LET’S DO IT! “The church can end extreme poverty.”

There simply is no organization on the globe with the placement and the reach to deliver strategic aid and give hope like the hundreds of thousands of Christian churches around the world.

There is stubborn power in good news, inspiring motivation in progress, and hope in the rock-ribbed evidence of statistical facts. We don’t need to look the other way when we face extreme poverty, or duck the darts of guilt. We can face the hard realities ahead knowing that we are well on our way.

I believe that abject poverty—poverty at its worst—is beatable in our lifetime. I know that is has been Christian churches who have paved the way. And I know they are poised to do even more.

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PROBABLY NOT: “Will the World Ask Why Palestinians Celebrate Murder?”

Apologists for the Palestinians will argue those in Israeli jails were resisting the “occupation” of the country, though few will own up to the fact that as far as the prisoners are concerned, the territory of pre-June 1967 Israel is just as “occupied” as the West Bank. But even if you think the Palestinian cause is just, how can anyone justify the slaughter of innocents such as at the Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem? Even if you think Israel should withdraw back to the 1967 lines, how can any civilized person condone the Palestinian decision to treat those who committed such atrocities as heroes?

What is on trial this week is not the moral calculus by which Netanyahu decided that saving the life of one Jewish soldier was worth the subversion of justice–freeing murderers as ransom. What ought to be discussed is the upside-down ethos of Palestinian political culture in which the spilling of Jewish blood grants the killer not only absolution but also heroic status.

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ARAB SPRING, COPTS, AND STEVEN PINKER: “Democracy’s Collateral Damage.”

More important, though, this is a familiar story for the modern world as a whole — a case of what National Review’s John Derbyshire calls “modernity versus diversity.” For all the bright talk about multicultural mosaics, the age of globalization has also been an age of unprecedented religious and racial sorting — sometimes by choice, more often at gunpoint. Indeed, the causes of democracy and international peace have often been intimately tied to ethnic cleansing: both have gained ground not in spite of mass migrations and mass murders, but because of them.

This is a point worth keeping in mind when reading the Big Idea book of the moment, Steven Pinker’s “Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.” Pinker marshals an impressive amount of data to demonstrate that human civilization has become steadily less violent, that the years since 1945 have been particularly pacific, and that contemporary Europe has achieved an unprecedented level of tranquility.

What Pinker sometimes glosses over, though, is the price that’s been paid for these advances. With the partial exception of immigrant societies like the United States, mass democracy seems to depend on ethno-religious solidarity in a way that older forms of government did not. The most successful modern nation-states have often gained stability at the expense of diversity, driving out or even murdering their minorities on the road to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.

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I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN THERE’S A CHURCH OR SYNAGOGUE IN MECCA: “Saudi Arabia: Unlike Champion of Interfaith Dialogue.”

Authentic interreligious understanding should be a high priority for thoughtful people of any faith, but it is in the name of such authenticity that the the value of ‘dialogue’ sometimes ought to be questioned—especially when that word becomes a thin veneer for glossing over significant and deep disagreements among people of different faiths. In this case, it seems the moniker is being used even more loosely than it is by some well-intentioned domestic activists. It would almost take an act of willful refusal to look past both the Saudi government’s own internal policies and their history of transparent public relations stunts. If the Saudi government feels it must adhere to an absolutist interpretation of Islamic law within its own territory, that is one issue. But for that same government to then proclaim its commitment to ecumenism and tolerance on the world stage seems a staggering and bizarre hypocrisy.

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THE MORAL NECESSITY OF BIBLE-THUMPING CHRISTIANS: “God, Liquor and the Gospel of Ken Burns.”

In the mid-1800s, there were two issues that radical, Bible-thumping Christians were railing about, two practices which they said “would lead the nation into ruin.” Those two issues were: alcohol and slavery. If the moral zealots of that era had been more considerate of the way average people thought, we probably could have completely avoided the whole debacle of prohibition. And yet, without their efforts, many of us would still own slaves.

As such, I would like to propose a simple but perhaps unsettling thesis: Even when we lament their zeal, our society needs the kinds of unpopular people who are extremely outspoken about public morality.

Were it not for the concerted and (let’s admit it, John Brown) radical efforts of many 19th century moral zealots, much of our country’s most shameful historical chapters would stretch right up to the present. Evil usually finds an advocate in all of us, and those willing to risk everything to rebuke us (if not always correctly) deserve our serious attention.

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ABORTION POLITICS: “HHS Ends Contract With Church Program for Trafficking Victims, Stressing Need for Contraception.”

The federal government’s decision to end funding for a Church program for trafficking victims has fueled concerns that “abortion politics” are at work.

“There seems to be a new unwritten reg at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s the ‘ABC Rule’: anybody but Catholics,” asserted Sister Mary Ann Walsh, the spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which established an ambitious range of services for trafficking victims in 2006.

The HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement and the American Civil Liberties Union have stressed that trafficking victims need access to the full range of “family planning” services, which the USCCB program won’t provide. But a former director of the HHS trafficking-victim assistance program contends that contraceptive services can facilitate coercive prostitution and won’t help victims.

The federal government’s decision to end its funding reltionship with the church agency is viewed by New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the bishops’ conference, as just the latest effort to sideline Church agencies that prohibit the inclusion of family planning in social services or employee health benefits. The bishops have aggressively challenged an interim HHS rule requiring virtually all employer health-benefit programs to provide contraception services and sterilization.

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MATERIALISM & MARITAL QUALITY: “Materialism and Marriage: Couple Profiles of Congruent and Incongruent Spouses.”

Previous research has shown that spousal materialism is negatively associated with marital satisfaction. However, researchers have yet to determine if this association is due to value differences between spouses or if materialism is problematic even when partners place a similar priority on money and material goods. Using 1,734 married couples, we developed a typology of couple materialism to investigate how congruent and incongruent patterns of materialism between spouses influence marital outcomes. We found that materialism had a negative association with marital quality, even when spouses were unified in their materialistic values. Marriages in which both spouses reported low materialism were better off on several features of marital quality when compared to couples where one or both spouses reported high materialism. Implications are drawn for therapists and financial counselors working with couples dealing with financial strain or conflict related to economic issues.

Emphasis added.

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MARRIAGE AND ECONOMIC THINKING: “The Rotten Spouse Theorem.”

Of course, it’s conceivable that you can hurt your spouse without hurting your children.  But probabilistically, you have to expect your family members’ pain to move in unison.  Think general equilibrium: The way you treat your spouse ripples out to your children.  The way you treat your spouse affects the way your spouse treats you, which ripples out to your children.  The direct effects are more visible, but that doesn’t make them more real.  A good parent must, as Bastiat says, foresee the indirect effects of his behavior with the “inner eye of the mind.”
The painful lesson: Contrary to gracious exes, being a bad spouse makes you a bad parent.  If you’d been a good spouse, you could have held your family together, and spared your children the pain of dissolution.  Of course, being directly bad to your spouse and indirectly bad to your children isn’t as awful as being directly bad to both.  But either way, he who troubleth his own house inherits the wind.

That’s why, in premarital counseling, I always tell prospective husbands: “Happy wife, happy life.” It’s catchy, and it has the additional advantage of being true.

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THE NEW TOLERANCE IN ACTION: “Driscoll’s Portland Church Met By Protesters.”

Black-clad demonstrators gathered outside the Portland satellite branch of a Seattle megachurch on Sunday (Oct. 16) to protest the church’s stance on homosexuality.

About 20 protesters lined up outside Mars Hill Church during the congregation’s first Sunday morning services, carrying banners and shouting obscenities as churchgoers left when the service ended.

“Shame on you bigots,” one woman yelled at worshippers as they left. “Shame on you homophobes. You’re not welcome here. You’re going to burn in hell.”

…

The protesters, some of whom wore kerchiefs to cover their faces, shouted profanities at adults and children. “That’s not how we would go about it,” Smith said afterward. “But they have the right to say what they want to say.”

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ARTHUR F. HOLMES: “Remembering Arthur F. Homes (1924–2011).” The second-best teacher I had at Wheaton College eulogizes the best teacher I had there.

Arthur was one of the three great intellectual influences at Wheaton College over the last half of the twentieth century. The other two exerted their influence from afar — Billy Graham by guiding Wheaton from fearful fundamentalism to evangelistic ecumenicity; C. S. Lewis through the example of wit, learning, and narrative turned to orthodox Christian ends. Arthur was an important guide in what he wrote, but he also contributed inestimably important service in the trenches. In 1951 Arthur began to teach courses in the Bible department while he was still working on his Wheaton M.A. I believe those first classes may have been in koiné Greek. But as he then went on to doctoral studies at Northwestern, he soon was offering classes in philosophical subjects as well. It took more than a decade and a half, and a special exercise of the patience for which he was legendary, but he was finally able to convince the college to establish a philosophy department in its own right. The victory was to establish that formal study of philosophy could advance, rather than threaten, Christian faith.

Holmes’ course on the history of Western philosophy was legendary, and I had a front-row seat for both semesters of it. God bless Dr. Holmes!

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HOLINESS, ILLUSTRATED: “Power Washed by God.”

When I grasp that God’s holiness is necessary for my cleansing but is also, by its nature, a vaporizing force, two things come into clearer focus. First, I begin to perceive God’s judgment as no more malevolent than the blast of water from a pressure washer. It is simply God’s holiness doing what God’s holiness does. Second, this reality points to one reason we need a mediator. Jesus is the only human who could vicariously absorb (and ultimately survive) the cleansing we so desperately need. Because of him, we are washed not by a force so intense it annihilates us, but rather by the blood of the Lamb.

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FOUR CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGISTS WALK INTO A BLOG: Patheos has a new blog—new to me, at least—called “Black, White and Gray.” In it, four Christian sociologists write about sociological topics—and sundry other issues—they find interesting. The four are Margarita Mooney, Jerry Park, Mark Regnerus, and Bradley Wright. Check it out!

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NO GREATER LOVE: “Oklahoma Mother Gives Her Life to Save Unborn Child.”

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ONLY THE SMART ONES: “Is Online Dating for Christians?”

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AS LONG AS THEY SHARE THEIR CANDY: “Can Christians Trick or Treat?”