Josh Benner

Tag: news

  • Colorado baker who refused to bake a same-sex wedding cake now has to defend himself for not baking a gender transition cake

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    Few people can say that they’ve had a case go to the Supreme Court. Jack Phillips can. He’s the Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same sex couple in 2012. The couple took this to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission who ruled in favor of the couple.

    According to the Supreme Court, the case addressed whether Colorado’s public accommodations law “violates the First Amendment as applied to an individual who declines to design and create custom wedding cakes for same-sex wedding celebrations that violate his sincerely held religious beliefs.”

    In a 7-2 ruling, the court ruled in favor of Phillips. (more…)

  • Is the media making truth harder to know?

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    With major news stories, does anyone else ever feel like it can be incredibly hard to even know what’s true?
     
    All of the media outlets have agenda, the spin that comes from both parties, facts getting twisted, intellectual dishonesty. I believe that truth is inherently worth knowing and pursuing and I feel like they make it so hard. I’ve read multiple articles on the border situation everyday this week. 
     
    It’s complicated. There’s a lot of context to these situations. 
     
    But it’s made so much more complicated to understand because of coverage. And I see it with stories all the time. 
     
    Every major media outlet does things that undermine their own credibility. Not saying they’re wrong on everything, but they’ve all been guilty of things to where I feel they can’t be trusted on everything. Some of the photos that are being shared aren’t even recent. Most noteworthy among them is the one of the little girl who’s crying. The one Time put on the cover. It’s not even true. She was never even separated from her mother. 
    There is no media outlet that has the credibility where they deserve to be implicitly trusted based on reputation alone.
     
    You hear different statistics and then conflicting statistics. 
     
    There are questions about what did or did not happen during the Obama administration. What Trump can or cannot do in regards to the border. 
     
    I also feel like a lot of things hinge on which side of the political aisle someone is on. Some people will just automatically assume it’s bad and wrong if Trump does it (same when Obama was president, same when George W. Bush was president). Others will generally be inclined to agree with the president if he’s in their party. But it’s shortsighted to think one president is always right or always wrong, and I feel like that biases how we interpret events in the world. 
     
    It’s so hard for there to be civility in arguments. There’s so much venom and vitriol. So much judgment and condemnation with those who respectfully disagree. So many assumptions we make about people’s character and intelligence based purely on if they agree or disagree with us. 
     
    We assume that people who disagree have their heads in the sand. 
     
    It’s hard to know what’s true! 
     
    For every statement, there is an opposite statement that someone will make where they also have a link to something that agrees with their point. 
     
    And it goes round and round. 
    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Politics in the religious arena: VP at Baptist meeting

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    Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention this morning.

    The speech hit on some political themes. Newly elected SBC president J.D. Grear later took to Twitter and said: “I know that sent a terribly mixed signal. We are grateful for civic leaders who want to speak to our Convention—but make no mistake about it, our identity is in the gospel and our unity is in the Great Commission. Commissioned missionaries, not political platforms, are what we do.”

    Some attempted to raise motions to block the speech. A Virginia pastor suggested cancelling the speech in favor of a prayer time. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in America. Over the last generation, Southern Baptists have overwhelmingly voted republican.

    But it’s also a time of some turmoil within the denomination. One of the most influential Baptist leaders of the past generation, Paige Patterson, was recently removed from his role as the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. This was related to improperly handling rape allegations from a student when Patterson was president at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Patterson had also made various other statements about women which were extremely controversial, such as insensitive comments about a woman who remained in an abusive marriage, after counseling the woman to stay in the marriage, Patterson saw her with two black eyes:

    “She said: ‘I hope you’re happy.’ And I said ‘Yes … I’m very happy,’ ” because her husband had heard her prayers and come to church for the first time the next day.

    These comments were met by an open letter from Baptist women, but Patterson did not issue any sort of apology until a similar letter by men within the SBC was sent. The treatment of women, how things like abuse and sexual assault are talked about and handled within the SBC have also been hot button issues at the meeting.

    There’s a lot going on within the SBC.

    It seems that another significant question among Baptists is the role of politics within the church.

    Christian historian Thomas Kidd traces politicians addressing the meeting. There was a resurgence of American Protestants to the GOP in 1979. Richard Nixon addressed the Southern Baptists in 1956 when he was vice president. In 1976, Gerald Ford was the first sitting president to speak at the meeting. Jimmy Carter in 1978. Ronald Reagan while he was running for president in 1980. George H.W. Bush in 1991. His vice president Dan Quayle in 1992. George W. Bush in 2002.

    There’s a history to it.

    So it isn’t shocking that vice president Pence would address the meeting this year. And the fact that his speech delved into both faith and politics should not be a surprise. That’s always going to be the case with any politician.

    I guess a question that I have would be, “what’s the purpose of a politician addressing the meeting?” It’s always going to be something that gets used for political purposes by the speaker. There are enough things that churches divide over. It seems unnecessary to add political viewpoints into that mix, especially in the current polarized climate. There are a lot of important gospel issues that the SBC is addressing. Having a political at this time seems like an unnecessary spectacle with respect to more pressing issues.

    The fact that there was some opposition to Pence speaking, some look at as a political shift among some in the SBC. Perhaps, to a small extent. However, with he size of the denomination, given what we’ve seen in other American Protestant denominations, I think it’s more likely that some (relatively small number with respect to the size of the denomination) churches would start walking away from the SBC before there be a major political divide within the denomination.

    I love the SBC, and I do hope and pray for what’s best for the denomination.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Great American evangelist Billy Graham dies at 99

    In an era when so many churches are rocked by sin and scandal, Billy Graham was respected by both Christians and non-christians for his integrity.

    In an era where sexual harassment is rampant in seemingly every sphere of life, Billy Graham vowed to never spend time alone with a woman who was not his wife, mother, or daughter.

    In an era where many of our most famous pastors live in mansions, Billy Graham vowed to not live lavishly. (more…)

  • Facebook ads extra layer of security

    Facebook announced today that they are going to be unveiling a couple of new security features for the site. One of the features is becoming increasingly common with websites where users login and it will prompt additional infromation from users if Facebook believes a person may not be legitimately logging onto the site.

    Given that Mark Zuckerberg’s own fanpage was hacked yesterday, new security is always a good thing.

    Let’s say that you live in Florida and logged in to Facebook from Florida this morning and that all of a sudden, someone from London trys to login to your Facebook. The site will prompt for additional information for you to verify that you’re you.

    Sometimes sites will use those annoying text boxes where you have to type the letters you see.

    That is called a captcha and it is meant more to verify that it is a human loging in, not so much that it is the legitimate owner of the account, as the Facebook blog notes.

    Facebook has come up witha pretty clever way for you to verify yourself. They are going to show you a set of photos of a Facebook friend and make sure that you can recognize the person.

    The advantage of this over a captcha is that any person can type in a captcha. It’s a matter of simply decyphering the letters. While anyone can figure out the captcha, people aren’t necessarily going to know your Facebook friends.

    Certainly this is not full proof. What if a friend of yours is hacking into your Facebook and the does know the friends who Facebook is using to verify your identity? That is a legitimate question and I don’t think Facebook has a very good answer for it. Ultimately, I think that the resonse would essentially be, “Well it’s still better than what we’ve had up to this point.”

    And that’s true. Another potential problem could be

    Facebook then said that they have to protect your information so that they can have it all to themselves to shamelessly sell. (ok, they didn’t actually say that).

    jrb