The Blinne Blog

Why Democrats Don't Get Evangelicals

The following editorial really analyzes well what drives evangelicals and why the Democrats don't understand them. It also gives Democrats good advice for capturing the evangelical votes. Some quotes:

After all, evangelicals are nothing new on the American political landscape. In the 19th century, most of the so-called mainline Protestant churches were evangelical in their commitment to a traditional Christian view of faith and morals. Their evangelicalism had deep roots in English Puritanism or in the Wesleyan revival of the 18th century.

Evangelicals were never merely orthodox. Their passion for classical Christian doctrine was fused with an equal passion for personal renewal and social reform. Like the Puritans before them, evangelicals were addicted to good works. They built schools, hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens and rescue missions. In many wings of evangelical Protestantism, revivalism and social reform were two aspects of the same religious impulse.

...

In the 1940s and 1950s, evangelicalism began to undergo a renewal. Prominent evangelical leaders like Billy Graham rejected the negative fundamentalist mind-set. Evangelicals increasingly realized that they no longer stood in complete opposition to all strains of liberal theology or every idea articulated by secularists.

Evangelicalism became more at home in the world. It sent its sons and daughters to elite schools such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford. It rediscovered common areas of agreement with mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. In short, it became more and more diverse, less and less easy to characterize. Evangelicalism now covers a broad spectrum of religious belief and practice from the fundamentalist fringe to socially (though not theologically) liberal activists.

...

Democrats like to regard themselves as more cosmopolitan than Republicans. But they have been woefully unsophisticated in their analysis of evangelicals, whom they tend to paint in monochromatic hues. Evangelicals seem to them to belong to an alien "retro" America, whose values they do not share.

In point of fact there always have been, and still are, evangelicals in the Democratic Party, including former President Jimmy Carter, who once caused distress in the media by announcing he was "born again." At least 22 percent of self-identified evangelicals voted for John Kerry, a number buoyed by black evangelicals, who vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates.

Unfortunately for Kerry, evangelical support for Democrats has eroded since 2000, even among blacks and Hispanics, but especially among evangelicals for whom abortion and gay marriage trump all other considerations.

However, this electoral setback is no reason for Democrats to walk away from a tough debate over values. People who love the Bible know that it has hard things to say about anyone who fails to take care of the poor and powerless. Democrats believe that at their best they are a party that does precisely that - protects people who cannot protect themselves. It is certainly a starting point for a values conversation with evangelicals.

Read the whole thing. Hat Tip: Christianity Today Blog

Cassini Mosaic of Titan

Click on image for larger view. CREDIT:Cassini-Huygens-Multimedia-Images.

A mosaic of nine processed images recently acquired during Cassini's first very close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on Oct. 26, 2004, constitutes the most detailed full-disc view of the mysterious moon.

Moon Gas May Solve Earth's Energy Crisis

At the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon the uses of Helium-3 on the Moon were discussed.

A potential gas source found on the moon's surface could hold the key to meeting future energy demands as the earth's fossil fuels dry up in the coming decades, scientists say.

Mineral samples from the moon contain abundant quantities of helium 3, a variant of the gas used in lasers and refrigerators.

"When compared to the earth the moon has a tremendous amount of helium 3," Lawrence Taylor, a director of the US Planetary Geosciences Institute, said.

"When helium 3 combines with deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) the fusion reaction proceeds at a very high temperature and it can produce awesome amounts of energy.

"Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one full year."

Helium 3 is deposited on the lunar surface by solar winds and would have to be extracted from moon soil and rocks.

To extract helium 3 gas the rocks have to be heated above 800 degrees Celsius.

Dr Taylor says 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium.

Only 10 kilograms of helium are available on earth.

Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam has told the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon that the barren planet held about 1 million tonnes of helium 3.

"The moon contains 10 times more energy in the form of helium 3 than all the fossil fuels on the earth," Mr Kalam said.

Such a possibility were discussed in President Bush's space exploration initiative.

Lunar ISRU [in situ resource utilization] would aim first for self-sufficiency; then it would export to Earth electricity and Helium-3 for fusion reactors.

Nevertheless, the President's plan still has critics within the science community.

A new report released by an American Physical Society (APS) Special Committee on NASA. Funding for Astrophysics has questioned the space agency's Moon, Mars and Beyond initiative. The APS assessment warns that the cost of overcoming technological challenges to make real the plan could far exceed budgetary projections and that numerous approved science programs could be jeopardized.

Returning Americans to the Moon and landing on Mars would have a powerful symbolic significance, the APS report observes, but it would constitute only a small step in the advancement of knowledge, since much will already be known from exploration with the robotic precursor probes that are necessary to guarantee the safety of any human mission.

Solving our over-reliance on fossil fuels a small step? Hardly. As I commented earlier we need to get beyond the politics, return to the Moon, and move on to Mars.

Taking the Test

A Victorian-era test was recently found. The questions covered Latin, British history, English grammar and arithmetic. This was an entrance exam for 11-year-olds! The test and its difficulty has started a furor in the British educational establishment.

Experts said A-level and GCSE students would struggle to pass the papers, which were published by The Spectator after being discovered by reader Humphrey Stanbury, whose father sat them and passed.

Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, said politicians needed to accept the "sad truth" of falling standards. "We're spending more and more to keep our children at school longer and longer, and yet they know less than their peers did 20, 50, 100 years ago," he said.

But Paul Woodruff, the director of studies at St Paul's School in London, said the papers "read like Sellars and Yeatman in 1066 and All That". The questions "look mind-numbingly dull and not very difficult to mug up on", he said. "It is not evidence of dumbing down, just that the goalposts have moved. What would 1898 candidates have made of: 'Use a spreadsheet to answer the arithmetic questions. Use the internet to find answers to the geography and history questions.'"

John Dunford, the general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said it would be a "damning indictment" ofthe education system if there had been no change in 100 years. "It is no comment on standards to say things are simply different."

The current headmaster of King Edward's School, Roger Dancey, said: "Looking at this paper is great fun but not proof we've dumbed down ... education moves on."

A spokeswoman for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said it was difficult to compare an entrance exam for one of Victorian Britain's top schools with today's tests.

You take the test. How would you do?

Scientists get their own Google

Scientists get their own Google.

Imagine searching the Internet and being able to restrict your results to academic texts. Today Google launched a free search engine that aims to do just that. Google Scholar searches only journal articles, theses, books, preprints, and technical reports across any area of research. A test version of the search engine is available at http://scholar.google.com, so you can try it out. In a search for the phrase "human genome", for example, a normal Google web search throws back 450,000 or so hits, with genome centres and databases and other websites ranked top. In contrast, Google Scholar returns just 113,000 hits, and all the top-ranked items are not websites but seminal papers on the subject. In fact, the number one hit is the landmark article "Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome" published in Nature in 2001.

I did my own work research on this today and found a relevant paper (the free version) in a few minutes! Here's how it works:

Much of the peer-reviewed material has been made available to Google by publishers, including Nature Publishing Group, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, through a pilot cross-publisher search engine called CrossRef Search.

Publishers have arranged for Google robots to scan the full texts of their articles. Users clicking on a hit returned by Google Scholar are directed to the article on the publisher's site, where subscribers can access full text and non-subscribers get an abstract or information on how to buy an article.

Google Scholar has a subversive feature, however. Each hit also links to all the free versions of the article it has found saved on other sites, for example on personal home pages, elsewhere on the Internet.

Subversion feature. Hmm. In the words of the immortal Instapundit, heh.

Love the Sinner, but Hate the Sin?

Love the sinner but hate the sin is a tired cliché within evangelical circles. Marsha Stevens has an alternative way of expressing this:

I like Mark Lowry's take on the old saying. He says, "What if we said 'Love the sinner, hate MY OWN sin?' Wouldn't that be a good thought?" We all spend such an inordinate amount of time mote-plucking. Figuring out EXACTLY which sin to hate, who's doing it and precisely how we "should" react to it. Wouldn't it be great if we spent that much time and energy looking into our own hearts and bringing our own failures and wounds to the throne for healing?

Hat Tip: Ex-Gay Watch.

Let's explore what the Bible has to say concerning judging other people's sin and see how true the cliché really is.

First, we need to deal with a limitation of human understanding. Man's judgment often is superficial:

1 Samuel 16
⁷ But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Second, Scripture puts up many barriers against people taking it upon themselves to judge others.  One barrier is found in Matthew 18:

Matthew 18

A Brother Who Sins Against You

¹⁵"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. ¹⁶But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'¹⁷If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Note this deals with someone who sins against us personally but it also shows a gradual and deliberate approach. We don't treat someone as as a pagan or tax collector immediately.

Scripture also limits who can judge.  Only the "spiritual" and this must be done gently and circumspectly:

Galatians 6

Doing Good to All

¹Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. ²Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. ³If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

Scripture limits who can be judged. We can only judge those inside the church.

1 Corinthians 5

¹²What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? ¹³God will judge those outside.

Scripture limits how people are to be judged. We are to be merciful.

Jude 1

²²Be merciful to those who doubt; ²³snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear--hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

Last and most importantly, we need to follow Christ's purpose for which he came. Jesus gave his purpose here in John 3:

John 3

¹⁶"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

If the purpose of God the Father was that the world would be saved, how can our purpose be in condemning the world by judging people? Hating the sin without hating the sinner also is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Given the passages above, Marsha Stevens and Mark Lowry have a good rewrite of the cliché.  Mine is a little different:

Love the sinner. PERIOD.

My Prairie Home's in Heaven

The evangelical outpost asks the following concerning the recent behavior of Garrison Keillor:

As an example of his dementia, look at his remarks for the opening of the new University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital:

Not one to shy away from speaking his mind, Keillor proposed a solution to what he deemed a fundamental problem with U.S. elections. “I’m trying to organize support for a constitutional amendment to deny voting rights to born-again Christians,” Keillor smirked. “I feel if your citizenship is in Heaven—like a born again Christian’s is—you should give up your citizenship. Sorry, but this is my new cause. If born again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?”

He’s only kidding (I think) but it surprises me to find that a man who has spent his life around Lutherans can be so Biblically illiterate. Perhaps he didn’t get the memo, but one of the main reasons the phrase “born-again Christian” faded out of use is because it is redundant. A person can’t be, as Jesus himself pointed out, a “citizen of Heaven” unless he is “born again.” While I had always assumed that Keillor was a Christian I take it from his comment that he leaves such superstition to the Red Staters. That’s unfortunate. For as the Good Book says, “What does it profit a man to gain an NPR audience and lose his soul?”

Where does this hostility to born again Christians and Republicans come from? The answer to the question can be found from Garrison's brother, Thomas. Thomas is an Evangelical Christian and a historian with Iowa State University. He said the following in a recent St. Paul Pioneer Press op-ed piece:

Sure enough, as the campaign intensified, I got an e-mail passing along my brother Garrison's vituperative attack on the Republicans posted on the Web magazine, "In These Times" (archived now), as excerpted from "Homegrown Democrat."

In the Web's hyperventilating hyperbole, this excerpt is not typical of the book, which contains interesting reminiscences and a passionate plea for the old, democratic, equal-opportunity society.

Still, the book describes Republicans as "fundamentalist bullies … misanthropic frat boys … hacks, fakers, aggressive dorks … little honkers."

GOP leaders are "Newt's evil spawn," Bush "their Etch-A-Sketch president … whose philosophy is a mumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk."

We don't talk like this up in Pine County. Nor are we nonfiction writers allowed to get away with such stuff without an editor asking for our sources.

...

Garrison now apparently rejects 1960s radicalism and applauds 1950s common sense, but does not admit that radicalism had consequences — like provoking conservatives into hardball tactics. They saw it as a breach of the social contract for judges to find words and concepts in the Constitution that no one imagined were there before.

The '60s radicalism he and other liberals embraced was a total repudiation of the views of the 19th-century Plymouth Brethren whom he nostalgically describes. Yet "Vote Kerry" buttons are, in effect, pinned to their lapels with no sense of incongruity.

The low-cost '60s state university is praised, and yet plenty of evidence is given that shows it had negative, corrupting influences on students as well as good ones. Usually in politics, the wisest course is to admit, "We were wrong," and move on.

In this book, Democratic misdeeds have no consequences and Republican ones no causes. Here is a video clip of a boxing match; the Democratic boxer's edited out and replaced with Grandma Dora Keillor knitting socks for the poor, while the Republican boxer menacingly punches towards her.

In Minnesotans' family political discussions this fall, we will all get along better if we acknowledge long-term causes of disagreements — if we don't act like hockey referees who only see the retaliation.

The book makes a commendable moral case for caring for the poor and helpless, but moral standards must rest on something more solid than the DFL platform. Here the Keillor aunts provide it. Yet, can their caring be neatly separated from their menfolk's Biblical literalism? Isn't caring literally commanded? If literalism goes, won't that command go, too?

Both parties confront us with false dichotomies: Should kids get school lunches or the CIA get Osama bin Laden? A Christianity preaching charity or sexual morality? We might choose both. In 2002, we had several choices — I tried to help as an independent evangelical running for the state Senate. We're back to bipolar hostility.

I've invited Garrison up to Chris Thorvig's supermarket in Sandstone, where the coffee's free, the owner generous to community groups, Republicans friendly, Democrats likewise, and the opportunity society partly survives. You can sit in the booth for hours, and no opposition campaign strategist overhears us when we admit, "We were wrong."

Evangelical Values: Beyond Abortion and Gay Rights

I received the following e-mail based on a discussion on  the Evangelical Outpost concerning the values vote. Namely, whether values were limited to abortion and the gay marriage debate. Since this is such an excellent question, I am posting my reply publically:

I'm sure that gay marriage and abortion are not the only moral issues for evangelical Christians. Can one of you tell me if evangelicals have a unified stance on the death penalty, torture, and pre-emptive war? These three items are basically condoned by President Bush from his record in Texas, his exemption of America from the Geneva Conventions, and his war against Iraq (which had neither WMD nor anything to do with 9/11). What do evangelicals generally have to say about these?  Are they considered less important than abortion and gay marriage?  Do you have any quotes from the New Testament on these issues?

This is an excellent question. All the issues you stated above are of interest and importance to evangelicals. However, there is disagreement on those issues (except for maybe torture which would be condemned). So, don't interpret the lack of a unified message as meaning they are not important, but rather we disagree amongst ourselves.

Before I start I will give the two basic philosophical perspectives. The politically conservative view is called the multiple spheres doctrine. That is, institutions were established by God to achieve different goals. The goal of church is to propogate the Gospel. The goal of the state is provide peace for the society in order for the church to achieve its goal. The church does not have the power of the sword, rather the state does. Thus, the state is allowed to wage war and to administer the death penalty. The church does not have the death penalty nor can it wage war, because its "death penalty" is the power of excommunication, where it excercises the keys of the kingdom. Nevertheless, there is a separation of the institutions and theocracy is really not in view here.

The other perspective I label the consistent pro-life stance. Here life is affirmed in all of its facets. So, these evangelicals also oppose abortion, but they also deny the death penalty and some are either total or partial pacifists. This perspective derives its authority from the "thou shalt not kill" commandment in the Ten Commandments.

Now I am going to look at the two cases in particular.

1. Death penalty. Since the death penalty was condoned in the OT, then it is allowable now. Romans 13 establishes that the government has the right of the sword possibly implying that the death penalty is still operative. [N.B. Romans 13 also tells believers that they should pay their taxes which counters some in the Religious Right] Generally speaking, the death penalty advocates limit the OT death penalty regulations to murder since that was established prior to Sinai. The reasoning is that the Sinai regulations expired when Jesus came. But, since the death penalty for murder was established prior to this then it is a creation regulation and thus did not expire.
   
   The counter argument stems from two passages in the Gospels. John 8:1-11 records where Jesus contermands the death penalty for adultery and frees the adulterous woman. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus claims to fulfill the law rather than abolish it.  In this case, the death penalties that are rightly applied to all who do wrong (i.e., all of us) fall on Jesus on the cross. To reapply the death penalty in a civil context would be to resacrifice Jesus.

2. War. This is very complicated question. Evangelicals follow for the most part Augustine's theory of just war. This also derives itself from Romans 13. The question with respect to Iraq is whether this war classifies as such. One possible justification is the oppostition to tyranny. Individual Christians are called by and large to simply endure tyranny. But, as Calvin says below there are sometimes intermedieries whose calling is to deliver others from tyranny:

"Herein is the goodness, power, and providence of God wondrously displayed. At one time he raises up manifest avengers from among his own servants, and gives them his command to punish accursed tyranny, and deliver his people from calamity when they are unjustly oppressed; at another time he employs, for this purpose, the fury of men who have other thoughts and other aims. Thus he rescued his people Israel from the tyranny of Pharaoh by Moses; from the violence of Chusa, king of Syria, by Othniel; and from other bondage by other kings or judges. Thus he tamed the pride of Tyre by the Egyptians; the insolence of the Egyptians by the Assyrians; the ferocity of the Assyrians by the Chaldeans; the confidence of Babylon by the Medes and Persians, - Cyrus having previously subdued the Medes, while the ingratitude of the kings of Judah and Israel, and their impious contumacy after all his kindness, he subdued and punished, - at one time by the Assyrians, at another by the Babylonians. All these things, however, were not done in the same way. The former class of deliverers being brought forward by the lawful call of God to perform such deeds, when they took up arms against kings, did not at all violate that majesty with which kings are invested by divine appointment, but armed from heaven, they, by a greater power, curbed a less, just as kings may lawfully punish their own satraps. The latter class, though they were directed by the hand of God, as seemed to him good, and did his work without knowing it, had nought but evil in their thoughts."

On the other hand, Hebrews 13:12-13 says "And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore." Thus, Christian people and by extension Christian nations need to endure reproach for Christ's sake. Christian nations are  not to hastily wage war nor are individual Christians to mount a rebellion against their own government.

Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Conference Examines Blogs' Impact on News.

Mindy McAdams, a University of Florida journalism professor, applauded bloggers' efforts but urged them to adhere to ethical standards held by mainstream journalists.

"Our credibility is suffering with so many people rushing to publish things without checking them out," McAdams said after Cox's speech. "Blogging is really great. I like that more and more people have a voice. That's good ... But it doesn't give people who call themselves journalists an excuse to not check out the information."

Oh, puu-leeze.  I hope we adhere to higher ethical standards than journalists. I wouldn't call bloggers journalists, anyway. They are ombudsmen because journalists do not have the standards that they claim. Therefore, we need to fact check them every step of the way. When blogs do act like journalists the rest of the blogosphere serves as their ombudsman.

U.S. Bishops to Pick New Chief in Sex Abuse Aftermath

In my previous post, I discussed Rome's rebuke of the Anglican communion over gay bishops. Now we shall see if the they are willing to apply the same rules to themselves as they do to Canterbury.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The priest sex abuse scandal that shook the U.S. Roman Catholic church to its foundations two years ago could turn out to be a key issue as America's bishops gather to choose new leaders this week.

Victims of clerical sexual abuse are campaigning against the front-runner for next president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Washington, saying he is unwilling to address the issue.