Welcome to my weekly digest for June 3, 2022.

For new subscribers, this contains a roundup of my recent writings and podcasts, as well as links to the best articles from around the web this week. You can control what emails you get from me by visiting your account page.

More Content and Media Mentions

Trevin Wax continues his ongoing Gospel Coalition series engaging with my three worlds model. Part three and part four are up. I would disagree with Wax that the world has shifted closer to the Christian model for thinking about race. It’s rather the reverse, that much of the evangelical church has embraced the secular “woke” model of race.

Jake Meador also has an alternative take at Mere Orthodoxy. Injustice was long common throughout Christendom - no one denies that - but was typically only perceived as such due to Christian critique. Similarly, even into the modern era, most movements for justice, such as the Civil Rights Movement took place within a broadly Christian societal understanding of what justice is. Absent a positive world, that is Christian, conception of justice, these would have found little traction. But this helps me clarify that my intent for the positive world was to cover the first section of the period of decline post-1963.

Speaking of Mere Orthodoxy, I have the most recent two print editions of the MereO magazine. I can’t store them but don’t want to toss them either, so if anyone is interested in them, shoot me an email. I’ll draw a name out of a hat and mail them to one or two lucky winners.

New this week:

The SBC's "Title IX" Recommendations on Handling Abuse - I show how the SBC’s third party abuse report recommends a process for handling accusations in which to be accused is essentially to be deemed guilty and added to a privately run sex offender registry. Matthew Schmitz made similar arguments at almost the exact same time in the Wall Street Journal. After our critiques, the SBC’s abuse task force issued recommendations that raised standard for deeming accusations “credible” - a move in the right direction - but retained a basically Title IX style approach. This was originally a subscriber only post, but by popular demand I unlocked it, and it is also being adapted by another publication shortly.
At American Reformer, Josh Abbotoy also shared thoughts on the SBC abuse report, including highlighting problem areas in the SBC that the recommendations will not address.
Also, Georgetown professor Joshua Mitchell writes about the church of the new American awakening.

This upcoming Tuesday, June 7th, I have been invited to host a live podcast in front of the proverbial studio audience as part of an event in Wheaton, Illinois. I’ll be joined by Paul Vanderklay and Bethel McGrew to discuss my three worlds model and the state of the church. Paul has done a number of videos on the decline of the mainline denominations, so perhaps we’ll discuss that as well. This live broadcast will be at 2:30pm ET, and you can watch live or on replay at Youtube.

My regular podcast will return on Monday as well. You can listen to my podcast on Apple, Google, or YouTube.

Best of the Web

Harpers: Permanent Pandemic - Will COVID controls keep controlling us?

The Week: Do men read books about Mars while women prefer tales of Venus?

A district attorney in Virginia says he will refuse to enforce any laws against abortion. In light of how our leaders behave today, there’s little reason for anybody to respect the law, norms, etc. except to the extent that they have to or believe it’s prudent for reasons of self-interest.

Related is this Revolver piece: The Cowardice of Uvalde Police Is Exactly What America Asked For

NYT: What comes after the religious right?

Aaron Renn

Weekly Digest: Abuse and the SBC