Judge Walker said Proposition 8 violated the federal constitutional rights of gays and lesbians to marry the partners of their choice.

“Plaintiffs challenge Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the judge wrote. “Each challenge is independently meritorious, as Proposition 8 both unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to marry and creates an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Walker’s ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To a Dutch observer of American society and politics, it all looked just a little too familiar. The long lines in front of the Massachusetts registry offices, the glare of the media spotlights, gay-marriage proponents crowing about a “historic breakthrough.” The scenes were virtually identical to those in Amsterdam three years ago, when amid much fanfare, the world’s first legal gay-marriage ceremonies were conducted by the city’s mayor. If the U.S. continues to follow the Dutch script, the next few months will see more jubilant headlines about the overwhelming demand for marriage licenses among homosexuals, a few more model gay couples getting married, and then…silence. With its aim achieved and the campaign over, gay-rights activists will simply drop the issue of marriage altogether and move on.

And what, exactly, will they have accomplished? The first legal gay wedding ceremonies in the Netherlands took place on April 1, 2001. By November 2002, however, gay-marriage enthusiasts were forced to admit that interest in this new institution was fading. Since April 2001, each quarter has brought a further decline in the number of gay marriages, falling from 2,500 in 2001 to less than 1,500 last year. As of April 2004, only 5,916 of Holland’s roughly 55,000 gay couples had tied the knot.

It seems that so far 90 percent of Dutch homosexual couples have declined the historic opportunity to get married. This already far-from-impressive statistic gets even worse when we take into account the fact that cohabiting gays and lesbians are actually just a small minority within the larger homosexual community. Gay organizations’ own figures, which put the size of the gay community in Holland at around 1.5 million (almost 10 percent of the total Dutch population of 16 million), seem a wild exaggeration. But if accurate these figures would give the impression that with only a little bit more than one-third of 1 percent of Dutch gays and lesbians actually married, interest in marriage among homosexuals is virtually nonexistent.

A government-sponsored study on sexuality in the Netherlands among people ages 18 and older came up with a more realistic figure of 350,000 gays and lesbians. Even on this cautious estimate, however, married gays and lesbians comprise no more than 3.3 percent of the total number of adult homosexuals. By comparison, by the end of 2003, heterosexual married people made up 60 percent of the total Dutch population ages 18 and older (and 75 percent if the categories of widowed and divorced are included).

Some would say this doesn’t matter — that the minimal interest among homosexuals in getting married is itself another good reason for legalizing gay marriage. After all, if few homosexual couples get married, there’s little chance of a Trojan Horse scenario whereby gay married couples could somehow work to undermine heterosexual marriage from within. The positive version of this argument is made by Andrew Sullivan in his so-called conservative case for gay marriage. He claims that allowing gays to marry would not only not undermine marriage, it would also help strengthen an institution under threat of countercultural erosion. It would do so, he says, not just by boosting marriage statistics, but more important by presenting marriage as something to be desired, a special status worth fighting for.

If true, this would be an important argument in favor of legalizing gay marriage. Unfortunately for Sullivan (and the Netherlands), however, the Dutch experience has shown the exact opposite of what he predicts. The Trojan Horse scenario only existed in the minds of gay-marriage activists looking for a strawman to burn down. After all, no serious opponent of gay marriage has ever argued that the fact that my gay neighbor suddenly has the right to get married would make me, a heterosexual married man, want to file for divorce. But by lobbying so intensively for a change in the law, the gay-marriage campaign did contribute to a change in people’s attitude toward marriage. And there is little doubt that it has been a change for the worse.

Since the start of the Dutch gay-marriage debate — in which gay-marriage activists successfully made the case for separating civil marriage from the legal rights and duties involved with the raising of children — the percentage of Dutch babies born out of wedlock has skyrocketed. As Stanley Kurtz has also pointed out (here and here), in the 15 years since the beginning of the long march toward gay marriage, the illegitimacy rate in the Netherlands has risen from 11 percent (1989) to over 31 percent (2003).

As it turns out, 1989 — the year in which gay-marriage campaigners filed their first legal challenge to the existing marriage laws — is something of a tipping point in marriage statistics as well. Before that year, both the absolute number of marriages and the marriage rate (number of marriages per 1,000 people) were on an upward trend. Since 1989, however, that upward trend has turned into a downward slope, from more than 95,000 new marriages in the peak year 1990 to just over 82,000 — including 1500 gay marriages — in 2003. This equals a decline in the marriage rate per 1,000 people from 6.4 at its peak in 1990 (out of a population of under 15 million) to just 5.1 in 2003.

It is, of course, possible that these figures don’t matter to the American debate. Maybe American homosexuals, unlike their Dutch brothers and sisters, are eager to march down the aisle in record numbers. Maybe the American public will respond to the gay-marriage debate not by losing interest in marriage as an institution, but by wholeheartedly recommitting themselves to holy matrimony. And besides, maybe it’s just a coincidence that the birth of the gay-marriage movement in the Netherlands coincided with the start of the decline of the institution of marriage. Maybe — but it would be an awfully big coincidence. If Andrew Sullivan is right, and the Dutch experience simply doesn’t matter, America has nothing to worry about. But if he’s wrong, the question won’t be whether or not homosexuals are interested in getting married, it will be whether, several decades from now, Americans will still be interested.

— Joshua Livestro is a columnist with Dutch political magazine Vrij Nederland and the Benelux edition of Reader’s Digest.

Dr. James Edwards confounded supporters of amnesty at a U.S. House hearing on Wednesday by providing scriptural and theological reasons why an amnesty would be unethical.

The hearing was conducted to make the case that there is an “ethical imperative” to reward millions of illegal aliens with permanent work permits and permanent residence in the U.S. But Dr. Edwards noted that showing that kind of mercy to illegal aliens would create a huge injustice against all the poor Americans who are unemployed.

DR. JAMES EDWARDS is a fellow of the Center for Immigration Studies, and co-author of “The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform”  A full treatment of the biblical ethics of immigration can be found at http://cis.org/ImmigrationBible.

Text of Dr. Edwards’ Speech

Madame Chairman, Ranking Member King, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. It is right to consider how Scripture and Judeo-Christian principles should inform such public issues as immigration. I appreciate the opportunity to share my own considered views on this subject.

The critical point to begin from is to differentiate between what the Bible teaches are moral imperatives applicable to individuals and those that are applicable corporately. That is, some precepts might bind one as a Christian that do not apply to the United States government. Indeed, biblical precepts in which Christ requires us personally to show mercy or compassion or forgiveness might not apply to the civil government of the nation-state of which we are citizens. Sometimes, such application would actually be harmful and wrong.

First, I will discuss a key biblical principle that relates to today’s American immigration debate. Second, I will suggest some implications of “comprehensive immigration reform” that ought to inform Congress’s immigration policymaking.

To begin, what are the most relevant principles from Scripture that relate to U.S. immigration policy in 2010? I have written about this at length elsewhere and testified before this subcommittee on the subject.

So, I will focus this morning on one key principle.

Christians as individuals are bound to a high moral imperative, which should be familiar to many of us: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. These cornerstone precepts, as elaborated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the Bible, instruct believers to go so far as to “love your enemies,” “bless those who curse you,” and care for “the least of these my brothers.” Considered alongside Micah 6:8 — “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” — it becomes clear that faithfully living up to those standards is tough. In fact, it is impossible even for those indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In other words, exhibiting Christian mercy and compassion is not for sissies.

But do these high standards apply to civil government? To an extent. For instance, U.S. laws reflect such biblical standards as providing for due process, impartial justice, and prohibiting torturous punishment of criminals. But to attempt to require civil authority to display the same manner of mercy or compassion that individual Christians are commanded to display would be ludicrous. Yet that is what certain advocates in the immigration debate unreasonably demand.

We must understand the God-given role of civil government. Romans 13 clearly teaches that civil authorities are God’s agents in their own specific jurisdictions to constrain evil. Civil authority wields the sword of justice to protect the innocent within its jurisdiction and to punish lawbreakers. The mission, described here and in I Peter 2 and Titus 3, is to “carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” In the Bible, the “things that are Caesar’s” are concentrated on justice. God deputizes civil authorities as part of His common grace, because we live in a fallen world. Evil exists, and government constrains evil within a body politic.

A civil government necessarily and prudently refrains from overdoing compassion or mercy. The reasons include that officials act merely as agents of the citizens they represent. Public acts of government differ fundamentally from individual acts. Grasping this concept is critical. Otherwise, it could lead to misguided and erroneous courses of action, such as jumping from the early church members’ voluntarily sharing their private resources within the body of believers in Acts 2 to conjuring some supposed biblical directive for socialism.

Compassion and mercy, as exercised by an individual, amount to his or her deciding willingly to bear an injustice. It is merciful when a private person turns the other cheek, goes the extra mile, gives up his tunic, and shares with a beggar. However, the government cannot itself do any of those things. Rather, the government only can obligate the members of its society and their common resources.

Thus, a compassionate act often becomes an injustice when compelled by civil government. Trying to codify mercy, the agents who are supposed to be the guardians of justice for their citizens can end up imposing injustice upon the innocent. What might constitute an act of mercy when an individual does it becomes an injustice against the members of the body politic when government employs its sword of “justice” to compel such “mercy.” This amounts to a grotesque misuse of power. Even if well intended, such government action is actually unjust.

So how does this discussion apply to our present immigration debate? It is advisable to consider the impact of proposed “comprehensive immigration reform” on our fellow Americans. More than the welfare of illegal immigrants is at stake here. And the foremost obligation, legally and morally, of the U.S. government is the welfare of American citizens.

The American people too often end up being the forgotten victims of “comprehensive immigration reform.” That is certainly the case were the CIR ASAP Act or the Schumer-Reid-Graham proposal to be enacted. The goals of those bills are principally granting legal status to nearly all of the estimated 11 million unlawful alien residents, as well as guaranteeing a flood of job competition from foreign workers every year for the foreseeable future.

The supposed penalties such schemes would impose on illegal aliens amount to what the law currently would require: payment of certain fees, undergo a background check, and some modest step toward English acquisition. These sanctions hardly constitute meaningful penalty or punishment. Plainly, the government’s display of “mercy” toward millions of people who willfully broke this nation’s laws forces its own innocent citizens to stomach substantial injustice.

Who would “comprehensive immigration reform” hurt? It would put the most vulnerable Americans at risk — native-born minorities, Americans with no more than a high school education including dropouts, legal immigrants, our teenagers trying to land that first rung on the career ladder, veterans, the disabled, and convicts seeking to amend their lives in society.

Before the recession started, native-born youth and those with less education were experiencing extra high unemployment — 11.6 percent for dropouts and 10.6 percent for those with only a high school diploma in the third quarter 2007. Needless to say, their joblessness has worsened. Some 21 million unemployed or underemployed native-born Americans lacked a job or were discouraged from looking for work in the third quarter 2009. “Comprehensive immigration reform” would exacerbate their economic prospects, both by adding many more job competitors to the U.S. labor pool and depressing the wages that U.S. workers could otherwise command. This policy amounts to substituting labor for capital, which runs directly counter to the “American system of manufacture,” based on a tighter labor market and led to the development of a strong middle class.

Today, fewer than half of American teens are in the labor force, compared with two-thirds in 1994. Adding more foreign workers who have displaced our teenagers from job opportunities accounts for a large share of this situation. The one-two punch of amnesty and massively more “guestworkers” would further kill summer job opportunities for our teens.

The impact of legalizing the 7-8 million illegal aliens in the U.S. workforce and the 11 million total estimated unlawfully resident aliens, plus the untold thousands of foreign workers brought in under the proposed “guestworker” program (lopped on top of the several existing guestworker visa programs) would force Americans who face the toughest job-search circumstances into head-to-head job competition with unimaginable numbers of foreign competitors. It would also drive down their wages. Already, immigration of the scale we have had in recent decades negatively affects U.S. natives’ wages. Scholarly analysis bears this out. For example, Harvard economist George Borjas has attributed immigration with directly reducing yearly average native-born men’s wages by 4 percent, or $1,700, between 1980 and 2000. For native dropouts, immigration’s wage depression was 7.4 percent over the same period. Northeastern University scholars found nearly all the U.S. job growth from 2000 to 2004 was filled by immigrant workers.

Consider in detail vulnerable Americans’ employment situation, which was already bleak as of third quarter 2009. I am citing the U-6 unemployment figure, which counts those actively looking but without a job, the underemployed, and people who have stopped looking for full-time employment. U-6 unemployment for native-born high school dropouts: 32.4 percent. U-6 unemployment for native-born blacks 18-29 years old with a high school diploma only: 39.8 percent. U-6 unemployment for native-born blacks who dropped out of school: 42.2 percent. U-6 unemployment for native-born Latinos without a high school diploma: 35.6 percent. U-6 unemployment for native-born Latinos 18-29 years old with only a diploma: 33.9 percent.

We do not have a labor shortage. Further, the wages of the least educated and less skilled fellow Americans have been declining for decades, beginning well before the current recession. Male high school dropouts have seen hourly wages fall 22 percent between 1979 and 2007, for example. Immigrants in general and illegal aliens in particular tend to fall into the lower end of the job scale, because of their low education and skills levels. With figures like those above, it would seem impossible to justify either amnesty or a generous guestworker program. To do both would be unconscionable, at least from a biblically informed perspective. The most vulnerable of our national community would see 7-8 million jobs currently held by illegal aliens permanently tied up and those jobs foreclosed to jobless Americans. And “comprehensive immigration reform” would vastly increase the number of working-age immigrants legally brought into the country year after year into the future.

Another set of consequences of “comprehensive immigration reform” must also be carefully and fully considered. Those include the impact of legalizing 11 million illegal aliens on America’s dire fiscal crisis. Beneficiaries of amnesty would qualify for many public programs from which they currently are disqualified on account of their unlawful presence. Those programs include welfare, health care, the earned income tax credit, and entitlement programs. Because illegal aliens are predominately less educated and unskilled, they would disproportionately participate in these programs and collect far more in benefits than they would ever contribute in taxes.

This means native-born American taxpayers would effectively be required to subsidize foreign-born public program participation, on an even larger scale. It also means enriching former illegal aliens at the expense of lawful immigrants who played by the rules.

Consider the fiscal impact of “comprehensive immigration reform” on just one entitlement program, Medicaid. While illegal aliens are excluded from Medicaid, many would in all likelihood become eligible when they gained legal immigration status under amnesty. Under the recently enacted health reform, Medicaid is expanded substantially. In 2014, those with incomes up to 133 percent of the official poverty level will qualify for Medicaid. Analysis I have just completed indicates that 3.1 million current illegal aliens would have incomes that qualify them for Medicaid. They would add an extra $8.1 billion annually to the cost of the Medicaid program. In the budget window the Congressional Budget Office used for estimating health reform’s costs, amnesty would cost taxpayers another $48.6 billion during the years 2014-2019.

The entire fiscal impact of amnesty and massively expanded immigration must be factored into the consideration of any immigration legislation. Rather than add to the nation’s unsustainable fiscal obligations through immigration, it would be more fiscally responsible to reduce immigration and forego legalization.

In short, what “comprehensive immigration reform” would do unto “the least of these” fellow Americans hardly ranks as ethical treatment.

In closing, it would be unwise to misapply biblical principles in any public policy area. This is true with respect to immigration. Immigration is one of those issues in which Scripture does not detail a normative public policy. This issue differs from clear-cut biblical precepts such as prohibiting murder, stealing, or perjury. Thus, we have to consider which biblical principles do appropriately apply, carefully assess the situation at hand, consider this nation’s experience and unique characteristics, judiciously estimate the impact of various policy options, and then exercise prudential judgment.

For biblical principles to inform our immigration policy, we must tread carefully. There is no proof text that justifies or mandates broad legalization, visas for certain countries or groups or skill levels, country quotas, or anything like that. Migration, where it comes up in Scripture, is incidental. The most precise teachings relate to fair treatment of resident aliens. Those who assert a biblical imperative for enacting “comprehensive immigration reform” or a specific bill are skating on thin ice.

Thinking prudentially, we know that in 1986, we tried immigration reform that looked largely the same as today’s proposals: amnesty with border enforcement and employer sanctions. Some 3 million illegal aliens were legalized, including a number suspected of doing so fraudulently. Within a decade, the illegal population had mushroomed to three times the 1986 amnesty level. The supposed enforcement measures failed to secure the border or shut down the jobs magnet, because of fundamental flaws that guaranteed failure. The most vulnerable Americans have suffered the consequences most severely. Then as now, what passed for “enforcement” mainly amounted to inputs — hire this many more border officers, etc. — and completely ignored requiring results — curb illegal entry to near zero, reduce visa overstays to near zero, achieve near zero attempted re-entries by those previously removed or excluded, reduce to near zero the number of illegal aliens holding American jobs, etc.

Pursuing essentially the same failed “solution” hardly measures up to prudence. Today’s proposals punish our fellow Americans through forced “compassion” they cannot afford. Perhaps the most ethical thing Congress could do is to suspend most immigration, at least until unemployment rates return to pre-recession levels.

by Elizabeth Marquardt

Elizabeth Marquardt is vice president for family studies at the Institute for American Values in New York City, a nonpartisan think tank focused on children, families, and civil society, and author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (Crown, 2005). She is editor of FamilyScholars.org and co-investigator of My Daddy’s Name is Donor, just released by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future, reporting on the new study of a large, randomly-drawn sample of adults who were conceived with use of sperm donors. She holds a Master of Divinity and an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in history and women’s studies from Wake Forest University, and lives near Chicago with her husband and two children.

My co-investigators—Norval D. Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin and author Karen Clark (who herself was conceived via anonymous sperm donation in 1966)—found that two-thirds of sperm donor offspring agree “My sperm donor is half of who I am,” and as many feel they have a right to know about their sperm donor biological fathers. About half are disturbed that money was involved in their conception. As a group, sperm donor offspring fare worse than their peers raised by biological parents on important outcomes such as depression, delinquency, and substance abuse. More than forty percent of them agree, “It is wrong to deliberately conceive a fatherless child.”

While the Catholic church does have teachings on donor insemination (it forbids it) most other denominations have had little to say, thus far, about reproductive technologies, much less about their possible impact on the young people these technologies aid in creating.

About one percent of children in the U.S. today are conceived through sperm donation. All this is quite interesting, you might respond, but how relevant are these findings, really, for my ministry today? To which I have three responses:

1) One percent equals millions of young people. Every person matters. Every story matters.

2) Sperm donation, in practice since at least 1884, is an old-fashioned technology at this point. Egg donation and embryo transfers, perhaps combined with gestational surrogacy, are making the new kids on the block. Scientists have created children with the DNA of three parents. Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy’s book, Everything Conceivable, reports a study showing that ten percent of U.S. fertility clinic directors welcome reproductive cloning as an option for couples who have exhausted all other options. Sperm donor offspring are the leading edge of the Brave New World. What they tell us about their experience, and what we learn about their outcomes, informs what we know not only about the impact of sperm donation but raises a host of urgent questions about other reproductive technologies currently in practice or on the horizon.

3) Although sperm donor conception is not widely practiced, it has rhetorical power in our public debates about marriage and childbearing. In the U.S. today, about 40 percent of children are now born outside of marriage (and these children are at higher risk for poorer outcomes). Women who find themselves pregnant can say, “Why should I keep this guy around, when doctors and lawyers help women to have babies with sperm donors and everybody says that’s OK?” Women who elect to get pregnant through sperm donation can say, “What’s wrong with having a baby with an anonymous sperm donor? After all, lots of kids are born each year to single moms.” Meanwhile, men can ask, quite reasonably, why they are accountable for eighteen years of child support after a one-night stand, but sperm donors can walk into a clinic, deposit sperm, and sign away their paternal rights (and get paid for it!).

Further, these technologies are having an impact on how the next generation is thinking about reproductive technologies and parenthood. One of the more striking findings to come out of our study is how distressed sperm donor offspring are when you ask them about their own experience, but how libertarian their attitudes are, as a group, about reproductive technologies and parenthood more generally. Compared to those raised by adoptive or biological parents, those conceived through sperm donation are much more likely to embrace an unqualified adult right to a child, to say that our laws and policies should support the exchange of sperm or eggs, and a full – and frightening – 64 percent of them agree that reproductive cloning should be available to couples who have exhausted all other options. It appears that adult donor offspring have embraced the positive “script” about donor conception and reproductive technologies, even as the majority of them support an end to anonymous donation of sperm in the U.S., and even as they tell significant, personal stories of loss and struggle.

Who are these young people conceived through sperm donation? What do they have to say about their own experience? What do their stories reveal about fatherhood and marriage? Church leaders who want to confront these questions can find the stories, the data, and a set of nineteen recommendations in our 140 page report, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, available as a free download at FamilyScholars.org.

In our study, 36 percent of adults conceived through sperm donation said they were raised Catholic, compared to 22 percent from adoptive families and 28 percent raised by their biological parents. By contrast, persons from adoptive or biological families – and especially those from adoptive families – were far more likely to say they had been raised in a Protestant denomination.

As adults, donor offspring are also much more likely to say they are Catholic today. About a third of donor offspring – 32 percent – say Catholicism is their religious preference today. By contrast, their Catholic-raised peers from adoptive families or raised by their biological parents appear more often to have left the Catholic church. As adults, 15 percent of those from adoptive families and 19 percent of those raised by their biological parents say that Catholicism is their religion today.

Finally, about a third – 32 percent – of donor offspring say that they are Protestant today, and nearly one-quarter of all three groups say their religious preference today is “none.” (Six percent of donor offspring say they are Jewish.) So while a minority of donor offspring do embrace a secular belief system, the majority of them are religious and they are over-represented in the Catholic church.

The study is based on a representative sample of more than one million U.S. households and has comparison groups of 562 young adults raised by adoptive parents and 563 raised by biological parents.

“Listening to the stories of donor-conceived adults, you begin to realize there’s really no such thing as a ‘donor.’ Every child has a biological father. To claim otherwise is simply to compound the pain, first as these young people struggle with the original, deliberate loss of their biological father, and second as they do so within a culture that insists some guy who went into a room with a dirty magazine isn’t a father. At most the children are told he’s a ‘seed provider’ or ‘the nice guy who gave me what I needed to have you’ or the ‘Y Guy’ or any number of other cute euphemisms that signal powerfully to children that this man should be of little, if any, importance to them.

What to do? For starters, the United States should follow the lead of Britain, Norway, Sweden, and other nations and end the anonymous trade of sperm. Doing so would powerfully affirm that as a nation we no longer tolerate the creation of two classes of children, one actively denied by the state knowledge of their biological fathers, and the rest who the state believes should have the care and protection of legal fathers, such that the state will even track these men down and dock child support payments from their paychecks.”

Slate.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2256212/pagenum/all/#p2

http://www.familyscholars.org/assets/Donor_15findings.pdf

In 2006 approximately 17,000 artificial reproductive in vitro cycles were performed in the United States using donated eggs, and that number is on the rise. The majority of these cycles were performed using anonymous egg donors, who by contract sign away their right to know if their eggs went on to create a child, how many children were created from their eggs, or who the parents of their biological children are. Would be parents scour the internet and egg broker agencies like “Our Fairy Godmother”, looking for the best genetic material to create a child of their dreams. Certain desirable characteristics, such as being pretty, tall, or having high SAT scores, can fetch more money for the donor. If the donor’s eggs produce healthy children she has secured her position as the coveted proven egg donor who can donate again – often at even higher payments.

Sadly, egg donation puts an otherwise healthy young woman at risk for short and long-term harm. A new film, Eggsploitation, reveals the tragic real stories behind the egg donation side of the baby making business. Ill health, loss of fertility, stroke, and cancer and in some rare instances, death of the egg donor is the reality they face.

And what about the children created through anonymous egg donation? As these technologies are relatively new, the children are just now entering adulthood. It is clear that they long to know who their biological mother is, and to have access to important medical history information. Internet sites exist to help people created by egg and sperm donation to find their biological parents and half-siblings.

P.D. Eastman’s childhood book, Are You My Mother?, is about a baby bird hatched while his mother is away. The story is about the baby bird searching for his mother, all along meeting a dog, a cow and many more asking “Are you my mother?” Human beings long for a sense of belonging and family. Mothers and fathers matter. Children have a right to know who their mother is.

Jennifer Lahl

http://www.ourfairygodmother.com/

http://www.eggsploitation.com/

To discuss religious commitment from a psychological viewpoint is not to imply that faith or moral choices are shaped entirely by external things like environment, body chemistry or sensory stimuli. If we remain true to psychology’s origins, beginning with Aristotle, we approach it as a branch of metaphysics which studies the life of the soul. At the same time, classical psychology (as opposed to idealism), does not dismiss the importance of physical reality. A whole range of factors can influence one’s mental behavior — including social relations, physical health, economic status, etc. — while leaving man’s free will fundamentally intact. Unfortunately, with the changes in epistemology and ethics growing out of the so-called Enlightenment, psychological commentators veered away from the Western tradition.

The American William James, for example, applied Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis to the development of the human consciousness in The Principles of Psychology (1890). A short while later, Sigmund Freud articulated the belief that human behavior was shaped by early life influences and the tendency to repress unconscious desires. Sexual drives were also seen as a key determinant in individual choices. While Freud was understandably reacting to the hyper-rationalism of earlier secularists (who denied the irrational side of fallen humanity), his theories further displaced belief in objective and transcendent morality.

Christian psychology, by contrast, should help one to understand the behavioral characteristics of the individual within an ethical framework. Recalling psychology’s Aristotelian roots, one can make the connection between repeated choices (“ethics” is from the Greek word ethos, meaning “custom” or “habit”) and the patterns of mental activity which emerge from consistent preferences in one direction or another. While the operations of the mind do not determine morality, the two react upon and shape one another. For example, distinct patterns have been observed in homosexuals or people suffering from extremely violent tendencies. As Sheen puts it, a man’s “secret hates, his hidden sins, his flippant treading upon the laws of morality — all of these leave their traces in his mind, his heart and his unconsciousness.”

Helpful to a Christian understanding of the subject is Dr. Paul C. Vitz’s Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. Dr. Vitz, a scholar and convert, states that historically important atheists “are the product of their historical period, family psychology (that is, the defective father), intellectual intelligence and level of ambition, and — last but far from least — their own free choice.” Such findings, based on decades of research as a psychologist, flout materialistic views that the idea of God is simply a “projection theory” based on man’s need for security.

For Freud, and others, religion could be criticized on the basis of believers’ supposedly subjective motives. Vitz boldly reverses this paradigm. Atheism is not so aloof as it pretends to be, and is as susceptible as any other attitude to external factors. Vitz makes his point by considering the lives of dozens of major atheists and seeing what they might have in common. It transpires that, almost without exception, militant skeptics of the last two centuries, from Voltaire to Stalin, have suffered from a “defective father” — one who was either absent through death or through moral failure. As a result, the stance taken by leading atheists may be seen (at least in part) as an emotional reaction against paternal figures, including the divine Father.

Much has been written about the absence of fathers in modern families. “Presumably,” remarks Vitz, “this widespread defective fathering will cause an increase in contemporary skeptical attitudes towards God. But it may also result in an equally widespread ‘father hunger’ which could manifest itself in a variety of ways, such as a growth in cults and support for political demagogues.” It is also worth noting, with regard to the unprecedented explosion of sexual deviancy since the 1960s, that homosexuals tend to suffer from hostile or absent fathers, leading to “defensive detachment” from the father and other males. If anything, it shows that Vitz’s thesis applies to a wide range of contemporary dysfunctional behavior and apostasy. Speaking of the decline of Christianity, he makes a point concerning the sudden vogue of black American males converting to Islam:

Recently I heard a report that black Baptist women were urging their husbands to become Muslims because they thought their men should have a religion and thought Christianity to be inadequate for men. The African-American community has suffered greatly from fatherless families, and many blacks who have become Muslims openly claim that Islam restored their manhood to them (“The Father Almighty, Maker of Male & Female,” Touchstone).

In this case, the attraction of Islam is due to a lack of emphasis on “fatherhood” in the black urban community and in Christianity at large. Men eager to assert their traditional role are left without spiritual support. This has been most evident in liberal, mainstream Protestant denominations where feminist and androgynous “unisex” theology has been heavily promoted.

As for widespread theoretical atheism, it is a relatively new phenomenon. Vitz believes that atheism, rather than traditional theism, is a social construct, and one prone to changing habits and tastes. While environmental influences do not determine unbelief, the social milieu can predispose people to a particular way of expressing their moral and theological rebellion. It happens that since the late 17th century, explicit skepticism has been the most convenient and acceptable outlet. As Samuel Johnson said of the libertine poet, the Earl of Rochester: “He lost all sense of religious restraint, and finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws which he resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity.”

An atheist’s upbringing is revealing. Even more so is his high level of egotism. “Nietzche’s pride and his arrogance,” observes Vitz, “often to the point of pathos, are widely acknowledged.” The same was true of Ludwig Feuerbach, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Adolf Hitler. In his other recent book, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, Dr. Vitz discusses the problem of selfism or “self theory,” which is liberal psychology’s rationalization of egocentrism. It is “an example of a horizontal heresy, with its emphasis on the present and on self-centered ethics.” As such it manifests itself in as many guises as egotism is capable of: materialist sociology, group therapy, New Age movements, or the “power of positive thinking” Protestant sects. At the root of this is metaphysical denial.

“A final profound conflict between Christianity and selfism,” Vitz explains, “centers around the meaning of suffering. The Christian acknowledges evil… as a fact of life.” Christianity accepts the existence of sin and death. It also provides a way to transcend and transform them. “In contrast, selfist philosophy trivializes life by claiming that suffering (and, by implication, even death) is without intrinsic meaning. Suffering is seen as some sort of absurdity, usually a man-made mistake that could have been avoided by use of knowledge to gain control of the environment.” Evil is thus externalized, or removed from the realm of personal moral culpability. It is the predictable operation of pride. We tend to credit success to ourselves while blaming our failures on others.

Heterodox philosophies not only appeal to man’s baser instincts, they “validate” them. False theology is an expedient rationalization for antinomian behavior, which eschews moral responsibility. Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that along with obdurate heretics are misguided individuals, who may be attracted to some residual good in a false system (since no belief is absolutely evil; its error lies in subordinating higher goods to lesser ones). Catholic theologians tell us that where there is unconscious ignorance of Church teaching, erroneous judgment, and imperfect apprehension, a necessary condition of sinfulness — free choice — is lacking. With this in mind, apologetics need to be conducted with prudence as well as conviction. Like the wheat and tares in the parable, it is difficult for us to hastily root up the outwardly bad without causing undue mischief.

Msgr. Ronald Knox, who addressed psychological problems in his sermons and essays, provides further insights. He rephrased the skeptic’s taunt that man “creates God in his own image,” observing that when “turning your thoughts toward the Supreme, the Ultimate, you can choose, evidently, this or that aspect, this or that avenue or approach.” St. Augustine argued much the same point in his Catechetical Instruction. Awareness on the part of the religious instructor of the catechumen’s fears, dislikes, and even his physical comfort is not inconsequential. Augustine’s psychological view of conversion has been reiterated by later apologists. We are taught not to mistake our own temperament, preferences or fashions for an objective standard. Related to this is another point raised by Vitz; namely, that religion is the solution but, superficially, it can sometimes be the problem. In this sense, the theist sees sanctimonious behavior as the failure of the individual to live up to God’s calling, while the non-believer feels it shows up religion for the “falsehood” that it is. In any event, there is no denying the scandal of religious hypocrisy. This point is important in dealing with the sincere individual who has experienced such failings. It can be a mitigating, if not justifying, factor in his momentary rejection of faith.

Religious hypocrisy goes beyond everyday human frailties. As an example of this, Vitz discusses Søren Kierkegaard’s father who was an austere and sometimes troubled man who nevertheless displayed genuine piety, compunction and love. He earned his son’s lifelong affection. The younger Kierkegaard was also a devoted Christian who overcame tremendous temptations to doubt, and even displayed a marked sympathy to Catholic thinking towards the end of his life. In stark contrast is the pitiable conduct of Jacob Freud, father of the psychoanalyst, who was not only cowardly and incompetent, but a pervert and pedophile. Says Vitz: “in proposing the Oedipus complex, Freud placed hatred of the father at the center of his psychology.” There was a very real basis for supposing that this expressed “his strong unconscious hostility to and rejection of his father.” What surely enhanced Sigmund’s distaste for religion was that Jacob carried on as an outwardly proper and observant Jew who spent long hours on readings and devotions. Needless to say, double standards are not unique to Judaism. Dr. Vitz gives examples of individuals raised in lax or rigorist Christian circumstances who, sadly, turned on their faith.

Vitz leaves us with an interesting paradox. Psychology will never be a proper yardstick for measuring the truth or falsity of religion. Faith of the Fatherless favors “the pre-modern idea that controversies should be settled on the basis of the evidence, not on the psychology of the interlocutors. In this framework, ad hominem arguments must be rejected as irrelevant — and all psychological arguments are ad hominem; that is, they address the person presenting the evidence and not the evidence itself.” At the same time, psychological understanding is important as a prelude to apologetics. It helps us to appreciate the motives for a person’s unbelief, which may include some intense, personal trauma. “If one wishes to genuinely reach such people,” concludes Vitz, “one must address their underlying psychology. Aside from the common, superficial reasons, most serious unbelievers are likely to have painful memories underlying their rationalization of atheism. Such interior wounds… need to be fully appreciated and addressed by believers.”

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.

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.”

Following a time of soul-searching, Jews and Christians across the country are stepping up to help the growing number of families – even middle-class ones – that are joining the ranks of the poor and homeless as people lose jobs and homes in the financial downturn. As the face of homelessness changes, shelters and government agencies across the nation are reporting unprecedented increases in the number of families losing their homes. A new report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates an extra 1.5 million Americans are likely to experience homelessness during the next two years. That’s in addition to the 2.5 million who are already expected to become homeless during the course of this year.

“We are both people of the Book and good Jews and good evangelicals take the Book very seriously,” says Fuller President Richard J. Mouw. “Some of us may have a bigger Book than the others, but we share a lot of the basic text that tells us we need to be concerned about the homeless, the marginalized and the oppressed. This is a new stage of evangelical and Jewish cooperation.”

Putting their faith into action, a growing number of churches and synagogues are participating in a new, concrete program to help the homeless. Known as Imagine LA  (ImagineLA.org), the goal of the innovative program is to mobilize the faith community to sponsor and mentor homeless families to get them into long-term housing and become self-sufficient. With 8,000 houses of worship and 8,000 homeless families in the Los Angeles area, program founder and Bel Air Presbyterian Church Pastor Mark Brewer imagines a day when no child sleeps on what are some of the nation’s deadliest streets. So far, more than a half-dozen churches and synagogues have “adopted” homeless families, but Brewer expects the number of sponsorships to grow to about 200 by 2011. The program is attracting interest across the country and he hopes the idea will catch on nationwide.

As statistics show 80 percent of the population is only two paychecks away from potential homelessness, Imagine LA Executive Director Jill Govan Bauman says the issue of family homelessness is now touching many people’s lives.

“I think what’s happening is that people really want to be part of the solution, not another Band-Aid, not another soup kitchen, clothing drive or food bank, but how can they help a family get back on their feet and stay on their feet,” Govan Bauman says.

This interfaith effort to help the poor and homeless comes at a time of growing secular and statist attacks on charities.

Rabbi Elliott Dorff, a rector and distinguished professor in philosophy at the American Jewish University, says this growing interfaith movement may prove vital in saving houses of worship and other charities that depends on tax-deductible contributions to operate. Despite Newsweek’s recent cover story proclaiming “We Are All Socialists Now,” Dorff says the United States is still a capitalist system and part of the reason why it works and is not “completely inhumane” is because it offers tax deductions to those who give to charitable institutions as a way of supplementing government programs for the poor.

“The presumption in the way the American government functions is that a lot of the care for the poor and homeless is not going to fall just on individuals and families, but also on institutions within society that take on these obligations and faith-based communities are a very important part of that,” Dorff says.

But the current financial crisis has focused lawmaker’s attention on tax-deductible giving.  Specific proposals are being floated to reduce or eliminate this deduction, especially for those in the upper-income brackets.

Brian Rooney, an attorney and spokesman for the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor, Michigan based public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, family values and the sanctity of human life, says this proposal is very troubling because the most wealthy individuals tend to give more to houses of worship and other charities. The proposal seems to indicate that some lawmakers have more faith in the government’s own ability to help the poor than it does in the ability of houses of worship and other charities.

“This is quite a paradox where you have state governments cutting back on welfare programs, but the federal government is not enabling charities to pick up the slack,” Rooney says.

In an effort to ensure they would be missed just in case the trumpet does blow, Fredrickson’s church took to heart the advice of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer that the essence of sin is a heart turned inward. They are now reaching out to their community in love. This summer, the church plans to ask several faith communities in the Simi Valley to join them in partnering with Imagine LA to sponsor homeless families.

“We want to be a church that if we ever were gone that the wider community would say, ‘We’re sorry that they are not here anymore because they really were doing good in the community.’”

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.

Japan is known as an earthquake society — a metaphor drawn from its placement on the line between the Asian and Pacific continental plates, which gives rise to frequent (and occasionally devastating) earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Throughout history, its social and economic structures generally have been rigid and long-lived — yet when change comes, it comes unexpectedly and transforms the country completely.

For example, the arrival of Chinese influence in the sixth century spurred the Japanese tribes to create an imperial government with an elaborate bureaucracy, which lasted until the tenth century or later. Eventually, like all empires, this one petered out. But the coming of Portuguese cannons and guns triggered another seismic shift throughout Japan’s home islands — giving rise to a unified samurai government that walled off the outside world and ruled for nearly three centuries, with few disruptions. Again, in the nineteenth century, Western colonial powers — notably the United States — imposed upon Japan and demanded that it open its doors to trade. The result was a revolution: the restoration of the emperor and the beginning of the Meiji era of industrialization and modernization.

Since then, Japan has experienced two “earthquakes.” One came in 1945, when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reducing the country to rubble and then overseeing, in a few short years, its transformation into a capitalist powerhouse. The second was in 1990, when this juggernaut economy foundered after the explosion of a giant property and stock bubble, and nearly two decades of financial crisis and deflationary recessions set in. It is no coincidence that Japan’s economic crash coincided with the conclusion of a global era, the Cold War.

Japan’s recent elections should be understood in this post-Cold War context. In 1993, the Liberal Democrats lost power for the first time — they were out of office for less than a year, but were hobbled ever after by the need to form coalitions with lesser parties. Then the DPJ was founded in 1998, when the country’s financial system was on the brink. The DPJ won the upper house of the legislature in 2007, and now, in 2009, it has swept out the ruling party and gained control of both houses.

But the significance of the recent elections does not lie in the ascendancy of a particular set of politicians. Though one party ruled Japan for decades, individual policymakers and factions rise and fall in rapid succession in Tokyo. This is precisely what makes deeper institutional and bureaucratic shifts so rare: Few can hold onto power long enough to do anything dramatic with it. The DPJ certainly will not be immune to this ceaseless personnel shuffling, which stretches back to the beginnings of parliamentary government in Japan. Many claim that, because of its inexperience and relatively slim roster of experts, the party will not retain power for long.

Nevertheless, a few facts stand out about this election. First, a change in leadership was long overdue, given Japan’s general post-Cold War malaise; the country’s political scene appears finally to have shifted in a way that is in keeping with the socio-economic changes that have taken place over the past 20 years. Second, the most recent financial and economic crisis, on top of preexisting woes, has brought the country to its most dire economic and fiscal situation yet. Third, the DPJ won the elections in an astounding landslide.

Furthermore, broader developments are taking place in the geopolitical system, from the United States’ focus on the Middle East to Russia’s resurgence and — particularly important for Japan — China’s rise, which suggest that the post-Cold War era is drawing to a close. All of these factors combined suggest that the DPJ’s election triumph is not simply a matter of a parliament playing musical chairs.

After all, the “earthquakes” that periodically interrupt Japanese history, while sudden and jarring compared to other nations’ histories, still do not happen overnight. Transitions between historical periods have taken decades. Even the Meiji Restoration, celebrated as a rapid turn of events, occurred after 20 years of growing dissent and dissatisfaction arising from foreign powers’ intrusion into Japan’s turf, and took decades to run its course. The military officers who led fascist Japan until 1945 began taking up political posts in the 1920s.

In other words, the earthquake that occurred in 1990 may still be rippling outward. Or perhaps these events are tremors ahead of a bigger earthquake to come. Either way, “change” is in the air in Japan — though not just because a new guy soon will be sitting in the prime minister’s seat.  Watch Japan’s political events, monitor her financial situation and, by all means, keep abreast of the world events surrounding her.  Imagine the domino effect if Japan could truly awaken to the truth.

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.

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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.

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.

Every inner prompting of conscience, every glimmering sense of beauty, every response we make to music, every experience we have of love—whether of physical love, sexual love, family love or the love of friends—and every experience of bereavement, reminds us of this fact about ourselves.”

And what of all the atheists he left behind, all his fellow comrades in the struggle against belief? Wilson accuses them, not of dishonesty, but a certain woodenness of soul.

“When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.”

Wilson’s atheism came to an end with his writing of Winnie and Wolf, a novel about the romance between Adolf Hitler (Wolf) and Winifred (Winnie) Wagner, the daughter-in-law of composer Richard Wagner.

“One thing that finally put the tin hat on any aspirations to be an unbeliever was writing a book about the Wagner family and Nazi Germany, and realising how utterly incoherent were Hitler’s neo-Darwinian ravings, and how potent was the opposition, much of it from Christians; paid for, not with clear intellectual victory, but in blood. Read Pastor [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer’s book Ethics, and ask yourself what sort of mad world is created by those who think that ethics are a purely human construct. Think of Bonhoeffer’s serenity before he was hanged, even though he was in love and had everything to look forward to.”

Hitler took up the Darwinian belief that human progress was the result of a struggle between races, where the superior vanquished the inferior, and made of it a cult devoted to purifying Germany of rogue racial elements. Dietrich Bonhoeffer set himself up against Hitler from the very first, delivering a radio address against him two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor. Bonhoeffer would be hanged as an enemy to the regime, sure that death would not be his end, but only the beginning of eternal life. Bonhoeffer’s faith and courage inspired all, including the Nazi guards and doctors. Discovering such magnanimity in Bonhoeffer, as opposed to such Darwinian brutality of the Nazis, tipped A. N. Wilson’s soul back to God.

Four years ago, A. N. Wilson wrote a tiresome expose of Jesus, one that was driven by his unbelief, and filled with the kind of reasoning and conclusions one finds among liberal biblical scholars who are also non-believers, such as Bart Ehrman.

In Wilson’s Jesus we are treated to the tiresome story of the biblical de-mythologizers that Jesus was not divine, but merely a misunderstood man.

As Wilson reveals now, his debunking of Christianity was not the result of scholarship, but of his reflex atheism. “Like many people who lost faith, I felt anger with myself for having been ‘conned’ by such a story. I began to rail against Christianity, and wrote a book, entitled Jesus, which endeavoured to establish that he had been no more than a messianic prophet who had well and truly failed, and died.” His leap into unbelief made the Gospels appear to be a foolish fairy tale.

“As for Jesus having been the founder of Christianity, this idea seemed perfectly preposterous. In so far as we can discern anything about Jesus from the existing documents, he believed that the world was about to end, as did all the first Christians. So, how could he possibly have intended to start a new religion for Gentiles, let alone established a Church or instituted the Sacraments? It was a nonsense, together with the idea of a personal God, or a loving God in a suffering universe. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.”

But what does he think about Jesus now? When Wilson took part in the Palm Sunday procession this year, and “heard the Gospel being chanted, I assented to it with complete simplicity.” “In the past, I have questioned its veracity and suggested that it should not be taken literally. But the more I read the Easter story, the better it seems to fit and apply to the human condition. That, too, is why I now believe in it.”

The Simplistic Faith of a Born-Again Atheist: A. N. Wilson Recalls the Thrill of Being a Convert to Non-Belief

“It was such a relief to discard it all [i.e., belief in God] that, for months, I walked on air. At about this time, the Independent on Sunday sent me to interview Dr. Billy Graham, who was conducting a mission in Syracuse, New York State, prior to making one of his journeys to England. The pattern of these meetings was always the same. The old matinee idol spoke. The gospel choir sang some suitably affecting ditty, and then the converted made their way down the aisles to commit themselves to the new faith. Part of the glow was, surely, the knowledge that they were now part of a great fellowship of believers.

As a hesitant, doubting, religious man I’d never known how they felt. But, as a born-again atheist, I now knew exactly what satisfactions were on offer. For the first time in my 38 years I was at one with my own generation. I had become like one of the Billy Grahamites, only in reverse. If I bumped into Richard Dawkins (an old colleague from Oxford days) or had dinner in Washington with Christopher Hitchens (as I did either on that trip to interview Billy Graham or another), I did not have to feel out on a limb. Hitchens was excited to greet a new convert to his non-creed and put me through a catechism before uncorking some stupendous claret. “So—absolutely no God?” “Nope,” I was able to say with Moonie-zeal. “No future life, nothing ‘out there’?” “No,” I obediently replied.

At last! I could join in the creed shared by so many (most?) of my intelligent contemporaries in the western world—that men and women are purely material beings (whatever that is supposed to mean), that “this is all there is” (ditto), that God, Jesus and religion are a load of baloney: and worse than that, the cause of much (no, come on, let yourself go), most (why stint yourself – go for it, man), all the trouble in the world, from Jerusalem to Belfast, from Washington to Islamabad.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: 1949

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and death are powerful witness to what it means to “put first things first.” Although it was never his overriding theological concern to work out the connections between the City of Man and the Kingdom of God, he never confused the two, as became clear when the issue was forced upon him during the dark night of National Socialism in Germany and Marxism–Leninism in the Soviet Union. The menace Bonhoeffer confronted directly was, of course, Nazism. As the vast majority of his countrymen and, shamefully, his coreligionists either made their peace with Nazism or actively promoted its advance, Bonhoeffer first demurred, then resisted, and finally moved into the active opposition that cost him his life.

Were Bonhoeffer among us today, he would insist that his opposition was much easier to understand than was the German obedience and enthrallment with Nazism or the active courting of the Nazi regime by the so–called “German Christians.” Many have seen the behavior of the state–worshiping “German Christians” as the ultimate outcome of Luther’s doctrine of the “two kingdoms.” Luther saw the need for rules and rulers as God’s punishment for human wickedness, and insisted as a consequence that believers ought to obey the rules unless ordered to explicitly deny the faith. Some alleged that this view gave nearly unchecked earthly or “profane” power to rulers. Their domain grew as the Church’s domain shrank. Unsurprising, then, that when the crunch came it was all too easy to capitulate and to see in Hitlerism an avatar of a specifically German brand of Christian particularism.

Bonhoeffer resisted this reading of Luther with all his strength in his unfinished Ethics. He argued that in condemning the state idolatry represented by Nazism, he was acting out of faithfulness to his tradition rather than in opposition to it. He rejected the sort of vulgarization of Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms that holds that there are two spheres, “the one divine, holy, supernatural, and Christian, and the other worldly, profane, natural, and un–Christian.” This reading of Luther’s doctrine, shaped (or deformed) by the Enlightenment’s apotheosis of reason in opposition to faith, finalized the severing of that which was “Christian” from that which was “profane.” The upshot over time was that human beings came to see the worldly domain as one in which they reigned as masters. The roots of totalitarianism lay in uninhibited human striving and willing, in which man begins to adore himself, denies the Cross, denies the Mediator and Reconciler, and has fallen out with the created world.

Bonhoeffer insists that deifying man’s sovereignty promotes Western godlessness. Faithfulness to Luther, rightly understood, requires that we accept our status as creatures whose actions are always partial and limited. We must distinguish the legitimate order of government from perversions which lead that order to overstep its appropriate boundaries. Legitimate government involves responsibility for limited tasks; within its limits and under normal circumstances, we do owe it obedience. But we do not owe government our very selves. The individual’s “duty of obedience is binding . . . until government directly compels him to offend against divine commandment, that is to say, until government openly denies its divine commission and thereby forfeits its claims. . . . If government violates or exceeds its commission at any point . . . then at this point, indeed, obedience is to be refused, for conscience’s sake, for the Lord’s sake.”

Government, then, is neither to be “diabolized” nor idolized. Religious belief always relativizes the claims of public life even as it calls us into stewardship and communal life. To sustain and support this balance, a strong and robust theology is necessary. Such a theology is conservative in the sense of claiming and clinging to what Bonhoeffer, in his prison letters, called the “full content” of the New Testament, for “the New Testament is not a mythological clothing of a universal truth; this mythology (resurrection, etc.) is the thing itself.”

First Things: Jean Bethke Elshtain