The Blinne Blog

Both/And Evangelism

Evangelicals are trying to broaden their influence beyond the normal politically conservative venues. The New York Times reported the following:

The National Association of Evangelicals, with 30 million members in 45,000 churches, opened a debate on Thursday on a document intended to expand the political platform of evangelicals beyond the fight against abortion and same-sex marriage.

The authors of the paper, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," said they reached a consensus between liberals and conservatives by adopting public policy goals, but not prescribing strategies to achieve them. At a luncheon held by the association on Thursday on Capitol Hill, however, some evangelical leaders voiced concern that the new platform could dilute the focus of the evangelical movement by taking on too many issues.

The document urges evangelicals to address issues like racial injustice, religious freedom, poverty in the United States and abroad, human rights, environmentalism and advancing peace through nonviolent conflict resolution.

So, what are evangelicals trying to accomplish? A both/and approach to evangelism and the Gospel. The extremes on both the left and the right have not always served evangelicals well. The following op-ed by David Waters sums up this thinking:

Will the pendulum ever stop in the middle? Some evangelicals are beginning to question the faithfulness of one-sided evangelism, left or right.

"The Moral Majority lacked a servant heart of Christ born out of humility and compassion for a fallen humanity," Robert Wenz, vice president of national ministries for the NAE, said at the conference.

"Instead, it was all about making America a nice place for Christians to live. This is not the kind of social involvement that we need or that evangelicals espouse."

Other evangelical leaders have been critical of the social gospel's lack of emphasis on personal sin and salvation.

"We need a full-blown biblical theology that affirms both personal and social sin, both personal conversion and structural change, both evangelism and social action, both personal and social salvation, both Jesus as moral example and Jesus as vicarious substitute, both orthodox theology and ethical obedience," Ron Sider, a professor of theology at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote in "Good News and Good Works."

The evangelical movement first began to win a huge following in the 18th Century, led by men such as John Wesley and George Whitfield. In these politically and theologically divisive times it's worth remembering why.

It was their conservative piety and their liberal humanity.

A Study in Contrasts

What are evangelicals to do with recent electoral victories? Two approaches are shown by Jim Dobson and Chuck Colson. The New York Times is reporting Evangelical Leader Threatens to Use His Political Muscle Against Some Democrats:

COLORADO SPRINGS - James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

In a letter his aides say is being sent to more than one million of his supporters, Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist and founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist" jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees.

The same article refers to an open letter to the Christian Church by Chuck Colson. Here Chuck Colson warns evangelicals not to become yet another special interest group.

So, what are we lining up at Election Day to get in return for our votes?  Nothing.  All we want is the President to be the man that he is and do the kinds of things he did in the first term.

I resent the media implication that Christians are waiting for their payback.  We’re interested in the common good for all people (the theological term for that is common grace).  We vote with conviction about a man’s integrity, his faith, his beliefs, and his accomplishments in restoring the moral order in American life.

So, Mr. President, give us more of the same.

This is an open letter to the church and to church leaders.  Do not let the media typecast us.  We are not special interest pleaders.  The media would love to catch us in the trap, talking about what the president is going to do for us.  The media loves to use stuff like that to paint us as “theocrats.”  Note what the New York Times did Thursday.   Garry Wills wrote a harsh piece, charging that we were trying to “roll back the Enlightenment” which is, of course, pure nonsense.  Poor Thomas Friedman wrote that he woke up the morning after the election to discover that many of us want a different America than he does (yes, we do—we want a moral America, which boggles the minds of some who live on Manhattan Island.)  But the point is we mustn’t give them an excuse to bash us.

What we care about is what’s good for the nation.  Record numbers of Americans cast their votes for Bush because he proved to so many of us that he shares these values, that he cares about the moral state of American life, and that he puts his faith in practice.  He has shown us his faith by his works.  Let’s us show our faith, not by flexing political muscles but by our good works.

Chuck Colson is willing to make such a sentiment as part of his New Year's resolutions.

We also, however, face a sobering question. Evangelicals have come back into the limelight. Talking heads are commenting on the increasing power of “values voters” and conservative Christians. And to listen to some Christians, one gets the idea that this is the time for our political payback.

So the question is this: Can we handle success and increased influence with grace and prudence?

The sad fact is that all Christians are susceptible to worldly wiles. In fact, sad to say, the Church has managed to shoot itself in the foot almost every time it has achieved power in society.

So what we need most right now is a bracing dose of humility. We’re not a labor union, lining up for our share of the spoils after the election. We are the Church. Our job is to bring biblical truth to bear in society; to win people to Christ; and to promote righteousness and justice. We serve the King of kings, no mere temporal king.

The Apostle Peter tells us always to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us, but with gentleness and reverence. And we are to keep a clear conscience so that when people slander us, they may become “ashamed of their slander.” Though we are commanded to engage in the political process, we are to do so lovingly, as citizens concerned for the common good. Trying to do that is my first resolution.

Not a bad way to start 2005.

Iraqi Christians Keep Low Profile

Link: Iraqi Christians Keep Low Profile.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Ameera Dawoud is a Christian, but as soon as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began, she traded her pants, fitted skirts and uncovered hair for oversize clothes and a veil.

"They say you have to cover your hair or we will kill you," Dawoud said by telephone from the northern city of Mosul. "If you don't wear a veil, people look at you as if you were naked."

Some Christians in Mosul feel say they are being subjected to threats that have escalated during Ramadan (search) and that may be designed to drive them out of the country, create religious tensions, or at least make life difficult.

Truly dangerous times in Iraq. Let's hope that this is short-lived and they can really get to a secular democracy with religious freedom quickly.

It's The Values Stupid

I'm back from a self-imposed hiatus similar to during the start of the Iraq war. I get tired when all there is politics, politics, politics. Ironically what follows is also political but has a philosophical/theological bent. That's a lot more interesting to me.

Now that the devastating defeat of the Democrats is coming in, everyone is doing a post mortem. So far, I've seen them be almost exclusively issue-oriented. On the other hand, I believe Senator Christopher Dodd nails it.

"On those sets of questions, more than anything else, is where we ended up losing these races," Dodd said in a conference call. He also announced he would not enter a fight to be-come minority leader of the U.S. Senate.

"We better understand that you got to connect with people, not just on issues, but on values as well," said Connecticut’s senior senator, who easily won a fifth term Tuesday.

Dodd, 60, said he was "fearful that we are conceding too much of that ground and assuming that people will vote with us because they agree with us on our plan, but don’t see us as connecting with them on cultural and social and value issues."

You cannot treat values as an issue. Values are above the issues just as metaphysics is above physics in Aristotle. Values are the ousios (essence or substance) of Red State political thinking. Issues are the accidental outworking of the substance of values. You can disagree even violently on the issues but if you have common value systems or worldviews then you get support from Red State America.

So, you can have Cheney and Bush disagree on how to deal with gay marriage and this causes no stir because Red State America is convinced they both value marriage. Also, you get a divide between Bush and Kerry even though their policies concerning gay marriage are almost indistinguishable. This is because Kerry failed to show that he valued marriage. I'll explain why below.

For Blue State America, what is necessary is for the candidate to have the right catalog of issues. Values are doing. Since President Clinton supported the right programs, he was considered virtuous. On the other hand, for Red State America values are defined by who you are. Good works are the outworking of being a good person. To use the Biblical metaphor, a good tree produces good fruit. President Clinton cheating on his wife made him not virtuous independent of the policies he supported. There is no compartmentalization in Red State moral thinking.

So, how do Democrats address this way of thinking?

1. Make sure your value systems are coherent. For example, if you say life begins at conception then the policies you propose need to be consistent with it. It is better to say you believe life begins at birth and be pro choice. This latter view is respected far more by Red State America.
2. Don't impute motives. Assume that Red State America supports a policy because they believe it is right. They support the ban on gay marriages because of supporting families, not out of hate of gays. Because the Democrats didn't understand this, they failed to understand why Kerry's comments concerning Mary Cheney were so offensive. Red State America values families. Kerry attacked a family. It had nothing at all to do with any issue including the gay marriage amendment. It was not political. It was personal. The same thing goes for the Swift Boat Veterans. Kerry offended their honor and never rectified it. That's why this had legs.
3. Don't belittle faith, but leverage it. Democrats treat taxes as an issue. They should treat it as a value. When the Alabama Governor argued that raising taxes was a Christian duty, Alabamans raised taxes. The loyalty of Red State America is to their Biblical values and not necessarily to any particular issue.
4. Avoid worldly sophistication. The worldly part is important. When nuance is used as an excuse for incoherent and relativistic thinking it will be uniformly rejected. On the other hand, if you properly work through a complicated ethical dilemma, Red State America will cut you some slack. For example, when dealing with stem-cell research Bush walked through how he tried to value current life when it conflicted with saving lives in the future. Red State America gave him a pass. The reason was that he confirmed his dedication to the principle of valuing life. Even when he reached different conclusions from those who thought he should have used the exiting lines, he still got a pass. The moral thinking must be without guile and grounded in absolute principles, however. If it reflects relativism or post-modernism it will be dismissed as self-serving "spin".

Democrats are failing miserably on the list above. In fact, they are doing something far worse than just missing it. Because they fail to understand Red State America, they move on to insult it. They call it stupid and simple. They insult the basis for the moral reasoning, the Bible. There is nothing that would necessarily connect Red State America with conservative politics. The reason why conservative politics has resonated is because only conservative politics affirms moral absolutes but wisely leaves the set of those absolutes undefined. Only the conservatives argue tu quoque with Red State America. They start with their values and then argue the policies. Democrats start with the policies and then belittle and insult Red State America for disagreeing with them. No business would ever think of doing this because it is bad business. It is also bad politics.

And the Winner Is...

The American voter.

The loser:

OBL Tape and Kerry's Rhetoric

Both candidates for President are honest about their desire to defeat terrorism in general and Osama bin Laden in particular. What I want to explore is whether out-of-control campaign rhetoric unintentionally gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

John Kerry has used the Book of James during the campaign, ""Words without deeds are meaningless -- especially when people are dying every day." I want to look at a different passage in James. James 3:2-6

2We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. 3When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

Pastor Rick Warren refers to people described in this passage as "verbal arsonists".

After the Oklahoma City bombing President Bill Clinton accused talk radio of being "purveyors of hate and division". He told the Detroit Free Press, "I cannot defend some of the things some of these more extreme talk-show hosts have said, even more extreme than that in these little short-wave programs that plainly are encouraging violence." President Clinton has a point. Words do have consequences and "verbal arsonists" can indeed provoke violence.

Now, let's look at some quotes from the Osama bin Laden video:

Then, what happened was that he was impressed by the monarchies and the military regimes, and he was jealous of them staying in power for tens of years, embezzling the public money without any accountability. And he moved the tyranny and suppression of freedom to his own country, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the disguise of fighting terrorism. And Bush, the father, found it good to install his children as governors and leaders.

Now John Kerry:

Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi Royal Family control our energy costs makes you unfit. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit. That's the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And that only scratches the surface. I believe it's time to move America in a new direction; I believe it's time to set a new course for America. And together, you, John Edwards and I will do that on November 2nd.

Bin Laden:

He was more interested in listening to the child's story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers. So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events.

According to the Washington Post:

At a morning appearance before minority journalists in Washington, Kerry faulted Bush for spending seven minutes reading to Florida schoolchildren after learning the World Trade Center had been attacked. "Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear that America is under attack, I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the United States has something that he needs to attend to," Kerry said.

In fact Kerry's communication director has an eery simularity with bin Laden:

"John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second-graders while America is under attack," said Kerry campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter, a reference to the book Mr. Bush continued reading with children for several minutes after his chief of staff informed him of the second World Trade Center plane attack.

Kerry needs to have much greater self control in his speech. As the Book of James would say, John Kerry's tongue is a "world of evil". He simply does not have the character to be President.

Eliminating Possible Fonts on IBM Composer for Disputed Documents

The current theory on the left was the disputed memos could have been done on an IBM Composer. There are two (that I know of) fonts that could possibly fill the bill. One is called Press Roman and the other is called Aldine Roman. The first possibility was dismissed quickly by expert Dr. Bouffard, who noticed that the 4's have feet on them. See here for a picture. Because there were no feet in the fours, Aldine Roman was offerred as a possible alternative. This font can also be eliminated. The reason is that the capital J's in the font descend below the baseline. They don't do it in the disputed document. See below:

Download aldine.JPG

Kerning You Decide

There has been much discussion on kerning and the disputed Guard memos. Hugh Hewitt's expert from Rice University noted that the fo combination would be kerned in word processors but not on a typewriter. So, I took him up on it, here's two samples one from one of the disputed documents and the other from the IBM Composer User Manual that was typeset by an IBM Composer. We report, you decide.

Download kern2.jpg

Update: An astute commenter noted that there appeared to kerning in an IBM document. However, this was done by a typesetting program. But, in the same document there contained a nice, clean sample of a "for" produced by IBM Composer. I have updated my pictures with this clean sample, along with the document in question and Word all blown up large. It is now patently clear that this is a fake.

Update: Dr. John Newcomer, one of the founders of DTP, called what is being done above pseudo-kerning or ABC width mechanism. Here's what he has to say:

Some have argued that the documents are forgeries because the characters are “kerned”. Kerning is an operation which tucks characters together to compact space. However, Microsoft Word by default does not kern text. The text of the memo is not kerned. Kerning is a pairwise operation between characters, and each character pair that can be kerned has a specified kerning value. Microsoft fonts and many others come with accompanying kerning data. But kerning is complex, and computationally expensive, and therefore would have slowed down redisplay in a WYSIWYG editor. However, Times New Roman uses a characteristic of Microsoft TrueType fonts called the ABC dimensions, where the C dimension is the offset from the right edge of the bounding box of the character to the next character. If this offset is negative, the character with the negative C offset will overlap the character which follows (in some technologies, the distance from the start of one character to the start of another is called the “escapement”, so a negative C offset gives an escapement which is less than the character width). This gives the illusion of kerning, or what I sometimes call “pseudo-kerning”. I discuss the ABC width mechanism in some detail in a book I wrote in 1997 (“Win32 Programming”, with Brent Rector, Addison-Wesley, 1997, p. 1104). I have attached sample output from a program I used to create illustrations for that book, one of which shows the characters “fr” and one of which shows the C offset of the “f” character is “–2”. ALL technologies I am aware of in 1972 that would have been available for office work (not, say, the sort of production book typesetters that major publishers might have had) could only advance an integral number of units, and could not “tuck in” the characters like Microsoft’s Times New Roman font under Microsoft Word does, by using a negative partial-character offset. Examine carefully the “fr” in the word “from” in the 18-August-1973 memo. The “r” is tucked under the “f” in the same way a Microsoft font does it. In 1972, technology available in the office, including proportional typewriters, could not do this. So it is clear that the only way this document could have been done is using a modern computer font, and the placement is pixelwise identical to Microsoft’s Times New Roman. The work we did at CMU could not support kerning or pseudo-kerning of text. We knew about kerning, but our software could not support it. I have not examined a New York Times of 1972, but I would be extremely surprised if the font used at that time exhibited any form of kerning (I should point out that Linotype machines—the hot-lead machines—had paired characters such as “fi”, which were actually a single slug. Character sequences like these are called a “ligature” and were a special case of kerning. Common ligatures included fi, fl, ffi, ffl, among others. This was an example of kerning built into the font definition, and Linotype machines had separate keys that dropped these slugs into place. Lead type set by hand also had similar ligatures. The illustration is scanned from The Unicode Standard Version 3.0, Addison-Wesley, 2000, p.804).

Hot lead type could not kern, because of the need to have a Linotype machine drop slugs into a frame, which was then filled with hot lead. Any publishing technology that used hot lead typesetting could not support kerning, except by the aforementioned ligatures. Any technology that used hand-set type could not support kerning without such a high expense that it is unlikely it was ever done. Not even Word supports kerning without selecting a special option (and if selected, the resulting document does not look like the memo). But somehow, magically, the font used by some hypothesized piece of equipment in 1972 works the same was as a font that uses a set of ABC width parameters that did not exist until TrueType fonts existed. Microsoft delivered the first version of TrueType for Windows in April of 1992, and the original TrueType font format was developed by Apple and delivered in May, 1991.

Based on the fact that I was able, in less than five minutes, to replicate one of the experiments reported on the Internet, that is, to type in the text of the 01-August-1972 memo into Microsoft Word and get a document so close that you can hold my document in front of the “authentic” document and see virtually no errors, I can assert without any doubt (as have many others) that this document is a modern forgery. Any other position is indefensible. I was a bit annoyed that the experiment dealing with the 18-August-1973 memo was not compatible, until I changed the font to an 11.5-point font. Then it was a perfect match, including the superscript “th”. In 1972, we expressed fonts in integral pixel sizes, and a fractional pixel size would have been meaningless. Until we got high-resolution printers in the 1990s, I am not aware of any application-level technology that supported fractional point sizes (Adobe PostScript could, but the high-level interfaces to it, to the best of my recollection, only allowed integers to be specified for sizes). I do not believe a typesetting program or typesetting technology that worked in fractional point sizes could have existed in 1972 or 1973. However, this might be an accident of the many levels of transformation from the original (wherever that is) and the photocopying, scanning, document conversion, and re-printing. The 11.5-point font could represent a reduction to 96% of the original size in the various transformations. In which case, the coincidence of the match is again extremely unlikely unless the document were a forgery. [Emphasis mine]

So, I have an example of pseudo-kerning. The quote above means that the memo could not even be produced by typesetting equipment of the day, let alone a typewriter. Game, set, match!

The Effect of the New Media on Campaign 2004

Update: This just brewing: the CBS memo on Bush's National Guard service may have been forged. It used a proportional font that wasn't used in the '60s.

The Blinne Blog is back from summer hiatus. I spent the Labor Day weekend watching the political blogs and I noticed how the so-called new media are directly affecting this campaign. Now I am not talking here about Matt Drudge or talk radio or Fox News. No, I am talking about independent web publishers popularly known as blogs. Three stories from this weekend illustrate things that weblogs have done that even the old new media can not do well.

1. John Kerry for President, a 404 Organization.
   John Kerry's web page had a response piece [Note: this link is dead and the index of press releases skip pr_2004_0905a and going straight to pr_2004_0905b.] entitled The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths. This was a cut and paste job that merely quoted from the convention and there was nothing to explain why the statements were lies. Check this link that saved the web page. It also in effect called John McCain a lier.
2. The Steubenville Meltdown.
   Here we have a witness that showed the main stream media completed missed John Kerry's rally going completely out of control. Steubenville is home to a Franciscan university and is very much pro-life. This had to be rescheduled from when the univeristy was not in session to when it was. They also had the rally in a public park. Here's an e-mail from a witness:
   

   John Kerry came to Steubenville yesterday and quickly realized he was in the wrong city. Steubenville is a city where there are 6 Democrats for every 1 Republican, and the Steelworkers unions are alive and active. You would think this was solid John Kerry territory. The mob used to control Steubenville and now the unions think they do. Well, they are wrong.

   The Kerry campaign first scheduled a visit to Steubenville two weeks ago but "scheduling conflicts" came up at the last minute. Oh, and did I mention that Kerry wanted to use a local gun range as a campaign stop, but the owner turned him down? And that the Fire Department Union President told the Kerry campaign that not only would he not organize the union to support Kerry at the rally, but that he was supporting President Bush! The Kerry campaign took for granted that this area was sown up. Mistake number one. So they rescheduled the campaign trip when Franciscan University was back in session. Mistake number two.

   Before Kerry arrived there was a huge pro-life march led by Franciscan University students, 500 strong. "You can't be Catholic and pro-abortion", read some of their signs. Students and members of local Catholic parishes were full of energy and FoxNews reported that this was the largest protest against Kerry outside of the Democratic Convention. Just picture 500 pro-lifers marching from their college campus to meet Kerry. Where else but in Steubenville, Ohio! Though the Franciscan University did not organize the event, it is well known for its orthodox Catholic education which encourages students to put their faith into action. These students simply cherish their Catholic faith and could not stand to let Kerry use their faith as a political prop. I am proud of my alma mater.

   ….The Kerry campaign not only made a mistake in their timing, but they also chose to hold the rally in a public park which should be open to all the public. Mistake number three. The police chief, sheriff, and mayor all agreed with me that protesters and their signs would be allowed inside the Kerry rally site. Freedom of speech is alive and well here in Ohio. The Kerry campaign flipped out!

   So, now add another 500 local Bush supporters to the Kerry rally. They tried to turn up the music but they could not drown us out. According to the Herald Star (local press), "The crowd, estimated by officials as 3,500 strong, was almost split in half with people for and against the Massachusetts senator." John Kerry must know he has a problem when over 15% of his audience was booing him. We were respectful and did not heckle him - but upon arrival and when he sought our applause he got something he didn't expect. As the press arrived a feisty nine year old little girl began shouting, "We want Bush!", and we all chanted along. The campaign staff was beside themselves. This is history in the making! Even places like Steubenville are not supporting John Kerry. He is in serious trouble.

   My friends, John Kerry will not be coming back to Steubenville. Kerry was visibly shaken when he received boos from the audience.....

3. AP Caught in Dirty Tricks
   This one was picked up by Drudge but it was the bloggers who did the heavy lifting. Here the crowd was alleged to have booed President Clinton's heart problems. Audio files came out the woodwork showing it not the case. AP tried to say it was oohing, then deleted the reference to booing altogether along with the by line, the timestamp, and all previous versions of the story. They also purged Nexus of the trail. This goes beyond bias in my opinion and AP should launch an investigation of this.
   

Bush Backing Marriage Amendment Politically Smart

I was of the opinion that President Bush backing the Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution was not politically smart. But, as always, it is dangerous to misunderestimate the President. While most Americans are not in favor of the amendment, those who are most likely to vote favor it. Note the following poll by the Barna Group:

The survey also showed that the adults most likely to vote in November favored the amendment by a comfortable margin, 52% to 43%. That margin may not be enough, however, to persuade two-thirds of the members in each house of the Congress to pass the proposal, and then to generate passage in three-quarters of the states. [Note: this survey was taken prior to the Senate voting down cloture for the amendment.]

...

The survey showed that President Bush has more to gain from supporting the amendment and opposing the ordination of gay clergy than Senator Kerry does by opposing the former and supporting the latter.

Among people likely to vote in the election and who support the President, 54% strongly favor the marriage amendment and 17% strongly oppose it – a gap of 37 percentage points. Among Mr. Kerry’s supporters, a plurality (43%) strongly opposes the amendment and 20% are strongly in favor – a gap of 23 points. Among the undecided voters, 35% strongly support the amendment and 32% strongly oppose it – a difference that is not statistically significant.

Although neither candidate is likely to mention his views on the ordination of gay clergy, 65% of the President’s likely supporters in the November election strongly oppose the ordination of gay clergy while just 4% strongly support it. Among Mr. Kerry’s supporters, on the other hand, only 18% strongly favor gay ordinations while nearly twice as many (33%) strongly oppose it.