August 2006

Last night I finished a book recommended by my good friend, Bob Patterson, titled Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (2004). We started the book during our family vacation, reading it aloud in the car as we drove. But we didn't get to the end so now we all have to finish it on our own.

Born Fighting is a broad-stroke history of the Scots-Irish, combined with a good bit of personal narrative by the author, James Webb, whose love and respect for his ethnic background runs gold-mine deep.

Webb's father was an Air Force colonel who clawed his way up the ranks by sheer determination. Webb followed in his father's footsteps, graduating from the Naval Academy, then serving as a Marine officer in the An Hoa Basin in Viet Nam. He was wounded twice and decorated with the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. Forced to leave the military because of a wound that wouldn't heal, Webb went on to earn his J.D. at Georgetown University where the faculty sought to humiliate him for his military service. His final work with the military came as Secretary of the Navy in the late eighties.

Since then, Webb has been a journalist. His work includes what many consider the classic novel of the war in Viet Nam, Fields of Fire (1978). Tom Wolfe writes, "In my opinion ( Fields of Fire is) the finest of the Vietnam novels."

If you've read The Great Santini to which Webb makes a glancing allusion in the final pages of his book, you could say Webb is the mirror image of the Great Santini's biographer-son, Pat Conroy; and therefore, his precise opposite. Many of his father's traits Conroy portrays as despicable could easily serve as the basis of Webb's honorable and loving tribute to his own dad. It's all in the perspective. Only one of these men has learned the truth of Wilde's observation, "Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."

And as an aside, I've rarely hated a book as much as I hated The Great Santini. Vulgar, sanctimonious (although I doubt anyone has ever applied this term to Conroy's work before), and patricidal, I do wish Conroy had read the account of Noah's drunkenness before taking up pen. Does America really need one more child bent on destroying his father's reputation? Conroy and Frankie Schaeffer would have done better to shut up. How do men cash royalty checks they receive for this kind of work?

But back to Webb. I'm telling you, this book is required reading for Baptists and Presbyterians with Scots-Irish blood. With me, you also may have the joy of recovering your ethnic roots and pride, realizing why, raised on Handel's Messiah playing from a stereo speaker above your crib in infancy in a suburb of Philadelphia, as you grow older you find yourself growing in your love for most things Southern. You love it's humor (Jerry Clower and Barney Fife/Citizen's Arrest); its music (Merle Haggard and Bill Monroe); it's manners (from the time of first meeting, your daughter's husband [a Nashville man] addressed you and your wife "Sir" and "Ma'am"); its literature (Flannery O'Connor, Dabney's bio of Stonewall Jackson); its sports (Nascar); its denominations (Presbyterian Church in America and the Southern Baptist Convention); its movies (Driving Miss Daisy and Deliverance [yeah, I'm joking--it's just a joke, chill out, wouldya?]...

I'm flabbergasted and deeply saddened ;-) to read a blog post by the wife of a former professor at Moody Bible Institute, Stan Gundry, titled, "Complementarian Christian Hate."

Linking to this blog as her prime example of "Christian Hate," Mr. Gundry's wife claims that I "cling to Medieval Bible interpretations and attitudes toward women," and that I hold "that females are to be restricted in some way, by males, and the most dominant male in the group gets to decide in what way and to what extent they are to be restricted." Actually no, Mrs. Gundry, not "the most dominant male in the group," but God the Father Almighty Who decreed:

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. (1Timothy 2:9-15)

It is God Himself Who created Adam and Eve in a first/second order, and Who told us the significance of His creative act--namely, that woman is not to exercise authority over man. By what possible construction can my endless repetition of this command of Scripture be construed as "the most dominant male in the group get(ting) to decide in what way and to what extent (women) are to be restricted." Is Mrs. Gundry blind, deaf, and dumb to the Word of God, and does her husband not know what she's writing?

At the end of her post, Mrs. Gundry declares "most comps will not come right out and reveal their fears of women, nor their hatred of the female."

My actions and words, according to Mrs. Gundry, can all be explained by my own fear and hatred for my wife, my daughters, my mother and mother-in-law, my sister and sisters-in-law, and so on. What a pile of rubbish.

Men, including the Apostle Paul, have always loved their wives and mothers and daughters. And it's precisely because of our love for them that we live in submission to God's created order.

Mrs. Gundry, I am sincerely sorry that you lack a husband who loves you enough to call you to submission to the Word of God--and according to that Word, to submit personally to him as your husband. But may I gently suggest that you not parade the nakedness he's abandoned you to as if it were a principle, and not a defect?

Still, I'm happy to report that Mrs. Gundry agrees with my own critique of the label, "complementarian." She writes:

I can't really be comfortable calling those traditionalists-in-a-new dress complementarians. After all, everyone, egalitarians included, believes that the genders are complementary to each other.

Not the sexes, but rather "the genders are complementary to each other." Well, regardless, preach it Mrs. Gundry.

This just arrived in my E-mail inbox from my friend, Kevin Offner:

I'm still a bit stunned as I write this. Georgetown University has just kicked off InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (and four other evangelical para-church groups) from its campus. No reason has been given other than what you see in this letter. Please pray for us as we seek to respond, that we would have wisdom and respond out of love, not fear.

Warmly in Christ,

Kevin Offner, InterVarsity Grad Staff at Washington, DC Universities

Looking into the matter, I found that Georgetown's campus newspaper, The Hoya, ran an article today (August 25, 2006), announcing the decision. The article titled "Campus Ministry Removes Affiliates exposed the tight-lipped, damage-control mindset characterizing Georgetown's administrators who implemented the decision:

"The manner in which they pursued this was that they weren't going to allow any other voices other than their own," (Chi Aplha Christian Fellowship co-leader) Jay Lim said. "It's not just what they did, it's the manner in which they pursued [it]."

The new policy barring ministry affiliates was announced during a brief meeting that administrators held with the groups last Thursday. According to several affiliate members who attended the meeting, administrators announced the exclusion of the groups without permitting any discussion or feedback.

Hannah Coyne (COL '07), another Chi Alpha co-leader, called the move "incredibly unprofessional and incredibly disrespectful to the students at Georgetown."

...Officials in the offices of Fr. Philip Boroughs, S.J., vice president for mission and ministry, and Fr. Timothy Godfrey, S.J., director of campus ministry, referred questions to the Office of Communications. Phone calls yesterday afternoon to Rev. Wheeler, who wrote the letter informing the groups of the new policies, were not returned.

Here is a PDF copy of the letter announcing the decision. Printed on Georgetown letterhead and signed by Rev. Constance C. Wheeler, Director of Campus Ministry, it reads...

If any Christians still need convincing that fruitful apple trees and grain fields and dairy herds and women's wombs are God's blessings, and that He denies these blessings to those who defy His authority, this from today's Wall Street Journal concerning the growing crisis of sterility within the pro-baby-killing, pro-sodomy, pro-euthanasia, pro-sex education Democrat crowd. From which I take this priceless quote:

Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation.

Reminds me of a cartoon in the latest New Yorker that hit my funny bone earlier today. The picture is of two modern-day prophets picketing the streets of New York City, one older man with wild hair and a long flowing beard and the other a middle-aged woman who appears frazzled and maybe neurotic. The title above the cartoon is "Turf War on West 49th Street." The man's sign says, "The end is near for religious reasons" and the woman's, "The end is near for ecological reasons."

Adding to the inanity all around us, I say "Make love, not war." Glad I got that off my chest.

(Thanks, Dave.)

This just in. Pastor Timothy LaBouf's church board at First Baptist Church in Watertown, New York, decided to relieve Ms. Mary Lambert of her teaching responsibilities in their Sunday school program. When she received her letter from the board asking her to step aside, Ms. Lambert had been teaching for 54 years.

The board explained that 1Timothy 2:12 prohibited what Ms. Lambert was doing--publicly teaching Scripture to men. Apparently, this was one Scripture Ms. Lambert had overlooked during her 2,808 Sunday school classes.

Taking her case public, Ms. Lambert said she was dismissed "without warning."

Speaking only for myself, I have my doubts. I'd put money on the fact that Ms. Lambert had any number of warnings she chose not to see or hear. Church boards don't up and fire people without first engaging in many private conciliatory efforts.

Further, Ms. Lambert's 54 years demonstrate quite adequately that she's a force to be reckoned with. Teaching children this long is one thing, but Ms. Lambert has been leading the men of her church for 54 years!

Ms. Lambert has made herself, her pastor, and her church national news, now, and you can watch her in a video on CNN's web site. Check out the statements released to the press by Pastor LaBouf and his church board. It's obvious Ms. Lambert's lectern isn't a prop for notes, but a battleship. She's an old hand at going public with her complaints about those God has called her to submit to.

Back on May 21, 2006, the First Baptist board released a letter reprimanding Ms. Lambert and other members of "a small group" who, according to their report, had "decided to forgo the mechanisms that we have in place for dealing with conflicts or disagreements within the church and elected to hire a local attorney and aired their grievances in a letter to the Watertown Daily Times."

Well, Ms. Lambert doesn't appear to have heeded her rebuke and now, just a few months later, she's taken another matter public. Her retirement is national news. CNN comments that Pastor LaBouf and his board hold to some exotic religious belief called the "literal interpretation of the Bible." They don't record what kind of interpretation of Scripture Ms. Lambert herself holds to after teaching for 54 years...