Run Sheet for Monday, July 22

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“As a young man I applied to be a Rhodes Scholar twice and was turned down both times. Just think how different my life would have been if I’d been accepted. ‬I’m sure I never would have become an astronaut much less walked on the moon. Sometimes your greatest disappointments or failures lead to your greatest success. So just remember, failure is always an option.”

— BUZZ ALDRIN —

President Trump Used Lord’s Name in Vain TWICE at North Carolina Campaign Rally

  • VIDEO: (Contains Offensive Language)

TODAY’S GUEST: Hunter Baker, J.D., Ph.D. serves as dean of the college of arts and sciences, a university fellow, and associate professor of political science at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He is the author of three books:The End of Secularism, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide, and The System Has a Soul.

  • Christianity Today: Christian responses to the President
    • “…too many court prophets…”
    • Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon Responds to Christianity Today
      • “In a nice little sleight of hand Timothy refers to Trump’s “ugly and demeaning statements at people of color,” intimating that the attack is on their “color” rather than on their exaggerated critiques of America and on their own inverse racism. There’s a big difference between attacking individuals who are persons of color and attacking the color itself. Rather than clarify the distinction Timothy writes in such a way as to obscure that distinction. He refers to Trump’s “attacks on ‘them,’” identifying “them” as all people of color, which is a misrepresentation of the content of the tweet. Indeed, Timothy never even attempts an argument. He simply insinuates that the remarks are attacks on race and states that “people of color” are “suffering unjustly” (!) from Trump’s tweet. This is irresponsible journalism.”
  • CNN: The Return of Archie Bunker
    • “By bringing attention to bigotry, [Norman] Lear hoped to combat its nefarious character in an age of culture war, but the results of his intentions have been less than clear.”
  • CS Monitor: Racist Tweets? Definitions vary in “red” and “blue” America
  • Peggy Noonan: America Needs to Rediscover Tact
    • “Now the idea has taken hold that the charge of racism doesn’t derive from thoughts and actions, from what people say and do, but from who they are. If you are white that accident of birth left you racist, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve got white privilege. You are unconsciously favored, and unconsciously assign disfavor. Either way you’re guilty. No action or word can turn this around.”

NYT: Michigan Beauty Queen Ousted over ‘Offensive’ Twitter Posts

BREAKING: Trump Administration pauses enforcement of abortion restriction

  • Michael W. Smith, Kevin Jonas launch Liberty University Music Label
    • Michael W. Smith Center for Commercial Music
    • Targeting mainstream market: “What I tell my students is it doesn’t matter what kind of music you’re going to go into, God’s called you to take worship to the nations.”
    • The goal is to also establish Liberty nationally as the “focal point for the training and equipping of commercial musicians for the industry.”
    • “[Kevin Jonas] has relationships with people who can be a Christian but still be on the pop side.”
    • Building $2M recording studio

John MacArthur: “Evangelicals of our generation seem pathologically addicted to the sin of desiring the praise of men.”

Trump: Back to the Moon in 2024
Buzz Aldrin: NASA “can’t get into lunar orbit”

  • Original NASA Moon Landing videos, bought for $217.77 in 1976, sell at auction for $1.82M
    • “…more than 8,000 times what then-NASA intern Gary George paid for them in a government surplus auction in 1976.”
    • “…earliest, sharpest, and most accurate surviving video images of man’s first steps on the moon”
    • Contains “the entirety of the moon walk as seen by the Mission Control staff, from the first walk to the phone call with then-President Richard Nixon.”
    • Buyer not disclosed.

Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon: Christianity Today’s Lack of a Sense of Scale and Balance on Trump’s Tweets Continues Unabated

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Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University’s School of Christian Thought

The NeverTrumpism never ends with Christianity Today. Here my friend Timothy Dalrymple, writing only his second CT piece since becoming CT’s new President and CEO, makes his attack on Evangelical Trump voters for being “captive” to the Republican Party and not acting as persons “accountable to a higher authority.” The charge? Not calling out Trump’s “ugly and demeaning statements at people of color” (article tagged “Racism”), namely, about Radical Left Congresswomen who use “race” much like a budding arsonist shouting “Fire” in a building whether or not a fire exists (and sometimes which the budding arsonist sets). Not a good start for Timothy.

To think of all the more important things that he could have written about than a tweet, a tweet, whether in agreement with Trump’s pro-life agenda and his focus on free speech and religious liberty, court appointments, or general restraint in advancing the “LGBTQ” agenda; or in disagreement with his first-ever salute to “Gay Pride Month” last month; or in criticism of racist-sounding comments and the abuse of the race-card by the “Squad” and the Democratic-controlled media; or in warning about the dire consequences that would follow from enacting the Democrat’s “Equality Act” into law. With the leadership team of CT, it is not a case of praising Trump when he does good and criticizing him when he does bad. It is rather a case of unrelenting criticism of Trump and those who vote for him.

The aggregate of Trump’s clumsy, allegedly “racist” tweets since his 2016 campaign really don’t amount to much, though the hard-left Democratic Party screams otherwise at the top of their collective lungs to great effect. Trump’s tweets are merely an instrument in the hands of a race-baiting left-wing media that uses the ‘trumped-up’ charge of racism to accomplish hard-left policy objectives and win elections. Timothy’s article contributes to that.

If Trump’s recent comments were so racist, we might have expected him to tell an entire racial group to leave America, not a few radical leftists who cry “racist” at the drop of a hat and magnify every ill in this country beyond what it is, all for the sake of power acquisition. Where is the claim in his tweet that “people of color” are inferior to White Americans or not made in God’s image? Where is the attack on Arabs, Latinos, and Blacks whose families recently came to this country grateful for the opportunities afforded them?

In a nice little sleight of hand Timothy refers to Trump’s “ugly and demeaning statements at people of color,” intimating that the attack is on their “color” rather than on their exaggerated critiques of America and on their own inverse racism. There’s a big difference between attacking individuals who are persons of color and attacking the color itself. Rather than clarify the distinction Timothy writes in such a way as to obscure that distinction. He refers to Trump’s “attacks on ‘them,’” identifying “them” as all people of color, which is a misrepresentation of the content of the tweet. Indeed, Timothy never even attempts an argument. He simply insinuates that the remarks are attacks on race and states that “people of color” are “suffering unjustly” (!) from Trump’s tweet. This is irresponsible journalism.

The real objective here is to make it impossible to vote for Trump on the grounds that only a racist would vote for a racist. In the meantime, they can point to no policy of Trump’s that promotes a racist agenda. Not one. Compare that to Democratic ideology about abortion, LGBTQ immorality, and the severe curtailments of the freedoms of speech and religion (through mandatory speech and celebration of immorality), all of which have real policy teeth.

One can add up all of Trump’s bad tweets and they still wouldn’t be morally equivalent to a single act of dismemberment of a viable baby, or a single firing or non-hiring of a person for being critical of “gay marriage,” or a single obscene “Drag Queen Story Hour” corrupting the minds of little children. Taking a shot at Evangelical Trump voters for not piling on Trump beyond the outrageous excesses of the Left’s manipulation of his comment for political ends looks to readers like just another effort on the part of CT to kowtow to the Left’s scolding like marionette puppets.

Do you remember the CT piece that charged Evangelical voters for Obama, Hillary, or any of the current crop of extreme left-wing candidates with being irresponsible “court prophets” who are “captive to a particular Party” and not acting as though “accountable to a higher authority”? I don’t remember it either. This seems to me to be quite an imbalanced oversight on the part of the CT leadership. For these politicians were (are) not merely issuing oblique tweets. They were (are) making direct pronouncements about policies involving the promotion of baby-killing, LGBTQ immorality, and the severe curtailment of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

I do remember when the executive editor of CT, Andy Crouch, insinuated that even Christians who voted for Trump “reluctantly,” in hope of good Supreme Court appointments, were flirting with idolatry (“Speak Truth to Trump: Evangelicals, of all people, should not be silent about Donald Trump’s blatant immorality,” Oct. 10, 2016). I don’t remember any CT article saying the same about Evangelicals voting for Clinton or Obama.

I do remember when CT published articles in 2017 contending that Evangelicals who supported Republican Roy Moore over Democrat Doug Jones were “fringe evangelical[s]” who “sold their soul,” “changed their view of ethics,” worked for the destruction (not “salvation”) of Evangelicalism, were guilty of “hypocrisy,” and had “sabotage[d] … the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I don’t remember CT saying anything comparable to Evangelicals who voted for pro-abortion, pro-”LGBT,” anti-religious-liberty, pro-activist-judge Doug Jones. Indeed, in one piece the latter were praised for “saving Evangelicalism.”

Most of us would probably have a mild heart attack if CT actually wrote a piece slamming the silence of Evangelicals who voted for Democrats with being “court prophets” “captive” to the Democratic Party. Why wouldn’t they do such a thing, since Democrats consider first-order business the passing of the so-called “Equality Act,” nothing less than the greatest abridgment of speech and religious freedom in the history of the Republic. Comparing the entire collection of Trump tweets with that danger is just plain silly. It indicates a loss of any sense of scale.

It doesn’t look like the leadership at CT is protecting racial minorities, since Trump isn’t attacking an entire race. It looks like they are trying to look good in the eyes of the Left and to distinguish themselves from “unenlightened” Evangelicals in order to gain entrance at some mythical table. They appear to be straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

And to think that Timothy’s article immediately followed upon the piece by Jeff Christopherson of SBC’s North American Mission Board who made even greater cheap shots at Evangelical Trump voters (“Partisan Evangelicals and the Burning of the Mission Field,” July 15). This followed other previous NeverTrump articles, including these two by Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli: “The Heart of the Evangelical Crisis” (May 15) and “Repenting of Identity Politics” (Apr. 22).

No sense of scale and no sense of balance. That’s what it looks like to most Evangelicals outside elitist contexts who have been beaten down with the same fare from CT for four years.

Used by permission of Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. Retrieved from his personal Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/robert.a.gagnon.56/posts/10162281539655045

Run Sheet for July 19

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  • WSJ: The New Ways Your Boss is Spying on You
  • “It’s not just emails that are being tallied and analyzed. Companies are increasingly sifting through texts, Slack chats and, in some cases, recorded and transcribed phone calls on mobile devices.
  • Peggy Noonan: America Needs to Rediscover Tact
  • “Now the idea has taken hold that the charge of racism doesn’t derive from thoughts and actions, from what people say and do, but from who they are. If you are white that accident of birth left you racist, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve got white privilege. You are unconsciously favored, and unconsciously assign disfavor. Either way you’re guilty. No action or word can turn this around.”

Show Summary for July 18

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  • David Fitch joins Paul to discuss his new book, The Church of Us vs. Them: Freedom from a Faith that Feeds on Making Enemies.
    • Fitch argues that within the church, various factions are extracting their positions on issues like sexuality out of their contexts, turning those positions into a moniker or banner (ideology), and aiming those positions (ideologies) against those who disagree with them, using the Bible as a blunt instrument to win an argument.
    • “The way people are organized politically (as groups) is around antagonisms or against somebody else. All the energy, all our identity, all of our anger, meaning, gets built around being against that ‘awful, evil person, object, other.’ And it’s empty because if you took away the enemy, there would be no reason to gather anymore.”
    • “The only way that we can ‘opt-out’ is to be a people submitted to and present to His presence….There is no other alternative to living except (either) antagonism or the presence of Christ.”
    • “I still claim to be an evangelical in some kind of way, although it’s getting harder, and harder, and harder. Progressive evangelicals are leaving the church in droves. They are angry, p—ed off.”
  • Theology on Mission Podcast

Show Summary for July 17

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