As a pastor, I have long struggled with the "If the pastor would lead on this political issue...." comments. I think them unfair since preaching through Scripture in a careful, thoughtful way takes an enormous amount of work. Being a shepherd, calling on the sick, encouraging those tempted, reaching out to the lost are also very time consuming. I am deeply saddened by the false teachers that pervert moral standards that Christ clearly communicates. They reinforce the perversion of society with their lies. I lived for a while in Asia and visited Singapore several times. An interesting place in that it balances cultural and religious diversity by structuring the moral laws around the large agreements of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. They enforce an anti-getto enviroment by forcing every building to have a mixture of each religion that is similar to the overall mix of the whole population of Singapore. If a building becomes too full one one type, they force everyone to move and sell their condos and move into a building with the right mixture. Harmony is their stated goal and the focus of their legal efforts. They are not perfect and the laws don't really protect temporary workers, but they do a fairly good job of providing a safe, walkable city-state, with great economic opportunities and the freedom to worship if you are not forcing someone to convert to your religion. I agree that conservatives need to win, need to defeat the left by both force of law and mockery until it's ideas are a relic. I think we also need a focus on legal harmony like Singapore that suppresses radicals while allowing freedom to exercise religion that is compatible with a Christian moral framework. Thus, animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, obscenity, etc would not be tolerated forms of religious worship. This would exclude many of the VooDoo practices. I have long observed that a cultural christian society is much better for evangelism than a pagan one, especially a pagan one that is specifically hostile to Christianity. It took nearly 150 years for Christianity to grow to 40,000 total believers in Thailand. The whole framework was very culturally hostile to Christianity, even though it was legally free, it was highly persecuted at every level and in every type of institution. As the church grew and more and more Thai interacted with Christians that rejection has gradually lightened, though it still remains, and the Church has grown to about 500,000 believers today, in a population of 66 Million. It takes a Thai about 10 years to move from considering Christ to actually entering a church. EVERY new believer suffers persecution. How much better in the USA? When Billy Graham could conduct mass evangelism and it was culturally positive to attend and to respond!
Singapore is an interesting model, and I have enjoyed reading Yew's biography of how he created such an impressive country. That said, I think the policies you cite are a necessary evil of a lack of religious consensus. Much better to have cultural Christianity, and the USA, particularly in the large hinterlands, still has enough of a consensus to revive that if God were merciful enough to provide us with a revival. I think that is more likely to happen if the Church can get out of the way of nationalist politics. Self-confidence in asserting the national interest would, I think, be helpful in recovering our religious heritage.
I agree on the evangelism angle. "Evangelism Explosion" pioneered by D. James Kennedy in the 70s and 80s used to start conversations with "if you died today, would you go to heaven or hell?" That question presumes so many shared assumptions in a broadly Christian society. Country music's tradition of the sin song likewise presumes God. "Lord, I've got a good woman at home, but she ain't always around, that's when I get whisky-bent and hell-bound." An astounding number of country songs feature a dialog between the singer and the Lord, and as such represent prayers, however flawed. There's more gospel in a song like that celebrating sin straightforwardly (at least acknowledging it as such, which is halfway home!), and presented tragically, than the pure degeneracy in the mainstream pop culture.
As a pastor, I have long struggled with the "If the pastor would lead on this political issue...." comments. I think them unfair since preaching through Scripture in a careful, thoughtful way takes an enormous amount of work. Being a shepherd, calling on the sick, encouraging those tempted, reaching out to the lost are also very time consuming. I am deeply saddened by the false teachers that pervert moral standards that Christ clearly communicates. They reinforce the perversion of society with their lies. I lived for a while in Asia and visited Singapore several times. An interesting place in that it balances cultural and religious diversity by structuring the moral laws around the large agreements of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. They enforce an anti-getto enviroment by forcing every building to have a mixture of each religion that is similar to the overall mix of the whole population of Singapore. If a building becomes too full one one type, they force everyone to move and sell their condos and move into a building with the right mixture. Harmony is their stated goal and the focus of their legal efforts. They are not perfect and the laws don't really protect temporary workers, but they do a fairly good job of providing a safe, walkable city-state, with great economic opportunities and the freedom to worship if you are not forcing someone to convert to your religion. I agree that conservatives need to win, need to defeat the left by both force of law and mockery until it's ideas are a relic. I think we also need a focus on legal harmony like Singapore that suppresses radicals while allowing freedom to exercise religion that is compatible with a Christian moral framework. Thus, animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, obscenity, etc would not be tolerated forms of religious worship. This would exclude many of the VooDoo practices. I have long observed that a cultural christian society is much better for evangelism than a pagan one, especially a pagan one that is specifically hostile to Christianity. It took nearly 150 years for Christianity to grow to 40,000 total believers in Thailand. The whole framework was very culturally hostile to Christianity, even though it was legally free, it was highly persecuted at every level and in every type of institution. As the church grew and more and more Thai interacted with Christians that rejection has gradually lightened, though it still remains, and the Church has grown to about 500,000 believers today, in a population of 66 Million. It takes a Thai about 10 years to move from considering Christ to actually entering a church. EVERY new believer suffers persecution. How much better in the USA? When Billy Graham could conduct mass evangelism and it was culturally positive to attend and to respond!
Singapore is an interesting model, and I have enjoyed reading Yew's biography of how he created such an impressive country. That said, I think the policies you cite are a necessary evil of a lack of religious consensus. Much better to have cultural Christianity, and the USA, particularly in the large hinterlands, still has enough of a consensus to revive that if God were merciful enough to provide us with a revival. I think that is more likely to happen if the Church can get out of the way of nationalist politics. Self-confidence in asserting the national interest would, I think, be helpful in recovering our religious heritage.
I agree on the evangelism angle. "Evangelism Explosion" pioneered by D. James Kennedy in the 70s and 80s used to start conversations with "if you died today, would you go to heaven or hell?" That question presumes so many shared assumptions in a broadly Christian society. Country music's tradition of the sin song likewise presumes God. "Lord, I've got a good woman at home, but she ain't always around, that's when I get whisky-bent and hell-bound." An astounding number of country songs feature a dialog between the singer and the Lord, and as such represent prayers, however flawed. There's more gospel in a song like that celebrating sin straightforwardly (at least acknowledging it as such, which is halfway home!), and presented tragically, than the pure degeneracy in the mainstream pop culture.