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Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity
American evangelicalism has been on a downward slide since the 1960s. It has progressively succumbed to the humanistic spirit of the world and as a result has made the narrow gate wide. Now, large segments of the American evangelical church no longer identify with the truth, passion, power, and other hallmarks of New Testament Christianity. The spirit of the world has captured the hearts and agenda of many evangelical churches. Accommodation and compromise are key elements used to sanitize and smooth the rough edges of an old-fashioned gospel flowing from a rugged, blood-stained cross that requires death to self. Thereafter, the enlightened church is freed to focus its efforts on the temporal needs of the saint and sinner alike. The new church is consumer-oriented for […]
Culture Wars – Dispatches from the Front
This book contains fifty-five articles originally published in CultureWarrior.net over a period of three years. The articles chronicle the rapidly accelerating cultural drift that has divided the nation since the 1960s. The culture wars are the product of the conflict between worldviews competing for supremacy in the American republic and on a larger scale in all of Western civilization. On one side we have those who hold to the Judeo-Christian worldview which was the heart of Western civilization for 1,500 years and America since the arrival of the first Europeans in the early 1600s. On the other side are those who champion a humanistic view of the world that has proliferated since the Enlightenment era of the 1700s. Those of the humanistic worldview have risen […]
Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision
Americans are angry, and this anger is often expressed in a scatter-shot resistance to what they perceive is happening in American society. They know that something is systemically wrong with America’s institutions and direction, and they see and recognize the symptoms but can’t diagnose the single disease that has metastasized throughout the American cultural vision. That disease is humanism and its many children (progressivism, naturalism, liberalism, etc.). The book focuses on root causes of the humanist-Christian culture wars but also connects those causes to the topical moments about which Americans read in the newspapers and magazines; listen to on broadcast media; and experience in the home, workplace, and culture at large. Humanism is the world’s second oldest religion. It began with the serpent’s first whispered […]
Tar Creek – The Quapaw Indians, the World’s Largest Lead and Zinc Discovery, and the Tar Creek Superfund Site
History! Love it or hate it, we can’t ignore or escape it. As one writer proposes, history is a dynamic web of change and no person acts or event occurs without causing change to that web, and all of these acts and events interconnect the past with present and future. Therefore, each of us in linked to everything in the past, to each other, and to the future. And this proposition is uniquely demonstrated in Larry Johnson’s Tar Creek—the story of the Quapaw Indians and their ancient history, the world’s greatest discovery of lead and zinc on a tiny Indian reservation in the far northeastern corner of the soon-to-be state of Oklahoma, and the making of oldest and largest environmental Superfund site in America. The […]
Pacifist Christians in the Culture Wars – Part II
Two paradigms for cultural engagement: persuasion v. warfare In his book Thriving in Babylon Larry Osborne describes two opposing paradigms of cultural engagement: persuasion and warfare. He has chosen Daniel of the Old Testament as the role-model for the persuasive, non-combative approach of Christians to a hostile culture. He describes those in the warfare paradigm as focusing on fighting the spread of sin on all fronts and who envision themselves as “frontline soldiers in a great spiritual battle between the forces of evil and those who uphold biblical values.”[1] Osborne believes that modern evangelicals who see the culture in terms of spiritual warfare have gotten it all wrong and should emulate Daniel. When the biblical authors speak of spiritual warfare, it’s always framed in the […]
Pacifist Christians in the Culture Wars – Part I
“If you haven’t noticed, the culture wars are over. We lost.”[1] This was written by Larry Osborne, senior pastor of North Coast Church, a multi-campus megachurch of 11,000 members headquartered in Vista, a city in San Diego County, California. Osborne is one of a growing group of highly influential evangelical leaders and their followers who have abandoned the culture wars. Not only have these evangelical leaders and many of their followers abandoned the culture wars, many are trying to justify their actions by claiming overt resistance to an ungodly culture is non-biblical. Osborne’s book presents several ideas and arguments which ultimately become a pacifistic approach to cultural engagement by Christians. In Part I we shall examine four of these ideas and philosophies. Some things aren’t […]
How much is your child worth?
You’ve probably heard or read about Harambe of the Cincinnati Zoo. He was the 420 pound silverback gorilla that was shot and killed on May 28th by zoo officials to protect the life of a 3-year old child that managed to slip into Harambe’s domain. Such is the outrage at the killing by many in our humanistic society that the story has spun across several 24-hour news cycles as well as exploded in the internet and print media. The preschooler managed to wiggle into zoo’s Gorilla World enclosure, walk through some bushes, and then fell down the 15 wall into a moat that separated the gorilla from onlookers. The gorilla went to the child and was reported to have been “violently dragging and throwing the […]
Growing Apostasy in the Last Days – Part IV
As described in Part I, the Yale Covenant was a response to an open letter signed by 130 Muslim scholars from throughout the Muslim world to leaders of Christian churches everywhere. The Muslim scholars pointed to common ground between Muslims and Christians with regards to the commands to love God and to love one’s neighbors. The Yale Covenant was a response to the Muslim letter signed by over three hundred prominent Christian ministers, professors, and leaders from various organizations including Christian churches, ministries, seminaries, Christian publishers, and various quasi-Christian organizations. Most of the signers could be classified as coming from the liberal segment of those entities. However, there were several high-profile and highly influential representatives from major evangelical churches and organizations that signed the Yale […]