No one comes to the political table as a blank slate. Everyone comes to the political table with a set of precommitments. This is what the Lutheran, then Catholic, minister, Richard John Neuhaus told us in 1984 in his book, The Naked Public Square. The central proposition of Neuhaus’ book, now close to 40 years old, was that the Founders of the United States, in drafting the First Amendment, were seeking to prevent the government …
Category: Politics
The Glittering Tinsel of Rationalism
…Hardly a century after the once glittering tinsel of rationalism, now that materialism is sounding its retreat in the ranks of science, a kind of hollow piety is again exercising its enticing charms and every day it is becoming more fashionable to take the plunge into the warm stream of mysticism.
Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (1898)
Book Thoughts: Christ and Culture Revisited- D.A. Carson
A new series for this blog in 2017 will be Book Thoughts. A while back a friend and I began sharing the best quotes and thoughts we had from our personal reading. The idea was to give one another greater access to books without having to read as many. If I read a book, my friend could benefit from reading the quotes I pulled out and any thoughts I shared. For 2017, when ever I …
Blog Link: Are Recent Restroom Laws the Same as Jim Crow Laws?
Andrew Walker raises both questions and brings clarity to what may be the hottest topic in American culture. In a post for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention entitled Are restroom laws that respect privacy the equivalent of Jim Crow laws? Walker writes the following:
…Jim Crow laws made arbitrary distinctions based on skin color. For example, the color of a person’s skin matters nothing to their hunger or ability
Christians and Politics
I hate, hate, hate commenting on politics.
But, as a pastor who gets asked a lot of questions about how our faith intersects with the political realm I do feel the need to share some thoughts. I won’t address any candidates here. My goal is the help you understand how I think about politics and in doing so, perhaps, help you think more deeply and critically as well.
Chances are you have Christian friends who …