Chuck Colson and Timothy George have this open letter in the current issue of Christianity Today:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

As you probably know by now, Obama Administration has refused to grant religious organizations an exemption from purchasing health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, surgical sterilization, and contraception.

The Catholic bishops in America have responded quickly, decrying the Administration’s decision for what it is—an egregious, dangerous violation of religious liberty—and mobilizing a vast grassroots movement to persuade the Administration to reverse its decision.

We evangelicals must stand unequivocally with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Because when the government violates the religious liberty of one group, it threatens the religious liberty of all.

Many bishops have already declared that they will not obey this unjust law. The penalty for such a move would be severe. Catholic hospitals, universities, and other organizations would be forced to pay punitive fines ($2,000 per employee) for refusing to purchase insurance that violates the teaching of their church.

For some institutions, it would spell the end of their existence—and their far-reaching service to the public and the needy.

But Catholic institutions aren’t the only ones affected by this mandate. Prison Fellowship, for example, which employs 180 people, could not purchase insurance for its employees that covers abortifacients. Nor could the world’s largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families afford the fines we would incur.

Three years ago, when we co-authored the Manhattan Declaration, we predicted that the time would come when Christians would have to face the very real prospect of civil disobedience—that we would have to choose sides: God or Caesar.

Certainly for the Catholics and for many of us evangelicals, that time is already upon us.

We do not exaggerate when we say that this is the greatest threat to religious freedom in our lifetime.

Read the rest.

I had some online (just a few), and a bit more offline, commentary regarding yesterday’s quote from ‘Knots Untied’.  A few of the offline missives were dismissive of Anglican evangelicals in general (don’t these folks know their history?) and of certain aspects (stereotypes?) in particular.  This dismissive and condescending comments provided a bit of fodder for discussion amongst some of our clergy as we travelled to and from Florence, SC (did you know that yesterday, Florence, SC was named the 7th most unromantic city in the U.S.?).  One consequence of our conversation was a universally renewed appreciation for Bishop J.C. Ryle and the timeliness of his writings – astounding for a work written across the pond well over a century ago.

One assertion of a Ryle dissenter noted the “disregard” with which Anglican evangelicals hold the Book of Common Prayer (or so the writer suggested).  Ryle had this brilliant response to the same charge leveled in his day:

I go on to say that Evangelical Religion does not undervalue the English Prayer-book. It is not true to say that we do. We honour that excellent book as a matchless form of public worship, and one most admirably adapted to the wants of human nature. We use it with pleasure in our public ministrations, and should grieve to see the day when its use is forbidden.

But we do not presume to say there can be no acceptable worship of God without the Prayer-book. It does not possess the same authority as the Bible. We steadily refuse to give to the Prayer-book the honour which is only due to the Holy Scriptures, or to regard it as forming, together with the Bible, the rule of faith for the Church of England. We deny that it contains one single truth of religion, besides, over and above what is contained in God’s Word. And we hold that to say the Bible and Prayer-book together are “the Church’s Creed,” is foolish and absurd.

Knots Untied, p. 14

Bravo!

“Knots Untied” is the first book in a four volume series written by J.C. Ryle, the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool; the other titles being “Practical Religion,” “Old Paths,” and “Holiness.”

While most people are usually familiar with the latter three (especially “Holiness”), “Knots Untied” has for the most part fallen by the wayside – ironic in that “Knots” went through ten editions in its first eleven years, and is considered by many J.C. Ryle’s magnum opus.

His chapter on the Thirty-Nine Articles is brilliant – a much needed corrective in his day as well as ours.  Here’s an excerpt:

I must now take up a question which is of great and serious importance. To prevent mistakes I shall state it as clearly and logically as I can. “What is the precise rank, authority, and-position of the Thirty-nine Articles? Are they, or are they not, the chief, foremost, primary, and principal test of true Churchmanship?”

My reasons for going into this point are as follows: Some clergymen and laymen in the present day are fond of saying that the Prayer-book, and not the Articles, is the real measure and gauge of a Churchman. “The Prayerbook! the Prayer-book!” is the incessant cry of these people. “We want no other standard of doctrine but the Prayer-book.”—Is it a controverted point about the Church? What says the Prayer-book ?—Is it a doctrine that is disputed? What says the Prayer-book ?—Is it the effect of baptism, or the nature of the Lord’s Supper, that is under discussion? What says the Prayer-book ?—To the Articles these gentlemen seem to have a peculiar dislike, an hydrophobic aversion. They seldom refer to them, unless perhaps to sneer at them as the “forty stripes save one.” They never quote them, never bring them forward if they can possibly help it. What intelligent observer of religious questions among Churchmen does not know perfectly well the class of men whom I have in view? They are to be found all over England. We meet them in newspapers and books. Wc hear them in pulpits and on platforms. They are ever thrusting on the public their favourite “Diana of the Ephesians,”—their darling notion that the Prayer-book, and not the Articles, is the test of a Churchman.

Now, with all respect to these worthy people, I venture to say that their favourite notion is as real an idol as the Ephesian ” Diana” was of old.  I shall try to show the reader that in exalting the Prayer-book above the Articles, they have taken up a position that cannot possible be maintained. I shall try to show, by evidence that cannot be gainsayed, that the true state of the case is exactly the reverse of what they are so fond of proclaiming. I am not going to say anything against the Prayer-book. It is a matchless book of devotion. But I am going to say, and to prove, that the Articles, and not the Prayer-book, are the first, foremost, and principal test of a true Churchman.

Read the rest (N.B. the chapter on the 39 Articles begins on p.74)

In April 1938 war was looming in Europe. Germany had just invaded Austria. C. S. Lewis wrote to his friend Dom Bede Griffiths:

I have been in considerable trouble over the present danger of war. Twice in one life – and then to find how little I have grown in fortitude despite my conversion. It has done me a lot of good by making me realise how much of my happiness secretly depended on the tacit assumption of at least tolerable conditions for the body: and I see more clearly, I think, the necessity (if one may so put it) which God is under of allowing us to be afflicted – so few of us will really rest all on Him if He leaves us any other support.

Later that year Lewis returned to this theme in writing Owen Barfield:

I had so often told myself that my friends and books and even brains were not given me to keep: that I must teach myself at bottom to care for something else more (and also of course to care for them more but in a different way) and I was horrified to find how cold the idea of really losing them struck. An awful symptom is that part of oneself still regards troubles as ‘interruptions’ as if (ludicrous idea) the happy bustle of one’s personal interests was our real work, instead of the opposite.

I did in the end see (I dare not say ‘feel’) that since nothing but these forcible shakings will cure us of our worldliness, we have at bottom reason to be thankful for them. We force God to surgical treatment: we won’t (mentally) diet.

–The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225-26, 231-32

A couple of weeks ago a new YouTube video about Jesus and religion went viral.

Specifically, the video purports to demonstrate how Jesus hates religion.

The video shows Jefferson Bethke, who lives in the Seattle area, delivering a well-crafted, sharply produced, spoken word poem. The point, according to Bethke, is “to highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion.”

Now, there is much I liked about the video and Bethke – his passion, his earnestness, his desire to see people free from a Western therapeutic gospel.  Unfortunately, he’s created – or accepted – a false dichotomy.

Kevin DeYoung  has an excellent article on the matter.  It’s worth the read (and you can watch the video) if for no other reason than to familiarize yourself with “pop” Christianity and how to engage it constructively.

DeYoung writes:

This video is the sort of thing that many younger Christians love. It sounds good, looks good, and feels good. But is it true? That’s the question we must always ask. And to answer that question, I want to go through this poem slowly, verse by verse. Not because I think this is the worst thing ever. It’s certainly not. Nor because I think this video will launch a worldwide revolution. I want to spend some time on this because Bethke perfectly captures the mood, and in my mind the confusion, of a lot of earnest, young Christians.

I’m a visual thinker and I love these kinds of visuals:

Two truths are clearly affirmed in the Scripture: God is Sovereign in all matters, including salvation, and, human beings are responsible to turn from sin and to God.  Better minds than mine have wrestled with the relationship between these seemingly irreconcilable truths.  Below are two quotes that seek to reconcile the apparent contradiction.

The first comes from Andrew Fuller.

A fleshly mind may ask, “How can these things be?” How can Divine predestination accord with human agency and accountableness? But a truly humble Christian, finding both in his Bible, will believe both, though he may be unable fully to understand their consistency; and he will find in the one a motive to depend entirely on God, and in the other a caution against slothfulness and presumptuous neglect of duty. And thus a Christian minister, if he view the doctrine in its proper connexions, will find nothing in it to hinder the free use of warnings, invitations, and persuasions, either to the converted or the unconverted. Yet he will not ground his hopes of success on the pliability of the human mind, but on the promised grace of God, who (while he prophesies to the dry bones, as he is commanded) is known to inspire them with the breath of life.

Here’s Spurgeon’s take:

“That God predestines, and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory, but they are not. The fault is in our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and I find that in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that so nearly parallel, that the human mind which pursues them farthest will never discover that they converge, but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

By “Little-Faiths”, Spurgeon here means people who are not great in faith and deed.  There are no Moses, or Paul, or Peter, or Augustine, or Luther, or Calvin.  They aren’t even  ”Joe-Schmoe” Christians, but something less than that.  They are people whose faith is full of doubts, whose morality is often feeble.  They are not spiritual giants but spiritual midgets.  Here Spurgeon speaks a word of comfort to folks just like this, and shows that the blessings of Christ are every bit their’s as they are to the spritual giant.  Maybe these words will be a comfort to you.  I know it spoke a word of comfort to me…

Now I want to say one or two things to Little-Faiths this morning. The little children of God who are here mentioned as being bruised reeds or smoking flax are just as safe as the great saints of God. I wish for a moment to expand this thought, and then I will finish with the other head. These saints of God who are called bruised reeds and smoking flax are just as safe as those who are mighty for their Master, and great in strength, for several reasons. First of all, the little saint is just as much God’s elect as the great saint.When God chose his people, he chose them all at once, and altogether; and he elected one just as much as the other. If I choose a certain number of things, one may be less than the rest, but one is as much chosen as the other; and so Mrs. Fearing and Miss Despondency are just as much elected as Great-Heart, or Old Father Honest. Again: the little ones are redeemed equally with the great ones! the feeble saints cost Christ as much suffering as the strong ones; the tiniest child of God could not have been purchased with less than Jesus’ precious blood; and the greatest child of God did not cost him more. Paul did not cost any more than Benjamin—I am sure he did not—for I read in the Bible that “there is no difference.” Besides, when of old they came to pay their redemption-money, every person brought a shekel. The poor shall bring no less, and the rich shall bring no more than just a shekel. The same price was paid for the one as the other. Now then little child of God, take that thought to thy soul. You see some men very prominent in Christ’s cause—and it is very good that they should be—but they did not cost Jesus a farthing more than you did; he paid the same price for you that he paid for them. Recollect again, you are just as much a child of God as the greatest saint. Some of you have five or six children. There is one child of yours, perhaps, who is very tall and handsome, and has, moreover, gifts of mind; and you have another child who is the smallest of the family, perhaps has but little intellect and understanding. But which is the most your child? “The most!” you say; “both alike are my children, certainly, one as much as the other.” And so, dear friends, you may have very little learning, you may be very dark about divine things, you may but “see men as trees walking,” but you are as much the children of God as those who have grown to the stature of men in Christ Jesus. Then remember, poor tried saint, that you are just as much justified as any other child of God. I know that I am completely justified.

Read the rest.

h/t: Awakening Grace