March 29
To Joseph Pearce and his article that called George Orwell a prophet because of what Orwell wrote in his book 1984 while condemning secular rule along with socialism, Soviet Union Communism, and Nazism. He does make some good points about the dangers posed by technology. This article was posted on the Imaginative Conservative's website.
The problem with the above article is that Pearce shows a lack of awareness about Orwell's political ideological leanings. While Pearce merges socialism with Soviet Union communism, which is something that Gorbachev did not do when talking about the Soviet Union's tyrannical leaders, Orwell not only did not conflate the two, he promoted Democratic Socialism.
What is sad is that Pearce's attacks on socialism and secular rule are opportunistic and rely on false premises regarding Orwell and socialism itself. Just as there is more than one kind of capitalism, there is more than one kind of socialism. And Orwell favored Democratic Socialism (see https://www.biographyonline.net/socialism-george-orwell/ ).
One other point should be made. What the Nazis called socialism, in reality, was not even close to socialism. At least it wasn't the kind of worker-led socialism promoted by Marx or the kind believed in by Orwell. And Nazism wasn't the 'wicked alter-ego' of Soviet Union Communism. Rather, some of Hitler campaign talking points sounded similar to what we hear from the Trumpublicans. After all, Hitler campaigned on bringing back traditional value and putting Germany first. Hitler believed that the Aryan race was the superior race while Trumpublicans believe in the moral superiority of like-minded political conservatives. And Hitler emphasized the importance of having a strong military.
Also, Hitler's regime not only allowed for the private ownership of property and relied on the advice of Business elites to run his government. He also opposed democracy and diversity. In addition, Hitler co-opted religion rather than opposing it. Hitler saw Soviet Union communism as Nazism's true ideological enemy.
While Pearce legitimately criticizes totalitarian regimes, he errs in claiming that they practiced socialism. The root of his errors is based on not knowing what socialism is and conflating it with Soviet Union communism.
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March 30
To Heidelblog and Simonetta Carr for the portion of Carr's article quoted in a Heidelblog post about the Protestant tradition.
Simonetta Carr's full article can be found at:
We should want to learn Church has taught in the past without becoming traditionalists. Why is that? It is because traditionalists are simply the flip side of the coin from narcissists. For while narcissists believe that we have everything to teach those from the past and nothing to learn from them, traditionalists believe that those from their favorite part(s) of the past have everything to teach us today and nothing to learn from us--that is to borrow a phraseology from Martin Luther King Jr. And that makes today's narcissists into tomorrow's traditionalists.
Of course, Jesus us warns us against substituting our traditional beliefs for God's Word when he challenged the religious teachers of His day in Mark 7. And so Carr is more than correct in saying that we cannot afford to put our traditional beliefs on the same level as the Scriptures. But how many of us do that on an informal level anyway? How many of us do not allow for interpretations of the Scriptures that have not been made by those theological heroes from the past? How many of us believe in full subscription to confessional standards that cover more than just the basics of the faith? When we put our traditional believes on too high a pedestal, we make those traditional belief a canon for the canon of the Scriptures.
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April 1
To R. Scott Clark and his blog article that questions whether the overture from the Evangel Presbytery in the PCA is appropriate because it petitions the government to take a legal stand that would prohibit the medical or surgical procedures done on minors seeking a gender reassignment. This was posted on Heidelblog.
The first point to be made here is about what is considered to be extraordinary cases. Like the word 'extreme,' the word 'extraordinary' is a relative measurement. But use of the Westminster Devines to consider what is extraordinary, as Clark attempts to do, shows both the pedestal on which Clark has put those Devines as well as his commitment to traditionalism, which itself has a disregard for historical progress.
The transgender issue has been with humanity much longer than religiously and politically conservative people would like to admit. Yes, God created man male and female. But that statement was made before the Fall. Both man and nature fell because of the Fall and nature bears witness to that as we have 1 in so many thousands of births where the biological sex of a person is indeterminant. And thus, we have 3 biological sexes.
But gender identity is another issue from biological sex because whereas one's biological sex deals with what is biological, gender identity deals what is psychological. And what we should note here is that the conservative approach to the gender identity mirrors the LGBT approach to gender identity. Both conflate biological sex with gender identity. While it is obvious how the LGBT approach conflates them, it is not as obvious to conservatives how they conflate them. They do so by using the visible biological sex indicators as the only factor that a person should use to determine their gender identity. Both nature and history gives us a different story. Nature does so since there are biological factors that can come into play in gender identity (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7415463/ ). History does so because taking a different gender identity other than what would be determined by one's biological sex is an old problem that is not unique to the West. For example, here we should note that some Native American tribes recognized up to 5 different genders and they honored those who identified as a different gender than what would be indicated by their biological sex.
Thus, we need to distinguish how the Church should approach gender identity from how the state should approach it. If truth be told, neither the LGBT community nor those who are conservative in this matter know all of the factors involved and because of that, the overture in question seems premature if it would ever be appropriate. Even scientists studying gender identity understand all of the factors involved.
We should also note that not all medical assistance given to minors who seek a gender reassignment produce permanent effects and surgical assistance to do the same is rare and is cautiously determined.
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April 3
To R. Scott Clark and his first blog article in a helpful series on the dangers of Kinism. Kinism is a form of Christian Deconstructionism that teaches that we need to segregate ourselves by our physical ethnicities. Used criticism of the Covid lockdowns to introduce the subject. This appeared in Heidelblog.
Regarding the lockdown, the lack or slow implementation of lockdowns did a lot more damage than the lockdowns themselves. This was seen in Europe and in some major cities in the U.S. where the number of deaths and those requiring hospitalization overwhelmed the available resources. Deaths and long Covid produce permanent losses for individuals and their families. Questioning the lockdowns without acknowledging the other side of things was an unnecessary political jab in the above article.
The above article is helpful in exposing Kinism-- something I've never heard of. But we also need to acknowledge two things: that the unbelieving world has had some success in battling the segregation that is a part of Kinism and that there seems to be a spiritual Kinism that permeates the those in the Reformed tradition. Yes, the latter practice is not real Kinism. However, there is an unnecessary segregation that we in the Reformed movement often embrace. That spiritual Kinism can be seen every Sunday morning and even on the internet.
The kind of segregation in Kinism which was described in the above article exhibits a control problem. But it doesn't take the extreme of Kinism to see this control problem in religiously conservative Christianity. So while it is easy for many of us religiously conservative Christians to point our fingers at such extremists as those who promote Kinism. But do we have control problems that are exhibited in other areas of our theology? Do we Reformed Christians use our allegiance to our confessions to unnecessarily segregate ourselves from other Fundamentalists and Evangelicals?
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April 4
To R. Scott Clark and his 2nd blog article in his helpful series on Kinism. Here he focuses on the CRC response to Kinism. This article appeared in Heidelblog.
There is a lot of good material against Kinism in the above article, but there are two things that require a second look and a step back from.
The first is in the quote below:
'Ground: Kinist theology and practice is neither biblical nor Reformed.'
If a theology is not biblical, why do we also need to say that it is not Reformed? If that is an admission that not all theology is Reformed, then that is acceptable. If that is a statement that is looking for an appropriate level of conformity in the denomination, that is understandable. But if that statement implies that we must be both biblical and Reformed, then we might want to reexamine the pedestal on which we place Reformed Theology.
The second item comes from a a line that Clark makes:
'That is the first time I have ever seen Friedrich Schleiermacher quoted in Synodical minutes. It should probably be the last, but I digress.'
Regardless of why Clark made that statement, his digression is a detriment. Should Reformed denominations only use statements from Reformed Theologians while theologically assessing a given position? If so, then some are in danger of making Reformed Theology a canon for the canon of the Scriptures. And thus they are in danger of replacing the Scriptures with Reformed Theology just as the religious leaders of Jesus's day replaced the Scriptures with their own traditions.
Does Reformed Theology have everything to teach the other Christian theologies but nothing to learn from them? If so, what we are witnessing is a theological Kinism. But worse than that, we we are witnessing is an unnecessary division in the Church based on arrogance.
Was everything that Schleiermacher taught theologically wrong or, even worse, a heresy? One would have to first prove that everything Schleiermacher taught was merely wrong or a heresy. Has Clark actually attempted to prove everyone of Schleiermacher's teachings wrong? Or has he assumed that everything Schleiermacher has taught was wrong?
Or maybe he didn't make his statement because of Schleiermacher per se. Maybe Clark is afraid that recognizing Schleiermacher in the way that the CRC did in their report would increase Schleiermacher's influence on that denomination. Such is a fear that stems from a tribal authoritarianism.
One should note that an easy answer to Kinism's use of the Old Testament to support racial segregation is to simply note the change of context that exists between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is an answer that we could also give when our implementation of New Testament principles differ from how they were implemented in New Testament times.
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April 6
K.V. Turley and his article describing the wartime and post war effects on the correspondent Michael Herr. Herr wrote Dispatches, which described the wartime experiences of Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. This was posted in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
As war leaves no participant innocent, it has a haunting effect on the correspondents who cover the war in person. Chris Hedges mentions this in his talks based on his book: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. Hedges also describes his own deep hardships after he quit being a war correspondent.
Perhaps the chilling effects that war has on its participants and correspondents is in itself a substantial argument that war should be abolished. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto gives another reason to do the same. With the advent of nuclear weapons, the Manifesto tells us that we have to choose between survival and the continued reliance on war. The Manifesto is realistic in its expectations of how acceptable that choice would be to people. That making the right choice demands that we ease our emphasis on national sovereignty.
Even the with the good "moral" wars, like WW II, war inflicts horrendous, irreparable mental scars on its participants. War correspondents give us an opportunity to vicariously learn about the horrors of war. But they too pay an exorbitant price to provide this opportunity for us.
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