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    Hunter Baker

    Website: http://hunterbaker.wordpress.com/

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    Two Kingdoms Theory and Ken Myers
    Friday, November 13, 2009, 10:11 AM

    Over at Justin Taylor’s blog, he offers a transcribed interview conducted with Ken Myers of the great Mars Hill Audio.  I want to talk about this part:

    Question: One of the arguments out there by what I am going to call a “high two-kingdoms view,” is that there is not a distinctively Christian way of doing “X” vocation, even that we should resist that because that would be to mix the kingdoms, and if you were to, for example (this would be the anti-Abraham Kuyper position), be a politician, your Christian thought should not come in. Could you interact with that a little?

    Myers: First of all I would agree…I am a believer in natural law. Let me put it this way. Let me say for the sake of the argument that I’ll agree with that, there isn’t a distinctively Christian view of politics and art, or anything. But there is a distinctively human view; that is there are de-humanizing possibilities in those spheres; Christians we are necessarily humanists. That is, Christians are necessarily interested in sustaining the best for human beings as human beings.

    What I take issue with, and not in a pugnacious way, is the statement that “there isn’t a distinctively Christian view of politics.”  I feel quite certain there is such a thing.  Contrast, for example, some of the Christian socio-political values that took the place of their Greco-Roman predecessors.  Mercy becomes desirable rather than contemptible.  The church becomes a brake upon the state’s unrighteousness rather than a servant of it (thinking Ambrose and Theodosius here).  The exposure of unwanted children to the elements and wild beasts goes way, way out of style.  The gladiator games cease.  Constantine closes the courts on Sunday unless there is a slave to be set free.  He ends the practice of branding criminals’ faces.  We could go on.  A Christian politics is a distinctive thing.  I suspect we think it is not only because of the degree to which the world now accepts many of those ideas and values as the correct ones.


    More on the Topic of Solving Poverty
    Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 9:49 PM

    Gene Fant opened this conversation up, so I’ll dive in.

    I think it is interesting that anyone, such as the person Dr. Fant refers to, could think that the federal government can effectively solve the problem of poverty.  I don’t think it can because it resolutely refuses to confront the sources.

    Really, truly, don’t we know the cause of a great deal of the poverty in our midst?  Here’s a hint:  Adam Smith thought the poor who gravitated to the fiery preachers were wise.  Why?  Because the hell and brimstoners alone preached the doctrines that might prevent the poor from the catastrophic consequences of things like losing their jobs and money on liquor and gambling.

    I can recall having lunch with Micah Watson, a colleague who teaches at Union with Dr. Fant, and he was talking about the trouble Jackson, TN has with some of its public schools.  He said something that stuck.  He said, “Many families in our school district lack the cultural capital to succeed.”

    And he is right.  Anyone who looks at the research in a dispassionate way will discover that people who do just a few things will almost never live in poverty.  Those few things are that they will graduate from high school, get married, and delay childbearing until after marriage.  If you do that, you will probably not spend your life below the poverty line.

    Going a little further you will also find that children who come from intact, two parent families are significantly more likely to do better in school, to have fewer behavioral problems, to commit fewer crimes, to stay out of jail, to avoid sexual and physical abuse, and to stay off of public assistance than are their peers from broken homes or from single parent homes.  These things are true even if you control for race.

    For some reason, and I would argue that it is partially because of our silly secular mindset that favors avoiding moralism, we are unwilling to embody some of this knowledge in our public policy.  When President Bush suggested that maybe we just might consider trying to encourage marriage among the poor, protest erupted.  It was the same old thing, theocracy, blah, blah, blah . . .  For some reason the morality that extends welfare to poor people is perfectly fine while the morality that would gently urge them toward the things that help human beings flourish is threatening and terrible and ultra-religious.

    Does the church do enough?  It does not, but I would argue that in part we fail to combat the problem of poverty adequately in the church because we think the duty has been subcontracted out to the state.  The larger the state becomes, the less air is left in the community space for everyone else, especially the church because we buy into the idea of a secular state.  (This is a point I talk about, by the way, in The End of Secularism.)  The state eats up both resources and social influence.  The system does not realize it has a soul, or if it does it is busy trying to kill it.

    (Now, the question of exactly how we are spending our resources in the church is another post.)


    Non-Preacher Preaching Here . . .
    Sunday, November 8, 2009, 4:43 PM

    When you are a Christian academic with a doctorate, many people assume that you are a seminarian and thus ask you to preach.  During the past couple of years, I have been called upon to do it a few times and have always accepted because it just seems like the thing one should do.

    Today, I had the chance to deliver a sermon at a Calvary Chapel service in Houston.  I wrote out the whole thing, as I usually do, and then delivered it taking care to look up frequently and make eye contact.  Upon finishing, I felt good.  I tend to focus on disaffected young people because I always hope my lack of preacher training will result in a delivery different enough to get the attention of the kid who has heard it all a thousand times and is just waiting for his chance to stop going to church.  It seemed to me that the sermon achieved the goal.  The topic was the resurrection of Christ as the strong foundation of the Christian faith.  My disaffected looking kid seemed to focus in on what I was saying.

    I felt a little less good afterwards, though, because a man in the congregation sought me out to give me a detailed report card on the message and my style in delivering it.  Although he was positive in his remarks, it troubled me a bit to put something like a sermon through the same kind of judgment process a food critic might apply to a meal.  I mean, to me it felt a little more personal than that.  And why would you ever assume that a speaker wants to go straight to the metaphorical telestrator to review his performance?

    My sermons, because I am not a preacher and have no real theological training or training in homiletics, tend to begin from personal experiences in life or things I have learned along the way.  From that point, I usually find my way into the scripture and try to drive the message home.  My friendly critic remarked that I started out talking about just whatever and he was wondering “Where’s the verse?  Where is he going with this?”

    I have to say, the thing that worries me the most in preaching is the wary waiting judgment of this type of person who feels that the only thing of value that can come out of a sermon is basically expository preaching from the word of God.    I wouldn’t seek to replace it.  But there is room to say more, is there not?  Isn’t there some value in personal testimony, in life experience, in reflecting upon literature, film, culture, etc.?

    I’d love to hear from the peanut gallery on this one.  And before doom descends upon me, I promise that I finished strong in the scripture with just about the full second half of the sermon.


    On the Catholic-Evangelical Point Once More . . .
    Thursday, November 5, 2009, 12:29 PM

    The hard-core folks here on the blog may end up critical of me, but I do not see Catholicism as an illegitimate faith.  Nor do I believe they possess a false gospel.

    My attitude is pretty well summed up by something the pastor of my parents’ church in Decatur, Alabama said when Pope John Paul II died.  The pastor of First Baptist Church in that small town told his congregation something very similar to this:

    I am not a Catholic.  I obviously disagree with the Catholic church about a number of things.  But this pope who just died, John Paul II, was a great man.  He was a great man and an outstanding representative of the Christian faith to people around the world.  There are many people on this earth who know very little about Christianity other than what they may get from contact with the Catholic church.  We should hope and pray that the next pope is as great a man as this one.

    To which I say, Amen.  And I don’t think we’ve done badly with JPII’s successor.  Not at all.


    Perhaps the Only Harmless Gay Marriage Joke . . .
    Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 3:18 PM

    I found this gem while mining some old material.

    Flipping through a local community magazine, I came across the following line:

    “My neighbor is confused by the whole gay marriage controversy. He just can’t understand why a gay man would want to marry a gay woman.”


    Thoughts on Natural Law
    Monday, November 2, 2009, 9:31 PM

    The subject of the natural law came up in a talk with a friend a while back. She is very passionate about the rights of illegal aliens, border issues, etc. I happened to know prior to the conversation that she considers herself a “nontheist.” If I understand correctly, the word nontheist is being used by some to get away from the highly negative associations attached to the word atheist.

    Anyway, I listened to her talk about the rights of various people and finally had to ask: “Where do those rights come from?”

    She thought about it and said, “I think I’d go with the Constitution on that.”

    I replied, “Those are just words on a piece of paper. They could easily say something else.”

    She then returned, “I can’t see the answer being natural law.”

    Me: Why not? I have a friend from Nigeria and we agree on the essentials. Lying is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Murder is wrong. Unprovoked assault is wrong. Yet, we are on opposite sides of the globe. These notions seem to be built into the structure of reality.

    She: But there have been people who sacrificed virgins!

    Me: That doesn’t do anything to undercut natural law.

    She: Huh?

    Me: The people who have sacrificed virgins have offered justifications for doing so. In fact, they offer an ultimate justification — to satisfy a god. What would damage natural law thinking would be if they thought it wonderful to sacrifice virgins for no reason at all. They may be wrong about the justification, but they aren’t wrong that one must have a good one before murdering innocent people.

    And at that, we had to switch the subject because she did not wish to be converted to natural law any more than to Christianity.


    Evangelicals and Fatima
    Friday, October 30, 2009, 10:48 AM

    As I may have mentioned earlier, I grew up with Catholics on my mother’s side and the Church of Christ on my father’s side.  Not exactly a recipe for happy relations.  For the record, the Catholics were more gracious about it.  I found the tension painful, difficult, and unnecessary and thus tried to avoid religion as a young person.

    The Hound of Heaven got to me, anyway, while at college in Tallahassee, Florida.  A story for another time.

    Although my parents now go to the Southern Baptist church, my mother still bears the imprint of her Catholic upbringing and relates easily on religious matters to her brothers and sisters.  I went through a period at the beginning of this century where I thought I might convert to Catholicism.  Yet, here I am, still evangelical and probably not changing, although my mentor Francis Beckwith has crossed the Tiber.

    Though I feel pretty settled as an evangelical, I do not understand why something like the claimed appearance of Mary at Fatima would be so disturbing.  We are talking about a woman who, if scripture is to be believed, bore the son of God in her womb.  We embrace the thought that God does everything for a reason.  And for some reason he chose her.  There is something I am missing, probably something obvious.  Someone on this list will tell me why I should find the purported appearance of Mary more unsettling than I do.

    What is it exactly that is so objectionable about the claim that she appeared to some children?  I readily admit that I am not a theologian, but am instead more of a religio-political analyst.  My many Catholic relatives may be blinding me, too.  I just don’t see it.

    What I can tell you is that I went to Mother Angelica’s beautiful church in Hanceville, Alabama a few years ago with my aunt and uncle, both of whom fit the old description of being more Catholic than the pope.  (My uncle, a good and godly man, died of an agressive brain tumor earlier this year.  He was the kind of man who wrote encouraging letters to prisoners.)  I sat in that place on a wooden pew and heard cloistered nuns (out of sight behind a screen) sing the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life.  Even now, I can feel the sensation of it, vibrating into my soul.

    What grieved me at that time and in that place was not whatever feeling those people had about Mary, but that I could not take communion with them because they did not wish it so.  Though I claimed Christ, just as they did, I was a separated brother who could not share the sacrament.

    The division of the church scandalizes me, especially in the world we live in.  Part of the reason we lost as much as we did in American culture is because the Protestants worried more about “Romanism” than they did about secularism.

    I wish I could see the Reformation’s end in sight, in a way that would somehow satisfy us all.


    Redecorating the Public Square
    Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 11:52 PM

    The transcript of my interview with Benjamin Wiker (who wrote Ten Books that Screwed Up the World) of To the Source is up.  We talk about my book The End of Secularism.

    Here’s a clip where I answer Wiker’s question as to whether I am calling Christians to be anti-secular activists:

    Baker: I think Christians should kindly refuse the invitation to take their religious activity and speech private.  They should maintain the validity of the faith for their approach to community life and politics.  They should point out that secularism provides little guidance for dealing with big political questions and that the values have to come from somewhere.  Too often, secularists selectively crib Christian values without acknowledging the source.  We didn’t just get here by accident.  We don’t appreciate things like liberty, equality, and democracy by sheer accident.  Christianity has been a major civilizational force.

    Christians should also learn about their own faith.  Religion is not a commodity.  Christianity is not just another religion.  Don’t accept the idea that your faith is about emotion and pure mysticism and the no one else can understand it.  Realize that the Christian faith makes public claims about events that happened in history.  Stick close to the resurrection of Christ and you won’t go far wrong in challenging the secular orthodoxy.

    (The relentless flacking of The End of Secularism has now officially infected Evangel!)


    Should Christians Apologize . . .
    Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 1:33 PM

    There was a post below on whether Christians should fast during Ramadan.  The answer is clearly no.  We should proclaim the gospel and why we believe it (See Resurrection, The).

    But the other question comes from Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz (which, as I’ve said before, I enjoyed reading).  He and a group of other Christians engage in an exercise we might call apologize to evangelize.  They do things like apologizing for the Crusades.  This supposedly makes everyone feel better and causes secularist college students to think better of their humble Christian peers.

    Here’s the short version.  We shouldn’t be apologizing for the Crusades.  First off, I suspect the vast majority of apologizers have no idea what really happened in the Crusades or what precipated them.  Second, it is just way too easy for people facing no great and threatening crisis to apologize for actions taken by others during an actual great and threatening crisis.  And third, the apologies assume the military invasion of the Holy Land was utterly without merit.  Assume nothing, youngsters or Christian hipsters or young, Christian hipsters.

    If nothing else, the sad apologies by emergent trendmeisters (who have many fine qualities) demonstrates the failure of colleges and universities to pass on a legitimate fund of cultural knowledge to our students.  The cafeteria-style pick and choose core curriculum has absolutely killed us.  Abandon it with haste, friends!


    The Competitive Situation of Christian Colleges and Universities
    Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 5:04 PM

    I have a powerpoint that I use to bring home to people where we stand in our colleges and universities.  We are doing a tremendous job, but we have a long way to go competively and resource-wise.

    Here’s the link for those who are interested.

    This is more for people who are into the university game a bit, FYI.

    I have a dream that we could collaborate on a presentation and then offer it to a BBC-style Dragon’s Den of cultural investors.

    UPDATE:  Just in case anyone has trouble with the Scribd link, here’s a link to an online posting of the powerpoint file.


    Thinking about the University . . .
    Sunday, October 25, 2009, 9:34 AM

    I am employed by Houston Baptist University. We are working hard to respond to a gigantic cultural need for strong universities that can offer a distinctively Christian education. You can read our vision for the next 10-12 years here. I just returned from giving a lecture at Union University which is obviously making tremendous strides and is also completely committed to integration rather than offering a commodity called “education” in a Christian environment.

    There are several others working in a similar way. What we all experience to varying degrees is financial scarcity. At the best universities, faculty teach one or two courses a semester and have ample time for research and publication. At our schools, professors teach four courses each semester. We simply can’t afford to have them teaching less. Thus, it is more difficult for our faculty members to get work into the journals and publish books at a rate equivalent to what can be done in state schools and wealthier privates. At the same time, a survey of endowments proves depressing. Even our best universities run far behind many secular institutions. Finally, we battle for students with a massive state subsidized system. It requires a real gut check for parents and/or students to pay $10-15 thousand dollars extra each year for a Christian education.

    I bring this topic up at the evangelical blog for First Things in order to draw attention to the situation. Those of us represented here: Union, HBU, Biola, and others all need much more help from donors than we are currently getting.

    (more…)


    What’s an Evangelical?: A College Convert’s View
    Monday, October 19, 2009, 11:57 PM

    When I became a Christian at Florida State University at the end of the eighties, I encountered a different kind of Christian from the ones I knew as a southerner from Alabama.

    Growing up, virtually everyone was some kind of churchgoer whether they were Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, Catholic, etc.  But that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  It was just a default.  To me, going to church was simply something people did.  My family did it more or less often over time.  Catholics, like my mom’s family, had stained glass, candles, and statues.  The Church of Christ, like my dad’s people, worshipped in spare chapel rooms with acapella singing.  ”There is pow’r!  Pow’r!  Wonder working pow’r!”

    The Christians I met at Florida State through Intervarsity were faithful and committed to a real relationship with Christ well before any denominational identity came into view.   We didn’t spend a lot of time debating differences in Christian flavors.  We talked about knowing Christ and his Lordship in our lives.  To me, it was endlessly interesting and challenging.  The first time I heard the word “evangelical” it was IVCF’s sister organization, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).

    Over time, I began to hear the word “evangelical” more frequently.  I associated it with liking C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Wheaton College.  I ended up marrying a girl in a classic evangelical family.

    To me, it just meant taking your faith seriously.

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