Category: Novus Ordo Seclorum

Legalism, Ecclesiastical and Political

Published on by D. G. Hart25 Comments

You may disagree with H. L. Mencken, but he sure could spot a major weakness when the pursuit and prosecution of vice goes from the duties of pastors and elders to magistrates and reformers:

Moral endeavour, in brief, has become a recognized trade, or rather a profession, and there have appeared men who pretend to a special and enormous knowledge of it, and who show enough truth in their pretension to gain the unlimited support of Puritan capitalists. The vice crusade, to mention one example, has produced a large crop of such self-constituted experts, and some of them are in such demand that they are overwhelmed with engagements. The majority of these men have wholly lost the flavour of sacerdotalism. They are not pastors, but detectives, statisticians and mob orators, and not infrequently their secularity becomes distressingly evident. Their aim, as they say, is to do things. Assuming that “moral sentiment” is behind them, they override all criticism and opposition without argument, and proceed to the business of dispersing prostitutes, of browbeating and terrorizing weak officials, and of forcing legislation of their own invention through City Councils and State Legislatures. Their very cocksureness is their chief source of strength. (Book of Prefaces, “Puritanism As a Literary Force,” 245)

If that doesn’t sound like the kind of moral activism favored by some “conservative” Protestants these days, I don’t know what does. In fact, this is the kind of engagement with “culture” that seems to go with heavy doses of the law and attacks upon antinomianism. It makes me wonder if the moralists our there really want a return to the kinds of constraints that Mencken faced as an editor (where books like Theodore Dreiser’s The “Genius” could land you in court). Here’s Mencken on his considerations as an editor of the Smart Set circa 1915:

I am, in moments borrowed from more palatable business, the editor of an American magazine, and I thus know at first hand what the burden is. That magazine is anything but a popular one, in the current sense. It sells at a relatively high price; it contains no pictures or other baits for the childish; it is frankly addressed to a sophisticated minority. I may thus assume reasonably, I believe, that its readers are not sex-curious and itching adolescents, just as my colleague of the Atlantic Monthly may assume reasonably that his readers are not Italian immigrants. Nevertheless, as a practical editor, I find that the Comstocks, near and far, are oftener in my mind’s eye than my actual patrons. The thing I always have to decide about a manuscript offered for publication, before ever I give any thought to its artistic merit and suitability, is the question whether its publication will be permitted —not even whether it is intrinsically good or evil, moral or immoral, but whether some roving Methodist preacher, self-commissioned to keep watch on letters, will read indecency into it. Not a week passes that I do not decline some sound and honest piece of work for no other reason. I have a long list of such things by American authors, well-devised, well-imagined, well-executed, respectable as human documents and as works of art—but never to be printed in mine or any other American magazine. It includes four or five short stories of the very first rank, and the best one-act play yet done, to my knowledge, by an American. All of these pieces would go into type at once on the Continent; no sane man would think of objecting to them; they are no more obscene, to a normal adult, than his own bare legs. But they simply cannot be printed in the United States, with the law what it is and the courts what they are. (276-77)

This was not Rome in the 1860s when Protestant worship could get you in trouble with the Roman Inquisition or Constantinople in the 1880s when converting from Islam to Christianity had significant penalties. This was the greatest nation on God’s green earth, established to promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, by Jove!!

Political Theologians Pleading Specially

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Why does Peter Leithart find this encouraging, uplifting, or persuasive? Why does the inadequacy of secularism somehow prove the sufficiency of God-drenched conceptions of the world?

The task is not simply to expose the inadequacy of a world without God or to show the collaborative spirit of religious engagement in the common good. It surely must more specifically be to demonstrate the unique power and thrilling wisdom of the logic of God in Christ and to reconceive tired issues in the light of the shape of Christ’s coming. The authority and the credibility of the public theology rest not so much on the theologian’s insight, intelligence, or subtle grasp of complex issues (wondrous as each may be) as on the ability – respectfully, lucidly, and accessibly – to show how Christ redefines human nature, transforms death, and overturns the givens of life; to show what only God can do and only God has done; and more intriguingly, to highlight the way that questions in public life today reflect and recall issues faced by the church in shaping and embodying Christian doctrine.

Who said secularism was going to figure it all out? Who says that Christendom ever did? In fact, if Peter Heather is correct about the appeal of the Roman Empire to Christian Emperors — Constantine, Justinian, and Charlemagne — then the European world even in its most Christian phase was responsible for a lot of senseless war:

. . . a restored empire that captured the essence of the Roman original had become completely impossible by the year 1000. Not only had Islam broken apart ancient Mediterranean unity, and the balance of power in Western Europe shifted decisively north of the Alps, but, still more fundamentally, patterns of development were now much too equal across the broader European landscape. Thanks to this equalization of development, you might say, the scene was set for the thousand subsequent years of fruitless warfare which followed as Europe’s dynasts intermittently struggled to achieve a level of overarching dominance that was in fact impossible. In that sense, it took the nightmare of two world wars in the twentieth century before the European Dream was finally called into existence to try to put a stop to the process of endless armed competition between powers that were always too equal for there to be an outright winner. (The Restoration of Rome, 294-295)

And let’s be clear, these were dynasts with Christian motivations (at least in part — Hegel’s w-w had not come along yet). So why does Leithart think that putting God into the questions surrounding public life will do any good? This time, he thinks, the politicians, inspired by his guy Constantine, will get it right?

And if anyone ever wants to argue for Christendom as an example of politics accomplished Christianly, or that the Christian society secured human flourishing, s/he should merely consider the fundamental dynamic of medieval monarchy — gain control and keep it by taxation, warfare (and don’t forget leaving behind an undisputed heir). According to Heather:

In the small-state world of early medieval Europe, expansionary warfare replaced large-scale taxation as the source of renewable wealth that was necessary to maintaining a powerful central authority in anything but the very shortest of terms. . . . All of which prompts one final question: if expansion was so crucial to the longer-term exercise of central authority, filling the massive gap in royal finance created by the end of taxation, why did later Carolingian monarch allow it to end? . . . A more profitable route into the problem is to consider expansionary warfare in terms of cost-benefit equations which governed it. Expansionary warfare would bring in profits, but also involved costs, not just in financial terms (food, weaponry, etc.), but also in personal terms since some of those participating would certainly die. If you think about it in this way, then the ideal profile of an area ripe for expansion is easy enough to construct: it needs to be economically developed enough to offer a satisfying level of reward both in terms of moveable booty and potential land-grabbing, but militarily not so well organized that too many of your expeditionary army, on average, are going to die winning access to the prize. . . . On every corner of the frontier, the cost-benefit equation was starting to deliver a negative answer, either because the enemy was too formidable (Spain), or because the likely benefits were not that great (the Balkans), or some combination of the two (southern Italy and the Southern Elbe region). (288-90)

When you think about empire and government in those terms, the modern secular nation-state surely does seem to have its advantages. That’s not because it doesn’t go to war or because it’s run by a bunch of virtucrats. Instead, say what you will about capitalism and its appeal to baser human motivations, it does generate the kind of internal wealth that many times prevents nation-states from having to conquer another people who will pay the government’s bills. Not to mention that constitutionalism and enumerated powers are a much better way of gaining consent than intimidation by force (cheaper too).

The American Jesus on the Un-American Calvin

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Zach Hunt has read Calvin and he is disgusted. Here’s part of what he has to say to Calvin himself:

[Quotations from Calvin on predestination and human wickedness] are, as you demonstrate so well, the logical conclusions of your theology of divine sovereignty and, therefore, at the very heart of what you believe about God. Worse, this isn’t a case of you overstating without thinking through the conclusions. You’re clear that this sort of God who ordains genocide, murder, rape, children abuse, and every other conceivable horrendous act is the God you worship. . . .

The bigger issue I have, John, is that you have a tendency (cause I’ll be the first to admit they’re not all like this) to create incredibly arrogant and sometimes hateful followers who are just as cold, calculating, and callous in their theology and selective in their use of scripture as you are. Just like you, too many of your prominent followers today denounce their critics as heretics while praising God for a whole host of evil things that happen in the world from earthquakes and tornadoes to the marginalization, oppression, and destruction of people made in the image of God.

John, I don’t know how to say it any other way – you’ve got a bad habit of making disciples that aren’t very christlike in their love, mercy, compassion, and grace towards others.

This may or may not be a fair reading of Calvin, but it does do justice to those parts that are hard to square with modern notions about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And yet Americans continue to think that Calvinism bears some special and positive relationship to a political order committed to freedom, equality, and tolerance. In most narratives of American origins, the lines between John Winthrop’s Massachusetts and George Washington’s Philadelphia are smooth, straight, and easy to follow.

Could it be that Americans need to take a page from the Turks who seem to know that the caliph Suleyman the Great was not a forerunner of Ataturk? Consider, for instance, what ??? had to say about the current Turkish television sensation, “Magnificent Century”? Here is an interesting bit from Elif Batuman’s Feb. 17, 2014 piece on the series, “Ottomania: A Hit TV Show Reimagines Turkey’s Imperial Past.”

The debate over “Magnificent Century” touches on one of the key issues in Turkish politics: the question of national identity. Who were the Ottomans – enlightened cosmopolitans or decadent sociopaths? Who was Suleyman? Who are the Turks? For the first eighty years of the republic, national identity was defined largely by the figure of Kemal Ataturk, with his tailored suits, his commitment to scientific positivism and ballroom dancing, his devotion to an adopted daughter who became Turkey’s first female fighter pilot, and his emphatic rejection of all things Ottoman. Ataturk’s picture is on every denomination of Turkish currency, and hangs on the wall of every public building. It is a crime to insult his memory. . . .

The Ottoman revival has its roots in the Cold War, when the main political polarity in Turkey wasn’t Islamist versus secularist but pro-Communist versus anti-Communist. In Turkey, a NATO member and a U.S ally, widespread internal violence between leftist and rightist groups culminated in a military coup, in 1980. The new government addressed the threat of leftism by opening the Turkish market to global competition, and by promoting Islam as an ideological alternative to Communism. One result of these measure was the rise of a new class of observant Muslim businessmen – entrepreneurs who described themselves as “Islamic Calvinists,” characterized Muhammad as a merchant, and cited the Koran as an authority on limiting economic intervention by the government. Where Kemalism had its basis in economic isolationism and cultural Westernization, these businessmen wanted just the opposite: Western-style capitalism and a Turkish culture. In the Ottomans, they found the ready-made idea of a prosperous Muslim elite, trading on an equal footing with Europe but preferring halvah to profiteroles.

In some ways Turkish developments parable simultaneous U.S. history. During the Cold War, especially before 1965 when race, sex, gender, and war divided Americans, Calvinism and the Reformation became a bus stop on the modern ride from the Dark Ages to Enlightenment and the United States’ new order for the ages. In other words, religious roots became useful to both the Turks and Americans to justify national involvements. You can even compare the Religious Right to the Islamo-Calvinists – Americans who refashioned their religious and national heritages to concoct a national identity that made secular humanism illegitimate.

But unlike Turkey where the contrast between republican progress and religious past was always stark under Ataturk’s unruly eyebrows, in the United States the tension between the Puritans and the Founders was glossed or ignored. Americans, from Julia Ward Howe and Perry Miller to Rick Santorum, have rarely if ever been willing to acknowledge that Winthrop’s communitarian, religiously demanding, and exclusive Massachusetts was not what Ben Franklin, James Madison or even John Witherspoon had in mind for the United States (whether confederated or federated).

That dishonesty may be responsible for the secularist and atheistical reaction against the faith-based exceptionalism of the last four decades. It doesn’t make it pleasant or civil, but when you constantly hear about America’s Christian origins as a later iteration of the Puritans errand into the wilderness, you may want to push back.

At the very least, this dishonesty helps to explain why an HBO television series on Massachusetts Bay’s pastors’ wives will not becoming to Netflix soon. Not even the producers of Christian sentimental entertainment could turn those godly women into a series, say “Sectarians in the City,” where the distaff side of the Gospel Coalition could feel good about their small group Bible studies, enjoyment of sex, and cosmetic choices. Although, if someone could provoke the female allies to get their hubbies to read Anne Bradstreet, maybe the New Calvinists would stop being so d—d nice.

Why the Bible Cuts Both Ways — two-edged sword and all that

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Peter Leithart’s comments on Eran Shalev’s American Zion: The Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution to the Civil War reminded me of what I learned from Sunday’s sermon (a week ago) from II Chronicles 36, the culmination of Judah’s fall from grace, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the beginning of the people of God’s status as refugees (which continues). This narrative includes the hard-to-spin wrinkle of Zedekiah, Judah’s king, rebelling against a pagan and foreign king, Nebuchadnezzar, a figure whom the Israelites would normally have regarded as a tyrant and against whom legitimately rebelled. But when Zedekiah doesn’t submit to Nebuchadnezzar, the writer likens Judah’s king to Pharoah — the stiffnecked oppressor who held the Israelites in slavery:

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD his God. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the LORD. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD, the God of Israel. All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations. And they polluted the house of the LORD that he had made holy in Jerusalem. (2 Chronicles 36:11-14 ESV)

This is the sort of narrative that folks like John of Salisbury or Thomas Aquinas may have cited to show that tyranny was not always bad. Well, to be precise, it was bad in the sense of not being the way things were supposed to be. But not bad in the sense that this was a form of rule that God was using to punish his people.

And yet, the American colonists, led by Calvinists as we keep hearing, never stopped to consider whether King George was their Nebuchadnezzar, the Lord’s appointed ruler to mete out punishment for disobedience and infidelity. According to Leithart (following Shalev):

During the Revolution, writers and preachers turned to the historical books of the Hebrew Bible to fill out ancient Roman analyses of political corruption. George III was Rehoboam, Solomon’s son whose high taxes divided Israel, or Ahab, who seized the vineyard of innocent Naboth. The charges against King George were sometimes moderated by reference to the book of Esther: The hapless king was manipulated by Haman-like advisors who turned him against the children of the land of the Virgin. Patriots were Mordecais or Maccabees, while loyalists were “sons of Meroz,” a Hebrew town cursed because its inhabitants refused to follow Deborah and Barak into battle. Colonial writers saw links with Roman history: Washington was Cincinnatus. But Washington was also Gideon, the judge who delivered Israel and very deliberately refused an offer of kingship.

Of course, the American rebels didn’t have a prophet to tell them what to think about King George the way that Zedekiah had Jeremiah to whisper advice or shout warning. And that’s the point. Without divine revelation, how do you interpret any ruler or set of events (or culture or city or television series) as in accord with or against divine will? (And when will the students of American politics who seem to enjoy pointing out the biblical context for political debates also point out that such appeals to holy writ could very well be wrong and an abuse of Scripture?)

My One Chance at an Overnight in the White House

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

Ben Sasse wins the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Nebraska — handily!

Sasse blunted a mini-surge from wealthy bank executive Sid Dinsdale, who appeared to emerge as a threat during the final week of the campaign amid a nasty advertising battle pitting Sasse and his allies against former state treasurer Shane Osborn, the candidate most closely aligned with the GOP establishment.

With most precincts reporting, Sasse led Dinsdale 48 percent to 23 percent, with Osborn running third with 22 percent of the vote. Sasse will be a heavy favorite in the general election considering Nebraska’s strong conservative tilt.

And yet, you’d have never known Sasse was even a candidate from NPR’s fly-over coverage yesterday:

LIASSON: Today there’s a primary in Nebraska, where Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and groups like FreedomWorks are backing one candidate. Mitch McConnell is backing another. But while that intramural fight is bitter, the stakes are low. In the very red State of Nebraska, the Senate seat will probably stay in Republican hands no matter who wins the primary.

There and elsewhere in GOP primaries, the differences are more about style than substance. Terry Schilling is with the American Principles in Action, a Tea Party ally.

TERRY SCHILLING: In 2010 and 2012, you saw this typical battle between the establishment and the Tea Party. What we’re seeing today is not necessarily a battle between the establishment and Tea Party, but both the conservative establishment and the Tea Party are embracing populist issues.

LIASSON: So instead of a Todd Aiken saying dumb things about rape, Schilling says you have Republican candidates across the board embracing bans on late term abortions.

SCHILLING: I would argue that right now what’s changed is that we all want a purer party, right? We want a party that stays in line with our principles. But we also want a party that connects with a broad base of voters. The conservative movement and the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party are getting more practical.

LIASSON: Democrats argue even if the Republican establishment is winning primaries they’re still nominating candidates that are too conservative to win. That proposition will be tested in November. But no matter what happens then, Matt Kibbe is on safe ground when he describes what the Republican ranks in Congress will look like in January.

KIBBE: I will boldly predict that there will be more members of what I would call the liberty caucus in the Senate and the House.

LIASSON: Ever since the Tea Party emerged on the scene five years ago, it’s managed to move the Republican Party slowly but steadily to the right, even if its candidates don’t win at the ballot box.

Of course, Sasse is not yet in the Senate — he will need to win in November. And where he might go from the Senate is unclear. A run for the president would seem a stretch, even though Sasse is young and even though we have precedents (arguably not the best) for electing Senators as chief executive. Nebraska is not exactly a state rich with electoral college votes. Maybe he will eventually run for governor of Nebraska, acquire executive experience, and consolidate Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, and Iowa into one mega-state (imagine the lottery winnings). But since I had no idea Ben had this in him back when he was passing the baton of Modern Reformation to me, I have learned not to underestimate him.

In What Robes Do the U.S. Courts See Me?

Published on by D. G. Hart37 Comments

Russell Moore weighs in on the recent Supreme Court decision about a town opening its council meetings in prayer. He does not believe this is an establishment of religion and so defends the majority opinion. But he goes further to address the question of why have prayer at all:

Some would say, further, that we could eliminate this tension altogether by simply disallowing any sort of prayer. In her dissent, Justice Kagan said that we come to our government simply as Americans, not as representatives of various religious traditions. But, again, this is itself a religious claim, that faith is simply a private personal preference with no influence on our public lives. That’s a claim that millions of us, whatever our religious beliefs, reject.

Prayer at the beginning of a meeting is a signal that we aren’t ultimately just Americans. We are citizens of the State, yes, but the State isn’t ultimate. There is some higher allegiance than simply political process. We often disagree on what this more ultimate Reality is, but the very fact that the State isn’t the ultimate ground of reality serves to make all of us better citizens, striving to seek for justice in ways that aren’t simply whatever the majority can vote through. And it reminds us that there is a limit to the power of politics and of government.

I don’t understand why this makes sense of any proper notion of jurisdiction. The only claims the state has on me is as an American citizen. It doesn’t touch my identity as a Christian any more than it touches my neighbor’s as a Mormon. Towns, townships, counties, and states in the United States assemble people by virtue of their civil identity only. Of course, if you think that you have only one identity, the way that the propagandists for race, gender, and sexual orientation have taught us, then you may want to say in good evangelical fashion that everything I am is Christian — all the way down. But if religious conviction and church membership is only one one part of me, if I am a member of a heavenly city, while also a citizen of the earthly city (in addition to being a husband, cat provider, Joseph Epstein reader), why does the earthly city need to recognize my heavenly identity when I walk around the United States? Aside from the very constitutional notion that public office and citizenship in the U.S. have no religious tests, an Augustinian rendering of the state requires no religious affirmation from public officials or religious trappings to public ceremonies. In fact, an Augustinian could well regard the prayers of towns like Greece a form of blasphemy if said petitions confuse the affairs of the secular realm with the kingdom of Christ. (And frankly, I don’t see any other way of regarding such a prayer — either it is a full-on Christian one that will not perform the public function of including those who can’t pray in Christ’s name, or it is such a bland one that no Christian could pray it.)

So instead of the state needing to recognize my religious side as Moore suggests, a better tack might be to consider justification by faith alone. If God can engage in a legal fiction and view me through the unspotted robes Christ, perhaps U.S. Christians can allow U.S., state, and local officials to engage in an eschatalogical fiction and view us simply as citizens of the United States.

God's Ways May Be the Tea Party's

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

We just don’t know.

The Republican primary for the Senate is entering its last week and our friend and confessional 2k Presbyterian, Ben Sasse, appears to be in the lead:

With less than two weeks to go until the Republican primary, Sasse has appeared to have moved to the head of a multi-candidate pack featuring two other major hopefuls. There’s a lot resting on the next 10 days not only for Sasse, but also for the likes of the Club for Growth, Senate Conservatives Fund, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Sarah Palin, who have all joined Sasse in one of the most intense primary campaigns of 2014.

Sasse, the president of Midland University, may represent the best chance for the national tea party movement to claim victory in a contested Senate primary this year. While Republican senators have been swarmed by primary challengers, most have fizzled amid intense scrutiny and a robust attempt by the establishment to define them early as outside the mainstream candidates. The open race in Nebraska presents an opportunity for the tea party to claim an early win against that backdrop. . . .

To say the race has been nasty and personal would be an understatement. Osborn is casting Sasse as soft on Obamacare in a television ad campaign that Sasse’s campaign says takes his words out of context. In response, Sasse has launched a TV ad in which his daughters defend his opposition to the health-care law and say that they “always pray for the opposing candidates at breakfast.” . . .

What happens in Nebraska on May 13 could set a tone for other primaries happening soon. A Sasse loss is the last thing tea party groups need heading into a stretch of primaries during the next eight weeks including contests in Kentucky, Mississippi and Kansas, where insurgent conservatives remain underdogs in their quests to defeat incumbent Republican senators.

It would also prompt a fresh round of questions about endorsement criteria. Sasse once supported Medicare Part D, for example, which the Club for growth adamantly opposes.

But a Sasse win could light a fire under the national tea party movement. Tea party groups will soon have another opportunity in an open Oklahoma race, where they have begun to coalesce around former state House speaker T.W. Shannon (R) in a contest looking more competitive for him.

This Old Lifer is pulling for Sasse. But I also believe that Ben knows enough theology to understand that God’s ways will be served no matter who wins next week (or in November).

The Big C[elebr]ity Pastor Effect

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

Michelle Cottle (thanks against to Michael Sean Winters) notices the effect that Pope Francis is having on political discussions in the U.S.:

In his first pastoral visit last July, the pope journeyed to Lampedusa, a tiny island off the coast of Sicily through which more than 200,000 migrants and refugees have entered Europe since 1999. Lamenting “global indifference” to the plight of migrants and refugees, Francis threw a wreath into the Mediterranean in remembrance of those who had lost their lives there.

Such acts send a powerful signal, says Kevin Appleby, head of migration policy for the USCCB. This, in turn, inspires like-minded advocates to “lead the charge” on the issue, as when a contingent of U.S. bishops traveled to Nogales on April 1 to celebrate Mass across the U.S.-Mexican border, conduct their own wreath-laying ceremony, and, while they were at it, call on Congress to quit dorking around and do something about our nation’s dysfunctional immigration system.

Five days later came Jeb Bush’s “act of love” moment, which Carr found “stunning,” and Appleby found encouraging. “When someone like Jeb Bush comes out and makes a comment that humanizes immigrants, I think it is in part inspired by the Holy Father,” says Appleby, who has been working on this issue with the USCCB for about 15 years. “In some ways, the Holy Father is providing some cover. Not intentionally. But for those who are sympathetic to his message, he provides cover to be more courageous and to speak about the issue from the human side.”

Conversely, the pope makes it awkward for political leaders of faith to ignore the human costs of poverty or the need for immigration reform, asserts Winters. “It’s really hard to justify, say, your opposition to immigration as coherent with your religious principles when you have the pope and the bishops out front saying otherwise.”

But how do we know that Rick Warren isn’t responsible in a much more direct way for the faith-based Republican’s opposition to Affordable Care Act than Pope Francis’ indirect influence on immigration reform? Here’s part of Warren’s social teaching looks like:

The administration argues that because Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation, the company has no religious rights under the First Amendment. In fact, the government says that exempting Hobby Lobby from paying for drugs and devices to which the Greens object would amount to an imposition of the Greens’ faith on their employees.

The first people who came to America from Europe were devout pilgrims seeking the freedom to practice their faith. That’s why the first phrase of the first sentence of the First Amendment is about freedom of religion — preceding freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. Why? Because if you don’t have the freedom to live and practice what you believe, the other freedoms are irrelevant. Religious liberty is America’s First Freedom.

In this case, the administration is insisting that those who form and operate a family business based on religious beliefs must disobey what they believe is God’s standard in order to obey the government’s program. The administration wants everyone to render unto Caesar not only what is Caesar’s but also what is God’s. If it wins, the first purpose on which the United States was founded would be severely damaged.

Maybe the takeaway is that the American people are receiving conflicting messages from pastors who have no more business weighing in on political and legal matters than Tim Robbins does.

Imagine how frustrating it must be when you are only a pastor in a small Scottish city and have no obvious celebrity:

I’m a vicar – or at least a clergyman – in an inner city charge. I accept that there are of course differences between being the vicar of a declining church of England in central London, and being a Presbyterian minister in a thriving church in the metropolis of Dundee! But there are also a great deal of similarities. Not least in how we as the church impact an increasingly secular society. So forgive me for pointing out a few lessons that we can learn from Rev.

So how do we judge the relative influence of pastors like Tim Keller, Rick Warren, Pope Francis, and David Robertson? Some mathematician out there has to have an equation for calculating a city’s size, antiquity, and media saturation along side a pastor’s ability to write books that ascend the New York Times’ bestseller list or how many times a pastor appears on the cover of Time. Then again, why does New York City’s newspaper carry more weight than Rome’s or Orange County’s? Does Keller have an unfair advantage?

The Dark Side of Civil Religion

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

Easy-target-alert!

Sarah Palin — can you believe it — has once again inserted the cosmic foot folly into her mouth by likening water boarding to baptism. I wonder if she had made similar remarks about the mode of baptism — say, by comparing Baptists’ immersion practices to torture as opposed to the humane treatment of Presbyterians sprinkling infants and adults — if she would have received as much flack. (You do know the old joke that at the exodus, God sprinkled the Israelites but dunked the Egyptians.) Or what if Palin had switched the object of water boarding from terrorists to Don Sterling? Might that have complicated the offended thoughts of many Americans?

Still, the point Mollie Hemingway makes about civil religion is worth mentioning (thanks to Rod Dreher):

I’ve long defended Palin against the offensive treatment she’s received at the hands of a blatantly biased media, a media that collectively lost its mind the moment she entered the national stage. But that hardly means she must be defended at all times. … This is a perfect example not just of civil religion but also how civil religion harms the church. Civil religion is that folk religion that serves to further advance the cause of the state.

That still doesn’t mean that commenting on Palin’s faux pas one shows great discernment. So to complicate Palin’s comparison of torture to baptism, consider the substance of John Danforth’s homily at the funeral for Ronald Reagan:

Reagan’s most challenging test came on the day he was shot. He wrote in his diary of struggling for breath and of praying.

“I realized that I couldn’t ask for God’s help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed-up young man who shot me,” he wrote.

“Isn’t that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all God’s children, and therefore equally loved by Him. So I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold.”

He was a child of light.

Now consider the faith we profess in this church. Light shining in darkness is an ancient biblical theme. Genesis tells us that in the beginning, darkness was upon the face of the deep. Some equate this darkness with chaos.

And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.”

Creating light in darkness is God’s work.

You and I know the meaning of darkness. We see it on the evening news: terror, chaos, war. An enduring image of 9/11 is that on a brilliantly clear day a cloud of darkness covered Lower Manhattan.

Darkness is real, and it can be terrifying. Sometimes it seems to be everywhere. So the question for us is what do we do when darkness surrounds us?

St. Paul answered that question. He said we must walk as children of light. President Reagan taught us that this is our mission, both as individuals and as a nation.

The faith proclaimed in this church is that when we walk as children of light, darkness cannot prevail. As St. John’s gospel tells us, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

That’s true even of death. For people of faith, death is no less awful than for anyone else, but the Resurrection means that death is not the end.

The Bible describes the most terrible moment in these words: “When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until in the afternoon.”

That was the darkness of Good Friday. It did not prevail. Very early on the first day of the week when the sun had risen, that’s the beginning of the Easter story.

The light shines; the Lord is risen.

If only Danforth would have received the same amount of outrage that Palin justifiably is receiving.

The deity of civil religion is a demanding god. It gives life and inspiration to millions when it generates a comforting fusion of the life of Jesus Christ with the life of a not-so religious president. This god takes away when it encourages people like Palin to confuse the sweetness and light of generic faith with the sour and dark of torturing persons suspected of terrorism.

Perhaps the application of this little encounter with the god of civil religion is to just say no (sorry for the split infinitive). Deny this god’s existence in good first-commandment fashion. Then we can avoid elevating our presidents to canonized saints and leave our dear sister Sarah some other means to derail American conservatism.

Pete Needs to Get Out More

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

If no one in their right mind reads Genesis 1-3 literally, the same goes for Romans 13:

. . . even when people agree that the Bible is indeed affirming/teaching, there is no guarantee that behavior will match the creed (as in the case of Jesus’ teachings).

What’s got me thinking about this is Romans 13:1-7. There Paul famously wrote what can be nothing other than a number of quite clear and striking affirmations and teachings about God, the government, and what that means for the rest of us plebes.

If I may summarize Paul: The governing authorities have been instituted by God and to resist these authorities is to resist God. If you conduct yourself well, you have nothing to fear. If you do what is wrong, you will feel the brunt of their authority, since they do not bear the sword in vain, do they? Of course not. The authorities are God’s servants.

It sounds to me like Paul is affirming and teaching something.

I also think there are major problems with taking Paul’s words as a binding affirmation/teaching.

I don’t need to draw you all a map. No one who is an American citizen thinks Paul’s words are binding, given how our country was founded in rebellion to the governing authorities.

Is Pete kidding? Hasn’t he heard of 2k or A2k? If he only reads biblical studies literature, has he ever heard of Meredith Kline?

Enns goes on to quote Timothy Johnson for support:

Paul cannot be held responsible for his practical advice later taken as divine revelation and as the basis for a Christian theology of state. That is too much weight for a few words of contingent remarks to bear. . . . Simply “reading it off the page” as a directive for life is to misread it and to distort it, for the world in which it made self-evident sense no longer exists and never can.

Enns explains:

Clear affirmations/teachings, just like everything else in the Bible, need to be seen in context. And in doing so we may come to see that when the Bible is affirming/teaching something, that does not mean it is binding. It may mean that is not longer is.

I wonder if Enns understands the context in which he writes these words and that he has now given aid and comfort to transformationalists and theonomists. Or could it be that Paul was really requiring something of believers, just like Pope Peter who wrote, “honor the emperor”?