When Conscience and Medical Practice Collide

Posted: Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 4:55 am ET

Should physicians and other healthcare professionals be required to perform procedures that violate their conscience?  Most states have adopted so-called "conscience clauses" that shield doctors and others from being required to perform abortions, euthanasia, and other procedures when these would violate the doctor's own moral commitments.

Now, this allowance for conscience is under attack.  Just last week, the California Supreme Court handed down a decision that denied a right for physicians who perform IVF procedures to claim a religious liberty right to deny those procedures to persons on the basis of sexual orientation.  The unanimous decision resets the whole equation in the nation's largest state and sets the stage for similar reviews elsewhere.

Then, just days later, the Bush administration announced a new set of regulations that would deny federal funds to any hospital or medical service that does not allow healthcare professionals to "opt out" of procedures that violate conscience.  Given the controversy surrounding these proposed regulations, we can expect this issue to be thrust into the current presidential race -- and probably soon.

A revealing look into the thinking of those who want conscience clauses eliminated or severely curtailed is found in a recent op-ed column contributed to The Los Angeles Times.  In "When Religion and Healthcare Collide," Professor Richard P. Sloan of the Columbia University Medical Center argues against what he describes as a "disturbing trend" toward allowing doctors to exercise a right of conscience to opt out of certain procedures.

In his words, this disturbing trend is "an increasing willingness to allow the actions of individuals to disadvantage, and even endanger, others if those actions derive from religious faith."

Of course, there could be situations in which Dr. Sloan's logic would rightly apply.  For example, we would not want to allow an emergency room physician to deny emergency treatment to a threatened patient -- any patient.   We would not allow for a surgeon to refuse to perform a life-saving operation just because of the patient's sexual orientation.

If these were the situations that troubled Dr. Sloan, all persons of conscience would join in his call for action.  But, as you might suspect, these are not the situations that concern him.

To the contrary, Dr. Sloan is concerned with doctors who want to opt out of "legal medical procedures" that they cannot perform without violating religious conscience.  Lest we miss his point, he explicitly directs his concern toward the proposed Bush administration regulations that would allow medical professionals to opt out of procedures "including those associated with reproduction and terminal sedation."  In other words, including abortion and euthanasia.

Dr. Sloan laments the fact that "studies have shown that 14% of U.S. doctors, when confronted by possibly objectionable but legal medical treatments, not only would refuse to deliver such care but also would refuse to inform their patients about it or refer them to physicians who would deliver the care."  He estimates this means there are "about 40 million people who would receive substandard care from these physicians, who believe that their religious convictions are more important than the well-being of their patients."

The use of terms like "substandard care" and "possibly objectionable but legal" point to the essence of Dr. Sloan's radical argument.  "Substandard care" is here applied to mean the refusal to use any legal procedure another physician may perform under a similar situation.  Abortion, euthanasia ("terminal sedation") and other procedures are presented as "possibly objectionable but legal."

We must doubt that Dr. Sloan would apply his chosen criterion to the era of Nazi medicine, where, for example, the medical murder of "unworthy life" was legally sanctioned (and encouraged).  These medical murders were legal, but immoral - a point Dr. Sloan would almost certainly accept.  Nor, we can hope, would Dr. Sloan extend his argument to the involuntary sterilization of Americans on the basis of mental capacity or race.  This practice was once legal in the United States, but it is inherently immoral.

Nevertheless, Dr. Sloan argues that "our deference to religion in contemporary American society has allowed us to subordinate all other values. It has allowed us to routinely accept religiously motivated behaviors that we otherwise would have no reluctance to sanction and that, indeed, would be impermissible with any other justification."

Thus, "it's time to say 'enough,'" he argues.  "In the United States, we all are free to practice our religion as we see fit, as long as we do not interfere with the well-being of others by imposing our religious views on them. If physicians or other healthcare providers who have religious objections to legal medical treatments will not at a minimum inform their patients about those treatments and refer them to others who will deliver them, they should act in a way that is consistent with their convictions and the well-being of their patients and find other professions."

The virtue of Dr. Sloan's argument is its clarity.  There is no doubt where he stands.  He wants doctors who cannot perform these procedures in conscience, or at least to refer patients to other doctors who will, to get out of medicine and "find other professions."

This is a logic that leads to disaster.  Indeed, it is a logic I believe Dr. Sloan would be hard-pressed to accept in other contexts, with respect to other procedures.  Requiring medical professionals to violate their own moral convictions by coercing them to perform procedures they believe to be immoral is itself immoral, and these conscience clauses protect the religious liberty rights of all.

Without these protections of conscience, our world would be much less free -- and much more deadly.

From Mainline to Sideline -- The Death of Protestant America

Posted: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 4:03 am ET

Joseph Bottum remembers a time when America was painted in bold Protestant hues.  "America was Methodist, once upon a time--Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian," he explains.  But, that was then, and this is now.

Now, Bottum suggests that the average American "would have trouble recalling the dogmas that once defined all the jarring sects, but their names remain at least half alive."

Bottum writes of this Protestant collapse in the August/September 2008 issue of First Things, one of the most influential intellectual journals of the day.  In "The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline," Bottum offers a clever and insightful theory of mainline decline -- the collapse of liberal Protestantism as a movement and dominant cultural influence.

That dominance was once unquestioned.  As Bottum explains:

And yet, even while we may remember the names of the old denominations, we tend to forget that it all made a kind of sense, back in the day, and it came with a kind of order. The genteel Episcopalians, high on the hill, and the all-over Baptists, down by the river. Oh, and the innumerable independent Bible churches, tangled out across the prairie like brambles: Through most of the nation’s history, these endless divisions and ­revisions of Protestantism renounced one another and sermonized against one another. They squabbled, sneered, and fought. But they had something in common, for all that. Together they formed a vague but vast unity. Together they formed America.

Bottum then offers his political theory of the Protestant mainline.  America, he asserts, was really a Protestant nation from the start.  This Protestant identity, he argues further, was an "obvious fact."  Jews and Catholics were tolerated, but the central identity of the culture was Protestant.

The American concept of religious liberty was, he argues, actually about making space for intra-Protestant rivalries and was "essentially a Protestant idea."  The dominance of mainline Protestantism within the culture represented one leg of a "three-legged stool" that joined democracy and capitalism to establish civic order and national self-consciousness.  Protestantism provided the nation's narrative, he offers, along with a moral vocabulary.

Nevertheless, the mainline Protestant denominations began to implode in the 1960s.  In Bottum's analysis, this decline meant that the main stream of Protestantism began to run dry in the 1970s.  Further:

In truth, there are still plenty of Methodists around. Baptists and Presbyterians, too—Lutherans, Episcopalians, and all the rest; millions of believing Christians who remain serious and devout. For that matter, you can still find, ­soldiering on, some of the institutions they established in their Mainline glory days: the National Council of Churches, for instance, in its God Box up on New York City’s Riverside Drive, with the cornerstone laid, in a grand ceremony, by President Eisenhower in 1958. But those institutions are corpses, even if they don’t quite realize that they’re dead. The great confluence of Protestantism has dwindled to a trickle over the past thirty years, and the Great Church of America has come to an end.

And that leaves us in an odd situation, unlike any before. The death of the Mainline is the central historical fact of our time: the event that distinguishes the past several decades from every other ­period in American history. Almost every one of our current political and cultural oddities, our contradictions and obscurities, derives from this fact: The Mainline has lost the capacity to set, or even significantly influence, the national vocabulary or the national self-understanding.

Bottum then offers a statistical analysis wedded to his historical review.  The collapse of the Protestant mainline has been swift, steady, and self-inflicted.  These denominations embraced theological liberalism and adopted accommodationism as a cultural posture.  Bottum estimates that less than 8 percent of Americans are now members of "the central churches of the Protestant Mainline."

Accordingly:

Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran—the name hardly matters anymore. It’s true that if you dig through the conservative manifestos and broadsides of the past thirty years, you find one distressed cry after another, each bemoaning the particular path by which this or that denomination lost its intellectual and doctrinal distinctiveness.

In the course of his article, Bottum offers a sophisticated and compelling sociological and theological understanding of what happened to the churches of the Protestant Mainline as they lost their members and forfeited their influence.  He offers a lament that the American experiment is now robbed of a central support.

"We all have to worry about it, now," Bottum reflects.  "Without the political theory that depended on the existence of the Protestant Mainline, what does it mean to support the nation? What does it mean to criticize it? The American experiment has always needed what Alexis de ­Tocqueville called the undivided current, and now that current has finally run dry."

What can replace it?  Bottum suggests that neither Catholicism (with its "vast intellectual resources") nor Evangelicalism (unable to offer "a widely accepted moral rhetoric") can replace what America's Protestant identity once provided.

His argument is convincing and his analysis is well documented.  Furthermore, his concern for the nation's social cohesiveness is admirable.  Joseph Bottum is clearly on the right track with his "political theory of the Protestant Mainline."

Nevertheless, understanding a "theological theory" of liberal Protestantism's collapse is an even greater concern.  The health of the church is a far greater concern than the health of the nation.  The primary injury caused by mainline Protestant decline is not social but spiritual.  These denominations once fueled the great missionary movement that carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth.  Now, liberal Protestantism sees conversionist missions as an embarrassment.  Committed to a radical doctrinal relativism, these denominations have served as poster children for virtually every theological fad and liberal proposal imaginable.  Now, many of these denominations are involved in court fights to keep churches from leaving.  The stream has indeed run dry.

The "Death of Protestant America" Joseph Bottum describes must serve as a warning to Evangelicals.  There can be no doubt where theological revisionism and accommodationism will lead.  Why, then, would some argue that Evangelicalism should follow essentially the same path?  Can they not see that the liberal Protestant river has run dry?

__________________

In today's edition of "The Reading List" I review David Wells' important new book, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Seekers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World.

New God or No God? The Peril of Making God Plausible

Posted: Monday, August 25, 2008 at 4:41 am ET

What kind of god would be plausible in this postmodern age?  Taken by itself, that question represents the great divide between those who believe in the God of the Bible and those who see the need to reinvent a deity more acceptable to the modern mind.

After all, the answer to that question would reveal a great deal about the postmodern mind, and nothing about God himself.  Unless, that is, you believe that God is merely a philosophical concept, and not the self-existent, self-defining God of the Bible.

That distinction is apparent in A Plausible God by Mitchell Silver, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.  The book's subtitle is "Secular Reflections on Liberal Jewish Theology," and Silver's work is an attempt to construct a concept of God that modern secular people will find plausible.  The book is directed to a Jewish readership, but the issues Silver raises and the arguments he proposes are precisely those found among many liberal Protestant theologians.  Most, however, are less candid and clear-minded as Professor Silver.

The key to understanding Silver's argument is his distinction between the "old God" of biblical theism and the "new God" of the secular philosophers.  Growing up as a secular thinker, Silver rejected belief in a personal God who created the world and now rules over it.  He saw those who believed in a personal and transcendent God -- a God who is objectively real -- as superstitious.

Yet, he observed that many people he thought to be intelligent thinkers did believe in God, and this fact perplexed him.  Then came the big realization that these intelligent people do believe in God, but not in a personal God who is objectively real.  Instead, they believe in a "new God."  This new God is the only God imaginable, he suggests, to secular moderns.

"My fundamental premise is that the modernist has only two options consistent with her modernism: new God or no God," he writes.  That sentence communicates a powerful insight with absolute clarity.  Belief in the old God, he argues, is simply too laden with impossible beliefs and immoral assumptions.

Indeed, one of Silver's stated purposes is to reveal just how little deity is associated with the new God, and in so doing he considers Protestant theologians such as Paul Tillich and Rudolph Bultmann.  As Silver rightly observes, the views of God represented by Tillich and Bultmann are not "substantially different" from atheism.  These theologians retained "references to the divine," but stripped theology of belief in a personal God.  He makes similar observations of Jurgen Moltmann's "theology of hope" and the works of the process theologians such as Charles Hartshorne.  What is rejected by these theologians, to one degree or another, is supernaturalism.

Such thinkers are theologians who are not theists, Silver reports.  Furthermore, the "God" of much popular belief is hardly more theistic.  "With all the particulars left unspecified," Silver asserts, "our public theism is probably a riot of equivocations in which there are many new-God beliefs among the rioters."

God is reduced to "deep feelings, fundamental values, basic attitudes, and humane hopes."  Many modern people, including both Jews and many who identify as Christians, have, as Rabbi Jonathan Gerard related, "merely lost faith in an older and unacceptable notion of God."

The new God is a philosophical concept that its proponents use to ground a potential for goodness in the world.  When believers in the new God speak of God in personal terms, they do so metaphorically.  One key insight in Silver's book is his argument that even secular people need to express gratitude in personal terms.  As he explains, "God-talk may be the only language adequate for the expression of certain emotions."  Speaking of a personal God in this sense is a "trope" or "just a manner of speaking."

The new God becomes "whatever there is in nature that makes good things possible."  But, lest we over-read this statement, Silver adds:  "God has no will, intentions, or desires."  In no sense is the new God a personal God.  This God is a principle, a concept; not a person.

The God of the Bible is dismissed as a rational impossibility.  Supernaturalism is itself ruled out of bounds within the closed box of the materialist worldview.  Many would go further and argue that the God of the Bible is immoral -- ethnocentric, violent, and oppressive.  But all this goes away with the new God, who is not a person, does not need to "exist," has no will or intentions, does not intervene in history, and is thus not morally accountable at all.  The new God is not an agent who acts, and thus cannot be an immoral agent.

The old God, the God of the Bible, the God described by Silver as the "God of our fathers," is simply not plausible.  Thus, as Silver eloquently suggests, modern secular people turn "from the God of our fathers to the God of our friends."

A Plausible God book is a brilliant exposition of the vast shift in thinking about God that marks so much modern theology -- Jewish and Christian.  Many theologians continue to speak of God without believing in the God of the Bible.  Those who are unaware that the "new God" of modern theology is not the "old God" of biblical theism may well be either deceived or confused.  Mitchell Silver's clarity is refreshing, even as it is tragic.

We are not called upon to make God plausible to the modern mind or the postmodern age.  The God of the Bible cannot be accommodated to the secularist assumptions of so many modern people.  The "God of our friends" fits easily into this modern secular framework and is easily received by a postmodern culture.  The God of our friends neither wills nor acts.

In other words, only "the God of our fathers" can save.

____________________

An interesting theological conversation at "On Faith" brings this new thinking about God to light in terms of what was at mid-century called "protest atheism."  In this video, Sally Quinn of The Washington Post interviews Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits.  Rabbi Berkowits rejects traditional theism (and divine omnipotence in particular) in light of his experience at Auschwitz.

In "The Reading List" today, I review Howard Gardner's new book, Five Minds for the Future.

Greeting the Future of the Family -- It's in the Cards

Posted: Friday, August 22, 2008 at 4:56 am ET

The greeting card features two male torsos in tuxedos. The message is clear -- Hallmark is ready to join the celebration of same-sex marriage.

According to the Associated Press, America's most prominent greeting card producer decided to roll out a line of same-sex greetings after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May. The company had released a line of "coming out" cards last year.

As the Associated Press reports:

The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.

"It's our goal to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can," Hallmark spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolell said.

The fact that Hallmark has decided to publish the cards is in some ways less interesting than that statement from the company's spokeswoman. When Sarah Gronberg Kolell asserts that Hallmark wants "to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can" she clearly intends, even now, for the public to read certain limitations on that goal.

We can safely assume that the company is not to release a line of cards intended to celebrate polygamous marriages. There has been no shortage of media attention to these polygamous unions, but don't look for a new card picturing a man in a tuxedo surrounded by women in bridal gowns.

No, the decision to market the same-sex marriage celebration cards reveals some tipping point in the culture. The normalization of homosexuality and homosexual unions is significantly enhanced when a company like Hallmark joins the revolution.

"The fact that you have someone like Hallmark going into that niche shows it's growing and signals a trend," remarked Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the Greeting Card Association.

But same-sex marriage is not the only trend of note in this regard. Some greeting card companies now offer lines of cards announcing and celebrating divorce. Selected card lines for heterosexual couples are designed to cover both the married and the cohabitating. One company recently released a series of Valentines greetings for adulterous partners.

Historians are not likely to look to our greeting cards as the most important documentation of these times, but they are hardly irrelevant. These cards underline what this society has decided to celebrate, allow, and announce.

Hallmark is sending America a message with the release of these same-sex marriage cards. Perhaps it is high time to send a message back.

So . . . Why Did I Write This? The Delusion of Determinism

Posted: Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 4:48 am ET

The subversion of moral responsibility is one of the most significant developments of recent decades. Though this subversion was originally philosophical, more recent efforts have been based in biology and psychology. Various theorists have argued that our decisions and actions are determined by genetics, environmental factors, or other forces. Now, Scientific American is out with a report on a study linking determinism and moral responsibility.

The diverse theories of determinism propose that our choices and decisions are not an exercise of the will, but simply the inevitable outcome of factors outside our control. As Scientific American explains, determinists argue that "everything that happens is determined by what happened before -- our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action."

In other words, free will doesn't exist. Used in this sense, free will means the exercise of authentic moral choice and agency. We choose to take one action rather than the other, and must then take responsibility for that choice.

This link between moral choice and moral responsibility is virtually instinctive to humans. As a matter of fact, it is basic to our understanding of what it means to be human. We hold each other responsible for actions and choices. But if all of our choices are illusory -- and everything is merely the "inevitable consequence" of something beyond our control, moral responsibility is an exercise in delusion.

Scientific American reports on a study performed by psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler. The psychologists found that individuals who were told that their moral choices were determined, rather than free, were also more likely to cheat on an experimental examination.

As Shaun Nichols reports:

The Western conception idea of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility, guilt for misdeads and pride in accomplishment. We hold ourselves responsible precisely when we think that our actions come from free will. In this light, it’s not surprising that people behave less morally as they become skeptical of free will. Further, the Vohs and Schooler result fits with the idea that people will behave less responsibly if they regard their actions as beyond their control. If I think that there’s no point in trying to be good, then I’m less likely to try.

Even if giving up on free will does have these deleterious effects, one might wonder how far they go. One question is whether the effects extend across the moral domain. Cheating in a psychology experiment doesn’t seem too terrible. Presumably the experiment didn’t also lead to a rash of criminal activity among those who read the anti-free will passage. Our moral revulsion at killing and hurting others is likely too strong to be dismantled by reflections about determinism. It might well turn out that other kinds of immoral behavior, like cheating in school, would be affected by the rejection of free will, however.

There are limitations to this kind of research, of course, but the report is both revealing and unsurprising. If we are not responsible for our actions, they why would people do the right thing? The most immediate result of such thinking is the subversion of moral accountability.

Of course, this pattern of thought also renders human existence irrational. How can we understand ourselves, our children, our spouses, our friends, or our neighbors if moral responsibility is undermined by determinism. Our legal system would completely collapse, as would the entire experience of relating to other human beings.

Shaun Nichols explains that "the Western conception of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility." That "Western conception" is a product of the Christian inheritance and the biblical worldview. The Bible clearly presents human beings as morally responsible. Christians of virtually all theological traditions -- including Reformed theology, Arminianism, and Catholicism -- affirm moral and spiritual responsibility and the authenticity of the experience of choice.

As a matter of fact, this capacity and accountability is rooted in the biblical concept of the imago Dei -- the image of God. Our Creator made us as moral creatures and planted within us the capacity of conscience. All this refutes the concept of moral determinism.

In its most modern forms, determinism is a product of naturalism -- the belief that everything must be explained in purely natural terms. Naturalism explains the human mind (including the experience of moral choice) as a matter of chemical reactions in the brain, and nothing more.

Determinism is implied by naturalism and relieves human beings of moral responsibility. There is no moral revolt against the Creator, no Fall, and no need for the Gospel. This subversion of moral responsibility is both a delusion and a trap. And, as the Scientific American report indicates, even those who say they believe in moral determinism are unable to live consistently with this assumption. We know we are responsible.

Backtrack to Saddleback -- Secularists Not Pleased

Posted: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 4:58 am ET

Suffice it to say that I was not very hopeful about the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency held at the California megachurch last Saturday night. In the first place, I am not really comfortable with the idea of hosting such a politically charged event in a church. No matter how the event is planned and projected, once the event starts it can turn into something far more politically volatile than planned. That is a truth I have learned by hard experience.

Secondly, the advance publicity about the event touted it as a platform for a kind of "third way" movement that would avoid the serious worldview issues and would instead limit the conversation to vague generalities. A good many media reports suggested that Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain would be asked only "soft" questions that would demonstrate common ground and agreement between the candidates. That would be an exercise in wasted time and a squandered opportunity.

Thirdly, I was concerned that Pastor Rick Warren, the moderator of the event, would be reduced by the format to the role of a therapist or spiritual guru. Like all of us, Rick Warren likes to be liked, and being liked by two of the most famous political figures in the world is quite an achievement. Yet, if Rick Warren was to fulfill his role in moderating and leading these conversations, he would have to risk being liked a bit less. Maybe even a lot less.

With the press pushing the event as a "new face" for American evangelicals, I was not overly hopeful. Given the hype, I was positively unhopeful. But . . . the event turned to be quite worthwhile after all. I still have deep reservations about identifying the event so closely with a church, but the conversations really did get to urgently important and controversial issues, and Pastor Rick Warren handled the conversations with aplomb, demonstrating both civility and candor.

Pastor Warren's questions ranged from the deeply personal to the overtly controversial. He often asked questions that made it difficult for the candidates to avoid giving direct and revealing answers. He let the candidates speak for themselves.

He asked about their greatest moral failure. Obama spoke of drug and alcohol use as a young person. McCain referred directly to the failure of his first marriage. When asked about the reality of evil, the two candidates revealed very different approaches. When asked about abortion and same-sex marriage, a great chasm appeared between the candidates. Obama declared his complete support for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand. When asked, "at what point does a baby get human rights?" Obama said that the question "is above my pay grade." That is a particularly evasive answer, because the President of the United States must frame policies that are predicated on some assumption of when a human being, born or unborn, deserves the full protection of the law.

On same-sex marriage, Sen. Obama attempted to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, but he made clear that he would actively oppose any constitutional amendment designed to protect that definition, and he gave full support to civil unions. He suggested that the matter should be left to the states, but he has opposed Proposition 8 on the California ballot -- a citizen-initiated referendum that would define marriage as a heterosexual union.

Sen. McCain offered more succinct answers. When asked the question about when a baby gets human rights, McCain said, "at conception." He pledged to be a pro-life president and he opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage. The worldview differences between the two men were made clear, but the conversations were calm, respectful, and unhurried.

In other words, something of genuine significance happened at the Saddleback Civil Forum. Millions watched the event on CNN and the event set the stage for many lively conversations to follow.

But, not everyone is pleased. Writing in the editorial pages of USA Today, columnist DeWayne Wickham complained that the event was too overtly Christian. "What we need in the White House is a devout believer in this nation's democratic principles, not the vicar of Saddleback," he asserted.

The "vicar of Saddleback?" Neither of these candidates is running for that office. That comment reveals more about DeWayne Wickham's commitment to a secularist vision of politics than about the Saddleback event.

He wrote:

As his interviews made clear . . . Warren's doublespeak cloaked an effort to get the candidates to take a stand on many of those non-negotiable issues, which he apparently still considers matters of religious faith — and qualification for public office. His questions about their "worldview" on Christianity, abortion and the definition of marriage reflected not so much a civil forum as a push for a theocratic presidency, one that would be deeply influenced by Warren's evangelism.

Sound the alarm -- "a theocratic presidency?" That hyperventilation is remarkable. Anyone who talks about Obama or McCain in terms of a "theocratic presidency" has been reading too much science fiction in the secularist apocalypse genre. Furthermore, Rick Warren is no theocrat.

Wickham continued:

Just as worrisome for me was his call for McCain and Obama to confess their "greatest moral failure." That's a pretty far-reaching inquiry that would be better answered in a pastor's study than on national TV — unless, of course, the purpose is political persuasion, not personal salvation. Even so, Obama said it was his drug and alcohol use during his youth. McCain said it was the failure of his first marriage.

Wickham's real issue here is probably not the question itself at all. It's hard to imagine his umbrage if Lesley Stahl or Bill Moyers asked that question of the candidates. No, the real issue here is the setting. But, then again, Wickham went on to argue that it is a good thing that many famous presidents of the past did not have to answer that question.

Finally, Wickham argued:

The president's job is not to rid the world of the Bible's Beelzebub but rather the worldly devils that afflict us. It is to properly handle the difficult issues of war and peace, to manage the domestic affairs of this great melting pot, and to ensure this country's longstanding guarantee of religious freedom — and protect its commitment to a secular government. CNN did these causes a great disservice by giving a leader of just one of this nation's religious faiths a platform to influence the outcome of the coming presidential election.

There is much in that paragraph to unpack, but the central issue here is Wickham's definition of a "secular government." The Saddleback Civil Forum revealed once again that government must necessarily deal with many decidedly "unsecular" questions. These two candidates were not forced into this conversation, they embraced it. Once there, they had to answer the questions.

Neither candidate is seeking to be the new vicar of Saddleback. Instead, both are running for the highest political office in the land. As both candidates were reminded Saturday night, that means there are certain questions you just can't duck.

_________________________

We discussed the Saddleback Civil Forum on Monday's edition of The Albert Mohler Program [listen here]. A CNN transcript of the Saddleback event is available here.

Remodeling Hell -- Americans Redefine the Doctrine

Posted: Monday, August 18, 2008 at 4:57 am ET

Is belief in hell disappearing? "Absolutely," says Barnard College professor Alan Segal, author of Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. Segal's remark is found within a news story released by Religion News Service. In "Belief in Hell Dips, But Some Say They've Already Been There," Charles Honey traces the transformation of hell in contemporary America.

The catalyst for Honey's article was the "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" released this summer by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The data does indicate a shift in beliefs concerning hell. In the Pew study, just 59 percent of those surveyed indicated belief in a concept of hell "where people who have led bad lives, and die without being sorry, are eternally punished."

That figure, Honey reports, is down from 71 percent "who said they believed in hell" as recently as a 2001 Gallup poll.

A closer look at those figures raises significant questions about the usefulness of the data. In the first place, the definition of hell as "where people who have led bad lives, and die without being sorry, are eternally punished" is a problem in itself. Evangelical Christians -- presumably among those most likely to believe in hell -- believe that hell is indeed where unrepentant humans will go, but that does not mean that the issue is having led a "bad" life. Evangelicals have historically believed that those in heaven are themselves no more worthy than those in hell. The crucial issue is faith in Christ, and thus the formulation used in the Pew study would confuse many evangelicals.

Nevertheless, no informed observer will doubt the central argument of Honey's report. Americans are redefining the doctrine of hell before our eyes. Honey provides a helpful survey of various beliefs concerning hell, but the most interesting part of his article concerns evangelicals.

He writes:

Skepticism about hell is growing even in evangelical churches and seminaries, says one theologian here, a bastion of conservative evangelicalism.

"In a pluralistic, post-modern world, students are having a more difficult time with (the idea of) people going to hell forever because they didn't believe the right thing," says Mike Wittmer, professor of systematic theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.

"That's the biggest question out there right now: `Would God send someone to hell if they were someone as good as me, but didn't believe what I believe?"'

It was easier to believe in hell 20 years ago when missionaries tried to convert people in far-flung places, Wittmer says. In today's global village, many live next to good, non-Christian neighbors and wonder why an all-powerful, loving God wouldn't eventually empty out hell, Wittmer says.

"I've noticed in the last five years how that view is making inroads even in conservative churches, whereas five years ago it wasn't even uttered or discussed," he adds.

Wittmer's observation holds true for anyone familiar with the accommodationist tendency within modern evangelicalism. The key insight within Wittmer's comments, however, is the way he lays out the populist transformation of the doctrine. Reasoning from their own experience and emotions, rather than from the Bible, many who call themselves evangelicals are just deciding that a "good" God would not send persons to hell -- at least not anyone they know.

Undoubtedly, much of this can be traced to currents in the larger culture, where non-judgmentalism, a therapeutic view of life, and a thoroughly modern view of fairness lead many to reject hell as a place of everlasting torment and punishment for those who never come to faith in Christ.

As Professor Segal observed, "They believe everyone has an equal chance, at this life and the next." Thus, "hell is disappearing, absolutely."

That this is true within the culture at large is not surprising. But when those who claim identity as evangelical Christians begin to modify the doctrine, this should set off alarms.

No doctrine stands alone. There is no way to modify belief in hell without modifying the Gospel itself, for hell is an essential part of the framework of the Gospel and of the preaching of Jesus. Hell cannot be remodeled without reconstructing the Gospel message.

Here is a sobering thought: Hell may disappear from the modern mind, but it will not disappear in reality. God is not impressed by our surveys.

"American Teen" -- Not a Pretty Picture

Posted: Friday, August 15, 2008 at 3:37 am ET

Nanette Burstein's American Teen documentary has hit the big screen with a limited release in major American cities. The film purports to be a realistic view of American adolescence, as Burstein went to Warsaw, Indiana in order to follow five teenagers through their senior year in high school. Parents who see the film will wonder if the documentary is as realistic as Burstein claims -- but they will worry that it is true.

American Teen won the Best Directing award for Burstein at the Sundance Film Festival, where the documentary was enthusiastically received. The big question now is whether the public will pay theater prices to see a film about what goes on at the local high school. Time will tell. In the meantime, the film is attracting controversy.

Burstein focuses on five high school seniors and, even as she insists that she did not play into stereotypes, the film's Web site advertises the central characters as "the jock," "the geek," "the rebel," "the princess," and "the heartthrob." Forgive me, but those seem to be the most stereotypical stereotypes of American adolescence.

The documentary is situated in rural America. Warsaw, Indiana is located just over a hundred miles outside of Chicago, which means that the town is hardly isolated. Nevertheless, the social context of the Warsaw Community High school seems realistic and recognizable -- but not at all reassuring.

Adolescent angst is the standard fare of coming-of-age stories and a staple of literature, drama, and film. From Romeo and Juliet and Catcher in the Rye to Rebel Without a Cause, Rumspringa, and Lord of the Flies, the insecurities, brutalities, and extremes of adolescent life have been on full display. Over the past several decades, adolescent psychologists have supplied the concept of the identity crisis as the therapeutic framework for expecting teenagers to misbehave. American Teen follows in this tradition. The general idea is that adolescent Sturm und Drang is just to be expected. Parents and other adults are to just "deal with it" and remember their own adolescent struggles.

The kids in American Teen do not come off well. Some, such as Megan ("the Princess"), are absolutely unlikeable. She is the rich kid of privilege who is spoiled, narcissistic, and ruthless. Once her parents are introduced, all is explained. When she is caught vandalizing a boy's home and is found guilty of sexual harassment her biggest worry is that she will not get into Notre Dame (she does). She explains that she has forgiven herself and her father suggests that her real problem was being stupid enough to get caught. Both belong on Oprah.

Jake ("the Geek"), is probably the most likeable teenager in the film, and he is almost surely the most authentic -- if simply because he is trapped within the identity that earned him the part. He, along with Hannah ("the Rebel"), brings nihilism to life. But, in his case at least, it is a rather happy and inconsistent nihilism -- the kind that marks the lives of so many American teens. Hannah, like Megan, is largely explained by her parents. She lives with neither parent, but with her elderly grandmother. Her mother is manic depressive and her father appears to be peripheral to her life. She wants to be remembered after she is dead, and hopes for a career in film. Jake, meanwhile, holds to a dream of protean transformation, confiding with the camera that he might turn into "Mr. Muscle" in college. The audience at the screening I attended laughed loudest at this point. Burstein clearly intended to use his hope as a laugh line.

Colin ("the Jock") is another of the more honest characters. His father, an Elvis impersonator, cannot pay for Colin to attend college and warns him that his only hope is a basketball scholarship. It's that or the Army, dad insists. Colin is the leading player on the Warsaw team, but he is selfish in hogging shots and hits a slump in his shooting. He finds athletic redemption (and earns a scholarship) when he learns to be less selfish and finds his groove once again. All Warsaw celebrates -- a reminder of the central role of high school athletics in small-town America. In Indiana, that means basketball.

Mitch ("the Heartthrob") is a bright and winsome character, but he dumps Hannah as his girlfriend with a text message. In the epilogue at the end of the movie, Mitch admits that he would never do that trick again, but the audience may wonder if he has really learned anything. He appears to glide through life with little worry and even less seriousness. Nevertheless, his aim is medical school.

Critics have questioned the authenticity of the film. Burstein defends her movie as an accurate and non-manipulated view of adolescent life but, as some reviewers have pointed out, she seems to have her camera on both parties in strategic phone conversations at just the right time. How can that happen by accident?

American Teen is not a remake of American Pie as a documentary. Burstein does not take her camera into the bedrooms of these teenagers nor does she depict them having sex. What the film does, however, is inform parents of the ruthlessly crude view of sex that pervades so much adolescent life. A girl sends a nude photo of herself by text message and then receives a series of vicious comments in return. Jake's older brother takes him to get drunk at a strip club. The kids speak in obscenities and vulgarities, and this is taken for granted by parents. When Megan refers to her father with a profane expression, he responds by asserting, 'You do not speak to your father that way." Well, Megan quite obviously does speak to her father that way.

The teenagers in American Teen are indeed stereotypes, but they are stereotypes with a ring of authenticity. This is depressing, but true. Some of the movie's critics suggest that Burstein has presented a white-washed tableau of American adolescence. Many viewers will fear that they are right -- even with all the problems of these five teens taken into consideration. This is small-town American after all.

There are no pregnant teenage girls, no stoned-out teenagers, no boys facing repeated juvenile charges. Are these teens not to be found in Warsaw?

But there are other teenagers missing from this picture of "realistic" adolescence. There are no teenagers who are believing and practicing Christians, none whose parents seem to be good examples to their children, none who appear to be looking and living for anything more significant than immediate gratification, popularity, or earthly glory.

American Teen is likely to be a critical success and to attract considerable buzz at the box office. The message of the movie seems to be that this is just what adolescence is all about and how teenagers really live and think -- parents must just accept this and get out of the way. Nevertheless, if Christian parents see this movie, they are more likely to be newly determined not to settle for this reality for their own teenage children. Thankfully, American Teen doesn't have to be the story of your American teen.

The Strange Persistence of Moral Sanity

Posted: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 4:38 am ET

The fall of yet another politician in a sex scandal has added a note of Schadenfreude to the political season. Coming so quickly after the fall of former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, the admission by former Senator John Edwards of an affair during his presidential campaign seemed to catch many observers off-guard.

Sexual immorality crosses all partisan lines. Spitzer and Edwards are prominent Democrats, but equally prominent Republicans have been caught in the same web. There is no room for partisan calculation here.

One interesting aspect of the Edwards saga is the near-universal assumption that, had Edwards won the primary race for the Democratic presidential nomination, he (and his party) would have been fatally wounded in terms of the November election. This assumption, revealed in media coverage of the scandal, seems to be common to both liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. The assumption is probably valid.

The American people are incredibly forgiving, but John Edwards violated a basic sense of public dignity and personal morality. The fact that his wife, Elizabeth, is in the fight of her life with cancer only adds to the public's sense of outrage at his violation of his marital vows. His repeated lies added fuel to the fire. On top of all this, the narcissism and recklessness of his affair revealed a poisonous disregard for his responsibilities, his supporters, his family, his friends, and the public.

The American people were confronted once again with broken promises, broken commitments, and broken hearts laid bare in public. Even now, the public seems braced for further revelations in this scandal.

But what of that near-universal assumption that this scandal should end the political career of John Edwards? Some observers reject that assumption.

Writing for Psychology Today [warning: objectionable language], Roy F. Baumeister categorically rejects the idea that a sex scandal should be considered politically significant at all. He writes: "My thesis is that the American people and their chances for good government are the ones most harmed by these scandals. In fact, I recommend that we should stop considering sexual behavior as a qualification for political office."

That is an audacious recommendation, but it is not unprecedented. Similar arguments followed the fall of Elliot Spitzer. The public is not buying the argument.

Baumeister continues:

I can imagine people objecting that sexual decision making reveals a man's character. (I refer specifically to men here, because so far only men have had their political careers ruined by sex scandals.) This argument seems lame to me. A much better and more relevant test of character would involve how the person has managed his money. Has he always paid his bills on time? If the answer is no, that is much more reason to question his suitability for public office than an occasional bit of unsanctioned sex.

That is an amazing and revealing argument. Christians must reject that argument on its face. The Bible clearly affirms that what is done with the body is directly related to the soul. Christianity is incompatible with a Gnosticism that divides the body and soul so that sexual behavior and character can be separated.

Baumeister even goes so far as to argue that the public is drawn to support high-testosterone men who, by virtue of that testosterone, are also likely to seek multiple sex partners. "High testosterone does not promote sexual fidelity," he asserts. "It makes men want to have more different partners. On top of the self-selection of adultery-prone men into politics, the opportunities probably increase for a successful politician."

In the end, he warns that the nation is "not so oversupplied with brilliant, wonderful, effective politicians that we can afford to disqualify a substantial number of them based on something as irrelevant as a bit of wild oats." An extended adulterous affair encased in lies and betrayal is merely "a bit of wild oats?"

Well, there you have it -- it's not the man . . . it's the testosterone. It's not a moral scandal, just a bit of wild oats. Most Americans recognize those arguments to be patent nonsense. Even in these confused and confusing times, some moral sanity remains.

"Rights Talk" in California -- Confusing the Same-Sex Marriage Issue

Posted: Monday, August 11, 2008 at 2:43 am ET

The fact that The Los Angeles Times favors same-sex marriage is not a new revelation. To the contrary, the paper has positioned itself in support of same-sex marriage for some time. Furthermore, no informed reader will be surprised to find that the paper's editorial position is quite liberal. Given our cherished commitment to the freedom of the press, the paper has every right to position itself this way. Intelligent readers are responsible to be aware of this fact, and take this editorial posture into account when considering the paper's coverage of controversial issues -- like same-sex marriage and "Proposition 8."

Proposition 8 will appear on the November ballot in California. The proposition -- put on the ballot by public support -- is an attempt to return the state's marriage law to where it stood earlier this year, with marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman.

California's state constitution does not mention same-sex marriage. On March 7, 2000 the people of California voted by an overwhelming margin to pass "Proposition 22" which stated: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

That is where the matter stood until May 15 of this year, when California's Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 4 to 3 that same-sex marriages must be legalized and recognized in the state. Thus, Proposition 22 and all similar laws were struck down by the court, and the court ordered that the state must allow and recognize same-sex marriages effective June 17, 2008.

Proposition 8 is a citizen-initiated response to that Supreme Court decision and an effort to return marriage in California to the legal definition effective as recently as May 14 of this year. The language of Proposition 8 mirrors that of Proposition 22, but differs in that it would amend the state constitution to define marriage.

The editors of The Los Angeles Times want voters to defeat Proposition 8 and, in effect, to confirm the action of California's Supreme Court that overturned the will of voters expressed in 2000. The fact that the paper wants to see Proposition 8 defeated is not surprising, but the arguments employed by the paper's editors are nothing less than breathtaking.

The paper speaks to the issue in an editorial published on August 8. The editors began their arguments with this introductory paragraph:

It's the same sentence as in 2000: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Yet the issue that will be put before voters Nov. 4 is radically different. This time, the wording would be used to rescind an existing constitutional right to marry. We fervently hope that voters, whatever their personal or religious convictions, will shudder at such a step and vote no on Proposition 8.

The editors argue that Proposition 8 would "rescind an existing constitutional right to marry." The California constitution still does not mention same-sex marriage. No such right existed before May 15. The right exists now only by judicial action, not by any amendment to the constitution.

But, even after referring to the marriage of same-sex couples as "an existing constitutional right," the editors went even further to declare same-sex marriage a "fundamental right."

In their words:

The state of same-sex marriage shifted in May, when the California Supreme Court overturned Proposition 22, the ban on gay marriage that voters approved eight years ago, and ruled that marriage was a fundamental right under the state Constitution. As such, it could not be denied to a protected group -- in this case, gay and lesbian couples..

What voters must consider about Proposition 8 is that, unlike Proposition 22, this is no longer about refining existing California law. In the wake of the court's ruling, the only way to deny marriage to gay and lesbian couples is by revising constitutional rights themselves. Proposition 8 seeks to embed wording in the Constitution that would eliminate the fundamental right to same-sex marriage.

Indeed, the court did rule that the right of same-sex couples to marry is a "fundamental right" -- a right that is either enshrined within the constitution, drawn from the notion of natural rights, or a necessary implication of the constitution. The court also defined homosexuals as a protected group and thus deserving of a special attention in questions of rights.

But the California Supreme Court is not the final authority in such matters -- the people are. The court and its decisions are ultimately accountable to the people, who can, when motivated by great concern or outrage, change the court's composition or amend the constitution itself.

The editors of the paper write as if the May 15, 2008 decision of the California Supreme Court is unassailable, unchangeable, and irreversible. None of these things is true. The court did declare same-sex marriage to be a fundamental right, but that decision is now, by definition, tentative and potentially temporary. California's voters must keep this firmly in mind. The voters of California now have the opportunity to define and defend marriage and to return the state's definition of marriage to where it stood just three months ago.

This entire controversy, illustrated by the paper's editorial, is an illustration of the legal, cultural, and moral breakdown described by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon as "rights talk." In her 1991 book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, Glendon defined the problem as "our increasing tendency to speak of what is most important to us in terms of rights, and to frame nearly every social controversy as a clash of rights."

Further:

The most distinctive features of our American rights dialect are the very ones that are most conspicuously in tension with what we require in order to give a reasonably full and coherent account of what kind of society we are and what kind of polity we are trying to create: its penchant for absolute, extravagant formulations, its near-aphasia concerning responsibility, its excessive homage to individual independence and self-sufficiency, its habitual concentration on the individual and the state at the expense of the intermediate groups of civil society, and its unapologetic insularity. Not only does each of these traits make it difficult to give voice to common sense or moral intuitions, they also impede development of the sort of rational political discourse that is appropriate to the needs of a mature, complex, liberal, pluralistic development.

"Rights talk" is what remains when deeper questions of right and wrong are taken off the table. The most important right at stake in Proposition 8 is the right -- and the responsibility -- of California voters to define and defend marriage as the union of a man and a woman.