It really never ends.  But then, I don't expect it to.  The hatred of the secular left, that is.  Oh there are some, to be certain, who say that it does not exist.  But then again, those are people who are more interested in things other than liberty.  They are irrational wearers of tinfoil hats whom we prefer to treat accordingly.

The situation in Nigera is grave.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said Monday that  “religion is not driving extremist violence” in Nigeria--just one day after a Christian church conducting an Easter service was targeted by a car bombing that left 39 dead.
Similarly, on Christmas Day, the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, attacked a Catholic church in that country, killing more than 40 people.
“I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria,” Assistant  Secretary of State Carson said Monday at a forum on U.S. policy toward Nigeria held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

Ya, right.   The situation in the Obama administration is equally as grave.  There's a lack of both character and intellect.  But in case you don't know who Boko Haram ...

Kaduna — Following several bomb blasts that killed scores of people and marred the Easter celebrations in some parts of the North, Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika, yesterday, told soldiers to consider themselves at war with the Boko Haram Islamic sect.
Ihejirika who spoke in Kaduna while declaring open, a one week First Commanding Officer's Workshop on "Enhancing Military Professionalism in the Nigerian Army to Meet Contemporary Challenges," said that the Nigerian Army will soon establish a special unit in the military on the use of dogs to fight terrorism and related crimes.
His words: "You and your men are to be in a war mood to be able to deal with the current challenges. Otherwise, how do you explain that troops on check point duty would be attacked by these decadents? And they sometimes do that and get away with it. This is an area you must work on.

Obama's True Believers follow suit, hence the ignorance of Fred Clarkson linked to earlier.

Keith Olbermann's comments about Franklin Graham's theology, which is consistent with his father, Billy Graham, were, shall we say, less than generous.  I can already feel the love.

We should also not forget the Obama administrations intention to violate the free exercise clause in the Affordable Care Act.  That is a matter of policy and requires no nuance for enhancing clarity.

The Obama administration's revision of the "conscience clause" is equally clear.

In broader society and popular conversation there is a revival of a serious issue.  Tell me -- do you think evangelical (or other) missionaries are either dupes of the CIA or are they actually CIA agents themselves, sent in to disrupt governments and social structures?  That was a subtext of last evening's NCIS episode which revived the topic.  It takes only a little searching of the web to find the accusation of a CIA and Wycliffe Bible Translators.  That's why Chet Bitterman was murdered/martyred.

For NCIS to revive this slur is reminiscent of the old complaint by the ancient Romans who complained that the early Christian love feasts and celebration of communion/eucharist amounted to orgies and cannibalism.

Countering these things is a matter of practical apologetics.  The ignorance and prejudice of CBS television's managers and writers deserves communication and confrontation.

Let them cater to the vote of their base for trivial political gains.  We will proclaim redemption first. Truth first.

(also published at Evangelical Perspective)

By now almost all of us have heard Melinda Henneberger's assessment of the First Amendment:

Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment but that is what they did and I don't think we have to choose here.

Her defense of the Roman church not withstanding, her view of the First leaves a lot to be desired.  But that's old news.  There is another set of issues we must face, and these revolve around the relationship of the church to the state and whether or not the church is obligated in any context to surrender its faith.

First, something abstract, but at the core of the issue:  Does the First Amendment cease to exist where tax dollars are present?  That is the Left's opinion.

Here's what the communists at The Nation had to say, first about the "Affordable Care Act" and the restriction on religious liberty:

This morning, the Obama administration announced a compromise on the Affordable Care Act mandate that religious hospitals and social service organizations would, along with all other employers, have to cover contraception without a co-pay for all employees. If a woman works for a religious employer who objects to providing contraceptive coverage, her insurance company will be required to cover it free of charge—to the employee and to the employer.

Not much of a compromise.  Either pay for it directly to channel A, or pay for it directly through channel B.  It's a change of rhetoric, not a change of policy.

Implicit here is that "all other employers" as a class makes any religious organization just a business like any other.  And when there are tax dollars involved then the First Amendment has no place.  It is, after all, just a political question to the Left.  As a subsequent quote in The Nation article makes plain:

If the bishops are unwilling to recognize the value of [this] compromise, I suspect their opposition is more about playing politics than serving the needs of the people ...

There is, after all, another alternative.  That is a matter of moral restraint -- a matter which the Left knows nothing about.

But the question of religious liberty extends into conservative concerns as well.  Take the recent "Hosanna" (click to read the decision) case that was recently "won" in the Supreme Court.  Though the result was that "the ministerial exception is not limited to the head of a religious congregation," (p. 4), Roberts kept the opinion limited to the case at hand and stated that "the Court expresses no view on whether the exception bars other types of suits."  What remains is an openness to controlling church internal activities regarding hiring -- since hiring is a business practice (even if it is entirely internal) and not a religious practice.  Too bad, really.

Of course the secularist at Americans United have a related opinion.  For Rob Boston there is no room for religious liberty in the public square.

Under new rules that are expected to become law soon, faith-based adoption agencies will be permitted to deny services to anyone who fails to meet their theological litmus test. In other words, a couple could pass a criminal background check with flying colors, receive top marks from every reference, show proof of steady employment - and still be denied the right to adopt because they are gay.
This type of bigotry, while obnoxious, might be permissible in a purely privately funded agency run by a church. But as I said, most of these adoption agencies operate in a quasi-public fashion on behalf of the government, and they receive taxpayer funding. 

Americans United would like it to be illegal, according to policy, for a religious group to practice its morality and values where others might be affected.

Of course, what Boston calls "imposing" religious beliefs by practicing Christian values in the public arena is like saying that a teacher wishing a student "good morning" amounts to imposing English on those who do not speak it.  It is nothing of the sort.  What Boston is proposing is something that earlier conservatives have written about -- being penalized not by law but by committee rules.  Bureaucracies may limit freedom very easily.

And while the First Amendment is not our source for freedom, it is part of our law and deserves a fair defense.  I would ask the courts to reconsider a stricter and fuller view of the First.  The Left won't like it, and neither will some conservatives.  My concern is the availability of the redemptive message of the Gospel, and the First is a useful tool to that end.  That is what "liberty" is all about.

The title sure is provocative, isn't it?    It is no surprise that some on the far left side of the radical opinion scale would hold this view.  They follow the atheism of the French enlightenment rationalists who sought to establish a society which was free of religious influence.  I did not say dominance.  They went further and attempted to purge their society the presence of religion.  This is an historical matter that has been documented, and upon which there is no disagreement. 
One of the many useful texts on this matter is "History of Europe from the commencement of the French revolution", volume 1, page 26:

... the Jacobins of Paris founded their influence on the ridicule of every species of devotion, and erected the altar of Reason on the ruins of the Christian faith.  Nor was this "irreligious fanaticism," as Carnot has well styled it, confined to the citizens of the metropolis: it pervaded equally every department of France where republicanism was embraced, and every class of men who were attached to its fortunes.  Everywhere the churches, during the Reign of Terror, were closed:  the professors of Christianity were dispossessed, and their rights overturned ...

We are, of course, not at any point which resembles the Reign of Terror.  There is nobody knocking at my door, let alone breaking in, to dispossess me of life and liberty.  The "American Jacobin" (as I would like to call it) is different.  Dispossession seems to be arriving incrementally.  It is carried by avowed secularists who seek not liberty (which is the product of the republicanism of government which the Jacobins, like today's Democrats, denounce) but an alternative form of government.  Theirs is an emphasis on "direct democracy" and its commensurate removal of class -- the liberty to succeed.  Though not all use this same language or employ it to the same ends, the principle remains intact despite its various applications.

This Jacobin attitude, anarchist at its core (a claim also having a sound historical foundation), can be seen at work in the US.  There are those whose effort it is to keep churches, or the individual religious voice, either silent or out of public influence on matters of politics and social concerns.  Even stopping specifically religious speech is not outside of their agenda.

One cannot help but see the paranoia seeping out of their pores as the complaints become specific and focused.  Here is a for instance: Child Evangelism Fellowship has been sponsoring neighborhood "Good News" clubs with the wordless book for decades.  It is a way to spread the redemptive message of the gospel to children everywhere. At the heart of their effort is the evangelical perspective that the gospel knows no bounds -- not even governmental.  There is no concern as to whether some government our court might establish a "gospel free zone."  The gospel message is to be given to all, with the nner work of the Holy Spirit taking it from there.  The gospel is not a political message.

CEF also sponsors after school events.  But this bothers some.  They do not like "equal access" for religious content.  So they make stuff up out of whole cloth.  Like this:

Now, it appears the movement has found another way of imposing its religious views in the public schools; through thinly disguised after school Bible study programs.

Amazing.  Now those of us who know how false this is can only sit back and laugh.  "Imposing" and "thinly disguised" ring of a paranoia level deserving of serious therapy.  Really.

But even within this paranoia comes a glitter of unintentional truth.  The author of that last statement quotes a comment regarding the matter of equal access:

Religious-based after school programs burgeoned after the Good News Club v. Milford Central School (a K-12 school in upstate New York) Supreme Court decision in 2001.  Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 6-3 majority, "laid out a philosophy that essentially destroyed the postwar consensus on the separation of church and school," Stewart reports. Religion was now redefined "as nothing more than speech from a religious viewpoint."

Note the term "postwar."  That is important for those who study history.   This nation was never intended to be like Jacobin France -- free of religions.  There are no defined religion-free zones.  And there were none created until after WWII.  That shift is notable in history, and it is useful to hear a leftist acknowledge the concern.  As Mark Noll noted in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, the religious liberty afforded by republicanism as a system of government was ideal and workable.   They were compatible.

But it's not like leftists would ever distort history and pretend that religious liberty is of no consequence in a free society.  Na.


Of course the implication to be drawn from Berkowitz' post and the quoted material is that religious live belongs within the four walls of the church.   One poor parent apparently remarked that "They distributed flyers. They were doing everything they could to have as big a presence on campus as possible."  What a serious problem -- religious liberty even outside of class time!

Of course the fear runs deep:

"This is an old organization with ties to well known evangelical mission groups," Talk2Action's Rachel Tabachnick told me in an email. "But CEF has mastered stealth evangelism of children, one of the goals for infiltrating society from the grass roots up, instead of top down."

There is an expectation (or anticipation, I don't know which is more suitable here) that church work is magisterial rather than popular.  I some ways it is both.  But in either way, we might sum up her expression "infiltrating society" as militant.  "The church militant" has been our theme for almost 2,000 years.  I don't see that changing any time soon.

Another leftist writes similarly:

The author, Katherine Stewart [of an "expose" entitled The Good News Club], embarked on her investigation of what's going on in our public schools with the best possible motivation to expose the truth --  she became alarmed by what was happening in her own kids' school. She then traveled the country interviewing both other parents like herself and experts on the stealth "Good News" movement, resulting in a book that is not only full of well documented facts, but tells the personal accounts of parents who, like herself, have seen first hand what these innocuous sounding "Bible study" groups are really all about and the tactics they're using to lure and indoctrinate America's children into the fundamentalist Christian mindset.

Again we see in this author a high level of fear and paranoia.  There come coupled with a strange attitude.  You see, the book is "full of well documented facts" even though the author admits "I haven't read the whole book yet."

Of course the writings of pseudo-historians like these makes for good blog content.  But the real issue here is that the church must maintain its gospel militancy.  To be too vocal politically has led many of us to a distortion of our message.  Likewise we are able to intelligently confront the errors of those who misrepresent us and our effort.  One need only read a little of the church fathers to see some of these complaints, many of which resulted in death for believers.  Complaints of treason -- being unpatriotic to Rome and emperor -- abounded.  Along with these were the complaints of sexual impropriety on a corporate scale.  But whether or not we are able to correct the errors is secondary.  Our message is redemptive and does not know any bounds.  It is global and public -- something significant in fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant and participating in the expansion of the Kingdom.

The Jennifer Keaton case provides a rich example.  And one need not extrapolate anything obtuse or indefinite.  No strange or conspiratorial abstractions are necessary.  One only need quote the lawyers on this side of the issue.

Fact 1:  The only person prohibited from doing anything is  Keaton.  She is not allowed to either continue her education while maintaining her belief system nor is she allowed the professional credential necessary to participate and succeed in her field of choice.

Fact 2:  The university is requiring remediation of beliefs in order to attain the desired degree.  Were the university to grant the credential of her desired degree, the university would lose nothing. 

But to the lawyers.  This quote is not from some nobody.  Joshua Block is "staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT Project" and this makes him a representative of the position of the ACLU on these matters.  He says:

Last Friday, a federal court of appeals issued an important decision, setting limits on the right to use religion to discriminate. The case concerned Jennifer Keeton, a student enrolled in a graduate school counseling program who told her faculty that "as a high school counselor confronted by a sophomore student in crisis, questioning his sexual orientation, she would tell the student that it was not okay to be gay." Augusta State University, where Ms. Keeton was enrolled, ultimately expelled her from the program after she indicated she would be unable to counsel without imposing her religious views on her clients.

That makes one point plain:  The position of the court, the school, and the ACLU, is that the Christian belief system and ethic is not acceptable within this profession.  Carte blanche has been given to other universities to add therapy for those holding the Christian belief system.


He also says:

The ACLU filed a brief arguing that a student who declares her intent to violate the university's professional standards through her conduct does not have a constitutional right to a court order requiring the university to let her work with clients.

This is more than clear.  The ACLU believes that the presence of Christian morality has no place within the four walls of the university.  It is a Christianity-free zone.  Give up your Christianity and you may enter.

Just as a medical school would be permitted to bar a student who refused to administer blood transfusions for religious reasons from participating in clinical rotations, so ASU may prohibit Keeton from participating in its clinical practicum if she refuses to administer the treatment it has deemed appropriate. Every profession has its own ethical codes and dictates. When someone voluntarily chooses to enter a profession, he or she must comply with its rules and ethical requirements. Lawyers must present legal arguments on behalf of their clients, notwithstanding their personal views. Judges must apply the law, even when they disagree with it. So too counselors must refrain from imposing their moral and religious values on their clients.

Ethics?  I wonder what is their ethical foundation?  But that's another discussion.  What is important here is that the ACLU is becoming even  clearer in their religious bigotry.  Faith need not be accommodated or tolerated.  No disagreement is allowed when it comes to the homosexual agenda.

My main point here is to the homosexual community, and it's not what you might think.  When it comes to arbitrary class designations, be careful.  The benefits of class are as easily arbitrarily removed as they are arbitrarily granted.  Take the case of the two black girls last year who attacked the corss-dresser in their restroom.  They fought to defend their dignity and almost got charged with a hate crime.  It seems that the homosexual class takes precedence over other class designations -- in that case both black and female.  The homosexual community is being used for political gain and nothing more.  It is being used to manipulate society for the advantage of communist organizations (ACLU) and socialists (today's liberals in general) as they seek to incite revolution.  Do not be surprised if you are called on to "occupy" something and disrupt society for no clear purpose or end.  That is the ultimate status of a pawn.  And you are almost there.

Here's a thought.  More of a thought experiment -- just a starting point.  The idea is that conservatism, at least in the U.S., is a populist movement while liberalism is a magisterial movement.  That's reformation-type of language.  Some history might be useful here.

Liberalism in the US was the grander system of governance proposed.  Self-government itself is a liberal concept and the US was largely influenced by the several French schools.  Certainly Rousseau among others.

But how did conservatism come to the U.S?  Russel Kirk calls ours a conservative revolution as it found strong popular support in the positions of Edmund Burke.  For instance, in dealing with the matter of excessive taxation ...

Soon, Burke became embroiled in a different political controversy. He and other Whigs charged the advisors of King George with funding the election of "placemen" to seats in the House of Commons. The king had appointed these individuals to government-paid jobs that had few or no real duties. Burke claimed that these "friends of the king" were conspiring to control the House of Commons and Pitt’s government.
Although historians tend to doubt this "conspiracy" amounted to much, Burke wrote a pamphlet on what he believed was royal tampering with the traditional roles of king and Parliament. "When bad men combine," he wrote, "the good must associate, else they will fall, one by one." 

And this not far from the position of today's Tea Party or the specifically "social" conservative movement.

I seems that, at least at first glance, the tax revolt represented popular and commercial "conservative" ideals while the actual governing structure was "liberal" in philosophy.  At least in today's language.

I wonder if the tension we have today is just a continuation of a tension that existed two centuries ago.  Your thoughts?

Electioneering
Here in Ohio there is a battle brewing about congressional redistricting.  Here are the current map and the proposed map.


As you can see many of the districts are changing significantly.  Some are changed very little.  Both look gerrymandered significantly.  Both parties, after all, are about electing candidates and both will secure their relative significance.  And this stuff is about maintaining electability (or virtual non-loss) by an agreed-upon number for each party.  Some districts will be up for grabs but some will have a certain outcome.  That's what redistricting is all about.  So have the Republicans done anything that the Democrats have not done?  Na.  It's just that nobody likes to lose.

Stupidity and Willful Ignorance
Gary Younge describes the strong conservatives in the Republican party as "very wing of the party that had become so openly and virulently racist" that "they shouldn’t have" found a place for Herman Caine.  Does Younge even know what "conservative" means -- a definition that lies outside of the pro-communist folks he is writing for?  I hope he describes the anti-Jewish behavior (not the rhetoric) of Obama in the same terms -- but I won't hold my breath.

Then there is the ever-wrong voice of Fred Clarkson.  First he quotes Rick Perry:

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.  As president, I'll end Obama's war on religion.  And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.

Now let's wait and see if there ever arises an actual definition for "dominionism" which is deemed acceptable outside of political punditry.  If it means "the institution of theological law" that might have a place.  Some might even extend it to "law first informed by theology" and going further, "law first informed by a theological ethic" though that is pretty vague and hard to control.

I wonder how corrections to bad history (teaching that all our founders were hard Deists), teaching that a government free of religious influence was the intention of all the founders, or that "democracy" trumps "republic" as our form of government.  There is much to fix.  And though Perry's remarks amount to little more than campaign blabber, they do not represent a theonomy.  There are reasonable voices which will continue to work against the ongoing secularization of culture -- which is in no way the domain of the federal government.  History has had enough of Rousseau's damage.

Cross-posted at Evangelical Perspective.

For decades the pro-life movement has been talking about progressive eugenics.  From long before Sanger, but reaching its peak with 1930s US and European policies, the eugenics movement has gone from distinction to an endemic philosophy.  Today it haunts science with its utilitarian mask and proclaims that it can produce the sort of people that are most productive and beneficial.  It is all about creating "Captain America" through science.  Science, that is, as Reason without the need to answer to Theism.

Rock Center reports about eugenics in North Carolina.

Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967.  The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized.  Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.

“I have to carry these scars with me.  I have to live with this for the rest of my life,” she said.

Riddick was never told what was happening.  “Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember, that’s all I remember,” she said.  “When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.”

Can you read this without seeing it as racist, or at least elitist/classist?  The language of "feeble" and "promiscuous" comes straight out of Sanger[1].  Certain behaviors are unacceptable and certain people are to be treated as inferior.

But these things do not happen any more, do they?  Riddick was in 1967.  Have things changed?  Not much.  In the 1990s (though it might have been in the late 1980s) Oklahoma treated black children with spina bifida differently, and the courts supported it.  It never became a scandal because the children were black.

Many know of the work of Jill Stanek in exposing infanticide within the abortion industry.

Not much has changed.

This is a time for education.  When you talk to proponents of abortion, mention Riddick.  And when you talk to Christians who have suffered because of this progressive deception, proclaim forgiveness, mercy, and most of all grace.  And when you talk to women in general who have also suffered:  The message is the same.

Also posted at Evangelical Perspective.

---

[1] See Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion by Jean H. Baker.  Baker notes that "there were political reasons for Americans to accept sterilization that grew out of progressive attempts to provide protection for the poor.  Along with criminals whose antisocial instincts were no believed inherited by their children, the unfit were becoming expensive in an era that was installing programs and institutions to support those who could not take care of themselves."  Sanger was a progressive through and through.

You've seen little children exclaim their love for Mommy and Daddy.  With outstretched arms and a beautiful smile they proclaim their love "This much."  It's a joy for any parent to receive, and joy for the child to give, and even a joy to watch.  Some things are soooo special that they cannot but be appreciated by all.

Some hearts are filled with hate.  There are those who hate the Christian faith so much that they will make the most ridiculous remarks.  Often for silly political points.  Tim Tebow must be a bad football player because he is a Christian.  After all, "all the charisma, good looks, and athleticism in the world won’t help you play quarterback in the NFL if you can’t throw a football."  Of course The Nation, Stalinists that they are, frame everything according to politics -- even faith.

Those familiar with the nature of leftist politics know that power is the key to their method.   While all political methods require the use of power to accomplish their desired ends, the left differs from all others because it portends to be informed by Reason instead of Faith.  Because Reason reigns there is no moral authority, no God and Judge, to which the Left will answer.  Reason stands opposed to the Christian faith.  Always has and always will.

So they proclaim "hypocrisy" because because of Tebow's Superbowl message.  They call it "right wing" and "politics" while whining about being "silenced."  Ok.  Will The Nation allow editorials by Al Mohler or Joe Carter or Sarah Flashing or Nancy Pearcey or ... any of the other intelligent conservative voice?  Na.  And we don't whine about it either.  Why?  Because we don't need to support Stalinists.  The nation does not need The Nation.

Read a little more over at Evangelical Perspective.

This person, Joe Wright, should be investigated.  At a minimum.  One just does not say these things out loud.  A call for assassinations is outrageous!  Where is law enforcement?  FBI?  And who was it that Liked this post?



cross-posted at Evangelical Perspective

It is a given that church life cannot be restricted to the four walls of our facilities.  The Christian message of redemption, with all of its consequences and benefits, was never designed to remain within the walls of any facility.  I would also contend that the fact of four walls of our facilities are actually part of the problem.  More on the implications of that later.

The sanctity of human life has been part of Christian theology, and Jewish theology, for all time.  The imago dei begins in Genesis and continues unabated.  It is from this point that the modern pro-life movement takes a call.  Life represents God's existence.  To deny God is to deny our own humanity.  Francis Schaeffer states it in these terms in A Christian Manifesto:

In contrast to the materialistic concept, Man in reality is made in the image of God and has real humanness.  This humanness has produced varying degrees of success in government, bringing forth governments that were more than only the dominance of brute force.

and

We must understand that the question of the dignity of human life is not something on the periphery of Judeo-Christian thinking, but almost in the center of it (though not the center becuase the center is the exitence of God Himself).  But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God.  It is becuase there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state of humanistically oriented law have no right and no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way that it is being taken.

At this point the Christian world view sits in clear opposition to modern secular materialism.  But it is not just the materialism of Wall St. and Madison Ave. that is a problem.  (The Occupy crowd is only half right.)  Both capitalism and socialism are essentially materialistic.  While Christianity has been able to influence at least a small segment of free enterprise and capitalism, the Marxist/Socialist movement has rejected the presence of a Christian ethic and its attempts to inform their world view.  here is an example from The Nation where Patrician Williams delves into the irrationality of an undefinable humanity.  She begins:

On November 8, Mississippi is set to vote on Measure 26, a ballot initiative that would redefine the state’s Bill of Rights to extend the protections of personhood to include “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” It is striking that the measure, which is largely motivated by religious concerns about the sanctity of human existence, crops up in a state that has one of the lowest indices for overall quality of life—whenever it might begin—in the entire country: the infant mortality rate over the last decade is about 10 per 1,000 live births, with black babies dying at twice the rate of white babies. Mississippi leads the country in obesity and ranks forty-sixth in the number of state residents who have health insurance. It suffers from high death rates from cancer and heart disease. Twenty-three percent of the population lives below the poverty level, giving Mississippi the unenviable distinction of ranking dead last in the nation.

Like all who come from the Left, she is partly right.  Infant mortality is a problem.  Infant mortality is also a racial/ethnic problem in many areas.  But if we are to expect that socialism would actually solve this problem, then it is clear that she is among the most naive.  Capitalism has minimized the problem, but only when it was informed by a Christian ethic.  Even those components of the socialist/liberal agenda which present a reasonably sound ethos extend from a Christian world view[1].  She might as well have quotes the statement from Ezekial that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, when the says that "the killing of a human being, whether considered legally justified or not, is momentous, mysterious, a repercussive tragedy no matter how reprehensible the record of that life."

But unlike Judeo-Christian theology, Williams is entirely materialistic.  There is nothing of eschatological benefit -- to end, no solution. Williams does not venture into any suggestion of a solution because she can not.  Nor does she pursue a path toward a solution because for materialism there is no end.  The Hegelian-Marxist dream of a better world, even as promoted by today's young progressives, has been reduced to a fantasy and is lost in pessimism.  Enter empty materialism and the threat of apocalypse.

As I write, the seven billionth person is said to be entering this earthly dimension. That statistic has been reported with Malthusian apprehension, as well it might. The resources of the world are not infinitely replenishable; much of the planet’s ecology risks systemic collapse as a result of habitat degradation, global warming, invasive species and thoughtless exploitation; and the superpowers continue to go to war with one another over dismally non-sustainable energy sources like oil, gas and coal. Add in the uncertain-to-teetering economies just about everywhere, and it isn’t hard to fathom the dangerous contradictions of those who feel both deep resentment about the mad global competition to make ends meet, and simultaneously, a frantic “need” to propagate more of “our kind” because “we” are too few—regardless of actual numbers or common well-being. It’s as though we are walking a tightrope stretched between fetishism of the fetus and an abyss of human disposability.

Now she reads like Glenn Beck.  "The world is going to end unless ..." has become tiring.  Too many apocalyptic preachers have deadened our ears to the message of redemption.  And now we conservatives are stuck with an apocalyptic Mormon.  But the liberals/Left/progressives are equally stuck with the apocalypse of Gore and the concept of secular materialism.  "The world will end soon ... if we do not keep aborting children," is her clear mantra. 

There is no redemption in fear.  And as far as secularism goes, there is also no progress in fear.

Now for the church:  We of course need to be teaching a systematic Christian ethic in our churches.  And by "systematic" I mean the full scope of Biblical exegesis coupled with application and challenge to the world around us.  This needs to be done with youth groups so that they might be prepared to challenge secularism in the universities.  Only then can they enter the business and academic worlds fully prepared to challenge the current dominant world view.

Education, done to its fullest possible extent, requires that we exit the four walls our facility.  If Christianity is exclusively true, then so too is the redemptive message and the content of the ethic proclaimed.

Cross-posted at EvangelicalPerspective.

[1] See John Gray's Black Mass, Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia and Klaus Bockmuhl's The Challenge of Marxism, A Christian Response, for analyses of the history and content of today's Leftist ethical system.

The Washington Post says that there is no leadership in this movement.  The author of the article makes this statement:

Implicit in this structure is also a rejection of the narcissistic, “I know what’s good for you” form of leadership, now pervasive in this country, in which lawmakers fail to consider the needs and desires of the people they claim to represent. The failure of representative democracy in the United States is perhaps one of the most serious problems of our time, and the Occupy movement is a symptom of this crisis of legitimacy. The people no longer trust their leaders and are even starting to indict the system itself. They think we can do better.

The movement is acknowledged to be political.  The parallel is set against other movements, and the standard Leftist theme that "everything is political" makes its appearance.

In the 1960s and 70s, feminists convened consciousness-raising meetings aimed at politicizing the various forms of women’s oppression that were occurring in private. Women in the ranks were tired of being excluded from the inner circles of leadership where the issues and demands were being decided. And, they were sick of the generalized hypocrisy regarding gender roles. For this reason, feminist consciousness-raising eschewed formal leadership because each woman’s experience and opinion had to be valued equally. The personal was the political. (bold mine)

It seems that the occupy movement is some sort of experiment in direct democracy.  When the author says things like "We are all leaders," we can be certain that this is an "anarchist-inspired" movement.  Just as the author has stated.

So is this movement just a flash-in-the-pan event?  Sooner or later, will these disgruntled students who took massive loans for meaningless coursework, go about creating their own income?  Will they be willing to work jobs outside of their meaningless Columbia degrees?  Will they produce, or will they continue to complain?

There is an irony to their complaint.  Among their complaints is the bailouts given to Wall St.  I think that was a problem as well.  But who gave the bailouts to Wall St?  Go protest Obama, Reid, and Pleosi!  (But don't get your hopes up.)

Of course this could become (if the quantities of people increase and violence increases) a "stage 1" revolution where the people are turned on their government.  (Stage 2 is where the attacks are direct and people fight their government.  Stage 3 is where all parties lose hope and seek a new leader.  That's how Lenin manipulated Russia from the outside.)  Right now police and other public servants are being encouraged to turn on their cities.

There are some who parrot the WP article.  Bill Berkowitz parrots the WP with the claim to it being leaderless.  Be belittles the anti-Jewish flavor that has come on more than one instance.  Funny how that works.  For the Left, all conservatives/Republicans are racists and deserve the badge.  But Leftists are somehow as pure as the driven snow.

At least Berkowitz acknowledged the place of AdBusters in the movement.  And he acknowledges a few other notable problems.  But it seems that these problems are to him just little ones.  After all, the Right is always at fault.  "The right is 'exploiting anti-Semitism'."  Funny how that works.  Better than defending it, protecting it, or minimizing it, Bill.

So where are we?  Well, we have a supposedly leaderless movement which was instigated by Adbusters and some other influences.  It operates on a revolutionary/anarchist paradigm.  So far it is only able to raise sentiment but has the capacity accomplish nothing.  To fulfill that goal -- actually being productive -- seems opposite its complaint.

Beck calls this Communism.  I think that needs to be more specific.  Let's try Leninism.  It is revolutionary.  The institution of a form of government comes after a revolution.  But certainly the mindset behind this behavior can be traces to Leftist thought which comes from universities.  These people have been educated in a mindset.  The real leaders are the educators behind the scenes.

Now is the time (actually, yesterday was the time) for Christians to earn their higher degrees and enter the world of education.  Christianity will lead to stability.  Marxism only leads to anarchy, poverty, and death.  As Russell Kirk noted, only the vermin survive a revolution.  Only the redemptive message of the Gospel is suitable here as people prepare for eternity.

Cross-posted in Evangelical Perspective.

Let's look at the situation, the question, and some potential answers.  Then I'll give my take on it.

Bruce Wilson has his panties in a bunch because C. Peter Wagner has apparently called for the silencing of Talk To Action.  Now, I am no friend of the world view presented on that site.  But neither am I of the so-called "dominion" (an imprecise term, so read: Reconstructionist/post-millennial) perspective that the site regularly criticizes.

I'd be upset, too.  That's not a statement to be taken lightly.  It's not like we're all out burning their books.  Despite the site's propensity to misrepresent dispensational theology (Rachel Tabachnick and Fred Clarkson) by either ascribing violence to it or placing it within the aforementioned movement, the site is a textbook example of fallacy after fallacy.  Guilt by association.  (Like Christian activism equals a violent jihad.  Ya, right.)  I guess a lie falls into the category of a fallacy.  (It's not SCR, but ESCR that we oppose.  Keep the facts straight and your argument either gains weight or loses weight.)  There is plenty more, but this is enough for a short post.

T2A can rightly be classed as a hate site because of its inability to grasp truth and propensity to demonize, especially things like support for the historic family. Those who disagree with the homosexual agenda are branded with that oh-so-effective "hate" moniker.  Same goes with the "racist" brand -- easily thrown around.  The site has even promoted the idea that evangelicals (religious in general) deserve less political influence than other citizens.

But I don't think it should be shut down.  We have neither a dictatorship nor any other form of heavy-handed government.  It's not like the Left has promoted shutting down Fox News (or calling in "dangerous") or shutting down Rush or other conservative voices.  :-)  Or controlling radio station ownership through some "diversity" doctrine.  It's not like any Leftist radio network greeted the name of President Bush with the sound of gunfire.  Or some Leftist two-bit broadcaster ever suggested that all Republicans be jailed.

There is something much better and far more effective than censorship.  Exposure.  Exactly the opposite.  Read their material.  Give it fair and accurate criticism.  Let people know what lies and totalitarian garbage they publish.  That's enough.

Cross-posted at Evangelical Perspective.

Just some basic considerations for Sunday morning to challenge the content of your worship.

It looks as though Vanderbilt University is ready to take control of religious organizations and even Bible studies.  I wonder how long it will be until the believers there will, instead of hiring lawyers, simply practice their faith and let the Lord do something other than be a courtroom topic.  (I Cor. 6:7)  Even so, Martinez is not the end of the conversation.

So far the U.S. military has burned Bibles.  This would seem to add a level of tolerance to the activity and even make it acceptable.  Seems to be so to some.

We can ask "where's the media" and pretend that Glenn Beck actually has something to say on the subject.  Like his political discussions and unitarian civil religion methods are actually representative of orthodoxy.

Christianity is not a political religion.  (Ok, that's my premill coming out.)  Though it carries some serious political implications (as do all world views), it's first message is not political but redemptive.  But unlike those who separate faith and reality, Christianity takes the redemptive message to all corners of society.  People redeemed from the practice of sin (John 8:11) as well as the spiritual consequence of sin.  A new allegiance (Acts 16:31) is demanded.  To many, even to many conservatives, that represents treason and must be controlled.

A gospel that is imminent and militant will first change us and then, as a consequence, change society around us.  The second cannot happen until the first does.  Those are some of the practical ends of the Christian faith.

It gets confusing sometimes.  Why do protestants so often cling to the idea that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and why do liberals fight so hard to dismiss the idea?  The again, why do liberals continue to use Christian language and ethical principles to reach their goals and yet say that "separation" is the standard?  Are both groups being inconsistent with history?  Are they being manipulative?  Or maybe there is something else -- something even more nefarious?  Or perhaps something really simple.

History teaches us.  Well, history can teach us, but we have to learn from it lest the lesson fall on deaf ears.

So what is all this about a "Christian nation" anyway?  Well, there are a lot who think that the U.S. is, because of its history, a protestant nation.  That's pretty true.  It's tough to argue anything else about the American population, except perhaps for Canada and Mexico.  But sometimes origins and ownership get mixed up.  This was, after all, just 200 years more or less after the Reformation.  We can easily forget that.  Time flies but ideas rarely take wing.

Mark Noll (The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind) notes (some of this is from his work and some are my conclusions from it and from other material) that protestants in the early days of the U.S. clung tightly to republicanism as the desired form of government.  Not the capital-R political party, but the governing principle.  To them it represented the best way to account for and deal with human freedom and moral responsibility.  That remains the case today.

But things never stay the same.  The 19th century saw a shift in protestant thinking.  The world was getting better and better and missions and government became tools for the evangelical (and other protestants).  Even rejecting Rauschenbusch's "social gospel" many protestants remained socially engaged.  At least until the fundamentalist movement took hold in the 20th century.

The leftward swing forced evangelicals to sway back to their roots -- republicanism.  But again it's not like this was a party matter on their part.  We can hear it loud and clear today -- the constructionist view of the Constitution reflects the return to first principles.  There is a rejection of the liberal whose loss of meaning (even in the simplest language) and regular calls for violent revolt are seen as socially destructive.  And they are.  Are they not?

Liberals cannot help but borrow Christian language and principles from Schleiermacher, Rauschenbusch, and Ritchl.  They inherited the a religious tradition.  Though these three had nothing at all to do with our nation's founding they did influence religious thought.  They did not get it all from Marx and Hegel.  Some, perhaps.  But not all.  What is unmistakable is how German these ideas are.  Their liberalism contributed significantly to the problems (both of them) of 20th century Germany.  Ethical standard with a Person to obey opened the door to all sorts if issues.  Reason proved inadequate, and that's a fact of history.

Protestants did not distrust the Catholics because of their skin color.  They distrusted Rome's theology and theocracy.  They distrusted what Rome did to Europe and even to some of their own families and property.  The Church of England represented the same thing to many, though perhaps in a lower form.  Protestants in the 19th century U.S. were diverse but often worked together.  From the Wesley revivals and onward the number of "born again" evangelicals in the U.S. grew rapidly and their social influence was unmistakable.  Abolition.

It was liberal Sanger who distrusted the Italian poor because of their ethnicity.

Yes, only a few of the Founding Fathers were evangelical.  And the founding documents represent a more-than-a-little influence from the French Rationalists.  It was their disciples (like Jefferson) who maintained and attempted to contain slavery.  (Liberals have tried containment twice now and it just does not work.)

Thanks to people like Edmund Burke the Rationalists were kept out of England.  (So to speak.)  The revolutions of Rousseau and Paine were kept at bay.  Their influence in the U.S. is notable, but so was Burke's conservatism.  And so was the evangelical protestant voice.  A cacophony of world views and only one could end slavery.  As happened in England, it was not the work of the Rationalists which could accomplish this task.

The rise of the evangelical voice today is no anomaly. The lull created by the mid-20th century fundamentalist was the anomaly.  A loud protestant and evangelical voice is a social conscience.  Like John the Baptist to Herod it is a call to a nation.

Cross-posted at Evangelical Perspective.

Ok, we can all rest assured that one of my conclusions is quite simple: The movie smacks of the standard Godless character of Hollywood. God has little or no place. Now that that's out of the way ...

First, the movie is positive. It promotes patriotism, but not a mindless patriotism. It promotes the defense of freedom. And it does something which is not popular in Hollywood -- it opposes the internationalist. The "bad guy" (played by the very respected Hugo Weaving) makes it quite clear that one of his goals is to eliminate national borders. That's not normal fare from the Left Coast. The Matrix promoted, in the last scene, the idea that we (for some reason) might actually want a world without borders. Those two miniscule statements reveal something important about the writing and direction of this movie that is noticeable especially when set against its opposite.

Second, the movie is positive. It promotes the idea of a willingness to serve and even sacrifice one's self for a greater good. Since so many movies preoccupied with self, it is refreshing to hear something resembling the Christian ethic step out so clearly.

Third, the movie is positive. It looks toward a better future when evil is dealt with. Winning is the goal. Containment is not acceptable. The fight was taken to the enemy with the express goal of wiping out the enemy. That is what (the tragic necessity of) war is about. Our nation became war weary when we settled for a truce in Korea and a politicized loss in Viet Nam. Your UN-supporting tax dollars at work. This movie hints at none of that nonsense.

Finally, the movie is positive. But this last one is different. Part of the story line was the construction of the perfect soldier -- one fighting for good and the other for evil. But both represent genetic engineering. Though the idea reflects the progressivism of the era (a theme which today's progressives do not like to discuss) this seeming positive shows something very frightening about genetic engineering. And the pragmatic approach that is taken can be just as dangerous. Any time we say "whatever works" and have no moral constraint we end up in situations that could not have been predicted.

Think of this movie as an old-style progressive set of ideas combined with something of American Exceptionalism. It is a unique package and, I think, might provide young people a good hint at some of the attitudes of the era.

I want a vibranium shield for Christmas.

Cross-posted at Evangelical Perspective.