Linkathon!
“Welcome the stranger” is a commandment…
Leaked Russell Moore letter exposes SBC leadership…
When it comes to evangelicalism, is separation the only option?
Kintsugi and the Divine Potter…
A Free Friar, Père Jacques of JesusÂ
Redeeming von Trapp: Coming to Terms with Unwanted Legacies
What are Southern Baptists really fighting about?
Is religion against relationship in Scripture?
Gods heart for people struggling with suicide…
More later…
“Welcome the Stranger”-not just because it was the first article, but because that seems to have defined my entire life. It started with getting to know my neighbors from other countries (learning to eat their foods, hearing their parents speak a different language in home, asking polite questions about their customs). I was fascinated and I am still friends with some of these folks 55 years later. Most of my teaching career has been with immigrants (Spanish-speaking majority, but also from all over the world). As a missionary, I worked with migrants to the large cities in Colombia who had fled fighting in rural areas. All that said, i find the “preserve our way of life” (i.e white way of life) view found in so many evangelical churches today to be both unscriptural and short-sighted. I don’t need to know what country you come from to treat you kindly and helpfully. Yes, I know the immigration system is broken (I’ve had friends deported and stuck in immigration hell by no fault of their own), but I don’t think churches will solve that one. But, we can love and welcome the people in our neighborhoods can help them to become part of the community. That is all most of them want.
Well said, Linn!
https://currentpub.com/2021/06/02/early-responses-to-the-leaked-russell-moore-letter/
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/june/bj-thomas-evangelical-conversion-born-again-jesus-rock-home.html?fbclid=IwAR2qWRPMzMm4U82rrcKEN03vHutocavf9eK2Z4e_i85LUHFjqWizzxV7eqc
David French on the racism at the top of the SBC:
“Please read every word of Russell Moore’s leaked letter to the ERLC Board of Trustees, especially these paragraphs. Read them and tell me the “real” challenge the church needs to face regarding race is CRT. Please.”
A fish rots from the head down
“I’m not a Christian entertainer. I’m an entertainer who’s Christian.” — BJ Thomas
Looks like ol’ BJ didn’t have much tolerance for Xns who wanted him to only sing rah-rah Jesus songs and nothing else. The rudeness and judgmentalism he experienced from “Christian” audiences just made it worse.
I was never much of a “ccm” fan (with a couple of exceptions). Many of the songs are/were so syrupy and phony.
Plus, it’s an INDUSTRY. Enough said.
Russell Moore’s letter is a powerful indictment of many in upper SBC leadership. Should I ever face such corruption and selfishness and anti-Christ behavior, may I have his integrity to take a stand too, even if it means alienating many others. Truth can be tough, but it does bring freedom.
Recently I came to believe the Confederacy never lost. Both sides just agreed to stop fighting…on the battle field. The struggle shifted elsewhere.
The SBC should be called the Slavery Baptist Convention. It never changed. It was created by elitist Antebellum men, and I think nothing has changed.
A secret circle has always been at the top, regardless of the sincerity of the rank and file.
The idea of men secretly manipulating behind the scenes is simple. Men loved darkness because their deeds are evil.
“As I shared with the officers, when these people started their guerilla attacks, I spent years in grief, feeling like an exile and like an orphan. I felt rejected by my own people and wondered why people would let this go on…”
Moore is the Southern Baptist I respect the most. He was my ethics teacher in seminary. But what Moore sadly does not see here, but which leapt out at me in an instant, is that he has just repeated the heart cries of the Moderates who were exiled from their beloved Convention by the Resurgency he supported.
Nathan, it’s possibly because half my lineage is Native American but I was introduced to the idea that from a Native American perspective there were no “good guys” in the war between the states, whether the Union or the Confederacy, because what everyone agreed to do after the fighting stopped was kill more Indians and steal more of their land. That doesn’t mean we can’t be grateful for the Confederacy losing because, if we have to choose, that’s the side where it was better that they lost, but that wouldn’t in itself mean the Union were “the good guys”.
My relatives’ view on the Civil War seems partly backed up by Crawford Gribben’s work on millenialism in trans-Atlantic evangelicalism, particularly where Gribben pointed out that postmillenialism was prevalent in the antebellum South and fell out of favor once the Civil War happened, whereas in the post-Civil War North postmillenialism was embraced more thoroughly. I.e. some version of manifest destiny was catalyzed by postmillenialism in the 19th century (and not necessarily, per other exchanges here, if memory serves, earlier postmil views espoused by Roger Williams or even to some extent Edwards) but the entitled utopianism of postmil historicism has had its doppleganger in the paranoia of dispensationalist futurism.
At least some of the The Trinity Church folks have found Wenatchee The Hatchet and the archives of stuff about Driscoll at the blog. If that helps people make some decisions about whether or not to keep attending it’s a reason to keep the archives up and available to the public. None of us can make anybody do anything but we can tell the truth as best we can and give people an opportunity to make their decisions.
WTH,
Have you read much of the involvement of Native Americans in the Civil War? Particularly the Western Theater. Stand Watie was perhaps the most well-known of the Native American leaders in the Civil War. He was the only Native American to reach the rank of general. He fought for the Confederacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_Watie
I agree completely that the Civil War had a major religious component and motivation.
The Antibelum South seems like an amalgamation of wealthy men in business, church and secret society, with no clear boundaries between.
Lee’s surrender wasn’t an actual surrender, in the sense of WW 1-2. Only the Army if N. Virginia was covered. There could have been any number of soldiers who returned fully armed, beyond Officers with side arms.
Blacks, Congress and doctrine, would be the next targets, of a still existing Confederacy.
Appomattox C.H. Va.
Apl. 9th 1865
Gen R.E. Lee
Comd’g C.S.A.
General,
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th instant, I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms; to wit:
Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate one copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands.
The arms, artillery, and public property are to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done officers and man will be allowed to return to their homes not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside.
Very respectfully,
U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General.
Headquarters Army N. Va
April 9th, 1865
Lieut-Gen. U.S. Grant,
Commanding Armies of the U.S.
General:
I have received your letter of this date containing the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 8th instant, they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations into effect.
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
R.E. Lee
General
One of the most enlightening books I’ve read on any topic is the one by the historian Mark Noll:
“The Civil War as a Theological Crisis”
Read it and tell me that the Bible’s message is so easy and straightforward.
But you realize after reading it how it’s not God that’s the problem — it’s His people justifying evil.
“Sure, God is on our side. That means the other side should be blown to bits.”
https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Crisis-Steven-Janice-Lectures/dp/1469621819/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mark+noll+civil+war&qid=1622737863&sr=8-1
Hmmm…
Coming to terms with unwanted legacies ..
I recall that movie – what i came away with was how disgusting the Nazi “legacy” is…
Are we headed that direction now? Dunno, but Pelosi seems like she’d have made a good one…. ? ? ?
bob1, Douglas Wilson agrees Noll’s book is a good book, which is not necessarily a count against the book. I’ve read it and Noll’s book is a good one. As I’ve noted elsewhere, having Native American ancestry in the PNW meant I was told there were, in fact, no “good guys” in that war but we can be grateful the North won.
CM, I am not as familiar with the other Native American groups outside the PNW and there isn’t exactly a strong pan-Native movement even now, but I do remember reading the Cherokee were on the side of the Confederacy and that would have a lot to do with how pervasive slavery was among Native American tribes generally and the Cherokee in particular. However, when the Emancipation Proclamation got issues the Cherokee voluntarily abolished their slavery practices … so paleo-Confederate or neo-Confederate types who would claim the Emancipation Proclamation “didn’t do anything” don’t have a leg to stand on if they go back and look at how a prominent Native American tribe voluntarily ended its slavery practices in response to the EP.
Oregon and Washington territory was basically not involved in the American Civil War. There was an extremely robust region-spanning slave trade that I’m reading about (again), actually. There’s a tendency in American discourse and debate to “only” define slavery practices in terms of white and black with little reference to the pervasive nature of Native American slavery systems. The system in the PNW was unusually robust and unusually nasty in a lot of ways. There’s been some interesting scholarly back and forth on how and why the PNW tribes had such an entrenched slavery system because Western theorists didn’t expect nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes to have such a system. There’s blog posts at WtH on that stuff, though, so I want to avoid rabbit-trailing too much.
The older I get the more grateful I am that I was introduced to a perspective where NEITHER side in the American Civil War has to be taken as “good”. Mark Noll’s book surveys some of that theological territory and for those who haven’t read it he made a particularly strong point that evangelicalism in the North and South and of the progressive and conservative varieties were so dead set on ignoring Catholic and rabbinical arguments and cases regarding slavery in the antbellum South that American evangelicalism couldn’t resolve the theological crisis in part because of who they were deliberately ignoring as having anything to contribute to the doctrinal debates.