Month: April 2005

Why do I keep getting sucked into internet debates arguing the merits of just war theory against pacifists when, in fact, I’m against 99% of all wars actually waged? Is this what they mean by “the narcissism of small differences”?

Bunnie Diehl on “Justice Sunday” and the Christian Right:

So apparently something called “Justice Sunday” took place yesterday. At my church we called it the Third Sunday after Easter. But in Generic American Protestant churches, it was the high holy feast of Justice Sunday! Where Republican politics and Evangelical doctrine are intertwined.

I don’t care how evil the secular/irreligious left is, religious folks should always be worried when the government uses them for partisan political purposes.

The press releases for the event said it was to bring attention that Democrats are keeping “people of faith” out of the judiciary.

This is stupid. First of all, who are “people of faith”? What does that phrase mean? Everyone is a person of faith — the question is what or whom they put their faith in: Is it in the Triune God? Is it in material wealth? Is it in logic? Moral relativism?

People of faith is itself a morally-relativistic phrase that equates all people who practice a religion. It says, in essence, that it matters not what your faith is in — just that you practice something.

For Christians, the phrase means nothing without an explanation of what and whom people put their faith in. For the purpose of partisan politics, it’s also stupid. Democrats don’t oppose judges because they’re Christian. There are plenty of Christians they would support. They oppose Christians who oppose leftist politics. And there is a distinction! Republican does not equal Christian. Christian does not equal Republican.

Liberal Democrats hate people who think the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original intent — and not international legal understanding. They hate people who think abortion is wrong, or who think Roe V. Wade is a bad legal decision. But believing in orginal intent or pro-life causes is not something only Christians or people of faith do. And it’s offensive to see the Republican Party — which has done so many evil things and is filled with so many evil and unethical people — act like it is SO MUCH better than the Democrat Party that they have a moral high ground on which to stand. It turns out I’m a registered Republican. But I know there is a difference between Tom DeLay and Jesus Christ and I know which one is my Savior.

Yup.

(Well, except I wouldn’t say that liberal Democrats “hate” people who take such-and-such a position. Spirited disagreement ain’t the same thing as hate.)

More…

From an evangelical pastor in Michigan. The website also features tips on praying the Hours from Phyllis Tickle, compiler of the Divine Hours series.

That’s the name of a new initiative being proposed by Democrats for Life. The idea is to reduce the number of abortions in America by 95% in ten years.

Policy proposals include:

• Federal Funding for Toll-Free Number/National Public Awareness Program
• Conduct a National Study & Update Abortion Data
• Federal Funding for Pregnancy Prevention Education
• Federal Funding for Abortion Counseling and Daycare on University Campuses
• Provide Accurate Information to Patients Receiving a Positive Result from an Alpha-Fetoprotein Test tests (these tests can result in false positives when the unborn child is actually healthy)
• Make Adoption Tax Credits Permanent
• Ban Pregnancy as a “Pre-Existing Condition” in the Health Care Industry
• Require pregnancy centers and women’s health centers that provide pregnancy counseling and that receive federal funding to provide adoption referral information
• Any women’s health center or clinic that provides pregnancy counseling or abortion services must provide accurate information on abortion and the adverse side effects to a woman’s health. Patients do not have to accept the materials if they do not want them
• Provide Ultrasound Equipment
• Increase Funding for Domestic Violence Programs
• Require insurance coverage of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration
• Fully Fund Federal WIC Program
• Parental Notification
• Provide Grants to States to Help in the Promotion and Implementation of Safe Haven Laws (i.e. laws allowing newborns to be dropped off at hospitals, etc. no questions asked)
• Require Adoption Counseling in Maternity Group Homes
• Require State Children’s Health Insurance Programs to cover pregnant women

Very little there for anyone to disagree with, I would think. See here for more information.

This is a very good essay by Croation theologian Miroslav Volf (I also recommend his Exclusion and Embrace). Volf argues that what’s needed to counter religiously sanctioned violence is not less religion, but more religion.

Specifically, the more rooted Christians are in their own “thick” tradition (rather than, say, some pale imitation civil religion) the less likely they will be to offer religious sanction to violence. He also has some good rejoinders to critics who argue that Christianity is inherently violent.

(via Faith as a Way of Life)

Much less one this cool.

(via Dappled Things)

Chapter two of Robert Kraynak’s Christian Faith and Modern Democracy has a lot going on in it, so I’m going to break it into two posts (for my post on chapter 1, see here).

In chapter 2, “The Illiberal and Undemocratic Christian Tradition,” Kraynak makes the case that it isn’t just a historical fluke that for most of its 2,000-year history Christianity hasn’t supported democracy. Rather, he contends, there is a consistent Christian political tradition which, at least in the pre-modern era, did not entail support for anything like modern notions of human rights and government by popular consent.

He begins, naturally enough, with the Bible. The Old Testament shows Israel as having several forms of government, but none that particularly resemble modern democracy. Some liberation theologians point to the Exodus story as a paradigmatic tale of political liberation, which it certainly is, but it’s liberation from Egyptian slavery into theocracy! Kraynak calls the form of government under Moses a “weakly ruled theocracy,” i.e. a fairly loose confederation of tribes under a theocratic head (Moses) whose powers are delegated to others (such as Aaron and Joshua). Later the Israelites are granted a king, but this seems to be a grudging concession on God’s part, possibly with the hope that they will reject the king and ultimately turn back to God’s direct rule. The Hebrew prophets are often invoked as authorities for the cause of social justice, but, as Kraynak notes, they are often as concerned with idolatry as with the oppression of the widow and the orphan, and seem to see the ideal polity as a kingdom under a messianic and Davidic ruler. (pp. 46-51)

In the New Testament things get murkier still. There is very little of an explicitly political nature, and what there is doesn’t seem to commend or condemn any particular set of political arrangements. It is significant that from the very beginning the NT church is not founded as a political entity like the nation of Israel; it exists from the get-go as a kind of diaspora community within other political entities.

The political philosophy, such as it is, that has been drawn from the NT usually relies on a few scattered statements: Christ’s (rather enigmatic) teaching distinguishing duties to God and duties to Caesar (e.g. Matt. 22:21), Paul’s admonition that Christians are to be subject to the ruling authorities and that those authorities exist to maintain order and punish evil doers (Rom. 13), and Peter’s similar teaching (1 Pet. 2:13-17).

These teachings have lead to the development of a tradition of Christian political theology that distinguishes between “The City of God” and the “City of Man” and holds the purpose of secular authority to be primarily that of maintaining a certain temporal order:

For much of its two-thousand-year history, Christianity derived its views on authority from the doctrine of the Two Cities, variously stated as the Two Kingdoms, Two Powers, Two Swords, or Two Realms. It was developed quite logically from the New Testament where Christ distinguished the duties to God from duties to Caesar and said that His kingship is not of this world. While setting God above Caesar, Jesus insisted that earthly kings hold legitimate power because God ordains or permits them to rule, implying political authority is divinely sanctioned and should be obeyed in its sphere. In the centuries after Christ, influential figures such as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Pope Gelasisus elaborated the distinction into a formal doctrine of two realms, the spiritual and the temporal, both authorized and ordained by God for the relatively distinct ends of heavenly and earthly happiness. (pp. 73-74)

According to this tradition, the temporal authority was responsible primarily for securing three distinct goods: civil peace or “tranquility of order,” moral virtue or moral order, and Christian piety, “meaning the highest good of recognizing God as the source of all earthly authority and more specifically the promotion of Christian faith by defending orthodoxy and punishing heresy as the church defined them” (p. 88). The degree to which each of these goods can be secured will depend on circumstances, resulting in what Kraynak calls a “politics of prudence.” For obvious reasons, securing basic civil peace is the most fundamental duty of any temporal authority, and in many cases that will be the most that is possible.

Kraynak traces the development of this tradition in four pre-modern theologians: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. All of them maintained the distinction between the Two Cities and applied the requirements of the goods of temporal order to their specific circumstances. Augustine, for instance, was fairly pessimistic that the temporal order could do much more than secure civil peace, whereas Aquinas, living at the apex of Christendom, allowed for a greater role for civil authorities in pursuing the goods of moral order and the defense of the faith. Luther was even more radically pessimistic than Augustine, calling princes “God’s hangmen” and denying the state any role in promoting virtue or religion, while Calvin went to the other extreme in advocating the creation of a “theocratic welfare state.” But all these thinkers are unified in separating the temporal authority from the spiritual authority, and none advocated anything like modern liberal democracy.

The point is that this political tradition is not simply rooted in pre-modern prejudices or authoritarianism, but in a coherent theological vision:

[T]he foundational doctrines of the traditional view–the Two Cities, the hierarchy of being, the prudential approach to politics, the demand for moral and spiritual perfection as well as civil peace–capture something essential about teh Christian religion. They are doctrinal formulations of Christ’s distinction between the realms of God and Caesar, of Christ’s admonition that His kingdom is not of this world, of divine election adn spiritual perfectionism, and of the limits of justice in the imperfect world of politics that will not change fundamentally until Christ returns in glory at the Second Coming and inagurates a New Heaven and a New Earth. (p. 106)

Check out these photos from the Hubble telescope, recently released by NASA in honor of the telescope’s 15th anniversary. Amazing!

Speaking of the Orthodox, this is Holy Week for them!

Here’s an article on conversions to Orthodoxy.

Here’s something on Greek Orthodox Easter traditions.

(It is also, not coincidentally, Passover of course!)

Christian tradition selector! (To be taken with a grain (or more) of salt of course.)

My results:

1: Eastern Orthodox (100%)
2: Lutheran (94%)
3: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (92%)
4: Roman Catholic (87%)
5: Presbyterian/Reformed (53%)
6: Congregational/United Church of Christ (48%)
7: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (48%)
8: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (35%)
9: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (35%)
10: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (35%)
11: Church of Christ/Campbellite (33%)
12: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (25%)
13: Seventh-Day Adventist (25%)