While Mike Horton zeroes in on the personalities associated with Word of Faith who will be speaking or praying (or speaking in tongues) and the presidential inaugural, not to be missed is the rest of the clergy assembled. Among them, Cardinal Timothy Dolan:
Dolan will be the first Catholic to take part in a presidential inauguration in 40 years, since President Jimmy Carter’s in 1977, the Religion News Service reports. Rabbi Marvin Hier will be the first Jewish clergy involved since Ronald Reagan’s in 1985.
His inclusion “may reflect, in part, homage to the Jewish faith of Trump’s daughter and son-in-law,” Black said. Eldest daughter Ivanka Trump, a convert to Orthodox Judaism, is moving to Washington and expected to serve as a stand-in to the First Lady.
The broad faith representation may also reveal a desire to please the American electorate, more pessimistic about the president-elect than any of his recent predecessors. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump’s overall campaign grade is the lowest among any presidential candidate—winning or losing—since it began collecting data in 1988.
White is the only pastor from Trump’s group of evangelical faith advisors scheduled to speak at the inauguration. The Mormon Tabernacle choir is slated to perform. Trump has downplayed the celebrity factor in his confirmed guest list. So far, Carter is the only former president expected to attend.
Horton puts his objection this way:
Thanks to the First Amendment, Christian orthodoxy has never been a test for public office. But it is striking that Trump has surrounded himself with cadre of prosperity evangelists who cheerfully attack basic Christian doctrines. The focus of this unity is a gospel that is about as diametrically opposed to the biblical one as you can imagine.
But is it fair to say “surrounded”? Kevin Kruse, who teaches at Princeton puts it this way:
“The traditional tasks of an inaugural—bringing the country together and setting an uplifting and unifying agenda for the future—are even more pressing for president-elect Trump,” said Kruse. “And that, I suspect, is why he’s enlisted a much larger lineup of clergy to speak at the inauguration than his predecessors. He knows he needs their help in elevating the tone and, in turn, elevating his presidency as well.”
Either way, a confessional Protestant could object to every religious figure scheduled for the inauguration. Especially in the year that Protestants commemorate the Reformation, shouldn’t Calvinists be up in arms about a Roman Catholic bishop at the event? Why single out Paula White? Looks too much like Megyn Kelly?
Old Life 
Greg, if Liberty is Baptist then how can it be “thoroughly orthodox”?
LikeLike
Different discussion Zrim
LikeLike
Right, Greg, because this thread has been precisely on point all the way through.
LikeLike
I’m glad you understand.
LikeLike
@ Bruce:
Thanks.
I did not know that Rutherford viewed the judicial law as pedagogical.
LikeLike
@ SDB:
Have you read The Abolition of Man?
LikeLike
Jeff,
I’m with Calvin and his “heretical nonsense,” and I like quoting these fathers (who took Christendom for granted) against those who don’t want to get rid of the techno-wizardly panopticon, so much as run it themselves–“Under God,” of course.
Rutherford’s money quote is the final sentence. In for a penny, in for a pound; or own your inner Galatian.
LikeLike
@jeff
Yes. I see bvf as creating a sort of 2k analog, but with the kingdoms being science and other ways of knowing (not so far divorced fron Feyerabend’s seperation of science and state). Doing so makes room for the sort of stuff that Lewis fears we lose from quantification. One gripe I have with Lewis is that his perspective allows no room for adiaphora. The opening bit about whether the lake was beautiful or merely pretty (or was it a river) and whether there was an objective reality about the lake to which we must conform our tastes lest society collapse in a morass of relativism is problematic in my mind. While objective truths may exist in nature, I don’t see why it must be all or nihilism.
That being said I think his Tao may be a fine way to ground ethics, but the problem is that it provides no path forward for determining right action. The Thomistic approach to ground the good in an Aristotellian teleology. I find the modern attempts at grounding ethics in evolutionary biology (e.g., Sam Harris) to be in this tradition more than either they or nlt’s would like to admit. The problem is the metaphysical realism…
There are several problems tied to ethical theory…the question of the ultimate source of what is right and wrong, the question of how we know what to do, and how to compel ourselves to do what is right, and how to cultivate these virtues. Lewis convolves these separate issues in unhelpful ways as I recall.
What do you think about Abolition of man?
LikeLike
Is there an oldlife lexicon of acronyms somewhere that I can consult, when, like now, I have no idea what you guys are talking about?
LikeLiked by 1 person
@gtt
SMH. ICYMI, JC pointed me to an interview with BvF a few comments up. I think my ~MPS led JC to ask about CSL’s AOM.
To get the TLAs, you need the decoder ring imho. Just mail me a SASE with $10 for S&H. LOL.
TTYL,
sdb
LikeLike
LOLZR
CTBHDGWWQ!
LikeLike
@jeff
You stumped my decoder ring.
LikeLike
Just sayin’ that this was a fun thread to re-read.
LikeLike
Took ten years off my life..
LikeLike
And 5 off Darryl’s.
LikeLike
Paul said submit to those in authority? Then he slipped away before they could kill him.
Maybe people do not know what the hell he meant. Maybe there was a context that he was speaking in that we lack.
Maybe those who take Romans 13 out of context will take the mark to show their submission one day.
And Trump is just floating down the apostasy stream that has been flowing for 2000 years.
LikeLike