Chuck Colson talks about the latest trend among the apostate, or wanna-be apostates out there: getting a certificate of “de-baptism.”
There’s a bizarre trend going on in Great Britain. Former church members are getting “de-baptized.” As Time magazine reports, “More than 100,000 former Christians have downloaded ‘certificates of de-baptism’ in a bid to publicly renounce the faith.”
Now, there have always been people who have walked away from their faith. But what’s behind this public display? And why are so many downloading an apostasy certificate?
John Piper can never be accused of not being thoughtful, so it’s interesting to hear why he’s tweeting.
Dangers, dangers everywhere. Yes. But it seems to us that aggressive efforts to saturate a media with the supremacy of God, the truth of Scripture, the glory of Christ, the joy of the gospel, the insanity of sin, and the radical nature of Christian living is a good choice for some Christians. Not all. Everyone should abstain from some of these media. For example, we don’t have a television.
When the chickens come home to roost as they eventually do it’s a safe bet that you don’t want to be sitting under the roost. So, I’m cringing as I think about how our debt habit is finally starting to hurt us in ways that really count. What’s going to get cut? Who’s going to get hurt? And will we learn the larger lesson about the borrower being the servant to the lender?
There’s lots of misery to go around, apparently.
Courthouses: Will the Derby courthouse close? Local businesses would suffer, other courthouses which already lack space would have to pick up the slack. (story)
Nursing Homes: “Representatives for Connecticut’s nursing homes are warning that budget cuts proposed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the legislature’s Democratic leaders could cost thousands of jobs at facilities across the state, and might plunge currently stable facilities for the elderly into financial peril.” (story)
It’s not only the State of course, but towns are varied as Greenwich and Hartford that are seeking ways to cut expenditures, raise taxes or both.
In today’s Courant, Dave Altimari has a good background piece explaining the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport’s lawsuit against the State of Connecticut.
In March, more than 4,000 Catholics descended on the Capitol to protest Bill 1098, which proposed having lay councils of seven to 13 people oversee the finances of local parishes, relegating Catholic pastors and bishops to an advisory role.
Church officials were sharply critical of the bill and organized the rally and, on their website, asked parishioners to contact their local legislators to protest the plan.
The bill was eventually withdrawn amid questions about its constitutionality.
But the issue did not end there. About a month later, church officials received a letter from the Office of State Ethics informing them that they were the “subject of an Office of State Ethics evaluation” to ascertain whether the diocese had violated state statutes by failing to register as a lobbyist before the rally.
In the letter, Thomas K. Jones, an ethics enforcement officer, said that the evaluation was only preliminary and did not necessarily mean that a formal complaint would be filed against the church.
Jones said that the diocese was being investigated for possible violations of three state statutes — failing to register as a lobbyist, failing to submit all appropriate lobbyist filings and failing to follow all applicable registration procedures.
We’re alarmed by the State action and can’t see why the Catholic Church or any church body would need to register as a lobbyist before urging its constituents to act as… well, citizens!
“The Diocese is not a registered lobbyist and does not devote itself primarily to legislative or political matters,” Bishop Lori continued. “Nonetheless, from time to time, the Diocese’s religious mission compels me and the pastors within the Diocese to take stands, consistent with our religious beliefs, on legislation that concerns the moral issues of the day, and to urge our parishioners to act on the basis of Church teachings. We communicate these messages to our parishioners through the Diocese’s website, in newsletters, at Mass and other religious services, and through a variety of other means.”
That’s very well stated in our opinion. Nothing could be more natural than a religious organization providing religious guidance to its adherents who pose moral and ethical questions to the religious organization.
Must churches keep silent on anything the State defines as political? The history of the 20th century shows that such a policy is a major building block of any tyrannical system.
The alarmingly clear-thinking Mark Steyn wants us to wake up, and fast, skewering us for becoming Europeans:
Every Democrat running for election tells you they want to do this or that “for the children.” If America really wanted to do something “for the children,” it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a leviathan of bloated bureaucracy and unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. That’s the real “war on children” (to use another Democrat catchphrase)—and every time you bulk up the budget you make it less and less likely they’ll win it.
Conservatives often talk about “small government,” which, in a sense, is framing the issue in leftist terms: they’re for big government. But small government gives you big freedoms—and big government leaves you with very little freedom. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher—and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline.
On the Internet, people can say anything about anybody. Sadly, and to our shame, this is often true even in Christian circles.
From time to time we receive comments about professing Christians which, were I to publish them, would subject me to a lawsuit for slander. I do not doubt that many such writers and commentators are sincere in their desire to see the Lord’s Bride be a pure Church “without spot or wrinkle.” However, this will never justify us publicizing things about others which may not be true and of which even the commenter has no personal knowledge – especially where it concerns a person’s character. I ask my commenting friends to examine themselves and ask: who called them to remove the spots and wrinkles?
I agree that the Lord’s command not to judge lest we be judged has been perverted at times and even used as a cloak for sin. Nevertheless, this does not invalidate His command or other Biblical counsel about judging righteous judgment, and not judging others before we hear what they have to say.
For these reasons, I do not wish to publish comments which slander other Christians, hold them up to contempt or allege ungodly deeds on their part, particularly on hearsay evidence. It is not right. If you wish to make such assertions you are free to do so on your own blog. But considering the words of Christ, do it at your own risk.
I’m happy to see that John Rankin is blogging more actively these days. John is the President of the Theological Education Institute (a great resource) and is one of the smartest – and nicest – people you are likely to meet in Christian circles in Connecticut. He’s done a great work in explaining the Gospel and engaging in “pre-evangelism” with people often thought to be too hostile to approach, appealing to the image of God and the foundational elements for all societies laid out in Genesis.
John’s debates and dialogues with nonbelievers on college campuses and other forums always make for compelling (and instructive) reading, as seen in this account from the Theological Education Institute website:
…we are all created in the image of God; we are the crown of his creation. In grasping this reality, we come to understand a common ground that is truly universal.
At a debate in April 1989, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, I spontaneously articulated some elements of the image of God. I was questioned about the issue of rape and incest. A young woman believed that the right to have an abortion should be available to those who became pregnant by such a violent act.
I began to frame my response by looking directly at her and saying: “In your life, are you like me, seeking the qualities of peace, order, stability and hope?” As I spoke these words, I had her eyeball-to-eyeball attention, and the hundreds of students and faculty in the Sayles auditorium came to a hush. The century old seats, bolted to the floor, always creaking at the slightest movement, also ceased their chatter, producing a moment of intense focus. She said, “Yes.”
I then said, “Is it also fair for me to assume, that like me, you also seek to live, to love, to laugh and to learn?” Again, the same focus of intensity defined the audience, the seats unmoving, and again she said, “Yes.”
So I continued, “Then there is far more that unites us than divides us – we are seeking the same qualities. The question is, in the face of the hell of rape and incest, does abortion unrape the woman and restore to her the lost qualities of peace, order, stability and hope? Or does the abortion only add further brokenness?”
The room continued its quiet, and I could have left the issue there. I knew that the resonation with the image of God, as represented by these qualities, was so complete in that moment that most students and faculty could answer the question themselves and deduce from there the reality I was addressing.
Thirty-six years into this quiet holocaust even the blind are now coming to see that society has been drinking hemlock in the guise of champagne. America and the West have been toasting themselves and congratulating themselves on being rid of the old god and his inability to appreciate our desire to have a good time. And so our vocabulary becomes ever more clinical, our discourse ever more shallow. Political enemies are routinely and flippantly demonized as Nazis, as the West ironically continues to absorb and inculcate to its young the Nazi ethos nearly in its entirety. Moral relativism, utilitarianism and depersonalization have written DNR on our collective chart.
No better epitaph could be written than that penned by Paul 1,950 years ago:
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
I hope we continue to pray against this scourge of abortion even after the attention it receives in January fades away.
Biting like the winter chill that brought the mercury down to -7 F here in Western Connecticut the other morning, Demographic Winter – the coming population collapse – is hitting Connecticut. We’ve written about this before (see post here) and we agree with those who say that the entire developed world is headed for disruptive declines in population. Of course, this runs counter to the expectations of those who were schooled in the 60’s and 70’s, who were inculcated with a strong belief in the threat of world overpopulation. However, factors such as the legalization of abortion, the popularization of homosexuality, and the delay of marriage have created a disastrous decline in the fertility rate. In many nations, women are bearing children at a rate which isn’t even sufficient to maintain the existing population, much less to increase it or create a “population explosion.”
As a little thought will suggest, this wave will hit the so-called “blue states” and thoroughly secularized nations first and hardest. So I was interested to see a frank discussion of this (hat tip: WoodstockTruth.com) from none other than the Connecticut State Data Center. In a remarkable document, it seems that the State Data Center has even adopted the rhetoric of those concerned about Demographic Winter, issuing a press release entitled “Where Have All the Children Gone?“ This document should be read and clearly understood by all. If the State school enrollement peaked last year and is going to decline 17% by 2020 – not so far away – what does this say about the viability of our State economy and institutions? In other words, if you think taxes will go up and services be cut this year, just wait!
The press release says:
Orlando Rodriguez, Demographer and Manager of CtSDC, states:
“We have been expecting this downward enrollment trend to begin. The leading edge of Baby Boomers are approaching retirement and the trailing edge of their children have aged beyond K to 12 schooling.”
In Connecticut, the public school population, grades 1 to 12, peaked at approximately 523,100 in the 2003/4 and 2004/5 school years. This population dropped to approximately 516,400 in the just completed 2007/8 school year. CtSDC projects that this population will continue to decline, reaching a low of approximately 432,300 in 2020. This is a loss of approximately 90,800, or 17%, from the highs of 2003/4 and 2004/5.
Low fertility rates are the root cause of this decline. The Boomer generation, now approaching retirement, had fewer children than their parents. Thus the size of the “Echo Boom” generation, the children of Boomers, is smaller than that of the Boomers. In effect, Boomers did not replace their own generation. Looking forward, Echo Boomers are expected to have lower fertility rates than their parents thereby exacerbating the projected decline. Each progressive generation is failing to replace itself.
It is unlikely that the enrollment peaks of 2003/4 and 2004/5 will return. Connecticut has some of the lowest fertility rates, across all ethnic groups, in the country. Foreign in-migration is too low to offset a long-persistent pattern of domestic out-migration. Indeed, Connecticut’s population is skirting negative growth with only foreign in-migrants keeping the population numbers afloat. (Emphasis in the original.)
This is alarming. The anti-life, anti-marriage, anti-fertility doctrines of the secular left do have consequences, consequences which we are only beginning to see but which will undoubtedly cause great hardship and something else, too: a diminution of the joy within society as we become ever more childless.
See a fuller report on enrollment projections here.
