Written by David R. Upham |
Thursday, June 15, 2023
 In Dobbs, the Court once again has looked back to our tradition, our laws, our Constitution, and found therein a reserved right of the states to protect prenatal life. Dobbs is in full harmony with Loving. Like Loving, Dobbs is a recovery and vindication of our republic—a great victory for constitutional truth, justice, and the American way.

Our national Supreme Court has set aside the so-called “right” to abortion established in Roe v. Wade (1973) in favor of the states’ reserved authority to protect prenatal life. The Court’s decision proceeded from this syllogism:
(1) The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment protects only the rights enumerated in the Constitution or otherwise “deeply rooted” in our “Nation’s history and traditions”;
(2) the right to abortion is not such a right;
(3) therefore, contra Roe, the Amendment does not secure any right to abortion.
According to the dissent and many commentators, the Court’s reasoning threatens various unenumerated and innovative rights. Indeed, Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, specifically questioned the putative constitutional rights of contraception, nonmarital sexual activity, and same-sex “marriage.” These putative rights do, indeed, seem foreign to our Constitution and were only recently acknowledged by some of our laws.
The dissenters, however, mentioned the right of interracial marriage, first endorsed by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967). According to Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, the right of interracial marriage, like the abortion right, is not deeply rooted in our traditions. Indeed, laws banning such marriage once prevailed as widely as anti-abortion laws did; therefore, just as the new right of interracial marriage was vindicated in Loving, so was the new right of abortion six years later in Roe: “The Fourteenth Amendment’s ratifiers did not think it gave black and white people a right to marry each other. To the contrary, contemporaneous practice deemed that act quite as unprotected as abortion.” By this account, Loving, like Roe, was evolutionary, and anti-traditional.
But the Dobbs dissenters are wrong, egregiously so. Their opinion reflects a widespread and serious misunderstanding of our nation’s history.
The right of American citizens to intermarry, regardless of race, is, indeed, deeply rooted in our traditions of freedom and citizenship, and is, for this reason, consistent with the original intent and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be sure, bans on interracial marriage, of course, were once widespread in some parts of our county.
But such laws were never our American tradition. They were not original but innovative. It was not until 1691, nearly a century after Jamestown, that Virginia became the first colony to ban such marriages. Moreover, these laws were never universal. At Independence, only about half the states retained such laws—and nearly all were south of the Mason-Dixon line.
When our political ancestors first migrated to America, they brought with them the English common law—a general customary law recognized in England at the time. This original law recognized three principles.
First, that law secured extensive liberty, including a broad freedom to marry. The ease with which the common law allowed marriages gave rise to what we still call “common law marriage”: a marriage that happens simply by the unofficiated and even unwitnessed private agreement to live as husband and wife. The “consent of the parties is all that is required,” as James Kent later explained. Under this law, racial barriers to marriage were unknown.
Second, the law recognized broad birthright membership: All persons born under English jurisdiction were English subjects. Here too, the law recognized no racial discrimination.
Third, that law incorporated or reflected the complementary principles of legal “due process” and “equal protection,” both of which aimed to secure, to all persons, the rights of life, liberty, and property against lawless violence. Here too, these principles involved no racial discrimination whatsoever.
This protection extended to all living human beings—even before birth.
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It seems as though the American church, having taken a disastrous turn into (largely but not exclusively) right wing politics, is now in danger of overcompensating and repenting in a progressive, rather than a biblical, direction. Fault Lines exposes this and thus is largely a book about American cultural wars and American church politics. 

There are not many books that have such an impact that they have made me change my mind. It turns out that Faultlines is one of them. Initially, I approached the book with a degree of scepticism. After all I had heard on the evangelical grapevine that it was ‘extremist’, ‘unbalanced’, and that Baucham was guilty of ‘plagiarism’. And I am against racism and think it is a major problem in the US and the church. However, I am thankful that instead of just reading about the book, I read it myself. And I can only suggest you do the same.
Baucham’s thesis is that the current culture wars in the US over racism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) are in danger of splitting the evangelical church and causing considerable harm. He believes that the acceptance of some of the language and premises of CRT by evangelical leaders is the acceptance of a Trojan horse. He argues that ‘the United States is on the verge of a race war, if not a complete cultural meltdown’ (p. 7).
Fault Lines is not a fundamentalist diatribe or political rant. It is a well-researched, well-written and well-argued clarion call from someone who has not only studied the issues in some depth but, as a black descendant of slaves, has lived them. Fault Lines is not a detailed academic textbook, although it should be required reading for all evangelical students. It is, as Baucham stated in an interview, “the view from 35,000 feet.” If you are confused about what CRT is (and some evangelicals even deny that it exists), then this book is an excellent primer.
His personal story is powerful. He grew up poor without a father, was bussed to a white school and has battled against racism throughout his life. He has walked the walk. Maybe we should listen to his story rather than the white saviours like Robin DiAngelo who make their living out of telling white people they are racist by virtue of their skin colour? The notion that if you are white, then you are racist is itself racist. For Christians we need to ask what has the priority: our skin colour, our culture or our identity in Christ?
Baucham is controversial—at times breathtakingly so. For example, he points out that he had never heard of a black pastor arguing for racial reconciliation or lamenting that their church was 99% black. He states the incontrovertible truth that Africans sold Africans into slavery—to Arabs and to Europeans. And the not so incontrovertible view that ‘America is one of the least racist countries in the world’ (p. 201).
One highlight is the exposure of the false narratives that play such a part in the impressions that many of us base our opinions upon. Some quotes stunned me: ‘We’re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step outside the comfort of our homes’ (NBA star LeBron James, p. 45). Or the oft cited and completely false claim from the National Academy of Sciences that ‘one in every 1,000 black men and boys can expect to be killed by police in this country’ (pp. 47–48). That would mean that 18,000 black men and boys would be killed by police. The facts are that, in 2014, 250 black men were killed, of whom only 19 were unarmed. In 2019, the figure was nine (p. 113). How we interpret facts is also crucial. What do you do with the fact that 96% of those killed by police are male? Is this de facto proof that the police are discriminatory against men?
Baucham’s strongest and most important insight is that in dealing with anti-racism, we are dealing a with a new religion—complete with its own cosmology, law, priesthood and canon.
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Everyone is confronted with who Jesus is as the resurrection and the life. People either believe that He is the Son of God who came into the world to bring salvation to sinners through faith in His name, or they reject that He is the resurrection and the life and remain a slave to the devil. The question to all men and women is the same that Jesus posed to Martha: “Do you believe this?”

We are continuing our wonderful study of Jesus Christ from the Gospel of John, as we look to answer the question, “Who is Jesus?” from what our Lord said about Himself. In John 6, we saw that Jesus is the bread of life. In John 8-9, we read that Jesus is the light of the world. In John 10, we studied that Jesus is the door of the sheep and that Jesus is the good shepherd. Each one of these pictures Jesus paints complements the others, giving us a full image of who Jesus is, what He has done for us, and what it means for us to believe in Him.
When we look at these four statements Jesus made, we see an ideal picture of the Christian life. Something, though, seems to be missing at this point in our illustration of our Lord and what it means for us to follow Him.
We read in Psalm 23 that the Lord is our shepherd, and we know the first half of the psalm focuses on the shepherd’s care and provision for His sheep. The psalm does not end there, however. The valley of the shadow of death comes as we follow the good shepherd. Having the good shepherd does not mean we avoid that valley, but that Jesus walks through the many challenges, trials, and tribulations of life with us.
That brings us, then, to this important query: How does the Good Shepherd walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death? John 11 speaks to this very question, as the focus on Jesus’ identity now shifts from ‘shepherd’ to ‘resurrection.’ Resurrection presupposes death, because we cannot have resurrection without death.
Jesus makes this statement – I am the resurrection and the life – in the context of the death of His dear friend, Lazarus. Here we see the meaning of Jesus being the resurrection life, and how our good shepherd assists us to navigate and triumph over death itself.
The narrative of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead takes place in five scenes, helping us understand the Savior as the resurrection and the life.
The opening scene involves Jesus and the disciples.
As we read Jesus’ words and actions in the opening of this narrative, we learn that He is motivated by two factors. First, He is driven by the glory of God. Everything Jesus does tends toward God’s glory. He is most concerned that God be glorified through this circumstance of an illness. Second, He is inspired by love for His people who are in distress and suffering. Jesus is not a god who is indifferent to the plight of others, but He is the living God who loves His people and acts out of love for them.
God always operates in this way toward His people, which is a glorious truth. His motives of displaying His glory and loving us are never at odds. We often do not see how what He is doing either glorifies Him or is a result of His love toward us, just as the peoples’ reactions depicted in the narrative. Nothing about Jesus’ response to Lazarus’ illness makes sense from a human perspective. John wants us to understand that Jesus’ plans often confound us because His goals are much greater than ours. The confusion, though, is never the end of the story!
The second scene focuses on Jesus and Martha.
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