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Joe Carter
8 July 2008

Last year while discussing bioethics with fellow blogger Jim Smalls, I expressed my disgust and dismay about ethicist Peter Singer. How could anyone with his intellect, I wondered, hold such bizarre and ridiculous beliefs? Jim has an M.D. and a Ph.D. He’s an extremely smart guy who is used to being around smart people so I expected him to confirm my suspicion that Singer may not be as intelligent as he seems. Instead, he said that I shouldn’t be surprised at all and provided an answer that floored me: “Increased intellect provides an increased power for rationalization.”

The rest… well worth the read.

Article by Joe Holland June 2008

Psalm singing is experiencing a renaissance. A national worship conference being held this year is entitled “Rediscovering the Psalms”. Websites are providing resources for people who would like to learn more about psalm singing. Churches are making strategic plans to train their members in psalm singing. Blogs and internet bulletin boards buzz with excitement over the Psalter. It is undeniable that the church is waking up to that which once marked it–the passionate singing of psalms. I am a child of this movement. I’ve tracked my growth in psalm singing by three major milestones.

The Rest of the Story…

Dr. Albert Mohler via albertmohler.com:

Peggy Noonan is right. At some point, in some moment, all of us must admit that something remarkable has happened to American culture. Mrs. Noonan, a former presidential speechwriter, recalls that this moment came for her during a high school graduation in the early 1970s. A young girl walked across the stage to received her diploma. The girl was obviously pregnant. Noonan recalls that her first impulse was admiration for the girl’s grit and determination against social disapproval. “But,” recognized Noonan, “society wasn’t disapproving. It was applauding.” As she reflected, “Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, not good for us.”

The rest of the story…

One of the roles of this blog is to track trends. One of the more interesting ones is what is ahead for the religious right. A fascinating look at this comes from David Kuo, former deputy director of faith initiatives for the White House under George W. Bush. He has published a piece called Not Your Father’s Religious Right. The link is:

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_8370168

The rest of the story…

Via albertmohler.com:

Efforts to reconcile Christianity and evolutionary theory abound, even as evolutionists bemoan the fact that such a large percentage of Americans simply will not accept a naturalistic understanding of cosmic and human origins.

Writing in the New Scientist, Michael Zimmerman calls for a new public celebration of Darwinism. Zimmerman is one of the proponents of “Evolution Sunday,” an attempt to encourage liberal churches to support the compatibility of evolution and Christianity, scheduled annually for the Sunday closest to Darwin’s birthday.

The rest of the story…

David Burchett
Author and Speaker
Thursday, February 16, 2006

Any article entitled “Evangelicals Miss the Big Picture” will get my attention. So I delved into the piece in USA Today with great interest. The writer, William Romanowski, a film studies professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, surmised that “evangelicals can influence Hollywood, but their efforts would be more effective and better received if they focused on cultural discourse, not religious conversion.”

Full article: Evangelicals Miss the Big Picture? Really?

Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide

A Recommended book.

Link to a review at Bible.org

jweaks

interesting…

Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons
Eugene Peterson talks about lies and illusions that destroy the church.
Interview by Mark Galli | posted 03/04/2005 09:00 a.m.

Excerpt:

Eugene Peterson had a publishing life before The Message. And one could argue that it was his previous publications that led, at least in part, to the renewal of Christian spirituality among pastors and laypeople today. In such books as Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, Run with the Horses, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, and The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, Peterson exposed the shallowness of American Christianity and offered a bracing and invigorating alternative.

It is momentous, then, that Peterson has returned to writing about the Christian life with Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Eerdmans, 2005). It is the first of a projected five-volume series in which Peterson will systematically pull together themes he has been talking about for three decades—spiritual formation, Scripture, leadership, the church, pastoring, spiritual direction.

The first volume is a tour de force in spiritual theology, combining incisive cultural analysis and biblical exposition with a sweeping and engaging vision of the Christian life.

Full story:
christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/003/26.42.html

Posted for future reference.

THE TRUE CHURCH, by J.C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool

I want you to belong to the one true Church: to the Church outside of which there is no salvation. I do not ask where you go on a Sunday; I only ask, “Do you belong to the one true Church?” Where is this one true Church? What is this one true Church like? What are the marks by which this one true Church may be known? You may well ask such questions. Give me your attention, and I will provide you with some answers.

The one true Church is *composed of all believers in the Lord Jesus*. It is made up of all God’s elect of all converted men and women of all true Christians. In whomsoever we can discern the election of God the Father, the sprinkling of the blood of God the Son, the sanctifying work of God the Spirit, in that person we see a member of Christ’s true Church.

It is a Church of which *all the members have the same marks*. They are all born again of the Spirit; they all possess “repentance towards God, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ,” and holiness of life and conversation. They all hate sin, and they all love Christ. They worship differently, and after various fashions; some worship with a form of prayer, and some with none; some worship kneeling, and some standing; but they all worship with one heart. They are all led by one Spirit; they all build upon one foundation; they all draw their religion from one single book, that is the Bible. They are all joined to one great center, that is Jesus Christ. They all even now can say with one heart, “Hallelujah”; and they can all respond with one heart and voice, “Amen and Amen.”

read more…

Many folks have noticed the increased attacks on the religious right. It’s more than a “phobia.” It is antitheism; the human penchant for resisting and denying God.

“Conveniently forgotten by those antagonistic to spiritual issues are the far more devastating consequences that have entailed when antitheism is wedded to political theory and social engineering. There is nothing in history to match the dire ends to which humanity can be led by following a political and social philosophy that consciously and absolutely excludes God.” - Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God?, p. XVII.

Links:

Theocracy or “Theophobia?”
therightword.blogspot.com/2004/11/theocracy-or-theophobia.html

Evangeliphobia
mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/beuoy/2004/beuoy111204.htm

The Re-paganization of the West: A Glimpse of the Future
11/5/2004
Albert Mohler

www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/?cal=go&adate=11%2F5%2F2004

“In the beginning there was the Church,” explains Carol Midgley. “And people liked to dress up in their best clothes and go there on Sundays and they praised the Lord and it was good. But it came to pass that people grew tired of the Church and they stopped going, and began to be uplifted by new things such as yoga and t’ai chi instead. And, lo, a spiritual revolution was born.”

Reporting in the November 4, 2004 edition of The Times of London, Midgley announced the results of a major research project conducted in Great Britain. According to the data assembled in this report, England is returning to its pagan roots.

If that seems unlikely, just consider the fact that only 7.9 percent of the British population attends church with any regularity. On the European continent, those percentages are generally much lower, with rates of churchgoing in Scandinavian nations running less than three percent.

The research was conducted by a team of British sociologists who looked at the small village of Kendal in Cumbria as a laboratory. As it happens, the statistics on religious participation in Kendal mirror almost precisely the national statistics in Great Britain. Led by sociologist Linda Woodhead and Paul Heelas, the researchers found that organized Christianity will be eclipsed by New Age spirituality within the next generation, if current trends continue. Their new book, The Spiritual Revolution, documents this incredible transformation of Great Britain–a reversion of a largely Christianized culture to its pagan roots.

As Midgley explains, “Study after study appears to prove that people are increasingly losing faith in the church and the Bible and turning instead to mysticism in guises ranging from astrology to reiki and holistic healing. The Government, significantly, said this week that older people should be offered t’ai chi classes on the NHS [National Health Service] to promote their physical and mental well-being.”

Professor Heelas, a well-known specialist on the New Age movement, describes the trend toward new forms of paganism as a response to larger cultural shifts. “It’s a shift away from (the idea of) a hierarchical all-knowing institution and a move towards (having) the freedom to grow and develop as a unique person rather than going to church and being led.”

Beyond this, Heelas argues that the idea of life after death is receding in the minds of most modern persons. With Heaven gone from the horizon, individuals must find full satisfaction in this life. “A lot of the comfort of religion is in postponement–a better life after death,” Heelas explains. “But belief in Heaven is collapsing, so people believe it is more important to know themselves and make themselves better people now.”

read more…

Another home run by Dr. Mohler:

Can We Be Good Without God?
11/8/2004
Albert Mohler

crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/?adate=11/8/2004#1295280

The greatest moral question hanging over America’s increasingly secular culture is this: Can we be good without God? That vital question–though almost always unasked–is the backdrop for most of the issues aflame in the media, the schools, and the courts.

Secularization, the process by which a society severs its ties to a religious worldview, is now pressed to the limits by ideological secularists bent on removing all vestiges of the Judeo-Christian heritage from the nation’s culture. They will not stop until every aspect of Christian morality is supplanted by the new morality of the postmodern philosophers–a morality with no absolutes, and without God.

read more…