My new review is up at Hollywood & the Vine. Check it out…

Review: The Stoning of Soraya M.

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Reaction from around the blogosphere:

Rev. Albert Mohler has an excellent piece up on Christianity Today about the Episcoplian descent. The Orthodox Are Finished.

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod member Professor Gene Veith also blogs about it. Episcopalians defy world Anglicanism with new pro-gay actions.

And the comments at Stand Firm say a lot about what traditional Anglicans are feeling. Episcopal vote on gay clergy widens Anglican split.

Sad times, my Christian friends. Keep in mind there are still many faithful in the Episcopalian Church and I’m sure their hearts are broken today. Keep them in your prayers.

Update: N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, weighs in too:

The Americans know this will end in schism.

Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying “we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules” is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.

Indeed, Bishop Wright. Indeed.

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The central teaching of the Christian faith is that Christ died for our sins and that there is no salvation apart from faith in Him. This often generates a heated and hostile response from the world, whether it be from unbelievers or other world religions. Typical of the “deeds not creeds” current that is rippling its way into even once orthodox denominations and congregations is this belief that Christians should somehow tone down, suppress, or compromise the the exclusive truth claim of the Christian faith stated concisely in the message of John 14:6,

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Christians these days are suffering a renewed sort of Pelagianism – a works based (or works focused) righteousness that not only becomes very “me” focused, but makes it very easy to water down the message of the gospel for fear of offense, “in the name of compromise”. They quickly jettison the exclusive claims of the faith – compromise it – with a misguided belief that they are somehow contributing to the greater good through lots of “good deed doing”. In the end, they deny the gospel message its full weight and power – they so muddy the waters that it is unclear to the unbelieving person why they even need to believe in Christ if they can just go about doing good deeds. Essentially, they are presenting an example to the non-Christian that says they can save themselves through their own works. There’s no need for Christ in that scenario.

A supreme example of this just occurred when Rick Warren spoke to the Islamic Society of North America over the weekend. You can read about it here:

Rick Warren Stresses Need for Christians to Build Bridges

The article quotes a Steve McConkey of 4WINDS ministry. While I don’t know anything about Mr. McConkey or 4WINDS, he sums it up very well:

“Rick Warren envisions coalition of faith,” McConkey wrote on his website following Warren’s appearance Saturday evening. “Where in the Bible does it say we are to combine with false religions to do good works? In James 2:14-26, faith in Christ is first and works second. In Warren’s theology, works are first and faith is second because as he does his works, he is not telling people that Christ is the only way!”

McConkey nails it. Warren is so focused on works that he does scriptural contortions with the story of Jesus eating with the tax collectors and claims that what he is doing is a parallel example of reaching out to the lost. But it is not a parallel. It is not the same thing at all. Rick Warren isn’t building bridges he’s muddying the waters of the gospel and the exclusive truth claims of the Christian faith in the presence of those who need to hear it. Mr. Warren should start reading the New Testament as a whole and taking the entirety of it into consideration. Here are the words of St. Paul who brings it home in this passage from 1 Corinthians 1:18-25:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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