Chaos Creates Conservatives

August 25, 2020 By Timon Cline

It feels like ages ago, but just this past January, the preeminent conservative philosopher and greatest Englishman of his generation, Roger Scruton passed away. A bad omen, it turns out, for 2020. Excellent tributes to his life, which poured in from around the world, can be found here and here. Before his death, Sir Roger agreed to set up the recently launched Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation. The inaugural event, a webinar (such are the times), is taking place tomorrow (which... Read more

Social Justice, Hermeneutics, and Impending Denominational Splits

August 24, 2020 By Timon Cline

I’ve written before about how, like the United Methodist Church, the Southern Baptist Convention is facing almost certain fracture. At the time, I attributed this to certain denomination traits that would/will make the SBC vulnerable to then-emerging hot-button issues. Nine months ago, a conservative cadre of UMC of bishops called for denominational separation over issues of sexuality and gender. I argued then that the UMC was a look into Galadriel’s mirror for the SBC, presenting one of several possible futures.... Read more

Christianity: The Foundation of the Common Law

August 18, 2020 By Timon Cline

One of the welcome results of the demise of fusionist conservatism and the ensuing post-liberalism discussion, which has yielded or melded with (its hard to tell) the reassessment of originalism as the established conservative jurisprudential outlook, is widespread interest in examining legal texts and opinions of the early republic. A disenchantment with bare (allegedly neutral) proceduralism and positivism, and the search for the common good through jurisprudence (as well as some “conservative” victories for once, which seem to elude the... Read more

The ‘Critical’ Threat of Missions

August 13, 2020 By Timon Cline

Alex Kocman (Director of Advancement and Mobilization at ABWE), writing at Founders, has issued a warning regarding the effect of critical ideologies on Christian missionary efforts. (Kocman also has a great review of Eric Mason’s Woke Church up at Founders). Kocman cautions that Blind application of critical theory to mission yields at least two negative fruits. The first and most obvious ill result is that the hands of Western missionaries are tied when they step into new cultural contexts and find... Read more

Richard Baxter on the Insufficiency of Scripture

August 9, 2020 By Timon Cline

Though articles at TCC may comment on a range of topics (cultural, political, etc.) one of the stated goals of this column is to attempt to expand our understanding of the Reformed tradition through examining older sources. We will henceforth refer to such articles, this being the first, as Ad Fontes articles (which will always be tagged with that phrase). Today we look at a portion of Richard Baster’s (1615-1691) Christian Directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases... Read more

MacArthur v. Leeman: Part 2

July 31, 2020 By Timon Cline

In Part 1 of this series I argued that the recent Calvary Chapel and South Bay cases, though framed as Free Exercise and Free Speech cases, should be considered, from a socio-political perspective, under the Establishment Clause. Part 2 investigates the anatomy Liberalism, the religion being favored by state governments around the country, a favoritism recently excused by the Supreme Court, in part because of a truncated Free Exercise jurisprudence which is resultant of a misinterpreted (neutrally rewritten) Establishment... Read more

Movie Review: Mr. Jones

July 29, 2020 By Timon Cline

Rarely is there a movie that features truth as its central theme. Mr. Jones, the story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones’ fight to reveal the Holodomor (see Anne Appelbaum’s Red Famine (2017))— Stalin’s manmade famine in Ukraine— to the world, is such a film. The movie’s U.S. release, scheduled for April of this year, was stunted by COVID-19. James Norton (Grantchester), who is rumored to be in the running to be the next James Bond, delivers an impassioned and convincing... Read more

MacArthur v. Leeman: Part 1

July 28, 2020 By Timon Cline

Introduction This past Sunday, John MacArthur and Grace Community Church (GCC) assembled together, in person, and in defiance of the standing state directive of Governor Newsom. This two days after announcing that they would do so. This announcement came less than two weeks after California Governor Newsom issued an executive order that essential aborted reopening plans after a surge of COVID-19 in the state. The renewed restrictions halted all indoor dining and closed bars, zoos, and museums. Major counties... Read more

What Wokeness Does to Friendships

July 21, 2020 By Timon Cline

The Cut recently ran a very long, shall we say, confession, called, “There’s a Divide in Even the Closest Interracial Friendships Including Ours,” an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. The former is a black woman and the latter a white woman. The excerpt is meant to instruct the reader on the dynamics, challenges, and best practices of interracial friendships. Early on, Aminatou is described as being always on high alert for things strangers might... Read more