Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Religion

  • Separating Church from State

    I believe in the separation from church and state. I’m not talking about the principle derived from the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, though I do accept that as well, but rather about a Christian principle. I believe that the more we depend on the power of Caesar to accomplish our goals, the less likely we are to depend on the gospel and the more likely we are to become corrupted. Government power is corrupting, and I think the church should stay away from it.

    Again, I don’t think that church leaders should be excluded from politics, but they should be especially careful to separate their personal political actions from the corporate actions of the church. I, as a member, should be able to handle having a pastor who works for political goals with which I disagree, provided he does not make me a part of his goals without my consent, and provided he is not committing the church to his own views.

    As an aside, nearly every election we have some controversy over churches involved with politics. What are acceptable political activities? Is it an infringement of freedom of religion for the IRS to forbid pastors to do political advocacy from the pulpit? I’ll probably awaken more controversy with this than anything else, but this is why I am ambivalent about church tax exemption. Tax exemption has become a key element of religious liberty in this country. I grew up Seventh-day Adventist, and in every discussion of religion, a bedrock principle was that churches must be tax exempt. “The power to tax is the power to control” was the key phrase.

    But it turns out that the power to define may also be the power to control, and if the government can provide tax exemption to “churches” it must somehow define what is and is not a church. Interestingly, some Christians of my acquaintance think this is obvious. We all know what a church is. But when a more marginal religious group is looking for tax exemption, they may be defined out of it. So is religious freedom for everyone, or just for the people that we think are obviously eligible? Perhaps tax exemption isn’t such a good thing.

    Personally, I don’t want my church doing any of the things that would threaten its tax exempt status, so I have no particular problem. But the fact that certain pastors disagree, and out of their convictions, which I believe they should be free to hold, believe that their religious duty calls for their involvement in politics, what then? That’s when the definition of a church, and of the activities that go with being a church becomes important.

    What do I mean by keeping the church out of politics but keeping individual members involved? I do not mean that Christians should not be involved in politics, whatever their nation. We are citizens of God’s kingdom, but we live in one or another of the kingdoms of this world. Like Nebuchadnezzar, we need to learn that God rules these kingdoms (Daniel 4:17), but he also expects us to live morally within them. I believe that means exercising what personal power we have within them in accordance with our Christian principles.

    I was a bit disturbed at a recent event to be given a voter’s guide. It was given to me by a very nice person, but it told me very clearly how to vote, and the person who gave it to me implied that this was the “Christian” way to do it. I think that is unfortunate. Not that he should not have pursued his political goals. For that I applaud him, even though he and I will likely not be voting the same way on just about anything. No, my objection is to implying that a particular way to vote is the one and only Christian way to approach issues. I’ve encountered churches I might have joined, but have backed off when I found that a particular political posture was so thoroughly assumed that nobody would imagine a Christian could disagree.

    I think the church would be much better served by working to create disciples, and then trusting that those disciples would act in accordance with the principles that they have learned.

  • Aim It at Yourself First

    One of the key things I say in teaching Bible study is: “Aim it at yourself first.”

    Now that’s a hard one to follow, and it doesn’t mean one can never discover what a text means for someone else. Rather, it’s a focus. I need to look at what I need to change. You need to look at what you need to change. But, of course, with the second sentence, I’m aiming it at you!

    Nonetheless, if I look at myself first, I think I will tend to be less judgmental.

    This focus is also important in the participatory Bible study method for which this blog is named. In fact, there is little new in Bible study, and little new in the method except for the emphasis on sharing. I imagine some wonder how “sharing” has to do with aiming it at yourself first. That’s because many of us are used to hearing the word “sharing” with reference to telling other people what we know.

    But sharing can and should be much more than that, not to mention less of that. Sharing is a form of accountability. Academics are acquainted with this type of sharing. One of the things I miss from graduate school is how easy it was to find someone who was studying a similar subject to mine. I could then present them with some idea I had, and they’d tear it apart. As a result, I’d be able to refine, or possibly discard my idea before wasting too much time.

    People outside of academic circles come up with ideas all the time from their Bible study. Sometimes they just dismiss them, assuming they can’t possibly know something the author of their Sunday School literature didn’t know. Other times, they build up a list of eccentric ideas that haven’t been tested.

    You can avoid either of these results by sharing. That means talking to other people about your ideas and listening to what they say. It means finding people who are not in your inner circle, who might think very differently, and hearing their point of view. Listening doesn’t mean you accept everything you hear. It just means you hear it, take the time to understand it, and then evaluate it, and your own ideas in light of it.

    Now for a link. Pete Enns posted today on the difference between a spiritual journey and a religious journey. He’s talking about just one key, but I think he has an excellent point. I think you’ll see how it relates. His title is Losing My Religion (At Least That’s the Plan).

  • Discovering What Young Adults Want

    I hear (and participate in) many discussions about what young adults want from the church, usually in the context of asking why the youth and young adults don’t attend church services or the events we put on for them. I’ve arrived at an age where waitresses at restaurants ask me if I want my senior citizen discount (I recently turned 55!), and I sometimes even get one. The interesting thing is how few of the discussions of what young adults like ever include any young adults. I may feel young, but I’m not in touch with the twenty-something or even thirty-something crowd.

    I recall being in a church committee meeting where we discussed what we should do with the church services to get more young people to attend. After more than half an hour of ideas, I felt constrained to point out that there was nobody in the room under 40, and maybe only one or two under 50. The rest of us were in our 50s. Isn’t there are problem with this sort of discussion?

    But when I read Dan Dick’s Beyond Label or Cateogry, I felt much more sympathy (or perhaps empathy) with the girl in the story than with my friends of a similar age. My first reaction was that listing the contents of her purse seemed like a violation of privacy. (I note that some time after I read the post, but before I wrote this, another commenter noted the same thing.) But then I thought that this was an effort to discover her identity, and nothing personal was revealed.

    I too have struggled with labels. I can’t just join a group, in many cases, because I’ll be on their side on one issue, but not on another. People in groups tend to expect you to be on their side, at least most of the time. But despite my own difficulties with labeling, I can get lost in trying to follow the various commitments of those younger than I am.

    So please read Dan’s article and give some consideration to flexibility. Is our complaint that young adults don’t like faith? Or is it, rather, that they don’t like all of our extraneous commitments and our expectation for conformity?

  • Jesus vs. Religion – Really?

    There’s a video that’s been making the rounds of the Christian blogs, in which pits Jesus against religion. Here it is:

     

    There have been a number of posts that are critical of it as well, including a good one by John Byron, and a longer, but still interesting one at The American Jesus.

    Another blogger I follow regularly, T. Michael Holcomb, has also created a video response, which is worth watching, though he gets into some more serious theological terminology:

     

    I think that both the original video and the responses have some important things to say. But we do have a problem here, and it’s one of equivocation. We’re not keeping a consistent definition of religion. One responder notes that Jesus objected to legalism, not religion, but to the speaker in the video, legalism is inherent in religion.

    I have little to add to the posts and videos I have linked. There is good religion and not-so-good religion. We should remember that the religion Jesus objected to (and did so as a Jew speaking of his own religion), was one God instituted in Hebrew scriptures. He opposed corruptions of it, such as legalism, but never said it was bad by nature.

    At the same time, those very corruptions of religion, including legalism and the elevation of earthly authorities above God, are diseases that are rampant in American Christianity.

    The institutional church needs to hear this and take action. If they can …

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  • To the IRD: Democracy is Biblical?

    Mark Tooley of the Institute for Religion and Democracy thinks that religious leaders should not be supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement:

    “Religious activists who have aligned with the Wall Street Occupation should model mature Christian discernment, not echo angry resentments that dream of a secular utopia.”

    That quote is highlighted at the top of the IRD statement titled IRD Challenges Religious Left over Support for Wall Street Occupation (HT: Christian Post).

    Now I have reservations about religious leaders becoming tightly connected to a particular political movement. I think it is way too easy to let our commitment to the kingdom of God be hijacked by various political agendas.

    But that’s not IRD’s point. They believe that the agenda of these leaders in the religious left is, in itself, not biblical. Their own statement says, “The Institute on Religion & Democracy works to reaffirm the church’s biblical and historical teachings, strengthen and reform its role in public life, protect religious freedom, and renew democracy at home and abroad.” In fact, if you look over your web site, it becomes apparent they have their own political agenda, for example on the death penalty, in which Mark Tooley again suggests that only those supporting the death penalty are presenting “careful reasoning rooted in Christian tradition . . . ”

    If one believes Mark Tooley, those who show “mature Christian discernment” apparently must support democracy, but oppose big government, and particularly redistribution of income. Now while I am leary myself of schemes to redistribute income, I do not make the assumption that my own political position is the only Christian one. I believe that God calls us to care for the poor and unfortunate; he has not told us in scripture the precise method to use.

    And please tell me just where it is that the Bible supports democracy. I have heard this over and over, yet I don’t see any case where democracy in any form recognizably similar to modern democracy, was practiced or advocated. Might it be the best way to run a country in which one may live as a Christian? I would imagine so. I like it myself. But the Bible doesn’t make that the one and only Christian option.

     

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  • A Christian Case for Limited Government?

    Allan R. Bevere is making a Christian case for limited government. Scot McKnight has linked to it. Some of the discussion is heated. Fun!

  • How to Keep Religion in the Public Square

    Every so often there’s another outburst of complaints about how religion is being suppressed in this country, and how it no longer has its place in the public square. And there are the occasional really silly incidents that actually support such a claim. I note, for example, that our local public library here in Pensacola, Florida refuses to permit religious groups to conduct meetings, which is simply a lawsuit waiting to happen.

    On the other hand, many, and I suspect most, of the complaints arise more from inconvenience, and the legitimate requirements that people use some kind of etiquette in the way in which they use the public square. The complaint of suppression is frequently actually a complaint that one is not getting the proper strokes, or that the government is not funding one’s favorite religious cause.

    WorldNetDaily has an article complaining that a clause forbidding the use of stimulus money to build buildings whose main use is religious. For example, you can’t build a seminary with the money. (HT: Dispatches.) They do this with the ridiculous headline, Stimulus to ban religious worship. Yeah, right. Either from the church or the state side, I very much do not want the government constructing buildings for religious purposes.

    But if we Christians do not have what we think is our proper place in the public square, why is that? Is it because of suppression? Christianity is, after all, the majority religion. I do note, however, that when this is limited to True ChristiansTM, no matter who gets to make the definition, the number drops substantially.

    But it seems to me that we’re so busy complaining about the opportunities we don’t have (and I’m not prejudicing the issue of what privileges we should have) that we aren’t really taking advantage of the privileges and opportunities we do have.

    If you are a parent who complains that children can’t pray at school, let me ask a couple of questions. Did you take the time to pray with your children before you sent them out to the bus stop? Will you pray with them when they get home? Will you take time out of your schedule today to pray for your children during their time at school? And even more, have you investigated just where and when at school your children can pray? Have you taught them how to pray for themselves?

    If you are complaining that our young people aren’t getting enough Biblical education, again let me ask you a few questions. Have you read your Bible today? Have you chosen a passage and really studied it, so that if someone referenced it in literature you’d “get” it? Have you or will you take time with your children to study the Bible or something about your faith? Do you encourage your children to read the Bible? Do you see to it that they know something about their church community?

    And more importantly, have you let that life of prayer and Bible study impact the way you act in the public square? When you ask “what would Jesus do?” does it come out to something other than your own inclinations? Do people who meet you know you’re a Christian? If they find out you’re a Christian will their opinion of Christians improve?

    If you don’t relate to many of the things I’m suggesting, I think you should reconsider complaints about being restricted in your religious activities. You aren’t taking advantage of the many opportunities that are available.

    If you or your children aren’t praying enough or studying the Bible enough, is it the fault of the much maligned ACLU? Or is it a result of your desire to have somebody else take care of your children’s religious education because you don’t actually care enough to take the time to do it yourself?

  • Creation-Evolution Posts and Reading Recommendations

    I’ve been posting a good deal about evolution since the Florida science standards have been rewritten and it’s time for comments. Early next year we’ll be dealing with a vote. Generally people think the new standards are good, but as is not uncommon, a different standard is applied to evolution than to other scientific theories.

    The issue is often framed either as faith vs. evolution, i.e. all who accept evolution are atheists, and atheists are bad, so we should reject evolution. As a subset the issue is framed as Christianity vs. evolution. Every aspect of that framing is wrong. Evolution is a well-supported scientific theory. It’s unfortunate that one can smear a theory by associating it with a certain category of people, but in the case of atheists that seems to work. It’s wrong, but there it is. But one of the advantages to science is that its results can be replicated, and they look the same to a Hindu, a Christian, or an atheist. One’s religious beliefs don’t change the information. Thus who it is that produces the information is not the issue.

    To back up some of my current writing, I’d like to point to some of my past post, taking on the religious issue first. There is not just one creationism. Even Christians subscribe to a number of different posts. In my review of What Is Creation Science? I commented on the attempt by the authors to separate the flood geology, the age of the earth, and what they call the “fact” of creation. This is an astounding claim. How can one make predictions about the fossil record without any timeline? How can one make predictions about it without regard to a universal flood? If such a flood happened, then it would certainly leave evidence. This situation is only made more complex by views such as old earth creationism, ruin and restoration creationism, and some minimal forms of ID that claim that perhaps God either tweaked the creation just a little bit here and there, or perhaps only created the first life-form with front-loading.

    I wrote a series of posts early in the days of this blog outlining these various views and also relating them to basic Christian doctrines. The major posts in that series were:

    For those interested in the religious aspects in particular, combine this with my series on my Participatory Bible Study blog. That series actually starts with Genesis 3, but it references my pre-blog (though updated) essay, Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship, and then continues with Genesis 3.

    You can get the whole series using this link, or by clicking on “Genesis” in the tag cloud in the right sidebar (at Participatory Bible Study).

    To the list of suggested readings, I would now have to add at least John Haught’s book God After Darwin, and Richard Colling’s book Random Designer, which I’m reading right now.