Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Part I

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Religious Divide Over the Death Penalty: Worldview Divide Between Gospel Christianity and Liberal Christianity Shows Yet Again

It’s often referred to as the binary and that is the fact that human beings tend to line up in two discernible lines. You can call them what you want. You can call it Democratic and Republican. You can call it liberal and conservative. You just go down the line and the interesting thing is that so many people end up on opposing sides of different issues. So what’s the explanation?

The explanation is that even though modern people have so many different positions, we have to take so many different positions. We have to say yes or no to so many different issues. But the underlying reality is that even as these issues are different, the basic divergence is at a far deeper level. It’s at the level of presuppositions. It’s at the level of worldview.

So when we talk about the Christian worldview, we need to understand that Christians, in times past, didn’t have to have the same kind of conversation. That’s because through many centuries, in Western civilization, the Christian worldview was the only available worldview. So you weren’t looking at a binary in which you had a Christian worldview, opposed to some other worldview. In most cases now, it is the modern secular materialistic worldview.

And so, you look at the reality and you say, “Here’s an issue, LGBTQ.” Now, admittedly, that’s a number of issues, but let’s just say it’s one issue for a moment, LGBTQ. Are you for the LGBTQ revolution? Are you against it? Then, change to the issue of abortion. Are you pro-abortion or are you pro-life? Let’s shift to another position. What can be the definition of marriage? Is it just merely essentially always the union of a man and a woman or can it be any number of other permutations or arrangements?

The interesting thing is that as you look at these kinds of questions, people tend not to cross the lines. They tend to be both pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ, to take just two examples. They tend to be predictable on these issues and the reason Christians understand is because the real commitment is deeper than the issue.

The position on the issue, say, of gay marriage or same-sex marriage, that position on that issue doesn’t come out of thin air. It comes out of deeper basic assumptions, presuppositions, deeper convictions, deeper commitments. If you hold to a secular materialistic worldview, then, well, marriage can be anything human beings decide or negotiate that it should be. If you believe that marriage is defined by the Creator who gave us marriage as his gift and said, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And then, to the man and the woman now united in marriage,” He said, “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

You either believe that marriage is a human creation, and thus, subject to endless human experimentation, re-definition, innovation, or you believe that it is a divine institution given to humanity as a gift,. Defined not by the creature, but by the Creator. But you know, there are other issues in which, frankly, you have secondary and tertiary or third level issues that tend to come back to the same route. So it is predictable. If you hold to, I would say, a pro-abortion position, then I can pretty much predict where you’re going to be on the LGBTQ issues. And there are other issues that are probably equally predictable. But there’s some other issues that might not be quite as predictable. So if you tell me your position on abortion or you tell me your position on, say, same-sex marriage, I might be able to infer your position on the death penalty. As a matter of fact, maybe four out of five times, I’m likely to get that right.

The point I want to make here is that at the worldview level, human beings are not as consistent as we should be. One of the responsibilities of Christians is to make sure that our positions, understandings on all these issues is accountable to the Christian worldview. And thus, it is coherent and consistent and whole.

Okay. Now, let’s look at the reality of the church in the year 2025. You have a two-party system in the church. You have liberal churches and you have conservative churches. Now, again, the main point of the conservative churches is that it is we who are holding to historic Christianity and the liberal churches have abandoned it. I believe that’s absolutely true. But when you drive down a street and you see the first church this, the first church that, you just look at all these names, you recognize that there are liberal churches that still continue to say they represent Christianity, liberal Protestant churches, as well as conservative churches.

And as you look back, say, to just a matter of a century ago, you had Protestant liberalism versus conservatism or more orthodox wings of Christianity. And then, you had denominations begin to divide. So you had more liberal Presbyterians and more conservative Presbyterians. You had more liberal Baptists and more conservative Baptists. And guess what? The conservative Baptists and the conservative Presbyterians often have more in common, even across the denominational divide, than either of them has with the liberal party in their own denomination. Or at least, by their own denominational name.

By the year 2025, most of the Baptists have sorted out into conservative bodies and more liberal bodies. Most of the Presbyterians have done the same. That wasn’t the case yet in the early 20th century when Gresham Machen, the Great Presbyterian New Testament scholar, went on to describe what he saw as two rival religions: Christianity and liberalism.

But now, you see that on a number of issues that divide, that Machen recognized back a century ago, it shows up in some interesting ways. And even in a highly secularized age, the major media can’t get away from the fact that there is disagreement among churches over some very important frontline moral issues. So yesterday’s edition of USA Today, a major article, here’s the headline, “Execution Divides Religion For Churches”. The subhead, “Murder of Texas Pastor Sparks Support.”

Well, as James Powel, the reporter on the story tells this, “Ecclesiastical lines have been drawn over the fate of Texas death row inmate Steven Nelson, with one church saying his sentence for killing its pastor is justified and another clergyman saying the state violates a foundational principle of Christianity.” Okay. Wait just a minute. So that’s an interesting lead, that’s referred to as the first paragraph in a news story. Historically, the lead.

What’s the lead here? Christianity is divided between those who are pro-death penalty and those who are anti-death penalty. And that is certainly, classically, revealed in this case in which the murderer of an evangelical pastor has been sentenced to death. But notice something else. In this lead paragraph, we are told, “With one church saying his sentence for killing its pastor is justified and another clergyman saying the state violates a foundational principle of Christianity.” So you have a church, on the one hand, set against a clergyman, on the other hand. And that’s just the way the press sometimes plays the game.

But there is a divide within institutional Christianity over the question of the death penalty. Again, evangelicals tend to be in overwhelming agreement, and liberal denominations opposed to the death penalty tend to be in just about universal agreement. How did this happen? Well, if you go back to even, say, the early decades of the 20th century, just about all major Christian denominations are in favor of the death penalty. Why? Well, I’ll just say that it has incredibly powerful Scriptural support.

For one thing, in the Covenant made with Noah in Genesis Chapter 9, it is not only presented as a legal option for human beings when it comes to the murder of another human being, it is actually ordered by God because of the sanctity of that human life and the assault upon, not only the creature, but the Creator in attempting to destroy an image bearer. So according to Genesis 9, it’s not really an open question as to whether a rightly ordered society would have the death penalty. But you’ll notice not just for any crime, before the specific crime of deliberate intentional homicide.

In the New Testament, you have an emphatic statement made by the Apostle Paul in Romans Chapter 13. When speaking of the emperor, he makes very clear that the state, the government, does not hold the power of the sword in vain. The power of the sword referring to legal prosecution in a general sense, but capital punishment in a specific sense. So it is recognized as a legitimate, indeed necessary demonstration of proper justice.

Again, let’s note, not for just any crime. And frankly, in some periods of human history, capital punishment has been far too widely applied. Far beyond the biblical logic. But the biblical logic does make very clear that intentional homicide is set apart from other crimes, as I said in Genesis Chapter 9, in the covenant that God gave through Noah. In the case covered in this USA Today story yesterday, we’re really talking about a very brutal intentional murder. The murder of an evangelical pastor in a church. And further, not just the murder of the pastor, other crimes were committed. Other people were involved. The man arrested for the crime, eventually convicted of the crime, and sentenced to death for the crime is Steven Nelson. The argument being made by the anti-death penalty advocates here is not that he didn’t do the crime. But basically, that no one should ever receive the death penalty.

Now, here’s something very interesting. I pointed to the contradiction of the fact that when former President Joe Biden, in the last days of his administration, offered clemency to most of the prisoners on death row in the federal system, I disagree with that action, but I also want to point to his hypocrisy. He did not grant clemency to all. He said he was against the death penalty, but he left some of those death sentences intact. Why? Because they were notorious cases such as the Boston Marathon Bomber, others. In other words, they weren’t politically plausible. That tells us this wasn’t a serious moral argument.

But those who oppose the death penalty, in some cases, are making a serious moral argument. But we just need to note that they are arguing, sometimes because they say the death penalty has been wrongly applied. And we come back and say, “We want to make certain the death penalty is rightly applied.” But then, they come back and they are opposed to the death penalty as an idea, as a concept.

They are opposed to it in principle. And that’s where I believe, established on a Biblical worldview, we can’t be against what the Bible, through the Noahic Covenant commands. But in reality, I’m not even bringing this up primarily over the issue of the death penalty. But over the issue of the fact that even when you have a secular newspaper like USA Today in a supposedly secular age, the headline is, “Execution Divides Religion For Churches.” And thus, USA Today recognizes, “This isn’t just a legal argument, it’s not just a cultural or social argument, it’s a theological argument.” And I just want to point out that those churches in the main, I’m not going to say this is absolute, but I’m going to argue very strongly. That those churches in the main, that have a more conservative view of Biblical authority, a more classic view of Christian theology, they’re going to be far more likely to hold to the appropriateness of the death penalty.

Those who oppose the death penalty have to find some way to say, “Even though there are clear references to the death penalty in Scripture, they believe that humanity has to basically grow up enough that we grow too big for the death penalty. It’s a humanitarian impulse,” they will say. In which it simply is our current understanding that no one can do anything that is deserving of the capital sentence. Now, again, I want to point out that former President Biden said that he doesn’t believe the death penalty should be applied. But he didn’t commute all the sentences of the federal prisoners on death row, that’s because it wasn’t politically plausible.

Now, let me just point to the logical thinking here. The worldview thinking here. If the death penalty is appropriate, in any case, it is not categorically wrong. And this is where most people in society, if they’re asked a question about the death penalty, oddly enough, they may have a strong opinion, yes or no. They may be somewhere in a mushy, undecided middle. But when you get to specific cases with specific crimes, belief or confidence, support for the death penalty goes up fast.

Okay. What are the theological issues behind the death penalty? Whereas I said, the number one issue, the theological issue, behind the death penalty is human beings made in the image of God. Thus, an assault upon the image bearer is an assault upon the one whose image is born. So it’s a direct assault upon the Creator when you seek to destroy the human creature made in God’s image. It’s a bit different when you talk about animals. They’re God’s creatures, but they’re not made in his image. Human beings are made in God’s image. Thus, the Noahic Covenant is extremely clear in singling out homicide as a capital crime.

But there are other basic theological issues behind this. And as I mentioned, one of the first and foremost is biblical authority. When you look at a text like Genesis 9 or Romans 13, are those just suggestive? Have we outgrown those issues? Now, you might have some more sophisticated argument, “Well, Genesis 9 is an Old Testament issue. To what extent is that binding on the church and our conscience today?” The reality is that Romans 13 answers that question, I believe. And so, by the way, has the Christian consensus for the better part of the last two millennia.

But my point today is that in looking at this USA Today article, the secular newspaper article, there is an understanding that there is a divide among churches over an issue like the death penalty. I want to suggest to you, that divide is deeply theological and it’s also predictive. And so, I would say that the churches, when they line up against the death penalty, the denominations, the churches, the institutions, the individual members of the clergy as the newspaper reports them who hold to a more liberal position, I’m going to argue that in the main, they’re going to hold to an entire constellation of liberal issues.

That’s going to be tied to understandings on sexuality. What’s the direct tie? The worldview. It’s going to be tied to issues in politics. What’s the direct tie? The worldview. It’s going to be tied to other issues in terms of predictability at the very least. And this comes right down to the gospel. What is the gospel? It is really interesting that so many of the people who want to argue the more liberal position on these issues, they may want to make reference to the Gospels, but they don’t want to make reference to the letters of Paul. That is to say they don’t hold to any comprehensive understanding of the authority and inspiration of Scripture. And sometimes, frankly, it’s a lot worse than that.

I also want to point to a certain imbalance in all of this. One activist from the theological Left is given about as much voice in this article as the argument that is represented by North Point Baptist Church whose pastor was slain. And also, the First Baptist Church of Arlington, Texas. A church that, by the way, is very clear in the fact that it believes that the homicide of this pastor is deserving of the death penalty.

And you notice an imbalance here. You’re talking about a church and you’re talking about one critic. That’s the way the media stories are often driven, at least as is reported in this article. And I would go much further than that, I will simply say that the First Baptist Church of Arlington, Texas is on very solid biblical ground.

Part II

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Gospel Christianity vs. Liberal “Christianity” on Immigration: Faithfulness Will Not Come From Liberal Presuppositions about Scripture

But in thinking about this deep divide in terms of institutional Christianity–and again, I’m not saying there’s a divide in gospel Christianity on these issues. There’s a divide when you have liberal denominations and conservative denominations. It is interesting that in the year 2025, in this supposedly extremely secularized age, you have not just one, but over the weekend, you have another article in a major newspaper.

This one’s the Wall Street Journal over a divide in the churches. Here’s the headline, “Churches Divide On Loss Of Refuge Status.” This has to do with announcements and executive orders handed down by the Trump administration on the issue of immigration. Actions for which there is very broad support in the United States.

But the reference here is to, what are defined as sanctuary churches? Now, this doesn’t refer to churches that have a sanctuary. This refers to sanctuary churches where they are claiming a right of sanctuary, to offer protection for those who are here illegally or are suspected of being here illegally. And in some cases, you’re talking about a very long time.

So for example, the article cites Reverend Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, “Which has been sheltering a Guatemalan mother and son for nearly a decade”. They say it’s a part of their religious mission. You also have other churches that have taken similar kinds of actions documented in this article. Sometimes for even more than a decade. That is to say, they’re not allowing immigration authorities or law enforcement on the church property, but they are offering what they call a Right of Refuge or a simple protection of these persons who are here without legal status. And they’re defying the US government in doing so.

Now, interestingly, the beginning of the story talks about some churches that had been a part of this movement that had decided not to be. And I think least a part of that is probably explained by a major shift in public sentiment. But here’s the other thing, I just want to point out. The churches that are taking this very liberal position on this issue, guess what? Predictably, they’re very liberal across the board. Not a single identifiable conservative church is identified in any of these related stories as holding to this kind of argument about the immigration and refugee sanctuary status of their congregation or their church or religious property.

Out of curiosity, I’ll admit, I’ve looked at some of the websites of some of the churches mentioned in this kind of story. And let me just say, they turn out to be pretty much predictably liberal or progressive across the landscape. And my argument is that’s because we, as human beings, tend towards a certain form of consistency. We tend toward a certain form of alignment, a consistency with our own positions. And when you get to the issue right now where you have such a divide between conservatives and liberals, it’s really hard to keep switching sides. Most people don’t. Most congregations don’t. Most denominations don’t, for good and explainable reasons.

This is where we also come to understand that biblical teachings coming with biblical authority come with a requirement on conservative churches that accept and celebrate biblical authority that liberal churches or denominations don’t have. If you see Christianity as something that’s constantly evolving, as the gospel is something that needs to be constantly updated, the ethical teachings of the church need to be updated from the old prescriptive, binding, restrictive commandments of the Bible. If that’s your view, then Christianity is a constantly evolving project. On the other hand are the conservative churches, which will, of course, make some mistakes. But the attempt, the motivation, is to stand in the line of apostolic and biblical truth, to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. That’s an embarrassment to the liberal churches. It’s an assignment recognized by the conservative churches.

Part III

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Does the Constitution Allow for Federal Funding for Explicitly Religious Charter Schools? SCOTUS Takes up Consequential Case from Oklahoma

Let’s switch to a separate issue. It’s also interesting that the Supreme Court of the United States recently announced, just in the past few days, that it is going to take a case on appeal in which the big question is whether or not an explicitly Christian or, in this case, Catholic Charter School, can be established with the support of the state, and can actually be recognized as a charter school, with an explicitly religious basis. I’m using that term in the legal sense.

Troy Closson is the reporter for the New York Times and he tells us, “The Supreme Court agreed on Friday,” that’s Friday of last week, “to consider a high-profile case that could open the door to allowing public dollars to directly fund religious schools.” The article continues, “The widely watched case out of Oklahoma could transform the line between church and state and education. And it will come before a court whose conservative majority has broadly embraced the role of religion in public life.”

So what we’re looking at here is that an organized charter school was put in place in Oklahoma with an explicitly Catholic identity. Now, the idea of a charter school is that even though it is funded with public funds, and in many cases can meet in a public building, it is organized around a comprehensive approach to education with a lot of separate control. It’s outside the normal control and curriculum of a school district. It operates on the basis of a charter.

Now, in the case of Oklahoma, it’s an explicitly Catholic school. It could be an explicitly Protestant or evangelical school. It could be an explicitly Jewish school. This is a new question and it only comes about because of the development of charter schools over the last several decades. And frankly, it comes in the midst of so many challenges to the great secular edifice of modern public education, even in a state like Oklahoma. Maybe especially in a state like Oklahoma, there is at least a widespread support for the allowance of charter schools with an explicitly religious mission.

Well, is that allowable according to our constitution or not? Frankly, the Supreme Court taking the case tells us that that’s an important question. The Supreme Court is requested to take far more cases than it does take. When it takes a case like this, it is because it believes there is precedential value. Which is to say the Supreme Court is going to decide a question and it will establish a precedent not only for the state of Oklahoma, but for all 50 states. Thus, we’re very interested in this.

So according to the Christian worldview, what’s the right position? Should we be for these religious charter schools or against them? My guess is that on this kind of question, there could be a genuine difference of opinion among people who hold to the same basic worldview. You could have, say, conservative Catholics, just to identify a worldview. Some of them may be for this. Some of them may be against this. The argument for it would be that parents should be given the choice for this kind of education. Rather than shunted into, that is their children shunted into public schools, that in many cases teach what is at variance with the parents’ beliefs. And the same thing might be true of an evangelical community where a sizable group of parents want to establish this kind of charter school. You could just go down the list. In states like New York and New Jersey, or in some other parts of the country, it could be Jewish parents who want to do the very same thing.

The issue here is tax support. The argument for it is that parents should be given choice to decide how their tax monies are going to be applied for the education of their own children. The argument against it is a bit more complicated, and there are some who’d argue it’s simply blatantly violative of the constitutional texts. I’m not sure about that. But there are some good arguments, one of them has to do with the entanglement of government in the affairs of a Christian or religious school. Who’s going to make the decisions about what’s going to be taught, who’s going to be hired, what will the policies be? I will simply state this. If this is a public school in any sense, even a charter school, the state is going to have some requirements that I would find difficult for an evangelical Christian school.

You also have the entanglement of federal money and state money, taxpayer money when it comes to, say, educational choice in this sense. But in the main, I have to say, my worldview tells me that I want to empower parents to have as many choices as possible in making their choice, which I believe is assigned to them by the Creator, in terms of understanding what is the best educational option and context for their own children. There are many Christians who are simply at the point of saying, “You know, there have to be options that are covered by the taxpayer money that is after all confiscated from us, that do not require us to violate our convictions.” And in a world of pluralistic understandings different, sometimes even contradictory understandings of the aims and purposes of education, there ought to be more choice and the government should facilitate those choices. I will simply say that I believe the religious liberty and the parental choice argument is incredibly strong. I also think the danger of entanglement with tax money is very significant.

So I look forward to the oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court. We’ll talk about those arguments when they happen. That should be very clarifying. And then, of course, we’ll have to wait. And then, the Supreme Court or the United States will hand down a ruling. And yes, it will have a lot of precedential importance. Precedential as in establishing a precedent. We’ll have to talk about that too.

In the meantime, let’s just understand that the clash of worldviews comes in many different forms. In this case, it takes the form of the question as to whether the State of Oklahoma can charter an explicitly religious school. A lot more hangs on this than one school in one state and we know it. The worldview implications are huge, but we don’t even know yet all the arguments that are going to be made. We do know this: those arguments are going to turn out to be very important.

One final observation about this case. If you were to rewind history, say, 100 years, Catholics and evangelicals would be probably in opposing corners on this kind of question. But the pressure of a secularizing age means that conservative Catholic parents and conservative evangelical parents may find a good deal of common ground in saying, “We want more choice according to our convictions when it comes to the education of our children. When you understand, as we must seek to understand, how the existence and the influence of worldview shapes all these things, this kind of thing doesn’t come as a surprise. But it should not escape us for its interest. I’m glad that the Alliance Defending Freedom is on this case and a spokesperson for the Alliance Defending Freedom was clear that the issues here are not just parental choice, but the basic question of religious liberty. That makes the case all the more important.