If You Needed More Reasons to Resent New York City

Published on by D. G. Hart

Upstate New York is lovely. Long Island has its charms. Even New York City has appeal — until the boosters start whooping. Christian boosters are even tougher to take because of that little matter of pride. This leaves me wondering if New York exceptionalism is worse than American exceptionalism. For the history of Presbyterianism, New York wins hands down. All of American Presbyterianism’s major controversies started over New York’s excesses — Old Side-New Side (Edwards and Tennent), Old School-New School (Barnes), fundamentalist-modernist (Fosdick), Old Life-New Life (Keller).

But now we hear that New York is experiencing a spiritual renaissance:

As the 80’s came to a close, a man considered by many to be one of the most influential pastors of our time answered a call to New York City to start a church: Tim Keller planted Redeemer Presbyterian, hailed as one of the most vital congregations in New York City.

By that time, the abortion rate in New York City had skyrocketed. Through the planting of Redeemer, a need for a crisis pregnancy center was identified. Subsequently, Midtown Pregnancy Support Center was founded. Other Redeemer members saw the need for a classical Christian school in New York City. So, the Geneva School was formed. That brought families into the city that wanted their children to attend that school.

As the year 2000 neared, New Yorkers saw more than the turn of a new century; they found ways to intellectually examine faith.

The King’s College opened its doors in a 34,000 square foot space the Empire State Building—after a short period of closure—in 1999 (the school is now located in the financial district). This placed the next generation of Christian thinkers in the hub of New York—and American—culture. Because of the placement of The King’s College, hundreds of young people are flooding the churches in the Big Apple.

In 2000, Metaxas started Socrates In the City, a monthly forum that facilitates discussion around “the bigger questions in life.” This event has seen growth over the 13 years in existence, and consistently attracts what Metaxas calls “The cultural elite.” Topics covered at these forums include: the existence of evil, the implications of science in faith, and the role of suffering.

In 2001, New Yorkers saw the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. “These events focused hearts on New York City,” said Metaxas. “This caused a lot of people to move to the city and start churches and other ministries.”

A post-September 11 New York City would see the emergence of many new churches, such as Journey in 2002, Trinity Grace in 2006, and Hillsong NYC in 2011—representing a wide variety of theological and worship styles. More parachurch organizations, like Q, have popped up. Founded by Gabe Lyons in 2007, Q exists to help church and cultural leaders engage the Gospel in public life.

“Now, there are so many churches in town, I don’t know the names of all of them. I know that the Lord is in all of this,” said Metaxas. “I am convinced we are on the verge of some kind of faith renaissance in New York City that will blow a lot of minds.”

A curious feature of this story is that the writer is Joy Allmond, “a web writer for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and a freelance writer. She lives in Charlotte, N.C., with her husband, two teenage stepsons and two dogs.”

No offense to Ms. Allmond, but I’d take her piece a little more seriously (though mainstream journalists usually put religion stories in the features sections where tough questions seldom go) if she actually lived and breathed in New York. On the ground in the Big Apple, the story is not Christianity but the new mayor, the Democrat, Bill deBlasio, and there the story even has a religious dimension, though Keller, Metaxas, and Thornbury are nowhere to be found. (Parenthetically, World magazine did report on the Republican loser, Joe Lohta, and his meeting with Tim Keller in September.)

First the numbers:

Protestants were the largest religious segment of voters in the Democratic primary, making up 31% of the voters. Because evangelicals make up the great majority of Protestants in the city, most likely the large majority of the Protestant Democratic voters are evangelical Protestants. Over two-thirds of evangelical Protestants are African American or Hispanic. Over one-third of evangelical Protestants reside in Brooklyn.

Catholic voters were the next largest religious segment of voters in the Democratic primary, making up 25% of the voters. The Catholic voters were less likely to vote in the primary elections. Most surveys have found that Catholics make up around 40-44% of the city’s population. Catholic charismatics, who were endorsed by Pope Paul II, are similar to Pentecostal Protestants in their values and voting behavior.

Jews were the third largest segment. Although Jews make up perhaps 10% of NYC’s population, 19% of the Democratic primary voters identified themselves as Jewish. The proportion of Jews who vote is significantly higher than that for the other main religious groups.

Was it a decisive turn to the left?

So de Blasio did not win the votes of unprecedented number of New Yorkers. And many of those who did vote for him also supported Bloomberg. That doesn’t mean that they like everything Bloomberg did. But there’s no evidence here of a progressive tsunami.

What about de Blasio’s career? The tabloid press paid a great deal of attention to de Blasio’s visits to communist Nicaragua and the Soviet Union as a young man. More recently, however, de Blasio worked as a HUD staffer under Andrew Cuomo, and as campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. De Blasio took liberal positions during his tenure on the city council, particularly on symbolic issues involving gay rights. But this is not the resume of a professional radical.

It’s true that de Blasio made “a tale of two cities” the central theme of his campaign. As many observers have pointed out, however, he lacks the authority to enact his signature proposals: a tax increase on high earners, to be used to fund universal pre-K. Nothing’s impossible, but the chances of the state legislature approving such a tax hike are slim. The same goes for several of de Blasio’s other ideas, including a city-only minimum wage higher than the state’s minimum and the issuance of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

The real issues under the de Blasio’s administration will be matters over which the mayor has some direct control. That means, above all, contracts with city workers, and policing. Will de Blasio blow the budget to satisfy public employee unions? And will he keep crime under control after eliminating stop-and-frisk ?

Where is New York City’s spiritual renaissance in all this?

For one thing, Keller focused his church plant on the city’s urban professionals, a class of people who, by definition, don’t necessarily mesh well with either the city’s dwindling stock of middle-class earners, or its increasing number of people of even lowlier social standing. If de Blasio is going to start playing class warfare, Redeemer’s target demographic may tire of being perceived as an economic liability.

For another, ministry in urban markets already struggles with the intense impermanence of career-chasing members who transition into and out of cities at the behest of job opportunities. Should de Blasio give New York’s corporate citizens a cold shoulder, there’s little keeping many companies in the city other than the recruiting edge they get from Gotham’s hedonistic urban allure. Such intangibles could become prohibitive quickly if companies are forced to re-evaluate their balance sheets.

Plus, socially liberal urban politicians are not known for embracing quality-of-life issues as much as their suburban counterparts are, or for their crime-fighting discipline, or their concern for traditional, proven educational practices in public schools. As it is, private schools in New York can cost more than $40,000 per year per pupil, demand is so great.

Indeed, you’d have to be an exceptionally devoted – and brazenly idealistic – New Yorker to not be concerned that the Big Apple’s rewards risk renewed marginalization under de Blasio’s management.

Although it’s not exactly a sin to increase taxes to pay for pre-K programs, or lawyers for renters going to Housing Court, such tactics do not represent a mindset of thrift, expediency, and personal responsibility when a city’s budget already requires astoundingly high tax rates. Such proposals by de Blasio indicate that just as Giulianni and Bloomberg might have given too much leeway to certain business leaders, a renewed emphasis on social liberalism may undermine the city’s economic vitality and endorse certain lifestyles that pose an economic liability for taxpayers.

There’s little in de Blasio’s manifesto that doesn’t presume individual citizens to be more righteous than those they may be accusing of wrongdoing. If equity is something voters thought was missing in the way Giulianni and Bloomberg governed, de Blasio is simply turning the tables towards a different sort of inequity. An inequity that likely will be much more expensive to maintain.

It’s an inequity that could also validate the suspicions that New York’s native poor have towards interloping rich whites, the type of people attending Keller’s various congregations throughout Manhattan. It’s also an inequity that banks on charity not as an opportunity for advancement, but as simply another enabler for attitudes and lifestyles that perpetuate poverty cycles instead of break them.

None of this adds up to a decisive point about urban ministry or the alleged renaissance in Gotham. It does indicate that the hype surrounding Christians in New York City is far removed from the realities of the very city for which they perform cartwheels. If they were spirituality of the church guys, then being silent about the city’s politics and economics in cheers for the revival might make sense. Even then, just as Charles Finney figured, we have natural ways of explaining what appears to be spiritual vitality. Reporters from North Carolina, however, aren’t going to help with those explanations.

63 thoughts on “If You Needed More Reasons to Resent New York City”

  1. Speaking of NYC, I’m reading James Wolcott’s “Lucking Out – My Life Getting Down & Semi-Dirty in the Seventies”. Good and funny. Wolcott dropped out of college to work for “The Village Voice”, aided by a recommendation from Norman Mailer. After awhile there he started doing freelance work, which he has done ever since. He usually has great stuff in “Vanity Fair”.

    http://www.amazon.com/Lucking-Out-Getting-Semi-Dirty-Seventies/dp/0767930622

    No mention of Keller or these other hipsters in the book.

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  2. “[T]he hype surrounding Christians in New York City is far removed from the realities of the very cityfor which they perform cartwheels.”

    And one of those realities is a large, antagonistic Jewish population which has no desire to convert?

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  3. I live in x-burb NYC (Princeton). I go to New York City many times per year. I used to work there. I have tons of close family in New York City. I have never heard anyone who actually lives in New York mention Tim Keller’s name. 0 times he’s come up in many conversation on topics of ethics, religion… The religious figure who New Yorkers (even non Catholics) consider to be the city’s religious spoke’s person is Cardinal Dolan. On the second tier are sect leaders like Zalman Teitelbaum (Teitelbaum is the one of the two leaders of a Hasidic Jewish sect called the Satmar which have a strong presence in New York City).

    What other ministers consider themselves to be to Tim Keller’s subordinates? Keller may very well be the most well known Conservative Presbyterian leader. but Conservative Presbyterianism has influence on the white evangelical culture which is small in NYC. The overwhelming majority of NYC’s Presbyterians if they belong to any church are happily PCUSA.

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  4. CD, that sounds right. Tim has gotten a few calls to be on “morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough, and some other spots major network news spots (I recall one showing on Dateline (or 20/20) I think, right after 9/11), in a same kind of way that Michael Horton was called on to be a voice on a news segment covering Joel Osteen, as I recall. All that mentioned here are each probably a YouTube click away…

    But, in any case, I think what Darryl is getting at is clearing up the alleged claims of “spiritual renaissance” in NYC.

    I think there is a way, as a conservative Presbyterian, to be glad there is a presence, by way of Keller, in that city (though I may be tarred and feathered here for claiming Keller is of that stripe, I’m just anticipating…). I mean, the man did go to Westminster, but anyway, the book “engaging Keller,” seems most appropriate to mention here, although my penny jar is running low…still working on DVD (ie topic of this blog), I can’t buy every book out there…

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  5. @Andrew

    But, in any case, I think what Darryl is getting at is clearing up the alleged claims of “spiritual renaissance” in NYC.

    My informal opinion of NYC is in line with the data, religion went during the last 2 decades from low to lower. For example Barna’s 9 point evangelicals declined from about 4% in the late 1990s to around 1.5% today. Keller’s people would (should) all be in this group. The indicator that is way up for NYC is “attended church last week” which went from the mid 30’s to the mid 40’s (a notoriously inaccurate number which really tracks people’s belief that they should have attended church last week, i.e. people who attended and people who are guilty about missing).

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  6. Ironically the largest cultural pond (NYC) is home to the smallest (per capita) evangelical pond. So one could say that Keller has in fact taken the easy way and is big fish in a small pond. And he is basically just an evangelical with a good degree or two and some confessional fumes wafting around him.

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  7. Some of us, on the other hand, have other types of fumes wafting around us. And how about this: Would Keller’s thing work in Orlando, Grand Rapids, Wheaton, Nashville, Baltimore or San Diego?

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  10. CD-H, on a trip to Seattle a few years ago, I asked any customer service rep with whom I had dealings (e.g., dept. store salespersons, waiters, bartenders, hotel clerks) if they’d heard of Mark Driscoll. Nada.

    We live in a bubble. It’s an even smaller bubble when we don’t know we live in a bubble.

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  11. Andrew, actually Keller went to seminary with the BeeBees — Gordon Conwell. He did teach at WTS — practical theology. I also taught practical theology (theological bibliography). So there.

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  12. CW, and here I thought the image of God was a part of the doctrine of man, not the doctrine of architecture or doctrine of sanitation. Neo-Calvinist bloviation alert.

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  13. Darryl, I simply stumbled on him first, not your fault. That’s cool you taught there. I did find in the archives here yours and his back and forth. We’re all etched in stone for eternity around here….

    Adios!

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  14. Markles, several have taken up the cudgel against “Engaging with Keller.” Their whole idea of ministry and there raison d’être is TKNYCism. It’s the only thing that makes churchy stuff cool. Slavish devotion to the great man is the only option. Obviously many are trying to do the Redeemer thing all over the country. Time will tell if the movement has legs. Or if it will blur into whatever follows evangelicalism.

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  17. PS

    But for those keeping score at home:

    Keller shows up (Ministries of Mercy in 2007 deacon training class, then Reason in 2009 (viewed at the time as an acceptable response to the Dennet/Dawkins/Harris then existent Zeitgeist)) and, for me, fades, much like he did in the 2009 Keller posts here (ox and gore, and one other one, around here that time). Haven’t read Tim since, just FYI. My verdict, is, like CD, he is “mostly harmless.”

    Darryl shows up in 2012, the mysterious man of riddles, puffing smoke on green bilbo Baggins’ (another WTSer…) papacy thread, all the while we study he excellent book in Sunday school.

    Since then, our smoking man of mystery fights these online battles that NI ONE ELSE WILL, and makes it look like he could do this in his sleep. In other words, I’ve seen enough around here who is really doing the heavy lighting (ie who the real golfer is), although Zrim brought that topic up on the 2009 Keller thread I read last night, so who knows. It’s a blog, after all.

    Thus my words are ended (as if).

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  18. DGH: “CW, and here I thought the image of God was a part of the doctrine of man, not the doctrine of architecture or doctrine of sanitation. Neo-Calvinist bloviation alert.”

    Man, do I dislike Twitter, but I am pretty sure Keller here is talking about the number of PEOPLE per square inch, bearing the Image of God, not buildings. Hard to argue with that simple fact.

    That said, the whole city thing is way overblown. And I happen to be preaching through Rev 21 right now as a matter of fact. Gentrification is not the same thing as redemption.

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  19. Chris, I totally get the population density concept and I’m sure that’s what TK meant. I was riffing on the “square inch” Kuyperian-Neocal thing. And I agree that Twitter is a bad medium for deep thoughts. Keller’s tweets are platitudinous and tiresome. Mine are just inane.

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  23. “offering REAL relationships, REAL restoration, REAL answers, and REAL Hope
    to one of the most creative cities in the world!!” — Where to begin? I have a new term (DGH-inspired) for the boosterism with hubris growth industry-hipsters — hubsters.

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  25. “I have never heard anyone who actually lives in New York mention Tim Keller’s name”

    I asked my wife’s uncle and cousin, both of whom live in Seattle, if they had heard of Marc Driscoll & Mars Hill. Neither had.

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  27. Since the CRC is going the direction of the Protestant Mainline they may not want the word “grave” in any part of their church names. Old members, dwindling numbers, long, slow march to extinction and irrelevance…

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  29. We need to start a virtual currency called “Hartcoin”:

    Bbqcoin? Virtual Money Is Smoking

    Gary Thomas plans to get rich off virtual currencies—but not bitcoin. The electrical engineer is betting big on newcomers like alphacoin and fastcoin.

    Mr. Thomas started trading the digital currencies from his home outside Boston earlier this year. He said he is convinced this is his ticket to fortune, even after an earlier attempt—investing in Internet stocks during the dot-com bubble—ended in disaster.

    “I think this is a point in history that will never be repeated,” said Mr. Thomas, who is in his 50s. “These things will take off like nobody will imagine.”

    A “cryptocurrency” craze has spawned more than 80 entrants, from peercoin and namecoin, to worldcoin and hobonickels. In October and November alone, developers launched gridcoin, fireflycoin and zeuscoin. Bbqcoin has enjoyed a renaissance after a false start in 2012. Litecoin, launched in 2011, has turned into the strongest bitcoin alternative.

    Virtual-currency experts credit bitcoin’s explosion into the public consciousness for a flurry of new currencies—and an increasing legion of fans hoping to make a quick buck trading them.

    Bitcoin, launched in 2009, fetched about $548 a coin as of late-afternoon Wednesday in New York, making all the existing bitcoin worth about $6.6 billion, according to CoinDesk.com, which averages bitcoin prices across exchanges. Its rise sparked hearings on Capitol Hill this week during which enforcement agencies described it as a legitimate currency but expressed worries that it could be used for illegal activities.

    That was a golden moment for the cryptomania. Bitcoin prices soared as high as $781.82 on Monday, before plunging. Some other digital currencies jumped, as well.

    Bitcoin was invented by an unidentified person or group going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. A finite number of bitcoin can be created, or “mined,” by using computers to find solutions to complex math problems. The bitcoin can then be traded digitally. Investors also buy and sell the coins via online exchanges, and a few merchants accept virtual currencies as payment for goods and services.

    The new coins generally use the same basic principles as bitcoin but have slightly different algorithms or rules that can speed up transactions or change the frequency and difficulty with which the coins are awarded.

    Because none of the coins are as widely accepted or used as bitcoin, investors place a fraction of bitcoin’s value on the upstarts.

    Many of the new coins trade on exchanges such as Cryptsy, of Delray Beach, Fla., a unit of Project Investors Inc., and BTC-e.com. Cryptsy founder Paul Vernon said his exchange has handled as many as 33,000 trades in a day from enthusiasts such as Mr. Thomas.

    A pool of day traders also has popped up, trying to take advantage of rate discrepancies on different exchanges to make money.

    One bbqcoin, for example, traded at about 0.00000474 bitcoin on Cryptsy Wednesday afternoon. One litecoin bought 0.01331025 bitcoin and one krugercoin bought 0.00000024 bitcoin.

    Greg Schvey, head of research for the Genesis Block, a New York research and data firm that tracks digital currencies, said the sheer number of new currencies being launched “can be distracting.”

    Many of them likely won’t succeed and will ultimately be worthless, Mr. Schvey said. “These coins are only as good as the next person who is going to accept it,” he said.

    A couple of the coins weren’t even created as a serious venture.

    Andy Pilate, a software coder who also goes by the name Cubox, in July 2012 rolled out bbqcoin, “just for ‘fun,’ ” according to his post on bitcointalk.org, a digital-currency online forum. Many of the forum’s users derided bbqcoin for being a clone of other currencies and for making light of virtual currencies. It quickly disappeared. But earlier this year, some of its original supporters resurrected bbqcoin. Now, a couple of merchants even take it as payment.

    Taylor Minor, owner of the Stoney Creek Roasters coffee shop in Cedarville, Ohio, mines bbqcoin and takes it in his shop. In October, he made his first bbqcoin-denominated sale to a friend, who bought two servings of Cookies and Cream ice cream for 7,000 bbqcoins. “It kind of brought my two worlds together of food and cryptocurrencies,” he said.

    Mr. Pilate, who is 17 years old and studying computer science in Paris, said he hadn’t paid much attention to the coin since abandoning it. “It makes me happy that finally people are using it,” he said.

    Litecoin has emerged as the strongest alternative to bitcoin, with a market capitalization of about $176.8 million as of late afternoon Wednesday, according to coinmarketcap.com, which tracks the market capitalizations of virtual currencies.

    Litecoin is designed to process transactions four times faster than the bitcoin network while sacrificing some efficiency in the mining process, said litecoin creator Charlie Lee, who is now a software engineer at Coinbase Inc., a startup that seeks to make it easier for merchants to take bitcoin.

    A few vendors now accept litecoin, as well. For example, Bees Brothers, which sells honey and caramels in North Logan, Utah, takes bitcoin and litecoin.

    Some bitcoin supporters say they don’t feel threatened by litecoin.

    Jinyoung Lee Englund, a spokeswoman for the Bitcoin Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes bitcoin, said she thinks the currencies can coexist in the same way investors use more than one commodity as a store of value. “If bitcoin is like gold, litecoin is like silver,” she said.

    Mr. Thomas, who mined his digital coins using his computer, says many more currencies will gain value. He is confident his pile, which he said is now worth about 8 bitcoins, or about $4,384, will be worth more than $10 million by next November.

    “There have been so many times where in the past, I’ve been right at the right spot and unwilling to take the big risk, and as a result I look back and say, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ ” he said.

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  36. DG, ‘zactly — are they redeeming concrete, media, soil, or all of the above. Whither the crunchy? Oh I forgot, urban gardens good and rural churches dispensable.

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  37. Montani: I just read the adjectives. Renewing, relentless, welcoming, holistic, vigorous, zzzzzzzzz. Then I wake up an hour later feeling refreshed. So there’s that.

    But I can’t figure out why they link to the Puritans. There must be one hardhead there who insisted on it.

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  38. I’m guessing the city folk read poems and, I don’t know, go to operas that have agrarian themes? But the farmers themselves aren’t good for church aesthetics.

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  39. CW asks, rhetorically, “…Would Keller’s thing work in … Wheaton? …”
    To which I reply, it already has; you’re a few years behind the times. Plus, not the hip, hip, hoorays from the audience when he mentions about cultural transformation. Also take note of the church in which this service took place.

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  40. the great leveler is revealed: no matter how skilled, focused or seemingly infallible he may be, no man is granted immunity from the the wrath of the golf gods – from the variability that defines life.  And when I witness a relative no-name win a major open championship or hit a hole-in-one, I bask in the glow of a simple, joyful truth: that every once in awhile, God smiles – even on a wretched golfing soul like me – and all is right in the world.

    Mark, never too cold for golf (emoticon).

    Good one.

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  41. I’ve dropped by Redeemer a couple times now. It’s old school in liturgy more or less and the preaching is pretty solid, but sprinkled throughout are two things that just seem a bit off to me. One is that it can be self-helpy, which surprises me.

    Two (and the bigger point that I’m still thinking through a bit), is that I think they can get a bit too excited about their intellectual approach to the faith (a not too subtle rejection of evangelicalism?) in an attempt to reach the well-educated in Manhattan. Their emphasis on the intellect (every week!) in light of their context reminds me of (amusingly enough) seeker friendly churches, but the way they quote guys like MacIntyre, Lewis, prominent sociologists, and pop TV shows and movies it seems a little desperate (we’re smart [cool!] too!), and because of that it seems at times as if the sources they’re quoting (as excellent and as Christian as some of them are) end up carrying the weight of the text rather than the other way around. In a strange way, then, the whole exercise seems a bit skewed: the white collar intellectual inhabitants of the city, not the confession, determines the message preached.

    Of course, a church has to account for its unique setting even as it preaches the gospel (the HOPC has a lot of college kids and occasional outbreaks of popery), but that can easily become over wrought (we’re the intellectual church that reaches out intellectual people in God’s favorite place: cities! [this logic strikes me as very utilitarian]) and ignores the comprehensiveness of the confession.

    Anyway, my two cents.

    Oh, and Union City is in Jersey and no self-respecting New Yorker would bother with those people.

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  42. Adam, that’s helpful. Even more problematic is TKNY’s contextualization of church order (deaconesses and very non-Presby affiliations and ways of doing things). They’ve already outgrown the Book of Church Order. I suspect the WCF will prove too restrictive ere long.

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  43. “All of American Presbyterianism’s major controversies started over New York’s excesses”

    Van Til vs. Clark was held at MSG?

    Did Don Dunphy, Howard Cosell, or Marv Albert make the call on play-by-play?

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  48. But I’d probably take the city malarkey over this:

    Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical Christian activist who is influential in Iowa politics and is considering running for U.S. Senate, launched a new book over the weekend.
    “If 7:14” is based on a passage in the Bible that says if people pray and turn from their wicked ways, God will hear and will heal their land.
    Vander Plaats is urging Iowans and people across the country to pray at 7:14 a.m. and 7:14 p.m. each day for a Christian revival in this country.
    “Set your smartphones,” he told a crowd of several hundred at a fundraising dinner Saturday night in West Des Moines for his organization, the Family Leader. The foreword of the book was written by Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister and 2008 presidential candidate.

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  49. The same Huckabee who as governor of Arkansas refused to sign a tornado disaster relief bill because it used the boilerplate legal phrase “acts of God.” Huckster said his god didn’t cause tornadoes.

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  50. The same Huckabee who was an SBC megachurch pastor before running for governor, before running for president, before becoming a TV star/culture warrior — an original celebvangelical.

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  52. If you want an endorsement from Mike Huckabee you’ll increase your chances exponentially if you’re a right wing evangelical in, say, Iowa or New Hampshire. He’s endorsed “With Christ in the Voting Booth” by an Iowa author. “Thankfully we don’t go into the voting booth alone; Christ goes with us.” There has to be corn-sugary painting of that somewhere – get on it, Chorts…

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  57. The Arkansas Legislature scrambled today to rewrite a bill intended to protect storm victims after Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, objected to language describing such natural phenomena as tornadoes and floods as ”acts of God.”

    Mr. Huckabee said that signing the legislation ”would be violating my own conscience” inasmuch as it described ”a destructive and deadly force as being ‘an act of God.’ ” The Governor, a Republican, said the legislation was an otherwise worthy bill with objectives he shared.

    Remember, God never has caused a flood or been associated with a cloud or a whirlwind. Also comical is the image of the Ark. legislature scrambling. I used to cover them as a new photographer and I never saw any scrambling.

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  61. For the record, I wrote the book from an amil/two kingdom perspective. I am not an “open theism” I have written against it on a blog, Caffeinated Thoughts. My thought is not that “we should vote for who Jesus would vote for”, but that we should vote responsibly, knowing that Christ goes with us into the voting booth.

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  63. “New York churches no longer outcasts

    Religion Mayoral candidate Joe Lhota gives more attention to Protestant Christians in the city | Emily Belz”

    Unfortunately, Republican candidates remain outcasts in New York City…

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