I’d say that $1 million in jewelry is the modern-day equivalent of a good sheep’s skin.
Any preacher wearing this much bling while delivering a Sunday sermon is not only flashing his wolfish fangs, he is begging for lightning to strike.
Well, lightning struck a few weeks ago for New York City’s Bishop Lamor Miller-Whitehead and his wife Asia, pastors of a Brooklyn City church, when several thieves invaded the Sunday morning service and relieved the two church leaders of their jewelry — all $1 million dollars worth.
There truly is no honor among thieves as the gold chains, diamond rings, and jeweled necklaces were quietly transferred from one pair of thieves to another.
(It reminds me of the time a Mormon bishop believed he could relieve me of my soul as I prayed for his salvation. But that is another story for another posting.)
Don’t worry about the Bishop or his wife, however, since they undoubtedly have millions worth of additional jewelry stashed away in their safe at home.
As the Bishop told the Religious News Service, “It’s not about me being flashy,” Miller-Whitehead said. “It’s about me, purchasing what I want to purchase. And it’s my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase.”
Ok then. I feel so much better now about their so-called ministry.
At least we know where their hearts are really at. As Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and money. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
NEW YORK (AP) — A preacher known for his close friendship with New York City’s mayor was robbed of more than $1 million worth of jewelry Sunday by armed bandits who crashed his Brooklyn church service, just as he was sermonizing about keeping faith in the face of grave adversity, police said.
Bishop Lamor Miller-Whitehead, who embraces his flashy lifestyle and can often be seen driving around the Big Apple in his Rolls Royce, was delivering a sermon at his Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries when police say three robbers walked in. They showed guns and demanded property from Miller-Whitehead and his wife, Asia K. DosReis-Whitehead, police said. . . .
. . . In a video posted to Instagram, Miller-Whitehead said he felt a “demonic force” enter the church and wasn’t sure if the gunmen “wanted to shoot the church up or if they were just coming for a robbery.” . . .
Of all people, the good Bishop ought to be intimately familiar with the feel of an approaching demonic force.
I would say that the news clip below is “unbelievable” except that it appeared on the Christian Broadcast Network. A network that conforms its opinion pieces so closely to the conservative, Republican obsession with “law and order” that you’d be forgiven for assuming its commentators all had day jobs as prison guards.
This editorial discussion is supposedly highlighting the importance of the
Jayland Walker
public “having all the facts” about a situation before drawing conclusions or making objections to the work of the authorities.
But then, conservative Christianity has always highlighted the importance of “obeying the authorities,” no matter how abusive they may be.
The matter at hand is the police murder of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio and the quick display of community outrage that followed.
The initial police reports, the details of which have not been changed, explained that Mr. Walker was going to be stopped for some unspecified sort of traffic violation.
Mr. Walker then took the police on a high speed chase which ended with him leaping from his car and running away. Police allege that Walker fired a gun out his car window during the chase.
As Walker ran away, his was chased by 8 – 9 policemen who fired 90+ rounds at his back. Mr. Walker never returned fire because, as the police later discovered, he was unarmed. (Duh, the fact that he never turned to fire back while unsuccessfully dodging a hail-storm of gunfire, hadn’t tipped them off to this already?)
Walker’s body was hit by 60+ bullets. He died at the scene.
These were the original facts. They are still the facts.
Mr. Walker is another unarmed black man gunned down for the crime of running from the police who consistently insult, abuse, assault, and murder unarmed black men.
As an African-American friend asked me not long ago, “David, why can’t white people understand why we are afraid of the police? We have good reason to be.”
Nevertheless, these CBN commentators object. They insist that most, perhaps all?, media reports have not mentioned the (alleged) gunshot out of Walker’s car window during the car chase.
However, EVERY report that I have read and watched HAS either shown the relevant video or mentioned the alleged gun fire from Walker on the highway.
In other words, CBN is ginning up an illegitimate, irrelevant concern for their own rhetorical purposes. Can anyone say, MANIPULATION? or PROPAGANDA?
But they all say these things oh so unctuously with such apparent concern…
They also fail to mention the many, many times that the police have been caught LYING to the public in their initial police reports in order to protect themselves and hide their own wrongdoing.
Naturally, the local black community responded with a large, peaceful, public protest demanding answers and accountability.
The very next day these three CBN Christian stooges, doing the half-step shuffle for white privilege, self-righteousness, hard-heartedness, foolishness and stupidity, scold the black community (!) for expressing their grief and anger, while exercising their first amendment right to cry out in the streets for justice.
I am sorry, but I find the entire diatribe to be absolutely infuriating!
Here we see three comfortable, extremely well paid, audacious examples of the poisonous fruit of white privilege dripping with the decay of dead men’s bones, all white-washed and dressed up pretty for broadcast TV.
I am sorry, but this report is nothing but pious hackery, blindingly oblivious to the persistent and pernicious racial/racist dynamic playing itself out over and over and over again in our city streets.
It is also painfully obvious — AGAIN– that something has gone horribly wrong with the way police officers are being trained to handle both people and their weapons.
It’s not a few “bad apples,” folks. It’s the entire system that appears to be rotten.
I could go on, but I will stop now. Watch for yourself. Especially notice the mini-sermon about “unrighteous responses” given in coordination with the film of African-American protesters walking through the streets.
Really?!?!
I have asked in the past. I am asking again. If anyone has a video clip of an unarmed white man being shot or chocked to death by police, please send it to me.
A friend of mine sent me the link to a fascinating article yesterday in reaction to my last post about the moral implications of believing that life begins at conception (see here).
This article investigates the legal issues that have arisen in America’s courts by consistently applying the principles of fetal life and individual bodily autonomy.
The piece is titled “The Rights of the Fetus and the Principle of Bodily Autonomy” and is published on the website of the Anastasis Center for Christian Education and Ministry. It is written by David Gill, Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Below is an excerpt:
The fetus is treated very inconsistently by U.S. law today, and not just in abortion situations. For example, the fetus can inherit property. If a pregnant mother dies before or in childbirth, but the fetus survives and is born alive, courts have decided that the child can inherit property along with other living siblings, and the state will appoint guardians for the child if needed.[1]
The fetus can be the victim of personal injuries in assaults in thirty-eight states. For example, in November 2014, in California, Scott Peterson was convicted of the first degree murder of his wife Laci and the second degree murder of their unborn son Connor.[2] In November 2017, in Texas, Devin Patrick Kelley committed a gun massacre at First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Texas, murdering 26 people, including Crystal Holcombe and her unborn child, who was at eight months of gestation and was counted as a person among the victims.[3] The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 makes a motorist guilty of two homicides in motor vehicle accidents when both a pregnant mother and the fetus in her womb die, even if that woman was on her way to abort her fetus.
The fetus’s life legally overrides its mother’s “religious freedom” interest in refusing blood transfusions if she is a Jehovah’s Witness. In 1964, the New Jersey court, in Fitkin Memorial Hospital v. Anderson, decreed that a pregnant woman who was a Jehovah’s Witness did not have the right to refuse a blood transfusion when doctors believed that the procedure would preserve the life of the fetus she carried. The 1985 In re Jamaica Hospital case in New York’s State Supreme Court decided the same. The New York court recognized the mother’s right to an abortion at that stage in her pregnancy, but maintained that in the circumstance where the mother was in need of a blood transfusion for another emergency reason, the state’s significant interest in protecting a midterm fetus’s life outweighed her religious beliefs against blood transfusions.
Under such laws, fetuses could have their interests defended against poisoning from lead in drinking water, biotoxin exposure, etc. as much as alcohol and other substances. In a helpful law journal article, Robin Trindel highlights numerous examples of courts that have even upheld children’s legal suits against a defendant “for prenatal injuries where the defendant’s negligence occurred prior to the child’s conception.”[4] For example, in Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital (1977), a minor daughter who was also incompetent, represented by her mother, successfully sued a hospital for administering an improper blood transfusion to the mother eight years prior to her getting pregnant. The Rh incompatibility in the mother’s blood caused brain, nervous system, and organ damage to her daughter.[5] A similar case occurred in Bergstreser v. Mitchell (8th Cir. 1978), concerning a child being adversely affected by the doctors who administered a Caesarian section improperly to her mother for her previous child. In Jorgensen v. Meade Johnson Laboratories, Inc. (10th Cir. 1973), deformed twin infants, represented by their parents, successfully sued a birth control drug manufacturer for their condition, which included mental retardation, physical deformity, pain, and suffering.[6]
The Curlender v. Bio-Science Laboratories (1980) case in California surprised many because a child successfully sued for a “wrongful life” cause. She was in constant pain from Tay-Sachs disease. She had been conceived because her parents had relied on the company’s assurances that their genetic tests were accurate and that their child would not have genetic complications. Whereas parents had been able to sue on the grounds of a wrongful birth cause, this was the first time in U.S. legal history where a child won a case on the grounds that she should not exist—that is, of a wrongful life. Observers in many fields registered their alarm at what Curlender meant for the legal jeopardy of science and medical professionals.[7] Taking that one step further, can a child sue the society into which it was born because it was born into poverty?
You can read the entire article and find the footnotes here.
Obviously, this post is spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade and the many conversations now occurring state-to-state about local abortion laws.
The premise of the anti-abortion (I refuse to use the term pro-life, since it is highly misleading) movement has always been the claim that “life begins at conception.” A secondary entailment of that assumption is the definition of “life” as the existence of a human person.
Let me begin by putting my cards on the table: I used to espouse this view myself. In the past, I have led protesters in prayer near an abortion clinic. But no more. Over the years, I have undergone a slow transformation.
Nowadays,I believe that only God knows when another “life” (see above) begins inside a woman’s body. Pinpointing this arrival of new life into the world is beyond human comprehension.
A human embryo
However, having said this, I also recognize two things. First, I recognize that opposition to abortion has been unanimous throughout Church history, going back as far as the earliest Christian Church fathers (among those who left written records). However, granting this fact still does not answer the question of when life begins.
For instance, some Jewish literature indicates that life was not thought to begin until the mother could feel movement inside of her body. So, terminating a pregnancy prior to that experience would not necessarily be considered abortion by all.
Second, understanding that the fertilization of a woman’s egg (both the egg and sperm are called a “gamete”) begins a process resulting in the creation and eventual delivery, assuming no interference, of a human baby. Whether or not we can say with certainty when life begins does not change the fact that pregnancy is a process that eventually produces a new life.
Thus, it only makes sense that abortion should be avoided as much as possible – yep, I am no longer an absolutist on this point, as I will explain below – as dictated by whatever reasonable concerns are raised by a pregnant woman’s circumstances.
Yes, I know that “reasonable concerns” is a subjective constraint, but it is not my goal in this post to explore that problem. I will only say that the current story of the pregnant 10-year-old Ohio girl, raped and impregnated by her father, raises more than enough “reasonable concern” to justify an abortion, in my mind.
Sadly, Ohio state law is now denying her that humane solution – yes, humane solution – to her tragic plight. That strikes me as terribly wrong.
Rather, in this post I want to explore the inconsistencies that I see in the conservative, anti-abortion position. Inconsistencies which suggest to me either that few conservatives actually believe what they claim to believe, OR they are ignorant, and therefore should remove themselves from this debate about the details of conception, contraception, and pregnancy.
Let’s first remind ourselves of the physiological details that everyone in this debate ought to understand…despite the fact that many, obviously, don’t.
Here is a simplified version:
When the female gamete, the egg, is penetrated by a male gamete, a sperm, fertilization occurs and produces a zygote. Remember that, according to conservative, anti-abortion advocates, this is when life begins, “at the moment of conception.” So, a zygote is a living person, according to this view. No, don’t try to quibble over this. A zygote is either “alive” or it’s not. And we are only talking about one kind of life: a human life.
After about five days of cell division, the zygote becomes a blastocyst.
The zygote or blastocyst continues to travel down the woman’s fallopian tube (coming from the ovary) towards the uterus and takes between four to ten days on average before implanting into the uterine wall.
But not every fertilized egg/zygote makes it to implantation. Implantation seems to be the moment when the blastocyst officially becomes an embryo. The embryonic period lasts for eight to nine weeks. At week nine or ten the embryo becomes a fetus.
The transition from a dependent fetus to an independent baby, capable of living outside the mother’s body, remains a matter of debate, partly contingent on the expanding capabilities of medical technology.
Sometimes the zygote implants inside the fallopian tube creating what is called an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancies are dangerous for the mother and are typically terminated (aborted, according to conservatives?) either naturally, chemically, or surgically.
Do you know of a woman, anti-abortion activist who terminated her ectopic pregnancy? I’d love to hear answers to my following questions.
Depending on what study you read, somewhere between 40% to 70% of fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus but are “flushed” from the woman’s body along with her menstrual fluids. In other words, IF life does begin at conception/fertilization, as anti-abortion activists insist, then either God or nature, whichever you prefer, is the greatest abortionist of them all.
More than that, if anti-abortion activists were serious about this belief, then why are these abundant “natural abortions” not being memorialized? Does anyone do this? Please tell me if you know.
Wouldn’t it make sense, both logically and morally, that every woman, anti-abortion activist – at least those who are still menstruating and capable of becoming pregnant – who believes that life begins at conception, ought to collect her monthly menstrual fluid in a bag for burial?
I am serious and not in any way trying to be flippant. That may sound foolish, but why? Does anyone do this? I really want to know. And if not, why not?
If you truly believe that life begins at fertilization, then it only makes sense, and conforms to the moral imperatives of honoring all life, to see those 40% to 70% of fertilized but unimplanted zygotes as “preborn babies” (to use the manipulative, propagandistic lingo deployed by certain activists).
In which case, every one of them deserves a decent burial with a headstone. Right? And, if not, why not? Please explain this to me and help me to understand. I have never heard of anyone doing this. Why?
This brings us to the question of miscarriages.
I am well aware of how extremely traumatic a miscarriage can be for everyone involved. In no way am I trying to be cavalier or callous. Nevertheless, we all must take the full implications of our moral positions with all seriousness.
If life begins at conception, then every miscarriage is a naturally occurring abortion which ends the life of a pre-born baby. This must be true at whatever stage in pregnancy the miscarriage occurs.
Obviously, this conviction is at the heart of what makes the experience of a miscarriage so very, very heartbreaking for those women who experience one.
So, let’s think this through together.
How many anti-abortion advocates who experience a miscarriage insist that the remains of their miscarriage be buried with a funeral and a headstone?
Perhaps some people do this. I don’t know? Do you know of any? I am asking questions for the purposes of logical and moral consistency. I would love to hear some answers from my readers.
In any case, miscarried fetal tissue is the remnant testifying to a human death, if human life does begin at fertilization. In which case, it is deserving of a memorial. How many conservative Christians name their miscarried fetuses and visit their graves?
Perhaps some do, which is wonderful. At least, they are showing real moral consistency.
Naturally, these questions also apply to those state legislatures that are talking about criminalizing the morning after pill, which chemically prevents the zygote from implanting into the uterus. Perhaps these activist legislators argue that this type of “abortion” is not a natural occurrence, so it is different from the 40% to 70% of fertilized eggs that are flushed naturally with a woman’s menstrual fluid.
But anyone making that argument is also underlining the importance of memorializing and properly burying those “flushed” zygotes…on a monthly basis. How many of these legislators do this themselves? I suspect the answer is, none.
But, why not? And, if they don’t do this, then aren’t they being hypocrites by criminalizing the morning after pill? I’d say they were.
The only logical response I can see to any of my questions is to say that “the degree” of life involved in these different events varies according to the developmental stage of the effected zygote, embryo, or fetus. So that, even though “life” begins at conception, certain stages of that “life” can legitimately be terminated, whether by nature or by human intervention, without the need for memorializing, burial, naming, or celebrating because they are “less alive” than they would be at other stages.
But if this is the case, then we have all agreed to the existence of those subjective matters regarding the “reasonable concerns” that make some abortions acceptable, depending on the mother’s circumstances (see above). Yet, these are the very concerns over a woman or a girl’s well-being that the average anti-abortion activist refuses to recognize.
This, my friends, is a major problem in this position, as I see it.
Christians need to think clearly and consistently, especially when the lives and future prospects of young girls and women are all at stake.
We need to follow the moral implications of our beliefs and behaviors all the way through to the very end, consistently, without fudging for personal preference.
Furthermore, we have no business applying moral directives to other people’s lives when we are not following those directives ourselves.
Personally, I don’t see any of these matters being taken seriously by the Religious Right; at least, not in the public conversation.
That’s a big problem for the anti-abortion movement.
Not long ago I had conversation with two old friends about a topic I have written about previously on this blog (here and here): regaining a unified church after Donald Trump’s presidency.
Their church has essentially undergone a split, both numerically and spiritually, sparked by the contentious political debates fomented around president Trump and his “America first” policies.
One of my friends, who is a staff member at the church, explained the various efforts – including programs focusing on collective reconciliation – the church leadership has been pursuing.
She lamented that, so far, nothing has proven particularly successful. Many members who left the church (mainly Trump devotees) appear to be gone for good. Political antagonisms remain. They are now sublimated beneath the surface of their community’s life, but they continue to be subtly divisive.
Of course, I felt compelled to offer my perspective. I won’t repeat it here; you can reread by previous two posts if you want to catch up. Let me just say that I am not a great fan of this prevalent urge “to reclaim the old church community.” I believe that it is fundamentally misguided, and I told them so (in a nice way; really, I was nice).
However, I was more than a little insulted when they both laughed in my face. (I am not exaggerating.) Their message was clear: “Oh there goes crazy David again with his weird ideas about the church! Don’t you know that church unity is essential?!”
As you can guess, this part of our conversation went nowhere. And I will admit that my thinking on this matter will undoubtedly sound “weird” to many, but then the Bible can be a very weird book.
The problem, as I see it, is that those, like my friends, who remain emotionally distraught over the supposed “loss” of church unity, generated by the politics of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, are chasing after the wrong goal.
They have set their eyes on an abstract concept of Christian togetherness, instantiated for them in the physical presence of familiar faces, when they should be “setting their eyes of Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) and what it means for Him to be glorified.
These two objectives are very, very different.
Let me explain what I mean by sharing a few thoughts recently prompted by a book which has motivated me to write about this topic one more time.
**********
Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) was the nineteenth century equivalent of the
Dwight L. Moody
evangelist Billy Graham throughout the English-speaking world.
As a young man in Boston, Moody had been a committed abolitionist actively agitating for the end of slavery in America. But as his revivalist career began to develop, and he became more and more well-known, Moody was faced with a challenge.
The remarkable book by historian Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and the American Nationalism 1865-1989 (Louisiana State University, 2005), lucidly explains the nature of Moody’s challenge and the ominous political, social, cultural challenges that confronted every public, religious figure in the aftermath of the Civil War.
That challenge concerned the unity of God’s American church.
The Civil War had embedded a seemingly permanent split between the northern and southern branches of American Christianity. Bridging that gap and healing those wounds, bringing the church together again as one unified, national community, was a major concern all throughout American society at the time.
A large number of national, Christian leaders, including Moody, decided that solving this problem meant that all political discussions must be set aside. This included any mention of slavery, black equality, or human rights. Instead, pastors and evangelists were to focus only on the “spiritual” demands of personal salvation and individual piety.
To further calm these divided waters and work towards unity between the north and south, Moody segregated his southern revivals in order not to offend southern churchgoers. After the war, he would openly praise “the lost cause” otherwise known as the southern rebellion. Unsurprisingly, a majority of black churchgoers, their friends and family boycotted Moody’s crusades.
Black leaders like Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells excoriated Moody’s betrayal of Christian morality for the sake of unifying the white church. One “negro” representative at an annual conference of the African Methodist Episcopal church wrote:
(Moody’s) conduct toward the Negro’s during his southern tour has been shameless, and I would not have him preach in a barroom, let alone a church.”
Frederick Douglas said (among many other things) of Moody’s segregated revivals:
Of all the forms of Negro hate in this world, save me from that one which clothes itself with the name of loving Jesus.
Ida B. Wells also condemned Moody for his version of “Jim Crow revivalism.”
Blum concludes that Moody’s Jim Crow strategy for church unity proved to be a major factor in the eventual reunion of northern and southern allwhite churches by the close of the nineteenth century:
Highlighting social consensus at the expense of social reform, Moody’s revivals contributed to the. . . spiritual justification to an ethnic nationalism centered upon whiteness.
Yes, white churches rediscovered unity across the Mason-Dixon line, but at what cost? Was it the type of unity Christ wants for his people? We dare not forget who was finally excluded from this long-sought unity.
Moody abandoned his previous Christian principles in order to accomplish a sociological result.
Consequently, Moody helped to infuse a permanent state of all pervasive segregation throughout the white and black churches in both the north and the south. Something that had not been true before the war.
But what Moody accomplished was not unity but a pernicious, intractable brand of sectarian division within the church.
Moody also helped to banish social reform and the ethics of political/social behavior from the evangelical vocabulary. His focus on personal piety at the expense of public, political ethics is still keeping evangelical churches on the sidelines of today’s continuing conversations about racial inequality.
This unbiblical separation of the spiritual from the political also continues to infect today’s efforts at reuniting the post-Trump, evangelical church.
Learning to tolerate opposing political opinions is a far cry from grappling with the outlandish moral failures exemplified in many of those opinions and their resulting policies. The first is called learning to live like an adult. The second is called learning to think and behave like a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ.
By refusing to talk about slavery; by failing openly to condemn the enslavement of fellow human beings; by embracing pro-slavery brothers and sisters into all white churches without any expectation of confession and repentance, Moody and those like him became guilty, not only of rank moral failure, but of an egregious betrayal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Misguided obsessions with unity for unity’s sake are replicating similar mistakes today. Seeing “Trumpers” and “Non-Trumpers” worshiping together again, in their pre-2016 blissfulness, is a fool’s dream about a bogus, vanilla brand of artificial fellowship.
Now is the time to talk about Christian ethics, both public and private, political, social, and cultural. This is the conversation that ought to take center-stage in any genuine attempt at church unity.
Was supporting Donald Trump and his policies a moral position for any of God’s people to take? Yes, or no? Defend yourself from scripture, chapter and verse.
Obviously, people will remain divided, but the substance of the divisions will have been altered; they will become clear: these are now ethical, moral fault- lines created by different understandings of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Good News, the arrival of God’s kingdom, and what Jesus requires of his followers.
Not everyone will want to hang around once the “political” differences are described in this absolutely necessary, moral framework. People may leave to attend other churches. Let them.
So what?
Moody’s slovenly strategy for church unity was a pig in a poke.
Once again, the church is being sifted. It happens. For cryin’ out loud, don’t we remember what the apostle Paul said?
The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. (2 Timothy 4:3)
No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. (1 Corinthians 11:19)
Let’s begin by watching this short clip from the Christian Broadcasting Network interviewing pollster George Barna who offers dire warnings about the imminent dangers let loose by American Christians’ lack of a Biblical world-view.
The CBN video clip is titled “Few Professed Christian Parents Hold a Biblical World-View.”
Frankly, I have never been a fan of the idea that Christian’s must hold onto a well-developed “Biblical world-view.”
For many years I taught at a college that required all incoming freshmen to take a class intended to press upon their young minds the details of a Reformed world-view. I was never a fan of that curriculum decision, either, and I spoke out against it at the time.
As a Christian educator, my basic objection – which I will elaborate below – had to do with the difference between education vs. indoctrination.
A basic principle of all good education, including a so-called Christian education, I believe, is to grasp the crucial distinction between teaching a person how to think as opposed to indoctrinating a person into what to think.
Focusing on the maintenance and preservation of a “Christian” or “Biblical” world-view places the emphasis on indoctrination rather than on learning how to think for oneself. This is why indoctrination so often fails once the pressures, expectations, and boundaries of homelife and college performance are finally lifted.
In all likelihood, that young mind will eventually decide that he/she has outgrown the days of being told what to think and believe.
Young adults have agency. They are not robots. Mr. Barna’s facile insistence that every young person who lacks an adequate Christian world-view is necessarily the derelict product of parental failure is both glib and harsh. It is also offensive.
The church is filled with a wide variety of adults with very different views on parenting. Of course, the church has always had its share of hypocrites, which is certainly noticed by the community’s young people.
I observed a great deal of hypocrisy while growing up in the church. Yet, I eventually decided to devote my life to following Jesus. Others are raised by strict, religious parents far more intent on both indoctrination and the maintenance of an indoctrinated lifestyle than mine ever were. Yet, I have watched many of them walk away from the church and abandon their youthful professions of faith.
For years I was ordained in a denomination that included an extensive Catechism (that is, an exercise in doctrinal education – a world-view – that was laid out in a question-and-answer format, typically memorized by the students) among its doctrinal statements. This Reformed version of “Sunday school” was valuable to many young people. But, trust me, I have also heard many stories over the years from others who eagerly repudiated their Catechetical confession of faith as soon as they were free to do so.
So, in my not-so-humble opinion, Mr. Barna needs to zip it when it comes to asserting simpleminded, cause-and-effect relationships between parental responsibility and the irreligious world-views of young people.
But let’s probe more deeply into the fundamental errors of such misguided insistence on the creation of a Biblical world-view.
First, I must object to the indefinite article “a.”
Barna’s discussion is typical in its assumption that there is only one, that is “A,” Biblical world-view. Just as there presumably is A Marxist world-view, or A relativistic world-view, there is supposedly A Biblical world-view.
Really?
Whose interpretation of the Bible are we talking about? The original, ancient Biblical world-view insisted that the earth was flat, and that rain fell from an ocean of water contained somewhere in the sky, to mention only a few of its “Biblical” principles. Should “faithful” parents teach these archaic, anti-scientific notions to their children?
Furthermore, who draws the boundaries distinguishing (1) a properly Biblical world-view from (2) a tendentious cultural world-view?
For the vast majority of American evangelicals such cultural artifacts as raw individualism, inalienable rights to private property, unregulated capitalism, and US style “democracy” are all self-evident, necessary ingredients of a truly Biblical world-view.
But are they? Really?
So, the many thousands, if not millions, of faithful Christians throughout western history who espoused Christian socialism (like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer), defended the divine right of kings (like John and Charles Wesley), or insisted that true Christian faith demanded communal living where all goods are held in common (like many, early Pietists) – they were all deluded by defective world-views that sadly led their children astray?
Who exactly decides THE one legitimate Biblical world-view? Who draws its boundaries? Who makes the final, authoritative distinction between the necessary, Biblical truths and the unnecessary, peripheral cultural add-ons? And whose Biblical truths become THE Biblical truths?
Personally, I have never heard these unavoidable questions addressed adequately in any of the conversations I have listened to or read that promoted this idea of a “Biblical world-view.”
And this is a big part of the reason why I think the entire conversation about world-views is bunk.
My most radical critique, however, drilling down to the most fundamental error of world-view thinking, is the neglect of discipleship.
Yep, I know that world-view advocates will protest here. They insist that possessing a Biblical world-view IS fundamental to Christian discipleship, and a large majority of the evangelical church agrees, in principle.
But this is precisely where the American church goes astray. Because the real focal point of Christian discipleship is Jesus, the crucified, resurrected Galilean.
Disciples know Jesus personally. They follow after Jesus closely. They submit the entirety of their lives to Jesus’ Lordship, and they want to conform their lives to Jesus’ own pattern of living and instruction.
Genuine discipleship is not acquired by memorizing theological principles, nor by mastering critiques of alternative world-views, nor by learning the right way “to think” about life’s questions.
Disciples are made through submission and obedience to the crucified Savior who becomes so loved and adored by the sinners he has saved that they will do anything he asks of them, no matter how odd, counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, offensive, or difficult it may be.
Many of the most serious disciples may never be able to articulate a coherent, integrated “world-view,” at least not to Mr. Barna’s satisfaction. But they will know the living Jesus and follow Him faithfully to the bitter end.
Certainly, genuine discipleship requires Bible study. But the focus of that study turns from learning doctrinal proof-texts to focus on the absorption of stories and lessons about Jesus’ shocking lifestyle among society’s most marginalized.
The focus turns to Jesus’ ethical teachings about selfless love, radical obedience, personal sacrifice, self-denial, anti-materialism, simplicity, generosity, sharing, and absolute allegiance to the resurrected Lord, even to the point of dying for Him, if necessary.
For much of my adult life I have been convinced that one of the great failings of the American church has been its preference for teaching the theological complexities of the apostle Paul rather than exploring Jesus’ outrageous moral requirements.
A proper, Christian world-view only emerges in the hearts and minds of those who wake up every morning with a renewed commitment to follow hard after Jesus, to become more and more like Jesus, to love Jesus with all the sincerity of someone who has pledged herself to “obey all of Jesus’ commandments.”
Does my alternative to world-view thinking give us a guaranteed, uniform answer to every philosophical question? Does it keep us all on the same page about knowing how to address life’s problems? Of course not.
But it does set us on the right path.
It does clarify that the heart and soul of the Christian life is not so much about what we know as it is about who we love and the way we live.
It does make us real Christians, not fakes.
It does put us in touch with God’s voice as He speaks through His Word, both through the words of holy Scripture as well as the words of His one and only holy Son.
And oh, my goodness, what a difference it would make in this world if the church were to prioritize wholesale obedience to our suffering Savior Jesus Christ – even to the point of our own suffering and death – as its number one value. The supposed need for a Biblical world-view would vanish in an instant.
Some time ago I blogged about the public complaints made by some of Dave Ramsey’s (former) employees. Most of their charges accused him of an authoritarian, even dictatorial, management style that intruded into employees’ private lives.
Most recently Mr. Ramsey has come to the attention of several independent news podcasts because of his advice to landlords about raising rent and evicting tenants from their homes because “the market” is dictating rent increases.
Watch the video below called “Should Landlords Feel Guilty.” I offer my reaction below:
The most important thing to notice in this video is the way Mr. Ramsey has surrendered his conscience and his behavior to the requirements of our capitalistic “marketplace.”
When it comes to his economic, investment decisions the marketplace is sovereign over Mr. Ramsey’s financial life. If the market “demands” that he, as a landlord, evict families from their rental homes, then he apparently has no choice.
The rules of capitalism and the “free market” command his allegiance.
Never mind that the country is experiencing a housing crisis with its dire lack of affordable housing.
Never mind that large corporations are in a buying frenzy scooping up foreclosed properties in order to rent them out at top dollar prices, thus maximizing their bottom line and the profits paid to corporate shareholders.
Never mind that the homeless population continues to grow at a shocking rate.
Oh sure. Mr. Ramsey assures his listeners that they need to be kind and thoughtful in their personal relationships with other individuals. But this is a disingenuous smokescreen typical of American evangelicals whose morals are so enslaved to American individualism that the larger, collective questions of system evil never cross their minds.
Ramsey flippantly throws out Christian sounding language that serves only to distract from the colossal compromise of both character and conscience revealed by his abject submission to the laisse faire market forces that obviously have gained Lordship over his life.
At this point, Mr. Ramsey’s economic advice is more demonic than it is Christ-like.
Not long ago I argued that the primary way in which we experience “demonic temptation” is through the corrupt power structures that surround us. To catch up on that analysis I urge you to revisit my blog post.
It’s important for the current discussion.
Because he exists within a supposedly free-market, capitalist, economic environment, in which anyone who questions the system is vilified as a Marxist (or worse), Ramsey obviously accepts this system as, at least, morally neutral, and perhaps even, virtuous.
Thus, surrendering to the dictates of the market, and behaving as any good capitalist would, obviously has no bearing on Ramsey’s Christian confession. He can remain a “good Christian” while ejecting people from their homes into an uncertain, competitive, laisse faire, dog eat dog housing market.
Yep. It’s a cruel world, but that’s the way the capitalist, cookie crumbles.
On the other hand, as I have argued extensively on this blog and in other writings, if we understand the Christian life in terms of our citizenship in the kingdom of God, then Mr. Ramsey has made himself the poster child for the besetting sin of American Christianity: Cultural Captivity.
Rather than critiquing our cultural environment; rather than analyzing, evaluating, and then criticizing the various power structures in which we find ourselves — as serious citizens of God’s kingdom should — we have a lamentable tendency to roll over and play dead in the face of society’s structures of power.
We accept our corrupted, and corrupting, systems of power and control as normal, inevitable, unchangeable, and even preferable to their alternatives. Yet, I am convinced that it is through these normalized systems of power, control, and domination that the Evil One is more successful in tempting and corrupting humanity.
In the face of “what is normal,” the ethics of Jesus and the lifestyle required of every citizen in the kingdom of God all become “unrealistic and unmanageable” given the nature of the world we live in.
I am sure that this is what Mr. Ramsey will say were anyone to challenge his highly dubious ethics of landlordship. Making people homeless when I have the opportunity of higher income in the face of higher expenses is, after all, normal.
We need to take a lesson from the early Christian church about how to deal with such ideas of “normal.”
For the first several centuries of Christianity, church leaders insisted that no church member could ever work for the police, the military, or the judiciary. (For more on this issue, check out my book I Pledge Allegiance.)
Anyone in the church who did happen to work for any of these three power structures had either to quit their job or be excommunicated from the church.
Why?
Because the early Christians understood — far better than most Christians do today — that Jesus taught his disciples to live lives of non-violence. Thus, no follower of Jesus had any business being party to violence or coercion.
And anyone serving in the police, the military, or the judiciary would eventually have to be involved with violence and/or coercion in the course of fulfilling their “normal” responsibilities.
But early Christian leaders insisted: It does not matter what society and its power structures have normalized for this world. Certain behaviors are always unacceptable for Christians because the Lordship of Jesus Christ always defeats the secular attempts at material lordship this fallen world tries to impose upon us.
I suspect that Mr. Ramsey’s cultural captivity may have begun with his extraordinary success which led to his great wealth and influence.
For all of these things, wealth, success, and power, have a sly, corrupting, acidic effect on the conscience if we do not guard ourselves against them.
Consequently, I want to suggest that it is time to excommunicate Dave Ramsey from the Christian church. Or, at least, to depose him from any leadership or teaching roles.
Ms. Prior describes her own acculturation into the norms of lopsided church tolerance — heavily tilted towards favoring men and conservative politics.
My only disagreement is with her description of “someconservatives” being intolerant of others. Sorry, but in my experience intolerance describes “most” conservative evangelicals.
Below is an excerpt:
. . . Conservative evangelicals often call out the hypocrisy of progressives whose tolerance goes only one way. But some conservatives have also made tolerance a one-way street, failing to support the religious and personal freedoms of those who believe differently than we do.
Instead of offering rigorous and compelling arguments in defense of what we understand to be true, some simply take up the other side of the rope in a tug-of-war game of intolerance, making each side no different from the other side.
I have a lot to process and even confess about what I have tolerated in Christian institutions and among fellow believers. A lot of us do. Too many in the church have tolerated too much for too long.
To be sure, situations can be complicated. Motives and actions can be mixed. Facts can be disputed. Perspectives can differ. Pictures can be incomplete.
Nevertheless, some things are clearly and simply wrong. It takes wisdom to discern what should be tolerated and what should not. It also takes wisdom to know when to speak up and when to wait. It takes wisdom to understand when institutions are set up to perpetuate wrong rather than prevent it, to recognize when corruption is a feature, not a bug.
And it takes courage to tolerate no more what is wrong — and to speak up and act for what is right.
Today the online version of Comment magazine published my essay about Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the conflict is has generated in American society, but especially in US evangelicalism.
This essay began as a review of the best-selling book by Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, a book that is highly critical of CRT describing it as a major threat to the Christian church.
What began as a simple book review evolved into a larger essay discussing the broader historical and social context of our current culture-wars over CRT.
You can find my essay HERE. The title is “Among the Tailings of Southern Segregation and Western Imperialism.”
I appreciate the editorial staff at Comment for their willingness to publish this article, as well as for their acute editorial eye.
I hope you will find my essay helpful, educational, and suggestive of the changes needed today in the American church.
I suspect that I will eventually post a more thorough review of this work at some point in the future. But given my recent encounters with several books and articles examining the lustful, nationalistic ties that have long bound American Christianity to the nation’s callous, military bloodletting around the world, I wanted to write a short note on Dr. Williams’ defense of the pro-life movement.
Williams looks at four political issues that tend to divide Americans along party lines: abortion, marriage and sexuality, race, and wealth and poverty.
His goal is to show that all four of these concerns should equally animate all Christians into a bipartisan – or better yet, nonpartisan – alliance that would work together towards a wholistic “politics of the cross.”
If you have read my book, I Pledge Allegiance, you won’t be surprised to learn that I couldn’t help but notice that war and peace (unsurprisingly) don’t make it onto Dr. Williams’ list of important Christian political issues.
This absence was underscored as I read his biblical/theological arguments against abortion. He naturally begins with the early Christian apologists and church fathers who condemned abortion in the ancient world. Their arguments are important and powerful, laying the groundwork for Christianity’s longstanding opposition to abortion. [This point requires elaboration, but I won’t do that here.]
However, these same ancient, Christian leaders used similar arguments to oppose all Christian involvement with violence, warfare, and the military.The same men who condemned abortion and defended unborn children were equally adamant in insisting that all Christians must be pacifists who condemned all forms of violence.
Unfortunately, Dr. Williams continues the evangelical habit of cherry-picking the “prolife” evidence.
For the early Christians, the reasons we must oppose abortion (while simultaneously providing all the supportive social services required by a newborn) are the same reasons we must oppose war and refuse to be involved in violence.
You can’t claim one part of the argument while denying the other.
So, if abortion is wrong, all violence and warfare are wrong, too. Yet, precious few Christians in either the Republican or the Democratic (yes, that is the proper adjective) party openly advocate for a national “peace/antiwar” policy in this country.
And that’s a tragedy.
For, if you believe that abortion-providers deserve to be picketed and closed down, then so do military bases, nuclear weapons facilities, war colleges, ROTC programs, weapons manufacturers, and the Pentagon.
As the earliest Christian teachers and apologists all insisted, IF Christians should not get abortions, THEN neither should they join the military, serve in the police force, or work in the judiciary, because all these roles demand an association with or the execution of violence and dehumanization.
We can’t cherry-pick the Biblical evidence, folks.
when several thieves invaded the Sunday morning service and relieved the two church leaders of their jewelry — all $1 million dollars worth.
The Civil War had embedded a seemingly permanent split between the northern and southern branches of American Christianity. Bridging that gap and healing those wounds, bringing the church together again as one unified, national community, was a major concern all throughout American society at the time.
authoritarian, even dictatorial, management style that intruded into employees’ private lives.
no church member could ever work for the police, the military, or the judiciary. (For more on this issue, check out my book 
society, but especially in US evangelicalism.
Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship
learn that I couldn’t help but notice that war and peace (unsurprisingly) don’t make it onto Dr. Williams’ list of important Christian political issues.
ancient evidence together for the modern reader. It’s called