They Were All Deists (?)

I’m getting a bit tired of having rosy-cheeked, well-meaning university students hit me with this statement, as though it explains some cataclysmic truth I cannot quite grasp about the founders of our nation and what they had in mind when they pledged their fortunes, their oath and their sacred honor to the task of building the foundation upon which our great nation stands.  The last time I checked we still lived in a more-or-less consistent universe, in which things that exist are actually real and things that don’t exist, but are only imagined to be, are not real.  Yes, yes, I know, everyone thinks the immortal John Lennon began all this preposterous nonsense with lyrics like:

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.
I’m crying.

What John was trying to say, under the influence of his rather militant and controlling wife, was that everything is the same as everything else.  There are no real differences between any “things” because all things are simply imagined to begin with.  According to her, and to him, everything is non-existent and meaningless.  Choices we make now are not remembered later and there is certainly nobody to hold those choices against us.  I’m struck by how much this sounds like the postmodern “truth” that reality exists only in the mind of the one beholding it.  Words have no meaning other than those the hearers assign to them.  Events have no meaning other than those the participants assign to them.  There is no independent, absolutely existent reality.  Only what we believe.  For a culture that decided to depend only upon science to prove what was true and real, we seem to have come a long ways in the other direction.

I’m watching a TV show right now in which the narrator is interviewing astrophysicists and other scientists, with the question; “how many universes exist?”  Really!  I mean, I’m as open-minded as anyone.  And I absolutely love string theory and the whole business of infinite possibility.  But this now sounds a lot like the medieval question; “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

I spent a great deal of time at a particular period in my life with Buddhist masters, who tried repeatedly to convince me that nothing is real.  “It all only exists because we imagine it,” they would intone.  I’m sure I’m a dullard, and I’m pretty sure that’s what they thought about me, but  I kept reminding them that when they came into the room to have this discussion with me, they used the door.  They didn’t come in through the wall, because they actually acted upon the belief that the wall and the door were real.  All that to say that in the “real” world we still behave as if things that happened actually happened and things that didn’t happen were either dreams or products of our imagination.  If we produce evidence showing that someone committed a murder, there isn’t an option for “it was only an illusion, and the victim wasn’t real and neither was the murderer or his gun.”  What happened actually happened.  I’ve tried to take back things I said in the past, and it didn’t work out too well for me.  My lovely wife once asked me; “Do these pants make me look fat?” To which I promptly replied, “Yeah, sure honey!”  With time the sting of that unconscious reply diminished in effect, but I doubt she ever forgot it, and I’m absolutely sure I didn’t.  What I said was real and it had real effects.  Now back to that statement I keep hearing from students, as though the saying of the thing changes the history of what was.  Fact of the matter is that what was real for our founding fathers is still real, as long as we can produce evidence that it was real then.  What they said gives us clues to how they actually believed, no matter how many times Howard Zinn revises the history.  Were our founding fathers actually all Deists?  Or are we somehow being led into the trap of believing that what is said most often is truth?  Here is some historical evidence.  Here are some things our founding fathers actually said.  Read these things and see if you get the idea that they believed God exists, but not in a personal or knowable way, that He had created the world and then walked away, leaving us to our own designs as to how it would proceed.  Certainly some of our founders were Deists.  But what of these men?

Samuel Adams
Father of the American Revolution, Signer of the Declaration of Independence
I . . . recommend my Soul to that Almighty Being who gave it, and my body I commit to the dust, relying upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.
Will of Samuel Adams
Charles Carroll
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits; not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.
From an autographed letter in our possession written by Charles Carroll to Charles W. Wharton, Esq., on September 27, 1825, from Doughoragen, Maryland.
William Cushing
First Associate Justice Appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court
Sensible of my mortality, but being of sound mind, after recommending my soul to Almighty God through the merits of my Redeemer and my body to the earth . . .
Will of William Cushing
John Dickinson
Signer of the Constitution
Rendering thanks to my Creator for my existence and station among His works, for my birth in a country enlightened by the Gospel and enjoying freedom, and for all His other kindnesses, to Him I resign myself, humbly confiding in His goodness and in His mercy through Jesus Christ for the events of eternity.
Will of John Dickinson
John Hancock
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
I John Hancock, . . . being advanced in years and being of perfect mind and memory-thanks be given to God-therefore calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing it is appointed for all men once to die [Hebrews 9:27], do make and ordain this my last will and testament…Principally and first of all, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of God that gave it: and my body I recommend to the earth . . . nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mercy and power of God. . .

Will of John Hancock
Patrick Henry
Governor of Virginia, Patriot
This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.

Will of Patrick Henry
John Jay
First Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court
Unto Him who is the author and giver of all good, I render sincere and humble thanks for His manifold and unmerited blessings, and especially for our redemption and salvation by His beloved son. He has been pleased to bless me with excellent parents, with a virtuous wife, and with worthy children. His protection has companied me through many eventful years, faithfully employed in the service of my country; His providence has not only conducted me to this tranquil situation but also given me abundant reason to be contented and thankful. Blessed be His holy name!

Will of John Jay
Daniel St. Thomas Jenifer
Signer of the Constitution
In the name of God, Amen. I, Daniel of Saint Thomas Jenifer . . . of dispossing mind and memory, commend my soul to my blessed Redeemer. . .

Will of Daniel St. Thomas Jenifer
Henry Knox
Revolutionary War General, Secretary of War
First, I think it proper to express my unshaken opinion of the immortality of my soul or mind; and to dedicate and devote the same to the supreme head of the Universe – to that great and tremendous Jehovah, – Who created the universal frame of nature, worlds, and systems in number infinite . . . To this awfully sublime Being do I resign my spirit with unlimited confidence of His mercy and protection . . .
Will of Henry Knox
John Langdon
Signer of the Constitution
In the name of God, Amen. I, John Langdon, . . . considering the uncertainty of life and that it is appointed unto all men once to die [Hebrews 9:27], do make, ordain and publish this my last will and testament in manner following, that is to say-First: I commend my soul to the infinite mercies of God in Christ Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, who died and rose again that He might be the Lord of the dead and of the living . . . professing to believe and hope in the joyful Scripture doctrine of a resurrection to eternal life . . .
Will of John Langdon
John Morton
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
With an awful reverence to the great Almighty God, Creator of all mankind, I, John Morton . . . being sick and weak in body but of sound mind and memory-thanks be given to Almighty God for the same, for all His mercies and favors-and considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the times thereof, do, for the settling of such temporal estate as it hath pleased God to bless me with in this life . . .
Will of John Morton
Robert Treat Paine
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
I desire to bless and praise the name of God most high for appointing me my birth in a land of Gospel Light where the glorious tidings of a Savior and of pardon and salvation through Him have been continually sounding in mine ears.
Robert Treat Paine, The Papers of Robert Treat Paine, Stephen Riley and Edward Hanson, editors (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1992), Vol. I, p. 48, March/April, 1749.
[W]hen I consider that this instrument contemplates my departure from this life and all earthly enjoyments and my entrance on another state of existence, I am constrained to express my adoration of the Supreme Being, the Author of my existence, in full belief of his providential goodness and his forgiving mercy revealed to the world through Jesus Christ, through whom I hope for never ending happiness in a future state, acknowledging with grateful remembrance the happiness I have enjoyed in my passage through a long life. . .
Will of Robert Treat Paine
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Signer of the Constitution
To the eternal, immutable, and only true God be all honor and glory, now and forever, Amen!. . .
Will of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Rufus Putnam
Revolutionary War General, First Surveyor General of the United States
[F]irst, I give my soul to a holy, sovereign God Who gave it in humble hope of a blessed immortality through the atonement and righteousness of Jesus Christ and the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit. My body I commit to the earth to be buried in a decent Christian manner. I fully believe that this body shall, by the mighty power of God, be raised to life at the last day; ‘for this corruptable (sic) must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on
immortality.’ [I Corinthians 15:53] Will of Rufus Putnam
Benjamin Rush
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
My only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!
Benjamin Rush, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, George Corner, editor (Princeton: Princeton University Press for the American Philosophical Society, 1948), p. 166, Travels Through Life, An Account of Sundry Incidents & Events in the Life of Benjamin Rush.
Roger Sherman
Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Signer of the Constitution
I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . . that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a revelation from God. . . . that God did send His own Son to become man, die in the room and stead of sinners, and thus to lay a foundation for the offer of pardon and salvation to all mankind so as all may be saved who are willing to accept the Gospel offer.
Lewis Henry Boutell, The Life of Roger Sherman (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1896), pp. 272-273.
Richard Stockton
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
I think it proper here not only to subscribe to the entire belief of the great and leading doctrines of the Christian religion, such as the Being of God, the universal defection and depravity of human nature, the divinity of the
person and the completeness of the redemption purchased by the blessed Savior, the necessity of the operations of the Divine Spirit, of Divine Faith, accompanied with an habitual virtuous life, and the universality of the divine Providence, but also . . . that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; that the way of life held up in the Christian system is calculated for the most complete happiness that can be enjoyed in this mortal state; that all occasions of vice and immorality is injurious either immediately or consequentially, even in this life; that as Almighty God hath not been pleased in the Holy Scriptures to prescribe any precise mode in which He is to be publicly worshiped, all contention about it generally arises from want of knowledge or want of virtue.
Will of Richard Stockton
Jonathan Trumbull Sr.
Governor of Connecticut, Patriot
Principally and first of all, I bequeath my soul to God the Creator and Giver thereof, and body to the Earth . . . nothing doubting but that I shall receive the same again at the General Resurrection thro the power of Almighty God; believing and hoping for eternal life thro the merits of my dear, exalted Redeemer Jesus Christ.
Will of Jonathan Trumbull
John Witherspoon
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
I entreat you in the most earnest manner to believe in Jesus Christ, for there is no salvation in any other [Acts 4:12]. . . . [I]f you are not reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, if you are not clothed with the spotless robe of His righteousness, you must forever perish.
John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), Vol. V, pp. 276, 278, The Absolute Necessity of Salvation Through Christ, January 2, 1758.

What Difference Do We Make?

At a time when more and more families are experiencing homelessness due to the economic tsunami, houses of worship are stepping up and working more closely with each other to help “the least of these.”  Paradoxically, the movement comes amid increasing secular and statist assaults on charities and a proposal to limit charitable deductions – a move experts say makes little sense because faith communities have the best resources to draw from to sustain the kind of charitable donations necessary to offer real hope to those in need.

During a rare gathering of Jews and evangelical Christians, Fuller Theological Seminary Doctor of Ministry Program Director Kurt Fredrickson said some Christians believe in the Rapture – the notion that God will supernaturally remove them from the earth prior to the end of the world.

Although Fredrickson doesn’t believe “that’s the way it’s going to work out,” the former senior pastor of a Simi Valley, California church used to wonder if the doctrine was true and his congregation vanished if the community would even notice they were gone.

“My sad conclusion was quite negative,” Fredrickson mused. “I really had this sense early on in my ministry at Simi Covenant Church that they wouldn’t notice that we were gone, and if they did notice we were gone, they would probably be happy that those crazy, crotchety Christians weren’t here anymore.”

The penetrating comment came during a recent luncheon sponsored by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and Fuller Theological Seminary that brought together rabbis, pastors and professors to talk about ways to work more closely together to help the poor and homeless. The meeting is part of a new movement by the faith community nationwide to do more to help the “least of these” amid an economic tsunami that is radically changing the way people think about life.

The luncheon, “Caring in a Caring Community: Doing the Right Thing in Bad Times,” was designed to bring Christians and Jews together because of a mutual sense of call to care for those who are marginalized by society. While the Jewish community engages in many “significant dialogues” with Catholics and mainline Christians, luncheon participants noted Jews and evangelical Christians have traditionally lacked a strong partnership.

“It’s a complex relationship,” says Rabbi Mark S. Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis. “This program between Fuller and the Board of Rabbis is an attempt to build bridges and realize that we have much in common. We have a joint mandate as people of faith to partner with God in caring for those in our community who are most at risk – people who are homeless and people who don’t have enough food to put on the table – and this is an effort to address those needs.”

For Just Such A Time As This?

Employees of mask-maker Ogawa Studios posed Friday in Saitama for a photo wearing masks modeled after Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

It would be difficult to overstate the anticipation and yet the trepidation I feel concerning the cataclysmic events that have occurred in Japan in these past few weeks.  A political event approaching the importance of the great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 has happened, sweeping the past into its wake and turning the ship of state in a new, if unknown direction.  Throughout my time in Japan, from 1985 to 1998, we often prayed for a “shakeup.”  In our role as peacemakers, of course, our prayers always stopped short of disaster.  But when disaster would strike we would look at each other and say:  “Maybe this is it?”  What we hoped for was a wake-up call, a single event or a set of occurrences that would bring Japanese people to the brink, at which they could re-evaluate their worldview and re-establish their faith with something other than “fate” as the basis.  In ‘95, as we pooled our resources and worked to provide needed food and water for the stricken Kobe area, where the earthquake had devastated the city, we saw many people come to a new realization about the fragility of life and the depth of their need for truth as the basis.  Over 3000 deaths were recorded, society’s resilience surprised even those who worked to rebuild, and our hopes that Japan would not waste her sorrow fell short, as life returned to ‘normal.’  In the ensuing years there was the stock market crash, the ripple effect of the war on terror, North Korea’s sabre-rattling, China’s stridency and many other candidates for this ominous honor as Japan’s wake-up call.  But now, another kind of event, one that encompasses many of the former events and portends to eclipse them all, perhaps the one we have been waiting for all along, has brought a kind of change that affects every area of life.  Beginning down deep in the political landscape, an earthquake that began shaking many years ago has reached the surface.  Dare we, again, pray that this is “the big one?”

Japan’s Prime Minister-to-be, Yukio Hatoyama, spoke by telephone with President  Obama early Thursday morning, and later met with the U.S. and Russian ambassadors, who congratulated him on his election. Mr. Hatoyama was careful to give assurances to the United States that, despite his party’s platform position on seeking greater independence from Washington, Tokyo’s commitment to the alliance would remain the “foundation” of his foreign policy.

Leaders across the world are especially anxious to get to know Hatoyama because his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has never put a cabinet together before, and no one knows quite what to think about the sweeping opposition victory in Japan’s House of Representatives on Sunday. A single party, the Liberal Democrats (LDP), has governed Japan almost without interruption since 1955. The change was expected — but now that it has happened, the implications for business, for relationships on a geopolitical scale, and even for the lives of ordinary people seem more momentous.

A Collision of Lives

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.^[1]

Douglas Wilson — Is Christianity Good For The World? — With Christopher Hitchens

One might be hard pressed to find two more completely opposite friends than Doug Wilson and Chris Hitchens.  Hitchens, of course, is the notably self-described “anti-theist” (eschewing the title “athiest”) writer of the NY Times best seller God Is Not Great!, erstwhile writer for Vanity Fair; The Atlantic; The Nation and others.  Wilson, although someone you may not have heard so much about, is equally notable.  Conservative Reformed and evangelical theologian, pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, faculty member at New Saint Andrews College, and  author of many books such as Mother Kirk: Essays and Forays in Practical Ecclesiology, To a Thousand Generations on infant baptism, and “Reformed” Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant.  Though certainly  poles apart from the brand of theology we normally espouse here at Pax-Rex, Wilson’s defense of the faith is exemplary and rigorous.  (The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a bit harsh I think, but so be it.)  Hitchens and Wilson became friends (or should we say “friendly”) in the spring of 2007 in a correspondence over the question “Is Christianity Good For The World?”  Hitchens, being his naturally pompous self, took the contra position on the argument and away they went.  The heated, but often hilarious, conversations were published in Christianity Today and earned high praises from a large readership.  The edited versions of the conversations were published in a book of the same name, and the two went on the road together for a series of public appearances, book signings, and of course, more arguments.  “All this sounds quite interesting,” you’re probably saying, “but what does it have to do with me?  I didn’t read Hitchins’ book and probably won’t spend time I could use gaining valuable insight into, say, LOST, to read this one either.”  The point is just this:  A movie version of the conversations and other content is about to be released.  Collision! will make its debut on October 27, 2009.  It will be available on DVD and will screen at theaters in New York and Los Angeles.  The DVD is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com.  My recommendation is that everyone who reads this article watch the first 13 minutes of the DVD here, and then click on the pre order link above to get the DVD and show it to as many people as possible.

All books and materials are Available Here.

Click on the VodPod Videos Widget at the right to view a 13 Minute Preview of COLLISION!

Knowing Christ Today

The genius of Dallas Willard's new book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne, 2009), is its explanatory power for many of the ills of contemporary Western society.

Dallas Willard, a longtime philosophy professor at the USC (University of Southern California) and author of such works as The Divine Conspiracy and The Spirit of the Disciplines, says the moral confusion we see today stems from one uber-problem: “the trivialization of faith apart from knowledge and … the disastrous effects of a repositioning of faith in Jesus Christ, and of life as his students, outside the category of knowledge.”

Our problem, then, is epistemological: What do we know, and how do we know it? Willard says that to actually claim that you possess real but not exhaustive knowledge on a moral issue (what Francis Schaeffer called “true truth”) is a scandal in the modern world. Relativists see certainty as a trip-wire for arrogance and extremism, and uncertainty as a recipe for tolerance and peace. The post-9/11 fulminations of New Atheists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who label all religions as potentially dangerous, are evidence for Willard’s thesis. Better to claim ignorance—and more humble, too.

Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and other “pop-atheists” of our day decry religion as the cause of history’s worst catastrophic abuses, citing the Crusades, the Inquisition and the like.  However, they fail to acknowledge that the absolute worst of all such abuses of human rights and pure abrogations of decency have all been perpetrated by those claiming to know that God does not exist, building upon a secular model of equality for all men.  Stalin, Pol Pot, and to at least some degree Hitler, all saw utopian socialist ideals as mankind’s salvation.

Yet knowledge need not provoke violence. Willard says rightly that sin is integral to the human condition and is not a specifically religious malady. Sometimes knowledge even sparks humility. And when do we actually possess knowledge, according to Willard? “We have knowledge of something when we are representing it (thinking about it, speaking of it, treating it) as it actually is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience.“

Once-hallowed religious beliefs, Willard says, have been relegated to the intellectual sidelines as a result of the post-Enlightenment struggle between what he calls “traditional knowledge” and secularism, which claims the mantle of knowledge without warrant and which rules in institutions of higher learning—even Christian ones—as the areas of human life that do not fit the “secularist story” multiply. As a result, knowledge disappears, and the vacuum is filled by others.

“In the context of modern life and thought,” Willard says, Christians “are urged to treat their central beliefs as something other than knowledge. Those beliefs are to be relegated to the categories of sincere opinion, emotion, blind commitment, or behavior traditional for their social group.” When this happens, Willard says, Christians cannot influence society for the good. Only knowledge, as opposed to mere belief, commitment, or formal adherence, conveys the right and authority “to act, to direct action, to establish and supervise policy, and to teach.”

A recent news event illustrates the brilliance of Willard’s diagnosis.  This past spring Notre Dame’s decision to award President Obama an honorary doctorate did not sit well with many alumni and friends of the university, who rightly pointed out that Obama’s pro-choice policies contradict clear Catholic teaching (Notre Dame is a Catholic school). While supporters, including the university president and most students, defended the action on the basis of tolerance and diversity, visiting scholar Francis J. Beckwith pointedly noted that the real issue is epistemology:

Unless the university does not believe that the Church’s understanding of the moral law is true and knowable, it can no more in good conscience award an honorary doctorate of laws to a lawyer who rejects the humanity of the proper subjects of law than it could in good conscience award an honorary doctorate in science to a geocentric astronomer who rejects the deliverances of the discipline he claims to practice.

At some point, a Christian university must recognize that the truth it claims to know matters, even if the truth is unpopular, and even if the propagation and celebration of that truth may put one’s community at odds with those persons and centers of influence and power that dispense prestige and authority in our culture.

So what is Willard’s cure? He says, first of all, that Christians cannot hope to return religious knowledge to its rightful place in society unless they believe in it themselves. So the professor—an expert on German philosopher Edmund Husserl’s work, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge—attempts to convince us of what we should already know, namely, that God exists, and that miracles (including Christ’s resurrection) are possible, even likely.

Willard gives a welcome reminder that, while the secular vision of the cosmos presents it as many academes hope it is, Christian truth faces the fact of what we do not yet know, and represents the universe as it really is–in other words, knowledge.

Willard moves on to “Knowledge of Christ in the Spiritual Life.” His key point: “Those who do know Christ in the modern world do so by seeking and entering the kingdom of God.” This is a knowledge based upon commitment. Here Willard distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge, knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. We know Christ when we acquaint ourselves with him and with his people.

Willard ultimately gives the task of repairing the breach in knowledge to pastors, defined by him more broadly than as shepherds of local congregations. Pastors, Willard says, are “those who self-identify as spokespeople for Christ and who perhaps have some leadership position or role in Christian organizations.“

Acquiring the knowledge they will need for such an expanded role—as teachers of the nations—will require a growth of duties and horizons that will challenge the abilities and calling of many pastors today. Still, a little knowledge can go a long way.

Prodigal Son

As is often the case, I repost here for your enjoyment and edification by Dr. Benjamin Wiker in “To The Source” of a cause for hope in these dark times.  God is still on the throne and intellectually honest men and women can still find Him.

For all too many years, eminent novelist and biographer A. N. Wilson was a self-satisfied atheist, a proud member of the British unbelieving intelligentsia, along with Richard Dawkins and expatriate Christopher Hitchens. But no more.  Andrew Norman Wilson has come home.

I still remember the taste of ashes in my soul reading A. N. Wilson’s biography of C. S. Lewis. It was filled with the kind of meticulous spite that can only be mustered by someone entirely bent on chipping away at a larger-than-life figure until he is largely unrecognizable, riddled with pock marks and imperfections. I sensed that I was not getting a representation of Lewis, but rather, a glimpse of the atheist Wilson himself and his thinly disguised contempt for so great a Christian apologist.

Looking back on it, I would dare to suggest that what animated Wilson’s spiteful treatment was a deep anger and frustration that Lewis, his intellectual superior, could waste his talents on something so infantile and obviously inferior as Christianity. If he was that evidently smart, why couldn’t Lewis—like Wilson—see that the whole God thing was a sham?

Wilson just couldn’t understand, and so in writing about Lewis, he searched under every psychological rock to find evidence that Lewis’s great intellect had been deformed by some hidden twist in his soul, and bent unnaturally to the defense of Christianity.

This Easter found that same Mr. Wilson in church among the faithful, singing the praises of the Risen Christ, a believer once again, a man who had experienced the heady thrill of casting away all belief in God thereby freeing himself from all ultimate claims, and then gradually, humbly recognized how small-minded and trendy his whole anti-God phase had been. Looking back on it all, Wilson wondered, “Why did I, along with so many others, become so dismissive of Christianity?”

“Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious. The universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti.

To my shame, I believe it was this that made me lose faith and heart in my youth. It felt so uncool to be religious. With the mentality of a child in the playground, I felt at some visceral level that being religious was unsexy, like having spots or wearing specs.

This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude towards Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio.

It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion.”

What ultimately changed Wilson’s mind? There was no dramatic, sudden conversion experience; just a slow, sure recognition that atheism rang hollow. Life was too deep, too rich for mere materialism.

“My own return to faith has surprised no one more than myself. Why did I return to it? Partially, perhaps it is no more than the confidence I have gained with age.

Rather than being cowed by them [the anti-religious smart-set], I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block: cutting-edge novelists such as Martin Amis; foul-mouthed, self-satisfied TV presenters such as Jonathan Ross and Jo Brand; and the smug, tieless architects of so much television output.

But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known—not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.

The Easter story answers their questions about the spiritual aspects of humanity. It changes people’s lives because it helps us understand that we, like Jesus, are born as spiritual beings.

Of Human Traffic

Download Samantha Power's Report on Gary Haugen and IJM from the Jan. 19, 2009 Issue of The New Yorker

In all the world there are only a few courageous organizations that actually take on the hard problems and stick with it until something happens. International Justice Mission is one of them and Gary Haugen, IJM’s president is an admirable and noble man.

A Conversation with Gary Haugen from International Justice Mission on Vimeo.

“When good people do what they can, then there’s great triumph over evil.”

There are 27 million people enslaved in the world today – most of them women and children. Is there any hope for overcoming this human rights crisis? International Justice Mission President Gary Haugen answers common questions about slavery – and shares how we can fight this crime and others that victimize the global poor.

» Download video transcript here .

Q & A Gary Haugen

President/CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM)

I read the article in The New Yorker, but I’d like to know more about IJM’s Christian identity. IJM is made up of Christians who want to be authentically engaged in the struggle for justice, not as an abstraction, but involved in a real struggle on behalf of real people who are victims of horrific abuse and violence.IJM sees itself as part of a long and encouraging history of people who were engaged in the struggle for human rights and justice, and engaged in a very authentic way — so authentic that for most it cost them their lives; and they were motivated in that struggle by their Christian faith. I saw this in my own life when I worked with Bishop Tutu in South Africa. Other examples include Dietrich Bonheoffer opposing the Nazi regime and paying the ultimate price in Germany, and Martin Luther King, Jr. here at home in the Civil Rights era. IJM likewise is made up of Christians who want to be authentically engaged in the struggle for justice, not as an abstraction but involved in a real struggle on behalf of real people who are victims of horrific abuse and violence.

But Christians haven’t always been on the side of justice. I can understand people’s skepticism depending upon their own experience of the Christian faith and their own familiarity with the struggles of history. Unfortunately, there are Christians who are actually on the side of oppression, who are actually disengaged from the struggle for human rights; they’re on the wrong side. Name your struggle for justice; you can probably find Christians on both sides of the equation. But I think those Christians who opposed human rights found themselves on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of their Christian tradition. And so we’re interested in bringing forth the best part of the Christian tradition in our era, which we believe would be on the side of justice.

How does IJM interface with non-Christians, or with those of other religions or spiritual traditions? At IJM, though we are motivated by our Christian faith, we are interested in building a platform of common ground that allows the maximum number of people to get on board in opposing issues that everyone agrees violate basic human rights. And I believe that the victims of human rights abuses are not so interested in parsing the philosophical or theological niceties of our various motivations; what they’re interested in is whether or not we are willing to actually do something to help them. We cannot engage this struggle without people of good will from diverse backgrounds, philosophies, traditions, and so we need all the help that we can get. At IJM, we hope that we can be authentic about our Christian faith while at the same time not having that be an obstacle to others who share the same objective of helping the people who are victims of abuse. We find that most people who have a different faith than ours are not upset by the fact that there are Christians who care about human rights and are trying to do their best to fight injustice. No, they tend to be upset with those Christians who are disengaged, or those who try to manipulate their involvement for some other purpose.How do those you help or collaborate with regard your faith-based motivation to seeking justice? The vast majority of the victims that we serve don’t share our faith, and most of the people we find ourselves collaborating with – like local police and officials – also do not share our faith. And we find that most people who have a different faith than ours are not upset by the fact that there are Christians who care about human rights and are trying to do their best to fight injustice. No, they tend to be upset with those Christians who are disengaged, or those who try to manipulate their involvement for some other purpose. Let me put it in context: I don’t think Jews suffering through the Holocaust were upset that there were a tiny, tiny minority of Christians who actually stood up and did the right thing. They’re rightfully enraged about Christians who did nothing, Christians who did the wrong thing, or Christians who acted like they were doing the right thing but were actually doing it for a pernicious purpose.

In 2009, do you feel that the call to justice has changed? Does it look different today than it did in past decades or centuries? In the Christian tradition – and especially as it connects theologically to the Hebrew tradition – the call to the work of justice is thousands of years old. It is deeply rooted in the Hebrew Prophets who in many ways have issued the most clarion calls in the Christian and Hebrew scriptures. What does change from time to time is the nature of assaults upon the dignity of the human being, and then the various things that make it hard for Christians to be on the side of justice. In one era it might be that they’re a small powerless minority and so there’s not much that they can do, or they’re a part of power and they’ve been corrupted into the culture that’s actually perpetrating some of the abuse, or they’re completely isolated from the abuse because they’re living in some bubble of prosperity or alienation from the community where it’s taking place. So, there are various boundaries of compassion, selfishness, or fear that Christians have to transcend in various eras. In every area you find that Christians are trying to struggle against injustice. They’re almost always talking about their forbearers who in other times and other places were doing the same thing, and they’re trying to find inspiration and direction in that.

Gary, what do you say to those who would categorize IJM as a group of well-meaning cowboys? Well, cowboy can mean different things to different people. If it means that you are doing risky things out of an excess of enthusiasm, then I do think we’re up against a bit of a problem because we are trying to intervene in situations of great violence in a very committed way. We acknowledge that there are risks associated with confronting perpetrators of grave violence. There are risks when we accompany the witnesses who have to testify against their perpetrators. There are risks when we provide safety for victims of abuse who are threatened by retaliation from perpetrators. So then the question becomes: Are we irresponsible about that? And I don’t think you could call us a group that is eager to bear the consequences of stupid mistakes, but actually highly experienced professionals who know the real costs of those mistakes and the preparation that’s necessary to prevent them. After you rescue many, many victims of abuse, the yearning arises to prevent it from happening to others in the first place; and then you realize that there’s a structure in society that is supposed to prevent the weak from being abused by the strong – and that structure is law enforcement, rule of law.

Gary, what do you mean by structural prevention? After you rescue many, many victims of abuse, the yearning arises to prevent it from happening to others in the first place; and then you realize that there’s a structure in society that is supposed to prevent the weak from being abused by the strong – and that structure is law enforcement, rule of law. IJM sees that the long-term and sustainable future of human rights and dignity for the poor is to be guaranteed by the structure of law enforcement, backed by the State, and protecting the poor person and his or her property and thereby preventing them from being abused; so that the global poor will never know what it means to be a slave. That for us is structural prevention.

Quiet Moves on the Russian Front: The Great Game Continues

Stratfor

February 10, 2009

It appears that quite a few pieces in the U.S.-Russian game moved this past weekend and Monday at theMunich Security Conference. Though the public negotiations between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov were tense, both men left the meeting with favorable remarks about the U.S.-Russian relationship. But there was another powerful American present in Munich, and not by coincidence. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was at the conference to accept an award for his past role on the international stage — yet Kissingerʼs principal role on that stage appears to be ongoing. The Obama administration virtually subcontracted Kissinger to deal with the Russians, long before the presidentʼs inauguration took place.  Kissinger has a long and intriguing history with the Russians. He is a Cold War veteran who understands what Russia wants and what it is willing to trade to get it — an essential skill for any successful negotiations, and something the Russians respect.

Kissinger quietly visited Moscow on behalf of Barack Obama in December, meeting casually with President Dmitri Medvedev and secretly with the real dealmaker, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Now he has returned to the negotiating table in Munich. But Kissinger has never been recognized formally as part of Obamaʼs plan.  This is because Kissinger isnʼt formally part of the U.S. government, and as a Republican from the Nixon administration he is despised by many Democrats.

But there have been many meetings of late that affect the Russians. Bidenʼs meetings with Russian officials in Munich concerned the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I). U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus recently toured the Central Asian states to broker a deal on new routes to Afghanistan, without taking into account the larger deal on the table with Russia. And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being as active as one would expect the secretary of state to be. The members of Obamaʼs public team are taking on different issues,

Book Review: What’s So Great About Christianity

In an earlier post I mentioned the excellent work of Dr. Dinesh D’Souza, a Christian apologist and debater who is constantly at work to define and defend the faith as it must be seen in our times. D’Souza, author of “What’s So Great About America,” has now released his new book, “What’s So Great About Christianity.” This is a must read for anyone interested in the current clashes between atheism and theism and the debates it produces. I’m reprinting here a review of the book by Stephen Barr, a particle physicist for Bartol Research Institute at University of Delaware. Dr. Barr earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia University and his graduate degrees at Princeton and has been known as a distinguished scholar for many years. Stephen Barr has two books of his own in publication which are germane to this subject, and which we will review at a later posting. Suffice it to say that Dr. Barr’s review of this Dinesh D’Souza book is credible by any definition of the word. And what follows here amounts to high praise.

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There is a great deal of ignorant nonsense in circulation about Christianity’s historical role. It is said that Christianity has been peculiarly intolerant, that it has been hostile to scientific inquiry, that it has been blind to social evils like slavery, that it has been oppressive to women, that it has stood in the way of political and economic progress, that it is superstitious. The bill of indictment grows ever longer. What is most galling to those who know some history is that most of these accusations are not merely inaccurate, but the very reverse of the truth. And what is so refreshing about Dinesh D’Souza’s book, “What’s So Great About Christianity”, is that it meets all of these accusations head-on and decisively refutes them. In our day Christianity is subject to an uncompromising, root-and-branch attack. D’Souza gives an equally uncompromising defense. Uncompromising in the good sense that he does not compromise with falsehood. He does, however, take the arguments of his opponents seriously — seriously enough to give them good answers.

Character Still Counts

New Year!. . . 16 days into it already and not a single post. Some of you probably thought I’d fallen off the face of the earth. Not so, just swamped with other things. Still, here I am, back on the job and with some new things to offer at that!

Yesterday evening our President said farewell to the nation. None of the bitter rancor of the Clinton years, none of the long, sappy speeches, none of the nonesense. May I predict that all the Whitehouse furniture and appointments will still be intact after he leaves? President Bush, rather than sarcasm or taking a parting shot, which he could easily have done, chose to focus upon the extraordinary character of the American people, who he has served these past 8 years. He spoke about a 60-year-old doctor from California who lost his son, a Marine, in Iraq, and had requested an exception in order to be inducted into the military medical corps, and about a young Marine who had charged into the fight to save 3 other soldiers, at his own peril. There was the highlight of a former inmate who started a faith-based program to keep people off drugs and out of the crime scene. The specifics aren’t important, they were just the people he thought of, probably because he and Mrs. Bush were having dinner with those people right after the speech.

The remarkable thing about President Bush’s speech was the setting of the stage that occurred earlier in the day. Less than six minutes out of LaGuardia airport with 150 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants on board, an Airbus A320 headed for Charlotte N.C. suddenly shook and caught fire. Amid the multitude of split second decisions he was making, the pilot keyed the intercom mic and said, “brace for hard impact.” Passengers said his voice was calm and reassuring. My friends who are pilots tell me two things:

1. The first thing you do when you’re in the air is start looking around for a place to set down in case something happens.

2. In the first ten minutes or so a complete power loss is almost certainly going to be disastrous. YOu don’t have enough speed or altitude to pick a good place, and unless a miracle occurs, you’re likely to crash.

And yet, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III, Sully to his friends, brought his plane to rest in the middle of the Hudson River, not far from 42nd Street in a water landing that was nothing short of miraculous. The crew cleared the plane immediately through the emergency exits, hustling passengers onto ferry boats that had come to rescue within minutes. There was no panic, very few injuries and some passengers hardly got wet. Captain Sully refused to don a life vest, made two full sweeps of the aircraft’s passenger cabin to be sure everyone was last to leave the planefor safety on the shore.

Commuter ferries operating in the area moved immediately to help passengers as they exited the sinking aircraft, and took them to shore. Rescue boats arrived only minutes later. Police, firefighters, paramedics and just plain folks were among the heroes of the day.

All this underlines, albeit in advance of the speech, what President Bush wanted to say about the exceptional character of American citizens. We are a diverse people from all kinds of backgrounds and ethnicities. And yet none of that matters when there’s an emergency. We cross a broad spectrum of social and economic strata. And yet no questions are asked when the need presents itself. We are sometimes divided by politics, religion, or the lack thereof. And yet, when there’s a life to be saved it is the emergency that takes precedence.

Last night on his radio broadcast Hugh Hewitt spoke of and read a very powerful editorial from Time Magazine referencing another aircraft crash, this one occurring in January of 1982. Written by Roger Rosenblatt, “The Man In The Water” is an incisive and beautifully written comment on the exceptional character of people who put others before themselves. I link it here because it reminds us well of the great need we have to teach character not only to our children, but to those adults among us who have grown up in and are products of the “me first” generation.

Had I been President Bush I might have found it much more difficult to resist a few one-liners, a zinger or two aimed at the folly of political process that so often gets in its own way. But he was too classy for that. It is this kind of class, and a nation framed in freedom by its founders that produces people of extraordinary, exceptional character. Like our president, today I am glad to be an American citizen.