A Sound of Sheer Silence

Two stories came through the pipeline in the last couple of days that caught my attention.  The first was a piece by Ross Douthat arguing for some sort of extensive ban on pornography .  The other had to do with Shane Claiborne, one of the organizers of an anti-Trump revival in Lynchburg, Virginia , who received very strong push back due to his non-affirming stance on LGBT questions ( example here , see also Bill Lindsey here ), as well as the corresponding backlash to the backlash.  The backlash to the backlash primarily took the form of "how can you shun or criticize Claiborne and claim to be a classical liberal?," an example of which can be found here .  The link between these two stories is a discussion of classical liberalism, and so it is worthwhile talking about that for a bit. We can think about classical liberalism as having two dimensions.  The first is political--a particular area of human life will not be regulated or otherwise coerced by the stat...

Bill Lindsey has a series of posts on the recent dust-up at Princeton Theological Seminary with relation to Tim Keller.  To briefly summarize, Princeton is an old and very well-respected Seminary affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA).  PCUSA allows women to be ordained and lead congregations, and also allows LGBT folks to fully participate in the life of the church (and last year authorized same-sex weddings).  Tim Keller just stepped down as the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, a large congregation.  Redeemer is affiliated with the rival Presbyterian Church of America (PCA), which does not allow women or LGBT people to be ordained, and is much more conservative.  Keller and Redeemer have publicly endorsed the positions of the PCA along these lines ( here's a position paper  on women's ordination from Redeemer).  Princeton initially awarded a theology prize to Keller, before later revoking it.  Hence the brou...