This gender gap has been growing for some time now, as successive generations of young women have entered the world of higher education. Yet, no one seemed to see a gap of this magnitude coming — until it had already happened.

The disparity of enrollment by gender varies by institution, but it is now estimated that almost 60% of all undergraduate students enrolled in American colleges and universities are women. This represents something altogether new in human experience since the rise of the university model as the dominant learning environment for young adults.  For the first time, a generation of young women will be markedly more educated than their male generational cohort.

Is this a bad thing . . . a negative development? Yes — and profoundly so. The problem is not the larger enrollment of young women in colleges and universities. The problem is the phenomenon of missing young men, whose absence spells big trouble for the future.

The numbers point to the problem, but do not explain it. Explanations for the phenomenon of missing young men point to the fact that girls out-perform boys at every grade level in grades K-12, and are thus more ready for the college experience than the boys. Other factors include economic and cultural patterns. Among some ethnic groups, the disparity between men and women entering college is far greater than 60% to 40%. Many young men consider the educational environment to be frustrating, constricting, and overly feminized. Others have lost confidence that an undergraduate education will lead to a job with adequate income and stability. Whatever the reason, their absence makes a big difference on the college campus today — and will make an even bigger difference in the larger society in years ahead.

The New York Times offered an unusually candid portrait of this gender disparity in “The New Math on Campus,” published in its February 5, 2010 edition. Reporter Alex Williams described a radically transformed social scene on some of today’s largest and most historic state universities.

The University of North Carolina, for example:

North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students.

Williams described a campus filled with young women who socialize with each other out of necessity — there are just not enough young men on campus. As Williams notes, this makes some college campuses resemble retirement communities, where women also generally outnumber men.

On the secular university campus, the gender imbalance has forced adjustments in the “hooking up” culture of sexual negotiation.  As Williams reports:

“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray, a senior at the University of Georgia, who said that it is common to see six provocatively clad women hovering around one or two guys at a party or a bar.

This is a portrait of demographic disaster, and the imbalance is not limited to secular campuses or students. Even as women now outnumber men in baccalaureate programs, they also indicate a desire to marry a man with equal or greater educational attainments. As the numbers now make clear, many of these young women will be disappointed.

Christian parents and all concerned with the coming generation should look closely at this phenomenon and ask the hard question — why is it that so many young men are falling behind in educational attainment? What are we doing that allows or encourages boys to exit formal education at their earliest opportunity? Why do we accept at face value the fact that boys fall behind girls of the same age in maturity and educational level? Why is college now an aspiration for far more young women than young men?

These are hard questions, but the answers will be even harder. We have allowed the development of an elongated boyhood and delayed adulthood. We frustrate them in school and then wonder why they bolt at the first exit from the classroom. We allow boys and young men to forfeit their futures.

All this might be different if the missing young men on our college and university campuses were missing for some good reason — such as military service or similar deployment. But, even as young men are more likely to join the military, the numbers do not explain the differential on campus.

Biblical manhood requires that a young man grow up, assume adult responsibilities, and prepare for leadership and service in the home, in the church, and in the larger society.

This much is clear — if this trend is not reversed, the college campus will not be the only place these young men are found missing.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Alex Williams, “The New Math on Campus,” The New York Times, Friday, February 5, 2010.

A crisis of fatherlessness marks the lives of millions of boys and young men, with boys growing up without fathers in the home now comprising a majority within some ethnic groups and urban populations. At almost every grade level, boys are performing below girls, and are often left behind as girls go on to more advanced levels of learning. Then, adding insult to injury, reports from scientists indicate that both sperm counts and testosterone levels are falling among some boys and men — blamed on anything from hormone supplements in the food chain to chemical contamination of ground water.

In many churches, young men and older boys are simply missing. The absence of young men ages 18 to 30 is just a fact of life in many congregations. Though this is especially acute in the mainline Protestant denominations, it is increasingly true of many evangelical churches as well.

One dimension of this problem is the difficulty of helping boys develop into manhood — a responsible, healthy, and meaningful manhood. Put simply, many of the most significant man-making institutions of our society are either gone or in big trouble. Military service is now both voluntary and no longer male-only. Organizations like the Boy Scouts attract more opposition and fewer boys. Even as the Boy Scouts of America marks the organization’s centennial this year, that proud American institution that shaped the lives of so many boys is marginalized and under attack.

Add the absence of fathers to all this and this society faces a challenge unprecedented in human history. A society cannot survive without a means of assisting boys to grow into responsible manhood. The same is true, of course, of the church — only in the church the stakes are even higher.

An enlightening (and oddly odorous) illustration of this social problem comes from The New York Times. Reporter Jan Hoffman tells of young boys now using “hypermasculine” products in order to demonstrate their masculinity and advertise their male identity — largely through the smells they put off.

Hoffman tells of Noah and Keenan Assaraf, age 13 and 14 respectively, who live near San Diego, where daily “they walk out the door in a cloud of spray-on macho,” according to their mom. The smell, she says, “drives me nuts.” Even as marketers insist the products are intended for young males ages 18 to 26, the products have now “reached into the turbulent, vulnerable world of their little brothers, ages 10 to 14.”

As Jan Hoffman explains:

Boys themselves, at a younger age, have also become increasingly self-conscious about their appearance and identity. They are trying to tame their twitching, maturing bodies, select from a growing smorgasbord of identities — goth, slacker, jock, emo — and position themselves with their texting, titillating, brand-savvy female peers, who are hitting puberty ever earlier.

And armies of researchers note that tween boys have modest disposable incomes, just fine for products that typically sell for less than $7.

“More insecurity equals more product need, equals more opportunity for marketers,” said Kit Yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University.

Insecurity seems to be a major motivating factor. Jake Guttenberg, a New York seventh grader, told the paper he uses one of these “deodorants” because, “I feel confident when I wear it.”

Lyn Mikel Brown of Colby College was blunt in her assessment: “These are just one of many products that cultivate anxiety in boys at younger and younger ages about what it means to man up . . . to be the kind of boy they’re told girls will want and other boys will respect. They’re playing with the failure to be that kind of guy, to be heterosexual even.”

Interestingly, Hoffman reports that these products are often bought for boys by their mothers, “simply relieved that their sons are thinking about body odor.” Just about any mom will nod in agreement at this point — but where are the dads?

These boys are acting out what society is telling them — urging them to be hypermasculine, hypersexualized, hyperconsumers. You don’t have to consult with Karl Marx to be leery of the marketing of these products to preteen boys. You do not have to know these boys to be saddened that while they understandably and naturally desire to grow up into manhood, think that “masculinity in a can” is the way to get there. Their desire to identify as masculine is natural and healthy — even essential — but the lack of real support in getting there leads them into confusion.

The New York Times also offers evidence of the crisis of manhood in a second article, in which reporter R. M. Schneiderman takes readers into a world of “mixed martial arts” in some evangelical churches and ministries.

“The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminized, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility,” he explains.

From his report:

In the back room of a theater on Beale Street [in Memphis], John Renken, 37, a pastor, recently led a group of young men in prayer.

“Father, we thank you for tonight,” he said. “We pray that we will be a representation of you.”

An hour later, a member of his flock who had bowed his head was now unleashing a torrent of blows on an opponent, and Mr. Renken was offering guidance that was not exactly prayerful.

“Hard punches!” he shouted from the sidelines of a martial arts event called Cage Assault. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!”

In order to reach young men, some churches are turning to mixed martial arts, defined as “a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling, and other fighting styles.”

The main issue here is not the legitimacy of martial arts, but the fact that these churches are making a self-conscious effort to reach young men and boys with some kind of proof that Christianity is not a feminized and testosterone-free faith that appeals only to women.

Of course, Christianity honors the man who fights “the good fight of faith,” and the most important fight to which a Christian man is called is the fight to grow up into godly manhood, to be true to wife and provide for his children, to make a real contribution in the home, in the church, and in the society, and to show the glory of God in faithfully living out all that God calls a man to be and to do. This means a fight for truth, for the Gospel, and for the virtues of the Christian life. The New Testament is filled with masculine — and even martial — images of Christian faithfulness. We must be unashamed of these, and help a rising generation of men and boys to understand what it means to be a man in Christ. The Christian man does not embrace brutality for the sake of proving his manhood.

This much is clear — we are living in strange times, getting stranger by the minute. Churches and parents are right to be concerned about the new challenges of helping boys to grow into manhood. The crisis is real, and this one demands urgent attention.

Boys will never find real masculinity in a can, but boys and young men should find respect for and examples of genuine manhood at church. What about your church?

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Jan Hoffman, “Masculinity in a Spray Can,” The New York Times, Saturday, January 29, 2010.

R. M. Schneiderman, “Flock is Now a Fight Team in Some Ministries,” The New York Times, Tuesday, February 2, 2010.

We had a lively discussion of these issues on Thursday’s edition of The Albert Mohler Program. Listen here.

See my resources, “From Boy to Man: The Marks of Manhood, Part One” and “From Boy to Man: The Marks of Manhood, Part Two.”

The boy had been given the penguin just after his birth. A Dutch couple was in the process of adopting him almost from the start of his life — they had been matched to him when he was only two months old. The penguin represented a promise.

The process of adoption took two years — the length of time considered adequate to determine that no living relatives might claim him. According to official estimates, there were over 50,000 parentless orphans in Haiti before the earthquake came and orphaned many thousands more.

Richard and Rowena Pet were the young Dutch couple who wanted so badly to be Arno’s mother and father. They had struggled with infertility for years before deciding to adopt. As they awaited the adoption of Arno, Rowena became pregnant. Last August she gave birth to Jim, who was left in the care of relatives as Richard and Rowena flew to Haiti in January to claim Arno and complete the adoption process.

The story of Arno’s adoption is movingly told by reporter David Charter of The Times [London]. As he reported, “Arno was shy at first but within 30 minutes of meeting his adoptive parents he reached for Rowena’s hand and took the Dutch couple on a tour of the orphanage in Port-au-Prince where he had spent most of his short life. He began to call them Mummy and Daddy.”

Richard had shared their joy with a friend in an e-mail:

“We got to the orphanage feeling a bit strange. We went around a corner and immediately saw Arno walking towards us. He was OK until he was about half a meter away, but then he panicked. The woman from the orphanage helped out and half an hour later he took Rowena’s hand for the first time. I’m sorry but I can’t help crying at the moment as I type this. Arno has been showing us everything in the orphanage. He showed us an old car they have for the children to play on. He was holding a birthday card we sent for his second birthday.”

According to Charter, adoptive parents often stay at the Hotel Villa Therese in the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince. That is where Richard and Rowena took Arno. That is where they were when the earthquake came. And that is where they died together.

David Charter tells the story, with comments by Chris Spaansen, the friend to whom Richard had sent the e-mail:

Dutch TV cameras were on hand during the frantic search by an international rescue team with members from the Netherlands, Britain and Canada. . . . Lying there amid the rubble was the unmistakable blue and yellow toy bird, Mr Penguin, marked with the word “Love”, that went everywhere with Arno. “That toy helped them to make their first contact with the little boy. It had a really special place in the family. It was a very emotional moment for all of us,” Spaansen says.

Then this:

What the cameras did not show were the three bodies, found intertwined together, as if Rowena and Richard had tried to put protective arms around Arno as the masonry began to fall. The disaster cruelly destroyed the new family, creating its own orphan back in the Netherlands. Jim, just five months old, will be brought up by Rowena’s sister, who already has her own three-year-old boy.

The bodies of Richard and Rowena and Arno Pet were taken to the Netherlands together, just as they had been found together in the rubble of the Hotel Villa Therese. They had been a family for a few hours, but a family all the same. Arno had a tragically short life, but he ended that life in the arms of a mother and a father.

Who can read this account without heartbreak . . . and a heart warmed? Is there a heart so cold that it does not feel the pathos of this report, and sense the sentiment of this family’s tragedy? At the same time, this is not a tragedy in the classic sense. The love of Richard and Rowena and Arno Pet transcends tragedy. That is why The Times published this report, and why it stays with you so long after you read it.

Of course, for the Christian there is far more to this story. In the story of Arno Pet we find a picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians:

But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a virgin, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. [Galatians 4:4-7]

Adoption is perhaps the most powerful depiction of the Gospel found in the Bible. We are all orphans, born under the curse of sin. By the sheer grace and mercy of God, those who come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are adopted as sons. Redeemed sinners are adopted as sons “through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise and glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” [Ephesians 1:5-6]

Arno Pet began life as an orphan, but he ended life as a son. He was abandoned at his birth, but he died in the arms of his parents. He did not die as Arno, he died as Arno Pet.

In the rubble of the Hotel Villa Therese the film crew found the bodies of Richard and Rowena and Arno Pet. In that same rubble, we find a picture of the Gospel of Christ. He who has eyes to see, let him see.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

David Charter, “Haiti Tragedy — The Couple Who Died with Their Newly-Adopted Child,” The Times [London], February 3, 2010.

Don’t miss the Adopting for Life conference at Southern Seminary, February 26-27, 2010.

You will also want to read Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches by Dr. Russell Moore. Here is my endorsement statement found on the book’s cover:

“Thankfully, there are good books on adoption and good books on the gospel. But until the arrival of Adopted for Life, there has never been a book that puts the adoption of children so clearly within the context of the gospel of Christ. Adopted for Life is one of the most compelling books I have ever read—both deeply touching and richly theological. You will never look at adoption or the gospel in quite the same way after reading this book. How could the church have been missing this for so long?”

By some estimations, the production and sale of explicit pornography now represents the seventh-largest industry in America. New videos and internet pages are produced each week, with the digital revolution bringing a host of new delivery systems. Every new digital platform becomes a marketing opportunity for the pornography industry.

To no one’s surprise, the vast majority of those who consume pornography are males. It is no trade secret that males are highly stimulated by visual images, whether still or video. That is not a new development, as ancient forms of pornography attest. What is new is all about access. Today’s men and boys are not looking at line pictures drawn on cave walls. They have almost instant access to countless forms of pornography in a myriad of formats.

But, even as technology has brought new avenues for the transmission of pornography, modern knowledge also brings a new understanding of how pornography works in the male brain. While this research does nothing to reduce the moral culpability of males who consume pornography, it does help to explain how the habit becomes so addictive.

As William M. Struthers of Wheaton College explains, “Men seem to be wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long-lasting effect on their thoughts and lives.”

Struthers is a psychologist with a background in neuroscience and a teaching concentration in the biological bases of human behavior. In Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, Struthers presents key insights from neuroscience that go a long way toward explaining why pornography is such a temptation for the male mind.

“The simplest explanation for why men view pornography (or solicit prostitutes) is that they are driven to seek out sexual intimacy,” he explains. The urge for sexual intimacy is God-given and essential to the male, he acknowledges, but it is easily misdirected. Men are tempted to seek “a shortcut to sexual pleasure via pornography” and now find this shortcut easily accessed.

In a fallen world, pornography becomes more than a distraction and a distortion of God’s intention for human sexuality. It comes as an addictive poison.

Struthers explains:

Viewing pornography is not an emotionally or physiologically neutral experience. It is fundamentally different from looking at black and white photos of the Lincoln Memorial or taking in a color map of the provinces of Canada. Men are reflexively drawn to the content of pornographic material. As such, pornography has wide-reaching effects to energize a man toward intimacy. It is not a neutral stimulus. It draws us in. Porn is vicarious and voyeuristic at its core, but it is also something more. Porn is a whispered promise. It promises more sex, better sex, endless sex, sex on demand, more intense orgasms, experiences of transcendence.

Pornography “acts as a polydrug,” Struthers explains. As Dr. Patrick Carnes asserts, pornography is “a pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience.” Boredom and curiosity lead many boys and men into experiences that become more like drug addiction than is often admitted.

Why men rather than women? As Struthers explains, the male and female brains are wired differently. “A man’s brain is a sexual mosaic influenced by hormone levels in the womb and in puberty and molded by his psychological experience.” Over time, exposure to pornography takes a man or boy deeper along “a one-way neurological superhighway where a man’s mental life is over-sexualized and narrowed. This superhighway has countless on-ramps but very few off-ramps.

Pornography is “visually magnetic” to the male brain. Struthers presents a fascinating review of the neurobiology involved, with pleasure hormones becoming linked to and released by the experience of a male viewing pornographic images. These experiences with pornography and pleasure hormones create new patterns in the brain’s wiring, and repeated experiences formalize the rewiring.

And then, enough is never enough. “If I take the same dose of a drug over and over and my body begins to tolerate it, I will need to take a higher dose of the drug in order for it to have the same effect that it did with a lower dose the first time,” Struthers reminds us. So, the experience of viewing pornography and acting out on it creates a demand in the brain for more and more, just to achieve the same level of pleasure in the brain.

While men are stimulated by the ambient sexual images around them, explicit pornography increases the effect. Struthers compares this to the difference between traditional television and the new high definition technologies. Everything is more clear, more explicit, and more stimulating.

Struthers explains this with compelling force:

Something about pornography pulls and pushes at the male soul. The pull is easy to identify. The naked female form can be hypnotizing. A woman’s willingness to participate in a sexual act or expose her nakedness is alluring to men. The awareness of one’s own sexuality, the longing to know, to experience something as good wells up from deep within. An image begins to pick up steam the longer we look upon it. It gains momentum and can reach a point where it feels like a tractor-trailer rolling downhill with no brakes.

Wired for Intimacy is a timely and important book. Struthers offers keen and strategic insights from neurobiology and psychology. But what makes this book truly helpful is the fact that Struthers does not leave his argument to neuroscience, nor does he use the category of addiction to mitigate the sinfulness of viewing pornography.

Sinners naturally look for fig leaves to hide sin, and biological causation is often cited as a means of avoiding moral responsibility. Struthers does not allow this, and his view of pornography is both biblical and theologically grounded. He lays responsibility for the sin of viewing pornography at the feet of those who willingly consume explicit images. He knows his audience — after all, his classrooms are filled with young male college students. The addict is responsible for his addiction.

At the same time, any understanding of how sin works its deceitful evil is a help to us, and understanding how pornography works in the male mind is a powerful knowledge. Pornography is a sin that robs God of his glory in the gift of sex and sexuality. We have long known that sin takes hostages. We now know another dimension of how this sin hijacks the male brain. Knowledge, as they say, is power.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

I interviewed Dr. Struthers on the January 11, 2010 edition of The Albert Mohler Program. Listen here.

As Lindenberger argues, the case has finally put the issue of same-sex marriage before the federal courts, setting the stage for a landmark decision, no matter how the judge rules and however the case is finally decided upon appeals. “Both sides see it as a crucial test of whether society can insist that heterosexual unions are worthy of the full sanction of the law in a way that other unions are not,” he reports.

Lindenberger also makes this assertion: “For decades, governments at every level have created one set of rules for heterosexuals in America, and another set for its gays and lesbians.” This is only partly true, for in reality governments have established “one set of rules” for married heterosexual couples and “another set” for everyone else. In other words, same-sex couples are not alone in having been denied a legal right to marry.

The unusual legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson — famous adversaries in the 2000 case, Bush v. Gore – made their case against California’s “Proposition 8″ amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage almost entirely on the argument that opposition to homosexuality is nothing but evidence of moral objections rooted in religious faith. This argument becomes crucial when understood in the context of the 2003 Supreme Court decision in the case Lawrence v. Texas, in which the nation’s high court ruled that mere “moral opprobrium” is no basis for a denial of any right to homosexuals.

Lindenberger then explains:

For his part, Boies told TIME that the trial has shown that legal discrimination against gays — in particular rules banning their marriage — starts with simple prejudice, in the form of religion-inspired views about the morality of homosexuality itself. “The Southern Baptist Convention describes homosexuality as an ‘abomination,’” Boies told TIME, as he prepared for what would be three days of sometimes blistering cross-examinations as the trial wound down. “The Catholic Church calls homosexual activity ‘gravely immoral.’ Who is kidding whom? These are sincerely held beliefs, to which they are certainly entitled. But no one ought to kid themselves that what is behind [efforts to ban gay marriage] is anything other than a majority imposing its beliefs on other people.”

In fact, Boies and Olson made this the central argument of their case against Proposition 8. As Mathew Staver, now dean of the Liberty University School of Law, commented, “What struck me is that the plaintiffs have tried to put Christianity on trial rather than Prop 8.”

Then Lindenberger reports this:

The Rev. Albert Mohler, a leading figure in the fight against gay marriage, says that in light of Lawrence, he understands Boies’ line of attack. But he told TIME that marriage is different. It is “the central institution of human society.” “The problem with that argument is that the current case has to do with marriage, not merely with the right to engage in certain sexual acts,” says Mohler, who is the longtime president of the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention in Louisville, Ky. “There are more than ample grounds to argue that the sustenance of marriage is necessary for the flourishing of human culture. Thus, anything that damages marriage or subverts its place in society is deleterious in its effects. Throughout history, societies have regulated marriage with this danger in mind, recognizing in marriage the privileged status granted to the heterosexual union as the best context for procreation and the raising of children — functions understood to be vital to the society’s well-being. The argument put forth by Boies would mean the effective deregulation of marriage, since his arguments already presented in court could be proposed by any number of others, including those representing polygamists.”

As this paragraph makes clear, Christians are put in a very strange position in today’s postmodern/post-Christian culture. We cannot be unclear or uncomfortable in acknowledging the Bible and the Christian faith as our moral authorities. To shrink from this — or in any sense to be unclear — would amount to treason against our convictions. My understanding of human sexuality, of morality, and of what it even means to be human is drawn from the Bible. As Martin Luther famously declared at the Diet of Worms, if I am convinced that the Bible teaches anything, I am under the glad obligation to receive it as true and obey it as a believer in Christ. In this sense, the historic Christian understanding of homosexual acts as sinful (and of same-sex marriage as inconceivable) is nothing less than faithfulness to the Bible as the Word of God.

At the same time, we also recognize ample reason to support the institution of marriage on other grounds as well. As I told Mr. Lindenberger, it is no accident that all societies throughout history have privileged marriage even as they have defined it as an exclusively heterosexual institution. This includes societies and cultures that are not even remotely Christian, and many that are not even based on a theistic worldview. Confucian cultures of the East, for example, have also defined marriage as inherently and exclusively heterosexual.

If we take Mr. Boies’ logic seriously, anyone who comes to any moral issue with any religious conviction is simply ruled unfit for public influence or consideration — no matter what argument he or she might bring. The problems with this are gargantuan and obvious — this would mean that the vast majority of Americans are excluded from any public debate over an institution as central as marriage.

Professor Marc Spindelman of Ohio State University told Lindenberger that, even as many Californians may have been motivated by religious conviction to vote in support of Proposition 8, “not everyone who voted for it did.” Will the federal courts now attempt a psychoanalysis of California voters and, eventually, of the American people?

Boies’ argument finds its roots in philosophies of public reason such as those proposed by Robert Audi and the late John Rawls. Rawls argued that a liberal society must require the exclusion of all “comprehensive doctrines,” by which he meant religious worldviews. Audi argues that public discussion — and certainly any legislative or judicial forum — must require all parties to come to the table with both a secular rationale and a secular motivation. In his words, all parties have an “obligation to abstain from advocacy or support of a law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless in advocating or supporting it one is sufficiently motivated by . . . adequate secular reason.”

In other words, Audi argues that it is not enough that all parties come to the table with secular reasons for their proposals. They must also come with a normatively secular motivation. And who, we must ask, will be the judge of those motivations? Once again, on this ground the vast majority of Americans would be excluded from all public decision-making.

David Boies and Ted Olson made their case on just this argument — that the people of California were motivated, at least to some degree, by their religious convictions. Of course, if this logic holds, it would mean the establishment of secularism as the only acceptable faith in postmodern America. Only by denying any religious faith could a citizen “prove” his or her secular motivation.

By any measure, the decision in this case will be momentous — and for reasons that go far beyond the question of same-sex marriage and homosexuality. In this case, far more than marriage is on trial.

______________________________

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Michael Lindenberger, “Gay Marriage: Prop 8 Trial Rests, and a Key Ruling Awaits,” TIME, Thursday, January 28, 2010. I appreciate Mr. Lindenberger’s careful reporting on this issue. Readers should review his other articles on the case, available here at www.time.com.

See also:
Robert Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason (Cambridge University Press, 2000), page 96.

The same is true for an article that just recently appeared in The Weekly Standard. In “Mugged by Ultrasound,” David Daleiden and Jon A. Shields reveal a reality becoming more and more common — abortion workers turning pro-life.

Abortion activists, they note, are usually detached from the actual process of abortion. Thus, they can hide behind arguments about a woman’s “right to choose” or “reproductive freedom.” But, as Daleiden and Shields explain, those who are actually performing the abortions cannot hide from the horrible reality, and some of them cannot handle the horror. Eventually, “a noteworthy number have found the conflict unbearable and have defected to the pro-life cause.”

Daleiden and Shields trace some of these defections to two developments that changed the experience of providing abortions. First, the usual means of aborting second-trimester fetuses around the time of Roe v. Wade (1973) was saline injection. But, that is no longer the case. Those abortions are now done by “dilation and evacuation” (D&E), which involves the dismemberment of the fetus within the womb. For doctors and others involved in a D&E abortion, there is no way to escape the horrifying reality of that procedure.

They write:

Such studies are few. In general, abortion providers have censored their own emotional trauma out of concern to protect abortion rights. In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin “breaking the silence” in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:

Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

Lisa Harris charged that the abortion industry had “not owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts.” Amazingly, Harris remained in the abortion business, but she could not deny what she knew about the killing of the unborn

Daleiden and Shields tell of Paul Jarrett, a doctor who did leave the business after performing 23 abortions. Jarrett explained why: “As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart . . . and when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.”

The second development that has changed the moral landscape of abortion is the ultrasound image. Bernard Nathanson, who at one time was performing more abortions than anyone else in the Western world, famously converted to the pro-life cause, largely prompted by seeing ultrasound images of unborn babies. Nathanson, who once aborted one of his own children, could no longer deny the reality. Daleiden and Shields make clear that Nathanson has been followed in this defection by others:

The most recent example is Abby Johnson, the former director of Dallas-area Planned Parenthood. After watching, via ultrasound, an embryo “crumple” as it was suctioned out of its mother’s womb, Johnson reported a “conversion in my heart.” Likewise, Joan Appleton was the head nurse at a large abortion facility in Falls Church, Virginia, and a NOW activist. Appleton performed thousands of abortions with aplomb until a single ultrasound-assisted abortion rattled her. As Appleton remembers, “I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. .  .  . After the procedure I was shaking, literally.”

David Daleiden and Jon Shields have done a masterful job of explaining why these two developments have altered the landscape of abortion in America. The defection of so many abortion providers and of those involved in that industry is a story that must be told. At a very important level, this is truly heartening news in the midst of tragedy.

We must also see clearly that the revulsion toward abortion that marks these defections is based in truth — the truth that the inhabitant of the womb is not a mere “fetus,” but a baby. Paul Jarrett looked into the face of “another human being—a human being that I just killed.” Joan Appleton “saw the baby open its mouth.”

Similarly, the ultrasound image reveals the undeniable humanity of the baby within the womb. This remarkable technology saves lives — just by revealing the baby in all of its humanity.

From a Christian perspective, the recognition of the baby’s humanity must be traced to common grace and general revelation. The womb is revealed to be inhabited by a human being who deserves nothing less than our full protection and respect. The heart and mind cannot deny what the eyes have seen.

The late Irving Kristol once explained his own intellectual conversion as having been “mugged by reality.” Daleiden and Shields get it just right when they describe these former abortion providers and workers as having been “mugged by ultrasound.” May those muggings be multiplied — and may they spread to the American public as well.

________________________________

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

David Daleiden and Jon A. Shields, “Mugged by Ultrasound: Why So Many Abortion Workers Have Turned Pro-life,” The Weekly Standard, January 25, 2010.

According to Young, the book was originally written for his own children. In essence, it can be described as a narrative theodicy — an attempt to answer the question of evil and the character of God by means of a story. In this story, the main character is grieving the brutal kidnapping and murder of his seven-year-old daughter when he receives what turns out to be a summons from God to meet him in the very shack where the man’s daughter had been murdered.

In the shack, “Mack” meets the divine Trinity as “Papa,” an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and “Sarayu,” an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack, Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. “Papa” is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed.

The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues. And the dialogues reveal a theology that is unconventional at best, and undoubtedly heretical in certain respects.

While the literary device of an unconventional “trinity” of divine persons is itself sub-biblical and dangerous, the theological explanations are worse. “Papa” tells Mack of the time when the three persons of the Trinity “spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God.” Nowhere in the Bible is the Father or the Spirit described as taking on human existence. The Christology of the book is likewise confused. “Papa” tells Mack that, though Jesus is fully God, “he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being.” When Jesus healed the blind, “He did so only as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

While there is ample theological confusion to unpack there, suffice it to say that the Christian church has struggled for centuries to come to a faithful understanding of the Trinity in order to avoid just this kind of confusion — understanding that the Christian faith is itself at stake.

Jesus tells Mack that he is “the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” Not the only way, but merely the best way.

In another chapter, “Papa” corrects Mack’s theology by asserting, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” Without doubt, God’s joy is in the atonement accomplished by the Son. Nevertheless, the Bible consistently reveals God to be the holy and righteous Judge, who will indeed punish sinners. The idea that sin is merely “its own punishment” fits the Eastern concept of karma, but not the Christian Gospel.

The relationship of the Father to the Son, revealed in a text like John 17, is rejected in favor of an absolute equality of authority among the persons of the Trinity. “Papa” explains that “we have no concept of final authority among us, only unity.” In one of the most bizarre paragraphs of the book, Jesus tells Mack: “Papa is as much submitted to me as I am to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”

The theorized submission of the Trinity to a human being — or to all human beings — is a theological innovation of the most extreme and dangerous sort. The essence of idolatry is self-worship, and this notion of the Trinity submitted (in any sense) to humanity is inescapably idolatrous.

The most controversial aspects of The Shack’s message have revolved around questions of universalism, universal redemption, and ultimate reconciliation. Jesus tells Mack: “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.” Jesus adds, “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, my Beloved.”

Mack then asks the obvious question — do all roads lead to Christ? Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Given the context, it is impossible not to draw essentially universalistic or inclusivistic conclusions about Young’s meaning. “Papa” chides Mack that he is now reconciled to the whole world. Mack retorts, “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “Papa” responds, “The whole world, Mack.”

Put together, all this implies something very close to the doctrine of reconciliation proposed by Karl Barth. And, even as Young’s collaborator Wayne Jacobson has lamented the “self-appointed doctrine police” who have charged the book with teaching ultimate reconciliation, he acknowledges that the first editions of the manuscript were unduly influenced by Young’s “partiality at the time” to ultimate reconciliation — the belief that the cross and resurrection of Christ accomplished then and there a unilateral reconciliation of all sinners (and even all creation) to God.

James B. DeYoung of Western Theological Seminary, a New Testament scholar who has known William Young for years, documents Young’s embrace of a form of “Christian universalism.” The Shack, he concludes, “rests on the foundation of universal reconciliation.”

Even as Wayne Jacobson and others complain of those who identify heresy within The Shack, the fact is that the Christian church has explicitly identified these teachings as just that — heresy. The obvious question is this: How is it that so many evangelical Christians seem to be drawn not only to this story, but to the theology presented in the narrative — a theology at so many points in conflict with evangelical convictions?

Evangelical observers have not been alone in asking this question. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Timothy Beal of Case Western University argues that the popularity of The Shack suggests that evangelicals might be shifting their theology. He cites the “nonbiblical metaphorical models of God” in the book, as well as its “nonhierarchical” model of the Trinity and, most importantly, “its theology of universal salvation.”

Beal asserts that none of this theology is part of “mainstream evangelical theology,” then explains: “In fact, all three are rooted in liberal and radical academic theological discourse from the 1970s and 80s — work that has profoundly influenced contemporary feminist and liberation theology but, until now, had very little impact on the theological imaginations of nonacademics, especially within the religious mainstream.”

He then asks: “What are these progressive theological ideas doing in this evangelical pulp-fiction phenomenon?” He answers: “Unbeknownst to most of us, they have been present on the liberal margins of evangelical thought for decades.” Now, he explains, The Shack has introduced and popularized these liberal concepts even among mainstream evangelicals.

Timothy Beal cannot be dismissed as a conservative “heresy-hunter.” He is thrilled that these “progressive theological ideas” are now “trickling into popular culture by way of The Shack.”

Similarly, writing at Books & Culture, Katherine Jeffrey concludes that The Shack “offers a postmodern, post-biblical theodicy.” While her main concern is the book’s place “in a Christian literary landscape,” she cannot avoid dealing with its theological message.

In evaluating the book, it must be kept in mind that The Shack is a work of fiction. But it is also a sustained theological argument, and this simply cannot be denied. Any number of notable novels and works of literature have contained aberrant theology, and even heresy. The crucial question is whether the aberrant doctrines are features of the story or the message of the work. When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points.

All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals — and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe.

The answer is not to ban The Shack or yank it out of the hands of readers. We need not fear books — we must be ready to answer them. We desperately need a theological recovery that can only come from practicing biblical discernment. This will require us to identify the doctrinal dangers of The Shack, to be sure. But our real task is to reacquaint evangelicals with the Bible’s teachings on these very questions and to foster a doctrinal rearmament of Christian believers.

The Shack is a wake-up call for evangelical Christianity. An assessment like that offered by Timothy Beal is telling. The popularity of this book among evangelicals can only be explained by a lack of basic theological knowledge among us — a failure even to understand the Gospel of Christ. The tragedy that evangelicals have lost the art of biblical discernment must be traced to a disastrous loss of biblical knowledge. Discernment cannot survive without doctrine.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Timothy Beal, “Theology for Everyone,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 15, 2010), pages B16-17. [subscription required]

Katherine Jeffrey, “‘I Am Not Who You Think I Am’ — Situating The Shack in a Christian Literary Landscape,” Books & Culture (January/February 2010), pages 33-34.

An important and helpful review of The Shack is offered by Tim Challies, “A Reader’s Review of The Shack,” http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/the-shack-by-william-p-young.php

For documentation, see also:

James B. DeYoung, “Book Review: The Shack by William Paul Young,” [pdf file].

Wayne Jacobson, “Is The Shack Heresy?,” http://www.windblownmedia.com/about-wbm/is-the-shack-heresy.html

I discussed The Shack on the April 11, 2008 edition of The Albert Mohler Program. [Listen here].

Liberalism: Saving Christianity From Itself

The classic liberals of the early twentieth century, often known as modernists, pointed to a vast intellectual change in the society and asserted that Christianity would have to change or die. As historian William R. Hutchison explains, “The hallmark of modernism is the insistence that theology must adopt a sympathetic attitude toward secular culture and must consciously strive to come to terms with it.”^[1]

This coming to terms with secular culture is deeply rooted in the sense of intellectual liberation that began in the Enlightenment. Protestant liberalism can be traced to European sources, but it arrived very early in America—far earlier than most of today’s evangelicals are probably aware. Liberal theology held sway where Unitarianism dominated and in many parts beyond.

Soon after the American Revolution, more organized forms of liberal theology emerged, fueled by a sense of revolution and intellectual liberty. Theologians and preachers began to question the doctrines of orthodox Christianity, claiming that doctrines such as original sin, total depravity, divine sovereignty, and substitutionary atonement violated the moral senses. William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian, spoke for many in his generation when he described “the shock given to my moral nature” by the teachings of orthodox Christianity.^[2]

Though any number of central beliefs and core doctrines were subjected to liberal revision or outright rejection, the doctrine of hell was often the object of greatest protest and denial.

Considering hell and its related doctrines, Congregationalist pastor Washington Gladden declared: “To teach such a doctrine as this about God is to inflict upon religion a terrible injury and to subvert the very foundations of morality.”^[3]

Though hell had been a fixture of Christian theology since the New Testament, it became an odium theologium—a doctrine considered repugnant by the larger culture and now retained and defended only by those who saw themselves as self-consciously orthodox in theological commitment.

Novelist David Lodge dated the final demise of hell to the decade of the 1960s. “At some point in the nineteen-sixties, Hell disappeared. No one could say for certain when this happened. First it was there, then it wasn’t.” University of Chicago historian Martin Marty saw the transition as simple and, by the time it actually occurred, hardly observed. “Hell disappeared. No one noticed,” he asserted.^[4]

The liberal theologians and preachers who so conveniently discarded hell did so without denying that the Bible clearly teaches the doctrine. They simply asserted the higher authority of the culture’s sense of morality. In order to save Christianity from the moral and intellectual damage done by the doctrine, hell simply had to go. Many rejected the doctrine with gusto, claiming the mandate to update the faith in a new intellectual age. Others simply let the doctrine go dormant, never to be mentioned in polite company.

What of today’s evangelicals? Though some lampoon the stereotypical “hell-fire and brimstone” preaching of an older evangelical generation, the fact is that most church members may never have heard a sermon on hell—even in an evangelical congregation. Has hell gone dormant among evangelicals as well?

Revising Hell: A Test Case for the Slide into Liberalism

Interestingly, the doctrine of hell serves very well as a test case for the slide into theological liberalism. The pattern of this slide looks something like this.

First, a doctrine simply falls from mention. Over time, it is simply never discussed or presented from the pulpit. Most congregants do not even miss the mention of the doctrine. Those who do become fewer over time. The doctrine is not so much denied as ignored and kept at a distance. Yes, it is admitted, that doctrine has been believed by Christians, but it is no longer a necessary matter of emphasis.

Second, a doctrine is revised and retained in reduced form. There must have been some good reason that Christians historically believed in hell. Some theologians and pastors will then affirm that there is a core affirmation of morality to be preserved, perhaps something like what C. S. Lewis affirmed as “The Tao.”[5] The doctrine is reduced.

Third, a doctrine is subjected to a form of ridicule. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral, known for his message of “Possibility Thinking,” once described his motivation for theological reformulation in terms of refocusing theology on “generating trust and positive hope.”^[6] His method is to point to salvation and the need “to become positive thinkers.”^[7] Positive thinking does not emphasize escape from hell, “whatever that means and wherever that is.”^[8]

That statement ridicules hell by dismissing it in terms of “whatever that means and wherever it is.” Just don’t worry about hell, Schuller suggests. Though few evangelicals are likely to join in the same form of ridicule, many will invent softer forms of marginalizing the doctrine.

Fourth, a doctrine is reformulated in order to remove its intellectual and moral offensiveness. Evangelicals have subjected the doctrine of hell to this strategy for many years now. Some deny that hell is everlasting, arguing for a form of annihilationism or conditional immortality. Others will deny hell as a state of actual torment. John Wenham simply states, “Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice.”^[9] Some argue that God does not send anyone to hell, and that hell is simply the sum total of human decisions made during earthly lives. God is not really a judge who decides, but a referee who makes certain that rules are followed.

Tulsa pastor Ed Gungor recently wrote that “people are not sent to hell, they go there.”^[10] In other words, God just respects human freedom to the degree that he will reluctantly let humans determined to go to hell have their wish.

Apologizing for Hell: The New Evangelical Evasion

In recent years, a new pattern of evangelical evasion has surfaced. The Protestant liberals and modernists of the twentieth century simply dismissed the doctrine of hell, having already rejected the truthfulness of Scripture. Thus, they did not enter into elaborate attempts to argue that the Bible did not teach the doctrine—they simply dismissed it.

Though this pattern is found among some who would claim to be evangelicals, this is not the most common evangelical pattern of compromise. A new apologetic move is now evident among some theologians and preachers who do affirm the inerrancy of the Bible and the essential truthfulness of the New Testament doctrine of hell. This new move is more subtle, to be sure. In this move the preacher simply says something like this:

“I regret to tell you that the doctrine of hell is taught in the Bible. I believe it. I believe it because it is revealed in the Bible. It is not up for renegotiation. We just have to receive it and believe it. I do believe it. I wish it could be otherwise but it is not.”

Statements like this reveal a very great deal. The authority of the Bible is clearly affirmed. The speaker affirms what the Bible reveals and rejects accommodation. So far, so good. The problem is in how the affirmation is introduced and explained. In an apologetic gesture, the doctrine is essentially lamented.

What does this say about God? What does this imply about God’s truth? Can a truth clearly revealed in the Bible be anything less than good for us? The Bible presents the knowledge of hell just as it presents the knowledge of sin and judgment: these are things we had better know. God reveals these things to us for our good and for our redemption. In this light, the knowledge of these things is grace to us. Apologizing for a doctrine is tantamount to impugning the character of God.

Do we believe that hell is a part of the perfection of God’s justice? If not, we have far greater theological problems than those localized to hell.

Several years ago, someone wisely suggested that a good many modern Christians wanted to “air condition hell.”^[11] The effort continues.

Remember that the liberals and the modernists operated out of an apologetic motivation. They wanted to save Christianity as a relevant message in the modern world and to remove the odious obstacle of what were seen as repugnant and unnecessary doctrines. They wanted to save Christianity from itself.

Today, some in movements such as the emerging church commend the same agenda, and for the same reason. Are we embarrassed by the biblical doctrine of hell?

If so, this generation of evangelicals will face no shortage of embarrassments. The current intellectual context allows virtually no respect for Christian affirmations of the exclusivity of the gospel, the true nature of human sin, the Bible’s teachings regarding human sexuality, and any number of other doctrines revealed in the Bible. The lesson of theological liberalism is clear—embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.

Be sure of this: it will not stop with the air conditioning of hell.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

This essay originally appeared in the January/February 2010 edition of the IX Marks Ministries eJournal.

Footnotes:
¹ William R. Hutchison, ed., American Protestant Thought in the Liberal Era (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1968), p. 4.
² Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805-1900 (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001), p. 18.
³ Dorrien, p, 275.
⁴ Martin E. Marty, “Hell Disappeared. No One Noticed. A Civic Argument,” Harvard Theological Review, 78 (1985), 381-398.
⁵ See C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2001 [1948]).
⁶ Robert Schuller, My Journey (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 127.
⁷ Schuller, p. 127-128.
⁸ Schuller, p. 127-128.
⁹ John Wenhan, Facing Hell: An Autobiography (London: Paternoster Press, 1998)., p. 254.
¹⁰ Ed Gungor, What Bothers Me Most About Christianity (New York: Howard Books, 2009), p. 196.
¹¹ See “Hell Air Conditioned,” New Oxford Review, 58 (June 3, 1998), p. 4.

Gilbert, you may recall, is author of the best-selling memoir of leaving marriage, Eat, Pray, Love. That book was a blockbuster, and Gilbert has been a fixture on shows such as Oprah, telling and retelling her story of finding true love after leaving marriage behind.

Now, in Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Gilbert explains her unexpected (and unconventional) road to marriage. By all accounts, Committed is likely to join Eat, Pray, Love atop the best-seller lists. In any event, the book reveals the vast redefinition of marriage taking place within Western cultures, right before our eyes.

Gilbert is an experienced writer, but until the publication of Eat, Pray, Love, she had been mainly known for writing articles for male-focused magazines. No more. Her two autobiographical books are clearly in the “chick lit” category, and women are devouring her writing. A movie version of Eat, Pray, Love is in the works, with Julia Roberts cast as Elizabeth Gilbert.

What makes these books so important for Christian consideration is the view of love and marriage the two books present with such unabashed passion. Over the last century, love and marriage have been driven apart in the modern secular mind. Marriage has been presented as a domestic prison camp for women, even as the divorce revolution has meant that every marriage is now, legally speaking, a tentative contract.

We are now in the age of personal expression and radical individualism. As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has suggested, the invention of “expressive marriage,” by which the individuals made a statement of their self-expression through marriage, has now been joined by “expressive divorce,” in which the formerly-married explain that the divorce was how they liberated themselves to even more truthful self-expression.

Few have told their story of self-expression so successfully — or so candidly — as Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, Pray, Love is nothing less than a complete rejection of the Christian conception of marriage. The applause she has gained from the public should tell us something.

In Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert told of coming to the conclusion that she no longer wanted to be married to the man she had married at age 25, after living with him since age 23. She wrote:

My husband and I — who had been together for eight years, married for six — had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of 30, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop.

But Gilbert did not want to have a baby and, as she realized, she didn’t want to be married any more, either. So, having expressed herself by getting married, she then expressed herself by getting divorced. After her acrimonious divorce was final, she set off around the world once again — this time in search of love.

Gilbert describes herself as “culturally, though not theologically” Christian, but she rejects outright the limitation of sex to marriage.  “I got started early in life with the pursuit of sexual or romantic pleasure,” she writes. “I barely had an adolescence before I had my first boyfriend, and I have consistently had a boy or a man (or sometimes both) in my life ever since I was fifteen years old. That was — oh, let’s see — about nineteen years ago, now. That’s almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week’s breather in between.”

Eat, Pray, Love is a memoir conjoined to a travel narrative. In the book, Gilbert traces her journey through Italy, Indonesia, and India. She is a skilled writer, and her travel writing is compelling. Nevertheless, it is Gilbert, and not the geography, that is front and center. By the end of Eat, Pray, Love, she has found love once again, in an affair with a Brazilian man known to her readers as Filipe. They decide to establish a live-in relationship, but are even more determined never to marry. Gilbert became a symbol of love without the constraints of marriage — a heroine to millions of women who watch Oprah and devoured her books.

Then she got married. As she explains in her new book, Committed, she married Filipe because it was the only way he could stay in the United States. She writes of being “sentenced” to marry by the Department of Homeland Security in order to continue her relationship with Filipe.

In Committed, Gilbert explains all this to the very readers to whom she had announced her determination never to marry again. She writes of “my efforts to make peace with the complicated institution of marriage,” once again in the context of a travel narrative.

Gilbert’s new view of marriage — the concept of marriage with which she has now “made peace” — is one that is fully in keeping with her affirmation of “me-ness.” This comes out in the context of an encounter she has with Hmong women, who do not seem to connect at all with her individualism. Writing of herself and her American friends, she says: “Whatever our religion, whatever our economic class, we all at least somewhat embraced the same dogma, which I would describe as being very historically recent and very definitely Western and which can effectively be summed up as: ‘You matter.’”

In her account, Gilbert inserts a lengthy and eccentric review of marriage in Western culture. Her angle is predictable — pointing to the liberation of marriage from traditional views to modern expressive views. She also understands what this transformation means: Marriage becomes tentative, conditional, provisional, and fragile.

Looking to the older women of her family, Gilbert understands that their commitment to marriage was very different. “This was their guiding verb and their defining principle in life: They gave.” This is not what Gilbert sees as her own principle.

Even as she is now (sentenced to be?) married, Elizabeth Gilbert has made her peace with marriage by affirming a very modern, very individualistic, very radical form of marriage — one that is the inevitable product of the replacement of obligation with liberation.

Sigmund Freud rejected the idea that he would write an autobiography or memoir as “quite an impossible suggestion.” To tell his own personal story would require “so much indiscretion.” Yet, as Daniel Mendelsohn recently noted, bookstores are now filled with a “tsunami” of memoirs, many of them extremely indiscrete.

Elizabeth Gilbert has written what will probably be another blockbuster, but discerning readers will soon discover that the conception of marriage with which she has made peace is revolutionary, and amounts to a deliberate rejection of marriage as a life-long covenant that implies children and generational obligations. The value of reading her memoirs is this — she shows where the revolution inevitably leads. The applause she is given by the public tells us how far the revolution has already progressed.

In the end, there just isn’t very much commitment in Committed.

______________________________

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

As Diana West explains:

When your average doting adult today murmurs the expression, “Out of the mouths of babes,” it is less an expression of wonder than a validation of the widely held assumption that children — babes, tweens, and teens — are innately wiser than their elders. They know better (sexual and fashion choices). They are discerning (music). They feel, therefore they understand (politics). Or so we have come to think due to a stunning if under-appreciated cultural reversal. Once upon a time, we believed wisdom was an expression of experience and maturity. Today, we believe the exact opposite.

Indeed, it is the exact opposite. Marketers target children because they know that the young drive many consumer choices. On the television screen, it is the kids on the sitcoms who are wise. The parents and other authority figures are routinely corrected by the wisdom of the young. The bumbling adults learn to laugh at their foolishness and follow the direction of the children and adolescents on screen.

Teachers and others who work with youth and children often receive the same message, not only from the kids but from their parents. “How dare you correct my child? His opinion is as valid as yours.”

West traces the development of this trend through the 1950s and 1960s. As long ago as 1958, Dwight Macdonald had noted the rise of the adolescent, with a flood of books on parenting teens emerging from a host of “experts.” As Macdonald saw, “The list goes on and on, and it includes many titles that would have been puzzling even in fairly recent times, because their subject matter is not the duty of children toward their parents, but precisely the opposite.”

The shift from the duty of children to parents to the duty of parents to children was not subtle. All of a sudden, the young became the instructors of the old, on everything from the morality of war and peace to the issues of sex and the meaning of life.

As West observes, “It is hard to overstate the significance of this change more than half a century ago. It is this fundamental rearrangement of life’s building blocks that put successive decades on an entirely new footing from all that had come before. To say the tide had turned is to imply a temporary, cyclical shift. What had occurred — replacing the child’s duty to his parent with the parent’s duty to his child — has so far turned out to be permanent.”

A quick review of contemporary entertainment, educational philosophies, and cultural influences would suggest that this shift is not only thus far permanent, but may be virtually irreversible. Diana West underscores the fact that this great shift was only possible because adults forfeited their authority and responsibility. The kids did not seize power in a coup. They were handed authority on a silver platter.

West has referred to this phenomenon as “the death of the grown-up.” Reaching adulthood ceased to be the great goal of the young. Instead, adults now attempt to present themselves as adolescents. The perpetual adolescent is the aspirational role model of today’s youth — and a tragic percentage of the nation’s adults.

From a Christian perspective, Diana West’s essay, as well as her book, The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization, serves to alert parents and others to the challenge of raising children in such a culture. The goal of Christian parents must be to raise children to adulthood — a genuine adulthood. The Bible honors children, but the biblical worldview establishes parents as the authority figures and adults as the figures of wisdom.

“Seen but not heard” is not the best model for parenting children. On the other hand, it is infinitely superior to the abdication of adult authority that marks the current age. Once again, Christian parents are reminded that raising godly children in this age requires the courage of a counter-revolutionary.

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Diana West, “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” In Character, Fall 2009.

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has just released a new study on the online lives of children and teenagers, and the statistics are simply astounding. America’s children and teenagers are now spending an average of more than 7 1/2 hours a day involved in electronic media.

As the report states:

As anyone who knows a teen or tween can attest, media are among the most powerful forces in young people’s lives today. Eight-to-eighteen-year-olds spend more time with media than in any other activity besides (maybe) sleeping — an average of more than 7 1/2 hours a day, seven days a week. The TV shows they watch, video games they play, songs they listen to, books they read and websites they visit are an enormous part of their lives, offering a constant stream of messages about families, peers, relationships, gender roles, sex, violence, food, values, clothes, an abundance of other topics too long to list.

Online, All the Time

The report is the third conducted and released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Just five years ago, the foundation released a second study that indicated young Americans were spending an average of nearly 6 1/2 hours a day with media.  Now, young people have found a way to devote another hour to media use, catching the researchers by surprise. As Donald F. Roberts, a professor emeritus of communications at Stanford University, remarked: “This is a stunner.” He told The New York Times, “In the second report, I remember writing a paragraph saying we’ve hit a ceiling on media use, since there just aren’t enough hours in the day to increase the time children spend on media. But now it’s up an hour.”

And it’s not just that these kids are devoting 7 1/2 hours of their daily lives to media immersion — their multitasking means that they somehow consume nearly 11 hours of media content in that 7 1/2 hours of time. Over the last ten years, young people have increased their consumption and use of every type of media with one exception — reading. As the researchers make clear, the vast increase in the amount of time teenagers are able to access the media is due almost entirely to the fact that their mobile phones allow an online life that can be carried in the pocket (and in far too many cases, taken to bed). “The mobile and online media revolutions have arrived in the lives — and the pockets — of American youth,” notes the report. “Try waking a teenager in the morning, and the odds are good you’ll find a cell phone tucked under their pillow — the last thing they touch before falling asleep and the first thing they reach for upon waking.”

The report indicates that 66 percent of kids now own their own cell phone, while 76 percent own an iPod or other MP3 player. Interestingly, these kids are using cell phones as mobile media devices, rather than as telephones. Young people spend an average of only a half hour each day talking on their cell phones, but their use of these devices for the consumption of media consumes far more time.

The report also offers a portrait of the media-saturated character of the average American home. That home now contains an average of 3.8 televisions, 2.8 DVD or VCR players, at least one digital video recorder, two computers, 2.3 console video game players, and assorted other media devices ranging from CD players to radios. In an amazing percentage of these homes, the television is on virtually every waking hour.

Media in the Bedroom

Even as the family home is populated with various media devices, the bedrooms of America’s children and teenagers are virtually saturated with media. “More and more media are migrating to young people’s bedrooms, enabling them to spend even more time watching, listening or playing,” the researchers report. An amazing 71% of all children from age 8-18 have their own television in their bedroom, and half have a video game player and/or access to cable. These kids have computers, too. Almost a third own their own laptops and the majority have easy access to a computer, usually with broadband Internet connections.

In most homes, parents are setting few rules for media use — or no rules at all. The majority of teens and tweens reported that their parents have set no rules about the type of media content they can use or the amount of time they can devote to media consumption. When parents do set rules, they are far more likely to set rules about the type of content that can be accessed, rather than the amount of time that is devoted to media use. A good percentage of parents who do set rules, often leave them unenforced.

Parents should note this statement from the report: “Children who live in homes that limit media opportunities spend less time with media. For example, kids whose parents don’t put a TV in their bedroom, don’t leave the TV on during meals or in the background when no one is watching, or do impose some type of media-related rules spend substantially less time with media than do children with more media-lenient parents.”

Media Use, Grades, and Personal Contentment

Another important section of the report indicates that the young people who spend the greatest amount of time with media report lower grades and lower levels of personal happiness and contentment. The researchers stated that their study “cannot establish whether there is a cause and effect relationship between media use and grades, or between media use and personal contentment.” They added: “And if there are such relationships, they could well run in both directions simultaneously.”

All this should serve to awaken America’s parents — and all who care for America’s young people — to the level of media saturation that now characterizes the lives of American youth. As The New York Times declared in its headline, “If Your Kids are Awake, They’re Probably Online.”

There is no turning back from the digital revolution. It is not realistic for most families to declare a principled disconnection from electronic media and the digital world. Nevertheless, this important report serves as an undeniable warning that America’s young people are literally drowning in an ocean of media consumption. There is every reason for parents to be concerned about dangers ranging from the content of this media, to the way digital saturation changes the wiring of the brain, to the loss of literacy and the reading of books, to the fact that many teenagers are far more connected to their friends through social media than to their own families in their own homes. Teenagers are forfeiting sleep and other important investments of time because they experience panic when they are digitally disengaged for even a few moments.

What is the impact of all this media saturation on the soul? Of course, that is a question that must be posed to America’s adults, as well as to our children and adolescents. At the same time, parents bear a responsibility many are clearly forfeiting.

The Courage to Disconnect

Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston and director of the Center on Media and Child Health, told The New York Times that the media use of America’s young people is so pervasive, it is time to stop arguing over whether this is positive or negative. Instead, he suggested that we should simply accept media as a constant part of children’s environment, “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.”

This is advice Christian parents cannot follow. We cannot simply accept that constant media saturation is now a fact of nature and a matter of constant need. These technologies and devices have their places, but the role of parents is to establish rules that protect children and teenagers from being dominated by technology and an army of digital devices. At the end of the day, parents must find the courage and wisdom to know when to disconnect.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

As Ruth Gledhill of The Times [London] reports, “Sermons, history shows, can be among the most revolutionary forms of human speech. From John Calvin to Billy Graham, preaching has had the power to topple princes, to set nation against nation, to inspire campaigners to change the world and impel people to begin life anew.”

Indeed, preaching is the central act of Christian worship, but its great aim reaches far above merely changing the world. The preaching of the Word of God is the chief means by which God conforms Christians to the image of Christ. Rightly understood, true Christian preaching is not aimed only at this earthly life, but is the means whereby God prepares his people for eternity.

Yet, you wouldn’t know this if you judged the importance of preaching by its place in many of today’s congregations. Gledhill observes, “In many churches this most vibrant of moments has withered to little more than 20 minutes of tired droning that serves only to pad out the gap between hymns and lunch.”

The withering of preaching is not uniform in all congregations and denominations. Evangelicals were most enthusiastic about preaching, while others registered less appreciation for the preached Word. Interestingly, Gledhill reports that “Baptists and Catholics were also more enthusiastic about the Bible being mentioned in sermons than were Anglicans and Methodists.”

The Anglicans also expressed a desire to be entertained, rather then educated. The Rev. Kate Bruce, Fellow in Preaching and Communication at the CODEC center, said that “in a culture which values entertainment and likes stand-up, over a quarter [of respondents] said they want preaching to be entertaining, too.”

Well, they will have to be quick about the entertainment. Many Anglicans indicated that they wanted the sermon to be less than ten minutes long. As Gledhill remarks, they might be willing to allow up to twenty minutes “if there was no ‘waffle.’”

Perhaps the biggest question raised by the report is why so many British churchgoers (96.6%) said they “look forward” to the sermon. Ruth Gledhill comments:

In their report the Durham researchers admit to puzzlement that so many people looked forward to the sermons, and confess that more work was needed to find out why.

The report questions whether people look forward to the sermon so much for the content, the engagement, the entertainment, the theology or simply that it gives them time to switch off.

Time to switch off? According to the report, Britain has only 3.6 million “regular churchgoers” out of a population of over 60 million. That is, only about five percent of Britons even attend church services on any regular basis. Evidently, many of those who do attend “look forward” to a very short message from a preacher that entertains them.

England, of course, is the nation that once gave us preachers the likes of Charles Simeon, Charles Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now, with the rare and blessed exception of some faithful evangelical churches, preaching has fallen on desperate times.

Some observers of British life now estimate that in any given week Muslim attendance at mosques outnumbers Christian attendance at churches. That means that there are probably now in Britain more people who listen to imams than to preachers.

This raises an interesting question: Is the marginalization of biblical preaching in so many churches a cause or a result of the nation’s retreat from Christianity? In truth, it must be both cause and effect. In any event, there is no hope for a recovery of biblical Christianity without a preceding recovery of biblical preaching. That means preaching that is expository, textual, evangelistic, and doctrinal. In other words, preaching that will take a lot longer than ten minutes and will not masquerade as a form of entertainment.

Time and time again, God’s people have been rescued by a recovery of biblical teaching and preaching. The right preaching of the Word of God is the first essential mark of the church. As the Reformers made clear, where that mark is absent, there is no church at all.

The study conducted for the College of Preachers is interesting, if also frightening. But little is gained from asking confused people what kind of preaching they want. The faithful preacher takes as his first and most sacred responsibility the charge to give the congregation the preaching it needs.

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Ruth Gledhill, “To Some, Sermonizing is a Sin, but Christians Still Value the Preacher,” The Times [London], January 19, 2010.

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Those looking to learn more about biblical preaching may want to read my book, He is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World.

The earthquake that will forever change that nation came as subterranean plates shifted about six miles under the surface of the earth, along a fault line that had threatened trouble for centuries. But no one saw a quake of this magnitude coming. The 7.0 quake came like a nightmare, with the city of Port-au-Prince crumbling, entire villages collapsing, bodies flying in the air and crushed under mountains of debris. Orphanages, churches, markets, homes, and government buildings all collapsed. Civil government has virtually ceased to function. Without power, communication has been cut off and rescue efforts are seriously hampered. Bodies are piling up, hope is running out, and help, though on the way, will not arrive in time for many victims.

Even as boots are finally hitting the ground and relief efforts are reaching the island, estimates of the death toll range as high as 500,000. Given the mountainous terrain and densely populated villages that had been hanging along the fault line, entire villages may have disappeared. The Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished nation has experienced a catastrophe that appears almost apocalyptic.

In truth, it is hard not to describe the earthquake as a disaster of biblical proportions. It certainly looks as if the wrath of God has fallen upon the Caribbean nation. Add to this the fact that Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism — mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult.

Haiti’s history is a catalog of political disasters, one after the other. In one account of the nation’s fight for independence from the French in the late 18th century, representatives of the nation are said to have made a pact with the Devil to throw off the French. According to this account, the Haitians considered the French as Catholics and wanted to side with whomever would oppose the French. Thus, some would use that tradition to explain all that has marked the tragedy of Haitian history — including now the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Does God hate Haiti? That is the conclusion reached by many, who point to the earthquake as a sign of God’s direct and observable judgment.

God does judge the nations — all of them — and God will judge the nations. His judgment is perfect and his justice is sure. He rules over all the nations and his sovereign will is demonstrated in the rising and falling of nations and empires and peoples. Every molecule of matter obeys his command, and the earthquakes reveal his reign — as do the tides of relief and assistance flowing into Haiti right now.

A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening.

God’s rule over creation involves both direct and indirect acts, but his rule is constant. The universe, even after the consequences of the Fall, still demonstrates the character of God in all its dimensions, objects, and occurrences. And yet, we have no right to claim that we know why a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti happened at just that place and at just that moment.

The arrogance of human presumption is a real and present danger. We can trace the effects of a drunk driver to a car accident, but we cannot trace the effects of voodoo to an earthquake — at least not so directly. Will God judge Haiti for its spiritual darkness? Of course. Is the judgment of God something we can claim to understand in this sense — in the present? No, we are not given that knowledge. Jesus himself warned his disciples against this kind of presumption.

Why did no earthquake shake Nazi Germany? Why did no tsunami swallow up the killing fields of Cambodia? Why did Hurricane Katrina destroy far more evangelical churches than casinos? Why do so many murderous dictators live to old age while many missionaries die young?

Does God hate Haiti? God hates sin, and will punish both individual sinners and nations. But that means that every individual and every nation will be found guilty when measured by the standard of God’s perfect righteousness. God does hate sin, but if God merely hated Haiti, there would be no missionaries there; there would be no aid streaming to the nation; there would be no rescue efforts — there would be no hope.

The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe. The entire cosmos awaits the revelation of the glory of the coming Lord. Creation cries out for the hope of the New Creation.

In other words, the earthquake reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real message of hope. The cross of Christ declares that Jesus loves Haiti — and the Haitian people are the objects of his love. Christ would have us show the Haitian nation his love, and share his Gospel. In the midst of this unspeakable tragedy, Christ would have us rush to aid the suffering people of Haiti, and rush to tell the Haitian people of his love, his cross, and salvation in his name alone.

Everything about the tragedy in Haiti points to our need for redemption. This tragedy may lead to a new openness to the Gospel among the Haitian people. That will be to the glory of God. In the meantime, Christ’s people must do everything we can to alleviate the suffering, bind up the wounded, and comfort the grieving. If Christ’s people are called to do this, how can we say that God hates Haiti?

If you have any doubts about this, take your Bible and turn to John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That is God’s message to Haiti.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

In giving assistance to the people, I recommend giving through the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. They have an excellent Haiti response in place through Baptist Global Response.

Photo credit, International Mission Board.

See also these two articles from the Katrina disaster:

God in the Storm — Part One

God in the Storm — Part Two

The article is breathtaking in its argument — that a man who abandoned the Christian faith was “no less devoted to Christ” than Southern Baptists’ most famous missionary.

In “Lottie Moon and Crawford Toy: Two Baptist Heroes,” Cartledge begins by noting the recent news that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth has secured a large collection of memorabilia from the house of Lottie Moon in P’ingtu City, China. Included in the 35,000 pounds of material are remnants of what is believed to be Lottie Moon’s rented home.

Cartledge took issue with comments made by Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson, who noted that Lottie Moon was a defender of biblical orthodoxy. Patterson also cited Miss Moon’s breaking of her engagement with Crawford H. Toy over the issue of biblical authority. Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest that Lottie Moon broke her engagement with Crawford Toy precisely over this question.

Nevertheless, Cartledge writes, “while there is evidence for a broken engagement, I’ve seen nothing to substantiate the motives Patterson attributes to Moon.” That statement seems especially odd given the fact that Cartledge cites an essay by the late Dan Gentry Kent of Southwestern Seminary — an essay that substantiates those motives.

The most troubling section of Cartledge’s article has little to do with Lottie Moon, however. After stating his admiration for Lottie Moon’s “willingness to suffer deprivation because of her devotion to Christ and to missions,” Cartledge then states, “Increasingly, I have also come to admire Crawford Toy, who was no less devoted to Christ, and was willing to suffer rejection by Southern Baptists rather than surrender to the narrow-minded demand that he forgo scholarship and limit his teaching to popularly accepted notions.”

The admiration of liberal Baptists for Crawford Howell Toy should be a matter of both amazement and genuine concern. It is also a telling indication of how many of those identified as “moderates” in the Southern Baptist Convention controversy actually view the Bible. To celebrate Toy is to celebrate his beliefs about the Bible. Those beliefs were not heroic.

Crawford Toy was a man of unquestioned brilliance. As a young man, he came to the attention of John A. Broadus during the time Broadus was pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist Church in Virginia. As a student in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s first class, Toy established his reputation for scholarship. He joined the faculty of Southern Seminary in 1869 as Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Oriental Languages. Prior to his election as Southern Seminary, Toy had studied at the University of Berlin for the years 1866-1868. As later became clear, Toy drank deeply from the wells of theological liberalism and Biblical criticism during his years in Germany.

In his inaugural address as a professor at Southern Seminary, Toy argued that the Bible has both a human and a divine element. As his theological pilgrimage revealed, Toy would use this hermeneutical distinction in order to argue that the Bible contains nothing but truth in its divine element, even as its human element shows all the marks of human fallibility. The human element contains both errors and myths, but the Bible’s “religious thought is independent of this outward form.”

Concerns about Toy’s teaching led to his eventual resignation from Southern Seminary — a resignation pressed upon him by the institution’s founding leaders and accepted by the vast majority of its trustees. Prior to his resignation, Toy had been warned by Broadus that his trajectory was headed toward serious theological error. Broadus also expressed his concern that Toy might eventually become a Unitarian. Eventually, Broadus’s worst fears were realized.

After his resignation from Southern Seminary, Crawford Toy accepted a professorship at Harvard University, where he taught for many years and established a reputation for scholarship. By all accounts, Toy was an esteemed member of the faculty. Nevertheless, Toy’s theological trajectory did indeed take him not only out of the Southern Baptist fellowship, but out of the Christian faith altogether. During his time at Harvard, Toy eventually became a Unitarian — a faith that denies the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. He also accepted an evolutionary understanding of religion which accepted religion as a purely natural phenomenon.

In other words, Toy became what Christians throughout all the centuries of church history and in all the major traditions of the Christian Church would rightly identify as a heretic. He abandoned faith in the deity of Christ and abandoned the Christian faith. Yet, moderates in the SBC controversy often celebrated Crawford Toy as a hero and as a theological martyr for academic scholarship. Tony Cartledge continues this tradition by expressing his admiration for Crawford Toy, going so far as to claim that he “was no less devoted to Christ” than Lottie Moon. “There’s more than one way to be a hero,” Cartledge concluded.

I can only hope that Tony Cartledge either does not understand or does not mean what he writes in this article. To declare Crawford Toy and Lottie Moon to be equally devoted to Christ defies both common sense and theological sanity.

As Old Testament scholar Paul House, now of the Beeson Divinity School, has argued, the roots of Toy’s later heresies were found in the presuppositions of his hermeneutic as he set forth his thought in his inaugural address at Southern Seminary. House does not question Toy’s personal integrity, noting his honesty in presenting his own beliefs. Toy himself recognized that his beliefs changed even during the years he taught at Southern Seminary. The key issue is that Toy’s understanding of the Bible left him completely vulnerable to every heresy and doctrinal aberration. Broadus rightly warned Toy of this danger at the time of his resignation.

We should grieve the example of Crawford Howell Toy and learn from it, even as we are inspired by the courageous and Gospel-centered witness of Lottie Moon. The story of Crawford Howell Toy contains a cautionary message for every Christian teacher, seminary, church, and denomination. The elevation of Crawford Toy to the status of a hero alongside one of Christianity’s most famous Gospel missionaries is both tragic and scandalous. Heresy is not heroic.

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For more on Crawford Howell Toy and the history of Southern Seminary, see Gregory A. Wills, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

This article originally appeared this morning at ConventionalThinking.org. See here.

Even the most cursory look at the world’s cultures will indicate the religious fervor that characterizes humanity. The only observers who seem shocked by this universal phenomenon are the secularists and the prophets of secularization theory who were absolutely certain that religious faith and religious fervor would disappear in the modern world.

Needless to say, it hasn’t turned out that way. The theory of secularization is a shadow of its former self. Leading proponents like Peter Berger of Boston University now acknowledge that the secularization thesis was not an accurate predictor of the fate of religious belief in the modern world. The modern world is not secularized. Indeed, many of the most heated conflicts around the world today involve conflicting faiths. As Berger has commented, it turns out that a few European nations and the American intellectual elites are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

And yet, the intellectual elites are not so secular as they believe themselves to be. As it happens, their religion may not be theistic, but it is a religion all the same.

That fact is confirmed in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Stephen T. Asma, a professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, argues that the new religion of many secular folk is ecology. As Asma explains, many secular types suffer from “green guilt.”

In “Green Guilt,” he writes:

Now the secular world still has to make sense out of its own invisible, psychological drama—in particular, its feelings of guilt and indignation. Environmentalism, as a substitute for religion, has come to the rescue. Nietzsche’s argument about an ideal God and guilt can be replicated in a new form: We need a belief in a pristine environment because we need to be cruel to ourselves as inferior beings, and we need that because we have these aggressive instincts that cannot be let out.

Asma rightly notes that Friedrich Nietzsche, the nihilist who famously declared that God is dead, understood that religion was not dead at all. He “was the first to notice that religious emotions, like guilt and indignation, are still with us, even if we’re not religious.”

These “religious emotions,” including guilt, explain why so many people seek relief by therapy or treatment of some sort. Therapy replaces theology; the analyst replaces the minister; psychotropic drugs become the sacraments; and confessing one’s misdeeds on Oprah substitutes for the confession of sin. Some of the most obviously religious individuals on earth are those who genuinely insist that they are free from any religious beliefs at all.

Asma is not the first to note the deeply religious character of radical environmentalism, but his analysis of the structure of this religious system is truly insightful.

He explains:

Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience, we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper. In addition, the righteous pleasures of being more orthodox than your neighbor (in this case being more green) can still be had—the new heresies include failure to compost, or refusal to go organic. Vitriol that used to be reserved for Satan can now be discharged against evil corporate chief executives and drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles. Apocalyptic fear-mongering previously took the shape of repent or burn in hell, but now it is recycle or burn in the ozone hole. In fact, it is interesting the way environmentalism takes on the apocalyptic aspects of the traditional religious narrative. The idea that the end is nigh is quite central to traditional Christianity—it is a jolting wake-up call to get on the righteous path. And we find many environmentalists in a similarly earnest panic about climate change and global warming.

Interestingly, Asma begins his article with an anecdote about his six-year-old son, who scolded his father for letting the water run too long. The boy is clearly “stressed and anxious” about the “sins of environmentalism.” The boy had obviously been indoctrinated into the religious system of environmentalism — something common to many of today’s children and adolescents.

Stephen Asma’s essay is important for multiple reasons. It is an excellent analysis of the religious character of environmentalism, complete with a set of comprehensive doctrines and religious practices. It is also an excellent consideration of the religious nature of human beings. Asma understands the pretensions of the secular mind, and he also sees the religious impulse working its way to the surface in the modern obsessions with health, fitness, and an ever-expanding set of “secular” sins.

At the same time, he writes from an apparently secular perspective — at least warning that we do not need yet another “humorless religion.” He is also identified as the author of Why I am a Buddhist. He seems above all to desire a bit less religious fervor from the environmentalists. He writes, “Let us save the planet, by all means. But let’s also admit to ourselves that we have a natural propensity toward guilt and indignation, and let that fact temper our fervor to more reasonable levels.”

We are left without a clue about what Asma would see as “more reasonable levels,” but his essay offers a rare glimpse into the religious character of the rather new faith of environmentalism, complete with its “potential for dogmatic zeal and obsession.” His essay puts an intelligent spotlight on the new religion of green.

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Stephen T. Asma, “Green Guilt,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2010.

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

In the first phase of her career she was known as a Roman Catholic, and she taught at Boston College for many years. Her tenure there could only be described as controversial. At the beginning her teaching career was marked by a fight over tenure. At the end she left Boston College after refusing to allow male students in some of her classes in feminist thought.

Her critique of the Roman Catholic Church as a bastion of patriarchy, expressed in her 1968 book, The Church and the Second Sex, was extended to the entire Christian tradition. She rejected Christianity’s focus on a monotheistic deity and what she attacked as its intrinsic patriarchy. She asserted that Christianity’s focus on Jesus Christ was just another dimension of its patriarchy — a Savior in a male body.

As Margaret Elizabeth Kostenberger explains, Daly’s “complete rejection of Scripture”  on the basis of its “irremediable patriarchal bias” took her far outside the Christian faith. While other feminists called for the adoption of female or gender-neutral language for God, Daly attacked those efforts as half-measures that fail to take the phallocentricity of theism seriously.

Her famous dictum, “if the God is male, then the male is God,” stood at the heart of her radical revision of religion. She accused Christianity of “gynocide” against women and suggested that all monotheistic religion — and Christianity in particular — is “phallocentric.”

She referred to feminists as “pirates in a phallocratic society” and preached her version of feminist liberation, describing herself as a “radical lesbian feminist.” She rejected the biblical notion of sin and called for a celebration of lust and the breaking of all sexual rules. She attacked heterosexuality as inherently patriarchal and championed lesbianism as a means of the liberation of women from the “phallocratic” power system of the culture.

In her later years, Mary Daly identified herself as a “post-Christian” — a term that was, if anything, an understatement.

In the end, Mary Daly will be remembered for the radical lesbian feminist that she was. She must be given credit for her honesty in accusing theological liberals of lacking the courage of their convictions. As she saw it, they were clinging to the furniture of Christianity long after rejecting its central beliefs. She saw the entire structure as hopelessly patriarchal and called for a complete break with Christianity and theism.

In the largest sense, she was undoubtedly right in arguing that the logic of radical feminism is diametrically opposed to the truth claims of Christianity. She was, as she claimed, taking ideological feminism to its logical conclusion.

Interestingly, Mary Daly also serves as a reminder that radicals are seldom so comprehensively radical as they consider themselves. Daly was criticized by transgender and transsexual activists for her failure to see transsexuals as anything other than “death-loving Frankenstein monsters.” Womanist author Audre Lorde complained that Daly, though a radical feminist, did not recognize the role of race in patriarchy. Even the most radical thinkers among us apparently have a hard time keeping up.

According to The New York Times, Mary Daly died of “declining health,” not “gynocide.” Her intellectual work lives on among the radical feminists, but her influence extends far beyond those who would identify themselves as “post-Christian.” Many of today’s liberal denominations and seminaries have absorbed and accepted her basic critique of Christianity, but lack her boldness and intellectual honesty.

In one of her later books, Daly said, “There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard. . . . Let them be assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination.” The story of Mary Daly is, by any Christian measure, a tragedy. And, we must add, a tragedy with lessons we dare not miss.

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Margalit Fox, “Mary Daly, a leader in Feminist Theology, Dies at 81,” The New York Times, Thursday, January 7, 2010.

Recommended Resource: Margaret Elizabeth Kostenberger, Jesus and the Feminists: Who Do They Say That He Is? (Crossway Books, 2008).

But, if my children were hungry and no other food could be obtained, I would feed them whale meat and keep them warm by burning whale oil.

Thankfully, it has never come to that, and I hope it never will. I support an end to all commercial whale fishing because it is no longer necessary and because these animals are or at some point have been threatened with extinction. My point is this — whales are magnificent creatures that I desire to protect and admire, but they are not human beings. Any confusion about this does not raise whales to a new status. Instead, confusion about the distinction between humans and animals serves to threaten human dignity.

This must be kept in mind in light of news that some scientists want to declare dolphins (porpoises) to be “non-human persons.”

According to The Times [London], researchers now claim that dolphins rank second to human beings in terms of intelligence, displacing chimps and apes from that ranking. Furthermore, some of these scientists want to declare dolphins to be “non-human persons” with specific rights.

As the paper reports, “The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing.”

Further:

Dolphins have long been recognized as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioral studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.

These claims of distinct personalities, “a strong sense of self,” and the ability to contemplate the future may well be valid. Measuring relative intelligence is hard enough among human beings, however, much less among various species. Nevertheless, no one should doubt the fact that dolphins and whales seem far more intelligent than dairy cattle. But is it reasonable to define them as persons?

Personhood and personality are not the same thing. Even house pets and farm animals have personality. This is part of their charm, after all. But much of what we consider personality is fueled by our own reflex to anthropomorphize — to read human states of mind and intelligence back onto our animals.

When scientists and animal rights activists call for an animal to be considered a person, they imply a status that invokes rights. It is highly problematic to suggest that any non-human species possesses rights in any sense analogous to those rightly claimed by human beings.

We are witnessing a massive shift in human consciousness at this point, with activists calling for non-human species to be classified as non-human persons. Legal activists are ready to argue that at least some animals deserve legal representation. There is no end to the confusion such moves would inevitable create.

A key moral principle comes down to this: We do not eat persons. While eating whales and dolphins is, at least for most of us, neither necessary or desirable, we must recognize that whales and dolphins — intelligent as they are — are still non-human animals, not non-human persons.

I fervently hope that I never have to eat a whale or a dolphin. But this is a matter of preference and need rather than immutable principle. The experience of watching those magnificent creatures off the coasts of Maui and Oahu was unforgettable. I support the maximum stewardship of sea life and the legal protection of whales from commercial fishing. But I do so because they are magnificent animals and part of the glory of God’s creation, not because they are persons.

The Christian worldview requires the careful making of the right distinctions, and one of the most important of these distinctions comes down to the crucial and categorical distinction between human beings — created in God’s own image — and the rest of the created order. We must reject the very notion of “non-human persons.”

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

How will 2009 be remembered? Looking back over the year, ten major developments seem most important to me from this vantage point. A few years from now, 2009 might be remembered differently, but these markers stand out as 2010 begins

1. The Inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States

The inauguration of an American president is an act of solemnity and national purpose. The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States came with all the usual fanfare and formality, but also with controversy and deep concerns. History was made as the nation inaugurated its first African-American president, and one of its youngest chief executives. The inaugural ceremony was marked by controversy over the ministers chosen for public prayer. The choice of Pastor Rick Warren of California’s Saddleback Church was hardly a surprise, given the prominence of the Saddleback Presidential Forum during the campaign. But Warren became unexpectedly controversial when homosexual activists complained about his support for California’s Proposition 8 — the measure that put an end to the state’s brief season of legalized same-sex marriage. Obama later chose Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly-homosexual Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, to pray at the opening event on the Mall. Soon after taking office, the new President discovered what every newly-elected president learns — Congress has a mind of its own.

2. The Uprising in Iran

The year began as the thirtieth anniversary of the Iran Revolution that toppled the regime of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and led to the establishment of Iran as an Islamic republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It ended with big questions about the survival of the current regime under the rule of the ayatollahs and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The spark for the uprising came as Iran underwent a national election. Thousands of Iranians, including many students, took to the streets of Tehran and other major cities to protest electoral fraud and to support opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Despite the protests, Ahmadinejad declared himself the winner and police eventually won back the streets. Nevertheless, the harshly repressive action seemed very reminiscent of the efforts of the Shah to hold back the anger of the Iranian people. At the same time, Iran continued to flaunt international efforts to end its pursuit of a nuclear weapons program.

3. The Travail of the Global Economy

The global economic recession was foremost on most minds as the year began and the Obama administration took office. Working in tandem with a Democratically-controlled Congress, the Obama administration undertook the most significant governmental take-over of the American economy since the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with massive Federal investments in virtually all sectors of the economy. The unthinkable became the actual as General Motors declared bankruptcy and American taxpayers became the company’s largest stockholders — and General Motors was just the tip of the economic iceberg. As the year ended, some declared the “Great Recession” officially over, but declining home values and rising unemployment underlined both hardship and the expected length of the economic recovery. Furthermore, the role of China as America’s creditor loomed as a long-term worry that had been largely unknown by most Americans.

4. The Death of Michael Jackson and the Nation’s Addiction to Celebrity

Notable deaths of 2009 included Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Evangelist Oral Roberts, but the most widely-covered death of the year was the unexpected demise of entertainer Michael Jackson. A digital search of the year’s headlines will reveal the international fascination with Jackson, a brilliant marketer and entertainer, but a tortured soul whose various presentations of himself made him a focus of endless speculation and concern. His death — presumably by a drug-induced cardiac arrest — came as the entertainer was working on a comeback tour. His sensational trial and acquittal on charges of child sexual abuse in 2005 failed to stem his international appeal, but financial sources argued that his net worth surged once again only after his death. His memorial service was broadcast around the world, drawing an estimated 1 billion viewers. Cable news networks and other channels fed a national mania for Jackson that continued weeks after his death, underlining the nation’s seemingly insatiable appetite for celebrity.

5. The Rise of Twitter and the Growing Domination of Social Media

Twitter, the micro-blogging sensation that took the year by storm, will soon register its 100 millionth user. “Tweets” of 140 characters or less became the communication medium of the year. At the same time, Facebook registered over 350 million members worldwide, with users spending 10 billion minutes there every day. By the end of 2009, Facebook had reached 54.7 percent of all Americans ages 12 to 17 — up from just 28.3 percent in 2008. The Age of Social Media had clearly arrived by 2009, changing the way Americans communicate and relate to each other. As one observer noted, even those in business who had dismissed social media as nothing more than notes about who was eating a doughnut with whom ended the year worried that their competition was eating their lunch.

6. The Battle over Health Care Reform

The President began 2009 with a focused determination to transform the nation’s health care system — a complex that includes no less than one-sixth of the nation’s economy. The President’s ambitious goals, articulated during the 2008 presidential campaign, gave way to political reality as the Obama administration discovered that its preference for a so-called “public option” was doomed in the U.S. Senate. The national debate over health care indicated that most Americans are not ready for a revolution in health-care delivery — much less for a major change in their own health insurance. As the year ended, the President had put the prestige of his administration clearly on the line, and the U.S. Senate barely passed a compromise bill on Christmas Eve. A much more liberal version adopted by the House of Representatives must now be reconciled with the Senate’s more gradualist approach. The biggest surprise of the health care debate was the so-called “Stupak Amendment” adopted by the House of Representatives that may well be the most significant pro-life legislation to pass either house of Congress since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Americans gained a rare view of the kind of political shenanigans used by congressional leaders in order to negotiate much-needed votes. The year ended with the President declaring a major victory, but with huge concerns about abortion coverage and other issues looming.

7. The Leftward March of Liberal Protestantism

Though hardly surprising, the continued leftward march of liberal Protestantism meant further tragedy for several denominations. In particular, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) stood the Lutheran tradition on its head by legitimating “bound conscience” as a means of subverting biblical authority. That denomination officially sanctioned the service of partnered homosexual clergy during its church wide meeting in August. The Episcopal Church continued its headlong rush to flaunt its refusal to abide by biblical standards of sexuality by declaring an end to the moratorium on electing openly-homosexual bishops and blessing same-sex unions. As the year drew to a close, the church’s Los Angeles diocese elected an openly-lesbian priest as auxiliary bishop, setting the stage for in inevitable head-on collision with the worldwide Anglican Communion.

8. The Climate Summit in Copenhagen

The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference was supposed to produce a binding legal agreement to limit international carbon emissions. Instead, the Copenhagen Summit ended without any such agreement and the failure of the global event appeared to signal the ineffectiveness of the United Nations in terms of addressing climate change. Of course, the event itself became the focus of intense controversy over the scientific arguments related to global warming and climate change — controversy fueled by leaked e-mails that demonstrated scientific malfeasance among some leading researchers. In the end, President Obama and other leaders claimed to have cobbled together a “meaningful agreement,” but harsh divisions between developed and developing nations led to an undeniable impasse. Nevertheless, the Copenhagen Summit may actually open the door to a far more reasonable approach to limiting carbon emissions — an approach that would rely on new technologies, market forces, and natural economic incentives. The unspoken conclusion of the process is the realization that the cost of limiting carbon emissions as called for by climate activists outweighs the potential threat in terms of immediate harm. In other words, when it comes to global warming, there is hope that cooler heads will prevail.

9.  The Swine Flu Epidemic and the New International Hygiene

If anything, 2009 was a boom year for manufacturers of hand sanitizer. Worries about an epidemic of the H1N1 flu virus led to panic in many contexts and to what may well prove to be permanent changes in personal habits. Hand sanitizer dispensers are now increasingly ubiquitous in schools, churches, shopping malls, and restaurants. Concerns about the spread of the highly infectious virus led to mass immunization campaigns, public health alerts, and a new hesitation about shaking hands. As the year drew to a close, it became increasingly clear that the virus was actually less deadly than the normal seasonal flu virus, and a major health catastrophe was averted. Nevertheless, the human race was reminded that we are vulnerable to microscopic viruses — a necessary and incredibly humbling knowledge.

10. The Spotlight on Private Scandals and Public Consequences

Every year seems to bring its own revelations and moral sensations, but the year 2009 seems particularly scarred by moral scandal. Sensational revelations of adultery were made by prominent leaders and celebrities including entertainer David Letterman, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and golfer Tiger Woods. All three of these men found their lives open to public scrutiny in the aftermath of adultery. David Letterman made his admission in the opening segment of his comedy program, leaving a bewildered audience uncertain whether to laugh or cry. Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina, destroyed his political career and his marriage when he was caught in an adulterous affair with a woman in South America — an affair the Governor clearly did not want to end. The year concluded with golfer Tiger Woods facing devastating financial losses as sponsors pulled their support in light of the media spotlight on his own marital infidelity. These scandals, added to so many others, served as reminders that private acts bring public consequences, that character does matter, and that marital vows do indeed mean something — even in this confused age.

And now 2009 has passed into the history books, but we must not let it recede into memory without considering its lessons. The year to come will bring lessons of its own — can we see them coming?

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

A closer look at the narratives in both Matthew and Luke reveals a richness that familiarity may hide from us. Matthew begins with the genealogy of Christ, demonstrating the sequence of generations as Israel anticipated the birth of David’s Son — the Messiah. Luke, intending to set forth “an orderly account” of the events concerning Jesus, begins with the anticipation of the birth of John the Baptist and then moves to tell of the virgin conception of Jesus.

A careful reading of Matthew and Luke reveals both the elegance of detail and the grand expanse of the story of Christ’s birth. Matthew gives particular attention to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The virgin birth, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, the Herodian massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt, and the role of John the Baptist as forerunner are all presented as the fulfillment of specific Old Testament prophecies.

Every word of the Old Testament points to Christ. He is not only the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies concerning him, he is the perfect fulfillment of the law and the prophets — the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, for Israel had been promised the Messiah. As Luke reveals, Simeon beheld the baby Jesus in the temple and understood this infant to be “the Lord’s Christ” — the Davidic Messiah.  Simeon understood this clearly — the Christmas story did not begin in Bethlehem, or even in Jerusalem.

So, where does the Christmas story begin? In the Gospel of John we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” [John 1:1-3]

The prologue to John’s Gospel points to creation and to Christ, the divine Logos, as the agent of creation. Yet, with language drawn directly from Genesis, John begins his gospel “in the beginning.”

In other words, the Christmas story begins before the creation of the world. As we celebrate Christmas and contemplate the Christmas story, we must be very careful not to begin the story in Bethlehem, or even in Nazareth, where Mary was confronted by Gabriel with the message that she would be the mother of the Messiah.

We must not even begin with Moses and the prophets, and with the expectation of the coming Son of Man, the promised Suffering Servant, and the heralded Davidic Messiah. We must begin before the world was created and before humanity was formed, much less fallen.

Why is this so important? Put simply, if we get the Christmas story wrong, we get the Gospel wrong. Told carelessly, the Christmas story sounds like God’s “Plan B.” In other words, we can make the Christmas story sound like God turning to a new plan, rather than fulfilling all that he had promised.  We must be very careful to tell the Christmas story in such a way that we make the gospel clear.

Christmas is not God’s second plan. Before he created the world, God determined to save sinners through the blood of his own Son. The grand narrative of the Bible points to this essential truth — God determined to bring glory to himself through the salvation of a people redeemed and purchased by his own Son, the Christ. Bethlehem and Calvary were essential parts of God’s plan from the beginning, before the cosmos was brought into being as the Son obeyed the will of the Father in creation.

The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, but we appropriately look to Bethlehem as the scene of the most decisive event in human history — the incarnation of the Son of God. Even as we turn our attention to Bethlehem, we must remember that the story of our salvation does not begin there. That story begins in the eternal purpose of God.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” That is where the Christmas story begins, and John takes us right to the essence of what happened in Bethlehem: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” [John 1:14]

Let’s be sure to get the Christmas story right, start to finish.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Goodman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, whose observations are predictably liberal and feminist, but also marked by a keen eye for cultural detail. I still remember a column she wrote almost thirty years ago about an abandoned church being transformed into a condominium.

In “Whatever Happened to Shame?,” published in the December 18 edition of the Boston paper, Goodman reports that The New York Post has hired Ashley Dupre, the prostitute at the center of the controversy that brought down former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, as an advice columnist. Goodman does not welcome this news: “I may be a cynic, but somehow I don’t think the Post was motivated by a desire to reform a wayward (call) girl. Dupre’s second act isn’t reformation. It’s confirmation, if we needed it, that there’s no shame in the game.”

Ellen Goodman is not a scold. She tells us this, insisting that “Shame on you” is “not a phrase that trips off my lips.” But she does see a loss of shame as an ominous moral signal. She referred also to the “scandal of the moment” centering on Tiger Woods and the financial scandals of the last two years.

Her greatest concern is the absence of shame:

If, as anthropologists say, shame comes from a violation of cultural norms, it seems to have found its match in a newer cultural norm: fame. Notoriety isn’t so notorious anymore. If Hester Prynne were around, she wouldn’t be the subject of a novel, she’d be the author of a tell-all memoir with cellphone pictures of a buff Arthur Dimmesdale.

Goodman’s reference to The Scarlet Letter will, I fear, be familiar to a decreasing number of Americans each year. The story has less hold on a society that does not fear (or even understand) shame.

The problem with Ellen Goodman’s understanding of shame is in her paragraph above. If shame is rooted only in “a violation of cultural norms,” then shame disappears as cultural norms change and what was once condemned is now celebrated.

I share Ellen Goodman’s concern about the disappearance of shame, but I do not believe that a secular understanding of morality can sustain a stable structure of shame. Cultural norms are changing before our eyes. The shame that matters is the shame that led Adam and Eve to fashion aprons out of fig leaves and hide from God in the Garden. This is shame rooted in the knowledge of sin, not mere cultural norms. It is shame rooted in the knowledge that we have sinned against God, not merely that we have violated a cultural standard.

It is a good sign that Ellen Goodman is concerned about this. I share her concern and appreciate her candor. But my greater concern is that the absence of the category of sin leaves shame floating on an unstable platform of cultural norms.

The crying shame is the absence of the conviction of sin, and that absence is explained by the cultural disappearance of God as moral judge. The formula is simple: No sin, no shame. Just ask America’s newest advice columnist.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Granville Oral Roberts was born into the home of a preacher and he married the daughter of a preacher. Soon after reaching adulthood he entered the ministry himself, holding tent meetings in the style of the evangelists of his day. Roberts began as a traditional holiness preacher, but he would later transform his ministry into a worldwide enterprise utilizing electronic media and extending a global reach through television and an institutional empire that would include the university named for him.

Writing in 1985, biographer David Edwin Harrell would describe Oral Roberts as “one of the most influential religious leaders in the world in the twentieth century.” In Oral Roberts: An American Life, Harrell, a professor of history at Auburn University, would lament the fact that mainstream academia had given so little attention to Roberts and to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements of which he was so famously a part. Harrell suggested three roles that led to Roberts’ preeminence.

First, Harrell credits Roberts with bringing leadership and publicity to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Though these movements began their legendary growth early in the twentieth century, most of the significant charismatic figures lacked the organizational and media ability that Roberts brought to his ministry. Roberts understood the institutional instability of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. His vision of mainstreaming the movement led him at various points in his ministry to do what other holiness preachers would never have considered. He sought and obtained ministerial credentials with the United Methodist Church, a denomination with deep roots in the Wesleyan tradition that represented the kind of middle-class America Roberts so desperately wanted to reach. The establishment of Oral Roberts University required an intense investment of time, money, and energy. Nevertheless, Roberts understood that the university platform would allow him to reach a generation of young charismatics and would serve as an institutional platform for his larger work.

Second, Roberts was a pioneer in the use of modern electronic media. Early on, Roberts recognized the power of television. He understood that radio could reach untold thousands, but he saw television as the way of reaching hypermodern America. His slick television specials, often featuring Hollywood celebrities and national figures, were virtually unprecedented in American Christian life. David Harrell goes so far as to credit Oral Roberts as the founder of what became known as the “electronic church.” During the prime years of Oral Roberts’ ministry, television was the major means of reaching a mass public, and Roberts had an intuitive feel for the medium.

Third, Harrell points to Roberts’ emphasis on religious healing. “It was healing that launched his ministry in 1947, and it is healing that is the foundation of the controversial City of Faith complex rising high over the Tulsa skyline.” Those words were written in 1985. The City of Faith complex was to include three major towers, one reaching to 60 stories. Roberts saw the City of Faith as a great medical center that would, he hoped, find a cure for cancer. The hospital was built, but it was not financially viable. The complex is no longer controlled by Oral Roberts University and is now office space known as CityPlex Towers.

In reality, most Americans probably know of Oral Roberts through a combination of his intended and unintended media exposure. Roberts frequently attracted controversy. Most famously, he became known for claiming to receive a vision of a 900 foot Jesus instructing them to build the City of Faith and, when hard times hit his empire, telling his followers that if a sufficient amount of gifts was not received within a specified amount of time, God would end his life. In 1987, Roberts became the focus of intense scrutiny in light of claims made by his ministry that a dead person had been brought to life.

In the end, however, Oral Roberts should be measured by his message. Though his claims of visions and healings drew deserved attention, along with both scrutiny and embarrassment, it was the core of his message that is most problematic. In his prime years, Roberts was the most significant agent for prosperity theology.

Prosperity theology teaches that God promises his people financial gain and bodily health. It is a false Gospel that turns the Gospel of Christ upside-down. The true Gospel offers forgiveness of sins and leads to a life of discipleship. Following Christ demands poverty more often than wealth, and we are not promised relief from physical ills, injury, sickness, or death. Christians die along with all other mortals, but we are promised the gift of eternal life in Christ.

There is tragedy in the sight of the City of Faith turned from a hospital into an office complex. In recent years scandal has erupted at Oral Roberts University, though stability may have been recently regained. Most Americans probably remember Oral Roberts, if at all, through his television ministry of decades past. Others will associate him only with the bizarre — visions of a 900-ft Jesus and the rest.

But the greatest tragedy in all this is the perpetuation of prosperity theology, passed on by Oral Roberts to a new generation. I am thankful for every sinner who came to know the Gospel of Christ through the preaching of Oral Roberts, and I heard him preach about salvation in ways that were true and powerful. But I can only lament the prosperity theology that he leaves in his long shadow.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Tiger Woods’s fall from public favor happened with breathtaking speed. In a matter of days, a minor vehicle accident in the middle of the night mushroomed into both private and public catastrophe. Even as Woods and his famously protective handlers sought to avoid or limit the controversy, the golfer’s eventual admission of marital infidelity has forever changed the way the public looks at the world’s most highly compensated athlete.

This story is far from over. Even as Tiger Woods has announced that he is taking an “indefinite” leave from professional golf in order to give priority to his wife and family, his future as both professional athlete and public figure is very much in question. Some believe that Woods will return to his exalted position after a necessary period of contrition and public withdrawal. Others suggest that, given the mental demands of professional golf, Tiger Woods will have a very difficult time returning to top form. And, what about Tiger Woods the brand? On these questions time will have to tell. Nevertheless, the travail of Tiger Woods already provides lessons that are not to be missed.

Lesson One: Acts done in private can and will have public consequences.

Interestingly, the scandal surrounding Tiger Woods appeared to be of low voltage in its opening chapter. Indeed, some of the most interesting public debate of this first phase was over the question of whether the unfolding scandal was of any public consequence at all. A good number of observers, including Peggy Noonan, appearing on the “This Week” program on ABC News, argued that the scandal was a private matter, since Tiger Woods is a professional athlete and not a politician. Writing in Newsweek magazine, Julia Baird made a similar argument. “He is not a politician, priest, or morals crusader. He is an athlete,” Baird declared.

She continued:

Why do we even pretend that sportspeople are models of propriety? Or rather why do we need them to be? They are physically gifted, driven, and disciplined. That’s what you need to excel in sport. Not moral strength, courage, decency, or fidelity. These virtues are admirable, but are a bonus: they should not be an expectation. Yet we continue to project an irrational desire for the physically perfect to be spiritually strong.

That is a rather amazing argument. Moral strength, courage, decency, and fidelity are “admirable,” but not necessary for athletes? Clearly, the American public was not buying that argument — and for good reason.

Tiger Woods may not be a priest or a politician, but he has transformed himself into a public figure. Indeed, most of his income is derived from selling himself as a brand, an advertising symbol, and an image. The glare of publicity was not forced upon Tiger Woods — he has actively and quite successfully cultivated this publicity for his own purposes. There is no inherent fault in this, but the American people are not buying the argument that his adventures in serial marital infidelity, combined with two late-night 911 calls, are matters of purely private concern between Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin Nordegren.

Charles McGrath made this point clear in an essay published in The New York Times:

[Tiger] Woods has become a public figure not just in the way that most great athletes are public figures, but also in a way probably unparalleled in the history of publicity itself. He has made far more money from selling himself, or his image, then he has made from playing tournaments. That image, partly genuine and partly sculptured, has been one of decency, modesty, filial devotion and paternal responsibility, and not of mysterious car crashes and evasive explanations.

Private actions lead to public consequences. This is not true at the same scale for everyone. As Charles McGrath pointed out in his essay, if the accident that sparked this scandal had happened to most people, “it wouldn’t have merited more than a line or two in the local weekly.” But whatever the context, private sins never stay as private as sinners expect, and the consequences are never limited to those privately involved. While the greatest injury is to Tiger Woods’s wife and children, he has also done great damage to the sport he has represented for so long. The damage spreads far beyond the sports world.

Lesson Two: The public still believes that adultery is a big deal.

There is no question that America’s moral landscape has been transformed in recent decades. This is especially true when it comes to the morality of sex and sexuality. Our contemporary society is marked by a breathtaking pattern of moral renegotiation that has led to the virtual evaporation of many moral stigmas, a rebellion against all rules, and the increasing legitimation of any number of sexual practices, lifestyles, and forms of expression. A spirit of moral revolution and moral relativism when it comes to sex has been in the air at least since the 1960s.

At the same time, marriage has been increasingly marginalized as an institution, with no-fault divorce and any number of other assaults serving to undermine marital stability and the place of marriage in society. Our contemporary mores have shifted to permissive extremes when it comes to matters such as premarital sex, pornography, and the ubiquitous use of sex in entertainment and advertising.

Still, it appears that Americans draw the line at adultery. The scandal surrounding Tiger Woods is essentially a scandal about adultery. In their own way, Americans have made clear their instinct and assumption that adultery is objectively wrong, deserving of moral censure, and not to be taken lightly.

The force of public outrage directed at Tiger Woods’s admission of marital infidelity indicates that the American public conscience remains more deeply rooted in its biblical origins than many secular observers would expect or appreciate.

A fascinating angle on this issue is provided in an article by Roger Blitz published in The Financial Times. Blitz argues that Tiger Woods is likely to escape much damage to his reputation because “while Mr. Woods and his advisers have built his image around many values, such as his diversity, his connection with young people, … and his well-spoken demeanor, Christian morality is not one of them.”

In other words, Blitz asserts that those who are not publicly committed to Christian morality are not held to this standard by the public. Evidently, someone forgot to tell the American people. Virtually no public figure has come forth to argue that what Tiger Woods has done is of no significant moral consequence. No major figure has argued that marital infidelity is morally inconsequential. While Americans may be confused about any number of moral matters and questions about sexuality, marriage exists as a fundamental moral firewall, and the public outrage over this scandal is, in its own very important way, a testimonial to this fact.

Lesson Three: A fall from public favor can happen in an instant.

Just a matter of days ago, Tiger Woods was at the very top of his profession, one of the most admired public figures of the sports world, and a man known primarily for his exquisite discipline and absolute mental focus. All that has evaporated (for now, at least) in an almost instantaneous burst of scandal.

“What Tiger Woods has caused to happen to himself and his image over the past two weeks is the sports world’s most remarkable fall from grace, ever.” So wrote Christine Brennan in USA Today. She continued: “No athlete has ever held a perch so high in our culture — right up there with President and Mrs. Obama, and Oprah — and fallen so far so fast.” All that changed in a matter of mere days. “Today, that man is in disarray, his family life a shambles, his golf future a question mark, with much of what we thought we knew about him now laughed at and doubted.”

Of course, no one knows where the scandal will end. Tiger Woods must already deal with accusations of adultery, his own admission of guilt, and a growing swarm of salacious details, rumors, and speculations. He has added to his public challenge by attempting to script every admission for limited impact. Even as he has, to his credit, used words such as “transgressions” and “infidelity,” he has not come forth with a compelling account of his behavior. Add to this his refusal to appear in public to make any comment. While this strategy is understandable, he will eventually be required to say something in a public forum.

Tiger Woods now finds himself in a disastrous crisis of his own making. There is no one else he can blame for his trouble and there is no public account that can undo the past. In a truly breathtaking reversal, Tiger Woods has gone from being one of the most universally respected figures in sports to one of the most widely discussed subjects of scandal. Clearly, it does not take long to fall from a pedestal.

In one of his advertisements for Accenture, the image of Tiger Woods appears along with the words: “It’s what you do next that counts.” Much now depends on what Tiger Woods does next. If the American people are truly scandalized by his adultery, they must now hope and pray that this marriage and family can be rebuilt and sustained. Something of far greater consequence than an illustrious career in sports is at stake here. Tiger Woods the human being is of infinitely greater value than Tiger Woods the brand.

For Christians, there is an even deeper concern. The current travail of Tiger Woods points far beyond his need for marital recovery, career consultation, or brand management. Tiger Woods needs a Savior. I am praying that this devastating experience, caused so classically by his own sin, will lead Tiger Woods to understand that he is not so self-sufficient as he thinks. Tiger Woods now faces a problem that he cannot solve. Though he can do much to repair his marriage, his family, and his public image, he cannot atone for his own sins. My prayer is that there is someone who can reach Tiger Woods with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In the end, all this must remind Christians of the universal need for the Gospel. We must remember our own sin and our utter dependence upon the grace and mercy of God made ours in Jesus Christ. Without question, this is the most important lesson drawn from the travail of Tiger Woods.

On his deathbed, Martin Luther offered these last words: “We are sinners, it is true.” Tiger Woods is one of us, after all.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Arrayed before us today is an assemblage of scholars decked out in all their glory. The regalia and ceremonial symbols will be recognizable throughout the world of scholarship and higher education. The completion of degree programs and courses of study deserves recognition. The investment of time — even blood, sweat, toil, and tears — is worthy of celebration. Furthermore, there is the very real sense that this institution of learning is setting loose a new generation to go out into the world. The least we can do is to organize an orderly launch.

Of course, there is actually far more here than meets the eye. Even as the regalia and ceremony will be recognizable throughout the world of education, this is no mere commencement ceremony. Then again, this institution is no mere school. This ceremony is a service of Christian worship and this institution serves no less than the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our calling is to educate and prepare a new generation of Christian pastors, missionaries, evangelists, and ministers in order that the church may be faithfully fed and competently led.

The process of education is more than the transmission of knowledge from one mind to another. This is especially true in a Christian institution, where teachers and students are learners together, where committed teachers invest not only their minds but their hearts in the inculcation of Christian conviction and knowledge, and where bonds of friendship and affection inevitably arise. In other words, we have come to love these students and it is no easy thing to let them go.

At such a moment, it seems appropriate that we consider this commencement event in light of Christian wisdom drawn from the Word of God — a wisdom that is, more often than not, counter-intuitive and distinctively different from that wisdom shaped by secular presuppositions. Indeed, a correct understanding of the Christian ministry will often require us to reject what the world is absolutely certain is true. And this applies even to the wisdom gained from the most trustworthy of human sources — even our grandmothers.

As a boy, I recall hearing my maternal grandmother’s admonishment that I should always be certain to finish whatever I start. In most dimensions of life, this remains good advice; the kind of advice a good and godly grandmother would pass along to her grandson. It is the sort of wisdom that passes the test of conventional acceptance. We should not be satisfied to leave our work unfinished.

In some cases, an unfinished project is a matter of mild embarrassment. Projects begin with great energy and intentionality — to trace a genealogy, restore a vintage automobile, renovate a room, write the Great American novel, or simply clean the attic. Nevertheless, so many of these aims are never accomplished.

In other cases, an unfinished project appears more tragic than embarrassing. Mozart did not live to complete his famed Requiem. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not live to see final victory in World War II. The landscape of Europe is dotted with both castles and cathedrals begun but not finished. Each of these has become a monument to the frailty of humankind and the fragility of human plans.

Nevertheless, the biblical conception of the Christian ministry is, as we should not be surprised to find, radically at odds with worldly wisdom. According to the New Testament, one of the most important insights about the Christian ministry is this: We will not finish what we begin. This is not to say that we will never set goals and reach them or that we will never complete plans and programs. It does mean that the Christian ministry must be seen in the context of faithfulness extended from generation to generation until Christ returns to claim his Bride.

This truth is made clear in this well-known passage from First Corinthians, chapter 3:

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

The background of this passage is Paul’s utter frustration brought about by the fact that the Corinthian church was so deeply divided into factions. Repeatedly, Paul expresses his grief, frustration, and heartbreaking concern over the tendency of the Corinthians to insult the Gospel and to divide the church by factionalism and a party spirit. As this passage begins, Paul admonishes the Corinthians for their spiritual immaturity. Spiritually, they are satisfied to be nursing infants rather than to grow into the fullness of Christ. They should be eating meat, but they must be fed with milk. When one claims to follow Paul and the other to follow Apollos, they demonstrate their mutual immaturity and fleshly ambitions.

The exasperated apostle sets the record straight by making clear that both he and Apollos are merely servants of Christ who have been assigned by the Lord to be agents of bringing the Gospel and feeding the flock of the Church at Corinth. Using an agricultural metaphor, Paul simply states: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Paul was commissioned to bring the gospel to Corinth and he planted the good seed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was followed by Apollos, a man of eloquence, who taught the Word of God and watered what Paul had planted.

Shifting to an architectural metaphor, Paul speaks of his role, by the grace of God, to act as a skilled master builder laying a foundation. He understands that others will come to build on that foundation. Ultimately the true foundation of the Church is none other than Jesus Christ.

In framing his admonitions, Paul reminded the Corinthians that “he who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.” Ministers of the Gospel are “God’s fellow workers.” The congregation is God’s field and God’s building. Every minister must take care to build faithfully upon the foundation. The one who plants and the one who waters are nothing in themselves. The agent of all true Gospel ministry is God himself. As the remainder of chapter three makes clear, the worthiness of our work will be fully disclosed on the day of judgment and tested by fire.

A commencement ceremony takes a quick view backward in order to aim at the long view of the future. This day is far more about beginnings than endings. The completion of these monumentally important programs of study is appropriately marked and celebrated, but our hearts are drawn to the future as we imagine what God will do by his grace and for his glory in these graduates arrayed before us. And so our focus is on the start of new ministries, missionary journeys, and opportunities to serve the church for whom Christ died.

But, in light of Paul’s words to the Corinthians, it seems necessary for us to set loose these graduates with the exhortation that they must start what they will themselves never finish. As a matter of fact, we really do not start what is altogether new. We will all build on the foundation someone else has laid. Even as the Lord grants opportunity to sow seed, we will spend much of our lives and ministries watering. The Christian ministry is not a career. It is a calling that originates in the sovereign majesty of God and is concluded only by the coming of the kingdom of the Lord, and of his Christ.

In the church age, ministry is handed from generation to generation. Our humble determination and our heart’s desire must be to receive this charge and to serve faithfully — planting and watering in the fields of ministry and taking care how we build upon the foundation laid before us.

The Lord God spoke through his prophet Joel to promise that older men will dream dreams and young men shall see visions. Powerful, faithful, and compelling dreams and visions animate these graduates. They were brought here to this seminary as they were called to ministry, these visions and dreams have kept them here through years of dedicated study, and these dreams and visions propel them onward as they go out into a world of ministry and mission.

But as they go, they join a line of faithfulness that reaches back to Moses and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, John the Baptist and John the evangelist, Peter and Philip, Paul and Apollos. It extends through generations punctuated by names such as Athanasius and Augustine, Luther and Calvin, Whitfield and Wesley, Owens and Edwards, Spurgeon and Moody . . . and so it goes.

Graduates of the Southern Seminary class of December 2009, if you aim to finish what you start in ministry, you will aim too low or finish what is not Christ’s. Go out to plant, but also to water. Sow the good seed of the Gospel, even as you cultivate and irrigate. Build faithfully upon the foundation laid by Christ and the apostles. Receive the stewardship of ministry that is passed on to you and give your all to this calling so long as you live. Then, pass this ministry to a generation yet unseen and unborn to continue this ministry and extend the reach of the Gospel until Jesus comes.

Start something you cannot finish and give yourself to it for the length of your days, with the strength of your life, to the glory of God. Dream dreams and see visions, and take up this calling as you plant and water in the fields of Christ. Build carefully upon the foundation laid for you. The hopes and prayers of God’s faithful people go with you.

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This is a commencement address and charge to graduates of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, delivered December 11, 2009 by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President.

The magazine recently featured a major article on abortion, and it just might be the most important article on this issue in recent history.

In “The Abortion Distortion — Just How Pro-choice is America, Really?,” writer Jennifer Senior offers an incredibly insightful and important essay on the moral status of abortion in the American mind. Senior is clearly writing to a New York readership — expected to be overwhelmingly pro-choice and settled in a posture of abortion advocacy. Given the passage of the so-called “Stupak amendment” to the health-care reform bill adopted by the House of Representatives, many in the pro-choice movement responded with amazement that a pro-life minority has been able to muster such support. Jennifer Senior posed the most awkward question for her readers: Is America really pro-choice?

Consider this:

According to a Gallup poll from July, 60 percent of Americans think abortion should be either illegal or “legal only in a few circumstances.” Only seventeen states pay for the procedure for poor women beyond the standards of the 1977 Hyde Amendment—meaning if the woman’s life is in danger or she’s been the victim of rape or incest. Just two months before the health-care bill’s passage in the House, a Rasmussen poll found that 48 percent of the public didn’t want abortion covered in any government-subsidized health plan, while just 13 percent did. (Thirty-two percent believed in a “neutral” approach—though what on Earth that means is hard to say.)

As a matter of fact, Senior went all the way back to 1973 in order to document her assessment that America was never as pro-choice as many liberals had assumed. The legal impact of Roe v. Wade could not overcome the fact that, as Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington University noted, the decision “was one of the few Supreme Court decisions that was out of step with mainstream public opinion.”

Senior suggests that America is “a very ambivalent pro-choice nation.” She acknowledges the numerical data that indicates an increasing pro-life direction for the American people and, speaking to a pro-choice readership, laments that “it sometimes gets lost how truly numerically challenged we are.”

So, just how did the Stupak amendment pass?

The idea that a bunch of pro-life rogue wingnuts have hijacked the agenda and thwarted the national will is a convenient, but fanciful, belief. Even with an 81-person margin in the House, and even with a passionately committed female, pro-choice Speaker, it was the Democrats who managed to pass a bill that, arguably, would restrict access to abortion more aggressively than any state measure or legal case since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade.

Along the way, Jennifer Senior makes some fascinating observations. In terms of the motivation to be engaged in the issue of abortion, she quotes Harrison Hickman, a former NARAL pollster, as saying: “If you believe that choosing the wrong side of the issue means spending eternal life in Hades, of course you’re going to be more focused on it.” That is a very powerful affirmation of the fact that one’s worldview really does matter.

She also understands the great generational shift taking place on the issue. She recognizes that the current generation of younger voters “is the most pro-life to come along since the generation born during the Great Depression.” Why? This same generation is the first to grow up with ultrasound images taped to the refrigerator door. Their understanding of the fetus is dramatically different from those who never had to face those images.  Furthermore, Senior also raises the fascinating insight that the big technological advance experienced by this generation was IVF — a technology that allowed having babies rather than not having them. This generation understands the issue in terms of infant human life. They do not see a mere fetus. They recognize a baby. Nancy Keenan of NARAL is cited as saying that the biggest defenders of abortion are now a “menopausal militia.”

Senior also deals with the troubled moral conscience of the pro-choice movement and abortion providers with remarkable candor. She reports that abortion counselors “will also tell you that the stigma attached to the procedure is worse than it’s been in years.” She cites Charlotte Taft, operator of a Dallas abortion clinic, who acknowledged to a reporter that women know “abortion is a kind of killing.” Jeannie Ludlow is cited for her uncomfortable experience in seeing repeat-abortion patients. The horror and reality of late-term abortions is documented — even as the continued “right” to such procedures is advocated.

By any measure, Jennifer Senior has written one of the most honest, revealing, insightful, and important articles on abortion to appear in recent history. At the same time, it is one of the most troubling.  Once again, we are reminded that the American conscience is not settled on the issue of abortion. We should be thankful that recent events and cultural developments — aided and abetted by technology — have made a real difference, helping and forcing Americans to understand that abortion is the killing of a human life.

In a very real sense, we should be thankful that the American conscience remains unsettled on this issue. A good and honest conversation about the reality of abortion is one of the best means of serving the cause of life. Jennifer Senior’s honest article can serve as an incredibly potent catalyst for such a conversation.

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Jennifer Senior, “The Abortion Distortion — Just How Pro-Choice is America, Really?,” New York Magazine, November 29, 2009. [Partial nudity in cover photo.]

Ms. Glasspool was elected on the seventh ballot, winning 153 clergy votes and 203 lay votes. Her election followed the election of another woman as a fellow assistant bishop for the diocese. More significantly, her election followed the seismic events of 2003, when the Reverend V. Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire — the first openly-homosexual bishop in the entire Anglican world.

Bishop Robinson’s election set off a cataclysm in the Anglican Communion. That worldwide body of Anglicans appealed to its American church, the Episcopal Church, to respect the concerns of other churches and to establish a moratorium on the election of openly homosexual persons as bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

Anglican churches in the so-called “Global South” responded to the election of Bishop Robinson with outrage and conservatives in the Episcopal Church withdrew, forming the new Anglican Church in North America [ACNA]. Over the past two years, a significant number of churches and dioceses have withdrawn from the Episcopal Church to join the new ACNA or another conservative Anglican body.

The election of Rev. Glasspool as bishop — an action that must be affirmed by the church — sets the stage for a global confrontation. The man at the center of that conflict is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Williams clearly sees his role as that of keeping the Anglican Communion together — at least as together as possible — at all costs. Ruth Gledhill of The Times [London] reports that Williams was chosen as Archbishop of Canterbury precisely because of his well-documented liberal views on homosexuality. As she reports, Williams “was the favored choice of Tony Blair’s Government and the mostly liberal Church of England bishops because of what they believed to be his fearless advocacy for gay rights.”

Conservatives, on the other hand, have been frustrated by the Archbishop’s refusal to define the actions of the Episcopal Church as unbiblical and objectively wrong. Given the Archbishop’s published comments on homosexuality, most observers have come to the conclusion that he is indeed an advocate for gay rights, but one who feels that the time has not come to take such radical steps as the election of openly-homosexual bishops.

In a statement released after the election of Rev. Glasspool as bishop, Archbishop Williams stated that her election “raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.” He concluded by stating: “The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”

That is the language of a man who — judging by his words — is far more committed to affection than to truth. His continuing calls for “gracious restraint” have only earned him the anger of both liberals and conservatives. The liberals are frustrated, to say the least, that Williams appears to lack the courage of his own convictions. Conservatives see his continual refusal to act against the rebellious Episcopal Church as evidence that he does hold those convictions, but is simply biding his time.

Here is a great lesson: We cannot reduce a question of truth to a question of process. The real question that confronts the Anglican Communion is whether their churches will bless homosexuality. Liberals see this as the necessary liberation of oppressed human beings from prejudice. Conservatives see the blessing of homosexuality as a direct rejection of Scripture, a violation of Christian tradition, and an act of rebellion against God.

“Gracious restraint” will not hold back strong conviction, as the actions in Los Angeles make clear. The conservatives and the liberals agree on this much — “gracious restraint” is no excuse for violating conviction on a matter of this significance.

The conservatives are profoundly right. The blessing of homosexuality is an affront to Scripture and an act of rebellion against God. They are also correct in understanding that the Archbishop of Canterbury knows that a lack of decisive action on the part of the Anglican Communion will lead to the eventual normalization of homosexuality. But the liberals show their public disrespect for the Archbishop by flaunting their disregard for his calls for “gracious restraint.”

When truth is at stake, denominational etiquette is no basis for courageous leadership. A call for “gracious restraint” is no leadership at all.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Collins is one of the most influential scientists in America today. He previously headed the Human Genome Project — the massive federal project to decode the genetic structure of human life. President Barack Obama nominated Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health on July 8, 2009, and he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate just a month later. At the time, several leading scientists voiced their opposition to his nomination, citing concerns about Collins’s identification as an evangelical Christian. Several critics expressed particular concern about his position on the use of cells drawn from human embryos in stem cell research — an enterprise that falls under NIH supervision.

This question is particularly pressing given the fact that President Obama had pledged to lift restrictions President George W. Bush had placed on federal funding for such research. President Obama did that on March 9, effectively changing the federal government’s position on the moral status of the human embryo.

There should have been no surprise when proponents of human embryonic stem cell experimentation raised questions about where Francis Collins stands on the question. A look at his published comments raised more questions than were resolved. In his book The Language of God, he wrote:

Many observers who are otherwise opposed to human embryo research have argued, however, that despite the likely ultimate destruction of excess embryos after IVF, the desire of a couple to have a child is such a strong moral good that it justifies the procedure. That may well be a defensible position, but if so, it challenges the principle that the inevitable destruction of human embryos should be avoided at all costs, no matter what the potential benefits.

The language Dr. Collins employed here, such as “may well be a defensible position,” is anything but clear, but he was clear in questioning “the principle that the inevitable destruction of human embryos should be avoided at all costs.”

In a 2006 interview, Dr. Collins said, “I would be opposed to the idea of creating embryos by mixing sperm and eggs together and then experimenting on the outcome of that, purely to understand research questions.” He went on to raise, “on the other hand,” his concern that “there are hundreds of thousands of such embryos in freezers at in vitro fertilization clinics.” He continued:

In the process of in vitro fertilization, you almost invariably end up with more embryos than you can reimplant safely. The plausibility of those ever being reimplanted in the future - more than a few of them - is extremely low. Is it more ethical to leave them in those freezers forever or throw them away? Or is it more ethical to come up with some sort of use for those embryos that could help people? I think that’s not been widely discussed.

In 2001, he told Christianity Today:

It is a classic example of a collision between two very important principles. One is the sanctity of human life and the other is our strong mandate as human beings to alleviate suffering and to treat terrible diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s, and spinal-cord injury. The very promising embryonic stem-cell research might potentially provide remarkable cures for those disorders. We don’t know that, but it might. And at the same time, many people feel, I think justifiably, this type of research is taking liberties with the notion of the sanctity of human life, by manipulating cells derived from a human embryo.

Once again, Dr. Collins employed language that offers moral angst without even a glimmer of clarity. Does he or does he not believe that the moral status of the human embryo precludes its destruction for medical research? What now becomes clear is that Dr. Collins is explicitly unwilling to affirm that it does.

Throughout the confirmation process, Collins appeared to reassure scientists that he would support the President’s policy. That assurance was made clear on December 2, when Dr. Collins announced the NIH approval of the first 13 additional stem cell lines for federally funded research. Collins said:

“I am happy to say that we now have human embryonic stem cell lines eligible for use by our research community under our new stem cell policy. . . . In accordance with the guidelines, these stem cell lines were derived from embryos that were donated under ethically sound informed consent processes. More lines are under review now, and we anticipate continuing to expand this list of responsibly derived lines eligible for NIH funding.”

In making his statement about the new cell lines for federally funded research, Collins defended his policy with very strange language. As The Washington Post reported, Collins said, “I think that there is an argument to be made that what is being done is ethically acceptable, even if you believe in the inherent sanctity of the human embryo.”

An argument can be made? Arguing that “an argument can be made” is no substitute for making the argument. Dr. Collins must now take personal responsibility for the use of additional stem cell lines that required the destruction of human embryos. When he says that such research is conducted according to “ethical” guidelines he is repeating the pattern of President Obama, who limits the “ethical” concern to the fact that the human embryos were derived with donor consent. In another evasion, the NIH is prevented by congressional action from funding the actual destruction of the embryo, so it allows other entities to fund that process, taking over after the embryo is destroyed.

Writing at The Public Discourse, Union University philosophy professor Justin D. Barnard sets the issue with refreshing clarity:

Collins needs to come clean. Either he upholds the dignity of human life or he doesn’t. If he does, and he accepts the nomination to head the NIH, then it seems that he is deeply compromised as a professing evangelical Christian. If he does not, then the evangelical community needs to know. For his appointment to this position has the potential to cause great harm in the way of moral confusion to many unsuspecting evangelicals as long as his views on nascent human life remain veiled behind a cloud of sophistical rhetoric.

Ethical responsibility demands that we never take refuge behind arguments about human dignity that are parsed with language such as “an argument can be made” and “may well be a defensible position.” The argument must be made that any destruction of a human embryo is morally indefensible as it subverts the dignity of every single human being. Arguing that such a subversion of human dignity “may well be a defensible position” is itself indefensible. Dr. Collins does need to come clean.

Then again, actions often do speak louder than words. The action of the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday by Dr. Collins is tragically clear.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

See also:

“Where Does Dr. Collins Stand on Stem-Cell Research?,” her.meneutics, July 13, 2009.

Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Francis Collins Confronts Ethics of Embryo Research,” USA Today, “Faith & Reason,” December 3, 2009.

Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health.

The fact that the referendum passed was news in itself. Nevertheless, the most significant aspect of the vote was the margin of victory. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The Swiss voted strongly for the ban, with 58% of votes in favor of the initiative and 42% against. Until about a month ago, polls had predicted voters would solidly reject the ban, though support for the ban had been edging up in recent weeks.” In the end, the measure was approved by voters in 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons — an overwhelming victory for a very controversial proposal.

According to press reports, Switzerland now has 150 mosques serving about 400,000 Muslims in a population of 7.5 million Swiss. Only four of the mosques have minarets, but none are used for the Muslim call to prayer. This is due to the fact that Switzerland operates under strict noise-pollution rules that prohibit the practice.

The conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has long warned of a creeping “Islamisation” of Switzerland, pointing to new mosques, Muslim immigration patterns, and high Muslim birthrates. The party convinced a sufficient number of the Swiss that minarets represent a sign of Islamic extremism and the threat of sharia law.

From a distance, the measure appears to be more symbolic than substantial. In effect, the Swiss voted to ban the most visible evidence of Muslims in their midst, while doing nothing to restrict Muslim immigration or worship. Thus, the voters sent a signal of their anxiety even as they acted in defiance of their country’s historic commitment to religious liberty. Oddly, the measure appears to be little more than a highly controversial effort to put the question of Muslim influence out of sight and out of mind.

Understandably, government authorities in Switzerland downplayed the vote and its meaning. Equally understandable were efforts by Muslims to explain why they were offended that minarets were singled out for exclusion in this ban. Can anyone be surprised?

Europe faces a looming crisis of Muslim influence and the spread of Islamic culture throughout the continent. This crisis is one of the most significant questions now facing Europe, and it comes as European cultures seem increasingly uncertain of their own identity and cultural commitments. The crisis is exacerbated by falling birthrates in many European nations. As a matter of fact, the birthrate in most European countries has now fallen beneath the basic replacement level. The severe reduction in the number of babies is a clear sign of a worldview crisis in those countries.

These trends must be matched to unexpectedly high levels of Muslim immigration and the high birth rates, and to Muslim populations. Put simply, the handwriting is on the wall as European citizens look to future population patterns. Though political correctness limits open discussion, citizens clearly fear the growing influence of the Muslim populations in their countries.

Nevertheless, the banning of minarets appears to be a cowardly move that contradicts Swiss commitments to religious freedom and tolerance. Singling out minarets in this ban is tantamount to isolating Islam and relegating it to second-class status — all protests to the contrary notwithstanding. The Muslim minaret is the central architectural symbol of Islam, as recognizably Muslim as steeples with crosses are recognizably Christian. Any nation that is truly committed to religious liberty cannot sustain a ban on one religiously significant architectural symbol or structure in this manner.

The receding influence of Christianity in Switzerland can be traced directly to theological liberalism in its churches and the increasing secularity of Swiss culture. Islam now enters the void created by the decline of Christianity and Christian culture in Switzerland, and throughout much of the continent as well.

Banning the minaret may serve to hide Muslim influence from view, but it does not address the underlying issues at stake. Surely the Swiss can do better than this. With this measure they have managed to violate religious liberty, anger Muslims, and avoid dealing with reality — all in one simultaneous act. “Out of sight, out of mind” is not a respectable or sustainable policy.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

This column is in answer to this question, posed by the editors of The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine for the “On Faith” feature: “What’s your reaction to Sunday’s decision by voters in Switzerland to ban construction of minarets, the slender towers from which Muslims are called to daily prayers?”

A haunting question is this:  How do atheists observe Thanksgiving? I can easily understand that an atheist or agnostic would think of fellow human beings and feel led to express thankfulness and gratitude to all those who, both directly and indirectly, have contributed to their lives. But what about the blessings that cannot be ascribed to human agency? Those are both more numerous and more significant, ranging from the universe we experience to the gift of life itself.

Can one really be thankful without being thankful to someone? It makes no sense to express thankfulness to a purely naturalistic system. The late Stephen Jay Gould, an atheist and one of the foremost paleontologists and evolutionists of his day, described human life as “but a tiny, late-arising twig on life’s enormously arborescent bush.” Gould was a clear-headed evolutionist who took the theory of evolution to its ultimate conclusion — human life is merely an accident, though a very happy accident for us. Within that worldview, how does thankfulness work?

The Apostle Paul points to a central insight about thankfulness when he instructs the Christians in Rome about the reality and consequences of unbelief. After making clear that God has revealed himself to all humanity through the created order, Paul asserts that we are all without excuse when it comes to our responsibility to know and worship the Creator.

He wrote:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. . .  [Romans 1:20-22].

This remarkable passage has at its center an indictment of thanklessness. They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Paul wants us to understand that the refusal to honor God and give thanks is a raw form of the primal sin. Theologians have long debated the foundational sin — and answers have ranged from lust to pride. Nevertheless, it would seem that being unthankful, refusing to recognize God as the source of all good things, is very close to the essence of the primal sin. What explains the rebellion of Adam and Eve in the Garden? A lack of proper thankfulness was at the core of their sin. God gave them unspeakable riches and abundance, but forbade them the fruit of one tree. A proper thankfulness would have led our first parents to avoid that fruit at all costs, and to obey the Lord’s command. Taken further, this first sin was also a lack of thankfulness in that the decision to eat the forbidden fruit indicated a lack of thankfulness that took the form of an assertion that we creatures — not the Creator — know what is best for us and intend the best for us.

They did not honor Him as God or give thanks. Clearly, honoring God as God leads us naturally into thankfulness. To honor Him as God is to honor His limitless love, His benevolence and care, His provision and uncountable gifts. To fail in thankfulness is to fail to honor God — and this is the biblical description of fallen and sinful humanity. We are a thankless lot.

Sinners saved by the grace and mercy of God know a thankfulness that exceeds any merely human thankfulness. How do we express thankfulness for the provision the Father has made for us in Christ, the riches that are made ours in Him, and the unspeakable gift of the surpassing grace of God? As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift” [2 Corinthians 9:15].

So, observe a wonderful Thanksgiving — but realize that a proper Christian Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act that requires an active mind as well as a thankful heart. We need to think deeply, widely, carefully, and faithfully about the countless reasons for our thankfulness to God.

It is humbling to see that Paul so explicitly links a lack of thankfulness to sin, foolishness, and idolatry. A lack of proper thankfulness to God is a clear sign of a basic godlessness. Millions of Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving with little consciousness of this truth. Their impulse to express gratitude is a sign of their spiritual need that can be met only in Christ.

So have a very Happy Thanksgiving — and remember that giving thanks is one of the most explicitly theological acts any human can contemplate. O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting [1 Chronicles 16:34]. Give thanks.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

But I signed The Manhattan Declaration. Indeed, I am among the original signatories to that statement, released to the public at the National Press Club last Friday. Why?

There are several reasons, but they all come down to this — I believe we are facing an inevitable and culture-determining decision on the three issues centrally identified in this statement. I also believe that we will experience a significant loss of Christian churches, denominations, and institutions in this process. There is every good reason to believe that the freedom to conduct Christian ministry according to Christian conviction is being subverted and denied before our eyes. I believe that the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and religious liberty are very much in danger at this very moment.

The signatories to The Manhattan Declaration include evangelical leaders, as well as leaders from the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches. The statement establishes the priority of the issues addressed:

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Further:

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non­believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

The Culture of Death looms over our civilization, threatening every human being and the very right of our fellow citizens to experience life and to be respected at every stage of development. The statement calls for all Christians to “be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion.” But the issue of the sanctity of human life reaches far beyond abortion, to the threats of genocide, “ethnic cleansing,” euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the destruction of human embryos for medical experimentation.

On marriage, the statement includes a humble admission of our own Christian complicity in its subversion: “We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage.” The declaration goes on to state:

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same­-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.

The declaration includes a pledge “to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture.” Why? “The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church.”

The threat to religious liberty is a clear and present danger — not a remote danger on a far horizon. As the statement rightly reminds us:

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro­-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro­-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti­ discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same­-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century­ long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same­-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi­marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate­ crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

Further:

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded.

Finally, The Manhattan Declaration ends with a statement of public conscience and conviction. These words are meant to send a very clear message — we cannot and will not abandon or compromise our Christian convictions:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo­-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-­life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

I signed The Manhattan Declaration because I believe it is an historic statement of conviction and courage that is both timely and urgent. Over the course of the next few months and years, these issues will be reset in our culture and its laws. These are matters on which the Christian conscience cannot be silent. There are, of course, other issues that demand Christian attention as well. The focus on these three issues is forced by the circumstances of current threats as well as the awareness that the time of decision on these questions has come. Though Christians struggle to understand the extent to which our convictions should be incorporated in the law, we must now recognize that the very respect for these convictions — and the freedom to follow and obey these convictions in our own lives, families, and ministries is now at stake.

I signed The Manhattan Declaration because I lead a theological seminary and college, serve as a teaching pastor in a church, and am engaged in Christian leadership in the public square. Thus I see the threats to Christian liberties that now stare us in the face. The freedom not to perform a same-sex marriage is one thing, but what about the freedom to hire employees according to our Christian convictions? What about the right of Christian ministries to conduct their work according to Christian beliefs? What about the freedom to preach and teach against the grain of the nation’s laws (for example, after the legalization of same-sex marriage)? When do hate crimes laws slide into definitions of “hate speech?” The threats to our religious liberties are immediate and urgent.

I signed The Manhattan Declaration because it is a limited statement of Christian conviction on these three crucial issues, and not a wide-ranging theological document that subverts confessional integrity. I cannot and do not sign documents such as Evangelicals and Catholics Together that attempt to establish common ground on vast theological terrain. I could not sign a statement that purports, for example, to bridge the divide between Roman Catholics and evangelicals on the doctrine of justification. The Manhattan Declaration is not a manifesto for united action. It is a statement of urgent concern and common conscience on these three issues — the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and the defense of religious liberty.

My beliefs concerning the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches have not changed. The Roman Catholic Church teaches doctrines that I find both unbiblical and abhorrent — and these doctrines define nothing less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But The Manhattan Declaration does not attempt to establish common ground on these doctrines. We remain who we are, and we concede no doctrinal ground.

But when Catholic Charities in Massachusetts chose to end its historic ministry of placing orphaned children in good homes because the State of Massachusetts required it to place children with same-sex couples, this is not just a Catholic issue. The orphanage could have easily been Baptist. When Belmont Abbey college in North Carolina is told by federal authorities that it must offer abortion services in its insurance plans for employees, this is no longer just a Catholic issue. The next institution to be under attack might well be Presbyterian. We are in this together, and we had better be thankful that, in this case, we are not alone.

Finally, I signed The Manhattan Declaration because I want to put my name on its final pledge — that we will not bend the knee to Caesar. We will not participate in any subversion of life. We will not be forced to accept any other relationship as equal in status or rights to heterosexual marriage. We will not refrain from proclaiming the truth — and we will order our churches and institutions and ministries by Christian conviction.

There will be Christian leaders, pastors, seminaries, colleges, universities, denominations, churches, and organizations that will abandon the faith on these issues. They will bend the knee to Caesar. Far too many already have. The signatories to The Manhattan Declaration pledge that we will not be among them.

I want my name on that list. I surrendered no conviction or confessional integrity to sign that statement. No one asked me to compromise in any manner. I was encouraged that we could stand together to make clear that to come for one of us on these issues is to come for all. At the end of the day, I did not want my name missing from that list when folks look to see just who was willing to be listed.

___________________________

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On November 8, the paper ran an article, “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?,” that described cross-dressing among teenagers as a growing phenomenon. Reporter Jan Hoffman explained that “a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate — or to confound — gender identity and sexual orientation.” Hoffman’s article focused on the challenge these teens present to public school officials, who must now deal with boys who want to wear makeup and skirts and girls who want to dress like male gang members.

Hoffman quoted Oakland, California psychologist Diane Ehrensaft, who said: “This generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with. . . . A lot of youths say they won’t be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field.”

Then, in the November 19 edition of the paper, reporter Ruth La Ferla brought a similar story, this time focusing on a slightly older age group and the marketing opportunity their new gender experimentation affords. Her article, “It’s All a Blur to Them,” is accompanied by a photograph of three rather androgynous young adults and the statement, “Crossing between the men’s and women’s aisles feels right to young customers today.”

And Diane Ehrensaft is back, explaining that this is all a part of the new “gender fluidity.” In her words, “younger people no longer accept the standard boxes. They won’t be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. I think there is a peer culture in which that kind of gender blurring is not only acceptable but cool.” That statement is virtually identical to her statement reported in the November 8 article about teenagers.

Is anyone editing the “Style” section? It appears safe to assume that The New York Times is trying to make a point.

Ruth La Ferla begins her article with a description of Chuong Pham, a 28-year-old engineer in Manhattan who wears “stalk-thin jeans” and borrows his mom’s “sexily sheared” sweatshirt. “There is a whole transition of men getting into women’s wear,” Pham explains. “It used to be that the people who did it were just the edgier ones. Now it’s much more common.”

Brandon Dailey, a 26-year-old hairstylist in Manhattan has not yet worn a skirt, but he expresses his experimentation by wearing “a long drapey shirt with really tight pants.” “My generation is more outside the box than the generation before me,” he advises.

Audrey Reynolds, age 25, alerted the world of fashion that a gender revolution is at hand. “Every line should be unisex,” she suggested. “A good piece of clothing is a good piece of clothing no matter who was meant to wear it in the first place.”

Ruth La Ferla suggests that these three young adults represent a “forward-thinking cohort” of the population who are “revising standard notions of gender-appropriate dressing, tweaking codes, upending conventions, and making hash of ancient norms.”  This “artfully calibrated ambiguity” about gender is fast becoming mainstream, she reports.

Evidently, at least some in the fashion industry are paying attention:

So entrenched are the latest forms of gender blending that mainstream purveyors of hip, including Urban Outfitters and American Apparel, are offering clothing and jewelry meant to be worn by either sex. American Apparel has no fewer than 724 unisex items — hoodies, cardigans, blazers and bow ties, among them — on its Web site, simply because, as Marsha Brady, the company’s creative director, put it, “that’s the way people wear clothes.”

Ms. La Ferla observes that some fashion lines “have been quick to interpret that sort of ambiguity.” One industry insider told La Ferla that “the more successful designers are the ones that try to bridge the gap between the sexes.”

Not all are buying into this as a broadening trend. Harold Koda, costume curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art advised that “you need to be young to do it well,” adding: “To carry it off, you need the physique of an adolescent boy. As long as the young are the primary audience, it’s not going to be economically sustained.”

Psychologist Ehrensaft admits that “androgyny may not play in Peoria,” but she also insists that “norms are shifting.” She then said this: “Kids, even little kids, are experimenting across gender lines. Boys are wearing My Little Pony T-shirts, just because they like them. Sometimes they like to dress in the girls’ section because the shirts are cooler.”

Well, my guess is that little boys wearing “My Little Pony” T-shirts will indeed not play in Peoria — especially if their dads ever see it. Yet there is something to these reports. There is a lot of experimentation with gender going on among young adults and teenagers. The paper seems to celebrate these young people as the vanguard of a new cultural future. The New York Times appears to be telling America to get ready. What are we to make of the paper running two stories with this much similarity on the front page of the same section within the span of less than two weeks?

The gender confusion and experimentation almost celebrated in these articles is a symptom of a larger and deeper confusion found throughout the culture. Androgynous young people are trying to get our attention. To them, male and female are fluid categories without objective meaning. They are also crossing more than aisles in clothing stores — they are intentionally confusing sexual identity and the very concepts of male and female.

Recovering sexual sanity and a proper appreciation for gender as a part of the goodness of God’s creation will not come easily. Just take a look at the clothing marketed to teenagers and young adults in trendy stores at your local mall. We have a lot of work to do.

___________________________________

Ruth La Ferla, “It’s All a Blur to Them,” The New York Times, Thursday, November 19, 2009.

Jan Hoffman, “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?,” The New York Times, Sunday, November 8, 2009.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Boys Wearing Skirts to School — What’s Going On?,” Thursday, November 12, 2009. http://www.albertmohler.com/2009/11/12/newsnote-boys-wearing-skirts-to-school-whats-going-on/

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Over the past several decades, that framework has been under sustained attack by ideological opponents, subverted by a secular shift among the elites, and increasingly forgotten by the masses. In its place, the moral reasoning mustered by many Americans amounts to a mixture of moral intuitions, ideological threads, and cultural assumptions. In the main, these all add up to what Philip Rieff called the “triumph of the therapeutic.” When morality collapses, all that remains is therapy.

This has been brought to our attention in the aftermath of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, arrested for the shootings that killed 13 and wounded scores of others, is now known to have yelled “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) as he was shooting, to have links to Islamic extremists in Yemen, and to have visited a mosque frequented by the September 11, 2001 terrorists. More details of his background and motivation have been revealed over the last few days. There is ample evidence that Major Hasan, a physician and psychiatrist, provided much evidence of his motivation.

The role his Muslim faith played in the shootings will require more time to unpack. There will be plenty of time for that consideration as his trial is conducted. In the meantime, we should note the extent to which some observers are doing their best to absolve Major Hasan, whatever the deepest sources of his motivation, of moral responsibility for the massacre.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz described the kind of moral evasion that the agents of therapy now substitute for any serious moral argument:

The quality and thrust of this argument was best captured by the impassioned Dr. Phil, who asked us to consider, “how far out of touch with reality do you have to be to kill your fellow Americans . . . this is not a well act.” And how far out of touch with reality is such a question, one asks in return—not only of Dr. Phil, but of the legions of commentators like him immersed in the labyrinths of motive hunting even as the details of Maj. Hasan’s proclivities became ever clearer and more ominous.

To kill your fellow Americans—as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred—the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.

This was not a well act? Would the killing of even one person in cold blood be a “well act,” Dr. Phil? Is our moral discourse now limited to distinguishing between what some psychologist or psychiatrist considers as well acts and unwell acts? That is all we have to say in light of a mass murder?

Columnist Charles Krauthammer described the same phenomenon in The Washington Post. Krauthammer, who is himself a psychiatrist, was outraged when so many commentators and national leaders responded to the massacre by suggesting that Major Hasan is a victim of some traumatic stress disorder brought on by his treatment of returning troops fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan.

He wrote:

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists — not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics — who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

Rejecting this evasion, Krauthammer wrote with exasperation: “It’s been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.”

The medicalization of mass murder is a great moral evasion. Substituting the therapeutic worldview for morality will not work. Krauthammer explains:

Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won’t find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as “compassion fatigue.” The poor man — pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

We must listen carefully to the conversations all around us — and particularly to those among the opinion-makers. Krauthammer and Rabinowitz offer much-needed words of warning. We ignore this at our peril.

The therapeutic mentality is all that remains when a moral framework is abandoned. No civilization can survive this evasion of moral responsibility. Sick is no adequate substitute for evil. Medicalizing morality means the end of right and wrong as meaningful categories.

We are just left with Dr. Phil, and his concern that a massacre is “not a well act.” If that is all we can say — even the first thing that we say — we are not a well society.

_____________________________

Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer, The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, November 10, 2009.

Charles Krauthammer, “Medicalizing Mass Murder,” The Washington Post, Friday, November 13, 2009.

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The Book of Genesis Illustrated is by famed cartoonist R. Crumb. Famous among cartoonists for his work as far back as the 1960s, Crumb has always combined cartoons and a social/political agenda. As David Colton of USA Today explains, Crumb is known for “subversive, turn-of-the-century linework, untamed libido, and obsessive social commentary.”

Indeed, Crumb personally attributes aspects of his style to experiences with LSD in his younger years. He became known for his “Keep on Truckin’” and “Fritz the Cat” cartoons. Disillusioned with the United States, Crumb took his family to France, where they now live.

Somewhere along the way, Crumb decided to take on the Bible, starting with Genesis. That is no small ambition. But why?

Crumb seems attracted to the book of Genesis as a collection of narratives with deep influence in Western culture. “I’m a spiritual guy,” he told USA Today. “I’m not an atheist, more an agnostic. I don’t doubt the existence of God. I just don’t know quite what God is. It’s a question that will challenge me until the day I die.”

As for the Bible, Crumb does not take it as the Word of God. He said, “I don’t believe it’s the Word of God. I believe it’s the words of men.” He added, “I’m just another human interpreting the story.”

In other comments about the project, Crumb has been a bit more forceful. He told Peter Aspden of the Financial Times that working on the Genesis project “nearly killed me.” Working through Genesis “ruined my health. I’m in recovery.”

He also spoke straightforwardly about his view of the Bible:

“I am completely sick of the Bible. I began to hate it as I worked on it. I’ve had my fill. The idea that millions of people have taken it so seriously — it is totally nuts. The human race is crazy.”

His Genesis project did not lead him to admire the Bible. “It had the opposite effect on me. . . .  I saw what a primitive, backward morality I had to deal with. It was a good way of exorcising the power of the Bible.”

Crumb’s distinctive cartoon style plays out across the Genesis narratives. The front cover of the book promises “nothing left out.” Very little is. Readers will find cartoon depictions of everything from Creation and the Fall to the curse of Onan. Reading The Book of Genesis Illustrated does reveal the power of this artistic expression (as in the sacrifice of Isaac), but mostly its severe limitations.

Christians coming across the Crumb project may wonder what to think. After all, this is a project that is attracting significant attention. Millions of Americans buy comics and pay close attention to the world of cartooning. Crumb’s new work has gained the attention of the nation’s major newspapers and the digital world.

For one thing, Crumb’s work reminds us that God gave us words, not images, as His means of revelation. The prohibition against images is not just a divine preference, it is a command. Looking at Crumb’s work makes the force of this prohibition all the more clear. Crumb interprets (or misinterprets) with every image and characterization. His style dominates the narrative — which is precisely the danger. And Crumb insists that he tried his best to restrain himself. “I’m not ridiculing it, just illustrating the exact words that are there.”

Another key insight from the project is this: The Bible always demands a judgment of the reader. The Bible cannot be read simply as literature of historical importance. Any reader sees it as far more than that. In fact, the Bible presents such straightforward claims about both God and humanity that it is either loved or hated, seen as the Word of God or as a poisonous chronicle of the human religious imagination.

In that respect, Crumb’s declarations about the Bible make more sense. His experience of drawing the narratives from Genesis led him to hate the Bible. He is offended that so many millions have taken it seriously. “To take this as a sacred text, or Word of God or something to live by, is kind of crazy,” he told David Colton. “So much of it makes no sense. To think of all the fighting and killing that’s gone on over this book, it just became to me a colossal absurdity. That’s probably the most profound moment I’ve had — the absurdity of it all.”

R. Crumb reveals a great deal about himself in this project. His project also reveals once again why God gave us words, and not images. Crumb’s newest work may be described as a triumph of the human imagination — and that is precisely the problem.

The Bible always lays claim upon the reader. The Book of Genesis demands a decision. The God who reveals himself in these words is not only the Creator of the cosmos, but the judge of every human soul. Genesis not only begins the Bible, it reminds us of our need for Christ. Every single narrative Crumb depicts finds its ultimate meaning in the atonement accomplished by Jesus Christ.

But that great fact cannot be reduced to a cartoon. It was never meant to be.

_____________________________

David Colton, “Illustrator R. Crumb is Drawn to God with His Latest Project,” USA Today, October 19, 2009.

Peter Aspden, “A Bad Boy and the Good Book,” Financial Times, October 4, 2009.

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I was honored to take part in this event, and to engage in a really productive question and answer session with the audience. I was especially pleased that some atheists attended and participated in the dialogue. The New Atheism demands Christian attention and a Christian response. This was a first-class event, organized by students under the direction of Dan Dewitt, campus pastor of The Campus Church. You can listen to the event here. Video should be available very shortly.

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The story, reported by Gillian Flaccus, begins with Rev. Tom Eggebeen of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. Faced with an aging and declining congregation, the pastor decided to do something innovative — he started a service for both people and dogs, “Canines at Covenant.”

Gillian Flaccus described Eggebeen’s idea: “He would turn God’s house into a doghouse by offering a 30-minute service complete with individual doggie beds, canine prayers and an offering of dog treats. He hopes it will reinvigorate the church’s connection with the community, provide solace to elderly members and, possibly, attract new worshippers who are as crazy about God as they are about their four-legged friends.”

Flaccus also cited Laura Hobgood-Oster, a religion professor at Southwestern University in Texas, who recently conducted a survey that revealed more than 500 churches that conduct blessing services for pets and six that go so far as to offer pet worship services like the “Canines at Covenant” service. One church near Boston offers a “Woof ‘n Worship” service. The professor sees “pet-centric” services as a growing trend.

The reason she offers is especially interesting: “It’s the changing family structure, where pets are really central and religious communities are starting to recognize that people need various kinds of rituals that include their pets . . . . More and more people in mainline Christianity are considering them to have some kind of soul.”

The report goes on to explain that the dogs at the “Canines at Covenant” service showed little evidence of interest. Nevertheless, the service was very pleasing to the human participants who brought their dogs. One woman brought two dogs, a black Lab and a Dachshund-terrier mix. She told the reporter, “I don’t have any kids, so my pets have always been my children, so it does mean a lot . . . . I haven’t been to church in a long time and this may push me into it. I’m getting older and I’ve been thinking about those things again.”

Gillian Flaccus offers a very interesting report on the “Canines at Covenant” service and the larger phenomenon of “pet-centric” services. Her report also points to a deep theological confusion that these services bring to light. There are several dimensions to this confusion.

First, the Bible clearly presents animals as part of the goodness of God’s creation. As Christians, we are to see the glory of God in the diversity and wonders of the animal kingdom. We are to respect all animals as intentional creations of God and to acknowledge the gifts that these creatures represent. God created animals for his own glory, and humans are to see the glory of the Creator in each animal species and individual.

Second, God made human beings as the only creatures made in his image. As the image-bearers of God, humans alone have the capacity to know and to worship the Creator. Animals reflect the glory of God, but only human beings can see the glory of God and know the Creator.  Animals may possess consciousness, but they do not have souls. They lack the capacity to know the Creator.

Third, God assigned human beings dominion over the animal kingdom and clearly marked a separation between humans and animals. This separation is clear, ranging from the dominion theme to the prohibition of bestiality. To compromise that separation is to disobey God. Some part of our contemporary confusion over this distinction is due to emotionalism and sentiment, but much of it is driven by an ideology that reduces the status of humanity to that of the animals.

Fourth, while we recognize and celebrate the consciousness of many animals, we recognize that their consciousness is different from our own. We must also be aware that we tend to read features of human consciousness onto animals. We enjoy stories and movies that feature talking animals and endearing animal characters, but this is fiction, not fact. Many animals do enjoy forms of community and relatedness, but they are not humans. We must always be aware of the temptation to read human abilities and states of mind onto animals.

Fifth, to put the matter simply, animals do not worship God. Jesus told the woman at the well [John 4] that the Father seeks worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth. The biblical concept of worship is not limited to attendance at a service, but involves the conscious and active knowledge of himself through Jesus Christ. Dogs do not worship. As Gillian Flaccus reported, the dogs at the “Canines at Covenant” service “didn’t seem very interested in dogma.” That observation is cute, but profoundly understated.

Sixth, the Bible says a great deal about animals. From Genesis to Revelation animals are keys to understanding God’s revelation. Genesis shows us the indescribable wonder of the animals in creation. The Bible reveals the catastrophic impact of the Fall on animals, leading to predation and violence. At the end of the Bible, we are given the picture of the new creation and the reversal of the curse of sin as the lion and the lamb lay together. But, amazingly enough, even as the Bible mentions animals as beasts of burden and agents of violence, it gives virtually no attention to animals as pets.

Seventh, America is a pet-centric culture, and this reveals much about us. We have the wealth to spend billions of dollars on pets. The ownership and enjoyment of pets is a sign of wealth and plenty. We are also a society that is trading human relationships for the companionship of pets. We cut off our elderly from extended family and leave them alone with their pets. We see increasing numbers of younger people who decide not to have children, but instead to pour themselves into relationships with their pets. Restaurants, malls, and hotels are asked to allow pets even as they allow children. Professor Hobgood-Oster points to the pet-centricity of our society as evidence of “the changing family structure, where pets are really central.” The woman who brought her two dogs to the “Canines at Covenant” service said, “I don’t have any kids, so my pets have always been my children.” Postmodern Americans see these statements as evidence of new lifestyle choices. Christians should see these statements as tragic.

Eighth, the churches that offer these services are concentrated in the liberal wing of American Protestantism. The declining membership of liberal churches is matched to a loss of theological focus. Churches concerned with the preaching of the Gospel, committed to authentic evangelism and biblical preaching, are not going to demonstrate the confusion that leads to “Canines at Covenant.” It is not surprising that Covenant Presbyterian Church lists its support for same-sex marriage and opposition to California’s “Proposition 8″ defending traditional marriage on the front page of its Web site.

I am thankful for dogs. My own family cherishes a friendly and inquisitive Beagle who reveals the glory of God in just being a Beagle. But Baxter does not go to church. I am absolutely convinced that animals will be a part of the New Creation we are promised in Christ. But it is believers in Christ — redeemed humanity — that yearn for this New Creation. To blur the distinction between humans and animals is to confuse the Gospel itself.

_______________________

Gillian Flaccus, “Gone to the Dogs: LA Church Starts Pet Service.” Associated Press (AP), November 4, 2009.

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Tonight I spent a really encouraging few hours with a group of younger pastors — men who are being greatly used of God to reach their own generation and far beyond. That experience made me really thankful, and also led me to think about why Southern Baptists should be especially thankful for the rising generation of young pastors. [Read more]

The article, right on the front of the “Sunday Styles” section of the paper, announced, “When gender bends the dress code, high schools struggle to respond.” The story reveals a confusion over gender that goes far beyond the dress code.

As Jan Hoffman reports, high schools generally have very specific rules about clothing these days. Boys are forbidden to wear muscle shirts and saggy pants, and girls cannot wear midriff-exposing tops or skirts that are too short. But what happens when a boy wants to wear a skirt?

“In recent years, a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate — or confound — gender identity and sexual orientation,” Hoffman reports. “Certainly they have been confounding school officials, whose responses have ranged from indifference to applause to bans.”

This is no longer an issue limited to isolated examples. Districts across the country have reported teens who have attempted to cross the gender line in dress. Many of these cases have captured media attention, with highly publicized controversies. In other cases, the challenges have been more quiet.

The cases are, to say the least, both interesting and troubling. Boys are making news for wearing skinny jeans, makeup, wigs, and skirts. Girls are bending gender in their own way by, for example, wearing a tuxedo for the school picture or to a school event.

Jan Hoffman does a good job of setting the issue in perspective:

Dress is always code, particularly for teenagers eager to telegraph evolving identities. Each year, schools hope to quell disruption by prohibiting the latest styles that signify a gang affiliation, a sexual act or drug use.

But when officials want to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions.

Well, that certainly presents a very complicated challenge. Diane Ehrensaft, an Oakland psychologist cited in the article, states the obvious: “This generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with. . . . A lot of youths say they won’t be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field.”  She added that adults then “become the gender police through dress codes.”

As Hoffman makes clear, these challenges to dress codes can quickly become legal skirmishes pitting students (and often their parents) against school administrators. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute argues that this is one reason that so many schools have shifted to students wearing uniforms.

“It’s hard enough to get students to concentrate on an algorithm,” she reminds, “even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes.”

That sets the issue in a very clear instructional perspective. Schools are about teaching and learning, and both teachers and administrators face daunting challenges. The last thing they need is the added distraction of gender-bending teenagers on parade.

And the issues can be far more troubling than classroom distractions. Hoffman reports that some schools have faced boys wearing “pink frilly scarves” and makeup and girls trying to dress like male gang members. In Columbus, Ohio a boy wore girl’s clothing but used the boys’ bathroom. Jeff Grace, faculty advisor for the school’s gay-straight alliance club told Hoffman, “One day I heard a student say, ‘Man, there was a girl in the guy’s restroom, standing up using the urinal! What’s up with that?’” Another student then quipped, “That wasn’t a girl. That’s just Jack.”

These adolescents represent the younger face of a society that is giving itself over to a confusion about gender and dress that reveals a much deeper confusion about gender, sexuality, and the limits of self-expression. The controversy also reveals an even deeper cultural and moral divide over the same issues.

Should a boy who shows up at school dressed as a girl be celebrated for self-expression and transgressing the boundaries of gender roles, or should he be seen as signaling a need for help and adult-imposed rules? The widely divergent answers to that question reveal the great worldview divide in postmodern America. This controversy cannot be isolated from the movement to normalize homosexuality, and that movement cannot be separated from an effort to remove all notions of fixed gender roles and sexual identity.

The controversy over boys wearing skirts to school is a symptom of our loss of sexual sanity and the will to preserve any reasonable and healthy understanding of gender. These teenagers are telling us something important — we are losing our sexual sanity.

For Christians, the issue is a matter of biblical concern. The Bible reveals a concern for respecting and honoring gender as God’s gift. In the Old Testament, the Law taught respect for these distinctions and roles. In the New Testament, we find similar expectations. As the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11: 7-15:

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman;for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered?Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.

While addressed to the specific concerns of a church setting, this text also generalizes the point by making a specific reference to what nature teaches concerning the recognition of the difference between males and females. The Creator is honored and glorified when men and boys dress and present themselves as males and when women and girls dress and present themselves as females. Culture by culture and generation by generation the specific form of this distinction may change, but the point remains.

God made human beings to show His glory, and an essential part of that glory is the visible difference between males and females that is reflected even in the public presentation of dress. We should be able to tell the difference between a boy and a girl by the way they dress and present themselves in public.

As James Laver reminded, clothes always tell us something. This article from the “Sunday Styles” section of The New York Times tells us something as well — something we need to hear.

_____________________________

Jan Hoffman, “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?,” The New York Times, Sunday, November 8, 2009.

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

In the days since the shootings, the question of Muslims serving in the U.S. military has been unavoidable. In one sense, the question is hardly new. It arose in the first Gulf War when Muslims asked if it could be allowable to serve in the U.S. military when action was taken in or against a Muslim majority nation. Clearly, the question now arises in the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Evidence that Hasan cried out a Muslim expression during the attack, that he had visited a mosque linked to Muslim extremism, and that he had been in contact with suspected Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda only served to add urgency to the questions.

The United States military is made up of citizen soldiers, and is an all-voluntary force. These citizen-soldiers defend our freedoms and constitutional rights, and they do not surrender their constitutional rights when they put on the uniform. Our cherished rights of religious belief and expression are not canceled when individuals enter the Armed Forces.

At the same time, the military is a unique institution — a fact recognized by law. Voluntary enlistment in the Armed Forces entails the assumption of certain limitations and responsibilities that are necessary for the maintenance of military order and effectiveness.

Given our commitment to religious liberty, we must make every reasonable accommodation to the religious beliefs of military personnel. These accommodations range from the provision of military chaplains and chapels to the category of conscientious objector, based in religious conviction. Complex questions do arise, and in the context of deployment to battle the questions of accommodating religious belief can erupt in excruciatingly difficult forms.

Service in the military is open to all, regardless of religious faith. In our constitutional republic, that is as it should be. Those who wear the uniform of the U.S. Armed Services take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” To take that oath and put on that uniform is to accept a solemn and sacred responsibility to defend the United States. If religious beliefs conflict with this oath, the individual should never enter the Armed Forces.

We know enough by now to know that Major Hasan was a deeply troubled man. There is now no way to isolate his deeds from his Muslim identity. We cannot read his heart, but we can read of his contacts, statements, and actions. There is already a reactivated debate among Muslims about the ethics of Muslims serving in the Armed Forces in Muslim lands.

It is not fair to generalize Major Hasan’s actions to the entire Muslim community, but there is also no way to ignore the fact that Major Hasan’s Muslim beliefs were involved in his motive for the killings. This will take time to sort out.

In the meantime, the U.S. Armed Forces should make every effort to accommodate the religious beliefs and convictions of its personnel. That is what we owe to those who put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms. But they owe the entire nation — and first of all their fellow soldiers –  the commitments of loyalty, obedience, respect, and protection.

The military cannot accommodate any belief system that undermines those commitments. No nation can accommodate those who would turn themselves into terrorists against their own neighbors, citizens, and fellow soldiers.

____________________________

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

“Sometime in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach a milestone,” the magazine predicts, adding that “half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself.” In other words, for half of the world the fertility rate will have dropped to 2.1, considered the replacement rate for couples. This milestone, the magazine declares, “is one of the most dramatic social changes in history.”

Predictions about falling fertility rates have become commonplace. In much of Europe, falling fertility has been a fact of life for decades. In many countries on the continent, falling fertility is already leading to social pressures as the workforce ages quickly and schools see falling enrollments. In Russia, the army fears that it will be unable to deploy adequate troops in coming years — there are simply not enough boys to become the next generation’s soldiers. In Japan, falling fertility rates point to dramatic changes in the society. As one observer noted, the nation is on its way to becoming a giant geriatric ward with fewer and fewer young people.

The Economist sees all this as good news. Looking at the picture with a rosy economic view, the magazine offers that falling fertility rates mean a “Goldilocks moment” for some economies, when the demographics of falling fertility mean a time of optimal economic growth and decreased economic dependence. Of course, the magazine has to acknowledge that this “Goldilocks moment” will almost certainly be followed by dramatic problems brought about by an aging population. For now, The Economist congratulates these economies for their temporary “demographic dividend.”

The magazine also suggests that falling fertility leads to an increase in women in education and women in the workforce. It states: “Educated women are more likely to go out to work, more likely to demand contraception and less likely to want large families.”

Shamelessly, The Economist even offers a thankful nod to China’s notorious “one child only policy.”  As the magazine reports:

China’s one-child policy…began nationwide in the early 1970s. China’s population is probably 300m-400m lower now than it would have been without it. The policy (which is one of population control, not birth control) has had dreadful costs, including widespread female infanticide, a lopsided sex ratio and horrors such as mass sterilisation and forced abortions. But in its own terms, it has worked—20m people enter the workforce each year, instead of 40m—and, to the extent that China is polluting less than it would have done, it has benefited the rest of the world.

So, despite its “dreadful costs” including female infanticide, mass sterilization and forced abortions, “it has worked.” Furthermore, by reducing pollution through the reduced fertility rate, China’s “one child only” policy “has benefited the rest of the world.”

Finally, The Economist argues that the falling fertility rates just might put the brakes on population growth, alleviating fears of a “population bomb.”  But look closely at this:

A further reduction of fertility would be possible if family planning were spread to the parts of the world which do not yet have it (notably Africa). But that would only reduce the growth in the world’s numbers from 9.2 billion in 2050 to, say, 8.5 billion. To go further would probably require draconian measures, such as sterilisation or one-child policies.

Do the editors of The Economist support or defend these “draconian measures” for the sake of economic gain? We must hope not, but the final words of the magazine’s essay are not reassuring:

The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born. The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.

Do they really mean what they say here? The fact that these girls have already been born is “bad news.” The good news is that they are likely to want fewer children, offers the essay.

The economic effects of falling fertility may offer a temporary “Goldilocks moment” for specific economies, but the long-range costs of a rapidly aging and numerically shrinking population are really frightening. Does The Economist care about anything beyond the immediate future?

In the end, the economic calculations and forecasts are less important than the moral concerns raised by this cover story. The assumption of the article seems to be that human beings are primarily economic agents, who should be moved into the workplace as soon as possible. This is a sadly deficient understanding of human nature and what it means to be human. The depreciation of family life (and specifically of motherhood) found in this essay reveals a great deal.

A society that celebrates a falling fertility rate is a society that is trading maternity wards for nursing homes. There is something very troubling and very sad about that exchange. Not least among the troubling questions is this: Just who will come visit and care for the aged when the aged outnumber all the rest?

___________________________________

“Go Forth and Multiply a Lot Less,” The Economist, October 29, 2009.

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

The passage of time is so swift that today’s younger Americans are only dimly aware of the Wall, if at all.  Their historical horizons collapse anything before their birth into ancient history.  As with all historical losses, this one is costly. We must remember the Wall in all of its ugliness and murderousness.  We must remember the gun towers and barbed wire, the broken glass and mines, the sight of human beings shot dead simply for seeking to flee a regime that crushed the human spirit.

History is never uncomplicated.  Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, several insights come into focus.  We now know that the Communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc had for some time been losing confidence and the will to maintain order by any and all means.  The epic economic and social failures of Marxism were impossible to deny.  Too many eyes had seen over the Wall, and denial of the obvious grew ever more costly.

The aged leaders of the Soviet Union maintained a steady face, but their own younger leaders had lost hope in the system. The Communist regimes were, quite literally, losing steam.  The amazing fact to realize now is that so few in the West seemed to see this.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Anthony R. Dolan, a former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan, offers keen insights in “Four Little Words,” published in today’s edition.  The article takes us into the life of the Reagan administration as President Reagan prepared to deliver a speech at the Berlin Wall in July of 1987. Reagan’s speech at the Berlin Wall is rightly remembered for four words he addressed directly to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall.”

As Dolan recalls, those words sent shock waves through the White House and the State Department long before the world heard the President speak them.  Powerful forces within the Administration warned that the words would “embarrass” Gorbachev.  But Reagan knew his moment, and he was fueled by a moral clarity that was missing in others.  Previous administrations had sought to avoid the kind of ultimatum of history that President Reagan delivered at the Wall.

As Dolan writes:

Reagan had the carefully arrived at view that criminal regimes were
different, that their whole way of looking at the world was inverted,
that they saw acts of conciliation as weakness, and that rather than
making nice in return they felt an inner compulsion to exploit this
perceived weakness by engaging in more acts of aggression. All this
confirmed the criminal mind’s abiding conviction in its own omniscience
and sovereignty, and its right to rule and victimize others.

Accordingly, Reagan spoke formally and repeatedly of deploying
against criminal regimes the one weapon they fear more than military or
economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral
absurdity, their ontological weakness. This was the sort of moral
confrontation, as countless dissidents and resisters have noted, that
makes these regimes conciliatory, precisely because it heartens those
whom they fear most—their own oppressed people. Reagan’s understanding
that rhetorical confrontation causes geopolitical conciliation led in
no small part to the wall’s collapse 20 years ago today.

Dolan’s article is important at many levels — not least for revealing the divisions within the American government — but his focus on moral clarity in the face of Communist oppression and criminality is both refreshing and important.  Reagan understood that certain regimes and empires were — remember the word? — evil.

This is not to suggest that any government or political structure is perfect.  Nevertheless, the Communist regimes that were so clearly exposed by the Berlin Wall had given themselves over to criminality and evil. President Reagan saw this when others, trained to see the world as diplomats, failed to see.  Reagan saw himself as stating the obvious, and hoped to give others courage to see and say the same.

There are two great moral dangers we must always resist: The first is declaring moral clarity before the truth is known.  The second is refusing to acknowledge a moral clarity that is right before our eyes.  These days, the second appears to be the greater temptation.

Those who took down the Berlin Wall in 1989 knew exactly what they were doing.  They knew exactly what that Wall meant.  They were willing to tear it down with their bare hands.  They were animated by freedom and guided by moral clarity.

We dare not forget the day the Wall fell, nor the moral clarity that brought it down.

___________________________

Anthony R. Dolan, “Four Little Words,” The Wall Street Journal, Monday, November 9, 2009.

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

“It was a subconscious act,” said Gallagher. “Young people today are connected socially from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they close their eyes at night. It’s compulsive.”

Zaslow calls the lifestyle of these young people “hypersocializing.”  As he observes:

Because so many people in their teens and early 20s are in this constant whir of socializing—accessible to each other every minute of the day via cellphone, instant messaging and social-networking Web sites—there are a host of new questions that need to be addressed in schools, in the workplace and at home. Chief among them: How much work can “hyper-socializing” students or employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with friends via text-messaging, or are obsessively checking Facebook?

There is an argument to be noticed here.  Some assert that this generation of teens and twenty-somethings has developed an invaluable ability to multitask, to frame arguments with few words, and to stay constantly connected. Some, like Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies, go so far as to argue that these young people are so skilled at “multimedia socializing” that their social skills are superior to previous generations, rightly understood.

Others, noting the time spent obsessively checking digital devices, see a loss of community, a fog of constant chatter, and, for both employers and educators, a massive volume of lost time. As P. M. Forni at Johns Hopkins University observes, “There is a lot of communication going on that is futile and trivial.”

Consider what this means for educators:

Educators are also being asked by parents, students and educational strategists to reconsider their rules. In past generations, students got in trouble for passing notes in class. Now students are adept at texting with their phones still in their pockets, says 40-year-old Mr. Gallagher, the vice principal, “and they’re able to communicate with someone one floor down and three rows over. Students are just fundamentally different today. They will take suspensions rather than give up their phones.”

As Gallagher concludes, asking students to separate themselves from social media for the school day seems futile. “It’s like talking to kids about why they don’t need air.”

Jeffery Zaslow’s article, published in the invaluable “Personal Journal” section of The Wall Street Journal, is directed mainly to the business community, where executives are hard pressed to know how much they should (or even can) restrict social networking among younger employees. But the issues he addresses go far beyond the business context. His article should be read by parents, pastors, teachers, and anyone who cares about the minds and souls of young people.

One thing is clear — Zaslow is not exaggerating. Almost every parent of a teenager or twenty-something will recognize the truth of his diagnosis of “hypersocializing” among the young. If anything, the issues range beyond the concerns he identifies.  Business executives are concerned about the financial costs and economic impact. Educators are rightly concerned about distractions from the learning process. But what does this hypersocializing do to the souls of young people?

As prophets of technological pessimism from Jacques Ellul to Neil Postman have reminded us, every technology comes with an effect on the soul. How does this digital revolution effect the souls of young people who quite literally sleep with cellphones on the pillow, lest they miss a text message in the night? What space is left for the development of flesh-and-blood friendships? How are they related to people who do not have access to text messages? Is their communicative ability now limited to 140 characters in a burst?

Among young Christians, what space is left for the development of a devotional life? Do their lives contain any space for extended quiet and reflection, for prayer, or for reading anything longer than a text message?

This is precisely where evangelical Christians need to invest serious thought and reflection. We should all be concerned when Steve Gallagher laments that these young people think they need constant access to social media the way they need oxygen for breathing.

Then again, maybe the real problem is much worse than Zaslow and Gallagher acknowledge. Is this phenomenon limited to the “hypersocialized” young?  In the spirit of personal confession I must admit that I turn on my iPhone the moment the plane hits the tarmac on landing. I feel irresponsible if I do not post regular Twitter updates and check email and messages constantly. Colleagues, friends, and constituents expect “hypersocializing,” and they now range across the age spectrum.

There is no going back — at least not in terms of retreat. The social universe is a fact of life, and a missiological challenge for the Christian church. We are all Facebookers now.

The hypersocialized generation of teenagers and young adults needs to learn limits. Parents must provide those limits for their children and encourage them in older offspring. Educators and executives cannot ignore the challenge, but there is as yet no mechanism for determining proper balance in a world growing more hypersocialized by the day.

We are all looking for someone to figure this out and find the responsible boundaries. When this happens, let’s hope they send a text message to the rest of us.

_____________________________

Jeffery Zaslow, “The Greatest Generation (of Networkers),” The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, November 4, 2009.

That said, there is something very strange and revealing about the response of the intellectual elites to the fact that their cherished theory of evolution is held by such a small percentage of the world’s population. Indeed, polls indicate that Americans reject the theory of evolution by a significant margin, leading observers like Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times to express public exasperation.

We know that about half of all citizens in the United Kingdom now want intelligent design taught alongside evolution in the British schools. In America, evolutionary scientists are trying to explain why young children seem “hardwired” to see evidence of intelligent design in the world around them. And a quick look around the globe will demonstrate that belief in the worldview of evolution is actually held by a very thin demographic slice of the world’s population.

Now, a really interesting slant on the global perspective comes as the Western media discover that (can you believe it?) Muslims tend not to be evolutionists. That accounts for between 20 and 25 percent of the world’s population.

From a report by Drake Bennett in The Boston Globe:

Americans familiar with the long and bitter battle over the teaching of evolution in our schools likely have a set of images of what creationism looks like: from the Scopes trial, and its dramatization in “Inherit the Wind,” to more recent battles over textbooks on school boards in Kansas and Georgia and in federal court in Pennsylvania. The doctrine of creationism, and its less explicitly religious cousin intelligent design, are extensively developed counter-narratives of the origin of life on Earth, fed by Christian concerns and shaped by Christian beliefs.

And then:

But there is another creationist movement whose influence is growing, and which is fueling challenges to science in countries where Christianity has little sway: Islamic creationism. Campaigners in countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and Indonesia have fought the teaching of evolution in schools there, sometimes with great success. Creationist conferences have been held in Pakistan, and moderate Islamic clerics are on record publicly condemning Darwin’s ideas. A recent study of Muslim university students in the Netherlands showed that most rejected evolution. And driven in part by a mysterious Turkish publishing organization, Islamic creationism books are hot sellers at bookstores throughout the Muslim world.

According to the report, the existence of an Islamic version of creationism “has raised concerns among scientists and educators.” Salman Hameed, a scientist at Hampshire College, predicted that “the next major battle over evolution is likely to take place in the Muslim world.”  That is a long way from Dayton, Tennessee and the Scopes trial.

The Islamic form of creationism is different in key respects from the Christian version, which can only be expected. Common to both, however, is the central belief in a divine Creator who designed and made the cosmos and all therein.

You can expect to see more about this, but consider a key question that the media coverage of Islamic creationism raises: How could the fact that Muslims generally reject naturalistic evolution come as a surprise to Western intellectuals?

Get out much?

_________________________

Drake Bennett, “Islam’s Darwin Problem,” The Boston Globe, October 25, 2009.

Salman Hameed, “Bracing for Islamic Creationism,” Science, 322 (December 12, 2008) [PDF file].

Write me at mali@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

On the other hand, the negative dimensions of the postmodern turn are often deeply subversive of the very concept of truth. Indeed, the rejection of truth in any knowable and objective form is one of the greatest challenges postmodernism presents to the Christian faith. The questions raised by postmodernism can lead to the development of a healthy and faithful epistemological humility. On the other hand, the more general effect of postmodernism has been to insinuate a very dangerous epistemological humility that can undermine confidence that any truth can actually be known.

In recent years, John R. Franke, a professor at Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, has been among the foremost proponents of the embrace of a postmodern worldview. A major figure in the emergent church, Franke has been a significant critic of modern evangelicalism. In his new book, Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth, Franke offers an argument that pushes the postmodern envelope and offers what amounts to a completely new way of understanding truth. Truth, Franke argues, is inherently plural.

Franke’s new book is part of the “Living Theology” series published by Abingdon Press in cooperation with Emergent Village. The book deserves close attention, for it presents a vision of truth we are sure to confront in years to come.

From the onset, Franke speaks honestly of his frustration when asked about his understanding of truth. “Personally I will admit that I am beginning to find the question more than a little annoying,” he states. Franke forcefully insists that he does believe in truth, but manifold witness presents an understanding of truth that amounts to postmodernism in full force.

Is Christianity Pluralist?

Helpfully, Franke sets out his thesis early in the book. He begins with the argument that the Christian church has embraced pluriform truth claims and then argues that the Christian faith “is inherently and irreducibly pluralist.” As he explains, “The diversity of the Christian faith is not, as some approaches to church and theology might seem to suggest, a problem that needs to be overcome. Instead, this diversity is part of the divine design and intention for the Church as the image of God and the body of Christ in the world. Christian plurality is a good thing, not something that needs to be struggled against and overturned.”

This is a truly breathtaking argument. Indeed, Franke understands that his embrace of pluralism is itself a product of his own postmodern context. Previous generations of Christians, he acknowledges, considered plural truth claims, doctrinal formulas, and theological systems to be a challenge that required clarification and the discernment of truth — not as a condition to be embraced. “The early Protestant church was characterized by plurality, but this does not mean that Protestants were pluralists,” he concedes. “They were not. Instead, they were committed to establishing the one true church over against the Roman Catholic Church, which they viewed as a heretical distortion of the one true church. They were committed to one true way to be a Christian, the one right way to read the Bible, the one system of doctrine, the one right set of practices.”

Not so in the emerging church movement. Instead, that movement “is similarly characterized by plurality.” But, in contrast to historic Protestantism, “it also affirms plurality as an appropriate and necessary manifestation of Christian community.” Thus, plurality “is not to be opposed, but rather something to be sought and celebrated.” This explains how the Emergent Village community can claim “to honor and serve the church in all its forms — Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, Anabaptist.”

In Manifold Witness, Franke offers a skillful review of postmodernism and its understanding of truth. Furthermore, he expends considerable energy and thought in the task of calling Christians to an understanding of the careless way some believers speak of truth. Many of his thematic statements are both eloquent and helpful. Franke is certainly right when he exhorts:

“Christians committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ should not acquiesce to the cultural relativism that gives up on the notion of ultimate or transcendent truth. But we must also resist the temptation of espousing a notion of truth that makes an idol out of our own conceptions, assumptions, and desires as though they are not subject to critique.”

Is the Trinity Pluralist?

So far, so good. Franke also offers a genuine and prophetic warning when he urges white Western evangelicals to consider the extent to which our own cultural context has shaped our thinking and beliefs and the temptation to assert our own cultural assumptions, rather than the Gospel, as the Christian message.

Nevertheless, the thrust of Franke’s argument goes far beyond that warning. In arguing for the plurality of truth, Franke seeks to ground this plurality in the very nature of God. In emphasizing a social understanding of the Trinity, Franke argues that plurality exists even within God. As he explains, “difference is part of the life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in the fellowship of missional love.”

The ministry of the Trinity is indeed so profound as to be beyond human imagination and knowledge. Nevertheless, the Bible does reveal the unity of the Trinity to be definitive. Throughout the centuries, faithful Christians have taken care to honor what the Bible reveals about the unity of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet, Franke asserts “in the life of God is the experience of what is different, other, not the same.”

Franke argues that God does reveal himself to his creatures, but he also insists “that God chooses to be revealed through creaturely mediums that bear the marks of their finite character.” In other words, the actual text of the Bible involves creaturely limitations. “These limitations remain in place in spite of the use God makes of them as the bearers of revelation,” Franke asserts.

In the end, Franke’s understanding of the Bible falls desperately short of evangelical conviction. In an argument similar to that made by his late mentor, Stanley Grenz, Franke argues that “Christian communal identity has been bound up with a particular set of literary texts that together have been identified by that community as canonical Scripture.” He speaks of the Bible as “inspired,” but his argument is that “the Spirit has spoken, and now speaks, and will continue to speak with authority, guiding the church into truth, through the canonical texts of Scripture.” His proposal seems to leave no room whatsoever for verbal inspiration.

“The Bible is the principal means by which the Spirit guides the church today,” Franke affirms, but he goes on to state that “the speaking of the Spirit is not bound solely to the original intention of the biblical authors.” Utilizing a postmodern understanding of literary texts and their interpretation, Franke asserts: “The speaking of the Spirit through the texts of Scripture means that while the intention of the author is an important concern, it is not the only concern. It does not represent the fullness of the speaking of the Spirit, since this always involves the response of the reader.”

Further:

“Put another way, the goal of reading the Bible is not the attempt to identify and codify the true meaning of the text in a series of systematically arranged assertions that then function as the only proper interpretive grid through which we read the Bible. Such an approach is characteristic among those who hold particular approaches to theology and hermeneutics in an absolutist fashion and claim that such procedures will lead to the arrival of the one true and proper conception of doctrine contained in Scripture. The danger here is that such a procedure can hinder our ability to read the text and listen to the speaking of the Spirit in new ways.”

This means that we are not actually bound by the words of Scripture. Instead, the church is to engage the Bible, trusting that the Holy Spirit will lead the community into a new understanding. Thus, the emerging church would be freed from accountability to the actual words and propositional statements of Scripture. The community can simply claim that it is being led by the Spirit into a new and different understanding.

Theological Liberalism in a New Key

Of course, this is the very argument asserted by Protestant liberals over the last two centuries. Franke adds postmodern concepts and language to an old argument. The new liberalism, chastened by postmodernism for its extreme individualism, now puts theological revisionism in a communal context. The result is the same — the subversion of biblical Christianity.

Clearly, Franke and other emerging types will chafe under that criticism. Indeed, even as he criticizes the notion of “historic Christianity” and any set of “minimum beliefs” necessary to be a Christian, he also asserts: “Of course I believe in truth. I believe in God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

The problem is this –  Franke’s argument that truth is plural means that the church should both embrace and celebrate different and even contradictory understandings of these doctrinal statements and core truths. While Franke is undoubtedly correct in warning that no theological system is free of cultural limitations, his proposal amounts to a total and unconditional surrender of doctrinal accountability. While he insists that not all doctrinal assertions are allowable, he undercuts the authority of Scripture to serve as the norm for establishing truth from error.

The Protestant liberals of the 19th and 20th centuries often offered words of criticism that orthodox believers and theologians needed to hear. Nevertheless, their subversion of biblical truth and their embrace of heresy rather than orthodoxy established these theological liberals as adherents of a religion fully distinct from Biblical Christianity.

Now,  the leading edge of the emergent church movement follows the very same trajectory. Manifold Witness is a fascinating book, but John Franke’s proposal is a recipe for theological disaster. In this book, a new postmodern form of theological liberalism comes fully into view.

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I’m always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

The research indicates that little degus raised without dads “exhibit both short-and long-term changes in nerve cell growth in different regions of the brain.” The research also reveals that “fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents.” Sound like anyone you know?

The specifics:

The researchers then looked at the neurons—cells that send and receive messages between the brain and the body—of some pups at day 21, around the time they were weaned from their mothers, and others at day 90, which is considered adulthood for the species.

Neurons have branches, known as dendrites, that conduct electrical signals received from other nerve cells to the body, or trunk, of the neuron. The leaves of the dendrites are protrusions called dendritic spines that receive messages and serve as the contact between neurons.

Dr. Braun’s group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they “caught up” by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.

The end result can be a pup without normal cognitive and emotional function that experiences brain activity like “a horse without a rider.”  Since the basic wiring of the brain is similar in both the human child and the degu pup, Dr. Braun believes that a very similar process is likely to emerge in the brains of fatherless children. Even so, the human brain is far more complex.

Similar research at the University of Ottawa has found a similar pattern in young voles (another rodent).  As a result, it appears that biological evidence now exists that would suggest that fatherless children (and especially boys?) are at greater risk of cognitive and emotional instability — and eventual delinquency — without dad in the home.

Of course, we should not need biological studies to demonstrate and validate what we should already know — children need fathers in the home. The epidemic of fatherlessness has brought disaster on a society-wide scale, and has brought harm into the lives of millions of young children, both boys and girls.

Girls raised with biological fathers in the home begin to menstruate at later ages than girls without a father in the home.  Boys raised without dad are far more likely to drop out of school, be arrested, be unemployed, and be designated as delinquent.  In sum, fathers matter.

Christians recognize this as a theological matter, long before we consider biology.  We know that the Creator’s intention in marriage and the family is for children to have both mother and father.  One of the most vulnerable designations in the Bible is the fatherless.

So, read the reports on biological research with interest and connect the dots from the data to the biblical worldview.  This is about far more than young degus and voles.  This is about the lives of children who deserve both mom and dad.

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Shirley S. Wang, “This is Your Brain Without Dad, ” The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

Freedman also found the Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister and high priestess of Circle Sanctuary, a Wiccan church in Barneveld, Wisconsin.  Rev. Fox won a major legal battle when the Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to allow the Wiccan pentacle on the gravestones of dead Wiccan soldiers.  “Our symbol was literally being carved in stone and taking its place alongside the symbols of other religions,” she said.  “Our religion was at last getting equal treatment. It was one of those crossroads moments.”

The most significant feature of Samuel Freedman’s report is his recognition of how ancient paganism experienced a resurgence in postmodern America — now claiming as many as 500,000 to 1 million adherents of one sort or another:

In several ways, though, Paganism was waiting for modernity to catch up with it. The emphasis on the worship of nature in virtually all variations of Pagan faith, and the embrace of a female divinity in many, situated the religion to mesh with the environmental and feminist movements that swept through the United States in the 1970s.

Exactly.  The resurgence of paganism in our times is not the recovery of ancient traditions simply reasserted in a new age, but a selective New Age embrace of pagan symbols, themes, and practices in order to add “spirituality” to ideological movements such as feminism and the radical ecologists.  The gynecological and pantheistic focus of ancient paganism is exactly what Judaism and Christianity rejected in full — and the embrace of these ancient heresies is further evidence of the widespread rejection of Christianity.

“From academia to the military, in the person of chaplains and professors, through successful litigation and online networking, Paganism has done much in the last generation to overcome its perception as either Satanism or silliness,” Samuel G. Freedman writes. Well, whatever you want to call it, the resurgence of paganism is a keen reminder that old heresies never die; they just fade away only to return once again.

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See, “Paganism, Just Another Religion for Military and Academia,” by Samuel G. Freedman, The New York Times, Saturday, October 31, 2009.

Throughout most of the 20th century, economic policy has been informed by the “Leading Economic Index” calculated by The Conference Board. That index, designed to track economic trends and to warn of impending recession, utilizes ten components of data, ranging from the average weekly hours worked by manufacturing workers to the amount of new building permits for housing. Just about everyone — including both government and the private sector — utilizes the Leading Economic Index as an essential tool for evaluating the health of the economy and its future prospects.

Now, for the first time, The Marriage Index does for the health of marriage what the Leading Economic Index does for the health of the economy — it provides essential data we ignore at our own peril.

The Marriage Index is a project of the Institute for American Values and the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting. As their recently released report asks: “Why do we so carefully measure and widely publicize our leading economic indicators, and do everything we can to improve them, while rarely bothering to measure our leading marriage indicators, or try to do anything as a society to improve them?”

The availability of The Marriage Index as a means of assessing the health of marriage is a most welcome development.  As Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, comments, “It’s a brilliant conceptual idea, long overdue. This is a GDP for marriage, a way to statistically sum up complex trends in a way that allows us to capture a core truth: Is marriage getting weaker or stronger?”

The Marriage Index is based on solid data and includes five major components: the percentage of adults ages 20-54 who are married, the percentage of married persons who are “very happy” with their marriage, the percentage of first marriages that are intact, the percentage of births to married parents, and the percentage of children living with their own married parents.

The percentage of adults who are married is an obvious indicator of the health of marriage in society. The report considers this percentage among the population of adults who are most likely to be coupling and least likely to be widowed. This indicator is not encouraging. As the report reveals, “The trend in the last four decades suggests that many adults are less likely to find marriage an attractive choice. In 1970, 78.6 percent of adults age 20-54 were married. In 2008, it dropped to 57.2 percent.”

“People still form relationships and still have children, but they are more likely to do so without marriage,” the report summarizes. This trend is especially common among younger adults. These young adults have experienced a disillusionment about marriage due to the divorce rates of their own parents. They now “show a much more favorable attitude toward cohabitation than earlier generations.”

The second indicator considers how many married persons report themselves to be “very happy” in their marriages. This measure of marital quality can be tracked through available data, and the trend is not positive. Though a clear majority of married Americans report their unions to be very happy, that figure has dropped from 67 percent to 62 percent in 40 years.

The marriage quality indicator is also important for children. As the report affirms, “when parents’ marital relationship suffers, children also tend to suffer.” The report also cites University of Texas sociologist Norval Glenn, who argues that the decline in marital happiness can be directly traced to the undermining of marital permanence by the availability of divorce.

The third indicator is the percentage of first marriages that are intact. In 1970, 77.4 percent of first marriages were intact, but only 61.2 percent were intact in 2007. There are signs that the percentage of intact first marriages may have actually increased in the last decade of this period, indicating that the divorce statistics are not inevitable. In other words, marital commitment can increase over time.

The percentage of births to married persons is the fourth major indicator. There has been a stunning increase in the percentage of children born to single parents or cohabiting couples. Today, only 60.3 percent of all babies are born to married couples, compared to 89.3 percent in 1970. Few statistics in social science reveal such a massive shift in the way human beings act and organize their lives. Marriage is the unique context in which children are most likely to flourish. Just one fact to keep in mind: Half of all children born to cohabiting couples see those unions end by age five.

The fifth indicator is the percentage of children living with their own married parents. “Marriage not only ensures that children are born into a stable family,” the report argues, “it also intends that children are raised with their own biological or adoptive mother and father.” The report cites family scholar David Popenoe, who stated, “Few propositions have more empirical support in the social sciences than this one: Compared to all other family forms, families headed by married, biological parents are best for children.”

In contrast, children from divorced or single-parent families are more likely to drop out of school, to be unemployed, and to become teen mothers. Interestingly, recent research indicates that children raised in stepfamilies “look more like children of single parents than children being raised by their own married parents.” In 1970, 68.7 percent of all children lived with their own mother and father. In 2007, that percentage had dropped to 61.0.

Taken as a composite, these leading marriage indicators reveal a score of 60.3 percent in 2008 — a devastating drop from 76.2 percent in 1970. Clearly, the nation’s marital health is in a free fall. This raises a frightening question: How low can these indicators fall and the society continue to survive?

The index of Leading Economic Indicators is understood to be a vital measure of America’s health and future prospects. If anything, The Marriage Index should be understood to be even more important to the health and welfare of our society. How low can these indicators go and the nation survive? Let’s pray we do not learn that answer the hard way.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Albert Mohler.

On October 29 I discussed this issue on The Albert Mohler Program with special guest Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage.

The bill, named for two men killed in vicious attacks, extends the definition of federal hates crimes to include attacks “based on a person’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or mental or physical disability.”

Referring to Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd, the President said:

It’s hard for any of us to imagine the mind-set of someone who would kidnap a young man and beat him to within an inch of his life, tie him to a fence, and leave him for dead. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the twisted mentality of those who’d offer a neighbor a ride home, attack him, chain him to the back of a truck, and drag him for miles until he finally died.

Those words are eloquent in exposing the deep evil that resides in far too many human hearts. If anything, the President spoke too cautiously.  It is not only “hard” for any morally sane person to imagine the mentality behind these attacks, it is and must be impossible.  Such crimes of violence against any human being should and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But defining these crimes as “hate crimes” shifts the legal issue from the criminally violent act itself to the thoughts and intentions of the criminal. This is a dangerous and unnecessary step, for the very idea of a hate crime requires the government to play the role of psychiatrist and also requires a list of those who deserve special protections. How can government stop the extension of that list?  If criminalizing hate is legally justifiable, should not every citizen be granted these same protections?

Even more ominously, the logic of hate crime laws inevitably leads to the idea of laws against what is defined as “hate speech.” It is not fair to suggest that this specific legislation includes a hate speech provision.  It is fair, however, to sound the alarm that very important rights involving the freedom to speak openly against homosexuality, for example, are now at far greater risk.

There was no surprise in the fact that President Obama signed the bill.  The shock came, not in the fact that he signed it, but in what the President said in his comments.  “This is the culmination of a struggle that has lasted more than a decade. Time and again, we faced opposition,” said the President. “Time and again, the measure was defeated or delayed. Time and again we’ve been reminded of the difficulty of building a nation in which we’re all free to live and love as we see fit.”

Does President Obama actually mean what he said here?  Does he really call for a society “in which we’re all free to live and love as we see fit?” The hate crimes bill he signed into law covers gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  The courts will have to sort out all that is covered in those categories.

But the “free to live and love as we see fit” language was set in a context larger than the hate crimes bill.  President Obama is an intellectually serious man. He knows that words matter.  When he speaks of all citizens being “free to live and love as we see fit” he opens the door far beyond the categories of heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual.  Does he mean to include polygamists in this vision?  The “polyamorous?” Incest?  The catalogue of sexual interests claimed by some as “loves” goes far beyond these.

We are living in an age increasingly marked by what Sigmund Freud called “polymorphous perversity.”  I do not believe that President Obama meant to include any and all sexual interests and lifestyles under his blanket category of living and loving “as we see fit.”  But words really do matter, and this President now bears responsibility for signing a dangerous bill into law and then for compounding that act by using language that was self-congratulatory, dishonest, and dangerous.

In another sense, the President’s language was revealing.  The logic that leads to the celebration of gay, lesbian, and bisexual relationships cannot stop with those sexual categories.  In an age that elevates “consent” as the only meaningful moral and legal issue, any effort to refuse similar recognition to any consensual sexual relationship, lifestyle, or practice is doomed to eventual failure.  It is all just a matter of time.

Yes, Sen. McCain, elections have consequences. But words have consequences, too, President Obama. Do you really want to live with the consequences of your words spoken on Thursday?

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates throughout the day on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

The availability of divorce without cause, so-called “no-fault” divorce, rendered every marriage less than it was before. Once impermanence became a mark of marriage in the law and in the culture, couples were required to muster a special level of marital commitment to remain married. Right before the nation’s eyes, divorce redefined marriage.

The revolution was, as is so often the case, led by members of the cultural, academic, legal, and political elites. Liberal intellectuals made the case for divorce as liberation, subverting marriage as a repressive institution. The moral revolutionaries attacked marriage as sexually limiting and oppressive. Feminists demanded divorce as a means of escaping marriage and achieving a right of exit for wives. There were even liberal religious leaders willing to offer a benediction over the dismantlement of marriage.

But as University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox recounts, it was none other than Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, who signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce bill. Reagan, who had recently experienced a bitter divorce from actress Jane Wyman, saw the legislation as a way to humanize divorce. Reagan later saw his role as, in Wilcox’s words, “one of the biggest mistakes of his political life.” Nevertheless, the damage was done — with effects far beyond California. As Wilcox explains, the availability of no-fault divorce “gutted marriage of its legal power to bind husband to wife, allowing one spouse to dissolve marriage for any reason — or for no reason at all.”

Professor Wilcox is one of the nation’s most knowledgeable authorities on the effects of divorce. He is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for American Values. In “The Evolution of Divorce,” published in the inaugural issue of the journal National Affairs, Wilcox traces the effect of the revolution:

This legal transformation was only one of the more visible signs of the divorce revolution then sweeping the United States: From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate more than doubled — from 9.2 divorces per 1,000 married women to 22.6 divorces per 1,000 married women. This meant that while less than 20% of couples who married in 1950 ended up divorced, about 50% of couples who married in 1970 did. And approximately half of the children born to married parents in the 1970s saw their parents part, compared to only about 11% of those born in the 1950s.

Every revolution requires cultural preparation, and the Divorce Revolution is no exception. Wilcox helpfully traces three developments that fostered the acceptance of no-fault divorce. First came the sexual revolution. An age of sexual obsession not only celebrated sex outside of marriage; it also elevated sex as, in effect, the only motivation for a relationship. Second, the “anti-institutional tenor of the age” undermined the authority of the churches to oppose divorce. Third, the psychological revolution undermined marriage with its “focus on individual fulfillment and personal growth.”  Of these three factors, the last was most central.

Wilcox’s article covers a wide range of issues related to the evolution and effects of divorce, but one section of his article deserves particular attention. Early in his analysis he cites the complicity of the elites in bringing about the revolution of no-fault divorce. Yet, the elites never felt the impact of divorce in the same way that the poor and less educated did. As he explains, “This imbalance leaves our cultural and political elites less well attuned to the magnitude of social dysfunction in much of American society, and leaves the most vulnerable Americans — especially children living in poor and working-class communities — even worse off than they would otherwise be.”

Later, Wilcox returns to this imbalance, documenting the “divorce divide” that marks American society. Among more educated and wealthier Americans, divorce is now more rare that it was in 1980. These privileged Americans have seen the impact of divorce and have more to lose if a marriage dissolves. They are now more likely than their parents’ generation to remain married. It is surely good news that “a clear majority of children who are now born to married couples will grow up with their married mothers and fathers.”

Furthermore, elite opinion among the academics has also shifted significantly on divorce. As Wilcox reports:

Although certainly not all scholars, therapists, policymakers, and journalists would agree that contemporary levels of divorce and family breakdown are cause for worry, a much larger share of them expresses concern about the health of marriage in America — and about America’s high level of divorce — than did so in the 1970s. These views seep into the popular consciousness and influence behavior — just as they did in the 1960s and ’70s, when academic and professional experts carried the banner of the divorce revolution.

So far, so good. But this is not the end of the story. Hauntingly, Wilcox observes that “marriage is increasingly the preserve of the highly educated and the middle and upper classes.” Further:

When it comes to divorce and marriage, America is increasingly divided along class and educational lines. Even as divorce in general has declined since the 1970s, what sociologist Steven Martin calls a “divorce divide” has also been growing between those with college degrees and those without (a distinction that also often translates to differences in income). The figures are quite striking: College-educated Americans have seen their divorce rates drop by about 30% since the early 1980s, whereas Americans without college degrees have seen their divorce rates increase by about 6%. Just under a quarter of college-educated couples who married in the early 1970s divorced in their first ten years of marriage, compared to 34% of their less-educated peers. Twenty years later, only 17% of college-­educated couples who married in the early 1990s divorced in their first ten years of marriage; 36% of less-educated couples who married in the early 1990s, however, divorced sometime in their first decade of marriage.

This “divorce divide” compounds the scandal of divorce, adding yet another level of moral responsibility to the issue and even greater culpability to the culture at large. The subversion of marriage flowed from the elites to the larger society. As Wilcox observes, working class and poor Americans once held more conservative views of marriage and divorce than the elites. No longer.

Now, the effects of the Divorce Revolution fall disproportionately on the poor. Even as the elites recover a significant level of commitment to marriage (and to being and remaining married in order to raise children), the effects of the revolution now fall on the poor, the less educated, and the less powerful. Even more tragically, the tragedy of divorce and the subversion of marriage fall on their children.

The Divorce Revolution is a national tragedy with enduring pernicious effects. Now we can see more clearly that the “divorce divide” is nothing less than scandal added to tragedy.

What Bradford Wilcox calls “the fallout of America’s retreat from marriage” now disproportionately harms the least among us. Shame on us all.

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I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Albert Mohler.

Professor Bradford Wilcox was my special guest on Tuesday’s edition of The Albert Mohler Program. Listen here.

National Affairs is an important new journal of ideas. As editor Yuval Levin explains, “To think a little more clearly means first of all to be better informed, and National Affairs will publish essays that bring to bear hard facts and figures and employ the social sciences, even as we remain aware of their limitations. It also means thinking more deeply, and we will publish essays that look to the philosophical foundations of our public life. And it means thinking constructively, so that we will publish not only diagnoses but, when possible, proposals for plausible remedies.” I welcome this new journal and recommend that you take a closer look.

Taking its stand with the radical theological revisionism of the Protestant Left, the ELCA “left the Great Tradition of moral teaching to identify with United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church,” Benne lamented.

Writing in Christianity Today, Benne argued that his denomination had abandoned the Gospel for a social gospel. “The liberating movements fueled by militant feminism, multiculturalism, anti-racism, anti-heterosexism, anti-imperialism, and now ecologism have been moved to the center while the classic gospel and its missional imperatives have been pushed to the periphery.”

Benne, director of the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society, offers a first-hand account of what took place in Minneapolis in August as the ELCA met for its Church Wide Assembly. The actions were sweeping in scope and effect. The ELCA voted to allow churches to call partnered homosexuals as ministers and then adopted a Social Statement on Sexuality (which passed by one vote) which insists that the Bible offers no clear teaching on homosexuality.

As the smoke now begins to clear from the votes in Minneapolis, a larger issue comes clearly into focus — the authority of the “bound conscience.”

As Robert Benne explains, the ELCA’s authority-smashing actions were made possible by the denomination’s adoption of a “bound conscience” principle that, in effect, means that anyone can believe almost anything and demand a place at the table, if they claim that their belief is rooted in a “bound conscience.”

Mark Hanson, the ELCA’s Presiding Bishop, explained that the “bound conscience” principle calls upon all Lutherans to respect the “bound consciences” of those with whom they disagree. Documents released or adopted by the ELCA explained in multiple ways that a conflict of interpretations concerning the Bible should not lead to a break in fellowship. For example:

The very fact that several different positions may be bound to Scripture means that we cannot assert one interpretation of Scripture over another but are called to respect consciences in the community of faith on this matter. The emphasis of “conscience-bound” is not on declaring oneself to be conscience-bound; rather it is that we recognize the conscience-bound nature of the convictions of others in the community of Christ.

In the case of the ELCA, the “several different positions” included the entire spectrum of positions on an issue as controversial and important as same-sex unions. The Social Statement on Sexuality affirmed no less than four “conscience-bound” positions within the church. The positions, all claimed as “conscience-bound,” ranged from the rejection of same-sex marriage to its outright acceptance. This affirms Robert Benne’s judgment that the church now has “no authoritative biblical or theological guidance” on a crucial theological and pastoral issue.

Though the issue of sexuality garnered media attention, the theological issue of “bound-conscience” is more fundamental. In accepting this principle, these Lutherans effectively abandoned any claim of normative instruction from the Bible. On an issue of such crucial pastoral and moral importance, the ELCA offers an entire range of contradictory positions, each of which is now to be “respected” because someone holding it claims to be bound by conscience.

Of course, any serious person declaring a position on any important issue will (and should) claim to be bound by conscience. The alternative to this is to suggest or to admit one’s position to be both baseless and insincere.  All sides in a theological controversy claim to be bound by conscience. This claim settles nothing and, on its own, leads to ecclesiastical disaster. The church simply surrenders to the autonomous individualism so prized by the larger culture and abdicates any authority to speak the truth.

The concept of being bound by conscience goes directly back to Martin Luther, the great Reformer who established what became known as the Lutheran tradition. On more than one famous occasion, Luther publicly took his stand and held his ground, claiming that his conscience was bound by the Word of God. He most famously made this case as he stood on trial before the Diet of Worms on April 18, 1521. Before the impaneled church leaders and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Luther declared:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason …,  I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.”

Of course, Luther was not merely claiming to be bound by conscience. He was specifically claiming that his conscience was bound by the word of God. Luther, unlike the ELCA, believed that the Scriptures offer a very clear presentation of the Gospel and of moral and theological teachings. Luther affirmed the inspiration, authority, sufficiency, and clarity of the word of God and he took his stand on the authority of Scripture alone. The Word of God bound his conscience by its clear teaching.

Indeed, Luther was very suspicious of the human conscience. In the main, he was convinced that sin had so warped the capacity of conscience that it actually functions in most persons to foster a works religion which is the very opposite of the Gospel. The conscience makes the sinner aware of doing wrong, but then suggests works as a way of earning God’s good pleasure. As Randall C. Zachman documents in his important work, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Luther was convinced that the conscience uncorrected by Scripture would lead to “the idolatrous religion of conscience.”

In Luther’s own words: “God wants our conscience to be certain and sure that it is pleasing to Him. This cannot be done if the conscience is led by its own feelings, but only if it relies on the Word of God.”

Thus, the ELCA’s new principle of “bound-conscience” actually embraces and leads to what Martin Luther most feared — a burlesque of conflicting consciences without accountability to the Scriptures.

The point was not lost on many Lutheran observers.  Retired ELCA Bishop Paull Spring of State College, PA, chairman of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee, a group opposed to the ELCA’s radically liberal direction, noted: “In its emphasis on conscience, the task force forgot that Luther was not talking about his own right to his own opinion. He was declaring his commitment and allegiance to the Word of God.” He added: “It is exactly the opposite of the task force’s idea of conscience as one’s personal beliefs. They are encouraging the strange notion of a bound conscience as nothing more than individualism.”

The idea of a bound conscience is deadly dangerous unless the conscience is bound by the Word of God. Those who would claim a bound conscience but pervert, deny, subvert, or relativize the Word may indeed be bound by conscience. But a conscience bound by anything other than the Word of God is a conscience given over to idolatry.

This is a Lutheran lesson we all desperately need to learn. And Martin Luther himself deserves the last word:

“It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.”

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I am always glad to hear from listeners and readers.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Rev. Robert Benne will be my guest on today’s edition of The Albert Mohler Program. Tune in to hear a discussion of why the actions of the ELCA must be of interest to all committed Christians.

This issue came to light last month in a fascinating essay by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times. Dowd, whose columns often reveal the nation’s Zeitgeist, cited the fact that a number of major studies indicate that “women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.” She asked: “Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?”

A very similar set of questions arises from TIME magazine’s current cover story and special report, “The State of the American Woman.” As the cover of the magazine explains, “A new poll shows why they are more powerful — but less happy.”

Reporter Nancy Gibbs traces the vast changes brought about by the feminist revolution. “It’s funny how things change slowly, until the day we realize they’ve changed completely,” she observes. As she documents, these changes are easily visible in contemporary America:

In 1972 only 7% of students playing high school sports were girls; now the number is six times as high. The female dropout rate has fallen in half. College campuses used to be almost 60-40 male; now the ratio has reversed, and close to half of law and medical degrees go to women, up from fewer than 10% in 1970. Half the Ivy League presidents are women, and two of the three network anchors soon will be; three of the four most recent Secretaries of State have been women.

Along the way, Gibbs also traces more fundamental changes. With remarkable understatement she simply notes “the detachment of marriage and motherhood” among other transformations. “Women no longer view matrimony as a necessary station on the road to financial security or parenthood,” she explains.

Nevertheless, “Among the most confounding changes of all is the evidence, tracked by numerous surveys, that as women have gained more freedom, more education and more economic power, they have become less happy.”

Gibbs cites a growing body of research that documents this trend toward unhappiness. In “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” [pdf file] published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers explain that women in the 1970s “reported higher subjective well-being than did men.” Now, the opposite is the case.

The big question raised by these studies is this: Has feminism produced unhappiness among women? That question is inescapable when seen in light of the historical context. The great transformation of society by feminism took shape only after the 1970s. As a political and social movement, feminism has been stunningly successful. In the span of a single generation, the society has been overwhelmingly transformed. But, over the same period, women report themselves less happy, especially as compared to men.

As Gail Collins notes in her new book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, the pace of this transformation has been absolutely stunning. “The cherished convictions about women and what they could do were smashed in the lifetime of many of the women living today,” she observes. “It happened so fast that the revolution seemed to be over before either side could really find its way to the barricades.”

Nevertheless, Collins, also a columnist for The New York Times, concluded: ” The feminist movement of the late 20th century created a new United States in which women ran for president, fought for their country, argued before the Supreme Court, performed heart surgery, directed movies, and flew into space. But it did not resolve the tensions of trying to raise children and hold down a job at the same time.”

These tensions have erupted as flash points in our national conversation over recent years. Some feminists have accused women who decide to stay home with their children as “letting down the team.”  Gail Collins cites Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard University as saying, “It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?”

The essays by Maureen Dowd and Nancy Gibbs both raise the fundamental question of feminism –  Has it led to greater unhappiness among women? Dowd and Gibbs remain committed feminists. Nevertheless, as Dowd notes, feminism has served to increase the burdens upon women, even as it promised to open doors.

Sadly, most feminists seem incapable, given their ideological commitments, of asking the hardest questions. “Progress is seldom simple,” Gibbs explains, “it comes with costs and casualties, even challenges about whether a change represents an advance or a retreat.”

In reality, feminism was never only about opening doors for women. In order to make the case for the vast social transformation that feminism has produced, the feminist movement aspired to nothing short of a total social, moral, and cultural revolution. Along the way, feminism redefined womanhood, marriage, motherhood, and the roles for both men and women.

Nevertheless, it appears that most women are uncomfortable with this total package. Instead of producing a vast expansion of happiness among women, the feminist movement must now answer for the fact that women, by their own evaluation, appear to be less happy than before the revolution.

The reason for this is probably quite simple. Women are in the best position to evaluate, not only what feminism has gained, but what it has lost. Maybe Susan Faludi is right –  The women’s movement wasn’t about happiness.

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I am always glad to hear from readers.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

I discussed this topic on Thursday’s edition of The Albert Mohler Program with special guest Dr. Denny Burk, Dean of Boyce College.