Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Danger in Silence

    There’s an excellent, thoughtful post on An Evangelical Dialog on Evolution, titled When the Acceptance of Biological Evolution has Personal or Professional Repercussions.

    I think this strikes closer home to those who are evangelicals in the United States, because their institutions are more likely to be subject to fundamentalist pressure on the issue of [tag]evolution[/tag]. Let’s face it, United Methodist schools like Emory, SMU, or Duke are not likely to be subject to this kind of pressure from the right–pressure from the left is more likely there.

    But I do think that silence on controversial issues is dangerous. It allows people to assume that you believe something you don’t, and can deny cover and fellowship to someone who might be forced to take a stand on things about which you are keeping silent.

    I must add the balancing point, however. There are so many controversial issues, and so many outrages committed in the world that to comment on all of them is quite impossible. Issues like abortion, gay rights, and evolution can each keep a Christian writer busy full time simply answering angry comments, leaving little time for anything else.

    On balance, however, I suggest that speaking up is most often appropriate, even if it is only to let people know where you stand without getting fully involved in debate.

  • Can a Liberal Learn from Mark Driscoll?

    I’m using the dreaded “L” word for myself again, because if I was put up against [tag]Mark Driscoll[/tag] I would certainly come out as liberal, no matter how moderate I think I am. Regular readers of this blog know that I disagree with him on a substantial range of issues.

    There’s a profile of Driscoll available on the Christianity Today web site (HT: Adrian Warnock). There’s some interesting things here, including most of the stuff on which I differ. Occasionally I stir people up through what I write on this blog, but in real life, I put much of my effort into reconciliation. I try to be a peacemaker in church. I’m not a [tag]Calvinist[/tag] by any stretch. Even good [tag]Arminian[/tag]s suspect me of heresy in the pelagian direction. I’m [tag]egalitarian[/tag], not [tag]complementarian[/tag], and if the bad guy is threatening the playground, I’m going to call 911 before mixing it up with them myself.

    Yet there are a number of things one can learn here. Driscoll really believes what he is teaching, and I think the evidence is good that he cares about his church and the people of his community. He’s willing to meet them culturally, something that other church people ranging from right to left are not willing to do. To many of us church is our culture, and others have to leave the “world’s culture” and become part of the “church’s culture.” But we have no particular reason to assume that the church’s culture as we practice it is actually better than the world’s culture. Driscoll seems to have caught on to the fact that from the point of view of the church, especially the mainline church, reaching the person down the street is just as much cross-cultural ministry in many cases as is going overseas.

    Nonetheless, I deplore Driscoll’s position on women in leadership and in ministry. I believe it would be quite possible for the church to articulate and practice a strong theology of family and of leadership without wedding itself to the single model of the dominant male. At the same time, egalitarians sometimes behave as though men don’t need to learn any leadership and even foster the “let women take care of spiritual things” attitude. We need to learn to respond to those attitudes.

    Too often what we practice is not the empowerment of all people to use the gifts God has given them and to follow God’s call on their lives, but it is rather a “let those who will do it go ahead.” We’re afraid to challenge men in spiritual leadership because we might sound too much like Driscoll. I am willing to confess to weakness when it’s there, but in this case, I’m not myself confessing to this practice. I have regularly preached that men need to be ready to get up on Sunday morning and lead their families to church. They need to be actively involved in both church life and in the moral life of their family and community.

    A family can only be properly led when both father and mother take up their appropriate gifts. But this does not allow looking down on supposedly “feminized” men either. That male leadership can involve the man cleaning the house, doing the dishes, changing diapers and helping get the children dressed. It might involve a husband getting the children to Wednesday night activities because the wife is working or out of town on a business trip.

    In other words this is another part of modern culture that we could meet with the gospel, rather than try to change into a first century image that exists largely in our own minds.

    I would suggest reading the Christianity Today article asking yourself this: “How can I make my spiritual life connect more with the age? What are the essentials of my spiritual and ethical beliefs, and what are just my church culture?” All of us could do with such a checkup.

  • How to Get it RIGHT!

    Start up your sense of humor and then go read this!

    HT: Kouya Chronicle.

  • Afternoon Links (9/21/07)

    Just a couple of things that caught my eye:

    Enjoy!

  • Christian Carnival #190 Posted

    . . . at The Minor Prophet. Go and enjoy! (I apologize for being late linking to this one.)

  • Important Senate Business: Condemning Ads

    They took the time to condemn the [tag]MoveOn.org[/tag] Ad on General [tag]Petraeus[/tag] (LA Times story).

    Now I don’t like the ad, and I don’t particularly like MoveOn.org, and I think private groups and politicians should go ahead and do all the condemning that the ad deserves. Though I’m an opponent of the war in Iraq, I think the ad deserves a good deal of condemning. But all of that, like the ad itself, is simply part of the free exchange of ideas that we have in this country. MoveOn.org gets to act irresponsibly; that’s their right. I get to loathe them for it; that’s my right. I get to think General Petraeus is wrong even though I loathe the ad attacking him, that’s my right. None of it is a matter for the law.

    And of course one can point out to me that the Senate didn’t pass a law. It’s not binding. OK, fine. But if it’s not a law, it’s non-binding, and it just expresses their opinion, why bother doing anything about it in the Senate? This is not the only such resolution, of course, and they have varying relevance to the business of the Senate. But right now, our government lacks a coherent policy on terrorism, the president and congress are wrangling over just how to behave in Iraq, thus preserving the maximally nasty situation in which we hold on, but with no reason to expect success. At the end of the fiscal year, the Senate will be running out of time to accomplish important business like appropriations bills.

    And here they are condemning an ad. Let them condemn (or condone) ads on their own time out on the campaign trail. That’s where it belongs.

  • Jena 6 Media Stories

    Just a couple of links. MSNBC has a pretty good story on the [tag]Jena 6[/tag] here, though that story also duplicates quite a bit of previous coverage.

    Laura at Pursuing Holiness, who first alerted me to this story continues to be quite balanced, reading huge amounts and being quite willing to call people on either side for excesses. She has a good post today titled The Media Circus and Alan Bean. It’s an interesting picture that’s portrayed there.

    Why am I blogging about this at all? It’s pretty simple. I think it’s an important story. Someone called my attention to it, and I want to make sure that others notice as well. [tag]Racism[/tag] is not dead in this country. But also law enforcement agencies have a great deal of power and discretion, and we the people need to keep our eyes on them. Support them, yes, but also expect integrity and fairness.

    My own knowledge on this is second hand, but I’m linking to folks who have information that comes closer to the source. Read up and be informed, and help find those other cases where someone is being treated unfairly, but doesn’t have this type of support. It has to start somewhere.

  • Why is Jim Changing Seminaries?

    Find out here.

  • Another Conservative View on Thompson

    Reformed Chicks Blabbing reports that [tag]James Dobson[/tag] won’t support [tag]Fred Thompson[/tag], with the last straw apparently being his support for a constitutional amendment on gay marriage that falls well short of conservative hopes. I now see what I missed before. Thompson supports an amendment that prevents states from being forced to recognize gay marriages from other states. Social conservatives want to ban gay marriage completely.

    I would suggest that federalism is a balance, and that the “full faith and credit” clause is not something that should be done away with lightly. Since one can move freely from state to state, just what is a gay couple married in Massachusetts, for example, supposed to do if work moves them to Alabama? (I resist the suggestion that they flee the country or at least change jobs rather than make such a move!) Nonetheless I find Thompson’s approach far more rational than that of other Republicans.

  • Jena – Not Racist, but . . .

    I found an interesting quote in this MSNBC story on the [tag]Jena 6[/tag] that explains why I have been very concerned about this event from when I first read about it. (I have been following this mostly via Pursuing Holiness, with her latest post here, and only occasionally reading other stories.)

    Here’s the quote:

    The white teen who was beaten, Justin Barker, was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function later that night.

    . . . yet the initial charge was attempted murder. I don’t see how the prosecutor can say this with a straight face:

    “This case has been portrayed by the news media as being about race,” he said. “And the fact that it takes place in a small southern town lends itself to that portrayal. But it is not and never has been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.”

    No, it’s not about holding people accountable–it’s about losing one’s sense of proportion. Should they young men involved in such a beating be held accountable? Certainly. Is an attempted murder charge “accountability” for what they did? No, it’s well out of balance. Bluntly, the [tag]racism[/tag] is clearly present.

    I also don’t buy the whine that there was nothing that could be done about the kids who hung the nooses. That indicates a severe lack of creativity. The assumption appears to be that if you can’t charge those kids under a law, there is nothing that can be done. But the school and the town definitely could have done something, had they taken the event seriously. (And no, they should go over the top about that either. “Deal with” doesn’t necessarily mean “go nuts.”)

    I hope that the rally today will shake some people up and make them look inside themselves and reconsider their attitudes. Probably most will simply become more angry, but I can always hope!