Is there a problem within evangelicalism in American? I had an acute sense of something being very wrong when I watched Tom Brokaw’s special last night on evangelical Christianity in America. “In God They Trust” was an hour long report on who evangelicals are and their involvement in American culture and politics. Brokaw made a particular church in Colorado the focus of his reporting. New Life Church is a charismatic fellowship in Colorado Springs, and their pastor Ted Haggard is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. One of Brokaw’s exchanges with Haggard in particular typifies what is wrong with American Evangelicalim today: Brokaw: Most of the churches that…
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A Postmortem on the Miers Nomination
A Triumph of Principle over Politics In church life, it is an accepted axiom that “a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.” In other words, a lack of spiritual substance in the pew is often a symptom of something that’s wrong in the pulpit. In the same way, conservative critics of Harriet Miers saw a nominee whose conservative bona fides could not be verified by her record. In the last several weeks, her misty record has looked more and more like a fog in the nominee. Just this week Miers’s speeches from the 1990’s have revealed a nominee who sounds more like a libertarian than a…
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Book Notice
Thank the Lord! The contract is signed, and my dissertation is scheduled to be published this summer in Sheffield Phoenix Press’s New Testament Monographs series. The book will be number 14 in the series, and the title is “Articular Infinitives in the Greek of the New Testament: On the Exegetical Benefit of Grammatical Precision.” As you can tell from the title, this book promises to be a real page-turner. I fully anticipate for Susan and me to be able to retire on the proceeds that I will receive from this blockbuster treatise. This book will likely be the surprise hit of the summer, and I expect it will be flying…
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“C.S. Lewis and the Quirky Idea of Male Headship”
Russell Moore has another great post. This one addresses C. S. Lewis’s views on male headship. The essay is titled, “C.S. Lewis and the Quirky Idea of Male Headship.” Moore is on a roll in this one. He comments on Wheaton professor Alan Jacobs’ speculation on C. S. Lewis’ view of the gender roles. Here’s one of Moore’s quotable zingers: “Jacobs argues that Lewis’s views of male headship would be articulated quite differently were he alive today . . . Professor Jacobs assumes then that Lewis’s views on male headship were culturally conditioned, that he would not consider the matter as important if only he could see the orthodox Christian…
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“The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have”
Patricia E. Bauer with her husband, Edward Muller, and their children, Margaret and Johnny Muller, in June at Margaret’s high school graduation in Massachusetts. Photo Credit: Courtesy Christina Overland Patricia E. Bauer, former Washington Post reporter and bureau chief, writes a stunningly pro-life Op-Ed today titled “The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have.” The article discusses whether it is right to abort a baby simply because pre-natal testing confirms that the baby has a disability. In Bauer’s case, the issue is intensely personal because she is raising a daughter named Margaret who has Down syndrome. She writes this about her daughter: Margaret is a person and a member of…
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Will James Dobson and Richard Land Be Subpoenaed?
It looks like James Dobson, Richard Land and others may very well be subpoenaed to appear before the Senate judiciary committee. The subpoenas look more and more likely as news of a certain conference call becomes public. According to John Fund in today’s Wall Street Journal, Dobson, Land and others were a part of a conference call, set up by the Bush administration, in which they received assurances that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Here is a paragraph from Fund’s piece: The conference call will no doubt prove controversial on Capitol Hill, always a tinderbox for rumors that any judicial nominee has taken…
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“Strong Grounding in the Church Could Be a Clue to Miers’s Priorities”
(From the Washington Post) “One evening in the 1980s, several years after Harriet Miers dedicated her life to Jesus Christ, she attended a lecture at her Dallas evangelical church with Nathan Hecht, a colleague at her law firm and her on-again, off-again boyfriend. The speaker was Paul Brand, a surgeon and the author of ‘Fearfully and Wonderfully Made,’ a best-selling exploration of God and the human body. “When the lecture was over, Miers said words Hecht had never heard from her before. ‘I’m convinced that life begins at conception,’ Hecht recalled her saying. According to Hecht, now a Texas Supreme Court justice, Miers has believed ever since that abortion is…
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Why Quick Endorsements for Miers from Evangelicals?
The newspaper of record has the best reporting that I have seen thus far on Harriet Miers. The story is titled “In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void.” This article gives great insight into Miers’s conversion to evangelical faith and the subsequent reconfiguring of her politics. This one is definitely worth your taking the time to read it. For those who have been wondering how prominent Evangelicals have been able to offer such a quick endorsement of someone who is largely an unknown quantity (e.g. James Dobson), there may be some information in this piece that helps to explain. The White House had Texas Supreme Court justice…
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Mohler Endorses Miers’s Nomination
Al Mohler has weighed-in in favor of Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court. After listing arguments against and in favor of her nomination, he appears to conclude that her pros outweigh her cons. He writes, “Her nomination deserves our support and close attention.”
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Encouraging News about Harriet Miers?
World magazine’s blog has an encouraging set of entries on Harriet Miers. According to an interview with her good friend, Texas Supreme Court justice Nathan Hecht, she is an originalist in her approach to constitutional (and biblical!) interpretation. The blog also reports that Miers is a committed evangelical Christian who is a regular tither to her church in Dallas and who holds the same position on abortion as the majority of other evangelicals in America. As for reports that Miers donated money to Democrat candidates for President in the late 80’s, Hecht says, “If she did it, it was because [her law] firm made her do it.”