I just received my weekly dose of The White Horse Inn, where the “usual cast of characters were discussing Romans 14 and 15. “The Romans Revolution” has been the topic all this year. If you haven’t heard it you need to go back and catch it. It has been a wonderful survey of the book of Romans.
The topic this week was on The Weaker Brother, and, among other things, Michael Horton cited some interesting statistics comparing the per-capita instances of alcoholism among various religious groups. Jews, Episcopalians ,Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have the lowest instances of alcoholism, which all happen to view alcohol as a gift from God. Now for those who view alcohol as a sin: Baptists, Methodists, and Mormons came in with the highest per capita instances of alcoholism. Interesting.
The basic thrust of the discussion on the White Horse Inn was that the “weaker brother” who insists that everyone else practice his weakness is really an inverted Pharisee. At one point the discussion got around to the “encyclical” that “we” passed this year at Greensboro. You’ve got to hear it to realize how silly we really look to just about everybody.