This past Wednesday (25 November 2020), the Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Cuomo had imposed to combat COVID-19. The vote was 5-4. If the late Justice Ginsburg were on the bench instead of Amy Barrett, it would have gone the other way.

This is not a permanent decision. Justice Kavanaugh explains:

Importantly, the Court’s orders today are not final decisions on the merits. Instead, the Court simply grants temporary injunctive relief until the Court of Appeals in December,...

Read the series.

The Declaration of Independence: The Necessity and Priority of Rights

The Declaration of Independence attributes the rights of individuals and government to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”⁴⁷ By virtue of all humanity being created equal,⁴⁸ all equally are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”⁴⁹ These rights are integral to human existence, and their description as unalienable means they cannot be removed from the individual. The Declaration orders the...

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

In our last installment, we considered three essential lessons that we may learn from the lives of the Thanksgiving Pilgrims. Here are the final two lessons that we will consider.

Perseverance

The Pilgrims model perseverance in the midst of difficulty (Phil. 3:14).

The Pilgrims were persecuted, jailed, harassed, hunted and humiliated. They knew almost every type of danger and embarrassment. Even modern action films cannot match the stories of their harrowing escapes from danger. They were betrayed by a shipmaster in their first attempt to escape persecution in England in 1607, but that did not...

In my previous article, I introduced the importance of the Pilgrims, and shared a little bit of my own heart for my Thanksgiving, and my interest in studying and teaching on the Pilgrims.

This time, we will consider the first three of five essential lessons that we can learn from the Thanksgiving Pilgrims.

Pilgrimage

The Pilgrims vividly portray the pilgrim-like nature of the Christian life (Heb. 11:13; 1 Pet. 2:11, 12).

This is, of course, the truth for which the Pilgrims have been named, since they lived it out so completely in their spiritual lives. The Pilgrims left all they had in order to seek a place where they might worship God freely and witness for Him fruitfully. Their journeys took...

There is no question about it—Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, bar none.

The mere word warms my heart and causes my mind to click through the memories of Novembers long past. It conjures up images of family and dear friends—some now departed—gathered around a bountiful table; of special services at church and shortened weeks of school; of singing grand old hymns which we re-learn usually just once every year; and, most importantly, of giving thanks to God for bringing us safely through another season of life.

For many, many years, there was little secular, commercial connection to Thanksgiving at all—except for sales on turkey, and the occasional silly commercial message, in which those advertising a product dressed up in supposed 17^th-century garb. For the...

Reposted from a The Cripplegate.

Napoleon Bonaparte delusion is a real thing. When the diminutive Emperor of France was in the heyday of his popularity, people would dress like him and act like him, and some were even institutionalized for their delusion. But what would happen if the real Napoleon ended up in an institution with deluded people who were also claiming to be Napoleon. This is the plot of a novel by Simon Leys, called The Death of Napoleon. 

In the story, Napoleon escapes his exile on the island of Elba by switching places with a look-alike named Eugene. Napoleon leaves the island aboard a ship, disguised as the deckhand “Eugene,” while Eugene, in costume as “Napoleon,” stays behind.

The...

The current COVID pandemic has affected almost every area of life in America, including normal church activities. Most churches cancelled every meeting initially, with some opening up partially and others completely after awhile, while still others remained closed. In many cases, these decisions were made by the churches themselves, but for others, decisions were forced upon them by governmental edict. Details vary from state to state and the situation highlights the issue of religious freedom with special focus upon the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Many Christians have given more thought to religious freedom this year than perhaps ever before. What has this pandemic taught us about religious freedom in America?

Churches Are Subject to Some Government...

I wrote this article for the congregation where I serve, based on our specific context. It may not be your context!

What to think about government public health edicts and the Church regarding COVID-19? In an outburst of representative frustration, a Southern Baptist theologian recently posted the following on Twitter in response to his Governor’s new lockdown restrictions which, among other things, forbade dancing:¹