“The gospel song came into great popularity in the middle of the last century largely through the evangelistic ministry of Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) and his musical associate Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908). It was an authentic expression of the highly emotional and individualistic religious experience which was typical of the American frontier of that day. Many Christians today do not realize what a comparatively recent development in religious music the gospel song actually is. Often when the great old hymns of the church, which have survived the centuries because of the magnificent depths of pure devotion expressed in them, are introduced in contemporary services the people complain. “Why don’t we sing the good old songs? Why must we sing new songs which we do not know?” The “old songs” to which they refer are the comparatively new gospel songs which have been put to highly singable melodies of the general type of the popular songs of the day.”
The Family Policy Institute has a good piece on the half-measures of accountability and reform in public schools. As soon as schools would have to compete, no self-policing enforcement would be necessary. Like other services, schools would strive for excellence or they would fail. The article is worth reading in its entirety:
Will Washington Refuse Money for Education?
Please be respectful, but please be heard.
Thoughts from the Executive Director
If you think this is anti-education, we urge you to call the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-562-6000. This number will enable you to leave a message for your legislators even if you don’t know who they are by providing your address. If you would like to contact your legislators individually, you can find them by clicking here. Read the rest of this entry »Posted on March 9th, 2010
I’m reading through John Piper’s very fine Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, and have come to his chapter on baptism. The pastoral thrust of this chapter is very good: “I think we need to teach our people the meaning of baptism and obey the Lord’s command to baptize converts (Matt. 28:19), without elevating the doctrine to a primary one that would unduly cut us off from shared worship and ministry with others who share more important things with us.”
Amen. One way we do this at our church is through a cooperation agreement whereby we perform both credo and paedo baptisms, and no one is allowed to throw food when it takes place. On occasion both are even performed in the same service. While wanting to cooperate and fellowship as a church, we also want to strive for like-mindedness, which is different than agreeing to disagree. We agree to love one another while pursuing the truth. So not only does our doctrine of baptism not cut us off from fellowship with other churches, we embrace this secondary difference within our own ranks. Read the rest of this entry »
Luther attacked the sacrament of ordination which is one manifestation of a false sacred/secular divide. How many pastors teach in such a way that nothing they ever affects or applies the way people behave at work? If a minister is a different sort of person altogether, saying “spiritual” things for a limited spiritual realm, then it makes sense that religion one compartment of a compartmentalized life. The faux sacrament of ordination is bad business, “designed to engender implacable discord whereby the clergy and the laity should be separated farther than heaven and earth, to the incredible injury of baptismal grace and to the confusion of evangelical fellowship. This is the source of that detestable tyranny over the laity by the clergy who, relying the external anointing of their hands, the tonsure and the vestments, no only exalt themselves above lay Christians, anointed by the Holy Spirit, but even regard them as dogs, unworthy to be included with them in the Church. ” Outside of Catholicism, these attitudes are still prevalent where ministers think they have spiritual exaltation, preferred benefits, or entitlement access, and titular dignity above other brothers and sisters. Ironically, Luther’s greatness came from minimizing his own. This sort of power give, rather than grab, is the mark of all reformers and reformations.
“If a woman wants to be a lawyer, she can go to law school, take the Bar Exam, send out resumes to employers, and practice law. If a woman wants to run for office, she can put her name in the hat, run a good election campaign, and win the race. If a woman wants to travel to Australia, she can buy airline tickets, pack her bags, and go. In other works, she can do something to accomplish her goals. But if she wants to get married, she’s told to sit like bump on log until the right Christina man finds her. I don’t think so.” Debbie Maken (Getting Serious About Getting Married)
One of the most confused issues of our day is the understanding of rights. Americans are supposed to enjoy the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and largely what this used to mean is protection from anyone who would take these things away from you. This “protection from” approach is polar opposite from what has developed and continues to develop, an “entitled to” approach. I am entitled to my house no matter how reckless and foolish I was when I “bought” it with no money down. If I’m in danger of losing it, others are required to pay for it through government bail out programs, the very others who acted with caution and chose not to engage in such risky behavior.
Any parent–but even as I write that I realize it’s entirely false because so many parents don’t–understands that if you don’t follow disobedience with consequences, you’re reinforcing the disobedience. You get more of what you penalize and less of what you subsidize.
Bailout responses to the financial crisis is only the most recent manifestation of the entitlement mindset that has been with us for well over a century, but it illustrates the point well. When you penalize virtue and reward foolishness, you get more of the latter. People are outraged at top execs of companies who received bailout money when they subsequently dole out all sorts of bonuses and massive perks. But who taught them that? Who taught them they could be financially reckless and still operate? Who enabled this? The same politicians who wag their fingers. Shocking: people who ran their businesses into the ground are still reckless, even after taking money from politicians. It’s like watching a man yell at his wife, and then turn around and yell at his kids for dishonoring her. Read the rest of this entry »
From Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life:
Yesterday, President Obama released his health care proposal…with no mention of the Life issue. Remember, the President promised you that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” In a meeting last fall, I told the White House very clearly that unless they include specific legislative language banning the use of federal funds for abortion, they will be establishing taxpayer funding for abortion. The President knows what he needs to do to keep his promise and has done just the opposite.
The Washington Examiner reported yesterday that the President and his staff have met at least four times with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, but that the President has not spoken to Congressman Bart Stupak – sponsor of the Stupak Amendment that protected Life in the House of Representatives health care bill – since September 18th, 2009. There is only one conclusion to be drawn; the Obama Administration has been working hand in hand with the pro-abortion lobby.
In his essay Calvin’s Covenantal Response, (in The Failure of American Baptist Culture) Peter Lillback writes concerning Calvin’s view of the law written on hearts by the Spirit. This summary is a wonderful treatment of the law against the Lutheran and neo-Lutheran:
Thus Calvin explains how one ought to compare law and gospel in his comments on Jeremiah 31:32ff. First, Calvin notes, one must recognize what the law is in itself–a rule of righteousness that only speaks to the ear as letter since it does not have the Spirit. But secondly, Calvin adds, this contrast ceases once the Spirit is joined with the law. It is then no longer letter, but actually spirit or the gospel itself. In fact, Calvin insists that it is not a new law that the Spirit writes on the heart, but the very same law that was once only letter. Therefore Calvin insists that the benefits of the New Covenant were even present in the law of the Old Covenant. To illustrate this, Calvin mentions John 1:17. If grace and truth have come through Christ and the law was of Moses, does this mean that these benefits were absent from the law? His answer is that even though grace and truth are only found in Christ, and the law doe not have them as benefits it can actually bestow, they were nonetheless present adventitiously. Simply, they were borrowed from the gospel. In light of this, Moses can be considered in two different senses. If he is considered without Christ in his narrow office (cf. comm. ad Rom. 10:4ff.) as lawgiver, his message was only letter and hence promised only death. But if Moses is considered in his whole teaching, he is seen to preach Christ as well. In that case, he must be considered as a preacher of the gospel, the same gospel as is found in the New Covenant.
“With respect to sex and marriage, the normal Puritan view was a robust and healthy one. The Rev. William Gouge, in Of domestical duties (London, 1634), used Proverbs 5:18, 19, to express the joy and beauty of marital sex: “Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love.” The Puritans often spoke of marital sex as one of the great delights and joys among earthly blessings. Frye tells us that a “favorite Biblical passage cited by Puritan churchmen is Genesis XXVI. 8 where it is recorded that ‘Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.’”
A typical employment of this passage is that made by William Gouge, who uses it for an attack upon Stoical abstinence–”A disposition,” said the Puritan Gouge, “no way warranted by the “Word.” Thomas Gataker provides a final and summarizing statement of Puritanism’s anti-ascentiticism in a marriage sermon published in 1620. Gataker is discussing the Christian life, with particular reference to marriage, and observes that it is a tactic of the demonic to misrepresent Christianity as a damper placed upon the joys of living; in other words, to misrepresent it as opposed to human happiness. This false picture of Christianity, says the Puritan Gataker, is “an illusion of Sathan, whereby he usually perwades the Merry Greekes of this world; that if they should once devotoe themselves to the Service of Jesus Christ, that hen they must bid an everlasting farewell to all mirth and delight; that then all their merry dayes are gone; that in the kingdome of Christ, there is nothing, but sighing and groning, and fasting and prayer. But see here the contrary; even in the kingdome of Christ, and in his House, there is marrying and giving in marriage, drinking of wine, feasting, and rejoicing even in the very face of Christ.”" (Rushdoony, The Flight from Humanity)
Rushdoony writes this in the context of a notable exception to the typical Puritan delight in marital love and other physical blessings, Michael Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth does aptly represent the false impression for the that merry lot who built a brewery among the first buildings of America. Here is to recovering Puritanism!
Loraine Boettner notes the connection between Calvinism and republican (representative) government:
Politically, Calvinism has been the chief source of modern republican government. Calvinism and republicanism are related to each other as cause and effect; and where a people are possessed of the former, the later will soon be developed. Calvin himself held that the Church, under God, was a spiritual republic; and certainly he was a republican in theory. James I was well aware of the effects of Calvinism when he said; “Presbytery agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the Devil.” Bankcroft speaks of “the political character of Calvinism, which with one consent and with instinctive judgment the monarchs of that day feared as republicanism.” Another American historian, John Fiske, has written, “It would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owes to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell, must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy . . . The promulgation of this theology was one of the longest steps that mankind has ever taken toward personal freedom.”
