Yousef Nadarkhani is a Christian pastor in Iran, and he has been charged by Iranian authorities with apostasy and evangelizing Muslims. Pastor Nadarkhani was sentenced to death, though some reports have claimed that this sentence has been annulled. Mark Kelly of Baptist Press reports that this is not the case: “Christians in Iran have challenged news reports that the death penalty for pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been annulled, saying that in reality the country’s supreme court appears to have added a precondition requiring him to renounce his faith or face execution.” Read the rest of this story here and pray.
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Carl Trueman Takes a Shot at City Theology
Carl Trueman has a brief but trenchant critique of “city” theology at Reformation 21. He writes: “One thing… I did discuss was the current nonsense about cities being special which so dominates the popular evangelical imagination. Not that cities are not important: as areas where there are the highest concentrations of human beings, they are inevitably significant as mission fields. Rather, we were thinking of the `from a Garden to a City’ hermeneutic which jumps from scripture to giving modern urban sprawl some kind of special eschatological significance. Was there ever a thinner hermeneutical foundation upon which so much has been built? OK, there probably has been, but this is…
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How To Disagree Agreeably
Here are Tim Keller, Michael Horton and Matt Chandler telling us how it’s done. One piece of advice is particularly helpful. They highlight the importance of limiting criticism to positions actually held by your opponent. Don’t confuse your opponent’s view with what you see to be the necessary entailments of his view. For example, you may think that consistent Arminianism leads to open theism, but it is uncharitable and unfair to describe all Arminians as open theists. (HT: Justin Taylor)
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Albert Mohler on Homosexuality in WSJ
Albert Mohler has an opinion piece in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal about the moral revolution we have been witnessing concerning homosexuality. Speaking of evangelicals, he writes, We cannot accept the seductive arguments that the liberal churches so readily adopt. The fact that same-sex marriage is a now a legal reality in several states means that we must further stipulate that we are bound by scripture to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman—and nothing else.
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John Piper on NY Gay Marriage Decision
Today at DesiringGod.org, John Piper offers some sobering remarks about gay marriage in general and about the NY law in particular: On June 24 the New York legislature approved a Marriage Equality Act. This makes New York the sixth state where so-called homosexual marriages will be institutionalized: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, (and the District of Columbia).
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Passive Indifference about Gay Marriage
Conservative columnist James Taranto is “Exhibit A” of why gay marriage will eventually be legal in all 50 states. Those who might stand up in favor of marriage are simply shrinking back, and Taranto is among them. The GOP majority in the NY state senate is another case in point. There is a passive indifference on the part of these conservatives when it comes to social issues in general and to gay marriage in particular. Perhaps they would prefer that our laws only recognize traditional marriage, but no biggie if they don’t. Taranto represents this point of view really well. He writes:
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The 2010 Census and the Future of the Great Commission
The findings from the 2010 census are set to be released this summer, but some preliminary estimates are already being reported by the Associated Press. Every Christian who wants to understand what Great Commission ministry is going to look like in this century needs to pay attention to these numbers. Probably the most significant item in this report relates to minorities. No doubt, many of you have already heard that demographers predict that by 2050 whites will no longer be the majority in the United States. This census finds that for the first time minorities already make up a majority of babies in the U.S.
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I Spank My Kids
Spanking has become quite the controversial topic these days and has even become somewhat of a taboo in certain quarters. For this reason, Nancy French has a column in National Review Online in which she boldly declares “I Spank My Kids.” Her declaration is provoked by a report from Texas about a woman who was convicted of a felony for spanking her child. No belt was used, and no bruising occurred. Nevertheless, this woman lost custody of all three of her children and was sentenced to five years probation. After the trial, the judge scolded the mother saying:
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The SBC Resolution on the NIV
A surprising thing happened at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention last week. The messengers approved a resolution opposing the 2011 edition of the NIV. This kind of move is not unprecedented for an annual SBC meeting. Messengers approved similar resolutions in 1997 and in 2002, both of which were in response to gender-inclusive revisions of the NIV. But there was something different about the resolution that came out this year. This resolution came not from the resolutions committee, but from a single messenger who was concerned about the issue and who wanted the convention to speak to it.
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My Ex-Gay Friend
The New York Times has a fascinating report about a man paying a visit to his long lost ex-gay friend. The ex-gay friend is Michael Glatze, a former homosexual who has converted to Christianity. The author is Benoit Denizet-Lewis, and he writes: “One Saturday afternoon last winter, I drove north on Route 85 through the rolling rangeland of southeastern Wyoming. I was headed to a small town north of Cheyenne to see an old friend and colleague named Michael Glatze. We worked together 12 years ago at XY, a San Francisco-based national magazine for young gay men, back when we were young gay men ourselves… Michael was fast becoming the…