerous. A gun-owning middle aged white man in West Virginia or central Pennsylvania who’s a truck driver or living on disability is not a major part of the Evangelical conversation. A near retirement age housewife who works part-time at Wal-Mart in a small Midwestern city is typically not part of the conversation. A Millennial age high school drop-out, unwed mother is typically not part of the conversation. Working class or unemployed black people are typically not part of the conversation. Nor are Asian or African immigrant families who come from traditional cultures, especially if they’re not doctors or engineers and are instead driving cabs and/or working retail. Hispanic immigrants are often topics of Evangelical public conversation because of immigration politics. But evangelistically appealing to a 35 year old Guatemalan construction worker or restaurant cook is not typically central to the conversation.