The Dawn Treader

"Americans believe in everything. It's a spiritual salad bar," says Rice University sociologist Michael Lindsay. Rather than religious leaders setting the cultural agenda, today, it's Oprah Winfrey, he says.

~ USA Today, More have dropped dogma for spirituality in U.S.

Pass the bacon bits.  Americans choose their religious beliefs about the same way they move through a salad bar.  I'll take a little of this and a little of that.

For those of you keeping track

• spirituality is now cool ... but "institutionalized" religion is not cool.
• the "unchurched" are worshiping more, the "churched", worshiping less
• the majority of people (78%) believe in absolute right and wrong, but most of them rely on "practical experience and common sense" to determine that absolute right and wrong ... iow, they are relative in determining those absolutes.
• 70%, including a majority of all major Christian and non-Christian religious groups except Mormons, say "many religions can lead to eternal life."  (good for the Mormons)
• 50% say "homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society," but the most consistently traditional religious groups say society should discourage it — 76% of Jehovah's Witnesses, 68% of Mormons, 61% of Muslims and 64% of evangelicals. (shock number: a third of evangelicals think homosexuality should not be discouraged).
• Heaven is in (74% believe in it) but hell is out (59% believe in it).
• We don't necessarily believe what mom and dad did.  44% say they're no longer tied to the religious or secular upbringing of their childhood. They've changed religions or denominations, adopted a faith for the first time or abandoned any affiliation altogether.
• Catholicism is growing (thanks to immigration), but Protestantism is fading.
• The mainline Protestant denominations are bleeding numbers and fast.  The growing trend is to identify yourself as "Christian" with no denominational affiliation.
• Doctrine is definitely out.  Happy talk spirituality like Osteen and Oprah, is definitely in.

Can you please pass the croutons?

More reading :

USA Today, 'Unchurched' worshipping more, 'churched' less?
USA Today, Survey: More have dropped dogma for spirituality in U.S.
USA Today, Oprah or Osteen -- or both?
USA Today, Topography of Faith
USA Today, Survey: Americans freely change, or drop, their religions

Romans 13:1 "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God."

1 Peter 2:13-14 "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution,  whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good."

"But were the admitted abuses serious enough to warrant an armed revolution? Patriot leaders thought so, but there is a problem with why they thought so. They were troubled less by actual evils (like the tax on tea, which, ironically, had made tea cheaper in the colonies than in England). Rather, they interpreted the bumbling British actions as a conspiracy to exterminate liberty in the colonies."
~ Mark Noll, Historian, Was the Revolutionary War Justified?, Christianity Today

According to classical Christian reasoning about war, the American revolution was an unjust war argues historian Mark Noll in Christianity Today.  He has a strong proof text for his argument from Romans and 1 Peter.

Noll argues that the colonists acted preemptively based on what they perceived the intentions of parliament to be.  Noll argues that sermons from America's pulpits argued for and against armed conflict, but few did serious exegesis of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.  Both loyalists and patriots alike used scripture to add authority to their argument, but it was most often done to support an existing position than it was to reason from scripture.

We ought to be careful how we handle God's word.  We need to practice sound hermeneutics, understand the context of verses, and systematically look at the corpus of scripture to take a Biblically informed position.

For your reading pleasure, I link to a John Witherspoon sermon from 1776 called "The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men".  Witherspoon was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and the only cleric to sign the Declaration of Independence.   His sermon begins with an exhortation to answer the call of the gospel.  It ends with his own stated opinion that the American cause "is the cause of justice, of liberty, and of human nature."  He qualifies his own opinion with "If your cause is just, you may look with confidence to the Lord, and intreat him to plead it as his own."  He does not say that it is God's opinion that the colonists should take up arms, but he argues that religious liberty is only possible in a land where civil liberty exists.  Clearly he felt the need for religious liberty and preaching the gospel trumped the biblical teaching to "honor the emperor" in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.  In support of Noll's point, however, Witherspoon does not reference Romans or 1 Peter in his sermon.  I wish he had.

"The greatest match I've ever seen."
~ John McEnroe

6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7 Rafael Nadal defeats Roger Federer in the longest men's final ever played at Wimbledon (nearly 5 hours).  I agree with Mr. McEnroe.  This match had more drama and better shots in big moments than any match I have ever seen.   The quality of play was unreal.  The Rafa-Roger rivalry is putting tennis back on the map, especially since Tiger Woods has no equal (nor ever will).

Superlatives continue to pour in.

"My description alone can't capture the drama and intensity of that fifth set. If you get a chance to see a replay (which you can Monday night at 7PM on ESPN Classic), grab a beverage and a bowl of popcorn and enjoy what can be safely described as perfection. While I'm on the Ali-Frazier comparison, for those of us too young to have witnessed the halcyon days of boxing, this mere tennis game sure seemed like watching a heavyweight championship bout between Ali and Frazier in their heyday. While the state of tennis has declined steadily since the 80's, this year's Wimbledon was a tournament the likes of which haven't been seen since Borg-McEnroe in 1980. We may never see a tournament of this quality for another 25 years."

~ Bleacher Report

"The men's 2008 Wimbledon final on Sunday is already being talked about as one of the best tennis matches, if not sporting encounters, in history. "

~ BBC