Jerry and Stephen

First it was Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. Then it was Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson ... and Dinesh D'Souza ... and William Lane Craig. Now it is Jerry B. Jenkins and ... Stephen King. The two authors, one specializing on God and the other on the devil, are sharing the cover of the next issue of Writer's Digest.

In his blog, Jerry says the men became friends because they shared the same voice actor, the late Frank Muller, for some of their works. One day out of the blue Jerry received a call from Stephen. Jerry notes:

During the conversation I said, “It may surprise you to know that I’m a reader of yours.” I told Stephen that while I wasn’t into horror fiction, I had read many of his short stories and that The Green Mile was one of my favorite novels.

He said, “It may surprise you to know that I’m a reader of yours.”

Christopher Hitchens Dodges the Question

I asked anti-theist pundit Christopher Hitchens at the Christian Book Expo panel on Saturday if his philosophy provides any basis for hope and dignity for the weak of the world, as Christianity does. This YouTube video picks up my question in mid-sentence and ends before I can follow up, but it shows that Christopher was unable to answer it. Instead he attacked my premise with a straw-man interpretation of Christianity. The audio quality is poor, but you will get the idea. (See the entry below, "Dignity, Hope, and Christopher Hitchens," for more info.)

Q & A: Tony Dungy

The retired NFL coach speaks to CT about the family, faith, and virtue.


Interview by Stan Guthrie

Culture Shift: A Mother's Perspective

Mary DeMuth was a panelist at the CT-sponsored panel discussion, "Living Christianly in a Post-Christian Culture," held this past weekend at the Christian Book Expo in Dallas. Mary, an author and former missionary to France, gave an internationally informed perspective to the discussion, which also included Don Miller, Andy Crouch, Ruth Haley Barton, and Randy Frazee. The interaction was interesting and wide-ranging, and we'll provide a video when it becomes available.

DeMuth had planned to provide a closing statement, but time did not allow this. So she has agreed to let me post her thoughts below for your consideration. They're well worth your time.

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If I could give every Christian a gift it would be this: to send him/her to another country, particularly one where materialism isn’t firmly entrenched. Taking ourselves from our culture, then reintroducing ourselves back into American culture is an important first step if we want to be engaged and pure within our culture. Why? Because we cannot accurately see how deeply entrenched the word “American” is connected to “American Christianity.” We’re Christ-followers with a consumer mindset. Until we walk dusty roads through countries where folks value community yet worry about daily bread, we will have an incomplete view of life and theology.

Last summer, my son Aidan who was 12 at the time, traveled with me to Ghana, West Africa. We went because of his God-breathed dream—to see a well dug for the village of Sankpem. While there, Aidan danced with villagers. He listened. He shared the gospel with Muslims and saw several give their hearts to Jesus. Together we heard our friend Paul say, “For ten years I never knew when my next meal was coming.”

Aidan came home changed. Our family, because of France and Ghana, sees America like a Potemkin village—a series of strange and beautiful facades masking the spiritual poverty inside. We are determined, by God’s grace, to understand who Jesus is and how He wants to interact with folks here. We’ve come to understand that love for people and broken authenticity is what this world needs to see the irresistibility of Jesus—not more programs, more clever marketing campaigns, more hype.

Living in a post-Christian culture takes the kind of spiritual sensitivity that can see beyond politics into the face of Jesus Christ—He who engaged unsavory folks, yet followed His Father perfectly. That calls for radical relationship and a determination to know Jesus profoundly today. It calls for an abandonment of the idea that true life comes from buying or acquiring a commodity. It calls for a radical re-engagement in the lives of people.

I am not afraid of the shift in our culture. Why?

· Because the majesty and capability of God is greater than my finite understanding of culture.
· Because a shift causes us all to exegete the Christian culture we’re a part of, learning to see what is truly biblical and what is simply cultural.
· Because genuine transformation doesn’t come from the outside in; it comes from the Holy Spirit renewing us from the inside out.
· Because any time we’re shifting, we realize how unsteady the ground is, and it makes us cling all the more fiercely to the Rock.

The shift in worldview is simply another opportunity to live out the redemptive story of Jesus.

My son Aidan understands this, though he may not articulate it thus. Now thirteen, he longs to return to Ghana, and he’s taken up the cause to continue to build wells there, letting go of his own slice of the American dream pie. He does this because Jesus has transformed him from the inside out, and he’s opened up his mind to the vast beauty of God’s needy world. He is engaged, yet striving to be pure. He’s just an average teenager, but his dreams for the world have expanded and his Ameri-centric view of Christianity has shifted.

It’s my prayer that you also would dare to look beyond the four walls of our nation to dream big for the Kingdom of God. Let the transformation start with you and Jesus. Dare to engage, yet do so while holding the hand of Jesus—the irresistible Savior.

Dignity, Hope, and Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens’s position on religion in general and Christianity in particular can be summed up in the title of his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In a CT-sponsored panel discussion in Dallas this past weekend on the subject "Does the God of Christianity Exist, and What Difference Does It Make?" he called God’s rule posited by Christians “tyrannical,” those who believe it to be wicked idiots, and said there was no amount of evidence that would cause him to jettison his supposedly reason-based evolutionary “anti-theism.” Other than that, he was very cordial! (Actually, despite his bias against Christianity, Christopher Hitchens is personable, funny, and highly intelligent, as well as a great writer.)

As the moderator, I wanted to make sure that the discussion—with heady examinations of the anthropic principle, epistemology, and other issues—didn’t get too ivory-towerish. I wanted to keep it practical and personal. And I hoped to give Christopher Hitchens something new to think about. So I asked the first question, which went something like this condensed summary:

“Christopher, in my rush to catch my ride to the airport so that I could get to this conference, I fell down at my office. I quickly got up, hoping that no one saw me. Because of my disability, such incidents are part of my life, something I have learned to deal with. I have not fallen since, but there is no guarantee that I will not fall again, even right off this platform.

“Now I love these kinds of discussions about the existence of God, and I’ve read your book with Doug Wilson, Is Christianity Good for the World?

“Besides all the arguments for God’s existence, one reason I believe Christianity is because it provides dignity and hope for people like me: dignity, because it teaches that we are all created in God’s image and because Jesus took all our suffering on himself; and hope, because he was resurrected and promises that one day we will be resurrected, too, with new bodies in a new heaven and a new earth.

“But your philosophy of anti-theism seems designed only for the young, intelligent, and well-connected. So my question to you is: What basis does your philosophy provide for promoting human dignity and hope for people like me, and, frankly, people who are much worse off?”

Hitchens’s answer, such as it was, was interesting. After thanking me for the question, he attacked my premise, railing against Christianity as a religion of the powerful. While that has certainly been true at times in history, the fact remains that Jesus was loved by the poor, the weak, the blind, the outcast, the disabled, and the despised—and still is. After Christopher subsided, I pointed out that he had not answered my question about how his philosophy provides for dignity and hope to the forgotten of the world.

I can’t recall his exact response, but I have the distinct impression he began mumbling, saying something about how he couldn’t lie about people who were “unlucky” in life. (Eventually a video of all the panel discussions will be released, so you can double-check my admittedly imperfect recall of the discussion.)

So there you have it. Hitchens’s anti-God philosophy offers no hope or dignity to the disabled and others who are “unlucky” in life. What difference does Christianity make? All the difference in the world. I suspect that this is why atheist pundits will continue to have limited influence in matters of religion, no matter how many debates they attend and how many best-sellers they write.

(A longer version of this commentary is posted here.)

One Cheer for Jim Wallis

By Keith Pavlischek

Jim Wallis has announced in a public interview:

Making abortion provisions part of healthcare reform will kill healthcare reform. . . There are a number of people who believe this is an issue of deep moral conviction and conscience and there are firewalls that if they are breached will really destroy common ground.

You have to know a little bit about Wallis to understand why this might be important. This past weekend, the New York Times has reported that President Obama has carefully cultivated relationships with at least five influential ministers—all described as evangelical “centrists”—for private sessions of prayer and occasional political advice. One of these is Jim Wallis. As Joe Loconte says in his Weekly Standard article, “Obama’s Prayer Warriors”, the label “centrist” is not entirely accurate.

The Other Side of Church Growth

Philip Jenkins says we need a theology of church extinction.

Interview by Stan Guthrie

Confessions of a Silent Prophet

By Keith Pavlischek

David P. Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights has taken to the pages of USA Today to confess—well, sort of—that things haven’t turned out exactly as he had hoped with President Obama. Gushee identifies himself as one among “a group of self-identified centrist or moderate evangelicals” who had “built a friendly relationship with Barack Obama and rejected the Christian right’s vilification of him.” Yes, of course, following close to script, Gushee, as a “centrist” or “moderate” must vilify the Christian right’s vilification before proceeding to confession.

China's Human Rights, In the Red

A Christianity Today editorial

President Obama should keep values at the center of American foreign policy.

Creeping Depression

Today's dispatch by Peggy Noonan, "There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression," captures the national mood better than most that I've seen. Here's a particularly interesting observation for CT readers:

"In Manhattan, Catholic church attendance appears to be up. Everyone seems to agree that this is so, though the archdiocese says it won't have numbers until next fall. But yes, said Joseph Zwilling, the director of communications, "from what I've heard anecdotally from various priests," the pews have been fuller. The rector at St Patrick's told him Ash Wednesday was "the busiest yet," with 60,000 people coming for ashes. At my local church at noon mass one day this week, there were 40 people when normally there are roughly a dozen, and the communion line stretched to the back of the church. Something is happening. Yesterday a friend sent the warning of the Evangelical pastor David Wilkerson, of Times Square Church, that a new catastrophe is imminent. This is causing a small sensation in evangelical circles."

Just in time for Friday the 13th, I guess.

Now Obama Tells Us?

What an honest campaign would have sounded like.

By Victor Davis Hanson

My comment: There's no doubt that sometimes circumstances force unforeseen changes to one's agenda, but what this administration is doing certainly isn't the kind of change people were voting for. And the promises that the president is keeping, such as forcing taxpayers to subsidize abortion and the destruction of human embryos, aren't exactly agenda items that people of good will can feel good about.

Stem-Cell Ideology

Today President Obama is expected to lift the existing ban on federal funding for research using new lines of stem cells taken from human embryos. Here's how CBS and the AP introduced the news:

President Barack Obama is expected to sign an executive order and memo Monday in an East Room ceremony that will end a divisive policy decision by his predecessor, while sending a clear signal that science - not political ideology - will guide his administration.

So much for objectivity. Actually, President Bush announced the ban in 2001 as a compromise position so that researchers could continue using existing stem cell lines (from which the embryos had already been destroyed), while prohibiting taxpayer money from paying for research that destroys human embryos. In the eight years since the ban was announced, research on human embryos has remained fully legal if funded privately.

It has not been very productive, however. While dozens of treatments using adult stem cells (from which no embryos are destroyed) have been produced for conditions ranging from Parkinson's to autoimmune disorders, the results of research using human embryos have been scarce at best--and sometimes downright scary.

Further, with new research showing that pluripotent cells can be produced from adult stem cell lines, the supposed scientific necessity to destroy human embryos to advance research would seem to be removed. And yet President Bush's compromise is deemed anti-science as all funding restrictions are swept aside (pending the institution of some ethics guidelines), forcing taxpayers to pay for research that many find deeply morally objectionable.

Just who is being ideological, anyway?

Cramer: My Response To The White House

Yet another supporter of Barack Obama getting cold feet is money guru Jim Cramer. Here's the "money" quote from his March 5 column:

"But Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He's done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity that help eliminate the excess supply of homes."

The Big Dither

I never thought I'd do this, but here's a link to a helpful column by Paul Krugman. The Times columnist is the latest Obama supporter (and Bush hater) to be wringing his hands over the way the Obama administration has stumbled out of the gate.

A good quote: "But among people I talk to there’s a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama’s failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering."

Unbelievable

Are the wheels already starting to come off President Obama's bandwagon? The market plunged again today, and we are starting to get daily ruminations from erstwhile supporters who are waking up, like sailors after shore leave, to a sobering truth: President Change We Can Believe In's expensive plans to remake America are, quite literally, unbelievable.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd says, "This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget 'line by line' and cut pork."

Meanwhile, Christopher Buckley, son of the late conservative leader William F. Buckley, made headlines last October when he announced his support for Obama. Is Christopher already having second thoughts? Perhaps, if his latest column is to be believed:

"The strange thing is that one feels almost unpatriotic, entertaining negative thoughts about Mr. Obama’s grand plan, as if one were indulging in—call it—the audacity of nope," Buckley says, almost apologetically. "It is on the one hand clear that something must be done about our economic woes. But that is very different from saying that spending these vast, oceanic sums of money is the right corrective to a decade of fiscal incontinence."

Obama: A course correction needed?

David Gergen is the latest moderate to get cold feet over Team Obama's plans to remake America with a New New Deal. The money quote: "In my own experience at the White House stretching back to the early 1970s, a President and his team can be successful in addressing one big major crisis when they apply laser-like focus, but when juggling two, three or four at a time, they usually bungle one – and often more than that."

A Moderate Manifesto

David Brooks is starting to understand the Obama agenda, and he's not sure he likes it.

Here's a telling quote: "Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal."

My comment: Better late than never.

More Government, Less God

What the Obama Revolution Means for Religion in America

While many social conservatives have focused attention on Obama’s liberal social commitments, few have considered what effects an expanded welfare state will have on religious belief—or how these religious effects will in turn impact civic virtue, personal responsibility, altruism, or solidarity. If the European experience with the welfare state and religion is any indication, the Obama revolution could well lead the United States down the secular path already trod by Europe.

By W. Bradford Wilcox

My comment: At first glance, Wilcox here seems to be worried that if government takes care of all social needs, then people won't need or care about religion. That doesn't seem like a very inspiring view of religious faith. I'm not sure that's anywhere close to the best reason to oppose encroaching socialism. Of course, Christianity should never live like carrion off of the failed carcass of capitalism. I doubt that many people who come to the church mainly for their emotional and material needs become open to their deeper spiritual needs (though many churches do find ways to move them from Point A to Point B), and we ought to be open to any good thing that lifts people from poverty, even socialism.

But I think Wilcox's deeper fear is not what socialism does to the churches, but what it does to society, as the above quote demonstrates. Socialism dissolves the bonds of community and trust that keep a society healthy as people rely on government to do everything for them. It is an embarrassment that many liberal voters and politicians give relatively little to charity, but it is not surprising. Helping the poor is seen as "the government's job." As a consequence we can become less caring and connected, impoverishing our own souls while removing the local hands-on kinds of help that assist the poor best (replaced by uncaring government bureaucracies).

And if we become passive recipients of government benevolence rather than active workers in the welfare of ourselves and others, how can that be a good thing?