Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Church and State

  • Scot McKnight on Dominion Theology

    Well, actually he’s summarizing Paul C. McGlasson. I recently wrote about hearing Dutch Sheets speak and mentioned what he had to say about the term “dominionism.”

    There is something that concerns me here, and that is that Rushdoony and those who agree with him are lumped in with folks like C. Peter Wagner, and of course Sheets. There are similarities and there are differences. There are differences in goals, such as the basis of whatever biblical law various leaders would apply. Is this a reapplication of at least the civil portions of the Mosaic law, or is it a gentle application of the Sermon on the Mount? I don’t see either of these as a basis for civil administration in a pluralistic society, yet the two goals are substantially different. Then there are differences in terms of strategy. Is force permitted? Is one simply working through the democratic process, or is one trying to undermine the entire system?

    I happen to believe that the Kingdom of God, insofar as it is manifested on earth, should be manifested through the people of God, what we often call the “upper case Church.” I believe that civil administration should be secular or as religiously neutral as possible. (I’ll have to write sometime about how I combine those two potentially conflicting ideas.) But at the same time I believe that we need to be careful when we lump groups of people with quite different goals and approaches together.

     

  • This Does NOT Represent Family Values

    In a blog on the American Family Association web site, Bryan Fischer has named Jessica Ahlquist, the High School student in Rhode Island who was plaintiff in a case against a prayer banner in her school, to his “American Association of Religious Bigots.” In doing so he calls her a “little atheist bully” and a “small-minded and vengeful brat.”

    One may, of course, disagree with Jessica Ahlquist. One may think such a banner harms no one. One might even think it’s helpful. But even so, does that justify those words about a teenager who acted in precisely the right manner if she felt her rights were violated? She went to court. She didn’t pull the banner down herself. She didn’t start a riot. She hasn’t been guilty of the kinds of nasty threats that so-called Christians have issued against her. (For a summary of more recent responses to the school board’s decision not to appeal the case, see Dispatches from the Culture Wars – Public Response to Decision Not to Appeal Prayer Case.)

    If one believes what happened in Rhode Island is wrong, one has the recourse of the political system and the courts. That’s the proper forum. I happen to think having a proclamation of one religion in a public school is not a good idea and that Jessica Ahlquist was right to oppose it. But the important thing here is that the disrespect, vengefulness, and brattiness have all come, not from her, but from the other side.

    Bryan Fischer’s column makes elementary school playground taunts look good by comparison. He should be ashamed of himself. The American Family Association should be ashamed of itself. This is not an example of family values.

    (HT: The Agitator)

  • Christians Behaving Vilely (Rhode Island Edition)

    43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. (Matthew 5:43-45, NLT)

    It appears that this message has not reached many Christians responding to a court order to remove a Christian banner from a Rhode Island high school. There have been treats against the 17 year old student who was the plaintiff. To get some of the tone of the remarks that aren’t legally “threats,” you might read this article. Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has collected some comments from Twitter (language warning!) in a post titled Crank Up the Christian Hatred.

    What I find even more disturbing is the number of people who are willing to provide some sort of justification for this type of behavior. Again, you’ll find them in the comments with comments such as “What did you expect?” Well, since I have followed church/state cases for years, including one just in the next county, I unfortunately expect Christians to behave very badly, to yell, scream, whine, defy the law, threaten, and resort to vile language in response to being denied some public stage. But in another sense, I expect better.

    And don’t get me wrong based on the text I quoted at the start. These Christians are not experiencing persecution. While they may no longer have a religious banner in their high school, a public place, they doubtless have plenty of churches where they can express their viewpoints, not to mention Twitter and the comments sections of their newspapers, where they can make incredibly unchristian comments while others say, “It’s just natural,” or something of the sort.

    Jesus said to respond in a loving and kind manner when you are persecuted. There’s an Iranian pastor on death row because he will not deny Christ. He’s being persecuted. A young woman was given 40 lashes for converting to Christianity in the Sudan. She is persecuted.

    But pampered Americans who have to pray in their homes, their churches, in restaurants, on the sidewalks, and in many, many non-governmentally sponsored events? Oh the deprivation! Oh the sorrow! Doubtless God will no longer hear us.

    And there are easy targets to blame. Atheists. See how you can make an epithet out of it? So now we talk about how much we hate them because they did what? Because they limited very slightly the places where we can proclaim our message. We don’t get the government’s authority behind our religion? How will the gospel ever survive without the backing of Uncle Sam?

    In a general sense it’s pathetic. The persecuted majority. I’d be laughing if it didn’t make me so furious. But that’s just as an American citizen.

    As a Christian myself, it makes me deeply ashamed and embarrassed. Here we have a perfect opportunity to model the behavior that Jesus commanded. We could be right up front and say, “We don’t want to use the power of the government to pursue our agenda in any case. The gospel doesn’t need a captive audience guaranteed by the power of the police (the public school classroom and facilities). Christians should be defending Jessica Ahlquist. They should be happy that she’s thinking enough about faith to take a courageous stand as she has done.

    And no Christian should excuse the behavior of those who threaten or revile any group of people, in this case atheists and the ACLU (convenient cultural tags for those who don’t go along with our “Christian” culture). We should make it clear that this kind of behavior is not acceptable. Note here that by “revile” I don’t mean “say they’re wrong.” I’m very clearly saying the people who made these comments are wrong. I think they should repent. I don’t think they should be subject to threats of violence, or obscenities, and what’s more I don’t hate them. Their behavior infuriates me. I hope they repent. I call on them to repent.

    I’ve used the word “Christian” for people who behave this way simply because that is what they claim to be. I don’t believe in trying to make non-Christians figure out who the “true” Christians are. God gets to judge that. But there is nothing “Christian” or “Christ-like” about this behavior.

    There are those who call people “Christians in name only” because of doctrinal beliefs. Well, people who behave in the way demonstrated on Twitter and the newspaper comments section are Christians in name only, much more so than anyone who denies some doctrine. There is nothing Christ-like whatsoever about their behavior.

    And those Christians among us who realize this should proclaim it.

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  • More on Florida HB31 and Inspirational Messages

    I wrote about this before, and commented that it seemed to accomplish nothing–nothing, that is, except to possibly encourage some school boards to tangle with the federal courts.

    That version, however, has been replaced in committee. I’m going to do something I don’t usually do, and put in a “tear line” so this won’t get too long, as I intend to quote both versions of the bill in full:

    (more…)

  • Florida May Remove Church-State Separation from Its Constitution

    SJR 2550 was passed out of the Senate Judiciary committee today. It would remove the provision that prohibits state money being spent “directly or indirectly to aid any church, sect or religious denomination.” It would also prohibit discriminating against someone who wanted to spend state program money they receive at a religious institution, such as a school.

    I’m guessing quite a number of things this might make legal under Florida law would still fail in federal court, but thus far Florida’s efforts at voucher programs paying for religious schools has failed at the state level.

    The official summary of the bill as filed reads:

    2 A joint resolution proposing an amendment to Section 3
    3 of Article I of the State Constitution to provide that
    4 an individual may not be barred from participating in
    5 any public program because of choosing to use public
    6 benefits at a religious provider and to delete a
    7 prohibition against using public revenues in aid of
    8 any church, sect, or religious denomination or any
    9 sectarian institution.

    You can find more information on the bill here.

    A similar bill has been filed in the Florida House of Representatives, HJR 1399. The house version is different in wording, but I’m not sure what the legal result would be.

    This would have to go on the ballot in November, as it is a constitutional amendment.

    (HT: Post on Politics)

  • Now Rick Warren is in REAL Trouble

    According to OneNewsNow, an organization only slightly less paranoid than WorldNetDaily, Rick Warren is praising President-Elect Obama for inviting Bishop Gene Robinson to pray at the inauguration as well.

    After supporting Proposition 8 in California and then accepting the President-Elect’s invitation, it’s possible that nobody will be happy with Rick Warren any more.

    They note particularly Robinson’s statement that he will not use the Bible:

    Robinson has said he will not use the Bible when praying, and states “I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer.”

    This is one of my problems with all this. I would prefer to see many people sincerely praying according to their own traditions and practices than an attempt to have everyone pray generically. More accurately, the whole thing bothers me.

  • The Difficulty of Appropriate Public Prayer

    MSNBC.com reports that there is a bit of a kerfuffle over whether Rick Warren will use the name of Jesus in his prayer at Barack Obama’s inauguration. At the same time we have a group of atheist and humanist groups suing to prevent any prayer at all at this public event.

    I confess to mixed emotions about the public prayer, largely because I think that the event reflects not only the public, but also the person who has been elected to that office, and Barack Obama is a believer. I could quite easily regard the prayer as relating more to him as a person than as something that is intended to reflect the country as a whole. While I may have mixed emotions, I would suspect that the lawsuit is doomed to failure, except in producing publicity, because we still have military chaplains and prayers to open the houses of congress, and the courts have shown no inclination to stop them.

    But I have more problem with a public prayer as a Christian than I do as a political matter, something that has only been stirred up and sharpened by discussions with a friend of mine who is a pastor and who gets invited to pray at public events. There are two major points involved. First, for most trinitarian Christians, prayer in the name of Jesus (or in a trinitarian formula in some cases) is the way to pray–it is prayer. Second, just what is it that we expect a pastoral prayer at a public event to accomplish? As my friend has pointed out to me, and I agree, the public bodies over which prayer is offered are not going to actually seek God’s guidance and blessing as a group. They’re going to go right on doing whatever they were going to do anyhow. And it’s difficult to expect a public body that is diverse in beliefs to do so.

    So in that case the public prayer becomes, in many ways, an act of idolatry. It is a pretense at worship, but not the reality. A critical part of the Lord’s prayer is “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Show me the public body here in the United States that intends to behave in that particular way. And with acute awareness of my atheist and other non-Christian friends, that is not a prayer that can be prayed collectively by a public body, expected to act in a secular way to govern a diverse body of people.

    Were I an elected individual, I could individually pray that God guide me, even though I must express my viewpoint in non-religious terms in public debate. And note here that I can only express my viewpoint in non-religious terms if it is honestly supportable in non-religious terms. That means that I can pray the Lord’s prayer for myself, but that collectively prayed, it becomes an outright lie. Any prayer prayed in the name of Jesus is similarly supposed to be “under the authority of” as well as “in the name of” and thus, in my view, becomes idolatrous if prayed corporately on behalf of those who do not consent.

    Given that there will be prayer at the inaugural event, I think the explosion of hostility over the selection of Rick Warren to offer that prayer is at best overdone. President-elect Obama, in my view, thinks he’s secure in his liberal credentials and wishes to reach out to a block of voters. That’s the political view. Thinking of it as a Christian I am much less comfortable, not because I don’t think Rick Warren can pray for, with, and on behalf of Barack Obama, but because I think it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible for him to pray on behalf of the inaugural crowd and certainly on behalf of the nation as a whole.

    I understand pastoral prayers in congregations to be collective, that is that the pastor prays both for and on behalf of the people. Those who are more theologically and liturgically oriented than I am may argue this. I don’t see how this can be transplanted to the public square.

    Yet we do so constantly in this country. I’m not sure where my conscience would lead me if I were a pastor. My friend doesn’t want to pray at public events (not in church), a position with which I sympathize. The only compromise position I can see is praying in public, but seeing this as praying solely on one’s own behalf, and for the gathered audience. Trouble is, unlike pastoral prayer in which I believe all participate, I think this sounds a great deal like a violation of the principle expressed in Matthew 6:1-6. The prayer becomes a public show, or perhaps a political show.

    I like interfaith dialogue, but I like interfaith prayer much less. I prefer the idea that in interfaith dialogue all sides maintain their distinctives honestly and openly, yet celebrate the diversity. In my view too much interfaith dialogue involves homogenization and blandness rather than actual celebration of diversity, combined with robust but respectful discussion and debate.

    Readers are free to see this as a modification or even a partial repudiation of my view expressed here, where I considered the invitation solely from the political point of view.

  • If You Want to Pray, then Pray!

    I worked with a pastor a few years ago who was frequently called up to counsel and pray with other pastors and church leaders. I won’t go into the reasons. In general, he was a bit impatient with talking about the problems, and just wanted to get praying. Normally he’d get a couple of the folks who worked with him to join in praying for the person, and I was often one of those.

    I used to enjoy watching him, because you could tell as the conversation went on that he was getting less and less interested in hearing about the problems. Suddenly he’d break in and say, “Why don’t we just pray about it?” Now whatever you think about the balance between receiving good counsel and having someone pray for you, you can tell from his actions that this pastor was really focused on prayer. Prayer was what was important to him. When prayer is important to you you pray.

    I was reminded of this as I read this post which tells about some reaction to the settlement in Odessa. Now that issue was about teaching Bible in public schools. Personally, as I have said before, I think we would be better off without specific Bible classes in public schools largely because of the difficulty with prescribing a good curriculum and finding qualified teachers. I think the Bible belongs in public schools, but it should come up appropriately in literature, social studies, history, and even music classes. But it is constitutional to have a Bible class.

    Yet when we get into court things get tangled. That’s because the NCBCPS curriculum that many schools are using is not very good and is quite sectarian (read a report by a professor at Perkins School of Theology). It’s interdenominational only in the sense that a number of very conservative denominations would find it acceptable. It doesn’t deal with a broad range of academic issues, and certainly doesn’t handle interfaith issues properly.

    Now if you really wanted to teach a Bible class, it would likely be easier to find or design a curriculum that would pass constitutional muster (there already is one that’s quite good). Then you go ahead and have your Bible class. People like me can object and suggest this is better done at home and at one’s place of worship as part of religious education, but there’s really nothing I can do to stop it.

    On the other hand if you want to make trouble, and get publicity waging some kind of culture war, well, you choose a curriculum that is likely to be challenged, and you use that.

    Similarly with prayer in public schools, if you want your children to pray, they can. There are a number of legal ways to do this, while not disrupting the classroom. You can’t have government mandated prayers, or prayers led by school officials. But if you want to pray, you can quite easily work it out and go ahead and pray. One key element here would be teaching your children to pray so that they could do so without needing an adult to make it happen.

    On the other hand if you want to fuss about praying, and try to make points in the culture war, you find a place where you can’t pray, and you do it there. On the other hand, administrators who would like to make points might just order you not to pray, or not to include religious references in art, or might try to make a music teacher eliminate sacred music from the repertoire. In that case they are making trouble instead of doing their job. Of course, in many cases it’s just ignorance, but the law is not that hard to follow. You can get pamphlets that will cover easily more than 90% of the questions that might arise.

    I’m beginning to believe more and more that the vast majority of these cases arise from a combination of stupidity and the desire to fight, and not from the desire to pray or study the Bible.

  • Good Teaching or Mockery?

    This case should turn out to be interesting. As it is, it cries out for context. (See also this on MSNBC).

    A Christian high school student is complaining that his AP history teacher is mocking his faith. His mother became concerned when the teacher said that American was not founded on Christian values. Since I’d agree with the teacher on that one, I wonder a bit about the rest. Perhaps some of these statements were made simply to provoke discussion, and if that was the case, I would have no problem. If only Christianity was challenged, that would be another matter. If one religion was mocked throughout the class, that would also be a problem. I don’t like it when Christian teachers do this to atheists or other non-Christians, and I don’t like it when it is done to Christians.

    So my initial reaction is tentatively against the teacher. But we do need to hear the context of all this. I’m assuming the principal and school board will listen to the tapes and determine just what the teacher was doing. While the student should not be mocked, challenging discussion is good. I recall once in a Bible class challenging a student about his faith and doing so effectively enough that he eventually yelled, “You won’t believe no matter what I say!” So I pointed out that I was his Bible teacher and already did believe. He thanked me afterward for the challenge.

    I will be keeping my eye on this case for sure.

  • Stupid Actions in Church-State Cases

    Ed comments on a bizarre church-state case on which he agrees with the ADF, as do I.

    There are cases in which there is some significant doubt about the correct set of actions. I sympathize with school administrators who must deal with close calls. But most of these cases are very clear, and I have a hard time understanding the motivation of the school administrators. Perhaps there is an overreaction to the perceived law. I know that many, many Christians I come in contact with truly believe that it is illegal for children to pray at school. They are surprised when someone points out that it is quite legal for their children to pray–student led, voluntary, non-disruptive times of prayer, worship and study.

    It would be very valuable for both parents and educators around the country to educate themselves on what the law actually is. Most of the litigation could be avoided with a little care and attention. I know that one way to challenge the law is to push the edges, but one should be aware of where those edges are and have some hope of accomplishing their goal before spending taxpayer money in that fashion.

    One document giving general guidelines can be found here, along with contact information for organizations that can provide more detailed and up-to-date information.