A Few Thoughts on How God's Moral Law Relates to the Civil Magistrate

The central cause of this widespread moral collapse, so it seems to me, is located in the decline of Puritan religion.  This returns us to the main theme of religious rather than civil history.  When the seminaries and churches declare that God is dead, or when, less extreme, they substitute for the Puritan God of the Ten Commandments a different concept of god, inconsistent with the Ten Commandments, it logically and factually follows that morality is changed, too.  A man's view of morality depends on his view of God or whatever his first principle may be.  Different types of theology produce different types of morality.   

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  Essays on Ethics and Politics.  John Robbins, ed. (Jefferson: Trinity Foundation, 1992   P. 167.

There is a constant danger for Christians who become involved in the political process.  But that applies equally to those who refuse to be involved in the political process.  Not speaking up when evil is dominating our nation is a violation of the command to preach the Gospel everywhere.  (2 Timothy 4:2).  The apostles said in Acts 5:28-29 that we ought to obey God rather than man when the political forces tell us to shut up and keep our faith in the closet.

However, the danger for the Christian who becomes involved in the political process is that his or her own theological system of thought and worldview could become compromised by watering down biblical principles and biblical theology for the sake of having an ecumenical common ground with unbelievers.  I am the first to admit that the danger of becoming a die hard Ted Cruz supporter, which I openly confess that I am, is that some people confuse the civil magistrate with the Bible and the result is what is usually called civil religion.  For example, Glenn Beck, a Mormon, is a strong advocate for God's moral law and for the United States Constitution.  But Glenn Beck is not a Christian.  Beck is strong on pro-life issues.  But I cannot in good conscience pray with Glenn Beck.  But on television I saw Ted Cruz praying with Glenn Beck.   Mark Levin, also a constitutional conservative, is Jewish and has a Pelagian view of free will.  Neither of these men are Christians.  So I cannot in good conscience pray with either of them.

Moreover, the American principle of religious pluralism is based solidly on the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, which guarantees the separation of church and state.  That definition does not exclude Christians from public service in the government as Steven K. Bannon of Breitbart News contends.  Bannon is continually misquoting the Bible as if Jesus somehow advocated a complete disconnect between Christians and the government.  The verse in question was render unto Caesar.  It is disturbing to me when I hear the Bible misquoted and trashed in a thirty second sound byte for a liberal or pseudo-conservative cause.  But anyone who has ever read the Bible knows that render unto caesar was a political trap laid for Jesus by his political and eccesiastical opponents, the scribes and Pharisees:

14 When they had come, they said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?
 15 "Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?" But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, "Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it."
 16 So they brought it. And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?" They said to Him, "Caesar's."
 17 And Jesus answered and said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they marveled at Him. (Mark 12:14-17 NKJV)

I actually called into Bannon's radio program and was able to rebut his irrational argument on the air at the Patriot Channel, Sirius XM.   He did not much like being shown to be ignorant of the Bible.   I later learned that Bannon is a Roman Catholic.  He probably has not read the Bible much in his life.  For the Protestant the main emphasis is the preaching and teaching of the written Scriptures, which are the final authority in all matters of faith, practice and morality.  (2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 4:4; Psalm 119:89; Isaiah 8:20).  This applies equally to how one does politics.  The Bible, according to Dr. Gordon H. Clark's Scripturalism, is the beginning axiom for Christianity and Christianity applies to all life, including the political realm.

I also called in to comment on Bannon's contention that "Evangelicals are voting for Donald Trump."  Well, the problem with this logically and Scripturally speaking is that if the term Evangelical is not specifically defined, then it is a meaningless term and you have said nothing other than that people in general have voted for Trump.  What they really mean is that from a civil religion point of view people who identify with some generic religious spirituality voted for Trump.  I pressed Bannon on this and asked him how he defined Evangelicalism.  His response was that Evangelicals were "self-identifying as Evangelicals in exit polls".  Well, if that is so, then the term is still meaningless because Bannon and the liberal press are just using a generic term as a propaganda device to manipulate an expected outcome and to persuade generally religious people to vote for the candidate favored by the press.  But the traditional definition of an Evangelical is someone who adheres to the five solas of the Protestant Reformation, the main one being Sola Scriptura or Scripture Alone.  Scripture is the final measure of truth in the political realm as well as in the private realm.  We know that murdering the unborn is murder because the Bible is propositional and logical revelation and because we can logically deduce that human babies have a right to live.  Thou shalt not murder is the principle upon which we base that inference.   (Exodus 20:13 KJV).  But here is a surprise for you.  God expects you to obey your elders and that expectation is the first commandment in the second table of the Decalogue.   Do not murder is commandment number six while the command to honor your parents and other elders is commandment number five.  (Exodus 20:12 KJV). The commandments are listed in a descending order of importance, though to break one commandment is to break them all. (James 2:10-11 KJV).

The idea that the Christian and Evangelical churches, moreover, cannot speak to political issues in their services or in sermons is understandable given the danger of civil religion, a tradition that started with the evangelist, Billy Sunday.  On the other hand, the theological doctrine of two kingdoms theology is foreign to the Protestant Reformers and to the Bible.  On that point, I can wholeheartedly agree with the reconstructionists and the theonomists.  But I am not theonomist or a reconstructionist because their theological system is inherently based on a confusion of the civil or judicial law of the Old Testament nation of Israel with the moral law of God.  The two are not the same thing at all.   (See chapter 19 of the Westminster Confession of Faith). 


The problem here is that the socialist left and the liberation theologians of the mainline liberal denominations are openly preaching the social sciences in their churches and in their sermons because they have replaced special revelation with general revelation or natural revelation.  According to the liberal model, God is totally transcendent and man can know nothing except what can be known from below.  We cannot know anything God knows because, as Kant said, we cannot know anything on the noumenal level.  We can only know what can be empirically observed from below and what we can establish by rational reason.  Kant called this the phenoumenal or phenominological realm--that is, what we can observe in natural phenomena.  But Kant did presuppose certain innate and pre-existing abilities in man such as the ability to think, to tell time, etc.  These are not learned but are innate in man, according to Immanuel Kant:

A large part of Kant’s work addresses the question “What can we know?” The answer, if it can be stated simply, is that our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the natural, empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics. The reason that knowledge has these constraints, Kant argues, is that the mind plays an active role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind’s access only to the empirical realm of space and time.

Matt McCormick, "Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics," in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:  A Peer Reviewed Academic Resource.

The point being made here is that liberal mainline churches are preaching and teaching a form of theonomy but they are doing it from the perspective of the theological left.  Their theological views are deduced from a humanistic view of the social sciences and the empirical sciences, including their higher critical views of the Bible and textual criticism.  Their views are not deduced from the Bible except as the Bible is interpreted by means of their liberal and socially progressive presuppositions.

In African American churches there has been a long standing tradition of preaching on social justice issues since the days of slavery, when the slave who could read would read the Scriptures while another would expound on the text that he could not read.  Of course, times have changed.  But in this tradition you can still visit some black churches where one of the deacons or another lay person will read the text verse by verse while the minister then preaches on the text verse by verse.  Verse by verse is not a bad way to preach, by the way.  So if liberation theology, feminist theology, black liberation theology, socialism, the LGBT or homosexual issues can be openly preached in liberal churches and political applications of the social "sciences" like psychology, sociology, evolutionary sciences, etc., can be and are openly preached in liberal churches, why do Evangelicals think they cannot apply biblical principles to the same issues and do so as openly as the political and theological left does?  In effect, the left has established their liberal theology as the civil religion of our nation.  All religions lead to God, right?  They have confused the political doctrine of religious pluralism with establishing a theological liberalism and comparative religions as the official state religion.  Religion, according to this view is nothing more than man's cultural adaptations of existential angst to help someone cope with the vicissitudes of life.  Secular humanism is another established version of this state religion and said religion makes it heresy to disagree with the state dogmas on evolution, homosexuality, abortion, gun rights, religion as an opiate of the people and a whole host of other politically correct dogmas that are strictly enforced by our increasingly socialistic government.

For example, Barack Obama appealed to the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence to justify his endorsement of the Supreme Court decision to uphold the perversion of gay marriage.  He said that homosexuals have a "god given right" to marriage.   But is that what the Declaration of Independence said?  All agree that Thomas Jefferson was a deist and not a Christian theist or an Evangelical Protestant.  But why did Jefferson appeal to the axiom that all men are "created equal"?  The answer is that Jefferson believed in a supernatural creation.  While it is true that Jefferson rejected  the supernatural miracles of the Bible, he did not reject the biblical doctrine of creation and in fact he got his doctrine that all men are created from the Bible.  (Genesis 1-3).  Obama's progressive morality is therefore anachronistic and is not to be found in either the Bible or the Constitution.  The Bible without any doubt condemns homosexuality.  Of course, the liberals do not believe the Bible is inspired by God.  They consider it to be a product of human invention in order to deal with  man's experience of suffering.

Additionally, the Bible nowhere advocates the separation of church and state.  Although I agree in principle with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I do not agree with the liberal presupposition that religion cannot be an influence in political matters.  The theological left is extremely engaged, so it is hypocritical and a double standard to forbid Evangelicals from the same engagement.  There is no political test for public office.  That would mean that Ted Cruz and other Evangelicals deserve the same consideration for office as any theological liberal, any Roman Catholic, or any atheist.  

From a Clarkian Scripturalist perspective, the beginning axiom of Christianity is the Bible, not the social sciences, not philosophy or rationalism, nor even political science.  All of these other beginning axioms lead to atheism or skepticism.  The Bible alone leads to a consistent Christian worldview or epistemology.  Scripture alone literally is the beginning of all knowledge. 

Proverbs. 1:7  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.  KJV

Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.  KJV

2 Pet. 2:20  For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.  KJV

I have much more to say on this subject but I will close here for today.

Question 191

What do we pray for in the second petition?

In the second petition, (which is, Thy kingdom come, (Matt. 6:10) ) acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan, (Eph. 2:2–3) we pray, that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, (Ps. 68:1,18, Rev. 12:10–11) the gospel propagated throughout the world, (2 Thess. 3:1) the Jews called, (Rom. 10:1) the fullness of the Gentiles brought in; (John 17:9,20, Rom. 11:25–26, Ps. 67) the church furnished with all gospel-officers and ordinances, (Matt. 9:38, 2 Thess. 3:1) purged from corruption, (Mal. 1:11, Zeph. 3:9) countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate: (1 Tim. 2:1–2) and the ordinances of Christ may be purely dispensed, and made effectual to the converting of those that are yet in their sins, and the confirming, comforting, and building up of those that are already converted: (Acts 4:29–30, Eph. 6:18–20, Rom. 15:29–30,32, 2 Thess. 1:11, 2 Thess. 2:16–17) that Christ would rule in our hearts here, (Eph. 3:14–20) and hasten the time of his second coming, and our reigning with him for ever: (Rev. 22:20) and that he would be pleased so to exercise the kingdom of his power in all the world, as may best conduce to these ends. (Isa. 64:1–2, Rev. 4:8–11)


The Westminster Larger Catechism: With Scripture Proofs. (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996).

Billy Graham site removes Mormon 'cult' reference after Romney meeting – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association apparently removed their cult page after a visit from Mitt Romney.  A decade or so ago Rev. Billy Graham was a guest on the Hour of Power television show hosted by Rev. Robert Schuller.  On that program Rev. Graham advocated a liberal view called "A Wideness in God's Mercy".  [See:  Billy Graham and Article 18].  Graham's Arminianism apparently led him to accept a view where implicit faith without doctrinal content can be a saving faith.

In light of Graham's position that only God knows a person's "heart", it follows that God does not save based on a public or even a  private profession of faith.  Assent to the biblical teaching on man's misery as a sinner under God's moral law and God's promises to save those who deserve nothing but God's eternal judgment and eternal punishment would seem to be unnecessary.  (Romans 3:20-25; Romans 7:7; Galatians 3:22).  Saving faith requires a knowledge of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.  (2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Ephesians 4:13).

Dr. Graham's view is just another example of how liberalism is creeping into Evangelicalism at large.  Although I personally favor Mitt Romney because of the issues of religious freedom and the liberal left's attack on traditional biblical values and the traditional family, I cannot and do not believe that Mitt Romney's religion is legitimately "Christian".  Mormonism is a cult.

I was particularly disturbed because Romney's last debate proclaimed that he believes in God, etc.  Basically, Romney's statements were offensive because he was saying that he is no different from other Evangelicals.  In short, he was outright lying about his religion.  If Romney does not have the integrity to honestly admit that Mormonism is not a Christian religion, then I can only conclude that Romney is no more trustworthy than Obama.  Either Romney is completely dishonest or he's sincerely deceived.  Having dealt with many Mormons online over the years I think it is a matter of dishonesty.  Mormons use that tactic in their proselytizing tactics and the implications of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's removal of their cult page is that Mormons will now use this publicity to deceive people into becoming Mormons.  This comment is particularly disturbing:

“Our primary focus at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has always been promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ," Ken Barun, chief of staff for the association, told CNN in a statement. "We removed the information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign." Billy Graham site removes Mormon 'cult' reference after Romney meeting – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

I have to wonder if Franklin Graham had anything to do with this?  Of course I agree that Obama's administration has outright attacked the Christian faith and openly promoted liberal "religion" by trying to establish a religious issue as the nation's policy, namely making it legal for homosexuals to get married under the sanctions of the federal government.  Obama's views on abortion are radical and his administration's attempt to force religious organizations to subsidize abortions for their employees via medical plans is a blatant and overt attempt to use state power to impose the federal government's religious views on religious institutions.

Although I agree with Franklin Graham that marriage is only between a man and a woman, it does not follow that removing Mormonism and other cults from the BEA website is not a "political" move.  It is much better to stand for the truth and let the chips fall where they may.  Removing Mormonism from the cult list on the BGEA website is itself a "politicized move" since obviously the elder and younger Graham do not want to see President Obama re-elected.  Be that as it may, Christians should never under any circumstances compromise the Gospel for the sake of winning a political campaign for a particular candidate.  As much as I would like to see President Obama voted out of office I cannot and will not stop saying that Mormonism is a cult.  If Romney is not careful his continuing claim that he is a Christian will backfire in his face.  Many not so naive Evangelicals might change their minds and vote against him.  In my case it is too late.  I have already voted by absentee ballot.  Yes, I voted for Romney.  Mr. Romney, show some integrity and openly admit that Mormonism is not compatible with Evangelical Christianity or the catholic Christian faith expressed by the Protestant Reformers.  Otherwise, you are more or less shooting yourself in the foot.

Charlie J. Ray, M. Div.

Eric Holmberg: I Will Never Vote for a Mormon for President

Although I do not endorse the apologetics ministry that sponsored this video statement, I fully agree with what Eric Holmberg has to say. The Apologeticsgroup.com is a continuationist or charismatic ministry, although they are Reformed in their confession of faith. See: About.

Christianity is neither conservative nor socialist | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

The following is from an article by Brian Lee and linked to by by Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary California:

Ironically, our Pilgrim fathers made just this mistake when they came to America. Fleeing their own religious persecution, they set up another. The 1647 Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts identified 15 capital offenses, including idolatry, blasphemy, and atheism, along with a predictable litany of sexual offenses. Now that’s conservative. Unfortunately, it’s also not the foundation of a just and pluralistic society.

Read more: Christianity is neither conservative nor socialist.

It would appear that the Christian church is not to call society to repentance? The error of the argument in this article is that salvation and the Gospel are to be kept individualistic and private. The church is never to call nations to repentance or interfere in the ungodliness being sponsored by the government of the United States? It does not follow that simply because social action and social justice have often led to a this worldly interest and a forsaking of the eternal kingdom of God and the Gospel that therefore the Church should keep to itself and simply preach the Gospel. While it is true that the Church should remain focused on preaching the Gospel, it does not follow that therefore churches and denominations should not call sin sin in the larger secular community or in the political realm. Of course, such holy boldness will get you crucified and maybe even get the government to sanction your church, censor your speech, and even violate your God-given rights to call sin sin. It is politically incorrect to say that homosexuals, abortionists, transexuals, atheists, and Mormons are all going to hell. Yet, that is what the Holy Scriptures clearly imply if we accept the Word of God for what it literally means.

While I am not advocating a return to the theocracy of the early Pilgrim Puritans, I am also not advocating what Brian Lee and Dr. Clark clearly advocate in this radical separation of the two kingdoms. The clear implication is that Christians should speak for themselves only as individuals and churches should not condemn sin in the public arena. But I would say that with Joshua we must choose this day whom we will serve (Joshua 24:14-27). Will we serve the Lord or will we serve the idols of American democracy which promotes licentiousness, greed, sexual freedom, homosexuality, and abortion as innate human rights?

As someone else wisely said, a church which stands for nothing falls for everything. The idea of common grace is obviously at the root of this sinful abdication to worldly values and is in fact an implicit endorsement to relativism and immorality.

I say churches should speak up and preach the Gospel boldly. They should tell the world that it is evil and that it is going to hell in a hand basket. The idea that a Christian could vote for a political party that is "liberal" to the point of pushing a secular state that hates Christianity and all that it stands for is just preposterous!

While I am certainly not saying that the Republican Party or the Tea Party is "Christian", I am saying that the Democratic Party has inculcated a blatantly immoral and anti-Christian party platform. In short, the Democratic Party is an "anti-Christ". To vote for the Democratic Party is spiritual and religious suicide. The purpose of the liberal party is to destroy conservative and orthodox Christianity, to use propaganda to encourage sexual immorality,pornography, abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, and outright atheism.

As a Reformed and Evangelical Anglican Christian, I can tell you that there is nothing I hate worse than a conservative theonomist or reconstructionist since both those movements are at root pelagian and lead to liberalism. But I equally despise political liberalism since it is nothing short of the same sort of theonomist philosophy--only on the other side of the political and theological spectrum. Both at root are pelagian. It does not follow that the Christian church is not to stand for what is right, as Dr. Clark and Dr. Lee seem to think. We should oppose all evil as individuals and as churches. Together we have a voice. But in that process we should never concede to sign ecumenical theological documents that compromise the Christian and Reformed commitment to Scripture and the eternal Gospel.

The answer is not to compromise by joining with reconstructionists and theonomists. But neither is the answer to so over-emphasize the two kingdoms to the point that the kingdom of God is not advancing against the evil kingdom of Satan on earth. We fight a spiritual battle, no doubt. But part of that spiritual battle is to boldly denounce the evil of individuals and of nations. The United States of America is not a Christian nation and probably never will be. But that does not mean that we should simply acquiesce our conscience and let the devil rule the world here and now. No, we are to fight the spiritual battle by bravely confronting an evil and decadent world and its rulers in high places:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12 ESV)

The seedbed of the church, according to Tertullian, is the blood of the martyrs. Christians all over the world are being persecuted by their own governments. Ironically, the policy being pushed by this radical misinterpretation of the two kingdoms is ushering in the same sort of persecution in the United States. We as Christians are called to be salt and light to the world (Matthew 5:13-20), not endorsers of political correctness, homosexuality as a God-given human right, and other such nonsense.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! 22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! (Isaiah 5:20-23 ESV)

Christianity is neither conservative nor socialist | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Touching the Third Rail! – Why Are Reformed Christians in the U.S. Obsessed With Politics?

Touching the Third Rail! – Why Are Reformed Christians in the U.S. Obsessed With Politics? [Click on the title to see the commentary at the Aquila Report].

I'm appalled at Brits who pretend to understand American Christianity, particularly Carl Trueman and Paul Levy. First off, neither of them understands the American Revolution and the fierce American opposition to governmental interference in private matters like free speech, freedom of religion, and individual freedom. As the federal government continues to usurp the rights of state governments to manage their own affairs, so the cultural divide widens. That is particularly true in the South where the wounds remaining from the American Civil War are still festering and slowly healing. What Trueman and Levy do not get is that Christians from the Bible belt feel the heat of government intrusions into matters of religious freedom. The Democratic Party's platform is essentially atheistic and relativistic and seeks to promote homosexuality, abortion, premarital and extramarital sex via its morally irresponsible cultural and social policies.

Trueman and Levy want Christians to shut up and stay out of politics because they are essentially liberals on both the political and the theological level. It is simply ludicrous to suppose that Christian churches should not be involved in politics, particularly when the government is increasingly curtailing the rights of Christians and Christian churches to voice their opinions on issues like abortion, homosexual/transgender issues, and sexual morality and ethics. For example it is now a "hate crime" for anyone to openly condemn homosexuality as a "sin" in Canada and from the looks of it the same sort of political interference in the individual's freedom of speech and freedom of religion will become law in the United States.

Furthermore, every American citizen was at one time required to take classes educating them about the dangers of atheistic materialism inherent in the communist and socialist worldview. The Democratic Party is increasingly opposed to Christianity and instead has adopted a form of socialism and secularism that is every bit as dangerous as the socialism espoused by the communists of the early 20th century. If Europe and Australia is our example, godlessness and atheism are the result of Trueman and Levy's point of view. Their celebration of hedonism in government simply reveals their true motives are not Christian but secular and materialistic. The Christian and the Christian church are not neutral but actively promoting the kingdom of God by focusing not only on the temporal and earthly extension of the kingdom but by preaching the Gospel and furthering the eternal kingdom which is unseen.

Moreover, Trueman and Levy are naive if they believe that the separation of church and state means that the state gets to dominate the Christian and the Christian church. It is true that Christians have been martyred over the centuries but that does not mean that Christians were beaten into submissive silence on moral issues and on theological issues. Trueman and Levy seem to have forgotten that John the Baptist was beheaded for daring to criticize Herod for marrying his brother Philip's wife, Herodias, which John the Baptist said was "unlawful". (Mark 16:17-29). I guess John should have taken the advice of Trueman and Levy? If individual Christians are members of the Christian church, then it follows naturally that both individual Christians and Christian churches should speak out against immoral government policies. What if William Wilberforce and John Newton had taken the position that Christian churches should not be involved in politics? Do you really believe the slave trade would have been ended in 19th century England? I suppose by Trueman and Levy's view Wilberforce should have simply acted alone and hoped for the best? But the English and the American abolitionist movement was promoted by Christian individuals supported by their churches. As the preacher of Ecclesiastes puts it:

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him--a threefold cord is not quickly broken. (Ecclesiastes 4:12 ESV)

I am not a theonomist nor am I a reconstructionist. That does not mean, however, that Christians or churches should hide in a corner somewhere and pretend the world is not an enemy of the Gospel. If the Protestant Reformation is any example then we as Christians cannot afford to sit back and hope that the enemies of the Gospel will simply leave us be. As I write this article Christians are being martyred all over the world. Does Trueman and Levy think this will not happen in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia? Christians and churches should stand together and unite against those who hate the Gospel, that much is clear.

I disagree with ecumenicalism on the Evangelical side of things and on the liberal mainline side of things. As Michael Horton has pointed out, many Evangelical churches are simply preaching a form of neo-pelagianism. But that does not mean that we as Christians cannot operate on a level of co-belligerence that refuses to confuse the Gospel with a social gospel or a civil religious compromise with false churches which promote a false gospel of good works or a false gospel of theological relativism. Conservative Christians should unite against the intrusion of the government into private affairs of the Christian churches and the freedom of religion. If the UK, Canada and Australia are any indication it is imperative that churches be involved in the political process. Otherwise we wind up with a nation with no conscience and genocide is the result. Never forget what happened when Christians did nothing to stop the genocide of the Jews in Nazi Germany. What if American Christian churches had done nothing to end Jim Crow laws and racial segregation? Would the American Civil Rights laws have been passed giving black Americans equal rights? I think not. Simply put Trueman and Levy are naive at best and dissimulators with a hidden agenda at worst.

Finally, it seems to me that many churches are already involved in political issues. If conservative Christian churches do not speak out against immorality, then the liberal left version of theonomy--which is basically sanctified godlessness and atheism--then the cultural war is lost by default. Albeit the Gospel is not to be confused with the moral law or with cultural transformation (the error of both theonomists and liberals), it does not follow that churches which preach the true Gospel are to shut up and stay out of politics. No thank-you, Trueman. Maybe you should move back across the pond. We Americans do not need your gutless accommodation to the world.

One has to wonder why Trueman wrote a book on political issues if he really believes that Christian churches should stay in their corner or holed up in solitude? It seems to me that Trueman is irrational if he thinks there is some sort of dichotomy between the individual Christian and the unity of Christians we call a congregation or a church. We all stand together or we all fall together. Church history seems to indicate that well enough.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. (1 John 3:1 ESV)

The peace of God be with you,

Charlie J. Ray