Blind, Stupid, or What?

“Last week, Gonzales sent leaders of Congress a 42-page legal defense of warrantless eavesdropping which suggests that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is unconstitutional if it prevents the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping.” AP writer Pete Yost 1-24-06
This is definitely a new low (or maybe high, depending on your political persuasion) in spin-doctoring. Initially, the Bush administration claimed that its domestic surveillance program was legal under FISA. Now it is claiming that if it is not legal under FISA then FISA is unconstitutional. I used to use the “Blind, Stupid, or What?” login for items regarding the lying of the Bush administration, but I now find it hard to believe that any rational person can put any trust in anything that comes out of the Whitehouse.
George W. Bush has been lying his entire career. Take you choice of issues: National Guard Service, WMDs, outing of CIA agents, etcetera, ad nauseum. Where is Jimmy Carter when we need him? Oh yeah, he out there doing some good for the kingdom of God.

PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD

Still very busy but needed to pass this on. I received an email from a college student with the subject:

PLEASE SIGN SCHOOL PETITION AND FORWARD

I was interested to see what kind of petition I was supposed to sign and discovered the following text:

PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Agree or Delete: Instructions to sign are at the bottom.
PETITION FOR PRES. BUSH

Following that was a list of 1839 names from all over the country.

As a firm believer that real prayer was not and cannot be removed from public schools, and consequently cannot be “reinstated,” I was not moved to add my name to the list and then forward it to a few thousand of my closest friends. But I was struck by the following dire warning that showed up at the end of the list of names.

If you don't forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names. If you do not want to sign it, please forward it to everyone you know. Thank you!!!
To add your name, click on "forward". You will be able to add your name at the bottom of the list and then forward it to your friends.
THE 2,000TH PERSON SEND IT ON TO THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESS  President@white.gov

“If you do not want to sign it, please forward it to everyone you know. Thank you.” I give them points for being polite and points for shear audacity, but just how stupid do they think I am? That, by the way, is a rhetorical answer which does not require a response.

What a temptation, all I have to do is not forward this message and all 1839 names of well-meaning but woefully misguided people will be lost. But upon further examination I saw that the sender had included six other names. It would be just my luck that one of them will sign and forward it.  It was interesting to see who was on the list.

One is from a baptist college
One is from a catholic college
One is probably a nurse, might be wrong but nurse_2b06@____  seems like a sure thing
One works for the OK state tax commission
One works for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Service
And one is only identified as smilelady70

All of them and me is an interesting group. I wonder if there is a way we could get together to discuss this issue.  Alas, I don’t see how it can be done without mining the list for addresses which I consider to be the unforgiveable sin.

Super Power Teacher

It’s a busy month, I’ve not had much time for blogging but found this on McCarty Musing and thought it was interesting/enlightening/disturbing/all-of-the-above.

if the US wants to run the world and be able to kick some serious military ass, we have to sacrifice certain other things. Like health-care. And maternity benefits. And reduced or free lunches for poor kids.

A Clear and Present Danger

Dialogue between a fictional president and the other kind.

FP: “You broke the law. You’re going to jail.”

OK:  “You are such a boy scout. You see everything in black and white.”

FP:  “Not black and white.  Right and wrong.”

OK: “I am not a crook.”

Oops, for some reason I keep reverting to that previous other kind of president.

The Slave is Our Brother

In a morning marked by the dissension and controversy about an increasingly unpopular war, I was pleasantly surprised to learn in church this morning the background of one of my all-time favorite Christmas songs, Oh Holy Night. Considering myself to be well-versed on the social aspects of the gospel, I was intrigued to hear that the song was written by a socialist wine-seller, the music by a Jew, and the English translated by an ardent abolitionist. The song premiered at midnight mass on Christmas 1847 in Roquemaure, France. Even though it was a very popular Christmas song in France, at one time it was banned for use in catholic churches. The problem with the song was that the author, Placide Cappeau, had became, according to one web-site, " a social radical, a freethinker, a socialist, and a non-Christian." The article goes on to say that later in his life, "he adopted some of the more extreme political and social views of his era, such as opposition to inequality, slavery, injustice, and other kinds of oppression." Certainly doesn't sound very Christian by many of today's definitions.

John S. Dwight translated it into English in 1855. Dwight was a Transcendentalist, a "commune"ist (see Brook Farm, MA), an abolitionist, and one of the foremost critics and proponents of classical music of his day. The song was very popular in the churches of the North during the civil war for obvious reasons.

There is a great deal of folklore which has been attached to the song. It is credited with being the song sung to begin the Christmas day truce of the Franco-Prussian War. It may have been the first song ever broadcast by radio. It was sung by me at one of my earliest public performances. (All right, it was at an 8th grade piano recital. The fact that they asked me to sing rather than play is indicative of my lack of skill at the piano. To paraphrase one of my favorite movie characters, "Eight years of piano down the drain.")

As we continue to debate the significant and not-so-significant issues of our day, it is good to stop and remember that "yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."

A small prophecy fulfilled

I make no claim to being a prophet, at least in the contemporary predictive sense of the word. But sometimes I do get something right.  A couple of years ago a told a friend, who was considering leaving the SBC because of the actions of the current leadership, to be patient.  I told him that the current leadership of the SBC cannot survive because they will self destruct.  When they no longer have "liberals" (can anyone tell me who those liberals were and where they are today?) to fight against they will start fighting each other.  We have already witnessed some opening salvos of the battle with the replacement of Ken Hemphill at SWBTS with Paige Patterson.  Now the trustees of the International Mission Board have stirred up a hornets nest with their passage of new selection guidelines.

Such “supposed pillars” of the “supposed conservative resurgence” as Morris Chapman and Wade Burleson (see Crusading Conservatives vs. Cooperating Conservatives: The War for the Future of the Southern Baptist Convention)  are greatly disturbed because the tactics which were used to “take of the convention and its agencies” are now be used to “take over the convention and its agencies.”  Somehow these men and there supporters still don’t understand that the take over of the SBC was never about theology. It was always about power.

Oh well, like my church history prof used to say, “If the SBC ever splits, go with the Annuity Board.”

They Have Forgotten . . .

“They have forgotten that what they believe is older than that which they read.”

An interesting statement from The Sacred Idolatry by James Shelly. He goes on:

They say, ‘We have the Book, and therefore we believe,’ but they forget those who believed before there was a Book. They forget that before the Book was formed, the Faith was sought. The Book did not give birth to faith. No, faith gave birth to the Book. The Book did not write faith, but faith wrote the Book.

To read the article go to The Ooze

Follow up to Another one bites the dust

Messengers to the Missouri Baptist Convention took aim at a treasured Baptist principle, the autonomy of the local church, by approving an amendment to their constitution which “changed the membership eligibility requirement from ‘any Baptist church in sympathy with the objects of the Convention …’ to ‘Any Southern Baptist church singly aligned with the Convention….’”  Historically Southern Baptist organizations have avoided the kind of connectionalism between groups that was approved in Missouri.  You can get differing perspectives on the vote from ABP, “Missouri Baptists narrow membership to exclude CBF, moderate churches,” and BP, “Missouri Baptists strengthen ties to SBC, MBC.”  It is a signficant that what one reports as narrowing and restricting the other reports as strengthening.  The fundys have now attacked “the lordship of Jesus Christ,” “the priesthood of the believer,” and “the autonomy of the local church.” I wonder what they will go after next.

That about sums it up.

Referring to the case against Scooter Libby:

Michael Madigan, a former Republican counsel in the Senate investigation of Clinton-era campaign fund-raising abuses. "The trouble the White House encountered in this case is that some of the information was classified."

Spin those Babies, SBC

We now have new evidence that the SBC's mouth organ, Baptist Press, is definitely not a "No-Spin Zone." A new article, FIRST-PERSON: Contracepting the New Birth? , puts an interesting theological/sociological spin on the news that conservative church growth over the past few decades is due more to biology than theology. (See "Baby Boom Growth in Conservative Churches " below) Russell D. Moore, who is not willing to give up the conservative mantra about why they are growing, quotes the Christian Century article,

"For most of the 20th century conservative women had more children than mainline women did," the sociologists wrote in Christian Century."

He then adds his spin,

Oh, so it is not that old-line Protestantism has adopted the sterile ideologies of modernism. It's just that they have adopted the idea that children should be delayed, and procreation downplayed. So, in other words, they've adopted the sterile ideologies of modernism.

(That's an interesting leap of logic. I'm not at all sure he read the same article I did. But he goes on . . .)

First of all, churches that don't celebrate and exult in children aren't going to celebrate and exult in evangelism. After all, the "fruitful and multiply" clause in Genesis is echoed back in the Great Commission of Christ, a commission that also seeks to fill the entire earth. Jesus links procreation to new creation by speaking of new converts as newborn babies, and through His apostles of the community of faith as the household of God. Moreover, He announces to His Father that He stands before Him with the redeemed of all the ages, "the children you have given me" (Heb 2:13).

If this is an example of the theology taught at Southern Seminary let the students beware. First of all, what is the warrant for his first of all claim? Is this based on some empirical study, or just a corollary of the conservative belief that if they don’t do it my way they don’t do it right?

Second of all, if I belonged to an old-line Protestant church, I would be very offended with his conclusion that because we are more likely to use contraception we do not “celebrate and exult” in our children. I’m not sure what principle of interpretation he uses to conjoin being fruitful and multiplying to making disciples except that obviously if you are fruitful you will have more targets for discipleship.

As far as the link between procreation and new creation, sure there is a link. You obviously have to be “born” before you can be “born again.” But that is exactly what the authors of the original articles said. Conservative church growth can be attributed to having more babies. But having more babies cannot be attributed to having a conservative theology.

In the unforgettable words of Dr. Malcolm Sayer, “I’m sorry, if you were right, I would agree with you.”