検索キーワード： "Douglas Wilson" 教会・国家

The repetition of Christmas traditions can appear to dull the powerful nature of the holiday. God Rest Ye Merry is meant to rekindle the Christian's understanding of Advent on every front, from politics to shopping to uproarious celebration.

There is a time for rhetorical qualifications. That time is not No Quarter November. During November 2018, Douglas Wilson hoisted the Jolly Roger and went merrily swashbuckling his way through the culture and the church. From the worst of the worldly (sexual chaos and atheistic evolution) to the frailties of the faithful (lame church music and foppish liturgical garb), both foes and friends got skewered. This book is the resultant shish-kebab.

This November 2019, pastor Douglas Wilson hoisted the Jolly Roger for the second year running and ceased making the qualifications he usually makes. In this collection, he takes aim not just at liberals eager to destroy the world, but at the conservative Evangelicals who are letting them take over the church without a fight. Doug takes a hammer to Revoice, global warming, woke Thanksgivings, and many other idols.

The so-called New Atheists have a great deal of moral indignation at all the evil in the world, but, as apologist and theologian Douglas Wilson cheerfully points out, they have no moral basis for it whatsoever. If we are merely the result of billions of years of matter in motion, then why do we feel that concentration camps, genocide, apartheid, and the like are so obviously wicked and despicable, if in fact such events are just time and chance acting on matter?

Many Evangelical leaders will say the truth, but surround it with bubble wrap and a thousand qualifications. But every year in November, Douglas Wilson eschews his usual nuance, qualifications, and disclaimers to tell the truth about the craziness of our world. The problem with qualifications is not that they are untrue, but that we do not recognize how bad our condition actually is. Evangelicalism has been drifting steadily leftward and policing the sins to the right. The problem is not the policing: the problem is the hypocrisy and one-sidedness.

Obergefell v. Hodges and the legalization of gay marriage was wonderful -- in that it's now forcing every Christian to decide whether their allegiance is to the Supreme Court or to the Supreme Being. In every other way, Obergefell was terrible. Same-Sex Mirage starts with the fundamentals of marriage and then traces the effects of this foundational institution in every area of life. Is marriage a private matter -- an agreement before God alone? Or is it public -- a matter for legislation?

This does not mean a withdrawal from politics to our own communities and churches. Instead, we Christians must take what we have learned from the wreck of secularism and build a Christendom of the New Foundation: A network of nations bound together by a formal, public, civic acknowledgement of the lordship of Jesus Christ and the fundamental truth of the Apostles' Creed.

Seen as godless by the religious and weak by the atheists, secularism mostly has been misunderstood. In How to Be Secular, Berlinerblau argues for a return to America’s hard-won secular tradition; the best way to protect religious diversity and freedom lies in keeping an eye on the encroachment of each into the other. Berlinerblau passionately defends the virtues of secularism, reminds us what it is and what it can protect, and urges us to mobilize around its cause, which is for all Americans to continue to enjoy freedom for - and from - religion.