Moore to the Point
By Russell D. Moore. Russell D. Moore serves as the teaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. In addition, Dr. Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find sermons and other resources to help Christians engage the culture from a biblical worldview at www.russellmoore.com.

Mr. Hefner’s Fertility Clinic

— Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 —

I must admit that I had never heard of Cindy Margolis until I read the Associated Press wire this afternoon. But I must be one of very few, since Guinness Book of World Records has dubbed Mrs. Margolis “Queen of the Internet” because of how many times her “girl next door” pictures are downloaded from the Internet. And now, at the age of forty, Margolis tells the the Associated Press she’s ready to go to the next level: a nude photo layout in Playboy magazine.

But it is all for the children.

Margolis assures us she never wanted to pose nude before “because my mom would kill me, and I thought it was more mysterious keeping my clothes on.” This year, however, things have changed.

Love, Sex, and Parenting…at Halloween

— Monday, October 30th, 2006 —

As Linus Van Pelt waits for the Great Pumpkin (if you don’t know what I’m talking about; good for you. Your parents more closely monitored television intake than did mine), two current articles seek to point out what Halloween reveals about contemporary attitudes toward sex and parenting.

The Los Angeles Times features the lament of a busy Mom who worries that the elaborate costumes of her neighbors’ children just reminds her how inadequate she is as a parent. Brett Paesel, author of Mommies Who Drink: Sex, Drugs, and Other Distant Memories of an Ordinary Mom (On second thought, never mind the television. My Mom was just fine), writes this:

I suggested that my 6-year-old wear a shirt and a tie and go as a politician, but he wants to be a Komodo dragon. I told my 3-year-old that I could paint bruises on his arms and legs and he could go as a kid who falls down a lot. But he wants to be a red cat because a friend of ours works at the REDCAT Theater downtown, and he’s been obsessed with the image ever since he heard of it. I’m figuring that we’ll do red sweats and a few whiskers drawn on with a lip liner. The Komodo dragon is going to require some re-imagining of last year’s T. rex costume.

Why Isn’t Rick Santorum on the Cover of Sojourners Magazine?

— Monday, October 30th, 2006 —

New York Times columnist David Brooks looks this morning at a United States senator who has been, Brooks writes, at the helm of virtually every major anti-poverty initiative this decade, from job training to fair housing for people with AIDS to Third World debt relief. The senator has also, Brooks says, been an advocate of global human rights, even winning the praise of the ultra-hip Bono. The senator is not political rock-star Barack Obama. He is Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) who is, it seems, destined to lose his Senate seat in next week’s election.

What is interesting is not that Brooks, an ideological kaleidoscope of “pro-choice” urban libertarianism and hawkish neo-conservatism and “National Greatness” corporatism, should praise the conservative senator. What is interesting is the reason Brooks gives for why most Americans won’t join him in their recognition of Santorum’s anti-poverty work.

He’s pro-life. And vocally so.

LEO Looks at Southern Seminary

— Sunday, October 29th, 2006 —

The LEO is the left-wing alternative weekly newspaper here in Louisville, Kentucky. The most recent issue is devoted to Election 2006, an election the LEO editors hope will result in “progressive” victories in metro Louisville, especially in the case of the newspaper’s former publisher who is running for United States Congress. I found the predictable political coverage to be much less interesting, however, than the way the newspaper views the two most significant evangelical presences in the city: The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Southeast Christian Church.

Commentator Michael Lindenberger asserts the essentially liberal character of Louisville, but then notes:

“I can hear some readers’ questions now: If Louisville is so liberal, then why is it home to such conservative bulwarks as Southeast Christian Church and the Rev. Albert Mohler, one of the intellectual godfathers of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Unitarian Revivalism: An Evangelism Explosion?

— Sunday, October 29th, 2006 —

The old joke asks what you get when you cross a Unitarian-Universalist with a Jehovah’s Witness. The answer, of course, is someone who goes door to door for no apparent reason. The joke is now a reality. Unitarian-Universalists have discovered personal evangelism.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the nation’s most liberal hyper-Protestant denomination is using advertising media and word-of-mouth to spread the gospel of a creedless faith in which new members may worship God, gods, a Goddess, or no god at all. One may be a Buddhist Unitarian, a Hindu Unitarian, an atheist Unitarian, a polyamorous Unitarian, even a Wiccan or neo-pagan Unitarian.

The Times reports that the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) seeks to borrow “outreach techniques of evangelicals” in order to reach those seeking to “escape” evangelical Christianity and orthodox Catholicism. This includes an upcoming Unitarian revival meeting “in the tradition of the old-time tent meetings.” No, I am not making this up.

And We’re Pro-Free Speech Too, So Shut Up

— Saturday, October 28th, 2006 —

A pro-life group of demonstrators apparently caused a ruckus at the liberal University of Washington campus in Seattle this week. Not all Christians will agree with the group’s tactics and few will be surprised at the venom with which the anti-abortion placards were greeted by the abortion rights majority on the campus.

Village Voice Virginity

— Saturday, October 21st, 2006 —

The call to sexual purity is examined in, of all places, the culturally and politically leftist Village Voice. Columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel looks at current expressions of sexual chastity, which she warns her readers not to view, necessarilly, as freakish.

The article notes the forthcoming book on the subject by Dawn Eden, along with modesty writings by Wendy Shalit and a Jane magazine blogger who allows reader input (including from her father) about the man for whom she’s looking, to whom she plans to lose her virginity when she finds him.

The Village Voice doesn’t see chastity as freakish, but only because it is one more sexual lifestyle choice.

Are Evangelicals Sinking the GOP?

— Friday, October 20th, 2006 —

Today’s New York Times features a front-page, above-the-fold story on fissures within the conservative wings of the Republican Party, leading up to next month’s midterm elections. The question is, why are President Bush and his party so unpopular with the American people?

Neoconservatives such as the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol argue that it is because the Administration is not hawkish enough (!) on foreign policy. Budget balancers such as Grover Norquist argue that deficit spending, along with Iraq and Katrina, are the root issue. Still others, such as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, argues the problem is religious voters.

Armey argues that economic conservatism, not social conservatism, is the answer to what ails the GOP. In so doing, he calls James Dobson and Focus on the Family a “gang of thugs” and “really nasty bullies.”

Does America Hate Women?

— Monday, October 16th, 2006 —

Bob Herbert’s op/ed column, “Why Aren’t We Shocked,” in today’s New York Times is must reading for Christians. You’ll need a hard copy of the newspaper because the column is not available online except for “TimesSelect” subscribers, all ten of them.

Herbert takes up the cultural roots behind such actions as the recent Pennsylvania gunman who separated girls from boys, killing only the girls. Herbert, correctly I think, identifies an increasingly violent misogyny in American culture fed by commercial corporatism and sexual libertarianism. He opens his column with a caption from an Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt for sale in a mall near you: “Who needs a brain when you have these?” Herbert wonders why, after ten years since the death of Jon-Benet Ramsey, we are still watching the sexualized images of this prepubescent child dancing around in make-up and high heels. He further points to gangsta rap depictions of women and commercial advertisements of products such as Clinique makeup that evoke imagery from pornographic depictions of women.

Was Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life?

— Friday, October 13th, 2006 —

Was Susan B. Anthony pro-life?

That’s the question taken up on the op/ed page of today’s New York Times. Susan Schiff points to the purchase of the estate of the early pioneer of American feminism by the pro-life group Feminists for Life. She then questions whether Anthony really fits the model of a pro-life feminst. It is questionable, she argues, whether Anthony actually wrote the essay against “child murder” quoted by pro-life groups, and these groups, she concludes, never mention that the same essay opposes legislative measures against abortion.

Schiff further contends that Anthony’s attitude was hardly pro-natalist.