Barack Obama can run for office as an anti-gay-marriage candidate — which he did, more than once — and that is a ho-hum business, because nobody believed him to be sincere. Brendan Eich was driven out of the company he helped found . . . Continue reading →
2015 Archive
It Was A Slippery Slope
…I was quick to smack down fears that churches would be forced to perform same sex marriages, or that people would be punished for not being made to agree. I deemed these wildly hypothetical fantasies. But I was wrong. …I apologize for . . . Continue reading →
Jefferson: Conscience Protected Against The Enterprises Of Civil Authority
No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority. It has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, . . . Continue reading →
Madison: Conscience May Not Be Coerced By The State
Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” [Virginia Declaration . . . Continue reading →
Freedom To Act According To Conscience In America
“…this Congress intend no violence to their consciences”—Continental Congress (1775) Continue reading →
The LGBT Lobby Is Threatened By Grandma?
UPDATE (3 April, 2015) The legal conflict, including fines and assessments against her business and personal assets, continues.
Heidelcast 88: God’s Holy Law (11)—The Seventh Commandment
In this episode we consider the 7th commandment: “You shall not commit adultery.” Warning: since this episode discusses sexual ethics, it may not be suitable for younger listeners. In the seventh commandment the Lord asserts his authority over our sex life. What . . . Continue reading →
Ken’s Doxology: A Subversion Of The Psalter?
… it was always his desire that Christians be allowed to express their praise to God without being limited only to Psalmody and to the Bible canticles. Continue reading →
Musical Instruments In Public Worship Are Among The Legal Ceremonies
…musical instruments were among the legal ceremonies which Christ at His coming abolished; and therefore we, under the Gospel, must maintain a greater simplicity (John Calvin, Commentary Exodus 15:21) Continue reading →
Civil Liberty Is The Relative Absence Of Coercion
This is not Mississippi Burning; it’s just a conscientious decision not to engage in purely voluntary commerce in a free society. Continue reading →
The Ceremonies, Shadows, And Symbols Abolished
We believe that the ceremonies and figures of the law ceased at the coming of Christ, and that all the shadows are accomplished are accomplished; so that the use of them must be abolished among Christians: yet the truth and substance of . . . Continue reading →
Faded Glory
Hiding Behind The Cross?
“No one in California will be able to hide their prejudice behind a cross, no one!” Continue reading →
Wealthy Foundations Seek To Suppress Religious Liberty
The Arcus Foundation’s website lists a 2014 grant of $100,000 to the American Civil Liberties Foundation supporting “communications strategies to convince conservative Americans that religious exemptions are ‘un-American.’” A two-year Arcus grant to the ACLU in 2013 gave $600,000 to support the . . . Continue reading →
Discerning Truth And Error In The New Media Age
Reformed Psalmody Distinct From Hymnody
As over against this Hymnody, whether of the Latin Church or the Hussites or Lutherans, the distinction of the Calvinistic Psalmody lay not in its form but in its authorship and subject- matter. The Hymn was a religious lyric freely composed within . . . Continue reading →
This Might Help
The Infantilization Of American University Students
Another reason students resort to the quasi-medicalized terminology of trauma is that it forces administrators to respond. Universities are in a double bind. They’re required by two civil-rights statutes, Title VII and Title IX, to ensure that their campuses don’t create a . . . Continue reading →
Rollock: Covenant Of Works Founded On Nature And Republished To Israel
For this cause he, when he was to repeat that covenant of works to the people of Israel, he gave the first law written in tables of stone; Then he made a covenant with his people, saying,”do these things and ye shall live.” Therefore the ground of the covenant of works was not Christ, nor the grace of God in Christ, but the nature of man in the first creation holy and perfect, endued also with the knowledge of the law. Continue reading →
Our Fundamentalist Founders?
The interweb is a funny thing. One never knows what, at any given moment, one will discover. This morning I stumbled on a discussion involving David Harsanyi editor at one of my favorites, The Federalist, over John Locke (1632–1704), God, and natural . . . Continue reading →