Netanyahu: Nukes and Extreme Islam Biggest Security Threat

Israel seeks peace with the entire Arab and Muslim world, but continues to be threatened by the forces of Islamic extremists, Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu Tuesday evening,” reports the Jerusalem Post. “‘These are irregular times,’ Netanyahu told the Knesset plenum in opening marks to his speech….’Today Israel is faced with two tests — an economic crisis and a security crisis. The source of these crises are neither our past actions nor past mistakes… our [current] actions, however, will determine the results of these crises.’….Netanyahu pointed to the ’spread of extreme Islam in our area, and all over the world,’ warning against the nuclear armament of these extreme forces, hinting at the development of Iran’s nuclear activities. The Iranian leader’s plan to erase Israel falls on deaf ears around the world, and is almost accepted as ‘routine,’ Netanyahu said.”

• Netanyahu during inauguration: Nukes greatest threat

EPICENTER CONF. SET FOR APRIL 4

It’s shaping up to be a dramatic week. On Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu will become Israel’s next Prime Minister. Also on Tuesday, the U.S. and Iran begin direct talks in the Netherlands for the first time since the Shah of Iran was ousted from power in 1979. Meanwhile, the G20 Summit of world leaders begins in London on Thursday to discuss radical reconstructive surgery to the international financial system, including the Russian and Chinese proposal of creating a new, single, common global currency.

We’ll consider the significance of these and other developments and trends at the 2009 Epicenter Conference on Saturday, April 4th at Cox Arena in San Diego. Last April, we held the premiere Epicenter Conference in Jerusalem for some 2,000 Christian leaders from all over the world. This year, we are expecting upwards of 8,000 or more attendees.

The theme will be: “Understanding Today’s Global Crises In Light of Bible Prophecy.” Key speakers include Lt-General (ret.) Jerry Boykin discussing the most serious threats facing the U.S., Israel and our allies in 2009; Pastor Chuck Smith discussing God’s everlasting love for Israel and Ezekiel’s prophecies concerning the “War of Gog and Magog”; and several special guests. I will be speaking on the global economic crisis, Inside The Revolution, as well as on “The State of the Epicenter.” We’ll also be talking about the work of The Joshua Fund and how you can be involved in blessing Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus.

The event is free. No ticket is required. We will be taking an offering to help cover expenses. Just come early to make sure you get a seat, as guests are coming from all over the country. More than 40 churches around the U.S. will also be showing a live, high-resolution, broadband Internet feed of the conference to their congregations. Details on locations of these satellite venues will be announced later this week. You can also watch the event live on-line at www.epicenter09.com.

Does Your Pastor Believe in God?

A news report from the Netherlands points to a form of theological insanity that is spreading far beyond the Dutch.  Ecumenical News International reports that church authorities in the Netherlands have decided not to take action against a Dutch pastor who openly declares himself to be an atheist.

The pastor, Klaas Hendrikse, serves a congregation of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.  In 2007 he published a book described as a “manifesto of an atheist pastor.”  In the book Hendrikse argues for the non-existence of God, but he insists that he does believe in God as a concept.

As Ecumenical News International reports:

In his book, Hendrikse recounts how his conviction that God does not exist has become stronger over the years.

“The non-existence of God is for me not an obstacle but a precondition to believing in God. I am an atheist believer,” Hendrikse writes in the book. “God is for me not a being but a word for what can happen between people. Someone says to you, for example, ‘I will not abandon you’, and then makes those words come true. It would be perfectly alright to call that [relationship] God.”

While this kind of theological language may be shocking, it is not all that uncommon.  For years, many theologians have been moving away from realist conceptions of theology to various forms of non-realism.  In classical terms, anti-realist theologians can actually be atheists, for they do not believe that God actually or necessarily exists.  They do, however, find “God” to be a useful concept.

Janet Martin Soskice defines theological realists as “those who, while aware of the inability of any theological formulation to catch the divine realities, none the less accept that there are divine realities that theologians, however ham-fistedly, are trying to catch.”

That definition is incredible helpful, for it serves to remind us that there are, on the other hand, some theologians who believe that there is no divine reality at all.  Evidently, there are some pastors who also believe that there is no God, but there is a concept of God that we can use.

Most Christians would be shocked and scandalized to know that a pastor would be an atheist — and intend to remain as pastor.  But in the doctrinally disarmed world of many denominations, the service of an atheist as pastor is not only conceivable but actual.  In one sense, Klass Hendrikse is merely more open about his atheism than many others.  Indeed, many liberal Protestants believe that God is, in the end, an intellectual concept that may add meaning to life — not a living self-existent deity who rules over all.

In Klass Hendrikse’s case, his congregation belongs to two denominational groups.  Neither denominational body was willing to bring Pastor Hendrikse to a church trial or disciplinary process.

In announcing the decision not to discipline Hendrikse, the church told the congregation by letter that a disciplinary process would amount to “a protracted discussion about the meanings of words that in the end will produce little clarity.”

Such is the world of liberal Protestantism.  The service of a preacher who does not even believe in God is preferable to “a protracted discussion about the meanings of words that in the end will produce little clarity.”  Of course, the lack of clarity is the church’s own fault.  It is not as if the issues are not sufficiently clear.  A denomination that will not require its pastors to believe that God exists is a denomination that has reached the very bottom of the well in terms of theological insanity.  According to the news report, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands claims that its own laws prevent the denomination from taking any action against a serving pastor.

The theological self-destruction of the church never starts with a pastor who doesn’t even believe in the existence of God.  It begins with denials of one doctrine here, another there.  Before long, the unwillingness of the church to call its churches and ministers to account leads to further theological concessions.  The cowardice of church bureaucrats opens the door to any and all theological aberrations.  The next thing you know, there is an atheist in the pulpit.

A church afraid of “a protracted discussion about the meanings of words that in the end will produce little clarity” is itself the guilty party in that lack of clarity.  The church bears the responsibility to make the issues clear and to defend the faith — otherwise it isn’t a church at all.

The Dutch have become famous worldwide for their liberal approach to assisted suicide and euthanasia.  In this case we see something new — the suicide of a church.

The Theology of Prayer

Dr. S. Lewis Johnson Audio Message of the Week

Part 1 of an 8-week series on Prayer.  TheChristianWorldview.com will be posting a link every Sunday morning to an audio message by the late, great expository preacher, Dr. S. Lewis Johnson from Believer’s Chapel in Dallas.  I hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to hear one of the greatest preachers of the second half of the 20th century. 

John Calvin, the champion of the doctrine predestination, wrote, “The principal exercise which the children of God have is to pray, for in this way they give a true proof of their faith.” But, isn’t a staunch belief in the doctrines of predestination and foreordination a hindrance to a believer’s prayer life? Listen as Dr. S. Lewis Johnson begins his eight part series on prayer and carefully navigates his audience through the challenging waters of prayer and the attributes of God.

The Theology of Prayer: What is Prayer – The Nature, Object and Grounds of Prayer

The Meaning of “Missional”

Podcast: Download (8.7MB)

LISTEN NOW: [audio:http://www.thechristianworldview.com/audio/TCW032809pod_hour2.mp3]

Guest: Jesse Johnson, Associate Pastor, Local Outreach Ministries, Grace Community Church

There’s a new word that’s actually an old word being bantered around in Christian circles these days – the word is “missional”.

Churches are now proclaiming themselves “missional” and pastors are exhorting their congregants to live “missionally”. 

But what exactly does “missional” mean and why it is important to understand this new buzzword of the faith?  What does “missional” have to do with engaging the culture, living a holy life, or bringing about “social justice”?         

Jesse Johnson, associate pastor of local outreach at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, recently gave a seminar on “Missional Madness” at the 2009 Shepherds’ Conference (click here to find audio).  He will tell us what we need to know about the meaning of missional.

The Pornification of the Pulpit

Podcast: Download (8.7MB)

LISTEN NOW: [audio:http://www.thechristianworldview.com/audio/TCW032809pod_hour1.mp3]

Guest: Phil Johnson, Executive Director, Grace to You

Who would’ve thought that the new trend for American pastors would be to joke about masturbation on CNN or give public advice on “biblical oral sex” or challenge their congregants to seven days of sex with their spouse?  (See links at bottom of page here.)

The fact is the “pornification of the pulpit” has arrived and is making huge inroads into churches all across the country under the guise of “contextualizing” Scripture and being “relevant” to an un-churched and sex-addicted generation.

Have sex-selling pastors like Mark Driscoll and Ed Young gone over the biblical line or are those calling for reverence and restraint overly puritanical?

Helping us discern this growing trend will be Phil Johnson, who gave a landmark sermon on this topic when he spoke at the Shepherds’ Conference in Los Angeles earlier this month.

The Eclipse of Christian Memory

Even as Californians await the decision of their state Supreme Court on the same-sex marriage issue, momentum toward the legalization of gay marriage has now shifted to New England, where several states are poised to approve some version of homosexual marriage in coming weeks.

Cathy Lynn Grossman and Jack Gillum of USA Today report that legislatures in New Hampshire and Vermont are on the verge of approving measures to legalize same-sex marriage.  Close behind are efforts in Rhode Island and New York.  Same-sex marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for some years now, but that action was taken by the state’s highest court.  Observers expect the New York state legislature to deal with the issue in coming months.

Grossman and Gillum offer a very insightful analysis of this new momentum toward same-sex marriage in New England and point to a most interesting pattern:  New England has demonstrated this new momentum toward the legalization of same-sex marriage at the very time it has also overtaken the Pacific Northwest as the most secularized region of the nation.

As Grossman and Gillum observe, “A USA TODAY analysis finds that states where the percentage of ‘nones’ — people who say they have no religion — is at or above the national average of 15% are more likely to push expanding the scope of marriage, civil unions or same-sex partner rights.”

A look at the data from the recent American Religious Identification Survey [ARIS] supports this conclusion.  As Grossman and Gillum write:

Today in New Hampshire, where nones are 29% of the population, nearly matching Catholics (32%) and Protestants (30%), the House of Representatives is expected to vote to legalize same-sex marriage, and “it has a good chance of passing the Senate this week,” says Marty Rouse of the Human Rights Campaign.

Friday in Vermont, a gay marriage bill that has passed the Senate goes to the House. Vermont has the highest rate of nones in the nation (34%), according to the newly released American Religious Identification Survey.

This pattern holds true in other New England states as well.  Secularization and support for same-sex marriage appear to be part of a combined pattern.  Conversely, those states reporting the highest church affiliation are also the states exhibiting the strongest opposition to same-sex marriage.

Proponents of same-sex marriage often claim that opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in religious argumentation and belief.  They seldom concede that support for same-sex marriage is equally grounded in a worldview and its cognitive commitments.  But, of course, that worldview is generally secular in its commitments.

Christianity once formed the worldview of New England.  While it was never true that all New Englanders were believing Christians, it is true that the worldview that gave birth to colonial America was explicitly Christian in substance and, most specifically, in moral commitments.  That first era of New England history was pervasively Christian and pervasively Protestant.  In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New England was reshaped by the arrival of millions of immigrants from Europe, and millions of these were Roman Catholics.  Thus, by the arrival of the twentieth century, many New England neighborhoods and city centers were shaped, very noticeably, by Catholic moral teachings.

Now, in the as the first decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, the increasingly secularized character of New England helps to explain why the region is now ground zero for same-sex marriage.

The moral teachings of Christianity have exerted an incalculable influence on Western civilization.  As those moral teachings fade into cultural memory, a secularized morality takes its place.  Once Christianity is abandoned by a significant portion of the population, the moral landscape necessarily changes.

For the better part of the twentieth century, the nations of Western Europe led the way in the abandonment of Christian commitments.  Christian moral reflexes and moral principles gave way to the loosening grip of a Christian memory.  Now, even that Christian memory is absent from the lives of millions.

New England is following the same trajectory.  In recent decades, the Pacific Northwest had the distinction of being the nation’s most secular region.  But the Pacific Northwest was never as highly evangelized as New England.  In effect, New England is rejecting what the Pacific Northwest never even knew.

New England, like Europe, is fast becoming a post-Christian culture.  And, as the late Lesslie Newbigin reminded us, evangelizing a post-Christian culture will be far more difficult than evangelizing a culture that never knew Christian commitments.  As New England has followed Europe, will the rest of the nation follow New England?

Same-sex marriage may be the signaling issue in this pattern, but the most important issue is not sexuality, but the Gospel.  New England certainly needs a corrective lesson on the issues at stake in sexual morality and marriage.  But, far more than this, New England needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The moral issues are sufficient alarm — the deadly danger is the loss of Christian faith.

New England is losing the remnants of its Christian memory.  We need a new generation of Christians who, like Jonathan Edwards, will bring the Gospel anew to New England.  New England was the cradle of colonial America.  Is it now the cradle of America’s secular future?

Israel, Egypt Mark 30 Years Of Peace

Israel and Egypt signed an historic peace treaty on March 26, 1979

>> Would you like to bless needy Israelis during this Passover season through The Joshua Fund?

The year 1979 was a game-changer in the epicenter for Radicals, Reformers and Revivalists alike.

• In January 1979, the Shah of Iran — not a Reformer, but certainly a long-time friend of the U.S. and Israel — was ousted from power.
• On February 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini — the first true Radical of the modern era — returned to Iran after decades in exile and was met by millions of Muslims who greeted him as the possible Islamic Messiah, chanting, “The Holy One has come!”
• On March 26th, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat — the first true Reformer of the modern era – and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords at the White House, an historic peace treaty unprecedented in the annals of 4,000+ years of Jewish-Egyptian relations.
• On April 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini declared Iran the world’s first “Islamic Republic,” putting the country under Sharia law and creating a Radical tyranny unlike any other at the time in the Middle East.
• By November of that pivotal year, Radical followers of Khomeini had seized the American Embassy in Tehran and began holding 52 hostages for 444 humiliating days.
• Also in November, Radical Muslim gunmen led by a man claiming to be the Islamic Messiah known as a the “Twelfth Imam” seized a key mosque in Mecca and triggered an enormous crisis for the Saudi government (Saudi troops eventually had to storm the mosque, leaving hundreds dead and wounded)
• In December of that year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a move that would lead to the rise of Osama bin Laden and the birth of al Qaeda, the Radical terror network, and later the dissolution of the Soviet empire.
• Curiously, it was also in December of 1979 that Warner Brothers and an evangelical Christian ministry called Campus Crusade For Christ released the JESUS film, a drama of the life of Jesus of Nazareth based on the Gospel According to Luke. It has since been translated into more than 1,000 languages and dialects, has been seen by more than two billion people worldwide, and has become a key tool used by Revivalists to reach Muslims with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Something was clearly crackling in the spiritual realm that year. The question now is: Where are we thirty years later?

A few observations:

• Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, now lives in Maryland and is trying to build a global movement to overthrow the mullahs and ayatollahs and bring democratic reform to Iran.
• The Iranian Revolution is rapidly approaching its most dangerous moment. Its current leaders believe the end of the world is at hand, the Islamic Messiah’s return to earth is “imminent,” and the way to hasten the coming of the Twelfth Imam is to annihilate Israel and the U.S. What’s more, the current leaders of Iran are feverishly trying to build, buy or steal nuclear weapons and build alliances with three nuclear powers — Russia, China and North Korea.
• Egypt and Israel have a cold but stable peace. True, Sadat was assassinated by Radicals, but he did inspire a new generation of Arab Muslim Reformers throughout the region, particularly in Iraq. Unfortunately, current Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is by no means a Reformer. He is, instead, a “Resister” of almost any sort of positive change.
• Menachem Begin’s disciple — Benjamin Netanyahu — is about to become the next Prime Minister of Israel.
• Afghanistan is in the hands of the Reformers, though the Radicals of al Qaeda and the Taliban are battling hard to take it back.
• The Revivalists have a new tool for reaching Muslims with the gospel — the new film, “Damascus,” which will premiere at the Vatican on May 16th and spread throughout Protestant and Catholic churches in the Middle East this summer. I just met with the executive producer of the film and will have more details soon.

Bottom line: Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution began in Iran, and the Reformer Revolution began with the Camp David Accords, and the Revivalist Revolution began with the JESUS film, the battle for hearts, minds and souls in the epicenter rages on with increasing intensity. Watching all three movements is the Islamic “Rank-and-File,” the vast majority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. The Rank-and-File represent the vast middle ground of the Muslim world. They are going about their day-to-day lives without much of a desire to be Revolutionaries of any kind. But they are the audience to which the Radicals, the Reformers, and the Revivalists are speaking. If any of these major movements ever gains the majority — or even a working plurality — of the Rank-and-File, the entire world will be forever changed, for good or ill. Understanding these three Revolutionary movements — including the crises they are responding to and the answers they are offering — is of absolutely critical importance. Those who ignore these trends do so at their peril.

HEADLINES TO TRACK:

• MEMRI: Sunni Sheikh the Persian Gulf urges Arabs to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons “in order to strike terror in the hearts of our enemies”
• Jerusalem Post: Netanyahu’s weekend dilemma — how will he satisfy key Likud leaders with key Cabinet positions when he has given so many away to coalition partners (Note: Netanyahu is expected to present his new government to President Shimon Peres on Tuesday)
• Haaretz: Netanyahu struggles with paucity of portfolios for Likud

Jim Wallis: Obama’s “Red” Spiritual Adviser

El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that’s because North America is moving in the same direction. The president of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red.

According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of the nation of El Salvador. Behind Funes “is a party of former Marxist guerrillas that fought to overthrow U.S.-backed governments in the 1980s and whose rise to power has raised fears of a communist regime in the war-scarred Central American country.”

The AP admits “ex-guerrillas will almost certainly form part of the Funes government, including Vice President-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a rebel commander-turned-congressman.”

And then there’s the “drug” connection! Investor’s Business Daily reports that “last May, the FMLN confessed to ‘a relationship’ with Colombia’s drug-trafficking FARC Marxist terrorists after documents found on the computer of dead FARC chieftain Raul Reyes, killed in a 2008 raid, proved it” (March 16, 2009).

Funes, of course, says he’ll “govern moderately, more like Brazil ’socialist’ President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva than Venezuela’s radical [communist] Hugo Chavez.” Of course, this is what the Nicaraguan communist Daniel Ortega said, too, before he displayed his communist “proletariat morality” by hugging the communist dictators Castro and Chavez. Ortega and all his South American pals are hard-core Marxist-Leninists.

While all of this, of course, is relevant to an ardent free-market capitalist, what really frightens me is that Obama’s latest announced “spiritual adviser” has had connections with all these Marxist regimes. And who is the president’s latest adviser? The Rev. Jim Wallis.

Frontpage Magazine (March 17, 2009) reports, “The most notable of [Obama's] spiritual advisers today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis.” Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have “been talking faith and politics for a long time.” He was picked by Obama to draft the faith-based policies of his campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year. Why should this alarm us?

First, Jim Wallis has had relationships with the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

Second, his “Witness for Peace” was an attempt to defend the Nicaraguan Sandinistas! Wallis, together with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s former pastor of 20 years) “rallied support for the communist Nicaraguan regime and protested actions by the United States which supported the anti-communist Contra rebels” (Family World News, February 2009, p. 7).

Third, Wallis and his Sojourners community of fellow-travelers believe Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua and the other revolutionary forces “restructuring socialist societies” are the communist paradises the United States needs to emulate in order to establish “social justice.” Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, Jacob Laksin notes, “Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of communist revolutions in Central America” (Laksin, “Sojourners: History, Activities and Agendas” in Discoverthenetworks.org., 2005).

The ugly truth is Wallis wishes to see the destruction of the United States as a nation and in its place “a radical nonconformist community” patterned after the progressive, socialist commune he established in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Laksin, Ibid.).

“The Sojourners community,” says Laksin, “actively embraced ‘liberation theology,’ rallying to the cause of communist regimes that had seized power with the promise of bringing about a revolutionary restructuring of society.” Clark Pinnock, a disaffected former member of Sojourners, said that the community’s members were “100 percent in favor of the Nicaraguan [communist] revolution” (Laksin, Ibid.).

All this revolutionary activity in spite of the fact that today’s Cuba, for example, has to import 84 percent of its food supply due to the socialistic mess of the agricultural system (150,000 oxen till the ground because tractors represent capitalism). However, in a move that looks more like capitalism than Marxism’s state farms, “Raul Castro is moving to boost food production by putting more land under the control of private farmers” (The Weekly Standard, March 23, 2009).

It appears that Raul Castro is learning what America’s early pilgrims learned back in the 1620s! William Bradford noted in his “History of Plymouth Plantation” that once he canceled the pilgrims’ socialistic experiment and provided each settler with a piece of property to till, starvation was averted. We can hope and pray that Raul Castro continues to implement more capitalistic policies and will learn firsthand the economic system that has brought more people out of poverty than any other in the history of the world. (See Rodney Stark, “The Victory of Reason.”)

Of course, Wallis should have learned the lessons of Plymouth Plantation early in his education, but may not have because our Secular Humanistic K-12 curricula delete most of the history of the pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact in an attempt to avoid acknowledging its “advancement of Christianity.” (Sadly, one first-grade textbook that does include the pilgrims has them “praying to the Indians.”)

For years, Wallis has been in the forefront of the “evangelical” left and has been fêted at numerous evangelical colleges and seminaries. That seems to be the “in” thing right now. His publication Sojourners is piled high on these campuses for the reading pleasure of the naïve and foolish.

Unbeknown to these colleges and seminaries is Wallis’ Red background. He was the president of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while at Michigan State University. The SDS was the youth arm of the League for Industrial Democracy – the American counterpart to the British Fabian Society founded to promote socialism throughout the West. One of the League’s mentors for years was Norman Thomas, who argued that “the American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened” (Google, Norman Thomas quotes). Another prominent League mentor was John Dewey, a signatory of the atheistic, socialistic 1933 “Humanist Manifesto.” The SDS actually merits a chapter in Richard J. Ellis’s work “The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America,” published by the University of Kansas Press.

In October of 1969, SDS original organizer Tom Hayden directed his followers to “set off on a rampage, smashing windows of parked cars, hurling rocks and bricks through apartment windows, and fighting with police.” Hayden blamed the police for his violence even though later his followers “comforted themselves, because theirs was a violence to end all violence, a liberating and righteous violence that would rid the world of a system that deformed and destroyed people. Such glorious ends justified, even ennobled, violent means” (Ellis, p. 137).

Ellis insists that the language of revolution and violent confrontation was evident throughout the ranks of the SDS. Jim Wallis was part and parcel of this pro-communist group of radicals and revolutionaries.

Wallis’ Sojourners enterprise has been a radical, socialistic undertaking from the start. Frontpage Magazine (March 17, 2009) says, “As one of its first acts, Sojourners formed a commune in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Southern Columbia Heights, where members shared their finances and participated in various activist campaigns that centered on attacking the U.S. foreign policy, denouncing American ‘imperialism,’ and extolling Marxist revolutionary movements in the Third World.”

Sojourners contributing editors included the radical Daniel “Pentagon Papers” Berrigan, Walter Brueggemann, James Hal Cone (author of the racist “Black Theology and Black Power” in which the white race is depicted as devils), Rosemary Radford Ruether (professor of Feminist Theology, Catholics for Choice, God is the feminine Gaia), Ron Sider, Cornel West and Garry Wills. Today, Sojourners’ Board of Directors includes Wallis, Ron Sider, Brian McLaren and Bart Campolo.

Over the years, Wallis has been pro-Vietcong and actually gloried in America’s defeat in Vietnam. He said, “I don’t know how else to express the quiet emotion that rushed through me when the news reports showed that the United States had finally been defeated in Vietnam” (Ronald H. Nash, “Why The Left Is Not Right,” p. 58).

However, like Jane Fonda, Wallis said next to nothing about the communist genocide that followed the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. In fact, in a typical communist response, he criticized those fleeing Vietnam by boat as somehow attempting “to support their consumer habits in other lands” (Nash, p. 59).

Wallis has been closely associated with Richard Barnet (former contributing editor of Sojourners) and the Institute for Policy Studies, a radical left-wing think tank supporting socialist revolutionaries around the world; Wallis had his book “The Soul of Politics” published by Orbis Books in 1994, a radical left-wing Roman Catholic publishing arm of the radical left-wing Maryknollers; Sojourner magazine has been a strong supporter of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and, indeed, has supported every left-wing, liberation theology cause around the world.

And yes, Wallis portrays the evangelical right that happens to be pro-American and anti-communist “as members of the forces of darkness” (Nash, p. 66, 71). For Wallis, a good Christian is someone who is pro-communist and socialist, while a bad Christian is someone who is anti-communist and pro-capitalist. The cry of the Sojourners crowd is “social justice” for the poor and downtrodden – social justice being code for socialism/communism.

I could not disagree more strongly. I contend that the Marxist-Leninist worldview is 100 percent contrary to biblical Christianity, and I document this extensively in my book “Understanding the Times.” Further, communism is directly responsible for the murder of tens of millions of human beings, a slaughter documented by Stephane Courtois, et. al. in their 1999 book, “The Black Book on Communism” (Harvard University Press).

I will attempt to be as kind and gentle as humanly possible and break the news to the Rev. Wallis and his “spiritual” advisee Barack Obama – socialism has never lifted the poor out of poverty. It has equally distributed poverty, but it has never been able to create the wealth that is partially responsible for lifting the poor out of poverty.

I say “partially responsible” because one’s worldview is even more important than wealth in reducing poverty. But socialism is a flawed idea, and it poisons the worldview of the people it influences. Our brothers on the evangelical left, who are concerned with the poor, need to read Theodore Dalrymple’s “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.” Although not a Christian, Dalrymple understands perfectly the importance of a proper worldview and its role in combating poverty, drugs, crime and broken families.

Can we admit a hard truth? Christian capitalist Truett Cathy’s Chic-fil-A has done more to fight poverty and help the poor than all the pronouncements of Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Daniel Berrigan, Brian McLaren, Tony and Bart Campolo, and their entire crew of left-wing sociological and economic friends combined.

Thomas Sowell explains, “It would be devastating to the egos of the intelligentsia to realize, much less admit, that businesses have done more to reduce poverty than all the intellectuals put together. Ultimately, it is only wealth that can reduce poverty, and most of the intelligentsia have no interest whatever in finding out what actions and policies increase the national wealth” (Capitalism Magazine, May 9, 2005).

In fact, the intellectuals are the very ones who complain about those who do increase wealth. Again, Thomas Sowell speaks to this issue: “Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century – medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge increases in consumer goods, dramatic improvements in housing, the computer revolution. The people who created these things – the doers – are not popular heroes. Our heroes are the talkers who complain about the doers.”

Socialism is built on a slogan: “What can government do for me today?” instead of “What can I do to better prepare myself to take care of myself in order to be a better Christian and servant of my Lord?” Preparation involves individual responsibility, traditional family values, education, love of God and neighbor, and compassion for the up-and-outers as well as the down-and-outers.

Socialists stand against nearly every Christian, conservative principle imaginable. Compare the socialist agenda with Yale professor David Gelernter’s summary of the conservative position – “the freedom of every American to make his own way, free speech on the radio and everywhere else, free elections for workers and other people … freedom to acknowledge and celebrate the nation’s rootedness in Christianity, Judaism and the Bible … love of liberty and love of God” (National Review, March 23, 2009, p. 32).

In 2006, Barack Obama was the keynote speaker at Jim Wallis’ Call to Renewal conference, “Building a Covenant for a New America.” Following his address, in an interview by the United Church News, he cited “the teachings of the UCC (United Church of Christ) as foundation stones for his political work.” He said, “Just as my pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, welcomed me as a young man years ago, UCC churches across the country open their doors to millions of Americans each Sunday . … I believe that democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal values. Social justice and national security are both universal values, values that may originate for some in their religious beliefs, but are shared by us all.”

What Americans can look forward to now that Rev. Wallis has the ear of the president is what Sojourners magazine has been pedaling since 1971 – “advocating America’s transformation into a socialist nation” (Accuracy in Media Research Report, May 1983, Section 19).

Could it be that America, who turned her back on God by deciding that prayer and the Bible can no longer grace her public schools, but homosexuality (indeed the whole GLBTQ rainbow), abortion counseling and condoms in school colors are welcomed, is experiencing the very judgment of God? There are consequences for “forgetting God,” as Solzhenitsyn noted about his mother country, Russia. These same consequences are piling up on the metro-sexual West in general and on the United States in particular.

The Real Population Threat

For well over a century, many prophets of doom have predicted world overpopulation would lead to ecological disaster, famine, poverty and other woes.  As Philip Longman points out in the March 24, 2009 edition of USA Today, the world’s population is expected to hit 7 billion by 2012, up from the 6 billion mark set in 1999.  So, is overpopulation a real threat?

Not hardly.  Though population density can threaten sustainability in some areas of the globe, the far greater danger for our future is what Longman calls “depopulation.”  On a global scale, we are seeing the population of older persons exploding and the numbers of young persons falling.

The trend toward depopulation started in Europe, spread to Asia, and is now detectable even in Latin America.  The United Nations now predicts that total world population may begin falling as early as 2040, and much of the surviving population will be very old indeed.

Consider this observations from Longman:

Under what the U.N. considers the most likely scenario, more than half of all remaining growth comes from a 1.2 billion increase in the number of old people, while the worldwide supply of children will begin falling within 15 years. With fewer workers to support each elder, the world economy might have to run just that much faster, and consume that much more resources, or else living standards will fall.

In the USA, where nearly one-fifth of Baby Boomers never had children, the hardship of vanishing retirement savings will be compounded by the strains on both formal and informal care-giving networks caused by the spread of childlessness. A pet will keep you company in old age, but it is unlikely to be of use in helping you navigate the health care system or in keeping predatory reverse mortgage brokers at bay.

The simple fact is that a stable standard of living depends upon a steady stream of young persons entering the work force and contributing to the economy and the culture.  When an unprecedented percentage of the total population is aged, the economy and the society in general begins to tilt toward unsustainability.  To state only the most obvious point, when the number of retirees is out of balance with the number of workers, there may simply not be enough economic activity to pay the bills.

Economists and demographers will debate innumerable aspects of this new phenomenon, but from a Christian worldview perspective certain issues stand out.  Longman underlines the fact that this looming population imbalance is the result of chosen behaviors and lifestyle changes — not to forces beyond human control.

Consider this one statistic alone:  Nearly one-fifth of Baby Boomers never had children at all.  As Longman observes, childlessness puts great strains on the entire system of care-giving upon which both individuals and the society in general depend.

There is something horribly haunting about his comment about pets:  “A pet will keep you company in old age, but it is unlikely to be of use in helping you navigate the health care system or in keeping predatory reverse mortgage brokers at bay.”  The media have provided any number of recent stories on the fact that many Baby Boomers now look to their pets as children.  Need we point out that the pets will not be able to return the favor?

Christians should remember that this issue is never isolated from God’s purpose in creating humanity in His image and giving humans a distinctive role in the world.  He also gave us marriage and the gift of children within the family.  The contraceptive revolution has changed the way modern people look at children.  Now, children are a choice . . . and a choice many couples now do not choose.

Longman concludes:  “Societies around the globe need to ask why they are engaging in what biologists would surely recognize in any other species as maladaptive behavior leading either to extinction, or dramatic mutation.”

The contraceptive mentality and the trend toward childlessness bring consequences, and these are not easily reversed.  The more we distance ourselves from the natural blessings of the natural family, the greater our vulnerability grows.  China, Longman notes, is fast becoming a nation in which one child supports two parents and four grandparents.  Not only is this pattern unsustainable — it is untenable.

A “Stained-Glass Ceiling?” A Clarifying Look at a Controversial Question

As Mary Zeiss Stange sees it, women are being denied their rightful place of leadership in American religious life.  Her logic is clear, and she writes with a mixture of exasperation and energy.  Her op-ed column in today’s edition of USA Today, “Do Women Have a Prayer?,” reflects the way many people naturally frame the issue of the role of women in the church.

Women report far higher rates of religious belief and participation than do men, according to studies as recent as The Pew Forum’s 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.  Women are indispensable to the life of our congregations and are more likely than men to participate in church life in some congregations and denominations.

This leads Professor Stange to write:

One would think that these facts would translate into women’s rise to positions of spiritual leadership — surely the mark of genuine equality — in the various denominations. Alas, as a glance at some of the largest organized religious groups in the country shows, the picture is at best mixed when it comes to women’s ability to break that stained-glass ceiling.

Mary Zeiss Stange is Professor of Religious Studies and Religion at Skidmore College in New York.  In the paragraph cited above, she refers to “that stained-glass ceiling” that, in her view, keeps women from positions of church leadership.  In her understanding, full access to all positions of leadership is “the mark of genuine equality” that is missing from most American churches.

Thus, this article gets right to the heart of the issues at stake.  Professor Stange writes from a recognizable point of view.  She sees equal access to leadership as integral to genuine equality for women.  If any office in the church is limited to men, women are treated as unequals.  Following her logic, this pattern can only be explained by prejudice and intractable tradition — thus the stained-glass ceiling as a religious form of the so-called “glass ceiling” that has limited the role of women in other sectors of society.

Professor Stange points her argument toward the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention as examples of denominations that illustrate the “stained-glass ceiling.”  She does recognize that both the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists base their understanding on theological commitments, but she sees this pattern as rooted in prejudice that should be overcome.

“The better news is that among the so-called mainline Protestant denominations, women have made considerable progress in attaining positions of religious authority,” she reports.  She cites the fact that, for example, the United Methodist Church has ordained women to the ministry for decades now.  Yet, as she also notes, “in a pattern familiar among churches that do ordain women — few of these women hold senior positions in large congregations.”

Accordingly, Professor Stange declares her verdict:

It is a truth so familiar as to have become cliché: Women are the driving force behind organized religion. They fill the pews, they bring their children into the fold. The Pew data help make sense of these facts. But the same data highlight the cruel irony that in far too many religious contexts in this country, women remain second-class citizens.

Like all of us, Professor Stange operates out of a set of presuppositions and intellectual commitments — a worldview.  In her worldview, any limitation of leadership to men is based in prejudice that must be overcome in the name of liberating women.  Churches are seen as human institutions marked by human prejudice, pure and simple.

Completely missing from her analysis is any concession that God might actually have ordered this pattern of leadership restriction for our good and His glory.  Her perspective on the issue is fundamentally secular in approach.  In this view, where men alone can hold positions of authority and responsibility, prejudice must be the cause and access to these positions for women must be the solution.

We live in a society that considers itself pledged to equality as a basic principle.  We also live in a society that is, indeed, marked by many prejudices that are evidence of human sinfulness, pure and simple.

Nevertheless, those who believe that the church is an institution established by Jesus Christ and who believe that the Bible is our sole final authority for belief and practice must obey what the Bible teaches.  This means that we must also follow the pattern set out in the Scripture as the pattern set out by God himself.

Men and women are indeed equally created in the image of God, equally in need of the Gospel, and equal in terms of salvation.  Both men and women are called to lives of discipleship, service, and witness.  Mary Zeiss Stange is surely right when she suggests that churches depend upon the dedicated service and faithfulness of women.  But this does not mean that the pattern for the church set forth in the Bible is to be rejected in light of current conceptions of gender equality.  Those who believe that the Bible is indeed the inerrant and infallible written revelation of God are obligated to perpetuate and honor the pattern of leadership ordered within the text of Scripture.

Furthermore, we must see this pattern, not as evidence of human prejudice, but as God’s revelation to us — a revelation by grace that is for the good of both men and women and the pattern by which God brings glory to himself.

Two very different worldviews stand at the intersection where this issue is now debated.  In her own way, Mary Zeiss Stange helps to clarify what is at stake, and to show how different worldviews lead to very different (even diametrically opposed) conclusions.   Opportunities for this quality of clarity are not to be missed.

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