Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-27-15

That America is no longer a Christian nation, the theme of our most recent message, struck a chord. Many people sense this sea-change in our culture.

A few people, we know, celebrate the facts that the church, and traditional values, no longer underpin our society. They are like maggots on a rotting corpse. But the vast majority of Americans today, the virtual silent majority, are troubled. They recognize the shifting sands; they despise the new morality; they reject the Brave New World.

America once bragged about being a pluralistic society. All forms of thought, all stripes of opinion, were welcome. No longer: Christian patriots are bring attacked. Cultural traditionalists are on the run, seeing nowhere to turn. A complete turnaround from what pluralism was supposed to preclude.

Where to turn? What options are there in a culture that has been hijacked, a nation that is no longer pluralistic, scarcely tolerant of our foundational principles? Threats of arrest for dissenting from homosexual marriage? A publicly funded agency caught discussing more efficient and profitable harvesting and sale of baby parts?

Traditionally, despite the “dirty” connotations, we turn to politics. Every mature society throughout history has, perforce, established rules, codes, and laws. When laws have been capricious (from dictators and mad monarchs) they have disappeared; sometimes quietly, sometimes bloodily. But the other societies, in natural if not always smooth evolution, codify the prevalent manners and morals, beliefs and byways, of the people. In recent centuries, this happened more and more (more or less!) through democracy.

Therefore, politics. Leaders and statesmen, for the most part, rise from the people… and represent them. Think Abraham Lincoln. When – not so long ago – our societies were more organic, it mattered little whether leaders reflected public opinion or molded it. In the main, it was the same thing, for our societies were organic. We knew our origins, we shared our faith, we accepted the same premises, we were unified, if not quite uniform.

That has all passed, hasn’t it? But I will put my pessimism aside and focus on the topic of politics – not to be partisan or to boost any candidate – but remembering the time when the public looked to leaders in their midst during crises.

I want to be specific about the topic of candidates and Christianity here. In the past, oh sure, some politicians were adulterers or drunks, but we are all sinners. In the past, most politicians clung to the principles of the Bible, dedicated themselves to Christian principles, honored the nation’s heritage. So voters could count on candidates, generally, to be of one mind on morality.

Today, we have examples of the Catholic Church, in various dioceses, denying Communion to politicians like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi for their advocacy of abortion.

Today, we have a president who often has been dismissive of Christian beliefs, of Christian martyrs and hostages around the world, of persecuted Christians; and at the same time has been strangely tolerant of Islamic extremism, at home and abroad.

Today, we have a recent presidential candidate, Romney, a Mormon – member of a counterfeit Christian-sounding sect. I am not saying LDS should be outlawed or proscribed, but I had trouble voting for someone, not who would “take orders” from his church any more than John Kennedy did… but who could believe the mumbo-jumbo about figgy underwear and magic glasses and such. But, you know, President Taft was a Unitarian and denied the divinity of Christ, and America survived him.

But I want us to think more about candidates who fill our airwaves in the run-up to 2016. Again, will they represent the values of the broad public? As Christians, we have, and we should have, views on issues that our central to our lives. And, yes, our faith… because our faith is under attack.

We are losing our freedom of religion. The very first words enshrined in the Bill of Rights are: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”

Congress never has tried to establish an American denomination, and never will. But it – and the courts (and the press, and the educational complex, and the entertainment industry) – are trying to destroy organized religion, and the small-c church of Jesus Christ. Certainly, examples are numerous of the government prohibiting the free exercise of our faith these days.

We have some candidates indicating a perception of these threats, and a few sharing our (proper) alarm.

What will they do? We must watch. We must study. We must apply pressure. We must challenge. We must work. We must push back. We must speak out, or shout out. We must sacrifice. We must organize. We must… pray.

There is a high percentage, thank God, of candidates who have heard, or even rung, the alarm bells! Support them. Some are not afraid to share their faith, to pray in public, to invoke Jesus and the Bible. Join them. They are not saviors; only Jesus is our Savior. But they might be prophets: godly leaders.

I have avoided most names in the news here, but one news clip prompted this rant. Donald Trump was asked this week if he believed in God. “I am an Episcopalian,” he replied, as if it were a rhetorical question. It is not. And it would have been easy to confess Jesus Christ right there.

Then he was asked if he ever sought forgiveness from God. In his life. Trump said no; if he thought he did something wrong he would try to correct it on his own. He displayed no understanding of the basis of the entire Bible or the life, ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus Christ: as much understanding of Christianity as the most ignorant aborigine from the dankest jungle somewhere. “I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

Then Trump volunteered: “When we go [to] church and when I drink my little wine – which is about the only wine I drink – and have my little cracker, I guess that’s a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed, OK?” My little wine? Cracker?

This is Christianity, according to one candidate.

I don’t want a Christian caliphate in America, but I do want us to support a candidate who shares our values, understands our bedrock beliefs, who embraces our heritage. Knowing what, in fact, to defend in these perilous days. This week’s opinion about immigrants should not be the only bell whose ring invigorates us. I was shocked at the appearance of a candidate who evidently feels on a par or superior to God, or irrelevant to Him, if he in fact does believe in Him.

One candidate or many candidates; one party or different factions; one nation or diverse communities – what ever happened to the idea, and the humble application, of One Nation Under God?

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Click: In God We Trust

10-17-11

Rational discourse in America seems to be an endangered species. Activists should be working to preserve Logic, not only snail darters and old trees; and if we were to rescue Reason it might become easier to rescue unborn babies.

Look at all the stuff in the news these days. People proclaim their “rights” when they don’t acknowledge anything as wrong. TV interviewers answer their own questions before they ask them. Interview subjects routinely answer questions that are not asked. The “Occupy” mobs are walking oxymorons: they shout “Anarchists Unite!” and they are endorsed by politicians whose policies the protestors supposedly despise. Circular illogic. Rationality has moved and left no forwarding address.

Common Sense is, itself, a member of those Unemployment Figures we hear about. The current flap over Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and other candidates’ opinions of it – and issues surrounding their own faiths – blow across the landscape like a big sand storm, blinding everyone in its path.

It all is characteristic of our contemporary culture’s moral confusion and intellectual cowardice. Mitt Romney is a Mormon, in fact descended from church hierarchy; being an overseas missionary and relatives recently living in Mormon “communities” in Mexico are part of his resume. A large number of Christians are curious or suspicious – or outright reject – a religion with core beliefs that are separate from the Old and New Testaments; with practices that are airlock-secret; with recent tenets that include denigration of blacks and women, and the embrace of polygamy.

Now that Mormons are running for president, Christians are thinking about Mormonism in the same way (maybe more carefully) that they consider candidates’ positions on, say, the capital gains tax, or free trade with Southeast Asian nations. Many are saying “I would not feel comfortable voting for a man who believes those things.” Or, maybe, “I would not feel comfortable with the kind of man who could believe those things.” It is reasonable to reach such conclusions, and is legal to state them. But it is being called bigotry.

Christians who decline to vote for Mormons do not confess to hatred, nor to anti-Mormon laws nor persecution nor deportation. They just declare they will vote for another person. If some use the word “cult,” it should be recognized that for decades evangelicals and Pentecostals have taught that cults are non-Christian sects that were started by, or still revolved around, an individual human. That would be Joseph Smith, in the case of the Mormons. No one claims that Mitt Romney is going to command his followers to drink Kool-Aid en masse. Objections to someone using the term “cult” over-reach.

There are tender threads of reason and clarity that might redeem a controversy that should not be a controversy.

1. The Mormons are in a horrible dander that people do not recognize them as Christians. “Look, our name is ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” said John Huntsman, rolling his eyes in a “duh” response about LDS. A movement that believes what it does about multiple gods, and the afterlife, and Jesus’ appearances on earth, and so forth, ought to be able to understand the reservations of traditional Christians, especially when all of Mormonism’s tenets are not even shared outside LDS. If the Mormons can disavow the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the sect of Warren Jeffs, convicted polygamist and child rapist) as a distorted off-spin of LDS, why cannot Christians be free to regard Mormonism as a distorted off-spin of biblical Christianity?

2. When Michele Bachmann’s traditional Lutheran synod holds to ancient characterizations of the Pope, the media called its members bigots; the implication being that other voters should reject members of that denomination. But when citizens decline to vote for a Mormon because of its beliefs… they are the ones labeled incipient bigots. The only constant, if you will notice, is that Christians are always painted as the nasty haters. Millions of liberals reject any candidate who opposes abortions, but they are never portrayed as haters or bigots in the press.

3. If it is bigotry to act, as a citizen, according to your convictions, then how soon do the Thought Police arrive, and how will they punish our opinions? And what a topsy-turvy world this has become. Christians are being murdered and sentenced to death for their faith in Pakistan, our ally. There are no Christians churches left, all having been closed or razed, in Afghanistan, another ally. In Iraq, after thousands of Americans died and billions of American dollars spent, two-thirds of a substantial Christian population have fled the country because of persecution, or have been murdered for their faith. All subsequent to Saddam Hussein. We can look at our ally Egypt, too, where since the Arab Spring, Christians churches have been invaded and Christians attacked, sometimes with the Army watching, sometimes by the Army. And the US Administration reserves its policy objections and sanctions for other countries, other causes.

The relation to the Mormon controversy, so-called? The media would paint those who decline to vote for an LDS candidate as virtual Taliban Trainees. In truth it is the opposite. Clarity of Thought informs Responsibility to Act, which both undergird the Duty to Vote, all of which are necessary prerequisites of Freedom of Religion. The Thought Police, with their Compassion meters, would strip-search everyone’s standards and consciences at the curtain of every voting machine.

Mormons are free to run for office in America. Who questions that? Nobody. And the rest of us are free to vote. Or not to vote. And, for the moment, we are still free to think.

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A traditional hymn of the church is here sung by the boys’ choir Libera. As we have noted, traditional, evangelical, and Pentecostal Christians seem to be the culture’s last remaining faith to denigrate. Any exercise of their own biblical beliefs is routinely called “hate speech.” This hymn is from a time when Christians asserted themselves more bravely and with assurance, not from hatred of men but love of God.

Click: Onward, Christian Soldiers