Page 2476 – Christianity Today (2024)

My post from yesterday elicited a couple of comments asking for further information about the Moody Pastors’ Conference going on this week. It wasn’t my intention to be unhelpful, but I was. So, thanks, Jarrod and PastorM. You asked good questions. Here are my answers.

I saw no Twittering–in the sessions I was in, there were not even any laptops. A pretty low-tech crowd.

As for diversity, I was actually impressed by the racial makeup. Based on my unscientific observation, I would say the Moody conference was more ethnically diverse that Catalyst and NPC. Significant numbers of Hispanic and black participants. I can’t say anything about the international makeup–I met a Canadian. Other than that, I don’t know.

The majority of the breakout sessions were issues and/or methods focused–how to grow your church, increase giving, responding to hom*osexuality, etc.

As for the “hidden curriculum,” I’d say the difference in Catalyst and Moody could be described like this: At Catalyst, all the talk was about contextualization and mission. At Moody, it was about doctrine and faithfulness. That observation is based on John Piper’s presentation on Tuesday night and the audience’s response to him.

As for women, no–there was very little female participation. In fact,

at one point in Piper’s presentation, he addressed us as “brothers.” Then he said, “I know there are women here, but I’m talking to pastors.” The clear assumption is that pastor = male.

Stan Guthrie explains the latest on pastoral health, the growth of agnosticism, and church giving to the Third World for WMBI Chicago’s morning program with Collin Lambert.

Editor’s note: With Terminator Salvation opening in theatres this week, we asked Peter T. Chattaway—a self-professed Terminator geek—to write an essay about the spiritual themes in the franchise, which he has seen since the first film released in 1984.

Whenever people ask me what my favorite Christmas movie is, I tell them it’s The Terminator—and I’m only half-joking.

The film, which celebrates its 25th anniversary later this year, is not exactly a religious movie or even a holiday movie on any obvious level. It’s an R-rated sci-fi action film with plenty of violence, a fair bit of profanity, and a sex scene that was standard fare for modestly-priced B-movies of that time. And yet, there is something about the storyline, written by director James Cameron, that has always brought the Nativity to mind.

The story concerns a man from the future named Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) who comes back in time to tell a woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) four things: the machines created to control our defense systems will become self-aware; the machines will launch a full-scale war to destroy the human race; humanity will be saved under the leadership of Sarah’s son John; and a cyborg called a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has been sent back in time to kill Sarah so that her son John can never be born.

Kyle has thus been sent back in time to protect Sarah, and, although he does not know it, he will also become John’s father. And so, in an admittedly imprecise way, the film concerns an Annunciation of sorts; and as the Terminator, bent on finding Sarah and killing her, kills everyone else who happens to get in his way, the film evokes parallels to the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem as well. Just as the birth of Christ took place against the backdrop of a cosmic war in which the final outcome was never really in doubt, so too the birth of John Connor is soaked in the blood of battles he is destined to fight.

(It is tempting to suggest that John Connor’s initials might have messianic parallels, too—but they are also the initials of writer-director Cameron, so who knows?)

Complicating matters

Thesequels have complicated matters in a number of ways, as more robotic assassins and more protectors have come back in time to fight over the life of John Connor, but the biblical, mythic and religious allusions remain. The films—and the short-lived TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which lasted two seasons before it was officially cancelled earlier this week—have also reflected the increasingly sophisticated nature of the world, and how we perceive our place in it.

Take politics, for example. The original film came out in 1984, when fear of a nuclear apocalypse was all over the popular culture, from movies like WarGames and the Mad Max flicks to TV shows like Threads and The Day After. For young Christians like me, the fatalism of the era was amplified by the end-times themes that filled Christian music, films, and comic books at that time. In that climate, The Terminator suggested that, yes, a disastrous war would happen—but we would ultimately pull through it and survive.

By the time Cameron wrote and directed the second film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in 1991, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the Cold War was over—and so, this time, the franchise went in a more optimistic direction. With the assistance of a new Terminator (Schwarzenegger again) who has been re-programmed to help them, Sarah and her young son John (Edward Furlong) are able to destroy the lab that was fated to create the machines of the future. The apocalypse, we are led to believe, will never happen now.

But then came Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, in 2003—less than two years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The hopefulness of the previous film gave way to the idea that the war with the machines is “inevitable”—and that it cannot be prevented, because the forces that want to attack us are radically decentralized. What is more, we are now told that Connor’s future victory was not so final after all—indeed, we are told that he was killed in the future, or at least in one version of the future.

And so, in the new film, Terminator Salvation, the adult John Connor (Christian Bale) openly worries that he may not be able to win the war any more; he argues with his fellow military leaders over whether they should “stay the course,” a term often invoked during debates over the “war on terror”; and he insists that the Resistance should not adopt the methods of the enemy, otherwise “what’s the point?”

If the original film had a clear set of allegorical parallels, the sequels have been harder to pin down in that sort of way. For example, all of them have used the term “Judgment Day” to describe that moment when nuclear missiles rained down on all the world’s cities and the war with the machines began—but who, exactly, was doing the judging?

Relevant themes

Still, even without a clear biblical template, the sequels have definitely explored some issues of pressing importance to the modern Christian moviegoer:

The human-machine relationship. From cell phones to iPods, technology is playing a bigger and bigger part of our lives, to the point where some people have said that we are all becoming de facto cyborgs ourselves. The original film makes humorous references to pagers and answering machines, both of which were fairly new at the time, as well as the bigger, factory-sized machines that make such devices possible.

In this increasingly mechanized and technological world, it is more important than ever that we hold on to something spiritual, to the thing that makes us uniquely human; in Terminator Salvation, a teenaged Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) points to his head and his heart and tells his fellow prisoners to “stay alive, in here and in here.” But humanity is no mere spiritual abstraction; it is also rooted in the world of organic, physical life. So the people in these films love each other, have children together, and die for each other sacrificially.

The source of meaning and morality. In the first two sequels, John Connor and his wife-to-be, Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), are assisted by Terminators that have been re-programmed to protect them—and they ask these robots if there is anything more to them than their programming. Are the Terminators “worried” about dying? If John and Kate are killed, will that “mean anything” to them? Faced with such questions, the Terminators betray little emotion, and reply simply that they would have no reason to exist if John and Kate died, and that they need to “stay functional” in order to keep their human masters alive.

But there is more to a meaningful life than simply following your programming, and both T2 and T3 end on notes which suggest that the “good” Terminators have achieved something resembling free will; in both films, the Terminator goes beyond the orders he has been given and sacrifices himself for the greater good, even though he didn’t have to.

T2, in particular, goes even further and suggests that the Terminator of that film has learned “the value of human life.” Interestingly, though, when John initially tells the Terminator it is wrong to kill people, he can’t think of a reason beyond “Because you just can’t, okay?” It isn’t until the TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles that a former FBI agent named James Ellison (played by the openly Christian Richard T. Jones) explains to a Terminator that it is wrong to kill because human life is made in the image of God and is therefore sacred.

And so, just as the re-programmed Terminators derive their meaning partly from the ones who have programmed them, but also partly from their freedom to go beyond their programming, so too we humans derive our meaning from the One who breathed life into us, and from our ability to exercise our free will in his service.

Destiny, prophecy and fatalism. The future is not set, and there is no fate but what we make for ourselves. So say several characters in each of these films, and yet, these characters don’t always behave as though they truly believe this. After all, John Connor sent the adult Kyle Reese back in time to become his father—and much of the new film revolves around John’s conviction that the teenaged Kyle needs to be rescued so that he can fulfill that destiny.

The films even play with the idea that efforts to change the future will just make things worse. In a couple of deleted scenes from the original film (available on some versions of the DVD), Sarah convinces Kyle that they should destroy the company that built the machines, to prevent the machines from being born—just as the machines are trying to kill Sarah to prevent John from being born. But, as we also see in T2, all Sarah ends up doing is luring the Terminator to one of the company’s factories—thereby guaranteeing that the technology which makes the machines possible will end up in that company’s hands.

In this, the films sometimes resemble Greek myth more than anything biblical. (T3 makes its debt to the Greeks explicit when the general who puts the machines in charge on Judgment Day tells his daughter, “I opened Pandora’s Box.”) To the Greeks, fate was unavoidable, and efforts to prevent a prophecy from coming true usually ended up fulfilling it.

And yet, the films resist fatalism. Just as the biblical prophecies often came with a call to repentance or an assurance that salvation was waiting on the other side of judgment, so too the Terminator films stubbornly cling to hope.

Death is certain, but human life remains precious nonetheless. The human spirit cannot be defeated or assimilated by machines. And, as the newest film makes especially clear, we can never rule out the possibility that we will get a “second chance.”

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Editor’s note: When word leaked last week that Derek Webb had “crossed the line” with his label, INO Records, partly over the apparent use of a four-letter word in one of his songs, we responded with a commentary by Todd Hertz on the topic—and readers have responded in droves. Some of your responses got Hertz to rethink his admitted pet peeve about artists who self-declare their work as important—and after further consideration, Todd says, “I jumped to some unfair conclusions when reading Webb’s use of the word ‘important,’ and I apologize for that. I expect any artist to have passion for their work. If it is not important, why do it?”

Other reader responses brought great insight into complex issues that, frankly, we still don’t know everything about. As Webb said in a follow-up e-mail to fans yesterday, “Make no mistake, our trouble with the label over content is very real, and not as simple as one word; we’re backed into a corner.” He is going to lay low for now, he says, but promises more details to come. And so, without further ado, we’d like to share some of those reader responses with you here:

I don’t understand Todd Hertz’s pet peeve about artists self-declaring their work as important. Don’t we all want our work to be meaningful and important? I’m a public health nurse and I am passionate about the work I do. I am convinced it is important work that makes a difference in people’s lives. Should artistic work be any different? Also, I know Derek Webb weighs each word he uses, sometimes obsessively. If he feels a word of profanity is necessary for the message of the song, I would like to hear his reasoning. He has always been willing to take risks and say what is sometimes hard to hear. I’ll take that honesty and refreshing transparency any day over the boring pop Christian pabulum.—Margo Cameron

I find it grating to hear an artist go on about how important his or her music is—and how necessary it is that it be heard. I believe that music is only important in hindsight. For instance, U2 is important—but no one could have known their importance when they recorded War.—Tom Richards

I feel like Hertz poisoned the well a bit, making it sound like Webb called his own work important and leading readers to see Derek as arrogant. Derek said he sees this as his most important record, which is perfectly legitimate for him to say. He’s saying that of his body of work, this record is important to him. That’s vastly different than saying “my record is important among all records ever made.” I believe it’s a mark of true humility to be able to freely talk positively of yourself, giving yourself neither special praise or criticism.—Jason Gray

For too long, legalism prevailed in Christianity: don’t do this, don’t say that. That’s not good—it’s very similar to the bonds of sin. But now, the contemporary Christian stance is license and liberalism. You are free to do whatever you see is appropriate. We have gone from one extreme to the other.—Gary Gamble

This discussion reminds me of the Tony Campolo line: “While you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a s—. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said s— than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.” Sometimes swearing is quite appropriate because the thing being sworn about is much more important than the swearing itself.—Adam Shields

If a record company doesn’t like a product for any reason that an artist is presenting, I believe that it is their right to do whatever they wish. However, if that is the case, they should release an artist to explore his artistic endeavors as he wishes.—Chris Risheill

The Apostle Paul used some very strong language concerning very strong subject matter. (In one instance, he used the Greek equivalent to somewhere between crap and s—-.) Although I realize Scripture talks about no unclean thing coming out of our mouth, but what if that statement is more about hatred, and non-edification? I don’t think we all ought to be incredibly potty-mouthed, but I do think we certainly have bigger fish to fry! Also, while profanity may not be right for “safe for the whole family” radio stations, it certainly could get the attention of others who commonly use profanity.—Heather Strouse

Hertz was far too lenient in his comments about the use of profanity in art. The matter speaks for itself: profanity is profane. It’s bad enough that in anger and the flesh we utter profanities. But to deliberately script and produce it is unacceptable to those called to live holy unto our Creator, pursuing that which is pure and true and right. The church today has a crisis of discernment and compromise of the authority of Scripture.—Duane L Burgess

I don’t understand why we categorize certain words as profane and others as not. They’re all words. I think this definition gives certain people a sense of morality and others a sense of rebellion. If it makes a stronger point to use a certain word, then use it. I do understand why Christian record labels would have rules against the use of certain words. That’s why I think Webb needs to break free from the record label cage. Because he’s one of the few Christian artists that actually make good and meaningful music, I believe him when he says the song is important.—Cate Song

I believe that using curse words is completely unnecessary and inappropriate. The Bible is pretty clear when it comes to the power and effect our words have (life and death is in the power of the tongue) and that we should tame our tongues.—Abe VanMeter

Artistic and poetic license is celebrated. People live and die for this freedom. But as a Christian, I live for so much more than just to make music, no matter how much I love it. Heroism in a Christian should be different from that of the world. If any of our music ever begins to take away people’s eyes from God, is it really worth our artistic pride? —Louriz Manuel

In his song “Wedding Dress,” Webb used strong words to great effect in making a profound point about the reality of grace covering our broken lives.I would fight for the freedom to do that! But the use of distasteful words just to say, “Look what I can say” is not needed. Flaunting liberty is a dangerous thing.—Verne Haskell

I for years have battled with trying not to swear. I think artists should have artistic license except were it will adversely effect others by leading them down a slippery slope. Matthew 18:6 comes to mind.

—Richard Campbell

I am a Christian songwriter. I wrote a song that included a profanity. I worried slightly about it, but it seemed to fit. My youth pastor told me he played it for the middle school students but stopped it before that line. I then decided to change it. I did not like the idea that kids needed to be protected from my music.—Larry Davidson

The more I read about Derek the more I start to wonder what his true motivation is. Does he truly think the message he’s been given by God to share is so important that he’s just fighting any and all opposition to it? Or is he just rebelling for rebellion’s sake?Can we know? —Jessica Stewart

The heart of this matter lies in sensationalism. If it takes a curse word to get an audience’s attention, then what does that say about the awe inspiring, life changing Word of God?—Gilbert Paez

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Pilgrims’ Progress

Ted Olsen’s April cover story, “He Talked to Us on the Road,” reminded me of a pilgrimage of sorts from a few years ago. In planning a New England vacation, I included a trip to Williams College in western Massachusetts in search of the Haystack Prayer Meeting monument. While visiting this now-obscure memorial overshadowed by ancient pines, I felt somehow connected to the four young men who were inflamed with a passion for foreign missions, particularly to Southeast Asia and India, and launched a worldwide movement thereafter.

My brief time at that quiet monument wasn’t necessarily a holy moment, but it connected me to a powerful work of God in history, a work that spanned the globe and touched my life. It was a pilgrimage I’ll never forget.

Kevin WheelerBossier City, Louisiana

I was delighted to see Ted Olsen’s story on Christian pilgrimage. As a professor at John Brown University, I take students and staff on such adventures quite often, always with the purpose of using the trips as tools for spiritual formation.

I was surprised, though, that Olsen did not mention some of the most fascinating pilgrims of Christian history, the Celtic peregrini of the early Irish monastic era.Their determination to “seek the place of their resurrection” is a worthy model: that as we leave behind what’s familiar, something new and living can perhaps emerge.

Tracy BalzerSiloam Springs, Arkansas

As a retired minister living on a subsistence income, I have never been to the Holy Land, Taizé, Mount Sinai, Geneva, Rome, or Luther’s Germany; even a “pilgrimage” to my alma mater, Wheaton College, is out of sight. Yet I agree with your insight that all Christians need pilgrimages in order to experience ecstasy (ekstasis, literally, “to stand outside oneself”). We need to climb the mountain not only to reach the peak, but also to look back at our daily world, small and comfortable, and see its place in the panorama of God’s world.

The Bible says that God rested on the seventh day of creation, and that keeping the Sabbath reflects being made in his image. Of course, the Almighty doesn’t need rest like we do, but there is a necessary truth in that term. Rest or re-creation speaks two truths: first, that we are not subservient to the universe of matter—we extend beyond it; and second, despite that, matter, places, and things are real. Created by God, they are good and deserve our attention and care.

Coalman CoatesNashville, Tennessee

Conflicting Histories

As editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (ecc), I found C. L. Lopez’s HeadLines piece “Book Brouhaha” [April, p. 15] skewed and incomplete. It ignores significant elements of the dispute and quotes uncritically and sometimes approvingly the assertions of ecc’s critics. ecc has 1,400 entries in four volumes with 1.8 million words. The offending passages total only 248 words. By no standard of proportionality is it fair to condemn a work of 1.8 million words on the basis of 248 words.

Lopez cited in full one of the offending passages on Islamic conquests of the Middle East and Central Asia from the 7th to the 15th centuries. It mentions the original Christian homelands in North Africa being “stolen” by the Arabs, and the vast Asian hinterland from Asia Minor to China being overrun by the Turks and Mongols as locusts. I challenge any historian, Christian or Muslim, to disprove the historical accuracy of these statements. Before they do so, they should read Philip Jenkins’s The Lost History of Christianity for a starter. I could give them hundreds of other narratives.

Is it a crime for a Jewish historian to describe the Holocaust because it may strain Jewish-German relations? Are we living in an Orwellian world where crimes against humanity can be condoned but cannot be written about?

There are hundreds of books attacking Christianity for its supposed failings and shortcomings. Has an encyclopedia ever been suspended for being anti-Christian? After all, Wiley-Blackwell itself publishes The Muslim World, one of the most radical Jihadist journals in the world, full of “inflammatory” statements against Christianity.

The whole story will be told in my forthcoming book, Intellectual Terrorism: How Wiley-Blackwell Killed the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, to be ​published in January 2010.

George Thomas KurianYorktown Heights, New York

The Nitpicky NCAA

I take strong exception to the HeadLines brief about Abilene Christian University and its encounter with ncaa sanctions [April, p. 17].It stated that there were “numerous ethics infractions.” In the ncaa report, there were never charges of ethics violations. The violations were secondary in nature, self-reported by Abilene Christian, and we believe they did not give the school any competitive advantage.

For the most part, the violations involved well-meaning Christian people assisting international students who also happened to be athletes.Christian colleges and universities affiliated with ncaa should make their constituencies aware that doing good is often trumped by ncaa regulations, thus constituting a violation of the rules.

Royce MoneyPresident, Abilene Christian UniversityAbilene, Texas

Fessing Up to Ourselves

Way to go, Christianity Today, in your editorial on Ted Haggard [“Self-Examination Time,” April]. I appreciate the reminder to know ourselves intimately. Most of us who had dysfunctional childhoods are not aware of how the sins of the past impact our relationships or create a propensity for particular sins today. Christians who wrestle with secret sins recognize them and have confessed them so often, we are caught in the downward spiral of the sin/confess cycle. For me, no substantive change occurred until a crisis of disclosure and subsequent counseling. I suspect the same is true for Haggard.

Scripture tells us to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). Our pride wants us to tell only God the truth; God wants us to tell the truth to other believers instead of living dishonest lives.

Dale WoleryExecutive Director, Clergy Recovery NetworkJoplin, Montana

No Gospel without Sacrifice

It was perhaps unfair to have read Mark Galli’s interview with Rob Bell [“The Giant Story,” April] an hour after a Good Friday service in which Isaiah 53 was read with power, our associate rector preached on “why Christians gather on the anniversary of a death,” and the congregation sang “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” with tears of gratitude flowing freely. Nothing could have drawn a bolder contrast between the gospel presented there and Bell’s gospel, which lacks suffering and sacrifice.

I read his responses carefully, searching for anything that would compel me to wonder why God the Son had to die for me. Despite several opportunities to address the issue of sin, or the issue of enmity that God resolved through the Cross, Bell continued to speak glibly of his own version of Jesus. I pray there is something in his ministry that resembles the core truths Christians have believed and lived over the past 20 centuries.

Steven BreedloveRector, All Saints ChurchChapel Hill, North Carolina

While i agree with many of Bell’s comments and observations, I can’t help questioning his main points. Social change is not the objective of Christianity—if it were, then Christ himself failed miserably. Rather, the objective is to die to ourselves and to find freedom in Christ; only then will our world experience a taste of the new kingdom. True life begins with a recognition of sin’s mastery over us and our need for salvation outside our selves. Social change is not the answer to the sin problem, but one of the many results of fellowship with Christ.

Josh RodriguezE-mail

Heeding Augustine

Marcus ross’s review of Young and Stearley’s The Bible, Rocks and Time [CTReview, April] unfortunately does not acknowledge that both Scripture and the universe have their source in the Creator. As Augustine taught, there is a danger in insisting on an understanding of Scripture that contradicts what we know about the world. He noted that it made God’s Word seem foolish to those we want to reach.

As Ross notes, an ancient-earth view can create problems with the literal existence of Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Flood, and other scriptural events. But the church has faced these problems throughout its existence. Will we achieve a general consensus on these problems? Probably not. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their followers have not agreed on baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and foot washing. Despite such differences, I have found devout fellow believers across denominations.

David F. Siemens Jr.Phoenix, Arizona

Once we start interpreting the Bible loosely rather than literally, we have no foundation left. Maybe Mary wasn’t really a virgin, but just a young woman? Maybe Jesus didn’t rise from the dead physically, only allegorically? If we apply the kind of information in The Bible, Rocks and Time to other fundamental areas of the Christian faith, we are left with nothing solid on which to stand. God created the earth and everything there is in six days. There was no death before sin, so man did not come about through millions of mutations and the deaths of different species. The Bible must be understood literally whenever it is possible to interpret it that way.

Brent VermillionValencia, Spain

Correction: We identified the photographer for our April 2009 profile of Doug Wilson, “The Controversialist,” as Doug LaMoreaux. The photographer was Mark LaMoreaux.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Letters to the editor must include the writer’s name and address if intended for publication. They may be edited for space or clarity.

E-mail: cteditor@christianitytoday.com

Fax: 630.260.8428

It’s always tempting to look for biblical allusions in apocalyptic stories, and they’re not hard to find in the Terminator movies, a franchise that returns on May 21 with its fourth installment, Terminator Salvation.

The series is in many ways a sci-fi Nativity story, about a man from the future, Kyle Reese, who travels back in time to tell a woman named Sarah Connor four things: that the machines controlling humans’ defense systems will become self-aware; that they will launch a full-scale war to destroy the human race; that humanity will be saved under the leadership of Sarah’s to-be-born son, John; and that a robot has been sent back in time to kill Sarah so that John can never be born.

In the first Terminator, Kyle is sent back in time to protect Sarah, and although he does not know it, he will also become John’s father. Thus, the film portrays an annunciation of sorts. As the Terminator robot kills everyone who comes between itself and Sarah, the film evokes parallels to the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. And just as the birth of Christ took place against the backdrop of a cosmic war in which the final outcome was never really in doubt, so too the birth of John Connor is soaked in the blood of battles he is destined to fight. (It’s also tempting to suggest that John Connor’s initials might have messianic parallels, but they are also the initials of writer-director James Cameron, so who knows?)

The sequels complicate matters in a number of ways, as more robotic assassins and more protectors go back in time to fight over John’s life, but the allusions remain. The second film reveals that the day the war with the machines began is called Judgment Day. A spin-off television series, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, also makes explicit use of biblical themes, partly because one of its lead actors, Richard T. Jones, who plays fbi agent James Ellison, is an openly devout Christian.

Regarding Terminator Salvation, director McG told mtv News that he and writer Jonathan Nolan were influenced by the stories of Luke Skywalker, Neo from The Matrix trilogy, and Jesus. Said McG, “Here’s a guy who’s saying, ‘Listen to me, I know what’s going on.’ Some people listen; some people don’t believe a word he’s saying.”

Peter T. Chattaway, ChristianityTodayMovies.com

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Related Elsewhere:

Terminator: Salvation opens tomorrow. Peter Chattaway wrote about Star Trek and Terminator comparisons and odds and ends for the Movies blog.

Under an anti-discrimination directive passed by the European Union Parliament in April, Christian churches, schools, and social services in Europe cannot limit their membership to those who share their beliefs. The directive, which the parliament passed by a 360-277 vote, must be passed unanimously by member states for it to become law.

The directive expands anti-discrimination protection beyond employment to health care, social benefits, education, and “access to goods and services.” Originally intended to protect the disabled, the proposal was expanded to include discrimination against religion and belief, age, or sexual orientation. Exemptions in the draft legislation for “organizations based on religion and belief” were removed before the final vote.

“In its present form, I would say I am extremely concerned,” said Don Horrocks, head of public affairs for the European Evangelical Alliance “It is very serious, though many regard it as extreme.” He believes the directive is unlikely to be passed in its present form, and expects that the government may hold public consultations before it is finalized.

If the directive were passed into law, faith-based social services would face problems, said Luke Goodrich, legal counsel at the The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

For example, faith-based schools and daycare centers could be barred from taking applicants’ religion into account for enrollment and employment. Marriage counselors and adoption agencies could have less discretion in accepting clients.

While the legislation’s aim is to ensure that all rights are equally respected and kept in balance, that may prove impossible to practice, Horrocks said. “There are definite attempts by some to create a hierarchy of rights in which ‘religion and belief’ seems inevitably to come at the bottom for various, unsatisfactory reasons,” he said.

The fear of religion could be a factor leading to this legislation, he said, along with religious illiteracy and a secularism that sees no place for religion in the public square.

“Everybody—not just Christians—should be concerned about the limiting of freedom of speech and conscience, and some member states understand these problems,” said Mats Tunehag, president of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance.

“We are working hard to make the EU understand that, even though it came from a good intention, they failed to take into account situations of possible conflict between different types of discrimination,” he said. “There is no fair and legal protection against discrimination in this directive if a Christian service provider treats a customer differently because of conscience reasons.”

The directive demonstrates that toleration is inadequate when compared with liberty, said Richard Land, who serves on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. If a government chooses only to tolerate religious expression, instead of defending it as a right, then it can just as easily choose to not tolerate it, he said.

“It’s an inevitable step, as long as Europe continues its move from post-Christian to utterly secular,” Land said. “While it is a threat in theory in the United States, I think it is much less immediate and much less threatening.”

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

The European Union provides more information about the proposed law in a press release.

More information about the European Evangelical Alliance, The Becket Fund, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom can be found on their respective websites.

More Christianity Today articles on Europe include:

Promoting and Uniting European Evangelicals | Swimming against the current makes the European Evangelical Alliance’s liaison to the E.U. feel alive. (June 24, 2005)

European Disunion | Churches push for acknowledgment of Europe’s spiritual heritage (August 5, 2002)

European Union Charter Omits Church History | Churches across Europe decry the EU’s failure to recognize Europe’s religious heritage (November 1, 2000)

Yesterday Norwegian scientists unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossil they are touting as a crucial link in the “stem group” from which humans and other mammals came. Jorn Hurum, whose Oslo museum purchased “Ida” in 2007 from a private collector who unearthed it in 1983, has been quick to label the well-preserved, cat-like fossil the “missing link” between mammals and humans, calling it the “Holy Grail” and the “Lost Ark” of science. Following yesterday’s media frenzy, a book on Darwinius masillae is releasing today, and a two-hour History Channel special is airing May 25.

What many media are ignoring, save the Associated Press, is that other paleontologists are skeptical of Ida’s close link to humans. “We are not dealing with our grand- grand- grand- grandmother but perhaps our grand- grand- grand- aunt,” German researcher Jens Franzen said yesterday.

“I actually don’t think it’s terribly close to the common ancestral line of monkeys, apes and people,” said K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. “I would say it’s about as far away as you can get from that line and still be a primate. . . . I would say it’s more like a third cousin twice removed.”

The bloggers for Francis Collins’s BioLogos Foundation, a theistic-evolution think tank, responded to the announcement this way: “[E]ven if it is only in a peripheral way, the new fossil offers a glimpse at our evolutionary ancestors. While it may not revolutionize our understanding of evolution, the fossil is just another piece of evidence showing that evolution has occurred . . .”.

Young-earth creationist ministry Answers in Genesis, on the other hand, noted that the fossil bears no connection to apes or humans, and that neither fossils nor similarities between fossils can prove evolution. The article posits that Ida’s remarkable preservation is characteristic of rapid burial caused by a catastrophic flood.

Meanwhile, Allahpundit at Hot Air posited that perhaps Richard Dawkins planted it.

What do you think of Auntie Ida? How should Bible-believing Christians respond to announcements from the scientific community such as these?

This spring may mark another race – besides last weekend’s Preakness Stakes – that finds a female crossing the finish line in first place.

Since Associate Justice David Souter announced May 1 that he would be retiring from the Supreme Court, pundits and Court watchers have predicted President Obama will nominate a woman to fill the seat. If appointed, a female justice would be only the third to serve. President Reagan nominated the first female Justice to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor, in 1981. President Clinton nominated the second, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1993. Thus, from 1993-2006 two women served on the Court, until Justice O’Connor resigned and her seat was filled by Justice Samuel Alito.

Political scientists observe that Presidents are reluctant to reverse the precedent of appointing religious, cultural, and racial minority-group members once the initial barrier is broken. Roger Taney’s 1835 appointment to the Court created a minimum threshold of one “Catholic seat” on the Court. (There are currently five.) Louis Brandeis’s 1916 appointment similarly created a “Jewish seat” that was kept until Abe Fortas resigned in 1969. And in perhaps the most striking case of a President preserving the seat, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to fill the seat vacated by Justice Thurgood Marshall, appointed in 1967, maintaining an “African American seat.” The Thomas appointment resulted in a dramatic change in both the political ideology and judicial philosophy of the person holding that seat.

Given this, restoring two women members to the high court seems in keeping with past presidential practice. According to recent American Bar Association data, women now compose about half of U.S. law school students, 30.1 percent of practicing attorneys, and about a quarter of judges on the lower federal courts. Current top prospects for the nomination include Judge Sonia Sotomayor, federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Diane P. Wood, federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Elena Kagan, currently the U.S. Solicitor General, the federal government’s top lawyer; and Janet Napolitano, current Secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona. Other maybes include Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, and Leah Ward Sears, Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Of the top four contenders, publically available data suggest that at least two are Christians, and one is Jewish.

The Thomas appointment points to the challenge of using race, gender, or religion as the primary criteria in nominating a Justice. Judicial philosophy matters. Political ideology matters. And sometimes, despite an increasingly meticulous vetting process, Presidents pick Justices whose ideology or judicial philosophy is not clear enough to ensure a “match.” Republication President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said that nominating activist Justice Earl Warren to the Supreme Court was the biggest mistake he ever made. In August 2008, at the Saddleback Civil Forum, then-candidate Obama and Pastor Rick Warren had the following exchange:

WARREN: OK. The courts. Let me ask it this way. Which existing Supreme Court justice would you not have nominated?OBAMA: That’s a good one. That’s a good one. I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. [ applause ] I don’t think that he – I don’t think that he was as strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the Constitution. I would not nominate Justice Scalia, although I don’t think there’s any doubt about his intellectual brilliance, because he and I just disagree. He taught at the University of Chicago, as did I in the law school.

More recently, President Obama has suggested that empathy and identification with everyday people’s real lives are qualities he thinks are important in a nominee, so it may well be that he will seek a nominee from outside the ranks of the judiciary, in contrast to the current Court, which comprises only former federal court judges.

Ultimately, what role do political ideology, judicial philosophy, gender, and religion play in Supreme Court decision-making? It’s important to note that, regardless of Obama’s appointment, the Court’s balance of political ideology will not shift. Souter, though appointed by George H. W. Bush, voted in the minority liberal bloc on the Court, so the conservative 5-4 majority will be kept. According to Sunday’s New York Times, politically conservative interest groups, some of them religiously affiliated, are marshaling arguments opposing the purported frontrunners in the nomination race, centering their arguments on potential nominees’ positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and church-state separation

With regard to gender, the Court recently ruled 7-2 (with the Court’s lone female Justice dissenting) that pregnancy leaves can be excluded from the working time used to calculate pension benefits. Still, there is no conclusive evidence that women on the Court – especially when they will have at most two votes – substantially affect the Court’s decision-making. A recent book by New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin suggests that Justice O’Connor’s presence on the Court significantly altered the Court’s social dynamics, particularly within the world of her own clerks, for whom she cooked crock-pot lunches on Saturdays and sent baby gifts long after their clerkships had ended. On the effect of religion on decision-making, we have recent evidence from the Justices themselves – notably Justice Antonin Scalia, an outspoken abortion opponent who nonetheless noted,

“The bottom line is that the Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge …. Just as there is no Catholic’ way to cook a hamburger, I am hard pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic.”

While abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem cell research may be useful for political mobilization of politically conservative voters, and while the specter of liberal judges may help in fundraising efforts, religion and gender may not be good proxies for discerning a potential nominee’s position on these issues. Ultimately, judicial philosophy and political ideology matter a whole lot more, though accurately discerning these attributes of potential nominees is a good deal more difficult.

Stacey Hunter Hecht is department chair of political science at Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Skye and I are at reFOCUS, Moody Bible Institute’s pastors’ conference, this week. Skye is leading a breakout session, and I’m making the rounds to see what’s what.

This is my first time at a Moody event. The last conference I attended was Catalyst (last month), and this is quite a different experience. We haven’t made it to a general session, so I can’t say much about the difference in content. But this conference is clearly aimed at a different demographic. At Catalyst, I saw more skinny jeans than I’d ever seen in one place before. Here–I’ve seen no man purses or boy bangs. The standard dress is polos and khakis. And, as the wardrobe might suggest, the crowd skews older.

The breakout sessions offer a little something for everyone. While Skye was talking about his book to one group of pastors, I slipped into to a presentation by Douglas Beaumont. He was talking about his book The Message Behind the Movie, in which he calls Christians to take their brains with them to the movies.

We’re looking forward to sessions by Andy Crouch, among others, the afternoon and to John Piper in the general session tonight.