Christianity and Capitalism

Every so often it is my distinct misfortune to read or hear someone wax eloquent about the evils of capitalism and imply, suggest, or say outright that Jesus was a socialist, or that He would have favored socialism, or that the early Christians practiced some form of socialism, or that capitalism somehow violates Christian teaching.

It's aggravating as the dickens. Aggravating because it reveals, at the least, appalling ignorance of history, economics, and the Scriptures; or worse, familiarity with one or more of those subjects combined with a serious deficiency in analytical thinking; or, worst of all, outright mendacity and lying. Combine this with the usual syrupy, dripping condescension that accompanies the commentary and you have a perfect recipe for annoying anyone who's devoted, say, 60 seconds of serious thought to the subject.

For what, exactly, is capitalism? It is often said that it is an economic system, but this really isn't the case. Capitalism, beloved, is nothing more--and nothing less--than the economics resulting from people--the mass of people, not merely elites--having both documented property rights and liberty. To the extent you deny the people liberty, or the right to administer their property and the fruits of their labor as they see fit, you depart from capitalism and pitch your tent in the Land of the Planned Economy, aka Socialism. Some prefer to deny those rights in toto; they are communists or socialists (Or fascists, for that matter. Surely you weren't unaware that fascism is but a variety of socialism?) Some prefer to deny them in part; they are liberals. Some prefer to deny them on an ad hoc basis as benefits them personally; they are political hacks, thieves, and liars.

Those who seek to guard and secure Man's God-given rights are commonly called "conservatives" these days.

It floors me that anyone even modestly familiar with Holy Writ would suggest that it does not recognize either the right to liberty or the right to property. How, if a man has not a right to life, do the Scriptures say, "Thou shalt do no murder"? And if a man has a right to life, how can anyone say that it is legitimate for another man to deny him the free use thereof, that is to say, to deny him his liberty? How can anyone be said to have a right to something if he has no right to control the disposition thereof? And if there is no right to property, how is it that the Scriptures say, "Thou shalt not steal," and "Let him who stole, steal no more?" How can any man steal what does not belong to anyone? The commands implicitly recognize the right to property.

And if the Scriptures recognize the rights to liberty and property, beloved, they recognize capitalism, for that is all that results when men have both!

These are amongst the rights the Founders of our country had in mind when they referred to certain unalienable rights granted from the Creator. Rights given by the Creator of mankind and which may therefore not be legitimately denied by men to men. It is largely the denial of such rights that constitutes injustice. Against this, the Scriptures warn us, and tell us that guarding against it is the proper role of the state. Hence, the Founders assertion that it is to secure such rights that governments are instituted among Men.

So much is obvious, as I said, to anyone willing to give the matter a few seconds of serious, analytical thought. I therefore do not hesitate to say that those who do not understand this have, at the least, simply not bothered to engage the material seriously. But there is more.

Consider, beloved, the track records of capitalism and the varieties of socialism. Capitalism has a track record of promoting liberty and economic growth and prosperity for masses of people. To this minute, it is the only economic--for lack of a better word, "system"--with a demonstrable track record of lifting millions of people out of poverty. (As an aside, the evils sometimes ascribed to capitalism are actually the evils resulting from greed, which usually results in the abuse or denial of property rights or liberty, and hence do not result from "capitalism" at all.) Socialism, on the other hand, especially when you consider that fascism and communism are but varieties thereof, has a track record of impoverishing and murdering hundreds of millions of people.

One is left shocked, stunned, in disbelief, at the notion that anyone could seriously suggest that a "system" that demonstrably lifts people out of slavery and destitution is somehow less charitable--and therefore less in accord with Christian beliefs--than a system that routinely enslaves, impoverishes, and murders people. But that is the position that people who take seriously the idea that Christianity is, or somehow should be, a socialist faith, are left with.

Ignorance can be cured. Here are some suggestions:

The Holy Bible
Money, Greed, and God
The Victory of Reason
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
The Wealth of Nations
The Mystery of Capital

The Perfect Church

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This is a still-in-development part of a much larger post I'm working on. There might be a couple of people who might find it interesting.

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I belong to a church in the heart of Tulsa, a church that you could describe as "big," in the sense that the physical plant is pretty big, and "average" in that the total attendance on Sunday morning is about average for most Southern Baptist churches, which is to say, about 200 or so. It is a church like so many in this part of Tulsa, like a very great many across the country, really. It's dying. Most of the churches in the heart of Tulsa are graying and thinning out and they are dying.

Some of them used to be among the fastest-growing and largest congregations in the country.

What happened?

Well, there are a lot of things that have happened. I am still learning about some of it But one of the things, I am convinced, is that transportation and ease of communication are actually working against the neighborhood church.

If you go to a seminar, or have a workshop on church growth, one of the things you will find out is that a church's natural territory--at least in a city, I don't know about in the countryside--is considered to be everything within about a three-mile radius.

Couple that with the fact--at least I think it's a fact--that the majority of people hear about Jesus from a friend or a relative.

Then ask yourself if you, or any of your friends and relatives, live within a three-mile radius of your church. If you go to an older church, in an older part of the city, I think it is likely you are going to say, "No!"

People can drive--so they, or their children, move out to other parts of town and if they're so inclined, they can still attend the old church they've always attended, but their friends, their relatives, their lives, are all outside that three-mile radius around their church. Naturally, it then becomes very, very difficult for the church members to reach the people around the church! Nobody should be surprised. Nothing could be more natural.

Some people are going to home churches or things like that and I see nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want to do, except that I think that it tends to reinforce a certain cliquishness in some cases, that is, I think there is a pretty good likelihood that you are going to get all eggheads in one group, all the emotionistas in another, and so forth, and that's not altogether good.

And then there's the bad teaching--not in my church, actually, I think our pastor is pretty good (critics would say that he appeals to "eggheads" like moi), one of the few left that actually does expository preaching, and he's not inclined to dumb things down--but it seems to me like there's almost an active contempt rampant in the North American church, a contempt for any sort of teaching that goes beyond the very basics. I will never forget asking my then-teenaged oldest son what the problem with Adult Sunday School lessons was, and he immediately shot back with, "It's the kids' lessons, only with bigger words." If you question this, in most churches and most Sunday School departments, you will be told that the material cannot be made too complex or we will alienate visitors, completely overlooking the fact that visitors are not exactly overrunning the building. And then, if you are not already a teacher of some kind, you will be told that you know so much, you ought to be teaching!

No thought will be given to the possibility that most visitors are not so stupid as to be unable to figure out when their intelligence has been insulted.

In my opinion, the teaching in most churches in North America is execrable. I do not even have to go to them to see in order to have a pretty good idea. Why? Well, just ask around. For example, how many Christians do you know that feel confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel? In my experience--and yes, I have asked--most Christians don't feel terribly confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel, or to answer questions and objections, and more often than not, they don't even try (I believe the stats indicate that something less than 10 percent of all Christians will ever share their faith with strangers).

They just keep coming to Sunday School and church services, hoping all the while, I guess, that they will eventually gain enough knowledge to be able to tell other people what they believe about God, life, death, eternity, and salvation. To my mind, the situation looks like a massive, systemic failure to educate and train, despite a massive Sunday School program and the availability of enough literature to choke a moose. It doesn't help that a lot of people seem to like it that way. It amazes me how many people say they're afraid to share the Gospel, on the grounds that they don't know enough to answer objections, and then won't come to a Sunday School class heavily geared to equipping people to explain and defend their beliefs.

What to do? How to keep my church and others like it from dying? Well, I envision building a church like this:

On Sunday mornings, first, in Sunday School, we'd tackle whatever subjects the class was interested in pursuing in depth, getting people involved in the discussion and accustomed to discussing and defending what they believed. Then we'd have a service where the Gospel was preached, the text of Scripture was expounded, and Christ exalted. Then there'd be a potluck lunch, and maybe a softball game, or maybe some indoor games (chess or go, anyone?). Then everyone'd go home for a nap, and come back at night for more preaching, teaching, and prayer, maybe followed by some sandwiches (Potluck sandwiches. If you try to make the church responsible for the sandwiches, it'll just create a burden that nobody wants to bear).

I have to say a word about "worship," or, more specifically, about music.

Worship is an absolute joke in most churches, at least most churches I've been to--including ours. That is not to say the music is, quote-unquote, "bad." Often, the music minister and musicians and choir are very capable.

But that is not corporate worship. In all the years I've been going to Baptist churches, I have seen precisely one man I would call a worship leader, in that he always managed to get everybody in the sanctuary singing their hearts out. Most music ministers, together with most choirs, are not leading worship. They are performing for the congregation. That is not right at all.

A worship leader needs to be far more concerned about leading the congregation in corporate worship than about how he and the choir sound.

Monday night'd be visitation. Not like most churches, where "visitation" means visiting people who should've been removed from the rolls years before, or visiting people that brought their kids to the "Fall Festival" five years in a row (that kind of stuff is, in my experience, a complete waste of time), but visiting, first, the members who couldn't be at church due to illness or frailty, those who are having a hard time in one way or another (I am as convinced as I can be that one of the modern church's problems is that we have so emphasized ministry to the community that we have let our ministry to our members slacken. This should not be. Paul suggested strongly that we should tend to the brethren first), and then just going door-to-door in the neighborhood, asking people how we could pray for them, and sharing the Gospel where the Lord opens the door. I would suggest strongly that the same people not do visitation every week, not unless they feel truly compelled. Rather, a whole bunch of people should rotate visitation duties. Nobody should be allowed to become overwhelmed.

Tuesday nights, the clubs would meet. As I mentioned in the section on RyuTe, someday I'd love to teach a class at the church. I picture an energetic, sweaty class, where the emphasis is on health and self-defense, not fighting, not aggression, with maybe just enough free-sparring thrown in to satisfy those that want to compete in an occasional tournament (Tournament fighting is useless for self-defense, but some people find them a lot of fun). There could, and should, be other clubs--whatever people were interested in. Maybe Praisemoves for some. Maybe Pilates. Maybe a homeschooling support group. The point is to have neighborhood Christian people with a common interest be able to satisfy that interest and desire for fellowship through the neighborhood church, not so much to use those activities to attract lost people to the church--although, God knows, you wouldn't want to turn lost people away from those clubs, and you'd certainly want lost people taught the Gospel while they're at the church.

Wednesday nights'd be for discipleship training and prayer. Classes on all sorts of stuff, from in-depth study of various books of the Bible, to home economics (we all need to know how to stretch a dollar, folks), to New Testament Greek. Classes'd be preceded by a potluck meal and followed by a prayer session.

I think that's the way church oughta be. And very frankly, I think in our case, we need to seriously consider merging with the Hispanic church that meets in our building. They are actually growing, in part, I think, because so many Hispanic families have moved into the neighborhood, and, like I said, people do hear about Jesus from their friends and neighbors.

Many times I think the ideal is to have a little church like this in every neighborhood, with the social life of the whole neighborhood revolving around it. I'm about half-convinced that when we got to the point where you had to drive to church instead of walk (or ride your horse), it allowed us to be too darn selective about who we'd associate with. Being able to drive--I've run across people that drive thirty or more miles to church, folks--well, it seems to me that it makes it easier to ignore the people who are right around us, in favor of people that we find it easier to love. Why would we not expect our neighborhood churches to be dying if we refuse to attend the neighborhood church? And conversely, I can't help but think that if the people and their neighborhood church get all wrapped up in Jesus Christ and in one another, both the churches and the people will quit dying.

That's what, in part, I'm working on for the future. I may die before I see it fully realized. But that's the direction I'm headed.

It Wasn't Always This Way

I'm not sayin' a word about the rest of the post from which this line comes--I gots my 'pinions, y'know, but I ain't gonna take the time ta lay 'em out tonight--but this line kind of caught my attention:

...a church system that exists primarily to pay professional ministers and to build and maintain buildings.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Y'know, it's kinda hard to dispute.

I don't have a problem with paying ministers. The Bible does actually say, you know, that preachers are entitled to get their living from preaching the Gospel, and I don't begrudge that one little bit. But is that the reason that the "church system" exists? To pay ministers?

To build and maintain buildings?

Well, I know those aren't supposed to be the reasons, but looking at what actually goes on in a lot of churches and para-church organizations might make you wonder.

Look at the Southern Baptist Convention. You know the reason it was formed, and what it was formed from? It was formed from a lot of Baptist churches--independent, every one of 'em--that wanted to have a means to cooperatively support missionaries and seminary education for preachers.

Looking at the SBC today, churches don't seem quite as independent as they used to be--or at least, as I've read they used to be. I really, strongly get the sense that the organization that was meant to be a tool for accomplishing the goals of the churches now sees the churches as tools for accomplishing the goals of the organization.

But maybe that's just me. And truth be known, the solution is always available: the people in the pews can always educate themselves and get involved. If they don't--

--well, they've no one to blame but themselves.

Just How Much Can You Get Wrong and Still Be a Christian?

Shortly after I got saved, I heard one of our church deacons say--I'm afraid I can't remember the context--that we didn't have to have perfect understanding of all the Bible in order to be saved, and that was a good thing, as otherwise we'd all be in trouble.

I have thought of those words many times since then. I thought of them last night. You see, I just read a post, and skimmed/read the comments thereon, that reminded me of them. I rather got the impression that a pretty fair number of folks in the Christian blogosphere have come to the point where they are seriously ready to say that anyone who doesn't publicly denounce a person who's made certain doctrinal errors as a false teacher or a heretic is himself a false teacher or a heretic.

Now, before I go on, let me say that Scripture, in the main, is not that hard to understand, and the main--principle--points of doctrine are really quite unequivocal, and that THERE ARE points beyond which a person cannot go and still be considered a Christian. To deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, for example, is one of those points. To deny that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, is another. Those are what one blogger--I almost hesitate to mention his name, so controversial is he in some circles--Wade Burleson, might call "primary" doctrines. Those are doctrines that one cannot simultaneously deny and be said to be holding to the Christian faith.

But there are other doctrines, what Burleson and others might refer to as secondary or tertiary doctrines, which, while important and certainly worth the effort of getting right, the denial or misunderstanding of which would not necessarily be an indication of a person having left the Christian faith. Problems--to say the least!--arise when some folks act as though every doctrine is primary, as though a deficiency in understanding about mode and timing of baptism or poor reasoning about the nature of "filthy talking" is enough to make one a false teacher or an apostate.

Sometimes issues arise when people just make mistakes, or are taken out of context. I have read, in the dim and distant past, some people say, for example, that Martin Luther taught justification by works, that is, that it was necessary, in order to be saved, that a person get certain sacraments right. I will admit that I have not read Luther exhaustively--actually, all I have read is his The Bondage of the Will and part of his Commentary on Galatians, but in those, Luther's insistence that salvation is by grace alone, that it is all of God and none of man, that man's works are of absolutely no avail when it comes to salvation, comes across so clearly that I can't help but think that people who are willing to say that Luther was a heretic who taught works-salvation have seized on some of his words to the exclusion of others and greatly mistaken his meaning.

I get the impression that there are bloggers out there who would separate from a preacher if he shared a stage with Martin Luther, or if he, not possessing exhaustive knowledge of every jot and tittle of some other preacher's doctrinal irregularities, generously assumed that the other preacher wasn't a heretic until it was definitively proved otherwise. I would suggest that when you have gotten to this point, you have gone a little bit too far.

Trust God and Tell the People

I spent waaaaaaay too long perusing this guy's archives the other night (you do know that most of my posts have been in the pipeline for several days before they see publication, don't you?) and ran across several posts involving tithing.

Now, for the handful of Christians who read my blog, let me say that you will never have an inkling what I give to the church. Ever. Think what you like.

The axe I have to grind on the subject is a very simple one: there is not, plainly and simply is not, any command anywhere in Scripture for Christians to give any specific percentage or amount to the church.

It

isn't

there.

Oh, I know that you believe it is. You've heard sermon after sermon on the subject, and you're convinced.

Well, not to be unkind, but I believe that you've heard sermon after sermon on the subject, and you've not had your critical thinking apparatus turned all the way up to "Max." I am not saying that you're stupid or undiscerning, but I am saying that on this subject (and a handful of others, most likely), you long ago stopped being a Berean and searching the Scriptures to see if these things are so. The situation is not unlike the way it is described here:

I've come to believe that many of the erroneous doctrines we are taught we easily believe them if they are taught "gently" and sincerely to us. Sometimes it is not until some bull-in-a-china-shop kind of preacher comes into our lives and kicks the doctrinal door down when we finally wake up and realize what we were taught all along was wrong.

Here are some excerpts from Croteau's preface that give a glimpse of how he started on his journey:

"I was driving to work in the fall of 1999 and listening to Christian talk radio. John MacArthur was in the middle of a sermon and he was explaining why the tithe was not applicable to Christians. I had never heard anyone actually challenge the applicability of the tithe before, so this took me totally by surprise."

Most of us in Baptist pews have been taught this doctrine as fact for so long, even by well-meaning and sincere preachers. We have not heard SBC preachers dare to consider that the Old Testament tithing laws do not apply to Christians under grace. Preachers at best take a hybrid approach: that yes, we are obligated to tithe, but the New Testament says we should do the forking over joyfully and not under compulsion - in fact we should give more than the tithe as proof of just how darned joyful we are. As someone who was saved in a Southern Baptist Church as a teenager in college, I know the tithe has always been an expectation. It is planted into the minds of preschoolers. The Malachi 3:8-10 application to Christian tithing was never, ever to be questioned. If you don't tithe, you're a God-robber, a cheapskate, plain and simple. No one dares question the doctrine.

[snip]

Bring up this topic in your Sunday School class. Tell your Sunday School class when you next discuss money matters, something like this: "Christians are not under the Old Testament law of tithing. Malachi 3 has been misused for decades by taking it totally out of context. We are to follow the New Testament model to be generous, but there is no prescribed percentage." Try it and see what happens.

I can tell you what happens in most churches: people just assume that you aren't giving anything! Never mind that you know, since the stats on Christian giving in the United States are not difficult to look up--indeed, those very stats are frequently cited in sermons on giving--that they are not likely to be giving any more than you are. The logic is apparently: this person doesn't believe tithing is commanded for the Christian, therefore he must not be giving anything. It's very strange thinking, but I know where they're getting it. It's from all those sermons on tithing they've heard, heard without checking them out.

I love the church. I really do. That is one of the reasons I hate hearing the teachings of men preached as the doctrines of God. There are, frankly, not many things that get me more worked up than people trying to hold me--or the rest of the church--accountable to commands that God has simply never issued.

And I must close by noting this: my pastor does not teach tithing. Oh, he says he does, but when you talk to him, you find that when he says, "Tithe," what he means is what others call "grace giving." That is, he'll tell you that the believer is supposed to give as God moves him and blesses him, and there is not any specific amount or percentage. Why he uses the word "tithe" when that is not what he means, I don't know.

Habit, I guess.

At any rate, the smartest thing I ever heard about the subject of giving was out of a former pastor, who said that he tried to follow this approach when there was a need:

"Trust God, and tell the people."

Amen, an' amen...

I Know You Don't Like to Hear It...

...but in the end, for the American people, there would really be no greater bulwark against over-reaching government than a population that read the Bible and The Federalist Papers through every year.

It only ticks you off 'cause you know it's true...

Peter Heck on Christianity and Government "Charity"

More than a few Christians, especially young Christians, are confused on this point:

They tell us that obedience to Christ comes in the form of high taxes on the wealthy to fund social programs for the poor. Even if these programs weren't as miserably ineffective as what they are, look at what they foster: envy, greed, bitterness and resentment. Not exactly the motivations of love and altruism that Jesus said were to be at the heart of our goodwill.

In truth, there is not one recorded instance of Christ advocating government confiscation and redistribution of wealth in the name of charity.

Jesus did say: "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' (Matthew 25:40)

Jesus did not say: "The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you forcibly took from the masses through taxation in the name of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Jesus did say: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." (Matthew 19:21)

Jesus did not say: "If you want to be perfect, go, get elected to high office and then use the law to confiscate the property of those who have, and give to those you deem more worthy of it. Then claim you are following me."

You get the point. Barack Obama's social gospel of government sponsored theft is a flat contradiction to what Jesus taught.

In my experience, the way this argument usually unfolds involves blatant equivocation, although the person making the argument doesn't realize that that's what he's done. People say things like this: "But MOTW, don't you agree that we need to help the helpless?"

Well, sure. The questions, though, are, "Who are 'we?'" and "Exactly what is 'helpless?'" If you don't get those answers spelled out clearly and mighty dadgum quick, you will find that instead of talking about the church and people who legitimately cannot work or who have been diligently looking but cannot find it, you are talking about government and any body of people from whom votes can be bought for the price of some public "charity."

A Mildly Amusing Inconsistency

Sometimes it takes a while for things to percolate around in my aging brain. I read a post the other day, and something...rattled...back there in my brain housing group (as we call our skulls in the Corps), but just exactly what took me a while to figure out.

Y'see, the more recently-read post talked a bit about how, if the Republican Party ever managed to work up the nerve to tell the Christians among them--the "American Taliban"--to torque off, then they'd inherit the great mushy middle--that majority of folks who are more or less libertarian and presumably don't want to hear about issues like traditional marriage--and sweep to electoral victory.

Probably not two weeks before that, I read posts and comments to the effect that with that judge's ruling--was it Vaughan Walker, or Walker Vaughan? I forget--that the fourteenth amendment somehow protects a right to homosexual marriage, the country had finally gotten things right in spite of the bigotry and so forth of the clear majority of the country.

So there you have it, folks: on some days, the majority of folks are a bunch of moralizing bigots who don't want homosexual marriage and need to have a judge whip 'em into shape, and on other days, the majority of folks embrace a sort of mushy libertarianism that doesn't really want to talk about moral issues.

All depends on which ox you're trying to gore on a given day, I guess.

Phyllis Schafly Saith:

The Declaration of Independence is the official and unequivocal recognition by the American people of our belief and faith in God. It affirms God's existence as a "self-evident" truth that requires no further discussion, debate or litigation.

The nation created by the great declaration is God's country. The rights it defines are God-given. The actions of its signers are God-inspired.

The Declaration of Independence contains five references to God: God as Creator of all men, God as supreme Lawmaker, God as the Source of all rights, God as the world's supreme Judge, and God as our Patron and Protector.

Aye, she's right, she is. Despite Jefferson's less than orthodox views of Christianity, all those concepts made it in there, and all those men who signed it gave those concepts their assent. It floors me everytime people wonder why I insist that a Biblical worldview is at the base of American government. It's like they either cannot read, or they read without noticing anything...

Michael Bates Quotes Sproul about Schaeffer, Christianity, and Statism

Couldn't resist quoting this. I know not all of my readers are familiar with the inimitable Michael Bates and might have otherwise missed this gem:

R. C. Sproul, writing in 2008, recalled asking Francis Schaeffer what was the greatest threat to the church in America. Schaeffer's one word answer: "Statism."

Schaeffer's biggest concern at that point in his life was that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state.

In statism, we see the suffix "ism," which indicates a philosophy or worldview. A decline from statehood to statism happens when the government is perceived as or claims to be the ultimate reality. This reality then replaces God as the supreme entity upon which human existence depends....

Throughout the history of the Christian church, Christianity has always stood over against all forms of statism. Statism is the natural and ultimate enemy to Christianity because it involves a usurpation of the reign of God. If Francis Schaeffer was right -- and each year that passes makes his prognosis seem all the more accurate -- it means that the church and the nation face a serious crisis in our day. In the final analysis, if statism prevails in America, it will mean not only the death of our religious freedom, but also the death of the state itself. We face perilous times where Christians and all people need to be vigilant about the rapidly
encroaching elevation of the state to supremacy.

But, of Course, We Know Better Than the Father of Our Country Did, Don't We?

Here's what he had to say, emphasis mine:

Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections.—The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits, and Political Principles.

[snip]

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion, and Morality are indispensable supports.—In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.—The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.—A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.—Let it simply be asked where is security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.—Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure.—reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.—
’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.—The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of Free Government.—Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?—

But what the heck did he know? Didn't he understand that "diversity is our strength?" Didn't he understand that you can have a nation of good people and good citizens, that you can have political liberty and freedom, without a widespread belief in God?

I mean, you really gotta wonder about that guy.

De Tocqueville on the Relationship Between Christianity and American Liberty

Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in
America

Just sayin'.

Random Thoughts on Why Our Churches Are Dying

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I started this post some few months ago, and then let it "sit," wondering if I would have much else to say. I didn't, not 'til the last couple of days, when I see from our local Baptist newspaper and some of what I see on Facebook that changing this situation is going to require the finger of God. If you're a Baptist, read on at your peril. I have added only a small amount of material since the original writing. I apologize if it doesn't seem a model of coherence. It was, after all, intended to be a "random thoughts" sort of post.

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Of course, your church may not be dying. "Church death" may not even be on your radar screen for one reason or another. You might find some of these thoughts useful for future reference anyway, if only to give yourself some ideas on some things to avoid.

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Our congregation was told some time ago that one of our full-time ministerial staff was being let go, due to a budget shortfall. In a way, it didn't really surprise me. I've been wondering how we afforded so much staff.

I'm not being negative about the man. The person who was let go is a wonderful guy. Very knowledgeable, very capable, universally loved (I know he's universally loved; I took over teaching the Sunday School class he taught. It took months for that stuff to settle down!). I'm sorry to see him go, I really am. But you have to wonder just how much full-time staff a church that (to the best of my knowledge) averages no more than two hundred people in worship on Sundays (and actually, I think it's less) can realistically afford to support.

You have to understand: it wasn't always this way. This church is somewhat more than fifty years old. Built shortly after World War II, as, I understand, a church plant from First Baptist, Tulsa. At the time, it was on the outskirts of town. Now, the part of Tulsa it's in is considered somewhat old and dilapidated. When it was built, the United States was in the middle of the legendary "baby boom." American economic power was at its zenith (economic power fueled, in large part, by a policy involving consumption taxes, the specific variety being tariffs, I might add). The population was growing and people had money. This church was built where all the young people with money were moving. It grew and grew rapidly. I believe that at one time there were about six hundred or so people in the services (I could be wrong on this), just like there was at another church built in the same time frame only a mile or two down the road. The population out there was growing so fast that you could hardly build churches fast enough or big enough--or at least I'm sure it seemed like that.

Take heed, those of you who live where the young people with money are moving now--places like Owasso, Jenks, Bixby, and so forth. There was a time when those old churches in central Tulsa fit the same profile you fit now.

I'm dead certain that when those rapidly-growing churches of the fifties and sixties were experiencing explosive growth, quite a lot of people saw that growth as a blessing from God and not a whole lot of people gave much thought to the possibility that they were doing some things drastically wrong. Why would they? I'm not sure it would occur to me, either. But in retrospect...

...You know, years ago I worked for a rather large restaurant chain. We had a location in Claremore that did pretty good business. One day I chanced to talk with the district manager who had that location. It seemed that a Wendy's had opened up down the road from our store--we called our restaurants "stores," for some reason--and business at our store had gone down. The district manager told me that he had been told that our store must be dirty. In other words, the problem, the business downturn, had to be the result of something the management and crew were doing wrong. It couldn't possibly be the result of a new competitor opening up. It couldn't be the result of a business plan that assumed the absence of real competition. It had to be something going wrong within the store. And before the Wendy's opened up? Presumably, their bang-up business must have been solely the result of excellence in product, cleanliness, and service. It must be very difficult to examine yourself and your business model for deficiencies when things are going smoothly and you are making good money. Why wouldn't you assume that what you are doing is correct? After all, you are making money--and isn't that the ultimate criteria for most businesses?

In the same way, I can't help but think that it must be very hard for a relatively new church experiencing explosive growth to examine itself and decide that it is doing some things wrong, or at least not as wisely as they might. It seems to me that just as most businesses operate on the assumption that massive profitability validates their business practices, most churches operate on the assumption that massive growth indicates that they are at least not doing too badly. When I've visited churches that are growing rapidly--the ones I've visited in the last few years are mostly out in Owasso--it seems to me that they have an undercurrent in their thinking, an assumption that their exploding numbers are at least partly the result of God's blessing and their own evangelistic fervor. Some seem to have a handle on the reality that Owasso and its churches are the beneficiaries of young couples with money moving out to the 'burbs, but others don't quite seem to "get" this and assume that their model of ministry must be okay.

To be fair, I'm not altogether sure that I would do things any differently in that situation. Looking at the situation in central Tulsa, my first thought was that it would have been better for those then-rapidly growing churches to have spun off more local, neighborhood churches than to build large buildings and grow themselves to enormous size. That way, I thought, when the younger folks moved out to go to college, then to the 'burbs and even to other states, the remaining, smaller congregations wouldn't have been faced with the problems of trying to maintain large buildings and large staffs on retirees' budgets. But then I remembered that the two churches I was thinking of most were within a mile-and-a-half of each other. How much more "local" can you get? Both those churches were running over 500 in attendance at one point! And they weren't the only churches in the neighborhood, not by a long shot!

Try convincing crowds like that that they do not, as a church, really know how to evangelize. I bring that up because, in retrospect, it seems clear that they did not. If they really knew how to evangelize, then would it not have been inevitable, as families moved out of the neighborhood and new families moved into those houses, that those new people would have been brought into the church in numbers proportional to those who had left? But that didn't happen. Instead, as families aged and children moved out of the neighborhood, those churches' attendance gradually dwindled. Since the houses in those neighborhoods are still occupied, I have to conclude that--for whatever reason--we are not taking the gospel to those new residents, at least not in the same way we did to the former residents.

This would certainly be consistent with my experience. Time and again, I'll bring up the topic of personal evangelism and witnessing and visitation to folks in our Sunday School class, and the folks in our Sunday School class will, time and again, aver that overall, they prefer "lifestyle evangelism." (They did not use this term; it is something I introduced to them.)

Do you know what lifestyle evangelism is? It is operating on the assumption that the people around you, on seeing how differently you live, will eventually be drawn to ask you what makes the difference in your life, giving you an opportunity to share the Gospel. And it is certainly true, in my opinion, that if you are going to go around sharing the Gospel, a lifestyle consistent with it certainly helps! And maybe this sort of thing was more effective back in the fifties and sixties, when central air conditioning and cable tv weren't ubiquitous and people spent more of their time outdoors, where their neighbors could see them. But now? Friends, for the most part, your neighbors don't even notice you, not unless your car is blocking their driveway. They are certainly not going to take notice of how holy your life is. And, too, ironically, the same people who seem to think that their lifestyles are so holy that they will attract people to Christ as lights attract moths will consistently confess that they need to grow in holiness! So, overall, what is lifestyle evangelism worth these days?

Sooner or later, you've got to go knock on some doors and at least pass out a tract. It's better to be able to say something, but--and yes, I have asked--most Christians don't feel terribly confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel, or to answer questions and objections, so they don't even try. They just keep coming to Sunday School and church services, hoping all the while, I guess, that they will eventually gain enough knowledge to be able to tell other people what they believe about God, life, death, eternity, and salvation. To my mind, the situation looks like a massive, systemic failure to educate and train, despite a massive Sunday School program and the availability of enough literature to choke a moose.

You know how I teach Mexican immigrants to speak English? (I teach an ESL class on Sunday nights.) We have books, of course, and we use them, but class after class, I, as the teacher, get up there and make them speak English. They can help one another answer questions all they want, but they have to do it in English. The hands-on practice is far more valuable than the textbook study, important as that is.

I can't help but think that for decades, we've had evangelism books, seminars, and so forth, and all we've succeeded in doing is so clouding the issue that most people aren't sure that they can share the Gospel "correctly!" Great result, isn't it? Perhaps it would have been better to focus first on hands-on experience and supplement with the training. Perhaps not. Perhaps yet another model would have been better. But because we confused demographically-driven church growth with successful evangelism, the idea that the core of our evangelistic practices simply didn't work and needed to be revamped never gained traction. If the thought was ever voiced, which I rather doubt. And now, our once-full churches in central Tulsa are dying on the vine, despite the homes around them being occupied, and I predict that the same thing will eventually happen to the now-full churches in Owasso.

The final nail in the coffin of how I think of our evangelistic methods, so to speak, was a thought that--in all seriousness--took me years to develop. You may remember, if you're from around Tulsa, that Franklin Graham came to Tulsa several years ago. Of course, I signed up to be a counselor and went to all of the BGEA's training sessions. Most were forgettable, though I remember enjoying seeing some of the other churches 'round town, but one--I think it was the third one--was something I'll never forget, not as long as I live.

You see, at one point, the person leading the training session--it was at Christ United Methodist, I believe, and it was packed out, brothers and sisters--asked all the assembled, "How many people here came to Christ at a revival?"

And a few hands went up.

Then, "How many people here came to Christ because they saw Billy Graham on TV?"

And a few hands went up.

Then, "How many people here came to Christ because of an evangelistic tract?"

And a few more hands went up.

And then, finally, "How many people here came to Christ because a friend or relative told them about Christ?"

And the whole place went up!

And I thought, "Brother, you don't know it, but you just told me that I'm wasting my time here." And that thought stayed in my head for a long time, even though I continued with FAITH evangelism, with "Share Jesus Without Fear," and so forth, and was one of the most consistent people in visitation the church had.

Some few months back, I was, like I alluded to earlier, talking to my Sunday School class about personal evangelism, and a light bulb went on. "How many," I asked, "of you live within a three--mile-or-so radius of this church?"

One hand went up, as I recall. Then I asked, "How many of you have friends or relatives that live within a three-mile-or-so radius of this church?"

And nobody, friends, nobody said a word. And that is the reality, friends, of most of the churches dying around you, I am quite sure. Yes, your church members fail to evangelize--to strangers, with evangelistic models that were assumed to work because the churches that used them grew so rapidly in the fifties, sixties, and even seventies. But they continue to talk to their friends and relatives about Jesus, and their friends and relatives often end up coming to Jesus. And friends, if you haven't figured it out by now, by and large, your church members' friends and relatives, unless your church is in a growing suburb, don't live around your church, so, ironically, your church members' perfectly normal evangelistic practices don't actually end up doing your local congregation any good.

You will say, "But MOTW, just like you said, we've got to revamp evangelism training, have people learn by doing, so that they will evangelize strangers! We're supposed to carry the gospel to everyone." I would agree. I am not saying otherwise, not at all. I am simply pointing out that the actual evangelistic practice of most of the people in your congregation differs considerably from what your theoretical model of church growth would like it to be, that it conforms, I have no doubt, to the actual evangelistic practice of most believers throughout Christian history, and that if you succeed in turning the situation around in your church, the entire Southern Baptist Convention will immediately be beating a path to your door.

Somewhere along the line, we built our ideas about church growth and evangelism around an ideal model that we would like to see in action, instead of the actual practices of the people in the pews. How to solve it? I'm not entirely sure. But I am pretty sure that if we keep failing to work with the way most people actually evangelize instead of against it, we are not going to be altogether successful.

There are other problems. One of them is a cloud of ideas revolving around giving and money. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard sermons or comments to the effect that if only church members would do what they were "supposed to do," that is, to tithe, to give ten percent of their income, that we'd have the money to maintain the building, pay staff, and do ministry and evangelism correctly. "Correctly," of course, being the way it was done during that era of explosive church growth. And since that way wasn't/isn't working anymore, and most people don't actually tithe, it is pretty much a slam-dunk for many ministers to conclude that failure in evangelism is somehow connected to poor stewardship, to a failure to tithe. As a matter of fact, I just read another such column to that effect by the director of the BGCO in the Baptist Messenger!

It's an easy out that allows people to continue to ignore the massive failure of our evangelistic models. So is the classic, "There's sin in the camp!" (Somebody in here drinks beer!)

You know, the word "tithe" is not to be found in The Baptist Faith and Message. You know why? It's because--and this will come as complete and utter shock to some of you--there is no command, not one, not anywhere in Scripture, for Christians to give a specific amount or percentage to the work of the church. Go ahead. Use your Bible software and spend some time looking for one. You won't find it. It isn't there. No preacher in the world can point to one. Instead, they will tell you what all preachers tell their congregations when they want them to believe something that they can't actually find in Scripture: that there is a "principle" found in Scripture to that effect. And that isn't true, either, not on close examination. Not that these people are lying. I don't think that at all. They are just parroting what they've heard all their own lives.

The reality is that there is plenty of Biblical admonition for the Christian to give joyfully and generously, but there is no guidance as to specific amounts or percentages--and the further reality is that on average, if memory serves, most families give about three percent. You might argue that they should give more, and they would probably agree. But this is the situation that you, and they, are facing: they have so arranged their finances that they can't, not without leaving some bill or debt unpaid. Does it reflect poor financial practice? You bet it does--and I'm as guilty as anyone, trying to claw my way out of all my non-mortgage debt over the next two or three years. Perhaps it would help--over a period of years--for the church to teach sound personal financial management, but that is hardly a short-term solution.

It doesn't help to tell families in this situation to "step out on faith." Telling them to have faith that God will bless them--somehow, usually, the impression is left that the blessing will somehow be financial--for their obedience to a command that any idiot can see doesn't actually exist insults the intelligence of a ten-year-old.

At any rate, we have this situation: we have churches that were built and staffed back when the population was growing and personal income was high, that now do not draw percentages of neighborhood residents similar to what they once did, and even if they did, most of those residents are either retirees on relatively small and fixed incomes, or they are younger families who moved into the neighborhood specifically because the older homes there were cheaper--in other words, nobody in the neighborhood has big bucks, many, if not most of them, are hard-pressed financially, and yet we keep trying to operate those churches and to evangelize on the very mistaken assumption that all good Christians will give ten percent of their income to the church, when any idiot reading the Scriptures can see that such a command just isn't there, and ten percent of the "not much" in those neighborhoods might not be as much as our ministerial models would like to think anyway!

That's why I asked, back at the beginning, how much of a staff a congregation that averages two hundred in attendance (at best) can realistically support. When we were running five or six hundred, perhaps it made sense to have a full-time preacher, a full-time music minister, a full-time Sunday School minister, two secretaries, and a maintenance guy (and maybe more). But now? What's the point in suggesting to a financially limited and much smaller congregation that they aren't doing what they are supposed to do, when they can't possibly support a staff like that? Doesn't it make sense the staff be cut back to a level commensurate with the congregation's size instead? Doesn't it make sense to operate on the assumption that what members you do have will give what people on average actually give? Why continually operate as though the fact that a congregation of two hundred cannot do ministry on the same level as a congregation of six hundred means that the smaller congregation is somehow failing to do something the larger congregation did? That isn't the way it is, or was. The larger, richer congregation was the result of a unique confluence of demographics and economics, and may not ever be duplicated.

We can either change our assumptions and expectations, or we can teach people--perhaps, ironically, by immersion--how to clearly articulate the Gospel to strangers, and teach people how to manage their money, and how to give biblically--it's often called "grace giving," if you want to know. But that will take time--and a willingness to admit that despite having ostensibly been completed devoted to evangelism for decades, the reality is that we really only manage to successfully pass the Gospel on to our children, and some people don't even do that.

Some Bon Mots from Dennis Prager

Mr. Prager has several interesting things to say in this column:

...the God-based morality of the Declaration of Independence and all the Founders.

Yes, all the Founders. Even the so-called deists, while not theologically Christian, were ethical monotheists, i.e., strong affirmers of ethics rooted in the will of the Creator. As Steven Waldman, no conservative, writes in "Founding Faith," a book that has been praised by Left and Right, "Each felt religion was extremely important, at a minimum to encourage moral behavior and make the land safe for republican
government."

[snip]

Leftism functions as a secular religion, and its adherents understand that the major obstacle to the dominance of Leftist policies and values is traditional religion, specifically Christianity. With the demise of Christianity in Western Europe, Leftist ideas and values came to dominate that continent. America, the most religious industrialized democracy, remains the great exception.

[snip]

Leftism opposes America's three great values -- what I call the American Trinity...-- "E Pluribus Unum," "Liberty" and "In God We Trust." The Left uses diversity and multiculturalism to undermine E Pluribus Unum ("From Many, One"). It substitutes equality (of result) for liberty, and the powerful state for the powerful free individual. And it seeks, perhaps above all, to replace "In God We Trust" with a secular society and secular values.

[snip]

The Left tells us that non-Christians are offended by the government celebrating Good Friday. As a Jew, permit me to say that any non-Christian offended by Good Friday or Christmas gives new meaning to the word "narcissist." To seek to erase the name Good Friday is an exercise in self-centeredness and ingratitude that is jaw-dropping. We non-Christian Americans live in the freest society in human history; it was produced by people nearly every one of who celebrated Good Friday, and we have the gall to want to rename it?

[snip]

Most Americans will characterize the Davenport attempt to rename Good Friday "Spring Holiday" as Political Correctness. That it is. But the term itself is Politically Correct. Like everything PC, the term itself hides its true meaning, which is Leftism. Political Correctness is invariably produced by the Left. The term, therefore, should not be PC; it should be OTL, "Offends the Left."

One of the most galling things about the way the Left deals with Christianity is its habit of saying the most moronically uninformed and ignorant things about it. Leftists get their ideas about Christianity from a mutually-reinforcing group of Christianity's critics and the Westboro Baptist Church, and hardly ever bother to actually read the Bible or anything decent defending Christianity. More often than not, they sound embarrassingly ignorant on the subject and aren't even aware of it. Then they have the unmitigated gall to act as though a country whose founding laws and documents are thoroughly rooted in Biblical ideas and whose founders explicitly said that they were counting on the religious character of the people--that being overwhelmingly Christianity at the time--has somehow moved beyond the faith that shepherded it into being.

Listen to Pat

Again, Pat Buchanan is not right about everything. But if you miss the lesson he's teaching in this column--well, it's an important lesson. C'mon, read the whole thing.

Ethnonationalism, that relentless drive of peoples to secede and dwell apart, to establish their own nation-state, where their faith is predominant, their language spoken, their heroes and history revered, and they rule to the exclusion of all others, is rampant.

[snip]

In speaking of the rising tribalism abroad, Schlesinger added, "The ethnic upsurge in America, far from being unique, partakes of the global fever."

Friends and neighbors, I am the last person to say that ethnic differences cannot be overcome. They can. My own ancestry is largely Irish, but we have Choctaw blood, too. My nephew is part Jewish. My children are part Mexican. Some of the people I like seeing most every week are the Mexican immigrants in the ESL (English as a Second Language) class I teach. The head of the karate system I study, RyuTe, is an Okinawan immigrant. I do believe in the "melting pot" concept.

But (you knew the "but" was coming) for the "melting pot" to work, something has to provide the "heat." There has to be something, some overriding thing in common, that overcomes ethnicity and cultural division. I submit to you that a more-or-less common religious faith--and Christianity was once professed by the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of this country--is the best candidate, followed closely by a burning desire for liberty, liberty having its strongest foundation in the view of man and God to be found in the Scriptures. For many decades, we had a more-or-less homogeneously Christian, government-phobic, liberty-loving population. That is sufficient to make the "melting pot" concept work. But now? Though the majority of Americans profess to be Christian, polling them on the details reveals that most don't quite understand the basics of the Christian faith and fewer and fewer attend church services or show other signs of a living Christian faith. More and more Americans have gradually been lured onto the government teat in one way or another and are loath to give up what they mistakenly perceive as security in exchange for more liberty. We are rapidly losing the very things that made the "melting pot" work, and it seems to me that the day is coming when this nation might very well fragment. It might not be within my lifetime (though it wouldn't shock me if it were), but unless things change soon, I think it is coming.

Paul's Valley, OK, the Broken Arrow of my Childhood, and the Culture War

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The notes for this post were written a few months ago, just before the end of October, I think. Almost forgot about them.

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I was in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma today, and found myself, as I went through their downtown, which is very attractively paved with brick, wishing that I had allowed enough time to take pictures. It is really quite a picturesque little downtown, very much like so many of the small-town downtowns I've seen all over Oklahoma, filled with buildings, many nicely maintained, that are clearly eighty, ninety, even a hundred years old.

As I drove through the town and gradually became aware that it was somewhat larger than I had first thought, something began to tug at my memory. A little while later, as I passed Stevenson's BBQ and got a good whiff of one of God's finest gifts, hickory smoke, I realized what it was.

"This," I thought, "is about what Broken Arrow was like when I was a kid."

And then I immediately thought of A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and then I felt a little sad.

I will explain.

I am 47 years old, born in 1962. I was born, to my everlasting regret and embarrassment, in an Arkansas military hospital, and then spent about the first year of my life in Paris, France. We spent a short time in Wisconsin, then came back to Oklahoma, where my family--on both sides--has lived since before The War of Northern Aggression. First, in a little green house, then in a red brick one, the address of which, believe it or not, I can still remember. Both were in Broken Arrow. I have memories of going to school in Broken Arrow, and of playing there, from the time I was about five 'til I was about eleven or twelve. I have a few vague memories of going to a Baptist church.

This was all 35-40 years ago, one biblical generation.

I remember playing all over the neighborhood, quite unsupervised, for hours on end. My mother sometimes wouldn't see me for hours. Everyone did that. Nobody thought anything of it. There was no fear.

I remember trick-or-treating. Yes, my parents checked the candy, but I don't think they really expected to find anything wrong.

I remember that you might see an occasional schoolyard fight, but nobody worried about weapons being used.

Everyone spoke English. You never heard anything else.

Most people--or at least a lot more people than now--went to church.

This was before LBJ's Great Society programs had time to create a permanent--and apparently permanently resentful--underclass, before our government managed to effectively destroy the black family as an institution.

This was before the Supreme Court manufactured a right to murder the unborn out of the "emanations and penumbras" of the Constitution.

This was before a radically changed immigration policy, a wide-open border, multiculturalist propaganda, and an almost continual assault on the idea of American exceptionalism combined to so erode and denigrate the country's common cultural basis as to bring it to the brink of balkanization and fill it with millions of illegal aliens, many of whom have no interest in assimilating into the dominant American culture.

This was before judges decided that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." actually meant that high-school valedictorians couldn't offer up graduation prayers in the name of Jesus.

This was when a TV Christmas special could actually quote Scripture saying that Christ is "Lord," and climax with a hymn that decares that through Him, God and sinners are reconciled.

This was before policies of "free trade" and profligate spending stagnated working Americans' real wages.

In short, the Broken Arrow of my childhood looked much like the America portrayed in those two Charlie Brown TV specials. No, it wasn't perfect. Yes, it needed to change some things. Overall, though, it was a pretty good place.

Some of you disparage the idea of a "culture war."' Perhaps that's because you don't quite get or are too young to remember just how massively different this country was only a generation ago (A biblical generation, that is, generally held to be about forty years). I think there is a culture war. I don't see how anyone could doubt it, not when they've witnessed, over three or four decades, their culture gradually becoming a casualty. I still don't see what the dickens was so bad about it, that some people felt the need to do their best to bust it all to pieces.

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Just as an aside, I can't help but repeat a few of Ted Kennedy's quotes vis-a-vis that now long-ago immigration act:

First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.... It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.

Sure, Ted. Sure.

And now that I've noted that, I have to include my standard disclaimer: No, I do not have anything against immigrants, not from anywhere in the world, as long as they come here legally and desire to become Americans.

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A Rather Nice Li'l Quote That'll Drive Some Folks 'Round the Bend

I was flipping through my copy of Original Intent and came across this passage, and thought it'd be worth sharing:

As the war prolonged, the shortage of Bibles remained a problem. Consequently, Robert Aitken, publisher of The Pennsylvania Magazine, petitioned Congress on January 21, 1781, for permission to print the Bibles on his presses here in America rather than import them. He pointed out to Congress that his bible would be "a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools." Congress approved his request and appointed a committee of James Duane, Thomas McKean, and John Witherspoon to oversee the project.

[snip]

On September 12, 1782, the full Congress approved that Bible which soon began rolling off the presses. Printed in the front of that Bible (the first English-language Bible ever printed in America) was the Congressional endorsement:

Whereupon, Resolved, That the United States in Congress assembled...recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.

Of this event, one early historian observed:

Who, in view of this fact, will call in question the assertion that this is a Bible nation? Who will charge the government with indifference to religion when the first Congress of the States assumed all the rights and performed all the duties of a Bible Society long before such an institution had an existence in the world!

Who would do that? Sadly, there are rather a lot of people in this country who would sooner eat dirt than acknowledge that the principles of American government rest firmly on the Bible.

I Lack Passion?

Someone told me the other day that I wasn't passionate about anything.

I don't know about that. I'm sure it seems like it to some. But I think it's more a question of having pretty much come to my conclusions and settled on what I need to do.

I am pretty well convinced that at best, the United States is sliding toward European-style welfare statism and quite possibly balkanization. I really don't anticipate the situation turning around anytime soon. The only thing that could turn it around is another Great Awakening, I think.

One of the things I think I need to do is to do my best to situate myself and my descendants so that we'll be better able to ride out the next--What? Fifty years? A hundred? Who knows? Could be more than that.

We--Mrs. MOTW and I, that is--have pretty much all the material things we really need and can use. Not that there aren't little odds and ends, but truthfully, all we need is to pay off the house and improve and maintain our property so that hopefully, our children can sell the house and split the proceeds when we croak. We've got to maintain, if at all possible, our health and mentality so that we are as little a burden as possible in our old age. And we've got to finish educating and preparing the kids, not merely to make a living, but to help prepare their descendants.

The other thing I think I need to do is to do my best to pass on what I can, what I know, of the Gospel, of the thinking that lies at the roots of any government that genuinely respects and protects man's rights, and the things that have proven practically useful to me or are likely to prove useful to my descendants and others of like mind. That's part of the purpose of this blog. It's true that I also use this blog to vent, but nevertheless, knowing that nothing ever really dies on the internet, I'm in hopes that some people, somewhere, sometime, will find some of these scribblings useful.

There'll be other things I try to pass on, stuff that will not appear in this blog. Sorry. I can't share everything in this forum. But I will share the introduction to a multi-generational project very soon.

Those things are long-term. All the short-term goals pretty much relate to the long-term goals in one way or another.

I suppose this mindset might seem passionless to some. It's not, not really. It's just that I'm more oriented, now, to situating self and family for the long haul. It's a mindset that calls more for steadily glowing coals of thought than for white-hot thinking.

Ideas don't, I think, ever really die. One day, the ideas behind the American Revolution, behind the Constitution, will likely experience a genuine reflowering. And when that day arrives, whether it is, by God's grace, near at hand, or a long time from now, the MOTW family will be ready.

Buchanan's Diagnosis and the MOTW Prescription

Pat Buchanan saith this morning:

Referring to the white working-class voters in the industrial towns decimated by job losses, Obama said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Yet, we had seen these folks before. They were Perotistas in 1992, opposed NAFTA in 1993 and blocked the Bush-Kennedy McCain amnesty in 2007.

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.

They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.

They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

To which rather a lot of people are saying, "Amen, and amen."

As I have noted repeatedly, I do not have a particularly big axe to grind when it comes to race (see my thoughts on the subject here); I am far more interested in what a person thinks than in his quantity of melanin. But I am old enough to know that Buchanan is right; this country has undergone an enormous demographic change since I was a child. I was born in 1962. Immigration law was changed, courtesy of "The Swimmer," in the mid-60s. When I was a child, the country was about ten percent black, and everyone else that you saw in Oklahoma was either white or Native American or a mixture of the two (as am I, at least a wee bit). You rarely saw Latinos.

Now, to reiterate, since I know beyond any shadow ever cast by any doubt, that some will take what I am saying here and try to make it out as though I hate brown people, there's not a darn thing in the world wrong with Latinos. I served with many in the USMC Reserve; my wife is half-Mexican by heritage, etc. All I am trying to point out is that prior to those immigration reforms and the flood of immigration, both legal and illegal, but especially illegal, there was a greater degree of cultural homogeneity than there is today. The most graphic illustration of the point is the presence of bilingual labels on darn near everything you buy. When I was a child and a teenager, no one even thought of such a thing. It was completely unnecessary. By the time I had become a young adult, you occasionally saw a bilingual label, and it was the object of mockery. Now--it is de rigeur.

We have carried a desire for diversity and tolerance to the point where we are being threatened with balkanization and civil strife. We have, out of a desire for "fairness," (you can make Americans absolutely hose themselves by accusing them of being "unfair," so highly do they prize the concept of fairness), allowed what is, historically, overwhelmingly the dominant faith of the land, the faith whose precepts and concepts undergird our conception of man's rights and our system of government, to be marginalized and sometimes even ostracized. A misplaced faith in "free trade" (again, not the same thing at all as "free markets") has resulted in the mass exportation of our manufacturing capacity (and this is actually cheered by fools who have never so much as operated a lathe and have no idea how much mental and physical labor is involved, and how impossible it would be to rebuild our manufacturing base on short notice, should war, for example, ever make it necessary). The brainless idea that we can spend poverty out of existence has created only more poverty and a wave of seriously bad attitudes on the part of people we are allegedly trying to help.

Now, what to do?

Knowing perfectly well that there is not a snowball's chance of this ever actually happening, this is what I suggest needs to happen. Here, for what it's worth, is the MOTW prescription:

1) America's Christians need to quit excusing themselves from talking about their faith on the grounds that they're afraid they might "screw it up" or "drive somebody away," which is the excuse I am continually hearing. All you have to do is read your Bible consistently, go to church and serve in church consistently, and talk about your spiritual life as consistently as you talk about your interest in NASCAR. Not that hard. I am constantly amazed at our situation. I just got the latest CBD catalog in the mail yesterday, and this country is awash in Bibles, study Bibles, Bible studies, commentaries, and the like, and yet nobody feels confident enough about what they believe to speak up and talk about it. What rubbish. Quit making excuses and open your mouths. I say again: America's fundamental political precepts are drawn from a Christian heritage. You will not see a renaissance of constitutional government in this country without first seeing Christianity again becoming the overwhelmingly dominant faith in the land. It matters not whether your Christian brothers and sisters are White, Black, Latino, Mestizo, Indian, or Asian--not as long as you preach and teach the Gospel. It is the Gospel, and the ideas it carries along with it, that are important. Those ideas underly what it means to be an American.

2) Trim or eliminate income taxes and replace them with consumption taxes, that is, with tariffs or--better yet--the Fair Tax. The bottom line is that you must create a tax advantage to manufacturing in this country and quit punishing success.

3) One of those tariffs needs to be on imported oil. It must be cheaper to drill here than to import oil. We have plenty of oil and coal. We have the technology to burn coal cleanly. Every year I read of more discoveries of oil locked up somewhere in this country. It may be in oil shale or oil sands (sometimes not) or offshore, but we have plenty of dadgum oil. We can be energy independent, and energy independence, in turn, will greatly diminish the capacity of jihadis to wage war, since waging war takes money, and, sad to say, it is our payments for foreign oil that indirectly supply the jihadis with money!

Need I add the obvious, that the Federal government needs to get out of the way of the drilling?

4) Congress must execute or get off the pot, so to speak. They either need to declare war in the places our troops are committed, or they need to cut off funding. That is Congress's job.

5) We have to give up the idea of nation-building in Islamic countries. Islam and totalitarianism go together, as I have said repeatedly, like peanut butter and jelly. You will never succeed in remaking Dar al Islam into a series of representative governments. Our objective, vis-a-vis the War on Terror, has to be to keep jihadis off-balance, on the defensive, on the run, deprived of leaders and of resources (see point no. 3).

6) We have to secure our borders. The much-discussed fence is a must. We have to end all the things that make this country attractive to illegal aliens. No more public money spent on illegals. Employers must be required to verify that their employees are in the country legally. Illegals, once caught, must be deported. Congress must clarify, in law, not subject to judicial review (they have this power), that babies born in this country to illegal aliens are not citizens. People that have immigrated legally must be encouraged and assisted to fully assimilate. There must be an end to "chain immigration," as well. We should allow, or not allow, immigration on the basis of whether or not the citizens of this country benefit from it.

7) Federal spending must be drawn back to objects allowed to it in the Constitution--which will immediately result in an end to entitlement spending, obviously. This should not be a problem if point 2 is enacted; the projection is that the first year the Fair Tax is in place, the economy will grow by about ten percent, so jobs should be plentiful and if point 1 is carried out, America's churches can fulfill their historic role of helping the genuinely needy, starting with those in their own congregations.

8) We must drop any military commitments overseas that have outlived their usefulness to us. Last time I read anything on the subject, the United States has multiple treaty commitments to go to war on behalf of other nations should they be attacked, whether our interests are at stake or not. We have, I believe, troops or military obligations in some seven-hundred-plus places around the world. This is madness. US troops should be used for defending the United States.

9) Missile defense, aka "Star Wars," has to be a priority. If points 2, 7, and 8 are carried out, there should be more than enough money to make this work even better than it has so far.

Hmmmm. I guess that's enough for one day. I've probably already offended half the known universe. And you can see why I don't bother running for office.

Pat Buchanan Echoes My Own Sense of the Situation

He saith, emphasis mine:

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others' throats.

One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.

There's much more; I recommend reading the whole column, as well as his excellent Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed are Tearing America Apart.

To my mind, for a nation to remain to united, to remain a nation, there has to be something that most people within it hold in common. The United States used to have that. As John Jay wrote in Federalist No. 2, we were, emphasis mine:

...one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...

I have seen people from widely disparate backgrounds come together and function beautifully, pulling together in perfect harmony, all confessing one another to be brothers of a sort. Those who haven't experienced it will laugh to hear it, but that was my experience of the United States Marine Corps. People from all racial and economic backgrounds came together, and they worked together beautifully, in my opinion, because they all had something in common, a powerful idea, the idea of the United States as a place where liberty was held in high esteem.

I am firmly convinced to this minute that, as diverse as this country is, it is yet possible for it to be united by a powerful idea. Having the same ancestors and the same customs is not as important as having the same important idea. And there are powerful ideas available: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the idea of God-given unalienable rights. But the church in this country has, for the most part, forgotten how to do apologetics and evangelism, we have failed to make the case for man's rights having their origin in the will of God, and our failure in this is likely to usher in a decades-long period where the idea of rights given by God, rights not granted by man and therefore not legitimately denied by man, is on the decline.

I'm very much afraid that the United States, if it survives the next few decades at all, will be quite unrecognizable.

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For a somewhat different take on Mr. Buchanan's column, see this post over at Oklahoma Lefty

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