By Samuel Smith

Christian ethicist Russell Moore has said that congregations too afraid of being political to speak out against acts of immorality, like abortion, are similar to churches in the 1800s that remained silent on the issue of slavery.

As the featured speaker at the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s fifth annual Diane Knippers memorial lecture, Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, criticized mainstream Christian congregations that have relaxed their teachings on key issues of sexual morality and other social issues in order to blend in with the “ambient culture” and appeal to today’s society.

Moore explained that religious conservatives need to “preserve” the biblical truth for future generations. Although secular society likes to claim that Christian conservatives are on the “wrong side of history,” Moore told the audience that Christian conservatives should not be afraid to have their biblical convictions conflict with mainstream society and that they should really embrace the distinctive Christian message.

“It’s a recipe for death, precisely for the same reasons that Jesus is speaking to Pilate about a Kingdom that does not originate from the world. Christianity always thrives the best when we have a distinctive word and a distinctive word that is rooted in a specific view of authority. Jesus said, ‘I have come to bear witness for the truth.'”

“The arguments that we see happening right now over issues of human sexuality are not really about human sexuality,” Moore continued. “These are debates of apostolic authority.”

Despite the fact that religious conservative views on issues like gay marriage and abortion directly conflict with the views of a secular world, Moore assured that the historic Christian message has always conflicted with the world’s understanding.

Although many congregations in the last 50 years have altered their views and teachings to accommodate the modern worldviews, Moore warned that churches that have historically distanced themselves from the biblical truth eventually failed to exist.

“The miraculous was startling in the first century and in every other century, so the churches who discarded it no longer had anything distinctive to say and withered and died into obscurity,” Moore stated. “The churches who were willing to speak with a voice of authority about resurrection, the coming of Christ, supernatural regeneration by the Holy Spirit are the churches who had a witness to be able to bring forward.”

Moore further argued that secularism is not the world’s final “stopping point.”

“Secularism is just a stop along the path,” Moore said. “We must have a distinctive word in terms of claim to authority, and we must be willing to bear witness. We must be a conversionist people, which means that if we truly believe that the spirit of God is able to transform someone from sinner to saint, we will be the people who will not hesitate to speak the truth and to speak what often will be unpopular truths.”

Churches have long been responsible for speaking the unpopular truths on social issues, not just in today’s world where abortion and gay marriage are the hotly contested subjects, Moore said.

“The churches in 1845 Georgia that did not speak to slavery, were speaking to slavery,” Moore said. “If you stand in the pulpit and call people to repentance for drunkenness and sexual immorality, but you do not call them to repentance for man-stealing and kidnapping and pretending to own another human being, you have spoken to that issue by saying that it will not be something for which one must give an account at the judgement.”

“The churches in 1925 Mississippi that spoke about drunkenness and adultery, but did not speak about lynching, were speaking to lynching,” Moore continued. “They were baptizing the status quo by not calling people to repentance for a grave sin against God and against a neighbor.”

“The churches in 21st century America that do not speak to the personhood of the unborn are speaking to the personhood of the unborn by baptizing the status quo and leaving consciences that are wounded and in need of Gospel liberation exactly where they are under accusation, rather than freeing them with a witness that is thought to be political.”

This article was originally posted at ChristianPost.com

Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke demonstrated his usual glib condescension yesterday in his ridicule of a Tennessee county commissioner’s odd proposed resolution. What is striking in Huppke’s relentless efforts to mock anyone who believes marriage has an ontology central to which is sexual differentiation is that he studiously avoids engagement with the ideas expressed by the foremost scholars defending the historical understanding of the nature of marriage. Such avoidance smacks of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice.

Does Huppke believe that marriage has no ontology or does he believe it does but that no one apprehended it correctly until homosexual activists did in the late 20th Century. Perhaps if he spent less time mocking those who are easy targets for his attacks—targets that don’t require him to make any actual arguments that he must defend with evidence—and more time engaging with substantive ideas, we would learn more about his beliefs.

For example, does he believe that marriage has a nature that societies merely recognize and regulate, or does he believe marriage is wholly a social construction—a social invention created by a vast, millenia-old, cross-cultural, patriarchal conspiracy?

If marriage is merely a social invention with no inherent nature, why not recognize unions constituted by platonic or storge love as “marriages”?

If marriage is wholly a social construction, then why not expand marriage to include any number of people of assorted “genders” (or no “gender”)?

If marriage is wholly a social construction and, as the Left argues, has no inherent connection to procreative potential, then why prohibit consenting brothers from marrying?

If, on the other hand, Huppke believes marriage has a nature but that nature is devoid of any connection to procreative potential and is solely constituted by love, then why erotic love? Other than procreation, which the Left argues is irrelevant to the nature of marriage, what is so special about erotic love that would render it of interest to the government? If marriage is wholly unrelated to procreative potential, then why is the government involved at all? After all, the government isn’t involved in recognizing and regulating other non-reproductive types of loving relationships.

Here’s an idea, why doesn’t Huppke spend some time reading and writing about the substantive, deeply intellectual ideas of Princeton University law professor Robert George, John Finnis (shared by Notre Dame and Oxford), Ryan Anderson, Michael Brown, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, and Doug Wilson. Yes, mocking their ideas may be a tad more challenging for Huppke, but his refutations would make infinitely more interesting reading than his ridicule of culturally non-influential people from small Tennessee towns.

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Big news this week as “progressives” worldwide learned, to their utter shock and mournful consternation, that the pope is Catholic. Rumors are they will next examine wild bears, the woods and certain mysteries therein.

On Wednesday the Vatican confirmed what a handful of us knew days before. Pope Francis secretly (and privately) met with Kim Davis at Washington’s Vatican Embassy to personally offer his broad support for her bold stand against that insidious and “intrinsically disordered” counterfeit called “gay marriage.”

Does Pope Francis really support Kim Davis?

While specifics of Davis’ legal case were not discussed during the private meeting, days later Pope Francis publicly affirmed Kim’s “human right” as a “conscientious objector” to refuse to sign her name to “gay marriage” licenses – even in her official capacity as an elected official. This human right, incidentally, is an unalienable right protected by the First Amendment. “Stay strong,” the pope told Kim after the two embraced during the tearful meeting. He thanked her for her courage and asked her to pray for him. She likewise asked him to pray for her. These facts are not in dispute.

On Friday the Vatican issued another statement to clarify what was, or, better still, was not, discussed during the meeting: “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi.

As Austin Ruse of Breitbart.com notes, “The Vatican spokesman chose his words carefully. By stating that the meeting should not be considered support for her position ‘in all of its particular and complex aspects,’ Lombardi is allowing the notion that the meeting can be understood as general support for Davis’ cause, but not necessarily papal support for every detailed aspect of the legal case.”

Indeed, neither Kim Davis nor anyone on her legal team ever suggested that the pope supports, or is even aware of, “her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” Still, based upon his own words and the official position of the Catholic Church, we can know, for sure, of at least three “positions” on which the pope does support Kim Davis. They are: 1) Homosexual behavior is sin; 2) Marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman; and 3) No “human person,” whether a government official or not, should be forced to violate his or her conscience by affirming sin-based “gay marriage.”

Who asked for the meeting?

There has likewise been much speculation and liberal wishful thinking as to how this meeting came about, with some pundits desperately clinging to hopes that the pontiff was “actually swindled into meeting Kim Davis.”

Let’s end the speculation.

Vatican officials reached out, unsolicited, to Davis through her attorney, Mat Staver, and arranged the meeting out of the blue before Pope Francis even arrived in the U.S. for his whirlwind tour. The Davis team was led to believe that the request came from the pope himself. Not only did Pope Francis know who Kim Davis was when he told reporters on the plane ride home that conscientious objectors have a “human right” to decline participation in sodomy-based “marriage,” he had personally met Kim privately, and embraced her both physically and ideologically, before he did so.

The meeting was temporarily kept “secret” during the pope’s visit so as to avoid the predictable media circus that would, and later did, ensue. Both Davis’ representatives and the Vatican agreed that news of the meeting would be released upon the pope’s departure. He wasn’t “embarrassed” by the meeting, as some have suggested, but, rather, held it discreetly for logistical reasons alone.

What does the pope believe about homosexuality and “gay marriage”?

While protestant Christians obviously don’t agree with Pope Francis and the Catholic Church on everything, all faithful Christians, both protestant and Catholic alike, are nonetheless indebted to him for validating Kim’s courageous obedience to God. By extension, the pope has likewise validated every other Christian who refuses to be forced to participate in, or otherwise affirm, this sinful pagan rite. “Gay marriage” is an affront to Christ, the Church and God’s natural order. No faithful believer who wishes to remain in obedience to God can have anything to do with it.

But why? Why is “gay marriage” an affront to God? Why must Christians oppose it?

While the reasons are manifold, it seems most wish to avoid the primary issue surrounding any discussion on “same-sex marriage.” That is, the fundamental wrongness of homosexual behavior itself. If homosexual behavior is not wrong, as it goes, then what justification is there for refusing to redefine marriage around it?

But it is wrong. It’s always, and in every way, wrong.

So says the pope.

So says the Bible.

And, most importantly, so says the very Creator of marriage itself.

On the question of homosexual sin, the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a clear and biblically sound summation: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

And so Kim Davis refuses to approve them.

Despite progressives’ best efforts, there’s simply no way to get around words like, “intrinsically disordered” and “grave depravity.”

As for those who struggle with same-sex attraction and define their identity as “gay” or “lesbian” based upon these aberrant temptations and proclivities, the Catechism ads, “This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”

“They” must be accepted. Their disordered and sinful behavior must not.

On progressives’ push for “gay marriage,” Pope Francis has said, “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

“Gay marriage” is inherently sterile – a dead end.

“Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity,” the pope has added, further calling all attempts to impose “gay marriage” on society “ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family.”

“The complementarity of man and woman … is the root of marriage and family,” he observes.

Amen, pontiff sir. Amen.

On Sept. 24, after Kim Davis and Pope Francis met privately, I had the distinct privilege of joining Kim and her husband, Joe, for dinner. In addition to sharing the pope’s views on sexual morality, marriage and freedom of conscience, I saw firsthand that they likewise share the pope’s profound love and compassion for those afflicted by these “trials.”

Kim Davis is an accidental hero.

Pope Francis is to be commended for honoring her as such.

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Written by Harry Torres

Recently, someone asked for my thoughts on Kim Davis (in fact, at a baseball game I recently attended) and I really haven’t given it much thought – until now. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

He was partly right. Liberty of conscience is indeed sacred. There is, however, a higher court before which Mr. Gandhi – before which we all – will ultimately stand. It is Kim Davis’ inevitable turn in the dock at this Supreme of all supreme courts that drives her steadfast refusal to mock God through mock “marriage.”

Let’s set aside for a moment all the legal and political wrangling over religious freedom. What is it about Kentucky’s Kim Davis that really has secularists, even some misguided and ill-informed church-goers, yanking their hair out in clumps?

While it may feel personal to them, it’s not. The “throw-Kim-Davis-in-jail!” crowd doesn’t hate this humble, non-assuming Democratic Christian wife and mother of four so much for who she is (though many elitists insist upon sophomorically deriding her as some kind of intolerant, backwoods hick); they hate her more for what she represents – for Whom she represents – and, most especially, because, while making her stand, she has been, to date, immovable.

After nearly a week in jail, Kim didn’t budge. Neither will she resign. Neither should she resign. If she did resign, you see, the precedent would be set. They want the precedent set.

And that’s what’s got them steaming.

If Kim Davis steps down from her elected position as Rowan County clerk, it would represent exile through attrition for her and her fellow believers. Christ follower? Seeking elected office? Looking for a government job? Forget it. Christians need not apply. All the same, if you do apply, be sure to keep your mouth shut, your Bible closed and your First Amendment at home.

To Kim Davis and her supporters, this courageous stand represents unwavering faithfulness to the ultimate Law Giver. To her detractors, it represents stubborn indifference to the laws of man. (The law, incidentally, remains unchanged and on the books as codified. Sections 402.005 and 402.020 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes have yet to be amended by the legislature and, even now, restrict marriage to “the civil status, condition, or relation of one (1) man and one (1) woman”).

Whatever your perspective, Kim’s stand is bold. It is that boldness that has at once encouraged biblical Christians and terrified secular-”progressives.” These things have a way of catching on, you see. This is how movements are born.

Before she was arrested, shackled and imprisoned by U.S. Marshals for her “crime” of conscience, Brian Beutler, senior editor of the New Republic, was among the torch-waving leftists demanding the government “throw Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in jail.”

“Any attempt to force her hand risks making her a bigger martyr on the religious right than she already is,” he wrote, “but that risk is small compared to the risk that allowing her to continue abusing her power without consequence will create a terrible precedent.”

And so she was thrown in jail.

It backfired magnificently. So much so, in fact, that Judge David Bunning suddenly and inexplicably walked back his contempt order and released her with no indication by Kim or her legal team that she intends to change her position one iota.

They aimed to make an example of her. Instead, they made martyr of her. And she set the example for others to follow. So, if jail won’t do it – if being thrown in jail won’t compel this brave woman to disobey God and violate her conscience, then what will?

Who knows how far we will regress as a Nation – They’ll have to burn her at the stake.

Time to ask yourself – Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Heaven and Hell? And what are you doing to prepare?

Harry R. Torres served in the United States Navy for 22 years and retired in 2006.  Mr. Torres has over 25 years of security management experience.  His hobbies include golf, hunting & fishing, baseball, rugby, classic cars, travel, music, entertaining and cooking.

Written by Bethany Blankley

The beginning of American law, the concepts of independence and freedom, is rooted in the belief that moral absolutes exist within a universal standard of justice independent from political rulers. The Judeo-Christian faith is not separate from but foundational to just and fair public policies that encourage human flourishing.

More than 2,000 Bible verses teach civics, providing examples of good and evil rulers, judges, and political authorities. These instructions on civics are informed by approximately 500 verses on salvation, 400 on hell, and 250 on heaven—with the overall foundation that right living best leads to a peaceful, thriving society.

Six of the Ten Commandments specifically define civil law. The western concept and definition of murder, manslaughter, theft, assault, marriage, birth, and other civil and criminal matters are defined and ascribed judicial punishment under Mosaic law. Religious freedom and self-governance are defined in the First Commandment, family governance in the Second, private property rights in the Fifth, and a fair trial with witnesses in the Sixth.

The founding fathers knew this, recalling Exodus 18 and 21, Leviticus 18, Ezekiel 3, and Isaiah 33:22, among others, understanding the Judeo-Christian God, the Lord, as lawgiver, judge, and king. Following this model, they devised three branches of government. Congress, the legislative branch—represents the lawgiver; the judicial branch—the judge, and the executive branch—the king, primary ruler, head of government.

But the founding fathers also knew the danger of authoritarian rule that some Puritans had tried to implement in 17th century American colonies.

For example, a non-Puritan and someone who didn’t agree with Puritan laws, would not have been able to live in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Winthrop, a Puritan attorney and its governor, sought to instill a magisterial government that prohibited anyone from voting unless the magistrate approved the specific Christian men who fit its criteria. Winthrop opposed codifying laws, believing that democracy was “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.”

The “City on a Hill” to which Winthrop referred in an often-quoted sermon, ended up being a place that excluded anyone who disagreed with magisterial rule. His colony effectively illustrated the very non-Biblical values that restrain freedom and liberty—and the opposite of meaning of the teaching he referenced.

Upon arrival to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, English clergyman and lawyer Roger Williams opposed Winthrop’s form of government. But the Colony’s rulers didn’t allow for free thought or speech. They rejected his notion of “freedom of conscience.” First the magistrates placed Williams under house arrest. He was forbidden from discussing his ideas. But when he continued to speak his mind– in his own home– the magistrates banished him from the colony. Next, they changed their mind and sought to kill him.

Winthrop warned Williams, who fled, leaving his family behind. His suffering was great he and barely survived. Because of this, he wrote one of the most influential treatises in history, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. Thomas Jefferson not only read Williams’s treatise, but also John Locke’s, Two Treatises of Government, in which Locke referenced over 1,500 Bible verses.

Were it not for Roger Williams’s influence, it’s unlikely Thomas Jefferson would have written what he did in the Declaration of Independence. In it, Jefferson references God four times:

• “The laws of nature and nature’s God,”
• All men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,”
• “The Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,” and
• “The protection of Divine Providence.”

Jefferson intentionally declared that a deity exists and is knowable by human reason. He identified this deity as a creator and judge. He asked in Notes on the State of Virginia:

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?”

Foundational to the Declaration of Independence was creationism and morality. As John Adams remarked,

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The founders ensured the validity of freedom originating from God, not man. Their assurance rested in “In God We Trust,” printed on American money, and in “One Nation Under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Bible is most often used when courts require oaths of office for U.S. Presidents and elected officials. The Judeo-Christian God is mentioned in all 50 state constitutions. The Supreme Court opens each session verbally declaring, “God save the United States of America.”

The founders did not seek to create a theocracy understanding Biblical Christianity to be non-coercive. They understood that only through Biblical principles freedom and liberty exist (Gal. 5:1). As Dostoevsky and others from atheist countries assert, “if there is no God, everything is permitted.”

The founders knew that in every human spirit lies an innate desire to be free. That spirit of freedom became the personification of American character.

As Ronald Reagan said in 1952, “America is less of a place than an idea, and if it is an idea, and I believe that to be true, it is an idea that has been deep in the souls of Man.” As the soul informs the mind, heart, and body, it also informs every area of life in which people live—including politics.

This article was orignially posted at Constitution.com

When a decorated soldier was told to turn a blind eye from intervening in the case of a child who was being repeatedly raped and beaten, he knew it was an order he had to refuse. Now, doing the right thing will cost him his career.Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, a Green Beret, learned from a 12 year-old Afghan boy’s mother that an Afghan police commander had chained her son to his bed in order to repeatedly abuse him…all occurring on a United States military base. The commander was being trained under Sgt. Martland’s mentorship.

Sgt. Martland confronted the Afghan rapist on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, who admitted and laughed off his sexually abusive actions, disregarding the concerns. Like any red-blooded American would (and should) do, Sgt. Martland would not stand by and allow the child to be hurt any longer.

A physical altercation broke out between Sgt. Martland and the Afghan commander. Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland admits he confronted the Afghan police commander and physically threw him off the base because he was fed up with the commander’s brutal sexual abuse of a village boy.

For protecting a child against an admitted rapist, Sgt. Martland has been told he will be dismissed from the military in November.

Did you catch that? Instead of standing with a soldier who was protecting a child against an admitted rapist, the military is kicking him out! I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t have done the same thing in Sgt. Martland’s boots.

I certainly wouldn’t punish any man for doing what any man should do…stepping in to protect a defenseless child from physical abuse!

No matter where our soldiers serve, no matter what local customs may dictate, every person serving in our military has a moral obligation to protect children anywhere and anytime abuse occurs.

TAKE ACTION:  Click HERE to sign our petition to the U.S. House and U.S. Senate Armed Services Committees, urging them to demand the Pentagon clear Sgt. Martland’s record and allow him to return to his regular duties.

This article was originally posted at AFA.net.

One of the things we must absolutely learn how to do better than we do is distinguish things that differ, especially things that look similar but which differ radically. We must learn to say, as Dorothy Sayers once famously said, distinguo. I distinguish.

There is a profound difference between the doctrine of interposition/lesser magistrates on the one hand and the doctrine of liberty of conscience on the other. There are places where they overlap, but there are also instances where they have nothing to do with each other. When a magistrate decides to interpose, he is doing it as a matter of conscience. But he is not exercising his liberty — he is discharging a duty.

A citizen has the right to be left alone in any number of areas. We ought not to tell him what days on which he must mow his lawn, we ought not require him to photograph homosexual unions, we ought not to tell him that the Department of Agriculture requires him to floss daily.  Even if he is mistaken, and his conscience along with him, we should still let him close his shop in honor of the coming of the Great Pumpkin. What he does with his time, his money, his business is, in fact, his business.

Now in some instances, a person’s private religious convictions can become a public matter, as when the Thugs of India used their free exercise of religion in the pursuit of killing and robbing people. The point is that the exact boundaries of the liberties of every citizen is a religious issue, and is a issue that cannot be settled from up behind the Agnostic Bench. If you don’t know what truth is, then the first thing you should do is quit deciding what truths are acceptable. A Christian judge would say that the Thug’s religious liberties are a matter of no consequence. The Communist judge says that the Christian’s religious liberties are a matter of no consequence. The Agnostic judge doesn’t know what is going on, but just sits there, trying to look wise. He thinks nobody will notice, but we have.

An agent of the state occupies a different station than does the private citizen; it is a different office entirely. The law that governs his behavior cannot be neutral any more than the law that bounds the private citizen’s liberties can be neutral. Scripture asks, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). The answer, in case you were wondering, is no.

So that means that a society has to decide what it will allow its citizens to do and why, and what it will require its officers to do and why. The religious framework that encompasses both of these needs to be the same one. Because I am a Christian, I believe that this framework needs to be a Christian one. When it comes down to differences between Christians, and it is an area where the state must act or not act (e.g. divorce), the state must decide which of the two Christian positions is right. When they do this, they must take great care to be right. Neutrality is impossible.

Kim Davis refused to issue a marriage license to homosexuals, and she was right. But would a devout Roman Catholic, on the basis of an absolutist rejection of remarriage after divorce, have the right to refuse a marriage license to Kim Davis on one of her later marriage? I would say no, but my purpose here is not to get into that debate. My point is that the society cannot be neutral about that debate. The applicants must either be served or refused. One or the other must happen. So if we say no, and are asked why, we need to be able to say more than just because.

This is why secularism is dead on its feet. We have gotten to the reductio ad absurdum portion of the Q&A session and we are no longer bound together by a hidden-generic-protestant-north-american consensus. For decades, we thought that this consensus was what everyone “just knew.” Turns out they don’t.

The doctrine of interposition means that Christian magistrates must be looking for an opportunity to just say no, and to do so on an issue of sufficient moral magnitude as to justify the societal dislocations that will result. Whether the municipal snowplows should run on the sabbath (and when do sabbath hours start anyway?) is not one of those issues. The two issues that I think are ripe candidates for interposition are abortion and same sex mirage. Mayors, judges, governors, county clerks, etc. should simply refuse to cooperate with evil mandates concerning them, and should issue decisions of their own restricting them. A Christian governor should simply outlaw abortion in his state.

Some are concerned that this would lead to a shooting war, but I don’t think that is necessary at all. If the feds send in the troops to keep the abortion clinics in Texas open, then another three states should follow suit and ban abortion. They can’t put everyone in jail. The Civil Rights movement didn’t lead to a shooting war. All that is necessary for this to become completely unwieldy for the bad guys is for enough good guys to say enough. As Edmund Burke might put it, were he here, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to have reservations about the doctrine of interposition.

These issues — abortion and same sex mirage — are good issues. They are weighty issues, whether weighed in the balances of Scripture, nature, or history. They are pressing issues — everyone knows a great deal about both of them. They are issues where victory is actually attainable. If everyone who objected to abortion acted like it, it would be gone this time next week. The same thing is true of same sex mirage.

The problem is not that we don’t have enough people who object. The problem is that those who object are so darn sweet. The problem is not that we don’t have enough resources. Our problem is that we won’t use what we have.

And so in the meantime it is fully appropriate for us to be fighting for “carve outs” in the law for private citizens. Pacifists shouldn’t have to fight in the army, and evangelical photographers and bakers should not be forced to celebrate abominations. But officers have a duty to interpose. They have a duty to prevent. A photographer should accept the carve out when it is offered. The official should not. For an officer of society to ratify high disobedience to God is as much compromise as would be exhibited by a florist who celebrated a same sex reception.

The secularist says that if you are not willing to issue a license to a same sex couple, then you should resign the position. I say something that sounds similar, only reversed. I would say that if you are not willing to interpose, you should resign the position. Why? Because you are not willing to fulfill the obligations that God assigned to that office. It is the will of God that all lesser officials, all lesser magistrates, hold their offices in the fear of God, which means that they must be willing to interpose when the greater magistrates mandate broad social rebellion.

And that is exactly where we are right now. We need leaders, at every level, who will refuse to participate in the rebellion.

This article was originally posted here

Written by John C. Eastman

Until her release [last week], Kim Davis, the clerk of rural Rowan County, Kentucky, was confined to a jail cell because she refused to issue marriage licenses over her name to same-sex couples. She has been pilloried in the media for “lawlessness” and compared not to Martin Luther King Jr. for her civil disobedience but to Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Michael Keegen of the grossly misnamed People for the American Way called her actions an “abuse of power” and proposed instead that she should “find another line of work” — that is, resign her elected office — if she “can’t in good conscience fulfill [her] duties.”

The double standard on display is palpable. I don’t recall Keegen or any of the other self-righteous, newfound devotees of the rule of law calling for the resignation of Kentucky’s attorney general when he refused to defend his state’s marriage law — or any of the other state attorneys general who did the same, from California’s Jerry Brown to Pennsylvania’s Kathleen Kane, and several others, including perhaps most notoriously Oregon’s Ellen Rosenblum, who was caught actively colluding with plaintiffs to ensure judicial invalidation of the Oregon marriage law she disliked.

“But Davis was refusing to comply with a decision of the Supreme Court,” it will be argued. So, too, did all those illustrious attorneys general. All of them refused to do their duty and defend their state’s man-woman marriage laws, even though the binding precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court at that time, a 1972 case called Baker v. Nelson, was that such laws were constitutionally valid.

Ms. Davis’s position has also been mischaracterized as asserting that because the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision is contrary to God’s authority, she cannot be compelled to comply with it and therefore can prevent same-sex couples from getting married in her county. Her position — so described — has been belittled by simpletons across the political spectrum as nothing more than the misguided stance of a crazy evangelical clinging to her Bible. But that is not her legal argument at all (however much merit it might have as a reaction to an illegitimate decision by the U.S. Supreme Court). Her actual argument is much more restrained.

Kentucky has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which expressly prevents the government from imposing a substantial burden on someone’s religious beliefs unless the government’s mandate is narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest. Because this lawsuit is pending in federal court, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which contains the same protection, is also applicable. Ms. Davis’s lawyers have simply argued that these federal and state laws require that her religious objection to issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses over her own name be accommodated.

There is no compelling interest here. Even assuming the validity of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision holding that right to same-sex “marriage” is a fundamental right, no one is being denied the right to marry. As a matter of Kentucky law, the couples seeking to compel Ms. Davis herself to issue them a marriage license can obtain a marriage license from any other county in Kentucky. They can also get one from the county executive of Rowan County. And if the governor would simply call the legislature into special session to deal with the problem that has arisen since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June, it would likely even be possible for other clerks in Ms. Davis’s office to issue a marriage license without its being issued on Ms. Davis’s authority (the legislature could simply remove the problematic “under [her] authority” language from the statewide uniform form), or for marriage licenses to be obtained via a statewide online system.

But none of those options would accomplish what the same-sex couple and its chorus of advocates are really after, which is not the “marriage” but forcing Ms. Davis and everyone like her to bow to the new, unholy orthodoxy. In other words, this controversy has all the hallmarks of the one that engulfed Thomas More, who silently acquiesced in but would not condone King Henry VIII’s illicit marriage.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, both the federal law and Kentucky’s version of it, required that Ms. Davis’s religious objection be accommodated as a matter of law. The federal court’s refusal to respect those laws is where the real lawlessness lies in this case. And of course, that lawlessness is quite apart from the not insignificant question of whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision is itself lawless. Such claims did not originate with Ms. Davis, but with the four U.S. Supreme Court Justices who stridently dissented from Justice Kennedy’s diktat, calling it “illegitima[te],” “indefensible,” “dangerous for the rule of law,” “demeaning to the democratic process,” “a naked judicial claim to legislative — indeed, super-legislative — power,” “pretentious,” “egotistic,” a “judicial Putsch,” “deeply misguided,” a “usurp[ation of] the constitutional right of the people,” a “perhaps irremediable corruption of our legal culture’s conception of constitutional interpretation,” and an “extravagant conception of judicial supremacy.”

That latter point is important to put to rest the other charge that has been leveled against Ms. Davis, namely, that she is violating her oath of office by not upholding the law she swore to uphold. The Constitution requires that all officials, both federal and state, take an oath to “support this Constitution,” and the Constitution itself provides that “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Neither the oath clause nor the supremacy clause requires fealty to an erroneous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that is contrary to the Constitution itself. That is not constitutionalism, or the rule of law, but the rule of judges; a claim that although the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, the Constitution is whatever the judges say it is, even if what they say is a patently erroneous interpretation of the Constitution.

Reacting to a similar piece of judicial tyranny in the Dred Scott case, Abraham Lincoln famously said, in his first inaugural address, that although judicial decisions are binding on the specific parties to a case, “the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

In short, Ms. Davis was much more faithful to her oath of office, and to the Constitution she vowed to support, than the federal judge who jailed her for contempt, the attorney general of the state who refused to defend Kentucky’s laws, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who usurped the authority of the states and the more than 50 million voters who had recently reaffirmed the natural definition of marriage, in order to impose his own more “enlightened” views on the nation. One can only hope that Ms. Davis’s simple but determined act of civil disobedience will yet ignite the kind of reaction in the American people that is necessary to oppose such lawlessness, or at the very least bring forth a national leader who will take up the argument against judicial supremacy in truly Lincolnian fashion.

This article was originally posted at the National Review Online.

— John C. Eastman is the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service, and former dean, at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law. He is also the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage.

Written by Pastor John Piper

I don’t know Kim Davis’s heart, so I can’t assess her motives. And I don’t know her theology. It is possible to do right actions for wrong reasons, and so be wrong in doing right. So I will just try to say something about her actions and what appear to be some of her convictions and perhaps touch on some wider implications.

First, I think she is right in rejecting so-called same sex marriage as contrary to God’s design for what marriage is. And she is right in assessing this departure from God’s will as massive, not marginal, and as personally and culturally deadly, not trivial. And therefore it’s not something that you can just go along with as if that were a loving thing to do.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 that the endorsement of same sex practice — which is what the approval of so-called same sex marriage does — endorses the destruction of persons (along with idolatry, greed, theft, drunkenness). Those who impenitently practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Calling such behaviors “legal” in no way removes the capital punishment that will follow in eternity. Therefore this judgment of the Supreme Court is massively evil and deadly for persons. Kim Davis is right if she believes that. It seems she does.

Second, I think she is morally right and probably legally right to refuse to put her name on the marriage license of two men or two women. She is morally right because God has given civil authorities to the world to reward the right and punish the evil. So when those authorities promote evil and punish good, those authorities may rightly be disobeyed for the sake of obeying God. Here are the two key texts.

1 Peter 2:13–14, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.” So be subject to governors as they are sent to punish evil and do good.

Romans 13:1, 3–4, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. . . . For [here is the ground] rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. . . . He is God’s servant for your good.”

Now I don’t think Peter and Paul are naïve in writing this way. This is what governments do. They reward the good. They punish the evil. What they mean is that this is what governments ought to do. This is the way it ought to be. For example, when Paul says, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct” (Romans 13:3), we are liable to scratch our heads and think of a hundred cases where governments have slaughtered people in great wickedness. What in the world, Paul?

Well, Paul says rulers are not a terror to good conduct, like when a dad says to his children, “We tell the truth in this family.” That is the indicative statement ofwhat ought to be. “We treat other with kindness in this family. That is what we do.” He doesn’t mean sin never happens in this family. The kids are not always good. He means this is what we ought to do. And when we don’t act this way, we are acting out of character. It ought not to be. Something should change. So it is with governments. They exist to support the good and resist the bad.

And here is an interesting thing: A few verses later in 1 Peter 2:18, 20, Peter gives an illustration of how slaves are to be subject to masters. So he is carrying this submission theme through for governments and slaves and wives and husbands and children and so on. And then he says, “Servants, be subject to your masters, even to the unjust. . . . For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.” Peter envisions someone under authoritydoing something good that gets him a beating. Authorities don’t ordinarily punish people for being completely compliant.

Now of course, it may be the slave was slandered and then punished for something he did not do. That is possible. But that is not what the text says. It seems to me he has done something good. Maybe he stood up for a fellow Christian slave or maybe he shared the gospel. Or maybe he refused to have sex with the master. When you do good, suffer, and endure, this is a gracious thing with God. So it may well be that this slave or citizen or wife knew he would pay a price. And that was a gracious thing with God to suffer for doing good.

Now I think Kim Davis was right not to sign the marriage licenses and thus to not treat evil as marriage. It is not marriage! If she blesses with her authority and her signature a union which leads to destruction, she endorses and participates in that destruction. Encouraging homosexual behavior is the participation in someone’s destruction. I think she is right not to do that. Now I said she may be also legally right and not just morally right. This thinking is complicated, but here are just a few observations:

Was she legally bound to resign instead of obstructing the licensing process? Now there are two angles on this question — two ways to come at it. One is to observe that perhaps she is not the one breaking the law, but that that Supreme Court broke the law by their ludicrous claim that they found in the Constitution a right to the non-existent illusion called “same sex marriage.” That is absolutely ludicrous that they could find such a thing in the Constitution. They came up with that out of thin air, because they want it to be. There comes a point when people with eyes look at the Supreme Court and say: This strutting court has no clothes on. They may wear a tiny little one-inch-across tyrannical crown on their heads, but they are not robed with the royal power to make the Constitution condone the killing of children nor to condone so-called ‘same sex marriage. It cannot be done. Out of nothing they create mirages.

The other angle that suggests Kim Davis was not only morally right, but, perhaps, legally right, is that she was drawing the line — the hill to die on — not at whether so-called “gay marriage” could be authorized by anyone in Kentucky, but by whether it would have to be authorized by her. The specific issue was whether her name or her official authority as clerk was put on the licenses.

So the legal question is, “Does an employee, even an elected employee, have to comply with every aspect of the job description if it compromises the conscience? Or are there legal — that is the key word here — legal provisions that mandate an employer adjust the employee’s job requirements to avoid a conflict with conscience?” And the answer is yes. Both the federal Civil Rights Act and Kentucky’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act have such provisions in them. And so the question for the court, if she pursues it this way, is whether the adjustment in her job description can be made without an undue burden on that office — on the employer.

Kim Davis’s case is not unique. People need to really be aware of this issue. Can she keep her job and not do part of her job because of her conscience? All of these are real litigations:

• Can nurses, who have religious objections to participating in abortions, keep their jobs and not participate in abortions, even though the hospital says they must?
• Can Muslim truck drivers not transport alcohol?
• Can a pacifist postal worker not process draft registration forms?
• Can a Jehovah’s Witness employee not be required to raise the flag at the school?
• Can a vegetarian bus driver not be required to hand out hamburger coupons?

Those are all real cases I read about — whether or not legally one can have his job description adjusted without resigning so as to avoid the conflict with conscience.

So for Kim Davis the legal question is, Can she be given an exemption so that she can carry out her clerk’s duties while not giving any of her official authority to the licensing of so-called “same sex marriage”? And the answer is, We will see. I don’t know what is going to happen.

Morally, she is in the right. She is, of course, just one prominent case of what will be hundreds in the months and years to come as Christians and others draw a line of conscience beyond which they will not go. And the upshot for us, all of us, is that we should all be pondering now what that line is in our vocation, in our schooling, in our civil life, in our finances, and in our friendships. Because if we are not fixed and strong in our resolve and we are taken off guard with the threat of loss, we will cave in. Now is the time to be clear and resolved — before they knock on your door.

This article was originally posted at the desiringgod.org website.

Pastor John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

Written by Joe Rigney

Written by Phyllis Schlafly

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by the narrowest possible margin that Kentucky’s definition of marriage is unconstitutional, the Court’s decision was qualified by its assurance that religious freedom would not be jeopardized. “The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection,” the Court solemnly intoned on June 26.

In the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, one brave woman is testing whether Justice Anthony Kennedy really meant it when he wrote those words. But the local federal judge for eastern Kentucky, David Bunning, has wrongly sent Kim Davis to jail for her beliefs, without respecting or accommodating her sincere Christian beliefs.

Local officials are required to support the laws of the United States, but no federal law requires every county official to issue marriage licenses, which are available in many other offices throughout Kentucky. Even Judge Bunning admitted that “plaintiffs have one feasible avenue for obtaining their marriage licenses” by traveling to another county, so the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling was not violated by the clerk’s decision to suspend all licenses while she seeks accommodation under the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Judge David Bunning previously came to national attention when he required the students and staff of the public schools in neighboring Boyd County to attend mandatory diversity training, “a significant portion of which would be devoted to issues of sexual orientation and gender harassment.” Bunning, who also ruled against a law banning partial-birth abortion, was nominated for his lifetime job at the age of only 34, and was confirmed because his father was a Senator, despite having inadequate legal experience and an “unqualified” rating from the American Bar Association.

As an elected public official, Kim Davis should not have been sent to jail by an unelected federal judge who can cite no federal law that she ever violated. Her imprisonment is the result of a judicial supremacy unrestrained by the checks and balances that apply to all other branches of government.

Described by Alexander Hamilton in 1788 as the “least dangerous” branch, federal courts are so out-of-control today that he would barely recognize them. A federal court has imprisoned a county official to force her to change the way she does her job, without any federal statute to justify such an order.

It is not “rule of law” to imprison someone based on judge-made law; it is “rule by judges.” Kim Davis is not committing civil disobedience, because she has not violated any law. She was arrested, humiliated with a mug shot and imprisoned, merely for abiding by state law and the Bible.

As an elected Democratic official, Kim Davis should be defended by her own party leaders, but the Democratic candidate for governor of Kentucky, Jack Conway, declines to defend her. As Attorney General, Conway refused to defend his own state’s constitution when it was challenged in the Supreme Court.

Republicans should look for guidance to the roots of our Party about 160 years ago, when it rose from obscurity by criticizing the judicial activism of the Dred Scott decision. Abraham Lincoln was a political loser until he started hammering the more popular Stephen Douglas about that ruling which extended a pro-slavery view nationwide.

Douglas, himself a skilled attorney and orator, tried to seek a middle ground between the pro-slavery federal court system and a populace that was increasingly fed up with the judicial supremacy. Douglas finally lost his credibility when he could not give coherent answers to questions posed by Lincoln in Freeport, Illinois, about what the full impact of the Dred Scott decision would be.

When one branch of government oversteps its power, the remedy under our Constitution is for the other branches of government to push back or refuse to comply, as multiple presidents and Congresses have done throughout American history. In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln repudiated the Dred Scott decision as wrong and declared that it was not binding on the other branches of government or on anyone who was not a party to the case.

The Republican Party platform of 1860 flatly objected to how Democrats were imposing their agenda through use of “the Federal Courts [in matters] of a purely local interest.” By standing up against the abuse of power by federal courts, Republicans quickly became the majority party.

When the Supreme Court ruled that all 50 states must license same-sex unions on the same terms as marriage, the court was implicitly declaring that Christianity and the Bible are wrong. If San Francisco can be a sanctuary city, let’s allow Rowan County, Kentucky to be a “sanctuary county” where the Biblical view of marriage continues to be honored and respected.

This article was originally posted at EagleForum.org

“Haters are going to hate” is how Shepard Smith of Fox News referred to supporters of Christian clerk Kim Davis on his Tuesday afternoon show. It was another example of the anti-Christian bias that has been rearing its ugly head on a channel that many conservatives had looked to for “fair and balanced” coverage of the issues they care about.

But calls to several Fox News officials, asking for reaction to Smith’s anti-Christian comments, were not returned.

In other controversial comments about a pro-Davis rally being broadcast during his show, Smith ripped conservative Christians for “a religious play again,” saying, “This is the same crowd that says, ‘We don’t want Sharia law, don’t let them tell us what to do, keep their religion out of our lives and out of our government.’ Well, here we go again.”

Smith seems not to understand the difference between Christianity, a foundation of the American system that protects religious rights and liberty, and Islam, an authoritarian religion which wants to impose its values on others.

It was expected that the liberals in the media complaining about “mass incarceration” would make an exception for Davis to go to jail. That’s just the way the liberals are. But it was somewhat unexpected that Fox News would break its promise to air “fair and balanced” coverage of the issue by permitting Smith to take such a crude stand against Davis on the “Shepard Smith Reporting” 3:00 p.m. ET show.

All that Davis had asked for from the beginning was the right to have her religious views respected by the government, and for her name as county clerk to not be put on marriage licenses for homosexuals. She was let out of jail on Tuesday despite the federal judge in the case, David L. Bunning, having failed to resolve the issues in the case. As a result, she could return to her job and decide again not to authorize gay marriage licenses.

With his reckless comments, Smith, regularly featured by Out magazine as a powerful homosexual media personality, has embarrassed his channel and turned himself into a liability with the channel’s conservative viewers. He has completely dropped any pretense of objectivity on his show, by apparently taking it personally that many people find the gay lifestyle to be morally repugnant.

His coverage of the pro-Davis rally on Tuesday was openly hostile to the clerk, as he denounced her and her supporters as the equivalent of racists who objected to interracial marriage. The idea of comparing blacks to homosexuals is a frequent claim made by the gay lobby and its adherents. However, skin color is a fact of life, and sexual orientation can be learned, chosen, and even rejected.

It was during her legal counsel Mat Staver’s defense of Davis at the rally that Smith said “haters are going to hate.”

But rather than being a “hater,” Staver is a well-respected attorney and legal scholar who “holds Bachelor, Master, and Juris Doctorate degrees and an honorary Doctorate of Laws and a Doctorate of Divinity,” his bio states. “He has argued two landmark cases before the United States Supreme Court as lead counsel and written numerous briefs before the High Court. Mat has argued in numerous state and federal courts across the country and has over 230 published legal opinions.”

Despite his liberal and pro-homosexual views, Fox News says that Smith “has played a major role in the network’s innovation of the way news is presented.”

If so, this can only continue to hurt the image and reputation of Fox News, which still promotes the slogan of being “fair and balanced” in order to maintain its conservative viewers.

A recent edition of Out said about Smith that his “sexual orientation and centrist ideology are some of Fox News’ worst kept secrets.” The magazine went on, “Despite 2014 reports that his desire to come out led to his demotion, Smith continues to provide nuanced, grounded, and logical reporting as managing editor of Fox’s breaking news division, and host of Shepard Smith Reporting.”

But with his bashing of Kim Davis for her Christian actions and views, the idea that Smith provides “grounded” reporting will be increasingly difficult to believe. The venom which came from him is something Fox viewers would expect from MSNBC.

While it cannot be confirmed that Smith was demoted “for his desire to come out” publicly as a homosexual, he might as well come out since he has really left no doubt in the minds of viewers how he feels on this very personal matter. He has confirmed with his wild and opinionated statements that he is not an objective news anchor who can be counted on to fairly report the news.

In addition to attacking Christians as “haters,” Smith complained on the air that those turning out in support of Davis were being “divisive,” and that Davis was surrounded by “grandstanders,” such as the “ridiculous” Mike Huckabee, a presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas who served as a host of a talk show on the Fox News Channel. He is a Southern Baptist pastor who helped lead the “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” for the restaurant when its CEO was criticized for supporting traditional marriage.

On his show last week Smith had mocked Davis for having been married several times and having kids out of wedlock, not mentioning her religious conversion to Christianity four years ago that turned her life around and led to her take a stand against signing the gay marriage licenses.

Smith said, “Ms. Davis apparently believes in the sanctity of marriage to the degree that she’s been married a total of four times. In fact, she got pregnant with her third husband’s children while married to her first husband. But fear not: her second husband adopted them.”

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth called the comments a “cheap shot” that ignored her born-again experience in becoming a Christian four years ago. “She knows that that’s her past. She’s probably ashamed of it,” he noted. “But she now has a strong allegiance to the Bible and to her God and wants to follow her God.”

Despite her religious conversion, Greg Gutfeld repeated the smear of Davis, based on her previous marriages, on the Fox News show “The Five” on Tuesday afternoon. Not one member of the panel took Davis’s side during the discussion or mentioned how Christianity had changed her life.

The basic facts of the case, given short shrift by Fox and other media, are simple: Davis had objected on religious liberty grounds to putting her name and government title on licenses for homosexual marriages. Legal experts also noted that a Supreme Court decision “legalizing” same-sex marriage was not sufficient to alter Kentucky law and the Kentucky constitution, which forbid legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

Nevertheless, Davis was found in contempt by Judge Bunning, who claims to be a Christian, and was put in jail without bail, only to be freed after five days.

Despite what the Supreme Court said in its ruling, dissenters called it a threat to democracy and predicted resistance from the people, who are supposed to have the power in our Constitutional system through elected representatives to make the law. That resistance, as far as the media are concerned, has started with the Davis case. It is shocking that religious conservatives cannot count on Fox to respect their side of the argument.

However, this isn’t the first time that Shepard Smith has been able to spout pro-homosexual views on the air. He denounced Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day as the “National Day of Intolerance” because supporters of the restaurant chain turned out in support of the CEO’s pro-traditional marriage views.

Fox actually pours money into the homosexual lobby. As reported by AIM, Smith and other Fox News personalities, including Megyn Kelly, have raised money for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), a special interest lobby which has guided pro-homosexual coverage in virtually all major media organizations. In April, the Fox News Channel joined CBS News and CNN as “silver” sponsors of the NLGJA 20th annual New York “Headlines & Headliners” fundraising event. A male stripper performed at the event.

This columnist, who tried to cover the affair, was told that if he recorded the event he would be thrown out.

“When I tried to reach Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News at the switchboard number of 212-301-3000, I was told he was unavailable for comment and that his office would not even accept my inquiry.”

Post originally found at aim.org

On August 29, 2015, faith leaders united in prayer for racial reconciliation, life, and Biblical marriage at the Abraham Lincoln Prayer Walk in Springfield. See video below:

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A consensus appears to be developing among otherwise reasonable people that Kim Davis, of Rowan County fame, either needs to start issuing marriage licenses or quit her job.

For those just joining us, a county clerk in Kentucky is refusing to issue marriage licenses against her conscience and is also refusing to resign. Her name, which should be on a bronze plaque on the side of the courthouse, is Kim Davis. A federal judge has ordered her to appear in his courtroom Thursday to explain why Davis should not be held in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses.

File this under sentiments which seem extreme at the time, but heroic when the danger is over, and you are reading them inscribed on the base of a polished marble memorial.

But there is a difference between contempt of court and seeing that the courts have become contemptible.

Now while florists and bakers and photographers enjoy a great deal of active support from the broader Christian world, the most people like Davis will get is a sympathetic lack of sympathy. It falls out this way because Christians generally understand the private sector — that’s where they live, after all — but they don’t understand the nature of government. They don’t understand the public sector and the relationship of God’s  Word to it. Their theology develops a distinct limp as soon as they step into the public square, but it is not the kind of limp you might acquire by wrestling with God at Peniel. It is more like what might happen if you dropped the Collected Works of Immanuel Kant on your foot. That results in quite a distinctive limp, one  you see everywhere.

Here is a quick sampling of that sympathetic lack of sympathy:

Carly Fiorina says the clerk needs to comply or move on. Ed Morrissey says the same. Ryan Anderson generally agrees with that, as does Rod Dreher. Note particularly the last comment in Dreher’s piece — that there are hills to die on, but that this is not it.

Update: After Ryan Anderson objected, I went back and reread him. His position is more nuanced than I let on, and so my apologies to him. I still have objections to his solution, but that will require a separate post.

So I want to begin by making an observation about that hill-to-die-on thing, but then move on to discuss the foundational principle that is at stake here. After that, I want to point out what it would look like if more government officials had the same understanding that Kim Davis is currently displaying — despite being opposed by all the intoleristas and also despite being abandoned by numerous Christians who admire her moxie but who don’t understand her moxie.

First, whenever we get to that elusive and ever-receding “hill to die on,” we will discover, upon our arrival there, that it only looked like a hill to die on from a distance. Up close, when the possible dying is also up close, it kind of looks like every other hill. All of a sudden it looks like a hill to stay alive on, covered over with topsoil that looks suspiciously like common ground.

So it turns out that surrendering hills is not the best way to train for defending the most important ones. Retreat is habit-forming.

This brings us to my second goal this morning, which is to highlight the principle. Pick some absurd issue — admittedly a dangerous thing to do in these times that defy the tender ministrations of satire — and that means that to be sufficiently absurd it would have to be an issue like legalized cannibalism. Now let us say that we live in a time, some weeks hence, when cannibalism can be practiced generally on established free market principles (Dahmer v. Illinois, 2023). But if you want to have a BBQ of that nature in a city park, on city property, then you are going to need a permit. Now say that you are Kim Davis’s granddaughter, and your office issues the permits for all activities in all the city parks. Do you issue the permit? Or do you arrange for a compromise? Find somebody in the office not nearly so squeamish as you are? “Hey, Queequeg! Can you handle this one?”

I interrupt this post to anticipate an objection to my choice of illustrations. “Are you saying, Wilson, that same sex marriage can be equated with cannibalism?” Well, no, they are very different sins. That said, they are both very wicked and God hates them both, and county clerks ought not give either one the sanction of law. But I am not trying to equate anything here — I am simply trying to illustrate how a believer’s conscience ought to work if he is employed by a government that tries to sin grievously through the instrumentality of a godly magistrate. This is just how I paint illustrations, with bright yellows and gaudy greens. I do that so that people can see them.

So, follow me closely here. Chesterton once said that art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. We have a set up where a line must be drawn at some point. And in the abstract all evangelical Christians would almost certainly agree that when that line was crossed, wherever it is, the revolt of the county clerks would be a good thing. With me?

Let me spell it out further. Back in the thirties, if a county clerk had refused a marriage license to a couple because they attended a church where the pastor baptized people with heads upstream, instead of her preferred way, with heads downstream, we would all agree that said clerk had gotten above himself. And if a county clerk expedited and stamped all the processing papers for trains full of Jews headed to Auschwitz, we would all have no problem with said clerk being prosecuted after the war. And when he was prosecuted, “it was entirely legal” would not be an adequate defense. Got that? Two positions, marked clearly on the map, and there is a line somewhere between them.

Where is that line? Why is that line there? By what standard do we make that determination? Who says? These questions cannot be answered apart from the law of God, and that is why we are having such trouble with them. We want a pagan society to respect our sentimental religiosity, and that is not going to happen any time soon.

The point here is not just private conscience. The right to liberty of conscience is at play with florists, bakers, and so on. But Kim Davis is not just keeping herself from sinning, she is preventing Rowan County from sinning. That is part of her job.

Every Christian elected official should be determining, within the scope of their duties, which lines they will not allow the state to cross. When they come to that line, they should refuse to cross it because “this is against the law of God.” They should do this as part of their official responsibilities. This is part of their job. It is one of the things they swear to do when they take office.

This is nothing less than Calvin’s doctrine of the lesser magistrates (Institutes 4.20.22-32), which I would urge upon all and sundry as relevant reading material. And as Calvin points out, after Daniel — a Babylonian official — disobeyed the king’s impious edict, he denied that he had wronged the king in any way (Dan. 6:22-23).

Now this takes me to my citation of Jefferson above. Some might say that it is a shame that I, a staunch Calvinist, have taken to quoting a Deist on the relationship of righteousness to government. And I say that it is a shame that a 18th century Deist has a better grasp of the relationship of righteousness to government than do two and a half busloads of 21st century Reformed seminary professors. The striking inconsistency might have two possible causes, in other words.

If just ten governors treated Obergefell the same way Kim Davis is treating it, that entire unrighteous and despotic imposition would collapse and fall to the ground. And if they did so, they would not be sinning against the United States. Rather, they would be preventing the United States from sinning.

The end game here is not armed revolution. The end game is simply a refusal to cooperate with their revolution. Make them fire or impeach faithful officials. Once removed, such faithful officials should run for office again with a promise to continue to defy all forms of unrighteous despotism. As one friend of mine put it, “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

Some might ask what the good in that would be. Wouldn’t it just result in no Christians in such positions? Perhaps, but it would be far better to have godless results enforced by the godless than to insist that the godly do it for them. It would be far better to have the “no Christians in power results” when it was actually the case that no Christians were in power. I would rather have non-Christian clerks acting like non-Christian clerks than to have Christian clerks do it for them. I mean, right?

Don’t tell believers to stay engaged so that they can make a difference, and then, when they start making a difference, tell them that this is not a hill to die on. Make the bad guys reveal themselves. Make them crack down on evangelical county clerks, while continuing to wink at sanctuary cities and local defiance of federal pot laws. Why do they apply their “It’s the law! Bow down!” standard so inconsistently? Well, mostly it is because evangelicals are sweet and naive enough to let them get away with it.

So it is ironic that this valiant stand is being taken by a clerk, because those sidling away from her provide a standing example of our real problem — the trahison des clercs.

Article was originally posted at douglaswilson.com

For those who have eyes to see, it’s evident that an age of persecution of the church is upon us in America. Warnings have been long issued and for the most part ignored.  Ignorance, complacency, intellectual sloth, cowardice, and lukewarm faith have conspired to create fertile soil within the church and without for the sodomy-as-identity juggernaut to spread its body and soul-destroying poison.

In the days to come, Christians will face challenges as they seek to submit their lives to Christ. Individual Christians will face persecution and so too will Christian institutions.  Those whose faith is weak may come to embrace heresy, and once the authority of Scripture on marriage, “gender,” and sexuality is rejected, it will be rejected on other issues as well. As we’ve already seen, there will be schism within churches and within denominations.

But God is faithful even when those who claim to love Jesus are not. He has given us his Word and preachers and teachers to light our path in the midst of a darkening cultural. Yes, there are pastors who are preaching truth about sexuality and marriage, and despite what the liberal press reports and perhaps believes, some of these pastors are young.

As an encouragement and source of clarity on homosexuality, “gender,” and marriage, IFI will be posting sermons from some of these pastors. Please listen to them. You will be emboldened and equipped to go and share truth with a suffering and confused culture. Those who love God and love their neighbors as themselves must never affirm homosexuality as good. Learn from these wise men how to truly love those who experience same-sex attraction and how to respond to lies in the culture and false teaching in the church.

The first of our posts is a brief sermon from Dr. Rob Rienow, pastor of Gospel Fellowship Church in Wheaton, Illinois: