Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes what many evangelicals already suspected: “At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith. “Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.” Kristof goes on to praise evangelicals for their work on poverty,…
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Rick Warren on the “Colbert Report”
Pastor Rick Warren appeared on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” last night (see video below). I have to say that the show is not the best forum for discussing things eternal. The show is too light, and the gospel is too heavy to sustain any meaningful interaction about the things of God. Nevertheless, Warren made a go at it.
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Christian Unity with Islam?
In 2007, 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals unanimously came together to declare the common ground between Christianity and Islam. The document that they produced is titled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” and it declares that “love of God” and “love of neighbor” are points of unity between Christianity and Islam. A group from Yale Divinity School drafted a response in late 2007 titled, “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You.” The response has been endorsed by over 300 Christian scholars and leaders, many of whom are associated with the evangelical movement in North America. The evangelical endorsements include…
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Letter from a Birmingham Jail
On Saturday, John Piper exhorted pastors to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to shine the light of the gospel on racism. He also quoted at length from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Dr. King’s description of Jim Crow South is one of the most gut-wrenching things you’ll ever read. It’s hard to believe that people once spoke so openly in racist terms, but they did. Here’s Dr. King in his own words:
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Church Discipline Gets Chastised in WSJ
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story about the practice of church discipline in American evangelical churches. On the whole, the story is negative, focusing on cases which are less than exemplary. A church here in Dallas is mentioned in the article, Watermark Community Church, as well as First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, Alabama. The article says,
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Pat Robertson Knows Who Will Be Next President
Pat Robertson is saying that God revealed to him who will be the next president of the United States, but Robertson also says that he will not reveal what he thinks God told him. He did say, however, that he is not happy about what God told him and that he hopes that he heard God wrong. Here’s the video:
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Alex & Brett Harris for Huckabee
Alex and Brett Harris are in the New York Times this morning in support of Mike Huckabee. It looks like they may Rebelutionize the GOP before it’s all said and done. If you don’t know anything about these two teenage boys, then you might be interested to hear the interview Al Mohler did with them several months ago. [click play button] [audio:http://www.sbts.edu/MP3/totl/2007/AMP_08_31_2007.mp3] “Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Guard” – by David Kirkpatrick (New York Times)
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Shake-up in “Young Life” Ministry
Colin Hansen at Christianity Today reports on a shake-up going on in the parachurch youth ministry Young Life. The leaders of the ministry recently adopted a sort of statement of faith called the “Non-Negotiables of Young Life’s Gospel Proclamation.” The new measures have resulted in the firing or resignation of 10 staff members in the Raleigh-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. For those of you who are involved in or concerned about the ministry of Young Life, you might want to check out the rest of this story. “Gospel Talk: Entire area Young Life staff out after evangelism mandate” – by Colin Hansen (Christianity Today)
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Mohler’s Candidacy in the News
Last week I noted that Dr. R. Albert Mohler will be nominated this summer to serve as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Some reports have already appeared in the media, and they are worth taking a look at. Not only do these reports describe who Mohler is and his role in the conservative resurgence of the SBC, but they also include some comments from critics of Mohler. Unfortunately, the criticism is not constructive. In both cases, the criticism is at best wrong-headed, at worst subversive to the life of the SBC.
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Hypocrisy in the Anglican Communion?
According to the Associated Press, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., Katharine Jefferts Schori, says that the only difference between gay clergy in the American church and those in other churches in the world is that the Americans are now open about it. Speaking of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Bishop to be elected in the Episcopal church, she says this: “He is certainly not alone in being a gay bishop; he’s certainly not alone in being a gay partnered bishop. He is alone in being the only gay partnered bishop who’s open about that status.”