An interview at Money & Faith with Dr. Robert Cooley, former president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, explores the biblical concept of stewardship.

A key quote: “Church leaders need to remember they have an awesome responsibility to manage well the funds the people of God give each Sunday and to maintain the trust of the congregation in the life and work of the church. As stewards, we also need to be reminded that God holds us accountable not only for the giving of our treasure but also for the giving of our time and talents.”

In addition, Cooley gives some bullet points summarizing the “theology of stewardship.” Cooley concludes, “Stewardship is a lifestyle. It requires all of my time, all of my talent, and all of my treasure. All of my work, all of my wisdom, and all of my will are subject to my relationship with God through Christ.”

Biblical stewardship includes a complex of interrelated ideas. The relationship between work, vocation, faithfulness, charity, and love is exemplified in the Heidelberg Catechism’s exposition of the eigth commandment. The positive aspect of this commandment against theft requires “That I do whatever I can for my neighbor’s good, that I treat others as I would like them to treat me, and that I work faithfully so that I may share with those in need” (LD 42, A 111).

“America has never been a Christian nation. America was founded on an attempt to integrate Judeo-Christian values with Enlightenment ideas of self-government. What I’m envisioning is a divine tipping point or critical mass.”

So says Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was discussing his new book, Imagine! A God-Blessed America: How It Could Happen and What It Would Look Like, and was responding negatively when asked whether his book’s thesis is “dependent on America being a Christian nation” (presumably meaning the embodiment of an explicitly Christian political order).

When referring to a “divine tipping point or critical mass,” I can only hope and presume that Land is talking about the largescale conversion of Americans to a dedicated and authentic form of biblical Christianity. This is likely what he means when he says, “We may look back and say that America entered what is either a revival or an awakening sometime in the late 20th or early 21st century.”

Aah, the good old days!

In case you haven’t noticed, the price of gasoline has been going up lately. And, with all the predictability of the swallows returning to Capistrano, the cry has gone up from certain quarters of society for the government to do something about the situation. Unfortunately for consumers in paradise, the State of Hawaii has decided to respond to that demand by instituting price caps on gasoline.

The price caps, which will be instituted on September 1, are the result of a process that began with the passage of Act 77, which was enacted in June of 2002. Implementation of the act was delayed, however, in order for enough time to pass for a more comprehensive study of Hawaii’s gasoline market to be undertaken. One might ask whether it might have been better to do that before passing price control legislation, but I suppose we should be thankful that the legislature required this inquiry at all.
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My sense is that the balance between political activism and personal evangelism among American evangelical leaders is often out-of-whack. A perfect example is the fight over FCC regulation of decency in the media.

A huge cadre of evangelical leaders seem to rely primarily on political intervention and lobbying to fight indecency. This puts the cart before the horse.

“Indecency” nearly always means some perceived illicit sexual content, so let’s look at how evangelical Christians are fighting pornography as a prime example. There’s been a lot of hubbub over proposed “.xxx” domain registration for adult Internet sites (here’s a good critical review from CEI).

The politically activist evangelical model views government coercive force as the primary means of achieving the desired end, in this case media decency. In extreme cases, what might otherwise be viewed as a secondary means, such as personal evangelism and conversion, can be completely overshadowed and even explicitly denounced.

So in the case of X3Church, a Christian pornography ministry aimed at consumers and producers of pornography, evangelical leaders criticize or distance themselves from the effort. At the same time Pat Robertson is busy pontificating on US foreign policy, he is rebuking X3Church. According to Robertson, while Jesus would not go to a porn convention, he might be in favor of assassination of a foreign political leader.

A scheduled appearance by X3Church leaders at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University has apparently been cancelled because of concern about the propriety of the ministry (as reported in the X3Church newsletter. The relevant blog post at the x3blog has been removed).

Christians should not refrain from making their moral judgments heard in public debates about policy issues. But political means should be viewed as secondary means to achieving desired ends and they should certainly never displace evangelism as the primary means of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom (see the Great Commission).

As I’ve said before, a far better way than coercing others to adhere to objective standards of morality is to convert them to those standards. It is ultimately only through proclamation of the Gospel that the culture and the nation will be redeemed. For the church is to engage the world not with the sword of the government, but with “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17 NIV).

For a rather different view on this, especially with respect to the FCC, and more relevant reading, see yesterday’s BreakPoint commentary from Charles Colson, “Shaking in their Boots.”

The National Council of Churches has had a rough ride in recent months with its Orthodox Christian constituency. The Antiochian jurisdiction has formally pulled out, citing a politicized agenda, and the Orthodox Church in America, which traces its roots to the Russian church, has been debating a similar move.

In an article on Front Page magazine, Rev. Johannes Jacobse takes a detailed look at the hard-left politics of the NCC and its long history of supporting communist despots. In “United Churches of Castro,” Fr. Hans, the editor of OrthodoxyToday.org, writes about the NCC’s track record of supporting “liberation” movements all over the world:

Like many of its left-wing counterparts, the NCC displayed a slavish devotion to Marxist ideas and anti-American cant. It strove to become the official dispenser of religious respectability to those who adopted either. Dispensing respectability made NCC bureaucrats feel important and offered the rationale that justified the NCC’s existence.

“Liberation Theology” was the dominant fad in the late 1960’s and 1970’s – a patchwork of ideas that claimed that the Christian obligation to care for the poor was synonymous with Marxist social dogma. Liberation Theology dressed Marxist ideas in the Christian moral lexicon convincing gullible activists that Christ was really a crypto-Marxist. The ideology swept through the religious left like wildfire. The NCC was front and center.

When he was hired to run the NCC in 1999, Rev. Bob Edgar said he had “no issue” with the group’s history. And what is the NCC doing today to further the goal of Christian unity? It is organizing opposition to the Iraq war, camping out with Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, Texas, opposing private Social Security accounts, stumping for the Kyoto protocol, etc., etc.

There have been countless analyses of Pope Benedict’s recent trip to World Youth Day in Cologne. But when it comes to looking at what the Pope actually says and does, no one compares to Sandro Magister, who writes for the Italian publication L’Espresso.

Check out his latest post, “After Cologne: The Remarkable Lesson of Professor Ratzinger” here. It concludes with links to the texts of the Pope’s speeches, all of which are worth reading.

Unlike most other journalists, Magister focuses on what the Pope wants us to focus on: the Eucharist and Jesus Christ as the Truth. And he does it without any ironic smart-quotes or snide asides.

Must reading for those who want to keep up with Vatican happenings.

I’ve talked before about the complexities of government funding before with regard to the abstinence-program called the Silver Ring Thing.

Now, on the heels of an ACLU suit, SRT is being faced with a cut-off in federal funding. The AP reports that the SRT may be in violation of Department of Health and Human Services regulations for not adequately separating “worship, religious instruction or proselytization” programs from the government-funded services.

A letter signed by Harry Wilson, associate commissioner of the Family and Youth Services Bureau, states “Our review indicates that the (Silver Ring Thing) may not have included adequate safeguards to clearly separate in time or location inherently religious activities from the federally funded activities.”

According to The Washington Times, SRT leaders feel they will be able to assuage the questions of government regulators. “We don’t think there will be any problem,” said Denny Pattyn, leader of SRT. “If we’re not doing it perfectly or correctly, or it needs to be tweaked, then HHS will instruct us and we will tweak it,” he said.

But instead of attempting to meet the government’s requirements, this may be a great opportunity for SRT to wean itself off of government support, ending its state dependency. The false dichotomy between faith and works represented in the HHS guidelines should be criticized rather than accepted by Christian groups.

A commentary from the Tax Foundation looks at government subsidies for the construction of a new stadium for MLB’s Washington Nationals. Analyst Eric A. Miller writes, “Funding a new stadium in the District may be good politics, but it is bad public policy. Major League Baseball will be laughing all the way to the bank while D.C. residents will find that they get much less than they were promised — and paid for.”

HT: Townhall.com

As the new school year begins, Anthony Bradley reflects on the role of the parent in creating educational success. “Overall, children in loving, stable two-parent homes have an academic and social advantage over those who do not,” he writes.

Read the full text here.

I was wondering how long it would take for this to happen. The acceptability of Google’s politics and public persona could only insulate it from the requisite corporate suspicion for only so long.

In today’s New York Times, Gary Rivlin writes of growing distrust of Google: “instead of embracing Google as one of their own, many in Silicon Valley are skittish about its size and power. They fret that the very strengths that made Google a search-engine phenomenon are distancing it from the entrepreneurial culture that produced it – and even transforming it into a threat.”

How much of the “grousing” is merely bad sportsmanship? More than a bit, I think. After all, “Just as Microsoft has been seen over the years as an aggressive, deep-pocketed competitor for talent, Internet start-ups in Silicon Valley complain that virtually every time they try to recruit a well-regarded computer programmer, that person is already contemplating an offer from Google.”

When Google beats you at something, the proper response would be to raise your game. This would spur innovation. But instead, the Google’s competitors seem more interested in complaining rather than competing:

“Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did,” said Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, a business networking Web site popular among Silicon Valley’s digerati. “It’s largely that they’re hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they’re working on so many different things. It’s harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.”

Sour grapes, anyone?