Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For September 28, 2022

 Sept 23

To Heidelblog and Thomas Jipping for the part of Jipping's article that the Heidelblog post quoted. Jipping's article was about an op-ed to the Washington Post by a representative for the ACLU which said that religious freedom cannot be used to justify discrimination. 

Thomas Jipping's article can be found at:

    https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/09/since-when-did-freedom-from-discrimination-require-destroying-religious-freedom/

There are some issues that must be raised here. First, America's origin cannot be reduced to a single factor, such as the search for religious freedom as claimed in the article. Yes, many of the first settlers came here because of religious persecution in England. But it wasn't until later in the colonization of America that religious freedom began to take form.

We should note that in the colonies, some groups of Christians persecuted other Christians for their different religious beliefs. For example, the Puritans persecuted and even martyred Quakers who set foot in New England and practiced their faith. And thus, though both groups may have come here to escape religious persecution, the religious persecution by those from one faith of those from another faith contradicts the claims that all of the early American settlers were seeking religious freedom. That is because freedom does not provide one with the license to just do what one wants. That is because freedom contains a self-restraining principle. That principle says that one must give others the same freedom that one desires for oneself.  For Freedom - Equality = Privilege. 

And so while many of the first settlers who came to America to escape religious persecution, their persecution of fellow Christians, let alone of Native Americans, who held different religious beliefs implies that they were seeking religious privilege rather than religious freedom.

In addition, contrary to the objections raised in Jipping's article, the references to the 1960s Civil Rights conflicts are most appropriate here. Why? Just as many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians believe that they have the right to discriminate against those in the LGBT community because of their own religious beliefs, the same applied to the practice of segregation during the Jim Crow era in the South. Many southern religious conservative Christians used the Scriptures to defend Jim Crow laws and culture that marginalized blacks and denied them from having an equal status in society. Thus to integrate and treat blacks as equals went against their religious beliefs.

Many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians object to comparing the discrimination they wish to practice on those from the LGBT community with the Jim Crow era of discrimination against blacks by saying that  being black does not merit punishment because being black is not a sin. But being homosexual or transexual are sinful and thus merit being marginalized in society. But right there, we see the imposition of a certain set of religious views, some of which I share without supporting discrimination, on those with different beliefs about being homosexual or not being cisgendered. And so again, the formula of Freedom - Equality = Privilege applies to those of my fellow religiously conservative Christians who believe that their faith justifies discriminating against those from the LGBT community are not seeking religious freedom; they are seeking religious privilege.

It is inconsistent, to say the least, to believe that those in the LGBT community should have equality in society while discriminating against them. And thus, the desired right to discriminate against those in the LGBT community for religious reasons carries with it some secular eschatological hopes. And some of those hopes desire a return to the old status quo when those in the LGBT community were marginalized in society because they don't deserve to be treated as equals. For treating them as equals means that one must agree with their lifestyles or not see them as a threat to society. And there is the rub. That we can only treat those who agree with us on a given subject(s) as equals. Only here, the given subjects are sexual orientation and gender identity.

Discriminating others can never be considered a freedom. That is because one cannot separate freedom from equality and discrimination rests on a presumption of inequality. 

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Sept 25

To Glenn Arbery and his article on why young men in college seem lost and are unable to complete their education. Arbery attributes this problem to the teach of feminist ideologies that makes young men feel bad about their masculinity. This article appeared in the Imaginative Conservative Blog

Besides the advertisement for Wyoming Catholic College, the article is based on pure speculation and assumption. It assumes that young men are belittled by the prevalent teaching  feminist ideologies--which seem to be regarded as a monolith. What are feminists ideologies teaching these young men that is belittling their masculinity? There is nothing specific provided by the article though feminist ideologies are made the scapegoat.

Having been a college instructor, I never saw any evidence of the claim made by Arbery. What I did see though were students who lacked the academic preparation and/or personal maturity to succeed in college. And culture, previous education, and parents seemed to be more responsible than any ideology. 

Society for the privileged revolves around entertainment. And for many young men, their lives revolve around being entertained. Part of that reflects the kind of home life they grew up in. But it also reflects society at large. When we look at what society invests in, entertainment seems to be one of the top sources for that investment. 

In addition, society doesn't teach enough kids the value of work. In fact, our economic system teaches us that wealth is more important than work. With wealth comes power, status, and the increased ability to consume. Work often doesn't bring power and status. And the harder we work, the more discomfort we experience. That discomfort can be a shocking new experience to many kids whose lives revolve around entertainment. In addition, when wealth is valued more than work, people tend to be to focused on themselves and what they are getting rather than on how they can contribute to others. 

In addition, many parents have been more concerned with the recognition their children receive in school than with their children's learning and preparation for the future. I had a conversation with a school system's lawyer one time. And what they told me is that too many parents have a penchant for threatening to file lawsuits. And on of the parents' big complain is that their students are receiving high enough grades. I know of one school district where parents demanded that a particular teacher be dismissed. Why did they demand that? It was because the teacher held to high standards when it came to giving grades.

And then there are school administrators who believe so much in boosting the self-image of each student that they pressure teachers to pass their students regardless of their grades.

In the meantime, students whose lives revolve around entertainment are often content to go along for the ride of easy grades and almost guaranteed graduation. That entertainment includes sports.

Finally, sometimes those who have lived in the lap of luxury lose an edge that would push them to excel while those who are hungry to escape deprivation. That might be what we are  seeing as women have tended to have less power than men and so men have grown complacent while women are more hungry to excel.

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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost about those who are promoting theonomy in America. This appeared in Heidelblog.

The problem with focusing on theonomy is that we tend to let other levels of Christian control of society fly in under the radar. 

Lately, the Christian websites and news media have been focusing on Christian Nationalism. And with Christian Nationalism, we see Christians seeking varying levels of control over the government and society enabled by Christians gaining a privileged place above all other religious groups in government. Should Christians achieve such a privileged place in America, then we would no longer have what is left of a democracy, we would have an ethnocracy--btw, a given religious group can be counted as an ethnic group according to anthropologists and dictionaries.

We need to oppose any level of Christian ethnocracy in America. Allowing that to happen is not just wrong, it can sabotage our efforts to carry out the Great Commission. That is because if we were to achieve installing a Christian ethnocracy in America, people would see our opposition to democracy and desire to control their lives before they would consider listening to our evangelism.

Have Conservative Christians Ever Understood Democracy?

In an article meant to dissuade Christians from seeing Theonomy as a cure from what ails a more secular America, Andrew Walker (click here for a bio), from The Gospel Coalition, presents a similar cure that Theonomy does in a recent article on the Gospel Coalition website (click here).

Why would Christians consider Theonomy today? It is because of the spiritual state of the nation, according to Walker. The nation is becoming more secular and is rejecting more and more of God's laws. Some see this increasing secularization as a culture war that Christians are losing. So to bring the nation back to God, Walker is afraid that Christians would look to Theonomy to solve the problem.

What is Theonomy? It is a Christian perspective on the Church-state relationship where the laws of a nation become the laws of God as expressed in the civil laws from the five Books of Moses. Theonomy would then stop perils that the further secularization of America would bring.

Walker provides some background information on Theonomy including  the definition, how it is different from Christian Reconstructionism, its tendency to adopt Postmillenialism, and key figures in the Theonomy movement. Walker also provides reasons why Theonomy should not be even tried by Christians in response to America's spiritual decline.

Why should Christians reject Theonomy? The first reason Walker gives is that Theonomy misrepresents what the Scriptures are saying to us today. It misrepresents the Scriptures because of its eschatology, which is the study of the end times. Theonomy teaches an eschatology of 'triumph' causing it to make errors in its analysis of the relationship between the Church and the state. Because of the emphasis on triumph, the state and Church are merged enough so that sin is contained by the religious civil laws. Walker notes that Theonomy fails to recognize the limited time period for those civil laws. For those laws were only  in force for the nation of Israel while it enjoyed its unique position of being God's covenant people. That time period has ended.

Theonomy's error is the belief that those civil laws from Moses were also meant to be a model for all other nations to follow. It also wrongly measures the Church's faithfulness by a given society's following of those civil laws. And while Walker acknowledges Theonomy's criticisms of the rejection of God's standards by society, its solution is one that tries too hard in responding to that rejection.

Walker is right in noting that it is unrealistic for any society to reach Theonomy's standards. It is basically to dream the impossible dream. So in contrast to the standards used by Theonomy, Walker suggests that we use the Noahic covenant as a better model of thought in terms of what to expect from the nations. That model of thought is based on what reason and nature can tell us, according to Walker.

Walker then describes the dilemma that he believes the modern Christian faces. On the one hand, no state can long survive when it flaunts God's laws. On the other hand, the New Testament does not provide detailed guidance on how the state should exist.

The substitute for Theonomy that Walker suggests is to use natural law as a guide for the laws of a nation. Such tells us that things like 'murder' and 'bestiality' should not be allowed.

Walker adds to the end of the article what we should be aiming at. We should be trying to disciple nations to 'glorify Christ' and to obey God in 'every domain.' A just government, according to Walker, is a result of nations following natural law. Thus, Walker's article is not there to argue about the goals of Theonomy as much as to say it is the wrong method to use in achieving any Christian notion of justice and what a nation should be.

We should note that in the middle of his article, Walker stresses the need for freedom of religion, but his notion is a limited freedom at best. And it is at this point we should note that Walker shows how many religiously conservative Christians do not understand what Democracy is about. Such a statement would probably surprise and confuse many such Christians. And that might be because they, and here I am specifically referring to American Christians, have reduced Democracy to the set of political processes by which we choose our representatives. Ironically, these same Christians would not view nations like Iran or Venezuela as being democracies even though they too have elections.

We should note that Democracy can also be a state of being measured by how the state and society is shared by the different groups within it. And this is where Walker's replacement for Theonomy fails. For in replacing natural law for Theonomy, we are still talking about having a Christian view of natural law and thus Christianity having some degree of supremacy in society and the culture. That means that though we wouldn't dominate society and culture like we would under Theonomy, the state would belong to us Christians more than it would belong to some others if we succeeded. And if we did succeed, then despite our democratic processes, we would not be a democracy. This is what many American conservative Christians don't understand about Democracy.

Now Walker acknowledges that we might not be able to have any place of supremacy over society and culture with natural law. He states that we must then be satisfied with just being able to speak prophetically to our nation. So where is the harm with following his suggestion? The harm is found in that by substituting natural law for Theonomy, we Christians are still trying to gain a privileged place in society. That is because in doing so, we would be promoting our own view of natural law and thus would be seeking the marginalization of those who disagree, and live that disagreement.

There is another problem with using natural law to control society, there is no uniform view of what natural law says. To give an example here, Christians would, and have already, used natural law arguments block the legalization of same-sex marriage without which there can be no full equality for the LGBT community in society. But, again, that is a Christian view of natural law. We find approximately 1,500 species of animals in which homosexuality is practiced and with beneficial effects for some of them. So if we look to nature to understand natural law, we see an acceptance of homosexuality. But the Christian view of natural law, which I believe is correct, would prohibit homosexuality in society, which I disagree with, if it could. So whose version of natural law should be used to act as a guideline for our nation's laws?

In the beginning of the article, Walker alludes to the current culture war that Christianity is losing. Most of the time, the defeat of Christianity in this culture war was marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage facilitated by the Obergefell decision. But there is only a culture war when one side decides that it wants to conquer the other side. So the question for Christians is this: Where does the New Testament tell us to fight such a war? The answer is in the book of Utopia--with the understanding that Utopia is defined as an imaginary place.

 

There Is More Than One Iceberg For The Church To Avoid Sailing In The North Atlantic

The blogpost being reviewed here has two parts. The first part consists of the article seen where R. Scott Clark (click here for a brief bio) discusses W. Robert Godfrey's assessment of theonomy. The second part consists of R. Scott Clark's assessment of a wider variety of subjects some of which are related and some of which are not. We will deal mostly with the first part here (click here for the blogpost). 

Before discussing the blogpost, however, we should note that one of the biggest struggles religiously conservative Christianity has is in deciphering how to share society with others. It is such a big struggle that many in such Christians have yet to regard how to share society with others as even an issue, let alone a struggle. Many of us are in denial. And we handle that denial by either exercising some degree of withdrawing from the world or by demonstrating hubris. And sometimes, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two.

So what we see is a continuum between the two approaches by the conservative Church. At one end of the continuum, we have some in the Church who are totally withdrawn from the world to wanting to exercise varying degrees of control over society. But regardless of where many conservative Christians see themselves on this continuum, it reduces the Church's position in society to having only 1 of 2 attitudes toward unbelievers in society. Either Christians don't care if they are put in a subservient relationship to unbelievers by virtue of their apathy toward society, or they seek some place of supremacy and thus some degree of control over unbelievers in society. Theonomy, which is the subject of discussion in the blogpost being reviewed, lies at one of the ends of the continuum. It represents a total domination of society by Christians who hold to a certain conjunction of interpretations of the Bible that consist of a specific study of the end times and a particular approach to interpreting Old Testament laws.

The article part of the reviewed blogpost gives a brief but sound theological, and even psychological view of theonomy. Theonomy desires, after all, to make the laws of Moses the laws of the land. Those desires have utopian overtones that imply that if we followed the laws of Moses, we would have the happiest and most prosperous society possible. After all, according to Theonomists, the laws of Moses reflect God's design for how humans should live together. And tolerating anything less than God's laws allows for sin and the destruction it brings. This makes sinners the enemy of the state and a threat to society.

Thus when Godfrey describes why religiously conservative Christians are drawn to Theonomy, he is more than correct in saying the following:

is its simplicity and apparently biblical character. The great complexities and frustrations of the secular, modern world lead many to look for easy solutions. But in a fallen world solutions to great political problems are not always easy. The approach of theorem is a novel one in the Reformed community and uses the Scripture in a way that is alien to Reformed Christianity.

And what we should notice is that what religiously conservative Christians from both ends of the continuum share is simplicity. Those Christians who withdraw from the world eliminate the complications that come with being involved with the world by separating themselves as much as possible from the world. On the other hand, Theonomists by insisting on enforcing the laws of Moses as eventually becoming the law of the land to have shown their preference for simplicity by insisting on a set of laws that don't need to be discussed to be applied and that could only be agreed to by a homogenous population. And thus it doesn't account for having to negotiate laws for a diverse population where competing values must be negotiated rather than overridden.

Though the article part of the blogpost provides helpful instruction on how to see Theonomy, the audio part of the blogpost has some glaring weaknesses. However, both the article and the audio parts share a conservative weakness when dealing with the modern world. That conservative weakness is the overwhelming tendency to see today's world solely through the eyes of selected sources from the past. Not only does such an approach show its own desire to embrace an overly simplistic approach to understanding today's world, it becomes, according to Martin Luther King, Jr., unjust. For when traditionalists believe that their selected heroes from the past have everything to teach those of us who live in the now and have nothing to learn from us, they practice the same sins as the today's narcissists who believe the converse of what traditionalists hold to.

When speaking against the Vietnam War, King made that point against the West's approach to foreign policy:

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

Thus, the only just way for Christians to live in today's is to share society with unbelievers as equals. And part of sharing society with unbelievers as equals is to collaborate with them in the legislation we promote, a legislation that enables all in society to share society as equals.