Double Dutch

Remembering Uncle Frank

2024-01-14T13:02:00.001-06:00

Let us now speak of Uncle Frank.

No, not that one.

My Bartlesville friends already know plenty about Frank Phillips. He’s royalty in Bartlesville. But sometimes the world’s true nobility are found in places we wouldn’t expect. “As for the saints who are on the earth,” the psalmist says, “they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”

Augustus Ward Loomis

We learn about another “Uncle Frank” in an 1859 book called Scenes in the Indian Country by Augustus Ward Loomis. Rev. Loomis was a Presbyterian missionary who penned an account of his time spent “amongst the Creek Indians, who are located along the Arkansas river” in what is now Oklahoma.Rev. Loomis introduces us to Uncle Frank, “the black man, whose quarters were in the rear of the mill-house, and who ground the meal. He was entirely blind; had once been a bondman, was now free ... He kept his snug little room in good order, neater than some do who have both their eyes. He chopped his own wood; and some times we found him engaged in mending his clothes, which he chose to do rather than to be the occasion of unnecessary trouble to others.”

Uncle Frank felt his way around with his cane. Often he would come to the missionary and humbly inquire if he could spare a few minutes. “If you please, I would be so much obliged if you would read to me a few verses.”

After hearing a few Bible passages, Uncle Frank would say: “Oh, that is beautiful! Thank you. I am indeed very much obliged. … Oh that delightful book, sir! Strange it is, sir, that we seem to hear it like a new book every time, and to get some fresh light from it every time! Does it seem so to you, sir, when you read it? Or have you learned it to the bottom?”

Uncle Frank would then go “back to his work,” Rev. Loomis tells us, “or to his room to ruminate, and study upon what he has heard, and to employ himself in prayer. … He was always devout, and always cheerful. God’s ways, he said, were all right and merciful, too.

“Occasionally we went to spend a few minutes with him, as he stood at his work, or sat in his door after the day’s work was done, to hear him tell of what the Lord had done for his soul. He was wont to say that he never could express all his thankfulness to God for ever permitting him to hear the gospel, and for causing him to see what a sinner he was, and what danger he was in; and then to see Jesus and to trust in him as the Lamb of God that taketh away sin.”

“The good Lord is taking care of me so well,” Uncle Frank would say, “giving me so good a home, and causing people to be so kind to me, a poor old black man, and blind, without money, relatives, or home of my own.”

What say you, dear reader, when you hear of this Uncle Frank? We sit here in our comfort, with our eyesight, all of us rich compared to most people in the world and ridiculously rich by the standards of world history. Many of us have numerous Bibles scattered throughout the house. All of us are within a short drive of dozens of faithful pastors who preach Christ and him crucified.

It seems to me that, when it comes to gratitude and contentment, we would do well to learn from Uncle Frank.

[This article appeared in the November 2023 issue of bMonthly magazine.]

The Heritage Foundation's 50th Anniversary Celebration Recap

2023-05-04T10:34:00.005-05:00

In Defense of Coach Kennedy

2022-03-02T15:01:00.000-06:00

I was honored to join in this amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case involving a football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games and in this amicus brief on the merits.

How ‘Progressive’ Can One Get and Still Be Considered a Christian?

2021-12-11T19:03:00.002-06:00

Obviously, there’s a kind of progress (penicillin, air conditioning) that’s good. But as John Piper says in a new podcast, it’s not good to “progress” away from the truth and toward error. It’s not good to “progress” away from holiness and toward immorality.

“There is a line that a person may cross that puts him in a position of rightly being considered a non-Christian,” Piper says, “because of some unrepentant behavior or some belief that the Bible itself shows to undermine salvation.”

Against Biden's Big-Government Socialism Bill

2021-09-09T14:00:00.009-05:00

[This post is updated regularly.]

I was pleased today to sign a coalition letter opposing the numerous tax hikes on American families and businesses being considered in the Democrats' reckless $3.5 tax-and-spend proposal. "The Biden economic agenda is designed with one goal in mind—to remake America and the principles upon which our nation was founded," my ally Brooke Rollins says. "These policies threaten American prosperity, small businesses, the economic health of every American family, and our standing in the world."

UPDATES:

I also weighed in to oppose Biden’s proposed reporting regime to have the IRS collect the account inflows and outflows exceeding $600 for your bank accounts, Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, etc.
Good write-up over at National Review ("How the Conservative ‘Save America Coalition’ Helped Kill Build Back Better"). I could not be prouder to be a part of this coalition.

Putting the 'Quit' in 'Equity'

2021-05-24T08:23:00.013-05:00

White evangelicals "have got to be willing to surrender power," Southern Baptist seminary president Danny Akin once helpfully suggested. "Not only do we need to invite ethnic minorities into our room and to have a seat at the table, we even need to be willing to surrender leadership at the table if we’re really going to make progress and really help our brothers and sisters understand we see them on an equal plane with ourselves."

Forbes columnist Jack Kelly agrees, saying bluntly that "to fight systemic racism, CEOs and high-profile professionals should step down and offer their jobs to people of color." As Noah Carl put it in a paper for the National Association of Scholars: "If you’re in favor of more 'diversity,' how come you haven’t resigned?"

Libs of TikTok highlights a doctor who is calling on white men "to show they’re 'dedicated to equity' by donating part of their salary to black women for Black History Month."

To their great credit, some of my fellow beige-colored Americans actually have the integrity and courage to walk the walk.

For example, Oklahoma State University teaching assistant Jessica Bridges—informing us that "racism originates with and is perpetuated by White people" and distraught over her own "internalized white supremacy"—says she plans to do her part for the cause by not teaching Spanish.

Matthew Dowd ended his campaign for lieutenant governor of Texas—and hinted that Robert Francis O'Rourke should end his campaign for governor?—saying "white male Christians" like himself must "take it upon ourselves to step back and give more people who don't look like us access to the levers of power."

One Greta Thunberg-inspired climate organization branded itself racist and disbanded.

Boston Pride, lamenting its own "systemic and structural racism," also disbanded.

Jaime Grant, a "queer feminist sex activist" (don't ask), declares: "White people, it's time to resign. I did."

And so did this PCA teaching elder. He says he resigned as the senior pastor of his church to make way for "minority voices." Here's hoping more and more pallid Presbyterian progressives will push pause on their performative preening and precipitate the passing of their privileged paychecks.

[Happily, this post is updated regularly.]

Jason Whitlock in OKC

2021-05-20T10:18:00.004-05:00

Sports journalist Jason Whitlock spoke to an OCPA crowd of 690 folks at a dinner last month in Oklahoma City. At a reception prior to the event, Jack Henry (pictured at right) and I had a chance to talk hoops with him.

We Need to Stop Being So Romantic About College

2021-05-07T12:05:00.014-05:00

Here is a helpful 60-second video from AEI.

This is especially true when you consider that so many colleges and universities are pushing critical race theory (which they disguise with terms like “equity,” “social justice,” and “diversity and inclusion”).

OCPA Asks Cole to Abandon Bogus Civics Bill

2021-05-03T14:30:00.000-05:00

"Leading members of the Civics Alliance, convened by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to fight action civics and related dangers, have issued an open letter appealing to Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) and Congressman Tom Cole (R., Okla.) to abandon their support for the egregiously misnamed 'Civics Secures Democracy Act,'" Stanley Kurtz writes today at National Review Online.

This $6 billion bill (which should be named the Action Civics and Critical Race Theory Harm America Act) will impose these pernicious pedagogies on every school in the nation, just as Obama used massive federal grants to spread Common Core. Cornyn and Cole are Republican co-sponsors of this “bipartisan” bill, and their exit from that sponsorship could kill this legislative monstrosity before it manages to destroy American education. ...

Some of the signatories of the open letter are of particular note. It will be of interest to Representative Cole of Oklahoma to see the names of Brandon Dutcher, senior vice president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and Sheryl Kaufman, an influential D.C. insider who served as communications director for former Oklahoma congressman Jim Bridenstine.

Homeschooling in Oklahoma Nearly Tripled During the Lockdown

2021-04-28T12:23:00.001-05:00

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that, nationwide, homeschooling doubled between the spring of 2020 and the fall of 2020. In Oklahoma, it nearly tripled—from 7.7 percent of households to 20.1 percent. (Importantly, Census says this is “true homeschooling” rather than simply “virtual learning through a public or private school.”)

Higher Than What?

2021-04-23T23:10:00.000-05:00

Just how widespread is the rot in Oklahoma's higher education system?

In its mandatory "diversity training" program, the University of Oklahoma asks all incoming students if they’re "genderqueer," "pansexual," or a number of other options. OU also warns students that the phrase "Boomer Sooner" is problematic. The OU diversity czar who oversees all this indoctrination is paid $230,000 annually in salary alone.

Oklahoma State University, whose new president is a pediatrician, informs its students that "gender is a large spectrum and does not only include male and female."

The University of Central Oklahoma informs us that "a person could be a man or a woman or both or neither."

Further examples abound. I am collating them here.

LGBTQPCA, RIP?

2021-04-18T13:24:00.065-05:00


[Credit: The Weekly Standard]

[This post is updated regularly.]

“If you are in the PCA, barring a miracle from heaven, your denomination is finished," Douglas Wilson wrote in 2018 (PCA, R.I.P.). "Either believe the Bible, all of it, or just cut to the chase and call yourself a liberal. And once you are a liberal, there will be absolutely no remaining principle of resistance when the LGBTQ-plussers are speaking as confidently as all dammit at the microphones of your General Assemblies. So whatever you say, apart from massive repentance, your beloved denomination is going to assume room temperature shortly. Count on it."

Why is this the case? Well, in short, Jon Payne explained in 2020 (“The PCA’s Very Slippery Slope”), “a growing number of our ministers and churches are conforming to the world’s values, attitudes, and ideals, especially as it concerns homosexuality and the social gospel. The future doesn’t look good for the PCA. Frankly, the future looks pretty bad, and I’m not alone in my assessment. … Progressivism is a fast-moving slippery slope in the PCA, ultimately leading to the idolatrous mire of theological liberalism … Unless the PCA—from her pulpits and courts—decides not to conform to unbiblical views on human sexuality, social justice, and critical theory, it will be impossible to avoid a denominational split. The inescapable fact is that confessional Presbyterianism and theological progressivism make terrible roommates.”

Is there any hope that things can be turned around?

Reason for Hope?

Tim Bayly doesn't see a reason for hope. He says that "passing this or that modulated statement of an earlier less-modulated statement" at the 2021 PCA General Assembly, while still having no intention of actually disciplining liberals, is meaningless.

"There are enough loopholes in the proposed changes," Larry Ball adds, "to continue to allow Side B Homosexuals to continue as officers in the PCA (or be admitted to the PCA)."

"I was glad to see the step toward confessional fidelity that the new BCO language may be," a young woman named Katie wrote on Twitter. "I was even more encouraged by the RE turnout that seems to indicate some have finally woken up to the fact that the PCA is in danger. But I fear it may be too little too late. In an ideal world, where the new overtures receive 2/3 support in presbyteries and then are actually enforced at presbytery level, this will merely cut off one small tentacle of the beast of wokeness / standpoint epistemology that has almost swallowed PCA whole."

On the other hand, Todd Pruitt is encouraged. The 2021 General Assembly saw record attendance, especially among ruling elders, and he believes the General Assembly sent a clear message.

Pastor Aldo Leon likewise is encouraged.

Jon Payne also sees a bright future for the PCA—without a bigger tent. Creating space for "two culturally driven ideologies"—Side B gay Christianity and Critical Race Theory (CRT)—"will facilitate serious and irreparable damage and division. Therefore, they must be rejected. There is no room for compromise. The Assembly’s voting margins from last week foster hope that the PCA’s future plans do not include tent expansion. We mustn’t make room for Side B and CRT."

Carl Trueman was likewise encouraged: "In the last few days, I have spoken to a number of GA commissioners. They seem to agree that at the GA, 'the little guys stood up' (to quote one commissioner verbatim). Ruling elders—commissioners who are not professional clergy and who live in the real world—turned out in force. Small churches scrimped and saved to send their pastors. The big urban churches, even with the social media savvy and the careful organization of the National Partnership (that most un-Presbyterian of things—a lobby group that operates outside the courts of the church), were beaten by the votes of culturally anonymous and culturally inconsequential congregations. And, to quote said commissioner again, the PCA voted to uphold the Christian sexual morality of the last two millennia, rather than that of merely the last two decades."

Trueman believes that "for the progressives, their own rhetoric of listening and inclusion now poses a problem for their strategy. ... Having had their approach so roundly defeated by the GA, are they prepared to listen as humbly to their fellow presbyters as they have apparently been willing to listen to culturally dominant voices in society at large? Or will they simply blame the result on the bigoted, troglodyte ignorance of the majority? Initial responses on Twitter suggest that the latter might well be the case. For example, one prominent opponent of the GA’s decision has declared on Twitter that it is the result of Southern pietistic moralists. Such a response gives little hope that the progressives will engage in any significant self-criticism at this point. That is unfortunate and, if it persists, would imply that the progressive language of love, unity, and dialogue amounts in practice to nothing more than sententious sanctimony designed to serve a broader political purpose."

Ryan Biese says "the PCA remains a sound denomination and if the actions of the 2021 General Assembly are ratified, the result will be a more faithfully Reformed and Presbyterian communion than it was last year." He believes we could see "departures by those who were not 'of us' as they grow frustrated with our commitment to uphold the standards of the denomination; they will begin to affiliate with more like-minded, progressive faith communions." One can hope. (Todd Pruitt suggests that many progressives are in fact headed out the door, while others would like to resign in protest but frankly need the paycheck.)

Below are some further reading materials.

"The Word of God comes and is used by the Spirit for the true care of our souls," Jonathan Master writes in an excellent review of Greg Johnson's new book. "What is offered in this book, however, is not that kind of care. It is not care aimed at growth; it is more like the palliative care offered to a hospice patient."
Greg Johnson "provides enough evidence from his own statements to make it obvious that this characteristic is so core to his being and so central to his personal narrative that it disqualifies him from ordained service," says the dissenting opinion in the Johnson case. "TE Johnson consistently palliates the sin of same-sex attraction such that he dishonors God."
Tim Bayly has put together a list of PCA pastors and elders "who declined to contend for the faith" when the homosexualists mounted an attack on the purity and peace of the Church at the 2019 General Assembly. (These men signed a formal protest against Pastor Steve Warhurst's witness against Revoice.)
"Greg Johnson and the Revoice crowd don’t understand the most basic aspects of Christianity or the Gospel," says PCA pastor Mark Kozak, "and in no way are qualified to be anywhere near the pulpit …. other than kneeling in front of it and repenting."
In this 73-page paper, M.D. Perkins confronts the ideology of the Revoice movement.
"The lines have been drawn," Charlie Rodriguez writes. "Either the Progressives will leave or the Confessionalists will leave. Or to put it another way, either the PCA will become a liberal denomination or it will remain true to the Word of God. ... Confessionalists must protect the purity of the PCA and its churches and agencies. Progressives need to take a good hard look at the Word of God, get right with God, and apologize."
"The PCA "is in the throes of an identity crisis," writes R. Scott Clark, "in part because of the relatively decentralized character of the PCA and a relatively lax approach to confessional subscription, which has developed over the last twenty years. In that time an influential and organized progressive movement has developed in the PCA. It has allowed them to adapt and adopt pragmatic church-growth principles, to take significant exceptions to confessional standards, turn a blind eye to the Federal Vision movement in the church courts, create functionally female deacons and elders, and to promote the so-called Side-B approach to homosexuality."
White evangelicals "have got to be willing to surrender power," our Southern Baptist brother Danny Akin once helpfully suggested. "Not only do we need to invite ethnic minorities into our room and to have a seat at the table, we even need to be willing to surrender leadership at the table if we’re really going to make progress and really help our brothers and sisters understand we see them on an equal plane with ourselves." Forbes columnist Jack Kelly agrees, saying bluntly that "to fight systemic racism, CEOs and high-profile professionals should step down and offer their jobs to people of color." To their great credit, some people actually have the integrity and courage to walk the walk. Jaime Grant, a "queer feminist sex activist" (don't ask), declares: "White people, it's time to resign. I did." And so did this PCA teaching elder. He says he resigned as the senior pastor of his church to make way for "minority voices." Here's hoping more and more pallid Presbyterian progressives push pause on their performative preening and precipitate the passing of their privileged paychecks.

"Progressive Christianity is Liberal Christianity 2.0 because it is cut from the same bolt of cloth—with the identical fabric of a wrong motivation and wrong mission, leading to the wrong message and the wrong ministries," Harry Reeder writes.
The embrace of critical theory within American Christendom "will do far, far more damage than an evangelical embrace of former President Donald Trump ever did," writes PCA member Erick Erickson. "It will fully separate Christians from the truth of the gospel and drag them into a religion without grace, which makes any sort of racial reconciliation impossible."
"As someone who lived as a lesbian for a decade while advocating for LGBTQ rights and causes as an activist and tenured English professor in New York, and now as someone who is a biblically married pastor’s wife with children and grandchildren, I can emphatically declare that gay Christianity is a trap set by Satan, whether you are acting on sinful impulses or not," Rosaria Butterfield writes. "'Gay' Christianity—whether a person is sexually active or not—is a different religion from biblical Christianity." She also laments that "intersectionality has found a home in many of our Reformed churches."
Art Pereira is a gay man serving as the director of youth ministry at Hope Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Randolph, New Jersey, Shawn Mathis reports. Mr. Pereira has a straight friend, Nick Galluccio, a youth pastor at Stonecrest Community Church, for whom Mr. Pereira has romantic feelings. Mr. Pereira says he and Mr. Galluccio "are deeply committed to each other." He says they are a family and a household. They are "planning on sharing life together for the rest of our lives." According to Mr. Pereira, "We make decisions together as a family. … When he has a wife one day, she'll make the decisions with us." Mr. Pereira's PCA pastor is supportive of this arrangement.
The PCA is now pretty much the PCUSA, Tim Bayly laments.
For all his faults, at least Donald Trump recognizes we are in a fight for our lives. "Ironically," Mark Devine writes ("Evangelicals Fight Wokedom Without and Within"), "unless the evangelical elites learn this as well, and soon, their hatred of Trump may destroy whatever evangelical or even Christian credibility they once thought support for Trump would threaten."
"Seeing prominent voices within the PCA embracing critical theory should deeply bother the leaders of the denomination," Erick Erickson writes. "Seeing, yet again, many of those voices coming out of the PCA’s own in-house seminary should deeply bother the denomination."
Reverend Melvin Tinker discusses the demonic cultural Marxism that has infected the church.
"I fear that if the PCA makes room for 'Side B' gay identity out of a sense of compassion, then vulnerable young people could be led toward unbiblical self-conceptions and even sinful behaviors," writes one PCA church member who has experienced same-sex attraction. "No matter how strongly a Christian claims (and sincerely tries) to adhere to traditional ethics otherwise, I don’t believe it’s possible to adopt the 'gay' modifier without bringing along a host of destructive implications. When I see Teaching and Ruling Elders publicly arguing otherwise, I believe they’re doing pastoral harm, no matter how kind their intentions."
On May 28, 2020, a committee of the PCA released a new report on gender and sexuality. "I couldn’t be more grateful to see these twelve affirmations from the PCA study committee," Denny Burk writes. "I look forward to seeing the General Assembly take it up next summer. I hope and pray that they will approve it. If they do, it will perhaps be the most comprehensive statement on biblical sexuality adopted by a Protestant denomination." For his part, Pastor Al Baker is underwhelmed with the new PCA report. "The very fact that we are having this discussion is all we need to know of how far the PCA has strayed from the Scriptures on the issue of homosexuality," he writes ("Leaving the PCA").
"Those of us concerned about the PCA’s drift toward worldliness have an important role to play in returning our denomination to sound biblical orthodoxy on creation, race, men and women, sexuality, etc.," Bill Peacock writes.
Greg Johnson's "recategorization of SSA as an untouchable identity fails the biblical and confessional test," David Garner writes. "Johnson’s new doctrine of sanctification requires befriending an identity that opposes Christ."
"The PCA is on track to be another denominational domino to topple along with the mainline churches who have embraced theological liberalism," Pastor Chris Gordon writes.
Aaron Baker, who received an M.A. in Theological Studies from the PCA’s Covenant Theological Seminary, is an 8th-grade social studies teacher in the Mid-Del school district who promotes "radical social justice in Oklahoma public schools." He boasts: “I unashamedly promote tolerance, multiculturalism, gender equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-racism.” Indeed, in districts like his with inclusive nondiscrimination policies, Mr. Baker says, "LGBTQ issues are non-debatable in classrooms" and certain opinions "should not be allowed to be heard." Moreover, he advises his fellow educators to “avoid saying ‘he’ or ‘she.’ … [T]he safest way for educators to be inclusive of all gender identities is to all together drop the male and female pronouns for students.” In addition, teachers should “avoid saying ‘boys and girls’ or ‘ladies and gentlemen.’ … The problem is that these phrases are binary and automatically exclude any students who don’t fit into these two defined categories. Instead, say something like ‘students of all genders’ or ‘students and scholars.’”
"What the PCA doesn’t need is another mission drift into social work and social engineering," Pastor Jim Shaw II writes. "If one wishes to see the world changed, it will happen in the same way that it has for the past 2000 years—through the work of the Holy Spirit regenerating hearts and turning them to Christ. The PCA needs to turn away from virtue signaling how much we are just like the 'woke' world and turn to being the salt and light we were called to be. ... There are no monsters to be found in the closet, and thrashing mom’s fur coat to make Chesapeake Presbytery feel better won’t do any good."
"While I deplore the theology of Revoice," writes Todd Pruitt, "the adoption of Critical Theory represents an even greater threat to the Gospel. It should not surprise us that the denominations which have taken up the categories and language of 'Theory' and Liberation Theology have all died or are dying due to apostasy."
As soon as one begins to appeal leftward, Doug Wilson reminds us, "your hypothetical audience starts to drift further left on you. You find yourself having to move ever leftward to remain 'winsome.' And this, boys and girls, is how we got from Dan Quayle’s Murphy Brown 'blunder' on single motherhood to the point where we are today, where doctors, without risking their licenses, will actually take money in order to cut off the breasts of perfectly healthy teen-aged girls."
"The scandal of Revoice is now almost three years old," Tim Bayly writes. "There has not been a single statement of condemnation nor a single disciplinary rebuke nor censure. Not one. ... The absence of any judgments against the men of Revoice might seem like no big deal until we stop and consider that a number of these Revoice souls have now entered eternity where they faced the judgment seat of God. Having not been blessed by any watchmen’s warning, they have died in their sins, but their blood will be required at the watchmen’s hands."
Larry Alex Taunton observes that "doctrinal malpractice has given us a generation of men, Christian and otherwise, who are what Lewis called 'men without chests.'"
Critical Race Theory is "a false religion," Gerry McDermott tells Todd Pruitt and Carl Trueman.
"How can a PCA church host an event that contradicts its own confessional standards?" asks the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. "How can this church allow a celebration of the very sin that Scripture binds them to oppose?"
"If the PCA approves of Memorial Presbyterian Church (and failure to discipline is approval), then those who cannot accept these secular inroads will have to consider how we must apply Paul’s demand to refuse partnership with those who promote spiritual darkness," Richard D. Phillips writes.
"Not on guard for the sanctification without which no man will see God, these men of the PCA and Missouri Presbytery have become liars themselves," Tim Bayly points out. "Elders lie. Pastors lie. Greg Johnson and his fellow Missouri Presbyters have lied and lied and lied. About practices. About intentions. About motivations. About holiness. About purity. About God." He says it's time for the PCA to stop lying and get to work.
Laura Perry, author of Transgender to Transformed: A Story of Transition That Will Truly Set You Free, warns against the PCA's 2020 Revoice conference. "If you have struggled with sexual sin of any kind," she writes, "you cannot continue to identify with your sin."
"Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA), the host church of the first Revoice Conference, has recently opened its doors to activities even further beyond the pale of PCA faith and practice than Revoice," Zack Groff writes.
The polity of the PCA "prescribes a system of discipline when church members, pastors, sessions, or presbyteries sin or indulge in error," Todd Pruitt writes. "It is sad to see that one of our churches, Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis, MO (Missouri Presbytery), hosted an event (February 27-March 1) which was intended to celebrate sexual immorality and gender confusion."
"I wonder how much longer before denials of orthodox trinitarianism, substitutionary atonement, justification by faith alone, the necessity of the new birth, etc. will be deemed in some Presbyteries as 'not striking at the vitals of our religion,'" Todd Pruitt writes.
The PCA is "increasingly a liberal, progressive denomination," PCA minister Al Baker laments. "No teaching elder (TE) or ruling elder (RE) in the PCA "would be so bold as to deny the inspiration, infallibility, or inerrancy of the Scriptures. No TE or RE would say that he no longer subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) or the Larger and Shorter Catechisms; but this my friends, without doubt, is happening regularly."
"The sponsors of the Revoice conference 'would rather blow up the PCA than deny their own lusts.'"
"The PCA cannot afford either to endorse the Revoice message or even to stand by inactive as conferences like these are held in our churches," Richard D. Phillips writes ("Revoice and the 'Idolatry' of the Nuclear Family").
"The fact that the PCA 'debated' whether to adopt something like the Nashville Statement and the vote was something like 800-500 tells you how bad the cancer is," Toby Sumpter writes. "This was not a victory for conservatives. It was a biopsy of the denomination. The results show us that the PCA has cancer in almost 40% of its lymph nodes. This is stage 4, and apart from radical chemo repentance, this cancer metastasizes and the PCA is dead."
"The PCA is sick and nothing other than the Spirit working through the denomination will save her," Andrew Dionne writes. "Greg Johnson, the man who urged his session to host the first Revoice conference and who recently came out on the pages of Christianity Today, used a heap of emotional manipulation to argue against the adoption of the Nashville Statement. Note the weaponized victimhood and the applause [including from some liberal Oklahomans] that followed his speech. Following the GA, as we noted, Johnson claimed victory for the homosexualists in the PCA." [All the Warhorn posts on the PCA are worth reading.]
"The heart remains soft towards Greg Johnson, brother in Christ, but with regard to Greg Johnson, minister in the PCA, the mind cannot help but find several fundamental problems, Jonathan Barlow writes. "Is it too great a task for God to help Greg Johnson love a particular woman, even in the midst of his general inclinations? Would any pastor in attendance at the General Assembly encourage a parishioner to approach his or her life in the way Johnson has chosen to walk—sure of what God cannot do, constraining hope to what Professor Experience tells us about our lives by sight rather than basing hope on the mighty arm of God by faith? Is this how Pastor Johnson counsels members of his own flock when they face sins (or temptations to sin) that alienate them from God’s good plan for us?" Moreover, "Johnson’s confessions raise the necessity of studying the trajectory of denominations who, in the past, have ordained openly gay, yet celibate Christians as ministers."
"The alternative to Revoice spirituality," Jonathan Master writes, "is one which points to the need for conversion—repentance from sin and a turn to the Truth—coupled with a life of worship shaped by these words: 'Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.'"
Dr. Peter Jones and Joshua Gielow provide a recap of the Revoice conference.
"If the Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran teaching on continence is the same as that which the Larger Catechism teaches concerning the 7th commandment," Jeffrey Windt writes, "it leaves me to wonder whether some of the Spiritual Friendship and/or Revoice proponents in the PCA might not have some significant disagreement with the Westminster Standards on this issue and all other implicated areas as well."
"For 45 years the PCA has stood for the gospel," the online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America notes, "and in the past decade, the denomination has begun thinking seriously about applying the gospel to social issues. In doing so, [PCA pastor and historian Sean Michael] Lucas is concerned that we might follow the path of progressives in the previous generation and lose the gospel."
"Revoice’s well-meaning empathy to the gay culture...must be thoughtfully examined," Dr. Peter Jones writes. "I believe it can only accelerate a cultural decline into paganism."
Albert Mohler's biggest concern with the Revoice conference "is the acceptance of the idea that our sexual identity or any individual's sexual orientation becomes a defining issue that isn't changed by the gospel and isn't transformed by sanctification."
"The PCA is supposed to be one of the stalwart evangelical denominations, and we all looked away for a minute and then blammo," Douglas Wilson writes. "Revoice is a plain and naked play to make open effeminacy an acceptable option for PCA members in good standing."
Revoice "is normalizing homosexuality in conservative churches," Shawn Mathis writes.
"The Revoice conference’s programming and the casual embrace of finding one’s identity in what the Scriptures prohibit," Andrew T. Walker writes, "seems to be an enormous miscalculation with real-world implications."
"Seminaries corrupt the church by first corrupting their pastors," Tim Bayly and Andrew Dionne write. "This is the only explanation needed for the condition of the Presbyterian Church in America today."
"The Revoice conference is the advance team doing the prep work for future and far more glaring compromises," Douglas Wilson writes ("Hey, Fancy Boy").
The PCA refused to discipline a City Church pastor who is now leading souls to Hell.
"The problems facing the PCA today are those the Roman Catholic church has been facing for many decades now."
The PCA's good-faith efforts to address historic racism are falling into wokeness and critical race theory, Miles Smith warns.

For Civics Education

2021-04-14T14:36:00.004-05:00

As America’s cultural revolution continues, the need for civics education in our schools has never been greater. I'm pleased to be an initial signatory on a letter announcing the formation of the Civics Alliance, a new coalition dedicated to preserving traditional civics education against this threat of left-wing activism masquerading as civics.

Most Oklahoma Students Are Eligible for a Private-School Scholarship — Right Now

2021-02-21T15:39:00.003-06:00

Survey data tell us that, for whatever reason—whether it's school safety, moral values, academic rigor, or whatever the case may be—one in three Oklahomans would like to send their children to a private or parochial school.

They may not realize that, perhaps surprisingly, most Oklahoma students are already eligible for a scholarship.

Oklahoma has two programs to choose from:

[1] Most students in Oklahoma are eligible to apply for a private-school scholarship funded by private donations (for which donors receive a state tax credit). Click here to learn more about the program. And to explore schools, click here, here, here, or here, for example.

[2] Many students in Oklahoma—special-education students, foster kids, children adopted out of state custody, and more—are eligible for a Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship. Click here to learn more about the program.

Against the $15 Federal Minimum Wage

2021-02-02T09:34:00.000-06:00

"If Congress is serious about supporting small businesses and a strong economy," says a coalition letter today which I signed, "lawmakers should reject any and all efforts to impose a nationwide $15 minimum wage."

Jack Henry Had a Cool 27 Last Night

2021-01-30T18:45:00.001-06:00

Including a four-point play.

Thoughts on Our Cultural Riot

2020-08-08T17:03:00.003-05:00

Protesters set up a guillotine outside the home of billionaire Jeff Bezos on June 28, 2020. A flyer promoting the march on Bezos's home called for an end to his "abuse and profiteering" and to "abolish the police, the prisons, and Amazon."

It is unequivocally true that black lives do indeed matter. This is obvious to the point of banality.
Racism in America today is real. "What I find most heartbreaking," Randy Alcorn writes, "is the intense pain felt by black brothers and sisters in Christ whose life experiences are so different from those of us who are white. Love means trying to put ourselves in their shoes and seeking to dialogue and understand why their views differ from ours—and why if we were black we would probably think very differently than we do about racial prejudice and instinctively trusting the police."
“I personally integrated the schools in the South and had to walk past angry mobs yelling names at me,” adds Kay Coles James, the former dean at my alma mater. Even in the year 2020, things like “driving while black” are real problems. “We don’t make this stuff up,” she says. “It’s real and it happens.”
"We've come a long way on the issue of race in America," U.S. Senator James Lankford recently said on the Senate floor, "but we clearly have a very long way to go."

And Yet ...

“Pointing out that there are things that we need to fix in this country,” says Mrs. James, “is not the same as equating that this country is a racist nation. It is not. .... I believe that the Founders gave us a gift, a gift of a form of government that allows us to work through our problems to fix them. No other country on the Earth, none is as exceptional as this nation.”
"The pretext for this entire nationwide riot is that America is a racist country," the Claremont Institute declares. "America is not a racist country. America is a country that has strived, imperfectly but passionately, to live up to its founding promise that all men are created equal. There is not—and will never be—a greater barrier to racism, or to tyranny in any form, than this American idea."
Black economist (and former Philly cab driver) Walter Williams puts it well: As a group, black Americans have made the greatest gains, and in a shorter span of time, than any other racial group in history. Nowhere else on earth could such progress been achieved except in the United States of America.
Civil rights leader Shelby Steele says "blacks have never been less oppressed."
Civil rights leader Robert L. Woodson says "there are a small group of people hell-bent on destroying this republic. They are using our birth defect of slavery to devalue our founding principles and virtues, and using race grievance as its weapon. We must resist."

Police

Gallup finds that 81% of blacks want police to spend the same amount of or more time in their area, whereas 19% want police to spend less time. Why do pallid progressives insist on whitesplaining to blacks that they don't really know what's best for them? Doing so seems—oh, what's the word?—racist.
"The 'institutional racism' canard bears no resemblance to reality—not in police forces, and not in America," Andrew McCarthy writes. "The most dangerous threat to the African-American community in America is not cops. It is liberals. The United States is not institutionally racist. The political system, the criminal-justice system, and academe overflow with political progressives. The notion that they would tolerate racism in their institutions would be laughable if sensible people were encouraged to think about it rather than mindlessly accept it."
Obviously, we should "hold officers accountable who use excessive force," Heather Mac Donald writes. "But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias."
"Activists have shoehorned the George Floyd episode into a pre-existing narrative about race and policing," black columnist Jason L. Riley writes. "The reality is more complex. The data don’t show racial bias in police use of deadly force. A few viral videos don’t prove otherwise."

Racial Reconciliation

"Should we reconcile blacks and whites who were caught up in bitter enmity with each other? Of course." Unfortunately, "the current received wisdom among respectable white folks is that ethnic harmony can be achieved if only they adopt the demeanor and posture of a guilty Labrador Retriever who ate the slippers. But you cannot develop a relationship with your brother by crawling on your belly. Stand up, look your brother in the eye, and talk to him like you were both Christians. If a black brother comes to me with an admonition or rebuke, and he has an open Bible with him, may God give me the grace to hear him out completely. If I come to him with an open Bible, may God give him the grace to hear me out in the same way. But if anybody, white or black, comes to me in the name of that bitch goddess intersectionality, I have absolutely no time for that crap. I am a Christian, and don’t want to lend an ear to any prophecies from that woman Jezebel. There is no proclaimed gospel in the New Testament that does not begin with the word repent. And when we preach this gospel to sinners, white or black, we must name the particular sins that they need to repent of. We do not urge them to turn away in a mild and inarticulate dismay from anything they may or may not have done that was less than proper. The only thing we can repent of is sin. And sin is defined by the Bible. It is a sin for cops to abuse suspects they have apprehended. It is a sin to loot a Target. It is not a sin to be white or black.
Sadly, "there are many 'gospel-centered' very white preachers today who, if directly commanded by the archangel Gabriel to go and preach repentance for specifically black sins to black men and women, would choose rather to wet themselves. This is because they do not love black men and women, but rather themselves. Because they love themselves, they want to be seen as being all about racial reconciliation. But seeming and being are two different things. White men can never bring about real reconciliation with black men by flattering them."
"Seeing African Americans, or Muslims, or Jews, as part of victimized minority collectives is a toxic formulation that ensures that we are never treated fairly as individuals—and denies us the ability to exercise real power," writes Zaid Jilani.

Del Dutcher, 1939–2020

2020-06-17T16:10:00.000-05:00

Harris A. (Del) Dutcher, Jr., 80, of Bartlesville, died on June 11, 2020, after a battle with cancer.

Del was born on July 17, 1939, in Hobart, Okla., to Harris A. Dutcher, Sr. and Louise (Sholl) Dutcher.

Del honorably served on active duty in the United States Marine Corps from 1957 to 1960. On December 29, 1964, he married Dona Beesley. They raised three children: Mike, Brandon, and Christy.

Del received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma where he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He worked for a few years in Tulsa as a banker, but Del was an outdoorsman at heart. (Though he had started on the basketball and baseball teams for the College High Wildcats, he didn’t play football because it interfered with hunting and fishing.) So he moved to Bartlesville, built more than 20 lakes and ponds, and began a decades-long career in commercial catfish farming.

Del is survived by his wife, Dona; his son Michael Dutcher of Bartlesville (married to Chris); his son Brandon Dutcher of Edmond, Okla. (married to Susie); and his daughter Christy McPhail of Bartlesville (married to Keith). He is also survived by his grandchildren: Andrew Dutcher, Jane Bartley, Betsy Dutcher, Lincoln Dutcher, Lillie Dutcher, Mary Margaret Dutcher, Jack Henry Dutcher, Oliver Dutcher, James Teague, Marybeth Patterson, Grace McPhail, Blake McPhail, Madison McPhail, and Parker McPhail. He is also survived by five great-grandchildren: Cohen, Evie, Easton, Jack, and Scottie.

Del is also survived by two brothers: Bill Dutcher of Norman, Okla., and Phil Dutcher of Tulsa. He was preceded in death by his parents and by his grandchildren Tyler Teague and Anne Marie Dutcher.

Del was widely admired in Bartlesville. He died on a Thursday night at 11:45; early the next morning this person paid a visit to our house. I'm not sure who you are, but thank you:

Below is a video of Del's funeral service, held on June 17, 2020, at First Wesleyan Church.

Instead of buying election ads, buy the whole paper

2020-05-03T15:36:00.003-05:00

Facebook is spending millions to plant left-wing activists in local media, Daniel Greenfield writes, including KOSU and Oklahoma Watch.

Report for America is eliminating what little difference there is between the media and political activism. It’s not alone in the field, but it’s the most successful organization and has the best financed of any of its rivals. Its founders have seen the bright future where journalism is a vestigial limb of political nonprofits who instead of buying election ads, buy the whole paper without having to manage it or pay taxes on it.

COVID-19 Consequences

2020-03-24T18:13:00.001-05:00

The third week of March in 2020 is the week that America changed. What trends may emerge thereafter? I'll post some interesting links as I find them.

Globalism

Nine years ago, historian J. Rufus Fears stood in the OCPA boardroom and warned that the Chinese communists are xenophobic despots who hate the United States and can ruin our economy. Fast forward to 2020 and another classicist, Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, says the Chinese communists’ coronavirus coverup will leave China "in its weakest global position in memory. And the U.S. will emerge stronger. Here in the U.S., COVID-19 will create bipartisan pressure to adopt policies of keeping key U.S. industries—such as medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and military applied high-tech—in America. Americans will not again wish to outsource the vast majority of their chemotherapy-drug, antibiotic, and heart-medicine production to a government that cannot be trusted and that sees such globalized output as a weapon to be used in extremis."
"The notion of very open international borders will seem strange and indeed intolerable," Tyler Cowen writes.

K-12 education

"Sometimes disasters lead to vast institutional change, such as when Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans and prompted the unprecedented creation of a nearly all-charter school system," Kerry McDonald writes at Forbes. "These systemic shocks can trigger a fresh look at norms and power structures and cause some to question if there is another, better way. Most of the 300 million schoolchildren currently quarantined in their homes will return to school once the epidemic fades. But some parents may discover that learning outside of schooling benefited their children and strengthened their family. They may start to wonder if homeschooling or other schooling alternatives could be a longer-term option. They may realize that education without schooling is not a crisis but an opportunity."
Joy Pullmann can foresee a massive shift in education.

Higher education

"Tyler Cowen’s predictions include the death of college as we know it at this point, and I absolutely agree," Ben Domenech writes on March 20. "What parent—even one with very steady work throughout the next three months—would be willing to plunk down a vast sum of cash after such an uncertain time given the damage to their portfolio and their livelihood? No, it’s time for Madison to take a gap year until we figure out what’s going on—she can take online classes and make up for the lost time with friends, and who would want her on a campus surrounded by disease (and not the kind preceded by fun) in the fall if this thing comes back with a vengeance? This will create massive funding problems for higher ed, particularly the overpriced middle tier of non-state schools. ... Schools that didn’t sufficiently invest in online learning will get burned."
"Now that students have returned home for distance learning, countless higher ed administrators—from the offices of diversity & inclusion, Title IX, student life, etc.—suddenly have very little to do," John David of the National Association of Scholars writes on March 24. "Maybe Chief Diversity Officers’ six-figure salaries can be cut to help save schools. Or the hefty funding allotted to Offices of Multicultural Affairs can be temporarily slashed during a time of emergency. Or countless other cuts to expenses about which we don’t even know."

Mass transit

"Just as the notorious public housing projects built for the poor in American cities as the wave of the future in the middle of the last century ended up being breeding grounds for violent crime and economic despair, the same approach of treating commuting human beings as cattle to be managed by their bureaucrat betters in authority above them is now proliferating a deadly imported pathogen that will transport death to the masses," Thomas McArdle writes ("Mass Transit, The Pandemic Petri Dish The Left Loves"). Tyler Cowen also predicts that "the case for mass transit also will seem weaker, because subways and buses will be associated with the fear of Covid-19 transmission." Steve Hayward adds: "Even the New York Times admits that high-density urban form and mass transit, which environmentalists have been trying to cram down our throats for the last 25 years, are detrimental to controlling a pandemic."

Mavs Down Thunder

2020-01-27T23:28:00.000-06:00

For Kobe. Honoring a legend. pic.twitter.com/luyBZFWnQG
— OKC THUNDER (@okcthunder) January 28, 2020

"The Mavericks and Thunder suited up to play a basketball game just over 24 hours after the tragic news broke on Sunday that NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash in California," The Dallas Morning News reported tonight. "As several other teams that played the day before, the Mavericks and Thunder paid tribute to the fallen legend during and before the game."

The Mavs and Thunder followed the lead of several teams and paid tribute to Kobe Bryant to start off tonight's game 🙏🙏🙏 #RIPKobe

(via @dallasmavs)pic.twitter.com/KkrMuCEL89
— SportsDay Mavs (@dmn_mavericks) January 28, 2020

"Emotions were raw," the paper reported. I knew they would be. Still, I was surprised when I looked at Mavericks guard Luka Doncic during the Thunder's opening possession, not 12 feet away from me, and he was crying. "Players’ feelings about Bryant were evident throughout and after Monday’s game," the paper reported. "Carlisle said that Doncic became upset after the first quarter and had to be consoled. Doncic admitted, 'I broke down. That’s when it hit me. It was really hard to play through.'"

He's such an amazing talent that it's easy to forget that he's a 20-year-old kid.

But the game got under way, and 8-year-old Oliver and I really enjoyed it. Especially this dunk:

😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 @DeeBurton30 | #ThunderUp pic.twitter.com/umuxCjycge
— OKC THUNDER (@okcthunder) January 28, 2020

In the pregame warmups, Oliver even got to do some camera work of his own:

We also enjoyed watching Steven Adams get some pregame work in:

Even the halftime show was terrific:

Bad News, Bears

2020-01-24T21:28:00.000-06:00

Dad, Oliver, Jack Henry, and Lincoln

As a junior at Bartlesville High School in 1982, I was a member of the first-ever Bru Cru student section that cheered on the Bruins, and I'm still a Bartlesville fan today.

But I very much enjoyed seeing my son Jack Henry (himself a high-school junior) and his fellow homeschoolers prevail over my alma mater today in the Bruce Gray Invitational Tournament, held annually at Deer Creek High School. I didn't even mind that The Oklahoman misspelled Jack Henry's last name in the box score.

Here's Jack Henry hitting a corner three against the Bruins:

Midwest City ended up winning the tournament, defeating Edmond Memorial in the finals. Midwest City’s Christian Cook was named tournament MVP. Jack Henry was selected to the all-tournament team, which consisted of Blair Anderson (Destiny Christian), Tru Buchanan (Trinity Christian), Christian Cook (Midwest City), Ethan Duncan (Trinity Christian), Jack Henry Dutcher (OKC Knights), Elliot Janish (Midwest City), Sean Pedulla (Edmond Memorial), JV Seat (Edmond Memorial), Makale Smith (Midwest City), and Jerry Tullis (Deer Creek).

Reporter Calls Source 'Highly Incompetent'

2019-12-15T20:24:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago the executive editor of The New York Times laid down some new social-media guidelines for his reporters. After all, "if our journalists are perceived as biased or if they engage in editorializing on social media," he said, "that can undercut the credibility of the entire newsroom."

Veteran Tulsa World reporter Barbara Hoberock probably should have heeded that advice rather than entering into a Twitter conversation over the weekend with state Sen. Nathan Dahm. Read it here.

It doesn't seem to me that Sen. Dahm's original tweet had Barbara in mind at all. Indeed, through the years I've seen Barbara do some solid reporting from the state Capitol. She strikes me as a standard-issue liberal, of course, but she's enough of a pro that her story selection and narrative frameworks are usually a cut above those of the woke kids at her own paper or at the former newspaper that GateHouse has turned into a nutty blog site for pallid urban hipsters.

Even so, it's difficult—impossible, actually—to imagine Barbara calling Emily Virgin "highly incompetent" or telling Kay Floyd to "think about getting another job." Sadly, it's one more example of why Republicans don't trust the media.

OC's Slow Surrender

2019-12-07T17:49:00.035-06:00

[This post is updated regularly.]

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen predicts that half of U.S. colleges and universities will close or go broke in the next decade. Oklahoma Christian University (OC) may well survive and thrive—though with a price tag of $130,000 for a bachelor's degree, I don't think it's a given. Disruptive innovation is a powerful force, and even now Forbes gives OC a financial health grade of only C-minus. Moreover, OC could stumble if it chose to alienate a good chunk of its base, namely, faithful Christians who don't believe the church has misunderstood the Bible for 2,000 years. (As law professor Glenn Reynolds famously says, “Get woke, go broke.”)

In a Religious News Service article this week (“Christian higher ed can’t win the LGBTQ debate unless it transforms”), Mercer University professor David Gushee made the case for abandoning biblical sexual morality:

Navigating their hard paths, administrators tend to offer very, very gradual change in the direction of student safety and a measure of inclusion. Permitting a campus support group for LGBTQ students is a common first step, as is communicating to students that the school is a safe place to wrestle with their sexuality. Next, a school may hire sympathetic student life staff. A bit more difficult is altering campus behavior codes to reduce the comparative stigma of straight versus gay sex. The school may even host campus events or classes to deal honestly with the contemporary LGBTQ conversation.

This is all a start, but from the perspective of those committed to inclusion, it is not nearly enough. LGBTQ students eventually demand more than safety, dialogue, and a friendly campus life staff. They want their existence and selfhood destigmatized. They want to be fully accepted for who they are.

Rather than going down that destructive path, one sincerely hopes that OC will speak the truth in love to its students. One OC student who uses the pronouns “they/them” announced on Twitter this week that this student would soon be giving a talk about “gender expression and gender identity” at an OC chapel service called “Safe at Home.” (According to the student newspaper, Safe at Home "provides a safe space for conversations about gender, sexuality, and the church by providing a feeling of being ‘safe at home’ for students.") One OC professor, though he wasn’t able to attend the chapel service, replied: “I’m confident God spoke wisdom through you.” To which the student replied, “Thank you so much, I believe this was an amazing first start to a change that needs to happen around campus.”

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has seen it all before. Theological liberals like Gushee are trying to remake Christianity, Mohler said yesterday. But of course, “we do not believe that Christianity can be remade,” he added. Mohler is worth quoting at length:

[A]nything that is remade and called Christianity isn't actually Christianity. It's a new religion that is claiming Christianity, but it's actually replacing biblical Christianity with something very different.

Now, that project has been going on rather explicitly now for nearly 200 years. This is the project of liberal Protestantism. It is the project of those who want to revise, and in their own words, restructure evangelicalism. It's the pressure of the so-called evangelical left, which is basically just taking up the arguments of the modernists and liberals of the early 20th century and bringing them up to date with new social media energy in the 21st century. ...

The problem we're talking about here is at least in large part the failure of administrators to hire rightly, for schools to be adequately confessional and convictional about their commitment to a biblical sexual morality, which only makes sense if you're committed to the authority of Scripture, which only makes sense if you are committed to historic Christian Orthodox theology. …

Speaking of the stereotypical academic administrator, Gushee writes, "... Christian college presidents and provosts are almost universally conflict-averse. Often very poorly equipped to deal with the theological, biblical, and ethical issues at stake, all they really want to do is keep everyone happy." …

Well, here's the problem: Trustees and search committees who elect academic administrators who are poorly equipped to deal with biblical, theological, and ethical issues have basically committed the suicide of their own institutions. And they do so, again, because they are looking for the wrong qualifications. They're impressed primarily with fundraising. That's not irrelevant, but it is not of first importance for a Christian institution. They are concerned with team building and all the rest, but the only team worth building is a team committed to historic biblical Christianity. Otherwise, they're playing for the wrong team. ...

This is the temptation we see so many evangelical schools succumbing to, and that is you allow the formation of an LGBTQ student group. Well, here's the problem. Once you do that, you have already bought into the identity construct and you have just invited a group of your own students to oppose the most deeply held convictions that are supposed to establish the identity and character of the school in the first place. ...

[Gushee] talks about altering campus behavior codes to reduce, note this language, “the comparative stigma of straight versus gay sex.” Well, if you can overcome that stigma, you’ve got to overcome the Old and New Testaments, but that's really what's going on on so many of these campuses.

But then again, it won't be enough. Dr. Gushee makes that point when he writes, “This is all a start, but from the perspective of those committed to inclusion, it is not nearly enough. LGBTQ students eventually demand more than safety, dialogue, and a friendly campus life staff. They want their existence and selfhood de-stigmatized. They want to be fully accepted for who they are. Ultimately, most want Christian colleges and seminaries to abandon traditionalist Christian teaching that harms them deeply.”

Well, there it is. There is the demand, you're going to have to remake Christianity. And I'm stating it in just that form because there are some who would like to say, no, it is only remaking Christian morality. But let's be really clear—Christian morality as revealed in Scripture is an essential structure of the Christian gospel, of the entirety of the biblical story: creation, fall, redemption, consummation. You can't undo historic biblical Christian morality without undoing historic biblical Christianity. Period. …

I want to speak from the experience of one who's been working in Christian higher education for many decades now. A school that is not both privately and publicly, absolutely committed to historic biblical Christianity when it comes to sexual morality, gender, sexual identity, and everything else, is a school that is accepting the terms of the sexual revolution and is surrendering perhaps in what appears to be a slow surrender. But it's only going to be slow in the beginning. It's going to be very quick in the end. …

Another essential point here is that the overarching theological commitments have to be just as clear. The school can't just be clear on gender and sexual identity, and sexual morality. It has to be clear on the atonement. It has to be clear on a biblical understanding of Scripture and the authority of Scripture, the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. It has to be clear about the exclusivity of the saving work of Christ. It has to be extremely clear about all of these things because none of them can exist alone, and that includes Christian sexual morality. But this also means that denominations and others, including boards of trustees and donors, have to hold institutions absolutely accountable to these convictions. …

The believing church must always be ready to be corrected by Scripture, but we have no right or authority to correct Scripture. It is, after all, the Word of God. And the Christian church has not misread the Scriptures for 2,000 years. It has read the Scriptures rightly when it comes to the crucial issues here at stake.

But as a final thought, it's not enough to read the Scriptures rightly. We must read the Scriptures obediently.

One hopes that OC faculty and administrators will do that. Speak the truth in love to all OC students—whether they're same-sex-attracted, multiple-women-attracted, thy-neighbor's-bank-account-attracted, or whatever—imploring them to repent and believe the gospel. Continue to build relationships with students, offering pastoral counseling or mental-health services when needed. But never trade historic biblical Christianity for something less.

UPDATES:

Not a good look for OC to be sending rainbow emails promoting, umm, "bedding options for students" during Pride Month. I'm told that OC's national vendor sent it without OC’s prior approval. That's plausible. Sadly, it’s also plausible that OC, which paid money to the radical race-grifter and Pride Month aficionado Jen Fry to speak to faculty and staff, doesn’t have a problem with the rainbow agenda. Perhaps OC will send an explanatory follow-up email.
OC is one of the most left-leaning universities in Oklahoma, public or private.
"Social justice" has long corrupted higher education in Oklahoma, and OC is no exception. (As one wise and biblically faithful seminary president has observed, "institutions drift left—that’s a Genesis 3 reality. They never drift right.") OC hosted "social justice" consultant Jen Fry to lead a faculty and staff event. OC declined to say how much the school paid Ms. Fry.
OC has done us all a service, albeit unintentionally, by wrapping its folly in a too-clever-by-half play on words that dishonors God's holy name. As you can see in the comments section, OC seems hell-bent on alienating a good chunk of its base.
OC's president touts the rally of a group run by Marxist organizers, which is regrettable given that "the BLM movement is utopian and un-Biblical." Moreover, he makes an accusation of "murder" (how does he know that?) and is even somehow able to ascertain the motives ("racism") of one or more of the white, black, and Asian police officers in the George Floyd case. Accusing someone of racism is a serious charge. Does OC’s president have evidence to support such an accusation? Black commentator Jason Whitlock doesn't believe it's racism; he says "no rational person can watch that [bodycam] footage and conclude the police were motivated by Floyd’s black race." Black columnist Jason Riley says “so far, we haven’t seen a shred of evidence that George Floyd’s death in police custody last month was racially motivated.” Black attorney Peter Kirsanow, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, says that “other than the respective races of Floyd and Chauvin, there’s no public evidence that Floyd’s death was due to race. Some may emerge during the investigation and trial of the four arresting officers involved, but none thus far. There’s no evidence any one of them used racial slurs during the arrest. Indeed, one of the officers is black, another Asian. There’s no evidence of disparate treatment of similarly situated white suspects. There’s no evidence that the arresting officers have a record of racial animus in policing or behavior. There’s no evidence of prior discipline on the basis of racial discrimination. There’s no evidence of racist posts on social media. The recently leaked expanded video of Floyd’s arrest reveals no race-related remarks.” Even the far-left race-baiter Keith Ellison grudgingly acknowledged: "We don't have any evidence" that racism was a factor in Floyd’s death.
A lefty journalism prof at OC calls for censorship, spurring a veteran journalist (and National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame inductee) to suggest that "people who advocate censorship should be kept as far away as possible from journalism classrooms."
David Talcott suggests “six questions parents should ask college administrators, presidents, board members, professors, and staff: [1] Does the college have a statement of faith? Who must sign it: every faculty member, student life staffer, and administrative executive? [2] Does the college have a statement that addresses same-sex romantic relationships and transgenderism? Who must sign it: every student, faculty member, student life staffer, and administrative executive? [3] What concrete steps is the college taking to address the dangers of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the emerging progressive ideology? [4] Ask to see a list of this year’s speakers at chapel, graduation, and school-wide lecture series. [5] Ask what steps the college takes to actively enforce the doctrinal and moral commitments of the institution. Ask, for example, whether any faculty or staff member has been let go because they could no longer adhere to the college’s statement of faith or other theological standards. [6] If you have heard negative stories about the college, or read things that don’t seem to fit, write to the president and ask for an explanation.
Interesting commentary from a former Bible and ministry major at OC:
Douglas Oliver asks if Christian colleges are worth the debt burden.
"Christian higher education, like many other parts of Christian culture and church life, follows broader cultural trends," philosophy professor David Talcott writes ("Don’t Assume Because A College Is Christian It’s A Safe Place For Your Kid"). "And those trends are distinctly anti-Christian."
"There is hardly anything more destructive you can do to your child's faith," Denny Burk writes, "than to send him to a 'Christian' college/university that is theologically liberal, trending left, or only nominally Christian."
"Enrollment is dwindling. Deficits are mounting. And more closures are looming: that’s the prediction of many higher-education experts, who are concerned about the future of small private colleges in America," Stephen Eide writes ("Private Colleges in Peril"). "Small mid-tier private schools tend to have modest endowments, and after decades of tuition hikes comparable to those of their elite peers, are now dangerously at risk of pricing themselves out of the market. Their problems will soon be compounded by demographic realities: the college-age population is expected to decline over the coming decades, leading to even tighter competition for students. The storm has yet to break in full, but a recent spate of closings and mergers may signal greater turbulence to come for the private nonprofit sector."
"What is it like to be the president who closes down such a school? What are the signs it’s time to make the decision?" Michael Horn interviews Linda McKinnish Bridges here.
"The ideas and culture at Christian colleges are slouching away from a biblical worldview, even when official policies appear to be faithful to the Bible," David Talcott writes. Fortunately, however, "presidents, provosts, and student life directors who recognize the spiritual dangers of our current situation have the ability to improve the long-term health of their institutions."

In Defense of Conversion

2019-12-03T20:36:00.026-06:00

One has to admire the candor: the end game is to ban conversion.

"When someone invokes the words 'conversion therapy,' what comes to mind?" asks Terry Schilling, executive director at American Principles Project. "For many Americans, thanks to messaging by the left, the words have become synonymous with horror stories of gay and lesbian children being mistreated at abusive religious summer camps, or even tortured by electric shock treatments."

I think reasonable people can unite against abuse, mistreatment, and electric shock. But in reality, those seeking to ban "conversion therapy" define the term much more broadly.

For example, GLAAD, which calls itself "the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization," defines conversion therapy as "any attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

Similarly, Oklahoma state Rep. Jason Dunnington (D-Oklahoma City) defines conversion therapy as "any practice or treatment that seeks to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity, including, but not limited to, any effort to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward persons of the same sex."

Rep. Dunnington defines gender identity as "the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual's designated sex at birth." He defines sexual orientation as "heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality, whether actual or perceived."

This sort of legislation must be opposed, Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler explained today:

We do not, as Gospel-minded Christians, believe that therapy is the ultimate answer for a deeply theological problem. We are talking about the problem of sin. This doesn't mean that therapy can't mitigate many situations, but it does mean that when we are looking at conversion therapy we do believe most emphatically in conversion; we do not believe in what might be called conversion therapy, that is, any kind of salvation by therapy. But we also have to be very clear, emphatically clear, that conversion and the new life in Christ brings about regeneration and progressive sanctification and that the new believer is immediately united with Christ and Christ is not united with sin. Biblically minded Christians cannot accept any limitation upon our belief in the fundamental change that does come by the Gospel and must come by the Gospel. And we cannot accept any rule, any legislation, any effort by the larger culture to tell us that we cannot preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we cannot teach all that the Bible reveals about God's intention and design and the law for human sexuality, and what the Bible reveals about gender and gender identity.

Ultimately, the Christian Research Journal correctly notes, "the outcome of efforts to ban conversion therapy will have enormous ramifications for freedom of religion and the church’s ability to continue preaching and teaching the full counsel of God in Scripture."

As Denny Burk puts it ("It’s not conversion therapy; it’s just conversion"), Christians have always believed "that faith in Christ leads to a conversion of one’s life. It’s what Jesus spoke about in John 3 when he told Nicodemus that he must be “born again” (John 3:3-5). Conversion is a transformation from death to life accomplished by the Holy Spirit in every Christian. It’s not therapy. It’s resurrection from the dead (Eph. 2:4-5). This conversion isn’t just for gay sinners. It’s for all sinners—gay, straight, or otherwise."

Rep. Dunnington's legislation (HB 2456) to ban conversion therapy for minors died in committee in 2019. Here's hoping his legislation (HB 3872) meets the same fate in 2020.

UPDATES:

On February 12, 2020, Rep. Dunnington's HB 3872 cleared the Children, Youth and Family Services Committee by a vote of 10 to 4. Voting yes: Rep. Forrest Bennett (D-Oklahoma City); Rep. Jeff Boatman (R-Tulsa); Rep. Carol Bush (R-Tulsa); Rep. Derrel Fincher (R-Bartlesville); Rep. Ronny Johns (R-Ada); Rep. Dell Kerbs (R-Shawnee); Rep. Cyndi Munson (D-Oklahoma City); Rep. Melissa Provenzano (D-Tulsa); Rep. Trish Ranson (D-Stillwater); and Rep. Cynthia Roe (R-Lindsay). Voting no: Rep. Mark Lawson (R-Sapulpa); Rep. Nicole Miller (R-Edmond); Rep. Randy Randleman (R-Eufaula); and Rep. John Talley (R-Stillwater).
On June 30, 2020, the Bolsheviks took out the Mensheviks in House District 88, so Rep. Dunnington won't be returning to the Legislature in 2021. Better still, Rep. Derrel Fincher (R-Allegedly) also lost in the primary and won't be returning. And better still, Rep. Jim Olsen (R-Roland) is conducting an interim study on "the right of therapists to help those with unwanted same-sex attractions, and the right of clients to receive this therapy."
Following up on his interim study, Rep. Olsen has introduced for the 2021 legislative session HB 1004, the "Parental and Family Rights in Counseling Protection Act." This legislation will secure parental rights and prohibit the government from restricting counseling by a mental health provider or religious advisor.
Lest you think that legislation banning "conversion therapy" isn't hostile to actual conversion, I ask you to imagine the following hypothetical situation. A 17-year-old boy who is not a Christian goes to a Christian counselor or psychologist and says: "I am attracted both to boys and girls at my high school and am promiscuous with both. I have a gnawing sense deep down that this behavior is wrong. And a friend of mine told me that I need to repent and believe the good news—namely, that Jesus died for my sins and was raised for my justification—or I won’t inherit the kingdom of God. But he said that if I become a Christian, then over time I can grow in holiness and one day settle down and marry a woman. That sounds good to me. I don’t want to be bisexual. What do you think, doc? Can you help me?" No, not if the state has banned so-called conversion therapy. As LGBTQ activist Sam Brinton admitted to the New York Times, conversion therapy "can also have religious elements, with patients being told that their god doesn’t want them to be LGBTQ."
Make no mistake: conversion therapy bans strike at the Gospel itself.
Conversion therapy bans are an ongoing threat to biblical Christianity.
Some therapists warn that "conversion therapy" bans threaten to criminalize dissent on gender identity.
The session of Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tampa, Florida, has published a helpful "Pastoral Statement Regarding Human Sexuality in Our Contemporary World."
"The religious left either does not know (or more likely, does not care) that the real reason people oppose homosexuality and transgenderism is obedience to God," Rick Plasterer writes ("Religious Left Mobilizes for War on the Gospel").
"Our LGBTQ kids, they don't need to be converted or repaired," says the mayor of Louisville. "There is no need for conversion here. It is an emphatic celebration of a multiplicity of sexual orientations."
The talk therapy that attempts to assist people dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction is better called "Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE)" or "Change-allowing Therapy." Jennifer Roback Morse and Paul Sullins, Ph.D. discuss the studies that claim that so-called “conversion therapy” is harmful.
Often with proposed legislation to ban "conversion therapy," Paul Dirks writes, "there is tremendous ambiguity about which practices and services are being prohibited, which obfuscates a multitude of problems: the endangerment of previously established legal rights for individuals to choose health treatments, the removal of the professional autonomy of doctors in providing treatment according to their expertise, the question of whether 'sexual orientation' includes pedophilia, and the controversy surrounding medical transition for gender identity. ... Either the language around conversion therapy needs to be significantly clarified in these bills to allow this kind of investigation, or we need to continue to allow medical practitioners to do their jobs and trust that, as in many other fields, the benefits of allowing therapy outweigh the potential harms."
On November 20, 2020, a federal appeals court struck down two local ordinances banning sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) for minors. In other words, it is illegal to restrict licensed individuals from pursuing their client's therapy goals. Meanwhile, a new study shows no proof of harm from such therapy.
States are moving to restrict so-called "conversion therapy" practices meant to help people struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender issues. But a review by WORLD magazine reporter Juliana Chan Erikson suggests the bans are misguided.
The Australian state of Victoria has now outlawed praying for someone’s deliverance from same-sex attraction, Oklahoma author Gene Veith notes.
Al Mohler asks: Will West Lafayette, Indiana, criminalize Biblical truth?
A new study finds that Sexual Orientation Change Effort reduces suicidal behavior.
The effect of Canada's conversion-therapy law, Craig A. Carter points out, "is to ban counselors from affirming the Christian doctrine of creation and from affirming the truth that our natural and biological sex is a good gift from our Creator."
Some pastors are calling out and preaching against Canada's conversion-therapy law.
Eric Metaxas interviews a licensed marriage and family therapist here.
The endgame, Rick Plasterer writes, "is to expand the meaning of 'conversion therapy' to cover any opposition to homosexuality or transgenderism, in public or in private. The Ozanne Foundation ... proposes making illegal any religious practice, which would include sermons, pastoral counseling, prayer, or exorcism aimed at bringing people to repentance from homosexuality or transgenderism. 'Conversion therapy' apparently also would include helping people de-transition from a “gender” other than their biological sex to which they have “transitioned.” Covered as well —which shows the real scope of the attack on Biblical morality—would be any calls for sexual abstinence."
The folks at the Colson Center ask a good question: