Paid Vacation

After working at the bookstore for over a year, I merited some vacation pay... a first for me. So, the first weekend of June, courtesy of a friend's frequent flier miles and superb hospitality, I flew out to Los Angeles. The first thing I did was drive to the nearest In-N-Out and enjoyed the best un-fastfood in the universe.

I really enjoyed the live performance of Prairie Home Companion at the Hollywood Bowl. The air was a bit crisp, but we had wine and cheese and performances by the Old Crow Medicine Show, among others. Phenomenal.

The rest of my time in LA was dinners and cookouts with old friends and new acquaintances. I'm generally not a fan of the westcoast, but I hated to leave.

Upon my return, I eased back into work by filling in for our community relations manager. I setup and enjoyed a local author discussion and signing with Catherine Rogers Arthur, curator of the Homewood House. Wish I could afford to attend the Evening of Traditional Beverages.

Top Worldwide Destination

Frommer's placed Charm City on its recent top 10 summer 2005 travel destinations.

(that's all. just wanted to brag.)

Intro To Transcendental Critique

Roy Clouser's The Myth of Religious Neutrality has recently appeared in a new revised edition by Notre Dame Press. This work is the best introduction to the foundation of Dooyeweerdianism available in the English language. I can't recommend it highly enough. See a comment on the first edition here.

Also, check out the Roy Clouser Pages. I particularly recommmend his article "Is God Eternal?".

Shameless Self-Promotion

If you haven't heard the news, I was recently accepted to a Masters program in philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam. I am tremendously excited about it, but the funding is still up in the air. Please consider an endorsement from Gideon Strauss, and pass it on to other possibly interested parties.

[Gideon is director of education and research at the Christian Labour Association of Canada; a senior fellow of the Work Research Foundation, and editor of Comment]

The Political Crux
or, secularist thought police in the public square

In his recent NYTimes BookReview back page essay Mark Lilla suggests that the ubiquitous preoccupation with public Christianity since W.'s re-election is "a media bubble, and like all bubbles it will burst." I don't doubt he is correct. But that certainly doesn't mean public Christianity is going away.

If (as I suspect) Lilla's views are fairly representative of secular academic would-be interlocutors with public Christianity in this country, the road ahead looks tedious. One hopes that Lilla's forthcoming book may provide a more enlightened analysis than his essay. There are so many things problematic with his understanding here. I might even call it propagandist schlock if I had the time to detail his confusion. But his main beef with public Christianity is, of course, that it doesn't play by his own ideological rules.

To Lilla's thinking, as to all secular fundamentalists', genuine pluralism is impermissible. Unless religionists drop their undemocratic fascination with the supernatural and adopt a modernistic theology, they are not welcome at the table. Lilla's hypocritical dogma is clear: when entering the public square, leave your faith at the door, or else you are neither sober or rational.

It's hard to say how long this sort of philosophical naivete will persist. But one thing is certain: a genuine civil society cannot be attained without cultivating intellectually critical habits of mind among so-called liberals. This was as true for Abraham Kuyper and J. Gresham Machen in their respective times as it is for us today.

NPR Takes Note... sorta'

In a recent series, NPR has been trying to get a handle on "Public Christianity." Of course they don't get it. As secular fundamentalists they have a core (religious) commitment to the myth of religious neutrality in public life.

I found the piece on Christian legal organizations interesting. The paranoia was palpable. They mentioned Mat Staver and the Liberty Counsel, Alan Sears and the Alliance Defence Fund, & Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice, but they failed to mention "the daddy" of Christian legal groups (and my favorite): John Whitehead and The Rutherford Institute. Neither did they mention the Christian Legal Society or the Christian Law Association. Happily, there are several more such groups out there.

German Reformed Liturgy Debates

For many years now the history of Reformed worship has been one of my "hobbies." Lately I've enjoyed reading Maxwell's Liturgical Lessons of Mercersburg. It's in dissertation format and type, but nonetheless a good read. And I noticed that D.G.Hart is coming out with a book on J.W.Nevin. I'll probably wait til it's out in paperback.

For more background on the RCUS and Mercersburg, see David Koyzis' posts of 7 Jul 03 and 8 Jul 03.

There's also a helpful comparative chart of various historical Reformed orders of worship on page 24 of the Ordained Servant, vol.3 no.3 [in PDF only].

Sex and Fraud

At the bookstore we often have small tables devoted to movie tie-ins. Such was the case with the somewhat recent film on Kinsey. I tried to order the book that debunks his research, but it was out of print. Kinsey: crimes & consequences and The Kinsey Corruption only recently came to my attention.

The Center for Public Justice has several valuable articles on the subject of homosexuality and public policy. Guidelines, Marriage On Trial, Sex and Race, Vermont, Skillen 1, 2, and 3.
See also my previous post on the topic.

Liberty Of Conscience

I haven't had the leisure to respond to certain objections to my post on Socinianism of 12 Dec. But the following comments address the issue further.

One of the implications of the fact that the church is obliged to teach God's Word with authority is "confessional communion." This is the view that church members who would be admitted to the Lord's Supper may not hold to doctrines which are contrary to what the church teaches as the Word of God. We can understand this view more clearly when we consider the biblical doctrine of "liberty of conscience."

The church must teach God's Word with authority, and it must teach God's Word alone. Everything other than the authoritative teaching of God's Word is the "doctrine of men." And God has left the consciences of believers free from whatever might be taught that is "in any thing contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith and worship."

Authoritative teaching of God's Word "is to be received with reverence and submission, not only for its agreement with the Word, but also for the power [whereby it is taught], as being an ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in His Word." And so, "because the power which God has ordained, and the liberty which Christ has purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another; they who, upon pretense of Christian liberty, oppose the church's lawful authority... resist the ordinance of God. And for their publishing of such opinions... as are contrary... to the known principles of Christianity, whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation; or to the power of godliness,... they may be lawfully called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the church."

The church is not at liberty to teach anything other than God's Word, and so believer's are free to disagree if anything else is taught. And because the church must teach the Word with authority, believers are not at liberty to disagree with its biblical teaching.

Lily On The Mountain

I am an uncle to a Lillian Grace Rees as of the 19th! Congratulations to my sister and bro-in-law, Amy & Jonny. I can't wait to see the beautiful kid in person.