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Seeing the threat to his royalties, Eugene Peterson finesses things—making things worse...

Now the Washington Post reports Eugene Peterson is having second thoughts about whether or not he himself (at 84 and retired from the pastorate) would actually in the final analysis really and truly go ahead and officiate at a sodomite wedding. Tough question that one—especially when one considers the filthy lucre at stake.

Which is a lot. Of money, that is. The Post reports:

Eugene Peterson, who is best known for “The Message” Bible translation, set off a firestorm this week when he said in an interview with Religion News Service that he would be willing to conduct a same-sex marriage. In response, LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said it was prepared to stop selling Peterson’s books.

A threat to royalties can have a profound impact on a pastor.

Predictably, this financial threat to Eugene Peterson didn't produce true repentance, but only further conniving betrayals of God, His Word, and His sheep...


The public shame of Eugene Peterson...

Screen Shot 2017-07-12 at 11.35.28 AM.pngA friend just sent me this link to a recent interview Jonathan Merritt of Religious News Service did with eighty-four year old IVP and NavPress author, Regent prof, and pastor, Eugene Peterson. This particular excerpt has to do with sodomy, lesbianism, and sodomite marriage. Peterson says he's OK with them all.

My friend writes, "As one formed by Intervarsity in the late 80s/early 90s, I see one "esteemed " teacher after another have no courage."

He's speaking euphemistically. This is no mere lack of courage, but utter apostasy. In other words, this man will never enter the Kingdom of God.

One might hope the things Peterson says are the product of early stages of dementia if only they didn't perfectly reflect everything I've known of Inter-Varsity and its press for decades now. How any Christian continues to give money in support of this organization and its employees is...


Daddy Tried audiobook now available...

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Warhorn Media is pleased to announce that Tim Bayly's Daddy Tried is now available as an audiobook. If you haven't had a chance to read it for yourself, swing over to Audible.com or Amazon.com, download a copy, and have Tim read it for you.

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We're also pleased to offer a free download of the Chapter 1 audio to Baylyblog readers.

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The book is finished: check it out on CrossPolitic...

Just now (and by "now," I mean now) I finished writing The Grace of Shame. Tentatively subtitled, 7 Errors that Keep the Church from Loving Homosexuals (And What To Do About Them), the book is co-authored by son Joseph and Jurgen von Hagen. All three of us are pastors, but here's a hint: one of the three is not like the others.

Get a feel for it by going over to CrossPolitic and listening to today's podcast.

The three guys behind CrossPolitic, David Shannon, Gabriel Rench, and Toby Sumpter, were great to work with and you'll want to sign up to support their work. Tell them I sent you.

Then look for Grace of Shame's release in a few months after it's turned down by all the publishers and we rob the piggy bank to get it printed and released.

If you want to help with that, please give me a shout.


Book giveaway...

Warhorn Media is currently running a promotion giving away 100 copies of Daddy Tried. This is a great chance to win a free copy. Even if you've already got one, I'm sure you can think of someone who could use a copy.

There are only a few days left in the promotion, so go ahead and click through and sign up (and make sure you use all three entries to increase your chances of winning and help spread the word.)

Enter to win

 


Suffering for our sins...

Native Americans attacked Fort Casco (Maine) in May of 1690. Along with her children, Hannah Swarton was taken captive. Her husband had been killed when the fort was taken and her eldest son was killed several months later. Early in her captivity, Hannah was separated from her three remaining children.

Over the course of the following year, Hannah traveled with her Indian captors. Poorly clothed, often freezing, and just as often famished, she learned to eat foods she was not accustomed to. Once, there was nothing to eat but a moose bladder which...


A tribute to my mother-in-law, Margaret Louise Taylor, on her one-hundredth birthday...

Note: Three days ago was the one-hundredth birthday of my dear mother-in-law, Margaret Louise Taylor. This past weekend, Mary Lee and I gathered with Mary Lee's nine siblings and their spouses, as well as Mom's brother-in-law and his wife, Lyman and J. Mae Taylor, to celebrate this wonderful occasion.1 

It would be hard to overstate the blessing Mom Taylor has been to all of us for many decades, now. Twenty years ago, thinking about Mom Taylor and my own mother, Mary Louise Bayly (who at the time was still living), I wrote this article as a tribute to them both. Now is a good opportunity to reproduce it as a hundredth birthday tribute to Mom. I hope it serves as a good reminder to readers of the true nature of biblical femininity, womanhood, and motherhood. Of truly sacrificial Christian faith.

* * *

Mom Taylor studied for her degree in Home Economics during the late '30s and early '40s, graduating summa cum laude from Oregon State University. After marrying her childhood sweetheart, Ken Taylor, she gave birth to ten children in fourteen years.

Engaged for most of the years when the family was young as editorial director of a religious publishing house, her husband, Ken, brought home low wages, so frugality was a necessity and the degree served this young mother and her family very well...


Quick reads...

One widow's take on hipster church plants: Working out her grief over her recent loss to cancer of her husband and the father of her daughter, a young mother calls the church to care for her and other widows in their distress. To love them and give them prayer and Jesus. She wants them to stop trying to give her sofas, videos, light shows, and coffee bars. You're not doing that stuff for me, she says. You don't want people who are poor and suffering if you're focussed on coffee smells Sunday mornings. Your church marketing plan shows you don't want me. Check it out: "Why the church doesn't need anymore coffee bars..."

Book publishing and sales: The self-publishing trend continues to leave legacy publishers behind. Meanwhile, the average book sells around 2,500 copies across its lifetime with average sales of 250 or so the first year. This reminds me Dad's satire about Evangelical parachurch evangelism he self-published back in 1964 titled The Gospel Blimp wasn't picked up by Zondervan until it had sold 40,000 copies self-published.


Alfred C. Kinsey: an introduction...

Alfred_Charles_Kinsey.jpgThe work of Alfred Charles Kinsey at Indiana University, and the affiliated Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, has had a dramatic impact on our age.

In that I grew up in Bloomington, the home of IU and the Kinsey Institute, and have lived here for a portion of my adult life, I can claim some expertise in knowing the reputation of the Institute in our small, midwestern city. In that I’m a Christian, I’ll be writing from a specifically Christian worldview in making these series of posts. The impact of the man and the Institute that bears his name has been evil. 

The author of my major source has made an attempt to be objective and at least some reviewers think he has been successful. It is the biography by James H. Jones entitled, Alfred C. Kinsey: a public/private life (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997). Jones is a historian who teaches at the University of Houston. He did his Ph.D. at IU and has written, Bad Blood: the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. He began his work on Kinsey while he was in Bloomington...


Flattery never brings reform...

...if I were to sum up my principal objections to most forms of feminism, it would be in the contention that feminism privileges dogmatic ideology over close and receptive attention to reality.  - A. Roberts, link

In Scripture, authority is symbolically masculine, as it originates with a God who stands over against us ...and who refers to himself with masculine pronouns.  - A. Roberts, link

I have some fairly far-reaching criticisms of complementarianism as most understand it. I believe that it unjustly marginalizes women within the life of the Church and society in many and various ways and tends to devalue them. I believe that women need to exercise far more prominent roles in the life and teaching of the Church, not just as a matter of permission, but as a matter of necessity.  - A. Roberts, link

We need more female spiritual directors, lay teachers, theologians, commentators, scholars, churchwardens, vestrywomen, treasurers, vergers, sacristans, elder women (different from elders), deaconesses, lay chaplains, leaders of Bible studies, missionaries, etc.  - A. Roberts, link

Justin Taylor works for Wheaton publisher Crossway. Now, just prior to their release of a book Heirs Together by UK Ph.D. Alastair Roberts, Justin got Gospel Coalition to run a piece on their blog introducing what Justin assures readers is a "big book." The GC blog post introduced by Taylor is written by Roberts and titled "How Should We Think About Watching Women Fight Women?" 

The post gives us an idea what Roberts's book will be like. He writes about "the particular subjective and objective otherness of the other sex," saying it is an "otherness that should excite wonder, love, responsibility, and care," A few sentences later he writes: "the strength and athleticism of women such as Rousey and Nunes is worthy of admiration in many respects." Then this...


Gore Vidal on Truman Capote's writing...

Gore Vidal on Truman Capote's writing:

I can't read him because I'm diabetic. 1

Funny funny. I think this is my problem with certain reformed uber-celebrities. They can't stop with the adverbs.


Stone Gate Ministries: pastoral care for sinners...

Harry Schaumburg and Brian Bunn invited a group of pastors and elders up to Port Washington, Wisconsin, this past week. Harry is the author of two classic books written to help Christians on the road of repentance for sexual sin. The books titled False Intimacy and Undefiled are an extension of the one-week Biblical intensive counselling program Harry provides...


Four rules for Christian readers...

Yesterday, a lifelong friend mentioned he'd finally taken my advice and read Luther's commentary on Galatians. My advice? I didn't remember giving him any advice to read Luther on Galatians. Who "gives advice" to anyone to read Luther on Galatians? It's like recommending to someone that he breathe air or drink water. For centuries now, everyone has said you should read Luther on Galatians, but somehow my dear brother remembers me saying it. Anyhow, I'm glad he read it.

This gets me thinking about reading, so here are four rules for Christian readers.

Rule 1: Don’t waste your time reading what living men tell you the dead men said; read the primary sources.

What are primary sources?

Back in 1977 I was taking an upper-level history course at University of Wisconsin, Madison taught by the medievalist William J. Courtenay. Titled "Medieval Intellectual and Social History," the course's texts included several volumes of Copplestone's "History of Philosophy," so it was tough sledding. It was a large lecture class, but prior to the first lecture Prof. Courtenay announced he would hold a proseminar for all grad and honor students, as well as anyone else who cared to participate. I was the "cared to participate" student who showed up...


Pre-order Tim's new book...

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce Tim Bayly's new book, Daddy Tried. This book has been several years in the making, and is unlike any other book on fatherhood you'll find. It's not a parenting guide. It's a book on the nature of fatherhood—one that draws on decades of experience as a husband, father, and pastor. It stares the sins of fathers past, present, and future squarely in the face and clears a path to overcoming them—a path that begins with faith in our heavenly Father who tells us He knows our weaknesses.

Pre-Order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Download a free sample chapter and learn more at WarhornMedia.com.

Book on table


An updated reading list on sexuality...

Here's a reading list of thirteen books on the meaning and purpose of the two sexes created by God—man and woman. It's been slightly reworked since it was last published.

1. Scripture, starting with these texts
2. Henrik Ibsen: A Doll's House
3. Paul King Jewett: Man as Male and Female
4. Stephen B. Clark: Man and Woman in Christ
5. Walter Neuer: Man and Woman in Christian Perspective
6. Steven Ozment: When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe
7. G. K. Chesterton: What's Wrong With the World or The Thing
8. Doug Wilson: Reforming Marriage
9. Bill Mouser: The Story of Sex in Scripture
10. Elisabeth Elliot: Let Me Be a Woman
11. George Eliot: Middlemarch
12. Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
13. Grudem, Knight, Piper, Poythress, etc.: Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Now then, here are thirteen explanations of why I've included each of these books and how each is helpful...


"I could hear God's beating a drum in the breezes..."

Theodore Beza carried on the work of the church and academy in Geneva after John Calvin went to be with the Lord. Only three months after Calvin’s death in 1564, Beza published the first edition of his biography of John Calvin, The Life of John Calvin. The following section of Beza’s work stood out to me. No longer do we read providence the way our Reformed fathers in the faith did. These are the same men who taught us to see God’s Word as the only infallible revelation, yet they were willing to read God’s providence through means in His creation in a manner that many of us would refuse, even rebuke. Here’s the passage I’m speaking of…

The following month, Calvin suffered an attack of gout which lasted several days. This was so severe that on the 18th, which was the day set for the examination of pastors in preparation for the Christmas communion service, they gathered in his room while he stayed in bed.

There had been a fierce gale blowing all night long and it continued to increase in fury as the day went on. The wind continued to rage all the next day, which was a Saturday, before dying down on the Sunday. In the presence of the assembled ministers, Calvin remarked on the force of the wind and uttered words which were to prove true in the days that followed. ‘I do not know what it is,’ he said, ‘but all last night, as I listened to this wind, it seemed to me as if I could hear God’s beating a drum in the breezes. I cannot get the thought out of my mind that something important is happening.’ Now, ten or twelve days later, the news reached us that the battle of Dreux had been fought on Saturday, 19 March and, whatever else one may say about it, there is no question that in that battle God rose up against the enemies of his church.

Calvin is guarded about the way he speaks of his impressions, his reading of God’s providence in the storm that raged outside his bedroom windows, but he nonetheless concludes that the fierceness of the unrelenting winds meant something. Beza goes on to say that those impressions Calvin received by his reading of the winds were confirmed...


The scandal of the Evangelical college...

Why bother continuing to warn souls against the betrayal of God by the profs and administrations of Evangelical colleges?

A quarter century ago, I bought a book that put some social science muscle behind what I had observed growing up in Wheaton and knowing Wheaton's profs, administrators, and their families firsthand. The book was Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter. Originally published in 1987, Hunter's work was based upon a careful survey of students at Evangelical colleges and seminaries, including Wheaton College, Gordon College, Westmont College, Seattle-Pacific University, Taylor University, Messiah College, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Wheaton Graduate School, and Westminster Theological Seminary.

University of Chicago Press summarized Hunters' work..


Read through the Bible...

Maybe you make new year's resolutions? Few are more important than to make a plan to read through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. You can buy a one-year Bible and that's good because you get a little bit of four things each day—some Old Testament, some New Testament, a small bit from Psalms, and a small bit from Proverbs. The McCheyne reading plan is similar. I prefer reading through the Bible because it gives you a straight-through feel for the whole special revelation of God and each day you get a strong dose of whatever book you happen to be in. This means you get a strong dose of the continuity the Holy Spirit chose including laws, genealogies, jeremiads, lamentations, Pauline defenses of pastoral authority, and apocalyptic bloodshed.

Anyhow, however you read it, read it. And if you choose to go through the Bible, always read with a pen or pencil so you can put question marks in the margin, lines under the things you find particularly helpful because they're particularly offensive to you, and themes you highlight with a letter or two in the margin. Currently, mine are "FS" for the texts helping me to see the marks of false and true shepherds, "CR" for Scriptures against cremation, "C" for every Scripture that speaks of fruitfulness of any sort, from children to apples to the righteous deeds of the saints, "F" for fatherhood, "S" for sex, and so on.

If you miss a day or two or three, don't let it keep you down. Get back on the horse and ride again.


Justice Primer; is this really a scandal?

Canon Press has pulled their recent book, Justice Primer, from their list, issuing an apology for some few sentences which were unattributed to their original authors. Doug Wilsons' co-author, Randy Booth, has acknowledged he is the guilty party, and the father-rule haters are gleeful at their success in humiliating Doug.

Yet here in the calm, solely by the grace of God, there are a couple things that need to be said about pastors and books.

Most pastors, to a greater or lesser degree, use manuscripts in the pulpit, and therefore write from 2,500 to 10,000 words each week, just for their preaching. As we write those manuscripts, we have first read and read other men's preaching and teaching, so when it comes to writing our manuscript, we pull in direct quotes from others' work and face the decision whether to cite that work in our manuscript, itself; but also, whether to cite that work in our preaching on Lord's Day. It's similar to the work of a prof lecturing. If we had a way to record profs' lectures and run them through a search site that included all copyrighted works, it's long been my conviction that a large percentage of academics' lectures would be found to contain plagiarism. But is it really that simple?

We can all see the difference between preaching and lecturing, on the one hand, and blogging and writing articles and books, on the other hand...


Book review: abortion, rape, and incest...

This is a review of Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie, editors. Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2000.

Rape and incest are two of the three exceptional cases (the third being "preserving the life of the mother") that get the camel's nose into the tent of acceptance of child murder. Speaking Out gives a voice to the mothers pregnant from the violation of rape or incest and their children conceived through these crimes, demonstrating that adding one evil to another doesn't bring about good.

The book has six chapters...