I’m fascinated and floored at the same time. Just about every writer at The New Americana wanted to take a crack at writing about the Nashville Statement. Not just here either. At The Resurgent (where I also contribute), there have been multiple takes on it. Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, tweeted “Did I miss the part of the #NashvilleStatement where any serious Christian doctrine changed in the slightest?”
Such a non-controversial statement, so plain and direct, should not have generated such vitriol and discussion. That’s why I’m fascinated. I’m floored because it has.
Obviously, something has touched a nerve. To me, and many who have read the Bible, think critically, and know what it says and what Christians believe, there’s no controversy here. The fact that there’s not only controversy, but great consternation, is a sign to me that I needed to sign the statement.
If you are a Christian who is asking “what’s the big deal?” you need to sign it too. Here’s why.
In 1776, on July 2, the Continental Congress approved the language for the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, the first printing, which consisted of two hundred copies for the colonies, and for the record, was released. An original from that printing run ended up stored away in an attic in the Ladd-Gilman House in Exeter, N.H., where it was found in 1985.
That document, once signed, became a death warrant for the signers. They had broken their allegiance with the Crown and placed it in the hands of God Almighty.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Nothing changed as regards the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God; the long list of grievances the King perpetrated against the colonies was an affront to liberty and God. At no time did more than about one-third of the colonists actively support independence, and about one in four remained loyal to the Crown to the end of the war. The rest did what they could to stay out of the way, rendering aid or obstructing either side based on what action would leave them in peace.
But in order that the colonies could win freedom, the Continental Congress members had to sign their names to a death warrant.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
Today’s battle lines in the culture war, the offensive war against Christian, Biblical values, have not been set by Bible-believing Christians. God’s word has not changed. The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God are the same for us as they were for John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson.
Signing the Nashville Statement may, culturally, be tantamount to a death warrant, a declaration of war and an acknowledgement of a separation, an unbridgeable gulf, between the values of those who sign it and those who oppose it on whatever grounds.
We’ve tried reasoning with them, explaining to them the historicity, metaphysical consistency, and exegetical simplicity of the Bible in terms of things like “man,” “woman,” “marriage,” and the relationships between them. We’ve tried to reach out in peace. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow their usurpation of our transcendent moral law and its law-giver.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. Sound familiar?
Those who oppose such an essential, clear, and non-controversial doctrine as the Biblical definition of gender and marriage, one which comports with biology, anthropology, sociology and history, have only one goal in mind. They wish to rule over us as Lord and Master, as the moral law-giver in place of God Almighty.
That is intolerable to Christians, and fellow-travelers in clear, critical thinking, just as it was to our founding fathers.
If the Nashville Statement is to be the defining line between the culture of God-fearing people and the madness of Nietzsche’s super-men who have killed God in their own minds, then that line was set by the enemies of God, not by the people who drafted the statement.
There is no choice for any Bible-believing Christian but to sign the statement, and literally side with God.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence closed with this promise:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
If the battle is to be joined, we must do no less.
