Category: Adventures in Church History

Audacity Lives

Published on by D. G. Hart67 Comments

This just in from the Vatican:

Pope Francis will grant a plenary indulgence – a remission of all temporal punishment due to sin – to World Youth Day Catholic participants, the Vatican announced July 9.

The head of the Church’s Apostolic Penitentiary, Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro, and its secretary, Bishop Krzysztof Nykiel, released a decree on July 9 that says the Pope will grant it during the July 22-29 event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“The young people and the faithful who are adequately prepared will obtain the Plenary Indulgence, once a day and under the usual conditions (sacramental Confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer in accordance with the intentions of the Holy Father), applicable also to the souls of deceased faithful,” states the decree published July 9.

The document adds that people who cannot attend World Youth Day can receive it “under the usual spiritual, sacramental and prayer conditions, in a spirit of filial submission to the Roman Pontiff.”

But this means they must participate “in the sacred functions on the days indicated, following the same rites and spiritual exercises as they occur via television or radio or, with due devotion, via the new means of social communication.”

While Christian Smith tells us to “get over” indulgences, they are still pretty hard to fathom from a biblical paradigm. I still come back to a point that Luther made in a 1516 sermon, as summarized by Roland Bainton:

To assert that the pope can deliver souls from purgatory is audacious. If he can do so, then he is cruel not to release them all. But if he possess this ability, he is in a postition to do more for the dead than for the living. . . . Indulgences can remit only those private satisfactions imposed by the Church, and may easily militate against interior penance, which consists in true contrition, true confession, and true satisfaction in spirit. (Here I Stand, 71)

Succession (not apostolic)

Published on by D. G. Hart73 Comments

I have long been intrigued by the question of who succeeds a personality who has made a particular institution a success — not just a success, but upon whom the institution depends. In the parachurch world, for instance, folks wonder who will replace R. C. Sproul. Can anyone? If not, what will become of Ligonier Ministries? Or what about Mike Horton? He’s not about to retire but could White Horse Media go on without Mike? Then there is the case of our friend Ken Myers and Mars Hill Audio. Will Mars Hill simply stop production whenever Ken decides to tend only to his garden?

This is not simply a question for Christians. Would Fresh Air be what it is without Terry Gross? Or what about Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion? In the former case, Gross has had enough guests fill in for her that the show could conceivably go on. Gross clearly “branded” Fresh Air but it continues to be a worthwhile listen when she is not running the show. She has (or her producers have) done what the late night talk shows did routinely — recruit guest hosts who then establish a connection with audiences that allows a Jay Lenno or David Letterman to emerge as a natural successor to Johnny Carson (or even a rival to Johnny’s replacement). (The later series of The Larry Sanders show are very entertaining but also poignant on the egos and expectations involved in these transitions.) In contrast to Terry Gross, Garrison Keillor does not seem to be interested in grooming anyone to take over the show. Not that I am a regular listener, but I can’t recall anyone filling in for Keillor as host. And yet, I can think of any number of writers or entertainers who might possibly make it work — Ellen Degeneres, Roy Blount, Jr., Tom Bodett, or Mitch Albom. The show would lose the Lake Wobegone connection. But it would go on as one of the more entertaining sites on the radio (a distant second to Phil who is cannot be replaced, unless R. C. Collins has a change of heart about a career).

By the way, another example of successful succession is First Things. Who would have imagined that the magazine could go on without Richard John Neuhaus? But after a rocky interlude, Rusty Reno appears to have righted the ship and edits what continues to be a thoughtful, ecumenical but primarily right-of-center Roman Catholic publication.

What prompted me to express these thoughts publicly was the news (thanks to Anthony Bradley) of the Village Church shuddering its doors. This was a congregation formed 18 years ago in Brooklyn when the brand of TKNY was expanding shelf space in the church planting superstore. But that work has ceased:

The time has now come for the Village Church to conclude. We believe our Lord is allowing the community to come to a graceful end.

As we look back over the past eighteen years, we are grateful for all that we have seen Christ do, working through us, even us, to comfort many in need, to challenge the strong, to walk alongside those who follow Jesus, and to bear witness to His life in Greenwich Village. We are happy to see what has been done in hundreds of important lives.

Now the members of the Village Church are being scattered. Along with the sadness of loss of relationships, we see God’s hand in this, causing us to take what we have learned into other church contexts. We are confident that He has, for each one of us, different work to do, in “preaching the word.”

We celebrated Christ for the final time at Greenwich House on April 7th. It was a time of great rejoicing and appreciation for what God has done.

Bradley wonders if this indicates the shelf-life for a “baby-boomber planted missional church.” My wonder is if this is another signal that Tim Keller’s empire is in decline. Of course, Redeemer NYC faces the same problem that Sproul, Horton, Myers, and Keillor do — how do you replace the guy who defined the institution? Although a common problem in the world of communications, it is one that churches that are defined more by teaching and worship than by personality do not usually face. Most congregations understand that its own pastor is not the best in the world but is the one called by God and the congregation for a specific stage in the life of a church. When that pastor retires or takes another call, the congregation assembles a committee and calls another man who will carry out his functions in the context of this congregation’s characteristics (both good and bad). Out of these circumstances emerges a form of spontaneous order where congregations and pastors have reasonable expectations of each other, ones that include an understanding the pastor does not define the congregation. But does the same dynamic work for celebrity pastors? And if one of the jewels in the Redeemer crown of city churches cannot survive even with Keller still active, what does this portend for the other congregations in NYC?

Independence Day After Glow

Published on by D. G. Hart127 Comments

This is the first Independence Day in recent memory that fell on a Thursday, thus giving the week more of a Thanksgiving Day rhythm than the typical federal holiday pattern of a three-day weekend. Which is to say that life appears to be slow on Internet and the street.

So while we Yanks are still in an autonomous mood, here are a few more considerations about Calvinism and the American Revolution. Paul Helm offers a minor correction to the point made here that American colonial Calvinists were likely following John Locke more than John Calvin. His conclusion is sufficiently mild that Christian nationalists and 2kers might both claim Helm’s agreement:

Yet it can be argued that for all his personal conservatism, there were, in Calvin’s view of civil society, enough chinks and fissures through which a case for rebellion against civic injustice could be developed. Calvin himself was certainly not an advocate of rebellion. Far from it. But what of those who came after? That this is the road that some Calvinists trod can be seen from Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 2: The Age of Reformation.

Whatever Calvin taught, and however later Calvinists justified their politics, some scholars have actually looked at the citations of the American founders to see which authors they were reading and following. Almost thirty years ago, Donald Lutz came up with the following scorecard:

1. Montesquieu
8.3%
2. Blackstone
7.9
3. Locke
2.9
4. Hume
2.7
5. Plutarch
1.5
6. Beccaria
1.5
7. Trenchard & Gordon
1.4
8. Delolme
1.4
9. Pufendorf
1.3
10. Coke
1.3
11. Cicero
1.2
12. Hobbes
1.0

Everyone else on Lutz’s list of 36 “Most Cited Thinkers” comes in at less than one percent. For those curious, Calvin did not make the cut. (I have to admit that some of these names were obscure to me, hence the links. For the record, Delolme and Beccaria find no results at American Creation, while Trenchard & Gordon do. Our smart guy TVD is not responsible for the posts on T&G.)

Lutz also compares the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in their citations of groups of authors. The Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Adams) cited Enlightenment figures 34% of the time, Whigs 23%, and Classical 33%. They did not cite the Bible.

In contrast, the Anti-Federalists (who? i.e., Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Luther Martin) cited the Bible 9% of the time, Enlightenment 38%, Whig 29%, and Classical 9%.

No smoking guns here, but maybe a few matters to ponder while smoking a stogie on the hammock.

And the Rockets Red Glare

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

So much so that the brightness blinds.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (doing things that would have driven Leo XIII bonkers) is in the midst of rallying Rome’s faithful for another all out defense of religious liberty. As a registered Libertarian Party member (have I ever voted for a Libertarian, I don’t know), who am I to take issue with another communion’s defense of liberty? But as a registered church historian, I am having trouble making sense of the Bishops’ call (which I believe is different from Jason and the Callers’ call).

First, this fortnight coincides with the feast day of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher. Here’s how Timothy Cardinal Dolan explains it:

Our two weeks begin tomorrow, June 21, and include moving feasts, such as June 22, the feast of Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher, both martyrs in England as they prophetically defended the rights of the Church against intrusion by the crown; June 24, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, the one who defended God’s law to a tyrant and lost his head because of his courage; and, of course, Independence Day.

I understand that evangelical Protestants are not as knowledgeable of church history as they should be, but to bring up More and Fisher is to court some of the old antagonisms that divide Protestants and Roman Catholics. Not that evangelicals would be comfortable supporting the English monarchy, but neither were George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards forerunners of the kind of evangelical-Roman Catholic co-belligerency kicked off by Evangelicals and Catholics Together. In which case, at a time when the bishops want to support religious freedom more generally, why invoke saints executed by Protestants or bring back memories of times when Protestants and Roman Catholics both advocated religious freedom but for the sake of excluding the other side (I believe we call that religious suppression)?

Second, invoking martyrs has the effect of making contemporary believers’ look ungrateful (for the blessings of religious liberty) and their pligths look pretty tame. Cardinal Dolan highlights the following as instances of “challenges to religious liberty”:

The HHS mandate, which presumes to intrude upon the very definition of faith and ministry, and could cause believers to violate their consciences

Impending Supreme Court rulings that could redefine marriage, which will present a host of difficulties to institutions and people who stand on their faith-based understanding of authentic marriage as between one man and one woman

Proposed legislation at the national and state levels that would expand abortion rights, legalize assisted suicide, restrict immigrants from full participation in society, and limit the ability of Church agencies to provide humanitarian services

Government intrusion into the rights and duties of parents regarding their children

Overt persecution of believers in many countries of the world

All of these are matters for concern, but in the context of martyrdom they seem trivial. One might argue that these sorts of threats to religious liberty are the road to martyrdom, but that would take a conspiratorial w-w. On the other side, one could also argue that this is part of the bargain that religious believers make with modern liberalism — we don’t get our way on how the government should rule or how our neighbors should live but we get to worship our maker and keep our lives. I suspect Christians in Iran and Egypt would take that deal.

Third, the bishops’ understanding of religious liberty is a historical bait-and-switch. On the one hand, they invoke the founders of the U.S. (fine), but then on the other hand bring up the nation’s anti-Catholic Protestant past without identifying Protestants (smart move) but pinning the blame on government (Roman Catholics used to have a higher view of government than Protestants):

Historically, what have been significant religious liberty issues affecting Catholics in our country?

Equal treatment of Catholic Schools: Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Jesuit settlers from England in 1634. However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from Maryland, as well as the destruction of the school they founded. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely. The American Revolution brought historic changes, and in 1782, Catholics in Philadelphia opened St. Mary’s School, considered the first parochial school in the U.S. In 1791, the ratification of the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom, helped Catholics further cement the establishment of Catholic schools.

Regardless, anti-Catholic sentiment in the late nineteenth century led to opposition to parochial schools. State governments opposed providing funds to aid students attending parochial schools, which Catholics founded largely in response to the requirement to pray and read from Protestant Bibles in public schools. Some Members of Congress attempted to block all government aid to religiously affiliated schools with the proposed “Blaine Amendment” in 1875. This constitutional amendment was never ratified at the federal level, but many state legislatures adopted similar legislation and amendments. Those “little Blaine” amendments are still in place in the constitutions of about thirty-seven states, and still operate to block Catholic school students from equal participation in government educational benefits.

Anti-Catholic bigotry in presidential campaigns: During the 1884 presidential campaign, candidate James G. Blaine (who proposed the “Blaine Amendment” in Congress) attended a meeting in a church in New York at which a minister chided those who had left the Republican Party by stating, “We don’t propose to leave our party and identify with the party whose antecedents are rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Blaine sat quietly during the anti-Catholic remark. The scene was reported widely in the press, and it cost Blaine in the election, particularly in New York City.

During the 1928 presidential campaign, Al Smith, a Catholic who had been elected governor of New York three times, was the Democratic candidate for president. It is widely believed that Smith’s Catholic beliefs played a key role in his loss of the 1928 presidential election, as anti-Catholic sentiment among the electorate was strong. Many feared that Smith would answer to the pope and not the constitution if elected president.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism became a major issue in the election. Like Al Smith, Kennedy faced charges that he would “take orders from the Pope” and could not uphold the oath of office.

Establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican: In the first years of the United States, the new Republic had contacts with the Papal States. However, in 1867, Congress prohibited the financing of any diplomatic post to the Papal authority. This began a period of over seventy years when the U.S. did not have a diplomatic representative to the Pope, coinciding with a period of strong anti-Catholicism in the U.S. In 1940, President Roosevelt sent a “personal representative” to the Pope who served for ten years. However, when President Truman nominated an ambassador to the Vatican in 1951, opposition mounted, and President Truman abandoned the effort. Presidents Nixon and Carter sent personal representatives to the Vatican. In 1984, President Reagan announced that full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Vatican had been established, and the U.S. has continued to send ambassadors to the Vatican since then.

I hardly approve of this anti-Catholic bigotry in a nation that was supposed to be open to all faiths, but it is a strange narrative of U.S. history that begins with the founders notions of religious liberty (who were opposed to priestcraft and superstition — read Roman Catholicism) and then moves to the devilish ways (without naming them) that Protestants, who also defended religious liberty (and also opposed priestcraft and superstition), mistreated Roman Catholics. When Ray Nothstine writes that “Recapturing the fullness of religious liberty in America will require . . . a fundamental shift in how we view God and man and his relationship to the state,” he may want to consider how a theologically conservative view of God and man was responsible for Protestants and Roman Catholics persecuting each other.

Carl Trueman recently warned about the host of ways that mythologizing politics or religion polarizes the world. He is certainly right to argue that the religious right is not alone guilty of myth-making. At the same time, mythologizing religious liberty obscures how good our times are compared to those when church members actually died for their faith at the hands of members from the rival church. Not to mention that it obscures the rivalry that still exists (spiritually, not temporally) between those churches.

Update: Some Roman Catholics aren’t purchasing the bargain.

Quote of the Day (too long to tweet)

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

This came in the further discussion between PCA and URC ministers about a footnote in the revised Belgic 36 (June 17, 11:50pm):

But in the end, I agree with all “sides” (I hate to use that term regarding brothers who agree on far, far more than they disagree) that this particular issue will not solve the Two Kingdoms-Neo Calvinist discussion one way or another. I found what Herman Kuiper said in his minority report to the CRC Synod in 1946 very helpful on this issue: “it must be said that there is no communisitic [one agreed upon] opinion in Reformed circles as to what the precise duty of the State with reference to the first table of the law may be, nor as to what the reciprocal obligations of Church and State are, and that is reason enough why it is unwise at this time to try to incorporate any deliverance touching these matters in our confession which should be the expression of our common faith.”

What's Good for the Turks is Good for the Protestants

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

Part of what makes studying the Ottoman Empire and Turkey fascinating is that you see aspects of civil society and political development that we in the West mostly take for granted. It is like studying a foreign language. I never understood English grammar as well as when taking Greek and Hebrew in seminary. To use English I never really needed to know the grammar. Not true for reading Greek (and faking my way through) Hebrew. The same goes for understanding the way western societies operate. We may take a civics class, but that doesn’t mean we understand the history behind or the choices made that resulted in a democratic and federated republic.

This is a way of introducing a poignant comment by Walter McDougall about the Turkish republic’s origins:

[Ataturk] set out to separate the state from Islamic religion, liberate women, define Turkish citizenship by residence rather than ethnicity, Westernize the legal system, promote economic development, and pursue peaceful relations with all of its neighbors.

In other words, Turkey accomplished in the 1920s what the United States did in the late 18th century. And Turkey also carried out some of the political outcomes that prevailed in Italy in 1870 when the papacy lost temporal authority over the Papal Legations. What was crucial in all three cases was for the laws of Turkey, Italy and the United States to be separated from the laws of Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism respectively.

But apparently, some Protestants have not learned this lesson politics. They still insist that the state enforce God’s law. They also insist that they have no resemblance to Islam or Pius IX. In fact, one of the great ironies of U.S. history is that Protestants used a high-wall conception of the separation of church and state against any Roman Catholic attempts to receive state funding for parochial schools. When the courts then applied that same argument to public schools and removed prayer and Bible reading, Protestants (mainline, evangelical, and fundamentalist) cried foul. Apparently, separation of church and state is needed for Muslims and Roman Catholics, but not for our team.

Of course, the contemporary opponents of the secular may be right. The Bible may require a union of religion and politics and a return to Old Testament Israel. But are those contemporary critics of 2k and the secular willing to identify themselves as anti-American (not simply opposed to the U.S. of Obama but also to the republic of George Washington)? And are they willing to admit that they are anti-Western (in a way similar to political Islam)? Or do they want all the benefits of a constitutional republic in the West with whining rights about godless secular societies?

Van Der Molen Pulls Up and Chats A While

Published on by D. G. Hart292 Comments

Our typical interactions with the Indiana attorney and URC elder, who appears to be anti-2k all the time, have been of the drive-by variety in comm boxes at various blogs. But now Mark Van Der Molen has outdone himself and provided a substantial rendering of the history of the revision of the Belgic Confession, Article 36, on the civil magistrate. Particularly intriguing are the revisions’ emergence in the context of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, an international Reformed ecumenical body that offered to churches like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a “conservative” alternative to either Carl McIntire’s International Council of Christian Churches or the liberal Protestant World Council of Churches. Readers should check Van Der Molen’s account on their own. They should also be aware of the debate over whether confessional subscription to the revised Belgic extends to footnotes.

Instead of weighing in on another communion’s internal debates, I want to challenge several implications that follow Van Der Molen’s narrative:

First, he claims that 2k advocates have used the revision of Belgic 36 to:

1. remove the magistrate’s concern with the first table of the Law,

2. remove the magistrate’s subjection to the authority of the Word of God, and

3. remove the magistrate’s purpose in the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.

I can’t speak for all 2kers (particularly Scott Clark and Mike Horton, who have subscribed the Three Forms of Unity), but I am not sure that Van Der Molen describes accurately their motives or the consequences of their position. This construction is again a common tactic among 2k’s critics, that somehow 2kers want to see God’s word flouted, and Christ’s kingdom reduced, and the gospel denied. In point of fact, and an attorney should know this, the arguments of 2kers do not prove what their motives are. Also, important to note, is that 2kers have denied explicitly having such anti-biblical, antinomian, and anti-kingdom motivations. Instead, they have repeatedly affirmed that they promote 2k for the good of the church, the defense of the gospel, and the rule of Christ among his people. Doesn’t such testimony count for anything with an officer of the court (I guess not when he is prosecuting alleged offenders)? Of course, 2kers could be confused, foolish, or simply wrong about the effects of 2k. But Van Der Molen once again engages in the overreach common among 2k’s critics (not to mention Rush Limbaugh or Fox News).

Second, Van Der Molen has a Netherlands-centric reading of Reformed history. For instance, he accuses 2kers of re-writing history to make it fit their view (meanwhile he does not notice how 2kers have written a great deal about the larger history of Reformed Protestantism than his narrow topic of revising Belgic 36):

What is not legitimate is a “two kingdoms” re-writing of history to suggest the entire first table has been entirely removed from the magistrate’s purview. Kuyper did not argue for a “table 1-ectomy”. More importantly, neither did our Reformed forbears when they revised the confession. Until we see a “two kingdoms” proponent successfully overture for a second-table-only revision, our confessional subscription today yet stands with the churchmen who adopted the RES Declaration and the revised Belgic 36 which retains the principle that the magistrate’s tasks are subject to both tables of God’s law.

This is a questionable reading of history on several grounds. First, Van Der Molen shows no awareness of the revisions that American Presbyterians made to their confession 150 years before the Belgic revisions. Last I checked, Presbyterians were part of the Reformed churches. The American revision includes this language, which I admit is different from the Belgic revisions:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. (23.4, emphasis added)

But in narrowing his historical analysis to the Belgic’s revision, Van Der Molen gives the impression that the Presbyterians don’t count (or that when he cites VanDrunen or me, Orthodox Presbyterians are not bound by Belgic as church officers).

Also troubling about Van Der Molen’s references to the Belgic’s revision’s context is a complete disregard for what happened to the RES or its member churches. The GKN, one of the big players in establishing the RES, no longer exists, having run out of confessional steam in 2004 to join the national generically Protestant church of the Dutch monarchy. Nor does Van Der Molen observe that the RES itself no longer exists, having in2006 voted itself out of existence when it joined the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a body dominated by liberal Reformed and Presbyterian communions. So if Van Der Molen wants his church brethren to respect their forefathers, he may want to specify which forefathers they might be. The GKN? The CRC? The RES? Is Van Der Molen really pinning his hopes on that group of Reformed churches? Talk about re-writing history.

Third, and relatedly, Van Der Molen ignores the ecumenical relations that governed the churches that revised the Belgic Confession. He concludes by stating it is time now “for the Reformed churches to recover the Reformed confessions, Belgic 36 incuded.” Well, how about the American revisions to the Westminster Confession? Does Van Der Molen really want to recover that confession? Or how about the ecumenical relations that may bring tensions between the existing Belgic 36 and OP Confession 23? Did the CRC or GKN (or the Covenanters, for that matter) ever make teaching on the civil magistrate the basis for fraternal relations? Have the URC and OPC objected to the other communion’s teachings on the civil magistrate in attempting to produce a psalter-hymnal? Has Westminster California or Mid-America Seminary ever required its Orthodox Presbyterian ministers to own the Belgic’s teaching on the magistrate and forsake their own communion’s confession?

To my knowledge, the answer is no. But Van Der Molen seems to think that Belgic 36 now needs to govern all the Reformed believers. Why? Three syllables, two words: culture wars. Theonomy, the religious right, and certain varieties of neo-Calvinism (including the Federal Vision) are all reactions to the perceived secularization of the United States in a period known as “Post-Protestant America.” Conversely, 2k is a set of arguments with the aim of steering the churches away from “putting their trust in princes.” Both have developed at the same cultural moment. One has a very narrow reading of Reformed history. The other does not.

Is This Good or Honest History?

Published on by D. G. Hart52 Comments

Rather than issue another “Declaration,” the Manhattan (is that Kansas?) Declarers are soliciting more signatures for their efforts to identify Christianity with the ongoing fights about the culture. I received an email from the folks at Christianity Today, no less, asking me if I have yet to sign MD. (It did make me wonder how many times Old Bob has signed it.)

So I went back to read the Declaration and gave up after going through the “wouldn’t-it-be-nice” historical narrative that apparently justifies the statement and is supposed to reassure non-Christians that Christianity has always been a source of sweetness and Golden Retrievers:

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our
societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in recent decades to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Sorry, but “while fully acknowledging Christian “imperfections and shortcomings,” the Declarers acknowledged nothing. I see nothing about Michael Servetus, the German nobles response to the Peasant’s Revolt, Edgardo Mortara or Prohibition. This is a Peter Marshall, Light and the Glory, Hallmark version of Christian history. It does nothing to persuade me to sign. If Christians can so selectively and self-centeredly recount their past achievements, I have no reason to trust their assessment of the times in which we live.

Meanwhile, this kind of history does nothing to school Christians about the kind of reception they may face when talking to folks who live in Manhattan. It may even promote idolatry.

John Clarifies Confusing Johns

Published on by D. G. Hart310 Comments

John Calvin, the Genevan reformer who had the most influence on the theology of the colonial clergy, taught that rebellion against civil government was never justified: “If we keep firmly in mind that even the worst kings are appointed by this same decree which establishes the authority of kings, then we will never permit ourselves the seditious idea that a king is to be treated according to his deserts, or that we need not obey a king who does not conduct himself towards us like a king.” Calvin added: “we must honour the worst tyrant in the office in which the Lord has seen fit to set him,” and “if you go on to infer that only just governments are to be repaid by obedience, your reasoning is stupid.” He taught that Christians must “venerate” even those rulers who were “unworthy” of veneration. As political scientist Gregg Frazer has argued, “One cannot legitimately employ Calvin to justify rebellion, which is why the patriotic preachers argued in terms of ‘Mr. Locke’s doctrine’ rather than Calvin’s.” In the end, today’s Christians who are interested in understanding the relationship between Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 and the American Revolution must come to grips with the fact that many patriotic clergy may have been more influenced in their political positions by John Locke than the Bible. (John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? 118-19)

Half-Modern

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For those who think that we can have republicanism, constitutionalism, and Calvin’s Geneva (certain critics of 2k who live and work in the former Northwest Territory), Geoffrey Wheatcroft reminds about the contrast between pre-modern and modern times:

The challenge of Western modernity produced a remarkable ferment of speculation in the Islamic East, but not in a form that the West has found easy to understand. So “What went wrong” needs to be set in context. For many centuries political and philosophical thought had languished in the East, not least because the Ottoman rulers did not encourage it. As a consequence, the fruits of the European Enlightenment reached the East rather late. Thereafter, Easterners sought (and seek), in the eyes of many modern commentators, to acquire the superficial trappings of Western economic and material progress, without recognizing that these develop from a commitment to education, freedom of thought and enterprise, and an open, essentially secular society. . . .

I suspect that most critics of 2k would like Muslims to be 2k whenever the vigor of political Islam manifests itself. But if Christians want Muslims to keep Shar’ia law out of civil policies and legislation, why don’t they see a similar imperative for themselves. Wheatcroft duly observes that adapting to modernity in the West has not always been smooth:

Nor has progress always had an easy passage even in Europe or the United States. Resistance to a godless and secular society existed in rural areas (like Indiana and Ohio – editing mine) everywhere. Throughout the nineteenth century many conservative Europeans, completely unreconciled to the alien ideals of progress, abhorred every aspect of modernity. For the vast rural majority, especially in eastern and southeastern Europe, in France, Spain, and the mezzogiorno of Italy, these new political and social ideas had no meaning: the faithful usually believed what their priests told them. The resistance to change was not very different in the regions under Islamic rule. Andrew Wheatcroft, Infidels: A History of the Conflict between Christendom and Islam (297, 298)

But what happens for both Muslims and Christians is that the modern ones (the premoderns are not alive) embrace modernity partially:

The eminent political scientist Bassam Tibi has described this melange of tradition and modernity as “half-modernity,” which he calls a “selective choice of orthodox Islam and an instrumental semi-modernity.” Charles Kurzman puts it into a more precise context. “Few revivalists actually desire a full fledged return to the world of 7th century Arabia. Khomeini himself was an inveterate radio listener, and used modern technologies such as telephones, audiocassettes, photocopying, and British short-wave radio broadcasts to promulgate his revivalist message. Khomeini allowed the appearance of women on radio and television, chess playing, and certain forms of music. When other religious leaders objected he responded, ‘the way you interpret traditions, the new civilization should be destroyed and the people should live in shackles or live for ever in the desert.’” (314)

The take away is that both 2k advocates and critics are guilty of being half-modern; none of us follows the laws and policies of Calvin’s Geneva or Knox’s Scotland (though the Netherlands’ toleration of folks like Descartes and Spinoza may be much more of a model for contemporary Bloomington, Indiana and Moscow, Idaho – a historical point unknown to most Dutch-American critics of 2k – than any champion of Reformed Protestantism realizes). 2kers believe they have figured out a way to retain the truths and practices of the Reformation while also living in good conscience in the modern world. The way to do this is to recognize that the church, her truths, and ways are spiritual and do not bend to the logic of modern societies. This results in two standards, one for the church and one for the world. 2kers don’t expect the world to conform to the church.

Anti-2kers also believe they have figured out a way to retain the truths of the Reformation. They do this by insisting that the church’s morality be the norm for society. They do not insist that the church’s truth (doctrine) or practices (worship) be the norm for society, the way those truths and practices were the norm for Geneva and Edinburgh. By clinging to one ethical standard for church and society, without either its theological foundation or its liturgical consequences, anti-2kers think they are following Calvin and Knox. They are actually doing a good impersonation of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Neither side is directly following Calvin. One side is deviating in good conscience.