Are you a Republican or Democrat? Well, whatcha drinkin?

From the National Journal Blog:

We’ve analyzed Scarborough Research data, which includes 200,000 interviews with American adults, to determine the politics of beer drinkers.

As the bubble chart shows, Dos Equis is a bipartisan brew – Republicans and Democrats both like to drink it. So Mr. Goldsmith’s public foray into the 2012 race could alienate a large share of Dos Equis fans.

Ironically, this is in contrast to its corporate sister Heineken, which as it turns out is the most Democratic beer of all. On the other hand, Republicans love their Coors Light and favor Sam Adams, which is brewed just a few miles away from Romney campaign headquarters and whose namesake was an original tea partier.

Dos Equis is not the first – and won’t be the last – brand to find itself in a political pickle. From Chick-fil-A to Susan G. Komen to the pizza owner who recently hugged the president, the fallout depends on media coverage, the brand’s response, and the political values of its customers.

We continue to advise big brands – who spend millions on consumer research – to make the investment to know where their fans stand politically and to put in safeguards to mitigate a political firestorm.

That being said, the best advice we can give: Stay nonpartisan, my friends.

 

Conservatives and Libertarians: Uneasy Cousins

Good essay from Dr. Robert Nisbet:

By common assent modern conservatism, as political philosophy, springs from Edmund Burke: chiefly from his Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790. That book is of course more than a brilliantly prescient analysis of the Revolution and its new and fateful modes of power over individual lives; the Reflections is also, through its running asides and obiter dicta, one of the profoundest treatments of the nature of political legitimacy ever written. Modern political conservatism, as we find it in a European philosophical tradition from about 1800 on, takes its origin in Burke’s insistence upon the rights of society and its historically formed groups such as family, neighborhood, guild and church against the “arbitrary power” of a political government. Individual liberty, Burke argued-and it remains the conservative thesis to this day-is only possible within the context of a plurality of social authorities, of moral codes, and of historical traditions, all of which, in organic articulation, serve at one and the same time as “the inns and resting places” of the human spirit and intermediary barriers to the power of the state over the individual. The influence of Burke’s Reflectionswas immediate, and all the major works of European philosophical conservatism-those of Bonald, de Maistre, the young Lamennais, Hegel, Haller, Donoso y Cortes, Southey and Coleridge, among others-in the early nineteenth century are rooted, as their authors without exception acknowledged, in Burke’s seminal volume.

 

Burke, it might be stressed here, had a political-ideological record leading up to his famous Reflections that was not regarded in his time, and would not be ordinarily thought of today, as quintessentially conservative. He had been from boyhood an ardent admirer of the glorious revolution of 1688 which had taken place four decades before his birth. When troubles with the American colonies broke out in the 1760’s, Burke threw himself without reserve on the side of the colonists, and his parliamentary speeches on the Americans and on what he regarded as the hateful practices of the British government are of course classics. He may not have endorsed the colonies‘ decision to go to war, to seek a complete break with England, but his sympathies lay nonetheless with those Englishmen who had created the New World of America. It is worth recalling that, as with respect to the Americans, some of Burke’s most powerful speeches in Parliament were delivered in behalf of India and its traditional culture and in fierce opposition to Warren Hastings, whom Burke sought unsuccessfully to indict, and the British East India Company for its depredations in India. And finally, Burke, for all his love of England and English ways, was unrelenting in his criticisms of the government for its treatment of Ireland, where Burke had been born. In sum, with good reason Burke’s close friend, that essential Tory, Dr. Johnson, could worry over Burke’s Whiggism.

 

Turning now to the foundations of contemporary libertarianism, of classical liberalism, we can go back at least as far as John Locke’s Second Treatise if we choose, to the writings of Montesquieu in France in the eighteenth century, those of Jefferson in America, and Adam Smith in England. But the securest and most vivid source of libertarianism seems to me to lie in J. S. Mill’s On Liberty, published in 1859, the same year in which Darwin’s Origin of the Species appeared (which has its own relation to classical liberalism and thus contemporary libertarianism, through its central thesis of natural selection, the biological version of what the classical liberals called the free market, using the phrase in its widest sense).

 

It is in On Liberty that Mill expresses at the beginning of the essay the famous “one very simple principle.” Mill writes: “The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually and collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. . . , His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” I suggest that Mill’s “one very simple principle” is the core of contemporary libertarianism. It is necessary, though, to note Mill’s immediate qualifications to the principle, qualifications which may or may not be acceptable to the majority of libertarians in our own day. Thus we learn that the principle does not apply to those below their legal majority, an abridgement that large numbers of high school and college students today would ridicule and reject. Nor does the principle hold for those Mill rather cryptically identifies as being “in a state to require being taken care of by others,” a state that must include all those on any form of welfare in our society as well as those whom Mill probably had chiefly in mind, the chronically ill and the mentally deficient. Mill categorically excludes from this principle of liberty all peoples on earth who are in what he calls “backward states of society.” For them, he declares, despotism remains necessary, albeit as enlightened as possible, until through social evolution these peoples reach the level of the modern West in civilization.

 

Later in the essay Mill goes so far as to deny the principle of liberty to those around us who are, in his word, “nuisances” to others. And, he continues, “no one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions.” In its bald statement Mill’s one very simple principle would most certainly give legitimacy to contemporary pornography in all spheres as well as to noisy, order-disrupting, potentially violent street demonstrations. But with the qualifications just cited, it is far from evident that Mill’s view of legitimate freedom would give sanction to contemporary license-moral, political, religious whatever. It is impossible not to believe that even in bald, abstract statement, Mill’s single, simple principle was intended to apply only to people formed intellectually and morally as Mill himself was. But such observations do not affect the sheer power that has been exerted, especially during the past half-century, by Mill’s principle-in philosophy, the social sciences, theology, law, and most recently in popular morality. (Looking at the scene around us, who can seriously doubt that the counterculture won the important battles in its war against traditional American morality, commencing in the 1950’s and reaching its high-point in the late 1960’s? And in essence these battles were waged in the spirit of Mill’s one very simple principle. Mill may have taken seriously the checks and limits he prescribed, but others, looking at the principle in the discrete, abstract, and categorically imperative form in which Mill set it down, have felt no similar obligation.)

Read the rest here (at the Imaginative Conservative)

Why baptize the infants of believing parents?

Dr. R. Scott Clark explains:

Told you all religions are the same!

DEVIL’S ELBOW, Missouri (ASS)— Theocratic, mean-spirited violence has erupted throughout the deep South, the “Bible Belt”, the Midwest, and a smattering of towns in the Rocky Mountains as thousands of Christians have taken to the streets, wielding swords, Bibles, and plowshares, to protest the recent revelation that Jesus had at least one wife. Other protests, less violent but also widespread, took place over reports that some scholars and pulp novelists believe Jesus merely dated, but never married. In Devil’s Elbow, Missouri, a group of about two hundred men, women, and children, all blood relatives of one sort or another, dressed in their Sunday best and carrying large Bibles, stormed through the downtown, chanting, “Those who mock the Lord, will surely taste the sword; Liars say he had a wife, liars deserve to taste the knife.” At least eighteen were injured from blows and bursts of righteous indignation, and two men were slain in the Spirit, although they were apparently not harmed physically. Eyewitnesses report that the riotous Christians were singing a popular, militantly theistic song with the lyrics, “It only takes a spark, to get a fire going/and soon all those around, are warmed up by its glowing…” One bystander, Joe “Buck” Bob, said the singing was “unusually good; they have really purty voices.” Similar riots have broken out in numerous small towns. But they are also taking place in cities and other important places. Demonstrations near Harvard University, where professor Karen L. King teaches, were especially intense, in part because Christians had not been on the Harvard campus for nearly five decades, and faculty and staff were deeply confused by their clean-cut appearance and efficient methods of quoting Scripture while seeking to force victims to “do some serious soul searching”. Numerous faculty members and students were shocked and traumatized by what one history professor called “the sort of theocratic-inspired violence that hasn’t been witnessed since Galileo was torn to shreds by Roman Catholic popes and their mistresses in the Vatican gardens in the thirteenth century.”

Read the rest here
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/1616/dozens_injured_thousands_confused_by_riots_over_gospel_of_jesus_wife.aspx

Is America becoming a nation of takers? – Society and Culture – AEI

http://www.aei.org/article/are-we-becoming-a-nation-of-takers Author shows how you can’t simply blame the growth in dependency on growth in entitlement spending on medicare and social security.

All Christians are creedal, some go public with it

It has become rather cool for some Christians to declare emphatically that they need “no creed but the bible” (a mantra made popular after the second great awakening). But of course, a creed or confession of faith (like the Apostle’s Creed or the 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689) is simply a fallible summary of what a group of Christians think the infallible bible teaches. It also provides a very easy and crystal clear answer to someone who asks, What does it mean to be a Christian? or What do you believe as a Christian? Not having a creed or confession to go by can make the answers given disjointed, unclear, incomplete, disparate, non-specific, too narrow or too broad, and even heretical. Moreover, it isn’t true that some Christians are creedal and others are not. As Church Historian Carl Trueman explains:

“I do want to make the point here that Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not, therefore, subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true.”

Trueman has a book on this subject called the Creedal Imperative.  Haven’t read it though.  Looks good.

Westminster Larger Catechism Questions 43-45

Q. 43. How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?

A. Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in his revealing to the church,[166] in all ages, by his Spirit and Word,[167] in divers ways of administration,[168] the whole will of God,[169] in all things concerning their edification and salvation.[170]

Q. 44. How doth Christ execute the office of a priest?

A. Christ executeth the office of a priest, in his once offering himself a sacrifice without spot to God,[171] to be reconciliation for the sins of his people;[172] and in making continual intercession for them.[173]

Q. 45. How doth Christ execute the office of a king?

A. Christ executeth the office of a king, in calling out of the world a people to himself,[174] and giving them officers,[175] laws,[176] and censures, by which he visibly governs them;[177] in bestowing saving grace upon his elect,[178] rewarding their obedience,[179] and correcting them for their sins,[180] preserving and supporting them under all their temptations and sufferings,[181] restraining and overcoming all their enemies,[182] and powerfully ordering all things for his own glory,[183] and their good;[184] and also in taking vengeance on the rest, who know not God, and obey not the gospel.[185]

[166] John 1:18. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

[167] 1 Peter 1:10-12. Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.

[168] Hebrews 1:1-2. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.

[169] John 15:15. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

[170] Acts 20:23. Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. Ephesians 4:11-13. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. John 20:31. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

[171] Hebrews 9:14, 28. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?… So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

[172] Hebrews 2:17. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.

[173] Hebrews 7:25. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

[174] Acts 15:14-16. Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up. Genesis 49:10. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Psalm 110:3. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

[175] Ephesians 4:11-12. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:28. And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

[176] Isaiah 33:22. For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

[177] Matthew 18:17-18. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 1 Corinthians 5:4-5. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

[178] Acts 5:31. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.

[179] Revelation 22:12. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. Revelation 2:10. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

[180] Revelation 3:19. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

[181] Isaiah 63:9. In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.

[182] 1 Corinthians 15:25. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. Psalm 110:1-2. The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.

[183] Romans 14:10-11. But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

[184] Romans 8:28. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

[185] 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9. In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. Psalm 2:8-9. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

In criminal justice, is “The Machinary of Justice” robbing society of justice and the public good?

University of Pennsylvania Criminologist Stephanos Bibas on how our criminal justice system is failing us (based on his new book):

Also, he wrote an interesting piece a while back on Charles Colson’s prison reform ideas and how they are supported by research in criminology.  Here’s a bit:

America began its great prison experiment two centuries ago as a humane effort to replace the sometimes brutal corporal and capital punishments of the colonial era. At the root of the prison movement was a combination of Enlightenment and Quaker optimism about human nature. Reformers no longer saw the roots of crime in weakness of free will or in the Devil’s temptations. Rather, they saw crime as a form of social disease, blaming wrongdoers’ families, associates, and vice-filled cities for dragging them down into crime. The solution seemed to be to remove them from their environments and to instill new, law-abiding habits and discipline.

These prison reformers were far too optimistic about fallen human nature, as were the psychologists, therapists, and social workers who followed them much later. Penitentiaries did not breed penitence but crime. Solitary confinement without work drove some inmates insane or to suicide. Keeping prisoners alone soon proved too costly and difficult to maintain, and rising crime led to double-bunking and more cells, destroying isolation and turning prisons into schools for crime replete with criminal networks and contacts. Opposition from unions and small businesses shut down the market for prison labor, turning prisons into dens of idleness punctuated by sporadic rape and other violence.

Prisons have failed at their missions as penitentiaries or reformatories. They have now become a broken system of warehousing broken men. A fraction of those men are so dangerous that we must confine them indefinitely for our own safety, but many are not, and we made little serious effort to reclaim them or even hold out hope. And the debate over crime became a simplistic divide between a Left that was seen as coddling and excusing criminals and a Right that wanted to lock them up as human refuse and throw away the key.

Conservatives have not always thought this way. As Winston Churchill, who was no softie, put it when he was Home Secretary, “The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country . . . . [This civilized attitude includes] unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man . . . .” But this Christian faith and hope of redemption lay dormant or ignored by self-proclaimed Christian politicians.

Read the rest here (how he approves of Chuck Colson’s biblically based ideas about how to reform our nation’s prisons).

“Zero Credit Policymaking,” why easy & painless solutions fail to become public policy

From the Monkey Cage:

The conventional wisdom is that the nation faces difficult economic choices, and that we cannot make progress on our collective challenges without imposing losses on someone. But in a provocative New York Times column, Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank argues that many important problems can be solved “without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone.”

Frank gives the example of highway congestion. Roads are crowded because they are generally free. Yet many Americans would gladly pay to avoid horrendous traffic delays. As Frank points out “A modest congestion fee, administered with E-ZPass-style technology, would raise needed revenue and provide an incentive to use crowded roads only when the benefits outweigh the social costs.” The congestion fee would be a burden for low-income households. But, Frank suggests, “because the gains far exceed their price, we can redistribute them so that everyone comes out ahead.” The more general point is that there are many potential reforms where the winners could compensate the losers and still be better off. Yet such “painless” solutions often fail to generate political support. Why not? Frank observes that the reforms may upset some ideologues and lobbyists, but that is at best a partial explanation.

Several years ago, Yale political scientist Alan Gerber and I invited leading scholars to contribute to an edited volume (Promoting the General Welfare: New Perspectives on Government Performance) on the failure of government as an institution to solve collective problems. Factors that our colleagues nominated for consideration included: the tendency of political competition by cohesive, differentiated parties to raise the political stakes in policy debates and inhibit the search for pragmatic solutions (Morris Fiorina); the failure of the federal system to function as a true “laboratory of democracy” that develops and spreads effective policy innovations across jurisdictions (Mark Rom); the failure to devise congressional rules and procedures that encourage the adoption of socially efficient laws (Sarah Binder); the elimination of analytic research bureaus like the Office of Technology Assessment (Eugene Bardach); and the tendency for electoral incentives to detour lawmakers “into small-bore distributive politics and feckless position taking” (David Mayhew).

To this list of factors, Gerber and I added another: developing novel solutions to promote the public good can be politically risky, because it requires a policy innovator to shift public opinion. This effort at persuasion is akin to making a risky investment, which can generate rewards for the investor or go sour. In a commercial setting, such an investment often enjoys legal protections such as patents and trademarks. But in politics, there is nothing to stop an opportunistic opponent who observes the changes in public opinion produced by his political rival’s effort to build support for a new policy from developing a similar proposal of his own.  If this copy-cat behavior is successful, the policy innovator will, at best, capture a small share of the credit for the result of his efforts, reducing the incentive to develop the policy innovation in the first place.

Gerber and I coined the phrase “Zero Credit Policymaking” to capture this political failure. As we wrote, “If problem solving is an unintended by-product of political competition rather than something pursued for its own sake, and if politicians are motivated to do what wins elections, a tension exists in our system of collective choice. From the standpoint of social welfare, a policy should be adopted if the benefits are greater than the costs, whereas from the standpoint of a politician, a policy should be adopted if the political benefits to the politician are greater than the political costs. Good policies that have large social but small political benefits may not find a political sponsor.”

Can anything be done? Focusing on Congress’s role, Yale University political scientist David Mayhew came up with a thoughtful list of reforms: streamline legislation (no more 1,000 page omnibus bills!) to help citizens better understand what their government is doing; open up congressional primaries to all voters regardless of party; encourage members to raise at least half their campaign contributions in their states or districts; package C-SPAN coverage in small segments that voters and the media can digest; and cripple partisan gerrymandering. All good ideas to promote the general welfare, but unfortunately they have not gained much traction.

Tell us what you really think Mr. Gerson.

Wish I could say it as plainly as he (I prefer charts and graphs, which makes me totally uninteresting).  I’ve been saying for a while, Republicans will not win a class warfare argument (or war, for that matter), particularly in the future given serious demographic changes occurring in society.  And they will not win with a strictly libertarian argument (however sound it may or may not be).  They had better learn to revisit old ‘common good’ or communitarian classical conservative arguments.  They are not jaded by class-based appeals and they are rooted in concern, rather than disdain, for troubled people made in God’s image.  Warning: Gerson has little patience with individualistic-libertarians.

From the Washington Post:

the video confirmed an existing stereotype of Romney and Republicans as wealthy white businessmen, clinking wine glasses while bemoaning the irresponsibility of the help. This probably does not change the fundamental dynamic of the race, because few imagined Romney to be a closet populist. The problem for Romney is that the fundamental dynamic is not favorable. A nation disillusioned with the incumbent has unresolved questions about the suitability of the challenger. The video holds those questions open at a time when Romney should be answering them.

It is possible that America — fed up with economic stagnation and worried about international disorder — will turn, in the end, to a solid, competent Republican stereotype. But that raises another issue concerning the video [47% remark of Romney] — a matter of governing, not politics. Is this Romney’s view of the nature of our social crisis? Romney was appealing to a common Republican belief that the expansion of government has produced a class of citizens who live off the sweat of others, regard themselves as victims and refuse to accept responsibility.

While the Romney video was making news, I was reading some recent research by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. He recounts an interview with a woman given the fictional name of Mary Sue, who lives in a declining industrial town in Ohio. Mary Sue’s parents divorced when she was young. Her mother became a stripper and left for days at a time. Her stepmother beat her and confined her to a single room. Mary Sue told the interviewer that, for a time, her only friend had been a yellow mouse who shared the apartment.

Mary Sue went in and out of juvenile detention. One boyfriend burned her arms with cigarettes. Her current partner has two children by two other women.

Is such a story really explainable as a failure of personal responsibility? That seems both simplistic and callous. Putnam describes these social conditions as “depressingly typical” in America’s working class. He measures a number of growing gaps between poorer and more affluent Americans — gaps of parental time and investment, of religious and community involvement, of academic achievement — that widen a class divide and predict a “social mobility crash” for millions of Americans.

This crisis has a number of causes, including the collapse of working-class families, the flight of blue-collar jobs and the decay of working-class neighborhoods, which used to offer stronger networks of mentors outside the home. Perverse incentives in some government programs may have contributed to these changes, but this does not mean that shifting incentives can easily undo the damage. Removing a knife from a patient does not automatically return him to health. Whatever the economic and cultural causes, the current problem is dysfunctional institutions, which routinely betray children and young adults. Restoring a semblance of equal opportunity — promoting family commitment, educational attainment and economic advancement — will take tremendous effort and creative policy.

Yet a Republican ideology pitting the “makers” against the “takers” offers nothing. No sympathy for our fellow citizens. No insight into our social challenge. No hope of change. This approach involves a relentless reductionism. Human worth is reduced to economic production. Social problems are reduced to personal vices. Politics is reduced to class warfare on behalf of the upper class.

A few libertarians have wanted this fight ever since they read “Atlas Shrugged” as pimply adolescents. Given Romney’s background, record and faith, I don’t believe that he holds this view. I do believe that Republicans often parrot it, because they lack familiarity with other forms of conservatism that include a conception of the common good.

But there really is no excuse. Republican politicians could turn to Burkean conservatism, with its emphasis on the “little platoons” of civil society. They could reflect on the Catholic tradition of subsidiarity, and solidarity with the poor. They could draw inspiration from Tory evangelical social reformers such as William Wilberforce or Lord Shaftesbury. Or they could just read Abraham Lincoln, who stood for “an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”

Instead they mouth libertarian nonsense, unable to even describe some of the largest challenges of our time.

1000 pastors pledge to defy the IRS on “Pulpit Freedom Sunday”

Here’s my analysis of this situation.  First, the IRS code which prohibits preaching about politics from the pulpit is unconstitutional.  It violates the 1st amendment’s freedom of religion and its implicit principle of the separation of church and state (it’s not the state’s jurisdictional business to police sermons).  However, Christian pastors should not ordinarily preach about politics from the pulpit (particularly electoral politics and candidate endorsing).  This is not their calling and political activity is not the mission or legitimate function of the church, which is instead simply to preach the Word, administer the sacraments and exercise church discipline, leaving what are essentially ‘worldly’ matters to other settings.  So, what is constitutionally permitted for Christian preachers to do, should generally be not done.   Here’s the story from Fox News:

More than 1,000 pastors are planning to challenge the IRS next month by deliberately preaching politics ahead of the presidential election despite a federal ban on endorsements from the pulpit.

The defiant move, they hope, will prompt the IRS to enforce a 1954 tax code amendment that prohibits tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, from making political endorsements. Alliance Defending Freedom, which is holding the October summit, said it wants the IRS to press the matter so it can be decided in court. The group believes the law violates the First Amendment by “muzzling” preachers.

“The purpose is to make sure that the pastor — and not the IRS — decides what is said from the pulpit,” Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the group, told FoxNews.com. “It is a head-on constitutional challenge.”

Stanley said pastors attending the Oct. 7 “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” will “preach sermons that will talk about the candidates running for office” and then “make a specific recommendation.” The sermons will be recorded and sent to the IRS. 
“We’re hoping the IRS will respond by doing what they have threatened,” he said. “We have to wait for it to be applied to a particular church or pastor so that we can challenge it in court. We don’t think it’s going to take long for a judge to strike this down as unconstitutional.”

An amendment was made to the IRS tax code in 1954, stating that tax-exempt organizations are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

“Violation of this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise tax,” the IRS says in its online guide for churches and religious organizations seeking tax exemption.

Stanley and others, like San Diego pastor Jim Garlow, say the IRS regularly threatens churches that they will lose their tax-exempt status if they preach politics.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/20/pastors-pledge-to-defy-irs-preach-politics-from-pulpit-ahead-election/#ixzz277LNV9Wf

Mitt de Tocqueville

From Sam Gregg:

Mitt de Tocqueville

“Not elegantly stated.” That’s how the Republican party’s presidential candidate described some of his words captured in the covertly-taped video in which he claimed that 47 percent of voters were in the bag for President Obama because they are “dependent on the government.” Amidst the hype and feigned outrage, however, it’s worth noting that a not-dissimilar analysis may be found (and much more elegantly stated) in a book published 172 years ago by the (still) greatest commentator on American political culture: the very refined and very astute French social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.

I doubt that thick books are in vogue at MSNBC these days, but if the liberal commentariat deigned to pick up a copy of the second volume of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and read the chapter entitled “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear,” they’d find the link between creating tame citizens and a state that generously volunteers to do everything on their behalf spelt out quite gracefully. Thinking about possible threats to freedom in a democratic age, Tocqueville wrote:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Sound familiar? More than one commentator has observed that Tocqueville’s words seem to foreshadow some of the cultural and political effects of the regulatory and welfare state in the conditions of modern democracy. Many people find themselves lulled into a type of dependency upon the government. The “softness” of this despotism consists of people voluntarily yielding up their freedom in return for the comforts provided by their oh-so-kind masters.

Ever since the modern welfare state was founded (by none other than that great “champion” of freedom Otto von Bismarck as he sought, unsuccessfully, to persuade industrial workers to stop voting for the German Social Democrats), Western politicians have discovered that welfare programs and subsidies more generally are a marvelous way of creating constituencies of people who are likely to keep voting for you as long as you keep delivering the goods. In terms of electoral dynamics, it sometimes reduces elections to contests about which party can give you more — at other people’s expense.

For several decades now, it’s been a playbook successfully used by European parties of left and right, most Democrats, and plenty of country-club Republicans to help develop and maintain electoral support. As Tocqueville predicted, “Under this system the citizens quit their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then fall back into it.” In such an atmosphere, politicians who seek to reduce welfare expenditures find themselves at a profound electoral disadvantage — which seems to have been Mr. Romney’s awkwardly phrased point.

Of course, it all ends in insolvency, as we are seeing played out in fiscal disasters such as the city of Los Angeles, the state of California, the city of Philadelphia, the city of Detroit, the city of Chicago, and the state of Illinois. In case you’re wondering, there’s a pattern here concerning who has been in power for most of the time in these places. And if you want empirical evidence of the resultant economic, cultural, and moral wreckage, then read Nicholas Eberstadt’s new book, A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic.

Sadly for the rest of us, one can safely presume our political welfare-enablers aren’t that interested in how Tocqueville saw the Americans of the 1830s resolve their problems: i.e., through the habit of free association in which they banded together (especially in churches) to address issues and take care of those in genuine need. The same Americans didn’t see any need for federal departments of this or state departments of that to get involved, let alone to create such behemoths in the first place.

So while Mr. Romney’s choice of words was indeed infelicitous (much like “spread the wealth around,” “cling to their guns or religion,” or “you didn’t build that”), it’s not as if he didn’t have a point. The welfare state does have its own political dynamic, and the Left (with the notable exception of Bill Clinton in 1996) has never hesitated to promote it. The sooner conservatives and free marketers come up with more attractive ways of explaining to voters that having large numbers of people unduly dependent on the state isn’t just economically unsustainable but morally debilitating, the better. Democracy was never meant to be a system that gave 51 percent of the citizenry free rein to progressively loot the other 49 percent.

— Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute. He has authored several books including On Ordered Liberty, his prize-winning The Commercial Society, Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy, and his forthcoming Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America can Avoid a European Future.

Why must it be “civil” marriage? A helpful, rather Rawlsian, thought-experiment from a Political Scientist

From Political Scientist S. Adam Seagrave (excerpts):

The profoundly fulfilling and sublime aspects of marriage, however these might be characterized, occur apart from the intervention of politics; the mutual commitment to intimate life-long union, the raising of children, etc., could conceivably occur on the proverbial desert island (think of the Swiss Family Robinson), or at least within various forms of non-political community. Why, then, do we drape marriage in such drab legal garb? What, in other words, is the purpose of specifically civil marriage?

Governments assign legal responsibilities and benefits to marriage, rather than to other relationships, to help mitigate the potentially destructive and tragic consequences of irresponsible procreation.

In the beginning of his Politics, Aristotle asserts that “he who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them.” This insight, used in various ways by ancient and medieval political philosophers, was manifested in modern form by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, each of whom constructed versions of a hypothetical “state of nature” that would have existed before the formation of political societies and governments.

Just as these political philosophers hoped to discover the legitimate source and essential purpose of politics by imagining away its existence and plausibly recreating its “first growth and origin”—thereby giving rise to most of our contemporary ideas about politics—so we will attempt to discover the legitimate source and essential purpose of the political and legal aspects of marriage, that is, civil marriage, by imagining away its existence and dramatizing the moment of its creation.

Perhaps individuals in various relationships would pressure the government to recognize their relationships by assigning them a legal status that would entail both legally enforceable duties and some legal privileges—but why would they do this? Not out of concern for equality between different kinds of relationships, since all sorts of relationships would be equally unrecognized by the government in the absence of civil marriage. Nor, it seems, would couples or friends be driven by the need for legal validation of their particular relationship; in a situation of equal (un)recognition, such a motivation would never arise. Why should couples or friends in our state of nature care whether or not the government likes their relationship? While all people in relationships would surely insist upon the freedom to cultivate them free from unwarranted governmental intrusion as a consequence of their natural right to liberty, no one would care whether or not they received the government’s paternal blessing.

Since civil marriage wouldn’t originally arise in response to desires or demands of individuals in diverse relationships, the first move must have been made by governments. Why, then, would governments want to create something like civil marriage?

A first possibility might be the following: since certain relationships are of crucial importance to the common good of political societies, governments would try to encourage the formation and long-term stability of such relationships as much as possible through legislation. By assigning legal responsibilities and granting legal privileges to individuals in these relationships, governments might hope to protect and strengthen such relationships.

This reasoning is, however, exposed to at least a couple of difficulties, chief among which is the fact that most relationships of importance to the common good of society would be formed and flourish entirely on their own, regardless of political intervention. The value of such relationships to this common good lies, in fact, largely in the free commitment of each party in the relationship to the other. The more fundamental and sublime aspects of marriage would, in other words, persist in the absence of civil marriage.

Moreover, not only do committed intimate relationships, friendships, and other relationships of importance for the common good not need superimposed legal frameworks for their existence and stability; such an imposition might also be counterproductive, hindering and constricting the very relationships that these legal measures would be intended to promote.

If governments wouldn’t use civil marriage to offer further, perhaps ultimately counterproductive support to relationships that are already self-supporting, perhaps they would do so to address social problems that can arise when certain relationships are left unregulated. While many relationships don’t cause any consequences that we might see as potentially problematic for society if left unregulated, one sort of relationship clearly does: sexually intimate opposite-sex relationships.

Left unregulated by the government, most consequences of relationships—such as warm, fuzzy feelings, mutual goodwill, and trust—will not become socially destructive; procreation, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. Procreation, from a political perspective, is a double-edged sword: while it is essential for the continued existence of any society (and thus of primary importance), it can also represent a significantly damaging and even destructive social burden. The problematic aspect of procreation, from a political perspective, consists in the enormous expenditure of time, expense, and care needed to ensure the survival and development of helpless children.

In our state of nature, characterized as it is by a total absence of marriage’s mundane legal aspects, procreation would be highly problematic. While some children would still be born to and raised by the couples from which they originated, many more would be at least partially raised outside of such relationships. More men would tend to father more children with multiple women, and many of these children would lack the care and support necessary to their development as human beings and, frequently, to their very survival. For all of the well-documented social problems that arise from irresponsible procreation in today’s political societies, and to which admirable efforts such as President Obama’s Responsible Fatherhood Initiative are directed, the situation in our state of nature would be far worse.

Since the purpose of politics is to look after the common good of society, this situation would call loudly for some effort on the part of government to address the issue of procreation. Mandated child support and welfare programs address the social problems associated with procreation only after irresponsible procreation already has occurred. By legally arranging incentives and penalties around intimate relationships, however, governments could hope to encourage existing couples to stay together, thereby channeling procreation—as far as is non-tyrannically possible—in a non-socially-destructive direction.

[here lies] the purpose for which something like civil marriage would come into existence in the first place. Governments don’t legally recognize a certain type of relationship because they are suckers for romance; they do so because they are understandably afraid of the potentially destructive consequences of such romance.

Even if civil marriage is now commonly understood to provide moral approval or emotional validation to couples who presumably would partake of the more fundamental, sublime aspects of marriage anyway, this is not the purpose for which it would have been made or for which it is best suited. This purpose is, rather, to encourage couples to stay together and procreate exclusively with each other as well as to facilitate various aspects of the joint life to which they have committed themselves, and thereby to help mitigate the social and personal tragedies brought on by irresponsible procreation.

If responsible procreation is the precise and essential purpose of civil marriage, a number of implications follow for public policy. First, we have an exceptionally clear answer to current debates regarding same-sex marriage. Since same-sex couples aren’t part of the problem to which civil marriage is an attempted solution, there is as little reason to apply civil marriage to such relationships as there is to extend welfare assistance to the rich. Civil marriage pertains to relationships, not the individuals who are in them, and its concern with relationships is limited to a particular byproduct that occurs only in the case of opposite-sex couples.

Second, it is clear that more sensible and active gate-keeping is needed to ensure that civil marriage continues to serve the purpose for which it exists in the first place. Such gate-keeping could include a reconsideration of no-fault divorce legislation, penalties for repeated remarriage, regulation of pre-nuptial agreements, or mandated pre-marital counseling.

The ongoing marriage debate should, then, be broadened to include not only the question of same-sex marriage but also the question of how civil marriage policy could be altered to ensure that this crucially important aspect of marriage—however mundane in comparison to marriage’s sublime aspects—continues to serve the purpose for which it exists. 

I wonder if David Brooks is satisfied with the Romney campaign?

From the NYTimes:

You could say that the entitlement state is growing at an unsustainable rate and will bankrupt the country. You could also say that America is spending way too much on health care for the elderly and way too little on young families and investments in the future.

But these are not the sensible arguments that Mitt Romney made at a fund-raiser earlier this year. Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers. Forty-seven percent of the country, he said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills.

People are motivated when they feel competent. They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a tour through the world’s poorest regions makes clear.

Sure, there are some government programs that cultivate patterns of dependency in some people. I’d put federal disability payments and unemployment insurance in this category. But, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.

Simply a timely, spot-on, practical, brief essay by Roger Scruton

The conservative philosopher from St. Andrews University (Scotland) lays it out really well in this essay.  Side note, regarding the opening paragraph, Romney should remember that part of the 47% are the “unwilling victims” of the sexual revolution.

When the self-policing regime of morality breaks down, the state must take charge of the mess and rescue the victims — both the unwilling victims, like the fatherless children of casual relations, and the willing ones, who have chosen dependency on the state as the easy option.

 Faced with this situation, many conservatives feel inclined to blame the liberal establishment, which has devoted so much energy to undermining moral norms and inherited institutions.  But although ideas have consequences, ideas are also the consequences of other things.  The demoralization of society is the effect of many causes, only some of which belong in the realm of ideas.  Prolonged peace, unprecedented abundance, social mobility, contraception, drugs, and stimulants — all these have a predictable effect in weakening the bonds of society.  And to those well-known temptations we must add the effects of recent technology: human brains are now saturated by ephemeral messages, while human relations have been transferred from real to virtual space.  Sexual love is notorious for changing its locations and its style.  But we have entered a new situation in which much of this love occurs in the realm of electronic signals. We should not be surprised if this virtual love often looks like hatred.  Virtual space is Mercurial, demonic, a space of transformations that we cannot control.  Living with your eyes fixed to that space, you acquire a mentality that has no real precedent in the annals of mankind.  Young people therefore find it hard to envisage the future as something for which they are accountable, and which requires them to make sacrifices on its behalf.

The problems we confront cannot be solved by philosophy, since they lie deeper than thought.  Even if we defeat the liberals in debate, refuting to our satisfaction the labyrinthine arguments of Rawls and the clever-dick challenges of Dworkin and company, it cannot conceivably change what most concerns us.  No doubt it was perfectly reasonable for conservatives, at the time of the New Deal, to warn against the growth of state power and the erosion of individual responsibility.  Looking back, we can feel the pull of their arguments and recognize there was much truth in what they said.  But we must also recognize that their arguments made no difference, just as the arguments of Hayek in postwar Britain — so manifestly superior in power and scope to the arguments of the paltry figures like Harold Laski, who packed Hayek off to America — made no difference.  State power continued to grow.

And such is the situation today.  State power increases and individual responsibility declines, regardless of whether liberals, socialists, or conservatives are in government; regardless of the social and political legacy; and regardless of which intellectual faction seems to be winning the battle of ideas.

Moreover, we should recognize that this process is not strictly a phenomenon of developed nations.  The dependency culture arose simultaneously in Europe and America, and the traditional family disintegrated right across the Western world.  The “decline of the West” may not be the inevitable process described by Spengler in a famous book of that title that first appeared in 1918.  But it is certainly not a process that can be tied to any particular nation or any one form of national politics.  Nor is it a process that can be arrested in the realm of ideas or easily deflected by affirming traditional values against the liberal alternative.

We have to accept that it is no longer possible to govern young people by the methods that were used to govern and influence the young of my generation.  Exhortation, example, the stories of saints and heroes, the life of humility, sacrifice, penitence, and prayer — all such moral influences have little or no significance for them.  And although from time to time they encounter obstacles, and perhaps experience real love, real jealousy, real fear, and real grief, these emotions are not available to them in the regular doses and predictable circumstances in which they were available to us.Moreover, the expansion of the state into every area of our lives and the steady contraction of the sphere of personal responsibility have produced a new order of things — one that makes it very difficult for us conservatives to communicate with those whom we hope to influence.  So many of our arguments and insights depend upon the old order of virtue, on the old moral assumptions, and on the old conception of the human being as a free and responsible agent.  Yet those old things have gone, and we look foolish if we do not recognize the fact.  It is not just that society has changed; the human being has changed with it.  We belong to the same species as Homer, Aquinas, and Mozart.  But we are also products of social interaction and change our nature according to the context in which we grow.  Our societies are now radically different from those observed by Burke, Maistre, Tocqueville, and Hegel, and the thoughts of those great men, whatever their intellectual value, will not enable us to construct a conservative politics suited to our needs today.

So what should conservatives be doing?  This is the last of my regular articles for The American Spectator, so let me conclude a happy period of my life with a few observations for future use.  Our work, it seems to me, consists in what Plato called anamnesis — the defeat of forgetting.  We cannot ask young people to live as we lived or to value what we valued.  But we can encourage them to see the point of how we lived, and to recognize that freedom without responsibility is, in the end, an empty asset.  We can tell them stories of the old virtues, and enlarge their sympathies toward a world in which suffering and sacrifice were not the purely negative things that they are represented to be by the consumer culture but an immovable part of any lasting happiness.  Our task, in other words, is now less political than cultural — an education of the sympathies, which requires from us virtues (such as imagination, creativity, and a respect for high culture) that have a diminishing place in the world of politics.

Of course, we should do our best to control the growth of the state and to make it more difficult to depend upon its constant expansion.  We should seek, through whatever avenues remain, to rebuild our education system with knowledge rather than “self-esteem” as its product.  There are a hundred small-scale ways in which we can help the next generation not to fall completely into the trap that is being prepared for it.  But there is no way, I fear, to destroy that trap entirely.  For it is built from human ingenuity and baited with our own desires.

The right and wrong of Romney’s 47% remarks

From Joseph Knippenberg at First Things:

Homo sapiens and Homo economicus

First of all, the context for his answer is provided by electoral politics. When he says he isn’t worried about the 47 percent who pay no federal income taxes (more about that number in a moment), he isn’t saying that he doesn’t care about them, that his fondest wish is for them to starve to death in the streets, but rather that he doesn’t think he can win their votes. He assumes that they will vote their pocketbooks, which he assumes are filled with government checks. A Republican candidate is never going to win a bidding war with a Democrat if what’s being bid is a government transfer payment.

Second, there are ways in which this number is right and wrong. He’s probably right that we’re pretty close to a 50/50 nation politically, that some substantial portion of the nation will support Obama, no matter what, just as some substantial portion will vote for Romney, no matter what. The election will be won or lost at the margins, by the side that most effectively appeals to the persuadables and/or that most effectively mobilizes its base. But he’s wrong when he assumes that the 47 percent of the population that doesn’t pay income taxes is in some sense homogeneous. His critics are quick to point out–rightly, I might add–that some portion of the 47 percent consists of retirees (most of whom likely once paid income taxes) and whose government transfer payments may come largely from social security and Medicare, that is, “insurance” that they purchased with their payroll taxes. They also point out that another portion of the 47 percent pay no income taxes, but do pay (among other things) payroll taxes, thereby “investing” in the same insurance whose benefits the seniors now enjoy.

Third, Romney is surely mistaken when he assumes that all those with no current federal income tax liability just can’t wait for their next government check. That may be true for some, but can’t (or at least need not) be true for all. But as a matter of politics, he’s probably correct that a political appeal based upon lowering tax rates won’t work very well with them, to the extent that they indeed vote their pocketbooks.

This brings me to my last point. However incautious and impolitic he was in making his generalization, Mitt Romney shares an assumption that most political consultants and most political scientists–and perhaps many ordinary citizens–make: People vote their interests, and conceive these interests largely in economic terms, Thomas Frank back in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 lamented the fact that, more frequently than they’d like, people indulge in a kind of false consciousness, clinging (for example) to religion when they should be paying attention to their “real” economic interests. All these views underestmate ordinary American people, who are quite capable of rising above mere self-interest, of making sacrifices on behalf of a common good, and of conceiving their own good in something other than simplistically material terms. Romney could have been more careful in stating the commonplace views he seems to share with most political professionals. But for my money his biggest mistake was in speaking as if we the people can’t “transcend” our pocketbooks.

If he retracts, restates, or corrects anything, that’s what I’d like to see him revisit. Tell us, Mr. Romney, that homo sapiens isn’t really reducible to homo economicus, that our commitments, for example, to faith and family are solid evidence that we’re not, as the economists put it, rent seekers, and that your administration will honor and respect the ways that we love and serve one another.

The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy, Interview with Political Scientist Robert Woodberry

Professor Robert Woodberry was recently interviewed on the Research on Religion podcast regarding his major article and study published in the prestigious American Political Science Review.  His study found that there are missionary roots to liberal democracy.  Here’s a synopsis as well as a link to the audio:

Did Protestant missionaries help plant the seeds of democracy throughout the world?  We take up that question with Prof. Robert Woodberry, associate professor of political science at the National Univesity of Singapore, whose recent article “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy” in the American Political Science Review is reinvigorating interest in the link between religion and political outcomes around the world and throughout history.  Our conversation begins with an examination of the standard theories for why democracy has emerged in some places but not in others.  Prof. Woodberry carefully indicates that democracy is more than just elections, but includes respect for civil liberties and the rule of law.  Our conversation tuns to the role religion plays in the promotion of liberal democracy and how Bob became interested in this topic.  He mentions that one of his dissertation advisors, Ken Bollen, had noticed an interesting historical correlation between Protestantism and democracy back in the 1970s, but most other scholars simply ignored that observation.  It was left to Bob to pick up the torch and run with it, a task he was well-suited for given his family’s history in missionizing.   Tony then asks Bob why he thinks scholars have so frequently overlooked the “religious factor” in the study of democratization, and Prof. Woodberry then provides some interesting speculations that click well with previous discussions we have had with other guests on our podcast.  Prof. Woodberry then spells out his thesis, arguing that “conversionary Protestants” — Protestants interested in fulfilling the task of The Great Commission (Matthew 28: 16-20) be it in post-Reformation Europe or elsewhere — have a strong interest in convincing individuals to make a free choice to accept Jesus as their savior.  In doing so, these Protestants encourage literacy, which in turn incentivizes the creation of mass printing.  The voluntarism inherent in these Protestant churches also foments the development of skills associated with civic organization, which become the basis for the vibrant civil society needed to challenge autocratic rulers.  Tony notes that this finding is consistent with other sociological research finding that church attenders are more likely to be involved in non-church civic organizations than their secular counterparts.  Tony also encourages scholars studying “new social movements” to look at “old social movements” (i.e., churches) because they have been collectively organizing for centuries, if not millenia.  Finally, Bob also notes that conversionary Protestants were strong advocates for religious liberty, which often corresponded with respect for other civil liberties such as the right to assemble and speak one’s mind.  This led many of these Protestants to also speak out against the more severe abuses of colonialism such as slavery.  All of this then prompts non-religious organizations to follow the lead of these Protestant groups so as to not be outdone in the competition for the hearts and minds of the general population.  It is at this point where Tony gets a chance to plug his first book which connects well with Prof. Woodberry’s findings.  We look at why the Catholic Church did not proceed along a similar path until very recently, and why civilizations such as Imperial China did not allow for the expansion of printing and literacy despite having invented movable typeset printing long before Europe.  We conclude our discussion with Bob’s thought on the Arab Spring.  Recorded: June 12, 2012.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali weighs in on the Islamist protests and the Western response (good read)

A few years ago, I read the biography (entitled Infidel) of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  I highly recommend it.  She has weighed in on the Islamist protests and the Western response in Newsweek.  A very insightful, firsthand, well-informed essay.  Here’s her bio:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992. She served as a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006 and is currently a fellow of the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Her autobiography, Infidel, was a 2007 New York Times bestseller.

Here is a part of it (please read it all):

Islam’s rage reared its ugly head again last week. The American ambassador to Libya and three of his staff members were murdered by a raging mob in Benghazi, Libya, possibly under the cover of protests against a film mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

They were killed on the watch of the democratic government they helped to install. This government was either negligent or complicit in their murders. And that forces the U.S. to confront a stark, unwelcome reality.

Until recently, it was completely justifiable to feel sorry for the masses in Libya because they suffered under the thumb of a cruel dictator. But now they are no longer subjects; they are citizens. They have the opportunity to elect a government and build a society of their choice. Will they follow the lead of the Egyptian people and elect a government that stands for ideals diametrically opposed to those upheld by the United States? They might. But if they do, we should not consider them stupid or infantile. We should recognize that they have made a free choice—a choice to reject freedom as the West understands it.

How should American leaders respond? What should they say and do, for example, when a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s newly elected ruling party, demands a formal apology from the United States government and urges that the “madmen” behind the Muhammad video be prosecuted, in violation of the First Amendment? If the U.S. follows the example of Europe over the last two decades, it will bend over backward to avoid further offense. And that would be a grave mistake—for the West no less than for those Muslims struggling to build a brighter future.

For a homicidal few in the Muslim world, life itself has less value than religious icons, such as the prophet or the Quran. These few are indifferent to the particular motives or arguments behind any perceived insult to their faith. They do not care about an individual’s political alignment, gender, religion, or occupation. They do not care whether the provocation comes from serious literature or a stupid movie. All that matters is the intolerable nature of the insult.

The riots in Muslim countries—and the so-called demonstrations by some Muslims in Western countries—that invariably accompany such provocations have the appearance of spontaneity. But they are often carefully planned in advance. In the aftermath of last week’s conflagration, the State Department and Pentagon were investigating if it was just such a coordinated, planned assault.

The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam. Of course, there are many Muslims and ex-Muslims, in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere, who unambiguously condemn not only the murders and riots, as well as the idea that dissenters from this mainstream should be punished. But they are marginalized and all too often indirectly held responsible for the very provocation. In the age of globalization and mass immigration, such intolerance has crossed borders and become the defining characteristic of Islam.

And the defining characteristic of the Western response? As Rushdie’s memoir makes clear, it is the utterly incoherent tendency to simultaneously defend free speech—and to condemn its results.

I know something about the subject. In 1989, when I was 19, I piously, even gleefully, participated in a rally in Kenya to burn Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. I had never read it.

Later, having fled an arranged marriage to the Netherlands, I broke from fundamentalism. By the time of Sept. 11, 2001, I still considered myself a Muslim, though a passive one; I believed the principles but not the practice. After learning that it was Muslims who had hijacked airplanes and flown them into buildings in New York and Washington, I called for fellow believers to reflect on how our religion could have inspired these atrocious acts. A few months later, I confessed in a television interview that I had been secularized.

Read the rest here

Federalism gaining in popularity?

Federalism, the rather unique doctrine from the Framers that government should be divided between a national and subnational unit, each carrying independent sovereign authority over its terrain and citizens, has fallen on hard times since the Civil War.  A dramatic shift in authority by various means has expanded the size and scope of the federal government over the sovereignty of the states.  But actions of the Supreme Court since the 1980s have provided the impetus for a resurgence of federalism.  Could the American people be coming around too?

From Pew Research:

Ten years ago, roughly two-thirds of Americans offered favorable assessments of all three levels of government: federal, state and local. But in the latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, conducted April 4-15, 2012 among 1,514 adults nationwide, the favorable rating for the federal government has fallen to just 33%; nearly twice as many (62%) have an unfavorable view.

By contrast, ratings of state governments remain in positive territory, with 52% offering a favorable and 42% an unfavorable opinion of their state government. And local governments are viewed even more positively. By roughly two-to-one (61% to 31%) most Americans offer a favorable assessment of their local government.

Although favorability ratings for state governments declined between 2008 and 2009 as the financial crisis hit, they have remained steady over the past four years. Consequently, the gap between ratings of state governments and the federal government has grown.

Conditional election, not unconditional election, makes God a respecter of persons

A common charge brought by Arminians and other non-Calvinists against the doctrines of grace (i.e., reformed theology or Calvinism) is that God’s unconditional election of a certain group of persons (the ‘elect’) unto eternal life makes God a respecter of persons, which the Bible denies concerning God’s character (Rom. 2:11).  However, properly understood, it is actually conditional election which makes God a respecter of persons, while unconditional election makes better sense of what we actually see in scripture concerning God and His Son and their activity in the world.

From John Hendryx:

it is actually those who defend CONDITIONAL election who make God a respecter of persons. This is because, if it were true that meeting some condition prompted God’s decision to elect his people then His choice of them would be based on their wisdom, prudence, sound judgment, or good sense to believe. He would therefore be looking at the character or merit of that person and choosing them because of it. The Bible, on the contrary, declares that we are all ill-deserving and, as such, God reserves the right to have mercy on whom he will, which is not based in any way on the will of the flesh (John 1:13; Rom 9:15, 16). If God is basing his election on who will have faith then this would, in fact, make God a respecter of persons because these persons are meeting God’s criteria in order to be chosen.

It is most ironic that those bringing this charge are the very ones who make God a respecter of persons by making God’s love and election “conditional”. It is the synergist who believes God shows favoritism or partiality because it is based on whether or not that person meritoriously meets the condition God gives him. In synergism God’s love for his people is not unconditional but is given only when someone meets the right condition… i.e. whether someone has faith or not. He chooses them only if they believe in him. Isn’t that favoritism? This conditional love is quite different than the love we expect from parents in everyday life. Consider, do you love your children because they do something for you? No, of course not. Don’t you still love them even when they do something wrong? Of course. As an example, if your child rebelled against you and made you angry then soon after ran out into oncoming traffic would you run out to save him? or would you wait until he used his own will to prove his love to you first? No as a parent who loved their child you would run out to MAKE CERTAIN your child was not hit by a car regardless of the ebbs and flows of your relationship with him. Your love for him and your choice to save him are based on unconditional love. In fact we would consider the parent who first determined the love of their child as a condition to save them most unloving and cursed.

It is important that we further draw out these every day analogies to show how unreasonable this charge against unconditional election is. Consider the very world we live in. In God’s perfect wisdom and because of the fall, for His own sovereign good purposes, some people are born into better families, richer countries, healthier bodies, better times, better conditions, more intelligence, etc. Others are born into AIDS, starvation and poverty. We see these “unfair” situations all around us. Does God have nothing to do with where people are born? Did people born into starvation have any say in the matter? Frankly I do not see the Arminian shaking his fist at God for being unfair here. Yet these conditions we see in the world are there because it is part of God’s judgement due to the fall. Further, everyone is born equally guilty in Adam and so it is perfectly just that not all get the same benefits in this life when they are born. If this is true of everyday life why is it such a stretch to carry the same idea into eternity? It is hypocrisy not to recognize this inconsistency.

Next, let us consider the example of Jesus himself in Scripture. Jesus chose a specific time and place to come to earth and reveal himself and not other times. He healed some and not others. He raised Lazarus, his friend, but not everyone. There were other families in the world that were just as sad as Lazarus’ family…many of them just faithful, just as godly.  According to human unaided reason, Jesus singling Lazarus out for resurrection might appear to show partiality or favoritism. Jesus actually had to power to raise people from the dead and you would think that if this was the case he would help EVERY family which experienced the death of a loved on. This would not be too hard for him. But Jesus did not do so.

By defining favoritism the way Arminians do you would think that Jesus would go around healing everyone, raising everyone, and making no distinctions and divisions whatsoever. Or, you would think he would at least give everyone the choice to have their loved ones raised. But the Jesus presented in the Bible is obviously not the Jesus of Arminianism or Universalism. He’s a Jesus who chooses to bring certain people to life and leave others in their own rebellion. Matt 11:27 says, “…no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Again Jesus himself plainly teaches that he makes distinctions in Matt 20:1-16 in the parable of Laborers in the Vineyard when He gives full wages to the laborers who worked an hour. He concludes, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.” Does this sound like the picture of God painted by Arminians?

In the end the Bible teaches that God chooses to have mercy on some ill-deserving people out of the entire mass of ill-deserving people. God is not obligated, in any sense, to save anyone because none are his children by nature, but by grace when He mercifully adopts them into his family. The others are rebelling against him and reject him, so he leaves them to their own desire. God is all wise and always conspires with his own wisdom in choosing to do what he does.  By definition God’s choices are always good, even if you cannot see it.  If God doesn’t satisfactorily explain to you the good reasons He has for what he does, do you thereby condemn Him for it? Well, most of us don’t explain all the good reasons we have for what we do to our own child. Am I therefore immoral? There’s several answers I could give that my child would not understand. On what basis do you think you could understand any God-justifying reason there is?

God loves his people because he loves them. Is there some better reason OUTSIDE or ABOVE God that should make him do so?  The Arminian would have us think so. But to say so is to profoundly misapprehend the nature of who God is.

Westminster Larger Catechism Questions 38-42

Q. 38. Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be God?

A. It was requisite that the Mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death,[144] give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience, and intercession;[145] and to satisfy God’s justice,[146] procure his favour,[147] purchase a peculiar people,[148] give his Spirit to them,[149] conquer all their enemies,[150] and bring them to everlasting salvation.[151]

Q. 39. Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be man?

A. It was requisite that the Mediator should be man, that he might advance our nature,[152] perform obedience to the law,[153] suffer and make intercession for us in our nature,[154] have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities;[155] that we might receive the adoption of sons,[156] and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace.[157]

Q. 40. Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be God and man in one person?

A. It was requisite that the Mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us,[158] and relied on by us as the works of the whole person.[159]

Q. 41. Why was our Mediator called Jesus?

A. Our Mediator was called Jesus, because he saveth his people from their sins.[160]

Q. 42. Why was our Mediator called Christ?

A. Our Mediator was called Christ, because he was anointed with the Holy Ghost above measure,[161] and so set apart, and fully furnished with all authority and ability,[162] to execute the offices of prophet,[163] priest,[164] and king of his church,[165] in the estate both of his humiliation and exaltation.

[144] Acts 2:24-25. Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Romans 1:4. And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 4:25. Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Hebrews 9:14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

[145] Acts 20:28. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. Hebrews 9:14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 7:25-28. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself. For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore.

[146] Romans 3:24-26. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

[147] Ephesians 1:6. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Matthew 3:17. And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

[148] Titus 2:13-14. Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

[149] Galatians 4:6. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

[150] Luke 1:68-69, 71, 74. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;… That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us;… That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear.

[151] Hebrews 5:8-9. Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. Hebrews 9:11-15. But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

[152] Hebrews 2:16. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.

[153] Galatians 4:4. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.

[154] Hebrews 2:14. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. Hebrews 7:24-25. But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

[155] Hebrews 4:15. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

[156] Galatians 4:5. To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

[157] Hebrews 4:16. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

[158] Matthew 1:21, 23. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins…. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Matthew 3:17. And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hebrews 9:14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

[159] 1 Peter 2:6. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

[160] Matthew 1:21. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

[161] John 3:34. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. Psalm 45:7. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

[162] John 6:27. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed. Matthew 28:18-20. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

[163] Acts 3:21-22. Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. Luke 4:18, 21. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised…. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

[164] Hebrews 5:5-7. So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared. Hebrews 4:14-15. Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Two-Kingdoms, Three Parts

Michael Tuininga, a doctoral candidate in Ethics at Emory University, is writing a three-part series on the 2 kingdom theology in Reformation 21.  According to some, Tuininga is an advocate of a 2KT which is a modified version of that espoused by his mentor, David Van Drunen.  Here is the intro to the first part:

Editors’ Note: This essay is the first of three. The second will describe John Calvin’s two kingdoms doctrine while the third will explain the two kingdoms doctrine as it is taught in Scripture.

When Jesus came to Jerusalem for the last time before his crucifixion, his arrival was marked by a triumphant entry into the city and the crowds proclaiming Jesus as the messianic king (cf. Luke 19:28-40; Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11). When the Pharisees failed to persuade the crowds from proclaiming such things, they changed strategies and tried to force Jesus to say something that would place him and his kingdom in conflict with the authority of Rome. In a series of three public interrogations the religious leaders of the Jews asked Jesus about his authority, the relation of his kingdom to civil government, and the relation of his kingdom to the family.

The result was fascinating. While Jesus refused to answer the Jews’ question about his authority, realizing that they knew well where his authority came from, he demonstrated that his kingdom is not in inherent conflict with the institutions of this world – whether government or the family – because it is of another age. To be sure, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus (Matt 28:18), and one day these earthly institutions will pass away (1 Cor 7). But in the meantime, the order of this world continues. Therefore, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25). What’s more, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:35). Christ is king but the order of creation, fallen as it may be, continues.

It is this distinction between the two ages, and between the institutions of one age and the kingdom of the age to come, that forms the foundation of the classic doctrine of the two kingdoms, as articulated by Martin Luther and John Calvin. The reformers argued that Christ governs and expands his kingdom through the ministry of the word by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet, the reasoned, he does so in such a way as not to nullify the order of creation or the institutions that God has created to govern that order, most importantly those of civil government and the family.

Read the rest here

One other note: According to his short bio, Tuininga is a “licensed exhorter” whereas I’m an unlicensed exhorter, so bear that in mean when you read my exhortations.  You get what you pay for.

Girls really do tend to throw like girls

From the Washington Post Health and Science section:

A decade or so ago, in New York, a ball came flying over an 18-foot schoolyard fence just as I was passing by. There was no one I could hand it off to, and a gaggle of fifth-graders was waiting for me to toss it back. I had so little faith in my overarm throwing that I had to go underhand. The squeal of brakes was my first indication that the ball had ended up behind me, in the middle of Columbus Avenue. The best I can say about this incident is that nobody got hurt.

I know I’m not the only woman with that kind of story. As much as the expression grates, girls do, in general, throw like girls.

Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has studied the gender gap across a broad spectrum of skills. She believes that men and women aren’t as different as they are often portrayed, and she has mined data on social, psychological, communication and physical traits, skills and behaviors to quantify the gap. After looking at 46 meta-analyses, Hyde found what she defined as a “very large” difference in only two skills: throwing velocity and throwing distance.

The throwing gap has been researched for more than half a century, and the results have been consistent. According to Jerry Thomas, dean of the College of Education at the University of North Texas in Denton, who did the throwing research Hyde cites in her paper, “The overhand throwing gap, beginning at 4 years of age, is three times the difference of any other motor task, and it just gets bigger across age. By 18, there’s hardly any overlap in the distribution: Nearly every boy by age 15 throws better than the best girl.”

Around the world, at all ages, boys throw better — a lot better — than girls. Studies of overhand ball throwing across different cultures have found that pre-pubescent girls throw 51 to 69 percent of the distance that boys do, at 51 to 78 percent of the velocity. As they get older, the differences increase; one U.S. study found that girls age 14 to 18 threw only 39 percent as far as boys (an average of about 75 feet vs. about 192 feet). The question is why.

Read the rest here

 

No Exceptions: The case for a consistent pro-life position

From Professor Karen Swallow over at Her.meneutics:

The trouble with “exceptions” on abortion—whether one is pro-life “with exceptions” or pro-choice “with exceptions”—is that exceptions make doling out abortions seem as capricious as Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi: “No abortion for you. Next!” 

With the recent blunder of a pro-life politician hedging on the rape and abortion question, the “hard cases” in the abortion debate have gotten the pro-life movement in trouble again. 

Unborn baby at 12 weeks

While well-intended (and politically prudent), the attempt to demonstrate compassion in cases of rape and incest by taking a “pro-life with exceptions” position commits the fatal errors of ignorance and inconsistency. 

Consider the mental gymnastics exercised by pro-lifers uncomfortable with prohibiting abortion in cases of rape and incest: on one hand, you have those who make exceptions in such cases (thereby putting the lie to the sanctity of life claim); on the other you have those who try to make the case that pregnancies don’t even occur in such cases, not the “legitimate” ones, anyway. (Note: Medically necessary abortions done to save the life of the mother are not in the same category as “elective abortions,” which were made constitutional by Roe v. Wade and now constitute the vast majority of abortions.) Whether the “exception” is a victim of rape or incest, pregnant with a child who has an abnormality, or simply not too far along to trouble the pro-choice conscience, the result is essentially the same: a choice permitted by virtue of an arbitrary line rather than a clear, consistent principle, a la the capricious Soup Nazi. Once begun, such parsing—of abortion, of human life—can go on ad infinitum.

Such capriciousness, even if motivated by compassion, is inherently cruel. It generates an air of judgmentalism in deeming some situations appropriate for abortion (rape or incest) and some not (consensual sex). The implied judgment spills over like boiling soup onto all cases, even the “exceptional” ones. When even more parsing occurs to determine which cases of rape are “legitimate” and which are not, justifiable outrage only grows. 
Indeed, pro-choice advocates have long charged that opposing abortion is rooted more in punishing women for sexual behavior deemed immoral than in protecting human life. It’s hard to argue otherwise when some claim to be pro-life but favor exceptions based not on the sanctity of life but on the sexual situation surrounding the pregnancy. Such positions, ironically, are based on choice—namely, the role that choice plays in the circumstances leading to the pregnancy. 

Hobby Lobby founder files lawsuit over Obamacare (read his own words)

From USA Today:

We’re Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I’ve always said that the first two goals of our business are 1) to run our business in harmony with God’s laws, and 2) to focus on people more than money. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy, we’ve also raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80% above minimum wage.

But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business must provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions. Which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million per day in government fines.

Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that’s raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It’s not right.

I know people will say we ought to follow the rules, that it’s the same for everybody. But that’s not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won’t exempt them for reasons of religious belief. So, Hobby Lobby — and my family — are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don’t like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.

My family has lived the American dream. We want to continue growing our company and providing great jobs for thousands of employees, but the government is going to make that much more difficult. The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I say that’s a choice no American — and no American business — should have to make.

David Green is the CEO and founder of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Christian values do not save; if they could the “Christ” in Christian would be unnecessary

From Al Mohler (commenting on article about a girl who loses her faith in the Christian God but promises her mother to hold on to Christian values):

“How can I help my daughter see that she is making a serious mistake with her life if she chooses to reject her God and her faith?,” the mother asks. Hax tells the mother to accept the daughter’s atheism and get over her “disappointment that she isn’t turning out just as you envisioned.”

What else would you expect a secular columnist who operates from a secular worldview to say?

The real problem does not lie with Carolyn Hax’s answer, however, but with the mother’s question. The problem appears at the onset, when the mother states that she has “tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with.”

Christian values are the problem. Hell will be filled with people who were avidly committed to Christian values. Christian values cannot save anyone and never will. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a Christian value, and a comfortability with Christian values can blind sinners to their need for the gospel.

This one sentence may not accurately communicate this mother’s understanding, but it appears to be perfectly consistent with the larger context of her question and the source of the advice she sought.

Parents who raise their children with nothing more than Christian values should not be surprised when their children abandon those values. If the child or young person does not have a firm commitment to Christ and to the truth of the Christian faith, values will have no binding authority, and we should not expect that they would. Most of our neighbors have some commitment to Christian values, but what they desperately need is salvation from their sins. This does not come by Christian values, no matter how fervently held. Salvation comes only by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Human beings are natural-born moralists, and moralism is the most potent of all the false gospels. The language of “values” is the language of moralism and cultural Protestantism — what the Germans called Kulturprotestantismus. This is the religion that produces cultural Christians, and cultural Christianity soon dissipates into atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-belief. Cultural Christianity is the great denomination of moralism, and far too many church folk fail to recognize that their own religion is only cultural Christianity — not the genuine Christian faith.

The language of values is all that remains when the substance of belief disappears. Tragically, many churches seem to perpetuate their existence by values, long after they abandon the faith.

We should not pray for Christian morality to disappear or for Christian values to evaporate. We should not pray to live in Sodom or in Vanity Fair. But a culture marked even by Christian values is in desperate need of evangelism, and that evangelism requires the knowledge that Christian values and the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the same thing.

I pray that this young woman and her mother find common hope and confidence in the salvation that comes only through Christ — not by Christian values. Otherwise, we are facing far more than a young woman “making a serious mistake with her life.” We are talking about what matters for eternity. Christian values cannot save anyone.

Now, my question is where did these churchgoers ever come to believe that Christian values were the most important thing about Cristianity?  Unfortunately, in our churches.  The gospel, if it is emphasized at all, is often relegated to an afterthought part of the service.  In our youth and children’s ministries, the stress is on relationships, clean living, and morals (e.g., Veggie Tales). 

Depending on Dependency | Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is pointing out one of the reasons I’m not optimistic about GOP success in the future (the other reasons can be found here):

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

Although the big word on the left is “compassion,” the big agenda on the left is dependency. The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Optimistic Republicans who say that widespread unemployment and record numbers of people on food stamps hurt President Obama’s reelection chances are overlooking the fact that people who are dependent on government are more likely to vote for politicians who are giving them handouts.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that, back during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He was reelected in a landslide after his first term, during which unemployment was in double digits every single month, and in some months was over 20 percent.

The time is long overdue for optimistic Republicans to understand what FDR understood long ago, and what Barack Obama clearly understands today. Dependency pays off in votes — unless somebody alerts the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.

The Obama administration is shamelessly advertising in the media — whether on billboards or on television — for people to get on food stamps. Welfare state bureaucrats have been sent into supermarkets to tell shoppers that food stamps are available.

The intelligentsia have for decades been promoting the idea that there should be no stigma to accepting government handouts. Living off the taxpayers is portrayed as a “right” or — more ponderously — as part of a “social contract.”

You may not recall signing any such contract, but it sounds poetic and high-toned. Moreover, it wins votes among the gullible, and that is the bottom line for welfare state politicians.

A review of the election forecasting model results as of today

PollyVote 2012 provides a nearly exhaustive list of the results of election forecasting regression models employed by Political Scientists (and a few Economists) to predict the election.  I’ll summarize where they stand right now.  These models take into account presidential job approval, economic conditions, national party identification levels, even national security factors.  According to most (but not all), if the election were held today, Obama would slightly win the popular vote (a majority share of the two-party vote).  On the other hand, forecasters who try to predict the national vote, particularly the electoral college outcome, using state-level factors, give Romney a slight edge.

Obama popular two-party vote-share Most recent change

Obama popular two-party vote-share	Most recent change
	PollyVote	51.8%	11-Sep-2012
	Polls	51.6%	13-Sep-2012
	Iowa Electronic Markets	53.4%	12-Sep-2012
	Econometric models	50.4%	10-Sep-2012
	Index models	53.1%	12-Sep-2012
	Experts’ judgment	50.7%	28-Aug-2012

Do Protestants have an incomplete Bible?

The Protestant Reformers denied that the Apocrypha, scriptural writing that occurred in the inter-testimonial period (about 400 years; period between the writing of the Old and New Testaments) is properly canonical and binding over the consciouses of Christian believers.  The Roman Catholic church, on the other hand, canonized the Apocrypha at the Council of Trent in 1546ad.  What’s is the Apocrypha and were Protestants right to reject their placement in the biblical canon of books?

The topic is discussed by Dr. Andrew Steinmann on an Issues Etc. podcast:

 

 

 

Grace as big as creation

From James K.A. Smith

The fisher of man’s lures

In my pilgrimage, God used the idea of Calvinism as a lure. After hooking my soul through the testimony of my girlfriend’s family (she’s now my wife of 22 years), Jesus, the fisher of men, wouldn’t let me go. And so my conversion at 18 led to a reconfiguring of my vocation, setting off for Bible college in a different country, with nary a clue as to what the Lord of my life really had in store.

If it’s not too irreverent, when I think of my theological education I imagine the Sovereign Lord as a fly fisherman sort of teasing me with various lures that, in a flash, captivated my attention and hooked me again and again. As a freshman, I bumped into a whole treasure chest of wisdom (the bait!) in the works of the so-called “Old Princeton” theologians like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, along with a fellow Presbyterian, William G. T. Shedd. I soon discovered that what they all shared in common was “Calvinism”—a theological vision and project that seemed to have deep intellectual reservoirs. Here was a well from which I could drink for a very long time.

What first captivated me about Calvinism was its soteriology, or doctrine of salvation. Calvinism offered a robust, biblical, and historic account of personal salvation, helping me to make sense of all those biblical passages about sin, grace, election, and predestination. Not only did this make sense of the Scriptures for me, it also had an existential resonance. It accounted for that deep sense that I had been found, not that I had found what I was looking for. (I became a Christian a year after U2’s Joshua Tree was released, so . . .)

But having been hooked by soteriology, God sort of reeled me into an even bigger theological universe. While it was trying to understand personal salvation that brought me into the orbit of the Reformed tradition, once I was drawn into that orbit, I began to see a lot more than just the individual. The orbital trajectory of Reformed theology showed me a side of things I hadn’t encountered before. Or, to return to my fishing metaphor: you might say that while I was hooked by soteriology, I was pulled into a boat that was as big as creation. The doctrine of election was the flashy lure that caught my attention, but I was caught up into the web of a doctrine of creation.

For what I realized was that the Reformed tradition wasn’t just a soteriology. In fact, the Reformed tradition’s understanding of salvation was bound up with a doctrine of creation. Indeed, this was part of the polemic with Rome at the time. While Catholicism seemed to teach that salvation was “super”-natural, that grace was a supplemental addition that “completed” creation, Reformers like John Calvin and his heirs emphasized that salvation was the restoration of creation—that grace restores nature. This is why the vision of the New Jerusalem is not just some science-fiction fantasy of an unimagined world. It explicitly hearkens back to the Garden of Eden. Salvation is not sheer reinvention; it is renewal.

The depth and breadth of grace

What I began to discover in the treasure trove of the Reformed tradition was that the soteriological focus on election and predestination was only a slice of a wider theological vision that was rooted in God’s sovereignty over all creation. While grace was absolutely central to the Reformed theological vision, I began to realize that the Reformers also emphasized that grace went all the way down: that creation was, in a sense, the “first grace,” because creation was God’s first gift. Creation was God’s “very good” gift, now marred by sin and the Fall. But in saving us, God’s wasn’t going to let his good creation languish and dissolve and be lost to the evil one. This is why the whole creation “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19).

So not only does grace go all the way down, but it sort of goes all the way around. That is, God’s grace will reach far as the curse is found. God is not just saving us—he’s renewing his world. Christ doesn’t just reconcile us to God—he reconciles all things to himself. In his Epistle to the Colossians, notice how Paul’s magisterial hymn to Christ’s saving power is bound up with Christ’s work of creation: it is because “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,” and because he is “before all things,” that God was pleased “through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his creation” (Col. 1:15–19, emphasis mine).

This is why the Reformers refused the unbiblical, two-tiered model of spirituality that seemed to suggest monks and nuns were really Christians, while butchers and bakers and husbands and wives were sort of second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. No, Calvin insisted: God is the creator of this good-but-broken creation, and he affirms the sanctity of mundane, “domestic” work. God affirms and delights in the good, hard work of tending families and tilling the earth (Gen. 1:26–31). We are not saved from such “earthly” cultural labors—we are saved for this work of tending God’s creation, for this is how we bear God’s image.

So now when I hear “Calvinism,” I think of a theological vision as big as God’s creation, and am reminded that God’s grace is just as expansive.

When will the latest Islamic violence episode cease to suprise us?

Islamists dragged the dead body of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens from the embassy after he was murdered last night.

In Egypt, Muslim fundamentalists riot and raid the American embassy, climbing it and replacing the U.S. flag with an Islamic flag. In Lybia, 2000 Muslims riot in the streets culminating in the arson of the American consulate building, killing several American diplomats (including the Ambassador) in the process. The offense? A Jewish-American made a movie a few months back casting Islam in an unflattering light. If the movie could be considered persecution of Muslims, then apparently persecution is not to be expected or accepted as normal in Islam as it is in Christianity (1 Peter 4:12). And apparently persecutors are not to be “blessed” (Rom. 12:14) or “loved” (Matt. 5:11, 44), but they are to be met with violence.

But we are told that all religions are equal and you can’t read anything in to what some wackos do.  If that’s reasonable, then I suppose we should expect that Christians, even Christian fundamentalists, would do the same sorts of things if they ever were to find a reason to do so (e.g., movies that depict Christ or Christianity in unflattering or mocking ways; public bible or church burnings; rapes or beheadings of Christian believers; legal status as second-class citizenship; etc.).  Until then, I guess we’ll have to reserve judgment for the sake of appearing tolerant.

How different denominational families seee each other (humor)

“If Republicans are growing nervous, they should be”

Let me put this in political science terms: if campaigns matter, Romney could be in trouble according to campaign experts like Charlie Cook.  If campaigns don’t matter (if elections are determined by factors exogenous to the campaigns themselves, like the economy, party identification numbers, job approval, etc.), then Obama could be in trouble (though some things work in his favor here too, like % of the population receiving government benefits).  Unfortunately for Romney, what has been true in the distant past (campaigns matter little) has been less true in the recent past (campaigns mattered a lot in 2008).

Charlie Cook, who is a matchless expert on American political campaigns and elections, shares his dim outlook for Romney’s election bid.  He argues that if Obama wins, it will be because of his campaign and despite the economy.  If Romney wins, it will be despite his campaign and because of the economy.  Here’s why:

Just a third of Americans in last month’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling felt that the country was headed in the right direction, and 54 percent disapproved of the president’s handling of the economy.

What’s worse, it’s not getting better. A just-released Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey of 56 top economists shows a consensus forecast of the U.S. economy growing by just 1.7 percent in the current, third quarter and 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter, with unemployment remaining around 8.2 percent for the last six months of 2012. Traditionally this would not be considered reelection territory.

But for all of that, Obama went into the conventions either tied or with an ever-so-slight lead in the national polls, and he comes out of the Democratic convention with a lead. The exact size of that advantage will be clear by the end of this week, when we will see a pile of new, post-convention polling. Gallup’s seven-day moving-average tracking poll through last Sunday gives Obama a 4-point lead, 49 percent to 45 percent. Going into the GOP convention, the battleground-state picture looked better for Obama than the national numbers: Obama was up in nine of 11 battlegrounds, with Michigan and Pennsylvania looking not so much like battleground states. Romney leads only in North Carolina.

While there are talented and hardworking staffers and consultants working on the Romney campaign, this column since July has been highly critical of Romney advertising and messaging. The decision to defer any biographical ads until August—ads that would have sought to define Romney on a personal level beyond being just rich, as someone worthy of trust, and as someone whom swing voters might be comfortable having in the White House—is inexplicable. The Obama campaign and allies ripped Romney apart in swing-state advertising, and with no Teflon coating to protect their candidate, it stuck like Velcro. While Romney allies say that such positive ads did not “move numbers” when dial-tested, my view is that these kinds of ads are essential to making their candidate acceptable. No matter how unhappy voters are, if they are uncomfortable with the alternative, the incumbent survives.

Only in the last few days has the Romney campaign begun buying any time in swing states on local cable systems, something the Obama team has been doing for months. While one campaign has been looking for every nook and cranny to reach voters and has been doing so for some time, the other didn’t bother until after the conventions. Go figure.

The Romney campaign made the extraordinary decision to not try seriously to connect their candidate with voters on a personal level until their convention. As dubious as that decision was, they were rewarded by having a convention shortened by a day due to a hurricane, then compounded the error of waiting until the convention by putting much of what was most needed to be seen in the 8 and 9 p.m. hours, when the only viewers would be C-SPAN fans. Wow! The biographical film and the testimonials of people whose lives had been touched by Romney were powerful, necessary, and largely unseen. Instead, the Romney campaign treated them to the Clint Eastwood debacle and a serviceable speech by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida that should have been made earlier, not chewing up precious broadcast airtime. At the 10-11 p.m. hour, abbreviated personal testimonies and the film introducing Romney’s own speech—which was quite good—would have made for an extraordinary hour of television and very likely have done him a lot of good with voters.

As a result of all of this, while voters are quite open to firing Obama, they remain quite reticent about Romney. Debates can and have been critical, but they work better for candidates who need to demonstrate that they are smart and knowledgeable, tests Romney met and passed long ago; debates are tougher venues for demonstrating empathy and developing trust.

This is a very close race and one that still could go either way. But the odds of Romney capitalizing on this economy, and the opportunity it affords, seem lower than they were before the conventions. If Republicans and Romney supporters are growing nervous, they should be.

 

 

Congresional Parties are Less Ideologically Diverse (especially Dems) and More Unified Than Ever

These graphs present more evidence of political polarization in Congress, in case you need to see it to believe it.

From Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post:

We’re two nights into the Democratic National Convention, and the themes could not be more distinct from those championed at the RNC last week. Whereas the RNC heavily emphasized the role of personal initiative in economic success, the DNC’s speakers have focused on the many barriers that keep success away from even determined, hard-working Americans.

It’s a sign, the New Republic’s Alec MacGillis argues, that the parties are getting more ideologically coherent — that is, they have more sharply defined, and sharply distinct, viewpoints than they once did. Democrats and Republicans are now, he writes, “ideologically coherent to the point where they make even Europe’s parliamentary parties look muddled by comparison.”

But is this showing up in actual congressional votes? To find out, I looked at Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal’s “DW-NOMINATE” database, which uses congressional votes to measure the ideological position of members of the House and Senate.

[First, how ideologically diverse are the parties in Congress over time?]

In recent years, the trend has been for Democrats — especially in the Senate – to grow more unified as the Republicans largely stay the same. A large part of this is likely the exit of Southern Democrats from the coalition, meaning many conservatives left the Democratic fold, but in the House the Democratic convergence continued well into the 1990s and 2000s. All of which suggests that, contrary to popular belief, Democrats aren’t actually worse at party discipline, and aren’t more ideologically varied, than Republicans. If anything, in recent years they’re grown more ideologically coherent than the Republicans.

Poole and Rosenthal also put out “party unity” scores which measure how frequently members vote with their parties on key issues. Interestingly, these numbers show much more similar behavior between the parties. These numbers measures the percentage of votes that members of each party voted with their party on:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In you case you missed it: in 2009, House Democrats and Republicans voted with their parties an average of 93 and 91 percent of the time, respectively. In the Senate, it’s 93 percent and 89 percent. The parties, in short, are extremely unified, to an unprecedented degree.

An open letter to unchurched professing Christians

You hear it all the time.  “I don’t need to go to church much.  After all, it’s MY relationship with Jesus that matters.  It’s personal.  I don’t need others polluting that.”  Sadly, this attitude is a byproduct of revivalistic and pop-evangelicalism’s exclusive focus on personal faith and experience and its failure to maintain a healthy biblical doctrine of the church (ecclesiology).  Now, obviously evangelicals go to church, so how do they often respond?  They’ll say, “but hey, you will really miss out on all we have going on here.  Really cool people and lots of activities and fun stuff to do.  Besides, the worship is really exciting and you just can’t experience that at home or watching on tv.”  Of course, this response just feeds the “Jesus and me” mentalility, since it still teaches that personal faith is all about experience, what you can get out of it, and has nothing to do with functioning and contributing as an essential member of the body of Christ.  So strongly does the bible teach about the corporate, connected, nature of Christian faith that one early church father said, “You can’t have God as Father unless you have the Church as Mother.”

A far more biblical answer to why do I need church is offered here, in an open letter to unchurched professing Christians from Matthew Everhard:

Dear Eugene,

I want to thank you for the kind email that you wrote me recently after we met by God’s providence at the Holy Grounds cafe last Thursday. I believe you are right that it was “a divine appointment” that we ran into one another, as it afforded us an opportunity to renew a conversation that we begun months ago.

Although you have chosen to no longer worship with us at First Avenue Reformed Church, I was greatly encouraged to hear that your confidence in the grace of our Lord still remains strong. You described yourself as experiencing a new joy and freedom that you had not known in a long time. For this, I am grateful.

I have to admit that part of me was deeply jealous when you described the relief that you have felt since you walked away from the frictions of the Deacon board! Our work in serving the hurting persons of our congregation is no doubt messy. Sometimes hurting people can be the cruelest of all! Since you left, those tensions have not been fully resolved, and I admit that some of the other men you mentioned are as difficult to get along with as ever. We are such an imperfect lot! In this sense, the church will always be “full of hypocrites” as you alleged.

But are not these very tensions also part of our sanctification? It is true that you were wronged by our brother Carl. I have had to apologize for our many failures as a board and as a church more often than I would like. It is my experience, however, that those same conflicts are really the necessary and silent hand of our Master Carpenter applying His rasp and sandpaper to our lives in order to refine us.

This prompts me to ask an important question: if you continue to worship alone in your home to avoid these kinds of conflict, would you not also be missing out on the joys of their resolution? In other words, how do you intend to practice forgiveness if you seek to avoid all those whom you may actually have to one day forgive? Is not our own Christian walk made more perfect by those whose walk is not?

Eugene, I too covet those times of personal prayer and devotional worship that you described taking place in your “prayer closet.” Jesus commanded as much. You are right to cite Matthew 6:6 in cultivating a “personal relationship” with Jesus. But I don’t think we must choose between “personal” and “corporate” as though they were mutually exclusive.

True, those times alone with Christ in the secret place are invaluable. But I have to confess to you that I am doubtful that our Lord meant those should be our only times of worship! Are we not commanded to worship alongside others in Scripture (Hebrews 10:25)? How then shall you fulfill the dozens of “one another” texts in Paul’s epistles if not in the context of a local church like those to whom Paul originally wrote?  Is not the first word of the Lord’s Prayer the plural possessive, “Our”?

You mentioned that the Greek word “church” does not mean a building, nor does worship require any certain number of people in order to be authentic. You even quoted Matthew 18:19 when the Lord exhorted us that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.” But come now Eugene, surely you don’t think that your reluctance to submit to church membership or the body of elders is justified by this text, do you? In context, my brother, this passage is in regard to church discipline; a “severe grace” of God that I am afraid is quite difficult to impose upon oneself!

While we are speaking of the means of grace, how do you intend to practice the Lord’s Supper while alone, if at all? Or baptism? Unless you have jettisoned these practices, too, as “formal,” “religious,” and “institutional!” Are not these not the very signs and seals of God’s grace that Christ has given–even commanded–us to perform in his name? Are they not impossible when alone?

Yes, I am sure that the online sermons of Piper and Driscoll that you have grown so fond of are a means of grace as well, so to speak. You were correct when you said they are a blessing to millions. But that’s just the problem right there. No matter how wonderful these gifted men of God are (and we thank God that their ministries) they will never know you, nor can you ever be known to them. As gifted as they are, they won’t be able to correct you when you go astray or exercise discipline in your life if your doctrine should go amiss. Perhaps that’s what’s so alluring.

Your brother in Christ,

Matthew

Matthew Everhard is the Senior Pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, Florida. This article is reprinted from his blog with permission.

What problem do evangelicals have with Karl Barth? Unfortunately for many, none.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Neo-Orthodoxy, the Crisis Theologians, and the theology of Karl Barth.  I found a few passages in J. Muether’s biography of Cornelius Van Til (who dealt extensively with Barth) very helpful even though its very brief.  Here are some excerpts:

“Crisis theologians espoused many conservative themes, such as the centrality of Scripture as God’s revelation, the transcendence of God, the biblical account of sin and the fall, the need for faith as an encounter with God through Jesus Christ, all the while embracing the higher critical conclusions about Scripture.”

“Van Til focused on Barth’s doctrine of Scripture.  At the heart of Barth’s teaching was the activism of God, which reduced revelation to pure existential encounter.  Revelation was found in Jesus Christ, who was the Word of God as the reconciling work of God.  This Word came to us in our encounter with God through faith, not through anything complete or past.  God’s freedom demanded the activism of his revelation and forbade our binding him to any static or completed revelation.  The written word, therefore, was itself a dead letter, Barth argued, and a petrification of the living word.  Barth’s activism was undercutting the most basic doctrine of the Reformation, Van Til countered, and Barth was robbing the Word of god from the people of god just as Rome had done.”

[What about the historical claims of scripture, if revelation is not about the past but only the present?]  “The resurrection [of Christ] happened in a time of pure presence; it was not an event in the past (Historie) but a present manifestation of Christ’s supreme sovereignty (Geschichte).  Thus Barth engaged in no theological quarrels about the past.  Debates over an empty tomb involve the static order of speculation, not the active realm of revelation.  Van Til charged that this was ‘playing fast and loose with the facts of redemption…'”

“Van Til’s work soon produced imitators, when, for example, Carl Henry’s 1949 book The Protestant Dilemma followed Van Til in tracing the roots of Barth and Brunner’s thought through Kierkegaard to Kant.”

Okay, so what?  I just find it ironic that Karl Barth would be very pleased with so many evangelical churches who emphasize the present reality of God’s work (as opposed to the redemptive events in history) and personal encounter/experience with God (as opposed to the objective reality of God’s revelation of Himself).  When they say with so little care and thought that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, or “my faith” is about Jesus, not doctrines, Barth essentially says, “Amen!”

Excerpts taken from pp. 122-124 of John Muether’s book, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman.

What’s the Laffer Curve? And where does it hump?

What economic theory of growth most influenced President Ronald Reagan?  Answer: the one espoused by Arthur Laffer called “The Laffer Curve.”  What is it?  And why might even a liberal economist want taxes to remain low (answer: to yield more government revenue).

From Economist Tim Groseclose:

Westminster Larger Catechism Questions 34-37

Q. 34. How was the covenant of grace administered under the Old Testament?

A. The covenant of grace was administered under the Old Testament, by promises,[126] prophecies,[127] sacrifices,[128] circumcision,[129] the passover,[130] and other types and ordinances, which did all fore-signify Christ then to come, and were for that time sufficient to build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah,[131] by whom they then had full remission of sin, and eternal salvation.[132]

Q. 35. How is the covenant of grace administered under the New Testament?

A. Under the New Testament, when Christ the substance was exhibited, the same covenant of grace was and still is to be administered in the preaching of the Word,[133] and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism[134] and the Lord’s Supper;[135] in which grace and salvation are held forth in more fulness, evidence, and efficacy, to all nations.[136]

Q. 36. Who is the Mediator of the covenant of grace?

A. The only Mediator of the covenant of grace is the Lord Jesus Christ,[137] who, being the eternal Son of God, of one substance and equal with the Father,[138] in the fulness of time became man,[139] and so was and continues to be God and man, in two entire distinct natures, and one person, forever.[140]

Q. 37. How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?

A. Christ the Son of God became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul,[141] being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance, and born of her,[142] yet without sin.[143]

[126] Romans 15:8. Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers.

[127] Acts 3:20, 24. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you…. Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.

[128] Hebrews 10:1. For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

[129] Romans 4:11. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also.

[130] 1 Corinthians 5:7. Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.

[131] Hebrews chapters 8, 9, 10 (entire). Hebrews 11:13. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

[132] Galatians 3:7-9, 14. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham…. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

[133] Mark 16:15. And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

[134] Matthew 28:19-20. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

[135] 1 Corinthians 11:23-25. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

[136] 2 Corinthians 3:6-9. Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. Hebrews 8:6, 10-11. But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises…. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. Matthew 28:19. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

[137] 1 Timothy 2:5. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

[138] John 1:1, 14. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John 10:30. I and my Father are one. Philippians 2:6. Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

[139] Galatians 4:4. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.

[140] Luke 1:35. And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Romans 9:5. Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. Colossians 2:9. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Hebrews 7:24-25. But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

[141] John 1:14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Matthew 26:38. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

[142] Luke 1:27, 31, 35, 42. To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary…. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS…. And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God…. And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Galatians 4:4. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.

[143] Hebrews 4:15. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 7:26. For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.

Practical questions to ask when studying a biblical text

From Justin Taylor’s blog (very helpful; very practical):

J. I. Packer and Gerald Bray—independently—suggest there are three questions we should ask of every passage we read in God’s Word.
First, J. I. Packer:

Three questions must govern readers of the inspired Word:
First, in the passage being read, what is shown about God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?  What does it say about what the holy Three are doing, have done, and  will do in God’s world, in his church, and in lives committed to him?  What does it reveal about God’s attributes, that is, God’s power and  character, how he exists and how he behaves? One reason, no doubt, for  God’s panoramic, multigenred layout of the Bible—with history, homily,  biography, liturgy, practical philosophy, laws, lists, genealogies,  visions, and so on, all rubbing shoulders—is that this variety provides  so many angles of illumination on these questions for theological Bible  readers’ instruction.
Second, in the passage being read, what  is shown about the bewildering, benighted world with all its beautiful  and beneficial aspects alongside those that are corrupt and corrupting?  Discerning the world’s good and evil for what they are, so as to  embrace the world’s good and evade its temptations, is integral to the  godliness that theological Bible reading should promote.
Third, in the passage being read, what is shown to guide one’s living, this day and every day?  The theological logic of this question, through which the reader must  work each time, is this: since God, by his own testimony, said that to those people in their situation, what does it follow that he says to  readers today in their own situation? The Holy Spirit answers prayer by  giving discernment to apply Scripture in this way. Those who seek will  indeed find.

Gerald Bray, more succinctly:

The first question we must ask of every biblical text is simply this—what does it tell us about God? What does it say about who he is and about what he does?
The second question is: what does this text say about us human beings? What are we meant to be and what has gone wrong?
The third and final question is: what has God done about this and what does he expect of us in the light of what he has done?

Bray goes on to offer an illustration regarding the reading of biblical genealogies. 

Politics before Christian brotherhood? Explaining the silence of western Christian media about anti-Christian persecution in Israel… by Jews

The author essentially asks, where’s American Family Radio on this one?  From the National Catholic Register:

…politics also has a distorting effect, and a story out of Israel this week makes the point.

On Tuesday, the doors of a Trappist monastery in Latrun, near Jerusalem, were set ablaze, with provocative phrases in Hebrew spray-painted on the exteriors walls, such as “Jesus is a monkey.” The assault was attributed to extremist Jews unhappy with the recent dismantling of two settlements on nearby Palestinian land.

Founded in 1890 by French Trappists, the Latrun monastery is famed for its strict religious observance. Israelis call it minzar ha’shatkanim, meaning “the monastery of those who don’t speak.” Ironically, it’s known for fostering dialogue with Judaism, and welcomes hundreds of Jewish visitors every week.

Tuesday’s attack was not an isolated incident. In 2009, a Franciscan church near the Cenacle on Mount Zion, regarded by tradition as the site of Christ’s Last Supper, was defaced with a spray-painted Star of David and slogans such as “Christians Out!” and “We Killed Jesus!” According to reports, the vandals also urinated on the door and left a trail of urine leading to the church.

Last February, the Franciscan Custodian of the Holy Land wrote to Israeli authorities to appeal for better protection after another wave of vandalism struck a Baptist church, a Christian cemetery and a Greek Orthodox monastery. That time, slogans included “Death to Christianity,” “We will crucify you!” and “Mary is a whore.”

At the time, the custodian, Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, complained that no arrests had been made in any of these cases.

Israeli observers say these assaults are part of what’s called the “price tag” campaign, meaning the vow by extremists that a price will be paid every time a settlement is dismantled — not just by those actually responsible for the demolition, but also by groups in Israeli society, such as the Christian minority, perceived to support the Palestinians and the ending of settlements. Frequent targets also include mosques, places of gathering for Arabs, and Israeli pacifists.

The assaults on Christian holy sites also reflect a nasty, if little-discussed, streak of broader anti-Christian animus in some Israeli circles. Local priests have reported that sometimes Yeshiva students chant insulting slogans at them, or even throw stones and spit in their direction.

The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land released a statement in reaction to the latest attack.

“What is happening in Israeli society to the point that Christians are the sacrificial lambs of such violence?” they asked. “Those who left their hate-filled graffiti expressed outrage at the eviction of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But why are they taking it out on Christians and their places of worship?”

“What kind of ‘teaching of contempt’ for Christians is being communicated in their schools and in their homes?” the bishops asked. “And why are the culprits not found and brought to justice? … It is time for the authorities to put an end to this senseless violence and ensure a teaching of respect in schools for all those who call this land home.”

(The phrase “teaching of contempt” was deliberately chosen, since critics have long charged that Christianity fostered a teaching of contempt about Judaism over the centuries. Today, the bishops appear to be suggesting the shoe is in the other foot.)

To be clear, so far these outrages haven’t resulted in any deaths — as opposed to, say, the thousands of Christians killed in Nigeria by the radical Islamist “Boko Haram” movement, or the hundreds who died in the Indian state of Orissa during anti-Christian pogroms in 2008. Israel remains a fundamentally safe environment for Christians, certainly as compared to most places in its immediate neighborhood.

Nonetheless, the question remains: Why haven’t these blatant acts of prejudice become a cause célèbre? I can think of at least three reasons.

First, some Christians may be hesitant to speak out because, in this instance, the prejudice is coming from Jews. Given the long and depressing history of anti-Judaism in Christianity, some Christians may, in their gut, be tempted to feel: “Yeah, this is disgusting, but in a way we’ve got it coming.”

Second, most Christians in the Holy Land are passionately pro-Palestinian, for the obvious reason that many are Palestinians themselves. Some Christians in the West sympathetic to Israel are therefore reluctant to take up their causes, however deserving in themselves, for fear of weakening the Israeli position.

Third, the travails of a handful of Trappist monks in Israel — or Dalit and tribal Christians in India, or Nigerian Christians menaced by the Boko Haram, or the 150,000 new Christian martyrs every year generally — simply have a hard time breaking through the media filter in the West, perhaps especially in the United States, where it’s now all 2012 elections all the time.

All of this, however, amounts to an explanation, not an excuse. If the defense of persecuted Christians is ever to become a transcendent social cause, analogous to the defense of Soviet Jews in the 1970s, or the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, it can’t be selective in its energy.

If the perception is that the West will push back when Muslims harass Christians, but not when Jews do it — or, to take another perceived inconsistency, that the United States will react when Christians are menaced in Iran, but not in China — then the oppressors will rightly conclude that the real concern isn’t defending a vulnerable minority, but scoring political points.

Perhaps Christians could take a page on this score from the Anti-Defamation League, which, needless to say, is not an outfit known for being soft on the defense of Israel. Yet on Tuesday, shortly after the assault on the monastery, they issued a statement strongly condemning it.