Doug Wilson has posted an interesting article today about the abolitionist and incrementalist approaches to opposing abortion. If you are unfamiliar with this debate, then I direct you to a piece I wrote about it last summer (here). Wilson and I both hold to incrementalism—that is, while we both want to see the abolition of legal abortion, we support policies that would reduce abortion along the way to that ultimate goal (like the new “heartbeat” law in Texas). Incrementalism is the mainstream pro-life position. Incrementalism does not entail an endorsement of every incrementalist measure. Indeed, some such measures could be ill-conceived and imprudent or perhaps surrendering too much on principle.…
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Can Calvinists Sing “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is Calling”?
John Piper’s message at T4G 2014 was one of the most memorable sermons I have ever heard. His assignment was to preach Romans 9, to explain the doctrine of election, and to show how that doctrine is NOT at odds with the free offer of the gospel to all sinners. At the end of the message, he tells a story about his father, who was a Southern Baptist evangelist. Many “cage-stage” Calvinists would not put Romans 9 together with an old school tent revival, but Piper does. And it’s beautiful. Here’s the description of the message from the T4G website: Why is Romans 9 in the Bible? More specifically, why…
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Buckle-up Pro-lifers. They will say anything to silence us.
The left is apoplectic about the shutdown of death-dealing abortion mills in Texas. Nothing is more catastrophic to them than that babies would no longer be subject to legal execution. And there is hardly anything they won’t say or do to get the abortionists back to the important business of killing the unborn. For that reason, you can expect to hear some crazy, wild claims in days ahead. You are going to hear downright asinine allegations about pro-lifers and their “sinister” motivations. Here is a case in point. Jeff Greenfield claims in Politico that evangelical opposition to abortion was merely a pretext for racial discrimination: It turns out that abortion…
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Is Debating CRT a Distraction from Racial Justice?
Jake Meador recently declared that racial reconciliation within Reformed Evangelicalism is effectively dead: “So far as I can tell, that conversation, which once showed such promise, is over.” You don’t have to agree with his explanation for why this is the case to see that he has a point. Things were already tense before the pandemic, but from the murder of George Floyd until now, we seem to have gotten ourselves into a tailspin. What happened? Evangelicals have differences over why things are the way they are right now. One side thinks the other is in the throes of Marxist identity politics. Another side thinks the other is marinating in…
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Should Christians Cuss?
For some time now, I have had a growing pastoral concern about Christians using foul language. This concern has been driven in no small part by well-known pastors who commend the use of foul language and who do so based on foul language that they perceive to be in scripture. They acknowledge that the Bible says that we should not be using certain kinds of language: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Eph. 5:4). But they also allege that the Bible itself elsewhere uses the very language that it prohibits in Ephesians 5:4. While…
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How a Christian Patriot Might Love His Wayward Country
I love G. K. Chesterton’s reflections on what it means to be a Christian patriot. If you have never read it, I encourage you to read “The Flag of the World” in his classic work Orthodoxy. Chesterton contends that love of one’s homeland is not like house-hunting—an experience in which you weigh the pros and cons of a place and choose accordingly. He writes: A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential…
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Self-Deprecation
I love Arthur Bennett’s Puritan prayer book The Valley of Vision. These prayers are a regular part of my devotional life, and sometimes I bring them to corporate prayer in my church as well. One one of the prayers of confession has been particularly meaningful to me for about twenty years now. It is titled “Self-Deprecation,” and I led our congregation in prayer with it last Sunday morning. As I said, this one has meant a lot to me over the years. I pray it will to you as well. _______________ SELF-DEPRECATION My every sense, member, faculty, affection is a snare to me, I can scarce open my eyes but…
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Why I opposed an anti-abortion resolution at the SBC
Two weeks ago, I thought the most important resolution coming before the Southern Baptist Convention would be about Critical Race Theory. I need to give up my prognosticating, because I turned out to be epically wrong in that prediction. That resolution didn’t even come close to being the most important resolution before the messengers. I made that prediction not knowing what I know now—that the convention would pass a resolution that amounts to a repudiation of the pro-life movement. In fact, this resolution is a break with every single pro-life resolution that the SBC has passed in the last 41 years. How could such a thing happen in a denomination…
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Dealing with Resolution 9… or not?
Last month, I made a prediction that we wouldn’t leave the SBC in Nashville without a resolution making it absolutely clear how Southern Baptists feel about CRT. How has that prediction turned out? It’s hard to say now because we still have more to debate and discuss tomorrow. Most notably, the Committee on Order of Business will report tomorrow on a motion to rescind Resolution 9 passed at 2019 SBC. If we are able to vote on that motion and rescind, it would serve the same purpose as a strong resolution. I suspect, however, that the motion will be ruled out of order and that we will not have the…
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Looking ahead to the SBC in Nashville
Today Ronnie Floyd — the President of the SBC Executive Committee — announced that over 16,000 messengers have pre-registered for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Over 16,000 pre-registered messengers for #SBC21 https://t.co/TVniU8bLrB — Ronnie Floyd (@ronniefloyd) June 9, 2021 To put this number in perspective, you have to keep in mind that 16,000 is about twice the attendance that we had at our last meeting. In fact, we haven’t had this many people show up for an annual meeting since 1995 in Atlanta (see stats at bottom). From the looks of things, this is shaping up to be a watershed convention. From the presidential election to debates…
