Despite Senator John Kerry’s insulting remarks about U.S. soldiers in Iraq (see previous post), I’m glad to see that our G.I. Joe’s haven’t lost their sense of humor. The New York Post has the story about the picture: “GI’s Drop Smart Bomb on Kerry.”
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John Kerry: I Was for the Troops before I Was against Them
In a speech on Monday, Senator John Kerry implied that only uneducated dullards end up fighting for the U.S. in Iraq, saying “Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” In a subsequent news conference, Kerry refused to apologize for the comment, saying that his remarks were just a “botched joke” (source). It turns out that no one is laughing, and now Kerry has the American Legion calling for an apology even as a Democrat congressman complains, “I guess Kerry wasn’t content…
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Santorum: The Pro-life Candidate
Not long ago, I wrote about Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s re-election bid and his debate with his Democrat challenger Bob Casey on “Meet the Press.” This campaign has been an interesting one to watch if for no other reason than that both candidates are ostensibly pro-life. But the “Meet the Press” debate revealed that Bob Casey is not a principled pro-lifer, as it became clear that Casey does not support the right to life from conception to natural death.
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Gay “Marriage”: A Debate about a Word?
A common misunderstanding about the debate over gay “marriage” is that this whole dust-up amounts to an argument about a word. The misunderstanding goes like this: “Conservatives want the word ‘marriage’ to refer to heterosexual unions, and liberals want the word to refer to heterosexual and homosexual unions.” If this were all that was as stake in this debate, then all that would be required is an updated edition of the dictionary.
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Peggy Noonan Hopes the Republicans Lose This November
Peggy Noonan suggests that the Republicans need to lose their congressional majorities this November so that they will be chastised for not being consistently conservative in their governing philosophy (See “Is There Progress through Loss?“). Noonan says this as one who was once a staunch supporter of President George W. Bush, but who now thinks that he and the Republican majority in Congress have strayed from the straight and narrow path.
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Complementarian in Principle, but Not in Practice?
In a previous post, I noted that Dwight McKissic’s letter to the trustees of Southwestestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) included a call for “a more inclusive role of women in public worship.” Specifically, McKissic has in mind a role for women in “public proclamation” in the church. He cites as examples many prominent women who do just that and who are regarded widely by Southern Baptists to be exercising a faithful ministry. Among those he lists are Beth Moore, Betty Criswell, Ann Graham Lotz, and Dorothy Patterson.
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Can Christians Forbid “Private Prayer Languages”?
The trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) responded to Dwight McKissic’s chapel sermon advocating a private prayer language with the following statement: “Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise, or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including ‘private prayer language.’
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CTR on Tongues of Fire
The newest edition of the Criswell Theological Review will be released next week. Our editor, Dr. Alan Streett, has put together a timely set of articles addressing the issue of tongues-speaking and Southern Baptists. We will be making one or two of the articles available online in the coming weeks and months. Already, you can download the introductory essay from the editor and an interview with Tom Hatley, former chair of the Trustees that govern the International Mission Board (SBC). The editor describes why CTR is taking a look at tongues-speaking, and he previews the interview with Hatley:
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James Barr, RIP
James Barr, noted linguist and biblical scholoar, died last Saturday at the age of 82. Ironically, even though he was a critic of the inerrancy of scripture, his watershed book The Semantics of Biblical Language helped all of us to avoid the linguistic fallacies that bedeviled previous generations of exegetes. Without Barr, errors such as “illegitimate totality transfer” would still be common fare among scholars and pastors alike. Even today, my own teaching of Hermeneutics is impacted by James Barr’s work. James Barr, March 20, 1924 – October 14, 2006. RIP. Obituaries: Times of London Vanderbilt UniversityÂ
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SBC Controversy over Speaking in Tongues
If you live in Texas, you have probably already heard the news coming out of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX. Unless you’ve been living in a hole, it’s been rather hard to miss the coverage both on television (CBS 11) and in major state newspapers (Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Morning News) and denominational press (BP, ABP). Yesterday, the trustees of Southwestern Seminary voted 36-1 to adopt a statement containing the following lines: “Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise, or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including ‘private prayer language.’ Neither will Southwestern knowingly employ professors or administrators who promote such…