Family Truths

November 29, 2011 By scotmcknight 4 Comments

From the inestimable source, The Onion:

ATLANTA—A Zogby poll of 1,542 American grandparents published Monday found that grandsons were described as “very” to “extremely” talented by 1,542 of the respondents. “Participants in the poll were emphatic in their descriptions of the talents of grandsons in fields as diverse as advertising and sales, choral performance, baseball, talking, crawling, making their beds, video games, and instructing their elders on proper cell-phone use,” pollster Tom Waterton said. “In addition, an overwhelming percentage of grandchildren were described as outgoing, sharp, and looking just like Uncle Andy, you remember Uncle Andy, he was always up to something, too bad he passed so young, he would have loved the grandchild in question.” Sources at Zogby admitted that the survey was incomplete, as several hundred pollsters are still unable to get their assigned grandparents off the phone.

Filed Under: Uncategorized 4 Comments

GOP Friendly Fire

November 29, 2011 By scotmcknight 85 Comments

By David Frum:

I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John ­McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.

America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Public Issues 85 Comments

Anointed? … Evangelicals and Authority 5 (RJS)

November 29, 2011 By RJS 18 Comments

I recently received, courtesy of the publisher, a copy of the new book The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age by Randall Stephens, an associate professor of history at Eastern Nazarene College and Karl Giberson, formerly a professor of Physics at Eastern Nazarene. Giberson has now moved on to concentrate on a number of writing projects.

In this book Stephens and Giberson examine several different facets of American evangelicalism to explore the manner in which “America’s populist ideals, anti-intellectualism, and religious free market, along with the concept of anointing – being chosen by God to speak for him like the biblical prophets” influence a broad range of evangelical and fundamentalist beliefs and practices.

Chapter five, A Carnival of Christians, discusses the evangelical subculture and the way Christians grow up and live within this culture, separated to an extent from the broader western culture. The presentation is shaped around the experience of a young Christian – Paul – who grew up embedded in this culture in the southeastern United States. Stephens and Giberson focus on two specific aspects of evangelical culture and the way they shape Christians – the culture of the local church and the Christian family and the culture of Christian higher education.  Both of these are worth some discussion and thought. In order to do justice to each I am going to consider the issues raised in this chapter in two separate posts. The post today will look at the local church and Christian culture. The post Thursday will turn to consider aspects of higher education and what is termed the “carnival of Christians“, the diversity of Christians views that deviate from any individual’s stereotyped expectation.

The evangelical subculture for Paul, and for many over the last several generations, has been an immersion in a parallel American culture, existing alongside the mainstream, but separate from it in many ways. This culture includes church services, children and youth activities, adult gatherings, music (traditional hymns, gospel choruses, and CCM), entertainment, t-shirts (“God is Totally Awesome” or “His Pain, Your Gain”), candy (Testamints and Faith Pops), even golf balls (Top Flite’s Gospel Golf Balls imprinted with bible verses).

The role of the local church in the evangelical subculture, however, loomed large – much larger than the somewhat cheesy merchandise. To be part of the church was to belong to an extended family. Parents were committed to the church and children were raised embedded in the community of the church.

Do you think that church is an extended family?

Is this evangelical subculture a positive or a negative influence?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Evangelicalism Tagged With: 18 Comments

For and Against Calvinism 11

November 29, 2011 By scotmcknight 22 Comments

Michael Horton’s question in his new book, For Calvinism, is to sketch and argue for Calvinism, including how Calvinism understands the Christian life.

Horton shows how Calvinism is neither antinomian nor legalistic, and it has been accused of both and it should not be. For Calvinism the Christian life is a downward movement from God to us and out into the world. It’s a work of grace, and sanctification is to be kept separate from justification; to be sure, the latter leads to the former but they are not to be confused.

Furthermore, for Horton there is an emphasis on the Christian life as ecclesially shaped and not just individualistically, and here he pushes against populist evangelicalism (rightly, I think). Election does not minimize godliness; justification leads to sanctification. The means of grace are the Word, baptism, Lord’s Supper, church membership … the Word flows into the home and into individuals, the home into the community.

Horton’s sketch says good and admirable things about the Christian life if one restricts one’s evidence to post-Jesus New Testament and to Reformed teachings, and much of what he says I’d agree with. It’s what he doesn’t cover that concerns me most. There is insufficient attention to the teachings of Jesus and to the Holy Spirit, to love, to self-denial and the cost of discipleship, to the Sermon on the Mount, to the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and to the Lord’s Prayer.

OK, for our Calvinist readers, if you were asked to sketch the Christian life according to Calvinism, What would be your top three points? [Other than, it's all of grace; got that. Other than, it's for the glory of God; got that, too.]

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Calvinism 22 Comments