I got snookered! That last @CaedmonsCall Tweet was not from the real Cliff Young at all. Sorry, Caedmon’s! I was wrong in substance and tone, and I apologize. I repent in sackcloth and ashes. Going to go listen to this song for a while.
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Hardball on Hagee and Beck
Chris Matthews takes umbrage with John Hagee’s appearance at the Glenn Beck rally. I don’t think the conversation here is all that helpful or illuminatng—except in one sense. This is the most theology I think I have ever heard discussed on “Hardball.” The discussion touches on theodicy, sin, judgment, and the nature of God. That’s pretty unusual for this program, but it does show where some of these characters are on the most important questions in the world. One more thing. Even though Matthews is a Roman Catholic, he regularly opposes Roman Catholic teaching on his program. It seems a bit inconsistent to defend the church against the likes of…
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Andrew Peterson on Poverty
Do you have to take a vow of poverty to be a Christian? Is money the root of all evil? Andrew Peterson says no, and I agree. You need to read all of this one, but here’s the conclusion: “The point: being poor is not the only way to radically follow Christ. Some people are called to it. I have long felt a tension between all that I learned from the Kid Brothers and Rich Mullins about identifying with the poor and the weak, versus my holy responsibility to tend to my family’s spiritual and physical needs.
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Ezell to NAMB
This is the happiest SBC news I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t imagine a better leader for NAMB. Pastor Kevin Ezell has been nominated to be the next President of the North American Mission Board (the domestic missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention). Jim Smith has the story here.
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Beck’s Revival
Russell Moore has Glenn Beck’s number—or at least that of Beck’s erstwhile “evangelical” following. Moore is rightly scathing in his rebuke of evangelicals who would confuse genuine revival with Mormon-American-pie-populist politics. That’s exactly what was on display this weekend at Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial. It was a mash-up of civic religion and syncretism that had some evangelicals looking to Glenn Beck as some kind of a spiritual leader. It exposed the fact that far too many evangelicals still can’t tell the difference between heresy and the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Moore writes: “It’s taken us a long time to get here, in…
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Is Your Doctor a Believer?
Is your doctor a believer? If not, a new study suggests that the care he is giving you may be inferior to that of believing doctors. The study appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics, and in it Dr. Clive Seale surveys more than 3,700 British doctors, of whom 2,923 reported on how they took care of their last terminally ill patient. In short, “Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to make decisions that could end the lives of their terminally ill patients, compared to doctors who are very religious” (AP report). Medical care is not value-neutral. That much is clear from this study. In fact,…
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Giberson Shows His Hand
Karl Giberson really showed his hand in his response to Albert Mohler’s open letter. He acknowledges that he is not a theologian, but he nevertheless makes a weighty theological pronouncement. But I don’t sense that he realizes how weighty it really is. Here he is in his own words. “Is it not here that we find the central truth of our faith? Our sinful nature is a simple reality… But is it not possible that we might have different ideas about how we came to have that nature? Does the saving power of Jesus vanish if sin becomes something that developed through natural history, rather than appeared all at once…
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Christian Hosoi: I Am Second
About a year ago, I found out about the conversion of one of my childhood heroes—Christian Hosoi (read about it here). He was a professional skateboarder, and I thought he was the best in the world. He was big-time in the 80’s, but the 90’s were a different story. He got all strung-out on drugs and eventually landed in jail. But that wasn’t the end of his story. Hear the rest of the story in the “I Am Second” video above. I think it’s amazing how the Lord works. For Hosoi, the text God used to quicken his heart was 1 Kings 2:1-9—the story of David’s exhortation to Solomon as…
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Mohler Responds to Giberson
In short, Mohler concedes an historical detail but presses Giberson on the larger theological point. Giberson and the folks at BioLogos need to grapple with the substance of Mohler’s argument. The dating of Darwin’s lapse into unbelief is not what this debate is about.
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The Future of Evangelicalism and the SBC
Dr. Mohler’s convocation address this morning was outstanding, and it relates to the subject matter of my last post. The title of the address is “Which Way to the Future? Southern Baptists, Southern Seminary, and the Future of the Evangelical Movement in America” (download audio here). In essence, Dr. Mohler argues that the evangelical movement provided the theological resources that the SBC needed to mount its conservative resurgence in the 80’s and 90’s. Now, Southern Baptists find themselves in the position of returning the favor. As the theological identity of evangelicalism becomes increasingly amorphous (and in some cases theologically liberal), Southern Baptists—with Southern Seminary included—need to lead the way in…