Author: jetbrane

Recently, I have seen several prominent Reformed and Evangelical Christians chastising the Christian community for hyperventilating regarding the recent hate crimes legislation that is moving through Congress. The constant verbal flogging used by these prominent men is that much is being made about nothing since the express language of the hate crimes legislation increases penalty for hate crimes while saying nothing about hate speech. Their point seems to be that this proposed hate crimes legislation will only effect people committing crimes and since Christians don’t commit crimes the legislation is nothing to be concerned about.

These people criticizing those of us who are raising voices of warning about this proposed hate crimes legislation are not people who are aware that how legislation gets written, interpreted and implemented are very different realities. To be honest the prominent Reformed and Evangelical critics are political naifs who do not realize how the game is played in Washington.

In Washington all laws are expansively interpreted so that the qualifications that were originally part of legislation is often ignored by those executing and prosecuting the law. In the Government class I am currently teaching we are seeing the historical use of this maximal judicial hermeneutic.

Paul Craig Roberts makes this same point in a recent article he wrote,

“The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was directed at drug lords. Nothing in the law says anything about divorce; yet it soon was applied in divorce cases.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act explicitly bans racial quotas and defines racial discrimination as an intentional act. Yet, quotas were imposed by the civil rights bureaucracy on the basis of the 1964 Act, and intent was replaced by statistical disparity.

The Clean Water Act makes no reference to wetlands and conveys no powers to the executive branch to create wetlands regulations. Yet, for example, Ocie and Carey Mills, who had a valid Florida state permit to build a house, were imprisoned by federal bureaucrats, who claimed jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. The bureaucrats ruled that the clean dirt used to level the building lot constituted discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters of the U.S. No navigable waters were involved, and according to the state of Florida, no wetlands.”

Woods and Gutzman’s book “Who Killed The Constitution,” likewise delivers example after example of how legislation is interpreted in a maximal fashion quite contrary to it’s supposed limitations.

Prominent Reformed and Evangelical Christians ought to do their research on how legislation has been used to pursue ends that were putatively not part of the original legislation before they criticize people who have a historical sense of how this kind of thing works.

Mark my words …. the hate crimes legislation that is currently moving through Washington, if passed, will eventually be used to stifle speech against the perverts that the legislation seeks to protect.

Michael Gerson served as a speech writer in the Bush administration while at the same time functioning as liaison for Bush with the Evangelical community. As Gerson is a bona fide Evangelical, complete with the spurs that came from graduating from Wheaton College, I never cared much for Gerson. He always had that air of Evangelical compromise about him and like most Evangelical movers and shakers he was (and is) completely tone deaf to Worldview complexities.

Today Gerson writes an article at,

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/09/nones_and_nuns_96399.html

In this article Gerson reviews a forthcoming book entitled, “American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives,” whichg is being written by Robert Putnam and David Campbell. Gerson describes the book as a classic piece of sociological analysis on American culture. The strength or weakness of a book that attempts to do sociological analysis is the presuppositions that are used to organize and read the collected sociological data. Now, this genre is seldom written from a Christian worldview but there are times that much benefit can be collected from such books when a kind of hard pragmatic approach rides shotgun on the pagan authors worldview. Such efforts by authors such as Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, or Marshall McLuhan suggest that this genre can be read beneficially at times.

However, the book that Gerson describes does not sound like it will be one of those types of books. It seems that Putnam has at the core of his book the presupposition that such a thing as religion-less Americans exist. Gerson tells us that, “Putnam outlined the conclusions of “American Grace,” based on research still being sifted and refined. Against the expectations of hard-core secularists, Putnam asserts, “religious Americans are nicer, happier and better citizens.” This is like my saying that research indicates that people who inhale and exhale live longer lives, all the while noting that such a conclusion is against the expectations of people who don’t inhale and exhale.

The point here of course is that there is no such thing as religion-less people. Therefore for Putnam’s coming book to get off the ground he is going to have to tell us just exactly what constitutes religious people and what constitutes hard core secular people and he is going to have to defend this distinction from those of us who will use his definition of “religious” to show how religious his hard core secularists really are.

A few other tidbits from Gerson on Putnam’s upcoming book indicate to us that Putnam is operating from some strange assumptions. Putnam offers,

“Against the expectations of many religious believers, this dynamic (being better people) has little to do with the content of belief. Theology is not the predictor of civic behavior; being part of a community is.”

One hardly knows what to do with such a quote. Putnam seems to assume that communities are not crafted and constituted by what the members of the community believe. Does Putnam really believe that belonging to a religiously Muslim community that prizes Jihad won’t yield different civic behavior then belonging to a religiously Christian community that prizes Christian Worldview? Further, is Putnam really suggesting that the different civic behavior that comes from each respective community isn’t driven by the theology that has crafted and constituted the community from which different civic behavior arises? I don’t know what research Putnam is reading but I do know, from the quote above that his worldview is shaping his conclusions in a irrational direction.

Putnam cites the reason for what he styles the secularizing of America as

“Baby boomers being far less religious than their parents at the same age — the probable result, says Putnam, of a ‘very rapid change in morals and customs.'”

But what reason can there be for this “very rapid change in morals and customs,” except for a change in religion and theological belief? Baby Boomers didn’t become more secular or irreligious because of the rapid change in morals and customs, rather Baby boomers brought in a rapid change of morals and customs because they changed their religion and theology. Now certainly, the religion and theology of Baby boomers may be less officially organized than their parents religion and theology but that organizational lack doesn’t make their new religion, irrelgion and shouldn’t be styled as “secular,” unless one wants to speak of religious secularism.

Putnam offers as proof for his thesis that 30-35% of his 20 something respondents have checked “none” as their religious preference. But this only tells us that his respondents are not self conscious about their “religious preference,” or that they don’t do religion that is officially organized or structured. It most assuredly doesn’t tell us that his respondents are not religious in the sense of being a people who are shaped by convictions, and are involved in habits and rituals, that are informed by a belief system that is anchored by some god or god concept. All people are equally religious, though all people are not equally self conscious about their religiosity.

Putnam does mention the polarization phenomenon we are currently experiencing as Americans.

“There are fewer liberals in the pews and fewer unchurched conservatives.”

Now it is interesting here that Putnam in his nomenclature suddenly goes from “irreligious secularists” to “liberals.” If there is anything we know about political “liberals” is that their political liberalism is the result of their religious and theological liberalism. Fewer liberals are in the pews not because they are not religious or theological but because they have a different religion, theology, and church from those churched conservatives that Putnam mentions.

Putnam goes on to explore the implications of the above statement,

“The political implications are broad. Democrats must galvanize the “nones” while not massively alienating religious voters — which is precisely what candidate Obama accomplished. Republicans must maintain their base in the pew while appealing to the young — a task they have not begun to figure out.”

What Putnam is saying here is that in order for America not to be hopelessly divided the parties have to find candidates who can build coalitions between the religious people who hate the God of the Bible (Putnam’s “nones”) and people who are rooted in historic Christianity. Putnam insists that is what Obama did but the polling evidence doesn’t align with that as exit polling from the last election revealed that Obama did not get a greater “Evangelical vote” than Bush did in 2004.

Putnam’s conclusions are disconcerting.

“Putnam regards the growth of the “nones” as a spike, not a permanent trend. The young, in general, are not committed secularists. “They are not in church, but they might be if a church weren’t like the religious right. … There are almost certain to be religious entrepreneurs to fill that niche with a moderate evangelical religion, without political overtones.”

I don’t know what rock Putnam is living under but legion are the names of religious entrepreneurs who are already hustling to fill the niche he speaks of.

What Putnam is saying here is that if a Christian evangelical religion can be constructed that doesn’t upset the politically liberal agenda of the young then that new religion will be able to take off. Can this explain the popularity of the Radical Two Kingdom movement? R2Kt sells itself as a religion that is a-political. In R2Kt Churches liberals can be converted without having to give up their liberal social agenda. Jesus can live with Marx.

It’s difficult to believe that the Church could be any more compromised but since the Church is currently a institution that is driven by marketing and demographics we can expect to see a burgeoning movement that reflects what Putnam anticipates here.

Gerson finishes the article by saying,

“In the diverse, fluid market of American religion there may be a demand, in other words, for grace, hope and reconciliation — for a message of compassion and healing that appeals to people of every political background. It would be revolutionary — but it would not be new.”

Does Gerson really believe that American Christianity today doesn’t already offer “grace, hope and reconciliation?” Does it take the affirmation of a new political movement in order for “grace, hope and reconciliation” to be present?

Gerson, once again reveals the chief quality of compromise that is so characteristic of Evangelicalism.

“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”

C. S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength

Reading Lewis is like working in a diamond mine. If you can ignore the wasteland of the mine the constant find of diamonds is a recurring delight.

Here Lewis captures perfectly the idea of how the antithesis works itself out over time as the elect and the reprobate who had, perhaps for generations, worked peacefully side by side eventually each become, perhaps due to some unforeseen momentous event or cultural crisis, epistemologically self conscious to the point that cultural friction becomes so prevalent that it is impossible to continue together as a people without conflict.

If the hate crimes legislation continues to slither its way through legislative process and becomes law the time of comparative elbow room will have come to an end. If this hate crimes legislation passes even the possibility of even apparent neutrality will disappear.

The contrasts are getting sharp out there. Montana has passed a gun and ammunition law that thumbs its nose at the Federal government and Federal gun and ammunition legislation. Reports are out there that suggest that homeland security document that labeled historical Americans as extremists are being taken seriously by law enforcement. Oklahoma has ignored a Gubernatorial veto and passed a resolution proclaiming Oklahoma sovereignty. I suspect that we are coming to a time where indecision will be decision and that no person will be allowed to temporize regarding their convictions.