Cultural Renewal and the Lutheran Reformation

As the only Lutheran pastor in Evanston, I can hardly let the 500th anniversary of the Reformation pass without comment. After all, anything that lasts a half-millennium has earned some careful thought. So, I ask your indulgence (pun intended) to do so.

On October 31, 1517 Dr. Martin Luther nailed 95 “theses” to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. This door served as the town bulletin board, and the “theses” were tightly reasoned sentences which Luther wanted to defend in a formal academic debate.

The debate was prompted by an audacious fund-raising scheme worked out between Pope Leo X, and Albert, his newly appointed Archbishop of Mainz, Germany. To make a long story short, the pope authorized Albert to sell plenary papal indulgences. This meant that “full remission of all temporal punishment due to sin,” could be obtained for money.

As a pastor, professor, and loyal son of the Church, Luther was aghast. When his own parishioners crossed over into Albert’s territory to buy indulgences, he sought to correct the abuse while clarifying the doctrine of indulgences which had already been disputed for some time.

His theses were more than an academic exercise. They struck a nerve which set all of Europe abuzz. When someone translated them into German and published them far and wide, the Reformation took on a life of its own.

Even Luther could not have guessed that, 500 years later, the entire world would be remembering the occasion. But here we are.

However, not all remember it fondly. Some lament it as the day when a hot-headed young professor smashed a once-united Christendom into a million splinters, sects, and denominations. Even though Luther himself fought tirelessly against this needless fragmentation, he is faulted for unleashing a movement which he could not control.

This viewpoint is not unreasonable when others celebrate Luther’s reforms as the opening salvo in a centuries-long rebellion against, not only papal authority, but secular authority as well. They think Luther represents the first stirrings of our modern spirit, that thumbs its nose at all authority, opinion, tradition -- even decency – whatever would hinder any individual’s self-will.

This spirit of rebellion led to the bloody French Revolution of 1789, then to its even bloodier daughter, the Bolshevik Revolution, on the 400th anniversary of the Reformation. These revolutions, in turn, spawned communism in countries throughout the world making the 20th century into the most murderous century in human history.

In our culture, the spirit of rebellion against authority has come full-circle. A large minority, disproportionately represented in academia, government, press, and the entertainment industry, is in open rebellion against the authority of the God Himself.

Is this the inevitable legacy of Luther’s Reformation? I submit to you that it is not.

Quite the opposite. Luther’s own attitude was not a rebellion against authority, but the profoundest submission to it. His famous words at Worms in 1521, summarize the entire spirit of the Lutheran Reformation: “I am bound by the Scriptures, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.”

Luther did not consider his own conscience to be the final authority. He considered the Scriptures to be that. He was not seeking freedom to follow his own will, he was admitting his complete submission to God’s will. That is the Spirit of the Reformation.

As I was considering how to write about the Reformation here, my initial plan was to keep the focus on the secular legacy of the Reformation. I could talk about how Luther translated the Bible into German, thus allowing common peasants to participate in the most important conversations of the day.

I could talk about how Luther’s emphasis on giving the common citizen access to the Scriptures led inevitably to the literacy education for every man, woman, and child – not just for the elite. If you value our schools, thank Luther.

I could talk about how Luther’s Reformation placed the family at the center of the economy, replacing the central planning of both the church and state.

But as I considered these things, I realized this would leave out the most blindingly obvious part of the story. The reason for learning to read was to read the Bible. The most important conversations of the day were about the nature of God – who is He, and how are we related to Him?

Luther’s assertions about the generous nature of God, and our relation to Him as our gracious Creator, were not just an internal Church debate. It involved secular kings, academics, printers, artists, farmers, ranchers, absolutely everyone. The Reformation effected the entire culture, because it was a conversation about the most important things in life.

Ponder that! The real news of about the 500th anniversary of the Reformation is how we have been conditioned to scrub the main point out of the story. It’s as if our whole culture were being pressured to tell the story of the Civil War without mentioning slavery.

In a day when questions of God and theology are being systematically excluded from the public square, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation reminds us that these questions still are the beating heart of all life and culture. We ignore them to our own peril.

As Anthony Esolen wrote in his recent book, Out of the Ashes, “The role of religion in human life is not little. It is essential: without it there is no culture at all, because culture is a cultivation of the things that a people considers most sacred.”

Luther did not seek to reform the culture. He sought to reclaim a Biblical view of God. Benefits to the culture came in the bargain. As C. S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, “Aim at Heaven and you get Earth ‘thrown in.’ Aim at Earth and you will get neither.” Jesus said the same: “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

And what kind of benefits come to a culture that is focused on God? Those who would marginalize religion blame Christianity for repressing self-expression and absolute freedom to do whatever I please. Is this true? Hardly.

Again, Anthony Esolen reminds us of what the culture looked like before we agreed to leave God at the margins. “In that culture of ‘repression’ people were free to leave their keys in the ignition of the car, to leave their doors unlocked at night, to let their children range all over town without supervision, to have shooting clubs in the public schools, to leave bicycles outside of a store without worrying that they would be pinched, to ride in the back of a pickup truck without getting stopped by the police, to tell children to get out of the house and stay out till suppertime, to have those kids walk a mile or two to school and back every day without worrying about kidnappers or perverts, to call on their neighbors (whose names they knew) when they needed some sugar or flour or when they wanted to play cards, to send their children to a parochial school without paying any tuition, to show up at a movie theater or a bowling alley at nine years old without arousing suspicion, to belong to men’s clubs and women’s clubs (whereof there were plenty to choose from) without being accused of hate or bigotry; and so forth."

If you would like this kind of culture to return, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation reminds us of how it came to be. It was built by a people who largely understood God as our gracious Creator. It was built by a people whose “conscience was held captive to the Word of God.”

Sue and Settle: Why Regulation by Litigation Must Stop

Last Monday, October 16, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to put an end to “Sue and Settle” practices which undermine the regulatory process put in place by the US Congress.

“Sue and Settle” is a little known, but disproportionally impactive practice that happens in federal bureaucracies. It skirts the normal regulatory process and shuts out the voices of millions of people with legitimate interests and useful contributions.

Since Wyoming’s economy relies so much on the energy industry and agriculture, EPA rules impact us more than a little. So, Secretary Pruitt’s announcement is welcome news for all Wyomingites. To understand its implications, we need to understand, first, how the EPA was designed to work.

The federal code that currently governs the regulatory process spells out in detail an orderly and reasonable way for citizens to have their say.

Through Congress, we, the people, have told agencies how to notify us of the proposed changes. We have told them how long they should give us to send them our comments. We dictate how seriously they must take our comments, and many other details of the process.

When any agency is making policy for more than 300 million Americans, it is a real challenge to reach a reasonable consensus on compromises needed to live together. That’s representative democracy.

But suppose some subsection of the EPA, or even its appointed secretary, wanted to skip all those rules and simply impose his will on the American people without following the law and doing the hard work of compromise and consensus.

Enter “Sue and Settle.” Here’s how it works. Some agency bureaucrat goes to have a lunch meeting with a special interest group that agrees with the regulations they want to impose. He simply tells them to file a lawsuit against the EPA. Shoot, he might even tell them exactly how to word the lawsuit.

Once the suit is filed, the lawyers of the special interest group sit down with the EPA bureaucrats, who agreed with them in the first place, and together they draw up a settlement for the lawsuit which spells out the desired regulations. They include in this settlement an accelerated timetable for implementing rules which skips over the time mandated by law.

They may even put in a clause that reimburses the environmental group for their attorney fees, or pays them directly for damages of some sort. Finally, they make it so that the regulations can’t be altered by future EPA actions, thus insulating their rule-making from future attempts to modify it.

After they have drawn all this up behind closed doors, they simply file a motion with the judge saying, “we’ve settled out of court.” The judge doesn’t have to ask if other interested parties have had their say, or have been accommodated. He doesn’t have to ask whether these regulations are the best compromise possible, or whether they express the consensus of the American people.

The judge simply declares, “by entering this consent decree the Court is only accepting the parties’ agreement to settle, not adjudicating whether EPA’s legal position is correct.” And violá, the final rule is written without all that cumbersome time and trouble to work out the details with other Americans who also have legitimate claims and valuable viewpoints.

If you don’t like the final rule, you have to sue the EPA. The lengthy process of arguing through the details happened while you were excluded from the table. Now your only remedy is to go back to the same court that rubber-stamped the settlement. Not a very promising option.

If you sometimes feel that your voice is no longer heard in Washington, there’s a good chance that it’s because of some “Sue and Settle” deal that you never heard about. In fact, the scenario I just described, is not merely hypothetical. It is roughly what happened in the EPA’s Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Rule.

The MACT rule bypassed the most significant controls which congress has placed on the EPA because it was the result of a lawsuit known as American Nurses Association v. Jackson. It went into effect in December of 2011 at an estimated cost of $9.6 billion per year.

Is the MACT Rule the best and most efficient way of achieving environmental quality while balancing our interests in jobs, energy, national security and a thousand other considerations? Who knows? We skipped all that part.

A February 25, 2014 document from the Heritage Foundation gives a sampling of ten rule changes that happened through “Sue and Settle.” Together they cost upwards of $125 billion dollars annually, and they’re only the tip of the iceberg.

The negative effects of “Sue and Settle” practices are much more than economic. There are several negative consequences which should concern all citizens no matter who is in power.

First, these practices put special interest groups in the driver’s seat. They undermine presidential control of the executive branch of government and empower activists and unelected appointees to set government priorities.

When unaccountable bureaucrats are colluding with courts and special interest groups, they are not working with you. That means your vote counts for less and less. It’s no wonder that a large segment of voters feel powerless and angry in the face of an unresponsive government.

Second, when rulemaking is rushed, laws which require public notice and a fair opportunity to comment are bypassed. This doesn’t streamline the process of taking every factor into account. It simply excludes the valuable wisdom and expertise of the people who are most knowledgeable about the day-to-day realities of the issue.

As a result, agency regulations fall prey to the most stupid and easily foreseen problems. The Soviet Politburo added arrogance to ignorance and caused unnecessary shortages and hardships throughout the USSR. Our system is designed to avoid that. Ivy-league lawyers negotiating a settlement behind closed doors simply do not have the detailed knowledge and experience necessary to avoid mistakes.

Third, when negotiations are bypassing the legal requirements, it is impossible for the people being regulated to know the rules well enough to comply. This is what happened in our own state. As the MACT rules were going into effect in early 2012, the industry leaders themselves had a whale of a time just finding anybody who knew the rules.

Fourth, when the power to make regulations is taken from the executive agency and transferred to a judge, the flexibility of that agency to respond to ever-changing realities is severely hampered.

Legally, for the EPA, or any agency, to change their policy, all they need to do is to adopt a new policy. But when the judicial branch is involved through “Sue and Settle” policy is frozen in place. Suddenly, the executive branch is barred from changing its own policy by an unelected judge. The separation of the branches is compromised.

Scott Pruitt’s move to end regulation by litigation at the EPA is a commendable goal. Let us hope that other agencies make the same commitment. As citizens in a representative democracy, we should insist on our rights to have a seat at the table. Bureaucrats in collusion with special interest groups are a threat to all Americans.

A Breath of Sanity in a Chaotic Week

There is a lot to talk about this week in our wide, wacky world.

For one thing, there is the scandal of Harvey Weinstein’s long-time and widely-known sexual assaults on women. It doesn’t reveal Hollywood’s objectification and sexualization of women – we already knew that. It does, however, shatter the myth that you can make millions of dollars exploiting of women onscreen while still respecting them in person.


Also in the news is Wednesday’s announcement that the Boy Scouts will admit girls. But this, too, is nothing new. The Boy Scouts began admitting girls on January 30, 2017, when they announced that girls who wished to be thought of as boys could join. Wednesday’s announcement only drops the requirement that they first declare their desire to be thought of as boys.

But amid all this mayhem, there was some sanity that deserves our attention. On October 6, 2017 the Justice Department issued a memorandum titled “Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty.” This memo was released almost five months to the day after the executive order that mandated it.

Since I wrote about that order here (“Executive Order falls short,” Uinta County Herald, May 9, 2017), and was critical of its weakness, I think it only fair to eat my words in public. My concerns centered around the fact that strong language defending the Constitution and the federal laws supporting it had been stripped out of an earlier draft and reassigned to the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and Health and Human Services.

Now that some results of that move have been released, I can see that President Trump was acting on good advice. There is no way he could have been as thorough as the Attorney General’s guidelines. He would have been mercilessly criticized while the Department of Justice would have been scrambling to defend his words.

Instead, the Department of Justice has taken the necessary time and care to produce a document of sound constitutional principles and careful examination of the applicable federal laws. While the usual suspects were quick to condemn the memorandum, their criticisms merely parrot tired talking points, but cannot claim to cite either constitutional language, or federal statute.

The memorandum begins by quoting James Madison, the main author of the Constitution. Two years before penning the Constitution, he laid down our country’s foundation for religious liberty in “Memorial and Remonstrance.”

“The free exercise of religion ‘is in its nature an unalienable right’ because the duty owed to one’s
Creator ‘is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.’”

On this we should all agree: You did not create yourself, neither did the government make you. But whoever made both you and the government was prior to government, and has a more fundamental claim on your loyalty than the government itself. That’s why this right is “unalienable.” Government cannot take from you what government did not give you in the first place.

From this foundation, the memorandum articulates nine principles from the First Amendment of the Constitution. I wish there were room to print them all, but here are a few of the most important points.

First, free exercise “includes the right to act or abstain from action.” It is not only the right to believe, or the right to worship. It is the right to order your concrete, physical life in the public square according to the demands of God as you understand them.

Beginning with a 2009 speech from then Secretary of State Clinton, there has been an attempt to reinterpret the First Amendment to cover only the “freedom to worship.” This was a sleight of hand that had no grounding in the Constitution. The Justice Department has weighed it against the words of the First Amendment and plainly rejected it.

Second, your freedom to act is not limited to the privacy of your own home. It also protects you in the public square. If you want to work with others by incorporating yourselves into organizations, the government cannot deny free exercise to you. So, free exercise is for “religious denominations, schools, private associations, and even businesses.”

As a result, American citizens don’t give up their religious freedoms when they open their doors to the public – whether as a school or business. Nor do they have to stop practicing certain aspects of their religion to be appointed to government office, or participate in a government program.

This also means that the government may not make policies which penalize businesses for following religious practices, nor can it disqualify people or organizations from government benefits like welfare, or school lunches just because of their religious practices.

One of the most important principles is, “8. Government may not officially disfavor particular religious groups. Together, the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause prohibit government from officially preferring one religious group to another.” This is called the “principle of denominational neutrality.”

It is undeniable that our culture wars have revealed a gaping chasm between old mainline denominations which have modified beliefs with the cultural shifts, and conservative Evangelicals who have not. Moreover, this same divide can be seen within Catholicism and worldwide Anglicanism on issues of sexuality and the sanctity of human life. These are thoroughly denominational differences. As such, the government is not permitted to favor one side or the other.

In recent years, policies, statutes and city ordinances have been written to penalize some of these denominations while rewarding others. Laramie’s “discrimination ordinance” is a case in point. It threatens Evangelical congregations and schools with fines and jail for maintaining religious practices which all denominations held unanimously only a few years ago.

We have also seen in recent confirmation hearings in the Senate that there is a move to ban certain religious denominations from public office. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin and Al Franken want to keep an “orthodox Catholic,” Amy Barrett, out of the federal judiciary, but would be pleased to have her if she were a catholic more like Dick Durbin or Nancy Pelosi.

Bernie Sanders wants to keep a conservative Evangelical out of the Office of Management and Budget, but would be happy to confirm someone who didn’t believe the Bible was inerrant. Here in Wyoming, the Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics has no problems with judges of many denominations expressing their religious views, but when Judge Neely of the Lutheran Church expressed hers, she was removed from her judgeship.

All of this is called out as unconstitutional by the Department of Justice. While this memorandum cannot stop the unconstitutional actions of these senators, it has the force of law to stop such injustices from continuing in hundreds of Washington bureaucracies.

These are only a few of the 20 constitutional principles that the memorandum spells out. It goes on to unpack the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Finally, it commends “The Clinton Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace.”

In short, the Justice Department has done an excellent job of summarizing the actual Constitutional and bi-partisan content of our federal protections of religious liberty. I hope that you will be able to look up the document and read all of it. It is a breath of fresh air for all Americans.

The Federalist: Stephen Paddock Exemplifies The Dangers Of Weaponizing Human Minds

 

 

While we have a moment of unity in our feelings of disgust and judgment upon the Las Vegas murderer, let’s engage our minds to make that common ground last.

“It was an act of pure evil,” President Trump described the murderous attack in Las Vegas. Nobody can disagree. There is no nuanced explanation for it. It is repulsive even to suggest that Stephen Paddock had good intentions for what he did.

Labeling it as “pure evil” needs no explanation, but it does merit comment. We are awash in excuses and explanations that make good and evil into matters of personal preference. Amid such moral relativism, these words crackle with clarity.

 Continue reading on the Federalist.

 

Pure Evil and the Value of Human Life

“It was an act of pure evil.” With these words President Trump described Sunday’s attack in Las Vegas. Nobody can disagree. There is no nuanced explanation for this murderous act. It is repulsive even to suggest that Stephen Paddock had good intentions for what he did.

Labeling it as “pure evil” needs no explanation, but it does merit comment. We are awash in excuses and explanations which make good and evil into matters of personal preference. Amid such moral relativism, these words crackle with clarity.

Las Vegas has blown away the smokescreen. We are utterly united that the murder of 58 people and the wounding 527 others is evil. Even to ask the question, “why?” sounds surreal and out of place. But we must ask it.

Part of the climate of relativism is that we make moral judgments with our guts and feelings and leave our minds out of the picture. But feelings and moods can change with the wind.

Consider how often in history horrific evils have come to be accepted as mainstream. Be it genocide or slavery, feelings can always change. But clear, reason-based judgments remain true no matter how much our feelings become conditioned to evil.

So, while we have a moment of unity in our feelings of disgust and judgment upon the murderer, let’s engage our minds to make that common ground last.

What makes the Las Vegas massacre evil is the killing of human beings. We would not be having this national conversation if Stephen Paddock had sprayed death into a nest of hornets. Even if he had poached 58 deer, it would be a weird curiosity, but not a national tragedy.  We are in shock and horror because he killed 58 human beings.

Human life is more precious than any other life. Yet Stephen Paddock hated it with a passion. Months of thought and research, thousands of dollars, and weeks of preparation were focused not on destruction in general, not even on the destruction of life in general, but on the destruction of human life.

Moreover, it wasn’t just “others” that he hated. He seemed to hate his own life just as much as his victims. It could not have been personal animosity toward his victims, something else drove him to kill. Could it be purely that they were human beings like himself?

Wayne Newton, Mr. Las Vegas, said in an interview on Tuesday, “I think that in his own mind, by committing suicide he might have escaped earth justice, and the justice of the people.” Whether self-inflicted suicide, or suicide by cop, it’s a good bet that Paddock believed a bullet in the brain would exempt him from any consequences of his evil actions.

Hindus believe in a Karma that carries on after death. Jews, Muslims, Christians and others believe that a final judgment will determine your eternal status. Paddock was betting the house that everyone is wrong.

Whatever was on his mind, right now, unseen by us, he is learning whether he held a royal flush, or was merely bluffing. Wayne Newton spoke for most when he said, “I know there’s a seat waiting for him in hell. So, he’ll suffer a long time.”

Verily, Stephen Paddock’s eternal fate hangs on the question of whether human beings have an eternal existence, or merely die like animals. But the fate of those 58 murdered and 527 wounded hung on the question of what Paddock believed about eternity. That is simply the fact of the matter.

Imagine a group of 59 people all tied together along a rope, and walking around near a cliff edge. What happens if one of them steps off the cliff will happen regardless of what he believes. Gravity will do its work whether he believes in it or not. But the entire group will be adversely affected by one person who doesn’t believe in gravity.

Your own fate is a reality that you cannot change. But what you do to those around you depends entirely on what you believe about that reality. That’s what happened in Las Vegas. It was an extreme example, to be sure. But it clearly demonstrates the relationship between any person’s view of ultimate reality and the fate of those around him.

On account of this, no amount of laws in the world can infallibly protect the rest of humanity from a single human being who holds antihuman views. Once a human mind becomes “weaponized,” no one is safe.

Human beings are by nature free to follow their beliefs. We have the capacity to think, to invent, to create, and to use the resources around us for incredibly great good. But with that freedom and ability comes an equal ability to do incredibly great evil.

The two come as a matched pair, and they can’t be uncoupled. You cannot keep a man from doing evil without affecting his ability to do good. Put a robber in jail, and he no longer can work to serve you. Shackles intended to limit people’s capacity to do evil, will in equal proportion limit people’s capacity to do good.

In addition to this consideration, we also need to think about what kind of shackles are effective for what kind of people. If someone’s aim is to get money, we can limit his ability to do evil by fining him. If his aim is physical freedom, we can restrict him by the threat of jail. But what if his ultimate goal is death? For such a person laws, fines, punishment, and incarceration have no power whatsoever. That was the case of Stephen Paddock.

How many more are there like him? More to the point, are we, as a society weaponizing other minds? By teaching people to believe that human life is nothing but a vapor, with no value and no meaning we contribute to our own demise. All the security agencies in the world cannot guarantee to protect us from someone acting on that belief.

It is time for us to remember this reality. Societies are not made safe and secure by abandoning any communal search for eternal truth while forever ratcheting up restrictions on individual freedom. The safest and most peaceful societies foster a common respect and love for human life while leaving as much freedom as possible for human ingenuity and energy to act on that love.

Is human life meaningless or not? There is no avoiding this question. To say, “I don’t know,” is to say, “it means so little to me that I can’t even take a stand.” It is an attitude which contributes to the making of ever more Stephen Paddocks. It is an act of pure evil, and it’s time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Further Reading:
The Federalist: Stephen Paddock Exemplifies the Dangers of Weaponizing Human Minds

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