The past decade has made one thing clear to evangelicals: the social, cultural, and political ground is shifting beneath us. We are not “winning the day” with our vision of the good life. Although we have seen some incremental progress on the pro-life issue, we are experiencing consistent regression on other issues that matter most to us, such as [ Read More ]
[Note: This post represents a peek into what I do in my role as Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Each year for Faculty Workshop, I write an essay which encapsulates the overall theme of the workshop. “How to Corrupt the Youth: 5 Imperatives for Shaping Students’ Hearts & Minds in [ Read More ]
It is no secret that something is deeply wrong with American politics and public life. We are alarmed by the unrest and violence that surrounds us. We are disturbed by the toxic nature of public conversation about matters that are important to our common life together.
We sense that we are being hoodwinked by the people we elected to office. Politicians often say one thing to get elected and do another thing once they enter office (I think it was William Buckley who once said that a politician is a person of his most recent word). More significantly, they lie to us on matters of the greatest significance (as the great political philosopher Dennis Miller once said, “Washington, DC is to lying what Wisconsin is to cheese).
We sense that our past political witness has, in some ways, failed.
In addition to these sorts of concerns held by many or most Americans, conservative evangelicals are disillusioned with the fact that the past few decades’ worth of political activism seem not to have paid off. Worse, it seems to have backfired.
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Yesterday, Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund held a crusade in Pittsburgh, PA, recruiting and training volunteers to further its mission. “We brought 1,000 people here to train them,” said Deirdre Schifeling, the Action Fund’s executive director. “These 1,000 people are a key. These folks are going to go back, and they’re going to reach tens of thousands of other people” with Planned Parenthood’s “mission.” This crusade and others like it provide evangelical Christians another opportunity to reflect our own mission to make a mother’s womb the safest place in America.
How does the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) implement its mission, for which it is recruiting “tens of thousands of other people?” It does so not only by terminating babies but by creatively recycling and selling organs harvested from the babies’ dead bodies. Although the public has always known abortion to be PPFA’s rainmaker, only recently—through the release of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP)—did the public become aware of PPFA’s practice of reselling infant body parts.
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The British cultural critic G. K. Chesterton once noted, “Seemingly from the dawn of man all nations have had governments, and all nations have been ashamed of them.” What is true of “all nations” in relation to their governments is true of many “Americans” in relation to the Supreme Court majority.
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In One Nation Under God, Chris Pappalardo and I address such questions as: If the Bible is the “true story of the whole world,” how does politics fit into that story? As Christians, how should we view the relationship between religion and politics, and between church and state?” Is the gospel merely a private truth [ Read More ]