My church meets in a small city in the metropolitan area of Houston, Texas. Our city council meetings always begin with an opening invocation. A local pastor is invited to lead the prayer at each meeting. I am grateful to be in the regular rotation of pastors. It is an honor to represent Christ before elected officials and pray for them as the Bible commands (1 Timothy 2:2).
How should a pastor pray at such meetings? Praying at a public event can be intimidating. Any type of person, with any type of belief, might be in attendance. You have to assume that a variety of religious and political affiliations will be present: Christians, non-Christians, conservatives, liberals, and anyone in-between. You know going in that not everyone will like your prayer. Some might be offended by it.
Because of this, a pastor could be tempted to offer a shallow prayer. A short, generalized prayer would avoid controversy. Being vague would keep everyone happy. But this temptation must be avoided by every minister of the gospel. We shouldn’t be controversial for the sake of being controversial, but we must proclaim the truth boldly and clearly.
As a public representative of Christ, a pastor should want to emphasize the basics of the faith: The Triune God (not a generic “God”), the sinfulness of man, redemption through Jesus’s death and resurrection, and that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth. The prayer should then address city-specific issues: That elected officials would rule according to godly wisdom, that judges and police officers would be a terror to evildoers, that crime would cease, and that there would be true peace in the community. At the end of the prayer, no one should have to wonder what you believe or what kind of Christian you are.
You are on trial for a crime you did not commit. Your accusers know that you are innocent. This is a setup because they don’t like you; you are on the wrong side of the political lines, shaking everything up. You must be handled. They are aimed at taking away your position, family, fortune, and if they can swing it, your life.They are not like the thugs on the street who will walk up to you and take your life. They are using the justice system that they have corrupted to make it all “legal” and “above board.”
Who is your defense? What should happen to these people? It is not only your fate that is on the line here. This is the fate of Justice itself and with it the survival of society into the future. If the distortion of justice is allowed to go on, the entire society will be turned upside down. To make things right, those that seek to distort justice must be the subjects of true justice.
This is an important book that demystifies Postmodernism. The book is thirty years old but still accurate for today’s world. When the book was written, the postmodernist project was a small seedling which made it hard to see all the parts. Today, the postmodernist project has grown up into a forest and all the parts are clearly visible right in front of us. This book is like a user’s manual for the world we live in today.
Here are three key reasons this book is important to read.
First, this book offers helpful definitions on many of the key terms that are around us all the time: postmodernism, social construct, queer theory, and intertextuality.
Here are some of the most important terms and definitions from the book.
Objectivist: those who believe that truth is objective and can be known (pg. 47)
Constructivist: those who believe that human beings make up their own realities (pg. 47)
Queer Theory: culture as suppression of homosexuals (pg. 53)
Intertextuality: culture is texts interacting with other texts (pg. 52)
Deconstruction: dismantle the paradigms of the past and bring the marginal to the center (pg. 57)
Social Construct: these paradigms are useful fictions, a matter of “telling stories” (pg. 57)
The second reason this book is important is that it clearly shows how the postmodernist project is ultimately aimed at destroying the individual self. That can seem like a strange claim to make given that our culture is so obsessed with identity. Let me explain.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone announced last week the excommunication of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Archbishop has cited Pelosi’s refusal to back down from her public advocacy of abortion, which conflicts with the moral positions of the Church, Christian tradition, and the Holy Scripture.
Many news outlets have strangely described the event as the “denial of communion” (Washington Post) or a “communion ban” (Fox News) rather than excommunication. One criticism of the excommunication comes from Whoopi Goldberg – who once pretended to be a nun in a movie and now pretends to speak with even greater erudition than the Archbishop. Goldberg claims, “This is not your job, dude! You can’t — that is not up to you to make that decision.”
Whoopi: "The archbishop of San Francisco is calling for speaker Nancy Pelosi to be denied receiving Communion because of her pro-choice stance … this is not your job, dude. That is not up to you to make that decision." pic.twitter.com/TCSe0t6XLY
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 23, 2022
The term excommunication itself literally means “out of/from communion” and is from very simple Latin: “ex” and “communicatio.” I believe the modern American sees phrases like excommunication as harsh and as with a sense of permanence, yet this is not the historic understanding of the term. The process of removing a Christian from communion is not related to any particular sin, but rather the obstinate refusal to repent. While various sins certainly place individuals in a grave position at odds with Christian teaching in faith and morals, it is impenitence alone that leads to formal excommunication.
The historic understanding of excommunication is lost on many who would rather paint the church’s role in excommunication as harsh, judgmental, and unloving – yet the act of excommunication is by the witness of Christ and his Apostles an act of love toward the wayward. God’s grace is fully present and offered in the pronouncement of excommunication as a final call away from sin and into the free gift of forgiveness – over even the most notorious of sins.
Did Jesus Teach Excommunication?
Just a few lines down from, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1) our Lord Jesus also says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (v. 19) and “‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” Jesus clearly expected that there would be situations that demand separation and even destruction from those who departed from his “narrow gate” (v. 13-14) and the, “will of My Father in heaven.” (v. 21). Jesus also passes down the authority to enact this separation through his Apostles with his own words, “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19).
St. Paul explicitly continued the practice of excommunication and explains that the act might be for the benefit of those engrossed in sin, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 5:5) St. Paul saw excommunication as having the power to save, not as a malicious act to permanently destroy. The Geneva Bible includes these helpful notes, “The goal of excommunication is not to cast away the excommunicate that he should utterly perish, but that he may be saved, that is, that by this means his flesh may be tamed, that he may learn to live to the Spirit.”
Does the Church Excommunicate for Politics?
Goldberg contends that, “The archbishop of San Francisco is calling for speaker Nancy Pelosi to be denied receiving Communion because of her pro-choice stance…” While this statement is partly true, Archbishop Cordileone claims that the decision is “purely pastoral, not political.” The idea that an activist Bishop might wield the keys of the kingdom for political reasons is rightly to be feared, yet the issue of abortion is not simply political. There is a plainly spoken and unbroken witness in the Christian tradition from the first-century Didache (“you shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”) through today in defense of the unborn. There is no doubt that ancient Christians consistently held that life in the womb was to be protected and the taking of this life was a sinful breech of the commandment to “do no murder.” Again, it should be reiterated that Cordileone has not excommunicated Pelosi for a belief about abortion or even “the grave evil she is perpetrating”, but rather forobstinately refusing to repentof her advocacy of abortion.
The Archbishop’s position to excommunicate a powerful governmental figure for their support of a grave evil is not new and has precedence in church history. In 390, Bishop Ambrose of Milan excommunicated Emperor Theodosius, claiming that the “The Emperor is in the Church, not above it.” The same could be argued today, in that SpeakerPelosi is in the Church, not above it. Emperor Theodosius’s excommunication was directly related to his role in the massacre of 7,000 men, women, and children in Thessalonica. After eight months outside the church, Theodosius kneeled his heart in penitence and was restored to communion. Through excommunication, the same grace and hope for restoration is offered to Pelosi.
The emperor himself had not driven a sword into a single individual, just as Speaker Pelosi does not herself scrape out a baby using a metal curette, yet the policies supported and advocated by Speaker Pelosi have contributed to the deaths of millions of unborn children through legal abortion in the United States. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, estimates the number of annual abortions to be over 800,000. (from 2017 figures)
In response to the Archbishop, Pelosi has openly criticized the church’s positions, accused the hierarchy of hypocrisy, and went on to receive communion at a church outside of the Archdiocese. Perhaps this speaks to Pelosi’s character or perhaps to the weakness of discipline in the Roman Church, but it certainly is not representative of a spirit of humility or of respect for her claimed ecclesiastical tradition.
The Practical Prayers of Excommunication
During the formative years of my Christian walk I sat under a church that prayed each week for those who had strayed from the Christian faith. We would pray for those who are not saved, but also for those described as “under discipline” (or “excommunicated”). Each week we would recite the names of those under discipline and ask, “that our Lord would bring them to a place of repentance and restore them to the fellowship of Christ’s church.” Seeing them actually return to answer these prayers was always a powerful testimony. My own tradition speaks to excommunication in the Articles of Religion, “XXXIII. Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided.” Here again, excommunication is affirmed but with the goal that such treatment, “as a heathen and publican” (see Matthew 18:17) would result in reconciliation, penance, and received back into the full fellowship of the church.
For those of you following the great theological brouhaha of 2022, there is a grand conspiracy against culture wars unfolding before our very eyes. Falwell and all his glory did not see this coming. Schaeffer and all his goatee didn’t see it coming either. Blame these warriors for their inadequacies and I will blame certain T4G characters for all their false comparisons.
The problem is that there are so many fine people saying things that frustrate me that my inner happy-clappy self wishes I could stay away from such entanglings. But, as I write, there are people out there wondering, “But if Ligon Schpunkin’ says it, it can’t be that bad.” And, as Joe Rigney would say, “I sympathize with that!”
Some of these men are men that I respect and find beneficial in some areas and men with whom I have personally interacted in my seminary days, and in my conference-attending days. I should also note that there is not a fabric of malice in these individuals. They desire the good. But, Nancy Pelosi is in the details.
And if you analyze this whole conversation, the thread goes off track at some point and someone needs to interact a little bit so that when records are stored in section 78B of Elon Musk’s Mars units, some curator will be able to observe that not everyone was silent.
The general thesis for those at Lake Wobegon is that there is an increased concern with the politicization of the pulpit. That is, too many people are using the pulpit for political causes. Now, why is such a topic so relevant today?
We should not be naive and act as if we don’t know the source of such antagonism. The man who is about 300 miles south of where I stand here in Florida carries a private tanning booth wherever he goes. But he also had the audacity to elevate the tribalism during his four-year reign. People were mad, in case you forgot. Like, “Mad Max” mad. David French was so upset that he left Fox News and all of the sudden started acting concerned for the environment. To say Trump brought things to the forefront is an understatement. To be more precise, he blew up the underground D.C.’s secret railroad and exposed the lies. Now, I am a Bud-Light critic of Trump and I am eager to not see him run ever again, but let’s remember that this man made the right people upset and there is something to that gift.
So, what’s the concern with political sermons? And why should we be more concerned about “Gospel” preaching? And why doesn’t Tom Brady just retire?
“I don’t trust the media. I don’t trust our political
leaders. I don’t trust foreign governments. I don’t trust my own government. I
don’t trust the mob. I trust almost no one at this point and that’s not because
I want to be this way. It’s just because I’ve been paying attention.”[1] This is
the lament of Matt Walsh regarding our current cultural environment. Who can
blame him? It is quite difficult not to be cynical when government officials
along with their allies in much of the media are using the language playbook of
1984. Reversals on positions (at least with words) happen so fast that
your brain is disoriented with a type of cognitive whiplash. The conspiracy
theorists that we once believed were insane have become the prophets of
culture. The difference between many conspiracy theories and the news of the
day is about six months. We live by lies at the highest levels of our society,
and it is destroying us.
Solomon told us it would. God hates a “lying tongue” and a
“false witness who breathes out lies” (Pr 6.17, 19). With the smorgasbord of
sins to put in his seven-fold list, Solomon includes two forms of lying. God
must really hate lying.
While people condemn the blasphemy laws in God’s law as
being barbaric and severe, every society has blasphemy laws. These are the laws
that tell you what you can and can’t say about certain people and subjects;
“gods” you must worship or, at least, refrain from criticizing. These laws are
not arbitrary. They tell you who defines the culture and what the culture is.
They tell you who the gods of the culture are; that is, what or who is
worshiped. Sometimes these laws are
codified and enforced by authorities. At other times they are general cultural
practices that are endorsed by the authorities’ unwillingness to stand against
injustice. Pressure by activists is put on companies to conform to their
morality. If they don’t conform, they will be canceled or attacked. Whether
codified or passive among government officials, or a loud, powerful, cultural
movement, blasphemy laws exist, and violators will be prosecuted.
What I wish to do is to establish some principles for thinking rightly about politics. I have done my very best to reflect these principles over the years with a certain level of success, and am also fully aware of the temptations that come with easily deviating into one side of the aisle over the other. I want to first begin with a legitimate concern in our evangelical ethos. And again, for the 400th time, I am addressing evangelicals, because I am one. I am not addressing my family members out of spite, but because God has given me some ability to see things. Now, whether my sight of the current issues is a gift from God or an incredibly astute self-deception is for you to decide. I speak only for myself and my three-old who still believes my flaws are merely superficial.
Back to the concern: there is a legitimacy among my friends who have sent me private notes about the dangers of over-politicizing things and how evangelicals are very susceptible to accepting bribes from politicians. And there is also a danger in making the Church so political, so trumpian, and so americana that we become a wing of the GOP receiving special favors from Donny Jr.
I see that concern and raise the bets. It’s real and if you have been reading me long enough, you know that I have attacked 4th of July celebrations in the Church and the exaltation of the Pledge of Allegiance over the Nicene Creed, etc. I have attacked these so much that as the great prophet says, “If you don’t know me by now, You will never never never know me.”
I am a Reformed, Evangelical, Christian with the bona fides to prove it and the letter of recommendations as well. I preface that to ensure that no one thinks I am some ecclesiocrat. I am not, but I do love the Church, like, a lot. She is my mother and I honor her as the bride of my only Lord. The result of this happy marriage and what ought to be our interest in the political sphere makes me an “ecclesiastical conservative.” And since those two words according to a google search have never been put together into a sentence, I’d like to define some of it in ten theses. Whether you find it fruitful or silly is up to you, but here I stand and I can do other things, but I want to park here for the moment at least to begin formalizing some thoughts:
Thesis I: Ecclesiastical Conservatism begins thinking about politics first as a churchman and then as a citizen of the body politic. His loyalty is first as a worshiper and then to his responsibilities to think about the politics of the day. The first must flow into the other and not the reverse. Our temptation to view government as the answer is a sign that we are eager to give up the role of the Church in society. Conservatism observes the expansion of the state and the overreach of the government in areas where the Church should be independent. We, therefore, oppose such actions and accept that our fundamental duty is to obey God rather than man.
Thesis II: Ecclesiastical Conservatism affirms that the Church is central to the purposes of God in the kingdom and that from her flows the wisdom of God to the world (Eph. 3:10). Wisdom comes from above through the lips of ministers and the gifts of bread and wine. The lessons or rituals from D.C. should never take precedence over the Church.
Astute observers have noted that there is a religious component to government actions. I don’t wish to prolong further the point, but it is a good one to contemplate, which means that I have already changed my mind and will happily prolong the point.
The point is clear: the religiosity of the government is a quest for moral tyranny. There is no doubt that there is a religious component inherent in the Romans 13 code for state officials. They are servants/deacons of righteousness (13:4). In that institution, there is a clear religious dimension to how the state operates in its functional demands. Yet, the overarching concern of citizens like myself stems from the overreaching of its religious duties.
Nietzsche once referred to the “theologian instinct,” which was not a compliment. For the “God is dead” atheist, the problem with Christians is that they are too prone to dressing their moral language with too much “God language.” This was our dreadful theologian instinct. In other words, we like to have our cake and eat it too with gratitude and doxology and all. In my book, that’s a good thing and I am eager to dress up more of my foundational theological morals with “God language,” which is ultimately the language of redemption and eternity and judgment.
The reason such leaps in language are so alarming to many, and especially our nationally elected officials, is not because they don’t like “God language,” it’s because they wish to reserve the right to use it only for themselves. They don’t want to respect familial and ecclesiastical languages, they want to exercise the theological instinct and dress their language in transcendent categories. The idea is that they get to determine what “Love Thy Neighbor” looks like.
If the government officials with its decreed limitations according to the Scriptures have the right to go beyond its boundaries and exert their supreme influence in church and family, then it can easily exert religious and theological influence in the moral sphere of church and family. When the CDC has an entire page dedicated to LGBT issues, then you know that the concern is no longer with health, but with the application of health issues to diverse sexual expressions. As they observe:
“The perspectives and needs of LGBT people should be routinely considered in public health efforts to improve the overall health of every person and eliminate health disparities.”
They are digging into the abyss of sexual diversity so they can take the priestly robe and self-authenticate their ordination before church and family. This is easy to see, but we are a blind generation.
I have always opposed neo-conservatism and a massive part of the Trump attraction to me was his opposition to nation-building, which incidentally was what built the conservative movement’s opposition to the Bush and Obama administrations post-Iraq war. That said, what is taking place in Afghanistan is barbaric in too many ways to count. I am of the opinion that a word can paint a thousand pictures, but the scene of Afghans clinging to the U.S. military plane painted a thousand words.
Without delving into a thesis on the role of the United States foreign policy and how fast or how slow withdrawal needs to take place if at all, I want to delve into two brief implications of the current crisis that touches on the subtle ways in which we have re-imagined ourselves after the ethics of Paris Hilton.
The first is the American administration’s failure to understand basic patterns of culture. Charles Taylor uses the language of “immanent frame” to describe those who build ideologies on the basis only of what they feel and sense. In other words, only what we see is valuable in grounding our philosophy of war, sex, and language. This is in contrast to a “transcendent frame” that allows our worldviews to be shaped by transcendent/divine meaning and morality.
There was an interview where an American journalist interviewed several men of the Taliban. The discussion turned rather transcendent when she posed whether the Taliban would vote in favor of putting women into office. The men laughed and the interview ended. It ended because that journalist was operating under an “immanent frame” category. She failed to see–what leftists fail to see–that Middle Eastern tribal men function on the basis of an other-worldly view of the cosmos. Of course, we’d affirm that Islam is both satanic and sadistic, but that’s beside the point. They still function on the basis of an unalterable law called Sharia. The journalist couldn’t comprehend the totality of a worldview that functions with divine imperatives.
The second failure stems from a variety of voices, but most namely Twitter’s dissent from reason in allowing the Taliban to function as if they are good schoolboys operating under basic rules. “Ok, Jonny, you follow these basic rules and we will allow you to speak your truth to millions of people.” This entire brouhaha stems from a confusion of determining who are the real enemies. We, humble Christian people, should know that you don’t negotiate with satirists. And that is exactly what these individuals are doing to the effeminacy of American politics. They are satirizing us and we are too stupid to pick up on subtleties. We are more eager to allow Abdul Ghani Baradar to speak to our audiences than the rural, good-guy, wife-lovin’, church conservative who defends Trump. It’s a failure of epic proportions and distortions, which they are targeting daily.
The moral of the story is that when we allow the Bidening of America, we are making America disgraced again. It’s a tough thing to say, but Schwarzenegger was right: “We are led by girly men.”
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
