The Reformed Pastor

An Oxford University scientist has come up with the next step in the ocmmodification of human beings: organ and body part harvest from aborted children. According to LifeSite News:

An Oxford University stem cell expert has urged the use of aborted children in organ transplants as a solution to the shortage of available organs. Sir Richard Gardner has called for a feasibility study on the possibility of obtaining organs from the bodies of aborted babies.

He said, “It is probably a more realistic technique in dealing with the shortage of kidney donors than others.”

Fears that this suggestion will create a trade in aborted children have their justification in the work of US pro-life groups who have in the past uncovered the relationship between the abortion industry and the trade in aborted body parts for medical research and the creation of vaccines.

In 2005, the trade in aborted fetuses made headlines after reports came from Ukraine that newborn babies were disappearing from maternity wards to fuel the increasing demand for body parts. One Ukrainian research institute was advertising fetal body parts, such as “Foetus spleen cells,” and “fragments of foetus spine,” for sale in medical research.

I’ve had half a dozen goes at writing a response to this in the last half hour, but you know what? Sometimes an idea is so evil, or so stupid, or both, that no response is necessary.

There’s been a move in the Connecticut state legislature to meddle in the internal affairs of the Roman Catholic Church in  a way that is grossly unconstitutional. Today, the bill in question, which would have mandated a specific form of governance for a particular religious denomination, was killed as needed. But the protests from Catholics about state interference in their church has provoked a snarky response from Americans United’s Sandhya Bathija:

Today, the Roman Catholic bishops sponsored a rally at the Connecticut Capitol building in support of church-state separation. They didn’t exactly bill it that way, but that’s what it was.

Considering this is the same church hierarchy that speaks so adamantly against same-sex marriage and reproductive rights — and believes that our country’s laws should reflect the church’s doctrines on these issues — a rally to support the church-state wall seems rather ironic.

But today it’s not about the church pushing its religious doctrine on the state. It’s about the state pushing its views on the church, and now the bishops would like everyone to remember and respect church-state separation![Emphasis added.]

The absurdity of the disapproval implicit in the highlighted remark is really astounding. Consider: Americans United never–ever–complains when a mainline Protestant denomination’s leaders or national assemblies take a stance on a political issue. Now, presumably those denominations are doing two things when they opine on, say, the minimum wage, climate change, or, yes, abortion and gay marriage. First, they are saying what they believe as a denomination. Second, they are advocating that the government (at whatever level) adopt their position as its own. In so doing, those denominations are exercising their First Amendment right to seek to persuade the public and its elected officials to agree with them. Nothing wrong with that at all, from a constitutional standpoint.

But when the Catholic church, through the voice of its bishops, make a similar effort to influence the political process based on its understanding of its faith, it is said to be “pushing its religious doctrine on the state,” which is the worst sin one can commit in the AU universe. This Orwellian position, redolent of double-think, is incomprehensible, except inasmuch as its reflects a willingness to ignore one’s constitutional principles for the sake of one’s political positions. Not that it’s news when AU does that, it just isn’t usually quite so blatant about it.

Bathija, after a detour, concludes:

State officials can — and often do — prosecute misuse of non-profit funds for personal gain. If Connecticut laws preventing this kind of fraud are inadequate, perhaps the legislature should tighten them up.

But that’s quite different from a gross governmental intervention into the internal structure of a church. The Constitution simply doesn’t permit that kind of entanglement between religion and government. Moves to reform churches must come from inside them, not from elected officials.

Said [Bridgeport] Bishop [William] Lori, “It is time for us to stop this unbridled use of governmental power. It is time for us to defend our First Amendment rights.”

We say amen to that, Bishop! Now, if only Lori could remember the First Amendment rights of those of us who do not want abortion and same-sex marriage laws to be decided based on church doctrine! That’s just as much of a church-state separation concern as this unconstitutional bill.

This needs some correction. What Bathija meant to say is that she wants “abortion and same-sex marriage laws to be decided on the basis of United Church of Christ doctrine,” rather than Catholic doctrine. Because that’s in fact what she supports. The idea that support for gay marriage and unlimited abortion is somehow a religion-free position, when one of the most prominent organizations advocating the latter, for instance, is the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, is nonsensical on its face. What Bathija really means is, the only religious leaders and organizations that have a right to impose their doctrine on the rest of us are those with whose politics AU agrees.

Christian writer Michael Spencer has an interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor today that I think presents a largely accurate picture of the future of American evangelicalism. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s all worth pondering and discussing. Here are a few excerpts:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Anyone with half an eye can see that there is a growing anti-Christian sentiment in the West, partially as a result of the rising tide of atheism and agnosticism, partially as a result of spreading hedonism. Evangelicalism, along with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, stand athwart such trends, and as they become more and more the norm, Christians will look more and more like relics who deserve to be run over be the rushing train of culture. It is also the case that evangelical churches are seriously unprepared to deal with this future, as Spencer points out in asking why this is going to happen:

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

This is sadly true, and is explained at least in part by the fact that immersion in a culture that is hostile to our faith (not just our moral values) makes the relatively small amount of time that is spent in Christian endeavors all too often futile. Our children and youth must be taught how to live the faith in every choice and at every moment, not just when they happen to be occupied in “Christian activity.” But to do this, they must also be convinced that what they are doing is right and true, despite the constant messages to the contrary that they receive every day.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

This is already the case in some areas of ministry (ex-gay work, crisis pregnancy centers) that touch on controversial moral or lifestyle issues. Christian efforts to penetrate sectors of the culture that are considered secular “property” (schools and colleges, media, politics, science) are also viewed with suspicion and hostility, even outright opposition in some quarters. Such responses are not only bad for Christians, they are bad for society as a whole, as they eat away at some of the most vital liberties of a free society. But those engaged in the effort to eradicate Christian influence in the mind and conscience forming sectors of the culture are growing less and less concerned with that, thinking that they are saving society from a medievalist scourge. I hope that Spencer over-estimates the degree to which ministries will downplay their Christian identity in order to survive institutionally, but I can’t say for sure that he does.

He then goes on to ask, “what will be left?”:

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

God help us all if he’s right here. Personally, I don’t think that such churches have any reason to survive, so I won’t mourn their passing, but the resources that will be wasted in propping them up will be unfortunate.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

Folks like this are already at work. My friend Mike Pasquarello, a preaching professor at Asbury Seminary, and I have talked about the need for this for years, and he’s doing his part with his students there and books that he’s written seeking to recover the theological heritage and practical experience of the Church that we have forgotten as we’ve fallen prey to the heresies of the new and therapeutic. (You can find his books, Sacred Rhetoric: Preaching as a Theological and Pastoral Practice of the Church; Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation; and Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching: Reuniting New Testament Interpretation and Proclamation at Amazon.) I will post on others as I think of them. The point is that this has already begun. The extent to which it is penetrating the evangelical conscienceness, however, remains to be seen.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

The first of these is already starting, as people like Brian McLaren become more comfortable with the National Council of Churches crowd than the evangelicals from which they sprang. As for the second, I think they will become less common and smaller, but they will never disappear. Fundamentalism isn’t just a theological stance, it’s also a mind-set, and people of fundamentalist mind-set will always be with us–some as conservative Christians, some as liberal college professors.

•Evangelicalism needs a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

This is also happening now. There are more missionaries from South Korea in the United States than there are American missionaries in South Korea, for instance. The question is whether these workers–from places as diverse as Nigeria, Honduras, and mainland China–will be able and willing to go beyond ministering to their own ethnic group and become universal missionaries. I mean, WASPs need the gospel too, right?

Spencer’s final section asks, “Is all this a bad thing?” I’ll leave that to you to read and answer on your own. But by all means read the whole piece.

The percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” has almost doubled since 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Fox News has the details:

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

In 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians, largely explains the shift. Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population.

Respondents who called themselves “non-denominational Christian” grew from 0.1 percent in 1990 to 3.5 percent last year….Researchers also found a small increase in those who prefer being called evangelical or born-again, rather than claim membership in a denomination.

Evangelical or born-again Americans make up 34 percent of all American adults and 45 percent of all Christians and Catholics, the study found.

Every day, the population of our nation is bombarded with secularist and anti-religious messages (n0t to mention hedonist ones, which play into the same mindest), so it’s not surprising that they are having a long-term impact. It’s also a function of the unwillingness of so many churches, particularly mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, to take seriously (in some instances, to even believe in) the call to evangelization. We’ve grown exceedingly comfortable in our religious ghettoes, and the temptation to hold fast to what previous generations bequeathed us and turn our backs on the growing numbers of spiritually hungry people is strong. But as the non-Christian and non-religious fields grow larger, the call becomes more insistent, and I suspect that those churches that have decided they would rather tend their own gardens will have some accounting to do when the time of judgment comes upon us.

Kim Jong II re-elected to parliament

–USA Today

You may have heard that the Obama administration is reversing Bush-era rules regarding embryonic stem cell research. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite of Chicago Seminary (UCC) is down with that for reasons that illustrate why theologians should not necessarily be listened to even when discussing ethical questions:

There have been many moral objections raised to embryonic stem cell research. But as President Obama prepares to sign an executive order to repeal his predecessor’s ban on federal funding for such scientific inquiry, we should also ask what the moral imperatives are to do this research. In addition, are there moral insights that can help us develop guidelines for the research?

It shoudl be noted that the Bush rules only prohibited federal funding for new ESC lines. Research has been going on all along, regardless of anyone’s moral objections.

Restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research have retarded scientific investigation that could well yield important medical advances. Devastating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, heart disease, and spinal cord injury may see treatments emerge that can relieve enormous suffering and promote healing. There is a clear moral imperative, shared across many religions, to relieve suffering and promote healing. This is a strong ground on which to base religious arguments for the research. [Emphasis added.]

Thistlethwaite is talking pie-in-the-sky. To date, there have been no results from ESCR that indicate that treatments for the diseases she mentions, or any others for that matter, are within reach. Some researchers estimate it could be 50 years before useful treatments based on ESCR will be available, if ever. But that’s not the biggest problem with Thistlethwaite’s thinking.

This is a classic ends-justify-the-means argument, made worse by being based on hypothetical ends rather than realistic ones. Her reasoing is thus: 1) relieving suffering, pain, and disease is a moral good; 2) ESCR may at some point in the unforeseeable future relieve said ills; 3) therefore, ESCR is a moral good. Thistlethwaite is able to blow off the moral arguments because her heart’s in the right place, and she wants to help people. That’s all fine and good, but it does nothing to deal with the questions that surround ESCR, which involves the deliberate use of human life as a means rather than an end, something which is anathema to Christianity and ought to be to civilized people.

The fact is that there is a way to achieve at least some of what Thistlethwaite wants to do, and its being done right now. But she’s not impressed by the use of adult stem cells:

Some ask, why not avoid this controversy and just use adult stem cells? Stem cells have been found in several tissues of adults. While adult stem cells have been used in scientific inquiry, what makes embryonic stem cells such a promising area for medical research is that these cells are more plastic, i.e. it is easier to encourage them to become other cell types. In addition, there is concern that adult stem cells may not reproduce as accurately as embryonic stem cells, as the adult stem cells may lose genetic information after multiple cell divisions. [Emphasis added.]

So instead of a hypothetical benefit, we have a hypothetical problem. We have to set aside the morally unobjectionable means because there might be problems with it, while we have to take the morally objectionable path because some good might come out of it. That’s a bizarre way to do ethics, in my humble opinion. But Thistlethwaite thinks she has  away around the moral objections:

It is thought that at least half of fertilized eggs in normal human reproduction do not survive when they fail to implant in the uterus. Failure of natural implantation is not considered by anyone to be a loss of human life. This natural process of destruction of embryos without implantation is analogous to what is actually the case with stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research begins with a group of human embryonic cells called a blastocyst, which exists before implantation. When this group of cells has divided to make a small group of cells, the stem cells are extracted and the blastocyst is destroyed.

Once again, means are confused with ends. Consider this analogy: all people die. Therefore, whether they die of natural causes or because someone shoots them is morally irrelevant, because they are dead in the end in either case. Ah, she replies, but the organism in question never becomes human anyway:

There is helpful insight from organ donation in regard to brain death. This is a widely accepted arbitrary definition of brain death. The absence of brain activity and its irreversibility constitute the medical definition of death. While not a complete analogy, the parallels for stem cell research are that fertilized embryos have no brain activity and where they will never be implanted, will never develop brain activity.

Once again, we have the same problem. In the case of the brain-dead person, something has happened to cause that condition. If it happened because of natural causes, we accept it as the natural conclusion of life. If the person is shot in the head, we call it murder and punish the shooter. In the case of the embryo, we have interrupted a natural process, and prevented what would have happened it we hadn’t interfered, which is the development of brain function and full-orbed life. It’s true, as Thistlethwaite goes on to say in trying to analogize fertilized egg use to organ donation, that lots of fertilized eggs from in vitro fertilization clinics and such are never used, and discarded like so much garbage, but I’m adamantly opposed to IVF, too, for the same reasons as above–it’s wrong to create human life for our own uses, however admirable those might be,

And as an aside, I might note that Thistlethwaite–a strong supporter of the unfettered abortion license–in her argument about brain activity effectively destroys the basis for supporting abortion after about nine weeks, since that’s when brain activity begins in the developing child. Not that that matters when the one sacrament of the culture of death is at stake. Though it may be that, given the almost blind faith in ESCR evinced by supporters such as Thistlethwaite, there will soon be a second.

UPDATE: I saw this a while ago from Associated Press, in a story headlined “Stem-cell policy change liberating for researchers”:

Eight years of frustration are close to an end for scientists seeking ways to use embryonic stem cells to combat illness and injury.

Translation: the private sector wasn’t interested enough in this work, but now that we can feed at the federal trough, it’s party time!

[President] Obama will hold an event at the White House to announce the move, a senior administration official said Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the policy had not yet been publicly announced.

The aim of the policy is to restore “scientific integrity” to the process, the administration official said.

Translation: we don’t have any problem funding research that millions of Americans consider immoral or speculative using their tax dollars. Why should you?

“America’s biomedical research enterprise experienced steady decline over the past eight years, with shrinking budgets and policies that elevated ideology over science. This slowed the pace of discovery and the search for cures,” said Sean Morrison, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Stem Cell Biology.

Translation: the yahoos don’t understand that just because we can do something means that we should do it, and that if we can’t do it, they still have an obligation to fund us!

Timothy Fountain (North Plains Anglicans) has posted a link to a baptismal liturgy that someone with way too much time on their hands sent to him. The latter found it at a Web site connected to St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Father Tim does a great job dissecting the deficient theology in the liturgy, but I agree with Chris Johnson of MCJ that the best part is this:

TRIPUDIUM TO THE FONT

Deacon A (steps onto platform) – We will go to the font in step, singing (name of hymn), found on your colored sheet.  Make sure and bring your baptism booklet. The step is very simple; if you’ll look at all of us up here, we will show you how it goes.

Starting on your right foot, go right, left, right, back;
(demonstrate)
right, left, right, back;
right left, right, back.

Please place your hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you.

___________(Cantor), will tell us when to step off.

Cantor – When we get to the word ”______________,” please step off on your right foot and start the right, left, right, back pattern.

Cantor leads the Tripudium, cues people to move at the right time, calls for additional stanzas if needed to get everyone to the Font.

Now, I can’t dance a lick, so I have no idea what to make of it, but I think what they’re trying to get at is illustrated in this video by the band Brave Combo:

And when leaders of the National Council of Churches goes to Communist China, who do they meet with? Representatives of the official Protestant church, who else? According to NCC News:

The president and general secretary of the National Council of Churches, in a historic first, have traveled to China to affirm with Chinese Christian leaders a mutual desire to engage in an “even deeper working relationship that allows us to consult regularly with one another and to speak and act together in response to contemporary issues.”

H.E. Archbishop Vicken Aykazian and the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon met here February 26 with leaders of the China Christian Council (CCC) and the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of Protestant Churches in China (TSPM). It was the first time an NCC president and general secretary have traveled together to China.

The NCC leaders along with the Rev. Gao, Feng, President of the CCC, and Elder Fu, Xianwei, chair of the TSPM, expressed “thanks for the distinctive gifts that God has given us in our different settings (a point which is central to the witness of the Three-Self Movement)” and rejoicing “that we are related to one another in Christ, and that through one another we can grow in knowledge and love of God.  Ours is a relationship of mutual encouragement in order that the body of Christ might be built up in love (Ephesians 4).”

There’s no hint in this article that Kinnamon and his colleagues made any effort to meet with anyone from the house church movement, which comprises the bulk of the Christians in China. Nor is there any indication of any meetings with government leaders to discuss the violations of human rights of those believers which have been endemic in China for decades. Maybe that will be discussed in a forthcoming report, though I’m not holding my breath.

And what plans for mutual cooperation did the NCC leaders and government church leaders talk about? Cooperative efforts to evangelize the world’s largest non-Christian population, perhaps?

Among the contemporary issues on which the leaders plan to “speak and act together” are the pollutants that the U.S. and China emit daily into the world’s atmosphere.

“We recognize that China and the United States together produce 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions,” the leaders said. ”For this reason, political leaders in our two nations have affirmed the need to work together to reduce such pollution and, thus, to address the urgent problem of climate change.

As churches, we can encourage this process of political collaboration by joining our voices in defense of God’s creation.  We can share materials on environmental protection and look for ways to provide education on ecological concerns that draws on the resources of one another.” The leaders pledged to raise the idea of deeper partnership with our governing bodies and to continue this conversation on forms of regular consultation.”

Yes, I’m sure that the government of the People’s Republic pays close attention to what the leaders of a few million Protestants say about carbon emissions. That’s a very purposeful use of the limited resources of the government churches in one of the world’s least democratic nations.

It has been a very busy couple of days, hence the lack of posts. So, in the interest of continuing to flog the horse (or whatever the appropriate metaphor is), I wanted to let my readers know that my church plant, Redeemer EPC, has a new Web site. It is still at the old URL (redeemerepc.org), but it is a completely revamped site. I would very much appreciate any comments you can offer to help make it better. Thanks in advance!

You may remember the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, the Episcopal priest who converted to Islam but continued to maintain that she was a legitimate Christian minister. (I wrote about it here, here, here, here, and here.) Well, on March 31 she will be deposed from the priesthood if she doesn’t recant her Islamic faith, but before then she is getting some assistance from Morehouse Publishing, an Episcopal Church imprimatur, which is publishing her new work of evangelism. According to the blurb at ChurchPublishing.org:

An introduction to the major themes and passages of the holy book of Islam, this book invites readers of any religion—or none—to meditate on verses of the Quran as support for spiritual practices and growth. It guides the reader through the rich tapestry of the Quran, weaving through a number of themes, including the mystery of God, surrender to the divine will, and provisions for the spiritual journey. Quranic verses are supplemented by sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the words of Rumi and other Sufi poets, and relevant quotations and insights from Jewish and Christian sources. The book also offers practical suggestions for expanding and strengthening one’s spiritual sinews.

The $30 paperback (!) is co-written by a trio of authors, who are described thus:

Jamal Rahman is a Muslim Sufi minister who teaches on the adjunct faculty at Seattle University. Author of The Fragrance of Faith: The Enlightened Heart of Islam, he is also a co-host on “Interfaith Talk Radio,” speaker, and retreat leader.

Kathleen Schmitt Elias, a former nun, is a Gregorian chanter, Jew by choice, meditation leader,and professional editor. She also lives in Seattle.

Ann Holmes Redding, PhD, is a professor of Christian scripture, preacher, speaker, and retreat leader, based in Seattle.

So we have one Muslim, one Christian whose apostasy led her to Judaism, and one Christian apostate to Islam whose apostasy is apparently too ticklish a subject to be mentioned on the book’s sale site.

Redding’s former employer, St Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, gives some publicity in its newsletter to an event celebrating the publication of the book:

Please join in the celebration of the publication of Out of Darkness Into Light: Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with Reflections from Jewish and Christian Sources, co-authored by The Rev. Ann Holmes-Redding, Jamal Rahman and Kate Elias. The evening will also observe the 25th anniversary of Ann’s ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church and her movement into the next phase of ministry as both Christian and Muslim.

“Next phase of ministry”? Not as a Christian. A Unitarian, perhaps. Or maybe she’s about to be ordained as an imam.

(Via T19.)