When ignorant journalism and bad theology mix

This is going to be a long one.

CNN ran a piece on their webpage that details the tragic story of D.E. Paulk, one time Pentecostal clergyman destined for greatness at the risibly named "Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church "and the derailment of that path. The article, How The Ultimate Scandal Saved One Pastor, is supposed to be a predictable story that goes from tragedy to triumph but it really goes from tragedy to worse tragedy.

This story has everything. Junk theology, family secrets, lurid sex, power struggles, mushy pagan syncretism dressed up as "ecumenism", rejection of Scriptural truth, confused chatter about "justice". It reads mostly like an exceptionally bad Lifetime movie in a religious setting. Yet even in the midst of the mounds of malarkey there are some important points.

If you want to suffer through the rest of my post it continues after the jump....warning, you might want to keep one of those air sickness bags close at hand...

Ecumenism is not the same thing as unity

In less than a week religious leaders from around the world and across the religious spectrum will gather in Vatican City under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to discuss marriage. The conference, called Humanum, purports to be "An International Interreligious Colloquium on The Complementarity of Man and Woman". If you read me very often you know that I am a big advocate of complementarianism so surely I am all in favor of this. Actually no. Quite the opposite.

When I examine the speaker list as an American evangelical I see some names I recognize and a lot I don't. At the top of the list that I do recognize are men like: Russell Moore. N.T. Wright. Rick Warren. Johann Arnold, current leader of the Bruderhof. Along with them are a host of men and

women from other religious traditions, or as I like to call them false religions. A whole bunch of Roman Catholic dignitaries who ironically are forced into an unbiblical vow of celibacy and yet are considered authorities on marriage. A top mormon leader. A lot of Muslims. A smattering of more esoteric religious groups. What is glaring from the invitee list is that there are a few people who are Christians and a lot more that are not talking about something that models and demonstrates the New Covenant relationship between Christ and the Church.

An event like this doesn't happen in a vacuum. Like two sides of a sand dune, the dual forces of the cultural religion of America are collapsing at breakneck speed. While "progressives" are racing one another to see who can deny the most central tenets of the Gospel, the "conservatives" are desperately making alliances with unbelievers and blasphemers in a desperate attempt to maintain their political power and influence. As a result many men that I respect and that publically hold to the "right" positions are nevertheless making common cause on issues they would admit are secondary to the Gospel. It is symptomatic of the mindset that compelled Albert Mohler to not once but twice speak to mormons about our common ground. It brings to mind the Manhattan Declaration and other attempts to find common ground where the sole foundation for common ground is absent, namely the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Make no mistake. To speak to people who deny Christ in a framework of the picture of husband and wife as a type of Christ and the church is to put the cart before the horse. Worse yet is for a Christian to attempt to speak on marriage without framing it in that way. You simply cannot truly begin to understand the blessing of marriage apart from the New Covenant relationship with Christ. Sure I loved my wife and cherished her and all of that before I was a Christian but I didn't understand what it meant to be united with her in a complementary relationship and I still am only scratching the surface of how I am to love her like Christ loved the church. Christian marriage as ordained by God is so much more than two people of the opposite sex pledging themselves to one another until death do us part and seeking some sort of fuzzy common ground, lowest common denominator definition and understanding of marriage inevitably diminishes marriage as instituted by our Creator.

Just to clear the air, yes what I am saying here is that Christians corner the market on understanding marriage. No, that doesn't mean that Christians are better at being married, that they make better husbands or wives or that unbelievers can't have fulfilling, loving marriages. It is simply to say that any understanding of marriage apart from the New Covenant in Christ is by definition incomplete and inferior. That sort of talk makes a lot of people twitchy. Too bad. In fact if you don't believe that I might gently suggest that you don't really understand the New Covenant, the eternal purpose of marriage (hint, it ain't about tax breaks and wedding registries) and the grand design of humanity made in the image of God as two distinct, equal, immutable and complementary genders.

Traditional marriage is not the Gospel. Religious liberty, whatever that means, is not the Gospel. Complementarianism is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the Gospel. What is on display here is trying to find unity in spite of the Gospel when the church can only have unity because of the Gospel. That unity is impossible to have with groups, sects and cults that deny that same Gospel that not only saves us but defines marriage for us. Russell Moore, anticipating the objections to his attendance, posted a preemptive strike with his post Why I’m Going to the Vatican. While I don't doubt the sincerity of his words and his conviction, his excuses ring hollow to me. The best thing he could do in an assembly hall full of unbelievers is not to talk about marriage but to preach Christ and Him crucified and call on those present to repent and be baptized. To do anything else is a betrayal of the Great Commission, even if done for the noblest of intentions.

I am going to try to watch and read what I can from this conference because it should be interesting. I suspect that it will be a lot of eloquent speech that amounts to nothing. I hope that in their time in Vatican City my Christian brothers have the opportunity to share the Gospel with the lost among them and that the Holy Spirit would soften those hearts. We can't preach marriage without preaching Christ. I pray that the fruit of this conference is not merely lovely speeches but changed hearts that are turned to Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Oh the outrage!

This will be sure to make people upset with me…

I saw this news story yesterday and just shook my head.

Evangelicals Left Off National Cathedral 9/11 Program

A weekend of religious-themed observances at Washington National Cathedral marking the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks will include a Buddhist nun and an Imam, but not an evangelical Christian, leading the head of the Southern Baptist Convention to ask President Obama to reconsider attending the event.

“A Call to Compassion” will include an interfaith prayer vigil on Sept. 11. It will feature the dean of the Cathedral, the Bishop of Washington, a rabbi, Buddhist nun and incarnate lama, a Hindu priest, the president of the Islamic Society of North America and a Muslim musician.

However, Southern Baptists, representing the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, were not invited to participate – and neither were leaders from any evangelical Christian organization.

Gasp, there are not going to be any proper evangelicals at an event featuring a who’s who of religions folks! What an outrageous snub!

Guess what?

I couldn’t care less.

I am not going to watch a bunch of empty speeches dressed up in our perverse blend of religious-political patriotic lingo in the midst of a ecumenical fiasco. Why in the world would evangelical Christians demand a seat at the table for an event like this? If we are doing our job right we shouldn’t be welcomed by the secular government in the first place. Our response as the Body of Christ should first and foremost be to love our enemies, to leave peaceably with all as far as it is up to us and to overcome evil with good.

September 11th was a tragic event. It is seared in the memory of Americans and led directly to the involvement of America in two wars, wars in which we have lost more troops than civilians were lost on 9/11/2011 (approx. 6000 killed and 43,000 maimed and wounded between Iraq and Afghanistan). Wars in which civilians casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan far outnumber our losses on 9/11 (nearly 100,000 in Iraq and some 10,000-30,000 in Afghanistan). Sure we have avoided another major attack on U.S. soil but that “security” came at a terrible cost of human life in far off places.

September 11, 2011 was a horrific event and a tragic loss of life but it was not a uniquely Christian event and is dwarfed by events elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands killed in Darfur. 15,000 killed in Japan as a result of the tsunami in March. Between 50,000 and 300,000 killed in the earthquake in Haiti last year. Over 300,000 people have been killed in Somalia since 1991. Around the world people die in much greater numbers than were killed on September 11, 2011, the vast majority of them dying outside of Christ, and yet we approach the tenth anniversary of that event with many of our “leaders” pitching a fit because they are not getting the recognition and respect they “deserve”.

The Christian response to September 11th, 2001 is not speech making, public displays of religious patriotism and flag waving or a bunch of guys stimping their feet because they didn't get asked to make a speech. It should be in quiet service to others, in loving our neighbor and our enemy equally, in washing feet and sharing our finances, in preaching Jesus Christ who is the only hope any human being has for any sort of peace in this life or the life to come. We can never shoot enough terrorists, bomb enough cities or pat down enough travellers to find peace and security. That can only be found by following a Shepherd who died for His sheep.

It is kind of a shame but I found the best statement on this coming from a Brit, Carl Trueman:

I think the Rev. Page has misunderstood the reason for the exclusion: it seems the powers that be in Washington understand the implications of the biblical evangel better than some evangelical leaders. Rather than lamenting the situation, the Southern Baptists should be delighted that the organizers had the sensitivity and foresight not to place them in the grim position of having to turn down such an invitation in order to avoid compromising their orthodox, Protestant identity. The public relations disaster that would have followed this elementary stand for biblical truth and exclusivity would have been spectacular. After all, how could one maintain that one is taking seriously 1 Timothy 2 while sharing prayer time with a real-life incarnate lama?

The Southern Baptists need to stop feeling disappointed that such a well-intentioned but theologically incoherent gathering does not want their presence and they should instead remember the wisdom of Marx - not Karl, but Groucho: you should never want to join any club that would have you as a member.

Exactly.

Rome Is Not Home

I have been reading an interesting exchange between a stalwart Reformed Protestant, Carl Trueman, and a staunch Roman Catholic, Bryan Cross.

In the essay by Cross he points out that many “Protestants” are not at all offended (his word) by the Roman claim to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded to the exclusion of all other sects, denominations and traditions because they frankly don’t even know that Rome makes that claim. Others do know of this claim and are deeply offended by it (think James White). A third group is aware of the claim and not offended because they see Rome as the source of Protestantism. From his blog post:

Some Protestants who know of the Catholic Church’s claim to be the Church that Christ founded are not offended by this claim. They are not offended by it, because they remember Protestantism’s historical origin in the Catholic Church. They remember that in the minds of the first Protestants, the intention was not to separate from the Catholic Church, but to reform the Catholic Church. For these first Protestants, their resulting separation from the Catholic Church was a kind of ‘necessary evil,’ not intended to create one or many schisms from the Church, but to bring needed moral and doctrinal reform to the very same Church that Christ had founded. In the minds of those first Protestants, this separation was to persist only until the Catholic Church was sufficiently reformed, so that they could return to full communion with her. The present-day Protestants who remember this obviously do not believe that the Catholic Church is infallible; that is why they believe that they can justifiably be separated from her. But they do believe that the Catholic Church from which they are visibly separated is (or has the best claim to being the visible continuation of) the Church that Christ founded, and they look to be reunited to her as soon as she is sufficiently reformed.

In many ways both Cross and Trueman are right. Protestantism did start with the basic premise of reforming Rome and that is in large part why it has been so splintered for so long. Rome is essentially a centralized, hierarchical, controlling institution. Everything about Rome is designed to perpetuate the institution and control what people think and do by controlling their access to the Scriptures and to God Himself in the form of the Eucharist, the priest system and the papacy itself. There is no coming boldly before the throne, you must go through an intermediary like a priest or pray to some long dead “saint” to intercede on your behalf. If you are outside of the Roman church, you are estranged from God Himself.

Little wonder that trying to tinker around with this system has led to chaos. It is not that the Roman system is right and we should return to it. It is that Christians have stubbornly clung to Roman tradition and in doing so are trying to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole with predictable and demonstrable results. The reality of the Christian life with its blatantly counter-cultural stance and worldly rejection is always at odds with the sinful human desire for something tangible to worship, for rituals to engage in and exaltation of other men.

It is very true that the Reformers, as the name would indicate, sought to reform the Roman Catholic church at first and then only after that failed sought complete separation from her. Likewise those who dissented from the Reformers and were persecuted for it were mostly seeking to push the Reformers to go further, not merely changing the doctrine of the church but also changing the practice of the church. It was only when they were stonewalled in that effort that they broke away from the Reformers, a path that left them vulnerable to persecution and martyring by Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. Little wonder that many Anabaptists eschew the title “Protestant” when their history is one of bloodshed from both sides of that conflict.

That is why many Christians are not as closely aligned with the Reformers as perhaps would seem appropriate. The Roman church does not now, did not during the time of the Reformation and has not represented the Church of Jesus Christ for over 1500 years. I am not interested in reforming Rome because Rome was never right in the first place. I am all for preaching Christ and Him crucified to Roman Catholics and welcoming them into the communion of the saints when God sovereignly brings them to faith. However many Protestants, those who embrace the title more than as a generic “not Catholic” title and seek a return to the Reformation find themselves in a precarious spot. As Carl Trueman says in his response to the blog post by Bryan Cross: Bryan picks up on a point I have made numerous times, both in print and in the classroom, that Protestants need a positive reason not to be Catholic. In other words, the default position for Protestants is that once Rome is sufficiently reformed, we can all go back. Merely being “not Catholic” for whatever reason is insufficient. I think that is troubling and dangerous.

When I look at the historic faith, I don’t see Rome as the fount. I am not like Trueman, assuming Cross is accurately representing him, in his view of Rome:

He writes about the Catholic Church as someone who knows that in a certain sense, the Catholic Church is his Church; she belongs to him, and he belongs to her, even though he believes he must now remain separated from her. In that respect, he writes of the Catholic Church as one writes about a parent from whom one is estranged, waiting to be joyfully reconciled.

Far from an estranged parent, I see Rome as a complete stranger who is sitting in our living room and helping herself to the contents of our fridge. The fact that she has been camped there for a very long time doesn’t change anything. The church that I trace back to is not now and never has been Rome. The so-called schism I see is not a 16th century event, it is something that happened around the time of Constantine when the unholy church-state alliance was formed, when the “visible church” stopped being a called out people, unique in and apart from the world, and became a man-centered religion that bore no resemblance to the Church of Christ. There have always been Christians and many of them could be found throughout the ages in the Roman Catholic Church but that doesn’t legitimize Rome in any sense.

Trueman is quoted as saying we need good, solid reasons for not being Catholic. I respectfully disagree. The Roman Catholic Church in no way is representative of the early church that existed when Peter and Paul were spreading the Gospel. I no more need a “good, solid” reason to not be Catholic than I do a “good, solid” reason to not be a Buddhist. I am not estranged from Rome, Rome is estranged from the Gospel. Being Roman Catholic is not the default for Christians, the position that we all naturally align ourselves to. The idea of innocent until proven guilty is a great one for civil laws but not when it comes to the Gospel. Since coming to Christ some ten years I have never once considered Rome because even in my limited understanding of Scripture a decade ago coming out of mormonism, I realized that there was very little that Rome had to offer that was supportable in Scripture. Even more so, I saw in Roman dogma and practice regarding the church much that seemed eerily familiar to someone who came out of an authoritarian cult like mormonism.

So to Mr. Cross and my friends in Rome, there is no need to leave the porch light on for me. I am not “coming home” because Rome never was home in the first place. I would instead like to invite you to come to Christ and join in the communion of His Church alongside believers all around the world, now and throughout the centuries. The historic church of the Scriptures was not a religion of hierarchy, ritual and works. It was and is a family of new creatures in Christ, believers who are linked by our common salvation instead of by label and baptism as an infant. I encourage you to come join His people all around the world. I would further exhort my fellow believers in Christ to make their division with Rome complete by rejecting Roman practice as well as doctrine.

Would the last one to leave Rome please turn the lights off on your way out?

The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

There is a new ecumenical declaration that has just been released, The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience. It is a lengthy, sober, thoughtful and solidly reasoned call for Christians to exercise their conscience in the public square.

The Manhattan Declaration deals with three primary issues: abortion, homosexual marriage and religious liberty. Signatories include men like Dr. Moore and Dr. Mohler, Tim Keller, Chuck Colson, Timothy George and James Dobson as well as men like William Donohue of the Catholic League, several Archbishops, Anglican Primates and Orthodox leaders. It is a veritable who's who of Christian leaders.

Here is the body of the declaration:

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

So what do we think of this? Is this a sober and appropriate declaration of Christian conscience in the public sphere? Is this an ecumenical capitulation in the name of political issues? Is this an unwarranted distraction to the church from Her mission of proclaiming the Gospel? Does this declaration not go far enough?

What say you? (Please read the whole declaration first)