Dr. John Henrik Clarke on history

 

“History is not everything” Clarke once wrote, “but it is the starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but more importantly, what they must be.”

Albert Mohler on how Theological Liberalism Happens

Albert Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, has written an article (Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens) on the genesis of theological liberalism. He observes the following:

“Theological liberals do not intend to destroy Christianity, but to save it. As a matter of fact, theological liberalism is motivated by what might be described as an apologetic motivation. The pattern of theological liberalism is all too clear. Theological liberals are absolutely certain that Christianity must be saved…from itself.

Liberalism: Saving Christianity From Itself

The classic liberals of the early twentieth century, often known as modernists, pointed to a vast intellectual change in the society and asserted that Christianity would have to change or die. As historian William R. Hutchison explains, “The hallmark of modernism is the insistence that theology must adopt a sympathetic attitude toward secular culture and must consciously strive to come to terms with it.”[1]

This coming to terms with secular culture is deeply rooted in the sense of intellectual liberation that began in the Enlightenment. Protestant liberalism can be traced to European sources, but it arrived very early in America—far earlier than most of today’s evangelicals are probably aware. Liberal theology held sway where Unitarianism dominated and in many parts beyond.

Soon after the American Revolution, more organized forms of liberal theology emerged, fueled by a sense of revolution and intellectual liberty. Theologians and preachers began to question the doctrines of orthodox Christianity, claiming that doctrines such as original sin, total depravity, divine sovereignty, and substitutionary atonement violated the moral senses. William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian, spoke for many in his generation when he described “the shock given to my moral nature” by the teachings of orthodox Christianity.[2]

Though any number of central beliefs and core doctrines were subjected to liberal revision or outright rejection, the doctrine of hell was often the object of greatest protest and denial.

Considering hell and its related doctrines, Congregationalist pastor Washington Gladden declared: “To teach such a doctrine as this about God is to inflict upon religion a terrible injury and to subvert the very foundations of morality.”[3]

Though hell had been a fixture of Christian theology since the New Testament, it became an odium theologium—a doctrine considered repugnant by the larger culture and now retained and defended only by those who saw themselves as self-consciously orthodox in theological commitment.

Novelist David Lodge dated the final demise of hell to the decade of the 1960s. “At some point in the nineteen-sixties, Hell disappeared. No one could say for certain when this happened. First it was there, then it wasn’t.” University of Chicago historian Martin Marty saw the transition as simple and, by the time it actually occurred, hardly observed. “Hell disappeared. No one noticed,” he asserted.[4]

The liberal theologians and preachers who so conveniently discarded hell did so without denying that the Bible clearly teaches the doctrine. They simply asserted the higher authority of the culture’s sense of morality. In order to save Christianity from the moral and intellectual damage done by the doctrine, hell simply had to go. Many rejected the doctrine with gusto, claiming the mandate to update the faith in a new intellectual age. Others simply let the doctrine go dormant, never to be mentioned in polite company.

What of today’s evangelicals? Though some lampoon the stereotypical “hell-fire and brimstone” preaching of an older evangelical generation, the fact is that most church members may never have heard a sermon on hell—even in an evangelical congregation. Has hell gone dormant among evangelicals as well?

Revising Hell: A Test Case for the Slide into Liberalism

Interestingly, the doctrine of hell serves very well as a test case for the slide into theological liberalism. The pattern of this slide looks something like this.

First, a doctrine simply falls from mention. Over time, it is simply never discussed or presented from the pulpit. Most congregants do not even miss the mention of the doctrine. Those who do become fewer over time. The doctrine is not so much denied as ignored and kept at a distance. Yes, it is admitted, that doctrine has been believed by Christians, but it is no longer a necessary matter of emphasis.

Second, a doctrine is revised and retained in reduced form. There must have been some good reason that Christians historically believed in hell. Some theologians and pastors will then affirm that there is a core affirmation of morality to be preserved, perhaps something like what C. S. Lewis affirmed as “The Tao.”[5] The doctrine is reduced.

Third, a doctrine is subjected to a form of ridicule. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral, known for his message of “Possibility Thinking,” once described his motivation for theological reformulation in terms of refocusing theology on “generating trust and positive hope.”[6] His method is to point to salvation and the need “to become positive thinkers.”[7] Positive thinking does not emphasize escape from hell, “whatever that means and wherever that is.”[8]

That statement ridicules hell by dismissing it in terms of “whatever that means and wherever it is.” Just don’t worry about hell, Schuller suggests. Though few evangelicals are likely to join in the same form of ridicule, many will invent softer forms of marginalizing the doctrine.

Fourth, a doctrine is reformulated in order to remove its intellectual and moral offensiveness. Evangelicals have subjected the doctrine of hell to this strategy for many years now. Some deny that hell is everlasting, arguing for a form of annihilationism or conditional immortality. Others will deny hell as a state of actual torment. John Wenham simply states, “Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice.”[9] Some argue that God does not send anyone to hell, and that hell is simply the sum total of human decisions made during earthly lives. God is not really a judge who decides, but a referee who makes certain that rules are followed.

Tulsa pastor Ed Gungor recently wrote that “people are not sent to hell, they go there.”[10] In other words, God just respects human freedom to the degree that he will reluctantly let humans determined to go to hell have their wish.

Apologizing for Hell: The New Evangelical Evasion

In recent years, a new pattern of evangelical evasion has surfaced. The Protestant liberals and modernists of the twentieth century simply dismissed the doctrine of hell, having already rejected the truthfulness of Scripture. Thus, they did not enter into elaborate attempts to argue that the Bible did not teach the doctrine—they simply dismissed it.

Though this pattern is found among some who would claim to be evangelicals, this is not the most common evangelical pattern of compromise. A new apologetic move is now evident among some theologians and preachers who do affirm the inerrancy of the Bible and the essential truthfulness of the New Testament doctrine of hell. This new move is more subtle, to be sure. In this move the preacher simply says something like this:

“I regret to tell you that the doctrine of hell is taught in the Bible. I believe it. I believe it because it is revealed in the Bible. It is not up for renegotiation. We just have to receive it and believe it. I do believe it. I wish it could be otherwise but it is not.”

Statements like this reveal a very great deal. The authority of the Bible is clearly affirmed. The speaker affirms what the Bible reveals and rejects accommodation. So far, so good. The problem is in how the affirmation is introduced and explained. In an apologetic gesture, the doctrine is essentially lamented.

What does this say about God? What does this imply about God’s truth? Can a truth clearly revealed in the Bible be anything less than good for us? The Bible presents the knowledge of hell just as it presents the knowledge of sin and judgment: these are things we had better know. God reveals these things to us for our good and for our redemption. In this light, the knowledge of these things is grace to us. Apologizing for a doctrine is tantamount to impugning the character of God.

Do we believe that hell is a part of the perfection of God’s justice? If not, we have far greater theological problems than those localized to hell.

Several years ago, someone wisely suggested that a good many modern Christians wanted to “air condition hell.”[11] The effort continues.

Remember that the liberals and the modernists operated out of an apologetic motivation. They wanted to save Christianity as a relevant message in the modern world and to remove the odious obstacle of what were seen as repugnant and unnecessary doctrines. They wanted to save Christianity from itself.

Today, some in movements such as the emerging church commend the same agenda, and for the same reason. Are we embarrassed by the biblical doctrine of hell?

If so, this generation of evangelicals will face no shortage of embarrassments. The current intellectual context allows virtually no respect for Christian affirmations of the exclusivity of the gospel, the true nature of human sin, the Bible’s teachings regarding human sexuality, and any number of other doctrines revealed in the Bible. The lesson of theological liberalism is clear—embarrassment is the gateway drug for theological accommodation and denial.

Be sure of this: it will not stop with the air conditioning of hell.”
Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens

Bro. Franklin and Offering time

There’s also a time to laugh. The video below is hilarious!

Most Expensive U.S. Small Towns

Top 5 Most Expensive Small Towns (Yahoo! Real Estate)

1. Sagaponack, N.Y.

2. Jupiter Island, Fla.

3. Hunts Point, Wash.

4. Los Altos Hills, Calif.

5. Fairbanks Ranch, Calif.

“Are you Listening,” with Kirk Franklin and Friends

An Open Letter to David Brooks on Haiti

 

Dear Mr. Brooks,

In your January 15, 2010 opinion piece in The New York Times, “The Underlying Tragedy,” you present what you seem to believe is a bold assessment of the situation in Haiti and what you certainly know is a provocative recommendation for Haiti’s future. You also offer some advice to President Obama. In order to successfully keep his promise to the people of Haiti that they “will not be forsaken” nor “forgotten” the President, you say, has to “acknowledge a few difficult truths.” What follows, however, is so shockingly ignorant of Haitian history and culture and so saturated with the language and ideology of cultural imperialism that no valuable “truths” remain. Please allow us, therefore, to present you with some more accurate truths.

First, Haiti is not a clear-cut case of the failure of international aid to achieve poverty reduction. For almost its entire existence Haiti has been shouldered with a load of immense international debt. The Haitian people had the audacity to break their chains and declare independence in 1804 but were later forced by France to re-purchase their freedom for 150 million Francs, a burden that the country has had to carry throughout the twentieth century.

What’s more, the “aid” Haiti has received from its powerful neighbor to the North has never been the sort that would help the country reduce poverty or achieve meaningful development. In the early-twentieth century the principle “aid” Haiti received from the United States came in the form of a brutal military occupation that lasted from 1915 to 1934. After “Papa Doc” Duvalier ascended to power “aid” meant assistance to a ruthless (but conveniently anti-communist) dictator. The U.S. gave Duvalier $40.4 million in his first four years in power, briefly suspended military and economic assistance to the dictator in 1963, but resumed shortly thereafter, restoring full military and economic aid to Duvalier by 1969. In the early 1970s and 1980s when “Baby Doc” Duvalier was at the helm, the “aid” the United States and other international agencies contributed failed to reduce poverty but did enrich foreign investors in the newly constructed assembly industry. Economic policies that the U.S. forced upon Haiti decimated its agriculture for the benefit of American farming while driving Haiti’s peasants into Port-au-Prince and other cities where they found few jobs and scarce housing. Four years after Baby Doc’s departure the Haitian people decided to help themselves by democratically electing a new leader, but the United States aided Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s domestic opponents in the coup of 1991 and did so again in 2004. It is no wonder then that that such “aid” from the United States has failed to lift Haiti out of poverty.

Equally unconvincing is your argument about “progress-resistant cultural influences,” which brings us to important truth number two: Haitian culture is not “progress-resistant” as anyone familiar with the examples you yourself provide can attest to. If Vodou or “the voodoo religion” as you put it, “spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile,” how do the majority of Haitians manage to survive on scant resources and less than two dollars-a-day? How do so many Haitians manage to travel abroad, find and maintain difficult jobs, and send money back home if not through careful planning and a fierce defense of precious life? How do the nationwide customers of Fonkoze, the Haitian banking operation that teaches literacy and business practices to curbside marketers to whom it makes small loans, achieve such strong records of loan repayment? In fact, it might be Haitian culture itself (and even Vodou) which allows Haitians to persist. After all, the Vodou spirit Ogou (St. Jacques) is honored as a clever planner and master of skills. So was the champion of Haiti’s war of independence, General Toussaint L’Ouverture, a onetime slave who entered history as a military and diplomatic genius.

The third important truth we have to offer (and we hope President Obama is listening as well) is the opposite of your call for “intrusive paternalism” as the solution to Haiti’s woes: Haiti does not need nor does it want the paternalism of the United States. Haiti is literally dying of cultural imperialism.

Whenever America’s leaders and pundits speak of subordinate peoples, the ideology of imperialism shines through. As it does in your words, Mr. Brooks, so it has done for far too many earlier Americans. President William McKinley, for example, facing the difficult question of how he was to govern the newly-conquered Filipinos worried that left “to themselves they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule . . . [So] there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them.”

Closer to home, those who worried about an earlier form of “progress-resistant cultural influences” decided it was better to remove the children of Native American families than to let them absorb the backwardness of their pagan and uncivilized parents and community. A common refrain by these “reformers” was “kill the Indian, save the man.” And now, Mr. Brooks, you propose to save the Haitians from themselves by replacing Haitian cultural values and institutions with “middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.” Imperialism, whether economic or military, is the primary reason for the conditions that so worsened the impact of the earthquake on January 12. Haitians need less imperialism, not more.

During the Vietnam War an American officer famously stated that “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Today Haiti is virtually destroyed. The earthquake having done the hard part, Mr. Brooks, you think “intrusive paternalism” will save it. Lacking a foundational understanding of Haitian history and culture, and bearing the familiar colors of American imperialism you and your ilk will do vastly more harm than good.

Tom F. Driver
Paul Tillich Professor Emeritus of Theology and Culture
Union Theological Seminary

Carl Lindskoog
Doctoral Candidate, Dept. of History
The Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York

To see the list of signatories please click here, http://bit.ly/6H39HA

Teaching Begins Tomorrow

Tomorrow I go back to teaching. I’m only teaching one course this semester, Elementary French I. My intermediate French II was cancelled. I like teaching beginning French. It is both an adventure and excitement, as I and the students learn from and teach each other.  I’m looking forward to meeting my new students at Tarrant County College. I have 25 students enrolled in the course. Hopefully, this occupation will ease my mind and some difficulty I’m wresting with, as I continue thinking about the plights of the Haitian people. So help me God!

God is a Warrior! Personal Reflections on God and Haiti

 

   God is a Warrior! Personal Reflections on God and Haiti

January 16/17, 2010

God: You’ve struck us like a violent warrior. Your wrath against us was terrifically unbelievable. Why did you appear mercilessly agitated? You’ve crushed us hardly to the point that the streets of Port-au-Prince has become a graveyard of resting souls of brave children of African descent whose suffering cannot be told in history books. Another 10 000 dead bodies have just been buried in the nearby city of Jacmel.  Restlessly, our hearts yearn for peace, a word of hope, a plea for mercy, and a world where justice triumphs and love reigns supreme. How can we now narrate the untold story and history of million lives that have vanished in the mighty wind of January 12? If we could have created meaning out of all of these we would have done so hesitantly.  For generations men and women of all nations have toiled and dreamed for life meaning and meaningful life. Why justice does not dwell among us? Why peace has forsaken our souls?   We refuse this land of ours where peace is deferred, the space where joy is wrong.  We are the heartbreak of the nations, the unwanted children, and “a Job” among the peoples of the world.  Will our memories be alive or fainted, be recorded and told in the telephone books of the nations, and in the library of congress? Dark are our days and mornings, painful is the course of our life.  We are exiled in our own land; inland exiles is what people call us today. We, the people, and our land have become a memorial desert, an archeology of public disturbance and shame not to study or analyse but to remember and forget. We have grown more into an itinerant people. Nomadic is our soul.  Our prayers, the fragments of our hearts, haunt us all. Our words have become our own misery. Who cares to hear? Do you?  Should you choose to intervene in time to come, please do not grieve our soul and lead us into despair, as you have done in former days? We want no war, peace is what we desire! Loving-kindness mercy is our everlasting quest. Who wants to be known as a ruin among the kingdoms of the world, a rose with repulsive fragrance? Who will rehabilitate us, cure our wounds? Renew us again. We are torn, shattered, split, disturbed, fragmented, and disrupted by this great event of yours. We and our children will never forget. We will always remember. Forget? Never! It appears that we are a people who were born to “suffer” and have done so successfully. Our struggle, for the past 206 yrs succeeding our independence in 1804, has been our effective struggle for existence and survival. Yet “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life” (John 6:68).  

The words of Wiezel come to mind,” Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.  “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (Night, Elie Wiesel). 

On the day of January 12, 2010, just twelve days preceding the celebration of the beginning of a new decade, a new life, but not a new joy for many, in the city of Port-au-Prince many died so straight and unswerving. You were indeed at war with us. You were in fact in a conversation with the nation, with a people whom you have carefully created and so uncarefully preserved (the lives of many…).  This divine passing which is now become, in addition to our freedom day of independence, our collective history and the most sacred moment of our history, will be an inscription on the country’s doorpost, and a symbiotic marker of divine abandonment for many generations to come and for the nations and peoples of the world to remember. Tuesday,  January 12, 2010 is a time we will never forget!   

 

 

Haiti: the Land of bitter tears!

Haiti: the Land of bitter tears!

By Celucien Joseph (January 14, 2010)

 

Oh the most merciful and gracious God, why Haiti again?

Have we not had enough?

Is this what you call love?

This justice is bitter

We who are left, how shall we look  up?

 

God of our bitter tears,

Where’s grace when it’s most needed?

Where’s hope for our wretched souls?

Where’s love when hate abounds?

Kindness has left us

Joy is no more

Peace has renounced us

 

God of our endless wounds,

Has the land of freedom black become a graveyard, and a jungle-folk?

Mourning their tragic loss…

A hundred drop of tears

In Children face they come…

 

God of our weary years,

Long ago Négrier betrayed us

300 years of bitter herbs…

Of poignant and despairing spirituals, we shall sing no more

Trampled under the strength of the mighty ones…

200 years of failed justice and false hopes

 Of foreign uses and abuses of Ayiti Cherie

What will happen next…?

In peaceful solitude of death we will be remembered.

 

God of our silent nights,

Have not our weary feet stumbled?

Who will write our story?

Who will write you songs of praise…?

Sing joy in the realm of the loss…?

How about morning melody?

Have we all been together erased and excommunicated?

 

God of our heavy sorrows,

If we must die, let it not be like orphans or dogs,

Nor those without hope

May we forever forget…?

May we evermore trod…?

It’s a long road to Guinea, of eternal dark days ahead

No sun will shine for us, in our dark land

We know all the roads of the world

Since we were sold in slavery, long ago…

 

God of our darkened days,

Will the moon guide our sleepy paths?

Will we sing the spirituals of the age-old Nile, in the new land?

Silence, separation, tears, lynching, all we know

We are fragmented and split between…

We also know hope and hope still…

Will another song spring forth from our voice to the sky?

Will we count still…?

 

God of our forgotten trials,

On your unqualified loving-kindness, 

Unconditional mercy and unreserved love

We shall stand and fall…

Upon the Lord above, in hope our soul shall rest

Standing tall at thy summit…

Lest we forget Thee…

Lead us into thy Light…

Toward freedom we shall march…

Oh God of our weary years

 

A Prayer for Haiti

“O God, we have been stunned once again by an event which seems so unnatural and yet is called “natural disaster.”

We have no words to answer the “why” which we feel, no wisdom to explain away the unexplainable areas of life.

Keep us from attributing this event as a heavenly reprimand, or from a certain haughtiness that tempts the distant soul. Give us to be compassionate and gentle, servants to those in need.

Remind us of your gracious love in the midst of sorrow, and your ability to work miracles when hope is faint.

We pray for those who suffer in Haiti even now and for those who await rescue. For relatives, for the children, for mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents, aunts and cousins. For the survivors who question what more they might have done. And for those who must keep on keeping on, in spite of.  For the leaders, for those who bring aid and those who await news. Strengthen and encourage them we pray.

Now unto you, O God, we take the burdens of this hour and place them in your divine care. For all you do and are doing, seen and unseen, we give thee thanks Eternal God of All Creation. Amen.

Source: Something Within.Com, A Prayer for Haiti by  Pamela Lightsey, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at Garrett Seminary in Evanston, Illinois