Nov 20
To the Heidelblog for its article on Greg Johnson's church, Memorial Presbyterian Church leaving of the PCA. That church decided to leave because of Johnson's treatment by those in the PCA. The treatment he received was because of his advocacy for Side B Christianity and for some of the programs it was running for those who are transgendered.
The over reliance on the Westminster Standards points to the faults of some conservatives in how they react to LGBT issues. The degree of reliance on those standards makes those standards to conservative Presbyterians what the traditions were to the Pharisees mentioned in Mark 7.
The over reliance on those standards in this issue can be seen in the fact that the writers of those standards have not faced many of the issues we are facing today. In fact, most of us who are living today do not understand enough about homosexuality and transgenderism to take some of the stands that those who rely too heavily on those standards are taking.
Most of us have not read much about these issues from the medical and psychological communities to adequately respond to Side_B Christianity and Revoice. We do know enough from the Scriptures to say that homosexuality and transitioning genders are not actions that can be tolerated in the Church regardless of the denomination that a given church like Memorial Presbyterian Church belongs to. But we don't know enough about the struggles that people today who are SSA and those with gender dysphoria have on how to adequately respond to those who SSA or have gender dysphoria. Their struggles are not all necessarily the same as those who had those conditions when the Westminster Standards were written.
So it seems that both sides need correction. We have to realize that SSA and gender dysphoria point to problems we have not just with our sin nature, but with nature itself since it also fell when Adam and Eve sinned. But how we approach people whose struggles are different from our own must not be based on even a small level of xenophobia. We all have multiple identities. One of our identities is in Christ. Another one of our identities is the same as that of the tax collector in the parable of the two men praying. Without that latter identity, that parable ironically becomes irrelevant for us believers. It ironically becomes irrelevant because forgetting that latter identity is unscriptural.
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Nov 21
To Heidelblog and Steven Smith for the part that quotes Smith's review of Muñoz's book that claims that natural rights and equality. That such concept minimizes religious freedom in America.
Steven Smith's full article can be found at:
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/11/85411/
If we understand the following logic, then we should realize that freedom has the same built in self-restraint that democracy has.
Freedom - Equality = Privilege.
Of course we should recognize that democracy without equality for its citizens is not democracy. Here we should remember what Thomas Jefferson said in his 1801 Inaugural Address:
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
When exercising our freedom, our religious actions and speech becomes privilege when our actions and speech does not recognize the equality of others. Of course some would argue about the necessity of natural law into the formula. But whose natural law are we referring to?
That question comes into play with LGBT issues because of what the Christian understanding of natural law says. But when we look at nature and the fact that same-sex behavior (SSB) can be observed in hundreds if not well over 1,000 species, what should we say? After all, since we don't recognize sin in animals, sin is not the issue in their SSB. And so don't we need to acknowledge that nature might be giving some people mixed messages about sexual orientation and gender identity? And if our religious freedom is infringing on the equality of others, then aren't we exercising religious privilege instead?
The issue of when the exercise of religion was really the exercise of privilege also came into play in America from the 1870s through to the 1960s. That was when Jim Crow had a prominent place in American life even in those places where Jim Crow laws were not passed. For some Christians used their religious faith to defend white supremacy and segregation. Therefore, the federal dismantling of Jim Crow could logically be seen as an infringement on religious freedom of those Christians who used their faith to defend Jim Crow. The same could be said about the federal effort to dismantle slavery.
If we include the concept of democracy here, we find that the government is there to represent all of its people as equals. And thus to give a religious view privilege and a place of supremacy in determining our laws over people from other religious views changes our democracy into a religious ethnocracy and the religious freedom of those whose religion so honored by the government into religious privilege. And perhaps what we see as an infringement on religious freedom is really an effort to reduce and eliminate religious privilege.
Is it natural rights that harms the free exercise of religion? It seems that with the issue equality being central in the concepts of freedom and democracy, it appears so. Thus, we need to acknowledge that if our social contract privileged one religion over others, then our social contract no longer promotes freedom and democracy.
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Dec 5
To R. Scott Clark and his article on what Christians can do with Natural Law in governing our nation. This appeared Heidelblog.
Besides the overly positive view of the American Exceptionalism as see in Clark's description of the American experiment, the problem with the above article is found in the details. Where do we see all of the stipulations made by natural law? Also, if we are free to build a society on natural law are we also free to build a society with only selective parts of natural law?
That last question pertains to LGBT rights today. If we are in a compact not to impose our religious beliefs on others, are we calling our beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity natural law in order to impose those beliefs with a free conscience?
We should also note something else about nature when it comes to many in the LGBT community, We should note that same-sex behavior (SSB) exists in around 1,500 animal species to varying degrees of strength and importance. Noting that we don't attribute sin to animals, is the prevalence of SSB in the animal world telling us something about what natural law says about homosexuality? In fact, are we too willing to make laws about sexual orientation and gender identity when we haven't even come close to understanding all of the factors that contribute to homosexuality and transgenderism?
We might also ask if the Apostles give us any indication of whether they viewed natural law in the same way that Clark, using Reformed Confessions, does? So far, the argument for using natural law to codify laws governing sexual behavior is based on a long list of deductions whose basis for thought comes from Christian theologians and pastors who wrote during a time in Christendom. And if we look at the end of I Corinthians 5 where Paul deals with a sexual sin that he says was not even tolerated among the pagans, what does that say about employing natural laws regarding homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism.
Returning to the description of American Exceptionalism as seen in the American experiment, shouldn't one expects more fruit and fewer thorns than what that experiment has produced. Of course, one's view of the fruit and thorns can be greatly determined by the groups one hangs out with. Those groups that have experienced great privilege in this nation will see more fruit and fewer thorns than those groups that have been working their way out of being marginalized. And ironically, the greatest accumulative push for deliverance and freedom from that marginalization came from a time period that questioned, and still does, the place that America's traditional religious faiths, some with their beliefs in natural law, have had in this nation.
We should also note the historical context of the writing of The Constitution. That context was the threat that widespread dissent and Shays Rebellion posed to the status of America's homegrown elites.
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Dec 9
To R. Scott Clark and his article that reviews a book by David Neff which responds to a complaint by Roger Olson which says that Arminians are the victims of 'mean Calvinists.' This appeared in Heidelblog.
Roger Olson and I have discussed Calvinism on his blog--btw, he has one of the finest Christian blogs I've seen. When he complains about Calvinists, he is more often complaining about personal experiences he has had with some Calvinists. But he is careful not to include all Calvinists in that category of those who have shown animosity toward him. So how can Clark criticize Olson's complaints about Calvinists?
Of course Olson also has theological complaints about Calvinism and hopefully my memory will not do disservice to what has said. The short of it is this, Calvinism, according to Olson, does not do justice to man's responsibility and ability to choose or to God's righteousness in dealing with people. In a model that emphasizes man's responsibility and free will in contrast to God's sovereignty, Olson absolutizes the former and thus sees Calvinism's view of God's sovereignty as being inconsistent with that. I remember from my time at WTS that we shouldn't absolutize either God's wanting all to repent or God's sovereignty otherwise we will make one concept subservient to the other. Instead, we should take each concept and apply it to the issues that God's Word applies them to since both concepts are expressed in the Scriptures. At the same time, we were taught Calvinism.
As for the narcissism quip, it is simply wrong and perhaps Clark is providing a minor example of Calvinists about which Olson has been complaining with that quip. Does celebrating or highlighting the small differences that exist between one's own group and other groups in the Church imply that some narcissism is present? We really need to be careful about what we say about each other in the Church lest we become more and more like the Pharisees against whom Jesus spoke. James 2 also warns us against us Christians judging one another.
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Dec 9
To Walter McDougall and his article on preserving conservatism despite the existence of hustlers in our system. This article appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
There are two points to make here. First, could American Capitalism ever exist without the hustlers in our nation about whom McDougall complained?
Second, if conservatism brings more happiness than liberalism and people are now being directed to pursue the happiness above all, then shouldn't conservatism see a big increase in their numbers right about now?
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Dec 10
To R. Scott Clark and his article on education and how it is, in essence, providing a road to Sodom for Americans. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
I see the problems with American education differently and I see no Marxist indoctrination. Instead, at the public school level I saw the results of Administrators seeking to put the self image of students as a first priority in education because that is what education theory has been emphasizing, of teachers who have not uses their unions to resist what is being pushed on them, of parents who were second in line in making the self-image of their children in school the top priority, and of students, who are addicted to entertainment, went along for the ride. All of that is what I observed from teaching 19 and 1/2 years in colleges.
If there is any indoctrination to engineer compliance, it is one that promotes corporate interests. This is especially true in colleges and universities with the devaluation of the humanities and an increased emphasis on technology, business, and what students immediately need to learn to get jobs asap after graduation. In fact, it seems that there is a businessfication of colleges where students have become customers which has lowered the academic standards colleges and universities have used to grant admission and the grade inflation used to retain students once they have started.
What I see among many of my fellow religiously conservative American Christians, including its educators, is a deliberate ignorance of what Marxism is and the full context of the sexual revolutions both about which they so eager wring their hands over and scapegoat.
Many of the problems that we see in American education is the result of the long-term effects of living in a consumer society where progress is measured by how far away from nature our lives can get.
