Culture

Some questions answer themselves.

Question: I am going to my first gay wedding, the "I do"'s of my nephew and his companion. But the whole idea of a grand, gay wedding ceremony and reception seems to me to be an open call for a topsy-turvy mad hatter's tea party. Which one is the bride? Am I a member of the bride's family or the groom's? Who dances with the father first? Who throws the bouquet? Who is eligible to catch it? And, frankly, I have never actually seen two men kiss in person. Don't you suppose there will be some kind of kiss at the altar to seal the deal? The entire prospect makes me nervous, and when I am nervous, I tend to get the giggles and say very silly things. Should I just stay home?

-Anonymous, "Dear Editor...William Norwich Contemplates Some Recently Posited Style-and-Entertaining-Related Questions." New York Times Magazine, 28 March 2004, p. 78.

This interview of Budziszewski, one of Marvin Olasky's colleagues at University of Texas, is quite helpful--particularly in the context of reformed pastors and elders abdicating their authority in the civil realm, generally; and most recently with regard to sodomy and sodomite (non) marriage. But more on this later.

As one of those reformed pastors, I haven't yet nailed down where, exactly, I stand on natural law (and I know I'm pretty old to be writing that). Still, as we're surrounded by the crumbling foundations of the West, I'm gaining sympathy and think, regardless of the reader's own position, he'll profit from this interview and be better able to articulate the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all creation.

Of course, by posting this interview I'm not at all commending the recent (Easter) conversion of Dr. Budziszewski and his wife to Roman Catholicism.

Contra Neuhaus, Colson, and their comrades-at-ambiguity known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, little things like the cult of Mary, the unique authority of Scripture, imputation, and justification keep getting in the way of rapprochement. Nor do I agree with Budziszewski's recommendation that Christians place a decreasing emphasis on the testimony of Scripture in witnessing to our culture, and a correlative increase in the testimony of natural law. In fact, there are a number of things I wish Budziszewski hadn't said. Still, there's much more I'm glad he said and find wise and helpful.

And while I'm at it, I am well aware how many readers of "World," and thus of Worldblogs, are Roman Catholic--in fact, here as I write, I find that a recent comment posted on this blog is by a dear brother in Christ who, many years ago, first introduced me to much of what I have come to hold dear in my life--a scepticism concerning the use of birth control to separate the unitive and procreative functions of the marriage bed; a parallel belief that children are one of God's chief blessings; a fatherly (and I must admit, somewhat haphazard) practice of praying over my children as they go to bed each night; a conviction that it is an act of piety and holiness to battle against false shepherds; a love of the writing of G.K. Chersterton and Joe Sobran; and so much more--all this happened one night when my wife, Mary Lee, and I sat for hours at John and Molly Archibold's dinner table, watching, listening, and learning. One night, and then we moved to Massachusetts and, decades later, the Archibolds moved from the Episcopal to the Roman Catholic Church. But we continue to love the Archibolds, and to look toward that day when we will have completely transparent fellowship in the Presence of our Lord.

Note: At the very bottom of the piecce, you'll find appended the extended section of Calvin's Institutes Budziszewski (briefly) quots in the first half of the interview.

This from Seymour Hersh in the most recent New Yorker on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and the prevalence of women soldiers in the published pictures.

The photographs--several of which were broadcast on CBS's 60 Minutes 2 last week--show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects--Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits--are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

Hersh as well on an American general's February 2004 report on the abuse--which apparently extended well beyond pictures published so far--and the impact of the commanding brigadier general's authority within her unit:

General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: "What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers."

Yet, many evangelicals and Lutherans alike claim that the Church has no authority to speak to society on such matters: "It's not our position to speak against women serving in our military. We're the Church; we speak for God on higher matters."

Notice as well that these women soldiers were not serving in combat roles. So much for the vaunted distinction between combat and non-combat roles...

Sad news today in England's Manchester Guardian of the death by suicide of 38-year-old David Reimer.

Reimer was born Bruce Reimer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, one of a set of identical male twins. A cauterizing mishap during Bruce's circumcision caused extensive damage and eventually led his parents to John Money, a Johns Hopkins University medical psychologist who was trumpeting his success in the mid-sixties with the surgical transformation of transsexuals.

Stuck way at the back of the bottom shelf of the Barnes and Noble magazine rack, where one must lean over at the waist and peer under the overlapping shelf to see it, an opinion journal of a rather unprepossessing appearance can be found with the title, The New Criterion. It's circulation is only about 10,000 but buy a copy and you will be richly rewarded.

The latest copy dated September 2004 carries an excellent review of Martha Nussbaum's recent work, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton, 2004), along with an essay pulled from its pages which ran in The Chronicle of Higher Education last month titled, "Danger to Human Dignity: The Revival of Disgust and Shame in the Law."

Nussbaum's reviewer, Roger Kimball, is The New Critierion's managing editor and it's apparent Nussbaum has failed to convince him that the use of shame is a bad thing. The review titled "Does Shame Have a Future?" is an excellent short treatment of the nature and meaning of shame. I commend it to our readers.

Another essay, "The Phobia of Phobias" by John Gross, contains this fascinating tidbit:

In Britain as a whole, Muslims at present form only around 3 percent of the population (but) Muslims stand out by their greater religious commitment. According to official sources, the number of British Muslims attending mosque at least once a week has now overtaken the number of Anglicans attending church.

This contributed by a member of our congregation, my friend, Scott Tibbs.

Article forgets lesbian women

I was very interested in reading Maggie Bozich's front-page story ("Greeks prepare to crown new Big Man on Campus," Oct. 15, Indiana Daily Student) on Zeta Tau Alpha's research benefit event, Big Man on Campus, but she lost me with her first sentence: "Every male on campus wants to be him, and every female on campus wishes she could date him." Although I have enjoyed reading some of Ms. Bozich's other work, she let me down this time. With one innocent slogan, she silenced every lesbian woman on campus by implicitly denying her existence. Too often we remain complacent with narrow-minded interpretations of love, and by denying the existence of perspectives or orientations different from our own we unconsciously make others feel invisible, which denies them the right to express their love.

I believe Ms. Bozich meant no harm, but let this serve as a reminder of why it is so important that we are inclusive in our language. Silence can be deadly.

Evan Rosenberg, Sophomore

Surely Evan, with all his multi-cultural feminine sensitivities, will make someone a good wife husband.

Let's return to a post I made a few days back, but first a reminder of the details:

Last week the Indiana Daily Student--Indiana University's campus paper, published a piece on a campus competition known as "Big Man on Campus." The piece's author wrote:

Every male on campus wants to be him, and every female on campus wishes she could date him

To which Mr. Evan Rosenberg took offense, and wrote the following letter to the editor:

Article forgets lesbian women

I was very interested in reading Maggie Bozich's front-page story ("Greeks prepare to crown new Big Man on Campus," Oct. 15, Indiana Daily Student) on Zeta Tau Alpha's research benefit event, Big Man on Campus, but she lost me with her first sentence: "Every male on campus wants to be him, and every female on campus wishes she could date him." Although I have enjoyed reading some of Ms. Bozich's other work, she let me down this time. With one innocent slogan, she silenced every lesbian woman on campus by implicitly denying her existence. Too often we remain complacent with narrow-minded interpretations of love, and by denying the existence of perspectives or orientations different from our own we unconsciously make others feel invisible, which denies them the right to express their love.

I believe Ms. Bozich meant no harm, but let this serve as a reminder of why it is so important that we are inclusive in our language. Silence can be deadly.

Evan Rosenberg, Sophomore

In posting Mr. Rosenberg's letter to the editor here, I concluded with this comment:

Surely Evan, with all his multi-cultural feminine sensitivities, will make someone a good wife husband.

In thinking more about this comment, though, I wondered whether some might take it as a cheap shot, a cynical dissing of Mr Rosenberg? In fact, it was an attempt to make a serious point to which I now return.

In her lecture, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," Flannery O'Connor explained the break-all-the-molds nature of the characters in her short stories:

Whenever I am asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the conception of the whole man is still, in the main, theological.

"Still" today? I'm not quite sure.

'bowdlerize': syn. abbreviate, abridge, bleach, blot out, blue-pencil, cancel, censor, clean, clean out, clean up, cleanse, clear out, cross out, cut, delete, delouse, depurate, deterge, dry-clean, dust, dust off, edit, edit out, erase, expunge, expurgate, freshen, kill, lustrate, omit, purge, purify, reform, rescind, rub out, scavenge, spruce, steam-clean, strike, strike off, strike out, sweep out, sweeten, tidy, void, whiten, wipe, wipe off, wipe out, and wipe up.

In our local paper, The Herald-Times, a young woman named Arlyn Keith is a Community Columnist. From her picture Ms. Keith seems to be in her mid-twenties and her piece appearing on yesterday's op-ed page is titled, "Rock'n'roll rejects the Bible."

Keith is responding to what she considers the non-news that Jan Wenner's Rolling Stone magazine has refused to run an ad for Today's New International Version, the new Bible put together under the patronage of Rupert Murdoch's News Corps' subsidiary, Zondervan Publishing Company.

Keith yawns as she wonders why Zondervan ever thought readers of Rolling Stone would be their market segment? Acknowledging that this chic Bible has compromised the original text, the better to reach her generation, Keith writes:

I knew that Christian leaders were concerned about the disinterest my generation and those younger than us seem to have with religion, but I just did not ever expect the mountain to come to Mohammed and plead for attention. This latest edition of the Bible aptly named Today's New International Version even features, according to USA Today, a method of translation which is meant to appeal to the 18-34 age group wherein gender terminology in reference to humans is neutral. The "truth" has been made user-friendly and packaged in a politically-correct manner. I am not an avid church-goer myself and am still struggling with my views, but it does seem that some values have been compromised in the process.

Out of the mouths of babes...

After years of hard work trying to convince my family members (owners of Tyndale House Publishers and its own gender-neutered Bible, The New Living Translation), Zondervan's executives (who are presently issuing this latest gender-neutered version called Today's New International Version), and the corporate leaders of the International Bible Society (holder of the copyright on all versions of The New International Version including Today's New International Version) of the false doctrine that is the heart of this work, I despair over their intransigence. And yes, one does begin to wonder what the application of "the love of money (being) the root of all evil" is to this Bible-selling business; or, for that matter, to Wycliffe Bible Translators, mega-churches, missions agencies, seminaries, and my own church's building program?

How lightly we consider our own motives in the light of Scripture's warning, "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives" (Proverbs 16:2 NASB95).

No matter how often we explain to them that the secular feminists are correct in their judgment that the Bible is "hopelessly patriarchal," hope springs eternal and these false prophets try once again to clean up God's Word so a modicum of its offense is removed and evangelism moves apace into the twenty-first century.

Over the past couple of years, Christ the Word's Rev. Dr. Andrew Dionne has created a web site called KepttheFaith exposing the assault upon God and His Word these men are carrying out. Church of the Good Shepherd has funded the site and my brother, David, and I have fought this battle arm-in-arm. Go to the site and read and pray. Secularists and seekers such as Keith can treat this matter lightly, easily seeing the charade. But Tyndale House, Zondervan, the International Bible Society, and all the reverend doctors paid to do the bowdlerizing take this matter very seriously seeing their reputations are on the line.

They're right. Were one of them a member of Church of the Good Shepherd, the elders would declare him to be in violation of his membership vow to honor and obey the inerrant Word of God, and call him to repent.

Chesterton nailed it almost a century ago:

It is remarked, "We need a restatement of religion"; and though it has been said thirty-thousand times, it is quite true.

It is also true that those who say it often mean the very opposite of what they say. As I have remarked elsewhere, they very often intend not to restate anything, but to state something else, introducing as many of the old words as possible.

(G. K. Chesterton, The Thing, p. 190, "Some of Our Errors".)

The New York Times cited World, yesterday, in a piece appearing in the Arts & Leisure section titled, "A Lion King of Kings: Can the Narnia books be turned into a blockbuster without offending one person or another?" Here's the quote:

According to a report in the February 12 issue of the Christian newsweekly World, Mr. Aviv [president of Disney's Buena Vista Pictures marketing arm] assured the gathering (of Christian leaders) that "our goal is to make sure that we make and market the movie so that it has the same significance that the book has had."

The Times piece is about the controversy over whether or not Disney's movie version of Lewis's Narnia Chronicles will, in fact, allow our Lord Jesus Christ and the doctrines of Scripture to have "the same significance" in the movie they have in the books. It's anything but a done deal.

Disney has this dilemma:

...the pros at Disney are wrestling with a special challenge: how to sell a screen hero who was conceived as a forthright symbol of Jesus Christ, a redeemer who is tortured and killed in place of a young human sinner and who returns in a glorious resurrection that transforms the snowy landscape of Narnia into a verdant paradise.

That spirituality sets Aslan apart from most of the Disney pantheon and presents the company with a significant dilemma: whether to acknowledge the Christian symbolism and risk alienating a large part of the potential audience, or to play it down and possibly offend the many Christians who count among the book's fan base. (The New York Times, February 20, 2005, p. AR 11.)

I'm just a humble midwesterner, but I wonder whether there might not be experts ready and willing--in fact, eager--to consult with Disney concerning their dilemma...

For sheer hypocrisy, this from Sunday's (March 27, 2005) New York Times takes the cake. It's off the first page of their Arts & Leisure section, taken from an article by Frank Rich titled, "The God Racket, From DeMille To Delay":

As Congress and the president scurried to play God in the lives of Terri Schiavo and her family last weekend...

Now let me get this right: because citizens and leaders of these United States are seeking to stop the judicial execution by starvation of a helpless young woman, we are "playing God?" Has Mr. Rich never heard of Jesus' exhortation, "I was hungry, and you fed me; thirsty, and you gave me something to drink?" And doesn't he know that most Americans believe we ought to obey Jesus?

Further, has Mr. Rich been so heartless as to decline to play God himself? Has he never bought a meal for the homeless souls he walks by each day on his way to work? Has he never given a baby a bottle? Never volunteered in a soup kitchen? Never sponsored a Compassion child?

It is the judges and legislators and justices--all those who conspired to deny Terri Schiavo food and water--who have played God. They have taken a human being who bears the Image of God and killed her. And when we oppose them, they accuse us of playing God?

A couple sentences later Mr. Rich writes of our day as:

...a time when government, culture, science, medicine and the rule of law are all under threat from an emboldened religious minority out to remake America according to its dogma...

Having inherited every charitable institution that is the fruit of many centuries of Christians "seeking to remake the world according to our dogma," he bites the hand that feeds him. Is Mr. Rich really prepared to see many centuries of militant Christian witness and work dead and buried? Does he not realize that with the death of Christian dogma will come the rebirth of every evil Christian dogma killed?

Is Mr. Rich anticipating the rebirth of brutal child labor? Of the poor house? Of the sick and diseased left on the streets to die? Of child prostitution? Of women treated like chattel? Of female infants left on the hillsides and river banks to die? Of slavery and pederasty and polygamy and sodomy?

Mr. Rich is the sort of armchair revolutionary who has not learned the distinction between reforming things and deforming them. He should be ashamed of himself. But then shame too is dead.

Please fasten your safety belts.

Earlier this week I received a letter from a Mr. Lauren Libby who identified himself as "Senior Vice President" of the Navigators, a parachurch group that Mr. Libby says has grown "from a fledgling effort to what it is today: a worldwide ministry in 112 countries with 4,014 staff of 61 nationalities."

The reason for Mr. Libby's letter? He closes the letter as follows:

I'm writing today to ask you to help us to tell others about the work of The Navigators.

That's why I'm delighted to send you these special notecards as a reminder that we are to share Christ's light with the rest of the world. I pray that you won't set these cards aside, but will use them as a tool to encourage others.

I've enclosed a reply form to allow you to order more of these beautiful cards. Each package of 15 cards and matching envelopes is available for a suggested donation of $12 or more. If you need additional packs, we'll send you two for a gift of $24. With each order you enable The Navigators to reach even more people with God's love and saving grace.

May the Lord richly bless you as you walk in His light.

Mr. Libby is the chief operating officer of The Navigators which, in 1999, was the one hundred and fifty-ninth largest charity in the world. At that time, Mr. Libby was pleased with his organization's receipts. In the November 4, 1999 issue of the The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Libby was guoted saying:

With the creation of capital for so many Americans, the last three or four years have been the best time for non-profit fund raising in over 25 years--for as long as I've been in the field.

So what exactly are "these beautiful cards" Mr. Libby enclosed with his letter?

Well, they're small notecards with one of the paintings of Thomas Kinkade on the front.

And who is Thomas Kinkade?

I know it's late, but the bug in WORLD's blog software kept me from referring to it yesterday...

What is it with the families of conservative, "born again" presidents? We suffered through the turmoils of the Reagan years when it was clear that whatever Ronnie might believe, Nancy was a confirmed New Age mystic, and the children were, to put it mildly, marching to the beat of their own drummer.

Now we have Mrs. Bush as comedian. Those who did not see Laura Bush's star turn at the White House Correspondents' the other evening didn't miss anything. I watched the video on my computer the next morning and was not amused. It went way too far into pruriency. In fact, I may be projecting here, but it seemed to me that George's smile seemed a tad forced the longer Laura went.

Michelle Malkin nails the inappropriateness of what Mrs. Bush did.

It was like watching a white-gloved hostess pick up a china teapot and pour out sewage.

A woman shall not wear man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God. -Deuteronomy 22:5

The craziness started when sex morphed into gender and the distinctions between men and women went from the hard reality of body parts to the soft fiction of social constructs. Back in the old days, a baby was born and the doctor or nurse took a quick look and said either "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!"

Now fathers and mothers wait with hearts a-thumping for their child to report back from college. Dutifully submitting him to the twistings and moldings of the academy (and paying twenty-five to forty thousand dollars a year for the privilege), Dad and Mom can never be quite certain where their child will end up. Things aren't clarified until he has had a a few years of polymorphous perversity, has heard all his options, has been hit on by every segment of the gender continuum, and one day shows up back home with his partner of choice.

Sex has been abandoned, and gender is a social construct that maximizes that idol of Western culture--choice. So now we've traded in man and woman for man-loving woman, woman-loving man, man-loving woman locked up in man's body, woman-loving man locked up in woman's body, man-loving man locked up in woman's body, woman-loving woman locked up in man's body; and so on. Far from the simple on-off of the sex switch, the gender switch is never simply on or off; it's bright or dim or somewhere--anywhere--in between.

And so absurdities multiply.

Wesleyan College:
Connnecticut's Wesleyan College is trying out a "gender-blind" dorm policy.

University of California:
The Financial Times reports that the University of California is considering covering drugs and surgery for her students to change their sex...

Following a link from a comment on our blog (thanks, Greg) I came to the Sharper Iron web site and blog. I've seen it before. An interesting site dedicated to "providing a place to publish and discuss news and ideas from a Christian, Biblical, Fundamentalist worldview." In some respects, it's modern Puritanism. I don't know where it stands theologically, though they quote Doug Wilson approvingly in one place and link to others from the Reformed world.

All this to bring you a link to another blog...

For nearly a year now I've used Bloglines to keep track of my favorite blogs. Almost any mainstream blog can be included in a Bloglines personal page--any blog with an RSS (or XML) feed can be included.

So I check the Guardian's latest stories on Blogline and I read Doug Wilson's latest posts there and I even have this blog listed so I can see when Tim posts something.

When I originally signed up for a Blogline page, I checked out their listing of the 200 most popular blogs for pages to include on my Bloglines listing. Most of those blogs proved tedious over the long haul, but several I still keep checking.

Originally, I placed Instapundit on my Bloglines list because I kept hearing that it was a good conservative blog. I still have it on my list, but I find myself increasingly disgusted with it. It's astounding to me that this blog is so popular among conservatives. Author Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, has no fixed moral center. Reynolds does not care about abortion, is in favor of homosexual rights and opposed efforts to save Terri Schiavo. Is this a blog worth claiming, conservatives? Is the fact that a man is libertarian socially and conservative economically enough for us to claim him as our own? I read Reynolds as I read the New York Times--an enemy of righteousness.

Considerably better than Instapundit is Little Green Footballs (LGF), also a blog popular among conservatives. Yet, LGF too often reads like the house organ of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in its incessant praise of Israel and disdain for everything Palestinian and Arab. Ultimately, I don't trust anyone who can't see anything bad in his own position or anything positive in that of his foes. Israel is not the Kingdom of God, nor is the Palestinian cause without some elements of truth, but you wouldn't know it from reading LGF. Yet, when LGF gets off its middle-eastern high horse--which it too seldom does--it can be a good read.

Of course, I very much enjoy Michelle Malkin, who, I suspect, is a true follower of Christ. Her blog is perhaps the one I enjoy most, but there's a catch.... I haven't yet figured out how to get Michelle on Bloglines, so I read her much less frequently than I would if her feed were available there. Michelle is worth reading very, very often. Of all the major blogs, she is usually the one to hit the biblical position on the money.

Finally, my favorite of the political blogs I read is Power Line. And increasingly, I respect the writers of this blog. Now they aren't Christians. I believe they're Jewish. But they're wise, they have a humility Glenn Reynolds lacks, and they will often present the best insights and commentary on events. So, for instance, they had a post today taking on the widescale backlash against last week's Supreme Court decision on the Kelo case. The author argues that on Kelo the Supreme Court was basically correct. If anyone else said this, I'd gag. But because this blog suggests this, I'm reconsidering my own reaction to Kelo. If there's one blog worth reading and heeding on political issues these days, I think it's Power Line. There's a bigness of spirit and a wisdom to this blog that I admire.

Finally, at the end of the night if you want some light escapist reading before bed, go here....

Note from Tim Bayly: There are times when it would be a shame for a comment made beneath one of our posts to be lost to our larger readership. This comment by my nephew, Chris Taylor, strikes me as such a contribution and I place it here on the main page for our good readers' prayer and comment.

Although the subject here discussed is the granting of reparations to African Americans for their enslavement, the larger question is the nature of God's judgments for sin, and our responsibility to make amends for that sin.

No one can deny that Sub-Saharan Africans and African Americans are troubled peoples. On both continents the debate rages over what is to be done by the civil authority? We must also ask what is to be done by the Church of Jesus Christ? These are issues that must be thought through carefully, and above all biblically.

But in the discussion, we must keep in mind that injustices have not come to an end with the Emancipation Proclamation's liberating of Confederate slaves. Since then blacks have continued to suffer oppression in our nation, both north and south, and that oppression has not yet come to an end. Racism is alive and well today in both the south and the north. We are segregated; we don't like each other; we don't live in one another's neighborhoods; and in my book the fact that African Americans are principally admired as sports and music and entertainment idols only strengthens the case.

Further, we have many other classes of oppressed brought to us by that most enlightened of centuries, the twentieth. Think, for instance, of the unborn children who, at the pace of 1,300,000 per year in these United States alone, are being slaughtered in their mother's wombs. If reparations are called for with regard to the black race, what on earth might sufficient reparation be for the wholesale slaughter of 40,000,000 unborn children? One trembles to ask, yet the enormity of the question is no excuse for leaving it unanswered.

Here then are Chris Taylor's comments. I'd love to see them engaged carefully and biblically, while keeping in mind other even greater oppressions in our midst today. The comments were originally made under my brother, David's, post, "No, God would NEVER include the righteous in judgment." Chris is responding to an earlier comment by Steve pointing readers to the link, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too.

* * *

Let me acknowledge where I am coming from. First, I am a Christian who trusts in God alone, not government, to break the bonds of oppression. When God commands us not to put our trust in man, but to fear the king, I try to do just that. I honor our pagan Senators, but I do not trust in them to accomplish the big things in life. After all, wasn't that God's point in the failed Davidic kingdom? How quickly the mighty have fallen. David, then Solomon, then division.

Second, I believe the Body of Christ is the physical manifestation of the Kingdom of God who ought to be restoring this ruined land. Not through political influence, but through taking up our cross and accomplishing unimaginable glory. The church will be the salt that both preserves the world and makes it bearable.

So permit me to answer Horowitz from that perspective.

Objection 1) There were 3,000 black slave owners before the war, therefore, no single group should be held responsible. This may be true on the surface. In the passage David Bayly quoted, Saul was the one responsible, so Saul's children paid the price. But surely this does not apply in a situation where a whole society (mostly white, but also black) did much evil. Since we have "no single group" to hold responsible, then we must all join together to make amends. The prophets confess the sins of Israel in an inclusive manner. "We have sinned." Really, have the prophets acted in like manner? So we see that it is possible to take responsibility for the sins of society. Should not the Body of Christ act as the prophets in this situation, confess the sins of our fathers, and make amends? Since I don't trust our government to do this, and God does hold societies accountable, let us make reparations...

The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!"

He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. (Psalms 2:2-4)

In a move that shocked Major League Baseball, a spokesman for the Washington Nationals announced yesterday that double and triple plays will no longer be allowed in RFK Stadium.

Across the country team owners, ballplayers, umpires, and sports writers and broadcasters were stunned. Responding to fierce criticism from some quarters, Team President Tony Tavares defended the decision:

"With major league ball back in DC, we feel the need not to squander our rather limited capitol, but to build on her in a way that will contribute to her well-being. If bipartisanship is the Holy Grail of the political process here in DC, why should it be so rare? We believe this is a small step for major league ball, but a large step toward healing our nation."

Acknowledging his franchise's less than stellar record at the end of the first season of major league ball in the city in thirty-three years (the Washington Senators left for Dallas in 1971), Tavares said: "As a franchise that's seen a good start evaporate, we know how embarrassing it is to lose. Adding the rather public humiliation of double and triple plays can be demoralizing. It's time to think of our players' feelings--not just the score. Our goal is to allow all teams playing at RFK to lose a little more gracefully. Why shove their noses in it?"

The move received some support within the Beltway. One committed fan, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, leader of the city's oldest Orthodox synagogue, Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah, responded to the announcement:...

There is a church in my town which has gone through a succession of metamorphoses, all in the name of relevance and witnessing to "real" people.

The church's initial location was a video arcade in an enclosed shopping center. It later began a skate park. Earlier this year it started a tattoo parlor, and now most of its fundraising focuses on its "ink" ministry.

Occasionally I must stop and remind myself when I find myself overly disdainful of this church that it is not, in fact, all that different from many of the more stately "high liturgy" churches of the area or, for that matter, the modern Evangelical churches which have adopted seeker-sensitive styles of worship.

The link between these seemingly disparate churches is not a shared culture: they range from low street to high classic, meandering through every waystation inbetween. No, the link between these churches is shared reliance on human culture to win the lost.

All culture is not created equal: the culture of a church which programs recitals on its magnificent pipe organ on Sunday afternoons is higher than that of the church with a tattoo parlor. (Further, there may be sin inherent in tattooing that isn't present in the recital--but then, there may be sin at the recital which isn't present at the skate park.)

But is there a fundamental difference between a church which relies on mindless drama, positive practical sermons and a thumping band to bring the Gospel to the lost and a church which relies on tattoos and skate parks, or a church which puts on Ibsen and Mozart in the park?

In the end, they're all relying on culture to advance the Gospel. And though one culture is certainly higher and more beautiful than another, though Mozart beats tattoos and Ibsen beats Debbie-the-skit-woman, reliance on Mozart and Ibsen to advance the Gospel is ultimately no more glorifying to God than reliance on a skate park or tattoo parlor.

My fear is that in reacting against churches which focus on variants of lowbrow culture, Reformed Evangelicals are in danger of sanctifying and enshrining middle-class culture rather than Christ.

There is nothing more inherently God-pleasing about Ibsen than skateboarding, nothing inherently superior about a classical recital or Shakespeare play as instruments of the Gospel than a Stryper concert.

We aren't likely to win the battle for high culture in American churches, but even if we did, we wouldn't thereby advance the Kingdom of Christ. The call of the Gospel is a call not into but away from human culture, highbrow and lowbrow alike:

"I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world."

May God grant our churches less culture and more of the Spiritual power that propels us as countercultural agents against all worldly pretension by sanctifying us in truth.

The path of true evangelism is a path of Spiritual power, not a cultural path. It is the path of faith, not of sight. Less culture all told, fewer concerts, fewer videos and dramas combined with more time with our unsaved neighbors, more good deeds from our homes, more prayer meetings in our churches: this is the route to evangelical power.

Gary Knapp has a superb post reflecting on the news of Katie Holmes' pregnancy.

While we've not failed to argue the reformed distinction between general and special revelation--that general revelation is sufficient to condemn while special revelation alone leads to saving faith in Jesus Christ--there is a current within reformed churches today that uses this distinction to provide comfort for what appears to us to be heartlessness toward our neighbors. The illogic goes something like this:

If pagans choose to kill their unborn (or newly born) children, they do so because God has given them over. Who are we to intervene?

If pagans choose to copulate like alley cats, they do so because God has given them over. Why should we oppose what God has decreed?

If pagans choose to sterilize their marital love, more power to God's covenant people who will have lots of children, teach them how to think and lead, and take over our nation.

If pagans choose to sodomize one another, what business is that of ours? We can't expect them to acknowledge, let alone follow, God's Law. Let the civil authority handle such matters in the way best calculated to preserve peace among us; if sodomites come to Christ, they will see the error of their ways and repent.

It is such reasoning that allows reformed and evangelical leaders to argue in favor of the repeal of all laws opposing sodomy across our nation. What are we to say to them...

Beauty is the battlefield where God and the devil war for the soul of man. -Fyodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov

Although I'm hesitant to recommend anything aligned with the neocons, for several years now I've been reading The New Criterion and I do recommend it to our readers. It's not for everyone; you have to be interested in the arts and open to dyspepsia as the critics main style. But of course, who could avoid being dyspeptic if he had to view and listen to the fruit of degeneracy as his life's work?

The latest issue has an essay by Roger Kimball reviewing Art in Crisis: The Lost Center by Hans Sedlmayr. You haven't heard of it because it sells only a couple hundred copies in English each year which may partly be explained by Sedlmayr having been somewhat of a Nazi sympathizer, although nothing to the degree of Martin Heidegger. Originally published in Germany in 1948, it had sold over 100,000 copies of the German original before it came out in English translation in 1957. Kimball writes:

In a column written in late December titled, "Is Darwin Holy?," Joe Sobran comments on the "curious evangelical zeal" of Darwinists opposing intelligent design. Three themes of this wise column: first, art is the religion of the godless, their best shot at the numinous or mystical--anything that transcends themselves; second, children are the greatest blessing God gives a husband and wife, often leading them back to His chains of love; and third, Darwinists hate God and attack those who love Him because, as Sobran puts it, "Spoiled souls always want to spoil other souls (saying) 'If I can't be innocent, neither can you!'"...

If I've gotta be hectored, please never let it be by a Brit--with them it's an art form. (Read the final few paragraphs.)

And yeah, I just committed a people-group generalization. Speaking of which, check out the Apostle Paul's, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons...this testimony is true." I wonder whether the latest revisionist Bibles keep this humdinger?