From Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on Is the Abortion Argument Changing?

But I just cannot get past one crucial, irreducible, and central issue — the moral status of those unborn lives. They are not mine to negotiate. If abortion were a matter of concern for anything less than this, I would gladly negotiate. But abortion is a matter of life and death, and how can we negotiate with death? What moral sense does it make to settle for death as “safe, legal, and rare?” How safe? How rare?

Our considerations of these questions will reveal what we really think of those millions of unborn lives. Do we consider the battle for their lives permanently lost?

Those fighting for the abolition of slavery pressed on against obstacles and set backs worse than these because, after all, these were human lives they were defending. What if they had listened to those who, after Dred Scott and the Missouri Compromise, said that the battle was “permanently” lost? What if they had been intimidated by critics accusing them of “single-issue” voting?

If every single fetus is an unborn child made in the image of God, there is no moral justification for settling for a vague hope of some reduction in the number of fetal homicides. If the abortion fight is “permanently lost,” it will be lost first among those who claim to be defenders of life — those who tell us that the argument is merely changing.

From Mark Galli’s article When Cowardice Meets Passion | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Yes, I still often find single-issue activists annoying and their arguments sometimes manipulative. But I also recognize that my reluctance to sign up often has little to do with overblown rhetoric or pushy personalities. Sometimes it can be chalked up to an unwillingness to risk all, to actually live a Jesus-life of sacrifice. I call it living a balanced life, or good stewardship of time and resources, or the pursuit of contemplative spirituality! It may be such for others. I suspect for me, it’s sometimes just cowardice.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Russell D. More’s thought-provoking post on ministers marrying unbelievers

In the New Testament, the marriages of church members are the business of the church community. Throughout the Scripture, the marriages of the members of the believing community are addressed to entire congregations (for instance, 1 Cor 7; Eph 5). At the same time, Paul tells the church at Corinth: “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside” (1 Cor 5:12-13).

That’s precisely the issue. For unbelievers the church has no right to hold a couple to their vows through church discipline. They are not, after all, members of the church. A church that isn’t able to hold a couple to their vows (through discipleship and discipline) as witnesses to the covenant made (through discipleship and discipline) has no right to solemnize these vows in the first place. What would the church do if the unbelieving non-members were to break these vows?

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The gospel minister is made of sterner stuff than what many of us are accustomed to seeing. Refusing to place your ecclesial imprimatur on a Christless marriage is among the least dangerous things a minister will ever be called to do.

The wedding ceremony is one more place where we don’t need Masters of Cermony or civil servants. We need ministers of the gospel, those with the courage to let their yes be yes and, when necessary, their no be no.

From Richard John Newhaus’ Why this Election is About the Freedom of Religion

The great problem today is not the threat that religion poses to public life, but the threat that the state, presuming to embody public life in its entirety, poses to religion. The entire order of freedom, including all the other freedoms specified in the Bill of Rights, is premised upon what Madison calls the precedent duty that is signaled and sustained by religion. When the American people can no longer publicly express and give public effect to their obligations to the Creator, it is to be feared that they will no longer acknowledge their obligations to one another—nor to the Constitution in which the obligations of freedom are enshrined. The word enshrined is used advisedly.