Category Archives: Culture

Defining the Connection Between Religion and Politics


In a previous post, I made observations about the connected nature of religion and politics. In this post, I want to elaborate on the distinction between the three terms I used to describe the Religious Nature of Politics.

Religion: All persons are inherently religious – even if they do not adhere to any particular religious system or dogma. Everyone has faith convictions. By this I mean every person holds to presuppositions about the world beyond the senses they believe to be true. We could not logically function in society without these assumptions. You may believe a divine creator made all things and all things hold together by His will and purpose. You may think the universe is governed by certain scientific principles that have coalesced over time into the world in which you live. Neither assertion can be proved or disproved with absolute certainty. They are faith convictions. Faith convictions are either theological (divinely transcendent) or Ideological (humanly immanent) in nature.

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The Religious Nature of Politics


Another election year is upon us, and campaign ads pervade the airwaves like toxic fumes. I dread the stage of the political cycle when propaganda reaches peak levels of slander. I can’t even enjoy a football game in peace without being inundated with ads. No one looks forward to post-election tranquility more than I do. I can only hope peace prevails when the dust settles.

I want to point out a significant truth that I have come to over the years as a once politically disengaged Christian. My disdain for politics is longstanding and fervent. It is ugly, riddled with lies, half-truths, deception, power, and pride. I find it overwhelming to sift through all the double talk. I refused to sully myself in its muck and mire. But that position has turned out to be wrongheaded and harmful. When Christians collectively abdicate their civil duty to help determine the direction of community, state, and national discourse they, by default, are allowing other parties, influenced by humanistic philosophies and ideologies, to choose the way forward.

To put things bluntly, a nation built on Christian foundations and populated mostly by professing Christians cannot allow a pagan worldview to dominate our politics. A Christian worldview should shape our ethics, laws, and all civil affairs.

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The Truth About Love


Imagine if you will, a couple, a man and a woman, winding their way up a mountain trail together, hand-in-hand, doting on one another. The man spies an encroaching bear and jumps out in front of his wife, weapon in hand, and fights the bear off with all his might. He suffers wounds in the confrontation but successfully protects his wife from injury.

Later on down the road  the couple sets up camp for the night. The husband, worn down from the fight and hurting from the woulds he sustained falls into a fast, fitful sleep. The wife is dozing off when familiar growls in the distance startle her. She turns to wake her husband but sees him slumbering peacefully. She doesn’t want to interrupt his rest, raise his fear and anxiety level and force him to move his aching body in response to the lurking menace. After all, she reasons, the bear was probably only trying to play around with them in the first place, before her husband overreacted and caused it to become aggressive. The wife perceives no real threat and leaves her husband be and falls asleep at his side.

The description of what follows is too graphic for those with delicate sensitivities. Needless to say, the journey of the couple ends only moments later in a blur of blood and bone. Continue reading →

Declaring Heresy


The vitriolic response to the Nashville Statement has stirred up mud from the bottom of the proverbial pond, threatening to cloud the clear waters of truth with murky ideological propositions.

Once upon a time the issues of marriage, sexuality and gender were self-evident in both nature and scripture, but in these confused times no revelation – natural or divine – can be taken for granted.

Thus the Nashville Statement came to be: A declaration of truth about the nature of marriage, the limits of human sexual expression and the common sense understanding of a male/female gender binary. The fact any of this is necessary bears sad witness to the reality that so many people who profess to be Christian can love the darkness so much more than they love the light. Instead of walking into the light of the gospel they hide themselves behind high walls of false, man-made doctrines and arm themselves with self-righteous counter-declarations that promote all that is depraved; then they have the tenacity to bless it with a holy kiss.

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Why the Nashville Statement is Necessary


The Council of Biblical Manhood & Womanhood recently released a declaration of belief regarding sex & gender ethics on behalf of the entire realm of Evangelical Christianity. It is called the Nashville Statement. The reason for the ambiguous title is that according to Christian tradition when a council or synod occurs, the meeting place is often used to identify the creed or statement of faith thereby produced. For example, the Nicene Creed was formulated in Nicaea, Turkey. The Canons of Dort were forged in the city of Dordrecht, Netherlands (often called Dort in English). More recently, the Manhattan Declaration was articulated in New York.

These kind of declarations, a clarion call to truth, are not common in this postmodern era. However, they have a rich history throughout the church age. During the explosion of biblical knowledge during the Protestant Reformation many confessions and creeds were put to pen and parchment. Other times, declarations of faith responded to serious error taking place within the church, to stem the rising tide of heresy within the visible body. The aforementioned Nicene Creed came about in response to the Arian doctrine denying the Trinitarian nature of God. The Council of Nicaea convened and refuted the error with great success. The Nicene Creed is the standard by which most churches understand the doctrine of the Trinity today. Continue reading →