TRUTH-TELLING IN A TIME OF TRAGEDY:

Two Inaugural Addresses

by Mary K. Mohler

Peggy Noonan is right. At some point, in some moment, all of us must admit that something remarkable has happened to American culture. Mrs Noonan, a former presidential speechwriter, recalls that this moment came for her during a high school graduation in the early 1970s. A young girl walked across the stage to received her diploma. The girl was obviously pregnant. Noonan recalls that her first impulse was admiration for the girl’s grit and determination against social disapproval. “But,” recognized Noonan, “society wasn’t disapproving. It was applauding.” As she reflected, “Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, not good for us.”

A common concern now seems to emerge wherever ministers gather–ministry is stranger than it used to be. Not that ministry is more difficult, more tiring, or more demanding . . . just different–and increasingly strange.

And how will they hear without a preacher?
Romans 10:14

The Christian church has experienced a massive wave of change over the last thirty years, and the emergence of women in some pulpits is perhaps the most visible sign of that change. Why would Southern Baptists resist this trend?

What does God know, and when does He know it? This startling question lies at the heart of what may well become the hottest theological debate among evangelicals. The outcome will determine whether evangelicals remain committed to what the church has always believed about God, or veer off in favor of a more user-friendly deity.

“The greatest question of our time,” offered historian Will Durant, “is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even East versus the West; it is whether men can live without God.” That question, it now appears, will be answered in our own time.

Homosexuality is perhaps the most controversial issue of debate in American culture. Once described as “the love that dares not speak its name,” homosexuality is now discussed and debated throughout American society.

“I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life.” That blunt assessment comes from John Dominic Crossan, a leading figure in the Jesus Seminar, and one of the most influential authors on religion in post-Christian America. Thomas Sheehan, another fellow of the Seminar, put it even more directly: “Jesus, regardless of where his corpse ended up, is dead and remains dead.”