Democratic Congressman George

"Buddy" Darden of Georgia's seventh

congressional district may choose to
move to Bartow County following the
upcoming 1990 census redistricting.
Cobb County, where the venerable
lower magistrate lives, is likely to be-
come a Republican district of its own
because of increased population. Or the
rumors may be true, that Darden is con-
sidering changing parties. He has gen-
erally voted in favor of gun owners and
the Contras, but he may have to "mod-
erate" his positions on those issues to
be part of the Republican Party of
Georgia.
On the other hand, he has voted
against South Africa and for the Civil
Rights Restoration Act of 1987. The
1987 biii was called by one
sexual congressman from Massachu-
setts a "homosexual rights bill." When
visiting his district, Darden has vigor-
ously defended voting for the measure.
Sounds as though he's already a soul
mate of long-standing establishment
Georgia Republicans.
*****
The name of John Sibley may not
be a household word in Georgia, and
maybe it never will be. But Georgia's
Great Helmsman, Joe Frank Harris, has
named Sibley the new Executive Direc-
tor for the Governor's Development
Council. Those who feared the passage
this year of the Growth Strategies Com-
mission legislation will soon know
that Sibley is at work. What the Qual-
ity Basic Education Act did to further
the state's status as Big Brother in gov-
ernment-approved local public educa-
tion, the Growth Strategies legislation
do for local governments. For
ignorant of General Assembly-run
by Rich Jefferson
education, QBE brought every policy of
every public school system in the state
under the control of some bureaucrat in
Atlanta. When different teams of bureau-
crats visit these school systems, they
may even demand to see the records that
show what students were doing at a
given time on a given day. Whatever
the students were doing, it had to have
been in keeping with QBE Standards. Is
this a drift toward centralization? A
Great Leap Forward?
Under the Growth Strategies bills
that passed the General Assembly in
March, local city and county govern-
ments do not have to comply with the
"suggestions" made by regional plan-
ning commissions under this act. But if
they do not "cooperate" in a regional
planning scheme with surrounding local
governments, certain state funds will be
withheld for the usual reasons. "The
lack of participating in the general pre-
paredness of the region for the potential
water needs and the critical foresight to
request inclusion in the development
infrastructure," etc.
When Sibley was asked by this re-
porter point-blank in January if Growth
Strategies wasn't state-sponsored brib ..
ery or blackmail, Sibley said no, but "it
is a carrot and stick kind of thing." The
trick has been for the Federal govern-
ment to offer money to the states, and
for the states to give various grants and
"appropriations" to counties and munici-
palities. In this way, the lesser govern-
ment develops a dependence upon the
bigger government, and then the bigger
government gets the leverage to dictate
centralization of all policy, by threat-
ening to withhold money for "noncom-
pliance." Noncompliance is a wondrous
euphemism for what would be a proper
exercise of authority by some brave low-
er magistrate. Sibley was right, Growth
Strategies legislation is not bribery or
blackmail. It's willing enslavement
(Deut. 17:14-20, I Sam. 8:5b, 7). It's
revealing that those who energetically
supported the Great Helmsman's
Growth Strategies ideas are those who
have been noisy proponents of zoning.
Carrot and stick indeed. Let 1,000
flowers bloom. Or you get no more
money to build roads, Mr. County
Commissioner.
*****
A cowboy named Charlie Lowry,
well known as a Christian in various
rodeo circuits, held his annual home-
town rodeo in Gore, Georgia, the first
weekend in May. I wrote a long feature
about Lowry and his show for The
Summerville News last year. The first
paragraph of the story read: "A familiar
country song tells mothers not to let
their babies 'grow up to be cowboys.'
But in Charlie Lowry's version the
words have a different meaning. Accord-
ing to him, tobacco-spitting, liquor-
drinking, oath-taking, womanizing cow-
boys ought to become babies. Babes in
Christ, that is." A woman from De-
troit, who evidently recieves ' The
Summerville News through the mail;
let the paper know she was intent on
proving Paul's argument in Romans i
about mankind's degeneration into wor-
shipping beasts when she wrote a
letter to the editor saying that no one
who participates in rodeos could be a
Christian. I responded in my column
that animals and humans are two dif-
ferent kinds of creation, and that her
assumptions about who is and who is
not a Christian should rest on some-
thing else besides whether they were
involved with a rodeo, or the kind of
treatment she preferred for her pets.
Being a member of People for the Por-
cine Way will not gain one entry to
heaven. An irrate Romans I kind of
guy wrote back, recommending that I
be branded to see how I might like it
*****
An asteroid big enough to relieve
earth of New York Cit}' 'and part of
Long Island came within 450,000 miles
of the planet on March 23. One scien-
tist said if the thing had hit it would
(Continued on page 24)
The Counsel of Chalcedon June, "1989 page 17
was theology anchored in Scripture, but
with an exegetic3l precision more
evident than in the older authors, and
combined with a devotion which raised
the whole above the level of scholar-
ship alone. 'Such was Warfield's own
knowledge and experience of the truth,
and of God in Christ through the Holy
Spirit,' Dr. Lloyd-Jones was to write in
the review already quoted, 'that more
tban most writers he gives a profound
unpression of the glory and wonder of
the great salvation we enjoy.' Once
back in Britain, he was to lose no time
in becoming, in his own phrase, 'a
proud possessor of the original ten
volumes'." ,
Old Princeton, from its founding in
1812, was, for the next 100 years, one
of the high water marks of orthodoxy in
the history of the church. This was due
in no small part to the great men who
taught there. Archibald
Charles Hodge, and A.A. Hodge were
the greatest predecessors of Warfield.
Referring to Warfield, Mark A. Noll, in
his 1983 book, Tlu! Princeton Theo-
logy, 1812-1921 (Baker) says, "His
scholarship was precise, careful, wide-
ranging, penetrating, and especially
well-grounded in scientific literature.
With these scholarly resources, he
labored might and IQain to restrain the
rising tide of liberalism, especially as it
affected the Old Princeton doctrine of
Scripture. Warfield read mQre widely,
possessed more skill in languages, and
displayed sharper dialectical powers than
any of his three notable predecessors."
(pp. 15-16)
Cornelius Van Til, in his. sixcy-six
page introduction to the 1948 reprint of
Warfield's The lnspiratin.n and
Authority of the Bible, possibly
his most important longer work, wrQte
thus; "In his day Dr. Warfield was
perhaps the greatest of what is
frequently called 'the high Protestant
doctrine of the Bible.' More particularly
as one of the outstanding Reformed
theologians of his day he was deepiy
concerned to defend the view of Scrip.
ture set forth in the Westminster Con-
fession of Faith." (p.3)
J. Gresham Machen, who had been
:Dr. Warfield's student and lliter his col-
league on the fa<;ulty at Princeton Semi-
nary, in describing Warfield's funeral,
February 19, 1921, said, to
me that old Princeton--a great institu-
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tion it was--died when Dr. Warfield was
carried out.'' .
I believe that a widespread serious
reading of Warfield today could very
likely do as much as anything (by the
power of the Holy Spirit) to returil a
neutralized church to its former vitality.
News Briefs
Continued from page 17
have opened a crater five to ten miles
wide and destroyed buildings 100 miles
away. Some scientists say such near
misses occur as often asonce every ten
years. Th.at means we've had around 600
close calls since the worli:l was created .
about 6,000 years ago. Some philoso-
phers masquerading as scientists say
such asteroids wiped out the dinosaurs
65 million years ago. One wonders
whether Divine Providence has con-
templated a closer look at asteroids for
certain Departments of Evolution at our
State Universities. They might land
soon on a government school near you.
"'****
It's for Dr. RJ. Rushdoony
to stop pulling punches. On tll.e subject
of P-resident Bush's performance so far,
Rushdoony was quoted in a national cir-
culation newspaper: "In terms of charac-
ter and his ability to get along with
Congress, George Bush has proven to
be the best president the Democrats
have had irt this century." Perhaps Bush
will also be a boon to the Sandinistas.
Or maybe Bush wants to challenge
The Bible Study' on Jeremiah will
contfuue next month and Ken Gentry's
letter, under the title, Tlu! Last
tion of Christians: A Defense of the
Faith, will conclude that issue. g
Roosevelt's historical fame as the best
president the Soviets have had this
century. As Albert Shanker, president
of the American Federation of Teachers,
pointed out, Bush keeps campaign pro-
mises the way the Soviets keep treaties.
Shanker said it was "good" that Bush re- .
pudiated vouchers and tuition tax credits.
(one .of many campaign-winning isSueS
Bush said he was corrunitted to), and
Sen. Joe Lieberman, (D.-Conn.) said
Bush's "collllliitment to ban produc-
tion of chlorofloirrcarbons by the end of
the century ... will reduce the threat to
human health posed by global warm-
ing." There was no indication Lieber-
man was concerned about other threats
to hilman health, such as Congressional
gas. ("Hot air," if your readers are deli-
cate).
*****
CORRECTION: In last month's
news briefs the article "a" was left out
of the following sentence, referring to
Madonna: "Iler interweaving of a Catho-
lic idolatrous sex, and, in her re-
cent video, the piercing of her own
hands so that they appear to bleed,
reafftrm her status as (a) Jezebel, (Rev.
2:18-29). . . . n
The Counsel of Chalcedon June, 1989 page 24