Feb 7, 2015 | Uncategorized
In light of President Obama’s distortion at this week’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where he compared the Crusades to modern day Islamic terrorism, I thought it important to point out a great resource for the truth about the Crusades, Rodney Stark’s, God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades.
The Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places. Although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from the pope, this had nothing to do with hopes of converting Islam. Nor were the Crusades organized and led by surplus sons, but by the heads of great families who were fully aware that the costs of crusading would far exceed the very modest material rewards that could be expected; most went at immense personal cost, some of them knowingly bankrupting themselves to go. Moreover, the crusader kingdoms that they established in the Holy Land, and that stood for nearly two centuries, were not colonies sustained by local exactions; rather, they required immense subsidies from Europe.
Feb 6, 2015 | Uncategorized
When Obama alludes to the evils of medieval Christianity, he fails to acknowledge the key word: “medieval.” What made medieval Christianity backward wasn’t Christianity but medievalism.
It is perverse that Obama feels compelled to lecture the West about not getting too judgmental on our “high horse” over radical Islam’s medieval barbarism in 2015 because of Christianity’s medieval barbarism in 1215.
It’s also insipidly hypocritical. President Obama can’t bring himself to call the Islamic State “Islamic,” but he’s happy to offer a sermon about Christianity’s alleged crimes at the beginning of the last millennium.
–Jonah Goldberg, “Obama’s Comparison of Christianity to Radical Islam Defies Logic”
Feb 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
The Washington Journalism Center, part of the BestSemester program of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), is an advanced, experiential semester on Capitol Hill that will cultivate professional news skills and encourage students to think through the implications of being a Christian working in the news media in a city that is home to the powerful and the powerless.
Feb 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
Instead of congratulating ourselves on our progress, whenever the school assumes another responsibility hitherto left to parents, we might do better to admit that we have arrived at a stage of civilisation at which the family is irresponsible, or incompetent, or helpless; at which parents cannot be expected to train their children properly; at which many parents cannot afford to feed them properly, and would not know how, even if they had the means; and that Education must step in and make the best of a bad job.
–T.S. Eliot, Christianity & Culture
Feb 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
Until modern times no thinker of the first rank ever doubted that our judgments of value were rational judgments or that what they discovered was objective . . . . The modern view is very different. It does not believe that value judgments are really judgments at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing from one community to another. To say that a thing is good is merely to express our feeling about it; and our feeling about it is the feeling we have been socially conditioned to have.
C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections
Jan 31, 2015 | Uncategorized
We’re at a great cultural moment for the Church of Jesus Christ, and when I say this I mean the conservative Church. i.e. those who believe God’s word says what it says, and who refuse to let their faith be captured by the cultural torrents of the moment. This even includes conservative Jews who embrace Scripture. It shouldn’t surprise us that sexual ethics is at the heart of this cultural challenge. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s was a sea change in Western culture, and homosexuality and gender issues are simply the logical conclusion of this change. (See the wonderful book Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution by Mary Eberstadt to see just how convoluted and inverted values and morals have become over the last 50 years or so.)
This piece at Touchstone by Brian Patrick Mitchell, “Gay Christians? The Grave Danger Coming Out Poses to Christian Churches,” is a sobering reminder of what is at stake in the current cultural battles. In case you are not aware, there has been a growing number of people who self-identify as “gay Christians” who are committed to celibacy. On the face of it this seems like a welcome change; better this than debauchery, or changing the definition of marriage. But after reading Mitchell’s well thought out and argued case, there is a definite downside to accepting the “gay Christian” label.
I’ve always thought and am thoroughly convinced that a large number of people who accept the homosexual label and lifestyle do so because of cultural reasons. Culture is one vast plausibility structure; what appears and seems true to a person is mediated by that culture. American culture today and for several decades has said that homosexuality is just as normal and right and good as heterosexuality, a natural expression of the sexual urge, and that to not embrace the homosexual passions and act on them is to deny your authentic self. And of course, repressing sexual urges is uniformly bad, right? So when a young person begins to have same-sex attraction everything in the culture says, go for it! Be true to yourself! That person instead of fighting these unnatural and sinful passions, embraces them and their entire identity is built around them. It just seems right to them. Mitchell believes acceding to the “gay Christian” label destroys the Church’s ability to fight against this sexual sin and the culture that promotes it.
He outlines an approach that recognizes the biblical norm of heterosexuality, of “male and female he created them,” and explains how Christians can live a counter-cultural message and actually help those struggling with this sin:
This biblical and traditional approach to sexuality edifies everyone, especially those afflicted by homosexual passion. Strong public sanctions against sodomy confirm the norm of heterosexuality, reinforcing the distinction between male and female and eliminating any uncertainty as to the proper sexual use of the human body. Intolerance of homosexuality actually strengthens those afflicted by homosexual passion in their struggle against temptation by impressing upon their consciences the enormity of the evil, giving them even more reason to “put off the old man with his deeds.” It teaches them self-control by minimizing opportunities for temptation and making indulgence unthinkable.
It also encourages them to live heterosexually as much as possible. For the young person just beginning to experience same-sex attraction, this means struggling against the attraction, adopting the manners and courses of life appropriate to his sex, directing his romantic attentions toward persons of the opposite sex, and often even eventually marrying, begetting or bearing children, and otherwise living in every way as a normal (yes, normal) man or woman.
Needless to say this is as politically incorrect as a person can be circa 2015 America, but the Bible could not be more clear, regardless of what is claimed, that God’s design for sex is exclusive to men and women within the context of marriage. Well meaning Christians who in the name of love and tolerance are not willing to call a spade a spade, or a sin a sin, should engage Mitchell’s argument to see if they are not actually causing more harm than good.
In light of President Obama’s distortion at this week’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where he compared the Crusades to modern day Islamic terrorism, I thought it important to point out a great resource for the truth about the Crusades, Rodney Stark’s, God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades.
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