While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School since its inception in 1988 — Dr. Timothy George. He has been instrumental in shaping its character and mission. He teaches church history and doctrine at Beeson and also serves as executive editor for Christianity Today, and on the editorial advisory boards of The Harvard Theological Review, Christian History and Books & Culture. Dr. George has written more than 20 books and regularly contributes to scholarly journals. An ordained minister, he has been pastor of churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Denise, have two adult children.

A number of people have asked me to comment on the Manhattan Declaration which I drafted along with my brother in Christ, Professor Robert George of Princeton University and our dear friend, Mr. Charles W. Colson of Prison Fellowship. At the launching of the Manhattan Declaration on November 20, 2009, I wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post which you can read here. Here are a few additional comments:

WHAT IT IS: The Manhattan Declaration is a statement of Christian conscience, a confession of religious conviction supported by followers of Jesus Christ from the Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical families of faith. The Declaration addresses three of the most pressing issues in our culture today: the sanctity of life, the dignity of marriage, and religious liberty for all persons. These are not the only issues Christians are called to care about but they are threshold issues related to everything else we believe and do. Because these three matters are increasingly under assault in our society today, we feel compelled to speak out in their defense. In doing so, we desire to stand in solidarity with all persons of goodwill for the sake of justice and the common good and on behalf of the most vulnerable members of our community.

WHAT IT IS NOT: The Manhattan Declaration is not a statement of partisan loyalty or political posturing. It cuts across political as well as denominational lines and has garnered support from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. The Manhattan Declaration represents an ecumenism of conviction, not an ecumenism of accommodation. While we acknowledge many ecclesial and theological differences among ourselves, we believe that our unity in Christ is sufficiently strong for us to stand together and speak out together on behalf of the least, the last, and the lost.

WHAT TO DO NOW: I encourage you to read the Manhattan Declaration, and if it resonates with your own convictions, endorse it. Our hope would be that we would have up to a million signatories who will want to stand with us. Already, in just a few short days, we are nearly one-third of the way toward that goal. The response to the Manhattan Declaration has far exceeded anything that Chuck Colson, Robert George, and I expected. We see this as a moving of the Spirit in our times. This is an important time for all Christians to come together, stand together and make clear what our convictions are. May the Lord continue to use this statement for the upbuilding of his Kingdom to the praise of his glory.

HOW TO SIGN: Go to www.manhattandeclaration.org for information on how to endorse the Manhattan Declaration.

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School since its inception in 1988 — Dr. Timothy George. He has been instrumental in shaping its character and mission. He teaches church history and doctrine at Beeson and also serves as executive editor for Christianity Today, and on the editorial advisory boards of The Harvard Theological Review, Christian History and Books & Culture. Dr. George has written more than 20 books and regularly contributes to scholarly journals. An ordained minister, he has been pastor of churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Denise, have two adult children.

I first met Jerry Falwell in the hot summer of 1968—yes, that summer of race riots, war protests, and assassinations. But the turbulence of the times seemed far away as I boarded a Greyhound bus in my hometown of Chattanooga and headed for a week long preaching assignment at Treasure Island Youth Camp, a summer ministry for underprivileged children run by Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg.

I was a recent high school graduate, a flaming youth evangelist, and this was the big time for me. Each week the church brought in a noted speaker to preach to the several hundred young people—white and black—who flocked to the island camp in the middle of the James River. I was flattered to be squeezed in between Bob Harrington, the flamboyant “Chaplain of Bourbon Street” and Lester Roloff, an austere Texas evangelist known for not eating catfish or anything else condemned in the Old Testament.

I was a Southern Baptist and Brother Jerry, as we called him back then, was somewhat skittish about folks of my ilk. No doubt, he feared that some of the reputed liberalism in the SBC might have rubbed off on me. When he heard me speak, though, he seemed relieved to know that his young people would be getting a genuine hot Gospel message that week.

Jerry had just received an honorary doctor’s degree from Tennessee Temple University and was already a well known figure in fundamentalist Baptist circles. He had begun Thomas Road twelve years earlier with just thirty-five members. By the time I arrived in Lynchburg, the church had grown to several thousand members. There was a home for unwed mothers, a center for recovering alcoholics, and a fledgling radio and television ministry as well as the youth camp I had come to preach at. Liberty University would not be founded for another three years and the Moral Majority was more than a decade in the future. I remember Brother Jerry as a warm, winsome preacher of the Gospel, a pastor who smiled a lot and had a compassionate heart for all kinds of people, especially for the down and outers.

Jerry Falwell was an unlikely choice to become one of the most recognized faces and one of the most influential clergymen of the twentieth century. Born in Lynchburg on August 11, 1933, he came from a respectable, hard-working family but not one known for its religious pedigree. His father had once been a bootlegger and disliked preachers of all sorts. His grandfather had been a committed atheist. Falwell himself was first awakened to the Gospel message by listening to the sonorous voice of Charles E. Fuller and his “Old Fashioned Revival Hour” which was aired across America on the Mutual Broadcasting Network.  Jerry’s “Old-Time Gospel Hour” program was a thinly veiled imitation, though eventually Falwell would master the media and reach millions more than Fuller could ever have dreamed of.

Falwell himself became a Christian at age eighteen through the preaching of a minister named Paul F. Donnelson who had been led to Christ by his missionary father Fred Donnelson who, in turn, had been led to Christ by the famous evangelist Billy Sunday. Sensing a call to preach the Gospel, Jerry attended Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri where he studied hard, played basketball, and taught a Sunday School class of 11-year-old boys. There, his commitment to the verities of Baptist fundamentalism was deepened. At Springfield, he also came to know some of the great leaders of the Independent Baptist movement including John Rawlings and B. R. Lakin, both of whom became his lifelong mentors. The speaker at Jerry’s graduation from BBC was Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.

Jerry was 34 when I met him in 1968. He was still in transition from the kind of baptistic sectarianism represented by William Bell Riley, J. Frank Norris, and Lee Roberson, on whose shoulders he stood, to the broader public theology he would come to embrace over the next two decades. But even then there was something really special about Jerry Falwell. Though he was no intellectual, he did respect the life of the mind and wanted Christians to be culturally literate as well as biblically informed. Already he had “that vision thing,” as Bush 41 would call the ability to envisage a reconfigured future and inspire others to work with you to make it a reality. Jerry Falwell was a horizonal leader. At a time when fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals were best known for Gospel puppeteering, Sunday School bus-ins, and sawdust revivalism, Jerry redefined the Christian calling in terms of activism, moral concern and social outreach. In so doing he helped many of his fellow believers recover a heritage that was in danger of being eclipsed.

In 1947, five years before Jerry’s conversion, Carl F. H. Henry had sounded the trumpet of evangelical engagement with his Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Early on Falwell had been wary of the evangelical entanglements Henry, Billy Graham, and others promoted.  In a 1965 sermon called “Ministers and Marches,” which he later repudiated, Jerry also opposed the civil rights activism of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Christian’s place is in the prayer room, not on the picket line, he said. Pastors should stay out of politics and stick to the pulpit. However, by the time the Moral Majority was born in 1979, Falwell publicly had repented of the racism of his segregationist past. He had also come out of the closet of evangelical privatism and had begun to rally his fellow believers for a moral crusade that would change the face of American politics.

What changed Jerry Falwell? No doubt, he tapped into the reservoir of resentment and rage felt by many conservative Christians in America during the sixties as the traditional values they cherished seemed to be eroding on every hand. But, by his own account, it was the Supreme Court’s 1973 abortion ruling that galvanized Falwell into action. Baptists like Falwell were notorious for opposing vices like smoking, drinking, and gambling, all matters handled at the private or local community level. It was the Presbyterian apologist, Francis Schaeffer, who helped Jerry to see the wider social implications of the abortion issue and who lent moral support to Falwell’s “Wake Up, America” crusade. In 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was first elected president, Jerry wrote, “As a preacher of the Gospel, I not only believe in prayer and preaching, I also believe in good citizenship. Americans must no longer linger in ignorance and apathy. We cannot be silent about the sins that are destroying this nation.”

Falwell entered the political arena with the same abandon with which he made his famous bungee jump a few years ago. The consequences were enormous, contributing to the second great demographic realignment in twentieth-century American politics. The first was the rush of African Americans to join FDR’s Democratic coalition in the 1930’s. The second was the move of many conservative Christians into Republican ranks. Without Falwell’s activism, it is doubtful that he would have lived to witness, shortly before he died, the 5-4 Supreme Court decision restricting partial birth abortions.

But there were losses as well, as Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, both former Falwell protégés, have pointed out. By identifying Christian concerns so exclusively with one party, does the church face the danger of becoming a mere pawn of partisan politics? Do pastors lose a prophetic voice in speaking to a broader range of moral issues, not only abortion and homosexuality but also systemic poverty, concern for the environment, and many more?  Early twentieth-century liberals identified the Christian message with the “social Gospel” of the day, and in time their message became all social and no Gospel. Jerry would have done well to have pondered that historic example while not backing away from the moral leadership he did provide with courage and civility.

Larry King was once asked whether he liked Jerry Falwell and he confessed that it was hard to dislike someone who was so likable. There were certainly those who could do so. Upon hearing of Jerry’s death, Christopher Hitchens, one of Falwell’s God-despising secularist critics, referred to him as “a little toad” and lamented that there was no hell for him to go to.  Falwell made good target practice for the abortion and pornography lobbies, and other predictable opponents on the left. But he had his detractors on the right as well—his former fellow-travelers among the fundamentalists who considered him apostate, and many evangelicals who winced when his views were equated by the media with theirs.

Jerry could pontificate with the best of them and some of his statements were uproarious, outrageous, and just plain stupid. After 9-11 he singled out pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians, the ACLU, and other assorted groups on the left, blaming them for the vicious attacks in New York and Washington. These were hurtful and divisive comments and I wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal saying that Jerry should have known better. I also said that I thought Jerry was better than his reckless rhetoric implied. He was, and he later apologized for those remarks.

In recent years, I had few contacts with Falwell. However, a few weeks before he died, one of my colleagues here at Beeson spoke at Liberty and Jerry sent back a warm personal greeting to me. I wrote him back just a few days before he died recalling our first meeting years ago and the encouragement he gave to a young preacher at Treasure Island. The Jerry I remember poured his life into countless young people across the years and I will always be grateful that I was one of them.

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School since its inception in 1988 — Dr. Timothy George. He has been instrumental in shaping its character and mission. He teaches church history and doctrine at Beeson and also serves as executive editor for Christianity Today, and on the editorial advisory boards of The Harvard Theological Review, Christian History and Books & Culture. Dr. George has written more than 20 books and regularly contributes to scholarly journals. An ordained minister, he has been pastor of churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Denise, have two adult children.

September 11, 2001, is frequently compared to December 7, 1941, as a day that will “live in infamy.”  But a more appropriate analogy might be August 24, 410, when the city of Rome was besieged and pillaged by an army of 40,000 “barbarians”  led by the Osama Bin Laden of late antiquity, a wily warrior named Alaric. One can still see the effects of this cataclysmic event when walking through the ruins of the Roman Forum today. The Basilica Aemilia was the Wall Street of ancient Rome, a beautiful structure in the Forum with a marble portico. One can still see the green stains of copper coins melted into the stone from the conflagrations set by Alaric and his marauders.

Before then, Roman coins bore the legend Invicta Roma Aeterna: eternal, unconquerable Rome. It had been more than 800 years since the Eternal City had fallen to an enemy’s attack. In many ways, Rome was like America prior to 9/11, the world’s only superpower. But in 410, Rome’s military power could not prevent its walls being breached, its women raped, and its sacred precincts burned and sacked.

Responding to those who said Rome fell as the gods’ punishment against the Christians who had recently expelled the pagan deities, Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in North Africa, began writing The City of God, a “great and laborious work,” as he called it. Augustine completed the book shortly before his death in 430. For 1,500 years, it has been the bedrock of a Christian philosophy of history.

Between the conversion of Constantine in 312 and the conversion of Augustine in 386, the Christian movement had been transformed from a small, persecuted sect into a tolerated, then legally recognized, and finally officially established religion within the Roman Empire. While there were many benefits that came with this transformation, including the fact that Christians were no longer routinely hauled into the arena or fed to hungry lions, there was a downside as well.

Within a few generations, those who had once been persecuted became persecutors. For the first time, Christians had to think about what it means to follow Jesus Christ while also participating in civil governance. What does it mean to wage a just war? Can followers of a Palestinian peasant who declined to call armies of angels to deliver him from physical assault now sanction violence against heretics and recalcitrant pagans in his name?

Eusebius of Caesarea, the biographer of Constantine, had hailed the emperor as the 13th apostle and acclaimed his conversion in utopian terms. Nearly a century later, Augustine realized that such hopes were as misplaced as they had been premature. As wealthy refugees from Rome began to stream into Hippo with their horror stories of Alaric’s acts—temples burned, women raped, citizens forced to flee for their lives—Augustine reminded his hearers that the City of God in its pilgrimage here on earth was not exempt from the ravages of time, that it was ever marked “by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labors, and dangerous temptations.”

With the assumptions of “Christendom”  shaken again today by the forces of terror, Augustine teaches us that we must not equate any political entity—whether it be the Roman Empire, the American republic, the United Nations, or anything else—with the kingdom of God. Islam proclaims an undifferentiated understanding of the human community (ummah), whereas Christianity, especially in the Augustinian perspective, requires a proper respect for the complementary but clearly distinguishable roles of church and civil authority.

Whenever this distinction is forgotten or minimized, the Christian faith is in danger of being politicized and the state idolized. When this happens, religious liberty invariably gets trampled. The danger of being co-opted by forces inimical to the gospel is not limited to one political party or ideology. It can arise from any point along the political spectrum, from the raucous right, the loony left, or the mushy middle.

This is one side of the Augustinian equation, but there is another. Christians hold a double citizenship in this world. Like the apostle Paul—who could claim that his true political identity was in heaven (Phil. 3:20), but who also appealed to Caesar as a Roman citizen when his life was at stake—so believers in Christ live as sojourners, resident aliens, in a world of profound discontinuity and frequently contested loyalty.

Jean Bethke Elshtain summarizes the counsel Augustine gives to believers beset by such fears and hopes: “Resisting altogether any notion of earthly perfection, Augustine offers instead a complex moral map that creates space for loyalty and love and care, as well as for a chastened form of civic virtue.” The key word here, chastened, calls for a posture of engagement that acknowledges, in the words of the old gospel hymn, “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through,” while at the same time working with all our might to love our neighbors as ourselves and to seek justice and peace as we carry out what Augustine called “our business within this common mortal life.”

How can Christians balance these commitments in a world of violence and fear? On October 22, 1939, C. S. Lewis preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford. Less than two months earlier, Hitler had invaded Poland. Britain was about to face the horrible Nazi onslaught. This is what Lewis told the assembled students:

It may seem odd for us to carry on classes, to go about our academic routine in the midst of a great war. What is the use of beginning when there is so little chance of finishing? How can we study Latin, geography, algebra in a time like this? Aren’t we just fiddling while Rome burns?

This impending war has taught us some important things. Life is short. The world is fragile. All of us are vulnerable, but we are here because this is our calling. Our lives are rooted not only in time, but also in eternity, and the life of learning, humbly offered to God, is its own reward. It is one of the appointed approaches to the divine reality and the divine beauty, which we shall hereafter enjoy in heaven, and which we are called to display even now amidst the brokenness all around us.

That is our calling, too, amidst the brokenness—including the threat of terrorism—all around us. We are to be faithful to God’s calling, to bear witness to the beauty, the light, and the divine reality that we shall forever enjoy in heaven. We are to do this in a culture that seems, at times, like Augustine’s, a crumbling world beset by dangers we cannot predict.

As Augustine aged, he increasingly thought of the world, its politics, culture, and institutions, as a tottering old man whose days were numbered: “You are surprised that the world is losing its grip? That the world is grown old? Don’t hold onto the old man, the world; don’t refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you: ‘The world is passing away; the world is losing its grip; the world is short of breath. Don’t fear, your youth shall be renewed as an eagle.’”

As Augustine lay dying in 430, a new wave of terror swept across the Mediterranean world. The Vandals, led by a ferocious warrior named Genseric, surrounded Hippo—bringing torture, violence, and disarray to its churches and its people. As Augustine chanted the psalms on his deathbed, he might have come across this verse in Psalm 31:21: “Blessed be to the Lord, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.”

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School since its inception in 1988 — Dr. Timothy George. He has been instrumental in shaping its character and mission. He teaches church history and doctrine at Beeson and also serves as executive editor for Christianity Today, and on the editorial advisory boards of The Harvard Theological Review, Christian History and Books & Culture. Dr. George has written more than 20 books and regularly contributes to scholarly journals. An ordained minister, he has been pastor of churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Denise, have two adult children.

Though Abraham Lincoln was never baptized nor joined a church of any kind, he was the most spiritually minded president in American history. His faith was wrought on the anvil of anguish, both personal and national, and because of this and he has much to teach us in our own age of anxiety.

Some historians interpret Lincoln as a proto-secularist not only because he never professed Christian faith in a public way but also because he made a number of skeptical comments about Christian teaching in his early years. But it’s well to remember that even great people of faith, including Mother Teresa, experience dark nights of the soul. John Calvin once said that all true faith was tinged by doubt.

When accused of being a scoffer, Lincoln said that he had never denied the truth of the Scriptures, nor shown intentional disrespect for any Christian denomination. In the midst of the Civil War, when Lincoln was told that the Methodist church had sent more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to heaven than any other church, he replied: “God bless the Methodist Episcopal church! Bless all the churches! And blessed be God, who in this our trial giveth us the churches.”

So why did he never join a church himself? Two reasons. First, he was offended by the religious rivalry and braggadocio of the frontier preachers of his day. None of them made a compelling case to his lawyerly mind that only one denomination was right, and all the others wrong. Further, Lincoln was reticent, “the most shut-mouthed man I know,” as his law partner William Herndon said. He did not want to cross the thin line between sincerity and self-righteousness. There was nothing smug about Lincoln’s faith.

Lincoln’s great achievement was to see the terrible times through which he lived in the context of God’s providential purposes. He referred to America as the almost-chosen nation, and came to see himself as a “chosen instrument in the hands of the Almighty.” His firm belief that God is concerned for history and reveals his will in it drew on the wisdom of the Hebrew prophets, and the teachings of the New Testament refracted through the tradition of St. Augustine, and the Calvinistic Baptists among whom he grew up. Though he read Voltaire as a young man, he had no interest in a deist God who dumbly peers down on human struggles. The God of Lincoln meets us, in judgment and mercy, and in the crucible of suffering that shapes the destiny of us all.

Lincoln also held in uneasy equipoise two other cardinal teachings of the Christian tradition: the inherent dignity of every person made in the image of God, and the corporate character of original sin. His abhorrence of slavery was rooted in the former; his disdain for utopian solutions to social problems grew out of the latter. Thus he was hated by secessionists and abolitionists alike.

The tragedy of slavery and the Civil War would not be resolved, Lincoln thought, by appealing to human goodness, but by calling the nation to repentance and prayer. On nine separate occasions during the forty-nine months of his presidency, Lincoln called his fellow citizens to humble themselves before God in public penitence, prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving. His great Second Inaugural has been called “a prayer of confession for the whole nation.”

After the death of his beloved son Willie in 1862, the burdens of his office became intolerable and he sought solace in the faith of the Bible he loved and knew so well. “I have been driven to my knees many times by the realization that I had nowhere else to go,” he said.

He and his wife Mary rented a pew at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, a short walk from the White House, and here Lincoln listened to the sermons of the Princeton-trained pastor. During special prayer services he would often sit in a side chamber lest he draw attention to himself in the congregation. Here he placed himself and his nation in the hands of God seeking justice, imploring mercy, needing grace.

On March 4, 1865, six weeks before he was assassinated, Lincoln presented his Second Inaugural. Frederick Douglass said that it sounded “more like a sermon than a state paper.” With the Civil War practically won, Lincoln refused to be vindictive. He knew that the evil of slavery, rooted so deeply in the South, had also been supported by business interests in the North. The purposes of the Living God could not be equated with the sectional ambitions of either side but transcended them both. By refusing to idolize the North or demonize the South, Lincoln called the entire country to its true vocation—one nation under God. Quoting the psalmist, Lincoln said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9 KJV).

Two hundred years after Lincoln was born in a rough-timbered cabin in Kentucky, America still longs for “a new birth of freedom.” In times of economic collapse, international uncertainty, of war, suffering, and terrorism, the faith of Abraham Lincoln can help us as a people act with courage and hope.  Lincoln’s belief in the Bible, his reliance on prayer, his humility and acknowledgement of God’s providential design in the tumult of history, and his call for national repentance and thanksgiving beckon us forward now as then.

The words chiseled in stone in the Lincoln Memorial are still a creed for us to live by: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School since its inception in 1988 — Dr. Timothy George. He has been instrumental in shaping its character and mission. He teaches church history and doctrine at Beeson and also serves as executive editor for Christianity Today, and on the editorial advisory boards of The Harvard Theological Review, Christian History and Books & Culture. Dr. George has written more than 20 books and regularly contributes to scholarly journals. An ordained minister, he has been pastor of churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Massachusetts. He and his wife, Denise, have two adult children.

Both Billy Graham and Rick Warren are ordained ministers in the Southern Baptist Convention, but their ecumenical import and stature as worldwide ambassadors for Christ have far exceeded their early success as a brash youth evangelist and a colorful church planter. From his base at Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, Warren has garnered great influence as a bestselling author, a crusader against AIDS, and one of the most winsome representatives of the evangelical community in America today. Rick Warren is the new Billy Graham.

This is why Barack Obama invited Warren to offer the prayer of invocation at his presidential inauguration. By any standard, it was a model prayer extolling the virtues of humility, integrity, and generosity and asking for God’s blessings on our new national leader. But then he spoiled all this, some say, by offering his prayer in Jesus’ name, and in four languages at that—Jesus, Jésus, Yeshua, and Isa. This was not the ceremonially correct thing to do, many said, even though Warren made clear that his invocation of Jesus was an expression of personal witness: “I humbly ask this in the name of the One who changed my life.”

Why do some Christians believe it is important to pray in Jesus’ name in public as well as in private? Several years ago I was invited to offer an invocation at a gathering of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, all concerned about issues in the Middle East. My prayer was “ecumenical” in that I thanked God for the many blessings that have flown into the human community from these three faith traditions, but I did end the prayer, as I always do, in the name of Jesus. The Muslims seemed to be all right with this (after all, they say “Praise be upon him” every time the name of Muhammad is mentioned), but one of the Jewish participants—more toward the secular, humanistic end of the spectrum—objected strongly. He complimented the content of my prayer but said he felt uncomfortable and excluded because I concluded my invocation in a uniquely Christian form.

I told him that I was sorry for his discomfort, for that was certainly not my intention. But in interfaith discussions and in public gatherings where prayers are given, it seems more genuine to offer such prayers according to the distinctive rubrics of one’s own faith tradition. I am not sure what the practice is at Harvard Divinity School these days, but, when I was a student there years ago, we prayed together in accordance with the deeply held convictions we each brought to that moment of worship, without any diminution of respect for one another. This reflected a genuine spirit of pluralism where nearly every tradition imaginable, from Buddhism to the Salvation Army, was represented in the student body.

Of course, there are ways for Christians to get around the awkwardness of praying in Jesus’  name in such settings. We can simply say “Amen,” and breathe “in Jesus’ name” silently, under our breath as it were. We can lamely offer our prayer “in your name,” as though God (or we) were confused about who he really is. Or we can try what Robert Jensen calls “syntactically impossible pronominal neologisms,”  such as “Godself,” or blander still, appeal to the deconstructed deity invoked by the Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson at the Lincoln Memorial inauguration service: “O God of our many understandings.” Of course, the sovereign Lord can hear and even answer prayers offered in this way, and no doubt he does. It is another question altogether whether Christian ministers should sidestep the scandal of particularity in the interest of making people less uncomfortable.

This has become an issue in the military chaplaincy of late and chaplains are now encouraged “to use the more inclusive language of civic faith” when praying with religiously diverse audiences. Russell Moore points out the difficulty with this approach.

Perhaps it wouldn’t seem too much to ask a Catholic soldier to serve himself and his friends Mass since “bread is bread” and the Muslim chaplain to lead the troops in the rosary because “it’s just a prayer.” But that is too much to ask from the believer’s point of view. A Muslim who would speak of Mary as the Mother of God rejects the Qu’ran, and is just not a Muslim anymore. A Catholic Mass without a priest is just not a Catholic Mass. And a prayer to a “God” who is not clearly the Father of our Lord Jesus is not a Christian prayer.

What is called for, not only by chaplains but all believers who dare to express their faith outside the confines of their mosque, synagogue, or church, is sensitivity without compromise. A few years ago a prominent church leader made a stupid and arrogant statement when he declared, “Almighty God does not hear the prayer of a Jew!” Taken at face value, this statement raises all kinds of questions: What is wrong with the Lord’s auditory capacities? Has God gone partially deaf? Could he not hear the prayers of the Jewish Messiah Jesus? The ugly tone of this statement led to religious sloganeering—a divisive pitting of “us good guys” against “them others.”

But there is another danger equally perilous, though more subtle, in our pluralistic postmodern culture: We may be seduced by a false ecumenism that relativizes all differences among faith perspectives and world religions. In reaction to the violence and distemper we see displayed in so-called fundamentalism (of whatever religious brand), many people are touting a kind of uncritical pluralism that would amalgamate divergent faith traditions into one homogenized whole.

Praying in Jesus’ name at a presidential inauguration is an expression of the free exercise of religion guaranteed to every American in the First Amendment. It no more violates the establishment clause than the fact of the president’s taking his oath of office on the Holy Bible (Abraham Lincoln’s King James Version, in Obama’s case), or the president’s concluding his oath with the words “so help me God.” The doctrine of nonpreferential accommodationism requires, of course, that Jews may invoke the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Muslims the words of Muhammad. It also means that an atheist president can be sworn in on The Humanist Manifesto, and that a Wiccan president can use a Ouija board. But it does not mean that Christians must hide their faith in the inner reserve of their private consciousness. Indeed, they must not do so. For Christians, religious faith is more than what one does with one’s solitude. It is a public declaration to all the world that Jesus Christ is Lord. The one who said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” was not crucified in private.

This article originally appeared as a January 30, 2009, entry of “On the Square” on the website of First Things (www.firstthings.com).

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is CrossPoint’s Minister to Students – Dave Snyder. Dave and his wife, Brooke, have one daughter, Eden, and have been at CrossPoint for just over 6 weeks. Dave enjoys reading, disc golf, and hanging with his sugar mama. You can find out more about Dave by following him on Twitter  - @DBoneSnyder.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Take just a few moments and count how many times “In Him” appears in the text above.  I’ll wait as you read and count.

How many did you find?  I counted 6 times that phrase was used in the text.  (I hope my counting was correct!) In who or what do we center our focus?  It appears to me that it can be very easy to take out the supreme position of Christ in our lives with substitutes.  Here is a list of things that rob me of what my focus should be.

1. In my control of things
2. In music
3. In worrying
4. In disc golf
5. In coffee (yup, had to confess that one)

What would be on your list?  Be honest with yourself today.  Christ redeemed us from the curse of our own depravity by absorbing the wrath aimed at us.  Christ placed us in a position to have perfect righteousness in eternity.  Christ has offered us unceasing joy in His intercession on our behalf.  In Him we should walk.  In Him, we should talk.  In Him, we should worship.

Look at your list again.  Read Ephesians 1:3-14 again.  What will be your focus today?  May it be…In Him.

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is CrossPoint’s Minister to Students – Dave Snyder. Dave and his wife, Brooke, have one daughter, Eden, and have been at CrossPoint for just over 6 weeks. Dave enjoys reading, disc golf, and hanging with his sugar mama. You can find out more about Dave by following him on Twitter  - @DBoneSnyder.

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people”

1 Timothy 2:1, ESV

Have you ever promised someone that you would pray for him or her?  Have you failed in that promise?  It seems the honest thing we should do as followers of Jesus is to either fulfill our commitment in intercession prayer or not make the promise to begin with.

For example, what if when someone asked for prayer, we replied with, “I really hurt for you, but I since I won’t remember your request, I can’t promise you I will pray.” What a horrible thing to say in church!  Well, at least it’s honest.  You see, we tend to treat prayer like a passing gesture instead of a divine privilege.  May this blog post today encourage you to pray…and really pray.

Paul wrote this verse with great passion to his young friend in regards to biblical worship.  1 Timothy 2 is immersed with a Spirit-led guideline for worship.  It should come to us at no surprise that prayer begins the section.

Without pure and honest prayer, how can we truly worship?  How can we believe and trust in the greatness of God if we refuse to speak to Him?  Friend, we have a divine privilege each day to enter into His presence through Christ, our Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5).

I believe it’s time we quit treating prayer like a nice comment or gesture and handle it with graceful privilege.  As the bride of Christ, let us pray for one another with sweet intercession.  May our prayers for our leaders not be for our selfish conclusions but rather God’s sovereign plans.  May our promises to pray for others not be forgotten.

Why did I write on this today?  Well, last night after the Wednesday night movie time with my students, I walked into the student center to grab a bottle of water.  As I was walking into the room, some students were circled together near the stage.  My intern was on the stage with a mic in his hand praying.  I grabbed the bottle of water quietly and proceeded to the door.  Right before my hand touched the door, I heard my name lifted up in prayer.  I stood near the door for almost a minute as my dear friend prayed for me.  The sweet intercession brought sweet peace to my soul as I drove home after a long day at the church.  I was prayed for that night.

Pray.  Pray for someone today.  Make a promise to pray for someone else…and really do it.

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is CrossPoint’s Minister to Students – Dave Snyder. Dave and his wife, Brooke, have one daughter, Eden, and have been at CrossPoint for just over 6 weeks. Dave enjoys reading, disc golf, and hanging with his sugar mama. You can find out more about Dave by following him on Twitter  - @DBoneSnyder.

My father-in-law loves this hymn.

My wife loves this hymn.

I love this hymn.

There is something that stirs within my soul when I sing of the cross. When I think about the price paid for the redemption of my soul, I’m moved to many emotions.

I believe we don’t sing enough of the cross in our day today lives. We don’t sing enough of the blood shed by our Redeemer. We don’t sing enough of the perfect atonement made for our sins. We, guilty sinners, have been made whole through the cross… what else would we want to sing about?

I find sometimes we sing and get consumed with things of this world that cannot bring us to God. We sing of love; but do we know of His love? We sing of joy; but do we have His joy? We sing of our needs; but are we satisfied in Him? I want to cling to the cross for I know through it, I was made righteous in the sight of the Holy Father through the death of His Holy Son.

Paul writes, “But may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world!” Can we write that with the same genuine passion that Paul carried with him throughout his life?

I love this verse. The word boast, kauchaomai (kow-khah’-om-ahee) has the idea to vaunt (in a good or a bad sense) — (make) boast, glory, joy, rejoice. What do we do this in/with?

I see in the south much boasting in college football. Can this boasting produce the fellowship we need with the Father?

I see many students boasting in their own selfish bubbles (facebook, myspace, texting, cheerleading, band, various sports, school clubs, etc.) Can this boasting produce within them the everlasting joy that we receive in Galatians 5:22?

I hope you will join me in never boasting about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus. May we join Augustus M. Toplady when he wrote in his hymn, Rock of Ages — “Nothing in my hand I bring; Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless, look to Thee for grace; Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Savior, or I die.”

Join me as I cherish the old rugged cross. Take time today and praise the Father for the grace that He displayed on the cross of His Son! May we boast in nothing more.

The Old Rugged Cross by George Bennard

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,The emblem of suffering and shame;And I love that old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,Till my trophies at last I lay down;I will cling to the old rugged cross,And exchange it some day for a crown. (chorus)

O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,Has a wondrous attraction for me;For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above To bear it to dark Calvary.

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,A wondrous beauty I see,For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,To pardon and sanctify me.

To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;Its shame and reproach gladly bear;Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,Where His glory forever I’ll share.

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is CrossPoint’s Minister to Students – Dave Snyder. Dave and his wife, Brooke, have one daughter, Eden, and have been at CrossPoint for just over 6 weeks. Dave enjoys reading, disc golf, and hanging with his sugar mama. You can find out more about Dave by following him on Twitter  - @DBoneSnyder.

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” – 1 Peter 2:2-3, ESV.

Today was a hot day.  Living near Birmingham, Alabama has exposed me to the reality that the summers are HOT.  Today, I had the privilege of attending a summer work out with one of the area high school football teams.  While I was standing on the practice field with my friend and coworker, Steve, I got hot.  Have you ever walked outside for just a few minutes and immediately felt the need for something to drink?  That was my day today.  Water never tasted better than after standing outside in the heat.

While I was driving back to my house, 1 Peter 2:2-3 came to mind.  I’ve learned more about God’s Word as a new father.  My 5/12 month old daughter continues to show and communicate to me the beautiful riches of the Gospel.  I started to think today about her.  She longs for much-needed nourishment daily.  Milk is not an option for her. It’s a necessity.  Without a healthy supply of milk, she will get weak.  She longs for milk in a way that makes it vital.  She craves it in a way that increases its importance.  I wonder if we crave the Word like a baby craving milk…would it radiate more worth to others?

We tend to ignore the riches of Scripture until convenient seasons.  When we are lonely, we may open it.  When we want to win a debate, we may study it.  When we want answers to our questions, we may invest time in it.  However, do we long and crave for it daily?  As His children, we need to long for His Word like a baby longs for needed nourishment.

It’s interesting to see that in the Greek understanding of “long” we get the word epipothēsate.  This word can mean, “to long, desire, or crave after.”  I like the idea of craving after the Word.  I like the idea that believers crave after His Word in a way that makes it go from being a head treasure to a heart treasure.  We tend to long and crave after things that don’t satisfy.  Isaiah 55 speaks a lot on that tendency.

Friend, it’s time to crave after what can eternally satisfy.  Is His Word good to you?  Have you tasted and seen that He is good? (Psalm 34:8).  Have you developed more taste buds for His Word? (1 Corinthians 3).  I pray you will start today with longing after what truly and eternally satisfies; His good Word.

While Ryan is away on vacation this July, we are having guest bloggers here at JustOneMore.info. This week’s guest is CrossPoint’s Minister to Students – Dave Snyder. Dave and his wife, Brooke, have one daughter, Eden, and have been at CrossPoint for just over 6 weeks. Dave enjoys reading, disc golf, and hanging with his sugar mama. You can find out more about Dave by following him on Twitter  - @DBoneSnyder.

This past Saturday, Brooke and I spent the afternoon looking for our new house in Alabama.  The search lasted several hours.  I’d love to inform you that the search reached a wonderful conclusion…but I can’t.  We are still searching.  The process for us will take even longer with our house in Georgia still on the market.

These times can be some of the most frustrating times for any family that is in the middle of transition.  Each house we stepped into yesterday had its pros and cons.

One house had everything Brooke wanted in one area, yet lacking in another.  One house had incredible curb appeal with the inside looking close to a college dorm room.  One house we toured had the owner in the house…with us…during the tour.  (Please make note; if you are trying to sell your home…DON’T STAY INSIDE WHILE OTHERS ARE LOOKING INTO BUYING).  The search will continue until we both find peace in the house that we will reside in.

During this transition time, I’ve been drawn to Philippians 3:12-21.  In this rich text, Paul writes to the church at Philippi with great joy over obtaining the goal of Christ.  What is the goal of your life?  To what goal do you invest the hours of the day?  What is the joy inside that goal?

For many, goals can be found in temporary pursuits like money, popularity, politics, etc.  These temporary pursuits will culminate into nothing but pointless vanity.  Friend, don’t waste your pursuits.  Paul gives us a much needed challenge in this text.  Take just a moment and read Philippians 3:12-21.  If you don’t have a bible with you, visit www.biblos.com for help.  I’ll wait.

Philippians 3:20 really jumps out at me.  Paul writes, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”  This verse has joined me here lately in the great Snyder house search.  This side of God’s blazing glory is only temporary.

In Christ, we have a permanent home waiting for us.  In Christ, we don’t have to search for this home.  In Christ, this home has searched for us!  In God’s amazing love and grace, He came to the world in the person of Christ to bring His children to their future home.

Friend, don’t waste your days in pointless pursuits for satisfaction that offers no eternal joy.  Where will your eternal citizenship be?  May you join me in living out the days not searching for temporary houses, but enjoying the blessing and peace of the future home in glory that awaits.