Is America Ready for a Mormon President? Should we be?

Subtitle: Mouw's backstab: the stab that keeps on stabbing!

Mitt Romney, the Mormon, Republican governor of Massachusetts, is being rumored as a possible presidential candidate. Many angles of this prospect are examined well by Terry Eastland in In 2008, Will It Be Mormon in America?

The tone of the article is generally positive, and Eastland cites supportive unnamed evangelicals, as well as named ones, the latter notably including Chuck Colson. He discusses whether or not evangelicals would support a Mormon candidate, and finds a cautiously positive response.

In that connection, he mentions alleged thawing of evangelical/Mormon relations. The premier evidence of this thawing is Richard Mouw's treacherous and dishonest cowtowing, and one could throw in Eerdmans' publication of a Mormon apologetic, all of which I discussed here and here

Here are my initial thoughts:

1. Because character, values and thought-processes make a great deal of difference in a leader (cf. Proverbs 16:10, 12; 20:8, 26; 25:4-5; 28:16; 29:4, 12; 31:8-9), it matters whether a leader is a genuine Christian or not. (NOTE: by "it matters," I mean just that. I do not mean that I would never vote for a non-Christian; see, for instance, my Why This Far-Right, Pro-Life Christian Plans to Vote for Schwarzenegger. I simply mean it factors into my thinking, judgment, and preferences.)
2. Specifically, in order still to be a Mormon today, a great deal of rationalization, avoidance of facts and reason, and self-isolation from reality has to have taken place. This is not a "plus" in one who'd seek such a vital office.
3. Specifically, Mormons are not as a rule where Biblical Christians are on the abortion issue.
4. Even more specifically, Romney was previously dead wrong on abortion, and has only recently drifted rightward, as his presidential options have become more of a discussed factor. A genuine conversion is a wonderful thing; one connected to the seeking of political office generates reasonable suspicion.
5. Romney's run against Ted Kennedy for the Senate -- if memory serves me -- was marked by Romney's scamper to the left, so as not to be so starkly contrasted with Kennedy. He did not cover himself with glory. Opportunistic weathervane, much?
6. For me to favor Romney in the primary would require a desolate field, indeed.
7. If Romney is the GOP candidate in the General election... it will mean a very difficult choice. One I hope I don't have to make.
8. The prospect of the discussions that naturally will result given a Romney candidacy suggest a mixed bag. On the one hand, it may afford opportunities for Christians to clarify the Gospel and the teaching of the Word. On the other, given the decimated and dessecated nature of the professing church, there is great reason to fear whether our public faces are up to the challenge. With "evangelical" Richard Mouw heading up a leading and respected "evangelical" seminary, and with him embracing Mormons as preachers of the real Jesus -- my fear is that evangelicals working for or acquiescing to his candidacy will be perceived as further "evangelical" embrace of Mormonism.

To re-word that last point: the press would be all over the story of how the Religious Right ("evangelicals," mostly) would respond to a Mormon candidate. If they reject him, that will be reported as further evidence of their divisiveness and general inability to play well with others. If "evangelicals" embrace him, it will be reported as evidence that all this bickering over how many Gods there are and what this Gospel thing really is was just hogwash from the beginning -- and maybe "evangelicals" are "growing" after all (i.e. losing all distinctiveness as Christians).

Neither is a happy scenario, to my mind.

Explain to me how this is not a worshipful prayer

When Roman Catholics speak candidly, they most characteristically speak of (A) praying (B) to this or that dead mortal, most notably Mary. But when a Christian challenges this practice as (excuse me, but "duh!") false worship, he is informed that it really isn't praying to; it is asking this departed brother or sister for prayer, as we do fellow-believers on earth.

With that in mind, I offer this with my own added emphases:

O Mother of Perpetual Help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners, and for this reason he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, that thou mayest help us in our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come then, to my help, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation and to thee do I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou are more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my Judge himself, because by one prayer from thee he will be appeased. But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect to call on thee and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, then, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee, O Mother of Perpetual Help.

Could anything more foreign to biblical religion be composed? Including direct contraries from Scripture, without comment, would double the size of that paragraph

James White read this to a "former Protestant" convert to Rome, fully expecting him to respond with horror and rejection. (I have had this very same experience talking to RC's about the scapular.)

The RC-apologists's response?

"I can only hope that someday you, too, will pray that prayer."

The abortion that... protects the child?

Stand to Reason offers some wonderfully helpful apologetic material; I recommend it highly.

My attention was drawn (h-t: Justin Taylor) to an article by Steve Wagner, who suggests a wise and clever response to the question, "Are you against abortion?"

He suggests the answer, “Do you mean the sort of abortion that protects the child or the sort that does violence to the child?” Be sure to read his full explanation.

This is a great example of the tongue of the wise showing how good knowledge really is (Proverbs 15:2), and at the same time tearing down the stronghold of the mighty (Proverbs 21:22).

A "gay" dad is a great dad! -- we're told

In a very sad essay that isn't supposed to be a very sad essay, seventeen-year-old Amber Snidebush tells us about "Growing Up With A Gay [sic] Dad" (hat-tip to SmithL of FreeRepublic). Amber wants to tell us that not only is it really not bad to have a homosexual father, but it's actually pretty cool and has been good for her. In fact, it's been a plus:

The best thing is that my dad can do things no fathers will ever do. He can do my make-up, and even taught me to walk in heels!

Now, how do we evaluate this? Amber evaluates her situation the way most of our society would: in terms of how she feels about it. She doesn't feel hurt by her father abandoning her mother to embrace and practice perverted and harmful desires. Instead, she feels good about it, her friends are OK with it, it's made her feel more accepted and accepting, and (very importantly, to Amber) she has never felt judged by him.

And then there's the whole make-up and high-heels thing.

Amber's way of approaching this will strike many of her readers as nothing but common sense, because this is the way we think about everything. We are not to judge others -- meaning we are not to say anything is wrong.

In fact, it is said to be wrong to say that anything is wrong.

A Christian will approach the matter differently. He knows from the start -- or should know -- that he will think differently than his culture. He knows that he is not to be pressed into conformity with his culture, but is to be transformed from within by the renewing of his mind, to conformity to the Word of God (Romans 12:2). He will ever be out of step with the majority in this fallen world (Ephesians 2:1-10; 4:17-24).

And so it is here. The Christian will not start with how Amber feels about her father's lifestyle or fathering-style. For that matter, he will not even start with how he feels about it. Rather, he will start with the Word of God. A father is a good father if he strives to do what God says a father should do. He is a bad father if he does not.

So, does God have anything to say about the responsibilities of a father? Indeed He does, far more than one essay can set forth.

But for starters, it is the role of a parent to train his children to see themselves first of all as stewards of God, responsible to Him in all they do, meant to carry out His will in the world (Genesis 1:26-28; cf. 18:19). The father must love the one true and living God above all (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), and must be so absorbed in His Word that it overflows into family life, as he talks to his children about the Word in all areas of their life together (6:6-9). He must raise his children in the faith-inspired love and practice of the Word of God (cf. Proverbs passim, especially 1:8ff.; 3:1ff.; 6:20-24; 13:24; 29:16; also Ephesians 6:4, etc.).

If he loves his child, he most certainly will "judge" him -- that is, he will teach him the difference between what God says is right and what God says is wrong, and will teach him that there are consequences for choosing to do wrong. If he fails to do this, he does not love his child at all. Rather, he hates him (Proverbs 13:24) -- because he is teaching his child that he can defy God with impunity.

With that in mind, what kind of father was Amber's father? The practices he proudly and openly embraced give us grounds to fear that he does not love God, but hates Him and wishes Him dead (Proverbs 14:2). He has denied Amber the blessing of a father who walks with integrity (Proverbs 11:7). He has exposed her to a nightmarish horde of miseries as potential consequences of his own rebellion against God (Exodus 34:7).

Worse, by his word and example he has taught her to imagine God to be irrelevant to one's thoughts or choices. He has taught her that right and wrong are relative. He has taught her that God can be ignored with impunity, and her essay shows that she has embraced this lesson and taken it to heart. Therefore, his upbringing has left with with no awareness of her state before God, nor of her need for reconciliation to God through Christ.

He has failed her in every crucial way. That she does not see this proves that very fact.

Now, very briefly, why do I dwell on this? For the purpose of picking on this poor girl, both of whose parents evidently failed to give her the most important gifts a parent can give? Absolutely not! I feel only sympathy and sorrow for Amber.

I dwell on it because we should all expect to see more and more essays like this.

The mainstream media has an agenda, part of which is to make homosexuality acceptable. If such a gut-level repulsive lifestyle is "okay," then surely anything else will soon be "okay." The mayor of San Francisco (where this essay was published) and various black-robed tyrants have forced homosexual marriage on the country, and now the mainstream media are in full damage-control mode, doing everything they can to force acceptance on American society.

Hence this essay.

And sadly American culture at large, and professing Christians in particular, show no signs of being able to think this through rationally, let alone Biblically.

Consider this my small contribution towards that end.

A Jew calls for Bible-based revival?

"David Gelernter is a senior fellow in Jewish Thought at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem" -- and in Bible Illiteracy in America he says:

America is fertile ground for Great Awakenings--mass movements in which large chunks of the population return to their religious roots. We haven't had one for awhile; we are overdue. ...The next Great Awakening will presumably be centered in the Protestant community--but will deal in friendship with America's other religious communities

I commend to you the entire essay. It's factual, fascinating, pretty much right on-target, and eyebrow-raising.

Of course, given his apparent current spiritual condition, one doesn't expect Gelernter to call for the preaching of Christ. It is this that is really needed, and it is the preaching of Christ that was at the heart of past revivals/awakenings. But Gelernter does discuss the woeful state of Bible knowledge in the general populace and in students, and he does commend the teaching and the study of the entire Bible... which would bring the same result.

He also gives a delightful overview of the history of English Bible translation, and of the role of the Bible in American history particularly.

Worth every minute to read; hat-tip to "billorites" at FreeRepublic.

UPDATE: Chuck Colson has an essay on this.

Eerdmans preaches the Mormon "Jesus"

Question: What do the following have in common?

On the one hand: great works of Biblically Christian thought such as Christianity and Liberalism, by J. Gresham Machen; Redemption Accomplished and Applied, by John Murray, and Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof.

On the other hand: a work defending Mormonism as true and Christian (A Different Jesus?: The Christ of the Latter-day Saints, by Robert L. Millett).

The answer: all are published by Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Eerdmans has long since strayed from exclusively publishing books within the sphere of Biblical orthodoxy, so this -- while gut-wrenchingly tragic and appalling -- cannot come as a totally jaw-dropping surprise. But this is, as far as I know, Eerdmans' first foray into publishing an up-front cultic apologetic.

If the sales numbers are good, it will not be the last.

Read some informative and on-target discussions by James White: A Different Jesus? Eerdmans Publishes LDS Apologetics Work; and Eerdmans Responds. It is so sad to see the Christians who destroy their credibility by praising this book, as White points out. Also check out Dustin, of Staying Current!, as he sadly (and passionately) writes Eerdmans embraces Mormonism and More on Eerdmans and embracing Mormonism. Also read Dr. Vincent Cheung, Kinchen vs Eerdmans.

The seeds for this treacherous act were surely sown in the event I mentioned over at the Biblical Christianity Message Board. Among other things Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, actually went to Salt Lake and apologized to Mormons on behalf of Christian evangelists/apologists.

So this is part of a slide some of us have noted for years. As to Fuller, I imagine that the late Harold Lindsell would be deeply saddened, but not dumbstruck; he had warned of Fuller's doctrinal defection when it was still a-borning. Slippage in larger evangelicalism has been well-documented elsewhere, including the sad but thoroughgoing work of Iain Murray.

Each of us could illustrate anecdotally, no doubt. When I was on-campus at Biola, unrepentant Roman Catholic students had achieved some prominence. In recent years, I've noticed that Christian bookstores (I'm fighting the temptation to put both words in quotation-marks) have started carrying specifically Roman Catholic religious hardware.

If the Roman Catholics are accepted as Christian brothers with a few minor doctrinal variances here and there, how could the Mormons be far behind? And so, it proves, they aren't.

I only have one original thought to offer on this: I'm guessing Fuller's enrollment must not be all they wish. I guess Eerdmans' sales must not be up to their expectations. The prospect of Mormon dollars must be very tempting. Since both institutions threw off the sufficiency and full inerrancy of the Bible as essential foundational doctrines years ago, what could possibly stand in the way?

Just an educated guess.

UPDATE: James White further details the damage caused by Richard Mouw's concessions to this fundamentally non-Christian religion, his giving occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, in Mouw Asks for Context. Fuller Seminary is one of the "unpaid bills" of Evangelicalism... whatever that is, anymore. When the indifference of evangelicals to Fuller's defection from the absolute authority of the Bible enabled it to continue its claim to the label, just this sort of a disaster was being prepared by the Enemy of the faith we profess. Now the bill comes due.

UPDATE II: And once again with the James White! He interacts with another "Mormons are Christians... just kinda different" apologist, Paul Owen, in Paul Owen Finally Lays His Cards on the Table (#1) and Paul Owen Finally Lays His Cards on the Table (#2). In the latter, he has this rather tour-de-force summary of the problem with this position:

A religion founded upon the assertion that the Christian Church is apostate and has not existed with proper authority since the second century after Christ; that teaches a plurality of Gods; that God is an exalted man; that Jesus is the first begotten spirit child of an exalted man from another planet and one of this physical being's flesh and bones wives; that teaches the most rank forms of works-salvation and Pelagianism (2 Nephi 25:23, Moroni 10:4-5); that adds wildly a-historical and heretical books to the Bible; that says Jesus Christ has not eternally been God; that says that Jesus Christ was begotten by God the Father in the flesh; that says Christ's atonement began in the Garden of Gethsemane and that there are certain grievous sins you can commit that the blood of Christ cannot atone for (your own blood must be shed to atone for these sins); that practices baptism for the dead; ---such a religion does not give Dr. Paul Owen of Montreat College [-- nor, evidently, Richard Mouw, nor Eerdmans] a problem.