If Sex Don’t Getcha the Money Will

From James Bratt

I vowed I wouldn’t make this post about how Evangelical celebrities keep tripping over the sex thing. But it’s so hard to resist. Just in the past week we have two newbies that can’t help but call up a golden oldie. First, right-wing screed-maker and putative thinker Dinesh D'Souza had to walk away from the presidency of The King’s College in midtown Manhattan after shacking up at a political hate-fest of God-and-America lovers with a woman not yet his wife, even though the woman who still is his wife had yet to be favored with divorce papers. Never mind, boys, God looketh upon the heart. Then, Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock gets all earnest over how God can bring a good thing out of evil—in this case, a cuddly little baby out of a rape.

Speaking of rape, of course, Mourdock is following in the august train of Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, who said last summer that women are endowed with a magic contraceptive thought-thingie that prevents a rapist's semen from producing any fruit in the woman he has favored with his attentions. So if she’s carrying it, she must have wanted it. Akin ought to know, science-wise and religiously too. He has a B.S. in management engineering (that’s your logistics and deliverables, like sperm and eggs and gestation and stuff) from Worcester Polytech, plus an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis where--PCA institution that it is--he might have picked up an echo or two of the he-man New Calvinism. Fortunately for the rest of us, he chose politics as his full-time ministry.

Really, it’s all too easy. So I’ll land closer to home where not sex but money has proven to be the trip-wire.

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So, what's the big deal about binders?

From Theresa Latini

I’ve been riveted to presidential politics this fall—the polling, the spin, the analysis and projections, the Facebook discussions, and not least of all, the presidential and vice-presidential debates. As the election season winds down, I resonate deeply with Jennifer Holberg’s friend who, this past Tuesday, made the decision to pray instead of watching the final Obama-Romney smack-down, I mean, debate. Like Jennifer, I’m a bit weary of it all—a signal that my most cherished values for community, respect, honesty, integrity, and justice seem so lost in this cacophony. (As an aside, Krista Tippett’s NPR series on civil discourse couldn’t have come at a better moment in time. It’s been a source of hope in the midst of an increasingly contentious, polarizing climate.)

Nevertheless, while a part of me would like to disengage and write about something more sanguine, I find myself led right to the heart of at least one dimension of the current debates: the meaning of binders.

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Friends and also strangers

From Jennifer Holberg

I know the candidate I am voting for, but I nevertheless have dutifully watched all three presidential debates.  By the last one, however, I almost didn’t bother—I was worn out. But my desire to be a well-informed citizen made me endure it.  And as an academic, I keenly believe in interacting with primary sources (here: the debates), rather than learning about them second-hand. 

Still…I’m not sure that watching made any difference, that it furthered my knowledge of issues or policies, or that it made me better able to talk with folks who support the other candidate.   

And I was struck when I looked at facebook (because, seriously, during that last debate multitasking was completely possible) and found this posting:  “Decided not to watch. Praying instead.”  I wondered if my friend has chosen the better part.

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Loyalty

From Steve Mathonnet-VanderWell

Lynn Japinga is substituting for Steve Mathonnet-VanderWell who is on sabbatical. If you are desperate for more information about the RCA’s Synod of 1969, you can check out her forthcoming book, Loyalty and Loss (or whatever title the editor chooses), early in 2013.

(In memory of the Rev. Carl Schroeder, who entered the nearer presence of God on Sept. 3, 2012)

“If that happens I’ll leave the RCA.”

I’ve heard or read that sentiment several times since the General Synod meeting in June. The RCA is once again fighting about homosexuality and the role of women. At heart, though, the debate is about biblical interpretation and the nature of the church. The threats to leave remind me of another time in the RCA’s history.

In 1969, after bruising battles over a proposed merger with the Southern Presbyterians, membership in Churches of Christ Uniting (COCU), membership in the National Council of Churches, and RCA students resisting the draft, General Synod delegates were tired, frustrated and angry with each other. On the second to the last day of Synod, after a close and contentious vote, Harold Schut, a pastor from Scotia, New York, offered a motion to the Synod. Since the RCA was so bitterly divided, he said, it should consider an orderly dissolution of the denomination. Neither side would leave; neither side would win. The whole denomination would simply cease to exist.

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October Perspectives Journal now online

The October issue of Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought is now available online.

It includes:

• Jack Van Der Slik's endorsement of Romney and Jack DuMez's endorsement of Obama
• Todd Billings on Adoption
• A review of Ross Douthat's Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Jay Green
• For All Saints Day, Saintly Heretic by Carol Westphal
• And much more

We hope you’ll check it out.

Subscribers, your hardcopy will be in the mail shortly. Wish you were a subscriber? It is simple and inexpensive!