Cultural Climate Change

I know I’ll get branded even deeper with this foray into unecumenical waters.  With the seeming daily manifestos emerging on topics as diverse as creation care and the definition of evangelicals it seems one more voice in the vacuum cannot do much harm.   Frankly, I’m in no hurry to embrace the label as an evangelical (with either a capital or lower case “e”) these days with its increasing desire to somehow be coherent with the culture but not too heavily identified with any set of doctrinal convictions.  Omitting inerrancy from an intended statement on evangelical commonalities is akin to a ban on plastic surgery in Hollywood.  This is not an oversight but an intentional bowing to political expediency.  It’s another shift in evangelicalism that intends to define itself almost always in an experiential fashion with minimum doctrinal substance.  Perhaps that’s why D.G. Hart despite harsh criticism suggests the following:

Evangelicalism needs to be relinquished as a religious identity because it does not exist.  In fact, it is the wax nose of twentieth-century American Protestantism.  Behind this proboscis, which has been nipped and tucked by savvy religious leaders, academics and pollsters, is a face void of any discernible features.

Let me contend with a few assertions and a less than subtle illustration.  Let’s begin with the personal narrative.  My Kindergarten student brought home a brochure over twenty years ago that had a distinct agenda.  It was a fundraiser for our small-town elementary school that was selling environmental t-shirts that benefitted the schools. It had t-shirts promoting a hit parade of secular songs such as a host of animals shouting “we were here first” and a cacophony of cute creatures suggesting “a circle of life”.  This was the day of the Lion King.  Being one that served another Lion King, I was more than a bit skeptical and so I scanned the fine print.  Guess which austere organization was also a beneficiary of these sales?  That’s right - the one and only Sierra Club.  I’ll not go into the details of the conversations with administrators but needless to say I had a different point of view. 

What’s the point?  It was almost inevitable in our culture with the daily drumbeat in our educational systems and our invasive and pervasive media that our students would be impacted.  My own kids seem more incensed when their politically -incorrect Dad litters than when the California Supreme Court legalizes homosexual marriage.  The latter for some brings a shrug of the shoulders suggesting what can we do while my environmental neglect brings a text message reprimand about ruining God’s creation.  What’s the difference?  One is politically expedient and the other is about as popular as Oprah Winfrey in Hillary Clinton’s inner circle.  You promote the environment and you’re applauded – stand for the unborn and against homosexual marriage and you’re skewered as divisive.

Let me see if I can step deeper into hot water.  I have a lot of younger Baptist friends.  Some of them have no problem voting for Barack Obama.  He seems hip and cool and is a tremendous orator.   When I mention his radical stances on abortion and homosexual rights some seem to casually dismiss that as somewhere below the radar on their need to know meter.  What is appealing is his rhetoric that suggests we can all just get along.   Again it plays to the desire to be inclusive, tolerant, environmentally-friendly and find the middle ground.  So here’s a pertinent question – where is the middle ground on homosexual marriage in California?  Partial birth abortions?  If standing on terra-firma on those issues equates to fundamentalism, sign me up as a charter member.

I think I’m going to jump on another bandwagon that needs to be boarded. It’s called the Great Commission express.  I for one am attempting to do my utmost to mobilize my church for one encompassing vision – making disciples in our local church.  I don’t know of a single Southern Baptist that’s not for that.  It’s the rest of the great commission that seems to be the omission for so many.  The part about biblical baptism and an encompassing theology that teaches disciples to do everything Jesus commanded.   It seems shortsighted and downright disobedient to emphasize one while downplaying the other.  It’s not either-or but both-and.  Our need is for doctrinal commitment that is wide enough to get us off our seats and on our feet and into the streets.  People are perishing and going to hell while we fiddle with Fiddler crabs. God give us a passion for souls!  It also must be deep enough to include all of the teachings of Jesus Christ.   Sure, I should care about creation but I must care more about the pinnacle of creation – the ones made in the image of God.  I’m all for doing as much as possible about poverty, but an abundance of poverty is created when we abandon biblical and clarion calls for marriage and family.  I guess the question is which ethical agenda will claim a broader prominence? 

I concur with the desire to dampen down some of the harsh rhetoric. We must be wise in our speech and attempt to make the most of every opportunity.  Our convictions must not be surrendered but neither can they always be imposed.  We must promote discussion with civility, but civility never surrenders territory for the sake of expediency.  The end result when you stand with Jesus is you will be persecuted for righteousness sake.  You will be derided and denigrated by outsiders.  It’s that persecution that ought to drive the gospel.  Our distinctiveness and differences define us as Christians – that’s how light shines in the darkness.  Our problem is not that we identify with those around us too little; it’s the fact we are often way too like them. D.A. Carson (Christ and Culture Revisited)  reminds us we can easily become of the world but not in it instead of in the world but not of it.  It’s a rich and full-flavored biblical theology that should inform and transform the world we inhabit.  Sometime we must stand full throttle against the cultural tides without haughty superiority or hypercritical self-righteousness.  Other times we must work to transform culture by attempting to make the most of every opportunity to alleviate hurt and harm among humanity without a sense of elitism or naïve idealism.   Above all we must strive to live under the real Lion King, King Jesus and enthusiastically submit to every aspect of His authority in every realm of life until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord.

 

 

Your Cheating Heart

It’s official – in the eyes of most Americans the end does justify the means. Cheating is justified as long as you win or it qualifies you for a shot at success. IU basketball players threaten to bolt if Coach Kelvin Sampson is fired – even though he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar at OU for the exact same violation. It would be refreshing for the media to report one player that understands the ethics behind the violations.

The NFL commissioner Roger Goodell oks the destruction of evidence of the New England Patriots illegal taping of defensive signals. The response of the rest of the league: a stifled yawn and an en masse echo to move on down the road. More sports examples abound: human growth hormones, steroids, blood doping, illegal enhancements on NASCAR cars, and playing older kids in younger leagues.

There are other examples that abound. Free cable or dish television. Padded resumes. Plagiarized speeches. Free movies. Doctored grades. Purchased reports. Dads and Moms doing Junior’s project. The list is really endless.

Think it does not occur in the church. How about pastors that preach sermons word for word that belongs to someone else without any attribution? Church leagues that deliberately put all the athletes on an elite team. The deacon or pastor involved in an affair. Withholding your tithe. I’m sure you can quote further examples. I’d be interested in hearing some anecdotes from how the church does wrong to get ahead.

I think it’s time to pull the old Hank Williams tune from the mothballs and play it in our collective memory every time we see another example. David Callahan has a book entitled The Cheating Culture that examines this escalating phenomenon.

I’ll follow up with a post to suggest some preventative measures, but in the meantime I’d love to hear from you. Is this an epidemic? What is the solution?

Tributes to L. Russ Bush

Please take time to post tributes to L. Russ Bush 

over at SBC Today

Montanists, Mexico, and a Message

I’m increasingly convinced I was born a hundred years too late. Now I think my mindset may actually drift back 200 years. I decided to post this rant here instead of SBC Today because I’m riled up. Unlike some, I don’t think Dwight McKissic is above some criticism. A panel discussion on Southern Baptist life at TBN is about as objective as a discussion of ethics at Enron. I saw the axes being gripped to grind from the opening credit. I’m all for having a legitimate discussion and debate about the issue in and among Southern Baptists. Just do it. The debate proffered was about as legitimate as Ron Paul’s hope for the presidency.

Before you ask, I didn’t call him, email him, text message, or attempt to communicate in any way. I didn’t even address this in my private prayer language. I also didn’t go on national television promoting TBN and expect Southern Baptists just to grin and bear it. For those that suggest he wasn’t promoting glossolalia at the end of the broadcast, Brother McKissic read from a report talking of tongues and trances and concluded that tongues were not Pentecostal but Baptist and Evangelical. Many of us stumps in the mud have been called paranoid fearmongers because we are suggesting that “private prayer language” is just the tip of the iceberg. He also didn’t call for an interpreter when Bro. Camp broke out in a little ecstatic, public presentation himself. Call it emotional prejudice but I didn’t see a poor, uneducated soul among the crowd. I’m not embarrassed to deal with tongues Brother Dwight - I just land in a different biblical zip code than you. It sure seems a bit out of the ordinary that we spend so much time in public venues discussing what most suggest no one needs to know about because it’s done in private.

This is why we need a renewal of Baptist identity. Don’t claim to love Southern Baptists and then watch as Gnostic, mystical Montanists go on national television and scorn and smear the very rock from which they were hewn. I about fell over when Scott Camp advocated Montanism as a tongue-speaking group, a heretical sect! You can call me a flaming fundamentalist if you want (oh and don’t leave out the pejorative terms of mean spirited, legalistic, independent, and against something), but until my last breath I will teach, preach, proclaim, and earnestly contend for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. The idea that a word spoken in a church setting ought to be bound up as additional revelation is heresy. Not a mistake, an aberration, a slip, or a faux pas - it’s heresy. Now if you want to dance to that tune go ahead. There’s a good ditty about sunning on beaches in Mexico. Say aye, aye, aye until you get your tongue loose, but if I’d have been in the audience (a longshot at best) they would have had to yell cut because I would have went postal, not Pentecostal.

I, for one, am weary and wary of spiritual Gnostics that claim something more is available for all of us pastors who are firing on just three cylinders. Their charge: I’m just not open to the Spirit because I have not experienced a “private prayer language.” Now before you come running to McKissic’s defense saying he wasn’t involved- here’s all I ask. I want a statement denouncing the non-biblical views held by those on the program. Up front and out loud. Disseminate it nationally just like this stuff went out nationally. For those that think we ought to tone it down - I have one phrase: No way Jose. Isn’t it funny that we forget - God’s not mute. He speaks to me every morning. Sometimes from Matthew 7. Other times from Acts 20. 2 Peter 1-2. Jude. He speaks through His Word. It’s not the only way He speaks - its just primary.

The implication is that Baptist Biblicists are holding back the power of God. Put away your traditions, your intellect, your seminary education, and speak in tongues and Southern Baptists could change the world. Southern Baptist, in the power of the Holy Spirit and the name of Jesus, already are. The argument that the only way to judge reality is by experience is a red herring. I’ve witnessed people do and say things in the name of God that were plain satanic. I also remember Peter reminding us of a sure and certain foundation that surpasses experience: God’s prophetic and permanent word.

Here’s the bottom line. I hunger and thirst after God’s presence and power. The implication that a private prayer language and a tongues “experience” makes me a spiritual elite is straight from the Gnostic playbook. There are some limitations (every jot and tittle of God’s Word) we would be foolish to abandon. The point of Wes and others is spot on: There are different visions for the SBC. It does matter which ship we board. They are headed to different docks. Board the ship you wish; that’s part of free-church autonomy. Just don’t expect me to be a passenger.

Finding Myself while Losing God

I discovered David Wells after picking up his tome Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World. It’s been tough to add his repertoire during my doctoral studies, but alas sleep must suffer. My copy of this more recent release is dog eared, highlighted, starred, and frayed. I quickly hustled over to Amazon, a site which my wife has grown to abhor because of the current stack of books I have accumulated and picked up his previous works. Not a cull in the bunch, and I long for a magnum opus which will synchronize and compile his considerable intellect. One recent work I’ve been scouring over at bedtime is Losing Our Virtue. I know it oversimplifies the concept but it gives much play to the loss of the moral in our culture because of modernity: displacing the moral by the therapeutic, the divine by the human, truth by intuition and conviction by technique (4).

It plays into my conviction (not his) about the forces that drive evangelicalism in our culture. Go ahead and play whack a pastor, but I’m beyond certain that the therapeutic, human, intuition and technique are the decisive and driving forces in the church today. The moral, divine, truth, and conviction are often sidelined instead of headlined. Now we play lip service to the latter but heavily display the former along with espresso machines and Krispy Kremes to reach the consumer culture we inhabit. One intriguing discussion is his concept of the modern notion of the self. His anthropology stirred me into a caffeine-induced mental somersault. To use my teenager’s vernacular – his insight is off the chain.

The point is the assumption we make of the self in our secular culture. “For preachers are caught between the secular assumption, now everywhere present in the churches, that the self can be crafted, developed, actualized, and the biblical notion that the self is corrupted, fragmented, and incapable of healing itself. Moreover, in a secularized world, God has vanished beyond the periphery of what is meaningful, while in the biblical world he stands at the center. Don’t think this is the case? Look at the sermon topics on most websites and the book titles at your local Lifeway store. Instead of Where is Waldo we should be asking Where is God. Library Journal compiles a list of the top ten requested Christian tomes. It probably reveals the reading audience but here goes anyway.

1. Forever by Karen Kingsbury
2. Get out of that Pit by Beth Moore
3. 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper and Cecil Murphey
4. Facing Your Giants by Max Lucado
5. Ever After by Karen Kingsbury
6. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
7. Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World
8. Sex God by Rob Bell
9. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
10. White Chocolate Moments by Lori Wick

Don’t despair though Becoming a Better You by Joel Osteen is headed down the pipe. Does it not suggest that we have bought into the constructed view of self hook, line, and sinker? Where is sin? Where is a view of God? Where is theology? I dare think that if I spent more time losing myself rather than finding myself . . . oh well, that probably wouldn’t sell.

BC entity heads vow intolerance of ‘personal attacks’ on colleague

Jerry B. Pierce

The heads of the Southern Baptist Convention’s seminaries and agencies closed ranks in prayer and verbal support around one of their own during the SBC Executive Committee’s fall meeting, defending fellow leader Paige Patterson against what was termed “a level of unprecedented attack … in the form of innuendo and smear and caricature and character assassinations.”

Speaking before the Executive Committee on Sept. 17, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. cited the unanimous vote of affirmation of Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and his wife, Dorothy, by Patterson’s 11 fellow SBC entity leaders.Mohler, apparently alluding to the persistent and often sarcastic criticism of Patterson by several Internet bloggers, said the group of entity leaders, known as the Great Commission Council, voted to “make a statement about the fact that we will not tolerate personal attacks upon one of our colleagues.”

Before calling the members of the Great Commission Council to the podium to pray over the Pattersons, Mohler noted such a move was likely unprecedented in Southern Baptist proceedings, “and it’s because we are living in a different day and a day in which there is a level of unprecedented attack among some of our own leaders. This attack is personal.”“There is no room in Baptist life for teasing, for taunting,” Mohler told the committee. “There is no room for cowardly attacks upon character.” “There is a right way to raise concerns about those in leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention,” said Mohler, adding that respectful dialogue with trustees is the correct method. “Two of our own have suffered in particular along these lines, and we want to ask Paige and Dorothy Patterson to join us here on the platform,” Mohler said. “Dorothy, I am going to ask that you join Paige here, and this is a surprise to them, because as the rest of us were meeting in the course of these days, we felt that a statement needed to be made about the vitriol and the malice of character assassination and personal attacks, and they have been particularly directed at our colleague, Paige Patterson and also his wife.

“This is an unprecedented development in modern Baptist history, and it is one that we felt needed to be named for what it is. The entire Great Commission Council voted unanimously, in the absence of Dr. Patterson, to make this statement.” International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin led in public prayer over the Pattersons, noting their faithfulness, their heart for the convention’s doctrinal integrity, commitment to the Great Commission and “their passionate commitment to train and equip seminary students to serve our churches and to go out as missionaries throughout the world.”Rankin continued: “I pray that you would give them grace in their response when they are abused and criticized. And I pray that you would keep them faithful and focused on the task to which you have called them because we commit them to you in Jesus’ name as our friend, as our colleague, as a leader and mentor, as a model and example of your love and your grace and obedience to your calling in Jesus’ name, Amen.” The Great Commission Council’s actions come after months of Internet criticisms, much of it by a former Southwestern employee and a former Arlington pastor, Benjamin S. Cole.

Cole is now an associate pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., where IMB trustee Wade Burleson, a critic of Southwestern’s policy of male-only theology faculty and its ban on public advocacy of charismatic practice, is pastor.Cole’s persistent criticism over Southwestern’s new homemaking program aimed at pastors wives, for example, spurred media interest and led to an appearance in August on the Fox News channel by Patterson, who defended the program as relevant and needed.The complete transcript of Mohler’s remarks and Rankin’s prayer is available at texanonline.net.

Wade Burleson and Egalitarians

Wade Burleson was recently given the Priscilla and Aquila Award by the egalitarian group, Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE). here

The Priscilla and Aquila Award recognizes those who, in spite of risk to position or reputation, have stood for full freedom of women to use their God-given gifts in the service of Christ. Just as Priscilla and Aquila “risked their necks” (Rom. 16:2) for the sake of the Gospel, this award honors those who have “risked their necks” for the sake of biblical equality. Wade Burleson has served as pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church (Southern Baptist) in Enid, Oklahoma for the past fifteen years. Wade’s blog, “Grace and Truth to You” (kerussocharis.blogspot.com) is one of the highest ranking evangelical blogs according to Google Blog Search. Earlier this year, Wade used his blog to raise awareness about the firing of Dr. Sheri Klouda, a professor of Hebrew at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, for holding a “position reserved for a man” (as stated by the President of the Seminary). Wade has raised thousands of dollars from all across the nation to support Sheri and her family as she transitions to a new teaching positionat Taylor University in Indiana. “I am honored to receive this CBE Priscilla and Aquila Award for ‘risking my neck’ for the sake of biblical equality. Even though I have been a conservative, evangelical Southern Baptist all my life, I had not been aware until recently that some people in my convention believe that women are not equal to men. My wife, who is smarter than I, has shown me the equality of women. I am a pastor and she is studying to be an anesthesiologist--we both put people to sleep. I made a vow to my wife two years ago that if I ever saw a women being mistreated in the Southern Baptist Convention because of her gender--I would not remain silent, but become a proactive agent for change. Dr. Klouda has been the most well known recipient of the fulfillment of that pledge--but sadly, there have been, and there will be others. I will do my part to be there for them.”

http://www.cbeinternational.org/new/free_articles/2007_CBE_Conference_Report.pdf

What a rousing defense of the complementarian position - caveman Neanderthals that do not believe women are equal to men. Where in the world does this position come from?