Christianity

Til Death Do Us Part–Or Whatever

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
8/31/2010 – Chuck Colson –

Worldview was on display at a church in Silver Spring, Maryland a few days ago. What did it look like? A lovely bride, dressed in white. A groom looking giddily in love. Promises to love and to cherish, as long as they lived.

If this sounds like an ordinary wedding—well, that’s just evidence that worldview is not always easy to spot. For instance, you couldn’t tell by looking that the bride and groom had never spent a night together before the wedding—unlike most couples these days.

They were both committed Christians—unlike many other brides and grooms who want a church wedding because it’s “traditional.” Most important of all, this young couple fully understood—and embraced—the meaning and purposes of marriage. [Read more…]

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Godly and Ungodly Violence

St Andrew Orthodox Church8/25/2010 – Fr. Josiah Trenham –

A Parishioner Inquires: “I understand that Leo Tolstoi was an excommunicant of the Orthodox church, but in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You, he raises an interesting question. Tolstoi posits that since Christ commands us to ‘resist not’, and to ‘turn the other cheek’, we should not resist physically anybody who would harm us. I have never been able to reconcile this notion to my own experience in life, considering that on more than one occasion, in order to protect those for whom I care, I have resorted to violence or to the threat of violence. In addition, in the life of Father Arseny, there is a passage in which a soldier-turned-priest beats a group of would-be rapists to preserve the honor of his wife. He experiences a measure of guilt for this, but is consoled by his bishop, since the safety of another was concerned. Can you give me an idea of the Orthodox position on the use of violence as a defensive measure?”

Fr. Josiah writes, “We have 20 centuries of warrior saints. Some of our greatest are St. George, St. Demetrios, St. Theodore the General, etc. They were men who utilized immense physical force to suppress evil and defeat injustice. [Read more…]

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Gay Marriage and the End of Christian Civilization

Fr. Thomas Euteneur
Fr. Thomas Euteneur

8/16/2010 – Father Thomas Euteneur –
So why, you ask, is gay marriage wrong? Let me count the ways.

While we respect all people as they are, we don’t have to respect such a wholesale assault on everything that is sacred to us and good for our society; no, in fact, we must fight against it with our very lives. The question is not whether or not we can win the battle; the question is whether we will join it.

FRONT ROYAL, VA (HLI.org) – Back in the 90s when Fr. Paul Marx, founder of HLI, was asked his opinion about the efforts to legalize “same-sex unions” he commented in his usual forthright fashion, “When they do that,” he said, “it’s the end.” He meant “the end” of the Christian civilization whose values used to form the basis of American common life. Fr. Marx, in a prophetic sense, saw rightly that a society cannot survive the perverse manipulation of the very structure of reality that God Himself has revealed to us, one very fundamental element of which is the institution of marriage. When we allow that to be changed-“It’s the end.” [Read more…]

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Re-education, It’s Not Just for Tyrants Anymore

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
8/16/2010 – Chuck Colson –

The threat to religious freedom in this country is not a hypothetical threat. It’s real, and real people are suffering as a result.

When we wrote the Manhattan Declaration last fall, we warned about “the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership.”

An example of this decline is on display currently in Georgia. Jennifer Keeton, who is a 24-year-old studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University, has been threatened with expulsion. The grounds for the threatened expulsion are not poor grades or misconduct – they are Keeton’s beliefs.

Specifically, they are Keeton’s beliefs about the morality of homosexuality. In written assignments and classroom discussions, Keeton has said that people’s sexual conduct is “the result of accountable, personal choices,” and not “a state of being.” [Read more…]

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The Perils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Christianity

8/13/2010 – Brett McCracken –
‘How can we stop the oil gusher?” may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment. [Read more…]

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A Secular Argument Against Gay Marriage

Over at “The Observer“, the popular American Orthodox Institute Blog, Fr. Johannes Jacobse has posted some insightful observations in regards to the “gay marriage” issue. He correctly emphasizes that: “Christianity properly understood makes no distinction between wisdom found outside of the Church from that found within it.”

Secular argument against gay marriage8/5/2010 – Fr. Johannes Jacobse –

From: Gay Marriage — and Marriage by Sam Shulman.

To me, what is at stake in this debate is not only the potential unhappiness of children, grave as that is; it is our ability to maintain the most basic components of our humanity. I believe, in fact, that we are at an “Antigone moment.” Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with “unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time.” I suspect, moreover, that everyone knows this is the case, and that, paradoxically, this very awareness of just how much is at stake is what may have induced, in defenders of those same “unwritten and unfailing laws,” a kind of paralysis.

By secular Shulman means non-religious, but Christianity properly understood makes no distinction between wisdom found outside of the Church from that found within it. [Read more…]

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Ground Zero is American Holy Ground. No Mosque Near Ground Zero

Ground Zero Cross 7/27/2010 – Fr. Johannes Jacobse –

Sacred ground is more easily understood by European Christians than their American counterparts. Some events are so catastrophic, or prove to be so historically significant, that they transcend the categories we normally employ to explain them. These events must reference something higher to make sense to us.

NAPLES (Catholic Online) – Muslims have it over secularists, but not Christians – at least the clear thinking ones anyway. The Muslim proposal to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is not only an affront to all people who died there, but another chapter in a cultural jihad that seeks to replace the cultural traditions of Christendom with Sharia, the code of law derived from the Koran and from the teachings and example of Mohammed.

First the caveats. Yes, most Muslims are not jihadists; they may see the non-Muslim as an infidel but won’t resort to violence to defeat him . Yes, Muslim believers pose no threat to American cultural norms and legal structures as long as their numbers remain small. Yes, every Muslim citizen should be afforded the rights due to all Americans regardless of their religion. [Read more…]

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Crime and Character

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

6/16/2010 – Chuck Colson –

Two weeks ago, I told you that crime rates are falling—despite the fact we’ve been enduring tough economic times for three years.

Obviously, this flies in the face of the liberal belief that the cause of crime is poverty. And one liberal columnist, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, dared to look at the facts and ask the question, “Did Liberals Get It Wrong on Crime?”

Cohen has this to say about falling crime rates: “Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty,” which was his view at one time, he says, “have some strenuous rethinking to do.” [Read more…]

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