The One Campaign, an advocacy group formed by international relief agencies that is promoting greater U.S. spending on foreign aid, has drawn support from prominent evangelical Christians and a pack of celebrities including U2’s Bono. But Anthony Bradley observes that the campaign, with its focus on greater governmental action rather than personal sacrifice, “promotes a depersonalized and sterile form of help characteristic of the secular appeal to radical individualism.”

Read more on The Free and Easy Charity of the ‘One Campaign’…

For its All-American Council in Toronto next month, the Orthodox Church in America has issued a study paper on its relations with sister Orthodox churches and the wider ecumenical community. While the paper is advertised as nothing more than "fodder for deliberations," it nonetheless makes a strong recommendation for cutting the ties with the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Chiefly, the OCA notes that this pull-out makes sense in light of the "liberal advocacy role" of the ecumenists.

Read more on Orthodox Pulling out of NCC?…

The Magna Carta

On this day, 790 years ago, the rule of law was affirmed in Britain. On June 15, 1215, King John of England signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede. Viewed as the basis of English common law, which greatly influenced the foundations of American society and government, the Magna Carta recognized a law greater than the will of the king. As Winston Churchill spoke of “a law which is above the King and which even he must not break,” Lord Acton too said similarly, “Socrates taught a law independent of the state and superior to it.”

Read more on Affirming the Rule of Law…

You scored as Reformed Evangelical. You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God’s Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die.

Read more on What’s Your Theological Worldview?…

A quote from a speaker at the CRC’s Synod 2005, endorsing the Micah Challenge and the ONE Campaign.

He also intimated that churches could never hope to match the $40 billion pledged recently to cut aid debt for African nations.

Read more on ‘Civil Society…is Never Enough’…

After SpaceShipOne was awarded the Ansari X Prize last year, Paul G. Allen became "the best-known member of a growing club of high-tech thrillionaires, including the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who find themselves with money enough to fulfill their childhood fascination with space," reports John Schwartz in today’s New York Times.

Read more on The New Space Capitalists…

A contentious energy bill passed by the House is scheduled to be taken up by the Senate today. House Republicans are calling for swift passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but some Senators are threatening to put off a vote until their concerns about offshore oil drilling are met.

Read more on Energy Bill Heads to Senate…

“Wind Farms Costly for Kansans, New Study Finds: Consumers would pay higher bills, reap few green benefits,” by James M. Taylor, Environment News, May 1, 2005, The Heartland Institute.

Via the highly recommended Evangelical Ecologist.

Read more on A Lot of Hot Air…

From Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Black Cat, first published in 1843:

And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness…this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only…

This is one of the better prosaic descriptions of the theological doctrine of total depravity, commonly identified as one of the five characteristic teachings of Reformed theology.

The label “total depravity” can be somewhat misleading, however. For as Poe’s narrators tend to embody the worst possible traits to the greatest possible degree, the doctrine is more about the comprehensive effects of sin than it is about the qualitative corruption. That is, the doctrine of total depravity means most properly that no area of the human person or human life is unaffected by sin. It does not mean that every area of human life is as bad as it could possibly be. This latter misunderstanding of the doctrine of total depravity is apparently the one which C. S. Lewis works with, when he states in his The Problem of Pain,

I disbelieve that doctrine [Total Depravity], partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved, and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human nature.

Read more on Implications of Total Depravity…

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today on the latest thuggish brutality from one of Africa’s saddest stories – Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe (subscription required):

One of Africa’s poorest countries, Zimbabwe, is suffering through a brutal forced relocation reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge’s “ruralization.” Hundreds of thousands of people in and around the capital, Harare, have been evicted from their homes, which are then bulldozed under the order of dictator Robert Mugabe, the poster child for Africa’s governance problem.

Read more on The Precondition for Aid – Civil Society…