A Must Read

As some of my friends know, the only thing that kept me from swimming the Tiber a while ago was Pope Benedict XIV: he seems often to want to reverse the progress that the Catholic Church made at Vatican II. That having been said, his latest encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" is a must read, and some of the best Christian Social Thought I've read to date:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

Important Thoughts on a Critical Topic

A few months ago, Leah Ward Sears' name had been tossed around in the speculation of who would be President Obama' first nominee to the Supreme Court. Today, I was shocked to learn that she has stepped down from her position as the Chief Justice of Georgia's State Supreme Court. Her explanation of why she made that decision, as well as great commentary on marriage and divorce, are here:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/07/02/sears.family.divorce/index.html

Great website

As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of the controversial Bishop of Durham, N.T Wright. If you want an introduction to his thought that won't require the 700-800 pages of reading each of Jesus and the Victory of God or The Resurrection of the Son of God, then this website has a collection of really great essays by Wright:

www.ntwrightpage.com

Reinhold Niebuhr quote of the day

It's been a busy week here in Beantown, so I haven't had a chance to write part 3 to my thoughts yet. In the meantime, enjoy this passage from a Niebuhr essay entitled "The Christian Church in a Secular Age" that I read last night.

"It was Roman law, the pride of all pagan civilization, and Hebraic religion, the acme of religious devotion, which crucified the Lord. Thus does the cross reveal the problem of all human culture and the dilemma of every human civilization...the truest interpretations of the Christian faith have come in moments of history when civilizations were crumbling and the process of history and the judgments of God had humbled human arrogance."

Urbi et Orbi,
TBG

Of Mice and Ministers, Part 2

Continued from Saturday...

So what happened? I think the answer lies in one saying of Jesus: "My Kingdom is not of this world."

I'm of the opinion that this verse is directed squarely at the Church as we follow Christ as His disciples. As the subjects of the King, we are the representatives of the Kingdom to this day and age. We cannot allow the way we do Kingdom work to reflect a World of which we aren't a part. The Church is not simply an institution, a charitable organization, or a social club. It's not a part of your cultural heritage, a cornerstone of the community, or the preserver of moral values. And it's most definitely not a political organization. We are a people, a Kingdom, and our only purpose is to worship and serve our King.

And that's precisely where I think the SBC has tripped up: they have earned their reputation as being culture warriors. And it's not just the Baptists, it's the American church as a whole. We are anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-supply-side economics, etc., and we represent ourselves to the world as such. For quite some time, we have been a wing of the GOP. We've confused America with the Kingdom. We've spent too much time fighting against Mickey Mouse and not enough time fighting against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. We've run our churches as if they were a part of this World.

Michael Spencer, better known as the iMonk, is one of my favorite bloggers. He's written a compelling analysis of the problems in the SBC entitled "Change or Die". I encourage you to read it here: http://www.patrolmag.com/times/1694/change-or-die . The most telling thing Spencer reports, to me, is that the SBC simply doesn't have any money allocated for sending out new missionaries. From a theological tradition that has long been at the forefront of missions and evangelism, that strikes me as an incredible tragedy. We cannot fight for political control of our nation while we leave lost souls to die without hearing the Gospel. That amounts to a fundamental betrayal of the Great Comission.

As the Church in America, we must refocus. We must repent of our lust for political influence and remember that we are called to make disciples, not Republicans.

That having been said, are we to leave politics and the culture war completely neglected?

Part 3 tomorrow...

Of Mice and Ministers: Southern Baptists and the State of American Christianity, Part 1

The Berean Gadfly's been neglected for many months now. I sincerely apologize for that. The demands of law school were all-consuming for much of the past 6 months. I will post regularly for at least the rest of the summer, and we'll re-evaluate the time commitment after that.

"That's gay!" When I was in middle school, it was the one-size-fits-all insult. The kid in school you didn't like? Gay. Algebra teacher assigned a ton of homework? Gay. Your favorite punk band sold out to the man? Flaming homosexuals. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade we had our own version of the Salem witch trials, only the subject of our inquisition was anything that "batted for the other team." There were gay things under every rock and tree. It was always especially bad at PE, when physical prowess was the only sure-fire proof that you were straight. The poor kids at school who were just bad at sports got called "gay" more often than Elton John.

Fortunately, when I entered high school, my insult repertoire grew enormously, as did my understanding of how sensitive a topic sexuality is. I've often wondered, though, if many in leadership at the Southern Baptist Convention ever quite moved on from middle school: prominent SBC ministers have made plenty of headlines over the past few decades for things like accusing tele-tubbies of being queer or starting a new boycott of Disney every other day for some new non-hetero infraction. The news media has never failed to pick up on one of these stories, and over the years there's been plenty of opportunities for journalists to make Christianity out to be a never-ending scene from my eighth grade gym class.

I thought about all of these things this afternoon when I read a story MSNBC has posted on their website: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31447763/ It seems there's a decline in Southern Baptist membership. In addition, stats like "new baptisms" are down. This is leading to a bit of an identity crisis in the nation's largest protestant denomination. Some members are wanting to eschew politics, others want to stay the course, still others just want to invest more money in foreign missions.

In some respects, the SBC is just late to the party: Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodists denominations have been in decline for decades. But in other respects, things are different for the Baptists: this wasn't supposed to happen to them. Baptist thinkers such as Al Mohler for years have claimed that the decline in the so-called main line denominations was due to liberal theology. The reasoning went something like "if people don't see their own sinfulness, they won't see a need to keep coming to church." If only Baptists stayed faithful to orthodoxy, they would continue to grow. Thus in the 80's and 90's there was a purge: moderates and liberals were forced out of SBC leadership as Mohler forced them out of professorships at Southern Seminary in Kentucky, the denomination's flagship ministry school. Things were looking good for the ol' boys down south.

So what happened?

Continued tomorrow.

Urbi et Orbi,
TBG

Insert your own metaphor...

I promise I will get to another missions post soon. In the meantime, enjoy this link:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/west/view/2008_11_21_Sarah_Palin_pardons_turkey_while_others_slaughtered_during_interview/

I love it. Palin pardons turkey. Palin turns around to give interview. Turkey farm continues to slaughter turkeys in the background. This is a great metaphor for...well, any number of things. Have fun!

Urbi et Orbi,

TBG

Mind The Gap

It has now been a full 10 days since my last post. My most humble apologies! School has been absolutely crazy. I will have another post on missions tomorrow, Lord willing and the creek don't rise (as Dr. James Strange would say). In the meantime, I would encourage everyone to check out savedarfur.org and prayerfully consider what we as Christians can do about the crisis in Sudan. The human rights group on campus here recently showed a documentary about the genocide that has been taking place, and God's been putting it on my heart to take action, but I'm not sure what to do just yet. Suggestions?

Urbi et Orbi,

TBG

Yes, We Can

My ancestors came to this nation on a dirty, cramped boat. They came because the potato crop had failed, and they needed food. They needed life and liberty. They needed Hope.

When they came, they met poverty, hunger, and adversity. They met with employers who posted signs that read "No Irish Need Apply". But they kept on striving. They had Hope.

48 years ago, one of us was given the highest honor any mortal man can have: to lead the United States of America. An Irish Catholic kid from Brookline, Massachusetts was elected President of the United States. He had his failings, and his moral faults. But he stood for equality, justice, and freedom. Though he was struck down as a young man, his flame still burns in Arlington, and his Hope still lives.

Barack Obama's ancestors came from very different places. They came, from Africa and Europe, from Kansas and Kenya. They strove and persevered. They needed life and liberty. Above all, they Hoped.

What was the Hope of John F. Kennedy and Barck Obama? What gave them so much strength in the face of so much adversity, and kept them going when all seemed impossible? It was the promise that some truths are self-evident, that all men are created equal, that we really are endowed with certain unalienable Rights. It was the faith that this is a nation with a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and that this reality will not perish from this earth. It was the strength that comes from knowing that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. It was the Hope, that Yes, We Can.

How will history remember this night? How will we tell our grandchildren about how the Irish Catholics in Boston and the Blacks in Chicago, the Hispanics in Florida and the Asians on the West Coast, and even Anglo-Saxons in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, all stood up and said "Yes, We Can"? We will remember that Tonight, our nation accomplished something incredible. It's longer-lasting than the victory in World War 2. It's bigger than putting a man on the moon. The wall we tore down was stronger than the wall that Reagan defied. We looked at an entire race of people in the eye, we spoke to a continent we had wronged for so long, we conjured up the ghosts that have longed for freedom since 1619, and we said to them, "Yes! You Can! You can Hope too!"

I have never been more proud to be an American. May God continue to bless our great nation.

"Of The Day" Double Whammy

This past weekend I went with Mrs. Gadfly to New York City to cheer on her step-mom in the NYC Marathon. We had a fun weekend, and we're so proud of her step-mom, who finished the race strong. Go Kellie!

Since I haven't been on the blog in 3 days, I thought I would make it up to you with a double-post of a Don West poem and a Reinhold Niebuhr quote. After the election is over tonight (assuming legal challenges don't prolong this business), I'll have some final words on the topic of politics, and then I'll move on to another topic: Missions. It's an extremely important topic for every Christian, but is sadly one of the most neglected and misunderstood aspects of our faith.

I pair the following quote and poem on purpose to say this: there is nothing new under the sun. The injustices that present themselves to us in our day are no different than the ones faced by Christians of every generation. The question God poses to each of us in every era is, "will you love your neighbor?"

"...a laissez faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. The history of the past 100 years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own. Its survival is due to the ignorance of those who suffer injustice from the application of this theory to modern industrial life but fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions."

(Niebuhr, "Moral Man and Immoral Society", 1935)

Factory Child

What chance now for Margaret Biggs

To grow in stature, heart and head?

She breathes foul dust and rotted lint

Among the wheels to earn her bread.

And while her lungs are eaten out,

Her eyes stare hungrily through space,

Eyes that sink at eventide

Within a sallow, longful face...

Better for her if she had gone,

From womb of flesh into the earth,

Or if she had not come at all

To cause some woman pangs of birth.

Soon she will have a pauper's grave,

Pitted deep in nameless sod...

Another child for Potter's Field

While churchmen sing and praise their God.

(West, date unknown)

Reinhold Niebuhr Quote of the Day, #2

"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own,; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."

~From "The Irony of American History" (1952)

To Live Is The GOP, To Die Is Gain

I would like to draw your attention to 2 recent news stories: the first involves a South African woman named Gayle Williams. Gayle was working in Afghanistan as an aid-worker when she was gunned down by Taliban forces last week. Her crime? According to a Taliban website, she was killed for spreading Christianity in Afghanistan. They claim to have been following her for some time. The full story is on cnn.com

The second story is the recent interview of Sarah Palin by James Dobson. Dobson, as you may or may not know, is one of the leaders of the religious right movement and the founder of Focus on the Family. He can, at times, make Pat Buchanan look like a pinko-commie. In his recent interview of Palin, Dobson whined that the "liberal mainstream media" has been attacking the Governor. The reason the media despises Lady Sarah so?

"It's the offense of the cross and it's one of the reasons there's such hostility tor Sarah Palin, because she is an unabashed Christian."

Oh really? So Dobson would have us believe that Palin is being persecuted for her faith. The religious right would apparently have us believe that Palin is a martyr, being crucified by the media for having "the courage to speak the name of Christ".

Here's some things we have heard Sarah Palin criticized for in the media:
1) Unethically firing a police commissioner
2) Cheating on her taxes
3) Spending $150,000 on clothes and make-up
4) Telling blatant lies at rallies
5) Claiming that certain parts of the country are more "pro-American" than others
6) Refusing to talk to the press
7) Deliberately avoiding the questions asked at the VP debate
8) In general, being unfit for office

I could go on, really, but here's one thing Palin has not been criticized for in the media: being a Christian.

Martyrdom and persecution have strong emotional pull on Christians. We believe that our Lord died for us, and ever since, Christians around the world have been called on to lay down their lives for their faith. Even to this day, Christians around the world face persecution and the possibility of martyrdom as a part of daily life in following Christ. Christians have always held those who are called to make these sacrifices in high regard, in part because nothing in the world is a more compelling testimony for the Gospel than someone who values his or her faith above their life.

Real martyrs die for their faith. Being criticized for your ethics violations and your being unfit for office does not equate to being persecuted for being a Christian. Implying that it does is frankly despicable and insulting to the memory of Gayle and so many others who have counted the cost and chose to give up what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose.

Dobson and his cronies know precisely what they are doing. They are playing on emotion to get political power. By making Palin a martyr, they are trying to get Christians to back a failed presidential ticket as a matter of faith. Evangelical votes are hemorrhaging away from the GOP, and Dobson wants to stop the defections by fostering an "us versus them" mentality. It has nothing to do with the Kingdom of Heaven and everything to do personal gain.

Shame on you James Dobson! Fellow Christians, we cannot allow our faith to be so sullied. We cannot continue to confuse our faith and our political affiliations. With a world in desperate need of the love of Christ, we have too much to lose. If you subscribe to any newsletters or magazines from Focus on the Family, or another organization like it, unsubscribe and let them know why you are doing so. This has got to stop.

Reinhold Niebuhr Quote of the Day, #1

What do Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, and The Berean Gadfly have in common? We share a favorite theologian: Reinhold Niebuhr. More on Niebuhr's life and thought in the days to come, but chew on this quote in the meantime.

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

~From "The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness" (1944)

Yet more trouble on the Right...

The battle lines are getting drawn in the Civil War in the Republican Party. Read this insightful piece from WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302869.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

It's amazing to me that more and more people are using the "civil war" language. Things are getting pretty ugly in the GOP. I don't think McCain could have won this year no matter how he ran his campaign, it's not the GOP's year, but he has so exacerbated the problem with his incredibly poor decisions that I don't think his party can continue the way they are going any longer.

A poem I wrote today...

I held my "choose life" sign so very high,
And I was really quite happy to note
That my Truly Christian friends and I
Always gave a Republican our votes

I stuck a pro-life sticker on my car
Right by my Jesus fish is where it stayed
I always frowned to show I disapproved
Of those who fought to uphold Roe v. Wade

But then, I died, and I was taken up
And I was sorely shocked that day to see
That Peter, standing by the Pearly Gates
Looked down, disappointed with me.

"St. Peter, please, what did I do,
To make you frown that way,
All my life I went to church
Always sang the songs, and always, always prayed"

"My child, I have to tell you this,
And I'm afraid it's going to sting
The Lord wanted an abortion
And you did not do a thing."

"How could that be?" I asked him, in a shock
My thoughts were all in quite the whirl.
"Jesus walked by you one cold night,
In the form of a teenage girl".

"Five months pregnant, hungry, tired.
She had nowhere to go from there
Her parents had kicked her out
She could not have been more scared"

"She told you this, as you both waited,
For the bus to come that night
You did not do a thing for her,
You went on about your life"

"You could have given her a meal
The number to a place to stay awhile.
You could have shared God's love with her,
And you could have adopted her child."

"Not knowing what else she could do
By abortion, she brought the child's life to an end.
She didn't know any better,
So the blood is on your hands."

"How can that be?!" I shouted,
Really quite irate
"She's the one who had the abortion,
She brought about the baby's fate."

"And I always voted pro-life, Peter!
I can't think of a better way to show
My commitment to God, and giving free hand-outs
Always seemed so socialist, you know?"

"My child, socialists we have here in heaven,
And a few more, we could afford
The thing we can't accommodate
Are those who do not serve the Lord."

Don West Poem of the Day, #3

Don West was a man deeply aware of his roots, both in terms of his family and the Appalachian mountains he came from and loved. This poem is a beautiful tribute to both, and it still gives me goosebumps everytime I read it.

Funeral Notes

We're burying part of him today
In Hickory-Grove Church Yard.
We can't put him all here,
For his grave
Spreads over a few rocky acres
That he loved-
Where peach blossoms bloom, and
Cotton stalks speckle the ground
On a Georgia hill.

Forty years he's been digging
And plowing himself under
Along these cotton rows.
Most of my Dad is there
Where the grass grows
And cockle-burrs bristle
Now that he's gone...

We're covering him in March days
When seeds sprout.
And I think next Autumn
At picking time
The white-speckled stalks
Will be my old Dad
Bursting out...

Myths and The Mythologizing Mythmakers Who Tell Them

In one of the very first assignments of the law school semester, we were asked to evaluate whether a young man should be prosecuted for burglary. The relevant statute said that burglary (which, by the way, has a much stiffer penalty in Massachusetts than just breaking-and-entering) is committed when a breaking-and-entering occurs at night, in a "dwelling house", when an occupant is present. Seems pretty straight forward, right? Here's the catch: our young man had broken into the basement of an apartment building, at night, when an occupant was doing laundry. The question we had to analyze was whether the basement of an apartment building counted as a "dwelling house" under the statute.

So we all did our research. Turns out that a series of judges had decided cases regarding burglary that were equally tricky on this matter. Over the years, the judges in this line of cases had adopted a three-requirement test to determine if a structure is a "dwelling house": (1) is it secured? A gazebo was ruled not to be. (2) Is it used for activities central to domestic life? A court felt that a shed used to store food was. (3) Is it easily accessible to the main habitation? The courts ruled that a parking garage across the street was not. Do those seem like reasonable requirements to you?

At this point, a true "strict constructionist" would cry "foul". No legislative body ever voted on those three requirements, the judges just made them up. That's absolutely true, and it gets to the heart of the debate over judges: should judges have the authority to do that? The truth that few Republicans admit is, they already do have that authority, and they have for about 900 years now.

Our legal tradition depends on what is known as the "common law" tradition in England. In fact, every state at its admission to the Union adopted a law stating, in effect, "we adopt the common law of England as it was in 1776." Many such provisions appear in state constitutions. The common law dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries in England. Essentially, the common law is an accumulated body of judicial decisions that are more or less binding on current judges by the legal principal of "Stare Decisis", Latin for "let the decision stand". What that means is that judges like to follow the principles and decisions of other judges, and are legally obligated to do so when those decisions are made by a higher court.

This practice is why, if you've ever seen a good legal drama on TV, you've seen a lawyer run into the room excitedly proclaiming "I found a precedent!" That character is telling the audience that a judge has made a decision on a case similar to his, and given some guidelines that the judge in his case can or must follow. This is of great benefit to society, because legislators simply cannot write laws that will never need interpretation. They first of all don't have the time to write "this is exactly what we mean by abc in xyz circumstance". They're too busy running for re-election. Second of all, it's impossible to foresee all of the scenarios that might need interpretation: for instance, a while back in class we read a recent case from California where a man died, but before he did he had some of his semen frozen for posterity's sake. 4 years after his death, his widow decided to have a child using the frozen semen. After giving birth to the dead man's offspring, she sued his two grown children to try to make them share the inheritance with their new sibling. Obviously, the California state legislature had not addressed this scenario when they wrote the inheritance laws for their state, so some judicial interpretation was in order.

This is where the myth comes in: during the Civil Rights Era, SCOTUS, lead by Chief Justice Warren, made some incredibly ground breaking decisions to break down segregation. To do this in many cases, they used a broad interpretation of the 13th Ammendment, which officially ended slavery in this country. And thus began the reacquaintance of the Southern conservative politician and the strict constructionist. After all, the ammendment did only say it was ending slavery, right? So SCOTUS must be overstepping its authority, right? And thus the myth of the "Judicial Activist" was born. The term was meant to convey that judges were overstepping their role and, in essence, breaking the law. Judges made decisions which they were within their legal and moral authority to make, and they were labeled judicial activists by the conservatives.

To do this, the strict constructionists had to ignore 900 year of history and the established legal practices of our nation. They did so brazenly to accomplish their own agenda. Unfortunately, when Roe v. Wade was decided, strict constructionists duped unsuspecting Christians into their camp by labeling Roe a fine example of judicial activism. Of course, in our present era most strict constructionists are not connected to the overtly racist past of the movement (for more on this, scroll down to my previous post entitled "The Once and Fututre Sting"), including, clearly, Clarence Thomas. (Law school classroom activity: get out your yarn and felt. Make a puppet out of Clarence Thomas. Tada! You're now Antonin Scalia). Nevertheless, their judicial philosophy is harmful to our country, and too many Christians advocate nominating them to SCOTUS and other high courts in the vain hope of doing something about abortion, to replace judges who are making, by and large, sound decisions.

So to summarize, the Judicial Activist is as mythological as the tooth fairy and Santa. Judges do what judges have always done, and if the strict constructionists don't like it, they can find another country.

PS: Thanks for the post name inspiration, Al Franken. Good luck in your senate race!

Update: 10/17

Turns out I'm not the only one who sees the coming storm in the GOP. WaPo's got an interesting article on-line today about Christopher Buckley, son of conservative founding-father William F. Buckley, endorsing Obama and resigning the National Review:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101602538.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Now, this isn't like The Gipper's Son turning Dem. This is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, scion of conservativism's first family telling his party he's had enough of their nonsense. I highly suggest following the links to Buckley's own articles on this matter.

Does it say something that conservative intellectuals have abandoned McCain, and all that's left is an unruly mob yelling "terrorist" and "Arab" ?

Slowly Going the Way of the Whigs

Are we seeing the early stages of a terminal illness for the GOP? If Obama wins on Nov. 4th, particularly if he flips reliable red states (think Virginia), I think it's entirely possible that the internal strife that has been smoldering beneath the Republican surface could come to a head, and the GOP could become the Whig Party of our generation. Maybe it's not yet probable, but it's possible.

To be sure, the Republican party has been an uneasy alliance for several decades now. Neoconservatives, Paleoconservatives, and Social Conservatives have never liked each other. But the events of the past few years have shown that the GOP's leadership is inept at satisfying the wants of any of their constituent groups. The neo-cons have a failed war in Iraq and their foreign policy is despised at home and abroad. The paleo-cons and other fiscal conservatives have been betrayed by the party with the bailout. And, as always, for the last eight years the social cons have been patted on the head and told to go outside and play with the other kids.

The McCain/Palin ticket is a perfect example of this. They've got the angry, flustered neo-con, still rattling his saber at Russia and calling for 100 years in Iraq. They've got his social con sidekick/comic relief who can't even keep the party line straight on foreign policies. And the fiscal conservatives, who thought they were going to have a seat at the table with Mitt Romney, have totally been left out in the cold. If Obama goes much over 300 electoral votes and/or the Dems make significant gains in the House, I don't see how that marriage will last.

Add to the mix the rise of the young, urban evangelical. I'll call us "latte-cons". We're under 30, we're college educated, and we'd rather read Donald Miller or Rick Warren than Chuck Colson or James Dobson. We're passionate about our faith and about social justice issues, we like to vote, and we don't feel tied to the political alliances of our fathers in the faith. We aren't pro-choice, but we aren't pro-Iraq war either, and we haven't made up our minds about gay marriage. The Democrats recognized our growing influence by nominating Obama, a man of strong faith who doesn't drink the neo-con kool-aid, and I think they're going to reap the rewards for that on Nov. 4th. I think we may well represent a 2-3% defection from the GOP, and in a divided nation, that's a lot. The Republicans will continue to ignore us at their peril, and our growth will mean that they lose the evangelical vote in the next generation once we're in charge of churches and ministries, if they continue on the path they are on.

I don't know how many of you have seen this, but we latte-cons have been getting quite the scolding from the likes of Albert Mohler and Robert George. The old guard of evangelicalism isn't happy that we're tending towards Obama. However right they may be (and I don't think they are), their condescending tone and demonization of Barack is going to further alienate us and reinforce our view of them as Republican surrogates rather than independent Christian thinkers. I'm not sure what George was thinking when he wrote his essay, but if he thought it was going to bring us back into the fold, I'd like a toke of what he's smoking.

Add to Republican death knell the rise of the Ron Paul conservatives. They are a rebirth of paleoconservatism and libertarianism that has found a likeable leader in Paul, an OB/GYN from Texas who's got a pretty impressive obsession with the constitution. They've attracted a few screwballs, but they've also attracted some intellectual heavy-weights (like our very own Chris "The Yellow Dart" Bauer), and they've got unbelievable fundraising and organizational skills. I think they're about done with the GOP. Again, this will represent another 2-3% defection from the Republican ranks, far too much for a party on the defensive to sustain. They're a force to be reckoned with (as my dad used to say, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog) and I don't think they've found a home in a party yet. When they do, watch out if you find yourself against them in an election.

So what will happen if the GOP goes down? Only time will tell, but I think one thing is certain: the great neo-con/fiscal-con/social-con experiemnt is over, and conservatives of all stripes have some soul searching to do. In the meantime, welcome to the new golden age of progressivism...

Thrown Under The Bus Again

Well, watching the debate tonight, I was frankly surprised that abortion came up, with the current preoccupation with the economy. But it did come up, and I was surprised to hear John McCain inching towards the truth about his positions. If you missed it, here's a link to some clips from the debate, including the one I'm discussing:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/15/debate.videos/

McCain specifically promises "I will not use abortion as a litmus test in appointing Suprem Court justices" and says "I believe this is a states rights issue". This is the EXACT same rhetoric that landed Charlie Crist in trouble with Florida conservative Christian leaders. I seem to recall that it roused a lot of excitement in church pulpits during the last gubernatorial election in FL, and understandably so, since it's basically code for "I could care less about abortion" and "I don't intend to nominate anyone who will actually interfere with abortion rights and hurt my appeal to independants". Where's the outcry from conservative Christians on this one? Those of my friends who are pro-life Republicans, John McCain just told you on national television that he plans to throw you under the bus on this one, just like everyone else in his party's leadership. Do you still think that a vote for McCain is a vote to overturn Roe? If so, on what grounds?

And for any other Christian bloggers who stumble upon this blog, can you please stop circulating the Robert George essay? I've seen it on a ton of Christian blogs today, and I'm over it. It's biased, untruthful, partisan, pejorative, and frankly beneath the dignity of Christian intellectuals, and I'm extremely disappointed that the likes of Albert Mohler are distributing it.