Religion – Page 11 – Warren Throckmorton

Why Christian Nationalism is a Problem – Exhibit A: India

Yesterday, Terry Mattingly at Get Religion blog began a post about the NYTs coverage of India and Compassion International like this:

If you have followed news in India in recent years, you know that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party – commonly known as the BJP – has continued its efforts to promote “Hindutva,” or Hindu-ness, which essentially argues that Hinduism is an essential component of what it means to be a citizen of India.
Thus, it’s goal is to defeat secular pluralism and the recognition of a valid role for other faiths in public life. The side effect has, in many cases, been a crackdown on many of the activities of other faiths in India – especially ministries linked to foreign groups.

For discussion’s sake, let’s Americanize these observations:

If you have followed news in the United States in recent years, you know that the Republican party – commonly known as God’s Own Party (GOP) – has continued its efforts to promote “Christian nationalism,” or Christian-ness, which essentially argues that Christianity is an essential component of what it means to be a citizen of the USA.
Thus, it’s goal is to defeat secular pluralism and the recognition of a valid role for other faiths in public life. The side effect has, in many cases, been a crackdown on many of the activities of other faiths in the US – especially the construction of new mosques and activities of foreign groups.

If you read the NYT’s article, you will get some insight into conditions in India where Hindu nationalism appears to be on the rise. Christian journalist Mattingly properly locates opposition to Hindu nationalism in human rights. When the government or a political party takes sides in religion, eventually freedom of conscience suffers.
Christians don’t like these policies in other countries but seem to be oblivious to the same or similar rhetoric and actions here. We should oppose religious nationalism even when the perceived winner is our team.

Now Evangelicals Leaders Want to Preach the Gospel

Giddy with power, evangelicals leaders who brought us Donald Trump now want to turn the page on the nightmare that was the 2016 campaign. Greg Laurie started a call for Christians to ignore the bad news all around us with Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas, James Dobson and other Trump (and some never-Trumps) supporters signing on.

The Year of Good News
In a time of bad news, distracting news, divisive news, disorderly news, and, sometimes, depressing news we—as Christians and as leaders—want to recommit ourselves to making sure that the Good News of Jesus cuts through it all. We call upon Christians in America to make 2017 “The Year of Good News.”

The first month of the Trump administration has been chaotic with assaults on basic liberties, including religious freedom. After a year of telling people in the pews that they need to get involved in politics to elect Donald Trump, now these leaders are telling us we need to rise above politics.

Therefore, we commit to preach louder than our nation’s politics, and we aim to make the message of Jesus Christ transcend the monopoly of our media. We confess our only hope of unity is on the level ground at the foot of the cross of Jesus, and our only hope of healing is in the victory achieved through his empty tomb.

Reactions to the Religious News Service article about the effort are worth looking at.

I guess having the Executive branch of the US government working on your behalf and special interests would be good news to you. Not such good news for the rest of us citizens.
This doesn’t sound right: Fellow believers are to “make 2017 the ‘Year of Good News'” – why again? Let’s all proclaim “the Good News that God loved us so much He sent His Son to this earth on a rescue mission” – for what compelling reason? It’s all because of: “the monopoly of our media … fake news, distracting news, divisive news, disorderly news, and, sometimes, depressing news … the divisions and distractions dividing our nation and disorienting our culture … our political, racial, and cultural divisions”?! (Harvest Christian Fellowship, Feb. 28, 2017)
No, thanks, I don’t do it for political reasons, or out of political motivation – post-election time! Who do they think they are?!

Now I am waiting for these leaders to tell Trump that they don’t want the Johnson Amendment eliminated. If they are going to focus on the Gospel, then no need to intertwine the Gospel with politics is there?
So now that they won, they want the rest of us to ignore the consequences. I suppose I would too.
The initial signers:

Greg Laurie – Pastor, Harvest Christian Fellowship
Cathe Laurie – Speaker, Author
Franklin Graham – Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Al Mohler – President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Anne Graham Lotz – Author
James Dobson – Author, Family Talk with James Dobson
Jack Graham – Pastor, Prestonwood Church
Steve Gaines – President, Southern Baptist Convention
David Jeremiah – Pastor, Shadow Mountain Community Church
Chris Tomlin – Musician, Songwriter
Max Lucado – Author
Russell Moore – President, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
James MacDonald – Founder and Senior Pastor, Harvest Bible Chapel
George Wood – General Superintendent, Assemblies of God
Eric Metaxas – Author, Speaker, Radio Host
Kevin Ezell – President, North American Mission Board (NAMB)
Robert Morris – Pastor, Gateway Church
Ronnie Floyd – Senior Pastor, Cross Church
Joe Focht – Senior Pastor, Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia
Brian Brodersen – Senior Pastor, Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa
Joel Rosenberg – Author
Levi Lusko – Pastor, Fresh Life Church
OS Hawkins – President, Guidestone Financial Resources
Randy Alcorn – Author
Willie Jordan – Cofounder and President, Fred Jordan Missions
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez – President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Skip Heitzig – Founder and Senior Pastor, Calvary of Albuquerque

Doug Coe, Spiritual Leader of the Fellowship Foundation, Died Today

Late this afternoon, the family of Doug Coe shared with friends and associates that Doug Coe died today at the age of 88.

Dear friends and associates,
Because of how much you mean to our family, we wanted you to be among the first to be informed that Doug Coe, 88, passed today, Feb 21, 2017 at 4:20pm from complications following a heart attack and stroke. Despite our personal sadness, we have joy in knowing that he is now with Jesus and at peace. All for which he gave his life and tirelessly revealed to so many makes complete sense to him now. He is with family and friends who have gone on before, perhaps saying, “See, I told you…”

Coe was for many years the spiritual leader of the Fellowship Foundation, a non-profit organization that is best known for organizing and hosting the National Prayer Breakfast. Every president since Eisenhower has spoken at the event.

According to Coe’s and his family’s wishes, there will be a small memorial service.

Doug begged us not to make his passing about him, but rather continuously showed us how to make it about Jesus. We realize that our grief is more for us than him, so we will do a small memorial service only to say goodbye. He didn’t want a big affair. His wish was that this family of friends around the world would each gather with one or two in their small group in their own location at their next regularly scheduled time, and continue the prayer from Luke 10:2 that was his life focus.

Everywhere the Lord would allow him to go, Doug would pray to the Lord of the harvest “to raise up laborers, for the harvest is ready, but the laborers are few.” Continuing that prayer would be the highest tribute you could give to Doug, and we know you will be together with us in spirit as we bid him farewell in this earthly life until we are reunited with him one day in heaven for eternity.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests gifts “to the Doug Coe Memorial Fund. Checks may be made out to The International Foundation (memo: Account 501-000) and sent to The International Foundation, PO Box 23813, Washington DC, 20026.”

I met and interviewed Coe at the 2010 National Prayer Breakfast. The interview was later published in Christianity Today as one of only a handful of interviews Coe granted to writers throughout his career. He was a behind the scenes kind of person who cultivated relationships with world leaders and helped spread the prayer breakfast concept around the globe.

My connection to the Prayer Breakfast came as a consequence of my opposition to the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009. Ugandan members of the prayer breakfast movement had offered the bill much to the eventual consternation of the American members. I was allowed to interview Coe in part to record his opposition to the Ugandan bill in person.

Doug wrote to me after my open heart surgery in 2012 to let me know he prayed for me. I will always remember his personal warmth and genuine desire to make his life about following Jesus.

I feel sure that Doug will rest in peace.

UPDATE:
Christianity Today has a write up about Doug.

A. Larry Ross has been designated to handle any media questions. See also his detailed bio about Doug.

Tullian Tchividjian Posts Possible Book Excerpt at Expastors.com

At the expastors.com website an article appears under Tchividjian’s name (oddly with his name spelled incorrectly in the first line and image – How does that happen?) which promises a vulnerable look at the recent history of the troubled ex-pastor.

There was no mention of his recent remarriage in the expastors article.
Tchividjian reveals that he went through a suicidal period. It sounds like he is on the mend. Good for him and I wish him well.
In the comments section, there is a good deal of arguing back and forth about the nature of this article. Some are skeptical and others are angry. Some wonder if this is a part of the comeback prior to an upcoming book release with David C. Cook.
Many of my readers have shown interest in Tchividjian’s career and this seems to be an interesting turn of events.
Incidentally, the Churchill quote at the end is has not been found in Churchill’s written works.
UPDATE: 9/28/16 – Since I posted this yesterday, I have seen a text thread with an early draft of the expastors.com article. The material was circulated by Tchividjian to friends in March of this year (prior to his non-speaking speaking engagement at a CA church). You might recall that Tchividjian’s Liberate Network was revived and then abruptly closed down in March due to new revelations at the time. Apparently, this expastor.com article is a re-worked segment of an upcoming book, tentatively titled, Finding Grace in a Hopeless Place. The last paragraph in the March version reads:

This is a book about sin and grace, desperation and deliverance. This is a book about brokenness and the glorious fact that God’s grace runs downhill and meets us at the bottom in ways that we simply cannot know or experience when we’re at the top. This is a book about finding grace in a hopeless place.

The two documents aren’t identical but the latter appears to be a re-written version of the former. In the March text, this paragraph again falsely quotes Winston Churchill but does not mention a suicide note.

That admission takes suffering, crashing and burning, collapsing, a running out of our own steam. It takes being exposed—a real confrontation with ourselves that we fight to avoid, delay, push back, and mitigate at all costs. As one of my counselors told me early on, circumstances don’t create the condition of the heart. Rather, circumstances reveal the condition of the heart. And what was revealed to me about my heart in the fiery hotness of dire circumstances was scary and destructive. As Winston Churchill once said, “The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

From the expastors article:

The truth is, though, that we are very good lawyers when it comes to our own mistakes, but very good judges when it comes to the mistakes of others. As one of my counselors told me early on, circumstances don’t create the condition of the heart. Rather, circumstances reveal the condition of the heart. And what was revealed to me about my heart in the fiery hotness of dire circumstances was scary and destructive. This disgusting truth about myself (and the desperate aloneness that I felt because of it) made me want to commit suicide.

Tchividjian has attributed the “human heart” quote to Churchill before. Max Lucado just used the quote without attribution. It has been attributed to Adrian Rogers and Oswald Smith as well as Churchill. I can’t find any primary source for the quote.
Update: The inaccurate spelling of Tchividjian’s name has been corrected.

Robert Morris: God Needs Us to Pray So He Can Heal the Land

As noted earlier today, Gateway Church hosted The Gathering yesterday. Robert Morris is the founder and senior pastor of Gateway and kicked off the afternoon session with pastors. It appears that the attendance was modest, between 140-200 pastors. Watch:

Transcript:

Let me welcome you and let you know where we’re going today, and a couple of things like that, and how this all got started. I’m gonna share just for a moment, have an opening prayer, and then we’ll have one more worship song, and then Dr Tony Evans, who’s the head of the Executive Council, that we’ve called this together, this Solemn Assembly is going to-to bring a word to us. So just to let you know, we were praying and talking a few years ago about what we could do to bring our nation to God. We could say, ‘bring our nation back to God’ but I’m not sure our nation’s ever been totally to God. Huh-huh. But we want to bring our nation to Christ, and we know that.
And that’s the most important thing is for us to come before Him. And that scripture reading I was thinking about the “IF’S” and the “THENS” And y’know, the most famous verse, and so sometimes when a verse is well known, we tend to forget the “theo-pneustos” part of it, the God-breathed part. But it’s still God-breathed. And that’s 2nd Chronicles 7:14. “IF my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will – no doubt about it – I will hear from heaven. Will forgive their sins, and will heal their land.
So, a few years ago as we were meeting, we said, “You know, I think the best thing we could do to help our nation is pray. And let’s call a Solemn Assembly and ask people to come together and pray and so that happens tonight at Seven. We are completely full tonight plus overflow. And we are simulcasting to many other churches, and we welcome those of you who are joining us by simulcast.
But we also said, let’s gather the pastors and the leaders together in the day. And let’s have a prayer meeting before we have the Solemn Assembly at night. So that’s why we’re here.
I wanna tell you one thing that you wouldn’t normally say to pastors without having the time to explain it, but I wanna tell you something that-that’s not theologically correct, but it actually is, when I get around to it. You ever preached a sermon like that?
God needs us to do our part. And when the Lord told me that a few years ago, that He said, “I need you” I explained to Him why that’s not theologically correct. I went to Criswell Bible College but I know that’s not theologically correct, because God is self-existent, self-sufficient, and self-sustaining. And I said, Lord you don’t need anything, and he said, “I need you.” And then the Lord began to explain to me what He was saying. God decided to partner with us. And that’s where the IF and the THEN comes in.
You know, God parted the Red Sea, but Moses raised the rod up. I coulda done that. I coulda raised a rod up. That’s a natural thing. My part’s always natural. His part’s always supernatural. So what we’re gonna do today is we’re gonna do our part. And we’re gonna come before Him, and we’re gonna pray. And so I wanna ask you just to join me now, and let’s let this be that first opening prayer, and please agree with me, where two or three are gathered, let’s agree.
Lord, we come and agree that today can change something in our nation. God, we come and agree, Lord, that if we will pray, that-and seek your face, and turn from our wicked ways, that you will hear from heaven, no doubt about it. You will hear our prayer today. And you will forgive our sins, and you will heal our land, and we receive it today, in Jesus’ name, and everyone said, “Amen”.

As Tony Evans did after him, Robert Morris recited the incantation to get God to change his mind (2 Chronicles 7:14):

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Here I will repeat what I wrote about Tony Evans’ misuse of 2 Chronicles 7:14.

I have never understood why people mistake this as a promise to America. American citizens are not His people called by God’s name. This verse is not addressed to Americans. This verse is the second half of a sentence started in verse 13 and concerns the dedication of the Jewish temple led by King Solomon.

¹¹When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace, ¹²the Lord appeared to him at night and said:

“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.

¹³“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, ¹⁴if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. ¹⁵Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. ¹⁶I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.

God made an agreement with Solomon regarding Israel. On behalf of America, who made such a covenant?
This promise was made in a very specific way to Solomon about the very homogeneous Jewish nation. Despite a majority Christian population, there is no civil requirement to keep Christian morality. There is no civil requirement to even be a Christian to serve in government. It is very simple, these verses have nothing to do with us. We are not a new Israel.
There is nothing wrong with praying and repenting. However, a nation such as ours doesn’t do it, people do.

In the past, Morris’ needy god asked Morris’ permission to move The Kings’ University from California to the Southlake campus.