Pastor's Blog

While we're on the subject, what about the economic sense of increasing taxes on businesses? This is just a hidden tax on consumers. Taxes are simply one of the costs of doing business and, like all increases in such costs, are paid for by the consumer in the form of high prices.

It occurred to me after making my last post that some people might wonder why we should worry about Obama's plan to increase taxes on "the rich." "It doesn't affect me," you say, "I'm not rich." Perhaps not, but you might be surprised to learn just how much we all benefit from other people's wealth--not by their providing us with charitable contributions, but in providing goods and services and opportunities for employment. The motive for all economic transactions is profit. And while the desire for profit can certainly be abused, it is equally certain that without it, no economic transactions would ever take place. Those who have excess money (i.e., the rich ) are motivated by a desire for greater profit to invest their money in the production of goods and the providing of services that consumers are willing to pay for. The greater the potential for profit, the more people are involved in the venture, and the number of goods and services

Obama knows better what to do with your money than you do. This year I had my students read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Marx and Engels advocated a ten point plan to achieve a communist utopia. Some of Obama's goals are eerily similar. Consider, for example, points 2, 3, and 5 of the Manifesto . 2. A heavily progressive income tax. 3. Abolition of inheritance. 5. Centralisation [ sic ] of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. (from The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings , Dover Publications, p. 141) Now read this article at Newsmax.com. Sound familiar?

More on the problems of "marketing" the church by David Wells. Here was the gospel product as sleekly fashioned and as artfully sold as anything in the mall or on television. Here also were churches smelling of coffee and reverberating with edgy music. There were bright and exciting videos. And the professional singers rivaled any one might hear in Vegas. It was all put together in a package to please, entice, entertain, relax, grab, and enfold potential customers, and worm its way into their hearts... What results, all too often, beneath all the smiling crowds, the packed auditoria, is a faith so cramped, limited, and minuscule as to be entirely unable to command our life, our energies, or, as a matter of fact, even much of our attention. One church advertises itself as a place where you will find "loud music" and "short services." It has a "casual atmosphere" but, it wants us to know, it also offers "serious faith." This is always the

In addition to the older, classical evangelicals whom David Wells identifies in his book, The Courage to be Protestant , he mentions an evangelical constituency which he calls the "marketers." The church marketers are those who have followed the innovations in "doing" church pioneered by Bill Hybels at Willow Creek Community Church in 1975... This approach, it is said, is seeking to preserve the old evangelical message while delivering it in new ways. Its strategies have been borrowed from the corporate world. The key idea is that there is a market for the Christian message. They utilize marketing techniques and proven entertainment formats to penetrate that market. This innovation seemed to be the train that was leaving town three decades ago, and pastors by the thousands scrambled to get aboard. Here was the magic formula for success. Though a genuine passion for evangelism no doubt lay somewhere in the experiment, it was also wrapped in the most stunning cultural

Compare this map with the others and notice how it confirms what we already knew to be true. The more religious (i.e., Christian ) regions are more charitable and tend to vote for more conservative candidates. Puts the lie to the liberal accusation that conservatives don't care about the poor. Conservatives are generous when it comes to spending their own money, but stingy with other people's money (taxes). Liberals are generous with other people's money, but stingy with their own.

This one charts charitable giving. And what you know...religious people on average are more charitable. Who'd a thunk it?

Here's another map reflecting religious faith by region. This one charts church attendance. Notice how it compares to the ones below.

David Wells continues his explanation of the demise of classical evangelicalism. The capacity to think doctrinally was being lost as new leaders emerged, as the leadership of the evangelical world shifted from the older pastor-theologians to the new entrepreneurial organization builders, and as churches began to reflect this change in their attitudes and worship. The erosion in biblical ways of thinking at first passed almost unnoticed... Campus organizations were undoubtedly reducing Christian faith to its most minimal form. And as serious biblical preaching in the churches diminished, ignorance of biblical truth became commonplace. But the largest factor in this internal change, I think, was that evangelicalism began to be infested by the culture in which it was living. And then Christianity became increasingly reduced simply to private, internal, therapeutic experience. Its doctrinal form atrophied and then crumbled.

Indulge me just a little and let me post a video link to KAKE TV sports showing James hoopin' it up last night in Wichita. Fast forward to the 2:30 mark.

Here's another map illustrating the "Leading Church Bodies" county by county across America. Turns out the Bible belt is mostly Baptist.

This map illustrates the percentages in my previous post. Turns out there really is a Bible belt, and it happens to be green.

I've come across some interesting tidbits of information about religion in America. A recent Gallup poll asked the question, "Is religion an important part of your daily life?" Here are the percentages, state by state, of those who answered, "Yes." 85% Mississippi 82% Alabama 80% South Carolina 79% Tennessee 78% Louisiana 78% Arkansas 76% Georgia 76% North Carolina 75% Oklahoma 74% Kentucky 74% Texas 71% West Virginia 70% Kansas 69% Utah 68% Missouri 68% Virginia 68% South Dakota 68% North Dakota 68% Indiana 67% Nebraska 66% New Mexico 65% Pennsylvania 65% Florida 65% Maryland 65% Ohio 64% Iowa 64% Minnesota 64% Illinois 64% Michigan 61% Delaware 61% Wisconsin 61% D.C. 61% Idaho 61% Arizona 60% NJ 58% Wyoming 57% Colorado 57% Hawaii 57% California 56% Montana 56% New York 55% Connecticut 54% Nevada 53% Rhode Island 53% Oregon 52% Washington 51% Alaska 48% Massachusetts 48% Maine 46% New Hampshire 42% Vermont

Vox Day has a good explanation of how three different economic schools of thought wish to handle the current (or any) crisis.

"Fire? Don't worry about it. We're dousing it with gasoline."

The more time one spends reading the Scriptures and searching out the implications of its teaching, the more forcefully this truth impresses itself upon one's consciousness: the Christian faith is not about me and Jesus and my personal salvation. It is, instead, a comprehensive view of life and the world . This reduction of the faith is one of the things David Wells decries in his book, The Courage to Be Protestant . He does so while explaining both the nature and the demise of classical evangelicalism. The first constituency ...is classical evangelicalism. This is what took shape and form immediately following the Second World War, both in Europe and in the United States. What stood out about it, and what still does, is its doctrinal seriousness (p. 2) Wells explains that there were two core theological beliefs that held an otherwise theologically diverse group together: (1) the full authority of the inspired Scripture and (2) the necessity and centrality of Christ's penal su

I've just started to read David Wells' latest book, The Courage to Be Protestant (2008), and it promises to be a good one. Wells is the professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon- Conwell Theological Seminary. Writing as an evangelical himself, Wells has published some searing critiques of evangelicalism, beginning with his No Place for Truth; or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? in 1993. This was followed by God in the Wasteland (1994), Losing Our Virtue (1998), and Above All Earthly Pow'rs (2005). The Courage to Be Protestant, Wells informs his readers, started out as a simple summary of these previous works, but ended up as a recasting of them in an attempt to get at the essence of what he sees as the chief problems with modern American evangelicalism. He begins by setting forth "The Lay of the Evangelical Land" (title of chapter one). And he divides the evangelical world into "three rather distinct constituencies": (1)

It seems a provision in the stimulus bill passed by the House of Representatives last week bans money designated for school renovation to be used on facilities that allow "religious worship." The House provided a whopping $20 billion for infrastructure improvements, of which $6 billion was designated for improvements in facilities at colleges and universities. But according to the bill, funds are prohibited from being used for the "modernization, renovation, or repair" of facilities that allow "sectarian instruction, religious worship or a school or department of divinity." Predictably, Christian conservatives are hopping mad that they are left out of the largesse from the public treasury. A couple of observations. First, it shows the hypocrisy of the left. The left deems it inappropriate to fund sectarian instruction, unless that sectarian instruction is of their own variety... anti-Christianity . Second, it shows the hypocrisy of the right. Conservatism

Thanks to George Grant for this timely reminder of the wisdom of our Founders. "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams

I first saw this on Doug Wilson's blog. It puts the current financial crisis is some scary perspective. The numbers are staggering, even considering the lost purchasing power of the dollar from 1920 to 2009.