The looming UMC split - initial thoughts

This was inevitable:

A prominent group of 16 United Methodists released a detailed proposal today calling for an amicable separation of The United Methodist Church. The group included individuals representing all the major advocacy organizations affiliated with the church and eight bishops from around the world, including Bishop Kenneth Carter, current president of the Council of Bishops, and Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, the council’s president-elect.

The distinguished attorney Kenneth Feinberg served, pro bono, as the mediator who guided the diverse group to an agreement. Among many important assignments, Feinberg is widely known as the special master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

In a document entitled “Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation” the group said, “The United Methodist Church and its members aspire to multiply the Methodist mission in the world by restructuring the Church through respectful and dignified separation.” The group went on to say, “the undersigned propose restructuring the [Church] by separation as the best means to resolve our differences, allowing each part… to remain true to its theological understanding, while recognizing the dignity, equality, integrity, and respect of every person.”

The protocol agreement calls on the 2020 General Conference to adopt a process that would allow central conferences, annual conferences, and local churches to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination while maintaining control of all their property, assets, and liabilities.

“This is a very important agreement, and the most hopeful development in a dispute that has undermined the health and vitality of both local churches and the denomination in general,” said the Rev. Keith Boyette, president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and one of the 16 individuals who negotiated and signed the agreement. Boyette and Indiana Annual Conference laywoman Patricia Miller, president of The Confessing Movement, represented the Renewal and Reform groups that include their organizations, plus Good News and the Institute on Religion and Democracy/UMAction.

“Since the close of the 2019 General Conference Renewal and Reform groups leaders have engaged in conversations with other advocacy group leaders, bishops, and church officials in an effort to resolve our differences through a negotiated plan of separation,” said Boyette. “We are thankful for those who have stepped forward since that contentious General Conference to propose an agreement respecting the sincere theological and ethical convictions of Methodists across the board.”

Under the terms of the protocol agreement central conferences, by a two-thirds vote, could vote to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination, and annual conferences, by a 57 percent vote, could vote to do the same. However, central and annual conferences are not required to hold such votes, and if they do not do so, they will remain with the “post-separation United Methodist Church,” the body that will continue the name and infrastructure of the present church.

Local churches, whether their annual conferences take action or not, could also vote to join a new traditionalist Methodist denomination. The local church council would “determine a voting threshold of either a simple majority or two-thirds of those present and voting at a duly called church conference [i.e., a conference that includes all church members present and voting].” According to the protocol agreement, “A vote on a motion to opt for a different affiliation would occur in a church conference held not more than 60 days after the request for such a vote is made by the church council.” Those conferences would be held in consultation with a local church’s district superintendent, and he or she would be required to authorize the conferences. Local churches voting to join a new traditionalist Methodist church would retain all their property and assets, and be responsible for their liabilities (e.g., loan repayments).

The mediation team assumed the Wesleyan Covenant Association would serve as the vehicle for creating a new traditionalist Methodist denomination. It is also assumed the post-separation UM Church would quickly move to adopt legislation creating a U.S. Regional Conference, and that conference would consider changing its sexual ethics, allowing same-sex weddings, and ordaining openly gay clergy.

There are several hoops this proposal must jump through prior to being made official, but it appears that all sides view this as the way to resolve the matter.

I attend a Methodist church - a small, rural congregation that is strongly traditionalist - but I am not officially a Methodist. On paper, I'm a Presbyterian (PCUSA), but it's been years and years since I attended a service of that denomination.

The fissures in mainline Protestantism over the last 60 years have been one of the more significant manifestations of our country's massive cultural transformation. As a 14-year-old, I witnessed what it did to the above-mentioned Presbyterians. My parents left the church then. My father took the pastor of our local congregation to lunch and told him that the final straw was the PCUSA's contribution to Angela Davis's defense fund. Years later, I immersed myself in research on the subject, as the correlation between the emptying of mainline Protestant pews over the decades since 1960 and mainline Protestantism's increasing preoccupation with secular concerns, principally US foreign policy, was the subject of my thesis when I was earning my master's degree in history. (I started writing it in the last spasms of the Cold War, when these churches were really pouring on the "peace activism" with regard to places like Central America and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Angola and Mozambique.)

But we all know what the looming UMC split is about: whether to adhere to sound doctrine on human sexuality or let some kind of vague notion of "inclusiveness" drive denominational policy. Where one comes down on that question has all kinds of ramifications for our society's foundational notions of what a family is, which is going to affect how future generations view the church's role as the bride of Christ. It's not much of a stretch to see a time when the non-traditional side of this split sees fit to abandon "bride of Christ" language as unrepresentative of the panoply of human family types.

It all gets back to how one views the Bible. Is Scripture inerrant and God-breathed, or is it some kind of human-crafted blueprint we can assume to have flexibility built into it?

This development joins other fissures within twenty-first century American Christianity - the Trumpist vs. non-Trumpist split within evangelicalism, the struggle of the Catholic Church to surmount the sex-abuse scandal -  at a time when the overall faith is in a particularly vulnerable position. Our society becomes less Christian by the day. For the deeply concerned faith-walk pilgrim - for me, anyway - it seems like the guiding question, as these things unfold, should be: Does this development reflect Scripturally revealed doctrine, or is it tainted by the fleeting impulses of this world?

Mayor Pete goes after Mike Pence for no reason

During the time when they were both public officials in Indiana, there was never any problem between them:

In his autobiography Shortest Way Home, Buttigieg describes his relationship with Mike Pence as governor as “long and complicated” but the tension appears to lie almost entirely with Buttigieg. He describes cordial meetings with Pence as a congressman, “I was surprised with how affable, even gentle he was.” He writes that “the governor seemed determined to be a friend to South Bend. His office was always open to me, and he often appeared in our area for factory tours, ribbon cuttings, and other events, always with something good to say about our city.” He appoints Democrats to state boards. Pence declares at a local event, “South Bend is so blessed to have an energetic, innovative, forward-thinking, creative mayor in Pete Buttigieg.” Pence talks with Buttigieg about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which some contended would legalize discrimination against gays, and the worst Buttigieg can say is “It was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind.”

Back in 2015, Pence tweeted that if he saw a restaurant owner refuse to serve a gay couple, he wouldn’t eat there anymore. And when asked by a local television station what he thought of Buttigieg’s coming out, he replied, “I hold Mayor Buttigieg in the highest personal regard. We have a great working relationship. I see him as a dedicated public servant, and a patriot.”

Buttigieg can never muster any examples of Pence being rude, hostile or hateful, but his book keeps lamenting “the complications of being openly gay in Mike Pence’s Indiana.” It’s as if Buttigieg knows his intended audience is expecting a tale of Pence sneering or denouncing the mayor, but the then-governor keeps failing to live down to expectations.

So what's up with Mayor Pete letting loose with this?

Potential 2020 Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, delivered a pointed message for Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday, telling him to raise his objections with the gay community with God.

Buttigieg, in a speech at LGBTQ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch in Washington, D.C., referenced the vice president's less-than-welcoming attitude toward members of the LGBTQ community when discussing his marriage to his husband Chasten. He called marriage equality a moral issue, saying his marriage of two years has made him a "better human being."

"My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God," said Buttigieg, a devout Episcopalian.  

"Devout Episcopalian." That's about like being a "devout Unitarian." To what is a "devout Episcopalian" devoted? It sure isn't Christian doctrine. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori saw to that.

“On July 8, 2012, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached her brand of post-Christian religion while masquerading as a Christian bishop,” reported convention attendee Dr. Sarah Frances Ives.

“She mocked most of the crucial doctrines of the Christian faith, including the God of creation, the Incarnation, and the Trinity. She accomplishes this through her demeaning use of rhetoric. She taunts the Lord by the use of the name ‘Big Man’ and then points her finger at everyone listening and tells them that they have ‘missed the boat.’

What Buttigieg's decision to light into Pence without provocation is all about is that he's in the camp that says actual Christianity must be eradicated. His track record demonstrates that.

Buttigieg has already used his powers as a mayor to block efforts to open a pregnancy center in his city because it did not perform abortions. Likewise, Buttigieg has come out in favor of the government shutting down Christian businesses if they do not bow at the altar of gay marriage.

He's yet another proponent of one-way tolerance.

What he's really about must be made plain before the next election cycle gets under way in earnest.

 

Two disparate Hoosier takes on the subject of hate crimes

In the wake of the Indiana legislature doing the right thing and putting the kibosh on the bill that would have spelled out a bunch of demographic classifications that would have made for additional punishment when one citizen harmed or killed another, there has, as was going to be inevitable, backlash from the Left.

Tom Linebarger, CEO of Cummins, a Fortune 200 maker of engines, gen sets, turbochargers and other power-generation products, has weighed in, along with the CEOs of Salesforce, Lily,  Old National Bank, Simon, IU Health, and the NCAA:

Cummins Chairman and CEO Tom Linebarger is among 22 leaders in Indiana asking Statehouse legislators to add protected classes back to Senate Bill 12, which is a hate crimes bill being considered this session.

The Indiana Senate passed the bill last week, but removed specific protections for race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, disability national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation and age.

In the letter, which was also signed by David A Ricks, chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly, Bob Stutz, CEO for Salesforce and Bob Jones, chairman and CEO of Old National Bancorp, the leaders said “the bill in its current form is unacceptable, unenforceable and harmful to the state’s economy.”

The letter asks that the bill be strengthened by adding the classes back in the legislation to establish a strong bias crimes law in Indiana. Indiana is one of only five states without a hate crimes law.

Also signing the letter were David Simon, chairman of Simon Property Group, Gail K. Boudreaux, president and CEO of Anthem, Dennis Murphy, president and CEO of Indiana University Health, Jeff Smulyan, chairman of Emmis Communications Corp. and Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA.

Now, for the sensible viewpoint, put forth in a Resurgent piece from last September by Peter Heck, who teaches high school social studies in Kokomo, Indiana and used to host a radio talk show, and who contributes regularly to The Resurgent.

I'm going to paste the entire piece, since his argument is so cogent and important:

There’s a situation going down in my home state of Indiana that provides a good learning opportunity for people of sound mind around the country. For years, left-leaning social activists have been attempting to push “hate crimes”legislation through Indiana’s part-time legislature and onto the Governor’s desk. To this point it hasn’t happened, largely because for well over a decade we haven’t had a Governor who would have been silly enough to sign it.

In late July, however, vandals scrawled Nazi graffiti on the walls of a Jewish synagogue in an Indianapolis suburb and everything changed. The state’s Republican Governor, Eric Holcomb, almost immediately issued a call for lawmakers to rectify this grievous act by enacting a new statewide “hate crimes” or “bias crimes” law. Left-leaning media, including the state’s largest newspaper The Indianapolis Star that has been editorializing in favor of this action for years, has amplified Holcomb’s request. Despite supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, it is likely that the upcoming session will see Republicans pass a law that they once understood was unnecessary at best, dangerous at worst.

Here’s why I say that:

1. Hate crimes laws are, despite having been enacted in a vast majority of states, objectively unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution demands equal protection under the law for all citizens. That means the punishment inflicted on a criminal who kills me is not to be gentler nor harsher than if that criminal killed you. To enhance the penalty for killing one class of people is to provide them more protection under the law, not equal protection.
2. Hate crimes laws are, despite their fanfare and appeals to emotion, completely unnecessary and in many ways harmful to justice. Take Indiana as but one example. Indiana law already permits a judge to take into consideration the personal characteristics of a victim that motivated a crime, and then enhance a penalty accordingly. Hate Crimes laws actually limit the ability of a judge to do this. For instance, if an old man wearing a veteran’s cap was assaulted because of his service in the military, an Indiana judge today could enhance the penalty for the attacker due to the heinous circumstances of his motivation to commit the crime. But “military service” is not a protected characteristic under Holcomb’s proposed hate crimes law; thus, if enacted, certain groups of victims of these bias crimes would be rendered vulnerable because they failed to make the government’s list of favorites.

Given these realities, plus the inconvenient truth that no hate crime statute would have prevented the Nazi graffiti at that synagogue, we can fairly surmise that this entire push is – like most progressive causes – about symbolism, not substance. It’s pandering, political grandstanding at its finest. Which is one reason why it is so depressing that Christians, who have been commanded by Christ to exercise discernment in ways the world does not, fall for this –particularly when there is often a nefarious element to these legal campaigns that threatens people of faith.

It is no secret that the loudest promoters of hate crimes laws are often the same social activists who champion so-called “non-discrimination” laws that include their favorite five words: “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Once codified, those laws don’t do anything to prevent discrimination, but they do provide a legal method through which progressives can harass, bully, financially intimidate, and exact debilitating punitive fines and punishments on people whose conscience offends their agenda.

When states or municipalities balk at adding those words to discrimination statutes in order to prevent that kind of harassment (like what Jack Phillips at Masterpiece Cakeshop is unconscionably having to endure in Colorado), activists slip them into the law code through channels like hate crimes bills. Codified as a legal “class” in one section of the law, it is judicially predictable to see it extrapolated outward to others – like non-discrimination.

It’s the camel nose under the tent, all for no moral or legal good whatsoever. Yet in Indiana, the presidents of six of the state’s leading Christian universities and colleges – The University of Notre Dame, Indiana Wesleyan University, Anderson University, Grace College and Seminary, St. Mary’s College, University of Saint Francis – all signed a letter supporting Governor Holcomb’s foolish appeal. 

Christian schools whose leadership calls to limit and deny justice, while providing a springboard to government harassment and censure of Christian citizens. Righteous discernment indeed.

This is what we are up against. All those corporations, colleges and universities have fallen in on the absolutely wrong side of an issue with grave implications for basic human freedom.

Interestingly, there appeared a piece today at National Review by Jim Geraghty that says that survey data bear out that people are far more interested in whether these companies' products have value to them than how woke the companies are:

A few oddities arose in a newly released survey of consumers and their views of companies and politics. The survey asked, “How appropriate is it for a corporation to take a position on each of the following issues?” As one might expect, more than 90 percent of respondents approved of companies taking a position on less controversial topics like “hiring and training U.S. military veterans” and “fair labor standards for workers.”

Coming in dead last? “Against President Trump,” at 47 percent — behind “legalization of marijuana” at 49 percent, “transgender issues” at 58 percent.

The survey asked, “If (company) were a person, do you think it would be a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent?” Unsurprisingly, Nike was the company scored most likely to be a Democrat. But the perception of other companies is surprising, considering what those companies have actually done.

Dick’s Sporting Goods scored just barely on the Republican side, which is surprising considering the company’s post-Parkland stance on gun gales (and resulting drop in earnings). Similarly, Delta Airlines scored as a Republican company, which is a little bit surprising considering the short-lived brouhaha over their quickly forgotten dropped discount for NRA members (that apparently only 13 people used anyway).

General Motors scored on the Republican side, which suggests the entirety of the bailout and “Government Motors” debate has been forgotten by the public. And the company that ranked the second most “Republican” in responses was the department store Nordstrom . . .  which stands out as a company specifically denounced by President Trump for dropping his daughter’s line of luxury apparel. (Ivanka Trump closed up her fashion brand last year.)

The company perceived to be most “Republican” is the bank- and financial- services company J.P. Morgan Chase. Most years, the company’s employees donate slightly more to Democrats than Republicans. In 2012, Obama called them “one of the best-managed banks there is.” Asked about his political views earlier this year, CEO Jamie Dimon said, “My heart is Democratic, but my brain is kind of Republican.”

Facebook is perceived as the second-most Democratic company, despite a considerable number of online activist Democrats believing that the company let Russia manipulate the election through various ads. Starbucks is fourth-most Democratic, which isn’t enormously surprising, but the company has certainly attracted the ire of progressive activists over the years.

Target is considered a Democratic company, Walmart is considered a Republican company; this probably has to do with the short-lived “transgender bathroom” policy announcement of 2016. Beyond that, Target’s policies aren’t all that distinguishable from Walmart’s. There is one dollar’s worth of difference in the two companies’ minimum wages. Both companies stand accused of using contractors who hire undocumented immigrants and pay them a pittance, and Target settled a class-action discrimination lawsuit last year.

The authors of the analysis of the survey declare, “There is reward for companies that take action on political and social issues, and a penalty for inaction.” But I think the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. I think the clearer lesson is that most consumers quickly forget about most of these controversies that kick up like a summer thunderstorm – they appear quickly, suddenly get very intense, and then disappear quickly, and almost everyone forgets about them. Despite all the loud talk of boycotts against Starbucks, Nike, and Facebook, most people just want to drink coffee, wear sneakers, and see which high-school classmates got fat.

The perception of a company’s politics often has only a nominal connection to what the company actually does. State Street, the financial-services company that paid for and positioned “Fearless Girl,” the statue of a young woman challenging Wall Street’s “Charging Bull,” agreed to pay $5 million in a settlement over allegations that it paid female employees less than their male counterparts.

A lot of people, led by a far-too-credulous media that is eager for clicks and controversy, are gullible when it comes to corporate image-shaping and public relations. Nike figured out how to get Americans to stop worrying about sweatshops. Patagonia realized its supply chain had been profiting off human trafficking, forced labor, and exploitation.

Outspoken progressive activism is the quickest and easiest way to buy your way back into the good graces of certain corners of society. Witness Michael Cohen this week, as well as James Comey’s reinventing himself from the favorite election scapegoat of many Democrats to a leader of #TheResistance.

Which is not to say we can ignore all this woke activism. For one thing, the social-justice jackboots are very loud and persistent.

It would be folly to sit idly by and cede the floor to them.

 

 

The United Methodists' surprising - and positive - move - and the immediate resistance to it

I'm not a Methodist on paper, but for the last five years I've attended a small country Methodist church. I got started because a former community-college student of mine was the minister, and I checked him out and was blown away by his sermon. He's since been moved to a big-city congregation, but I've stayed. I don't have a clear feel for the leanings on matters of doctrine and ideology of the minister we've had since last summer (the former pastor was a staunch traditionalist, another level on which we bonded), but he's a nice enough fellow. I've become increasingly involved and now even serve on a committee.

That former minister had told me that he looked for the UMC to split in two at some point. For now, unity seems to be holding sway, but I think his prognosis will still be borne out.

This move did not sail through. Quite the contrary.

Delegates to the United Methodist Church Conference voted today. They voted to strengthen certain prohibitions regarding declared and practicing homosexuals from serving in the Church Leadership and to prohibit the sanctification of same-sex marriage.
As noted in The Atlantic, this result came as complete surprise, especially to the Church Bishops, who had determined a fore-ordained result, just not this particular one.

At a special conference in St. Louis this week, convened specifically to address divisions over LGBT issues, members voted to toughen prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy. This was a surprise: The denomination’s bishops, its top clergy, pushed hard for a resolution that would have allowed local congregations, conferences, and clergy to make their own choices about conducting same-sex marriages and ordaining LGBT pastors.

The Mandarins pushed hard, but came up short. And, as always when defeated at the ballot box, the leftists turned ugly. The below is just part of the Ugly. I watched a live stream of the event. When faced with ballot box defeat, these leftists were anything but Christian in their responses.

In the final hours of the conference on Tuesday, the debate turned acrimonious: One delegate alleged, without clear evidence, that people at the conference were bribing others for votes. Another speaker’s mic was silenced when he threatened to filibuster any vote before the end of the day. And the debate came to an abrupt halt: Delegates had to clear out of the conference hall so that it could be turned over for a monster-truck rally.

And, as is the case with the Left in any realm in post-American society, they don't accept outcomes other than the ones they insist on:

Below are the most important paragraphs from the article.

Some Methodists, however, seem determined to keep fighting this battle within their denomination. “I am a 32-year-old, and I am one of the youngest delegates here. For a denomination who claims so desperately to want young people in our churches, maybe we need to reevaluate,” said Alyson Shahan, a delegate from Oklahoma, who seemed to support LGBT inclusion in the denomination. “This body is not where the disciple-making happens. Thank the good Lord, am I right?”

There will be another General Conference again in 2020, where any of these issues or proposals can be taken up again. “With the traditional plan that adds teeth, you’ve not only alienated progressives, but also centrists,” said Hamilton. “Do you think these churches will quietly accept this regressive, traditional plan with teeth? Will these churches protest less, or more, for LGBTQ persons in the future?”

“You’ve inspired an awful lot of people who were not really engaged in this struggle before,” Hamilton said. “And for that, I thank you.”

So once again, we are at the crossroads of sound doctrine versus feelings, of biblical inerrancy versus "truth" made up out of whole cloth.

If this should lead to a split, it will be interesting to see which branch grows the fastest. 

 

Sunday roundup

A study, which claims that those pesky Europeans who came to the Americas back in the 1490 - 1700 period caused climate chaos, reported on by CNN is just a little too chock-full of all the right accusations:

Does anybody else think this sounds a little contrived?

I mean, this theory has it all. Horrible white people flaunting their privilege and taking whatever they want? Check. Indigenous people of color suffering at the hands of racist invaders? Check. Nature avenging this cold cruelty with plummeting temperatures of her own? Checkaroo. If this got any more woke, they could mix it with high fructose corn syrup and go head to head with Bawls Guarana.

Give CNN credit though, as they at least acknowledged the obvious:

Before this study, some scientists had argued the temperature change in the 1600s, called the Little Ice Age, was caused only by natural forces.

One of those forces being something called the Maunder Minimum, an period of time during which sunspot activity had diminished precipitously. To give you an idea of just how much, observers noted fewer than 50 sunspots during this minimum—compared to between 40,000 and 50,000 in the modern era.

And when did all this happen take place? During the Little Ice Age.

What was once the defining feature of a declining mainline Protestantism, as well as pockets of Catholicism of a certain odor - that is, replacing focus on the saving blood of Jesus with a social-justice preoccupation - is now infecting evangelicalism:

In a recent podcast, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention (until now a theologically conservative body), J.D. Greear, highlighted "white privilege" as a serious moral issue for Christians.  Likewise, David Platt, former president of the SBC's International Mission Board, browbeat evangelicals for having too much of the same skin color: "Why are so many of our churches so white?"

At another historically conservative denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America, things are not any better.  Its institution and my own alma mater, Covenant Seminary, hosted a conference on race whose onetime director was a Black Lives Matter activist.  Furthermore, the seminary and the PCA denomination as a whole have been embroiled in controversy over the Revoice Conference, which promotes the idea of LGBT victimhood.

The result? A diminishment of individual agency and culpability:

Terrorism, riots, murder, bullying, and genocide have all been excused as justified responses to victimization, real or imagined.  In his book The Vanishing Conscience, California pastor John MacArthur comments, "Anyone can escape responsibility for his or her wrongdoing simply by claiming the status of a victim."  Along with leftist victimhood ideology, he noted that the psychotherapeutic outlook has contributed significantly to the muting of conscience in modern churches.  For instance, many church leaders are convinced that instruction about personal sin and guilt wounds self-esteem.

The UN behaves true to form:

The United Nations is again facing accusations of anti-Israel bias for erasing from display the location of an Israeli-made bottle of wine during a recent Holocaust remembrance event, according to pictures provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

During a U.N. Holocaust memorial event sponsored by Austria and Norway earlier this week, an Israeli-made wine was served. However, "Golan Heights Winery," where the wine was produced, appears to have been blacked out on the label so it can no longer be viewed, according to pictures.

The overall arc of Sohrab Ahmari's journey from secular agnostic to Christian is compelling, but it's also full of aspects that are surprising on their own. For instance, did you know there were still pockets of cosmopolitanism in Iranian society several years after the revolution?

Contrary to some internet misinformation, Ahmari came to Christianity from Western materialism and relativism, not from Islam. Of his conversion, he writes that “I had turned my back against Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault, not the prophet Muhammad, whose religion had left only faint imprints on my soul by the time I entered adulthood.”

His childhood recollections of Iran are fascinating nonetheless. Born in the 1980s, Sohrab was raised in middle-class comfort amid the circumspect remnants of artistic and bohemian circles. His parents drank alcohol and had an excellent supplier of contraband VHS tapes. Their faith “amounted to a kind of liberal sentimental ecumenism.” Despite mandatory religion classes in school, Shiite Islam never gained much purchase in his soul.

The moment of saying yes to the Lord years later sounds a lot like the way it was for me:

He had become too comfortable in half-belief, and tarried there without reaching the rest of Christ and his kingdom. But “the house on the Cape of Olives warned me that there was no time to waste. I, too, had to throw myself at the foot of the Cross without delay.” The embarrassment, pride, and comfortable hesitation that held him back were overcome.

There was now urgency to his knowledge that “our Lord’s gift of radical absolution on the Cross was the only thing capable of repairing the brokenness in me and around me.”

Great piece at The Bulwark by Kimberly Ross and Andrea Ruth entitled "Why We Are Quitting Red State." I'd started checking out Red State again even after the big Salem purge, but lately I'd noticed a turn of editorial tone that struck me as irreversible.

 

  

The church that forced this pastor to resign can no longer accurately be called a church

Here's the story:

Pastor Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California, has lost his job following both community and alleged internal backlash over the language used in his most recent church sign.

In early January, Hoke designed a sign that read: "Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not."

According to SFGate, "a couple dozen" community members gathered to protest the sign on January 6. The protest, called the "Shastina Love Rally," was organized in part by local resident Amelia Mallory.

A second protest was held on Sunday. According to the most recent count on the official Facebook invite page, 71 people were "going" to the event, and 182 people were "interested."

In a pinned post on the official Love Rally Facebook page, a message from Mallory reads in part:

We are there to support the LGBTQ+ community in a positive way. Debating with any church members isn't the goal. We are not there for them. Some of us on our side of the street still are also religious. All of us are capable of treating everyone with respect, even if we disagree. Do not engage anyone trying to escalate the situation to violence.

It didn't stop there. The sign was vandalized.

Reverend Hoke's Facebook statement about what went down:

As of today, I am no longer the pastor of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church.

After much prayer and counsel, I have decided that it is best to briefly communicate what has taken place.

1. I was informed by our other elder that he felt he could no longer follow my lead as Pastor of TBPC.

2. I was informed that essentially all but one couple in membership would leave the church if I continued as pastor of TBPC.

3. Our other elder and the couple felt that those who left would likely return if I would leave.

4. Our other elder was agreeable to stay and assume the pastoral responsibilities.

Therefore it was determined that it would be in the best interest of the local body for us (TBPC and the Hoke family) to part ways.

Congregants in some post-American "churches" now feel free to hound their pastors out of their jobs for upholding sound doctrine.

It is very late in the day.

Society keeps getting more brittle because God has been completely sidelined

Peter Beinart is a lefty who has contributed some silly ideas to the national conversation over the years, but in his latest piece at The Atlantic, he draws a conclusion that merits consideration. He says that declining church attendance has made our society even more brittle than it was becoming in more generally religious times:

Over the past decade, pollsters charted something remarkable: Americans—long known for their piety—were fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The vast majority still believed in God. But the share that rejected any religious affiliation was growing fast, rising from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in 2014. Among Millennials, the figure was 35 percent.

Some observers predicted that this new secularism would ease cultural conflict, as the country settled into a near-consensus on issues such as gay marriage. After Barack Obama took office, a Center for American Progress report declared that “demographic change,” led by secular, tolerant young people, was “undermining the culture wars.” In 2015, the conservative writer David Brooks, noting Americans’ growing detachment from religious institutions, urged social conservatives to “put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations.”

That was naive. Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.” Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.

Beinart says the phenomenon goes a long way toward explaining the rise of Trump:

When pundits describe the Americans who sleep in on Sundays, they often conjure left-leaning hipsters. But religious attendance is down among Republicans, too. According to data assembled for me by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), the percentage of white Republicans with no religious affiliation has nearly tripled since 1990. This shift helped Trump win the GOP nomination. During the campaign, commentators had a hard time reconciling Trump’s apparent ignorance of Christianity and his history of pro-choice and pro-gay-rights statements with his support from evangelicals. But as Notre Dame’s Geoffrey Layman noted, “Trump does best among evangelicals with one key trait: They don’t really go to church.” A Pew Research Center poll last March found that Trump trailed Ted Cruz by 15 points among Republicans who attended religious services every week. But he led Cruz by a whopping 27 points among those who did not.

I can see that. The all-caps comment-thread yay-hoos and the talk-show hosts who served up a daily dollop of protectionism and ire at some ill-defined "elite" were not inclined to couch their arguments, such as they were, in the language of tradition and the centrality of transcendent faith. It was all about disappearing jobs and the search for objects of resentment.

Beinart goes on to document how black America is less religious as well. African Americans under 30 are much less inclined to claim religious affiliation than their elders. This plays itself out as an absence of church leaders among prominent figures in today's racial-politics arena:

Critics say Black Lives Matter’s failure to employ Christian idiom undermines its ability to persuade white Americans. “The 1960s movement … had an innate respectability because our leaders often were heads of the black church,” Barbara Reynolds, a civil-rights activist and former journalist, wrote in The Washington Post. “Unfortunately, church and spirituality are not high priorities for Black Lives Matter, and the ethics of love, forgiveness and reconciliation that empowered black leaders such as King and Nelson Mandela in their successful quests to win over their oppressors are missing from this movement.” As evidence of “the power of the spiritual approach,” she cited the way family members of the parishioners murdered at Charleston’s Emanuel AME church forgave Dylann Roof for the crime, and thus helped persuade local politicians to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s Capitol grounds.

Black Lives Matter’s defenders respond that they are not interested in making themselves “respectable” to white America, whether by talking about Jesus or wearing ties. (Of course, not everyone in the civil-rights movement was interested in respectability either.) That’s understandable. Reformists focus on persuading and forgiving those in power. Revolutionaries don’t.

Black Lives Matter activists may be justified in spurning an insufficiently militant Church. But when you combine their post-Christian perspective with the post-Christian perspective growing inside the GOP, it’s easy to imagine American politics becoming more and more vicious. 

So if that's the lay of the land, or an approximation of it, doesn't it look like the buzz-saw rancor and deep polarization are about secondary matters rather than the vital questions that ought to preoccupy us? If the issues at the heart of the culture war are "settled," is it not now just a case of various tribes elbowing each other out of the way for a place at the table?

And what of the prospects for the flickering flame - or is it dying embers? - of the truth that Christians know?

Rod Dreher has addressed this question in his new book The Benedict Option, and  in an interview with NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez:

ome years ago, upon becoming a father, Rod Dreher — formerly a colleague of mine on staff at National Review – noticed that Christians “seemed content to be the chaplaincy to a consumerist culture that was fast losing a sense of what it meant to be Christian.” Now, in a post-Obergefell country, “Christians who hold to the biblical teaching about sex and marriage have the same status in culture, and increasingly in law, as racists,” he writes in his new book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. 

“Don’t be fooled,” he adds, “the upset presidential victory of Donald Trump has at best given us a bit more time to prepare for the inevitable.” He writes The Benedict Option “to try to wake up the church and to encourage it to act to strengthen itself, while there is still time.” We talk about the Option — and Saint Benedict, too.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Your book was causing controversy even before it was out. What’s your pitch to people who think they already know what you have to communicate? 

ROD DREHER: A number of people are under the false impression that The Benedict Option is a call to head for the hills. It’s not. The book is about the crisis of Western civilization and Western Christianity, and about how believers living in this post-Christian culture can respond faithfully to it. We are not called to be monks. Our vocation is to live in the world. But how can we do that while facing challenges that Christians have not had to face for 1,500 years? Pope Benedict XVI said that we are living through a period of disruption comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire. I think he’s right. That’s why I say we lay Christians of the 21st century need to look at how St. Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century responded to the collapse of his own civilization. There are lessons for us there.

He's unsparingly stark in his take on the current juncture, asserting that even institutional Christianity has been hollowed out:

LOPEZ: Why are you at peace with being called an “alarmist”? 

DREHER: Because the times really are alarming! I mean, we have a lot to be alarmed about. In addition to the considerable geopolitical turmoil in the world today, the state of the churches in the West is weak. The faith is flat on its back in Europe. We have long considered the United States to be a counterexample to European secularization, but research over the past ten years is conclusive: America is now headed down the same declining spiritual path. The Millennial generation rejects religious belief in percentages never before seen. Older Christians like to comfort themselves by saying that the young people will come back when they get older. It’s not really true. 

Plus, the content of the Christian faith that people actually profess has decayed dramatically from its historic orthodoxy. Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith and his team have documented exhaustively that among younger Americans, the faith is only nominally Christian in terms of its content. They have cast aside coherent, biblically consistent Christianity for a shallow, feel-good counterfeit that Smith calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” This is not the kind of Christianity that will endure — but this is the Christianity that most Americans hold. In my travels to Christian colleges, both Evangelical and Catholic, I hear the same thing from professors: Our students are coming to us from churches, families, and Christian schools knowing next to nothing about their faith. Contemporary American Christianity is a house built on sand.

So we really are faced with the reality of exile status.

And in the larger society, even though some will still talk a good game about community and civic bonds and the fostering of goodwill, the reality is that nearly everybody, within all camps and on both sides of the basic divide, really embrace veneration of self as the core value driving their words and actions.

The Author and Perfector of our faith still has the last word on the matter:

"Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes."

Is Gorsuch's home church a red flag?

Judge Gorsuch's comment to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal that DJT's tweets about the judge ordering the stay on the immigration order were "demoralizing" and "disheartening" has become fraught with layer upon layer of aftermath. Laura Ingraham has taken to Twitter herself to say it "doesn't bode well." Blumenthal, on the other hand, wants to gin it up into the makings of a constitutional crisis. Squirrel-Hair has chimed in, excoriating Blumenthal and tossing in the Senator's misrepresentation of his military service for good measure.

It will no doubt all get even more interesting, but for now, the question I'd like to contemplate is whether the church Judge Gorsuch attends is a red flag or a nonstarter.

It's pretty clear that it's not the kind of place I'd ever attend:

Gorsuch is also a member of the St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder.  The Episcopal Church has embraced very liberal positions on a variety of issues, including performing same-sex commitment ceremonies since the 1980s and eventually same-sex marriages. At church, he often hears a very liberal point of view.  

Mike Orr, a spokesman for the Episcopal Church in Colorado, described Gorsuch’s church, as a congregation that “does a lot of social justice and advocacy.” He said, “It’s a healthy and vibrant congregation. It’s very diverse in its congregants as well as its ministry.”

The first word that St. John’s uses to describe itself on its website and Facebook page is “inclusive,” and the church is led by a female rector. On its website, the church encourages members to write letters to Congress asking that they combat climate change.

You can almost smell the leftism wafting from it.

And I've seen some opining of the sort that deems his membership there to be a deal-breaker. The calls for DJT to withdraw Gorsuch's name from nomination have begun.

I'm holding off. Sure, I'd like it if he went to an actual church, that is, a place where sound doctrine is preached,  but my sense is that calls for his head without knowing more than what is revealed above strike me as exemplifying the utter lack of subtlety that characterizes most public-policy thinking these days. People's reasons for attending a particular house of worship are varied and often quite personal. I know people who attend such churches, including the Presbyterian Church USA church in which I grew up, which is now a hotbed of social justice, and while they seethe and gnash their teeth, they have not to date reached the point of leaving. There are roots and relationships involved in a lot of cases. A person's church, even if it's become rotten with leftist nonsense, is sometimes the scene of defining moments on one's spiritual path.

Let's remember that the Heritage Foundation recommended him to the Trump team. Let's also remember that he enjoyed a deep friendship with the late Antonin Scalia, who was not only a towering judicial mind, but a real Christian without question.

As an undergraduate and a law student, he was generally regarded as a solid conservative. There is, of course, the now-somewhat-famous piece he wrote for National Review in 2005 on the "overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy."

In this age when bits of information become accessible worldwide in a matter of seconds, an age also characterized by the most raw polarization in anybody's lifetime, an age in which nothing escapes being imbued with an ideological charge, I daresay that any of the other finalists for this SCOTUS seat would have been subjected to a degree of scrutiny that would have had some camp of self-styled purists up in arms by now.

Can we please all continue to learn more about this man and get a fuller sense of the overall picture?

In a world of fallen humans - there is no other kind - is there no one we won't jettison?

This one has the strong scent of "well, duh" about it

So a Wilfried Laurier University professor of religion and culture, David Millard Haskell, writes a Washington Post column  in which he cites a study of 22 mainline Protestant churches in Ontario that he and his colleagues meticulously designed in order to allow for this and allow for that, and comes to the conclusion that you and I knew he would come to.

Let me back up just a bit. He starts his piece by citing Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong's book Why Christianity Must Change or Die and conferring legitimacy on it by citing all the liberal theologians who have heaped praise on it since its publication 20 years ago.

Then he lays the groundwork for getting into the methodology and findings of his study by saying basically, "What we found indicates that Spong had the wrong remedy for institutional Christianity."

Professor Haskell, had you afforded Spong the presumption that he was right before you went to the trouble of conducting your fancy-pants study?

Because what you found seems pretty obvious to most people, I feel safe in saying:

We also found that for all measures, growing church clergy members were most conservative theologically, followed by their congregants, who were themselves followed by the congregants of the declining churches and then the declining church clergy members. In other words, growing church clergy members are the most theologically conservative, while declining church clergy members are the least. Their congregations meet more in the middle.

For example, we found 93 percent of clergy members and 83 percent of worshipers from growing churches agreed with the statement “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb.” This compared with 67 percent of worshipers and 56 percent of clergy members from declining churches. Furthermore, all growing church clergy members and 90 percent of their worshipers agreed that “God performs miracles in answer to prayers,” compared with 80 percent of worshipers and a mere 44 percent of clergy members from declining churches.

Outside our research, when growing churches have been identified by other studies — nationally and internationally — they have been almost exclusively conservative in doctrine. As we explain in our academic work, because of methodological limitations, these other studies did not link growth to theology. But our work suggests this is a fruitful avenue of research to pursue.

I found his tortured striving to see some esoteric reason for this rather amusing:

What explains the growth gap between liberal and conservative congregations? In defense of liberal churches, one might venture that it is the strength of belief, not the specifics of belief, that is the real cause of growth. In this case, pastors embracing liberal theology are just as likely as conservative pastors to experience church growth, provided they are firm and clear in their religious convictions. Yet different beliefs, though equally strong, produce different outcomes.

Got that? It might just be the "strength of  belief, not the specifics of belief."

This is a classic example of cultural observation so clouded by moral relativism that it must deny that which is right up in its face.

I wrote my master's thesis in history on this subject, the emptying of the pews in mainline Protestant churches, 27 years ago.  My own inspiration was the Presbyterian church I had grown up in. Recall that two big issues on America's radar in those days were US attempts to roll back the spread of Marxism-Leninism in Central America, and the outcry on the Left over US nuclear missiles in Europe. The "peace fellowship" hosted by the church was on the anti-freedom side of both issues, quite vocally so.

It hasn't changed. I go by there occasionally and always look to see what kind of banner they are currently hanging on their wrought-iron fence. Sometimes it's one that says, "Torture is always wrong." Sometimes it simply sports a rainbow. The latest one says that immigrants and refugees are welcome there.

And I have it on good authority that its services are sparsely attended.

Professor Haskell, while it's true that fewer post-Americans are going to church overall, the ones who are go because church is - ostensibly, anyway - a unique institution in that it deals with how one is going to spend eternity. If, instead, all one hears is identity politics and guilt-mongering, someone interested in actual church is going to bail and go find a place that talks about the salvific blood of Jesus and the promise of the empty tomb.

Not exactly rocket science if you haven't mucked up your mind with a lot of gobbledy-gook.

That Pope position has some requirements that rowdy Texans could never fill

I decided to post about this based on a comment-thread exchange under my post about the Pope's hard-left climate advisors.

I flirted with Catholicism a couple of years ago, but then lapsed back into not going to church altogether.

Now, I've found a little country church - UMC, but unencumbered by the denomination's national-level leftward tilt - that I've been attending regularly all year. Even getting involved, contributing to pitch-in meals and playing some special music during services.

Anyway, it's allowed me to take a fresh perspective on the papacy.

It's a take that is similar to that of Doug Giles. Giles is a solid conservative and Christian. His writing can be annoyingly formulaic, but sometimes it's just the bracing antidote to the cultural nonsense of the moment.

Such is the case with his list of reasons he could never be Pope:

1. The No Sex Clause Would Be A Deal Breaker. How a man can live around all those beautiful Italian ladies and not fall flat out in love is beyond my level of sanctification. When I first saw my Italian wife I knew right then and there my Pope pipe dreams were no mas.
2. I’m Not Soft Spoken. Apparently, if you’re going to be the Pope you have to speak in soft monotones. That ain’t me, man. When I speak I have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. 
3. I Have Deeper Faults Than The San Andreas. 
4. I’m Not Fluent In Several Languages. Unless, of course, you consider pig-Latin and Texan different languages.
5. I Couldn’t Endure All The Adulation/Man Worship Of My Person. Sure, it would probably feel good for a few days, but after a while, as a sinner, it would get a wee bit creepy because … duh … I’m not God.
6. I Could Never Wear The Elvis Outfits. Wearing a suit is a stretch for me. A tie is a big, big deal. You can’t be a Pope and wear T-shirts and blue jeans, can you?
7. I Think Socialism Is Anti-Christian, Human Enslaving, Bullcrap. Plus, I prefer Jesus' view of self-defense in Luke 22 more than Pope Francis' kum-ba-yah "guns are evil" stuff he preaches to us behind heavily armed guards in a walled city. 
8. I Can’t Keep My Mouth Shut Around Evil Politicians.
9. I’m Not That Nice. My image of the Galilean is not a non-offensive Mr. Rogers type of dude, but rather a thirty-year-old holy rebel with a cause.
10. I Believe The Word Of God Trumps The Traditions Of Men. Yes, I saw Joseph Fiennes movie Luther and ran with it.

I was pleased to see affirmation of my view that, for all the excitement over his supposedly refreshing departures from the previous realm of papal concerns, the guy has a truly soporific speaking style. It wasn't just me.