Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/leonard-pitts-jr-the-social-covenant-has-shattered/ar-AARkgok
I occasionally glance at syndicated editorials. Pitts is
sometimes interesting and thoughtful and other times less so. This one struck
me because it's something I've been talking about for years. Pitts barely
scratches the surface but it was still refreshing to read. At least someone is
thinking about these issues.
What a sad moment. Ocasio-Cortez the much vilified Democratic
representative from New York and member of the hated 'Squad' has spoken truth –
and a truth that puts Evangelicals to shame.
https://www.crikey.com.au/topic/god-in-the-lodge/
The Crikey series is worthy of
consideration and yet typical of such journalism it offers a secular assessment
that deals with issues that at times the authors and editors clearly don't
understand. Given that the name of the publication is tantamount to blasphemy,
one must expect a degree of hostility to the Christian faith. But it shouldn't
scare us or cause to dismiss the reporting out of hand.
This was a good and insightful interview with much to
consider. Kovalik's 'The Plot to Scapegoat Russia' caught my eye a few years
ago. Kovalik is one of the few voices on the Left that's critical of the
Democratic Party and its increasingly hysterical Anti-Russia campaign. This
conversation is wide-ranging and touches on several important issues, ones critical
to understand if we're to navigate the present situation and filter the many
voices that seek to dominate our thinking.
The recent World Magazine rift seems to be also rooted in a Trumpian schism. Marvin Olasky, a right-wing figure who was loosely associated with the George W Bush presidency is enough of a principled intellectual and in possession of enough historical sense to realize he could not endorse Trump for president in 2016.
One of the flagship conferences of New Calvinism, Together for the Gospel (T4G) will end in 2022. The official reasons have convinced no one. Everyone more or less knows the group's founders have become irreconcilably divided. This is but part of a larger fragmentation taking place, one that seems to be hitting the New Calvinist sphere hard.
https://www.breakpoint.org/helping-haiti-with-our-heads-and-hearts/
Haiti has been in the news more than once in 2021. Unrest, assassination,
an earthquake, and now the kidnapping of US-based missionaries, Haiti is all
but associated with chaos, turmoil, grinding poverty, and corruption. The
cultural commentators want to weigh in and John Stonestreet of BreakPoint and
The Colson Center recently offered his own Evangelical assessment, his own take
on the Haitian situation.
Kyle Rittenhouse is the product of a generation brought up in the midst of social turmoil, economic decline, and endless war. It's evident that to Rittenhouse life is cheap and he speaks casually (in almost video game terms) of shooting people. They're not human beings, they're objects. He's the classic 'angry young man' and while he's a murderer, he does deserve a degree of sympathy.
For the Bohemian Brethren, the contacts with the Magisterial Reformation produced mostly negative results. Swept up into the political struggle, the theology and ethics of the Reformation produced worldliness and compromise in their lives. The net sum was that their movement was forced to pay a vicious price in the aftermath of the Schmalkaldic War. Though attempting to keep their distance at times, they were now part of the larger Protestant movement and (willingly or not) they were caught up in the catastrophe and bloodletting known as The Thirty Years War.
A good resource regarding the formative years of the Moravian Church is The History of the Unity of Brethren (A Protestant Hussite Church in Bohemia and Moravia) by Rudolf Rican. First published in the 1950's, the available English translation (by C. Daniel Crews) came out in the 1990's. It's published by The Moravian Church in America.
The book begins with the martyr Jan Hus (1372-1415) and other
dissident movements in Bohemia such as the Waldensians. Petr Chelčický (c.1380-1460) also receives significant
treatment as he came to exert a great deal of influence on the early Brethren movement
– itself a derivative of the larger Hussite wave.
Nancy Pelosi is the Right's greatest and most powerful enemy within Congress and at this point she's the one figure that could really lead the charge, the one person that has the power to pursue the January 6th coup attempt and to take down the collaborators in congress – wounding the party in the process.
And yet she's not. Why isn't she? Why isn't the Establishment
media aggressively reporting on this? Why aren't they coming after her and
challenging her tepid response and her lacklustre investigation?
The US sought unipolarity in 1989 and thirty years later it finds itself in grave danger, the dream lost, and US hegemony under threat. The American Establishment is desperate to re-engage the world and rekindle the kind of American dominance that the nation had in the decades after World War II. The vast wealth and power the US accumulated post-1945, is now under existential threat from foreign rivals.
Some independent commentators have picked up on the fact that the mainstream media, the so-called 'Leftist' media has all but ignored the recent 'bombshell' Rolling Stone article that exposes the fact that several members of congress were actively involved in the failed January 6 insurrection.
Why? Why would the media ignore this? It's like the goose
that laid the golden egg, a chance to take down several Republicans – and yet
they're ignoring it. The January 6 investigation should be like Watergate with
around the clock coverage and televised hearings. But instead it barely gets
noticed and while the congressional investigation continues – tepid is a word
that comes to mind. Given the magnitude of what happened and the nature of
emerging revelations since, one would think this would be a major story.
If the younger generation has soured on capitalism it's because they've come of age at a time when the entry level situation is fairly dire and in some cases hopeless. You can skip college and remain on the lower end of the working class – an exception being those who find a skill in demand and escape neo-vassalage by means of becoming self-employed.
Or, you can take on massive debt which more or less enslaves
you to a job (an employer) as you are compelled to keep making your payments.
And by the time you're done you've undoubtedly taken on many more. It's a trap
and some young people have realised it. For many of that generation, adult life
properly speaking, an age of autonomy and social establishment is nigh on
impossible before one is in their thirties. The system is immoral and exploitative
and those who are living in the bottom tiers realise it and thus they're willing
to entertain other options, all the more when they begin to understand the
American system and its priorities, as opposed to the model of the social
democracies in Europe – which have elements that many Right-wing Americans
erroneously associate with Marxism.
https://familyliferadio.blubrry.net/2021/10/21/faith-under-fire-ep-74-marxism-in-america-part-1/
George Barna is best known for his fusion of ecclesiology
with market analysis. He and those associated with him have pursued models of
church growth rooted in surveying and in shaping practice on the basis of the
results. His name is usually associated with the Seeker Sensitive Movement
because its leaders (men like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren) have integrated the
market strategy popularised by figures like Barna into their models for Church
growth.
The broken ecclesiology that dominates the Evangelical scene
is bearing a rotten harvest. Cultural attitudes and tensions, false
expectations, and alternatives born of the technological age have created
conditions in which men are leaving Church leadership for other 'ministries'.
In some cases we must say good riddance but few seem willing or able to address
the real reasons for this trend and identify the nature of the problem. It
starts with an unbiblical ecclesiology – especially in the Evangelical and New
Calvinist spheres.
As our congregation has succumbed to Trumpism we are currently looking at other options and let's say the scene is not encouraging. Sunday after Sunday, I find myself driving the better part of an hour or more to sit in on meetings that disappoint and sometimes are an occasion for righteous anger. It's one of those moments that living in a rural area becomes a burden. There are relatively few churches and the distances can sometimes be great.
Revelation 18.23 refers to the sorceries of fallen Babylon. It could be a reference to Babylon in general or more specifically to the merchants of Babylon. Ultimately it doesn't matter as the mercantile-mammon driven activity of its 'great men' are part and parcel representative of the Babylonian system as a whole along with its larger list of deceptions and evil.
In October 2020, French president Emmanuel Macron proposed new education legislation that was meant to counter the influence of subcultures within France – particularly those of a religious nature.
https://julieroys.com/sherri-tenpenny-covid-denier-christian-nationalism/
This is the hour of deceived deceivers. If every dog has his
day, this is the hour for those who have embraced quack medicine and have (via
their sorceries) created a toxic brew that is deceiving people in terms of the
gospel and in this case is literally causing people to lose their lives.
http://uwesiemon.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-wrong-side-won.html
I have written before about Uwe Siemon-Nietto who is a
semi-frequent guest on Lutheran Public Radio's Issues Etc. Along with John
Warwick Montgomery, Siemon-Nietto often provides what might be described as the
view from Europe.
Is General Milley a traitor? The Trumpites would have you think so. As a Christian my concerns to this end are minimal at best. Let the dead bury their dead. Let the Babylons and the Babylonians scheme and betray one another. Whatever faction is ascendant – it's still Babylon in the end.
And yet there's a concern here on a deeper level because it
touches on fundamental understandings of the nature of US government. This is
particularly important given the way Evangelical leaders have fused Liberalism
with Christianity and have thus generated a series of extra-biblical
imperatives regarding citizenship, voting, general participation, capitalist
economics, and the like.
Recently I was talking with my son and he told me about some experiences he had on a Christian chat forum that he visits from time to time. He's had several interesting interactions on the site but recently things took a somewhat bad turn as a person appeared who argued (in a rather aggressive manner) that Christians were under obligation to combat systemic racism. A hot button issue to be sure, the tensions and conflicts that emerged from this confrontation led to several departures and in his estimation has almost ruined the overall experience.
When the Magisterial Reformation appeared on the scene in the Sixteenth Century it was followed by many episodes of iconoclasm. Protestant mobs would rush into Catholic buildings and tear out and smash art, statues, relics, and architectural elements that they found objectionable.
Over the years I have heard various appeals to the Book of Revelation as some kind of guide or normative template for New Testament worship. Usually those who appeal to this line of reasoning wish to move their particular congregation (or perhaps denomination) in a High Church direction. Revelation's liturgical imagery is certainly lavish and one can easily make a case for vestments, incense, candles and the like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgBOsGFc5h4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWJVMoe7OY0
I don't doubt this testimony for one moment and one need not be a fan or supporter of Global News (Canada) or the New York Times to benefit from this reporting. The testimonies and images all but speak for themselves.
Irwin C Herendeen (1883-1982) is a name few remember today. Those who are familiar with the name usually connect it to Arthur Pink. A Christian book and tract publisher, Herendeen laboured in Central Pennsylvania and published many of Pink's works among others.
https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2021/the-christian-mans-calling/
Helm begins by arguing that Evangelicals have adopted an
essentially gnostic view of Creation and Redemption and a non-Christian
anthropology. These claims are regularly made by Dominionist-minded thinkers
and yet I have yet to find anyone who actually holds to these views. For nigh
on forty years the Christian Right has laboured to eradicate them – largely
straw men to begin with – and they have been successful. The attack is against
new straw men they have substituted for the real problems they face.
That the Old Testament was harder to understand did not minimise the onus placed on the saints of that era. And yet, New Testament believers are called to a higher ethical standard. We have so much more revealed and we are called to live as citizens not of the typological kingdom comprised of sword-conquests, land boundaries, stone buildings, and blood sacrifices. Rather, we are called to live as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and as such we are strangers and pilgrims on the Earth in a way the saints living under the Mosaic order were not. We do not live by the sword, we have the completed perfect sacrifice which grants us access to the Kingdom of Heaven. Our Kingdom is eternal and yet hidden to the unregenerate. Our Temple and sacrifices are spiritual. Our High Priest is in Heaven. Our battles are not against flesh and blood. Our ethics are born of a higher eternal order.
https://blog.tms.edu/is-the-old-testament-unintelligible-without-the-new
I was struck by two recent displays of the reductionist
hermeneutics utilised by the MacArthurite faction. These are retentions of the
Baconian attempt within Dispensationalism to cast hermeneutics into a
scientific framework. They want the Scriptures to have one clear unambiguous propositional
meaning that is grounded in the inductive and deductive processes of human
experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLI_iF75_-8
Overall this was a very good forum. My wife and I both agreed
that is was some of the best practical ethics and wisdom we've heard since the
Covid crisis emerged over a year ago. Bercot did not disappoint. He got the
balance right and rightly applied Kingdom ethics to the situation – mask mandates
and the like. I really appreciated it and the fact that he condemned the behaviour
of Evangelicals and the many Anabaptists who fell into Right-wing individualist
thinking and behaviour and brought shame to the testimony of Christ and the
Church.
But there were two glaring deficiencies that I would point
out and I think they're important to consider.
His comments on the government operating outside parameters and violating its God-given authority are frankly ridiculous. It's the wrong way to approach such questions. He's mischaracterized the nature of government and badly misjudged and wrongly framed the Christian interaction with this post lapsum reality – a temporary situation that will be eradicated at the eschaton.
https://thelocalkirk.org/a-postmortem-on-covid-and-the-church/
Perhaps what I found most disappointing about this piece is
that many will believe it to be well-reasoned and moderate in its tone and
posture. I did not find this to be the case and in addition I found it
indicative of some other disturbing trends at work within conservative
Evangelical and Confessional circles.
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881
The stage for all of this was set in the aftermath of 9/11
and increasingly as people no longer consider the surrendering of their privacy
and data to be anything controversial, and as generations of lock-step, wave
the flag, support the troops, my country right or wrong nationalism has come to
dominate – this story isn't even controversial.
The title of the movie is taken from George Elliot. In Middlemarch she writes:
"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on
unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might
have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited
tombs."
Though Evans (Elliot) was an infidel, the quote as it stands
is true and worthy of reflection. We might modify it a bit and rather than
think in terms of the 'growing good of the world', instead we can ponder the
testimony that will be revealed in heaven itself. Hebrews 11 tells us that the
'winners' in terms of the Kingdom are those who wandered about destitute,
living in caves and other lonely places, suffering torture and even death. In
the world's eyes they were losers but as Christians we don't see these things
or reckon them as the world does.
In recent days while reflecting on Afghanistan and the US withdrawal, I have thought more and more of Vietnam and what happened there in 1975. I was prompted to revisit the 2014 PBS film Last Days in Vietnam which was aired at the end of April 2015 – the fortieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
I was at first a little surprised to see that PBS-American Experience had produced a documentary on Billy Graham. In other respects it wasn't all that surprising as he was a significant figure in twentieth century American life – certainly a household name to anyone over forty or so. I certainly grew up with Billy Graham and thus was eager to see it.
What should we think about William Wilberforce?
I think Wilberforce was sincere in his intentions and who
can doubt that his campaign resulted in some good? And yet it's not that
simple, certainly not as simple as his advocates would present it. His larger
campaign was with an eye to reform manners in society, and while the
entirety of the Victorian social project along with its gross hypocrisies and
failures cannot be laid at his feet, in many respects he helped to instigate
it.
I had to laugh over Memorial Day weekend 2021. I happened to be someplace where I had access to television and so I couldn't help it – I took in some FOX news. It's like the ghost that hovers over the American Church, the proverbial elephant in the room. It's eye-opening to observe this channel which continues to wield such sway over the minds of many who are supposedly renewed in their minds.
The story of the hour was the Kamala Harris tweet.
Superpositioned unity of distinct states, entanglement, dual
identity and other concepts associated with the quanta remain more than a
little intriguing. And indeed I have often thought of this realm of science as
a case of science breaking down, even
of a hint of the metaphysical imposing itself on empiricist assumptions. It has
a real value in terms of apologetics – not in what it can say, but in what it
can destroy. It casts doubt on the certainty and epistemological assumptions of
Scientism. It declares not only that there's something more and something
beyond but that these questions end in mystery and incoherence. It painfully
reveals the limitations of human epistemology.
It's hard to miss. In Evangelical and Confessional circles there's a heavy despondency over the Biden presidency and the fact that Trump lost the election. There's an ominous tone of coming persecution and hard times. America is in a state of crisis we're told. If we don't do something to stop this trajectory there won't be any Christian America anymore.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/exile-ok/
The Gospel Coalition has run a recent article by Alistair
Begg that I notice is getting passed around and seems to be trending as they
say. Apparently many people find it to be helpful, an encouragement during our
present time. Begg says that we're just going to have to get used to living as strangers
and pilgrims. This is (we're told) a new development in American Christian
life, something that's only really come to bear in the last few years.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/02/eric-metaxas-2020-election-trump/617999/
Metaxas has simply applied the logical outworkings of his
position. Christianity and the Kingdom of Christ are equal to Western
Civilisation and in order to maintain supremacy over that vast complex and its
institutions one must embrace the ethics of mammonism – power, wealth, and even
violence in order to maintain it. It is the ethic that is literally
antithetical to what Christ laid out in the Sermon on the Mount – the same
discourse in which he stated unequivocally you cannot serve God and Mammon. In
other words they are different belief systems, different religions with
different gospels.
As is already clear in the historical record, reflections and fallout from the Second Trump Impeachment are producing a wide array of opinions and narratives. There is no agreement and the entire episode (along with the January 6 event that precipitated it) will remain shrouded in partisan fog.
Hebrews for its part is Redemptive-Historical theology par excellence as it elaborates the nature of the prophetic word, the Sabbath, priesthood and Mosaic order, and the New Covenant, along with questions of faith and its resulting ethics and imperatives.
It is with fondness that I often reflect upon friendships I formed in the 1990's with some fellow Christians. We always marvel that in terms of day to day life we had (and perhaps still have) little in common but what brought us together was Christ and a love for the Scriptures.
Most Conservatives will insist that the American political spectrum has shifted rapidly to the Left over the past fifty years and will make the case by appealing to cultural standards which (admittedly in some respects) have moved away from conservative ideals.
This was a remarkably sober analysis from Evangelical Focus
though its conclusions are (as expected) ultimately false. The Lausanne
oriented movement is concerned not with truth speaking to power but power
itself and the unbiblical quest to redeem culture. That said, the editors
possess enough sense to realise that current trends at work within
Evangelicalism risk destroying the movement and thus their cultural mission. A
New Testament based analysis will lead to a totally different trajectory but
that doesn't mean that the article has no value.
We can speak of a Social Accommodationist Triad or SAT. There are many aspects of social life that could be plugged into this equation but in particular it could be argued that three powerful socially transformative forces have been at work in the post-WWII period – and these forces have worked symbiotically to shape and affect the culture.
Evangelicals are outraged at the prospect of being kicked of Twitter, Facebook, or some other form of social media.
There is a lot of anxiety at present, fears that the blowing winds of social and political change will find the Church in a place of danger. Freedoms known by Christians for generations are in jeopardy and there is a nervousness about the future and what Christians should do.
The History of the Protestant Church in Hungary from the beginning of the Reformation to 1850 is a commendable historical work. It value is both inherent as a historical text and in what can be extrapolated from it – which in some cases may result in observations and applications beyond the intention of the anonymous author. The work first appeared about 1854 and was translated into English by one Dr. Craig.
Trumpites and Conservatives are desperate to pin the insurrection (in reality a failed coup) on groups like BLM and Antifa but despite their aggressive propaganda campaign, the argument continues to fall flat. What motives would Antifa have to stop the electoral vote? Would they want four more years of Donald Trump?
I've been struck by the number of Trumpites and Republicans that seem genuinely shocked at the 6 January storming of the Capitol. 'That's not us' they insist. 'Those people don't represent us.' It only shows that these same folks not only do not understand what has happened in American society, they don't understand their own movement, the people they've allied themselves with and what Donald Trump's presidency means.