Institutionalised Envy: How the Tenth Commandment Can Make or Break a Country
Every form of government is fallen, but not in the same way or to the same extent. Constitutional democracy and a free market are rooted in many biblical principles, when rightly applied. Socialism (and its end-goal, communism) is rooted in envy, greed, and covetousness. It has bred all kinds of theft and trampling over private property rights (as enshrined in the eighth commandment against stealing), and discourages a biblical work ethic. As Margaret Thatcher famously said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
You shall not covet” (Exod 20:17). How many Christians realise the political significance of those four words (only two words in Hebrew)? Consider with me for a moment the widespread implications of the tenth commandment. This awful sin and deadly vice of “coveting” includes all forms of greed, envy, and lust—any selfish desire for what is not ours. How different our world would be without coveting!
My Zambian friend and Christian author, Lennox Kalifungwa, recently summed up well the broader ramifications of the 10th commandment for our day:
Socialism is the politicized envy of wealth.
Feminism is the politicized envy of patriarchy.
Post-colonialism is the politicized envy of western civilization.
Statism and globalism are the politicized envy of divinity.
Envy produces great evil, and is inevitably never satisfied.
Biblical Summary
“The leech has two daughters: Give and Give!” (Prov 30:15). “The eyes of man are never satisfied” (Prov 27:20; cf. Eccl 1:8; 4:4). As our Lord Himself warned, “Beware of covetousness!” (Luke 12:15). Paul summed it up best: “covetousness . . . is idolatry” (Col 3:5; Eph 5:5), bringing us back full circle to the first commandment, showing how everything begins with right worship.
In recently catechising our youth in our home-school co-op, the tenth commandment has hit home to our hearts and our society with striking relevance:
Question 80: What is required in the tenth commandment?
Answer: The tenth commandment requireth full contentment with our own condition, with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor, and all that is his.Question 81: What is forbidden in the tenth commandment?
Answer: The tenth commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his.
Heart Diagnosis
Other ancient law codes cover the morals prescribed in the first nine of God’s commandments. But none have anything like the tenth commandment, climbing into the depths of my being, confronting my desires.
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West Lafayette RPCNA Changes Name After Abuse Allegations, ‘Painful Chapter’
The congregation recently released a special statement highlighting its troubled history and explaining why the church changed its name to “Redeeming Grace Church.” The statement also explained why the congregation left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America denomination. One factor in such a separation is that it would allow the church to welcome back some of the former leaders sanctioned for their roles in the abuse case.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A West Lafayette church at the center of “minor-on-minor abuse” allegations opted to change its name to put the “painful chapter in our story” behind them.
A December 2021 Indy Star investigation found Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church Pastor Jared Olivetti and elders Keith Magill, Ben Larson and David Carr failed to act with urgency in responding to inappropriate behavior and sexual offenses by a boy at the church.
In January of 2022, the national governing body of the Reformed Presbyterian Church announced that Olivetti must refrain from exercising his duties as pastor pending the result of his ecclesiastical trial, which resulted in his defrocking.
The congregation recently released a special statement highlighting its troubled history and explaining why the church changed its name to “Redeeming Grace Church.” The statement also explained why the congregation left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America denomination. One factor in such a separation is that it would allow the church to welcome back some of the former leaders sanctioned for their roles in the abuse case.
“If you do know us by the name ‘Immanuel,’ it’s likely you know something of the negative publicity and very hard years recently suffered by our congregation,” the statement reads.
“Those years began with the revelation of minor-on-minor abuse in and around the congregation. As we worked through that painful chapter in our story, our former elders worked to follow the pertinent laws, to believe and support the victims, and to honor Christ.”
The IndyStar investigation revealed that leaders at the West Lafayette church were informed that children from multiple families had been abused and harassed by another minor within the congregation, according to internal church documents obtained by IndyStar.
The ecclesiastic trial revoked Olivetti’s ordination and status as an elder, the IndyStar reported, forbidding him practicing in any capacity within the denomination. He has also been suspended from participating in sacraments such as communion.
Olivetti and his fellow elders were found to have kept the abuse from church members for more than four months, even as they learned of additional transgressions.
The perpetrator, a teenage boy, was a relative of the pastor. Rather than immediately recuse himself, Olivetti continued to shape the church’s response, taking advantage of his position as a leader to interfere with the investigation, according to the IndyStar reporting.
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Charles S. Vedder, Presbyterian Huguenot Minister
After more than forty years of ministry at Huguenot that included many challenges including times when the congregation could not pay him, he spent his last few years of life as pastor emeritus. One factor contributing to his retirement was total blindness. His final sermon was delivered February 22, 1914. During his life he served outside the church as well as within. Among his other works were serving as a commissioner for the Charleston Public Schools, president of the Charleston Bible Society, president of the City Board of Missions, president of the Training School for Nurses, and the eighth president of the New England Society for 34 years.
Charles Stuart was born to Albert A. and Susan (Fulton) Vedder in Schenectady, New York, October 7, 1826. His education was provided by Schenectady Lyceum Academy which prepared him to graduate valedictorian of Union College’s class of 1851. Ready for his life’s work, Vedder was employed in the publishing industry by Harpers’ Magazine and other New York periodicals while he anticipated bigger and better things. However, having set his course, his direction would change. Vedder grew up in a Christian home reading the Bible and had been profoundly affected by The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471). His ancestry was Dutch-German and à Kempis was influenced by the Dutch priest, Geert Groote (1340-1384), whose devotio moderna was a response to what he saw as speculative theology among the Dutch. Groote’s teaching emphasized personal spirituality and taught practical communal religion as applied in the Brethren of the Common Life. But Vedder did not seek the priesthood, rather he became a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry. One thing is certain, he could not have become a priest given his marriage to Helen Amelia (Scovel) of Albany, June 7, 1854.
Where would the former publisher go for seminary? Since he was about twenty years old he had suffered reoccurring bouts of ill health because of compulsive work habits combined with the difficult climate of long, wet, and cold winters in New York. A more agreeable climate might prove prudent for theological education with the bonus of improved health. Other men that were Presbyterian ministers such as George Howe, Aaron W. Leland, and Zelotes Holmes moved South for warmer winters, so Vedder joined the number by attending Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina. He graduated Columbia with twenty others in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning.
Vedder was soon licensed and ordained by the Presbytery of Charleston for work in First Church, Summerville, beginning 1861. The Summerville congregation could trace its ancestry to a small group of settlers from the Congregational Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which sailed in 1695 to Carolina (North and South, divided 1712) to establish a settlement about twenty-two miles northwest of Charleston. The next year they built the Old White Meeting House. At the Synod of South Carolina meeting in 1859 the Presbytery of Charleston reported, “They have organized [June 9, 1859] a Church at Summerville, and constituted the pastoral relation between it and the Rev. A. P. Smith” with one ruling elder, “Arthur Fogartie” (10, 96). After but a year, pastor Andrew Pickens Smith left Summerville to serve the Glebe Street Church in Charleston, 1862, and after a series of brief calls ended his days in First Church, Dallas, Texas, 1873-1895. There are several events and transitions on the timeline between the Old White Meeting House era and organization of the Summerville Presbyterian Church, but the Summerville Presbyterians exemplify the close relationship between Congregationalists and Presbyterians in the Low Country. Both presbyterian and congregational polities held to the Calvinism of the Westminster Confession in opposition to the established religion of the Church of England in the colonial era.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, Vedder continued at Summerville another year before changing call to the Huguenot Church in Charleston where he would be pastor the remainder of his lengthy life. Huguenots fled France and emigrated to other nations in anticipation of Louis XIV’s October 18, 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes that had given them some freedoms to practice their Calvinism and worship as Protestants. Just as Congregational churches in South Carolina enjoyed good relationships with the Presbyterians because of their common commitment to the Westminster Confession, so also the Huguenots were friends in ministry with Presbyterians due to their common commitment to Calvinism, rule by elders, and the mercy work of deacons.
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Battle over “Wokeness” at Christian Colleges Isn’t Just about Politics, It’s about Dollars
Moving off—or being perceived as moving off—from sufficiently conservative viewpoints is a major gamble with poor odds of success. The inverse is also true—the more conservative a religious-based college is, the better its odds are of not just surviving, but flourishing.
For decades, Hillsdale College and Grove City College mirrored each other.
Fiercely independent, neither takes any federal dollars, including government-backed student loans, in order to be exempt from most federal rules.
Located in bucolic settings — Hillsdale in agricultural southern mid-Michigan and Grove City in the hills of western Pennsylvania — one feels smarter simply by stepping on the carefully groomed campuses with spectacular academic buildings, chapels and residence halls. Both have reputations as bastions of conservatism.
But the last two years have started to push the two apart, at least in the minds of their core markets.
Hillsdale, to the delight of conservatives and the consternation of liberals, has continued to burnish its conservative credentials. It has worked closely on education matters with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
“The college’s belief in genuine classical education and its deep admiration for the principles of the American Founding, as espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, has made it a target for those who oppose such challenges to the status quo of what is now taught in most American institutions of higher education,” Hillsdale spokeswoman Emily Davis told the Free Press, adding that Hillsdale wants all students, not just those in Michigan, to have a quality education. “Hillsdale College has been dedicated to pursuing truth and defending liberty since 1844 and has no plans of retreating from that noble effort.”
And while Hillsdale alumni, students and faculty have been supportive of the college, alumni, students and faculty at Grove City have been engaged in all-out-war over whether it is woke.
The two schools represent the newest battle in Christian higher education, one that isn’t centered on theological issues such as creationism or who is God, but rather on whether Donald Trump won the last election or whether Black people are still targeted by systematic racism in America. It’s about politics brought to campus, witnessed by students who arrive as self-styled culture warriors, armed with smartphones and social media.
This conflict of ideas is setting up a litmus test with real consequences: Want to survive and perhaps even flourish as a small religious liberal arts school? Don’t invite someone to speak on campus who can be characterized as being woke. Have your soaring chapel be dedicated with a speech from Clarence Thomas. Be a training ground for the next Ben Shapiro.
“The clearer a faith-based institution is on where they stand on issues, the more families are happy with them,” said Jim Hunter, chief executive officer of Emerge Education, a Pennsylvania-based college enrollment consulting firm. He has studied and co-authored an academic paper on the topic.
The statistics show a clear result: Moving off — or being perceived as moving off — from sufficiently conservative viewpoints is a major gamble with poor odds of success. The inverse is also true — the more conservative a religious-based college is, the better its odds are of not just surviving, but flourishing.
The growth comes in the crossing of two narratives. One: conservatives convinced in the depths of their hearts they aren’t welcome in higher ed and thus highly attuned to any slight — real or perceived — that their so-called safe institution is no longer a place where their views can be heard and even flourish. Two: a realization by college leaders that times are tough and they have got to keep people happy.
“It’s a major reality,” said Grove City President Paul McNulty, a former George W. Bush appointee in the U.S. Attorney General’s Office. “It’s a continuous reality. You have to always be thinking, ‘how will this impact our ability to attract students?’ ”
The upheaval in religious education is rivaling the great debates over higher education from the 1920s that led to the foundation of many superconservative schools, like what is now Bob Jones University, where some were upset over what they saw as a progressive-led move away from traditional belief systems to a more inclusive, modern approach to the world.
Different than previous Christian higher education disputes?
In 1994, I got word the president of the small Christian liberal arts college I was attending wanted to see me. The school, then known as Grand Rapids Baptist College, was going to announce it would be changing its name to Cornerstone College. As the editor of the school paper, I was going to be writing the story on the change and needed the information.
The name change was an acknowledgment by the school’s board and administration that the student body was, while still Christian, not simply from the Baptist denomination. It was also part of other shifts, including the loosening of various rules, that left the college, while still more conservative than most places, a wee bit more progressive than before. The changes drew protests from some alumni and donors, worried about the direction of the school, particularly that it was moving away from its traditional set of beliefs.
It’s not uncommon for there to be disputes about the direction in which a college is headed. Those debates date to the early 1900s, when a push was made to have colleges and universities focus more on scientific methods and less on their faith-based foundations. Then, in the 1920s, conservatives fought back and founded a variety of very conservative schools.
Now it’s 2022. The most recent battle is on and experts believe this iteration is different than previous ones.
“This is not a split over classic theological beliefs,” said Andrea Turpin, an associate professor of history at Baylor University and the author of a book on gender, religion and the changing of the American university in the early 1900s. “Nothing about the creeds is at stake at Grove City. They aren’t debating questions like: Who is Jesus?”
The debates are about political issues, often wrapped in Bible verses and interpretations. In many cases, colleges aren’t changing their political views, just becoming more vocal about them.
The schools are mirroring their donors. Those leaders who stay are the ones who can show growth and showing growth means listening to the donors and families who keep revenue coming in.
And at higher-priced colleges, which often opt out of federal grants and loans for students and the oversight that comes with them, parents have clear expectations.
“If they are willing to pay a premium, they want to get what they are paying for,” Hunter said. “The lack of distinct values in the marketplace is a challenge in enrollment.”
Shifting to a more conservative outlook can bring problems, too. Just ask my alma mater, the now-named Cornerstone University. In October 2021, Gerson Moreno-Riaño was set to be formally inaugurated as the school’s president. But one day before the ceremony, faculty issued a vote of no confidence in him, saying he had allegedly opposed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and created a culture of fear by firing staff and professors with little or no warning.
Moreno-Riaño came to Cornerstone from Regent University, founded by conservative evangelical leader Pat Robertson. One year before the no-confidence vote, Moreno-Riaño wrote about the “woke” movement in higher education, calling out schools where classrooms “are the breeding grounds of intolerance where the other, any other, who does not pledge absolute, blind allegiance to the emerging revolutionary ethos is demonized, canceled or destroyed.”
This spring, Moreno-Riaño told me he felt like the school had moved past those conversations. He said he’s trying to grow Cornerstone and doing so by showcasing how Christian higher education should work.
“The question is what does Christian mean today?” he said. “Is it subject to whatever the present culture is? Christian is meant to be the Gospel of Christ. At every institution (Christian or not) there’s moral formation going on. Every (college) has an anchor point. We are a Christian school. That means we are to touch a deeper part of a person.”
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