The Reformed Pastor

There are some things I just don’t get. For instance, why would an atheist want to be the pastor of a Christian church? And why would the denomination or congregation of which that person is a pastor want him or her to remain in that position? Those questions are provoked by an article from Ecumenical News International entitled, “Dutch ‘atheist’ pastor urges church to discuss whether God exists”:

A pastor of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands who came to prominence after publishing an “atheist” manifesto has challenged the general synod of his denomination to discuss whether God exists.

Many clergy and lay church members would find such a discussion helpful, the Rev. Klaas Hendrikse said on 5 January in an open letter to the church’s general secretary, the Rev. Arjan Plaisier.

What exactly is supposed to be the point of such a conversation? The existence of the church pre-supposes the existence of God–if God is not real, then the church isn’t the church, but a social or political or literary club. Now, if that’s what the Protestant Church in the Netherlands wants to be, or if that’s what Hendrikse wants to lead, that’s fine. But please don’t confuse such an entity with the ekklesia built upon Jesus Christ.

In his letter, Hendrikse recalls a survey conducted by the Dutch ecumenical broadcaster IKON in 2006. This found that one in six clergy of the denominations affiliated to the broadcaster either do not believe in the existence of God or is unsure about this. By far the largest of the seven affiliated denominations is the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN).

Assuming the accuracy of that survey, all I can say is that the PKN is apparently in even more trouble than its mainline counterparts in the United States.

The pastor wrote his letter in response to a recent article by Plaisier in the official Protestant church magazine, in which the general secretary referred to Hendrikse’s book, and discussed the issue of belief in God.

In the article, Plaisier acknowledged that many people raised as Christians in the Netherlands find it difficult to believe in the existence of a personal God. “Many have difficulty [believing in] God as he was held up to them in their youth. That is the image of a Father in heaven, a God who knows you personally and to whom you pray as a Friend.”

Plaisier urged Dutch Protestants to, “come together in the name of Christ. If we are all open, even with our doubts, to talk about God and what it means to believe in him.”

In his response to Plaisier, Hendrikse noted that the Protestant church has traditionally seen itself as a broad denomination. “But when I read you, then it seems that in the PKN there is only room for those who agree with the existing confessions of faith, and who do not go on to ask awkward questions or give any indication of doubts.”

Hendrikse’s complaint is akin to that of the person who walks into a chess club and demands to play rugby, and who then complains about the attitude of the club members when they turn him down. The PKN is presumably a church, not a debating society. Hendrikse isn’t asking “awkward questions,” or giving “any indication of doubts”; he’s on record as repudiating the One who is the foundation and sole reason for existence of the organization of which he is a leader. What he’s demanding is a public forum in which to indulge his theological eccentricities, something that the church is under no obligation to grant him.

In his book, Hendrikse tells how his conviction that God does not exist has become stronger.

“The non-existence of God is for me not an obstacle but a precondition to believing in God. I am an atheist believer,” Hendrikse states in the book. “God is for me not a being, but a word for what can happen between people. Someone says to you, for example, ‘I will not abandon you’ and then makes those words come true. It would be perfectly alright to call that [relationship] God.”

If I read this correctly, Hendrikse is a member of the Humpty-Dumpty school of linguistics. For him, words have no meaning, and no connection to anything real, so if he wants to call building a house for a homeless person “God” rather than “service to God and neighbor,” he can do that. For that matter, I guess if he wants to call a one-night stand that both people enjoyed “God,” I suppose he’s free to do that, too, if he’s so inclined. And he should be free to do that–just not in the pulpit of a Christian church, where presumably the worship of the One who is called the “Word of God” means that language actually does have some connection to reality. Whether the PKN is such an institution is, however, obviously open to question.

This is the 1000th post that I’ve made since beginning this blog back on January 6, 2007. That’s not particularly significant except as a number, but I did want to take the occasion to thank everyone who has stopped by to read my scribblings since this venture began, and to say that I hope it has been a rewarding experience on some level for all. To those who have disagreed with me, I especially want to say that I welcome your disagreements–there have been times when I’ve gotten things wrong, and needed to be corrected, and I appreciate when folks do that in a constructive fashion. I also want to apologize for those times when I’ve gone beyond the bounds of decorous debate and gotten personal in my posts or responses to comments. I strive always to keep my critique of church leaders, theologians, and others in the public square aimed at what I believe are mistaken ideas, information, or policies, rather than aiming at the person, but I know I’ve not always lived up to that standard. Your help in enabling me to keep to that commitment is something I always desire.

Keep coming back, keep reading, keep commenting, and by all means, if you find yourself in northern Virgina some weekend, come visit me and my congregation in Woodbridge (necessary info is in the “About Me” item in the column to the right). I would love to meet you.

I expect to be hearing from Americans United about an op-ed piece in the Washington Post from the Episcopal bishops of Washington and Maryland any minute now. It seems that John Chane and Eugene Sutton think that the Maryland state legislature needs to write their particular view of the ethics of Jesus into law:

As the Maryland General Assembly prepares to convene on Wednesday, we hope that legislators will decide against the death penalty in Maryland. Doing so would represent an enormous moral failure for the state and for civil society.

Somebody was clearly asleep at the grammar switch. What they mean is “not doing so.” Anyway…

For decades, many religious groups have voiced strong public opposition to capital punishment, believing that every human being is given life by God and that only God has the right to deny life. Of course, we understand that the state must seek justice and prosecute wrongdoing, but we cannot condone the state pronouncing a sentence of death for wrongdoing — no matter how violent and brutal the crime. There is simply no moral justification for the state to execute a child of God in the name of justice.

Unless, of course, that child is still in the womb, in which case the state should pay for it, and even encourage it through the subsidization of abortion mills such as Planned Parenthood. But I digress. What really needs to be said is that a statement like “there is simply no moral justification for the state to execute” a criminal actually demonstrates a  poverty of moral imagination on the part of the bishops. I can think of at least three serious moral justifications for the death penalty. One can disagree with them, of course, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real arguments that need to be dealt with, rather than dismissed out of hand.

The Episcopal Church has carefully studied the application of the death penalty in many states. In every case, it has concluded that the death penalty is unjust and ineffective. It is immoral to any who are seriously committed to the ethics of Jesus, who continually forbade violence as a means to solve problems caused by evil.

And here’s the reason for the post’s header. By the logic that people like Chane and Sutton use on religious conservatives without a second thought, what in the name of Clarence Darrow do the ethics of Jesus have to do with legislating in Maryland? It is obvious that Chane and Sutton are seeking a serious breach of the separation of church and state, and trying to impose their particular sectarian view of criminal justice on a population that includes lots of people who have no interest in, or use for, the ethics of Jesus. They go on to say:

Most likely today someone in the nation’s capital and in Maryland will die under violent circumstances. Understandably, we will all be outraged at the senselessness of the carnage, and there will be public cries to kill the perpetrator. But the test of love is not found in doing the loving thing whenever it is easy to do so. Love is doing what is right precisely when it is hard. Jesus taught his followers to go beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, for that would inevitably lead to what Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called “an eyeless and toothless society.”

So the views of those who hold strictly to an Old Testament-based view of punishment, or to the philosophical theory of retribution as the basis for punishment, are to be pushed aside so that some of Jesus’ followers can use the power of the state to get their moral views written into law. I expect to see a sternly worded rebuke to the two bishops to come forth from Americans United, based on its rejection of the Religious Left and its anti-First Amendment agenda.

I also expect swine to swoop down from the heavens any day now.

(Via T19.)

One of the things the mainline church-connected U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has been doing on its Web site is running lists of protests in which they are urging people to get involved. I got interested in that because of items I saw at Little Green Footballs and Hot Air that linked to the San Francisco Bay area photographer who goes by the nom de cyber of Zombie. One of the protests had this information on the U.S. Campaign site:

Saturday, January 10, 2009, 11:00AM
Mass March, Civic Center Plaza, Larkin & Grove Sts.
Sponsored by: Gaza Action
Contact: info@araborganizing.org 415-861-7444

As it turns out, the protest in question was primarily organized by International ANSWER, the front for the neo-Stalinist Workers World Party. Zombie, who specializes in photo essays of Bay area moonbat-dominated events, had a field day with this one. Here is a trio of examples of what she saw:

Even though her spelling is bad, I think her anti-Semitism comes through loud and clear.

I never knew Santa Claus had such violent proclivities.

It doesn’t look like pacifism was the order of the day.

I’m not saying that people like David Wildman of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, or Adam Horowitz of the American Friends Service Committee (steering committee members of the U.S. Campaign), or former PCUSA Moderator Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel (a member of the advisory board) agree with these particular protestors. My point is that the organization they are helping to run is directing its supporters to march alongside people like this (and this is by no means the only march on the U.S. Campaign directory to feature violence-advocating anti-Semites in its ranks). That may not make for an endorsement, but it certainly does lead to a connection that they may want to reconsider. Do they want to be associated with this kind of hate? More to the point, do the people who run their denominations?

UPDATE: Another look at the list of protest that the U.S. Campaign directs its supporters to reveals a lot of International ANSWER organizers. ANSWER has apparently taken the lead in putting together moonbat displays in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Haven (CT), Washington DC, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Boston, and New York City–and those are just the ones with ANSWER contact e-mail addresses.

UPDATE: Viola Larson at Naming His Grace has further information about ANSWER allies Al-Awda and the Free Palestine Alliance, who were also among the organizers of a number of these protests. By all means check it out.

I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation.

–Gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson, explaining how he will approach the task of praying at one of next week’s presidential inaugural events

(Via MCJ.)

UPDATE: For whatever reason, AP has changed this article, and eliminated the quote above. Does any reader know how to find prior version of an Internet item?

UPDATE: Christopher Johnson of MCJ sends along a link to a New York Times item that makes clear what Robinson thinks of personal integrity in the act of public prayer:

In recent years, and especially during the inaugurations of President George W. Bush, ministers gave explicitly Christian prayers. Bishop Robinson said he had been rereading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.”

Bishop Robinson said, “I am very clear that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”

He said he might address the prayer to “the God of our many understandings,” language he said he learned from the 12-step program he has attended for his alcohol addiction.

And this is from The Living Church:

The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, has accepted an invitation to offer a prayer at a Jan. 18 inaugural event to welcome the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Bishop Robinson said he has not yet composed the prayer he will offer, but said he will not use a Bible.

“While that is a holy and sacred text to me,” he said, “it is not for many Americans. I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation. It won’t a happy clappy prayer.”

The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society has long been a bastion of anti-Israel advocates. This week’s edition of that agency’s “Faith in Action” newsletter continues the trend. General Secretary Jim Winkler illustrates:

Several years ago, a Jewish colleague asked me why we do not speak out more often against Palestinian attacks on Israel. I replied that it seemed to me the Palestinians claim they are responding to Israeli attacks and Israelis claim they are responding to Palestinian attacks. How, I asked, can we help to end the cycle of violence? There is no cycle of violence, he said, because Israel only responds to attacks against itself.

Well, that’s one point of view. I suspect there are those on the Palestinian side who would also say there is no cycle of violence. Rather, they might claim Palestinians are only responding to Israeli attacks on Palestine.

That’s true–lots of Palestinians would claim that. But rather than look at the record, Winkler simply abdicates any responsibility for determining whether either claim has any validity.

The latest manifestation of this terrible cycle is the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Hamas, the Islamist movement once funded by Israel, seized control of Gaza several years ago. Hamas should never have used the overcrowded ghetto as a venue to launch rockets into Israel, and Israel should not have dramatically overreacted as it has, killing and wounding thousands of Palestinians.

Once again, it seems Israel has “overreacted” by actually being effective in its mission. Let’s get one thing straight: Hamas hasn’t fired thousands of rockets into Israel to get rid of unneeded scrap metal. Its intention, if its weaponry had been better, was to kill or wound thousands of Israelis–the fact that it has largely failed in carrying out its intention speaks only to competence, not to morality. Winkler, like so many of his mainline colleagues, apparently thinks that the reason Israel has “overreacted” is because the Israeli Defense Forces have actually hit what they were aiming at–Hamas terrorists who deliberately target civilians, while using civilians as shields and instruments of propaganda.

Political parties and movements championing peacemaking have been unsuccessful in winning elections in either country although established political leaders have periodically made efforts to settle the conflict. The principal difficulty remains Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its subsequent settlement of hundreds of thousands of its people on that land.

The settlements have exacerbated the problem, and made Israel’s self-defense much more difficult in many ways (though it should also be mentioned that all Israeli settlements in Gaza have been withdrawn, which seems to have satisfied Hamas not at all). But what Winkler doesn’t realize is just how true his other assertion regarding the “occupation” is. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade–all would agree that “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory” is the root of the conflict. Thing is, they believe that “Palestinian territory” includes every inch of Israel. as well as the West Bank and Gaza. The root of the conflict, whether liberal Protestants like Winkler want to recognize it or not, is the existence of Israel, and no matter how much we wish it were not so, the above named groups will never lay down their arms until Israel disappears, or they are destroyed.

In the midst of everything bad happening in the economy, as well as the news about history’s biggest fraud, it turns that there is some good that has come out of it. According to Crain’s New York Business.com:

Hit with declines in funding from the economic crisis and the Madoff scandal, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is laying off around 20% of its staff.

Roughly 30 people were let go earlier this week, according to a source who works for the nonprofit. Executives at Planned Parenthood confirmed the layoffs, but declined to give more details.

“As with many other nonprofit organizations, Planned Parenthood has had to make staff reductions at our headquarters due to the challenging economic times facing our country,” said Maryana Iskander, chief operating officer at the agency.

We can hope that the same will happen to the local affiliates as well.

…Part of Planned Parenthood’s funding declines stem from the closing of the Florida-based Picower Foundation, which shut down in December because its assets were managed by Bernard Madoff. The $1 billion foundation was one of the few major funders of reproductive rights issues.

Those are layoffs I’ll rejoice over. Now if we can just get Congress to cut off their public funding….Yeah, I know, not going to happen. But we can dream.

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

My congregation, Redeemer Evangelical Presbyterian Church, is moving. We’ve had a terrific couple of years at Belmont Elementary School in Woodbridge, but believe that our future growth will be enabled far more by our new location. Starting tomorrow, we will be meeting for worship, Sunday School, and a variety of other purposes at Yarbrough Park, a business park at the corner of Occoquan and Old Bridge Roads in Woodbridge. The specific address is:

1549 Old Bridge Road, Suite 105
Woodbridge, VA 22192

This new location not only will be visible to a lot more traffic, but we will have it 24/7, so that we will be able to do a lot more in the way of outreach events to the community in Woodbridge and Lorton. Please be praying for us as we begin a new chapter in the life of our church plant.

The Israel-Palestine Mission Network is an official organization of the PCUSA, created in 2004 by the General Assembly. It has come out with as one-sided, distorted, and terrorist-whitewashing a statement as I have seen from any Christian agency. It says:

The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) condemns in the harshest terms possible the Israeli massacre of Palestinians now underway in Gaza. This long-planned and all to indiscriminate slaughter of hundreds of civilians, the wounding of thousands, and the destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and economic infrastructure cannot be justified in the name of Israeli national security.

“Massacre”? “All too indiscrimate”? These folks have been drinking from the Hamas water cooler for way too long. As usual, they have completely ignored the efforts Israel has made to protect Gaza civilians as much as possible, through tens of thousands of cell phone calls and e-mails sent to people in combat or air strike zones. As usual, Israel tries to protect civilians, Hamas targets them, and who gets the blame?

The numbers simply do not add up: In the past eight years 20 Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets while in the past three years over 1700 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military, including the 600 men, women and children who have died so far in this most recent attack. Hundreds more have died as a result of the Israeli embargo on medicine, food and fuel. The sheer disproportion of death and destruction is an affront to the conscience of humanity. This blatant collective punishment mocks international law as well as the Geneva Conventions. It is morally repugnant to us and the rest of the world.

The IPMN is obviously extremely frustrated that more Jews haven’t been killed over the last eight years. It isn’t for lack of trying, of course; Hamas has sent over thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel in that time, including over 8000 since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. So naturally the Israelis get blamed because they are better at the art of war than their enemies, who apparently deserve sympathy for their lack of success. As for the numbers, IPMN is, I suspect, being deliberately obfuscatory, refusing to recognize that hundred of those killed in Gaza over the last eight years have been Hamas terrorists. It would seem that they should be off limits to Israeli retaliation as well.

Despite the usual “blaming” justifications given for this incursion, there are other truths about Israel’s actions that need to be told:
1) Israel, not Hamas, broke the truce*, and has long used its own missiles to assassinate Palestinian leaders, often with family-destroying “collateral damage.”

The asterisk there is to a footnote that gives a URL for a CNN discussion on the question of who broke the cease-fire. I’ve listened to the report, and it isn’t clear that the two talking heads come to the definite conclusion that IPMN attributes to them (one of them even despairs over the fact that it is so hard in the Middle East to get at the truth). So the “evidence” that IPMN presents for its claim that Israel broke the truce is ambiguous, and the definitive claim it makes is a lie. As for that truce, it seems that Hamas gunmen digging tunnels into Israel, which can have no other purpose than to re-open hostilities, doesn’t qualify as a violation of a truce. Most  fair-minded people would disagree, I think.

The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), in accordance with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, stands with the victims of this atrocious massacre. We condemn violence committed by both sides, but cannot turn a blind eye to the disproportionate amount of suffering on the Palestinian side of this equation. The simple fact is that the firing of the most lethal, hi-tech weapons on earth into an embargoed, walled-in Gaza by Israeli forces is tantamount to what is crudely known as “shooting fish in a barrel.”

Once again, what they seem to object to is that the Israelis are good at killing their enemies via military (as opposed to terrorist) means. Nor are they willing to recognize that, if Israel were really intent on a “massacre,” that there would be tens of thousands of dead Palestinians, not just a few hundred, the majority of whom are legitimate targets. Once again, as have so many of those protesting Israeli actions, they have fallen back on the “disproportionate” meme without bothering to explain what constitutes due proportion in this case, though from the rest of the statement I would infer that there would need to be an equal number of dead Jews as dead Palestinians before IPMN would be happy.

We call upon the government of the United States of America to support an immediate cease-fire within the United Nations and independently. We also call for a multi-national peacekeeping force to be installed as soon as possible, which is the standard that has been set anywhere else in the world following such a tragic humanitarian disaster. We call upon the Israeli government to allow UN peacekeeping forces with humanitarian assistance to enter into Gaza immediately.

The one thing they do not do, and I have a hard time believing this is an oversight, is call on Hamas (which they somehow manage to not even name in this statement) to stop trying to kill Israeli civilians. Not that there’s any surprise there.

I have the greatest respect for Pope Benedict XVI, but he was apparently having an off-day today when he spoke to  assembled diplomats accredited to the Vatican. According to the Times of London:

The Pope today condemned the use of violence by both Israel and Hamas in his annual speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See. “Once again I would repeat that military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned,” he said in an even-handed address.

He rejected “hatred, acts of provocation and the use of arms” and deplored the renewed outbreak of violence in Gaza which was “provoking immense damage and suffering for the civilian population”.

That second paragraph is right and true. But the first is extraordinary for the Pope in its lack of nuance. “Military options are no solution”? Ever? Just in Israel’s case? Just in this situation? But if so, why not? And is it really true, from the standpoint of Catholic just-war doctrine, that “violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned”? That kind of absolutism is more typical of the historic peace churches like the Quakers and Mennonites than of Rome. Or, again, is he just referring to this situation? And if so, why? Is Israel really not permitted to respond with force to violent attacks on its citizens?

The Pope is not alone in seeking to bring peace. Statements like this, regardless of their intention, are not likely to help bring that about.