What’s Britain Up To?

“Oxford University Press has removed words like “aisle”, “bishop”, “chapel”, “empire” and “monarch” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like “blog”, “broadband” and “celebrity”. Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3569045/Words-associated-with-Christianity-and-British-history-taken-out-of-childrens-dictionary.html

I know people may be bored with hearing it but no country can survive as a multicultural, multifaith society. Cultures can not survive by being radically heterogeneous. The idea that Britain is moving from the singular culture of Christendom based upon the singular faith of Christianity to a multi-culture of Pluralisdom based upon a multiplicity of faiths is rubbish. What is happening is that Britain is moving from the singular culture of Christendom based upon the singular faith of Christianity to the singular Unitarian culture of Humanismdom based upon the singular faith of humanism.

There is something we need to see here. Christian culture insists that the Christian faith alone is true. Multiculturalism insists that many faiths are true. However, each are claiming that their way alone is true. Thus we see that pluralism isn’t really very pluralistic. Multiculturalism is every bit as mono-cultural as Christianity is. In reality multiculturalism is a singular faith that is built up from a Unitarian religion where people live move and have their being in the State. All faiths are welcome in multiculturalism as long as no faith takes their God more seriously then the State-God who polices to make sure all the gods stay equal and don’t go beyond their boundaries.

Britain is not moving to a culture of one faith to a culture of many faiths. Britain is moving from the one faith of Christianity to the one faith of Statism.

Sorry, I know I’ve said this before.

Doug Keeps Trying To Justify His Vote For Socialist Republicans

Doug Wilson and I had a brief couple of exchanges in one of his Obama Nation building threads.

http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=6096&Data=3003#posts

I remain convinced that all of Doug’s cheer leading for McCain / Palin was both counterproductive and just plain wrong. Doug defended his actions and in a post this morning spends several paragraphs seeking to justify his vote. Doug Wilson’s words are in blockquote. My response follows.

One of the valuable things I learned from Rushdoony was the idea of the inescapable concept. It is not whether we will impose morality through our laws, but rather which morality we will impose. It is not whether there will be an ultimate god for every political system, but rather which god it will be. Not whether, but which.

I learned this likewise from Rush. It is a lesson that I wish all Christians would learn. Because this is true, we can and do insist that all governments are theocratically arranged. Theocracy is an inescapable concept. In government there will always be some God or gods at the top of the food chain and all that is being done in the government and in the legislation is being done pursuant to the commands of that god or gods.

Now, here is what Doug did with his vote, in light of this idea of inescapable concept. Doug yoked his strength to John McCain and voted for the god of humanism, in the hopes that the god of humanism would do something (appoint pro-life judges) to cause itself to fall and crumble. How much sense does it make to vote for one of the chief prophets of humanism / socialism (the other chief prophet being Obama) in hope that the chief prophet of humanism / socialism would makes some decision that would lead to the fall of humanism / socialism?

In the same way, all attempts at political engagement (or disengagement, for that matter) provide yet another setting for the same principle to manifest itself. No matter what you do, or where you go, you will find yourself tied to others doing the same thing for very different and frequently disreputable reasons. It is not whether you will have strange bedfellows, but which strange bedfellows you will have.

This is a true observation! However, the question isn’t one of whether the guy next to me who is voting for the same guy I am is a weirdo. The question is whether the guy both the weirdo and I are both voting for is going to be true to the weirdo’s interpretation of the candidates agenda or to the interpretation of the agenda that I have of the candidate we are voting for. Now, as to John McCain there is no doubt what his agenda was. McCain was for open borders. McCain was for stem cell research. McCain was bad on the second amendment. McCain was bad on the first amendment. McCain was he of “we’ll keep the troops there 100 years if necessary” fame. McCain was bad on judges (remember the gang of 14). And yet despite all this Doug voted for McCain. The problem wasn’t that Doug was voting next to a weirdo who actually wanted McCain to do all of that. The problem was that Doug (as a leading luminary in Christian “conservative” circles) voted for the weirdo.

If I vote Republican, as I did in the general, in the hope of getting one or two more pro-life Supreme Court justices, I find myself cheek by jowl with somebody else pulling the lever because he will be getting some sweet kickbacks on a defense contractor.

Let’s review this. Doug is supposed to have a prophetic streak about him, and I admit that Doug often does a good job of reading the tea leaves of the culture. But what Doug was asking us to do in the election cycle was vote for McCain in hopes that Palin was going in influence McCain to nominate pro-life SCOTUS justices. Even on the face of it such an idea is laughable. However, when you combine this idea with the reality that everybody knew that the US Senate, which has to give its approval for SCOTUS nominees, was going to go overwhelmingly liberal, the idea that a President McCain was going to nominate, let alone get through the Senate pro-life judges is double laughable. Doug must have been smoking peyote to believe that a President Maverick McCain, already famous for screwing the conservative base of the Republican party, was going to give the country justices who would reverse Roe vs. Wade.

Like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown and promising this time she won’t move the football before Charlie Brown kicks it, Doug fell for the Republican recurring party line. A wise sage of the Church should not have fallen for such transparent “Lucy” lies.

If I vote for Ron Paul, as I did in the primary, I find myself cheek by jowl with another fellow up here in the sticks of north Idaho with swastikas all over his backhoe. I know, an absurd example, but it is not as though I haven’t seen that kind of thing with my own eyeballs. Now I am not “contaminated” by either one, unless I overtly own or connive at their evil deeds — like Obama did with Ayers. But I am doing the same thing that they are doing, and I am doing it at the same time . . . strange bedfellows. And I can’t get away from this law by forming a political party of one, and heading up for the tall grass of the high mountain pastures. Lots of people have done that, and many of them are fruit loops.

Doug is right again here, however the observation is not an escape route to justify his wrong headed vote. The problem was never with the weirdo that Doug was voting with the problem was the weirdo Doug was voting for. The problem isn’t with strange bedfellows, the problem is with strange head of the household. No one is advocating voting for a party of one. What people are advocating is that Christians quit voting for a known quantity who promises to be other than they’ve always been. Doug should know that you never ever listen to what a politician says. You only look at what they’ve done.

If mere unity of action contaminates, then I am as contaminated by voting for purist Third Party candidates as I am by voting for the Establishment solons. The one difference is that the impurities present more of an intellectual challenge to the Third Party guys, because their raison d’tre is . . . purity. The pragmatists running the big tent circuses don’t really care about that because all they want is warm bodies checking their boxes, clearly and legibly.

Now here we find a glitch in Doug’s understanding at what I and others are doing when we vote third party. The issues for me isn’t “the pure as the wind driven snow purity” of the third party candidate. I realize that there is impurity in guys like Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, or Bob Barr. I could list them for you. No, the problem for me is the impurity of the guys in the major parties. I don’t expect perfection. But what I am looking for is a guy who is actually not promoting government that is trying to crush the basics of a Christian world view. So, my reason for existence (raison d’tre) when it comes to voting is not the pure as the wind driven snow candidate. The reason for existence when it comes to voting is voting for someone who is moving in a different general direction from the two major parties.

So, if I accept the “guilt by association” argument, I have to accept it across the board. If I don’t, then I don’t. As I said, I voted for Ron Paul in the primary, and had he made it to the general, I would have voted for him there. Had he been elected, I would have supported him fully and enthusiastically for the entire three weeks of his presidency. Having said this, anybody who thinks that there weren’t a bunch of unsavory characters and moonbats supporting his run is somebody who doesn’t get out much.

Once again, Doug is correct, but his correctness doesn’t have anything to do with voting habits error. Yes, when you vote third party you are voting with moonbats, however, you’re not voting for a moonbat as he was when he voted McCain.

And having said that, I recognize that there are different kinds of moonbats — for example, there are the kind who draw up working models of a new constitutions in their trailer park near Houston, and there is the respectable kind of moonbat who gives away billions of dollars by the fistful to failing banks in the hope of correcting problems caused by financial irresponsibility. Heh.

But the difference is that neither Chuck Baldwin or Bob Barr were drawing up working models of a new constitution, while McCain did vote to give away billions of dollars for … well, who knows where it finally went to? Now, this isn’t to say that Baldwin or Barr didn’t have problems. They weren’t pure and they certainly did have problems. This is to say that at the very least they wanted to move away from collectivism.

Ron Paul understands the Federal Reserve system, and none of the eggheads running that system do. When someone suggests a sane solution to the financial crisis, everyone cries for “realism,” not remembering that it was very similar calls for “realism” that got us into this mess. And so I would be happy to vote for Ron Paul despite unsavory support for him in the background. But when I decide to vote McCain, don’t try to dissuade me by pointing to the unsavory assocations there. I know all about that — but I know about it in every direction, and not just in focused partisan directions. You can’t even identify with Mennonite pacifists without getting into weird associations with communist thugs with blood stains up to their elbows. Welcome to earth. Welcome to political engagement.

NOBODY IS FAULTING YOU DOUG WILSON FOR VOTING WITH WEIRDOS. WE ARE FAULTING YOU FOR VOTING FOR WEIRDOS. As far as I’m concerned Doug could hold a party and invite all the weirdos he voted with to come if he and they hadn’t voted for a collectivist, socialist, anti-second amendment, anti-first amendment, anti-American sovereignty weirdo.

The same kind of observations apply to the Constitution Party, the Libertarians, and anybody else numerous and effective enough to get themselves on to the ballot.

At the end of the day I want to conduct myself in principled ways, caring the most about the advance of the kingdom of Christ, and the preservation of human dignity. And so here is the main point. The litmus test of all principled (biblical) political engagement is this: as you engage, are you willing to recognize and denounce the whackjobs who will (inevitably) associate themselves with what you are seeking to do? If so, well done, and God counts your vote, wherever it is cast. If not, then you are just a shill, whether for the big party pragmatists or the little party pragmatists.

You will not advance the Kingdom of Christ by voting for people (like McCain) who are representatives of the Kingdom of anti-Christ. You will not advance the Kingdom of Christ by thinking that representatives of the false God of humanism (McCain or Obama) will do things that will work to pull down the god of humanism. This is the problem with Doug’s reasoning. Doug has forgotten that a political party divided against itself can not stand and so in order to stand it won’t do things to advance the Kingdom of God. Doug has forgotten that Beelzebub is not going to cast out Beelzebub. McCain, as a representative of Humanism was not going to bring down the God of humanism. No way. Never ever. Wasn’t going to happen. Not a snowball’s chance in Hell. Therefore, he had no business voting for McCain, and worst yet, giving other Christians justification for voting for McCain.

Whenever I write about this, the comments invariably divide down a predictable line, with both sides circling the wagons. Both sides point out the glaring faults in the other side. Big deal. Pagans know how to do that. Point out the faults of your own approach, the one you have decided to take. Remember the beams and motes. If you decide to vote Republican, acknowledge that there is much justice in the observations made from the nickel seats of the Third Parties. If you decide to vote for a Third Party candidate, recognize that there is justice in the criticisms mounted against them. That is a genuine third way.

I’m sorry Doug … I will not recognize that voting for Republicans that are known collectivist and humanists is a wise thing to do. I’m glad to admit that every now and again in some races there are Republicans that can be voted for in good conscience (Ron Paul comes to mind) but on the whole the definition of insanity remains doing the same thing over and over again (in this case pulling Republican levers) while expecting different results. Doug, you were just plain wrong to vote for Republican McCain wistfully imagining that a Vice President Palin was somehow going to keep him honest on SCOTUS nominees. Politically speaking that was the thinking of a novice.

What a field day for the heat,

A thousand people in the street,

Singing songs and they’re carrying signs,

Mostly saying, “Hooray for our side.”

Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

Some Random Thoughts On The Movie Hancock

1.) The lead white male is a complete doofus in the movie. He is weak, idiotic, socialistic, idealistic, and manages images for a living.

2.) Businessmen are seen as greedy corporate captains of industry selfishly refusing to share their gains with the people.

3.) The white female lead is a blond Aryan type goddess who hides her immortal super-human ability from her husband while treating him the way that a owner would treat a prized pet.

4.) The black male lead is a god who is a derelict who learns from the white man how to function in civilized society. Come to find out the white Aryan female goddess and the black god are husband and wife who were created from time immemorial to be a matched pair. They belong together (as seen in a near kissing scene) and yet when together they destroy each other as well as the white man’s world.

5.) The black male god and the white female goddess eventually work together to save the day, though this results in them realizing that they have to go their separate ways in order for each of them to survive individually.

6.) The white doofus takes his white female goddess back as a wife even after he realizes that she had an intimate past with the black god.

7.) The Black god is the hero of the movie and rescues the male lead from his disastrous publicity career by emblazoning his add logo, intended to bring the world together, on the moon.

8.)A Black guy is the central cop and a white guy is the central criminal in the bank heist in the movie.

9.) The Black God, the White Goddess and the doofus white guy all work together to make sure the White criminal can’t “get his power back.” They end up making a double amputee of him.

10.) The white Goddess tells the white doofus husband that there is no such thing as fate and people have choices.

Please don’t think that any of these observations are me reading to much into the film. There is definitely a racial / gender agenda in this movie and it isn’t favorable to white males who aren’t weak doofuses.

A More Pressing Issue Than Abortion?

There are many Christians who are champions of the unborn. I salute them all. But there is a problem that is more fundamental in our country and in our Churches than the scourge of Abortion and that is the sending of our covenant children to government schools.

The reason that this issue is more important than abortion and has a greater need to be spoken to than abortion is that government schools are the institution that is creating a citizenry of moral zombies wherein a climate can thrive that can support abortion. The ascendancy of different forms of outcome based education with its value neutral emphasis and cultural Marxist origin is driving the creation of a citizenry that either supports or turns a morally tin ear to the cries of the weakest among us. If we want to stop abortion, we must, at the very least, separate the schools from State control, or failing that we must remove the children from the schools.

The State schools are serving as the Church of Humanism. If you want to stop the agenda of Humanism, which includes Abortion, you must attack the root of the matter. Stopping abortion by means of legislation, without changing the government school culture, is like picking off leaves of a Kudzu plant. The triumph is only momentary as the vine eventually grows with even more rapidity. To stop Kudzu you must kill it at the root. To stop abortion you must kill it at the root — the root is government schools. Either remove the State control of the government schools with its humanist agenda or remove the students from government schools and ending abortion will be a task that is suddenly more achievable. Fail to change the government school culture and we will be picketing abortion clinics for the next 75 years.

So to all you abortion warriors out there, if you are really serious about ending abortion then read up on what is going on in government schools and turn your artillery in that direction.

Conversational Flotsam and Jetsam

Actually, I like Tim Enloe. Really, I do. Still, he as a bad habit of characterizing a conversation in an interesting light. Actually, I only barely recognize the conversation that Tim summarizes in what we can only hope will be his closing post on the subject. I think he re-works the conversation in the way he does because the conversation didn’t really go that well for him.

http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=6077&Data=3003#posts

Well, at least the important issue of what “reform” even is has been put on table by all this. Those who think the Reformation formulations are the end of the discussion have revealed an attitude which would have prevented the Reformation itself from happening, because they don’t recognize the possibility of fruitfully engaging the tradition understanding that it isn’t a self-contained, self-justifying whole.

1.) I never even came close to saying that there isn’t any possibility of fruitfully engaging the Reformed tradition. Nor, do I necessarily think of it as a self-contained, self-justifying whole, though it could very well be. It all depends on whether or not the people who engage the Reformed tradition ever end up doing so fruitfully. I’ve read a great deal on the engagements so far and I see a lot of good fruit but the good fruit I see is a reclaiming of the Reformed tradition. All the so called “extensions of the Reformed tradition” that I’ve read (especially on justification) is just pretty lousy stuff, that should not satisfy anybody who realizes the depth and width of all that justification by faith alone touches.

2.) As to my attitude … well, I kind of like Ronald Reagan on this score. Reagan said, “trust but verify.” I trust Tim but having looked at what is being offered as a replacement for justification by faith alone, whether it is from Reformed Catholicism, Federal Vision, or New Perspective I can honestly say that I can not verify that it isn’t just another arrangement of justification that is analytic and process at its core.

My concerns in all this have been chiefly the restricting of “the Gospel” both in proclamation to others and belief by others to an explicit consciousness of JBFA – a restriction which seems to prevent “the Gospel” from being readily seen in the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and 1 Corinthians 15.

1.) Tim’s problem here is that he is reading the Gospels, Acts, and I Corinthians 15 in isolation from the rest of the Bible. It’s like saying because you can’t find the name of God in the book of Esther therefore the Bible really isn’t about God. This is nonsense.

2.) I would say that justification is found all over those books that Tim cites if only implicitly. Justification, soteriologically speaking touches everything, therefore if one finds a soteriological fact in any book there will be some way in which justification will eventually be involved.

3) Tim greatly mischaracterizes the conversation because I’ve clearly admitted that people can be justified apart from an explicit consciousness of jbfa. What I have denied is that someone can explicitly deny justification by faith alone and still be considered as justified.

4.) By Tim’s downgrading the importance of justification by faith alone Tim has revealed that it is, for him, no longer the hinge upon which Reformed theology turns. All I can do is recommend people read Buchanan’s book on Justification or Owen’s book on Justification or Chemnitz’s writing on Justification, or Turretin’s writings on Justification or …. (Let me guess Tim … these are all standard Reformed manuals.)

Tim’s downgrade on jbfa and the downgrade that we are seeing through much of the Reformed Church on this doctrine is, in my estimation, an attempt to rebuild Christendom with those who clearly deny jbfa. Christianity is being assaulted and our numbers are dwindling and there seems to be ostensibly Reformed people with opinions that one way to rebuild the crumbling walls of Christendom is by removing those doctrines that divide the epistemologically self-conscious Reformed Biblical believer from those who are seen as sharing our Christian morality. If this project is successful Christendom will go into full eclipse. It is only a Reformation Biblical worldview that includes jbfa that can successfully rebuild a genuine Christendom.

Other than that, my concern is with the demonstrable massive historical ignorance of the Reformed community as a whole regarding the state of the Church prior to the Reformation, including but not limited to (1) the continuity of the Reformers with previous tradition, (2) their knowledge of and creative interaction with issues our standard Manuals never mention, and (3) the simply grossly uncharitable sloganeering about other theological viewpoints. These issues remain as legitimate points of discussion regardless of any regrettable flaring up of personal stuff.

As to the above

(1) Anybody who knows Church History understands how much certain early Church fathers influenced the Reformed. The doctrines of the Reformation didn’t jump out of the Reformers heads as Athena jumped out of Zeus’ head. For Tim to suggest that anybody who disagrees with his profundity doesn’t know Church history is just silly. I’m glad to admit the continuity of the Reformers with previous tradition. Is Tim glad to admit the substantial discontinuity of the Reformers with previous tradition?

(2) Tim keeps mentioning his “standard Manuals” without defining which exact books he has in mind. Now, I’m not the Medieval Church Historian that Tim is but I’ve done a great deal of reading that I’m pretty confident extends well beyond Tim’s “standard Manuals.” This “standard manual” line is just a sophisticated way to disparage somebody who doesn’t agree with Tim.

I will continue to insist however that on this point Tim is just plain upset that people haven’t come to the conclusion that he or his favorite authors have come in light of these “non-Standard manuals.” I will repeat, yet again, there is a host of ways to read the Reformation, the theological/philosophical/cultural influences on the Reformers, and what I call the “psycho-history of the Reformation.” For Tim to insist that his reading must be the standard that measures all other readings is just disingenuous.

Still, I’m all for taking on all comers. The Reformation has nothing to fear from Tim’s non-Standard manuals with their speculation about the Reformers psycho-history.

(3) I quite agree that history can’t fit on a postcard. So, I understand Tim’s concern about sloganeering. Still, I won’t apologize to those who are self consciously against jbfa for any sloganeering I involve myself in. The reason that people are so offended by sloganeering so quickly, I suspect, is because the slogan has hit its target.