From Left Behind to Right Behind: Denny Burk’s review of Mark and Grace Driscoll’s “Real Marriage.”

March 9, 2012 By francisbeckwith 7 Comments

Just read Denny Burk’s enlightening review of Mark and Grace Discoll’s Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship & Life (Thomas Nelson, 2012).  The Rev. Driscoll, a committed Calvinist, is a well-known megachurch pastor in the Seattle area.  If Driscoll’s book is Evangelicalism’s answer to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Evangelicalism has no idea what the question is.  Here’s an excerpt from Burk’s review:  ”Although some Christian authors comment on the ethics of a husband sodomizing his wife, I have yet to find any who contemplate the reverse. Yet the Driscolls give explicit instructions to wives about how they might sodomize their husbands in a pleasurable way.” God help us.

Filed Under: American Culture, Ethics, Evangelicalism, Theology of the Body Tagged With: , 7 Comments

What Reagan Can Teach Romney and Santorum

March 2, 2012 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

That’s the title of my latest piece over at The Catholic Thing. Here’s how it begins:

American Conservative politicians are at a rhetorical disadvantage running for national office, not only because the national media are largely liberal. Our cultural vocabulary is infused with liberal assumptions. For this reason, many of us who largely agree with social and economic conservatism cringe when we listen to conservative politicians either struggling to convey a conservative answer without giving offense (as in the case of Mitt Romney) or without bothering with a winsome delivery (as in the case of Rick Santorum).

Americans love a happy warrior, which is why they loved Ronald Reagan. He knew what he believed and why he believed it, and he was willing to offer reasons for his beliefs. But he also knew how to deliver his message with humor, wit, and self-deprecation. He was a serious man who did not take himself all that seriously. And thus, unlike today’s candidates (including the current occupant of the White House), he rarely used the first person singular. This is because Reagan loved America more than he loved himself. And it showed.

>>>continue reading

 

 

Filed Under: American Culture, Mitt Romney, politics, Rick Santorum, Ronald W. Reagan, The Catholic Thing Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment

Read All About It!: President Obama to exempt religious organizations..[+Update]

February 15, 2012 By francisbeckwith 9 Comments

from the list of tax-exempt non-profits that a citizen can work for in order to have the government forgive the student’s college loan. Read all about in the Washington Post On Faith blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Are clergy and teachers of religious faith/thought public servants? Is their work on par with that of others who work for 501c3 non-for-profit groups and for government agencies? It used to be, but as of January 31st, the federal government has changed its mind about that.

Although not known to most people, the federal government maintains a program called Public Service Loan Forgiveness. According to that program, after ten years of public service work, any remaining federal student loans remaining for that worker would be forgiven. But what counts as public service?

Until the end of January, the government definition was clear and inclusive….

So after telling us that pretty much everything qualifies, even going out of its way to highlight that neither the type of work nor nature of the organizations matters, the government slips in the fact that if faith or worship are part of your work, you don’t qualify. What?!

Do read the whole thing. (HT: The Anchoress). In response to a claim in the combox, the following comes from Hot Air:

Update: I’ve had a couple of e-mails from readers who sent the link to the statutory language for the PSLF, which doesn’t indicate any changes to the law itself since October 2009 (not 2008, as one of them wrote), although there is no indication what changed at that time.  However, the administration’s PSLF fact page did in fact change on January 31, 2012, with the addition of that restriction on eligibility.  Someone wanted to make sure that people working at religious organizations knew they don’t qualify for PSLF at about the same time the White House announced the HHS mandate, and the message is pretty clear that they intend to enforce that restriction.  Either way, the fact remains that this administration is treating religious exemptions very differently based on their preferred outcomes.

Filed Under: American Culture, President Barack Obama, Religious Liberty Tagged With: , , 9 Comments

The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws

February 15, 2012 By francisbeckwith 3 Comments

That’s the title of a well-reasoned article published in the March 2012 issue of First Things.  Authored by the University of St. Thomas Law School professor Robert K. Vischer, here’s how it begins:

The law in several states now requires pro-life pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill, Christian adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples, and religious entities to pay for their employees’ contraceptives. The list of such violations of religious freedom keeps growing, along with the insistence that religious beliefs be kept private. The recent spate of “anti-Sharia” initiatives is just the most politically popular example of such threats.

Though popular with secularists and religious conservatives, anti-Sharia legislation does not defend against theocracy but calls into question our society’s fundamental commitments to meaningful religious liberty and meaningful access to the courts. These commitments have been relied on by generations of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Jews, and to try to remove them for Muslims both is unjust to Muslims and sets a dangerous precedent for other religious groups.

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I think Professor Vischer is spot on, and I have shared similar concerns with my students at Baylor.

Filed Under: American Culture, Constitutional Law, Religious Liberty Tagged With: , 3 Comments

Wall Street Journal: Birth-Control Mandate: Unconstitutional and Illegal

February 14, 2012 By francisbeckwith 3 Comments

David Rivkin and Ed Whelan write in the Wall Street Journal (15 February 2012):

Last Friday, the White House announced that it would revise the controversial ObamaCare birth-control mandate to address religious-liberty concerns. Its proposed modifications are a farce.

The Department of Health and Human Services would still require employers with religious objections to select an insurance company to provide contraceptives and drugs that induce abortions to its employees. The employers would pay for the drugs through higher premiums. For those employers that self-insure, like the Archdiocese of Washington, the farce is even more blatant.

The birth-control coverage mandate violates the First Amendment’s bar against the “free exercise” of religion. But it also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That statute, passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and by a 97-3 vote in the Senate, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. It was enacted in response to a 1990 Supreme Court opinion, Employment Division v. Smith.

>>>continue reading

Filed Under: 2012 Election, American Culture, President Barack Obama, Religious Liberty Tagged With: , 3 Comments
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