Denny Burk – A commentary on theology, politics, and culture_News & Media

Denny BurkA commentary on theology, politics, and cultureHomeAbout MePublicationsSpeakingSubscribe / ConnectHomeAbout MePublicationsSpeakingSubscribe / Connect Abortion, Culture, Politics The Illiberal Left and AbortionJuly 13, 2022Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the consequences of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. The Democratic majority called three pro-abortion witnesses, and the Republican minority called two pro-life witnesses. I watched most of the hearing and listened to sworn testimony from all five witnesses. You would be hard-pressed to find a more stark expression of the division in our nation than what is on display in this testimony. Three witnesses lamented the overturning of Roe and argued in favor of new federal legislation to ensure abortion rights through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. They also argued that restricting abortion rights in…Read MoreDenny Burk Christianity With whom is the Christian soldier meant to fight?July 10, 2022What a great word from Bishop Ryle. I needed it, and it did my soul good. Maybe it will be that way for you also. “With whom is the Christian soldier meant to fight? Not with other Christians. Wretched indeed is that man’s idea of religion who fancies that it consists in perpetual controversy! He who is never satisfied unless he is engaged in some strife between church and church, chapel and chapel, sect and sect, faction and faction, party and party, knows nothing yet as he ought to know. No doubt it may be absolutely needful sometimes to appeal to law courts, in order to ascertain the right interpretation of…Read MoreDenny Burk Abortion, Culture, Social Justice Doubling-down on Abortion Rights on Independence DayJuly 4, 2022This morning I received an e-mail from The New York Times advertising a new 8-minute documentary they have produced about what abortion in American looks like after Roe. It’s a first-person narrative of a 27-year old woman who puts herself through a “self-managed” abortion. The film is a how-to guide for anyone living in a state where abortion is illegal. It shows women how to order the drug mifepristone from out of state so that they can put their unborn child to death in the privacy of their own home. This is naked advocacy on the part of The New York Times. The Times is making no pretense to objectivity…Read MoreDenny Burk Christianity How a Christian Patriot Might Love His Wayward CountryJuly 4, 2022I love G. K. Chesterton’s reflections on what it means to be a Christian patriot. If you have never read it, I encourage you to read “The Flag of the World” in his classic work Orthodoxy. Chesterton contends that love of one’s homeland is not like house-hunting—an experience in which you weigh the pros and cons of a place and choose accordingly. He writes: A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential…Read MoreDenny Burk Abortion, Christianity, Culture, Politics The End of Roe in the Bright Light of JuneJune 24, 2022On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade and its companion decision Doe v. Bolton effectively made abortion-on-demand a Constitutional right in the U.S. through all nine months of pregnancy. Since that time, the regime of Roe has presided over the legal killing of 63 million children. That is more than ten times the people killed in the Jewish holocaust. Roe formed the legal basis for what has become without question the greatest human rights crisis of our time—that a whole class of human beings have been excluded from the human community by our legal system. Today, all of that changed. The Supreme Court of the United States has spoken in…Read MoreDenny Burk Culture, Transgenderism What Is a Woman?June 23, 2022I just finished viewing Matt Walsh’s wry and powerful documentary What Is a Woman? This is one of the most timely and compelling films that I have ever seen. The premise is simple. Transgender ideology has swept over the Western world. Given that it is becoming more and more common to see some men identity as women and some women identify as men, surely people who hold to this ideology can tell us what a woman is. It turns out that they can’t. In calm even tones, Walsh put the question to person after person, expert after expert, and activist after activist. And yet none of them can explain what…Read MoreDenny Burk Christianity, Complementarianism, Theology/Bible Non-Contradicton (not Subscription) Is the SBC’s Confessional StandardJune 21, 2022If anything became clear at last week’s meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Anaheim, it’s this. The SBC has a confessional dispute in front of it, and it is not at all clear where it is going to go. The debate is occasioned by the ordination of female pastors at Saddleback Church in California. When Albert Mohler rose to speak against such a practice last week, it was very clear that the floor of the convention was overwhelmingly behind him. So much so that the Credentials Committee withdrew its proposal concerning Saddleback church’s female pastors. Nevertheless, in spite of that show of solidarity on the floor of the SBC,…Read MoreDenny Burk Christianity, Complementarianism, Theology/Bible Is Rick Warren Right about Gift vs. Office?June 16, 2022An unexpected thing happened this week at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) when Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, rose to make a statement that began with, “It’s customary for a guy who’s about to be hung to let him say his dying words.” He said it tongue-in-cheek, but we all knew that he was actually referring to something very serious—that his church is currently under scrutiny from the SBC for ordaining three women as pastors just over a year ago. Just recently, Warren also announced that his successors at Saddleback would be a husband and wife team, both of whom will be pastors leading the…Read MoreDenny Burk Christianity, Complementarianism, Theology/Bible Will the SBC Now Accept Women as Pastors?June 14, 2022Last year, Rick Warren’s Saddleback church announced that it had begun ordaining women as pastors. This caused quite a stir at the time because Saddleback is an SBC church, and the SBC’s statement of faith clearly disallows female pastors. Our statement of faith, the Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M), says that the church’s …scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. So it was not a surprise that a messenger at last year’s convention moved to have Saddleback disfellowshipped from the SBC. This morning, the SBC’s Credentials Committee…Read MoreDenny Burk Christianity, Homosexuality, Theology/Bible Pride Month and Ezekiel 16:49June 3, 2022I’ve gotten quite a bit of pushback on a thread I posted on Twitter a couple days ago to resist the abominable observance of “Pride Month.” I was inspired to post the thread in part by Carl Trueman’s excellent column marking the first day of this month-long celebration of sin. (If you haven’t read Trueman’s piece yet, I highly recommend it.) My thread was simply a list of Bible texts dealing with sexual perversion and God’s grace to sinners. You can read the entire thread here, but the push-back I’ve read focuses on the text from Ezekiel 16: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom… they were haughty…Read MoreDenny BurkOlder PostsABOUT MEDenny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, the undergraduate school of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.BOOKSDENNY’S TWITTER FEEDTweets by @DennyBurkBlogrollFirst ThingsJim HamiltonJustin TaylorKevin DeYoungPublic DiscourseR. Albert MohlerRussell MooreThe Gospel Coalition BlogTim ChalliesLinks9MarksBoyce CollegeCBMWDesiring GodKenwood Baptist ChurchSouthern SeminaryThe Gospel CoalitionTogether for the GospelSavona Theme by Optima Themes