Great letter. I heard about it out here in NC via Truth Talk Live. Stu Jr. is an old college friend of mine. Unfortunately, I was unable to listen, but I did come here to read the letter.
I would add that we should be concerned about Focus on the Family and the current Christian Coalition strategy because, in addition to having been ineffective, and now succeeding in making even more enemies on the left...after all, one day they will be a majority again...but it simply isn't theologically sound.
The principle of Sola Scriptura says that Scripture is our only infallible rule of faith and practice. However, there are other traditions that we can hold to and embrace, as long as they are subject to Scripture and do not define or interpret it for us. As a Southern Baptist, I affirm, in addition to the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, the 2000 Version of the Baptist Faith and Message which says:
However, two sections afterward it reads, in the section on Religious liberty the means by which the Section on the Social Order should be carried very clearly (Note my emphasis):
The church and state historically have been at odds. With the exception of the first centuries of Christian history, the state has only been strong morally when the Church was at its strongest theologically, during the high marks following the Reformation. During the time from Constantine to the time of the Reformation, from a Protestant perspective, the Church's theology became more and more rife with error, and governments were often as corrupt as the episcopacy of the Roman See. After the Reformation, the Puritans, for example, had a divorce rate of nil, literally. The First Great Awakening had a great impact on the period leading up to the Revolution. From a Protestant perspective, the Church was (aside from that first century) at its strongest theologically, and it remained so until, roughly, the 18th and 19th centuries. All this is to say that the state is only "Christian" morally, when we are at our best in both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. However, today American Protestant evangelicalism bears little resemblance to the theology of the Reformation. We're more influenced by The Prayer of Jabez and The Purpose Driven Life than we are Pilgrim's Progress and Knowing God . How many of us have curled up with a good theology book or a Christian classic lately? The differences between Protestants and Catholics, who should differ widely on the very content of the gospel itself, are swept under the rug by Focus on the Family when Dr. Dobson made the statement that he merely had significant theological diffferences with Roman Catholics in his radio show about Pope John Paul II's death. If he had been a denominational leader in the SBC or the PCA that would not have been tolerated. Open Theism is rising in its influence. Oneness Pentecostals, who do not affirm the historic Trinitarian formulas (they are modalists) write books and sell music and sing in our churches and all is well, in the name of evangelistic pragmatism. While Calvinists and Arminian Protestants historically get along, most people have no clue that the true heirs of the Reformation are the Calvinists, who alone are monergists as all the Reformers were and as a result make increasingly a-contextual and a-historical statements about their theological foundations as Protestant Christians. The President of Fuller Seminary, an evangelical school writing the preface to a new book by Eerdmans, A Different Jesus?, authored by Robert Millet, and LDS Apologist, soon to be marketed in Christian bookstores can write this (context provided):
(Remember, Millet is a BYU Professor and a Mormon polytheist, not an evangelical Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, or Catholic.) and folks turn a blind eye or simply don't understand why the Christian Apologetics community is upset. Our own President, who is supposed to be one of us, can get away with talking openly about the truth in Islam, a remark that would have you, me, and every other evangelical Protestant that teaches from Scripture a false teacher of the highest order, and nobody really says anything to admonish this brother. He's the President, yes, but even his allegiance is to a Higher One than his office.
In other words, American evangelical Christianity has curled into a fetal position with regard to its core theology and substituted a salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for the glory of God alone found in the Scriptures alone for an evangelistic pragmatism that assures converts that pray the sinners prayer that all is well, become confused about its once most core values, and cast its socieital hopes onto the political machine. This is not New Testament Christianity. This is not the Christianity of Abraham Kuyper of Hollland, who lead one of the greatest Christian governments in history, this is not the theology, discipleship, evangelism, or even the social order of the Reformation. We have not succeeded because we have lost our way, become so fragmented and disaffected from our biblical and theological heritage, not to mention our historic confessions of faith, that we have lost the fight. It's our fault for not being the Church...not the Church that votes and relies on the state but the Church that understands our Lord, His Word, and our mission and takes this:
seriously. Only God changes hearts, and only changed hearts change societies. We need a reformation in our own churches, not just a reformation in our government institutions.
it's " : p " without the spaces