Stones Cry Out

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#47  Beth Moore. Ceiling breaker  b.1957

Beth Moore is a Bible teacher whose books, study guides and conferences have had an enormous impact on millions of Christian women. Oh yes; men, too—but keep that to yourself. There are enough evangelical churches that believe that women cannot teach men about spiritual things that successful female Christian leaders often mask the truth about the number of men who benefit from their teaching.

Moore is perhaps the best-selling female author among evangelicals in the last generation and a symbol of women who over the last decade have begun to break into the upper echelons of evangelical influence. At the center of the strongest resistance to an egalitarian role for women in the church, the Southern Baptist Convention, Beth Moore is among the most successful and perhaps the best-selling Baptist author, and a financial boon to the denomination’s B&H Publishing Group. For the longest time, when you walked into a Lifeway (SBC) Christian Bookstore it appeared there were only two authors at work:  Beth Moore and Henry Blackaby. 

Moore committed her life to vocational Christian ministry at the age of 18, but years later, when she was volunteering as a Sunday School teacher, she realized that she needed to learn more about the Bible. She went to a biblical doctrine class that gave her a deep yearning to know the Bible, and she began sharing her expanding knowledge through a weekly Bible study class. By the mid-1990s that class had grown to 2,000 women and she was speaking at churches throughout South Texas. It was then that B&H began publishing her Bible studies, leading to a national speaking ministry.

Moore founded Living Proof Ministries in 1994 with the purpose of teaching women about God’s Word. Moore writes books based on the regular Bible studies that she conducts at the Living Proof Live conferences and at her local church, First Baptist Church, Houston, Texas. Her books include Breaking Free, Believing God, The Patriarchs. and When Godly People Do Ungodly Things. Living Proof Live conferences are conducted in every state and have been attended by more than a million women. Moore began a radio ministry called Living Proof with Beth Moore in 2004, and she has a Bible study segment on the television program “Life Today with James and Betty Robison.”

The evangelical consideration of gender roles often puts men in the forefront and one result is that any listing of evangelical leaders is predominantly male. Despite this, there is no doubt that women are the primary strength of the modern church. This is not because of the positions they hold but because they are teaching the children in the churches and at home, they dominate in sheer numbers, they are more faithful in participation (including modern missions), they are frequently the real life examples and teachers of spiritual things to their spouses, and they are the most effective hounds of heaven. At times, superior teachers such as Moore, Anne Graham Lotz, Kay Arthur, Joni Eareckson Tada, Joyce Meyer and others have risen to the top as speakers and authors within a male-dominated subculture, and although they are restricted by conservative convictions on gender roles, we all find ways to listen in.

 Criticized for teaching men, Moore responded:

 “The ministry to which God has called me is geared to women. My conference and weekly Bible studies are entirely focused upon women. The only exception to an entirely female audience is my Sunday School class. Men continue to come and sit in the back. We never sought them but did not know how to deal with them. Would Christ have thrown them out? I just didn’t know. I handed the problem over to my pastor and under his authority; he said to allow anyone to come who chooses. I have wrestled with this and the Lord finally said to me, ‘I tell you what, Beth, you worry about what I tell you to say, and I’ll worry about who listens.’ My ministry is to women. That’s where my heart is. I make no bones about it. But what if men come and sit down? Do we stop and throw them out? I really don’t know. I just placed myself under the authority of my husband, my pastor, and my God.”

Good morning.

This last weekend our N.T. class delivered homilies based on New Testament passages. I’m drawing on parts of one of the other student’s homilies for what follows.

And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things.The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. (Matthew 21:23-17)

and take quick read of of the story of Jesus encounter with St. Photina Equal to the Apostles (who is known to the Western traditions as the Samaritan woman at the well) The passage is from John 8,  ESV here. 

You can please some of the people, some of the time, but… Evidently, the city of New Haven has removed the words “in the year of our Lord” from its high school diplomas, this year (HT: First Things). From the school superintendent,

I’m surprised it took this long for someone to notice it. We certainly don’t want to offend anyone.

Well, actually, you are offending someone – me! I think what you really should say is that you don’t want to offend secularists.

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And here I thought they were communists. China is predicted, for next year, to surpass the U.S. in manufacturing output. Could there be a profit motive there?

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Who’s going where? Interactive map, from Forbes, showing the numbers of people moving to and from various counties in the U.S.

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When you outlaw guns… Over the weekend, in Chicago, 54 people were shot, with 10 of them being killed. Chicago has, since 1982, had a ban on new handgun registrations. Imagine how many people would have been shot had there been no handgun ban for almost the last 30 years. Oh no, wait – imagine how many people would have been able to defend themselves, if there had been no handgun ban at all.

As much as General Stanley McChrystal’s comments in his Rolling Stone magazine interview may accurately reflect the military’s view of Obama as Commander-in-Chief, he was wrong to make them to the news media.  He’s not the policy maker; Obama is. 

I disapproved of this sort of behavior under George W. Bush, and I want to say for the record that I disapprove of it under Barack Obama. 

That is all.

In his (always excellent) column yesterday, James Taranto noted that, earlier this month, President Obama was calling small-government conservatives hypocrites for expecting the government to lead in the Gulf oil spill issue.

In an interview with Politico, the president said: "I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending."

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

"Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much," Obama said. "Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."

Got that? If you didn’t support Obama’s effort to take over the health-care system, you’re a hypocrite if you expect him to lead in a crisis, and the oil spill is the fault of the minority party in Congress for its hypothetical opposition that hypothetically deterred Obama from taking hypothetical preventive measures.

Obama makes it clear that he has no idea at all what the Tea Partiers are all about (or he does, and feigns ignorance to make some political points).  Small government types are actually more correctly labeled "right-sized government" types.  It just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily. 

Our Constitution enumerates the powers of government, and was written with a particular role of government in mind.  Our Founding Fathers, understanding man’s fallen nature as revealed in the Bible and seeking to restrain the inevitable power grab that all governments throughout history had tended towards, tried to restrain the beast while still providing enough power to do the job it was intended to do.

And so the Tea Partiers seek to restore government to that role and restraint.  It so happens that this proper size of government is quite a bit smaller than what we have now, so "smaller government" is a good enough label for now.  And the health care takeover is just the latest and most blatant attempt to "super-size" this beast.

But comparing opposition to the health care bill with criticism of the federal government’s handling of the Gulf oil spill is like comparing apples with prime numbers.  One is not what our Constitution intended (and some are making the case that it doesn’t allow it at all), especially requiring all citizens to purchase something and penalize them if they don’t.  The other is an interstate crisis that the federal government is specifically for. 

In this case, Obama has been dithering while Louisiana tried to get booms or barrier islands to block the oil.  He didn’t use a well-tested and very effective method to clean things up early on.  He turned down offers of help from 17 countries.  He’s used this disaster to push for ethanol subsidies that have been panned by both Republicans and Democrats alike for, among other things, shrinking the food supply in poor countries.

Are those of us "small government" types hypocritical to suggest we get leadership from our President in a time of crisis?  No, we’re not, and either the President knows this but is willing to use this situation to score political points, or he’s hopelessly ignorant about his critics. 

In the meantime, we’re stuck with a community organizer in the Oval Office who won’t or can’t or doesn’t know how to lead.  BP deserves what it gets (and likely more) as the fallout from this spill continues, but President Obama is likely to be protected by his party and what supporters he still has left.  (Hey, when you’ve lost James Carville, you’ve lost a lot of the Left.)  It’s a teachable moment.  Is the President in class?

Good morning.

Thomas Sowell reviews the book "Out of Work" by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallawa, which, among other things, counters the idea that it was the depression that cause the subsequent unemployment problem.  But as Sowell notes, the historical stats say something completely different.

Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table.

Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed– and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930.

This was what happened in the market, before the federal government decided to "do something."

That "something" was government intervention.

What the government decided to do in June 1930– against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it– was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

This was the first massive federal intervention to rescue the economy, under President Herbert Hoover, who took pride in being the first President of the United States to intervene to try to get the economy out of an economic downturn.

Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits– and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started.

Oh, and there was another stock market crash, more recently, that did not result in huge unemployment.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

The very fact that we still remember the stock market crash of 1929 is remarkable, since there was a similar stock market crash in 1987 that most people have long since forgotten.

What was the difference between these two stock market crashes? The 1929 stock market crash was followed by the most catastrophic depression in American history, with as many as one-fourth of all American workers being unemployed. The 1987 stock market crash was followed by two decades of economic growth with low unemployment.

But that was only one difference. The other big difference was that the Reagan administration did not intervene in the economy after the 1987 stock market crash– despite many outcries in the media that the government should "do something."

Hat tip to Don Sensing, who has some charts and graphs to help point this out.

Good morning.

A typical reason couples live together before getting married is that, supposedly, this will allow them to find out if they are compatible and thus ensure their marriage lasts longer.  But a new study says, nope, they are less likely to stay married.

Read my lips; no new taxes on those making $250,000 or less.  Well, we may soon add to the many exceptions since that promise was made, “unless you own a home”.

The revolving door between the MSM and the Democratic Party.  Oh, that liberal media.

If the Gulf oil spill had happened on Bush’s watch, do you really think the environmental groups would be as virtually silent as they are now?  (Me neither.)

Remember how the UN climate change panel was supposed to be the result of boatloads of scientists in agreement?  Turns out the boat was a dingy.

And from the “Beware of Governments Bearing Gifts” department:

Churches and other faith-based organizations that receive government funds, beware. In an agreement that will be enforced by a federal court, government agencies in New York have agreed to monitor the Salvation Army to ensure that it doesn’t impose religion on the people its serves through its tax-funded social services.

The agreement just effects the Salvation Army’s social work in New York, but it’s more than a cautionary tale for religious groups in this era of government-backed faith-based initiatives. “With this settlement, government is watching out,” co-counsel Deborah Karpatkin of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. “It will not fund religious organizations to proselytize to recipients of government-funded social services.”

The Salvation Army’s social services are intended to be an expression of faith in God and love for fellow man, but if they are prevented from doing the former while performing the latter, they’re being hobbled.  My suggestion has always been to avoid government money at all costs.

Good morning.

1. Selling sin in Lebanon.
2. Stupid PC tricks.
3. Obama not making the grade. More here.
4. Islam, not at its best.
5. Heavy industry 130k years ago?
6. Upending theodicy.
7. Immigrant handbook … an eastern version.
8. The Holy Fool.
9. Mr Obama’s buddy. Class. Pure class. More evidence of inexperience in office here.
10. The Obama effect and the campaign trail.
11. Stupid politician tricks.
12. Etymology and the word for God.
13. I concur, that movie was great.
14. TARP tally.

Well, some of us tried to warn our fellow Americans about Obama’s lack of experience.

“Barack Obama’s incompetence, if indeed he is incompetent, results directly from a flawed political and media process that allowed such a candidate to go forward. It’s a failure of quality control. It’s an indictment of the gatekeepers and of the media in particular. They didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth and now it turns out he’s wearing dentures. It wasn’t President Obama’s fault that he aspired to a job he had no preparation for: a man’s entitled to try for as much as he can get … will you give a billion dollars, please … but only a fool would let him. And the fools in this case would do well not to ask for him to try harder. At some point the only way they can redeem themselves is to stop digging and realize that they, not he, are to blame for this fix.”

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I suppose, then, we should re-write our founding documents?

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – the trailer is out.

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From the common sense department:

Women in always-intact marriages who worship at least weekly are more likely to have had fewer lifetime sexual partners than those in other family structures who never worship.

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Good guy wins another one. Let’s see, another attempted robbery, and another store-owner dispatching the would-be robber. And, again, this one is in Chicago, which means that the individual who engaged in self-defense could face prosecution. As they say, “better to be tried by 12, than carried by 6.”