Thursday, May 8, 2025

Part I

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The Papacy on the World Stage– Why Do Evangelicals Care About the Papal Conclave? And Why Is It So Fascinating to the Media?

Well, it started yesterday. The elector cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church are gathered there in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in order to elect the next pope. Now, from an evangelical perspective, there is a lot to consider here. 

First of all, what exactly happened yesterday? Well, as you look at how the Roman Catholic Church chooses the next pontiff, the next pope, it comes down to the electors, the cardinal electors who will make the decision. The winning candidate who will become pope is the person usually from among the cardinals themselves who gains two-thirds of the votes out of the 133 electors. Now there are good many more than 133 cardinals. But going back to the pontificate of Pope Paul VI, a change was made so that cardinals who are over the age of 80 cannot vote.

So they are not elector cardinals, they remain cardinals. They’ve been a part of the discussion over the last several days. They will be a part of the ceremonies concerning the installation, inauguration and enthronement of a new pope. But there are 133 who will be serving in the conclave and who will be electing the new pope. They went into the Sistine Chapel yesterday and with a lot of ceremony, they began the process and it required each of the cardinal electors to make a pledge concerning for one thing, the confidentiality and secrecy of the entire process.

But nonetheless, they paraded in and of course in all of their cardinal regalia and with all the music and the pipe organ and the background, and it was begun with all the formalities of the selection of a pope and it was meant to be seen. That’s very important. It was meant to be seen. And the cardinals basically put themselves on display as they went into the Sistine Chapel.

Now, we associate Conclaves, and by the way, that word goes back to the fact that the cardinals are locked in the room, but we are accustomed to Conclaves being held there in the Sistine Chapel. And as is so often the case with the Roman Catholic Church, there is old, there is older and there’s older still. When it comes to the process for electing popes, much of it is clearly medieval, going back to the Middle Ages. And a lot of that means it’s over a millennium old.

But when it comes to the conclave being held in the Sistine Chapel, we’re really only going back a couple of centuries and something like just over 20 popes who were elected in that way in that room. But nonetheless, it makes a great deal of sense. When you look at the Sistine Chapel, there’s virtually no room on planet earth that makes greater claims about grandeur and also about the essential claims of the Roman Catholic Church.

And so you’re familiar with the chapel itself, with the amazing artwork, and that’s not only of course Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling, it is also a collection of other major art theatrical in terms of presenting images, mostly from Scripture, but it is to bring a sense of awe and also a sense of grandeur and a sense of formality. And the Roman Catholic Church does all those things extremely well. 

As I often point out, the Roman Catholic Church and the faith of the Roman Catholic Church is something which is intended to apply itself to the senses. It appeals to the senses. It is something to be seen. It is something to be heard in terms of the antiphonal music and all the rest. It is something even to be smelled in terms of the incense and in many cases it is something to be touched in terms of reality, and if not actually touching them, then looking at the materiality of objects including relics. We are looking at a very sensual faith, in the sense of appealing to the senses.

This is one of the radical breaks that the Reformation brought because the reformation basically says the only one of those senses that really applies is the auditory sense. It is hearing, and it is the preaching of the word of God and the hearing of the word of God. That is to be the central act in worship. The Lutheran Reformation kept some of the formality, and some of the holy days and things like that, and even some of the holidays that the Roman Catholic Church had on the calendar.

And so just looking at it looked less reformed, but even in the Lutheran Reformation, you had the clear placement of the pulpit in the center and you also had the rejection of the medieval Roman Catholic theology of the sacraments. Now, in the reformed tradition, the Calvinist tradition, and it began in places such as Zurich and Geneva, but also of course took major shape in the English Reformation, and then spread elsewhere around the world, even more austere, even more centrality on the preaching of the word and on seeking not to be distracted by things you would smell or things you would see or things you would touch.

And so it’s a very different theology. When you’re looking at those cardinals going into the Sistine Chapel and then you see the cardinals with the door closing and you see the conclave beginning and you hear the music, we’re not smelling the incense, but you understand all of that is going on, but certainly it is visual splendor that is nearly overwhelming and you have to wonder how could you be bored, for example, in that room or you might put it another way. How would you pay attention to what’s going on when you’re surrounded by all of that historic imagery?

Nonetheless, Catholicism, as I say, is very much a visual and sensual faith in this sense. It is also important to understand that there are 133 of the electoral cardinals there. There were two others qualified by age. They’re not over 80, but for other reasons they have not participated in the conclave. One of them because of a bit of scandal, the other because of a health reason. But in the previous days after the funeral of Pope Francis, there has been a lot of discussion, and this was in the so-called congregations of the cardinals. And this included not only the cardinal electors who will have the opportunity to vote, but the older cardinals as well.

Now, here’s the amazing thing, and there’s just a lot of attention to this and this is worth our attention. Pope Francis appointed the vast majority something like 85 to 90% of the cardinals who will be electors. And this is the first time in the modern history, and I don’t think you really have to say the word modern, but we’re going to say that as the first time in an historical sense that a majority of those cardinals have been non-European. A majority of the cardinals who are in the room right now in the conclave participating in the election of the next pope, they are non-European. That has never happened before. It’s not by accident. Pope Francis had that very much as his agenda. And so there are cardinals from nations which names have never been mentioned in a conclave before who are a part of the process right now.

Now, I am not about to talk about some of the names that have been mentioned, and I want to zero in on I think what evangelical Christians should be thinking about in particular, as we have the conclave underway there in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. And by the way, how long is it going to last? We don’t know it’s going to last until in one of the cycles of voting, there is a candidate who receives at least two-thirds of the vote, and at that point they will have a pope, habemus papum

But as evangelicals look at this, it really is interesting because it makes very clear what is natural to Catholicism and completely unnatural to the Protestant mind, and that is that there would be a bishop of Rome who would be considered the pope and who would be elected as a reigning monarch for the entirety of the rest of his life.

Obviously, we did have Benedict XVI who retired, but that is an aberration in Catholic history. And so you are looking at an elected monarch. Now, what does that mean? An elected monarch. Well, there are precedents. One of the precedents is for example, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire who through several centuries was elected by electors. They were usually dukes, or kings, or princes, and they elected often one of their own number of course as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

So there is an example, and these two ran on a parallel track for some time. But the world isn’t really marked by many effective continuing monarchies. And so especially when you consider this is a monarchy with real power. So you look for example at the constitutional monarchy represented right now by the King of England, and you understand that he signs or gives assent to everything that is sent by Parliament because if he didn’t, there would be a constitutional crisis.

He is not supposed to have positions on most issues. The papacy is the opposite. And we’re not talking about a constitutional monarchy or with very limited powers, we are talking about someone who is really one of the closest things you see to an absolute monarch. He’s not absolutely absolute, but the closest thing you’re likely to see right now to an absolute monarchy is the Roman Catholic Church and its papacy.

Now, we’ve all noted how much press coverage is devoted to this, and as I said, that really reflects two things, and as an evangelical Protestant, I want to want to mark both of those things. One of them is the importance of the Roman Catholic Church as an actor in the world scene. We are talking about a church that represents vast millions of people. Well over a billion people. That is a very sizable population.

It’s not all the same, even though it claims to be Catholic, it’s not all the same. It’s not universally the same everywhere it is found, but there is a continuity, and there is a centrality. And all of this comes down to the papacy. And I think even in a secular age, it’s just really important to recognize it does matter who is pope. This is one of the reasons why many evangelicals look, and at least if there’s going to be a pope, we’d prefer it to be a pope who is not going to use his influence to try to move Western civilization in directions we believe it should not be moved.

And this has to do with the fact there are evangelicals who would say, “We don’t have any stake in this,” and that’s not really true. We do have a stake in it in that, for example, Pope Francis pressing as strangely as he did, and even as with as much angularity as he did, the agenda of normalizing LGBTQ relationships and behaviors. That does have a great deal to do with the cultural context.

It has to do with what many people around the world believe would be the teaching of the Christian Church. And so as we’re looking at a lot of these issues and controversies, it is not insignificant whether the pope of the Roman Catholic Church is pressing with us on these issues or against us. But the second reason there is so much attention given to this is that cameras are drawn to drama. And here you have the drama, you have the pageantry. Cameras are drawn to color. You’ve got the red historic color of cardinals. They’re very much in evidence. You’ve got St. Peter’s square. You’ve got all of the visual splendor of the Roman Catholic Church.

And so cameras are drawn there. We shouldn’t be surprised by that. You have the election of a president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Let me just say, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention is not a monarch absolute or otherwise. Serves a maximum of two years in that term, has appointment power and a lot of influence, but he doesn’t get any special outfit for the occasion.

And furthermore, cameras really aren’t all that attracted to it because it’s several thousand Baptists in a room holding up ballots indicating a vote. Not a great visual, nothing to match the Sistine Chapel. And of course, after the election of the pope, there will be other ceremonies that will involve the Roman Catholic Church and even, let’s just say continued attention. The cameras will continue after the election of the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the messengers to the SBC generally, well, their minds turn to lunch.

There are so many interesting aspects, of course, to the papacy itself, and I am just getting ready to lecture on the Reformation in an extended way. And it just affords the opportunity to point out that you take the reformer, Martin Luther. He did not intend in the beginning, even with the posting of the famous Ninety-Five Theses, he did not begin in 1517 with the intention of eventually breaking with the papacy or certainly with the magisterial authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

He came to that and he came to the conclusion that the problem was not just this pope, but the papacy and the entire web of doctrines began to become very clear to him. But the pope of the Roman Catholic Church claims a temporal and a spiritual authority, and that’s a rare combination. You don’t have any real equal to it anywhere. Even where you have Protestant churches that have, say, archbishops such as the Church of England with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury can’t hold a candle to the pope in terms of the powers invested in the role so let’s just face this honestly.

Part II

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Who Will Be the Next Pope? The Ideological and Theological Arguments Shaping the Future of the Roman Catholic Church (And More)

The big question that both sides on so many controversial issues are concerned about is: which way is the Roman Catholic Church going to go? Is it going to go in a more liberal direction, kind of taking cues from Pope Francis because Pope Francis was definitely sending those signals. You remember, “who am I to judge?” even in some sense allowing the blessing of the Catholics who were involved in same-sex couples. Even that was very awkward, by the way, because it wasn’t a blessing of the union. It was to be a blessing simply of the people. But you understand that it didn’t work out that way as so many people are now saying he allowed the blessing of same-sex unions.

And so the conservatives are hoping for anything more conservative than Pope Francis. And even more so they are worried about someone who would be more liberal, who would come in and actually move to change official church teaching, and doctrine, and morals on so many key questions. On the other hand, the liberals are hoping, well, just for the opposite. They want a change agent that would make Francis look tepid.

And there are some big considerations here. For one thing, just about anyone looking at the Roman Catholic Church worldwide understands that its future is in Asia and in Africa, and that is a very conservative future. The Roman Catholic Church has been so influenced by Europe, and of course not only cardinal archbishops in places like Italy, but also throughout much of Europe. But much of Europe is now incredibly secular, and where you do have manifestations, for instance in Germany, the Roman Catholic Church, it is not uniformly, but it is overwhelmingly liberal.

And so let’s just put it this way, Germany and Uganda are not moving in the same direction, and those will be very pleased with someone who would be elected pope to go in the German direction. Well, they’re looking for something liberal. They’ll celebrate that. But that puts so much at risk for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. Another very interesting thing, and this is something evangelicals should be thinking about because even as this is debated in the Roman Catholic Church, you bet this is relevant for us, and that is, you have people making the argument, we’re going to have to liberalize the church, we’re going to have to liberalize its teachings. We’re going to have to liberalize its practices if we want to draw young people, okay?

You hear that argument over and over and over again. The argument of Protestant liberalism and of Roman Catholic modernism was, you’re going to have to change the doctrines and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you’re going to keep the intelligentsia and you’re going to keep the cultural influencers, and you’re going to keep the well-educated on and on and on and on is the argument.

But if you watch Roman Catholicism in the United States and you look at the young Catholics, by and large, they’re not liberal. They’re more conservative. Something very similar to that is happening on the Protestant side, on the evangelical side. The churches that say, “We have to go with the culture in order to keep the young people,” well, the young people are leaving them. Where the young people found, they are found where the gospel is preached, where the doctrine is clear, and where quite honestly, there’s a counter-cultural approach with young people intuitively understanding what is at stake.

It is really interesting to see so many people on the left wing of the Catholic Church saying that the Catholic Church doesn’t move in that direction. It doesn’t have a future. Well, let me just state the obvious. The Roman Catholic Church is not looking for advice for me, but I’m concerned for evangelical Christianity. And I’ll tell you, our denominations in churches had better note carefully that the churches that say our denominations and our churches and our institutions had better watched carefully. Those who say you have to liberalize to stay relevant, become the absolutely irrelevant. Those who say you have to liberalize in order to attract young people, well, if they do attract young people, they’re the wrong young people.

The fact is that when you look at denominations and churches across Protestant, evangelical Christianity in America today, it is not the liberal fringe that has most of the young people. They’re looking for something authentic. They’re looking for something real, and they are looking for authentic biblical Christianity. In a secular age, being a little bit interested in doctrine is not going to work.

Oh, and just one final observation here, the churches that have said, “We have to revise historic Christian understandings of marriage and sexuality in order to keep the young people,” let me ask you a question. Where are the young people? Are they in the churches that went liberal on these issues? No, they’re in the churches that said, “This is the Word of God. Here, we have to take our stand.” There is so much for us to consider, and of course we’ll come back once there is a pope. Until then, probably not. But then the big story will be what does the election of this pope mean for the future of the Roman Catholic Church and frankly, for influence throughout much of the world?

Part III

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50 Years Since the End of the Vietnam War: Even in a Broken War in a Broken World, Americans Owe Honor to Those Who Served Our Country in Vietnam

But there are a couple of other things we need to talk about before this week is over. One of them is the 50th anniversary, the end of America’s war in Vietnam. And we just need to recognize that even as officially the United States withdrew its armed forces from Vietnam and the Vietnam conflict as it was known, in 1975, it was a very convoluted process. And looking back at the war in Vietnam right now, one of the biggest questions for Americans is what in the world it means.

One of the problems with this is that we tend to think sometimes the history can be evaluated, historical events can be evaluated, saying this was absolutely right. That was absolutely wrong. But the biblical understanding of history tells us that oftentimes it’s a lot more difficult than that. When America entered into the effort to prevent the spread of communism by military means in Southeast Asia, and in this case you can say in 1955, was that right or was that wrong?

I think it was more right than wrong. I think the threat of spreading communism throughout much of what became known as the third-world presented a clear and present danger, not just to the United States and to our allies, but also to human flourishing. Let me just put it bluntly. I think in the battle between freedom and communism, we should be on the side of freedom. The other thing is that even as America became involved in the war, the French had been involved in a war there in Indochina and French colonialism had been very much a part of that. And so a part of what the communist revolutionaries were doing in what became North Vietnam or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, as it was known with Ho Chi Minh and others as leaders, what they were doing was basically saying that communism is a way to get out of the oppression of western colonialism, and in the case originally of France. 

And the United States entered this at the very time, let’s just say 1955 until maybe 1960. It was like those five years. That was a period in which the United States and the Soviet Union were absolutely locked in a Cold War, and both were looking for satellites and allies, and the United States could hardly have just said, “We’re not going to worry about Southeast Asia. We’ll just let the Soviets and let the communist Chinese divide it all up between themselves. That would consign millions and millions of people to that kind of bondage and oppression. 

On the other hand, in successive administrations, and you really have to look at four presidential administrations during this time. And so first it was President Eisenhower, and then it was President Kennedy and then President Johnson, and then President Nixon, all four of them had to deal directly with the Vietnam War. And then after that, President Ford and after that President Carter in one sense. 

So we were talking about four whose presidencies were largely defined, at least in part by the Vietnam War, and then two others who also had to deal with the Vietnam War. And honestly, we’re all still dealing with it. Now, I know some people hear me say, “We’re still dealing with it,” and you’re thinking, “Well, I don’t think about it very often.” Well, that’s the way history works. But an anniversary like this reminds us that sometimes you just look at history and you have to say, “Well, the United States at that time was, at least in the beginning, I think, doing what it thought needed to be done.”

The problem is that the United States and the Soviet Union, neither one, and you could also add China to this, you take those three parties, none of them wanted to go directly into war, and none of them considered Vietnam worth having a head-to-head confrontation directly with troops, say, the Soviet Union versus the US or even China versus the US. And the war in Korea, which remember didn’t end with any conclusive ending. It ended officially with an armistice. That is where you did have Chinese and American forces accidentally engaging one another.

And the three big powers decided, “We are not going to put the world at risk at that.” So you do have what amounted to proxy wars. And in the United States, that meant that we were in it to limit communist expansion. But as the state was said at the time, it isn’t clear that were in it to win it. By the time the emergency evacuation of Americans, and also some of the Vietnamese came in 1975, the price of the war was astounding. $140 billion and 58,220 American lives lost. That’s a good-sized town. Almost 60,000 Americans, largely overwhelmingly American young men killed in that war. 

And the big question at the conclusion was, for what? And this is one of the hard issues in history. You look at that war and you look at, for instance, the presidency of Lyndon Johnson largely broken over that war, and you deal with the fact that most Americans at the onset of the military action thought that it was well-intended and right. But by the time you had vast draft calls up, and you had literally hundreds of thousands of young American men who were drafted into the military, very controversial at the time.

World War II, not controversial. Vietnam controversial. That tells you that the moral situation was quite different. There were so many lives that were broken in terms of that war. Many GIs came back deeply, deeply wounded by the war experience. And this is one of the occasions when, for instance, in Christian ethics, the concept of moral injury began to take on greater prominence. There were people who didn’t suffer a physical injury in the war. They did suffer a moral injury in the war. Looking back at the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, Americans weren’t even sure what to call it. At the time, many people wanted to call it the “conflict in Vietnam.” Some people wanted to call it the “expeditionary effort.” Some people wanted to call it the conflict in Vietnam, the Vietnam conflict. There was the admission that there was a war, but there was not a genuine admission as to exactly what role the US was going to play in it.

You also had the developing moral imperative of the self-determination of nations. That became very problematic here because the question is, “Do you have two nations, North Vietnam and South Vietnam? Is that a sustainable future? Is the north going to invade the south?” Well, the answer to that was yes. And thus, if they did so, with self-determination would that be marked by Vietnam as a United Nation becoming communist?

The main moral argument that was made to the American people was that the people of South Vietnam should have the right of self-determination. And of course, that came to an end shortly after the American withdrawal 50 years ago. Of course, at home, you had the vast protests against the Vietnam War. It broke out into riots, and some of them even turned violent. And at the same time, you had many millions of Americans, even many middle-class Americans rethinking America’s role in the world and the willingness of families to send their sons to Vietnam. And they had to ask the question, “What exactly would they be dying for?”

And this is where in terms of a Christian understanding and the morality of this kind of military effort understands that there is a point at which the question is, how is the withdrawal going to happen? And if so, one of the parables of war is who wants to be the last person to die, especially when you have an army withdrawing. For sure, there’s one thing Americans did not do well at the end of the Vietnam War. We did not thank those who served in that war and did so with integrity. We did not thank them adequately.

There was a sense of exhaustion at the end of the war. There was so much controversy at the end of the war. It had become so political at the end of the war. There was a great culture war that was breaking out in the United States, and the Vietnam War really became an early fuse in the culture war. And we did not do right by the veterans of that conflict. And at least while many of them are still alive, we need to say from our nation’s heart, thank you.

There are many, many lives broken by this war. And again, in a Christian world, it’s just a way of underlining the fact that this world is filled with so much tragedy that we can’t fix, that America can’t fix that the United Nations can’t fix. And we as Christians understand that much of this is not going to be fixed until Jesus comes. 

One final thought about the 50th anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. When that took place, I was 15 years old. And the world around me was a puzzle in many ways. And the question of Vietnam was a puzzle to me as well. I did sense in my bones that there was something about it that invoked patriotism, and there was something about it that implied tragedy. I had family members who had fought in the war, and honestly, they didn’t much want to talk about it.

But many decades later, I found myself in Nashville, Tennessee in a context in which I came face-to-face unexpectedly with someone I recognized. And I wondered why in the world did I recognize him? And then all of a sudden it came to me. It was General William Westmoreland who had been the commander of US troops in Vietnam. He had been a staple on black and white television back when the three networks brought us the only news that was available to us in that form.

And as a boy, I had seen him give his reports. He was a man who himself is a part of the huge question mark of the Vietnam War. And just seeing him face to face and I recognized him and I spoke to him, he seemed to appreciate being recognized. But then again, maybe not much. This is one of those odd brushes with history we sometimes have, and in this case, a brush with the difficulty of understanding the war in Vietnam. 50 years ago.

And by the way, the people of Vietnam are now in one nation, and that one nation is quite communist. Both ideas and wars have consequences.