New Books and Old Books, from Steyn to Chesterton

Consistent with the oft-repeated axiom from C.S. Lewis that the reading of new books should be punctuated with the reading of old books in order to avoid the temptation to "chronological snobbery," two books, one in each category, have ruled the reading corner of late.

The first, a relatively new one, America Alone by Mark Steyn (2005?)(been trying to get this one into my queue for a while) is a wakeup call to post-Christian America and the post-Christian church. With Europe as the model, we are offered a step-by-step analysis of the trends weakening us and the cultural suicide of the world as we know it on both sides of the pond. Some quotables...

On the false promise of secularism:

The meek's prospects of inheriting the earth are considerably diminished in a post-Christian society....[quoting Kathy Shaidle] It is secularism itself which is part of the problem, not the solution, since secularism is precisely what created the European spiritual and moral vacuum into which Islamism has rushed headlong.

On the paralyzing effect of European (now American) Socialism:

The trouble with the social democratic state is that when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.

On the destructiveness of multiculturalism:

But if you think you genuinely believe that suttee [the Indian cultural practice of burning of the living widow along with the deceased husband] is just an example of the rich tapestry of indigenous cultures, you ought to consider what your pleasant suburb would be like if 25, 48% of the people really believed in it too. Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own; it is, thus, the real suicide bomb.

And there is much more, some of it quite entertaining despite the ominous topic. Which brings me to book two, much older, but in a similar vein and as timely as a stimulus package or an auto industry takeover. At Twin Cities Chesterton Society meetings, we've been reading and discussing the outstanding (large) biography of GKC by Maisie Ward (1942). Gilbert Keith Chesterton is a treasure chest of not just his story, but his vision of the world. A major component consists of early unpublished writing, correspondence and quotations. Enormously clever and joyful on many topics and many levels, GKC watched, wrote, waved his sword/walking stick in the air and cried out against England's initial embrace of precisely what we are now embracing—the diminution of religion, tradition and liberty, and the incremental arrival of the the Servile State. A couple of quotes:

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want one that will move the world. We want one that will move it away from many of the things towards which it is now moving; for instance, the Servile State. It is by that test that history will really judge, of any church, whether it is the real Church or no. —GKC

[Chesterton]...did not think, then or ever, that any increase of comfort or security was a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty. —Maisie Ward

No, Mr. President [revisited]
From John Piper, this is a brilliant video adaptation. Pass it on...

Time for Obama's "Pro-Life" Supporters to Face What They've Done

This from moralaccountability.com. Summarized:

Amidst the fawning press coverage of President Obama’s overturning of the Bush stem cell funding policy, it is important to understand a few basic facts about what he has and has not done.

First, the stories about this decision suggest Obama has restored federal policy to what it was before George W. Bush’s 2001 stem cell policy announcement. This is simply not true. The federal government has in fact never before-even under President Clinton-used taxpayer dollars to encourage the destruction of human embryos, as it will now begin to do....

The president’s decision to take the unprecedented step of encouraging the destruction of human embryos with taxpayer dollars every day seems more removed from the scientific and ethical realities of the debate, and from the aspiration that underlay the policy he has chosen to end: that science and ethics might both be championed together, rather than set against one another.

For all the facts and Obamafuscation, read the whole thing.

"No, Mr. President..."

I attend Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis when I get the chance. I'm not a Baptist, I've never been a Calvinist. In fact I worry some (and have blogged some) about incipient authoritarianism and other issues among the neo-Calvinists (Mark Driscoll, Sovereign Grace Ministries come to mind) with whom JP is sometimes associated. So I don't fit the category of "Piperite," or Reformed Resurgent or whatever.

But I do love John Piper's preaching, and this one he knocked out of the park. At least listen to/view the 3 minute section starting about 20% in—beginning "No, Mr. President..."

Any concern that in the wake of this historic presidential inauguration Mr. Piper may have become soft on the issue of abortion is here eloquently dispelled.

"He is trapped and blind in a culture of deceit..."

Watch it here.

Keeping Tabs on Obama
Francis Beckwith, Hadley Arkes, Robert P. George and others have launched a new website, moralaccountability.com to monitor and analyze the new administration in regard to moral issues; principally abortion policy and the defininiton of marriage question. The first George piece defines the purpose:

The Moral Accountability Project trusts that those self-identified pro-life and pro-marriage Catholics and Evangelicals who helped to put Barack Obama into a position to accomplish his goals were sincere in their admiration for him. We are willing to believe that they genuinely hope that he will go back on his pledges to attack pro-life laws and repeal pro-marriage policies. Still, actions have consequences, and the actions of these intellectuals and activists will have consequences that are all too easy to predict. With each assault of the Obama administration on laws and policies upholding the sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage, we will ask all Catholics and Evangelicals, including those who supported Obama, to join us in resisting these assaults. That is what we will do at www.moralaccountability.com.

Our project is offered in a constructive spirit, not one of vilification. Our goal is to help ensure that never again will good intentions conspire with shoddy reasoning and wishful thinking to compromise the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our community and to undermine the institution of marriage. And so in a sincere spirit of friendship, we invite those Catholics and Evangelicals who joined Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and similar organizations in helping Obama join us now in repelling the attacks that will be launched against life and marriage in this administration.

A worthy effort.

The website notes that today will be the day Barack Obama reverses the "Mexico City Policy" which forbids the use of American foreign aid money to kill babies. Even he did not possess the "audacity" to do it yesterday on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

"Evangelicals" who supported the Obama campaign (Emergents Brian McClaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, among many others): The party's over. The Capitol Mall is littered with trash, the promises, platitudes and sophistry rang hollow and then were silent.

Today begins the grim harvest.

Of course Republican politics or politics of any kind are not the hope of the world. But a vote against this was the least you could have done for "the least of these." Can you not see the blood on your hands? May God have mercy on his church. Then, perhaps, on the United States of America.

Francis Schaeffer Bios Reviewed
Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary reviews two recent volumes on the significance of Schaeffer's contribution to apologetics and Christian philosophy. He winds it up with this:

I fear that the younger generation of evangelicals do not know enough about the remarkable life and achievements of Francis Schaeffer; instead they are opting for the trendy but intellectually barren hype of much of the emergent church movement-which claims to be "authentic." ("Authentic" often means little more than emotional, unconventional, and obsessively autobiographical.) Many older evangelicals may have forgotten many of the salient lessons from his life and teachings as well. Reading these two new biographies can help rectify this problem. But better yet, one can read or reread Schaeffer's own books and watch his two film series (the ten-part, "How Should We Then Live?" and five-part, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" which are both available on DVD). Indeed, Schaeffer did live an "authentic" life-a life of piety, truth, and courage-worthy of our attention and of our thanksgiving to God.

"Authentic" often means little more than emotional, unconventional, and obsessively autobiographical. Sigh. That is a good description of the spirit of this age isn't it? And it explains "reality" television: one minute of something happening followed by 3 minutes of participants alone with the camera telling us how they felt about that one minute.

Business As Usual in Minnesota
Item: Funny Business in Minnesota. Did anybody really think that the Franken/Ritchie/Star-Tribune consortium would fail to come up with enough votes for the Democrat to win? See the WSJ editorial summary of highly predictable Minnesota electoral shenanigans.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

Item: Eagles 26, Vikings 14. Did anybody really think...? From the Star-Tribune's only department still above the waterline:

A playoff berth didn't bring playoff-caliber football from the Vikings, who watched a confident and poised Eagles team rise up and disappoint a packed Dome house.

That Sound of Rustling Pages
you hear all across America is some of us thumbing through our newer Tim LaHaye prophecy library and even our old dusty Hal Lindsey Late-Great books. Read this.

Broad-minded Tolerance or Tyranny?
Why do many of us see the gay marriage agenda as the latter and yet feel the sting of being called narrow minded and intolerant? Excellent analysis of the same-sex marriage debate from S.T. Karnick. He begins:

From the beginning, the debate over “same-sex marriage” has been one of those topsy-turvy issues in which the side that is truly tolerant and fair has been characterized as narrow-minded and oppressive, while the side that is intolerant and blatantly coercive has been depicted as open-minded and sympathetic.

Favoring government-enforced recognition of same-sex “marriage” is not, as the media invariably characterize it, a kindly, liberal-minded position, but instead a fierce, coercive, intolerant one. Despite their agonized complaints about the refusal of the majority of Americans to give in on the subject, those who advocate government recognition of same-sex “marriage” want to use coercion to deny other people their fundamental rights.

And, of course, change is coming.

Change Has Come
There is much to say about what yesterday's election means for America, the church, the unborn and the world. But in the third paragraph of Barack Obama's victory speech last night, a watershed moment came and went almost without notice.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled — Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Don't miss the significance of this sentence. For the first time in American history, the declaration that approval—not mere tolerance, not simply the recognition that private sins are none of anybody's business in the public square, but hearty approval—has now been granted to a particular class of moral misbehavior. Along with gender, racial origin, socio-economic status, physical disability or political viewpoint, homosexual activity is, in the new president's view, elevated to equally protected and respected legitimacy in the United States.

The reason the statement slides by with so little notice is of course that it's been a long time coming, and is already the de facto assumption of popular culture. But make no mistake, a corner has been turned. We have been asked first to tolerate, then accept, and now honor.

Those Christians who still take seriously the Epistle to the Romans' description of godlessness and cultural decay are neither naive nor surprised. They understand that sin of every kind is rampant around us—and sometimes within us—and that all sin puts all people in peril of the judgment of God, that the line between good and evil runs through the middle of every human heart. But with the sobering implications of Obama's statement, they also understand that another full rotation in the downward spiral of America is now complete.

...and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. —Romans 1:32 NAS

The Point of No Return
What is at stake in tomorrow's election cannot be overstated. On any front; the protection of life, the rule of law, national security, economic freedom, individual liberty. As Thomas Sowell points out in this series of short interview segments, a Barack Obama presidency will almost certainly take us past the failsafe point in more than one category. Do not miss segment five. Then pray, then vote, then pray again.

Al Franken and Christianity
Just imagine the political decapitation if a candidate for the U.S. Senate had written something this disparaging of the Religion Of Peace and its prophet.

C.S. Lewis on Politics Part 2
From God in the Dock, Is Progress Possible?

I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has the "freeborn" mind. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing.

C.S. Lewis on Politics Part 1
In feeble resistance to the tidal wave poised to engulf us all, a series of quotes from gentle C.S. on Liberalism—the madness of modernity, and the twilight of freedom.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies."
—from The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, God in the Dock

After the Veep Debate Write Your Own Caption

Suggestions?

The Creepiest Political Advertising Thus Far

Take a look at this, Mr. Orwell.
(This post is properly filed under Politics AND Religion.)

Ending a Blogging Hiatus

There's so much to blather about with the onset of this most unusual political/meteorological/financial season we're in, that I truly don't know where to begin. So I'll show some wonderful grandson pictures! Enjoy. He just celebrated Birthday Uno...

(Cranky, cynical, highly-partisan posts on the state of Politics and Religion to follow)

Re-Considering Rick Warren

Expecting the worst (in terms of the popular trend of evangelical pandering to the political left out of embarrassment for being seen as part of the religious right) from the Saddleback forum a couple of weeks ago, I was actually quite impressed with Warren's questions for the candidates and his post-show comments here and there.

Here is a WSJ interview with more encouragement for my cautiously growing respect. Sample:

In our interview, he recalls that tolerance used to be the idea that you "treat others with respect." Now, he laments, it has come to mean that "all ideas are equally valid." And so you can begin to understand why some people today are not happy with the idea of tolerance. But Mr. Warren aims to return Americans to that old view. Despite his calm demeanor, his easy laugh and his casual dress, there doesn't seem to be a relativist bone in Mr. Warren's body.

Chesterton on The World of Obama

Public Radio was fairly breathless all day Thursday as the question "which Democrat will we support?" had been answered at last. As far as most in the media are concerned, the big political questions of 2008 are now resolved. It's time for healing and forward-looking optimism, for reaching out across our differences, working together to elect Obama (virtually a foregone conclusion) in the Fall. And the mood is contagious. All up and down the Malibu beach front broad consensus among ordinary Americans is already palpable. Change at last! Peace and safety! Graduate school, healthcare and hybrids for all! Obama!

For that tiny minority with a rudimentary understanding of the American experiment and a vague consciousness of history, G.K. Chesterton's 83 year old rejoinder is a more accurate assessment of where we may actually stand, and what sort of clouds may be on our horizon. He was addressing those who assume and trust in the notion of inevitable "progress" (Change):

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.
—The Everlasting Man: Chapter 3 The Antiquity of Civilization 1925

The Greek Language, Roman Roads and Starbucks
Musings over a cup of Pike Place Roast

What do all these have in common? Much has been made by Biblical commentators of significant historical providences during an otherwise silent inter-testamental period—between the last book of the Old Testament and the coming of Christ. During that 400 years, two grand empires left behind two great legacies transforming both the speed and effectiveness of communication in the Mediterranean world. Alexander provided the Greek language as the common denominator of commerce and learning, the Romans well-built roads and the freedom to travel on them. Both were intended for human conquest, control and profit, but employed by the feet and pens of the Apostles, invaluable to the spread of the Christian gospel. The rest is world-turned-upside-down history.

Starbucks? Assuming that Common Grace still abounds, I ask what else might be identified, particularly in our time, as useful cultural provisions for the spread of Christianity and the edification of the church? Certainly the printed word, globe-shrinking transportation, radio, television, electronic media, the internet. But one recent development not to be underestimated here in America is the Coffee Shop. "Starbucks," you say? With their ever-so-secular feng shui and nasty new little mermaid logo? Remember, there was nothing particularly Christian about Koine Greek or Roman pavement, and both conveyed many things pagan while at the same time serving infinitely higher purposes. Okay, if you don't like the Seattle original, think Caribou (as I most often do), or Dunn Bros. or whatever else is available where you are, but do think about what the genre has accomplished for human interaction.

What the coffee shop has done for the socially starved and spiritually hungry is remarkable. It has provided a thrifty option, a convenient excuse, a ubiquitous venue for people to get together and talk, read and debate, confess and pray and commiserate and counsel and edify and rebuke and encourage the faint-hearted and weep and laugh and strategize and reflect and google and blog and evangelize and study, test the spirits, examine the scriptures to see if these things be so, ask questions and give answers for the hope that lies within us. In the atmosphere of Starbucks white noise confidentiality, put a coffee cup in my hand, I'm ready to talk.

What did we do before coffee shops? We did lunch and dinner; time-pressure and expense. Bars and pubs; noisy and not usually a good idea. We had people over; still do, but it gets complicated and doesn't happen as readily or spontaneously as meeting at a neutral location. We talked after church; surface-y and truncated, unsatisfying. We used the phone; not as good as face-to-face, and curiously enough, nearly impossible for men. We wrote letters; no we didn't, that was a previous generation.

As on Roman roads and most religious television (now there's a botched providential opportunity!), there are time-wasters, thieves and conspirators too, so the coffee shop can be used for the spread of the worthless and even harmful, but used for good it's just so easy. "Let's meet for coffee" is much more appealing than "can we talk?" So I think it's a 21st Century divine providence. By the way, I say don't sweat the new logo, just appreciate the ambiance and the opportunities and enjoy.

The coffee is better than church basement percolated Folgers too.