Great Reading

I managed to finish Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ over the weekend. This is an excellent resource. For me there was not a lot new as far as arguments and information, but what took me years and years to discover through my own private reading and research, Strobel put in one concise and easy-to-read volume that can be read in a day or two. Kudos. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. What? Are you one of the only about a hundred and fifty evangelicals who still haven't read it? Go ahead! Bite the bullet. Dew it! You won't regret it. Besides, you'll want it on your shelf as a reference. I promise you my kids will read this book when they are teens.


Since finishing that one up I have begun devouring Alister McGrath's Dawkins God--Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. No light reading this. However, it is not a long book, my copy being about 160 pages minus the reference sections. It is worth it. We would all be better off if we turned off the television and pop culture from time to time and spent some quality hours with a good tome--thinking and developing discernment--learning. Besides that, here you have one Oxford professor taking on (and taking out) the arguments of another--an academic free-for-all! Check out what McGrath says about Dawkins and this debate in the Introduction:

"Yes, Dawkins seems to many to be immensely provocative and aggressive, dismissing alternative positions with indecent haste, or treating criticism of his personal views as an attack on the entire scientific enterprise. Yet this kind of overheated rhetoric is found in any popular debate, whether religious, philosophical, or scientific. Indeed, it is what makes popular debates interesting, and raises them above the tedious drone of normal scholarly discussion, which seems invariably to be accompanied by endless footnotes, citing of weighty but dull authorities, and cautious understatement heavily laced with qualifications. How much more exciting to have a pugnacious, no holds barred debate, without having to worry about the stifling conventions of rigorous evidence-based scholarship! Dawkins clearly wants to provoke such a debate and discussion, and it would be churlish not to accept such an invitation."

Let's get it on!

Other Blog-related Info

Tomorrow night look for me to get that list of John Leland quotations on the separation of church and state added to this blog and also look for the first sermon to be web-published to The Spurgeon Archive Addendum.

John Leland, Patriot for Liberty

When we think of patriots we think of men like George Washington, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin, and so on. But I bet you never stop to contemplate the effect on our liberty made by a Baptist preacher by the name of John Leland.

John Leland was a Baptist evangelist, a Calvinist, and an outspoken political activist. His issue? Separation of church and state.

Although we were all taught that our forefathers came to this land seeking religious liberty, in truth religious liberty was not law in the thirteen colonies. With the exception of Roger Williams' Rhode Island, each colony had its own state church. Yes, the pilgrims and puritans did come seeking a place where they could freely worship--and everyone else was forced to worship that way too.

We look at that and think how horrid! But we are the recipients of a moral code in this vein that was unheard of in the 17th century world. At that time there was religious liberty virtually nowhere and the idea was morally repugnant to the religious thinkers of the day (it had been for thousands of years). If the government does not enforce religious practice then the public will go wild, said they. Have you never read the Law of Moses and the Old Testament?

But in the new world that thinking was to change and that change had been coming about since the early 1600's and the appearance of the Baptists in Holland and England. Baptists were non-comformists and, as such, had been suffering at the hands of the established churches (read: state churches) since their beginnings. But they persevered through all obstacles and flourished. In the colonies, and especially in Virginia, they suffered greatly at the hands of the colonial government.

When the time came for a new nation to be born and a new government to be formed it was the Baptists, with their doctrine of liberty of conscience, who led the charge for a bill of rights which would guarantee, among other things, religious liberty--through the separation of church and state.

I read an interesting article published on-line by Homer Massey of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. I would encourage you to read the whole article, but I wanted to quote him on this next part. He writes:

"The Constitution of the United States was submitted to the various states for ratification on September 1, 1787. Each state dealt with the pros and cons on a grass-roots level, with public discussions and debates between candidates for that state’s own Constitutional Convention.

In two states--Virginia and Massachusetts--there was considerable opposition to ratification because, in the minds of many, it had no specific guaranty of religious liberty. James Madison was the primary author and he felt confident that there was no major problem. As he was returning to his home in Orange County just prior to the election there for the Convention, he stopped at Fredericksburg. There he received “an urgent warning that he should be sure to visit an influential Baptist leader and convert him from the idea that the Constitution (as it stood) menaced religious liberty.”

The influential Baptist leader was John Leland, who lived outside the town of Orange on the road to Fredericksburg. Madison discovered that Leland had garnered sufficient support to keep him out of the ratifying convention, so he and Leland met in an oak grove six miles outside Orange in the Spring of 1788. Instead of converting Leland, however, Madison was the one who was converted. As a result of this meeting he agreed to introduce amendments to the new Constitution that would spell out specific items Lelad and the Baptist were concerned about. In the county meeting shortly thereafter Madison was elected to the Convention with Leland’s support.

A local Baptist association has preserved the spot where the two men held their historic meeting, calling it “Leland Madison Park.” A fine memorial marker now stands in the small park on Highway 20 in Orange County, briefly telling the story of how the Baptists played a crucial role in securing religious liberty in America.

In June of 1789 James Madison introduced his promised amendments to the new Constitution. The first of them reads in part, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…’

This, when eventually adopted, embedded in the fundamental law of our country the historic Baptist principle of the separation of the domains of religion and civil government.”

So when you go to church this Sunday, whatever church you attend, think of John Leland and give God thanks for him. And for those of you who don't go to church and don't worship God in any form or fashion, please take some time to contemplate that it was, in part, a Baptist preacher who vehemently fought for you that right. Tomorrow I will post some quotations from John Leland on religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

Senator Jesse Helms--American Statesman

On this, the 232nd anniversary of the birth of our nation we mourn the death of an American statesman--Jesse Helms of North Carolina. How fitting that he should die on this day.

“Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"--Jesse Helms

We have too many politicians--men who govern by polls and fear the press and are bought by special interest groups--and too few statesmen--men of principle, men of backbone, men of courage, men of character. God rest his soul and in His grace give us more men like him.

The American Empire

I just read a fabulous article at National Review Online entitled "If America Is an Empire, then Why Is Gas So Expensive?--Imperial considerations" by Thomas F. Madden. Here is a teaser:

"America has become an empire. Everyone says so.

This is a surprise to most Americans, since few imagined that they were building such a thing. But, as historians such as Walter Nugent and Robert Kagan have recently taught us, Americans have been at this imperialist expansionism for quite some time — really since the beginning of the republic. How else to explain that the United States has gone from a handful of agrarian colonies to a world-spanning colossus in the space of only a few centuries? As you read this, American military might is deployed across the planet. The U.S. Navy is literally larger than all of the other navies in the world combined. The United States military accounts for almost one-half of total global military expenditures. Never before in human history has there been such a disparity in power among sovereign states.

So, I have a question. If America is an empire (and everyone says that it is), then why is gas so expensive?"

Go read it. You will get a chuckle and you will also learn something.

The Spurgeon Archive Addendum

Introducing The Spurgeon Archive Addendum--a blog which will help supplement some of the missing sermons from the famous Spurgeon Archive which highlights the work of the late Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I will be adding, hopefully, at least one new Charles Spurgeon sermon to the cyber-world per week, sermons not available at The Spurgeon Archive or anywhere else on the web. This work will hopefully help to complete that wonderful resource in the future.

Morning Musings

Independence day is coming (Friday) and I am planning at least three blog posts for that day. One will be about our Christian heritage and the part it played in the formation of the Bill of Rights. One will be about the American Empire and how we differ from the historic empire model. The last will be a post on defining the American dream. Don't miss that last one.

In the meantime you might have noticed the list in the side-bar of books I am reading right now. A word on those:

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is considered one of the best biographies of TR available. Edmund Morris received, I believe, a pullitzer for it. If I'm not mistaken it was also made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCapprio which would explain why I haven't bothered watching. But the book is excellent and I am taking my time with it. Not that it isn't a page-turner, it is that, but I have so much on my plate that I only read it on weekends when I'm at my folks' house and I set a course to complete it by the end of the year. It covers T-Rex's life from birth through his election as President. It is the first volume of a planned trilogy of which only the first two have been written thus far. The second is called Theodore Rex.

The Hobbit I have read at least four times already--once as a 7th grader, again as a young adult, then aloud to my oldest son when he was in kindergarten, and now to my younger son who will be in kindergarten next year.

The Confessions of St. Augustine is a classic which everyone should read. My copy was published by Moody. It is the edition edited by Dr. Paul Bechtel in 1981, working primarily with an edition translated from the Latin by Anglican clergyman E.B. Pusey (1800-1882). Those of you who grew up with the King James Version of the Bible will feel right at home with this translation for it has the same style of language. I will blog more on this book.

The Case for Christ I have mentioned in a previous blogpost. Nearly done with it I hope to put it back on the shelf this weekend.

Pawn of Prophecy--pure escapism. I read this series of books when I was a teenager and completely taken by the fantasy genre. I picked it back up to see if it could still maintain its captivating spell now that I'm a more mature reader. So far not bad. Better than some I have returned to after twenty-plus years.

The Church and Politics

I've been a bit short on blogging time but hope to be able to get to something of substance later this evening. In the meantime I ran across a topic of interest on another more populated blog and I thought I would pass it along here. Phil Johnson of The Spurgeon Archive fame posted some interesting thoughts on what may happen when the Church mixes and mingles in the political arena and how that may affect its overall witness. I rarely read the comments over there because there are so many, but I would be interested in anyone's thoughts on the post. I will also be opining along these lines in the near future, though I may be hitting at it from a different and, perhaps, odd (unique?) angle.

Just to give you a small taste and perhaps kindle your fire a little let me tease this future line of posts by saying that I am adamantly FOR the separation of Church and State. I know that specific terminology is not used in the Bill of Rights, but I wish it had been. Evangelicals often frighten me in their inability to grasp this very important and Christian concept. The marriage of Church and State was a marriage made in hell. Though probably all of our founders were theists and many of them Christians, and though their theology cannot help but to have seeped into their writings, they set out purposely to set up a system of government that was a-theological in its institutions--not favoring one theological creed over another. My gripe, however, is not so much the Church's foray into politics (though I tend to agree with Phil) but the government's intrusion into things that properly belong in the private sector, specifically to the Church. I think as a layman I am perfectly suited to opine on this subject.