OD Today: 20 January 2009 (late edition)

Same day, same issues, more or less: lots of reaction to the Obama inaugural. I’m facing a long night, so I’m posting a short update here.

1. Ingrid Schlueter quotes Albert Mohler on American religion, meaning (more or less) Christianity as it is filtered through American values. “As much as Christians in this blessed nation should respect and cherish our democratic ideals and system of government, we must keep ever in mind that the Kingdom of God is ruled by a higher and infinitely more perfect law and system of governance. Be warned: God is not running for office, and heaven is not a democracy.”
2. Tim Challies offers links a la carte as he does most every day; a couple of them are “1.20.09” related, including John Piper‘s advice on being pro-life under a pro-choice president (circa 1992).
3. Lighthouse Trails excerpts an article by Berit Kjos warning against creeping Socialism. Kjos connects a number of dots (Hitler, Stalin, Rick Warren, and Barack Obama), but mostly warns against (if I am reading her correctly) the quest for solidarity and common ground as ingredients in a recipe for totalitarianism.
4. Terry Mattingly parses some numbers regarding the popularity of Barack Obama’s decision to invite Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration. “By the way, did I read that right? Did a higher percentage of DEMOCRATS favor the Warren choice than Republicans?”
5. Confessing Lutheran Mollie Hemingway offers yet another take on more or less the same story we’ve seen in the 2004 Cathleen Falsani interview with Barack Obama and related articles. “The ultimate civil religion president, perhaps?”
6. Desert Pastor recaps, comments on Rick Warren’s prayer. “Good ending by concluding in the name of Jesus (and the inclusion of the Muslim, Spanish, and Hebrew variations of Jesus). I am just afraid that this man has chosen to misrepresent the true nature of God and His Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ!”
7. Ken Silva puts Queermergent into context within his ongoing study of Phyllis Tickle and the Emergent Church, also mentions Peter Rollins and Adele Sakler.
8. John Sexton excerpts Barack Obama’s inaugural address. “Will he deliver [safety] or will he make the same mistakes previous Democratic Presidents have made? With Gaza in flames and Iran on the verge of constructing its first nukes, I think we’ll know soon enough.”
9. Terry Mattingly catches ABC News fumbling a Rick Warren reference to a “great cloud of witnesses” as being a reference to Martin Luther King Jr.
10. Rich at Take Up Your Cross offers a term for a religion with Barack Obama as its Messiah: “Obamianity.” “In the minds of many people, our new President has been elevated to an almost Messiah-like status.”
11. Christine at Talk Wisdom takes up the question of Bible Codes referring to the new President. I’d completely forgotten about Bible Codes. Completely.

Why didn’t somebody at one of the the various conservative news sources dig up the Falsani interview in (say) September 2008?

OD Today: 20 January 2009 (early edition)

We’re expecting lots of inauguration-related links; we saw overnight more than we’re sharing now.

1. Darryl Foster calls out the Church of God in Christ regarding elder Ronald Kimbrew and his relationship to an online gay clergy group. “Is COGIC going to be silent while an organized culture of homosexual ministers and bishops populate its pulpits?”
2. Chris Rosebrough mentions Queermergent. Rosebrough is working on an “emergent church is postmodern liberal (as opposed to modern liberal)” theme going at his various outlets. “Even though Emergents try to navigate a middle road between liberalism and conservatism, then end up supporting the same agenda as their Modern Liberal cousins.”
3. Henry Neufield reflects on the meaning of race within the Obama inauguration story. “As a Christian I believe we do owe one another allegiance, and that we do have a duty to help free the oppressed, to care for the poor and needy. I think there is a moral duty to do such things not because they are good for me, but because they are good. At the same time, I think God has so ordered the universe that it seems that I can do good for myself by doing good for others, that I will live in a richer and better society if I am willing to sacrifice for others and fight for their rights.”
4. Jonathan Dodson ponders the pros and cons of churches partnering with non-profit groups. “So the question is not should we partner with non-profits, but when and where should we partner with them. Sometimes it will be best to not partner and other times it will be best.”
5. John Baker copies Joseph Farah‘s call for Christians to pray that Barack Obama fails.
6. Chris Rosebrough offers his take on Gene Robinson’s prayer. “This ‘god’ is an idol and a demon. This ‘god’ is powerless to answer and save and worshiping and following this demon ‘god’ will land people in hell.” (YouTube)
7. Ralph Petersen offers comments of Ron Livesay, a recently-retired principal from a Christian school, suggests that evangelicals voted for Barack Obama because they went to public schools. “What caused the children of the so-called “religious right,” to change their moral imperatives so dramatically? In this article, Phyllis Schlafly suggests that most likely it’s the humanistic attitudes and decision-making they learned in the public schools, which 89 percent of U.S. students attend.” Warning: some readers may be offended by a drawing of an anatomically correct somewhat humaniform rhinoceros.
8. Phil Johnson at Pyromaniacs on whether he’d pray at the Obama inauguration if given the chance: he’d decline “because Obama’s own stated intention is to make his inauguration “the most inclusive, open, accessible inauguration in American history,” and I would not want to affirm that goal, even tacitly.” This is part of a series, and it starts here.
9. Ken Silva continues his series on Ravi Zacharias and Henri Nouwen. “In the first place, it needs to be understood here that as a Roman Catholic monk Nouwen not only rejected Sola Scriptura but also the genuine Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even so, RZIM recommends we read the Roman Catholic Nouwen and then make up our minds “as to Christian commitment.” But the question that needs to be asked here is: Why would supposedly Protestant evangelical RZIM even want to recommend that we read for our Christian edification writings from someone who denied Christ’s Gospel in the first place?” For the record I think this is a fair question, and I feel compelled to point out that Nouwen was a priest and not a monk.
10. Miriam Franklin shares an anonymous story with a warning about laying on of hands/impartation. “A week or so after this “laying of hands” and “impartation,” I began to have this intense almost uncontrollable lust and desire for the senior pastor’s wife who I worked with.”
11. Christine at Talk Wisdom is concerned by how chummy the outgoing President is with the incoming President.
12. Terry Mattingly, at GetReligion, pushes a book about how the press doesn’t get religion, and also brushes up against the question of American civil religion and the “Orthodoxy of No Orthodoxy.” “The apparent orthodoxy of forbidding all orthodoxies is a philosophical puzzle in liberalism since John Locke. Journalists cannot be expected to solve it.”
13. Jeremy at Renewing Our Minds posts a link to a sermon claiming that Billy Graham is going to hell. I haven’t seen it yet and can’t summarize.
14. Mike Ratliff stakes out the most conservative position on abortion: “Rape, incest, and birth defects do not justify taking the life of a child.” Well, the second-most, I guess, since he doesn’t broach the question of the life of the mother.
15. Job at Jesus Christology comes full circle in his exploration of Israel/Hamas: “Despite my sympathy for the Palestinians and many disagreements with Israeli policies, I have always maintained that ultimately Israel has not only the right but the responsibility to defend itself when faced with a population that throws rocks at Israeli tanks trying to avoid civilian casualties rather than at the terrorists using them as human shields.”
16. Ingrid Schlueter copies a press release regarding the Freedom of Choice Act. It looks like it originates with American Right to Life. I believe this is the first time Schlueter has referred to Barack Obama as “America’s New Messiah.” The same press release is also here, and doesn’t include the term “New Messiah.”
17. Chris Rosebrough delves deep into Barack Obama’s religious beliefs. I hope to get to this episode of Fighting for the Faith Today, but it’s a full two hours. Update: The Obama/Cathleen Falsani interview starts at about ninety minutes, and the article Rosebrough reads can be found here. I can’t do this justice; I’d encourage anyone and everyone to read the interview and listen to Rosebrough’s analysis. He says Obama “sounds like a postmodern/emergent” because he prefers the “subjective voice” to the “objective Word of God.” The payoff comes at about 1:52-55 or so; Rosebrough changes his call on Obama’s salvation, if I understand him correctly. Note also Obama’s specific reference to civic religion: “Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.”
18. I’m Speaking Truth picks up John Piper’s comments on Barack Obama’s aims for the American church. This is pretty heavy stuff, but I’m guessing most if not all of my readers have already seen the phrase “a minister of condemnation,” and I’m not going to try to unwind all this theology here. I think Piper’s argument is that by including Gene Robinson in the inauguration Obama is making the American church itself a minister of sin and damnation.
19. Defending Contending also comments on the Obama inauguration. “People, your king is here; may God have mercy on us.”
20. Mollie Hemingway at GetReligion offers an inauguration link-fest, and raises the spectre of Rick Warren praying “in Jesus’s name.” “We’ll be sure to have more on coverage of the inaugural prayers. Will Warren be chastised for praying as a Christian (or, as Amy Sullivan at Time calls it, “if Rick Warren gets preachy when he prays,” God forbid).”