Much has been said about the King James Version, which spent the best part of its 400 year history as the Bible of choice for Americans of all stripes. The King James brought the Bible to the common person and a common cultural language to English-speaking peoples. The beauty of the translation was unparalleled.

I was fortunate to grow up with the King James Bible, which is somewhat rare for someone my age. The KJV has fallen into disuse in the U.S.A. over the years as more modren translations are introduced constantly. Most would agree that the KJV could use some updating in some of its use of archaic words. However, no one quite agrees on how to update and no new translations stop with that. We now have dozens of translations on the market. I guess this is to be expected. Who can expect a country with more than 700 Christian denominations to have just one Bible?

I’m past the point of fighting about bible versions. Too many churches, friendships, and families have broken up into strife over the great Bible version debate. I’ve come to a point of acceptance. When I need to communicate something to the general culture, I accept that we live in a modern Bible version country where if you read a “peradventure,” or a “whosoever” people will stare at you fish-eyed. As such, if I want to communicate with that perspective, I wouldn’t use the King James any more than I would use the King James Version to communicate to Spanish-speaking people. For these purposes, I use the ESV, which is perhaps the best of the modern versions. I still use the KJV for my daily devotions.

The big thing I think that we are missing today in modern Bible versions is that sense of having a book that is, The Bible and provides a common frame of reference for Christians and the culture as a whole to communicate. While on the most important things, the Bible versions are solidly in agreement, the exact phrasing is often vastly different. The beauty of the King James was that the way it said things was easy to memorize and communicate ideas with.

One example of how this worked came in World War II. British soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk with the Germany Army advancing. The forces sent a simple message, “But if not.”  The three word phrase came from the book of Daniel where Daniel’s three friends refused to bow to the idol of King Nebuchanezzar:

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

The phrase, “but if not” sent a message to not only the British army, but to the British people, and the world. The soldiers defending Dunkirk would be faithful to death.

“But if not” means nothing in many modern Bible versions.  With everyone reading different translations, we find ourselves without that common language, which Protestants of nearly every denomination used to share. It’s a tragic loss of our modern times.

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

According to Rabbi Hammerman, America is full of crazy all to certain Christians who are ready to go pillaging mosques and putting the ban on immigrants…if a football game goes the wrong way. It seems Hammerman practices the hysteria and hatred he accuses others of.

The ban has opened a war of words between worshippers in the Pike County community and provoked accusations of discrimination.

It was imposed after Stella Harville, the church secretary’s daughter, attended a service with her black fiancé Ticha Chikuni.

Of course, there are liberals who will jump on this. “You say you’re pro-life , but you support the death penalty,” or “You’re a Christian, how can you support the death peantly?”

The pro-life issue has a flip side , as most (but not all) of the death penalty’s most fierce opponents are also pro-choice. I’d suggest that for these liberal opponents of the death penalty, this has less to do with the sancityof human life and more to do with a permissive attittude towards crime and murder and a lack of respect for the lives of crime victims.  Of course, not all opponents of the death penalty are liberals, but they are the ones who push the argument strongest.

To me, the death penalty is an affirmation of the value of human life, as those who destroy human life face the ultimate sentence. Innocent human life should always be protected.

As a Christian, I do not see anywhere in scripture, there is no general prohibition of the civil authority from executing criminals. Indeed, it’s at least hinted at in Romans 13: 3, 4 (KJ21):

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same, for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

As a Christian, I hope Rhoades makes his peace with God. But as an Idahoan, I fully support the state, as God’s minister, executing its duty to punish evil.

While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization.

There are a couple things to unpack here. First, the numbers are a little messed up. If 80% of unmarried young Evangelicals are having sex and 88% of unmarried total young adults are engaging in sex, the common sense comparison would be between Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals. What the magazine linked by CNN does is compare Evangelicals to general population which doesn’t show what they’re trying to show.

Still 80% is very high. The question is why is this happening. The answer can be found in scripture. The Bible is pretty clear what Christians relationship to culture ought to be. In Matthew 5, Jesus states it’s succinctly:

“Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.

“Ye are the light of the world…”-Matthew 5:13, 14 

Another parable spoke He unto them: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.”-Matthew 13:33

The message of all three parables in a nutshell is that Christians are to be a force for good, influencing the world around them. The Church is to operate like leaven in the the rising of bread, working its influence into the whole lump.

What’s happened in the West is that the world and its values are influencing the Church in both its communication of the gospel and the way Christians live their lives and we can see it in how the church communicates.

Many youth ministries have taken to using pop culture as a basis for their ministries and engagement with teen. The problem with that is that the church ends up affirming pop culture institutions that don’t share Christian values.

The Church never came to grips with the shift of culture institutions in the 1960s. Up until that point, School, State, and Media were, if not allied with the church, at least not hostile to it.  That’s changed.

The life of a Christian teenager in America could go something like this:  they will spend 35 hours a week in school and another 5-10 hours on homework being taught out of textbooks that are writing by atheists, secualarist, and humanists. They spend another say 15 hours consuming TV shows and movies writen by secularists, atheists, and humanist.

On the flip side, they’ll spend maybe 2 hours studying the Bible and praying, they’ll spend another hour in Church on Sunday and if they’re fortunate, another hour and a half in youth group. Let’s add up the scoreboard:

Secularist/Humanist Influences=55-60 Hours a week

Christian Influences=4 1/2 Hours a week.

And that’s before we consider how their friends will influence them, which may be the most powerful influence of all. With such numbers, its a miracle that every Christian kid isn’t out having sex outside of marriage. And despite that this pretty close to typical, a lady writing a tongue in cheek article  on Christian parenting suggested that sheltering your kids is a way to ruin their lives. Yeah, because we know that’s the major problem Christian parents face today.

With the leftist having succeeded in redefining the culture’s values, Christians need to be counter-cultural.  This is something for Christians in America to  embrace, but historically Christianity has been against anti-Christian norms of culture.

For example, Saint Telemachus died in the fifth century trying to stop gladiator games. Today, if Gladiator Games were going on, would we be like Telemachus? Or would we be crowding the TV to watch it and rushing down to the stadium so we could talk with folks around the office cooler?  Would the church use gladiators as  sermon illustrations, have a youth group outing to watch the bloody slaughter, and condemn people like Telemachus as being legalistic and Pharisees about the whole thing?  

Tough questions.  And this whole discussion raises another question. If the church has been too influenced by the world around it, how do we fix it? It’s beyond our power to just change our own minds. W’eve all been influenced by the culture’s attempt to brainwash us.  And for most people, the brainwashing has been at least partially successful. Ultimately, our only hope lies in God and in his promise to transform us by the renewing of our mind.

I’m not interested in either. The Shack is but the latest in a line of trendy Christian books that are topics of great buzz, such as The Prayer of Jabez, The Purpose Driven Life, and Left Behind. Yet, as with these books, the work of The Shack has generated controversy.

There are godly Christians on both sides of the discussion and I respect those who hold differing views. I come down in the middle on this.

1) There’s Something to Doctrinal Concerns About the Shack. Much has been written about the doctrinal problems in The Shack. It’s not my aim to rehash them all here. But these claims are not entirely without merit. One passage seems to teach Universalism:

Jesus said, “Those who love me come from every system that exists.  They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptist or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.  I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous.  Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians.  I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my beloved.”

Young himself claims not to be a universalist. A former colleague claims he embraced it several years back. Whichever the case, the passage does seem to teach it. So either it is embracing universalism or the writer wrote it poorly.

I’m further concerned by Young’s rejection of churches as a bad and dangerous example to set. I can attest to the fact that there are some weird, and plain bad churches. But there’s a much greater number of imperfect churches. People who attempt to practice “Churchless Christianity” most often end up isolated from those around them and often stray into old heresies they think are new revelations from God. Some stray into abusive behavior (The Christian radio drama Unshackled recently aired a two part episode on the case of a woman named Elishaba Speckles, which illustrate the pitfalls, listen here and here.) Having grown up with a mostly Churchless Christianity, I cannot recommend it, and I find Mr. Young’s suggestion to be quite harmful.

In fairness, many other doctrinal issues raised in the Shack, such as precise understanding of the operation of the Trinity and the operation of law and grace, are not issues on which Christians universally agree. So, raising Mr. Young’s views as some sort of heresy doesn’t wash.

2) The Book’s Theological Problems Cannot All Be Dismissed Due to Its Fictional Status.

One defense of the Shack is, “Hello, it’s fiction!” This does have resonance for me. As a writer of fiction, I’m aware of the scope of literary license. Certainly, when C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia or The Space Trilogy, he was not professing belief either in witchcraft or aliens, but using them to discuss wider themes. This defense can apply to some complaints with the book.

Regarding Young’s setting and his portrayal of the three persons of the Godhead, I’m willing to cut him some slack. However, much of the book focuses on God talking to the hero about theological matters in a way that is neither metaphorical nor symbolic. Rather it is an attempt to communicate a theological treatise through the dialogue of a fictional book, placing the author’s own views in the mouth of God. It’s flummery to defend these portions based on them being fiction.

3) The Shack’s Opponents Have Made Silly Charges.

Shack Opponents have not stuck to the truly meaty theological issues contained within the book, but rather have gone off the rails with many concerns that would belong in the trivial category. The belief is common that the more complaints you throw at a controversial book, no matter how unsubstantive they happen to be, the better.

Lets consider a couple examples from this website, which does include the above quote about universalism, but also complains about this quote:

“‘Whoa,’ said Papa, who had returned from the kitchen with yet another dish. ‘Take it easy on those greens, young man.  Those things can give you the trots if you ain’t careful.’”

The reason for the complaint, “God the Father is talking about diarrhea? Seriously?… What God is this before which a man is casually having a conversation and diarrhea is the topic?”

For the faint of heart, you may want to skip the next couple paragraphs, but I do have news for you. God does talk about things many Christians consider icky. In the book of Revelations, Jesus uses vomiting as a metaphor. In Jesus’ teaching in Mark about what defiles a man:

Do ye not perceive that whatsoever thing from outside entereth into a man, it cannot defile him, because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly and goeth out into the drain, thereby purging all meats?”-Mark 7:18 and 19 (KJ21)

What’s being described here is the digestive process from start to a finish that mortal men long dare not discuss in polite company. If we look into the book of Ezekiel, we’ll find God commanding a prophet to eat dung as a sign.

God serving a meal and warning that eating too much of a food may be harmful doesn’t appear all that extreme in context.

Further, on the above protestor’s top 10 list of quotes from The Shack, this quote ranked #6. The quote on universalism ranked #9. Talk about burying your lede.

4) Where’s the Love in the Shack Attacks?

One can find a lot of pretension, posturing, and arguments in the attacks on The Shack, but not a whole lot of love, other than for the Christians they fear might be deceived. Many of these arguments fail to look deeper at why these books are appealing.

The church is full of walking wounded, such as Mr. Young was: victims of physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse. They long to be healed and to enjoy a closer, more intimate relationship with God as their Father. Opponents of The Shack may respond with apologetic statements, but they never address these real needs of hurting people.

Young can be charged with forgetting God is holy, righteous, and worthy of reverence, and for disregarding God’s church, but at the same time, it seems the Shack’s opponents have forgotten God came to bind up our broken hearts, longs for intimacy with us, and is the God of imagination and beauty who created this Earth.

5) The Shack Opponents are Using a Time-tested Strategy that doesn’t work.

Whenever a controversial book comes out, response books hit the shelf at a high rate. Invariably, websites will pop up taking issues with the inaccuracy and dangerousness of the book and some enterprising individuals will cash in by selling a rebuttal. These rebuttals are mostly read by those who wouldn’t have read the original book or wouldn’t have believed its more controversial claims. None of the rebuttal books against any of the fad Christian best-sellers of recent years has “stopped” its target. What has invariably happened is that the fads ran out of popular inertia.

You cannot oppose something with nothing, which is what critics ultimately offer. The needs of the hurting people that the Shack speaks to must be addressed. If you think the The Shack is the wrong way to do it, then how should it be done? Those who create will accomplish more than those who criticize. Those who write the books and produce the films, those who comfort the afflicted and proclaim the truth of God’s word in their churches will make far more impact than all the critical pamphlets in the world.

I’d much rather spend my time creating rather than waste it on useless criticism.

Sunday morning religion wasn’t limited to churches this past week. NBC’s David Gregory spent the last third of his interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann asking about her personal views on such issues as God’s guidance, her interpretation of biblical passages on husband-wife relations, and her personal views on homosexuality.

Bachmann isn’t the only candidate with religious views that have come under media fire. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has been under constant media fire. Jacob Weisberg of Slate has suggested Romney’s Mormonism should disqualify him as have some fringe evangelicals. Governor Rick Perry’s religious faith has been similarly under scrutiny.

Some have argued that if there is to be any overt religious involvement in politics, then all religious points are fair game, even if dealing with obscure credal issues or statements made in religious non-political events. Not only does this lead to focusing on issues that have nothing to do with governing, but it also encourages prejudice against people of faith running for public office. While Americans still believe in God, there is widespread ignorance around the particulars of religion. This ignorance makes it possible to turn a benign belief into something to fear or ridicule.

Religion has been part of American politics since the founding era. Yet, it hasn’t been the source of political contention that it is today. In fact, it helped unite Americans during the Revolutionary War. This wasn’t because Americans all agreed on religion. While America was not as diverse religiously as it is today, there were nearly a dozen religious backgrounds among the Founding Fathers, including groups such as Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, and Episcopalians: groups that had been at odds in the old world.

If the political discussion of God focused on inter-religious snark about the Catholic view of the Eucharist, the Calvinist belief in predestination, or the Quakers quiet sitting services, the result would have been such interreligious loathing that there would be no hope of accomplishing a revolution. Instead, the religious political dialogue of the Founding Fathers focused on three key points about God that helped unite Americans and give them the strength to fight the world’s most successful revolution.

Perhaps, we should take a page from their book.  Rather that looking into the minutiae of a candidate’s personal beliefs, we’d be well-advised to focus any discussion of religion on the candidate’s views on these same points.

1) God is the source of our rights

When the Declaration of Independence states that it is self-evident that we “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it declares God, rather than the state or the king is the source of rights.

The issue of rights being “God-given” is something that you will hear from conservatives quite a bit. It defines nearly every major debate, whether you’re talking about abortion, religious freedom, the second Amendment, economic policy, and personal liberty, the idea that drives many on the right is that the state cannot legitimately step over these boundaries.

Liberals prefer to view rights as more elastic. In a 2000 debate, Professor Alan Dershowitz rejected the idea of natural law, stating, “Rights are not self-evident. They’re not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.”  This view is consistent with the left’s belief in a living constitution that ends in the creation of new rights and the curtailment of old ones to fit the courts view of how society is changing.

This is a crucial issue that every candidate needs to address and their actions need to back up their words.

2) God Governs in Human Affairs

Benjamin Franklin, a deist, in pleading for prayers to be offered before meetings of the Constitutional Convention declared this at the Constitutional Convention in calling for prayer. The founders often spoke of Divine providence which in Washington’s words, “wisely orders the affairs of men.”  The Founders believed that God was at work in the world.
This is why they believed in prayer. It was not an exercise in showing religiosity to curry political, but they did so out of a genuine sense that God was active and willing to guide those who asked for his help. At the Constitutional Convention, they had studied the failures of every well-intentioned effort to set up free governments, leading Franklin to quote scripture in declaring, that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.”

These ideas gave the founders a sense of humility. It made them understand the limitation of their own wisdom to make rules for the lives of others, and is at the core of why self-government is so important in our system of government.

3) God is Just

The founders didn’t believe that God was neutral in human affairs. They believed that he stood on the side of justice. Even the irreligious Thomas Paine wrote, “I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.  “

However God’s justice was a two-edged sword and many founders realized that there would be consequences if America acted unjustly. On slavery, Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Lincoln later acknowledged the Civil War as part of God’s justice in his second inaugural, quoting scripture to declare, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

A belief in a just God should cause leaders to be just themselves in the way they treat others and to ensure justice is done, knowing that they will called to give an account.

Beyond these simple but profound truths, their remains a whole universe of religious issues that while very important in a theological sense, have no relevance to the public sphere. While it may matter a great deal what a church believes regarding worship styles or if they believe in dietary restrictions, these questions have little relevance to public policy.

And citizens shouldn’t expect answers. It is irrelevant whether a candidate believes you are living in sin, or doesn’t believe that you will enter Heaven, as long as they don’t believe in using government to force you to go to Heaven. It is only the mind of an insecure person that looks to politicians to answer on these sort of issues. For example, what Mitt Romney thinks will happen to me in the afterlife is completely irrelevant as he has no vote on it.  

Let’s debate other issues of religious import within the appropriate forums, but when it comes to our nation’s political life, let’s stick to basics that made our nation free.

The scripture is very clear as to whether Camping has any credibility beyond the fact that scripture says no one knows the day or hour.

When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him.-Deuteronomy 18:22

Alleluia! He is risen indeed!

Seriously? I have news for Mr. Jones. There’s a final judgment for both the living and the dead. Guess what? It won’t be held in his church.

Mr. Jones is not responsible for the killings that have occurred overseas in regards to the initial Koran burning. I don’t believe in a “Murderer’s Veto” where we have to censor our speech for the sake of madmen. But I question what he thinks he’s accomplishing here.

There are legitimate arguments to be made challenging Islam. see the website Answering Islam for example. This site that even features stories of people who converted to Christianity from Islam. I’ve yet to hear a conversion story that began, “I was really a committed Muslim, but that all changed when someone lit up an effigy of the Prophet Mohammad tied to a pork roast.”

If he’s not converting people to Christianity, is his actions causing his congregation to become more holy, more like Christ? He might say that he is raising public awareness about the dangers of radical Islam. But this is not the case. What this absurd behavior is doing is allowing critics of Islam to be caricatured.

Burning books and effigies is not an argument. It is nonsense that may have given Pastor Jones some publicity but is certainly not doing anything to advance the Kingdom of God.

Thousands of Christians were displaced in Ethiopia  after Muslims sent fire to fifty churches and dozens of homes.

Finally, Anthony Bradley in a post that when juxtaposed with these other stories shows how frivolous some American Christian concerns are by comparison, writes about the acceptability of Christian Hip Hop. Bradley writes in comparing hip hop  to Contemporary Christian Music, “hip-hop may provide one of the best modes of music to convey propositional truths and doctrinal content that at the same time connects to a younger generation. Contrast that with Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), which is often criticized for being shallow, theologically light, and generally lacking content that inspires the mind and the heart.”

Bradley  isn’t without a point. He posts lyrics to this song by Shai Linne which with the exception of a few modern phrases could have come out of a hymm book:

The above does serve as a case when hip hop can be used to convey biblical truths. However, I think that Bradley doesn’t really make a good case for Hip Hop as better than CCM in explaining biblical truths. He builds up a bit of a straw man here in telling us that CCM is often “Shallow” but provides no examples and compares it to a very strong Christian Hip Hop artist. I’d agree that too many, “Jesus is my best girl,” songs become popular with worship leaders. However, you can find theological depth in CCM if you listen in the right places: Michael Card, Sara Groves, and Andrew Peterson among others.

If there’s a good conclusion to reach, I think it would be fair to say that there is good music praising God in a variety of styles. Also, there is bad music in a variety of forms. There were hymns that had many of the defects that critics may associate with their least favorite worship songs. The advantage of the hymnal is that many of the weaker hymns have been weeded out over time, not so with songs written ten years ago.

With a bit of Google News sleuthing, supplemented by a trip to the Lexis-Nexis archive, it appears that the term “blood libel,” pre-Palin, was adopted by some conservative commentators in the immediate aftermath of the Tucson assassination attempt.

The first use of the phrase I uncovered came on January 9, one day after the shooting, on the website Renew America. As conservative activist Adam Graham put it: “When someone on the left says that the Tea Party movement is responsible for the shooting in Tucson, they are leveling the political equivalent of a blood libel that blames an entire political movement for the actions of a person who in all likelihood had no connection to the movement.” Note that Graham links to the Wikipedia page on “blood libel,” demonstrating knowledge of the traditional meaning of the term.

In all seriousness, the use of the term “blood libel” is appropriate because the attacks are being used to systematically demonize, blame, and scare into silence people who disagree with them.

Alan Dershowitz found himself in the fascinatingly odd position of defending Sarah Palin (and by extension I guess, me) on this front:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.

Well said, professor.

Westboro Baptist Church, the church of hate that pickets funerals to highlight its vile attacks, will picket the funeral of the little girl and five others who were killed in Saturday’s shooting rampage.

Fred Phelps, in an offensive press release you may not want to read in full, announced Sunday he will bring his tiny band of followers, fresh from last month’s Elizabeth Edwards funeral, to this wounded city because, “That’s how God the avenger rolls,” he says.

The good news: Citizens in the community are banding together to stand against this clown:

Tucson, said Gilmer — who said two of the six people killed were friends — is a “caring, loving, peaceful community.”

“For something like this to happen in Tucson was a really big shock to us all,” she said. “Our nightmare happened when we saw Westboro Baptist Church was going to picket the funerals.”

They’re planning an “angel action” — with 8-by-10-foot “angel wings” worn by participants and used to shield mourners from picketers. The actions were created by Coloradan Romaine Patterson, who was shocked to find the Topeka church and its neon signs outside the 1999 funeral of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man beaten and left on a fence to die in Laramie, Wyoming.

“We want to surround them, in a non-violent way, to say that our community is united,” Gilmer said. “We’re a peaceful haven…”

But political persuasions don’t matter, she said. Republicans, Democrats, independents, right, left and center — they’ve all offered their support. Forty-two people have signed up on a Facebook page called “Build Angel Wings for the Westboro Funeral Counter-Protest and Meeting” and more than 4,500 have signed up on another page to “Show Support for the Families of the Tucson Shooting Victims.”

I wish the folks in Tucson well standing against this hatemonger and false Christian/fake pastor. There have been several such efforts to combat the virtriol of the Phelps clan.

The only bright side with people coming together to protest is that it may cause us to realize that whatever our differences, our mainstream political opponents are decent human beings, unlike the Phelps people.

Something called “The Obama Prayer” has landed a Manatee County corrections sergeant in hot water. According to an internal affairs report, Sergeant Matthew Neu highlighted a verse in a bible that reads, “Let his days be few – and let another take his office.”

Sgt. Neu’s co-workers at the Manatee County Central Jail facility in Palmetto say it’s a well known fact that Neu is not a fan of President Barack Obama.

Many of them explained that in a 16-page internal affairs report, saying he made that clear in casual conversation before. But one of his co-workers, Sergeant Martha Nash, told investigators he went too far recently. She says what he admitted to doing was shocking.

Sgt. Nash says a copy of her bible was on her desk and inside that bible was a handwritten note that said “Obama Prayer.” She says at first she thought it was probably something positive until she took a closer look.

 

I actually heard Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) use the same verse when referring to Bill Clinton.  When you study Psalm 109, it is clearly not what the Bible meant when advising us to pray for our leaders. Sergeant Nash probably read the whole of Psalm 109:

 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer be counted as sin.

 Let his days be few, and let another take his office.

  Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

  Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

  Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the strangers despoil his labor.

    Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.

   Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation to follow let their name be blotted out.

   Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered by the LORD, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

    Let them be before the LORD continually, that He may cut off the memory of them from the earth; because he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

Clearly the Psalmist is not wishing for the recipient of these curses to be voted out of office in the next election. While taken out of context, Psalm 109:8 may be a clever use of the Bible for taking a cheap political shot. In context, it’s really not something that’s appropriate to use on a political opponent, certainly not the President of the United States.

Author/song writer Michael Card calls Psalm 109, the darkest place in scripture outside of Golgotha. It is never read in Jewish worship. Card suggests that Psalms 109 is David’s attempt to offer his own anger and hatred to God. He cries out for God’s help (v. 21) and in one way could be seen as crying for God’s deliverance not only from his enemies, but from his own hatred. Indeed, scripture records when David dealt with his enemies, it was generally with mercy. He refused to slay his predecessor, King Saul despite Saul’s unjustified quest for David’s life, twice. The same thing goes for a Benjaminite who cursed at him when he was fleeing his son. Because David gave his angery and hatred to God, he didn’t take vengeance or act on his feelings of anger. It’s a powerful message about the honesty that’s required with God to purge us of our anger and hatred, so we aren’t consumed by them.

It’s one that gets lost when the scripture gets used for cheap sloganeering against a political opponent.

The Christmas Carol is the most timely story at Christmas with its clarion call for personal charity and kindness. However, Krugman sees it as a support for statism:

Hey, has anyone noticed that “A Christmas Carol” is a dangerous leftist tract?

I mean, consider the scene, early in the book, where Ebenezer Scrooge rightly refuses to contribute to a poverty relief fund. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” he declares. Oh, wait. That wasn’t Scrooge. That was Newt Gingrich — last week. What Scrooge actually says is, “Are there no prisons?” But it’s pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, instead of praising Scrooge for his principled stand against the welfare state, Charles Dickens makes him out to be some kind of bad guy. How leftist is that?
 

Krugman then proceeds on a somewhat rambling lazy columns that you can get away with as an experienced columnist.

Of course, Scrooge didn’t argue against the Welfare State. He argued that his paying for the British Welfare State covered any duty of kindness to the poor. This neither affirms nor supports the Welfare State. As for Government workers, transferring Dickens’ sympathy for the 19th Century British underclass to 21st Century Government workers with generous pay, benefits, and vacation packages is pure conjecture. This is the case any time we speculate as to what the opinion of the long dead might be on a modern political issue.

Ann Coulter, while referencing Scrooge in her title, “Scrooge is a Liberal” she didn’t offer a conservative deconstruction of the book. Instead, she listed how Americans who tend to be more conservative are statistically more personally generous as well which after all was what the Christmas Carol was about. This would seem to give lie to Krugman’s theory of the cold and hard conservative.

In a larger sense, both columns attempt to diminish the larger point of the Christmas Carol. Any time, we take scripture or a great piece of literature and we declare, “It’s about those other people,” we innoculate ourselves against the power of the story, because it doesn’t apply to us.

The message of the Christmas Carol is clear. In our lives, we should be about the business of helping others and alleviating the suffering that pervades so much of our Earth. Not only that, we’ll be held accountable in the next life for how we use the gifts that God has given us.

No wonder some would rather talk politics.

A civil rights complaint has been filed against a Grand Rapids woman who posted an advertisement at her church last July seeking a Christian roommate.

“The statement “expresses an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths,” according to the complaint filed by the Fair Housing  Center of West Michigan.

“It’s a violation to make, print or publish a discriminatory statement,” Executive Director Nancy Haynes told Fox News. “There are no exemptions to that.”

Haynes said the unnamed 31-year-old woman’s alleged violation was turned over to the Michigan Department of  Civil Rights. Depending on the outcome of her case, the Christian woman could face several hundreds of dollars in fines and “fair housing training so it doesn’t happen again.”

(Hat Tip: Right Wing News.)

You can’t choose to seek have someone who shares your values according to the person bringing this suit, or at least you can’t say so in the advertisement. Of course, it’s possible, maybe even likely that the case will be thrown out in court, but after a lady has been put to considerable expense defending herself from a frivolous lawsuit.

The more you see laws expanded on non-discrimination over sexual orientation and gender identity, the more you’re going to see people dragged into court to defend their rights to basic self-determination from people hankering to bring a nuisance lawsuit.

Rather than suggesting we should expand laws into territories, this case suggests we would do better to revise our current laws.

BURLEY, ID – A Burley Junior High School teacher is arrested for reportedly trying to entice a child over the Internet.

Then we have this story:

BURLEY, ID – A former Burley High School teacher is sentenced up to 12 years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a student.

Chad Burnett pleaded guilty in June to two counts of sexual battery against a minor and violating a no-contact order.

 Now, mind you, Burley is a tiny town, by most standards with less than 10,000 people, so it doesn’t have a ton of school teachers. I think it’s safe to say that these two public school teachers represent a higher percentage of high school and junior high teachers in the Burley Public school system than pedophile priests represent of the Catholic Church. Nor is Burley the only one to have teachers involved in sexual misconduct. There have been stories throughout the Treasure Valley and throughout the country in recent years of teachers having relations with students with varying degress of punishment. Yet, it has not generated the amount of media coverage or the same type. Sexually abusive teachers are treated as an isolated incident, however, the abusive priests are linked in a chain as if they were co-conspirators.  

The question is why the difference in media coverage. The answer is the pervasive role of bias in the press. In the eyes of the mainstream press, the Catholic Church is an institution that deserves undermining and exposing as full of hypocrisy. Public confidence in public schools should not be undermined even though there are sickening number of people being paid by taxpayers who view public schools as a place to pick up dates. If the media treated sexual abuse in public schools as a systemic problem, they’d be a boon to homeschooling as many skittish parents would withdraw their children afraid of their children falling victim to the next Chris Burnett.

Looking at the large number of sexual abuse cases within the walls of public schools in recent years, you find how silly some of the commentary on the Catholic abuse scandal. In particular, the fanciful notion that this could all be solved if we only allowed priests to marry. Unless, there’s some rule requiring celibacy among Burley Public School teachers that I don’t know about, that solutions seems totally ineffective, unless your aim is to undermine Catholic Church tradition, which is the mainstream media’s goal.

What really is behind the rise in sexual abuse in recent years?  I don’t think it can be tied to a single profession as it cuts across all lines and professional barries.  Certainly, Catholic Priests and School teachers are good folks in general, who want to help children, not hurt them, despite the bad actors in the profession.

Part of it may be better reporting. The news and entertainment media has done a good job educating children that they should report these crimes, although far too many go unreported.

I think much of this goes back to the sexual revolution and the idea of eliminating all inhibitions. It’s kind of like opening a pandora’s box. If one suggests casting aside all outdated inhibitions,  for most of society, that may mean going further in non-marital relationships and sleeping around a little. For a smaller portion, this may mean committing adultery after you’re married. For a yet smaller group, it may mean same sex sexual experiments. And for a small minority, it may mean sex with children and young people who should be able to trust them.

Of course, most advocates of the sexual revolution will point out that they don’t advocate for things like adultery or child abuse. But it’s awful hard to make a headline, “Disregard Outdated Sexual Inhibitions” and expect people to read all the way to the bottom for the fine print.

There are going to be conservative Evangelicals who get caught up in the fact that Glenn Beck is a Mormon and they’ll be concerned that he’s up their preaching about God. They’ll say that his rhetoric may confuse people because he doesn’t view God the same way Evangelicals do. That’s true and valid but look, here’s the deal: Glenn Beck IS NOT your Senior Pastor. He’s not the Apostle Paul or Billy Graham even though Beck’s message on Saturday may have sounded like all three of them combined. If Glenn Beck went up there talking about the tenets of his Mormon faith, that would be one thing. If he started to whip out the Book of Mormon and started reading from the biography page of Joseph Smith then there would be a problem. But he didn’t. When he talked about God and Moses and the Apostle Paul, we Evangelicals know that he’s talking about the one true God: The God of the Bible. If others interpret it differently there’s nothing that can be done about that.

Glenn Beck did something very important this past weekend. He injected God directly into the equation. It is now part of the national discourse. He used his influential megaphone to give God the glory. And while Glenn Beck’s view of God may be different than that of Evangelicals don’t you think it’s about time someone with true influence stood up and wasn’t ashamed to say that putting God first in your life is the only way to real change? After Beck’s rally on Saturday, you can be sure that more people may start to inquire about who God really is. They really may start to search. Glenn Beck deserves credit for that. God can and will use anybody so that people will be drawn to him and If those folks who are searching for answers approach us, are we as Evangelical Christians ready with an answer? We better be.

Brody’s words are well-taken. In recent days, I’ve read some reports of people who got hung up about Beck’s Mormonism and the role it played in this weekend’s rally. I think such complaints show a lack of understanding of American history.

If you go back to the Founding era, you’ll find many men of disperate theological pursuasions who played a role in the country’s history. Benjamin Franklin, whose call to prayer at the Constitutional Convention has been read time and time again this year and also helped promote George Whitefield’s revival meetings that led to the first Great Awakening, was agnostic in terms of the divinity of Christ. There were certainly a large number of theological divisions among the Founders, even those who were Christians. Doubtless, I think it would have been possible to derail the Revolution if you’d got people to fight over predestination.

Throughout American history, it’s been the case that on every issue of  justice, that you’ve had a degree of inter-religious cooperation. Think the Underground Railroad with cooperation of other religious groups with Quakers. Or think of the Civil Rights movement and the involvement of Jews, Anglicans, Baptists, and others working together.

There are many important theological differences that can be discussed between a wide variety of groups. However, many of them have no relevance to public policy debates. Over the years, in political groups I’ve interacted with people who have very different theological perspectives but on our the samde side politically, whether its Jewish people, Catholics, Mormons, Calvinists, or Baptists, it’s quite a spectrum. It’s part of the reason I’ve stated that the threat of a theocracy is nothing more than a leftist boogeyman. A theocracy requires a single unifying theology, and it’s not to be found among religious conservatives. 

If there’s a uniting thought within religious conservatives, it is that God is the source of our rights, and that we are accountable to Him. Of course, I’ve seen many cases where some people just can’t handle dealing with people of other religious perspectives. The lady who recruited my family into our local pro-life group quit it because she became convinced that she couldn’t in a group that included Catholics. When I was starting a Teens for Life group, I’ll never forget calling up a Baptist Pastor who told me that the pro-life movement was nothing more than a Catholic plot to unite the church, and therefore he wouldn’t participate. I have to wonder if that pastor needed help pulling a drowning man out of the water whether he’d worry about the drowning rescue  being a Catholic plot.

(Hat Tip: Jill Stanek.)

Just a comment for my Christian brothers and sisters who invest so much in the political process, which, by the way, I’m guilty of myself at times.  Do not put your faith, your hope, in men, their laws and their political institutions.  Legislating anything, be it the “defense of marriage” (whatever that is) or protecting the life of a baby in the womb, will never be a sure thing deal that gets you the world as you think it should be.  You are trusting in human beings and human beings are notorious for selling out for a bowl of porridge.  Just ask Bart Stupak…

So look up.  The plan proceeds apace, and the King is still on the throne. 

I think that the Obamacare bill passed poses a grave threat to our liberty and that our nation is in serious danger overall. I definitely think Christians should remain involved in the process and committed to standing up for what’s right because I believe this American heritage we have is a gift, but at the same time, BillH has got a point. Our hope can’t be in the outcome of the next elections. Rather, hope needs to exist in God no matter how hopeless and scary the situation.

Habukkuk 3:17-19 comes to mind:

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls– yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

The LORD God is my strength; and He will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

I think hope has sustained godly people facing situations far more grim than we face today, and that is the hope I continue to long for as we continue through this difficult age.

As a Protestant, I don’t believe ministers should be required to be celibate, but blaming celibacy in the Catholic Church seems to be the problem.  For one thing, there have been cases of sexual abuse by protestant ministers where there is no requirement of celibacy, other within the bounds of marriage.  In addition, far more than protestant or Catholic ministers, teachers are often culprits of sexual abuse, with no requirement of celibacy.

The fact of the matter is that sexual abusers will go where children are readily available. They’ll become teachers, they’ll volunteer at church, they’ll become scoutmasters. Anything that is set up for the benefit of children has the potential of attracting sexual predators. And many of these predators have been married.

I think the Catholic Church, and all at-risk institutions would do far better to aggressively psychologically screen potential applicants than addressing a peripheral issue like celibacy. I think many people pushing the Catholic Church to abandon its policy are far more concerned about deconstructing the Catholic Church than they are stopping abuse.

I must disagree. I don’t identify as part of the environmental movement because I don’t view the movement as all that noble.

Certainly, we ought to have clean air and clean water. Who likes polluted streams and unbreathable air? Likewise, we ought to treat God’s creatures with respect and kindness. I remember how angry was when on a visit to the Columbus zoo, a crowd of kids were infuriating the gorillas, teasing them until they would slam themselves into the glass. I’m all for banning cockfighting and dogfighting and making them felonies. William Wilberforce opposed cruelty to animals and so do I.

But I won’t identify myself as an environmentalist, and I can’t support the agenda of the groups that identify themselves as environmentalists, for the following reasons.

•1) Environmentalist Initiatives May Not Benefit the Environment

I lived in Montana, where we suffered greatly in the Clinton years. The Clinton Administration failed to allow loggers to manage our forests, leading to a build up of fuel, which sparked great wildfires. This was because of the demands of environmental groups with insane policies like “let it burn.”

In my last trip to Glacier International Park before leaving Montana, the air was so full of smoke, I could hardly breathe. We couldn’t make it past the visitor center and left on a very downbeat note.

Other initiatives raise questions. We are told the Earth is warming when three decades ago we were told it was cooling. We’re being told the air we exhale is a pollutant against all common sense understanding of how plants use Carbon Dioxide.

I remain unconvinced that much of the changes called for by the environmental movement are even necessary.

•2) Environmentalism Is About Control

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has even admitted that the goal of his department was to coerce us out of cars. Environmentalism is about controling what cars you drive and even where you live. The focus of much of urban planning is on shoving people into high density urban housing and making them take the bus when most people want to live in a single family home and to drive.

Environmentalism demands an increasing role for the state in lording it over the lives of citizens and also demands increasing expenses, and in many cases, for efforts that aren’t even environmentally sound and cause people great expense.

•3) Environmentalism Hurts People

As a whole, environmentalism forgets about people. While a bureaucrat in Washington, DC or San Francisco decided it was a great idea to let wildfires burn, its the folks in Montana who had to wake up smelling like hell in the morning. It’s the folks in timber towns like Eureka, Montana, who suffered from double digit unemployment as a result of the closing of lands to logging.

When I moved to Idaho, I was earning less than $11.00 an hour as my family’s sole breadwinner and was required to register my old junker for emissions and it failed. I spent more than $200 fixing the car until it passed emissions. Then that car died. I had to get another junker and spent another $70 getting that one passed. The emissions testing hurts poor people who need to be able to drive and can’t depend on the city’s buses.

In rural Idaho, wolf populations are out of control. Meanwhile, much of North End Boise is so busy worshiping wolves, they don’t care that people’s livelihood is being endangered by a wolf population far larger than the state ever agreed to take on.

Further, environmentalism’s tragic policy of banning DDT has led to tens of millions of deaths around the world as malaria has made a comeback without the protection of DDT.

Most churches try to focus on the warm fuzzy aspects of environmentalism, like recycling and energy conservation, and stay neutral on the hot button stuff the environmentalists we’re supposed to ally with do to hurt people. Even in this lies danger.

•4) Environmentalism Lends to Pharisaic Attitudes

One of the few times someone on the left complimented me was when I mentioned I’d been walking to work. In environmentalism, that is a virtuous act. Taking the bus, eating organic foods, recycling, and driving a hybrid are all virtuous to environmentalists.

There’s a danger when the church begins to engage that type of mindset. When one begins to view oneself as morally superior for how you get to work or how you obtain the food you eat, you’ve become like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, who claimed moral superiority for outward works never included in scripture.

This reminds me of the story in Matthew 15, where the Pharisees chided Jesus for his disciples eating with unwashed hands. Certainly, the Pharisees had a hygienic point, but it was not a sin issue. Jesus told his disciples what defiled someone was those things which came out of their heart, but “to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.” (Matthew 15:20) To those who would get hyper Pharisaical about environmental dos and don’ts, it seems likely that Jesus would say, “To drive an SUV does not defile a man.”

There’s a second danger of becoming like the Pharisees: losing sight of the main thing. Jesus noted the Pharisees paid the tithe on their garden herbs (Philip Yancey’s paraphrase) but “have omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith.” (Matt. 23:23)

Environmental stewardship is a mandate to each individual on their own. If a church begins to think planting trees is more important than the child prostitute in Thailand, or the urban ministries, or feeding the hungry in their own community, then they’ve neglected the weightier matters of justice and mercy.

Many churches have avoided this danger. The Vineyard of Boise is heavily involved in community beautification through their Tend the Garden program. They also feed the homeless. They provide assistance to those in crisis pregnancy situations. They have an excellent men’s ministry. They have integrated the environment into their ministry without hurting their other efforts.

Churches can recycle or adopt a highway, but should be cautious about embracing labels like “environmentalist” because those labels have been defined in a way that hurts people, as environmentalism believes people don’t matter. That doesn’t mesh with a God who created us in His image and came down to dwell among us and die for us.

Michael Moore has been bashing capitalism, its excesses, and its lack of concern for workers and their exploitation. A story that backs Moore up comes from a reliable source. It’s a story of naked capitalism ignoring the rights of workers and arbitration.

A farmer had some crops that needed to be harvested and he hired day laborers, agreeing to pay them $100 for working a 12-hour shift. The farmer was in a hurry to get his crops harvested, so he went out again two hours into the shift and hired more workers. He continued to look for laborers throughout the day, bringing in more laborers every hour. Finally, at seven o’clock, one hour before sunset, he brought in a dozen more workers to help finish the job.

He then lined the workers up to give them their pay and he paid first the workers who had only worked an hour. Those who stood, sweat dripping from their bodies from a 12-hour shift, smiled when they saw the one-hour hires get $100. They figured that meant they’d get paid extra. But to their horror, the farmer also paid them only $100.

They confronted the capitalist with the charges of favoritism and unjust discrimination. Rather than offering arbitration, the farmer responded, “I’m not doing you any wrong. Didn’t you agree to work for $100? Take your money and leave. I’ll pay the people who worked an hour the same as I paid you. Isn’t it lawful for me to do what I want with my own money?”

Who is this capitalist exploiter of workers who thinks he can pay people whatever he wants?

Most theologians will tell you this landowner represents none other than Christ himself. The names, currencies, and exact quotes have been changed, but the essence of the story Christ told in Matthew 20 hasn’t. It’s a helpful story to remember when Michael Moore is out telling us that capitalism is anti-Jesus.

Moore’s statement is one of two grave theological errors that liberals commonly make when recruiting religion to their cause. At best, he’s doing eisegesis, where, rather than trying to figure out what stance the Bible takes on an issue, the debater comes to the Bible with a point of view and then cherry-picks scripture to support that view, ripped from any context.

Check out the rest.

We’re past Halloween and approaching Christmas and gearing up for the biggest battles in the highest stakes contact sport there is. No, we’re not talking about college football’s bowl season. Rather, ’tis the season for filing legal briefs over Christmas displays.

Like two prize fighters, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Alliance Defense Fund are preparing to go at it as the ACLU begins its annual season of silly lawsuits. The fear of silly lawsuits leads schools and local governments to take even more ridiculous actions, such as the school that banned red and green napkins from a “holiday” party a few years back. The Alliance Defense Fund’s prepping a phalanx of attorneys to go to battle has brought a touch of sanity to the annual festival of PC insanity by ensuring that government bodies realize trampling on the rights of citizens out of ACLUaphobia will have consequences.

With the ACLU, the silly season never stops; it just hits its biggest fever pitch around Christmas. They’re engaged in a lawsuit in Illinois and have found a friendly judge to agree with their atheist client that a moment of silence in schools is unconstitutional. Yes, having a moment of silence where kids can do whatever silent activity they want, from praying to thinking about their hot date tonight, is now considered something the drafters of the First Amendment would condemn.

However, there’s a glaring hypocrisy, dare I say cowardice, in the way the ACLU executes its inane war. The ACLU’s favorite modus operandi is to find a town or school district, generally a small one with a limited budget, and look for an easily offended person to file a lawsuit. This is what happened in Dixie County, Florida, when the ACLU admitted to “shaking the tree” to find a plaintiff to sue the county for having a Ten Commandments monument. It seems a stretch to say the ACLU was protecting the liberties of anyone by filing a lawsuit in a county where they had to conduct a search for someone to be offended.

If one is sincere about the need for an absolute and impregnable separation of church and state, the ACLU would have far bigger fish to fry than Dixie County, Florida, and Illinois students who are violating the Constitution by being silent.

Read the rest here.

Really, the Baker/Bakker thing was irritating but understandable. However, what I can’t understand is the media desire to list any Christian with problems as an Evangelical, even when they’re not, and the desire of some Evangelical to go along with the silliness.

Some Sunday Music for you.

Predictably, many on the left are proclaiming this as a decision affirming the Separation of Church and State when really it’s nothing in sort. The flyover has occurred for 42 years. Did the Constitution change last year and I missed it?

It actually discriminates against citizens who believe in God and goes against the ideas of our nation’s Founders. George Washington said, “Religion and morality are indispensable supports.” The Northwest Ordinance declared that Religion and Morality were necessary to good government, which is why schools should be “forever encouraged.”

What the Founders opposed was using the State to impose a creed on the people or having a State Church. It was certainly not their intent to create a group of hypersensitive opponents of religions on steroids.

At best, the Pentagon’s actions are somewhat hypocritical. While the Pentagon opposed a flyover, apparently they had no problem with recruiters for the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines being at the event. If the presence of a flyover constitutes a violation of the Separation of Church and State, why doesn’t any presence at the event by the military constitute a violation of Separation of Church and State? If flying over is wrong, what’s with military recruiters in uniform and a color guard being there. It’s an absolute absurdity because the Obama Administration is making the rules up as it goes along.

Even as a non-Christian (i.e., someone who doesn’t believe in the literal truth of the Bible – you go, Herb!) however, I have often considered writing a column titled “The Rapture Can’t Come Soon Enough for Me!” Truthfully, it sure seems like it would be a win-win for all of us – Christians get to disappear in the middle of what they’re doing, and the rest of us get to enjoy that they’re gone. ;0)\

Um-nice thought, but I don’t she’s familiar with the theory. First, the theory goes thall the true Christians are taken away. However, many people who are pretending to be Christians end up “left behind.” So you get the worst hypocrites of all of Christendom still on Earth.

Then, you’ve got the various and sundry plagues and natural disasters that befall mankind in the book of Revelation. Misery so bad that people try to kill themselves, but can’t for several months.

Though, I can’t blame the lady.  I think the popularizers of end times stories that paint a picture of the tribulation as a campy B-movie where Christians disappear leaving perfectly folded piles of clothes  have much to answer for in creating mass confusion on the coming of Christ.

Obama Faith-based appointee attacks the Pope, Knights of Columbus.

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Rick Warren: lies and backs off under cultural pressure.

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Promoting his state sovereignty resolution on the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives on Monday, St. Maries Rep. Dick Harwood declared that the United States is really a “confederacy.”

“To be accurate, we’re a confederated republic,” the fifth-term Republican then told the House.

This brought a strong reaction from a local minority right’s activist:

“It’s a very offensive term for minority communities in our country, like African-Americans,” said Tony Stewart, a board member and co-founder of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, and a retired political scientist at North Idaho College. “That whole term refers to the period of slavery.”

So every use of the term confederacy applies to slavery? Not according to my dictionary. The primary meaning is, ” an alliance between persons, parties, states, etc., for some purpose.”

Steve Shaw, an active political science professor at Northwest Nazarene University, while disagreeing with Harwood and suggesting that Harwood needed remedial U.S. History classes, identified Switzerland as a confederacy. I guess this would indicate the Swiss have slaves, if we’re to believe Mr. Stewart.

Was the United States founded as a confederacy? I’m going to do something totally wild and suggest we find out what the Founding Fathers say.

The Federalist Papers were a series of polemics written to argue for the Constitution. I did a search of the Federalist Papers and came up with Federalist #9, where Alexander Hamilton (for my generation, that would be the ten dollar bill guy) makes his argument for a Constitutional Government in opposition to the Anti-Federalists, who argue that the proposed union is too large. This was a time in American history when we were concerned about political philosophy and philosophers. And the arguments of Montesquieu had been used by the anti-federalists (who opposed the Constitution) to make their case. Hamilton began to go through some of the arguments of Montesquieu and wrote:

So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism. (emphasis mine)

Hamilton then proceeds to quote Montesquieu’s arguments for a Confederate Republic at length, “because they contain a luminous abridgment of the principal arguments in favor of the Union, and must effectually remove the false impressions which a misapplication of other parts of the work was calculated to make.” So, it is not Dick Harwood that concluded America is a confederacy. It was Alexander Hamilton, writing the principle argument for the Constitution. And being a confederacy had nothing to do with slavery. How does Hamilton understand a Confederate Republic?

The definition of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC seems simply to be “an assemblage of societies,” or an association of two or more states into one state. The extent, modifications, and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. So long as the separate organization of the member states be not abolished; so long as they exist, by a constitutional necessity, for local purposes; though they should be in perfect subordination to the general authority of the union, the union would still be, in fact and in theory, an association of states, or a confederacy.

Now, Rep. Harwood’s usage of confederacy may not be in line with the understanding of modern political scientists, or with people whose political correctness leads them to go racist hunting. But Rep. Harwood’s use of the term confederacy is backed up by the Founding Fathers, and as he described the United States as a confederacy in the context of a bill reaffirming Idaho’s rights under the Tenth Amendment, which was written in the 18th Century, Harwood’s use was totally appropriate.

I would further suggest that, before Professor Shaw prescribes any more remedial classes to Idaho’s legislators, he should brush up on the Federalist papers.

The big loser are mainline Christian denominations. They made up 18.7% of the population in 1990, and today only make up 12.9% of the population. The mainline denominations are Episcopaleans, Methodists, Lutherans, and the United Church of Christ. These denominations tend to be:

• More theologically liberal.
• More focused on social programs and the social gospel rather than the Gospel.
• With less reliance on belief in the scripture. A Jeffrey Hadden poll in 1998 showed 13% of Lutheran Ministers, 30% of Presbyterian Ministers, 35% of Episcopalian Ministers, and 51% of Methodist ministers doubted the truth of the resurrection.

There was a slight decline in the number of Catholics which I think can be partially attributable to the Abuse Scandal (and actually the Catholic Church bounced back from 24.2% in 2001 to 25.1% today. Though part of the Church’s comeback may have more to do with immigration.)

Other places where there was shrinkage: Churches of Christ (another liberal denomination) from 1.0% to 0.8% Also shrinking from 9.8% of the Population to 2.3% of the Population is the Demographic of “Protestant-Unspecified” which to me seems like the type of answer that’s given by somebody whose family was Protestant but they really don’t practice.

Judaism is down to 1.2% from 1.8% eightteen years ago.

What’s up though? The Reports correctly note that the number of people identify as No Religion has gone up substantially (from 8.2% to 15.0%) as well as the Don’t Knows (2.3%  to 5.2%). The number of hardcore Atheists/Agnostics has risen to 1.6% from 1.1% in 2001 and 0.7% from 1990.

However, that’s not the full story, the number of Americans identifying as Pentecostal/Charismatic is up from 3.2% to 3.5%.  Non-Denominational Christians up from 0.1% back in 1990 to 3.5% today.  Christian-unspecificied category has risen from 4.6% to 7.4% and Evangelical/Born Again with no specific denomination has tripled from 0.3% to 0.9%

Other religions have grown but are still relatively small. Islam has doubled from 0.3% to 0.6% of the population making lies of numbers putting the country’s Islam at 5 million, when the adult population is 1.35 million. Buddhist have rise from 0.2% to 0.5% which may be part immigration and part popularity on college campuses. Eastern Religions such as Hinduism have increased 0.4% to 0.9%. Not huge changes over 18 years given U.S. Immigration.

What’s my conclusion?

I think that there’s less of a need today than in years past to claim a religion in order to feel socially acceptable, thus decline in kind of liberal or fuzzy designations that were often used by people who didn’t care much about God or religion in the first place.

I think the mega-church model is probably leading to a decline of Protestant Denominations as huge autonomous McChurches replace denominations of old. I know quite a few Ex-Baptists attending non-denominational churches for example.

This isn’t to say there’s not a problem and at this point, there are probably several U.S. States that need to be treated as a mission fields as Western Europe is for many different denominations including the Assembly of God.  However, I don’t think this survey proves near as much as U.S. Today and many bloggers think.

Governments that receive donations of Ten Commandments displays and other monuments for public parks are not compelled to take everything they are offered, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

Boise’s Keep the Commandments Coalition was hoping the case would clear the way for the group to seek the return of a Ten Commandments monument to Julia Davis Park, but city officials say the monument will stay where it is, at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Boise.

The court said that a small religious group, the Summum, cannot force Pleasant Grove City, Utah, to place its granite marker in a park that has been home to a Ten Commandments monument for 38 years.

The liberal spin on this has been interesting. Remember the City of Boise removed the monument out of fear that they’d be forced to include a monument from Fred Phelps stating Matthew Shepherd was in Hell. The Supreme Court ruling made clear that no such requirement could ever be imposed.

The award for most bizarre spin on ruling that the City’s view of the constitution potentially requiring them to include a Fred Phelps hate monument if they put the Ten Commandments in the park

Chris says: “Supremes agree with Utah, validate Boise City’s decision to remove the 10 Commandments from the park.”

Really? The type of the post was Thursday Morning Coffee, but perhaps Whiskey and Coffee are easier to confuse than I thought…

Then Binky Boy alleges that Ruth Bader-Ginsburg has joined the grand conspiracy to turn America into a theocracy.
The bottom line is the Constitutional reasoning of the City of Boise was always specious and 9 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices agree.  They removed this because many (not all) members of the City Council are hostile against the idea of religious symbols in the public square.

Given that the city’s case to the public for removing the monument was a sham, I think there’s a case to be made for reconsidering the monument. I don’t believe the city can (after a vote of the citizens) decide to just put the monument back. But another vote on the Monument would be appropriate, in my personal opinion.

This is similar to a trial in which there were facts that were not known or there was false information that had a material impact on the outcome.

If the Ten Commandments is to make a comeback, there would needs be a large grassroots movement, and any such effort would need to be undertaken with much thought, planning, and prayer.

The idea of putting competition into a tax-funded program is like having prisons advertise for better accommodations.

So, public schools are like prisons and their students are like prisoners? What a compelling argument for public education.

The argument against charter schools ultimately assumes that children are the property oft the state, specifically, of their local school district, and that we cannot trust families to decide what education is best for them.  It’s a socialist notion and an affront to parents’ rights.

We are a southern gospel singing quartet called Joyful Sound Quartet. You can view our web site and listen to our style of music at www.joyfulsoundqarter.com
We just lost our bass singer / pianist, and are looking for a good christian, non smoking non drinking bass singer. We are a ministry that travels some in the northwest and ministers to various churches and events that are looking for good local talents to minister to them. We all work so this is a part time deal with some travel on occasion to others states with in 500 miles. We would like to interview you for a try out. There is no pay involved at this time but we do cover most travel expenses. We would like to interview you for a try out.

The ad is here.

Robertson said Friday that the trillions of government dollars spent on economic stimulus could lead to hyperinflation that ruins the dollar’s value.

“Everybody here will have to pay more, imported goods will cost a lot more, and there can be a lot of pain and suffering,” he said.

According to the Creator, “if I’m hearing him right, gold will go to about $1,900 an ounce, and oil $300 a barrel,” Robertson said.

However, you don’t have to be a prophet to see that coming and Robertson is no prophet. The Bible gives prophets a simple test: 100% accuracy and the missed predictions Robertson’s made would preclude that.

Still, is Robertson a good predictor of what the news will be.

2008:

Right: Robertson predicted a recession, violence and chaos in the world. Gold hits $1000 an ounce.

Wrong: Oil hits $150 a barrel (Oil actually only hit $147)

2007:

Wrong: Very serious attack on the United States. Chaos ruling.

2006:

Wrong: Tsunami striking the Northwest U.S.

2005:

Right: Good economic year, Bush will get conservative judges, Good year for terrorism (low)

Wrong: Bush will get tax reform and social security reform and claim “victory after victory.”

2004:

Wrong: Bush in a Blowout (3 points does not a blowout make.)

The way I count it, Robertson’s about half right and half wrong on everything he predicts. The same level of accuracy could be obtained by flipping a coin.

I’m not a great prognosticator either, but I don’t claim my predictions come from God. Really, this act is getting old.

So Rick Warren pulled the anti-gay language from his church Web site. The site used to explicitly ban gays from membership in the church…

Now the offending language is gone, but you can still find the anti-gay language via Google’s cache.

So does Rick Warren now welcome gays, all gays, as members of his church? Or is he simply embarrassed of his views – embarrassed of God’s views, per Warren’s own admission? And if Warren is embarrassed of God’s views, then what is he doing as a public spokesman on religion?

And whose idea was it to remove the anti-gay language? Warren’s, or Obama’s?

The idea of the President-elect telling a pastor what he can have on his website is pretty scary, but Arovois actually failed to note something. Warren has only re-organized the website.

There is a banner at the bottom page called “Bible Answers”, you click on that link and you find that instead of the written FAQs, Warren has posted Audio FAQs on issues including homosexuality where he reasserts the same viewpoint he stated in the text that Arvois found offensive. This is a pure myth.

Thoughts on Sarah Palin and the failure of the bailout.

33 pastors defy an unconstitutional ban on statements about candidates from the pulpit. (Hat Tip: Stop the ACLU.)

Opposition to abortion rises in Russia, one of the early legalizers of the practice.

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No. Obama took the heat for his association with the reverend Wright and has been falsely declared a Muslim. Romney was scrutinized for his Mormon faith. I think Palin’s religious beliefs are fair game.

We’ve never played the Obama Muslim game here.  As for Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, I do not like Mitt Romney, but it has nothing to do with his religion. In fact, I wrote a satirical piece showing the liberal strategy of using Romney’s Mormonism to attack anyone with with any religious beliefs. (Rush would call this a “See, I Told You So” moment.)

However, in regards to Barack Obama, it’s a different situation. The issue was not the faith and practice of Obama’s old church. The issue was the church’s Racist messages from the Pulpit, coupled with the explosive political content including sympathy with terrorism. If Sarah Palin’s church  were White-centric and racially insensitive invective flowing from the pulpit that she’d sat under for 20 years, you’re talking about another issue. I don’t hold someone accountable because one day there church has a kooky guest-speaker, but if you have a racist pastor, that’s a problem.

The difference here is between tolerating racism, antisemitism, and anti-Americanism, as well as support for terrorism as a consistent part of church life for 20 years v. what amounts to the faith and practices of the church. From a political perspective, I don’t care what Mitt Romney does at temple, I don’t care if Sam Brownback thinks that, during communion, the bread and wine become the body of Christ. I don’t care if an Orthodox Christian politician places a high value on the Icons of the Orthodox Church. These are not issues of public debate, these are issues of private practice, exactly like speaking in tongues.

By the way, if speaking in tongues should disqualify you from being treated with respect in the public square, someone needs to call Howard Dean.

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This isn’t news to anyone — or it shouldn’t be. It’s been going on for years, now. But the opportunity inherent in this monumental shift in the status quo is slipping away from those for whom it holds the greatest potential. How long have conservatives, both religious and secular, lamented that the tools of mass communication were largely inaccessible to them, being hopelessly entangled in the tentacles of the liberal media? How long have conservatives winced or curled a lip in disgust at the hundreds of little jabs against them, the countless ill-informed jokes at their expense, which left wing writers have shoehorned into every script for every TV show and film made since the 1970s? How long have they grumbled against the lack of representation among journalists, the lack of portrayals in entertainment as anything but ignorant, hateful stereotypes, straw men eagerly fashioned by the creative left and just as eagerly knocked down? The left would have you believe that conservatives are rare in the media simply because creative conservatives are rare, or even non-existent. Oh, they will grudgingly acknowledge them in Country and Christian music, though they will be just as quick to label those fields as derivative and banal by comparison to those where liberals dominate. Maybe they’re right — you’d be hard pressed to produce much to contradict them. And before you blame the left-wing establishment, try to remember that we are not meant to blame others for our problems. “Our Job,” as Joel Surnow of ‘24‘ fame puts it, “is not to whine. That’s their job. Our job is succeed despite the adversity.” So, are we? It sure doesn’t look like it. I’d like to be able to tell you that we are. I’d love to tell you that we’re insurgent in every field, and the left-wing ivory towers are coming down. But that’s not what’s happening.

What’s happening now, when the old media that’s been suckling the left-wing message machine since before most of us were born is at it’s weakest, is that we’re still acting like nothing has changed. Young conservatives don’t see themselves as potential actors, producers, directors, animators, artists, or journalists. Those are liberal jobs. Well, the fact of the matter is that because we’re letting those stay as liberal jobs, there are going to be fewer and fewer of those young conservatives every generation. Like it or not, young minds are fed on a steady diet of a media that is still dominated by the left as much as it ever was, no longer because we can’t do anything about it, but because we won’t.

So I’m here to send a message. This message goes out to the people I’m calling The Creative Right. Stop whining. Right now. Stop whining about their music, their movies, their TV, their Internet. And start realizing that none of those things, not one, actually belongs to them. Those things belong to the creators, to the dreamers, to the people who care enough to put themselves out there. We conservatives supposedly believe in hard work and the free market, the power of entrepreneurs and visionaries, and the ability of one person to change things for the better. We’re also supposedly not afraid to put our religion out in the public square, so let me give you a tidbit from mine: “Faith without works is dead.” And because conservatives aren’t acting like they believe those things when it comes to creative fields, our culture is sick, decaying, rotting from the inside with the plague of a creative zeitgeist controlled by our adversaries. We can do better. But we have to prove it.

Here are the important points. One: Realize that everything is open to you. You are not limited to fields where you think conservatives have a foothold. That kind of thinking is why so many people sell out their principles to peer pressure to try and make it, because they mistakenly think that they have to. Two: You will not succeed by being conservative, you will succeed by being good at what you do. Be assured that there are ten thousand failures in Hollywood who are every bit as liberal as Janeane Garofalo and Harvey Weinstein — having the political advantage of being a leftist doesn’t mean as much as you think it does. Learn your craft, even if you have to put up with learning from persistent left wing proselytizers. You’re smart enough to sort out the genuinely essential information from the politics they try to shoehorn into it. If it’s any consolation, rest assured that academic bias is severe and systemic enough that you’d have to listen to almost as much socialist, gender feminist, racist, radical homosexual propaganda in an accounting or engineering class as you will in film or art school. Three: Most importantly, never give up. This will not be easy. It isn’t easy for them, so it sure won’t be easy for you.

The odds may seem long for a conservative who wants a career in a creative field, or anywhere in the media, but the fight here is every bit as crucial as the political fight. We can be as politically clever as we want, but if we give them free reign over the culture, we are ultimately fighting a losing battle. When history looks back on our time, it’ll be the sum total of what we created that tells them who we were. Right now, that picture looks pretty bleak. It’s time someone changed it. That someone is you — I’m talking to you, with the camera. And you, behind the keyboard. You, with the pen, the brush, the digitizer tablet. Their gatekeepers can’t keep you out, and even if they could, there’s a whole wide internet out there that doesn’t even have any friggin’ gates.

I know you’re out there. I’m out there too, working my way up along with you. Get to work, Creative Right. Find your muse, find your voice. And then, find each other. Get a few of you together, and see what you can do. I’ll see you there .

One of the things we’ve learned about the shooter is that he didn’t have a job, and may have lost it at some point. For some reason, he blamed “the liberal movement” for this, and it is rumored that the man’s ex-wife once attended the Unitarian Church in question. The shooter obviously held a grudge-which was likely his motive-he was down on his luck (or rather down on his life), and he planned and executed a scheme to enter this church and take many lives, and finally his own. As it was, he took two lives, and the actions of a lot of brave men kept him from taking many more.

If we are to believe certain people in East Tennessee (and in some other parts of the country), our shooter wasn’t responsible for the lives he took and the people he injured, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and James Dobson were the responsible parties:

Well. I was afraid of that. Thanks Rush. Thanks Southern Baptist Convention. Thanks Fox News. Thanks National Association of Evangelicals. Thanks GOP. Thanks Focus on the Family. I hope you will at least have enough decency to send flowers to the funerals and the hospitals. The thing I don’t understand is why so many people in our society support these hate mongers when they see the results of their rhetoric acted out.

It is shameful that in a time like this, certain people from the far-Left fringes are attempting to use this tragedy for political advantage, but that is precisely what they are attempting to do. We hear even more of it from the simple-minded Left, accusing us of being simple-minded:

Conservative talk radio targets simple-minded and easily led folks who feel like they are on the fringes of society. It fans the flames of their discontent while neatly ignoring that the gulf between the haves and have-nots is only increased by a conservative agenda.

So it wasn’t a deranged lunatic bent on revenge against people he didn’t even know who was responsible for this terrible deed-no, it was conservative talk radio leading the “simple-minded.”

I have a B.A. in political science with a history concentration, and my favorite writers and thinkers include Locke, Burke, Kipling, Ambrose Bierce, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, John Grisham, and Plutarch’s Cato the Younger. I guess I’m so simple-minded.

I make no bones about the reality that as an ideology, I have no love whatsoever for modern American liberalism. I believe that most of the evils prevalent in our society today can be traced to the influence of liberals, from abortion to family breakdown to our terribly high divorce rate. I am, philisophically, the Anti-Unitarian. I am a Trinitarian Catholic through the bone to the core, and I hold to the notion that belief in the articles of the Nicene Creed (whether one actually recites that Creed or not) are necessary for salvation, for the Creed is, in turn, based upon the Scriptures.

In spite of the fact that I believe modern liberalism in our modern sense of the term to be filled with error, and despite my belief that the ideology is, in a social sense, responsible for our society’s slow destruction, I will defend to the death the right of any liberal to believe as they do and to practice that belief in the ways that they see fit, in and out of whatever church or house of worship they may or may not see fit to attend-including the Unitarian Church. This is the attitude of nearly every conservative that I know, for we believe that we shall be free to represent the truth so long as others are free to believe whatever errors they might choose to embrace.

I don’t say this because I have liberal friends (I do, plenty of them), or because I want to butter over my beliefs in order to continue the general palor of sorrow that has overtaken both the press and the people of East Tennessee. My beliefs are well-known enough, and I neither intend to water them down nor butter them over. Because I hold to those beliefs so strongly does not make me want to burst into a church full of liberals with a 12-guage and open fire. I couldn’t dream of doing such a thing in my wildest dreams or worst nightmares-such a deed is foreign to my whole thought process. To do such a thing, something else has to be wrong with a person-something that has nothing whatsoever to do with talk radio. If Limbaugh could tip this guy off, so could Franken and Kos and the hatred they spew at conservatives.

This shooting was an unspeakable act of hatred, but it was the fault of the man who committed the crime.

Instead, certain of the Left are content to blame talk radio and spend their time using unsubstantiated quotes attempting falsely to prove a conservative intent to kill liberals.

When you feel the need to use something like this for your own political advantage, that speaks volumes about how desperate you really are.

In yet another example of why the west might not beat the onslaught of radical Islamofascism, Minette Marrin of the Timesonline thinks she has found a solution to the clash of cultures. Marrin details the extremism evinced by too many Muslims in England and then posits a solution: ban all religion. Talk about an absurd idea. It’s as foolish as throwing out the baby with the bath water. It also discounts thousands of years of worthy and enlightened western culture influenced, guided and based on Christian philosophy.

In To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups, Marrin’s wooly headed prescription also serves as a fine example of the most shallow of PC, postmodern “thinking.” Famed French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré once said that, “to doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” It is a lesson in discernment and critical thinking that escapes most on the left, and specifically this prosaic, anti-intellectual Timesonline columnist.

The first half of Marrin’s piece details recent poll results revealing the extremist leaning of Muslim students in England and it is alarming information, indeed. These poll results show, for instance, that four out of ten Muslim students in Britain support Sharia law in the UK. One third said that killing in the name of religion was justified. It shows that a quarter think women are not equals to men. The poll also shows that, among other results, 57% believe Muslim soldiers in the British army should be allowed to opt out of the war on terror. This alarming YouGov poll will be released on Monday, July 28. To sum up, Marrin says of the poll:

The authors make it clear that the majority of Muslim students support secularism and democratic values and are broadly tolerant of others. However, the CSC points out that the incidence of conservative and separatist Muslim beliefs has been growing and is more prevalent in young Muslims than in their parents’ generation. British Muslims used to be much more moderate.

It is an alarming poll. Of course, who can doubt such results? The Brits have for decades been collectively turning their back on western society with politically correct teaching that holds that their own culture is no more than just another culture and, therefore, not deserving of special consideration. Like most left leaning provocateurs, British liberals have become fond of morally equating their own culture with the worst lot of humanity. On the other hand, these young Muslims are taught from birth that their religion is superior. Not only that, but Islam is a political system as well as a mere religion. So why shouldn’t British Muslims seek to replace the British culture with one they are taught is superior? If the English aren’t going to insist their culture is optimal, why should anyone else?

In all this England is reaping what it has sown. Also in this they aren’t much different than the French, the Germans, Spain, Canada, and to a lesser extent, even the U.S.A.

It is enlightening information and serves as a good warning, but Marrin isn’t done. She wonders aloud what we should do. “Insecure young people can be swayed by extremists,” she assures us, “The question is how to stand up to the extremists.”

Marrin begins with a good idea saying, “First, I think, we should abandon all discussions of what Islam truly is.” That is a pretty good prescription, but it isn’t a subject of much discussion in the west, really. Westerners aren’t interested in what is or is not the “real” Islam. That is a question that has vexed the Muslim world from time immemorial and will surely never be resolved. What the west is interested in, though, is what Islam is not, and that is a “religion of peace.” Still, no matter what it is, it is a major problem and solving that problem is all the west is interested in. Muslims living in peace is not something the west is interested in meddling with. Muslims on the rampage is.

And now we get to Marrin’s solution of banning all religion, her nihilistic suggestion.

What follows inescapably from this is that religious people and their views should not be officially recognised in groups. Religion should not be allowed a public space or public representation. This is hard for those of us who used to love the muddled Anglican compromise; it means the disestablishment of our national church – if it doesn’t self-destruct first.

She goes further.

The challenge of other, fiercer and more divisive convictions has forced the issue; multiculturalism has been subversive. There must be no more religious schools – personally I would leave those that exist alone. There must be no public recognition of religious associations as representatives of anything or anybody: not on campuses, not in student unions, not in government consultations or in parliament.

Marrin even wishes to ban religious schools? And how does this make her much different in stringent authoritarianism than the radical Islamists she here condemns?

Now Marrin’s absurd, overreaction would make sense if there were even half as many honor killings in Britain perpetrated by Christians, Buddhists — or even Druids for that matter — as there are Muslims. It would make sense if Christian nations were exporting terror cells secretly into nations throughout the world. It would make sense if major Christian leaders were issuing their own fatwa-like proclamations calling their flocks to violence, oppression, and self-immolation.

It would be a perfectly sensible idea to ban all religions if all religions were exactly as dangerous as Islam. But they aren’t. In fact, it isn’t even close. Islam is by many magnitudes of measurement a far more dangerous ideology than any other religion on the planet.

Yet, in a reductionists silly fantasy, Marrin offhandedly decides to veer off track and rush to ban all religions instead of making even a tiny attempt to actually deal with the real problem. This is the same sort of empty headed thinking that would punish the bully and his schoolyard victim for fighting on the playground. Hers is the same sort of idiocy that reduces all human actions to moral relativity. Marrin’s ultimate destination for her vacuous reasoning would equate the works of a Gandhi or a King, Jr., to that of a Stalin or Hitler. After all, all of them espoused their philosophies loudly and insistently and brought many followers to their side.

Certainly, a banning of Islam is not perhaps a solution out of the question. After all, Islam is the problem, here. But a foolhardy banning of all religion just because one is currently a problem is no solution at all. But it is a “solution” that falls into Poincaré’s admonition. It has the dubious benefit of eliminating any reflection. Sadly, it is the way of the unthinking left that we’ve become so tiresomely familiar.

Now here is an interesting little story that doesn’t seem to be getting any media coverage. In South Dakota after being held up in courts since 2005, a new law finally took effect on July 21 requiring any abortion doctor to read a statement covering the possible ill effects that abortions have on women — both mental and physical — at least two hours before the procedure occurs. The one Planned Parenthood office in South Dakota had taken the state to court to stop this law being implemented, but lost their case on the 18th. On the day the law was to take effect, though, the Planned Parenthood office did not open its doors for “business,” refusing to abide by the new laws. Doesn’t this refusal to operate tend to confirm that Planned Parenthood is in the game for ideological reasons as opposed to being only interested in women’s health?

This is a big defeat for Planned Parenthood, and a great victory for anti-abortion supporters yet the media is silent on the issue. That seems rather curious.

The new notification law requires a doctor to read a prepared script filled with the sort of info that PP tries desperately to exclude in their normal day-to-day operations. The Washington Post had a story about the new law on July 20.

Under the law, doctors must say that the woman has “an existing relationship” with the fetus that is protected by the U.S. Constitution and that “her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.” Also, the doctor is required to say that “abortion increases the risk of suicide ideation and suicide.”

More specifically, the law requires the physician to tell the patient the following information:

• The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being;
• The pregnant woman has an existing relationship with that unborn human being and that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States Constitution and under the laws of South Dakota;
• That by having an abortion, her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated;
• A description of all known medical risks of the procedure including depression and related psychological stress and increased risk of suicide

Naturally, PP is ginning up their highest dudgeon claiming that this simple act of reading some scripted information will be a “terrible, terrible barrier” to women seeking abortion.

“The law is one more terrible, terrible barrier,” said Sarah Stoesz, president of the regional Planned Parenthood office. She described the rules as “unprecedented interference in the doctor-patient relationship and unprecedented interference in a woman’s life.”

Of course, it seems like an untenable position that PP is arguing. Why are they against a few words on a piece of paper? Why is it such an affront to their idea of “health care” to be sure and give their patients accurate information with which to make an informed decision?

Obviously what PP is objecting to is that they won’t have free reign to disseminate their own ideologically skewed information to patients and this is why they’ve closed their office in South Dakota. How such a small gesture of reading a list of information to a patient could be such an impediment to proper health care is anyone’s guess.

To even a casual viewer, it would seem to be big news in the abortion fight that Planned Parenthood has decided to quit their work to avoid obeying these common sense laws, but so far only a few sources on the Internet are reporting this story. Worldnetdaily.com, of course, has the story, LifeNews.com has it, and a few blogs posted entries as well. But, no major news outlets have yet to touch the tale.

Curious, eh?

(Photo credit: Foxnews.com)