On the Coptic Martyrs: "We Will Not Be Lost"

Monday 2/23/15: Important information I became aware of since I posted this video below.  Fox News is reporting that the original video may not be real.  See HERE for story.  The video below may still be valuable in that it responds to a PR war.  Also, Mark Durie's analysis is still relevant because ISIS is attempting to say something even if using a faked video.

The 21 Coptic Christian men that were killed have become well-known around the world.  Brian Mattson recently posted a moving video that honors these martyrs and attempts to redeem the video made by ISIS.

For those who want an in-depth analysis of the original ISIS video be sure to see Mark Durie's analytic explanation--HERE.

Election 2012: Brian Mattson's Views

Brian Mattson continues to write in an insightful manner on politics.  Here are a few pieces from his fine essay entitled Random Notes on the 2012 U.S. Elections:

I admit that I get a bit irritated by Christians whose insta-reaction is to brush it all off, glibly posting Facebook updates that communicate, in effect: "It doesn't matter." Yes, in the ultimate, grand scheme of things, the God who will be openly vindicated at the end of time is in control and our political contortions are not of ultimate concern. But it does matter, nevertheless. The stuff in the middle matters: culture, the material world, real people, real problems matter, and they matter to God. The sting of defeat is not salved by Gnostic cliches.

I admit that I also get irritated by Christians whose insta-reaction is to interpret "Honor the King" as a mandate to engage in a big group hug and proclaim our love of Barack Obama and liberals. The title of this Russell Moore piece gave that impression to me, but I found its content very, very good anyway. I recommend reading it. We must be the political opposition, yes. But the loyal opposition.

....

I look at the electoral map and I see a sea of red and tiny pockets of blue. Those pockets of blue are major urban population centers, filled with young millennials bewitched by the mind-numbing, soothing language of Progressivism: tolerance, compassion, social justice, etc. They are persuaded by the likes of JayZ and Katy Perry, as depressing as that is. Politics is downstream from culture. We have a lot of work to do persuading these voters that a culture of life, strong civil society, free market enterprise, and the impartiality of justice (i.e., not identity politics) leads to human flourishing and Progressivism does not. We cannot simply assume they'll grow out of it as they get older. They may, and often do. But we need to be more proactive because these people obviously vote before their eventual enlightenment. I have some ideas of my own and I'm open to suggestions.

But these ultra-liberal urban centers are also filled with upper-income elites who seem utterly entrenched in political liberalism. What is so amazing about this is that these rich liberals are not engaging in free sex or aborting their babies (a major campaign pitch of the Obama campaign in the final days). They are getting married, staying married, and having kids. Yet they seem to think the Republic is at stake if those young millennials don't get free contraceptives or abortifacients. My point? Upper class liberals live more conservatively than they vote. This is a fact, and you can read all about it in Charles Murray's Coming Apart. We need to start persuading these people.

I look at these blue urban pockets and something else strikes me. How would these electoral areas look if large evangelical church pastors had not stubbornly refused for the past few decades to teach and preach anything politically related? I think of Tim Keller, of whom I have the greatest admiration. I believe he is under-serving his people in New York City if his teaching never translates into political matters. And he purposely makes sure it never translates into political matters. Upper income elites need to be encouraged to vote the values they actually live (by and large), and young millennials need to be encouraged to make the connections between the Christian Faith they get on Sunday and the ballot booth they enter on Tuesday. (I've written a book to do just that, by the way. Buy it now. More than ever. Give it to your children and all their friends.)

Theology and the Presidential Election

Dr. Brian Mattson has the text from a recent address he gave entitled: The Theological Stakes in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election over at his website.  In his address Dr. Mattson discusses the theological ramifications that flow from either a President Obama win or a Governor Romney win.  He begins by laying out some framework from which to reason on this issue:

How does one go about probing the “theological” stakes of a presidential election, much less any other cultural event? Where do we start? I have developed my own rubric or framework for evaluating such things, and it begins with God. I lay this out in my book, Politics & Evangelical Theology, and I will summarize it for you. At its root, I seek to ground our political evaluations in what God has told us about himself. For this is our preeminent creaturely task. Reformed theologians, particularly from the Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition, call this “Thinking God’s thoughts after him.” For my taste, that is a bit narrowly intellectual for a general rule, with slightly too much emphasis on “thoughts” and “thinking.” My own version is simpler and more down-to-earth: As creatures made in the image and likeness of God, we must seek to love what God loves. Love comprehends more than just our intellects; it tells us not just of an object of apprehension, some nugget of truth we should know, but also an object of affection and desire. “Love” is a more well-rounded term than “thinking,” which is why I prefer “loving what God loves” to “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”

In and of himself, as the Triune being, God is love. If this is so, his revelation of himself has to be a revelation of what he loves. When it comes to the distinctly political questions facing our nation and culture, I find three of God’s loves particularly significant. God loves people. God loves prosperity. And God loves justice. In those three categories I believe I have captured all of the great relevant political questions of our time. That God loves people means something for issues of the dignity and value of human life and sexual well-being. That God loves prosperity means something for economics, wealth creation, and helping the poor. That God loves justice means something for our earthly systems of justice, foreign and domestic.

Dr. Mattson goes on to assess President Obama in relation to these categories of  people, prosperity, and justice.  His comments, although brief, are well worth reading.  In coming to assess Governor Romney the theological ramifications are also worth noting.  Dr. Mattson writes:

It is a happy coincidence that when it comes to public policy issues, the worldview of Mitt Romney contains substantial overlap with that of orthodox Christian teaching. This is partly due to the fact that Mormonism is a uniquely American folk-religion of the 19th century. The American values promoted by Joseph Smith were therefore 19th century American values, a time when human life, prosperity, and justice were far more informed by the Christian worldview than they are today.

Mitt Romney is therefore pro-life, pro-marriage (thankfully the 20th rather than 19th century Mormon version), pro-economic freedom, against partiality before the law and various race and class quotas, and he seems to believe in that old-fashioned distinction between good and evil. They do not seem for him to be relative terms.

But his election to the office of President presents its own set of theological problems, and I think it wise that we face them squarely. I have in mind this: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has wanted nothing more than to be culturally included as a respected and legitimate branch of orthodox Christendom, and having one of their own as the President of the United States will go a very long way to achieving this aim. This will present a theological and cultural challenge for orthodox Christianity, especially since we might, frankly, agree with a President Romney on many things.

As a Christian theologian I believe we must resist the mainstreaming of Mormonism. In other words, I believe we must join in common cause with Romney on many political issues, but the ground of our agreement needs to be kept crystal clear. There is, as I said, substantial overlap between the cultural views of Mormonism and orthodox Christianity. The word “overlap” suggests that we must not conflate the two. The theological ground for Mormonism’s views of people, prosperity, and justice is, frankly, the imagination of a 19th century religious fanatic who happened to land on some truthful things. The ground for orthodox Christianity’s views of people, prosperity, and justice is the Word of the Living, Triune God, revealed to us infallibly in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

I believe we need to resist the inexorable slide into “conventional wisdom.” Let me give an example. We can see already even in the conservative political movement a certain conventional wisdom that homosexuality is a perfectly legitimate lifestyle choice. Oh, yes, the National Review set might agree with us on the issue of the definition of marriage, but it is fast becoming conventional wisdom that opposing homosexual conduct itself is bigoted and beyond the pale. I foresee something similar with respect to Mormonism. With the election of Mitt Romney, Mormonism will be well on its way to becoming legitimate and sacrosanct, insulated from critique. It will soon be considered bigoted and out-of-bounds in polite society to oppose Mormonism as antithetical to orthodox Christianity. I do not know of an easy solution to this coming problem. But I do know we need to be able, as an aphorism has it, to walk and chew gum at the same time, maintaining our substantial overlapping agreement on many issues while simultaneously making clear our foundational theological divergences. If we fail to do this we will be damaging the true Church of Jesus Christ, inviting cultural confusion, and ultimately harming the message of the gospel. This will be the foremost theological consequence of a Romney presidency, and we must be prepared for it.

These are important words for evangelicals in the days ahead should Governor Romney be elected president.  Already the evangelical church is downplaying the differences between Mormonism and orthodox Christianity and this trend will only become more pronounced with a Romney presidency.  

Christian Foundations of the Social Order

Brain Mattson has a great essay over at First Things entitled "Why Conservatism Needs the Religious Right."  Here are few quotations to whet the appetite:

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat likewise observes that secularism hasn’t given up on religious ideology at all. It relies on metaphysical notions bequeathed by earlier generations. “The more purely secular liberalism has become,” he concludes, “the more it has spent down its Christian inheritance.” Elsewhere, he elaborates:

I don’t think that many humanists actually do have strong reasons for their hopes regarding human dignity and human rights. I think that they have prejudices and assumptions and biases, handed down as an inheritance from two millennia of Christian culture, which retain a certain amount of force even though given purely materialistic premises about mankind and the universe they don’t actually make much sense at all.

Italian philosopher and statesman Marcello Pera argues similarly in his book, Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies. Classical liberalism, he concludes, is ideologically underwritten by Christian ideas about human dignity and purpose. The purportedly secular public square has succeeded for so long because it has a presupposed ideological consensus about those ideas, even if we have naively papered over their Christian origins. Religion—deeply held, pre-critical normative convictions—is not optional. It is inescapable.

For those familiar with the thought of Cornelius Van Til, Mattson's essay will be familiar territory.