Toby Young, British journalist and founder of the Free Speech Union, in conversation with Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, has some insightful comments about the new “progressive” public morality (i.e. normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism, unrestricted abortion rights, etc.).

I am posting this not just because I agree with him (except for his use of “woke” to describe the new morality[1]), but to underline the main point in my recent post about Disney:

Most of the people who have subscribed to this new pulic morality sincerely believe themselves to be good, moral people; even some Christians have become persuaded of the new morality and have convinced themselves that just as we have abolished slavery so we need to abolish traditional sexual mores in order to be truly loving.

A “Christian” culture war rhetoric demonizing them and casting aspersions on their motives is effectively our version of “cancel culture” and will neither turn our society around, nor protect our children, nor increase the likelihood of winning people to Christ—which, after all, should be the church’s main goal.

Instead we should do as Christ did: compassionately, lovingly calling people to repentance, praying that the Holy Spirit would open their eyes to the deception of this new morality.

When we have an opportunity to oppose the new morality in the political realm (from school boards on up) we will be much more persuasive if we do so in a rational, measured tone and without resorting to personal invective. As Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath.”

Here is Toby Young:

We have to try to understand why it has become harder and harder to disagree about essential values in the public square without falling out with each other, and why cancel culture has metastasized to become such an all-encompassing blight. I think it has something to do with the ebbing away of the Christian tide.

In the nineteenth century, and even in the first part of the twentieth century, we were a  Christian society, and the sacred values we were expected to observe were Christian values, and if someone comitted adultery, or got divorced, or was born out of wedlock, there was serious social stigma attached to that. We had a kind of public morality which people were expected to observe, and if they didn’t, they were sort of outcast, or they were in some kind of Bohemian sub-culture. There was some tolerance for people who didn’t believe, more tolerance, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the higher education sector, towards people who challenged the prevailing orthodoxies, more tolerance than there is now.

So as the Christian tide ebbed away, so this morality faded, and particularly in the 1960s and 1970s all the taboos which had constrained people’s behavior, the moral taboos, fell away and there was a brief period where we enjoyed this intellectual, sexual freedom, and everyone thought that was what the future was going to be.

But then, intererestingly, people seemingly found it quite difficult to cope with that degree of freedom, and they’ve embraced another, even more dogmatic morality, which in the past ten, fifteen years has become the public morality.

So, after a brief interlude, one public morality has been replaced by another. And if you don’t sign up to the articles of faith of that political morality, you are now outcast, probably more outcast than you were if you didn’t sign up to the articles of the Christian faith in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

And I think that’s really what has happend: we have embraced this new, secular public morality which is actually, interestingly, much more puritanical, and censorious, and authoritarian, than the seemingly much more gentle Christian morality which at least allowed for forgiveness, a path back, redemption, but which this new public morality seemingly doesn’t allow for. And I think that’s why we live in an increasingly intoletant society, why, if you don’t sign up to the shibbolets of the “woke church”, you end up kind of cast out; and, curiously, a lot of people who find themselves at odds with the articles of faith of that new public morality are orthodox Christians.

1. I believe using “woke” to describe the new morality’s sexual agenda is a mis-appropriation of a term that belongs to people of color in their fight against racism,  and mis-using it this way equates support of traditional Christian beliefs, and opposition to “progressive” beliefs, about sex, marriage, and the sanctity of life with racism, which is nonsense.[↩]

In the conservative Christian online medium Mercatornet, Sydney journalist Sebastian James laments that “The Woke Disney Company is turning its back on family values.” He writes,

In a company-wide zoom meeting back in March, the president of Disney’s General Entertainment Content, Karey Burke, said the company “doesn’t have enough LGBTQIA leads in their content and don’t have enough narratives in which gay characters just get to be characters”. She vowed to change this “non-inclusive trend”.
Why can’t Disney stick to producing great content, family films which champion what is good, true, beautiful, and universal?

That question does Disney and its management an injustice. They believe that by making their products more “inclusive” they ARE in fact championing what is good, true, beautiful, and universal.

I also think that the so-called “inclusivity” of companies like Disney is an illusion; you rarely see conservative Christians with traditional views of sex and marriage portrayed as wholesome, but the same thing applies: they genuinely believe that such views are NOT wholesome but bigoted and harmful.

We may disagree with them and oppose them, and I do, but demonizing them by denying their sincerity or otherwise impugning their motives is neither fair or just, nor will it halt society’s trend of normalizing “alternative sexualities and identities.”

Let us by all means call sin “sin” but not lose sight of the fact that these folks’ greatest problem is not their view of sex and marriage but the fact that they are not following Christ, and that their unbiblical views are merely the outworking of that. Ultimately our task as Christians is winning people to Christ (including Disney president Karey Burke), not making secular society conform to Christian values (or lamenting the fact that the world’s values are, well, “worldly”).

Unfortunately it is also true that throughout much of church history Christians have treated “perverts” abominably, as if their sin were worse than heterosexual adultery, fornication and concubinage (which were frequently tolerated, even among church leaders), and even today we see scandals of churches most vociferously opposed to the normalization of homosexuality and same-sex marriage being revealed as having swept under the carpet the heterosexual abuse of children, adolescents, and other vulnerable people by clergy, in an (usually unsuccessful) effort to shield their institutions from liability and preserve their reputation. We as individuals, congregations, and even denominations may not have been guilty or complicit in these injustices, and may not even have been aware of them, or we may think that those who perpetrated them were not true Christians, but we must not ignore the damage these things have done to the testimony of the universal church and how they have contributed to the situation we see today:  “wokeness” may be an over-reaction but it is always is a reaction to injustice.

In Scripture we see Jesus rebuking with strong language (i.e. “you are of your father the devil”) those religious leaders who failed to obey not just the words but the spirit of God’s commandments, but calling ordinary sinners to repentance while treating them with love and compassion (i.e. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”). As Jesus-followers it behooves us to do the same.

Banner picture: Lightyear / Disney/Pixar

Eine Facebook-Freundin (anonymisiert) fragt:

Die Antwort lautet: Wahrscheinlich stimmen beide Aussagen.

Die israelischen Raketen waren wahrscheinlich die (traurige aber verständliche) Reaktion auf den Raketenbeschuß durch den Islamischen Dschihad.

Wie Thomas M. Eppinger auf MENA-Watch berichtet,

In der Nacht zum Samstag hat der Islamische Dschihad über 160 Raketen aus Gaza auf Israel abgefeuert. Jede einzelne von ihnen zielte auf Zivilisten, jede einzelne ist ein terroristischer Akt. Nur dem Iron Dome und den öffentlichen Sicherheitseinrichtungen ist es zu verdanken, dass solche Terrorakte nicht mehr Opfer fordern. 

Demgegenüber unternimmt Israel mehr als jede andere Armee der Welt, um die Zivilisten des Gegners in der Kampfzone zu schützen. Dennoch sind in jedem Krieg unbeteiligte Opfer unvermeidlich. Die palästinensische Taktik, sich hinter der eigenen Zivilbevölkerung zu verstecken, kann nicht zur Folge haben, die eigene Bevölkerung widerstandslos dem Terror auszuliefern. 

Das Infame an der CNN-Überschrift ist, daß sie die Ursache für den israelischen Raketenbeschuß, nämlich den vorausgegangenen Beschuß aus Gaza, verschweigt (auch wenn der Artikel dann beides erwähnt).

Diese Art der Überschrift entspringt der unter westlichen Medien und vor allem linken Politikern und Organisationen weit verbreiteten Leugnung, direkt oder indirekt, des israelischen Rechts auf Selbstverteidigung in diesem Krieg, der von palestinensischen Terror-Organisationen wie PLO (die im Westjordanland regiert), Hamas (die im Gazastreifen regiert) und Islamischer Dschihad (die für den aktuellen Raketenbeschuß verantwortlich ist) am Leben erhalten wird.

Diese Leugnung, die durchaus nicht auf englischsprachige Medien begrenzt ist, sondern unter Anderem auch in österreichischen und deutschen Medien gut vertreten ist, ist zu einem gesellschaftsfähigen Antisemitismus geworden, der sich als Sorge um die unterdrückte palästinensische Bevölkerung geriert, dabei aber die Rolle der palästinensischen Führung, insbesondere der Hamas, in dieser Situation verschweigt. Diese hält sich zwar derzeit mit direkten Angriffen auf Israel zurück, läßt aber andere Terrorgruppen wie den Islamischen Dschihad weitgehend unbehelligt im von ihr konrollierten Gazastreifen agieren.

Man muß nicht die gesamte israelische Politik im Westjordanland, im Gazastreifen, und in den besetzten Gebieten gutheißen, aber es muß schon ganz klar gesagt werden, daß der Staat Israel die ständigen Angriffe auf die eigene Zivilbevölkerung nicht einfach so hinnehmen kann. Dies auch dann, wenn aufgrund der Taktik der Terrororganisationen jeder Verteidigungsschlag Israels Opfer unter der palästinensischen Zivilbevölkerung fordert: Leider verstecken die Terrororganisationen ihre Raketenwerfer und Munitionslager ebenso wie die Eingänge zu ihren Terrortunneln in zivilen Siedlungen, um die resultierenden zivilen Opfer dann propagandistisch auszuschlachten. Dazu gehört auch, daß die Opfer der eigenen Raketen (wenn diese z.B. zu kurz fliegen und noch im Gazastreifen einschlagen), grundsätzlich immer Israel in die Schuhe geschoben werden.

Nun werden einige diesen ganzen Narrativ in Frage stellen, und trotzdem die Verantwortung für die Gewalt im Nahen Osten primär Israel in die Schuhe schieben. Darauf kann ich nur sagen:

Ich finde den demokratischen Staat Israel, der als einziger in der Region faire und geheime Wahlen sowie eine unabhängige Presse hat, in seiner Darstellung der Situation wesentlich glaubwürdiger als die autokratischen bis diktatorischen Regimes von PLO und Hamas, die in ihren Herrschaftsbereichen keine Opposition zulassen.

Und obwohl ich kein Freund von Krieg bin, und ihn als Mittel der Politik kategorisch ablehne, muß ich doch Staaten das Recht auf Selbstverteidigung zugestehen, dem Staat Israel ebenso wie der Ukraine.

Recently I came across this conversation on Facebook (I blanked out names and pictures):

This led me to ponder my own attitude towards and relationship with books. 

My father had a huge private library of more than 2500 books on all sorts of subjects: non-fiction from politics (such as Mein Kampf and Das Kapital) to philosophy, history, medicine, etc., as well as fiction (i.e. the German classics like Goethe, Schiller, etc., as well as German novelists of the interwar period and immediately after WW2 like Kraus, Kästner, Tucholsky, Grass, etc.). As I grew up I followed in his footsteps and began to assemble my own collection of books.

After my father died and we his children had to sell the house we had grown up in to a contractor, none of us was either interested in or had enough space to take over this massive library. So with a few exceptions the books stayed in the house which within a few days was demolished to make way for terraced houses. The books became part of the demolition rubble.

As a bibliophile and avid reader I was saddened by this. In the course of my own life I relocated several times, both within Austria and to the US and back, and for reasons of logistics I had to get rid of many of my books. Then I discovered eBooks and for the most part stopped buying printed books. With very few exceptions I now buy only eBooks, in Kindle, ePub, and PDF formats. I have even purchased eBook versions of some of the books I used to own in paper.

Now my entire library fits on a USB stick, and when my time comes to depart this life my kids won’t have to worry about where to find room for hundreds of yellowed books; and if they are not interested in my library they can just reformat the stick.

As much as I love books (and particularly also fine examples of the arts of typography, printing, and bookbinding, which I mostly cannot afford anyway) I realize that just like money, my computers, etc., ultimately I cannot take my books with me, and that they can all to easily become a burden, if not for me then for those who come after me.

By the way, the title for this post is taken from Ecclesiastes 14:12:

To the making of many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

Kürzlich stieß ich auf folgende Konversation auf Facebook (Namen und Bilder anonymisiert):

Dies hat mich zum Nachdenken gebracht über meine eigene Einstellung zu Büchern. Mein Vater hatte eine riesige Bibliothek von mehr als 2500 Bänden: von allem etwas, von Politik und Philosophie (z.B Mein Kampf und Das Kapital), über Geschichte, Medizin, usw., zu Belletristik (vor allem deutschsprachige Klassiker sowie Autoren der Zwischenkriegs- und unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit wie Kraus, Kästner, Tucholsky, Grass, usw), und ich fing sehr bald an, es ihm gleich zu tun und meine eigene Büchersammlung anzulegen.

Dann starb mein Vater; ein paar Jahre später mußten wir aus familiären Gründen unser Elternhaus an einen Bauunternehmer verkaufen, und keines von uns Kindern hatte das Interesse oder den Platz, die Büchersammlung unseres Vaters (bis auf ganz wenige Ausnahmen) zu übernehmen. Die Mehrzahl der Bücher blieb im Haus zurück und als es abgerissen wurde, um Platz für eine Reihenhaussiedlung zu machen, wurden sie Teil des Bauschutts.

Als Büchernarr und begeistertem Leser tat mir das sehr weh. Im Laufe meines Lebens mußte ich wegen mehrmaliger Übersiedlungen (sowohl innerhalb Österreichs, als auch nach USA und zurück) viele meiner Bücher aus praktischen Gründen weggeben. Dann bin ich schließlich auf eBooks gestoßen und habe größtenteils aufgehört, gedruckte Bücher zu kaufen. Bis auf ganz wenige Ausnahmen kaufe ich inzwischen nur mehr elektronische Bücher, in den Kindle-, ePub-, oder PDF-Formaten. Inzwischen habe ich habe auch einiges, was ich mal in Papier hatte, elektronisch nachgekauft.

Meine ganze Bibliothek paßt jetzt auf einen USB-Stick, und wenn meine Zeit gekommen ist, werden sich meine Erben nicht den Kopf zerbrechen müssen, wo sie hunderte vergilbter Bücher unterbringen sollen; und falls sie kein Interesse an meiner Büchersammlung haben, können sie den Stick einfach neu formatieren.

So sehr ich Bücher liebe (und gerade auch Kunstwerke der Typografie-, Buchdrucker- und Buchbinderkunst, die ich mir ohnehin nicht leisten kann), bin ich doch zur Erkenntnis gelangt, daß ich Bücher, ebenso wie Geld, all mein Computerzeugs, usw., letztlich nicht mitnehmen kann, und daß diese Dinge leicht zur Last werden können, wenn nicht für mich, dann für die, die nach mir kommen.

Den Titel dieses Beitrags stammt übrigens aus Kohelet (Prediger, Ecclesiastes) 14,12:

Des vielen Büchermachens ist kein Ende, und viel Studieren macht den Leib müde.

Because of the effective take-over of the Republican Party by the Trumpians, and similar developments in several other countries, I find it necessary to state clearly:

It is possible to be a values conservative without becoming a right wing crazy.

It is possible to be a values conservative without supporting attempts to overturn election results, violent attacks on the institutions of government, or the fomenting of civil unrest.

It is possible to be a values conservative and a Christian without being a “Christian nationalist” of the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Trumpians in the US, or Victor Orbán and Vladimir Putin in Europe.

It is possible to be a values conservative who does not turn a blind eye to the suffering of refugees from war zones or famine-stricken countries.

It is possible to be a values conservative who does not oppose government aid to the disadvantaged in our own countries.

It is possible to be a values conservative who rejects abortion as a birth control method but who recognizes that there are legitimate exceptions to a total ban and wants these enshrined in the relevant laws.

It is possible to be a values conservative who does not oppose, but indeed supports, comprehensive universal healthcare with needs-based public financing.

It is possible to be a values conservative who supports reasonable gun control – at the very least a ban on private ownership of military grade weapons beginning with assault rifles.

It is possible to be a values conservative who believes churches and religious believers should be able to follow their understanding of human nature, sexuality, and marriage while at the same time respecting democratic decisions concerning broader definitions of civil marriage.

There are probably other aspects I can think of right now; but my main point is that it is possible to be a values conservative without being a right-wing nutter.

According to this article  in the Roys Report,

The 47-year old lead pastor of an evangelical church in Wiconsin was arrested after soliciting a sex act with an underage girl. …

“These arrests demonstrate that the market for juvenile commercial sex is not confined to limited segments of society,” said Washington County attorney Kevin Magnuson. “The buyers come from all walks of life and each are responsible for the tremendous harm to the victims, their families and the public that sex trafficking causes.” …

“It’s a sad thing,” said the church’s associate pastor. “This is a lose-lose scenario for the community and the people impacted by it. The worst thing is what this will do to his family — and the church family.”

Unfortunately this associate pastor’s perspective is all too common in churches across the denominational spectrum.

No sir, the worst is not “what this will do to his family — and the church family”, but what this sort of thing does to the victims of sex trafficking and to the testimony of the Lord’s church, and that is where our focus should be, not on the perpetrator’s family and congregation (however painful and devastating this no doubt is for them), nor on the reputational and legal problems that may cause the local church and/or denomination.

In a recent Facebook discussion on the subject of “Christian nationalism” a commenter said, 

“I sometimes feel we have an attitude that because we do it better than most, we don’t need to make changes. When you believe you are the best, why make changes??”

This was my response, slightly expanded here, which gave me no pleasure to write:

As an Austrian who grew up in a home built with Marshall Plan funds and and who was fully aware that without US involvement in WWII my country would likely be living under either Hitler’s or Stalin’s terror regime, and who therfore used to be an uncritical fan of the US in my youth; as one who was socialized and formed as an Evangelical Christian by American missionaries, spent almost five years living in the US working for a Christan ministry, and still has many dear friends in and from the US, but who now is thoroughly disillusioned with both American society/politics and the American church, I would say the attitude you describe is wrong on two counts:

1. Of course you need to make changes. Even the best can always do and be better.
2. But you don’t actually do it better than most. Let’s see:
   • You are almost the worst at controlling violent crime, largely due to a ludicrous misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment to your constitution;
   • You may have some of the best (and best-equipped) doctors and medical facilities but you are pretty worse than most industrialized nations at providing equal and equitable healthcare access and funding to all;
   • You are a leader in technological research who sends people into space and spends tons of money on your military, but your power grid and road network and telephone network are in deplorable condition;
   • Your education system leaves most of its graduates shackled by debt for many years;
   • Your society is hopelessly polarized and your politics controlled by the extremes of the left and the right:
     • The Democrats are dominated by a destructive “progressive” agenda which seeks to deconstruct human nature as essentially male and female and plays with identity politics which divides rather than unites the country;
     • The GOP is under the thumb of a serial adulterer and liar who has brought the country to the brink of political collapse and possibly civil war and whose followers know only law and order but not mercy and compassion;
   • Vast swathes of the American church, instead of being a prophetic witness speaking truth to power, have got into bed with either the political left or the political right, championing their respective agendas and favouring the separation of church and state only when it suits them while trying to push their own agenda on the state when that suits them.

I could go on, but this is enough to show why in a very real sense you do it worse than most in so many areas that the meaning of American exceptionalism has become inverted, and why there is definitely room (and a desparate need) for change.

It pains me especially that many churches and leaders in my own Evangelical tradition have, in an extreme and especially bizarre form of supersessionism, appropriated the Jewish people’s status as God’s uniquely chosen people not just for the church (bad enough in view of Romans 9–11) but for the United States, claiming the promises made to Israel but disregarding most of the responsibilities such as caring for the poor and welcoming strangers. At the same time they uncritically support the State of Israel as an actor in and venue of their favourite end time scenario but have little use and sympathy for Jews as a people.

So the question posed in the title of this post is a very real one: unless the American nation and the American church drastically change direction, and do so soon, I fear for their future.

The cover image appeared here. The editor of e-International Relations could not find any licensing information so I decided to use it. If anyone claims copyright I will of course remove it.

(I borrowed this text from Craig Greenfield)

On the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus stands with Moses and Elijah (representing the Prophets and the Law of the OT). (Mt 17:1-9)

God’s command is “This is my son, Listen to him!”

In this powerful moment,
with these powerful words,
Jesus is lifted above and beyond all other teachers
and all other parts of scripture.

This is why we must read the Bible though the lens of the life and teachings of Jesus.

This is why Jesus can dare to say, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye (in Exodus 21:23), but I say to you, Love your enemies”

This is why we seek,
not to be Biblical,
but to be Christlike.

Note from Wolf: I am fully aware that this hermeneutical principle can be (and has been) distorted and abused. That doesn’t mean it’s not valid. And I know one can argue about the word “biblical” in the meme above, but I think readers of good will know what is meant.

And finally, a common temptation seems to be to read all Scripture not through the lens of Christ’s life and teachings, but rather through the lens of that image of Christ we have constructed in our own head.

Diesen Text habe ich von Craig Greenfield übernommen und übersetzt:

Auf dem Berg der Verklärung steht Jesus mit Moses und Elija (als Verteter von Gesetz und Propheten im AT) (Matt 17:1-9).

Gottes Gebot lautet, “Dieser ist mein Sohn, Ihn sollt ihr hören!”

In diesem mächtigen Augenblick,
mit diesen mächtigen Worten,
wird Jesus über alle anderen Lehrer gestellt, und auch über alle anderen Stellen in der Schrift.

Deshalb müssen wir die Bibel durch die Linse von Jesu Leben und Lehre lesen.

Deshalb kann Jesus sagen, “Ihr habt gehört, dass gesagt ist ( 2. Mose 21,24): Auge um Auge, Zahn um Zahn. Ich aber sage euch, Liebet eure Feinde.”

Deshalb streben wir
nicht so sehr danach, biblisch zu sein,
sondern vielmehr danach, Jesus-ähnlich zu sein.

Anmerkung von Wolf: Und ja, mir ist schon klar, daß dieses Auslegungsprinzip auch verdreht und mißbraucht werden kann und wird, was aber nichts an seiner Gültigkeit ändert. Und man kann darüber streiten, was in dem Bild hier oberhalb “biblisch” bedeutet, aber jeder Leser guten Willens versteht das schon.

Und schließlich besteht immer die Gefahr, daß wir die Schrift nicht durch die Linse von Jesu Leben und Lehre lesen, sondern durch die Linse des Bildes von Jesus, das wir uns zurechtgelegt haben.