In fact, there was evidence to suggest that the country was angrier, more antagonistic, more fearful, more divided–less Christlike–because of the Moral Majority. If Jesus was known for hating sin and loving sinners, American evangelicals were known for hating both.
— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory
Would a serious Christian see fit, I wondered, to condone this brutish behavior in any other area of life? Would they condone vicious ad hominem attacks if they were launched at the office? Would they condone the use of vulgarities and violent innuendo inside their home? Would they condone blatant abuses of power at their local school or nonprofit or church?
If the answer is no, then why do they accept it in politics? Because politics is about the ends, not the means. Since the ends are about power–the power to legislate, the power to investigate, the power to accumulate more power–the means are inherently defensible, even if they are, by any other measure, utterly indefensible.
This compartmentalization of standards is toxic to the credibility of the Christian witness. Many evangelicals have come to view politics the way a suburban husband views Las Vegas–a self-contained escape, a place where the rules and expectations of his everyday life do not apply.
The problem is, what happens in politics doesn’t stay in politics. Everyone can see what these folks are doing. Just as you might stop taking marital advice from your neighbor if you saw cell phone footage of him paying for prostitutes and cocaine in Vegas, you might stop taking spiritual guidance from your neighbor if you saw him chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” at the Capitol Building.
— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did,
maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move, maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.
With Christians soon to be a minority in the United States, the question shouldn’t be how best to fight back and reclaim their lost status.
Rather, Dickson said, the question should be how Christians might “lose well”–carrying themselves in ways that reflect the hope and confidence and great love found in the gospel.
At present, Dickson said, the American Church is suffering from “bully syndrome.” Too many Christians are swaggering around and picking on marginalized people and generally acting like jerks because they’re angry and apprehensive. “Every teacher will tell you, the bully on the playground is usually the most insecure boy. It’s a compensation mechanism. If the boy were truly confident, he wouldn’t need to throw his weight around,” Dickson said. “It’s the same with the Church. The bully Church is the insecure Church.”
— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory
On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight.But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.
There were genuine threats to religious expression in America, Moore said, but a government crackdown on churches wasn’t among them. Assuming pastors played by the rules that govern all nonprofits–namely, no endorsing political candidates from the pulpit–there would be no trouble.
As it happens, some pastors have openly flouted this regulation for years, all but begging the IRS to come after them. The government has done exactly nothing in response. Jeffress knows this better than most. Numerous high-profile churches in Texas, including several in the Dallas area, are notorious for their brazen defiance of the Johnson Amendment. (The Texas Tribune has reported on this extensively.)
Not only was the Biden administration not coming after churches; the Biden administration was actively looking the other way as churches broke the law.
In the end, it was revealing that Jeffress felt the need to fabricate these threats to the Church. Far more revealing, however, was that he saw the persecution of Christians as sufficient to justify behavior that is antithetical to what Christ taught. …
Christians volunteered to live in a negative world. Christians signed up to be under siege. The notion that some conjectural bullying of the American Church is a defense for the indefensible–while Christians worldwide are being harassed and hunted and even killed for their faith–would be comical if it weren’t so calamitous.
— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patcha few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorwayinto thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
In early 2017, a month into Trump’s presidency, the Public Religion Research Institute asked a sample of Americans which religious group they thought faced more discrimination in the United States, Muslims or Christians. The general public was twice as likely to pick Muslims in response; non-religious respondents were three times as likely. Both white Catholics and white mainline Protestants agreed, in overwhelming fashion, that Muslims face more discrimination in the United States than Christians. Only one group of respondents dissented from this view: white evangelicals.
Jeffress was inviting an obvious question: Once a person becomes convinced that they are under siege–that enemies are coming for them and want to destroy their way of life–what is to stop that person from becoming radicalized?
— Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory
Theology is a specialized, professional language, often employing obscure (Latin and Greek) terms that are never used by anyone but theologians, as if theologians live in and talk about a different world from the one mortals inhabit.
Theology functions sociologically like other professional languages—to keep people out and to help the members of the guild to identify one another.
Whereas the Bible talks about trees and stars, about donkeys and barren women, about kings and queens and carpenters.
Theology tells us that God is eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
The Bible tells us that God relents because He is God (Joel 2:13-14), that God is “shrewd with the shrewd” (Ps. 18:25-29), that He rejoices over us with shouting (Zeph. 3:14-20), and that He is an eternal whirlwind of triune communion and love.
— Peter Leithart, Against Christianity
It is not enough just to sing the words without meaning them. Yet there are still many advantages to having hymns composed before a service instead of being made up on the spot–advantages like greater participation, assurance of doctrinal soundness, and compelling and memorable words. More than that, singing familiar hymns again and again actually enhances rather than diminishes their capacity to express the inarticulate longings of our hearts. If we can sing hymns written down in advance, without thinking that makes them fake or insincere, why not say prayers written down in advance?
The idea that liturgical prayers are in conflict with prayer from the heart, with really meaning what we say, is relatively new in Christian history. Jesus, the apostles, churches before and after the Reformation–all used fixed forms of liturgical prayer. For most of the last two thousand years, Christians have used liturgical prayers and spontaneous prayers, with liturgical prayers predominating in public worship and adding richness and depth to the spontaneous prayers used in private worship.
— Samuel L. Bray and Drew Nathaniel Keane, How to Use the Book of Common Prayer
Bologna 