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Showing posts with label Billy Graham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Billy Graham. Show all posts

Friday, March 23, 2018

Letting Go Of The Future By Looking Back To The Past

The death of Billy Graham appears to be the final nail in the coffin of American conservative Christianity from the past. Conservative Christianity was the rage in America from time to time and preachers like Billy Graham ignited interest and brought in many new followers. But there seems to be no one who is taking his place and Thomas Kidd (click here for a bio), who is from The Gospel Coalition and Baylor University, recently wrote a reminiscing  article that appeared on the First Things website asking if another Billy Graham is waiting in the wings (click here for the article).

Kidd's question is asked from a certain perspective. That perspective wasn't focused on Graham's personality, beliefs, or political connections. Kidd's question was asked regarding whether there will be another evangelistic preacher who will have the impact Billy Graham had. And Kidd's answer to his own question seems to be 'no.' And Kidd gives a surprising explanation why while praising Graham for his vision and his many skills.

 Why did Kidd answer his own question with a 'no.' It is because today's audience is far different from the audiences on which Graham began to build his ministry. That was true even when Graham ran crusades in other countries. For then, Graham was riding on the coattails of his own success in America. And his audiences back then were, for the most part, evangelical or heavily influenced by evangelicalism. Thus Graham's crusades not only easily reached unbelievers, his crusades ministered to believers as well. But today's audiences are too secular for any evangelist to follow in Graham's footsteps by imitating his methods and message, according to Kidd.

Kidd believes that any "future Billy Graham" would have to accomplish the following. He would have to distinguish the evangelical message and movement from what evangelism has been all strongly associated with: a 'religious white' Republicanism. And any future Billy Graham would also have to exhibit Graham's combination of entrepreneurial skills with his adept use of the communications technology of the day.

 There are several points to be addressed in Kidd's article. Again, he asked, will there be a new evangelist who will have the same impact that Billy Graham had? And I fully agree with his answer and he gives a substantially qualified explanation as to why. But his explanation could also be added to.

What else could explain why it is unlikely that we will see another Billy Graham? We should note that both Modernism and Post Modernism have made more of an impact now than during the beginning of his ministry and heyday. That means that the Christian metanarrative is more likely to be heavily challenged than it was when Graham was popular. Modernism's metanarrative still challenges Christianity's explanations for the physical world around us. In addition, Post Modernism is giving fits to what Kidd referred to as white Christian Republicanism because of how religiously conservative Christians have all too often aligned themselves with a self-exalting patriotism and conservative American political ideology. The challenges of both Modernism and Post Modernism have effectively, in the eyes of many people, dismantled the credibility of the Evangelicalism promoted by Billy Graham.

But one other point needs to be made here. That is when use Billy Graham's message and political entanglements as the basis of comparison, we already have another Billy Graham. His name is Franklin Graham. He pretty much adheres to the evangelicalism promoted by his father. And like his father, Franklin has his own questionable political associations. But those associations have hurt Franklin more than Billy Graham's associations hurt him. Why? The difference in in the audience. The audience back then was more accepting of a conservative authoritarianism than it is today. And that is why Kidd alluded to the need for any new Billy Graham to distance evangelicalism from its past political and racial associations. That is why this article has pointed to Post Modernism as contributing to a new audience that is less receptive to Billy Graham's messages and political associations than the audiences he preached to.

 Is there a new Billy Graham visible on the horizon? I'm afraid not, though too much dependence on such a figure is not healthy. Why? Because too many conservative evangelical leaders have not distanced themselves enough from the Republican party and politically conservative ideology to at least answer the objections of Post Modernism.






 

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Monday, March 5, 2018

ONIM For March 5, 2018

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Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For February 28, 2018

Feb 24

To John Horvat and his blogpost that blames liberals and liberalism for events like the mass shooting in Florida. Liberals and liberalism are to blame according to Horvat because mass shootings are the result of breakdowns in society caused by liberal influence. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

The tragic part of the above article is that in scapegoating liberals for the recent mass shootings, conservatives are playing the role waned against by the God whom they claim to believe in and liberals reject. Conservatives are also sharing a practice, which is scapegoating, employed by those who participate in mass shootings like the one recently seen in Florida.

Jesus warned us against judging others and putting ourselves on pedestals in His parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-25). In that parable, Jesus compared the standing before God between a pharisee, who bragged about his own righteousness, and a publican, who could only see himself as a sinner to the extent that he didn't even mention the pharisee. And why did Jesus tell the parable. Verse 9 explains:

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:

At the end of the day, Jesus's parable tells us that it was pharisee, not the tax collector, who went home condemned.

The scapegoating of liberals and liberalism for today's gun violence runs counter to the narrative of the Florida shooting. For Nikolas Cruz was linked to white supremacists--a right-wing group. We should note that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has tracked 150 terrorist attacks, including those from anti-abortion extremists, to right-wing groups. Those attacks have occurred from 1993 to 2017. The 2 groups involved in most of the attacks are white supremacists and 'anti-government extremists,' who as a group are sometime referred to as the Patriot movement (see  https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states  ). We should note that the Imaginative Conservative website has spoken against government when it sees government as stepping outside the bounds that the website has assigned to it.

The scapegoating of liberals and liberalism for today's gun violence runs counter Church history when religious wars and atrocities were performed in the name of Christianity--sometimes with both sides of a war claiming that the Christian God was on their side.That scapegoating also runs counter to the Church's attempts to silence scientific discoveries and thought. The scapegoating of liberals and liberalism for today's gun violence also runs counter the history of our nation where in the name of Christ, European Christian settlers of our nation engaged in both ethnically cleansing Native Americans from the land and owning slaves. Their descendants used their religious faith to defend the continued owning of slaves and, subsequently, a society based on white supremacy such as what occurred during Jim Crow.

It would be just as wrong to scapegoat conservatives and conservatism as it is to scapegoat liberals and liberalism for the violence we see in society today. But we should note that the scapegoating of others is what is still being practiced by many who have been conducting terrorist acts and other mass killings. The scapegoating of others has often been used to justify wars. And yet, that scapegoating is what is being used in the above article to persuade people to have such a hostile view of liberals and liberalism that they see liberals as not only having everything to learn and nothing to teach, but as posing a real physical threat to society.

It isn't that liberals have no faults or that the  have never made questionable impacts on society. It is that negatively influencing society is a human fault that is a part of all groups that wish to influence society. Both liberal and conservative groups have contributed to the some of the breakdowns in society. As Jesus said:

9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on research designed to measure the employment of Protestant religious values with individual prosperity. This appeared in the Acton blog.

Whenever we run into claims of Christian values promoting human flourishing, we also need to account for how Christians have practiced those values to the detriment of others. But that is often not done because, as in the study cited above, the scope of negative and positive effects is limited to the participants. Such possibly shows attempts to correlate work ethic and personal values that would make one more marketable and productive, or reduce wasteful spending or the taking of personal risks that would hurt one's prosperity. So the scope is very small and asks people to only look at how they themselves are affected. The trouble here is that the study was conducted within a certain context that included an economic system but excluded data on the other stakeholders who affected by the same economic system.  It is in that small scope that revolves around the self that shows the fault of measuring the effects of sets of values like the Protestant work ethic and life values.And thus one should wonder if the religiosity involved causes people to be more self-absorbed.

In addition, the tie between increased grit and income is rather ambiguous. For increased grit could show a positive, or at least realistic, relationship with a relative healthy economic system or could be a sign of an acceptance of being exploited in an abusive economic system. And with the small scope that comes from revolving a study on one's focus on oneself, there is little chance, without outside influence of any given participant discovering the kind of economic system in which one is participating.

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Feb 26

To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost about how Billy Graham claimed that Britain’s Labour Party created many problems. He also stated that Communism and Christianity are diametrically opposed to each other. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

Should it come as a surprise that Graham would criticize economic ideologies that were not employed in his own nation? Should it come as a surprise that Graham and others viewed socialism as his government did: as a monolith.

Martin Luther King initially viewed Communism as a monolith, but unlike Graham, he could see the strengths and weaknesses in both Communism and Capitalism. King correctly saw materialism in both Communism and Capitalism. After all, both were measured by how they distributed goods. The two, however, employed different kinds of materialism and he viewed the materialism of both as posing a threat. But King saw something else. He saw that the strength of one served as the weakness of the other. King saw that Communism recognized that life was social but forgot that life was individual. Capitalism reversed that.

We could also add to that that both Communism and Capitalism promote utopias. Communism, following Marx, sought an absolute utopia while Capitalism claims to have reached a relative utopia. The relative utopia of Capitalism can be seen in its claim that no other system can make a better economy and way of life.

While Graham saw Communism and Christianity as being diametrically opposed, Marx didn't see it that way. When he wrote about the abolition of religion, he was simply expressing similar views to Jefferson's separation of Church and state. When comparing his view of the abolition of religion in the state with those of Bruno Bauer, Marx noted that Bauer wanted religion to be replaced with science while he simply wanted the state to be liberated from the control of religion. Marx stated that his view of the abolition of religion presupposes its existence--a view that was employed by neither Lenin nor Stalin.
When John McDonnell bragged about there being much to learn from Das Kapital, he was possibly referring to how Marx saw how Capitalism made the worker into something that is disposable. And, by extension, we could include that all that depend on the worker as being disposable as well. That criticism alone shows how Capitalism denies the intrinsic value of each person--definitely an anti-Christian position-- and only recognizes as their extrinsic value their contributions to the market. The jab at cradle to grave welfare state indicates the same mentality.

How the British Labour Party could be thought of as being socialist in same way as the Soviet Union was shows ignorance. It shows an ignorance of the variations of socialism as well as its history. This especially applies to the perceived view of Marx's abolition of private property (see  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/   ).

The political elevation of man above religion shares all the defects and all the advantages of political elevation in general. The state as a state annuls, for instance, private property, man declares by political means that private property is abolished as soon as the property qualification for the right to elect or be elected is abolished, as has occurred in many states of North America. Hamilton quite  correctly interprets this fact from a political point of view as meaning:

“the masses have won a victory over the property owners and financial wealth.” [Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 2 vols, Edinburgh,
1833, p. 146]

Is not private property abolished in idea if the non-property owner has become the legislator for the property owner?  The property qualification for the suffrage is the last  political form of giving recognition to private property.

Nevertheless, the political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinction, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty, when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state. Nevertheless,  the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being.
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Monday, February 26, 2018

ONIM For February 26, 2018

10 Best Fact Checking Sites Found Here.

If you are not sure about the validity of a news story linked to below, you can use  mediabiasfactcheck.com to check out the credibility of the source of most of the stories linked to here.

Christian News


World News


Israel-Palestine


Donald Trump


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Monday, August 1, 2016

ONIM For August 1, 2016

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Monday, February 9, 2015

ONIM For February 9, 2015

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