Sermon Illustrations on Government — page 2

Redefining the First Freedom: More Than Worship

Acts 4:19

For some time now, I’ve been warning you about the various threats to religious freedom. We’ve talked about the gay-rights movement, which insidiously insists that religious believers and organizations bow before the altar of sexual freedom. We’ve talked about the so-called health care reform bill, which does not protect the freedom of conscience of medical practitioners.

But now I’m seeing the threat to religious freedom in its most pernicious and dangerous form ever. In a nutshell, here’s what happened. In a speech at Georgetown University, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on human rights. Not only did she talk about the right “to love in the way you choose,” (an obvious attempt at making protecting gay rights a top priority for the U.S. government), she also talked about “freedom of worship.”

But she never mentioned freedom of religion. Only freedom of worship. This is a big change.

In the First Amendment, the founders (whose work we celebrate this weekend) wisely ensured that government could not prohibit the “free exercise” of religion. And that means so much more than freedom of worship. It guarantees that we are not restricted to living out our faith in the privacy of our homes or church sanctuaries. It means we are free to exercise our religion — and contend for faith — in every area of life.

Just this clever dissembling of words is an apparent attempt to restrict freedom of religion to freedom of worship only. Do you see the implications? Sure, I am free to attend church, sing hymns, pray over meals, offer thanks to God for my children and grandchildren. That’s my own private affair.

But should the government succeed in redefining freedom of religion, how much longer can I practice my faith in public?

If you read history, you will see that that the first act of a tyrant is to suppress religion, which means of course, religious practice. Our Founders knew this. They knew the first English settlers came to these shores precisely so they could practice their faith.

And if you read history, you’ll know that the one true threat to a tyrant’s rule is always the believer’s loyalty to a God Who is above the god of the state.

This is why Christians were thrown to the lions in ancient Rome. The earliest baptismal confession of the young Christian Church was “Jesus is Lord.” And that meant Caesar was not. This is why Hitler and Stalin first went after the church. The star of David and the cross were symbols of an authority higher than their own.

We all know about the battles over the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “under God,” the battles over manger scenes on public property. These are important, but they are skirmishes, mere skirmishes. The real battle is about whether God is Lord, or whether government is Lord. And make no mistake, if government can redefine or restrict our freedom of religion, our first freedom will be gone.

And, as our Founders understood, when that freedom is gone, we will, in short order, lose the other freedoms as well.

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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

Listening To Jerry: Urban Faith-based Efforts

Jerry Bush grew up in East Capitol Dwellings -- one of the toughest housing projects in Washington, D.C. By age seventeen, Jerry was pushing drugs, and it wasn't long before he was serving time.

Jerry sounds like the kind of young man I see all the time -- the kind for whom the prison gate becomes a revolving door. But Jerry's story doesn't end that way. Thanks to a faith-based program, Jerry ended up outside the prison gates -- permanently.

Soon after his release from prison, Jerry was sitting in his front yard when a stranger approached. It was Curtis Watkins of the East Capitol Center for Change. "Would you like to turn your life around?" he asked.

Watkins invited Jerry to visit the center and see about getting a job. Although skeptical, Jerry showed up a few days later. Almost before he knew it, Jerry found himself promising to abstain from drugs and violence and to perform community service in exchange for a job.

A year later, Jerry was studying to become an electrician and coaching a neighborhood football league. As he told Insight magazine, "These same kids used to see me doing bad stuff. Now they listen to me."

If our public policymakers are smart, they'll listen to Jerry, also -- and to folks like Curtis Watkins, who run urban ministries. They're the real experts on the problems that plague the inner-city -- and how to patch up broken lives.

As my friend Joe Loconte writes in his book God, Government, and the Good Samaritan, "The problems of urban America are ravaging minority populations. Out-of-wedlock births, incarceration rates, illiteracy, unemployment -- all disproportionately affect Blacks and Hispanics. But policymakers have largely turned a blind eye ... to the best place for help in turning things around: the Church."

Many who lead minority churches agree. Last year, when Senate and House Republican leaders held a faith-based summit, more than four hundred religious leaders -- mostly African-American -- took part. And a study of 1,200 congregations revealed that nearly two-thirds of pastors from black churches were thinking of applying for government funds for social-service projects.

These numbers ought to surprise no one. Surveys indicate that "African-Americans are among the most religious and socially conservative groups in America," Loconte writes. "They tend to support traditional marriage, oppose abortion, and endorse school choice. Many have built extensive social-service ministries saturated in religious instruction."

Simply mailing government checks or blaming a bad environment doesn't work: Changing people from the inside out does. But accomplishing this isn't easy. Says Bob Woodson, founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprises, changing people like Jerry requires "people who are in their lives twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." It requires a willingness to make judgment calls about behavior and lifestyle choices -- and to address what Woodson calls the true causes of youth violence: moral, spiritual, and social emptiness.

I hope you'll read Joe Loconte's book God, Government, and the Good Samaritan. You'll learn why we ought to be promoting faith-based efforts, because the real answer to our cities' needs lies in ministries that restore urban neighborhoods by reshaping human souls.

When God Goes Public

The uproar over this week's court ruling challenging the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance reflects a dual reality that's older than the republic. And that history provides a reminder that while acknowledging the deity is at the core of the nation's heritage, so are protections that keep government out of religion.

Drawing the line is difficult, but the Founding Fathers found a way.

When they were drafting the Declaration of Independence 226 years ago, they didn't hesitate to invoke God to justify an act of treason against the British crown. The final version, adopted July 4, 1776, speaks eloquently of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." It says men "are endowed by their Creator " with unalienable rights, and it speaks of relying on "the Protection of Divine Providence."

But soon after, in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Founders were equally firm in prohibiting both government support for religion or religious tests for public office.

Today the dual traditions are no less important. Thus the Supreme Court ritually opens to "God save the United States and this honorable court." Chaplains pray daily over Congress. The money is emblazoned with "In God we trust." And since 1954 the Pledge has referred to a nation "under God."

No wonder the California atheist who wanted to shield his daughter from that part of the Pledge ignited a public uproar when a court decided in his favor. The phrase is by now a cherished part of American heritage.

It almost certainly falls under what the high court has called "ceremonial deism:" acceptable references to the nation's culturally religious tradition that don't violate the separation of church and state. That's why legal experts across the political spectrum expect the California court's holding to be overturned on appeal.

But this two-tracked history also requires that the same fervor be applied to preventing the outright government promotion of religion. To that end schools are prohibited from imposing official prayers on children of myriad faiths, or none at all. Direct subsidies to churches are banned. And the high court's 5-4 endorsement Thursday of vouchers for religious schools may eventually need to be revisited if it becomes a vehicle for public funds to be used for proselytizing.

Many of the nation's settlers sought religious freedom for themselves. But many also balked at extending the same freedom to others. Today there still are those who would use government power to advance their own religious agendas.

By acknowledging God while ordering firm protection for religious minorities, the Founders had it right - both ways.

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The Two Cow System

An explanation of economics in simple two-cow terms:

* Socialism: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.

* Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.

* Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them and sells you the milk.

* Bureaucracy: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours it down the drain.

* Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

* Corporate: You have two cows. You sell one, force the other to produce the milk of four cows and then act surprised when it drops dead.

* Democracy: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point that you must sell them both in order to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow which was a gift from your government.

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Hanoi bans toy guns, plastic daggers

Vietnam is banning toy weapons to protect the minds of its children.

A Trade Ministry official told Reuters the ban, which covers bamboo and plastic swords, bows, rifles and grenade-shaped cigarette lighters, applied to both imported and locally produced toys.

"Those toys are dangerous and harmful," he said by telephone. "They cause a bad impact on children's psychology, and make them think of wars and violence."

Vietnam's communist government regularly expresses concern about the impact of consumerism and outside influences on its young people.

Officials also said they were seeking a ban on Japanese pocket-sized computer games known as Tamagotchi featuring virtual pets which bleep when they need attention.

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REUTERS

Freedom Is Not Free

Romans 13:1

Anna Greenberg, former assistant professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, observed in a 1999 Chronicle of Higher Education essay:

“Polls show that Americans have the perplexing ability to hold ideologically contradictory views. As many scholars note, Americans are simultaneously attached to both limited and activist government policies; they are capable, for instance, of favoring both cutting the federal budget and increasing spending on education, health care, and other social programs. Americans are also quite willing to offer opinions to poll takers on subjects that they concede they know nothing about.[1]

As this observation humorously portrays, Americans are people with varying opinions, competing loyalties and often contradicting perspectives.

Despite our weaknesses and sometimes our silliness, we have much for which to be thankful. We enjoy freedoms that most people in the world do not have. While there is much with our government, judicial system, legislative process and executive branch to cause us concern, we must stop and thank God for the freedoms we do have. We must also remember our duties and responsibilities as Christian citizens.

The apostle Paul thought this was important. Both Romans 13:1–7 and 1 Timothy 2:1–4 are instructive about the Christian’s perspective on the role of government.

We are to acknowledge that government is ordained of God.

The Romans passage speaks of our subjection to government authorities. In verses 3–5, Paul went as far as to tell us that government is a minister of God. We know that God’s purpose through government is to aid the good and punish the evil. Governments are ordained of God to help citizens accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number and, hopefully, to prevent evil people from profiting at the expense of the overall community. Assuming that the government fulfills its purpose, one reason for obeying our laws would be the fear of punishment. However, for Christians there is a more worthy motive, namely to be good citizens as part of being a positive Christian witness in society.

We are to remember our duties.

The Romans text also instructs Christ-followers to obey the laws and honor those in authority (vv. 5–7). Yes, we have duties as good citizens! One of those duties in a free society is to encourage all persons to be involved in the political process.

I am well aware that we are in the midst of one of the most interesting election cycles in our history. There is deep division in our country as to what needs to happen in the days ahead. Colorful candidates are espousing views which reveal, in essence, two very different Americas. We desperately need to be involved in the process so that we will vote for a person who would honor the true needs of our citizens while also honoring the timeless judgments and precepts of our Lord. Christians must be involved in the political process. To relegate that responsibility to nonbelievers is irresponsible at best.

In the churches I have served over the years, we routinely held registration drives to encourage people to vote. It is unconscionable to me for a Christian not to exercise his or her right as a citizen in this country. I understand apathy. I understand fatigue. However, we must not grow weary in well-doing. We must vote our convictions!

I viewed it then, and view it now, as inappropriate for me to endorse specific candidates. But it would be irresponsible for me not to remind followers of Jesus Christ about an issue of extreme importance, namely Christian citizenship and the duty to show up at the polls and vote our convictions.

We are to prioritize focused prayer for our government and our leaders.

In 1 Timothy 2:1–4, we see the need to pray for our leaders: “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone” (verse 1). When government espouses the values of religious liberty and respect for its citizens, hindrances to public witness and barriers to religious freedom begin to fall. Christ-followers are able to lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity (verse 2). Such an environment is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (verses 3–4).

Have you been praying for our leaders? Have you been praying for our president? Are you praying for this election process? Are you registered to vote? I hope so. Let us pray and let us vote to protect the liberties we have enjoyed in our lifetime and preserve them for our children and their children throughout the generations!

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1. “Public Opinion Makes Better Sense without the Opinion Makers,” May 14, 1999, pp. B8-B9; cited in Leadership, Winter 2000, p. 69.

Thomas Jefferson On Taxes

Ezra 4:13

If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses;

And the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers;

And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...

And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Pushing Death: the D E A & Physician-assisted Suicide

Four years ago, voters in Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide. Oregon became the first state where physicians may provide terminally ill patients with a lethal dose of drugs. In the past four years, seventy Oregonians taken advantage of this dreadful law. All used federally controlled substances.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has argued that this use of federally controlled substances violates federal laws. Tom Constantine, former head of the DEA, warned doctors that they could lose their license and even be arrested if they dispensed controlled substances for something other than a "legitimate medical purpose."

Constantine was overruled by then-Attorney General Janet Reno. She prohibited the DEA from enforcing federal law in the case of doctors operating under the Oregon law. Last week, Attorney General Ashcroft did what his predecessor should have done: place the federal government squarely on the side of life.

In his memo to DEA head Asa Hutchinson, Ashcroft rejected the idea that dispensing controlled substances to facilitate suicide was a "legitimate medical purpose." He agreed with the DEA's original position and ordered its implementation.

Ashcroft's actions drew criticism from Oregon's elected officials. Senator Ron Wyden accused him of "undoing Oregon's popular will in the most undemocratic manner possible."

Oregon's governor agreed, and the next day, the state filed suit in federal court to block the DEA from enforcing the law. One day later, District Court judge Robert E. Jones issued a temporary restraining order against the DEA. On November 20, the state and the Justice Department will argue the case.

I agree with Wilberforce Forum's Dean, bioethicist Nigel Cameron, that "Attorney General Ashcroft's decision to turn the Feds loose on Oregon's killer physicians is an answer to prayer. This should nip in the bud the slow but growing move to use the prescribing of deadly drugs by doctors as back-door euthanasia."

I am sympathetic to state's rights, but not where the right to life is concerned. The Declaration of Independence is absolutely clear.

And talk about "popular will" shouldn't obscure the real issue here. What lies behind the drive for physician-assisted suicide is expediency and desire. The combination of suffering and limited healthcare resources leads us to look for an easy way out. It wasn't too long ago that one politician spoke candidly of the elderly having a "duty to die."

Polite public opinion professes to be shocked at such a thought. Still, an aging population, combined with the cost of medical care in the last year of life, makes physician-assisted suicide very appealing on an expedient basis. And all of us have that fear that we may be the ones doing the suffering one day.

But Christian ethics rises above the expedient. This is what the Gospel does. It doesn't ask what is easier, it asks what is right. Not what is, appealing though that might be, but what ought to be. Likewise, government's job isn't to cater to self-interest, it is to have the people rise above self-interest and do what is morally correct.

That's what makes Attorney General Ashcroft's decision so crucial. I urge you: sit down and write him a letter to tell him how much you appreciate his courage. And then I urge you to follow this case closely. Because our government must bring itself to side with life. One that doesn't has lost sight of its legitimate purpose.

For more information:

Press release from the Drug Enforcement Agency on physician assisted suicide ruling.

You can contact the Attorney General through the Department of Justice at or via e-mail at .

You can order a video of a debate on bioethics and physician-assisted suicide featuring Wilberforce Forum Dean Nigel Cameron from the Center for Bioethics and Culture (look under videotapes in the "resources for sale" section):

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Facilitating Vulgarity vs. Helping the Needy: Double Standards & Faith-based Groups

A few weeks ago, the White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives issued a report on how government agencies treat religious nonprofits. The report cited many examples of discriminatory treatment toward these groups.

This discrimination has no basis in law, and it underscores the important issues in the current debate over faith-based initiatives.

One example of discriminatory treatment took place at a Head Start program held in a church in Worcester, Massachusetts. Prior to each class, the teacher covered up all the religious imagery and bible verses. Why? Because Head Start officials believed that federal law required them to do so.

In fact, it does not. But, as the report noted, government agencies have been "hostile" toward the participation of religious groups. The report cites "overly restrictive agency rules ... [that] are repressive, restrictive, and actively undermine the established civil rights of these groups ..."

Well, the president has promised to end this "governmental bias" against faith-based groups. Good for him. I hope he acts quickly.

But even this clear evidence of bias didn't dissuade the initiative's critics. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State told reporters that "taxpayers must never be forced to support religions they don't believe in."

Lynn's comments highlight the double standard that lies at the heart of the discrimination described in the report. For instance, it's difficult to imagine Lynn saying that taxpayers must never be forced to support art they don't believe in. On the contrary, as Terry Golway of the New York Observer has written, withholding tax dollars -- as Mayor Giuliani did with a New York museum featuring a painting of the Virgin Mary covered in dung -- is considered a violation of the First Amendment. Liberals maintain that the government has an obligation to support art and ideas that many people consider offensive.

The same double standard extends to concerns over the possible corrupting influence of government money. As Golway pointed out, artists, museums, and defenders of the National Endowment for the Arts are untroubled by any possible corrupting influence of government money. They regard it as an entitlement.

Which brings to mind another bit of hypocrisy. Opponents of the president's initiative are aghast at the idea that religious nonprofits would seek assurances that they wouldn't be forced to hire homosexuals. You'll see Senate Democrats this fall in the upcoming debate over the president's faith-based bills demand that religious groups not be allowed to discriminate in who they hire.

At the same time, these same senators insist that money given to artists must be free of any restrictions or requirements. As Golway puts it, restrictions on art are considered the product of "neo-Fascist" opponents of free expression.

The First Amendment protecting artists but not religious workers: This double standard makes neither moral nor constitutional sense. But it surely illustrates the anti-religious bias that exists among many of our elites. And it reminds us of what's at stake in the debate over faith-based initiatives: Not only helping those in need, but also correcting the distortion created by our culture's embrace of secularism.

It's a distortion that, in this case, prefers facilitating vulgar and even obscene expression to serving the needy.

For more information:

"Report on Unlevel Playing Field: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service Programs." White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives, Washington, DC, 2001.

Terry Golway, "Clerics Search Souls, Artists Demand Payment, " New York Observer, April 16, 2001, p. 5.

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The Theory of Just War - A Summary

Romans 13:1

(Thoughts on how to apply the Christian tradition's guidelines for waging war)

WHAT IS JUST WAR THEORY?

The Christian just war theory is a 1600-year-old attempt to answer the questions "When is it permissible to wage war?" (jus in bello), and "What are the limitations on the ways we wage war?" (jus ad bellum).

WHERE DID JUST WAR THEORY ORIGINATE?

The first Christian thinker to write extensively about the subject was St. Augustine of Hippo. For Augustine, war was a logical extension of the act of governance. And governance itself was, as St. Paul wrote in Romans 13:1-7, ordained by God.

This, however, doesn’t mean that all wars are morally justifiable. Augustine wrote, "It makes a great difference by which causes and under which authorities men undertake the wars that must be waged." This led him to describe the conditions under which war could be waged justly.

WHAT DOES JUST WAR REQUIRE?

For Augustine, the first requirement was proper authority. As he put it, "The natural order, which is suited to the peace of moral things, requires that the authority and deliberation for undertaking war be under the control of a leader." The leader Augustine had in mind was one whom God had entrusted with the responsibility of governance. In his time, this was the emperor. Later, it would be kings and princes. Today, it’s our elected leaders hip. These people are answerable to God for the welfare of their states in a way that no private citizen is.

Proper authority is not the only requirement. For Augustine, proper cause, the reasons for which we go to war, was as important as who authorized the action. He specifically ruled out as justifications for war such causes as "[t]he desire for harming, the cruelty of revenge, the restless and implacable mind, the savageness of revolting, [and] the lust for dominating." Augustine saw war as a tragic necessity and we should keep in mind his admonition to "[l]et necessity slay the warring foe, not your will."

ARE THERE OTHER REQUIREMENTS?

Augustine’s ideas have been expanded upon over the years. In addition to proper authority and proper cause, Christian just war theory requires that there be a reasonable chance of success. Even if you have a good reason to attack, you cannot simply send young men out to die. Human life is too precious, too sacred to waste.

The final requirement is one of proportionality. In waging a war, authorities must make sure that the harm caused by their response to aggression does not exceed the harm caused by the aggression itself. Annihilating the enemy in response to an attack on one of your cities is an example of disproportion.

Similarly, proportionality has also come to mean that non-combatants must be shielded from harm. They can never, for any reason whatsoever, be the targets of an attack. The history of modern warfare is characterized by "total warfare," the expansion of targets beyond strictly military ones. That’s why, of all the requirements of just war theory, proportionality is the most likely to be violated, even by governments with the most just of causes.

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For more information:

"Justice in War" - an interview with Robert George on National Review Online.

"Just War Principles and Counterterrorism," a paper by Keith Pavlischek at the Center for Public Justice.

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Walls of Our Own Making: the Founders and Religion

This term [2002], the Supreme Court will hear and decide a case that will shape the relationship between church and state for years to come. The case involves Cleveland's school voucher program. Two courts have declared the program unconstitutional because, in their estimation, the program amounts to a "diversion of government aid to religious institutions," and an "endorsement of religious education." [June 2002 - by a 5-to-4 vote they declare it constitutional.]

The contemporary assumption in the courts and among legal scholars is that the Constitution requires what has been called a "high wall of separation" between church and state. If a program can, in any way, be characterized as constituting an entanglement between religion and government, it is said to be a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.

Well, there are two problems with this reigning orthodoxy. First, the phrase "wall of separation" doesn't appear in the Constitution or even in the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention.

Second, it's a total inversion of nearly all of the Founders' beliefs about the relationship between church and state. While they did not want the federal government to establish a national church, they viewed religion as indispensable to the American experiment.

In his marvelous new book, ON TWO WINGS, author, theologian, and former U.S. ambassador Michael Novak reminds readers that a religion-free public square was the last thing the Founders wanted. They believed that religion, by which they meant biblical religion, is "necessary for the maintenance of republican institutions." Or as Jefferson put it, "no nation has ever yet existed or even been governed without religion. Nor can be."

Why? Because, in the Founders' estimation, virtue was the precondition for liberty. And as James Madison put it, belief in an all-powerful, wise, and good God was the source of virtue.

Thus, unlike many of our present-day elites, the Founders didn't see religion as a threat to liberty. On the contrary, it was irreligion or atheism that was the threat. These would cause "everyday morals" to "slide into decadence" and pave the way for tyranny.

Accordingly, the Founders saw religious belief and practices as something to be encouraged. In my home state of Massachusetts, John Adams argued that religious education is essential to survival of a free republic. His case was so persuasive that the state's constitution included a provision that required the state to pay for religious education if there weren't any private groups able to do it.

Against this historical backdrop, the concerns of contemporary courts seem like a radical departure from the Founders' intentions which, in fact, they are. But it's not because modern judges have discovered something the Founders didn't know about maintaining a free society. It's because their worldview causes them to see personal autonomy and freedom as synonymous -- an idea the Founders explicitly rejected.

In this worldview, biblical religion is the enemy of personal autonomy and, thus, the enemy of freedom. Hence, the relentless drive to rid our public life of religious content. Christians can help their neighbors to understand the true role that biblical faith plays in American life. That starts with understanding that the Founders, far from fearing religious education, saw it as something indispensable to American life.

For more information:

Michael Novak, ON TWO WINGS: HUMBLE FAITH AND COMMON SENSE AT THE AMERICAN FOUNDING (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002).

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Sanctity of Life Is Foundational

The sanctity and dignity of life (which abortion destroys both physically and conceptually) is the cornerstone upon which all justice is built. All human rights are predicated first upon the right to life.

Thomas Jefferson understood this clearly when he wrote, and I quote, “The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

For the believer, the value of each human life, no matter how young or old, derives from the belief that all humans are created by God and stamped with His image.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #3068]

Quotes On Blood

"Blood alone moves the wheels of history."

-- Benito Mussolini

"The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito."

-- Austin O'Malley

"No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody."

-- Martin Luther

"The future can be anything we want it to be, providing we have the faith and that we realize that peace, no less than war, required 'blood and sweat and tears.'"

--Charles F. Kettering

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

-- Tertullian

"Blood is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood ... there are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them!

--Padraic Pearse

"Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms."

-- Andrew Jackson

"Blood will tell, but often it tells too much."

-- Don Marquis

"Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day."

-- Charles Kingsley

Quotes On Separation of Church and State

"No religion can long continue to maintain its purity when the church becomes the subservient vassal of the state."

-- Felix Adler

"In the relationship between man and religion, the state is firmly committed to a position of neutrality."

-- Thomas Campbell Clark

"The church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back."

-- Charles de Gaulle

"The church is actually patronized by the social order as a means of stabilizing and perpetuating the existing system."

-- C. C. Morrison

"The church is only a secular institution in which the half-educated speak to the half-converted."

-- William Ralph Inge

Surf's Up! : Climate Change and Hubris

Job 9:2

As the story goes, the courtiers of the 11th-century Anglo-Scandinavian king, Canute, told him that he was “so great, he could command the tides of the sea to go back.”

Knowing that this was nonsense, Canute, a pious Christian, had his throne moved to the beach. As the waves came in, he commanded them to desist. When the waves paid him no mind, he proclaimed, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, whom heaven, earth and sea obey.”

Twenty-first century governmental leaders could learn a lot from this 11th-century Viking king.

At the recent G8 summit, the leaders of the world’s largest industrialized economies agreed to stop the world from getting too warm. Really. In their communique, they said that “the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees [Celsius].” Or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just like it’s one thing to command the waves the desist and another to literally stem the tide, saying that temperatures ought not to rise and actually making that happen are entirely different matters.

By way of making that happen, the G8 communique calls for the 32 industrialized nations to cut CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2050. As you no doubt realize, 32 nations are more than 8 nations. That means that the G8’s plans to limit the world’s temperatures require that other countries join them in standing athwart the climate and saying, “Go back!”

Or, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel put it, “even if all G8 countries cut their emissions, we will not meet the 2 degree goal without the emerging economies.”

And the problem is that the emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil have no interest in yelling, “Go back!” Brazilian president Lula spoke for many when he said, “We don’t want to continue to be second-class citizens. We want to go to the top floor.” For that matter, Russia, a member of the G8, has said that it won’t “sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction.”

Nobody knows how, or even if, the kind of cuts being discussed can be made without sacrificing economic growth.

What is certain is that simply declaring that the world shouldn’t warm up more than we want won’t magically solve the technical and economic challenges.

To be fair, not everything about the pronouncement was Canute-like. For one thing, I am fairly certain that nobody was seated on a throne when the communique was released.

But while the Viking king knew the limits of his authority and competence, the hubris of world leaders today, in contrast, has us imagining that we can control the weather. As the G8 was setting the global thermostat, Bill Gates and others claimed to have developed a technology that suppresses hurricanes. I’m serious.

It isn’t only the weather. We also speak about “directing our evolution” through biotechnology. Our confidence in our ability to control nature knows no bounds.

Eventually, the tide will come in. Let’s pray that it’s only our vanity that gets washed away.

________

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #7649]

The Christian and the Government

Ezra 7:26

What does a government ordained by God look like? For the Apostle Paul writing to the Romans, it was the Roman Empire -- not what you would call an enlightened regime. You and I wouldn’t like it even if we had been Roman citizens. Yet Paul referred to these pagan rulers as governing authorities established by God, and he instructed persecuted Christians to submit to them “for conscience sake”:

“Everyone must submit to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God. So then, the one who resists the authority is opposing God’s command, and those who oppose it will bring judgment on themselves” (Romans 13:1-2 HCSB).

Americans are fortunate to have a much higher government standard: “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” founded on the principle that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that the founding document of the United States is the Constitution. The U.S. Constitution is really the enabling document for the founding document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence.

Government, along with its appointed officials, is ordained by God to curtail evil in the world. That is its primary responsibility: to protect those who do right and punish those who do wrong. “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do good and you will have its approval. For government is God’s servant to you for good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For government is God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong” (Romans 13:3-4).

Our Christian obligation is to support the government through tribute and through taxation. It is our godly duty to obey the law even when no one’s looking: “Therefore, you must submit, not only because of wrath, but also because of your conscience” (Romans 13:5). It is our godly duty to obey the laws even if we disagree with them, unless in doing so we would disobey God, and seek to change them in a peaceful manner. We are to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.

The Apostle Paul’s command in Romans 13:6-7 is clear: “And for this reason you pay taxes, since the [authorities] are God’s public servants, continually attending to these tasks. Pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor.”

We need to obey the law and pay our taxes. If we don’t, we can expect that sooner or later the hammer of the government will come down and we will have brought reproach upon the Gospel.

We have a ministry to the world as “salt” and the “light” (Matthew 5:13-16), and we all have responsibilities to the civil authorities. A biblical lifestyle requires us to maintain the proper balance between the three divinely ordained institutions of family, church and government, and to insure that no one sphere leans so far over onto another sphere that the proper equilibrium is disrupted.

Whether or not America has a future worth having doesn’t depend on what happens in Washington, D.C., on what happens in the Supreme Court or in the Congress. It depends on what happens with you, and people just like you; your family, and families just like yours; and your church, and churches just like yours, with godly pastors after God’s heart and church members thirsting for God’s Word. Our future is in His hands (Psalm 121:1-2).

Independence Day is a wonderful day to reflect on the precious freedoms we enjoy in this great country. It is a day to give thanks to our Almighty God whose hand has surely been upon this nation. And it is day to commit anew our resolve to pray for spiritual revival to sweep across our nation.

________

Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #796]

Democracy In A God-less Society

In his classic work “1984,” George Orwell saw a day when government eventually would morph into a ubiquitous, all-seeing, all-controlling Big Brother. While the British author’s prognostication might have been off a few decades, his fictitious view of the future is slowly, but surely, becoming reality.

Conservatives, liberals and libertarians don’t agree on much. However, there is one subject that most of them see eye-to-eye on, and that is our world is becoming more monitored and more regulated with each passing day. And while government isn’t always the culprit, we nonetheless are being watched.

Surveillance cameras abound. Most of our movements can be traced by surveillance cameras strategically positioned in parking lots, stores and ATMs.

If while going through airport security you are randomly selected or happen to have the tiniest bit of metal on you, you are going to be subjected to scrutiny just short of a strip search.

Have you noticed the packaging on most items today? It takes special tools and training to open a new CD or DVD. And make sure all the security tags are removed from clothing or you will have the joy of hearing a store’s anti-theft detection alarm go off.

Don’t expect security measures to decrease anytime soon. In fact, they likely will become more intrusive. With identity theft on the rise, expect finger print, face print, eye scanning and voice recognition technologies to become more a part of our lives.

Not only does the monitoring and regulation add a certain level of discomfort to our lives, but the price of everything is impacted. There is a significant cost for all the surveillance and special packaging we endure, and it is all passed on to the consumer.

I, like many conservatives, liberals and libertarians do not like being watched every time I turn around. However, given the reality of crime in our world and the added threat of terrorism, what are the alternatives? Is there a solution that is better than constant surveillance and regulation?

Interestingly enough, many of the founders of the United States articulated the antidote to Big Brother more than 200 years ago.

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” observed Benjamin Franklin. “As nations become more corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters.”

“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” said John Adams, the country’s second president.

“Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet,” stated Robert Winthrop, who served as speaker of the House of Representatives in the mid-1800s.

The words of these three men are representative of the consensus of thought that existed at the time America was founded, and that was the Bible and the practice of religion are necessary in order to have an orderly and free society.

In other words, in order for democracy to function a people must regulate their behavior. It either will come via a self-governance based on an accountability to God or it will be imposed from without by an accountability to government.

For more than four decades secularists of all stripes -– conservative, liberal and libertarian -- have been seeking to drive religions influence, especially that of Christianity, away from the public square. And now they decry the threat posed by surveillance and regulation?

If democracy, as envisioned by America’s founders, is to survive and thrive, Americans must learn to live either with the fear of God or the fear of government. As for me and my house, I choose the former. However, one or the other is enviable. Just ask George Orwell.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #1400]

Quotes On Politics and Government

Ezra 7:26

"In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take."

-- Adlai Stevenson, Wit & Wisdom, 9/16/03

"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs."

-- P. J. O'Rourke, Wit & Wisdom, 9/16/03

Only 42 percent of American adults can name their own country's three branches of government, but 73 percent can name the Three Stooges, a poll has found.

-- This Is True internet newsletter, 9/24/06

The Purpose of the Civil Ruler

Romans 13:3

”For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to [execute] wrath on him who practices evil.” (Romans 13:3-4 NKJV)

The Purpose Of The Civil Ruler

• rulers…evil — for this purpose are they appointed

• wilt…power {want…authority}? — do you desire to live without fear of punishment?

• praise — 1 Pet 2:14 — protection, favour

• minister — servant; being himself under authority

• good — unless you are evil

• afraid, of detection and punishment

• beareth…vain — for use, not mere empty show

• revenger {avenger} — exacting the claims of justice

Relative duties — Anon.

I. Of rulers — to protect the good — to restrain the evil — to reward merit.

II. Of subjects — to respect authority — to do good and thereby to merit praise.

The necessity of law — Anon.

I. Its design is good.

II. Its violation evil.

III. Its execution just

The functions of the ruler — Dr Lyth

I. To maintain law and order — as the minister of God — for the benefit of man.

II. To punish crime: for this purpose he is invested with the power of life and death — must use it righteously — as responsible to God — for the suppression of evil.

Craftiness of criminals — Be law-makers as able as nature or experience (which is the best art) can make them, yet, though I will not yield the wicked to be wiser than the virtuous, I may say offences are too hard for the laws, as some beasts are too wily for their hunters; and that vice overgrows virtue as much as weeds grow faster than medicinal herbs; or rather, that sin, like the fruitful slime of Nilus, cloth increase with so many various shapes of serpents (whose walks and retreats are winding and unknown), that even justice, the painful pursuer of mischief, is become weary and amazed. — Davenant

“For those are the men to maintain themselves with credit in the world, who never suffer their equals to insult them, who show proper respect to their superiors, and act with thoughtful kindness to their inferiors.” — Thucydides

“All my own experience of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the fear.” — Addison

Subjection To Civil Authority

Romans 13:1

”Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.” (Romans 13:1-2 NKJV)

Subjection To Civil Authority

• every soul — without exemption of clergy

• higher powers {governing authorities} — Tit 3:1, 1 Pet 2:13, Matt 22:21, Acts 5:23 — civil authorities of all orders

• there…God — permitted by, answerable to Him

• ordained {appointed} — Prov 8:15-16, Dan 4:32, 2:21, John 19:11 — placed under, see Gk., a military term

• resisteth — by opposing wise and wholesome laws

• power {ordinance} — rule, authority

• damnation {judgment} — punishment

Condescension — The following simple story illustrates a trait in the character of our Queen [Victoria] which explains much of the feeling of fond regard entertained for her by all classes of her subjects. One year, when the court was at Balmoral, Her Majesty made a promise to Jenny, the daughter of a humble Balmoral neighbour, but who was an especial favourite with Her Majesty, saying, “I’ll bring a pretty toy for you when we come back next year.” The Court went, and the promise was thought little more of, at least on one side. Her Majesty went that year to Paris to visit the Emperor of the French. Amid all the pomp and style of royalty and imperiality, there was enough in the events of the year generally to drive many others besides the present child from the thoughts of the Sovereign of Great Britain. Well, next season came, and with it the Court returned to Balmoral. The Queen, in making her rounds, soon called on her little protégée, and with a “Now, I haven’t forgot you,” exhibited the promised present. While Queen Victoria was in the French capital, amid all the din and distraction of French state pageantry, she found time to think of the little Highland girl on the banks of the Dee, and then and there bought an article to please and gratify the little child. — The Times

Royal courtesy — Frederic II., King of Prussia, made it a point to return every mark of respect or civility shown to him in the street by those who met him. He one day observed at table, that whenever he rode through the streets of Berlin, his hat was always in his hand. Baron Polintz, who was present, said “That his Majesty had no occasion to notice the civility of every one who pulled his hat off to him in the streets.” “And why not?” said the king, in a lively tone, “are they not all human beings as well as myself?”

“Distinction of rank is highly necessary for the economy of the world, and was never called in question but by barbarians and enthusiasts.” — Rowe

“He who too much fears hatred, is unfit to reign.” — Seneca

“Power is detested, and miserable is the life of him who wishes rather to be feared than to be loved.” — Nepos

“Whoever pays you more court than he is accustomed to pay, either intends to deceive you, or finds you necessary to him.” — Courtenay

One Nation Under Whom?: the Founders' Compact

Today is the holiday in which we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, and all over the country millions of children are studying his life and his work. They'll learn that his LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL is one of the most eloquent defenses of the law of God that must undergird our nation's laws.

How astonished King would be, were he alive today, to hear the shrill claims from secular ideologues that America was founded as an explicitly secular nation.

In the NEW YORK TIMES recently, Susan Jacoby argued that it's a “misconception, promulgated by the Christian right, that the American government was founded on divine authority rather than human reason.” [see #26526]

Nonsense, Dr. King would have retorted; after all, his entire campaign to abolish unjust laws was predicated on his belief that civil laws must square with the lawgiver God.

As King knew — and most scholars agree — for the first time in history, two ideological streams partially converged in America, one coming from the Judeo-Christian tradition, the other from Enlightenment thinkers. Adherents to both traditions agreed (for different reasons) that the new government should neither establish nor interfere with the church. But this certainly did not mean that America was to be a nation free from religious influences.

George Washington was explicit: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

In his marvelous book ON TWO WINGS, theologian Michael Novak contends that the faith of the founding fathers was deeply rooted in the writings of ancient scripture, especially the Jewish covenant. As he put it, secular writers typically cut off “one of the two wings by which the American eagle flies” — the one that is America's “compact” with the biblical God. They understood, with Thomas Jefferson, that “no nation has ever yet existed or even been governed without religion. Nor can be.” Why? Because, in the founders' estimation, virtue was the precondition for liberty.

While the founders admittedly did not use the word GOD in the Constitution, they didn't need to. The “laws of nature and nature's God” had already been appealed to in the Declaration of Independence, which provided the context for the constitutional debate.

No one made the case better than Martin Luther King, Jr., that America's founders intended religion to undergird America's laws. “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” King wrote. “But conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? The answer would likely make Jacoby, Barry Lynn, and secular ideologues cringe. “A just law,” King said, “squares with the moral law of the law of God. An unjust law ... is out of harmony with the moral law.”

As we celebrate King's birthday and his success in advancing the civil rights cause in America, let's remember that without his defense of the law of God, we would still be a segregated nation today. We need to learn from his stirring LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL that it is the moral law that undergirds the nation's law.

America is a purely secular state? Don't tell that to the gentlemen farmers who founded America — nor to those who today honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Susan Jacoby, “One Nation, Under Secularism,” New York Times, 8 January 2004. [see HolwickID #26526]

• Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963. [see HolwickID #22116]

• Read President George Washington's farewell address, 1796 [taken from J.D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 1 (1907), 213].

• Mervyn A. Warren, King Came Preaching: The Pulpit Power of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (InterVarsity, 2001).

• Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (Encounter, 2001).

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030828, “King's Dream: The Good Society and the Moral Law.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030117, “Fighting Unjust Laws: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.“

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 020121, “The Duty to Disobey: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.“

• Mark Gauvreau Judge, “The Division of Black America,” BreakPoint Online, 8 August 2003.

• Rev. Thomas A. Tarrants, III was a former Klansman who nearly died from multiple bullet wounds when he was arrested. In prison he came to Christ and now speaks out against racism and for the superiority of the Christian worldview. A CD of his testimony is available: “How a Former Klansman Rejected Racism and Came To Christ.”

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One Nation, Under Secularism

American secularism from a "free-thinker" perspective:

In the American presidential campaign of 2004, secularism has become a dirty word. Democrats, particularly Howard Dean, are being warned that they do not have a chance of winning the presidential election unless they adopt a posture of religious “me-tooism” in an effort to convince voters that their politics are grounded in values just as sacred as those proclaimed by President Bush.

On one level, the impulse to capitalize on the religiosity of Americans can be seen as transparently, and at times comically, opportunistic. Late last year, Ed Kilgore, policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council, earnestly advised his party's candidates to invoke “God's green earth” in supporting stronger environmental laws. Mr. Dean, the candidate stuck with the label (or libel) of being the most secularist Democratic aspirant, seems to be heeding the advice to get religion. He recently informed an Iowa audience that he prays daily, and in New Hampshire last week, he demonstrated his ecumenism by using the Muslim expression “inshallah,” which means God willing.

On a deeper level, the notion that elected officials should employ a religious rationale for policy decisions is rooted in the misconception, promulgated by the Christian right, that the American government was founded on divine authority rather than human reason. When I lecture on college campuses, students frequently express surprise at being told that the framers of the Constitution deliberately omitted any mention of God in order to assign supreme governmental power to “We the People.”

Dismissing this inconvenient fact, some on the religious right have suggested that divine omnipotence was considered a given in the 1780's — that the framers had no need to acknowledge God in the Constitution because his dominion was as self-evident as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet isn't it absurd to suppose that men as precise in their use of language as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison would absentmindedly have failed to insert God into the nation's founding document? In fact, they represented a majority of citizens who wished not only to free religion from government interference but government from religious interference.

This deep sentiment was expressed in letters to newspapers during the debate over ratification of the Constitution. One Massachusetts correspondent, signing himself “Elihu,” summed up the secular case by praising the authors of the Constitution as men who “come to us in the plain language of common sense, and propose to our understanding a system of government, as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, nor even a God in a dream to propose any part of it.”

The 18th-century public's understanding of the Constitution as a secular document can perhaps best be gauged by the reaction of religious conservatives at the time. For example, the Rev. John M. Mason, a fire-breathing New York City minister, denounced the absence of God in the preamble as “an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate.” He warned that “we will have every reason to tremble, lest the governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than individuals, overturn from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing and crush us to atoms in the wreck.” But unlike many conservatives today, Mason acknowledged — even as he deplored — the Constitution's uncompromising secularism.

Americans tend to minimize not only the secular convictions of the founders, but also the secularist contribution to later social reform movements. One of the most common misconceptions is that organized religion deserves nearly all of the credit for 19th-century abolitionism and the 20th-century civil rights movement. While religion certainly played a role in both, many people fail to distinguish between personal faith and religious institutions.

Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, and the Quaker Lucretia Mott, also a women's rights crusader, denounced the many mainstream Northern religious leaders who, in the 1830's and 40's, refused to condemn slavery.

In return, Garrison and Mott were castigated as infidels and sometimes as atheists — a common tactic used by those who do not recognize any form of faith but their own. Garrison, strongly influenced by his freethinking predecessor Thomas Paine, observed that one need only be a decent human being — not a believer in the Bible or any creed — to discern the evil of slavery.

During the 20th-century civil rights struggle, the movement's strongest moral leaders emerged from Southern black churches. But the moral message of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. obviously ran counter to the religious rationales for segregation preached in many white churches in the south.

In addition, Dr. King welcomed the help of nonreligious allies like Stanley Levison, his friend and lawyer, and the outspoken labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, murdered in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, were nonobservant Jews who died not in the name of religion but because of their secular humanist commitment to racial justice.

Many politicians today, including President Bush, use the civil rights leadership of African-American ministers as an argument in favor of “faith-based” government financing. But those ministers were free to pursue their moral vision within American society precisely because they were independent of both government money and government control. Government officials, by contrast, have a very different constitutionally mandated obligation — to devise public policies based not on religious interests but on a secular concept of public good.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and declared, in his memorable Texas twang, “We shall overcome,” he was articulating a moral position that could and did command the respect of citizens of any or no religion.

That is real leadership. Not a scintilla of bravery is required for a candidate, whether Democratic or Republican, to take refuge in religion. But it would take genuine courage to stand up and tell voters that elected officials cannot and should not depend on divine instructions to reconcile the competing interests and passions of human beings.

Abraham Lincoln, whose spiritual beliefs were so elusive that both atheists and the devoutly religious have tried to claim him as their own, spoke eloquently on this point during his long period of deliberation before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

“I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the divine will,” he told a group of ministers in September 1862. “I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that he would reveal it directly to me.... These are not, however, the days of miracles.... I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right.”

Today, many voters, of many religious beliefs, might well be receptive to a candidate who forthrightly declares that his vision of social justice will be determined by the “plain, physical facts of the case” on humanity's green and fragile earth. But that would take an inspirational leader who glories in the nation's secular heritage and is not afraid to say so.

__________

Susan Jacoby, author of “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism,” is director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York.

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A Theology of Political Participation

Acts 5:29

Government, according to the Scripture, is a divinely ordained institution. Its importance in society is secondary to the primary institution, which is the home. By the same token, government parallels the church. Whereas in the divine economy the church is primarily to order and discipline the affairs of born-gain believers, in society as a whole the government exists as a method of resisting evil on the one hand and promoting good on the other.

“Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:13-17)

Christians, too, are to be in subjection to these authorities as Jesus Himself made clear when He said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's” (Matthew 22:21). The subjection to the powers that exist in government, even governments that are evil, is a matter of Christian example. As a result of this general deportment, it is not uncommon even for unsympathetic rulers to admit that Christians generally are the best of citizens creating the most peaceful conditions in any society. However, there are those rare occasions when Christians find themselves in a position where they must demure from that which a government demands, choosing to follow the authority of Christ when it is in direct contradiction to the authority of government.

It is here that the Christian must tread with great care. In light of the Holocaust, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's example of being a part of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler certainly appears to have been not only an acceptable decision, but a commendable one. Based on Romans 13, governments clearly have the right to bear the sword; this seems to be biblical ratification of the right of a nation to defend itself against aggressors and also the right of a society to exact judgment in the form of capital punishment.

But the question here is a different one. Does the Christian himself have the right, as in Bonhoeffer's case, to become involved in a violent protest against one's own government? It seems to me that this is where the Christian is obligated to move with the greatest care of all.

The principal of Acts 5:29 that “we ought to obey God rather than men” does make allowance in rare situations for the Christian to indulge even in violent protest. Surely this was the conclusion of the American colonists at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the war for independence in this country. Once again though, American colonists faced a question not so much of Christian protest against an existing government. Instead theirs was a question of whether to seek independence from a repressive regime. The fact that some and perhaps many colonists were Christians means that individually they had to assess these matters for themselves.

No particular form of government is prescribed in Scripture. However, the basis upon which a democracy proceeds is that a free and responsible people will always be the most productive people. Such freedom, as is provided in a genuine democracy, will inevitably produce those circumstances that make it possible for citizens to realize their full capacity to know, experience, and imitate God.

Indeed, the principle of democracy seems to me to be embodied in the local church through the doctrine of the priesthood of believers. If the Holy Spirit of God genuinely indwells each believer, then each individual believer should be entrusted with the ability to make the right kinds of decisions to enhance his or her own life, the life of their family, and, indeed, of the world.

Years ago, as a young preacher, I took the view that politics was one domain, and religion was an entirely different one. My responsibility as a pastor was to lead people to faith in Christ, teach them about Christ, and grow the church as a witness within a degenerate world. In that persuasion, I have not changed across the years. I am still convinced that the most valuable thing any Christian can do is to be involved in leading people to Christ and building up the church of God.

Nevertheless, culture wars, politics, and government are areas to which we simply may not turn a deaf ear or blind eye. Eddy McAteer of the then well-known Religious Roundtable was influential in my life in taking me to Washington, D.C. for a briefing in which incontrovertible evidence of the devastation of pornography upon our society was set forth. When I viewed young women being kidnapped, raped and then literally murdered on screen in films prepared in South America for distribution through the underworld in this country, I realized that it was no longer enough for me to avoid the culture wars, politics, and government. Around 1978, I became involved in these culture wars and have not ceased my involvement since.

The fact is that Christians must be salt and light. They cannot live in the world and fail to be both salt and light except at the expense of dishonoring the Lord. Nevertheless, it remains true that the most monumental change in the social order is always wrought in the heart of individual men and women when they are led to repent of their sins and place their faith in Christ. That has to remain the major emphasis of the church.

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[Original illustration here was a duplicate in HolwickID 25837-26027]

Problems of the Heart: Uncle Sam's Plantation

Job 24:4

Twenty years ago, Star Parker was a single mother living on welfare. She had been through four abortions and had a history of drug abuse, promiscuity, and burglary.

Today, Star Parker is the president and founder of the nonprofit Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. She is a popular author and a committed Christian. In her latest book, UNCLE SAM'S PLANTATION: HOW BIG GOVERNMENT ENSLAVES AMERICA'S POOR AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT, Parker recalls the words that helped turn her life around. Having gone to church at the invitation of some Christian friends, Parker heard the pastor challenge his congregation with these words: “What are you doing living on welfare? ... The government is not your source!”

Parker was stunned. “Government welfare was my source — my only source,” she writes. “I believed I was entitled to receive government welfare anytime I wanted it and viewed it as an unlimited resource. This belief was intrinsic to my worldview. I didn't realize my belief system had trapped me in spiritual and economic poverty.”

Looking back now, Parker believes that her problems stemmed from a lazy and rebellious attitude that she adopted while still in her teens. She divides the poor into three categories—”the economically challenged,” “the lazy poor,” and “the poor in spirit.” Parker has worked with people in each category and understands that many poor people are not to blame for their circumstances. But she unhesitatingly classifies her younger self as one of the “lazy poor,” willing to blame anybody but herself for her problems and unwilling to work when she could get welfare checks for doing nothing.

That's why Parker argues that government's increasing involvement in the lives of the poor causes a dangerous dependency, leading to emotional and spiritual poverty. The welfare reform bill enacted in the 1990s was a good start, but, in her mind, it does not go far enough. We need to change cultural attitudes about government and the poor. We're still attempting to use government as a Band-Aid to cover life-threatening wounds.

Parker doesn't propose any one-size-fits-all solution, but she does assert that we must not encourage poor people to see government as their salvation. Government can never solve the kind of problems that held her down for so long, Parker says, because they are problems of the heart and must be dealt with at a deeper level than government can reach.

As Parker writes, “In our attempt to blame poverty on prejudice, we have taught the poor to be prejudiced against the basic values necessary to sustain a free and civil society ... We've taught them there are no real absolutes to the human condition—except perhaps that the highest value in life is to acquire things.” That's a good reminder for all of us, the poor and the prosperous alike. Our dependence on government to help the poor is a natural result of an outlook that honors materialism and wealth above everything else. But materialism is no answer for rich or poor. Real hope comes only from God who teaches us to work with dignity, who gives us self-worth.

I have met Parker and read her book. She's a sparkling witness, and I hope every political reader will read her book. Then we could really do something to give the poor REAL help.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Star Parker, Uncle Sam's Plantation (WND Books, 2003). See Star Parker's tour and media schedule.

• Dutch Martin, “Star Parker on ‘Uncle Sam's Plantation,'“ interview, Townhall.com, 30 December 2003.

• Star Parker, “The real lessons of black history,” Townhall.com, 4 February 2004.

• Star Parker with Pamela Pearson Wong, “Breaking the Bonds,” Family Voice, March/April 2000.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040106, “At the Foot of the Cross.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 031009, “Smashing Idols: Why God Loves the Poor.”

• Chuck Colson, “The Lost Art of Association,” BreakPoint Online.

• “Richer, Fatter, and Not Much Happier,” press release for State of the World 2004, Worldwatch Institute, 8 January 2004.

__________

God Not Allowed In School

All over the grounds of the school

the bodies of students lay,

and parents and students everywhere

were starting to pray.

Now our God is allowed back on

the campus of the school,

But not any other time for you see

it is against the Federal rule.

The Supreme court said we must not

allow prayer by students,

or allow on the walls of our schools

the Ten Commandments.

They said “If they read them

they may think, and become reflective

and could possibly obey them,

and this is not a permissible objective.”

We replaced God with Humanism

and the Religion of Evolution,

and placed in the mind of our students

the elements of confusion.

We tell them not to kill others,

yet teach the toughest will survive.

Get what you want in life, it’s justified

as long as you can stay alive.

We have tried to make our schools safe

by putting in metal detectors,

but guns and knives are not the problem

it is simply the social reflectors.

For if all weapons were kept out,

it would not give students purpose or love,

a change in the heart is needed,

and that’s best done with help from above.

Remember when we had prayer,

and God’s commandments were read,

and chewing gum and being tardy

was the worst problem that we had.

Now murder, drugs, assault, teen pregnancy,

and survival of the fittest rule,

but guns and knives were never a problem,

till we kicked God out of school.

Citizenship 'Under God?: the Pledge and the Court

Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court holding that UNDER GOD in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, absent Justice Scalia, who has recused himself, will hear arguments today as to whether to uphold the ruling or allow children and others to continue to recite those familiar words.

In yesterday's NEW YORK TIMES, columnist David Brooks made a great suggestion for the justices. He assigned as bedtime reading the book A STONE OF HOPE by David L. Chappell.

Chappell's thesis is that without America's religious beliefs, we never would have had a successful civil rights movement. Chappell argues that there were two groups involved in the civil rights movement. First, there were “mainstream liberals, often white and Northern,” who “tended to have an optimistic view of human nature” — these are the utopians who believe that, with government help, public awareness, and education, all the world's ills can be mended. The second group, “mostly black and Southern,” were religiously motivated. They included Martin Luther King, Jr., who saw that in a fallen world, justice can only be achieved by a commitment to religious beliefs.

One only has to read King's speeches to see his constant references from the Old Testament prophets. And in his LETTERS FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL he cited Augustine and Aquinas to show that an unjust law is no law at all and that God's law sets men free.

Brooks, writing as a Jew, says that whether you believe in the Bible or not you have to agree that it has a deeper and more accurate understanding of human nature than secular social scientists.

In addition to Chappell's book, I recommend that the justices also read FOR THE GLORY OF GOD by Rodney Stark, an eminent secular social scientist at the University of Washington. Stark shows how Christianity led to great advances in science, the reformation of human behavior, and the end of slavery.

You see, the real question raised by this case is one posed by Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor and founder of the Intelligent Design movement. “If we are not to declare ourselves one nation under God,” Johnson asks, “what are we under? The universe? The UN? The goddess Gaia? Or the Supreme Self?” The editorial board of the NEW YORK TIMES, which, despite Brook's superb column, favors the elimination of the words UNDER GOD, presumably leaving us as one nation under nothing.

But that is the ultimate act of hubris. We declare ourselves free from any moral law or governor higher than the imperial self, and so we become gods. I cannot imagine a more frightening prospect.

Now the fate of the republic doesn't hang on two words, but still this is no small matter. We've seen the steady erosion of Christian influence in American life over the years and a growing hostility to those who hold that the one, true sovereign God called us into being and reigns over us. The Court's decision will be one more step toward the official establishment of secularism as American religion. And it will tell much about our values, humility, and our capacity to love and respect one another.

Brooks suggests that the most important thing at the moment is to try to understand what the phrase ONE NATION UNDER GOD might mean. “That's not proselytizing,” he concludes, “it's citizenship.” To that I say, Amen.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• David Brooks, “One Nation, Enriched by Biblical Wisdom,” New York Times, 23 March 2004. (Free registration required.)

• Linda Greenhouse, “One Crucial Issue in Pledge Case: What Does 'Under God' Mean?“ New York Times, 22 March 2004. (Free registration required.)

• “Dad's status could derail pledge case,” Charleston Post and Courier, 23 March 2004. (Free registration required.)

• Ginny Mooney, “Just 'One Nation'?“ BreakPoint Online, 1 July 2002.

• David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

• Alan Sears, “'Under God' the Bedrock of America,” Crosswalk.com. Visit www.telladf.org for more information on the pledge case before the Supreme Court.

• Bill Murchison, “Under God — or somewhere else?“ Townhall.com, 23 March 2004.

• Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963. (Free Adobe Acrobat Reader required.)

• Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts and the End of Slavery (Princeton University Press, 2003). Read an interview with Rodney Stark and an excerpt from the book.

• See BreakPoint commentaries “Hunting Witches,” “We've Been Lied To,” “The First and Only Abolitionists,” and “Wall of Separation.”

• Phillip E. Johnson, The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning, and Public Debate (InterVarsity, 2002).

• Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (Encounter, 2001).

__________

*

Imperfect People: Voting and the Christian

I have huge respect for Dr. Mark Noll. He's a first-rate scholar, thinker, and historian. His book THE SCANDAL OF THE EVANGELICAL MIND, written ten years ago, remains a tough-minded challenge to develop a Christian worldview.

That's why I'm so saddened by an essay he wrote titled, “None of the Above: Why I Won't Be Voting for President.”

Noll writes, “As has been the case for the past few presidential elections, on Election Day I will almost certainly cast my vote once again for none of the above.”

He goes on to list seven issues and his convictions about those issues: race, the value of life, taxes, trade, medicine, religious freedom, and the international rule of law. Noll writes, “My position on each is related to how I understand the traditional Christian faith that grounds my existence. Yet neither of the major parties is making a serious effort to consider this particular combination of concerns or even anything remotely resembling it.” And so, because both parties and their nominees are flawed, Noll will vote for no one.

That position is dead wrong and damaging to democracy. It's the utopian notion which assumes divine perfection in fallen humans. His assumption that we can support only candidates who have perfect scores according to our reading of the Bible makes me wonder how he votes at all. And if that's the standard, all of us should stop voting.

But that's exactly what the fundamentalist movement did in the early part of the twentieth century, the movement Mark Noll so correctly criticizes. Their error was allowing perfectionism to get in the way of their responsibility to act for the common good. It's an error we can't afford to repeat — not this year, not ever.

Voting is not an option for Christians. It's a biblical duty, because by voting we carry out God's agency; we are His instruments for appointing leaders. Just like Samuel in the Old Testament, we are commissioned to find the very best people we can who are best able to lead us. Not to vote, or to turn down both presidential candidates because they're not perfect on a biblical score sheet, is a dereliction of biblical responsibility.

Remember that the first job of a leader biblically is to preserve order, out of which freedom flows, and then to restrain evil. Every thinking Christian has to look at both candidates this year and decide for himself or herself which one can best keep and preserve order and restrain evil. And remember also Jethro's advice to Moses: Choose men who love God and are able. And you have to look at other things with candidates — their character and their stand on moral issues. And then once they're elected, we need to keep pressing them on those moral issues, lobbying for what is right. Noll's argument convinces me of the need for more, not less, political involvement from Christians. And it all begins with voting.

I shudder to think what would happen in our culture if we fall into the disengagement trap the Church fell into a century ago. It's the reason that we lost our place in the culture. It's the reason people stopped taking Christianity seriously.

Instead, let me urge you — and my friend Mark Noll — to look at the presidential candidates and make a wise, informed choice. Choose men who love God and are able to govern well.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Mark Noll, “None of the above: Why I Won't Be Voting for President,” Christian Century, 21 September 2004.

• Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994).

• James M. Kushiner, for the editors, “First Things First,” Touchstone, October 2004.

• David Mills, “Unimposing Kerry,” Touchstone, October 2004.

• Kwaku O. Kushindana, “How Will I Vote? I Won't,” Washington Post, 3 October 2004, B04.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 021104, “Voting for Less Evil: Why Vote for the Imperfect?“ (Archived commentary; free registration required.)

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040127, “Two Cities: Augustine's City of God.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040823, “A Sacred Duty: Why Christians Must Vote.”

• Charles Colson, “An Act of Love: The Role Christians Play in Public Life,” BreakPoint WorldView, October 2004.

• Ben Wiker, “Why You Must Vote,” Crisis, October 2004.

• Roberto Rivera, “First Things First: Voting and the Sanctity of Life,” Boundless,2 September 2004.

• Diana J. Wynne, “Top 10 (bad) excuses for not voting,” Christian Science Monitor, 13 October 2004.

• See the “Worldview for Parents” page “Why Should I Vote?“

• M. Moore, “The Church and the Preservation of the Republic,” Findings, Fall 2002.

• David Naugle, “A New Screwtape Letter: A Christian Worldview Must Frighten the Enemy,” BreakPoint Online, 22 July 2004.

• Ken Connor and John Revell, Sinful Silence: When Christians Neglect Their Christian Duty (Ginosko, 2004).

________

*

Christians Must View Politics Theologically

Romans 13

If Christians confuse their citizenship in the kingdom of God with their citizenship in the United States, they are in danger of twisting and perverting the Gospel, Russell D. Moore recently told an audience at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Moore, dean of the seminary's school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration, said that Christians in America must think theologically when deciding how to vote and where to stand on important issues in the upcoming presidential election.

American Christians are in the unique position that is the equivalent of “Caesar” in the Bible, Moore said. Pointing to Jesus' and Paul's discussion of Caesar, Moore said that in a constitutional republic, Caesar is the people. Moore's comments were made at the seminary during a September address on political engagement.

“You and I are not in the same position as the first-century Christians, gathering together in catacombs, wondering what Caesar is going to do,” Moore said. “Instead, you and I are in both situations. We're the church trying to live out the mandate of the Gospel and we are at the same time those Romans 13 authorities.

“The authority in the United States of America is constitutionally invested, not in the White House, not in the Congress, not in the Supreme Court, but ultimately in the people through their elected representatives. So responsibility for using the sword wisely, for fair taxation, for all of these things, ultimately rests with us. When we are reading passages [that refer to Caesar], we read it through two lenses: It is addressed to us as the church and it is also addressed to us as Caesar.”

Believers confuse their citizenship in the two kingdoms when they mistakenly view America as the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel and desire for the government to function accordingly, Moore said. Instead, Moore said that Old Testament Israel is fulfilled in the church.

Because of this, spiritual disobedience must be dealt with through church discipline and not through the coercive activity of the state, he said. Believers must think theologically, not only about specific issues such as same-sex “marriage” and abortion, but also about political engagement in general, he said.

“When we read New Testament texts in which we see Jesus or Paul talking about Caesar, we read them through two lenses,” Moore said. “They are addressed to us as the church and also as Caesar. Political decisions are important for the sake of the church, for the sake of the Gospel, and for our accountability to God as the ultimate governing authorities in a constitutional republic.”

So, must an evangelical Christian vote Republican or Democrat? Moore said that ideally both parties would have conservative evangelicals working within them. However, most evangelicals gravitate toward the GOP because of a profound shift that has occurred within the Democratic Party over the past three decades, Moore said.

The Democratic Party, once home to many Southern Baptists and other evangelicals, now prefers the influence of groups such as abortion rights groups and homosexual activists -- lobbies with a worldview not consonant with evangelical convictions, Moore said. The loss of orthodox believers in the party has meant the loss of a unity based on transcendent causes of justice, such as the civil rights movement, Moore said. Now, party activists are more likely to be energized by conspiracy theories such as those found in Michael Moore's film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” he said.

Christians must not identify themselves first and foremost by affiliation with a particular political party, Moore said. A party is merely a mechanism one uses to advance objectives informed by a Christian worldview, he said.

“What is best for America would not necessarily be to have a Republican Party full of evangelicals and a secular Democratic Party,” Moore said. “Ideally, it would be wonderful if we had two parties that had evangelicals working and active within them.

“The problem is that you have interest groups within the contemporary Democratic Party that simply will not tolerate evangelicals who hold to some essentials of an evangelical worldview. That's the sad reality.”

Believers need not only to think theologically about issues such as abortion and same-sex “marriage,” but they must also bring a biblical worldview to other issues such as foreign policy and terrorism, Moore said.

“What I'm concerned about in terms of foreign policy is that some of the arguments that are being used completely erode any foundation of justice at all,” Moore said. “Should a nation that has been attacked feel a sense of justice toward the capture of Osama bin Laden? Is that simply vengeful human beings who want blood or is that something that resonates with the way God has made the world?

“If we establish a society that no longer understands justice, we can no longer understand the Gospel. The Gospel is not just asking Jesus into your heart so that you will be happy all the day. The Gospel is 'while we were sinners, yet Christ died for us.’ There is a just condemnation against us, a sense in which God, in order to be just, the apostle Paul says, must punish evil and He has done so in Jesus Christ. If you don't understand justice, you can't understand justification.”

*

Engaging the City of Man: Christian Faith and Politics

Over the last 20 years, evangelical Christians have been politically mobilized in an outpouring of moral concern and political engagement unprecedented since the crusade against slavery in the 19th century. Is this a good development? With the 2004 presidential campaign now under way, the issue of political involvement emerges anew with urgency.

To what extent should Christians be involved in the political process?

This question has troubled the Christian conscience for centuries. The emergence of the modern evangelical movement in the post-World War II era brought a renewed concern for engagement with the culture and the political process. The late Carl F. H. Henry addressed evangelicals with a manifesto for Christian engagement in his landmark book THE UNEASY CONSCIENCE OF MODERN FUNDAMENTALISM. As Dr. Henry eloquently argued, disengagement from the critical issues of the day is not an option.

An evangelical theology for political participation must be grounded in the larger context of cultural engagement. As the Christian worldview makes clear, our ultimate concern must be the glory of God. Building from that, we understand that when we are instructed by Scripture to love God and then to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are given a clear mandate for the right kind of cultural engagement.

We love our neighbor because we first love God. In His sovereignty, our Creator has put us within this cultural context in order that we may display His glory by preaching the Gospel, confronting persons with God's truth, and serving as agents of salt and light in a dark and fallen world. In other words, love of God leads us to love our neighbor -- and love of neighbor requires our participation in the culture and in the political process.

Writing even as the Roman Empire fell, Augustine, the great bishop and theologian of the early church, made this case in his monumental work, The City of God. As Augustine explained, humanity is confronted by two cities -- the City of God and the City of Man. The City of God is eternal, and takes as its sole concern the greater glory of God. In the City of God, all things are ruled by God's Word, and the perfect rule of God is the passion of all its citizens.

In the City of Man, however, the reality is very different. This city is filled with mixed passions, mixed allegiances and compromised principles. Though the City of God is marked by unconditional obedience to the command of God, citizens of the City of Man demonstrate deadly patterns of disobedience, even as they celebrate and claim their moral autonomy, and then revolt against the Creator.

Of course, we know that the City of God is eternal, even as the City of Man is passing. But this does not mean that the City of Man is ultimately unimportant, and it does not allow the church to forfeit its responsibility to love its citizens. Love of neighbor -- grounded in our love for God -- requires us to work for good in the City of Man, even as we set as our first priority the preaching of the Gospel -- the only means of bringing citizens of the City of Man into citizenship in the City of God.

Thus, Christians bear important responsibilities in both cities. Even as we know that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, and even as we set our sights on the glory of the City of God, we must work for good, justice, and righteousness in the City of Man. We do so, not merely because we are commanded to love its citizens, but because we know that they are loved by the very God we serve.

From generation to generation, Christians often swing between two extremes, either ignoring the City of Man or considering it to be our main concern. A biblical balance establishes the fact that the City of Man is indeed passing, and chastens us from believing that the City of Man and its realities can ever be of ultimate importance. Yet, we also know that each of us is, by God's own design, a citizen -- though temporarily -- of the City of Man. When Jesus instructed that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, He pointed His followers to the City of Man and gave us a clear assignment. The only alternatives that remain are obedience and disobedience to this call.

Love of neighbor for the sake of loving God is a profound political philosophy that strikes a balance between the disobedience of political disengagement and the idolatry of politics as our main priority. As evangelical Christians, we must engage in political action, not because we believe the conceit that politics is ultimate, but because we must obey our Redeemer when He commanded that we must love our neighbor.

We are concerned for the culture not because we believe that the culture is ultimate, but because we know that our neighbors must hear the Gospel, even as we hope and strive for their good, peace, security and well-being.

The Kingdom of God is not up for vote in the 2004 elections, and there are no polling places in the City of God. Nevertheless, it is by God's sovereignty that we are now confronted with these times, our current crucial issues of debate, and the political decisions that will be answered in the electoral process.

This is no time for silence, and no time for shirking our responsibilities as Christian citizens. Ominous signs of moral collapse and cultural decay now appear on our contemporary horizon. A society ready to put the institution of marriage up for demolition and transformation is a society losing its most basic moral sense. A culture ready to treat human embryos as material for medical experimentation is a society turning its back on human dignity and the sacredness of human life.

Trouble in the City of Man is a call to action for citizens of the City of God, and that call to action must involve political involvement as well. Christians may well be the last citizens who know the difference between the eternal and the temporal, the ultimate and the urgent. God's truth is eternal and Christian convictions must be commitments of permanence. Political alliances and arrangements are, by definition, temporary and conditional. This is no time for America's Christians to confuse the City of Man with the City of God. At the same time, we can never be counted faithful in the City of God if we neglect our duty in the City of Man. That's a good principle to remember as America gears up for a political season.

*

Every Democracy Will Finally Collapse

[According to Snopes.com, this popular email is falsely attributed to Tyler (should be Tytler); the actual author cannot be determined but the writing is undoubtedly very recent.]

At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinburgh) had this to say about “The Fall of The Athenian Republic” some 2,000 years prior:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

________

Source: Monday Fodder; http://www.fishermansnet.com/monday-fodder/

How Would Jesus Vote?

1 Peter 2:13

Sermon on politics. 1 Peter 2:13-17

HOW WOULD JESUS VOTE?

=====================

I. A pastor's dilemma.

II. Jesus and Osama bin Laden.

III. The politics of Jesus.

A. The political context of ancient Palestine.

B. Where Jesus stood.

IV. Is Jesus the last word?

A. Being as radical as Jesus would turn our society upside-down.

B. Political insight from the rest of the Bible.

C. Values that are upheld in the Bible from first to last.

1) Value each and every life.

2) Help the poor.

3) Work hard and with honesty.

4) Uphold law and order.

5) Beware of power.

6) Honor God.

V. There are some things government cannot do.

A. It cannot make you happy.

B. It cannot save you.

Reconsidering Secularism: One European Looks Back

Some Europeans are still amused by the primary reason American voters gave for their electoral choices. “Moral values?” What an antiquated concept! And claiming to be “a city on a hill”? What arrogance!

But one European official thinks the United States is on to something. Rocco Buttiglione, Italy's minister of European affairs, wrote an article titled “Of God and Men,” published in the November 10 OPINION JOURNAL, an online feature of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. [see #28676]

The article began by noting that President Bush concluded his election victory speech by saying “God bless America.” Buttiglione comments, “It's likely that in the European Parliament, the U.S. president would be considered unfit for his job on account of his religious beliefs. Even worse, for Europe's legislators, would be that he's not ashamed to express those beliefs so clearly and so publicly.”

The Italian statesman notes that Mr. Bush's firm stand on family values and other moral issues was a major factor in his re-election. He opines that this makes it apparent that “Europe and the United States are drifting apart not only on foreign policy but also on their vision of a democratic society and of the proper relationship between politics and ethics.” He contrasts the views, for example, of Alexander Hamilton and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Hamilton believed politics “needed values it could not produce itself” and needed to rely heavily on churches “to nurture the virtues civil life needs.”

By contrast, Rousseau thought churches needed to bow before civil religion, which is why Europeans will not tolerate an under God phrase in their pledges of allegiance.

On both sides of the Atlantic in the cultural revolution of the sixties, traditional values like individual responsibility and self-sacrifice were jettisoned in favor of individual freedom and self-indulgence. “In this world nobody would need moral convictions,” writes Buttiglione. In a world of limitless disposable resources, “nobody would need to toil for his bread.”

Well, back in the real world, that fantasized tomorrow never came, though secularism did take deeper root in Europe than in the United States. Buttiglione points out, “We still live in a world in which resources are limited, we have to work hard to have our share of them, we need the support of a family, and we need the old traditional virtues that had been too easily dismissed. Americans have become aware of this state of affairs sooner than Europeans.”

Some Europeans ridicule America's resolve to be “a city set on a hill,” implying that we should abandon the moral high ground and join them in a convictionless swamp. But there's hope that the migration may move in the opposite direction.

Buttiglione reasons that a struggling economy and aging society in Europe “can survive and be modernized only if we recover at least some of the values of the past — among them the ethics of hardworking and caring fathers and mothers.” He thinks “we can expect also in Europe a change of attitudes within a comparatively short period of time.” Good news.

Then he concludes, “Now America, the most advanced country in the world, shows us that religion may be and indeed is a fundamental element of a free society and of a modern economy.” Amen! I could not have put that better myself.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Rocco Buttiglione, “Of God and Men: Unlike America's, Europe's political establishment is hostile to Christianity,” Wall Street Journal, 10 November 2004.

• David Klinghoffer, “What We Bush Voters Share: In God We Trust,” Los Angeles Times, 8 November 2004.

• Collin Hansen, “Now That You've Got Political Power, What Are Your Going to Do with It?“ Christianity Today, 12 November 2004.

• Trudy Chun, “ A Legacy of Light: Ronald Reagan's 'City on a Hill' ,” BreakPoint WorldView, October 2004.

• See the “Worldview for Parents” page “The First Requirement of Leadership“ for a comparison of Rousseau and George Washington.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 041117, “The Threat at Home: Europe and Radical Islam.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 041108, “It's Not Payback Time: Christians and Politics as Unusual.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 041104, “Don't Stop Now: 'Value Voters' and the Future.”

• Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn, Being the Body (W Publishing, 2003).

________

*

Of God and Men

Unlike America's, Europe's political establishment is hostile to Christianity.

_____________

George W. Bush concluded his election victory speech with “God bless America.” It's likely that in the European Parliament, the U.S. president would be considered unfit for his job on account of his religious beliefs. Even worse, for Europe's legislators, would be that he's not ashamed to express those beliefs so clearly and so publicly.

If you consider that Mr. Bush won re-election in part because of his firm stand on family values and other moral issues, it becomes apparent that Europe and United States are drifting apart not only on foreign policy but also on their vision of a democratic society and of the proper relationship between politics and ethics.

One of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, was convinced that politics needed values it could not produce itself and had to rely on other agencies (mainly the churches) to nurture the virtues civil life needs. The state could therefore not privilege any church in particular but had to maintain a positive attitude to religion in general.

Jean Jacques Rousseau thought, on the contrary, that the state needed a kind of civil religion of its own and the existing churches had to bow to this civil religion by incorporating its commandments in their theology. Many scholars see in this idea of Rousseau's the seminal principle of totalitarianism. The tradition of Rousseau and of the Jacobins has survived in Europe in less virulent forms than in the not too distant past, but it's still part of the European political and ideological landscape.

These differing philosophical approaches to religion and politics do not give us, however, the whole truth. In the 1960s, both Europe and the United States lived through a cultural era that belittled traditional values and wanted to prepare the young generation for a world of tomorrow in which individual responsibility, self-sacrifice and other virtues of the past would be needed no more. In this world nobody would need moral convictions. It would be a world without the constraint of limitedness disposable resources. Nobody would need to toil for his bread.

Unfortunately that tomorrow did not come. What came, on the contrary, was the collapse of communism. We still live in a world in which resources are limited, we have to work hard to have our share of them, we need the support of a family and we need the old traditional virtues that had been too easily dismissed. Americans have become aware of this state of affairs sooner than Europeans. This is another explanation of the difference between the two sides of the Atlantic. But we can expect also in Europe a change of attitudes within a comparatively short period of time. Our struggling economy and ageing society can survive and be modernized only if we recover at least some of the values of the past -- among them the ethics of hardworking and caring fathers and mothers.

This is difficult to accept in Europe because our intellectuals were always convinced that modernity brings with itself the extinction of religious faith. Now America, the most advanced country in the world, shows us that religion may be and indeed is a fundamental element of a free society and of a modern economy.

________

Mr. Buttiglione , Italy's minister of European affairs, last month withdrew his candidacy to become European justice and home affairs commissioner. [He received too much criticism for being a conservative Roman Catholic]

[see #28675 for Charles Colson's interpretation of this article]

*

In Politics, the Bible Cuts Both Ways

Mark 12:17

I find it fascinating that certain groups on the Right want pastors to “speak up.” What they mean by this, of course, is to more overtly endorse their preferred candidates and/or moral issues. But what they don’t understand is that pastors are speaking up. It’s just that what pastors are speaking up about may not be the talking points of the current season. And the Bible cuts against both parties, against all political persuasions. Yes, there is much in the Scripture affirming the prolife (Psalm 139; Genesis 2-3) and traditional marriage (Mark 19:5) positions. You can also make a good argument that the Bible affirms the idea of limited government (1 Timothy 2:2; Mark 12:17) and some of the root ideas of capitalism. So some would say the Bible is very conservative.

And yet that would be incomplete, because you will also find in Scripture many texts on justice, the plight of the poor, treatment of the immigrant. And who were Jesus’ chief antagonists in the gospels? The Pharisees, the “Religious Right” of their day.

Should pastors speak in the pulpit about contemporary issues? Yes, but only when the texts of Scripture clearly articulate it. They shouldn’t bow to any party’s talking points. They shouldn’t slant their sermons to fit a political profile. They shouldn’t become wannabe pundits in the pulpit. They should preach the Word and let it do its work in the hearts of the people, who will then influence their communities.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #13176]

Government's Chief Role Is To Protect Life

Thomas Jefferson never knew Terri Schiavo. But his words resonate with relevance as we reflect on the roles that the state of Florida and the government of the United States have played in trying to protect her life.

“The first duty of government is the protection of life, not its destruction,” declared Mr. Jefferson. “The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.”

It was Jefferson who, in penning the words of the Declaration of Independence, declared that the right to life was “unalienable” because it was “endowed” to us by our Creator. Government's role, according to this revered founding father, was to “secure” the unalienable rights conferred by the Creator on His creatures.

In the hue and cry that has surrounded the controversy concerning Terri Schiavo's court-ordered death, many seem to have forgotten the role our Founding Fathers envisioned for government. There is a reason Mr. Jefferson and the founders attached such primacy to the right to life. The right to life is the “first” right. It is that right without which no other right can exist. The right to speak as one pleases, worship as one chooses or associate with those whom one prefers all depend upon the protection of the right to life. Without protecting the right to life, all other rights are meaningless. Even the “right to privacy,” which has been at the center of the Schiavo litigation, means nothing to a corpse. The enjoyment of all of the rights that derive from the Creator and which are secured by our Constitution and laws depend, first and foremost, upon protection of our right to life.

Critics of government intrusion into the acrimonious battle between Terri Schiavo's husband and her family seem to have overlooked the fact that it was Michael Schiavo who first petitioned the Circuit Court of Pinellas County to authorize the starvation and dehydration death of his disabled wife. In doing so, Mr. Schiavo is the one who injected government into the controversy. Thereafter, in proceedings that accorded her substantially fewer due-process protections than afforded death-row inmates, the court not only “authorized” Terri's death, it “ordered” her death by starvation and dehydration.

The legislature and the governor of the state of Florida acted in the finest tradition of government when they sought to intervene to prevent Mrs. Schiavo from suffering a slow, agonizing death -- one that would have been deemed “cruel and unusual punishment” for serial killers like Ted Bundy. The United States Congress and the president, likewise, acted in the finest Jeffersonian tradition when they sought to provide relief for Terri Schiavo.

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “no state ... shall ... deprive any person of life ... without due process of law.” The amendment confers on Congress the explicit power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of the amendment. Thus, acting pursuant to its constitutional authority, Congress rightly sought to provide Terri Schiavo the same rights of review that are available to death-row inmates. After all, Mrs. Schiavo will be just as dead as Ted Bundy if the Florida court order is not set aside.

Contrary to the assertions of some, Congress' intervention did not offend principles of “states' rights” or “federalism.” Neither states' rights nor federalism gives a license to the states to run roughshod over the rights of American citizens. Sadly, the states have a long and sad history of giving the short shrift to the constitutional rights of vulnerable or unpopular American citizens. It is precisely because of that history that the 14th Amendment was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War.

What is most surprising about the role of government in the Schiavo case is that the courts seemed to have cast a blind eye and a deaf ear to the need to protect the rights of a frail and vulnerable citizen. Historically, courts have been a bastion for the protection of individual liberties. Traditionally, it is the courts that have been the great “equalizer” for the weak and the vulnerable and the poor and unpopular. In this case, however, and increasingly around the country, courts are becoming aiders and abettors of the strong in exploiting the weak, and accomplices of the rich in exploiting the poor.

As our country shifts away from a sanctity of life ethic and moves increasingly toward an ethos that calculates the net worth of individuals using cost-benefit ratios and quality-of-life calculus, who will protect us from exploitation and abuse when we become inconvenient or when we cost more to maintain than we produce? If not the government, who will stand in the gap?

________

Ken Connor served as counsel to Governor Jeb Bush in the Bush v. Schiavo case. He is chairman of the Center for a Just Society, online at www.centerforajustsociety.org

Authentic Authority

Romans 13:1

Sermon in Romans series, #4 Romans 13:1-7

AUTHENTIC AUTHORITY

===================

I. The place of a Dad.

II. Authority's foundation: God

A. God has woven authority into the fabric of human life.

B. Authority is necessary because of sin.

III. Authority's method: servanthood

A. Authority is to be used to help others.

B. Fathers should be this kind of leader.

IV. Authority's responsibility: moral enforcement

A. Authority promotes and rewards what is good.

B. Authority restrains and punishes what is evil.

V. Authority's requirement: submission

A. Rebellion against authority is a sign of our society.

B. Submission means giving what is owed.

C. Paul's view of government is very positive.

VI. Authority's limits.

A. Paul is giving an ideal picture.

B. The Bible teaches that all human authority has limits.

C. God trumps all other authorities.

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From the Depths To the Heights: Reconciling Human Behavior

Romans 13

G. K. Chesterton wrote one of the most remarkable books I have ever read titled ORTHODOXY. In it he says that the Christian faith uniquely reconciles the varying aspects of human character and behavior. For example, we see the dark side of life, and we hate the sin — but we love the world, and so we love the sinner. Chesterton says this is why he believes that the Christian doctrine exactly fits the human condition.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina revealed this truth, as well: that man is a sinner, desperately depraved, but always capable of goodness and greatness. The television coverage of what took place in New Orleans last week exposed us to the depth of human evil — and also to the heights of human compassion.

What about the rioting and chaos in the streets? Most Americans were horrified to see this — and most people I talked to were surprised. Well, the Christian ought not to be surprised. This is precisely what the Bible teaches us: that without the restraint of God or God's appointed agents — that is, government, as Romans 13 makes clear — we will slide quickly into chaos. John Calvin understood this, which is why he considered the magistrate in government one of the highest offices in society.

I have a very high view of government. As a conservative, I favor limited government, but never confuse limited government with powerless government. I believe that delegated to governing authorities is God's responsibility to wield the sword and preserve order.

And why does order matter so much? Without it, because of human depravity, we will sink into the kind of chaos we saw on television. Remember that it was St. Augustine who wrote the great doctrine of Tranquilitis Ordinus — that is, peace follows order.

Having said that, in the wake of Katrina, we also saw human goodness at its best. Watching the news last week, I was transfixed seeing Coast Guardsmen risk their lives, descending on cables with baskets to lift people off the housetops. Thousands were saved. We saw planes carrying the sick out of hospitals, flying them to other cities. We saw towns across the country opening their arms to them, welcoming the dirty, exhausted masses coming out of New Orleans.

So, in watching this, we saw altruism at its best. Altruism is the one characteristic of human behavior that destroys a key element of Darwin's theory of evolution: that is, natural selection. According to natural selection, we would allow a disaster to weed out the unfit, the weak, and the poor — anyone who could not contribute to society. But Americans, because of our Christian heritage — a heritage that remains strong no matter how secular the nation becomes — do not behave this way. We carry our wounded off the field of battle. We risk our lives to rescue strangers. We offer food and shelter to the stranger's child — even to prisoners. And when we do, Darwin is disproved.

In the aftermath of one of the worst disasters in American history, we ought to remind our neighbors that only the Christian worldview explains the otherwise bewildering events we have watched on television: We saw the depravity — exactly what happens when governing restraints are withdrawn. And we saw human compassion at its glorious best.

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The Politics of Happiness

The science of happiness poses huge questions for politicians. Governments have succeeded in delivering greater and greater wealth but that has not translated into extra happiness. Now research is suggesting ways in which societies might try to maximise well-being - ideas which often challenge some of the basic principles of modern life.

Increasingly, politicians from all sides are taking notice of the findings and discussing how they might capture the elusive feel-good factor. Back in 1999, Tony Blair wrote about achieving “a better quality of life”, adding: “Money isn't everything. But in the past governments have seemed to forget this. Success has been measured by economic growth - GDP - alone. Delivering the best possible quality of life for us all means more than concentrating solely on economic growth. That is why sustainable development is such an important part of this Government's programme. All this depends on devising new ways of assessing how we are doing.”

The leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron told The Happiness Formula programme: “We should be thinking not just what is good for putting money in people's pockets but what is good for putting joy in people's hearts.

“When politicians are looking at issues they should be saying to themselves 'how are we going to try and make sure that we don't just make people better off but we make people happier, we make communities more stable, we make society more cohesive'.”

ECONOMICS

The idea that politics should be about creating “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” goes back to the end of the 18th century and the philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

However, no-one could work out how to measure happiness, or how to weigh one person's happiness against how other people feel.

So economics, which is built on objective measurement, took hold instead.

In the past few years figures close to government in Britain have been arguing once again that policies should take account of how happy - or unhappy - they make people.

In 2002, The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit held a “life satisfaction” seminar in Whitehall discussing the implications of a “happiness” policy.

A few month's later, Downing Street published an “analytical paper” which considered how happiness might affect different policies including:

A happiness index Teaching people about happiness More support for volunteering “A more leisured work-life balance” Higher taxes for the rich

The authors were careful to say that the ideas were not government policy, but Tony Blair's policy adviser who helped write the paper, David Halpern, told The Happiness Formula it is inevitable that in future governments will be judged on their success in making people happy.

“Put it this way, if government doesn't measure it, other people will and already are.”

Already one government department has defined its purpose as improving people's “health and happiness”.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working on a happiness index.

Furthermore, every local authority in England and Wales has wide-ranging powers to promote well-being.

The Happiness Formula has been looking at how different politics would be if government tried to make people happy rather than just rich.

TAX MAKES YOU HAPPY

Research has suggested that one of the key reasons why wealth has not translated into happiness is that we tend to compare ourselves with people who are richer than we are.

As a result, even though we may be better off ourselves, we still do not get any happier.

If we want a happier society, so the theory goes, we need to reduce the gap between rich and poor.

And the way to do that is to redistribute wealth from the rich to the less well-off.

So some close to government are now arguing that, believe it or not, taxes make us happy.

“We tend to think of taxes as bad,” said the PM's adviser David Halpern.

“I know it's difficult for us to believe as we take out our chequebook at the end of the year, but it looks like, at least at a certain level, taxes are likely to increase the well-being of the population.”

The leading economist Professor Richard Layard of the LSE explains why: “We should try and discourage people from comparing themselves with other people ... and I think the tax system can help us in that way.”

Do not panic though - both Mr Halpern and Professor Layard reckon the current tax rates are about right for maximising happiness.

BANNING ADVERTISING

The science of happiness suggests advertising is a major cause of unhappiness because it makes people feel less well-off.

According to Professor Layard some advertising should be banned.

“I don't see that we need to allow pictorial advertising which conveys very little information because it makes people feel poorer.”

In the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where government makes policy on the basis of Gross National Happiness, most street advertising is banned - particularly when aimed at children.

In the UK, the National Consumer Council is campaigning to ban advertising to children below the age of 10.

“We already regulate alcohol to children, we should also regulate and I think ban advertising of junk food to children,” said Ed Mayo, Chief Executive of the NCC.

“There is no case, in terms of health or wellbeing of children for advertising like this.”

In fact, says Mr Mayo, the council's own research suggests advertising to children can make them more unhappy.

“Children that are more brand aware, are more consumerist, came across as less satisfied in other parts of their lives - were unhappier”.

COMMUTING LESS

According to scientists commuting is really bad news for happiness.

Not only is the journey to and from work often a pretty miserable experience in itself, it has knock-on effects which limit the happiness of the rest of our lives.

It appears that our happiness is closely linked to what researchers call our “social capital” - the sum of all our connections and trust in other people, our personal family ties, our friends, and our acquaintances.

Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University has calculated that every 10 minutes of commuting cuts all forms of social involvement by 10% - so 10% fewer family dinners, local club meetings, and other involvement.

Once politicians encouraged us to “get on our bikes” and look for work.

But the science of happiness suggests we might be better off staying close to our families and friends.

There are implications for whether government should support communities where traditional industries have failed.

Questions, too, for business and individuals as to whether they should move to new areas.

It is arguable that planners and politicians should try to discourage people from living far from where they work.

ENCOURAGE MARRIAGE

The science of happiness suggests marriage is so good for your well-being that it adds an average seven years to the life of a man and something like four for a woman.

To maximise happiness, it is argued, government should certainly do nothing to discourage marriage; arguably it should promote it.

However, in Britain, any financial incentives to get married have been taken away.

Politicians seem reluctant to make moral judgments about domestic relationships.

“The married tend to be happier,” said Mr Halpern.

“In my view, it's not so much necessarily for government to say you therefore should be married, but it's perfectly reasonable [for the government] to say ... if you do these you'll probably be happy, if you do these you'll probably be miserable, you decide.”

RETHINKING THE HEALTH SERVICE

Research also suggests there is a powerful link between happiness and health.

It is suggested that making people happy could do more for the health of the nation than all the exercise, diet and anti-smoking campaigns rolled into one.

And that argues for a big re-think in the priorities of the NHS.

Policies aimed at making people happier - or at least less unhappy - should be encouraged in an effort to prevent people becoming ill in the first place.

One idea is to massively increase access to a relatively new form of psychotherapy called CBT or cognitive behavioural therapy, which aims to help people avoid dwelling on negative thoughts and find ways to overcome them.

Lord Layard, author of Happiness: lessons from a new science, believes the science is so conclusive the government should immediately employ another 10,000 therapists.

“We're talking about for a course of CBT a thousand, £1500 with something that can change somebody's life.

“It really is important that we should try and have a major nationally organised training programme for more therapists.”

MAKING PEOPLE HAPPY

But just how far should a government go?

In Bhutan they have banned a whole series of TV channels such as wrestling and MTV. The country has even banned plastic bags.

One reason Bhutan has been able to take such dramatic steps is that it is run by an absolute monarchy.

In the West, if politicians, acting in the name of happiness, were to impose bans and restrictions on people's freedom, governments would be more likely to encounter resistance.

Some argue that the logic of happiness research would be the ultimate in nanny states - an argument the Prime Minister's strategy adviser is keen to contradict.

“I'm sure lots of ministers would be nervous about that.

“But it turns out that some of the key determinates of what make us happy, are things over which we as individuals have relatively little control about prevalent levels of community safety, they're safe when they go out.

“How do other people in general behave, about the way in which our whole economy may be locked into a given path.

“These are things that as individuals we can't determine, but we can determine as a society together, and that basically means government is in the game.”

God's Politicians

Proverbs 8:14

Sermon in Proverbs series. Proverbs 8:14-16

GOD'S POLITICIANS

=================

I. Who's in charge here?

II. Leaders must uphold justice.

A. They should make just and wise laws. 8:15

B. They should be good at uncovering the truth. 20:8, 25:2

C. They shouldn't show partiality. 24:23

D. Crime must be condemned, not let off hook. 24:24-25

III. Leaders must have compassion for the poor.

A. Being fair to the poor ensures a secure government. 29:14

B. Love and faithfulness are firmest political foundation. 20:28

IV. Leaders must have personal integrity.

A. Bribes will destroy them. 29:4

B. Sex can ruin them. 31:3

C. Booze can corrupt them. 31:5-6

D. Evil companions can influence them. 25:5

E. Rage is a common problem of kings. 20:2, 16:14, 19:12

F. Arrogance and lying are unsuitable. 17:7

V. Leaders reflect God.

A. We are told to respect them as we do God. 24:21

B. Their words are like an oracle/message from God. 16:10

C. God remains in charge. Only he can truly save us.

Liberties Flourish Within Christian Worldview

In America, it has long been a popular sport to demean and ridicule the faith of religious conservatives. Christians who seek to participate peacefully in the political process are often denigrated as “religious Ayatollahs” who represent a threat to freedom and democracy.

Such aspersions are themselves a form of bigotry and accomplish little, other than to add to the profound polarization that already characterizes American politics. Further, such demagoguery reflects a lack of appreciation for the positive contribution that religious faith has made to the shaping of American law and freedom.

Author John Eidsmoe has rightly noted that at the time of the founding of the American republic, our system of law and justice was forged out of an underlying social consensus that included four elements:

(1) There is a God who transcends human history and to whom human beings are ultimately accountable.

(2) Even though human beings are fallen in their nature, they are special, having been created in the image of God.

(3) Because of their special nature, human beings have been endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights.

(4) Government is instituted among men to secure the inalienable rights conferred upon mankind by the Creator.

The Judeo-Christian worldview which prevailed at the beginning of our republic dramatically impacted the shaping of the American political and legal system. This unique view of the nature of man and the role of government has been responsible, in large measure, for producing the greatest protection and the greatest freedom for individuals that the world has ever known.

It is not difficult to understand why individual liberties flourished within the Judeo-Christian social consensus that existed for so long in American culture. Ideas have consequences, and what we believe determines how we behave. To understand the impact of the Judeo-Christian worldview on American law and freedom, one needs only to ask and answer a few simple questions:

• What measure of protection should the law extend to a creature made in the image of God -- one who has been declared by none other than Almighty God Himself to have worth, value and dignity?

• What right does society, or any individual, have to strip such a creature of inalienable rights conferred upon him by the Creator?

• What limits are placed on the state to prevent it from overbearing the conscientiously held beliefs of one person who stands in conflict with the rest of society?

“Self-evident truths,” “inalienable rights,” “equal protection,” “limited government with delegated powers” -- all these flow naturally from the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Secular cynics counter that we live in a more enlightened age than that of America’s founders. They maintain that we should discard the antiquated notions that inhere in the Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Secularists reject the notion that there is a transcendent God to whom human beings will one day render an account. They maintain that God is merely a creature of our imagination. Human beings were not created, they say. Rather, humans evolved by chance from slime, and they are accountable only to themselves. They are but “beasts,” albeit the best of the beasts. There is no such thing as truth, no right or wrong. There is no authority greater than the state, and it is from the state that human beings are granted their rights. What the state gives, the state can take away.

The secular worldview of those who condemn religious conservatives has also had an impact on the rights and freedoms of our citizens. To assess that impact, one may again ask a few simple questions:

• On what basis does a creature of chance claim to have worth, value and dignity worthy of the protection of the law?

• On what basis can such a creature claim to have a “right” to resist the will of the majority or the weak to resist the will of the strong?

• What claim can such a creature lay to inalienable rights conferred by the Creator, when the very existence of the Creator is denied?

The answers to these questions suggest that when it comes to preserving our legal rights, it is the view of the secularists, not of Christian conservatives, which is to be feared.

Thomas Jefferson rightly declared, “God, who gave us life, gave us liberty.” Then he wisely asked, “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift of God?”

Competing worldviews naturally come into tension in the political process. Since that process has a dramatic impact on the rights and freedoms we enjoy, we would do well to examine the consequences of the premises advanced by the partisans participating in the political arena. We would also do well to do more thinking and more listening. It is hard to carry on the conversation we call democracy if all we engage in is name-calling.

________

Ken Connor is chairman of the CENTER FOR A JUST SOCIETY based in Washington D.C., online at www.centerforajustsociety.org.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20874]

Changing Hearts and Minds: Wilberforce and Politics

Throughout America’s history, the role of both church and state has been regarded as essential in safeguarding the culture, with religion providing the moral foundation upon which democratic institutions could function, as well as providing the conscience of society. But in recent years Christians have been all too inclined to put too much emphasis on human kingdoms — especially during an election year.

This year is no exception. Already I have seen people despair over the quality of the candidates; some think the issues they care most about are being brushed aside. Others are in a lather because they think America will not survive if the wrong candidate wins.

Elections matter, of course, and there have been pivotal elections in history. And Christians have a duty to vote and pray for our leaders. But anyone who thinks elections change the course of American history is terribly naïve. Politics reflect deep cultural changes — in other words, politics is merely an expression of what is already percolating through the culture.

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in Great Britain 200 years ago. The great abolitionist and parliamentarian William Wilberforce knew he would never get a law passed outlawing the slave trade unless the people were behind it. And so, as the film Amazing Grace shows, he and a dedicated group of people spent two decades working to change the hearts and minds of Englishmen by exposing the horrors of slavery.

We saw the same phenomenon in our country. Ronald Reagan could not have been elected against a sitting president had it not been for a surging moral awareness among voters. His election was significant because he did bring about a profound change in the world. But of even greater significance was the spread of the ideas that he championed that had been brewing in the culture for some time — ideas about democracy and freedom, free markets and free minds.

We need to take our cultural duties seriously, because culture is, after all, religion incarnate. If Christians are not being salt and light, our society will rot and produce terrible politics — like laws supporting abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex “marriage.”

So if we really want to change America for the better, we need to get rid of the idea of a “top-down” approach that says that if we just get the right people elected, the right judges appointed, the right laws passed, all will be well. What’s going to change the course of history — as Wilberforce showed us — is moral reformation and recommitment to the common good.

There is a wonderful scene in the movie "Amazing Grace" where Wilberforce says, “God has laid before me two great objectives: the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” You see, he realized that in order to get rid of a systemic evil, you had to begin to change the way in which the people lived their lives, in which they thought about the real purposes and meaning in life.

If we Christians deal with these kinds of issues and stay at our posts and try to reform this culture, I will have a lot more confidence in America’s future than I will even if my favorite candidate wins.

________

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20949]

Nancy Pelosi Is My Prayer Partner

Luke 13:32

The Moore household has a new prayer-partner, and her name is Nancy Pelosi. [substitute the name of any politician you disagree with]

I suppose “partner” isn’t the right word since the soon-to-be-speaker of the United States House of Representatives doesn’t know anything about our kitchen-table intercession. Nonetheless, my young boys will soon learn how to pronounce the words “Speaker Pelosi” as they ask God’s blessings for her.

It’s not that I’m a Pelosi supporter. Indeed, while the California congresswoman and I would probably agree at several points, I find her position on the most defining issue of the day –- the abortion of unborn babies –- to be not just wrong-headed but profoundly evil.

Nonetheless, my wife and boys and I will be praying for her. And I hope a wave of Southern Baptist churches and families will join us.

It is easy for Christians to pray for political figures who court our votes. There are several organizations out there devoted to encouraging believers to pray for President Bush. Our offertory prayers often ask God’s blessings on President Bush as he leads our country. And this is right. We are commanded to pray for President Bush. But our responsibility doesn’t end there.

The news networks tell us that the new majority in the United States House and Senate is the result of a “wave” of Democratic Party voters. From a human and historical vantage point, that’s true. But as those who believe in the providence of God, it is also true that “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God” (Romans 13:1). For whatever reason, on Election Day God decided that Nancy Pelosi will be sitting behind President Bush at next year’s State of the Union address. And God decided that outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert would not be seated there.

As the Apostle Paul urges us to obey the “governing authorities,” we must keep in mind that he is not speaking of the religious right of the Roman Empire. He is speaking of a bloodthirsty and pagan Caesar, a government that was directly responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Caesar never sought the evangelical vote -– or any other vote, for that matter.

It is not simply, though, that we as Christians are to obey our governmental leaders as long as they exercise legitimate authority (boundaries the Spirit sets forth in Romans 13 and elsewhere in the Scripture). We are also commanded to pray for these leaders. Paul writes to Timothy, “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and for all those who are in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1-2a). Again, this is in the context of a pagan and ungodly first-century Roman Empire. Paul singles out kings and governing officials for prayer and he tells us why he does so: “So that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:2b). The “we” there is, of course, the church of Jesus Christ. We pray for our leaders precisely so that the church’s mission may be unimpeded by Caesar’s whims.

This has everything to do with the Great Commission. Immediately after instructing Timothy to pray in this way, Paul writes: “This is good, and it pleases God our Savior who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4). The church survives -– and people are saved -– even under governmental persecution. But we should not seek such persecution. We should pray for a government that allows the church to be the church, so that the church can call the lost to be saved.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t criticize our governing authorities. John the Baptist didn’t hesitate to do so, and lost his head in the process. Jesus sarcastically derided King Herod as “that fox” in a public forum (Luke 13:32).

It also doesn’t mean that we acquiesce to their demands. God gives Caesar the power of the sword and, in a representative democracy, we are Caesar. We’ll give an account for the kind of government we put in power, and for the kind of culture we allow to inform that government. I plan to denounce Speaker Pelosi’s abortion-rights ideology.

But at the same time, I am going to respect her as one who wields a power given to her by my God, and teach my children to do the same. I am going to love her and pray that God grants her health, happiness and wisdom to govern. I am going to pray that she will seek the punishment of evildoers and mercy for the poor and the vulnerable –- including the unborn babies upon whose corpses she, sadly, has built a career. I’m going to pray that Speaker Pelosi’s admirable love for the weakest among us will one day extend to the most vulnerable of all.

It isn’t easy to love and pray for someone who stands at odds with your worldview. But it pleases the God who wants all to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

So tonight the Moore boys, with their Mom and Dad, will pray for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. And then they’ll be introduced to the name of Mrs. Pelosi, our new prayer partner.

________

Russell D. Moore is dean of the school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Adapted from a column first posted at www.henryinstitute.org.

The True Source of Power: Legislators Bend the Knee

What is the most powerful room in the United States Capitol? Ask some members of Congress and you would probably hear this: Room 219. It's the room closest to the House Chamber, and its walls have been privy to some of the most pivotal discussions of our history.

Recently, however, Room 219 just got a whole lot more powerful. How so? You see, in Room 219 some of the highest elected officials of our land are bending their knees in weekly prayer gatherings — openly declaring, not THEIR power, but their dependence on the power of God.

It's not a new idea. Our first president in his inaugural address said, “ ... it would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations and whose providential aid can supply every human defect.”

President Washington and our founders agreed on the necessity of prayer. And while today there are prayer breakfasts and even a National Day of Prayer, seldom do legislators gather to spend significant time actually praying. That's what led Congressman Randy Forbes, representative of the Fourth District of Virginia, to help initiate these gatherings in Room 219.

Congressman Forbes has also established the first Congressional Prayer Caucus to protect and promote prayer. Such an effort is so necessary today, not because our forefathers did not find prayer important, but because it was never before under attack as it is today.

Congressmen Forbes takes seriously that before calling others to prayer that he and other congressional leaders must begin by setting the example.

Forbes says that when others began hearing about what he and the other members were doing in Room 219 — praying — the phones began ringing. One man called to say that the men in his church are stopping at 2:19 in the afternoon to pray for our nation. Another church said they had begun gathering in their own Room 219 to pray for the nation. And so Forbes realized the need to call the nation to prayer “not for a day, but continually, without ceasing.”

So twenty-two members of Congress (men and women from both sides of the aisle) joined together to sign A CALL TO PRAYER FOR AMERICA, a document resembling the Declaration of Independence. And like Nehemiah who helped rebuild his nation by rebuilding a wall, congressional leaders are hoping Americans will help raise up a wall of continuous prayer to surround America. People across the country are signing up to be a part of this “Prayer Wall,” taking time blocks of five minutes to stop and pray.

If we want to protect faith in the public square, if we hope to create a culture that will uphold what is good and curb what is not, we must begin by bending the knee, acknowledging that true freedom is found in utter dependence upon our Creator.

Congressman Forbes and the Congressional Prayer Caucus have realized precisely that, and you can find them in Room 219.

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Why Christians Are Hung Up On Sex

Romans 1:21

Sermon on Christians, government and sexuality. Romans 1:21-32

WHY CHRISTIANS ARE HUNG UP ON SEX

=================================

I. Is sex that big a deal?

II. The joy of theocracies.

III. Societies which mirror Biblical standards will prosper.

A. The Bible expects morality of all societies.

B. Romans 1 shows the results of a God-denying culture.

C. We can make everything legal - but that does not mean

D. All of society should be concerned about marriage.

IV. Biblical standards are not the same as laws.

A. Christians know that a law approach has limits.

B. Those who reject the Bible cannot have it forced on them.

C. The Bible allows for concessions to human sin.

V. The Bible makes sense on sex.

A. We are not animals - self-control is possible. 1 Thess 4:3-5

B. Human behavior needs boundaries.

C. Ideals are doable.

D. Forgiveness is available for sexual sin.

E. Consequences may remain.

VI. God's truth is at stake.

Ayatollahs On the Prairie? Theocracy and Secular Hysteria

In recent months, an epidemic of anti-Christian books has erupted, viciously attacking the faithful as “theocrats” and “fascists.” Conservative Christians are called evangelical mullahs, intent on replacing the government with our own “religion-soaked political regimes,” as one overheated author put it.

Good gracious! Is America really about to fall into the hands of a diabolical Christian Taliban?

Of course not. It’s a false and malicious charge, and our critics know it. I know of not one Christian leader, theologian, or scholar who wants to impose a theocracy — that is, the church running the state — because the notion is entirely contrary to Christian faith.

At the heart of Christianity is the concept of free will. We can choose good and evil. Freedom is a God-given right. This is why right-thinking Christians oppose a system of government that would force citizens to accept faith in Christ, or any religion, as a condition of citizenship. And it’s why — secular hysterics not with-standing — there are no Christian theocracies anywhere in the world today. There are plenty of Islamic theocracies, but not one Christian theocracy.

This is not to say that over the centuries, Christians haven’t tried to impose their values at times, which in the Middle Ages produced bloody crusades and inquisitions.

And we see some of this utopian thinking today, on the fringes. It crops up in contemporary Christian circles from left-leaning Catholics, to mainline leaders, to evangelicals. Some want to impose actual religious values by force of law. They are called reconstuctionists, or Dominionists, and they are wrong, both theologically and politically.

Of course, reconstuctionists, who espouse the idea of building a literal Christian society as opposed to working within the system to try to change politics, represent a small fringe group which is, as Ross Douquet notes in FIRST THINGS, about as politically influential as the Spartacist Youth League.

Even if Christians advocating dominion gained power, they would be doomed to failure. As Martin Luther once wrote, “It is out of the question that there should be a Christian government even over one land ... since the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence a man who would venture to govern ... with the gospel would be like a shepherd who should place in one fold wolves, lions, eagles and sheep together and let them freely mingle.”

But while the Church must avoid utopianism and diversion from its transcendent mission, it is not to ignore the political scene. To the contrary, Christians have a duty to advance the cause of justice and human good within the democratic system, as William Wilberforce did in his battle to eliminate the British slave trade.

America has drifted far from the vision of its founders. But our form of government, with its unique church-state relationship that respects the roles of each, continues to offer the world’s most hopeful model in an otherwise contentious history of conflict.

This is why Christians need to defend against the ludicrous charges of theocracy.

The Real Solution: How To Help Our Kids Succeed

It’s an argument that has gone on almost as long as we have had public schools: What makes children succeed in school — and what makes them fail?

In a recent NEW YORK TIMES column, David Brooks offers a big part of the answer: If kids have a chaotic home life, he writes, it is much harder for them to succeed in school.

Brooks mentions programs in which mature women visit mothers under stress to offer “the sort of cajoling and practical wisdom that in other times would have been delivered by grandmothers or elders.” If we want better students, Brooks concludes, the government ought to fund more of these programs. The next president, he suggested, could win on such a platform.

I admire David Brooks, but he is dead wrong on this. He is addressing symptoms, not the sickness: The sickness is broken and unformed families.

Instead of relying on a government program to fix families after they break, wouldn’t it be better to keep families from breaking in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to find ways to encourage parents to marry before having children, instead of telling them — as our cultural elites often do — that marriage does not matter?

Second, when it comes to families, government itself is often the problem, promoting policies destructive to families. For example, courts that force states to accept same-sex “marriage” are redefining true marriage out of existence. That’s not good for kids.

And many studies have shown that kids do best in married, two-parent families. Yet some states now force adoption agencies to send kids into the homes of homosexual couples.

No-fault divorce laws allow one parent to abandon the family with impunity. Welfare programs provide support for moms so long as they do not get married to their child’s father.

Even worse, our political leaders do not support programs that would mean the most to help kids — including kids from healthy families — who languish in bad public schools. If they really cared about kids, they would support school choice — allowing kids to move from failing public schools into private ones.

Sometimes we forget that, often, the best solutions do not involve the government at all.

A story in the WALL STREET JOURNAL this week revealed that one 16-year-old South Carolina boy is not waiting for “the government.” Last summer, Rontrell Matthews walked into Capers Preparatory Christian Academy in a poor rural community with terrible public schools. Rontrell held out a check for $32.86 — his first paycheck from his after-school job. If they would let him in, Rontrell promised, he would give them every paycheck from then on.

Rontrell — who is willing to literally work his way out of a bad public school — is now excelling at Capers. God bless him and the school that was willing to take him in.

The story made me wonder: What if more kids were willing to do this — to simply abandon bad public schools and work their way into good ones?

So sure — let’s helped stressed-out moms form healthier attachments to their kids, as David Brooks proposes. But better for politicians to work to prevent problems from forming in the first place.

And we should celebrate when kids like Rontrell Matthews find their own solutions — solutions that show that individual ingenuity always trumps the best government program.

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Christian Patriotism: When Is Civil Disobedience Justified?

Acts 4:17

During a visit to the United States a few years ago, a pastor from Nepal told of being thrown into a Nepalese prison for spreading the Gospel. This pastor gave an excellent summary of Christian patriotism.

“Of course I must obey my Lord and spread His Word,” he said. “But even though we are persecuted, we who are Christians in Nepal pride ourselves on being the best citizens our king has. We love our country — but we love our God more.”

Here in the U.S., Christians are sometimes confused about where to draw the line between the demands of the state and the demands of God. Is civil disobedience ever justified? And if so, how do we know?

As I write in my new book, GOD & GOVERNMENT, Scripture makes clear that civil disobedience is justified when government attempts to usurp the role of the Church or our allegiance due only to God. Then the Christian has not just the right but the duty to resist.

The Bible gives a dramatic example of this in the account of three young Jewish exiles who were drafted into the Babylonian civil service.

All citizens of Babylon were required to worship the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, the king. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the young Hebrews, refused. To worship an earthly king would be the ultimate offense against their holy God. So, the three young men were thrown into a blazing furnace — but God miraculously delivered them.

We also have the example of Peter and John, who, when they were ordered to stop preaching about Jesus, refused. “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God,” they said.

Their first allegiance was to Christ’s command to preach the gospel. They could not permit the authority of the government-backed Sanhedrin to usurp the authority of God Himself.

Civil disobedience may also be justified when the state ignores its divinely mandated responsibilities to preserve life and maintain order and justice. The resistance of the German church to Hitler was a clear modern example of this necessity. In the fifties and sixties, this necessary resistance was modeled in our own country by those active in the civil rights movement. It was later modeled by those who took part in Operation Rescue sit-ins at abortion clinics.

Christians need to have a thorough understanding of biblical teachings about civil disobedience. Today, perhaps more than any other time in American history, Christians face attacks on their freedom of conscience. For instance, colleges go to great lengths to silence Christians who speak out against the aggressive, gay agenda. Some states order pharmacists to fill prescriptions for morning after pills — even if the pharmacist has moral objections. Christian adoption agencies are told to allow same-sex couples to adopt — or else.

Christians are to be the best of citizens; Out of our love for God, we live in subjection to governing authorities and we pray for them and respect them. We also love our neighbors and promote justice. But good citizenship requires both discernment and courage — discernment to know when duty calls one to obey or disobey, and courage, as in the case of the latter, to take a stand. But this is never done lightly. Only when, in consultation with other Christians and leaders, we feel obligated to do so.

As that Nepali pastor put it, we love our country. But we love our God more.

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The Will To Power: To Reign Or To Serve?

Luke 22:24

Power. Even the word is seductive. A love of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is to serve others. This truth is perhaps most graphically illustrated in the world of politics.

As Chuck Colson writes in his marvelous new book, GOD & GOVERNMENT, the everyday business of politics is power, and power can be perilous.

The history of the last fifty years has richly validated Friedrich Nietzsche’s argument that man’s desire to control his own destiny and to impose his will on others is the most basic human motivation. Nietzsche’s prophecy that the “will to power” would fill the twentieth-century’s vacuum of values has been fulfilled through Hitler, Mao, Stalin, to name only the worst tyrants.

All governments use power to hang on to power — election-year favors and pork-barrel politics are even common here in America. But in regimes where there are few moral restraints, tyrants wield power shamelessly — and often viciously.

But remember this: power corrupts, but power itself is not necessarily corrupt. God has given power to the state to be used to restrain evil and maintain order. It is the use of power, whether for personal gain or for the state’s ordained function, that is really at issue.

Jesus Christ turned conventional views of power upside-down. He not only offered mankind redemption, He also washed the dusty feet of His own followers. The apostle Paul said, “My power is made perfect in weakness.”

As Chuck writes in GOD & GOVERNMENT, nothing distinguishes the kingdoms of man from the kingdom of God more than their diametrically opposed views of the exercise of power. One seeks to control people; the other seeks to serve people. One promotes self; the other prostrates self. One seeks prestige and position; the other lifts up the lowly and despised.

It’s crucial for Christians to understand this difference. For through this upside-down view of power, the Kingdom of God can play a special role in the affairs of the world.

When we, as citizens of the Kingdom today, practice this view of power, we’re setting an example for our neighbors by modeling servanthood — and exposing the illusions worldly power creates.

This doesn’t mean that Christians can’t use power. In positions of leadership, especially in government institutions, the Christian can wield power in good conscience. But the Christian uses power with a different motive and in a different way: to serve, to seek the common good, and to seek justice.

Those who accept the biblical view of servant leadership treat power as a humbling delegation from God, not as a right to control others.

The challenge for the Christian in a position of influence is to follow the example of Jesus, who knelt down to wash His disciples’ feet, rather than embrace Nietzsche’s will to power. In doing so, the citizen of the Kingdom can offer light to a world often shrouded by the dark pretensions of power-mad tyrants.

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The Cross & the Crown: When Caesar and Christ Collide

Mark 12:17

In Uzbekistan, a regional government has just ordered religious leaders to do a better job of preventing “undesirable actions” — translate that: Christian missionary activity. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty says Uzbek churches have been warned that all religious gatherings will be under careful observation by the government.

Well, that’s Uzbekistan, you say. A former Soviet republic, now a tin-pot dictatorship. That kind of state encroachment on religion would never happen here in the United States, the land of the free.

Think again.

Three years ago, for example, the California Supreme Court upheld a state law requiring that Catholic Charities, a religious employer, violate its church’s teachings by including contraceptive coverage in its health plans. This was a clear intrusion into a religious body’s expression of its religious precepts and sense of mission.

But this is what happens when Caesar and Christ collide — something that’s occurred ever since Christ walked the earth.

As I write in my book, GOD & GOVERNMENT, conflicts between religious conscience and political mandates are unavoidable. Both church and state assert standards and values. Both seek authority; both compete for, in the case of God, ultimate allegiance, and sometimes in the case of the state as well.

The conflict is especially apparent in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The assertion that God is King has been an offense to the proud and the powerful for millennia — and one of the reasons Jews and Christians alike have been systematically persecuted.

During the first centuries after Christ, Christians were martyred not for religious reasons (after all, Rome was a land of many gods), but because they refused to say, “We have no king but Caesar.” Thus the Roman government saw Christians as political subversives — subject to flogging, imprisonment, and execution.

Down through the centuries, through the reign of Constantine, the Crusades, the Reformation, the French Revolution, church and state have often violently clashed — usually when the Church sought to wield worldly power or when the state sought to suppress the spiritual authority of the Church.

You see, as the Bible makes clear, both church and state have clear and distinct roles ordained by God. The Church’s is to make visible the kingdom of God. The state’s is to restrain evil and preserve order. The issue is how to apply these teachings to each institution in today’s volatile world.

Modern — and terrifying examples — of the state overstepping its bounds are easy to find: the suppression of the Church in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and in much of the Islamic world church and state are seen as one.

Here in the U.S., the state’s encroachment on faith is more subtle, but no less insidious: Be it medical students having to learn how to perform abortions, Christian pharmacists forced to dispense morning-after pills, or zoning boards banning in-house Bible studies.

The record of the centuries, however, ought not to cause us to despair. Tension between church and state is inevitable. But both operate under God’s rule, each in a different relationship to that rule.

Our job is to understand these distinctions and then remind our neighbors, our legislators and our pastors of what is so important: that the church and state remain true to their respective roles.

As Jesus put it so plainly, we must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

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No Time To Check Out: Evangelicals and Politics

Cal Thomas, a conservative evangelical columnist, is someone I really admire. But shortly after Barack Obama’s historic election victory, he wrote a column called “Religious Right, R.I.P.,” which I strongly disagree with. In it, Thomas asserts that evangelicals should abandon their efforts to impact culture through political involvement.

He says, “Evangelicals are at a junction. They can take the path that will lead them to more futility and ineffective attempts to reform culture through government, or they can embrace the far more powerful methods outlined by the One they claim to follow.”

By following the example of Christ, Thomas continues, “they will get much of what they hope for, but can never achieve, in and through politics.”

Well, Thomas, in my opinion, is both dead right and dead wrong. He is right in the sense that all of the followers of Jesus should indeed emulate Christ’s life. Thomas is also right that some of those who have led the evangelical movement in the political culture have been strident in tone and hungry for power.

But Thomas is wrong in setting up an either-or proposition. Either you are involved in politics seeking change — or you live like Jesus and effect change merely by your exemplary life. Unfortunately, neither Jesus nor the whole of Scripture gives us that choice. Instead, we are called to work and live in all areas of life, living like Jesus in the process. We cannot withdraw from any area — especially not politics.

Thomas’s conclusion seems to be based on a sense of failure. Looking back on the last 30 years of evangelical political involvement, he observes that evangelicals have little to show for their efforts. Abortion remains the law of the land, society grows coarser, and the homosexual culture is widely entrenched.

I wonder, however, what our country would look like today if believers had been absent from the public square for the last 30 years. I understand his frustration, but to despair after 30 years is shortsighted.

Os Guinness gives us a reminder of how dangerous withdrawing can be. Such an imbalanced emphasis on the “sphere of inwardness, personal bliss, and private salvation” characterized the church in Germany in the first half of the last century. In such a fog, Guinness says, they “could raise no altar strong enough to resist the challenge of Adolf Hitler.”

Likewise, Carl Henry, one of the great theologians of the 20th century, writes, “The Christian populace fails its contemporaries if it postpones all protest until a state becomes so corrupt that revolution seems the only course of action.”

We Christians simply cannot afford to fail our contemporaries by withdrawing. Especially now, when so many have an agenda that devalues life and weakens families.

The tension to retreat into religious isolation is not new. After Jesus’ ascension, some in the early church were ready to withdraw from the affairs of men and simply wait for Jesus to return. Paul repeatedly and sternly had to remind them to go back to work, to do good to their fellow man, and to regularly meet together. They could not check out early, and neither can we.

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109 Sermon Illustrations on Government