Review: Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, And the Spiritual Mission Of The Church By Alan D. Strange (Part 1)
By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:
The debate last year over the overture by Evangel Presbytery to the General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church in America (overture 12), which was adopted by GA, presented acutely the question of the spirituality of the church. Overture 12 asked GA to petition humbly the United States federal government and by so doing to remind the government that it is a divine institution, that holy Scripture teaches that God made humans in two sexes, male and female, and that it is biologically impossible for humans to change their sex. Overture 12 called upon the government to “renounce the sin of all medical and surgical sex change procedures in minors.”1 The assembly adopted the overture.Let me be very clear: the concerns represented by Overture 12 are entirely reasonable. Every administration after the second administration of George W. Bush has, to one degree or another, pushed the LGBTQ agenda.2 The Obama and Biden Administrations spent twelve years seeking to normalize even the most radical wings of the LGBTQ movement, and none more aggressively than the Biden Administration, which featured so-called transgender people in prominent positions in its administration. The most visible of these has been Dr. Rachel Levine (formerly Richard Levine, a pediatrician), a male who presents himself as female, who was confirmed to the position of Assistant Secretary of Health. The federal government has the power (if not the authority) to push massive social changes, and the Biden Administration has forcefully pushed the trans-agenda.
The question is not, however, whether it is advisable for young people to undergo radical surgeries, etc. It is most ill-advised, as the United Kingdom and some European nations have decided. The trans-agenda is against nature, it is against all previous standards of medical care, and it is quite frankly insane. It was not long ago that Dr. Levine would have been hospitalized as mentally ill. In our time, however, the Senate has confirmed him to a high-ranking position in the federal government. Neither is the question whether the changes are being pushed by the Biden Administration and the mass media. The evidence is all about us. Media outlets, once lambasted by the social left as “reactionary” (e.g., CBS), have taken it upon themselves to catechize Americans in the latest orthodoxy of the sexual revolutionaries. Major businesses (e.g., Target) have pushed the trans-agenda. Public school districts across the nation have become ideological battle grounds as teachers and administrators have used their position to advance the trans-agenda. There is every reason to be deeply concerned about this phase of what Carl Trueman calls “expressive individualism.”
The question remains, however, how the church as church, as an institution, should respond to great social crises such as the trans agenda or, in the nineteenth-century, man-stealing, slavery, and the Civil War. What is the mission of the church? Is the visible church authorized to speak, as the church, to these issues? If so, what are the limits of such proclamations? Is there anything to which the visible church may not speak? After all, the theologically liberal and socially left Presbyterian Church in the USA has adopted no fewer than 127 social positions.4
Part Two:
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