Perhaps passive was not the right word to use. I meant that you can do civil disobedience and it still be persecution when the civil magistrates clamp down on you.
The issue is a civil government that thinks it can do whatever the hell it wants without regard to God’s law or the truth.
Good point Ben. It’s conflict and I’m sure there are some differences being teased out on a few issues like theonomy, the mission of the church, and etc. We may disagree on these things and we may disagree about masks but we are united. We are a part of a Presbytery so we can fight the enemy together and that sometimes means fighting each other. As Mark Cox says We sweat more in training so we bleed less in battle.
The state thinks they can do whatever they want, without regard for truth? Yes. Hardly new ground there. The lack of truth underlying their decisions means they are harming people? Yep. Sort of like God warned his people the king would do. The king they would be required to honor and obey.
God’s law, though? Are you referring to the third commandment?
I know you’ve been doing the work of opposing immorality and murder, and discouraged over the years that so few churches are willing to take a public stand for God’s moral law and call the world to repentance and obedience to Jesus Christ. So when others are finally willing to take a public stand, you’re excited.
So I ask again, what moral law are these new brothers in arms standing up for? The third commandment?
If you were to come face to face with your governor today, what would your message to him be? “You know that God says requiring face masks is evil because you know that we must not misuse His name. Repent of your sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?” Absurd! Absolutely not.
Boniface was known for taking a public stand for the gospel by cutting down Thor’s Oak. Martin Luther was known for taking a public stand for the gospel by opposing the sale of “salvation.” The Sovereign King Church is known for taking a public stand for the gospel by opposing abortion. Christ Church in Cincinnati (if it’s known for anything) is known for taking a public stand for the gospel to children tempted by homosexuality and transgenderism. Christ Church in Moscow is known for taking a public stand against face masks.
If you think that’s how to proclaim the gospel to this crazy world we live in, I don’t know what to say. The only way you can believe that (as far as I can figure out), is if you believe that wearing a mask is statist idolatry and/or a violation of the third commandment.
If you start from the presupposition that facemasks are an immoral violation of God’s commands, then sure, they are being religiously persecuted.
Who are you going to call to repentance over the sin of wearing a face mask? This sad liberal woman? Your governor? If the answer is essentially nobody, then this is not a gospel issue.
That doesn’t mean you can’t let your governor know what you think. It just means you don’t do it as the church of Jesus Christ. It isn’t gospel ministry to the lost. And if he won’t listen, you don’t yell about your religious rights being violated, or the persecution you are facing because you are a Christian. That just perpetuates the old error of equating being an American with being a Christian, because everybody is facing the same things.
Dear Brother thank you for the response. I would argue not on the basis of third commandment directly but that certainly is in play because any time you break one commandment you break them all. I would argue that the civil magistrates in Moscow and other places are breaking the 9th and 8th commandments with Covid shut down orders and masks. When civil magistrates command masks and social distancing but then don’t practice it themselves they are practicing unequal scales and measurements. When they permit BLM riots but arrest Psalm singers, they have become petty tyrants protecting evil and punishing the good.
We all agreed at the beginning that it was wise to act even though it would have been better to follow the general equity of quarantine laws in the Bible. Either way we agreed that if there was warrant then shut downs would be obeyed. 6 months in and the narrative has changed more times then I can count. The rule of law is being lost because these orders are disconnected from the rule of law.
We have become a nation of hypocrites (not that we weren’t already but now it’s by order of civil government.)
You appear to know much more about what the city council members and mayor of Moscow are doing than I do. Perhaps you can share your evidence.
I only found one report of a BLM protest in Moscow in a quick search. It was from prior to the mask mandate. It was titled “Peaceful BLM Protest in Moscow, Idaho.” It was recorded and posted by a Christian man. I trust he wasn’t lying. This is a local city law. If the city has been practicing unequal weights and measures, if they have engaged in selective enforcement on the basis of viewpoint or religion, it will be interesting to see what the courts do.
I’m much more impressed by Pastor Wilson’s simple statement that the law is illegal, though he has yet to give much evidence of the fact, than I am by the tortured attempts to turn this into religious persecution. He may well be right that it’s illegal, and I’ll be interested to see how the court case turns out.
This law went in place on July 2 by order of the Mayor and hasn’t changed since then, other than to be confirmed through Oct 6 by City Council back on Aug 3. Not a shutdown. A social distancing/masking requirement. Talk about “the narrative” is a cop-out. Let’s deal with facts and details. But if you want to talk about the narrative, how about the narrative that the shutdowns are dumb and that we should do something much less economically disruptive. I remember that narrative, and now that we’re doing that, I see that the narrative has changed. I remember that the narrative was that having to wear face-masks in worship was a violation of the 3rd commandment, and now it turns out that actually we shouldn’t have to wear them anywhere because that’s a violation of the 8th and 9th commandments. I wonder how many times this narrative is going to change? Two can play at that game to make people look dumb, brother, but it doesn’t have any bearing on this discussion.
I made a case for why I wouldn’t make this church work. I made a case that this is not equivalent to the gospel work you’ve been doing. I made a case that these men are not nearly so much brothers-in-arms with you as I am. I made a case that this isn’t a gospel issue. (And all without condemning taking a position against mask mandates, or even saying civil disobedience is unjustified.)
But once again, you’ve completely ignored my case, just like you’ve constantly ignored the case I made about Pastor Wilson’s abuse (dare I say violation of the 9th commandment?) of the concept of binding consciences—rhetoric that leads directly to the destruction of souls, which is why the Apostle Paul is constantly fighting against it. But I’m supposed to let it slide because he’s “on our side.” Just like you ignored my case that it is obvious hypocrisy for Pastor Wilson to say that he is giving people freedom of conscience to wear masks in church while exclaiming that it is a violation of the third commandment to do so. Just like you ignored the case we made that he is attacking faithful elder boards and pastors all over the country, and instead you turned around and faulted us for attacking Pastor Wilson. We are men who are actually on your team, actually engaged in the fights you care most about, and more importantly, that the church is set apart to the work of, but you accuse us of not leading like Wilson.
Of course we haven’t led like Wilson. That’s because I believe that Wilson has not put his money where his mouth is. That’s because I believe that they are not suffering for the gospel. That’s because I don’t believe that what Pastor Wilson is teaching is even sane. Does nobody care today that we have a whole generation of conservative reformed Christians that have suddenly adopted an insane idea of what it means to bear God’s image so that they can feel like they are theologically justified in not submitting to the civil magistrate?
Truth is in order to goodness. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy are inseparable. And my judgment is that a number of very big claims and theological arguments from Pastor Wilson have not been true, so the outcome from them will not be good.
If you need a leader like Wilson for Coronavirus and masks, go ahead and follow him. Just remember that I’ve tried to warn you. It seems clear I’m wasting my time making actual arguments, though. This isn’t about facts. It’s about feelings. But in the meantime, I will seek to lead by keeping the church focussed on gospel fights. And I’ll continue fighting to protect the consciences of Christians. Fighting to explain a sane and unhypocritical view of authority and how it works. Fighting to keep people from believing that they can throw off the authority of their parents, teachers, elders, pastors, and civil magistrates when they are wrong or hypocritical or selfish in their leadership. Teaching them that instead there are biblical ways to respond when authorities sin. And I’ll take care to leave secondary issues like masks truly secondary.
Thank you, Joseph. Well said.
Brother Joseph,
I am not in the thick of this conversation, but wondering if you can help clarify something for me.
When I asked you about whether or not you think Joe parishioner in Moscow should be following their leaders to the Psalm sing, you wrote:
But in this last post, you’ve used language like this:
To make sure I am following correctly, are you saying that if you were Joe parishioner in Moscow, you would follow your leaders into this fight they are picking with the civil magistrate, even though you’re persuaded that they – your elders – are doing so on insane grounds?
I guess this begs the question for me: How far are we supposed to follow our elders into insanity? It seems disingenuous to me that you’d with one breath say you’d follow the Moscow men if you were a member of their church, and in another breath you’d describe them to be acting insane and for the detriment of the church.
The reason I am seeking clarity is that it seems to me that you’re conveying that church members should suppress their own discernment and conscience and defer in all things to their elders – whether they are Moscow men or Warhorn men or something in between.
My interest in this question is not to determine who is correct between the Warhorn men and the Moscow men. I’m trying to understand what you think the humble parishioners who are caught in the crossfire should do.
Thanks.
Our position has always been that this is a secondary issue (actually even less in this context), not worth dividing over, and that elders have the ability to lead in it. Starting from that you can understand why I don’t mind saying I’d probably follow them. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn’t condemn people for not showing up. Nor are they, so, freedom reigns in this. Ultimately you have two authorities pitting their authority against each other, and it’s always sad when mom and dad fight, but it’s also common. Sometimes you just do what mom says when with her and what dad says when with him. Maybe I’d go and sing the Psalms but wear a mask. Or maybe that would be divisive and I wouldn’t. Not sure. Or maybe I’d decide that the honorable thing to do when mom and dad are fighting is to leave the room and let them fight and not let them use me.
The more insistence that this is not an area of freedom, the more problematic. The more intense the biblical justifications of that claim, the worse.
I don’t want the people in those churches to believe those doctrinal things. Similarly, many pastors don’t want my people to follow me in my amillenialism.
But to follow your elders decision about masks does not require you to agree with all their reasoning.
Hope that helps. I know it’s short.
You appear to know much more about what the city council members and mayor of Moscow are doing than I do. Perhaps you can share your evidence.
Apparently the mayor and some of city council (which voted unanimously to extend the mask wearing) attended a wedding with a ton of people where there was no social distancing nor mask wearing. I believe the mayor officiated it as well?
At a private residence. The law applies when in public.
These things matter.
And by the way, I hadn’t heard or read anything about that, but I tracked down the original source (as far as I can tell) on FB in about 2 minutes. That’s what the source said. And the source was not defending them but attacking them. They still stated clearly that it was a private residence.
I also found out some of the details of Coronavirus in their county and that the city council supposedly just voted to extend it to January. I found no mention of that on the official government pages when I looked up the law and it’s timeframe.
I think the view that Moscow/apologia crowd takes is very Puritan/Kuyperian/Rushdoony in regards to Gods law in our day. This seems to go hand in hand with postmillenialism and civic engagement in general. I know that many premil/amil view the law of God in a different light and so I think some of the disagreements at the surface are coming from the divergence at bottom. The reconstructionist crowd probably does see this as religious persecution because their religion tells them to defy tyrants, or to at least obey the magristrate that is most aligning with Gods law.
For many people who have not been exposed to this wave of ‘new Puritanism’, these acts can seem needlessly stiff, but I think the groups may just be talking past one another. I think at bottom they both have a great love for each other and only want what they each think is best in the end.
To that end, I have greatly benefitted from both ministries and plan to do so in the future. God bless all involved.
I think you’re right.
I’ve had a lot of discussions with my wife about all this, and the point we end up spending the most time discussing has to do with the implications of a post-mil and/or reconstructionist eschatology.
I’m so over people arguing that eschatology doesn’t have practical implications. It has very practical implications.
Civic engagement is important, because the church has a responsibility to teach the civil magistrate God’s law. How can we love our magistrate neighbor and not teach him to fear God in his judgments? It has to be a question how we engage, not whether.
Going back to John Knox… I have to guess that Knox’s regular engagement with the civil magistrate in his day would today get him labeled a postmillenial. He was certainly a reconstructionist, wasn’t he - working to get not only the church but Scotland’s civil laws back in harmony with the Scriptures? Thomas Randolph, England’s ambassador to Scotland, got so sick of Knox’s petitions to and rebukes of the Scottish queen regent. Multiple of Randolph’s letters to William Cecil, England’s Secretary of State regarding Knox’s doings seem to carry an attitude of “Here he goes again!” Civic engagement out the ears.
Knox engaged his rulers directly and appealed for freedom to have Scotland worship the Lord according to the Scriptures; he sometimes said no to his rulers on behalf of the “lords of the congregation,” declaring to his rulers how the people were not able in good conscience to follow a certain command because it commanded something God forbids or forbade something God commands (though even here they submitted to being forbidden to have public protestant worship services, meeting in private until the queen regent listened to their appeals).
Bringing it back to Christ Church Moscow, I can’t think of an instance where Knox disobeyed publicly in a way calculated to ensure that it was bad press if the ruler put the smack down. Why not show up in masks, demonstrating obedience while appealing for the end of the mask orders? Longsufferingly, over the course of months or years, with continued obedience and continued appeals? This is Knox’s record, and it bore such glorious fruit in Scotland for the gospel.
How to engage the civil magistrate? Let’s go Knox’s way.
Have the exact same protest. Go out of your way to all wear masks and social distance. Then, if/when the authorities arrest you, their hypocrisy is seen and the religous persecution is abundantly clear to all.
2 quick points:
That being said, I think I’m done for this discussion. Many words have been said and I’m sure we could go on forever. God bless and love to all the brothers.
Very, helpful, Joseph
When all is said and done (and people have left the debate), I’m thinking everything can be summed up with this: wearing a mask is not idolatry and getting arrested for not wearing one in front of the courthouse is not religious persecution. Not a single argument has left me with any reason to remove these clear truths from my noggin.
Reconstruction and postmillennialism may be the excuses we trot out in order to try to provide some covering for our dear brothers who are making such claims, but the claims themselves are, on the face of it, untrue. If wearing a mask were really and truly idolatry, a violation of the Third (and other) commandments, and who knows how many other degrees and kinds of ungodly, then maybe getting busted for taking masks off in front of a courthouse would, in fact, rise to the level of religious persecution. But the major premise being wrong, we need not try to rescue any of the minor ones.
The vast majority of reconstructionists and postmillennialists alive and breathing here in North America today, not to mention the overwhelming majority of modern-day Puritans, make no such claims, and think them ridiculous. We have no objection to some of our fellow Puritans and postmillennialists demanding an end to the mask regulations, and no problem with their protesting them and getting arrested for it, just so long as they don’t continue to claim masks are idolatry and their wearing them to get a haircut while taking them off in front of the courthouse—and getting busted for it—constitutes religious persecution.
Sure, we’re all trying to parse our relationships of love for souls making such claims, but truth trumps relationships. Even very close and loving relationships. Love,
I agree with this, in principle. And that’s the important thing, that we agree on principles.
When it comes to the political/social/public policy questions of what to do about the virus, I suspect I have quite a few substantive differences with Warhorn men. Actually I know I have substantive differences with you men on those issues. But those are political questions and, for our purposes here, they are not important and I don’t want to discuss them. I wish you would agree more with me, but I’ll get over it.
Mr. Tesseract,
This comment really needs to be shouted from rooftops. The differences here are real, principled differences.
The views of the Postmil Puritan Recon crowd are influential today at the popular level. And many Christians who are outside the Reformed world have imbibed a very particular American Christian patriotism turned political theology that celebrates defying tyrants. This is everywhere in evangelical circles. If you have ever been involved in the pro life movement at any level as an evangelical, you know what I’m talking about. You know who Peter Marshall is, and Judge Roy Moore, and Randall Terry, and Matt Trewhella, and on and on.
The differences in this debate are deep, principled differences that will not be solved with quick blog posts.