Exiled from Vanderbilt: How Colleges are Driving Religious Groups off Campus (Video)

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This is not a secondary issue...religious liberty impacts all of us. Please share this and consider standing up for religious freedom by reading and signing the Manhattan declaration.

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Is the HHS Mandate Really a Threat to Religious Liberty?

Jesus, Love, and Chick-fil-A: JP Moreland Responds to Matthew Paul Turner

So are Christians unloving if they supported Chick-fil-A day or stood up for free-speech and religious liberty? Did Christians fail miserably as Christ's ambassadors earlier this week? Mathew Paul Turner seems to think so. But his well-intentioned post is misguided. Dr. J.P. Moreland provides clear thinking on these issues and responds to Turner's post, point by point:

Point #1:

Yesterday’s campaign, while I don’t think it should be considered or called “hate,” neither can it be called love. Christians all over America ignored the second greatest commandment: to love our neighbors. Call yesterday what you want, freedom of speech, a rally behind “family values,” a sincere fascination with CFA’s brand of fried poultry…but it cannot be called love. It was not love.

RESPONSE

Here Matthew confuses standing against an issue with loving the people who engage in the issue.  We should stand against abortion, but still love people who get them.  We should stand against opponents of free speech and advocates of gay marriage, but also love individual homosexuals.  So he confuses a macro-issue (the issue of marriage and free speech) with a micro-issue.   Moreover, he also seems to think that love cannot be tough.  Sometimes the best thing you can do to love someone is to confront strongly their harmful, immoral behavior. So even in with regard to the micro-issue (involving a specific person) it is the right thing, given an adequate relational context, to say that their homosexual behavior is deeply immoral, their desire for marriage to be re-defined is contrary to Scripture and the natural law, and it will harm society significantly, and their desire to have political censorship brought against CFA is egregious.

POINT #2

People felt hate and we ignored that. At the end of the day, regardless of whether or not your Christian understanding of scripture harbors hate or not, a large group of people felt hated. Again, we can debate this point all day long, but that does not change the fact that people felt hatred because of what happened yesterday. Whether or not hate actually existed is not the point, people felt hated. And rather than acknowledging those feelings or trying to understand or engage them in any way, Christians everywhere marched off to their local CFA like it was a cross to bear, a necessity, a battle cry of some sort, the waffle fry’s last stand.

RESPONSE

Regarding his point about people feeling hate, this is the other side's issue, not ours, and to be quite honest, they may need to search more deeply within themselves if they, in fact, felt hated.  Very few went to CFA with hate; they were angry about the other side's hate, but they were not hateful.  Matthew confused hate with the hard virtues of confrontation of moral evil and standing for what is right, and he confuses real hate with the feeling of hate.  The feeling of hate was not the protester's fault; it was a projection of the other side onto the protesters and probably reveals a need to be more discerning about those who disagree with you and not to react emotionally.  Such an emotional reaction is often narcissistic (I and my feelings of acceptance are all that matter; the issue, and people’s right to disagree with me are not the issue).

Point #3:

By rallying behind CFA, Christians put an issue above people. And it’s impossible to follow Jesus when issues trump people. Jesus never said “love God, love causes.” That is not the message that gets preached in churches all over America on Sunday mornings. I’ve heard a hundred different explanations from patrons of yesterday’s rally and nearly every one of them gives precedence to “the cause”. We can’t embrace love, mercy, hope, and peace when our causes (or a place of business) trumps people.

RESPONSE

Regarding the point of putting an issue above people, this is hopelessly misguided.  How can you even know, love and care for people without truth and knowing “issues (alleged truths) about people and how they think?  One of the most loving things one can do to someone is to stand up against their harmful behavior.

Also, how about loving the CFA people and all those on their side?  Don't they need love, mercy and support?  Yes they do, and people chose to express that love and respect
Wednesday.  That was a very Christian thing to do.

You can read points 4 & 5 by visiting J.P. Moreland's excellent site here.

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Rationality and the Gay Marriage Question

Hunter Baker, author of the helpful book The End of Secularism, has written a thoughtful post on this issue. Here are the basic contours of his argument and then you can read the rest at his blog.

"Thinking in terms of what is rational and what is not, I would like to set forth what I think should be considered a rational account of why marriage should remain a male-female arrangement.  My own view might be different in important ways from this one, but I am trying to present something that is non-religious in nature and which I think should be capable of being accepted as rational by any person.  Note:  “rational” does not mean that it convinces you.  It merely means that you could see the argument as a position a person could hold without being, basically, crazy.

So, here is one rational account of why marriage should be confined to opposite sex couples.  As you read, keep in mind that you need only find the account rational (i.e. not crazy) rather than truly persuasive.

Men and women are obviously complementary in nature.  This is not a matter of holy writ.  Without the man and the woman, it is not possible to produce children.  Without the ability to produce children, the political community has no future whatsoever.  It will die out like the Shakers, who chose celibacy.  This interest in the future is clearly a political interest since the political community emerges from families.  Families form villages.  Villages form towns.  Towns grow into cities.  And so on.  Male-female marriage is the basis of the political community.  For that reason, it is obviously rational for the political community to take an interest in affirming, sustaining, and protecting male-female marriage.   

Same-sex pairings are not procreative.  The answer will come back that many heterosexual marriages are not procreative.  That is true, but the marriage is still rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and the complementary sex act.  The man and woman share an intimate relationship based on the way their bodies are made to fit together.  You could say God made this design.  You could say it emerged from evolution.  Regardless, it is clear that the male sex organ and the female sex organ work in harmony in a way that the male sex organ and a non-sexual male organ do not.  This biological fact is the reason for the long existence of marriage between men and women.  Marriage would not exist without it.   

Homosexuality was once considered a disorder.  Looking back on those who thought so, can we say with great confidence that their conclusion was invidious or irrational?  Or was it to some degree a reasonable position to take considering that the desire to engage in sexual stimulation (not intercourse as that is impossible) with members of the same sex is highly atypical for human beings and, biologically speaking, does not make sense?  And there is little question of that.  Biologically speaking, the act of a man attempting to have sex with a man or a woman having sex with a woman makes no sense at all.
There are a number of atypical behaviors to which some human beings appear to be predisposed.  We do not need to make a list, but I am sure we can agree that such behaviors exist.  Our reaction to these atypical behaviors is mostly to accept without having to positively affirm.   

Given these realities, it is not surprising at all that the history of marriage has been the history of men and women marrying each other.  Marriage is a direct consequence of the biological complementarity of the sexes.  While we should not positively inhibit same-sex pairings, we should not give those pairings the same status as male-female marriage.

Based on what has been written above, is it clearly irrational for the government to favor the traditional and biologically sensible form of marriage?  One might characterize these remarks as insensitive or unpleasant or out of fashion, but would it be fair to say that they are irrational?  One may easily disagree, but would you regard these remarks in the class of comments claiming the moon is made of green cheese?  Could you not easily say, “I disagree with what this person has said, but it is a rational  reason to oppose gay marriage.  If I have a vote on the matter, I will cast my vote against this position.”  To do THAT, to cast a vote in favor of gay marriage, is a fundamentally different exercise than to do what courts have done by simply ruling that the person or institution opposing gay marriage is irrational...." (read the rest at his blog)


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Eric Metaxas Speaks At The 2012 National Prayer Breakfast: A Bonhoeffer Moment

In case you missed this or haven't seen it yet, you really owe it to yourself to watch this video. Eric's talk begins 35 mins in (on the C-SPAN video below) and ends with him leading the 3,500 assembled (including the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State) in singing “Amazing Grace”. This may be the most important 30 minutes you spend today.



As Eric says, this is a Bonhoeffer moment. As Christians, we need to lovingly, yet with full conviction stand for religious liberty, the freedom of conscience, traditional marriage, and the protection of all human life.

Here are two first steps. First, get informed and add your voice to the the more than 500,000 people who have read and signed the Manhattan Declaration. And then share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, and by email.

Second, please take 60 seconds and sign this petition to the President and let him know that you want him to stand for religious liberty.

Chuck Colson and Timothy George on this issue in Christianity Today.

Read Eric Metaxas' New York Times bestselling book on Bonhoeffer:

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