I took note of two public statements in recent days that must have been calculated to draw attention because both were -- in my humble opinion -- preposterous.
Former (and probably future) presidential candidate Mike Huckabee -- who is also a Baptist preacher -- has been touring Israel as the guest of the "Jewish Reclamation Project" of Ateret Cohanim, a polarizing group that promotes Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory. Buying into his hosts' position, Huckabee announced that if the Palestinians think they should have a homeland, it should be somewhere else, not in Israel.
An orthodox rabbi who welcomed Huckabee prayed that the former Arkansas governor might be elected president of the U.S. so he could become like a modern King Cyrus, urging the people of Israel to build a new temple.
That correlation is so out-of-context and so wrong that it hardly deserves comment. Huckabee's hosts are using him to undermine global efforts to promote peace in Israel-Palestine, and Huckabee is playing right into their hands -- probably hoping his zealous and uncompromising stance will win him sufficient support to carry the Republican banner against President Obama (who supports the United Nations' longstanding call for a two-state solution) in the next election. Huckabee criticized Obama's approach during his visit.
I'm hoping that most Republicans are more interested in both justice and peace, and less interested in fomenting present oppression and future war.
Meantime, leading Calvinist advocate John Piper has taken a page from Pat Robertson's playbook, interpreting a recent tornado that grazed the Minneapolis Convention Center as a God-sent "gentle but firm warning" to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), which was holding a meeting there. During the meeting, the ELCA voted to agree to disagree on the morality of lifelong same-gender relationships.
A report by Associated Baptist Press first alerted me to an August 20 blog in which Piper noted that what he called a "curious tornado" came through and struck a Lutheran church across from the convention center at precisely the time appointed for the Lutherans to discuss liberalizing their policies toward homosexuals. Piper argued that "official church pronouncements that condone the very sins that keep people out of the kingdom of God are evil," that "Jesus Christ controls the wind including all tornadoes," and therefore the tornado should be seen as a warning to both Lutherans and the rest of us to turn from the approval of sin (no word on Piper's interpretation of the typhoon that killed hundreds in Taiwan and East China).
By portraying the tornado as a divine warning, Piper seems to be suggesting that the Lutherans and others can, by their own free will, change their ways and have a better outcome.
I guess predestination isn't what it used to be.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
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7 comments:
If the US Christian right goes back into power, peace between Israel and the Palestinians certainly will fall further behind, as will this country. Even Netanyahu wasn't too thrilled by Huckabee's words.
I am shocked by Piper's statements. Though I am not with him theologically, I always understood him to be above that kind of rhetoric. Now we know the truth...
http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/
Greg Boyd offers a thoughtful response to Piper's comments.
Well, at least now there are 2 prominent Baptist former governors making preposterous statements favoring one side over the other in ways that are harmful to a meaningful two-state solution. In this case, two's a crowd, but I'd love to see Jimmy Carter and Mike Huckabee debate the issue with the help of a reasonably objective moderator. If nothing else, it might help illuminate the complex and irreconcilable differences involved when 2 groups who hate each other make life-or-death claims to the same patch of land.
Unlike some of my friends, I'm not a rabid fan of the "Pied Piper," though I have greatly profited from many of his writings. Anybody who passionately points us Arminian-leaning Baptists toward the sovereignty of God can't be all bad!
Even if he's right in this instance (and he could be, I guess), it was obviously an unwise statement to make, even if it was something he blogged. In almost every case, I'll take the theology of John Piper over the openness theology of Greg Boyd. In this case, though, Greg Boyd (thanks for the link, Tim) seems the wise voice of reason.
Hopefully we can allow John Piper a mulligan on this one, though, rather than proclaiming, "now we know the truth" as we throw him overboard. It'll be interesting to see how he handles the outcry over his statement in the coming days. I know what I hope he'll do. Let's see what he does.
We can debate openess theology versus sovereignty theology until we are blue in the face, but Greg Boyd hits a homerun with his response.
Calvinists seem to imply that God is cause of all things and that he is on his computer sending blessing and curses upon humanity as he chooses, "so that his name may garner fame in all the land" or something like that.
If God's sovereignty in Calvinism suggests that God is the direct cause of evil, violence and sin, and the cause of rejecting God's salvation, then give me Arminianism any day. Calvinists really need to rethink outworkings of God's sovereignty in their systematic theologies.
Of course, comments like Piper's are attributed to those on all sides of the theological spectrum.
Though, we are still supposed to cooperate, aren't we :)
DC, that's an interesting suggestion to have Huckabee and Carter debate like that. However, I'm going to have to decline on the grounds that that debate would have the potential to go down in history as the #1 worst, most painful debate ever. The two of them make Adm. Stockdale ("Who am I? Why am I here?") look legitimate.
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