Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For July 14, 2021

The comment below was blocked in its original form. Thanks to a hack, it was posted later. 

July 9

To Gene Veith and his blogpost on how Christianity is seeing an increase in adherents in the nation of Iran. At the end, the article states that the increasing influence of Christianity in Iran is a 'blow to Western Secularism.' This appears in the Cranach blog on Patheos.

What is the compulsion to make progress or set backs for Christianity as either a blow to or victory for Secularism? Why not allow for interpretations of the news that assumes a context of peaceful coexistence rather than for some kind of competition for control?

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July 13

To R.Scott Clark and his blogpost quote from an article by Jon Payne that stated that there is no room for compromise with Side B Christianity and CRT because they are unbiblical. This quote of Payne's article appeared in Heidelblog. 

Jon Payne's article, from which Clark's quote originally appeared in, can be found at: 

    https://gospelreformation.net/the-pcas-bright-future-without-a-bigger-tent/

"We mustn't make room for Side B or CRT"? Does that mean that those who believe to any significant degree in what Side B or CRT are saying must be excommunicated from the Church? That neither view has any truth in them? Is that what is behind that quote?  After all, to take that quote with any seriousness at all and to take what he says later in the article about how there can be 'no compromise,' Church discipline is required on those who advocate any part of either view. Otherwise, the Church could affirm the legitimacy of parts of Side B and CRT.

But my guess is that the PCA doesn't want to discipline those who advocate to any significant degree those questionable views. The conservatives in the PCA just wants marginalize those who advocate such views within the denomination. Perhaps it is out of hopes that such advocates would disappear from the denomination out of attrition. But certainly, this is a control issue. And though such fears are more understandable for the Side B view, such fears over CRT has more to do with what is and is not kosher with the PCA subculture than with the Bible. That subculture being a predominantly an American conservative political one. And that subculture view is more dominated by influences from European and our nation's founding fathers, and thus a white subculture view, than by the Scriptures.

We should note something about racism in the discussion of CRT. While most conservatives who reject CRT want racism to be defined in terms of what it means to them, most of whom are white, CRT defines racism in terms of what it means to the victims of racism. Thus, such a rejection shows a problem that those conservatives have with being self-absorbed. But such a reliance on the past also shows a continuity with the Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking  in Mark 7: those who relied on their traditions to understand the Word of God.

In short, the all-or-nothing approach to Side B and CRT is more out of the most pronounced weakness of conservatism: that they rely too much on the past, here I am excluding the Scriptures, to understand the and respond to the present. And in that sense, conservatives are against the notion of always reforming but are also in danger of associating unbiblical conservative subculture views too closely with the Scriptures.