Category Archives: Consequences

Secularism and Religion

16 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Abortion, Church/State, Consequences, Education, Faith, Islam, Politics

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Many here are aware that the basis of western civilization is in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Often we merely assert this, since we have known it all our lives, but it can be examined fruitfully.

I admire Melanie Phillips greatly because not only is she a very good writer and speaker, she is fully capable of thinking through things. And she does so here. Yes, this is a long read, but I think you’ll find it valuable to read the whole thing.

It has become the orthodoxy in the West that freedom, human rights and reason all derive from secularism and that the greatest threat to all these good things is religion.

I want to suggest that the opposite is true. In the service of this orthodoxy, the West is undermining and destroying the very values which it holds most dear as the defining characteristics of a civilised society.

In truth, in the United States, we don’t hear it explicitly very often, but in Britain, it is quite common in my experience. Not to mention very strident, not only from the secularists, but from Randians, and other assorted libertine groups.

Some of this hostility is being driven by the perceived threat from Islamic terrorism and the Islamisation of Western culture. However, this animus against religion has far deeper roots and can be traced back to what is considered the birthplace of Western reason, the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Actually, it goes back specifically to the French Enlightenment. In England and Scotland, the Enlightenment developed reason and political liberty within the framework of Biblical belief. In France, by contrast, anti-clericalism morphed into fundamental hostility to Christianity and to religion itself.

“Ecrasez l’infame,” said Voltaire (crush infamy) — the infamy to which he referred being not just the Church but Christianity, which he wanted to replace with the religion of reason, virtue and liberty, “drawn from the bosom of nature”.

[…] Instead of God producing heaven on earth, it would be mankind which would bring that about. Reason would create the perfect society and “progress” was the process by which utopia would be attained.

Far from utopia, however, this thinking resulted in something more akin to hell on earth. For the worship of man through reason led straight to totalitarianism. It was reason that would redeem religious superstition and bring about the kingdom of Man on earth. And just like medieval apocalyptic Christian belief, this secular doctrine would also be unchallengeable and heretics would be punished. This kind of fanaticism infused the three great tyrannical movements that were spun out of Enlightenment thinking: the French Revolution, Communism and Fascism. […]

In the Sixties, the baby-boomer generation bought heavily into the idea propounded by Herbert Marcuse and other Marxist radicals that the way to transform the West lay not through the seizure of political or economic control but through the transformation of the culture. This has been achieved over the past half century through what has been called a “long march through the institutions”, the infiltration into all the institutions of the culture — the universities, media, professions, politics, civil service, churches — of ideas that would then become the orthodoxy.

From multiculturalism to environmentalism, from post-nationalism to “human rights” doctrine, Western progressives have fixated upon universalising ideas which reject values anchored in the particulars of religion or culture. All that matters is a theoretical future in which war, want and prejudice will be abolished: the return of fallen humanity to a lost Eden. And like all utopian projects, which are by definition impossible and unattainable, these dogmas are enforced through coercion: bullying, intimidation, character assassination, professional and social exclusion.

The core doctrine is equality. Not the Biblical doctrine that every human being is owed equal respect because they are formed in the image of God: equality has been redefined as identicality, the insistence that there can be no hierarchy of values of lifestyles or cultures. There can no longer be different outcomes depending on different circumstances or how people behave. To differentiate at all is to be bigoted and on a fast track back to fascism and war.

So the married family was kicked off its perch. Sexual restraint was abolished. The formerly transgressive became normative. Education could no longer transmit a culture down through the generations but had to teach that the Western nation was innately racist and exploitative.

Subjective trumped objective. There was no longer any absolute truth. Everyone could arbitrate their own truth. That way bigotry and prejudice would be excised from the human heart, the oppressed of the developing world would be freed from their Western oppressors and instead of the Western nation there would be the brotherhood of man.

All this was done in name of freedom, reason and enlightenment and in opposition to religion, the supposed source of oppression, irrationality and obscurantism.

At the heart of it was an onslaught against the moral codes of Christianity. Those moral codes are actually the Mosaic laws of the Hebrew Bible.

[…] What they [Western “progressives” and the Islamists] also have in common is hostility to Judaism, Israel or the Jewish people. The genocidal hatred of Israel and the Jews that drives the Islamic jihad against the West is not acknowledged or countered by the West because its most high-minded citizens share at least some of that prejudice. Both Western liberals and Islamists believe in utopias to which the Jews are an obstacle. The State of Israel is an obstacle to both the rule of Islam over the earth and a world where there are no divisions based on religion or creed. The Jews are an obstacle to the unconstrained individualism of Western libertines and to the onslaught against individual human dignity and freedom by the Islamists. Both the liberal utopias of a world without prejudice, divisions or war and the Islamist utopia of a world without unbelievers are universalist ideologies. The people who are always in the way of universalising utopias are the Jews.

Do read it all, and there is a deal more than I have given you. The full title is: Secularism and religion: the onslaught against the West’s moral codes. It is simply a superb examination of where our basic morality came from, and how it has allowed us to exceed former civilizations by orders of magnitude, and how it has come to be endangered.

Amoris Laetitia: a Lutheran View

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Consequences, Faith, Heresies

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I admire tremendously the thought process that Philip Augustine described in his post Support the Pope. It is one of the most reasoned comments I have seen on the matter.

I’m not going to opine on it, it is something for Roman Catholics to settle, except to say that I too think the Pope should answer for the reasons Philip points out. But it does have ramifications for all of us. We Lutherans and Anglicans as well, as well as others, do indeed subscribe to the creed as the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, some who profess Rome are not Christian, and quite a few who do not are, which is something to keep in mind.

I also note that, long ago, although not as long as it seems, our resident Baptist, Geoffrey, wrote about this phenomenon, as well. You’ll find that post here.

This month we will commemorate an Augustinian monk’s posting of ninety-five theses for discussion on reforming the Church, on the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church, 500 years ago. Most of the reforms he called for, eventually happened in my Lutheran Church, but also in the Catholic Church. The Church, founded by the sinner St. Peter, like all organizations of men, is not sinless, and never will be. For all that, it is an institution that we all, Catholic and Protestant, look to often for leadership, not least because it has done better than most of us at preserving the things that we have always done, everywhere.

An observation, one thing that many of us have observed is that sometimes the Church appears, especially to outsiders as a bureaucratic, legalistic maze. It may or may not be, but sometimes it appears so to the rest of us. QVO yesterday said, “Amoris laetitia, in so far as it encourages a perversion of discipline re admission of unrepentant adulterers to Communion has a bearing on the external forum.” He’s  not wrong, but it begs the question of “How does he know whether said sinner is repentant or not? Surely that is for him and his priest to discern, not a legal document that applies to millions around the world. Guidelines, absolutely there need to be, but in the last analysis it is up to him and his God to resolve. Finally it is a matter of the communicant’s free will. I think we should give St. Paul the last word in  the matter.

“Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an
unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of
the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread
and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing
the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.”
I Corinthians 11:27-29 (NIV)

The other thing I want you to consider is this.  Like Philip, I urge you to read Amoris laetitia thoughtfully and prayerfully. I suspect you will find it says something very different from what you have seen reported. Again like Philip, I try to eschew terms like ‘liberal/conservative’ or ‘Modernist/traditionalist’ although sometimes we all end up using them, they do not help us to understand, this, after all, is not politics, this is about eternal souls. But for that very reason one cannot trust the media, many of whom are demonstrably Godless people, and as such do not have your, or my, best interests at heart. To take them at their word is neither prudent nor provident. On the other hand, it would be well if the Pope were to refrain from making off the cuff comments to people who may, or may not, have the best interest of the Church at heart. It is considerably more pernicious than President Trump’s Twitter feed,

I’ll leave you with a few words from William Tyndale, whose first translation of the Bible from  Greek into English is the basis of our favorite version. From his “To the reder” of his 1526 rendering of the New Testament.

Note the difference of the lawe/and of the gospell. The one axeth and requyreth/the wother perdoneth and forgeveth. The one threateneth/the wother promyseth all good thynges/to them thatt sett their trust in Christ only. The gospell signifieth gladde tydynges/and is nothynge butt the promyses off good thynges. All is not gospell that is written in the gospell boke: For if the lawe were a waye/thou couldest not know what the gospell meante. Even as thou couldest not se person/favour/and grace/excepte the lawe rebuked the/and declared vnto the thy sinne/mysdede/and treaspase.

Repent and beleve the gospell as sayth Christ in the fyrst of Marke. Applyee all waye the lawe to thy dedes/whether thou finde luste in the bottom of thyne herte to the lawe warde: and soo shalt thou no dout repent/and feale in the silfe a certayne sorowe/payne/and grefe to thyne herte: be cause thou canst nott with full luste do the dedes of the lawe. Apllye the gospell/that is to saye the promyses/vnto the deservynge off Christ/and to the mercye of god and his trouth/and soo shalt thou nott despeare: butt shalt feale god as a kynde and a merciful father. And his sprete shall dwell in the/and shall be stronge in the: and the promises shalbe geven the at the last (though not by and by/lest thou shuldest forgett thy sylfe/and be negligent) and all threatenynges shalbe forgeven the for Christis blouddis sake/to whom commit thy silfe all togedder/with out respect/other of thy good dedes or of thy badde.

And finally, I join  Francis and all people of good will in welcoming theinfiniterally as he joins us on our journey, to the Cross, and beyond.

Terrorism and The Exhausted West.

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences

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Yesterday, I wrote at NEO about the terrorist attack in London. If you read me, you will know that I am becoming increasingly frustrated by Europe’s (including the UK in this instance) complete unwillingness to face the truth. 90% + of all terrorists are some variant of Islamic, even if only in their mind. We do our citizenry a major disservice when we fail to acknowledge that, and act to secure the rule of law. In my article, I quoted the great Russian writer Alexander Solzenitsyn’s famous commencement address at Harvard in 1978.

It struck a chord with me, and it did my astute readers as well. They dug around in my archives and found what I half-remembered. We had spoken of that address before, in a post of Jessica’s from 2013 while I was off for Christmas. It was an amazing post then, and it still is, and so I’ll share it with you today. Here’s Jessica, in one of her best.

The Exhausted West?

The title is not mine and it is not new. It was the title used by one of the last century’s greatest writers and spirits, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for his 1978 Commencement speech at Harvard. This came as a shock to the West at the time. Here was a man whom it had lauded as a hero of the Cold War, a moral giant who had exposed and condemned the Stalinist regime and its successors; in the face of his writing, the Left which liked to appease Communism fell silent, and the Right which loved to excoriate it celebrated him. But after his Harvard speech, his admirers were puzzled. Instead of thanking them and saying how wonderful the West was, Solzhenitsyn could not have made it clearer that he did not think that the best alternative to Communism was individualistic, humanistic capitalism. Any system which saw man as instrumental in a materialistic sense missed the point of human life: we are not here to be parts of the economic utopia or to consume, we are not an economic animal whose main point is to accumulate as much wealth as we can, or to consume as much as we can; there is nothing wrong with creating wealth, or even accumulating it – unless it is an end in itself. After all, the Good Samaritan could not (as Lady Thatcher once reminded us) have done any good had he not had the money with which to do it. Jesus did not condemn wealth, he feared its effects on the rich man, and he wanted it, like all of God’s good things, to be used rightly. A society which pursued wealth for its own sake and which makes money (or celebrity) an end in itself is not a good one.

America was founded on noble ideals, including the pursuit of happiness. Our wealth has become such that many citizens can get an unimaginable amount of material wealth, but, as he noted:

the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life, and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. 

He saw a society in which:

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. 

It is hard to see that nearly forty years later, things are any better; here, as elsewhere, Solzhenitsyn  prophesied aright. He identified the reasons for this very well:

Without any censorship, in the West, fashionable trends of thought are carefully separated from those that are not fashionable. Nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally, your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day 

The West was, he said, ‘spiritually exhausted’. The ‘human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.’

The origin of this decadence lay, Solzhenitsyn suggested, in the anthropocentric views of man’s destiny which came in with the secular thinking of the Enlightenment. Man was at the centre of all things, and the ends for which he was meant were material ones:

Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our day there is a free and constant flow. Mere freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones. 

But these are not the ends for which man is made, and so even if he reaches them, he is dissatisfied and his spirit unsatisfied. So it is that even in the richest society the world has ever known, even the rich lack what is needed to heal what ails them?  We can reject God and make gods of ourselves. But Solzhenitsyn did not see that as bringing us what we needed; and forty-five years on, we can see, even more clearly, that like Jeremiah, he was a prophet to whom few wanted to listen.

Eugenics, Icelandic Style

25 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in Abortion, Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Commentaries, Consequences, Early Church, Lutheranism

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Webster’s defines Eugenics as, “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”. Pretty innocuous, isn’t it? It merely means that as we have children we should be aware that our characteristics; looks, intelligence, and such, will likely carry on. In other words, we should find smart, attractive, whatever matters to you, partners. I think we all knew that even before 1883 when the term was coined.

But what about this, Iceland has all but eradicated Down’s Syndrome. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? A real victory for eugenics. Or is it? Iceland has done this by aborting just about every unborn baby that shows a possibility of Down’s. Rather a different sort of thing, I think.

The worst part is that they seem proud of it. David Harsanyi writing in The Federalist (and you really should read it) tells us:

Now, the word “eradication” typically implies that an ailment is being cured or beaten by some technological advancement. Not so in this case. Nearly 100 percent of women who receive positive tests for Down syndrome in that small nation end up eradicatingtheir pregnancies. Iceland averages only one or two Down syndrome children per year, and this seems mostly a result of parents receiving inaccurate test results.

It’s just a matter of time until the rest of the world catches up. In the United States around 67 percent of women who find out their child will be born with Down syndrome opt to have an abortion. In the United Kingdom it’s around 90 percent. More and more women are taking these prenatal tests, and the tests are becoming increasingly accurate.

For now, however, Iceland has completed one of the most successful eugenics programs in the contemporary world. If you think that’s overstated, consider that eugenics — the word itself derived from Greek, meaning “well born” — is nothing more than an effort to control breeding to increase desirable heritable characteristics within a population. This can be done through “positive” selection, as in breeding the “right” kinds of people with each other, or in “negative” selection, which is stopping the wrong kinds of people from having children.

The latter was the hallmark of the progressive movement of the 1900s. It was the rationalization behind the coerced sterilization of thousands of mentally ill, poor, and minorities here in America. It is why real-life Nazis required doctors to register all newborns born with Down syndrome. And the first humans they gassed were children under three years old with “serious hereditary diseases” like Down syndrome.

Now, as a general rule Down’s Syndrome is not inheritable, and this story “reflects a relatively heavy-handed genetic counseling,” as geneticist Kari Stefansson admits in a video. One is led to ask, what else can we control for in our kids? Want one son and maybe a daughter later? That can certainly be done. Why not, it’s the mother’s body, after all. Isn’t it?

But what about that child, essentially murdered even before he or she had a chance at life?

Over at Landspitali University Hospital, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality. They speak to her when deciding whether to continue or end their pregnancies. Olafsdottir tells women who are wrestling with the decision or feelings of guilt: ‘This is your life — you have the right to choose how your life will look like.’

Marie Stopes and Margeret Sanger must be so proud of her.

You know, back in the day, when Christianity was known as ‘The Way’, one of the markers of Christians was the way they loved each other, no matter the station, and more to our point, they did not leave unwanted children to die of exposure. As just about every other culture in antiquity did

Seems to me that for all our prattling about human rights, we’re doing a really terrible job of practicing what we preach.

The Refugee Resettlement Business

18 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences, Politics

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screenshot-syrian-refugees-germany-pixlr-440-x-294A word of explanation because I realize many of you have never heard of PumabyDesign 001. She is one of my oldest blogfriends, who I met nearly a year before this blog even started. I have always found her posts to be well researched, and more to the point, true. In this one, she gores the oxen of all of those who act like our organized churches, and their corporate outreach. I’ve done a bit of research, and what I found corroborates what she says. Mind, this is US based, but I suspect that you would find much the same in the UK. Here’s byDesign…

Social justice evangelicals and church leaders across the United  [States] wrote a letter to President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence asking that the executive order implementing extreme vetting of individuals traveling from jihadist breeding nations and the 90-day moratorium on Syria be rescinded.

CBN News

More than 500 evangelical leaders from all 50 states signed a letter to President Trump asking him to reconsider his controversial executive order. The letter included the likes of Ann Voskamp, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Daniel Akin, and Open Doors USA President and CEO David Curry.

While they acknowledged the order could prevent bloodshed on American soil, America should still be a nation of compassion….

The letter points out that thousands of churches have welcomed and sheltered suffering refugees through the Refugee Resettlement Program[…]

Continue Reading

“thousands of churches….”

Pope Francis once said that many Christians are Christians in name only, “People who go to church on Sundays, but spend the rest of the week cultivating their attachment to money, power and pride are pagan Christians…“

For obvious reasons, the social justice warrior in the Vatican who has labeled the rejection of refugees “an act of war” overlooks those organizations under the umbrella of Christianity receiving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from the refugee resettlement program beginning with his own U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The USCCB received $80,733,062 in federal grants (2015) and $79,590,512 in federal grants (2014) which accounts for more than 90& of their revenue stream but they’re not alone.

Many of the organizations who partake in the refugee resettlement programs are Christian in name only and for the love of financial gain have no problem quoting parables from the Bible and demanding compassion for refugees whose sole agenda is to convert infidels and/or chop off the hands that feed it.

The letter/petition signed by Tim Breene, CEO, and Scott Arbeiter, new President of World Relief and supporters starts off ironically enough with these two paragraphs:

As Christian pastors and leaders, we are deeply concerned by the recently announced moratorium on refugee resettlement. Our care for the oppressed and suffering is rooted in the call of Jesus to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus makes it clear that our “neighbor” includes the stranger and anyone fleeing persecution and violence, regardless of their faith or country.

As Christians, we have a historic call expressed over two thousand years, to serve the suffering. We cannot abandon this call now. We live in a dangerous world and affirm the crucial role of government in protecting us from harm and in setting the terms on refugee admissions. However, compassion and security can coexist, as they have for decades. For the persecuted and suffering, every day matters; every delay is a crushing blow to hope….

World Relief (full name: World Relief Corp. of National Association of Evangelicals) is a social justice organization corporation whose survival and existence is SOLELY dependent upon a steady revenue stream of taxpayer dollars.

For the year ending 2015, World Relief’s “most recent Form 990 …had a total gift/grants income of $58,487,081 and $42,589,050 was provided by you, the US taxpayer, making their federally-funded share of their budget 73% taxpayer funded….” See: Ann Corcoran’s post entitled, “Federal Refugee contractor World Relief (Evangelicals!) has a new Prez.”

As confirmed by the chart below from Charity Navigator:

Notice the lack of fundraising in the graph above? Namely, that tiny slither of orange in the second graph under “Expenditures Breakdown 2015.” Theirs is a sense of entitlement.

Private foundation supporters include the Vanguard Charitable Foundation, Mustard Seed Foundation, Soros Fund Charitable Foundation, Pfizer Foundation, Global Impact and many others. [Source: CapitalResearch.org]

In addition to World Relief Corporation and US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) mentioned above, below are the major refugee resettlement businesses who receives tens (if not hundreds) of millions of taxpayer dollars for their doing their part in the Hijra with the blessings of Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama and Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Again, notice the lack of fundraising in the graph above? Namely, that tiny slither of orange in the second graph under “Expenditures Breakdown 2015.” Simply put, theirs is a sense of entitlement

If you know me at all, you know that I have a properly developed sense of compassion and charity for those caught in a war, or simply down on their luck. So do most Christians. I have little compassion for so-called Christian organizations who bleed the people of a country, of tax money to presumably resettle people in our countries. I agree with this, though,

Washington, DC – U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (TX-36), who has been a leading critic of America’s United Nations (UN)-led refugee resettlement program, issued the following statement today in support of President Trump’s executive order on extreme vetting:

“I commend President Trump for delivering on his campaign pledge to put a common-sense pause on a broken refugee program and immigration system that has serious national security gaps and is in desperate need of repair….

“As I have been saying for nearly two years, the refugee resettlement program poses a clear and present danger to the American people. We were told by President Obama’s own DHS, FBI and DNI Directors that U.S. intelligence officials cannot properly vet or screen refugees coming from Syria and other terrorist hot spots. We have seen the deadly consequences in Europe as ISIS has already successfully infiltrated its refugee population. Why repeat the same mistakes here?

“As a compassionate Christian, I believe we can and should help displaced refugees by caring for them in safe zones near their own countries. In fact, for the cost of bringing one refugee into America, we can help at least twelve refugees in safe zones….

From: That Sense of Entitlement: Social Justice Evangelicals, Church Leaders, Refugee Resettlement Biz. By permission, and do read the whole thing.

This is, of course, what Britain was originally doing, but it seems that it has succumbed to pressure (from what I read) to concentrate on resettling the unfortunate people from their home countries to the UK, as our church organizations here in the US have. I don’t think this is good for either our countries (especially since no vetting is really possible) nor is it good for the refugees (if many of them are, in fact, refugees, and not merely economic immigrants).

I hate to sound like Bosco, but our friend has a point about how our churches can easily be corrupted, by the fool’s gold of the Second Kingdom.

In short, we are commanded to be charitable, but we are not entitled to steal (and government funding for other than the proper purposes of government is just that) from others to fund our charity.

And that doesn’t even start to address the problems of the introduction of immigrants culturally incompatible with our culture into our countries. I note that Chancellor Merkel is now hoping to bribe her immigrants to go away, I doubt that will work since it is not in their best interest. And who will guarantee that they will not return, perhaps with another name, since many have no reliable documentation anyway, directly thereafter.

 

Doctrine Really Does Matter: So Does Evangelization

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Consequences, Faith, Prayers, Salvation

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This is very interesting, although I’ve heard this anecdotally for years, here are some real results. From On Religion via The Catholic Herald.

When they set out to find growing mainline churches, sociologist David Haskell and historian Kevin Flatt did the logical thing – they asked leaders of four key Canadian denominations to list their successful congregations.

It didn’t take long, however, to spot a major problem as the researchers contacted these Anglican, United Church, Presbyterian and Evangelical Lutheran parishes.

“Few, if any, of the congregations these denomination’s leaders named were actually growing,” said Haskell, who teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University in Branford, Ontario. “A few had experienced a little bit of growth in one or two years in the past, but for the most part they were holding steady, at best, or actually in steady declines.”

To find thriving congregations in these historic denominations, Haskell and Flatt, who teaches at Redeemer University College in Hamilton, had to hunt on their own. By word of mouth, they followed tips from pastors and lay leaders to other growing mainline churches.

The bottom line: The faith proclaimed in growing churches was more orthodox – especially on matters of salvation, biblical authority and the supernatural – than in typical mainline congregations. These churches were thriving on the doctrinal fringes of shrinking institutions.

“The people running these old, established denominations didn’t actually know much about their own growing churches,” said Haskell, reached by telephone. “Either that or they didn’t want to admit which churches were growing.”

I found that fascinating, the growing churches, are simply putting their head down and growing the church, but they are not really telling the hierarchs what they are doing. I can’t say I’m surprised, though, I can remember when I was a trustee of my home church, even the council paid no attention to the mission fundraising, we were a fairly conservative E & R church in the maelstrom of the UCC, it was not a happy combination. You know, we traditional types were not enamored of supporting Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who was and is a part of the UCC. Continuing:

In growing congregations, all the clergy interviewed said it was crucial to encourage non-Christians to convert. In declining ones, only half the clergy agreed.

The study found that, in growing churches, pastors were even more orthodox than their congregations. In declining ones, the pastors were even more liberal.

Growing congregations were likely to be younger and have more children.

via On Religion – Canadian researchers find that doctrine really does matter, in terms of church growth – Columns

I don’t really think I have much to add to that, except that I told you so, and so did a lot of others here. A lot of the mainstream churches have become political clubs, or as I said once, coffee shops full of do-gooders, not houses of God. Well, the ones that remember the mission seem to be progressing in the mission.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

A Lutheran’s View on the Anglican Meeting

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Abortion, Consequences, Faith

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Shore ChapelI found Jessica’s post on the Anglican conference to be very fair, and to make the salient points.

I also thought Francis encapsulated my views exceptionally well when she said this:

One should always apologise if one’s behaviour towards others is uncharitable. But this is different from, pointing out, in truth as well as love, that we all sin (including in the sexual sphere) and that this sin separates us from God. What is problematic today is that you can’t state this in public without being called “homophobic”. One might coin the word “Christophobic” to describe people who can’t bear the toughness of the Christian faith and hate those who try to live it. We are all called to sexual restraint outside marriage between a man and a woman. This can be very hard – but part of being a Christian is “carrying one’s cross”. Today, the “Cross” is a scandal to our hedonistic society that refuses to allow any restraint on any kind of sexual behaviour. Sadly this has infected the Anglican Church in the West – but not in Africa where the bulk of Anglicans live.

Very true, and very well stated.

But as I read through the comments, something else struck me. Our churches have come very close to condoning all of the sexual sins, homosexuality, yes; but also adultery, fornication, and occasionally lately paedophilia as well. And always abortion. But there is more than sex concerned here.

All of these sins (and most are either, or lately were, crimes, as well) have one thing in common. Like strongarm robbery, they are crimes of the strong against the weak. To Francis’ point on the differences between Christianity, one needs to look no further than last New Years Eve in Germany, for the difference between Christianity and Islam, and how our secular governments cower before Islam. And that is something we are increasingly seeing as the tide of Christianity rolls back in the west. The protection for the weakest amongst us is leaving with it.

That shouldn’t surprise anybody, really. The protection of the individual (and the organic family) is a key feature of Christianity, based on Judaism. All other systems have elevated the ‘collective’ over the individual. Only in Christian Western Europe and places it has reached in the world, like North America, has the individual been exalted over the group. Remember, in Christianity, many may believe but we are judged, and saved, individually.

This is the centerpiece of our faith, He came down from heaven to save us, each of us, an individual sinner, not the nation, or the tribe, or the congregation, but me. The protection of the weak against the strong, and we can tie that back into our secular history just as easily. What else is King Arthur, the Once and Future King, but the end of the rule of ‘Might is Right’. And that is the entire thrust of Anglo-American legal history as well. The protection of the individual citizen against the all powerful, and uncaring state, whether King, Parliament, President, or Congress, the objective law is the weak individual’s bulwark against the state. All the way from King Alfred the Great, through Magna Charta, and the Cousin’s Wars to the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, and beyond.

And that is what I see in where many of our churches are going, and undoing, not only of the Faith, as it has always been taught, everywhere, but and undoing of the very rights that we believe God himself gave to us, in favor of bullies and slavemasters.

210 Years

21 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences, Faith, Uncategorized

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largeIt was two hundred and ten years ago today that Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets off Trafalgar. This is one of those victories that in the modern age we seem to think was pre-ordained. It wasn’t. Two years ago Geoffrey told us here that for the most part it is no longer celebrated in the UK. That’s sad. I can only attribute that to too many of our people coming to believe that our influence on the world has been an evil one. That is not only wrong, and perhaps evil in itself, but diametrically opposed to the truth.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c., said this:

For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.

This was also quoted by Fleet Admiral Nimitz, on his retirement. It was true for the Elizabethans, it was true in Nelson’s time, it is true now, it will always be true. But the Anglo-Saxon powers have always been more interested in trade than pure control of the world and its people. Alfred Thayer McMahon, in The Influence of Sea Power upon History, says this with regard to the British fleet:  “Those distant, storm-tossed ships, never seen by the Grande Armee, were all that stood between it and world domination.” And that is so. Our francophile president, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if Napoleon took possession of Louisiana and attempted to move an army there, “on that day we shall have to marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation”. Nor was he kidding, control of New Orleans would have (and had under the Spanish) stifled the growth of not only the Old Southwest, but also the Old Northwest, it was simply something that America could not allow, and survive.

Nor did it end there. We haven’t forgotten that during our Civil War, the French attempted to impose a Hapsburg emperor on Mexico, or that it was only thwarted in 1865, when fifty thousand battle-hardened Union troops assembled in Texas, leading to the French Foreign Legion’s most famous defeat. But we also recognize that one of the reasons that we developed as we did is that the Royal Navy was the guarantor of the Monroe Doctrine. That allowed the new world to develop at its own speed and in its own way.

We should also mention that the end of chattel slavery in the west was primarily done by the Royal Navy, which to encourage industriousness amongst its people, paid prize money for captured slavers, and the return of their cargos. Slavery ended with the deaths of a half-million white Americans, but they and the Royal Navy were both following the precepts first proposed around the time of the Revolution–in East Anglia.

Nor do I think there is any question that India, is far better off today, than it was in the days before the Raj. Gandhi himself once said that his nonviolent tactics would not have worked against a less moral people than the British, and in fact, Dr Martin Luther King said the same thing about the civil rights struggle here.

And so we come to the twentieth century, to 1941 specifically. Off Newfoundland, two convoys of warships met. One carried the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, on HMS Prince of Wales. the other carried the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, on the USS Augusta. Here was mapped the grand strategy that would allow the cousins, for that is what we were, and are, to free the world from the menace of Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. But here’s the point: On that day in 1941, only seventy-five years ago, if you were free to speak your mind, you spoke English as your native language. All the rest of the world owes their very freedom to those distant storm-tossed ships, that won one of the world’s greatest victories, for England, and for the world.

And so, for two hundred and ten years now, the Royal Navy has drunk one toast in silence, and all free peoples should join them.

I give you, Gentlemen (and Ladies):

“The immortal memory,

of Nelson and those who fell with him”

It’s true now, as it has always been, We sleep safe in our beds because of rough men (and now women) who are prepared to do violence on our behalf.

Conversionary Protestantism and Democracy: Overview

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences

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CPsThis is based on a paper by Robert D. Woodberry of the National University of Singapore. It is available here. What I say here will seem quite abrupt to some. That is a function of reducing about thirty pages to a few blog posts. I have also removed all notes, footnotes, and references, and while I have quoted the author extensively, mostly I have restated his conclusions in my words.

He writes about five contexts: Context 1: Western Europe; Context 2: European Settler-based colonies; Context 3 and 4: Eastern Europe; and Context 5: Everywhere else. I have chosen to write about mainly Contexts 1, 2, and some on 5. All are interesting, but I think these more so.

He also has divided his theory into historical and statistical parts. While I’ve read through the statistical part of the study several times and closely, and it makes sense to me. I am not all that good with statistics, if anyone else is, I’d be interested in your conclusions. I’ve pretty much limited myself to the historical section of his study, which is more in my field of competence. All quotes are from the paper. You will, of course, find the link to the full paper, including references, footnotes, and far from least, the statistical work that supports this historical narrative.

Also, Greg Scandlen at ‘The Federalist’ wrote on this as well, his very superficial (although accurate) overview is here.

Religious actors played a huge role in post-Enlightenment modernization–although secular social scientists almost unanimously deny it. How do we know this? Partly because history tells us so, and partly because the historical study of statistical variables tell us so, and partly because we have eyes to see, and some measure of common sense. The author says this:

I argue that Western modernity, in its current form, is profoundly shaped by religious factors, and although many aspects of this “modernity” have been replicated in countries around the world, religion shaped what spread, where it spread, how it spread, and how it adapted to new contexts

In particular, conversionary Protestants (CPs) were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, most major colonial reforms, and the codification of legal protections for nonwhites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These innovations fostered conditions that made stable representative democracy more likely—regardless of whether many people converted to Protestantism. Moreover, religious beliefs motivated most of these transformations. In this blunt form, without evidence or nuance, these claims may sound overstated and offensive. Yet the historical and statistical evidence of CPs’ influence is strong, and the cost of ignoring CPs in our models is demonstrably high. […]

For example, stable democracy first emerged in Protestant Europe and British-settler colonies, and by World War I every independent, predominantly Protestant country was a stable democracy—with the possible exception of Germany. Less stable versions of democracy developed in Catholic areas with large Protestant and Jansenist minorities, such as France. However, democracy lagged in Catholic and Orthodox parts of Southern and Eastern Europe where Protestants had little influence. A similar pattern existed outside Europe.

In European settler based colonies, Protestant based ones (United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) are far more democratic than the otherwise similar, but Catholic based ones such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. You will note that this also weakens the theory that secularization tends to promote democracy, as the author says, the United States is far more religious than Uruguay. It is also worth noting that one set are all former British colonies and the other all-former Spanish colonies. What that seems to tell us is that, whichever colonial regime we choose (and these were the main two on offer) they seemed to export quite well.

I start with Western Europe and North America because that is where representative democracy was first developed. In this, I follow the author, and for the same reason. This is the baseline, if we can’t find links here, they are unlikely. If we can, and then we also find them in the other contexts we make our case stronger, possibly much stronger.

I too think the classical origin of democracy may well be overemphasized. Sure, Athenian, Enlightenment, and Deist roots exist, and were known, and important, but much of this is also paralleled by earlier specifically religious terms, especially arguments for political pluralism, electoral reform, and limitations of state power.

For example, Calvinists tried to reconstruct states along “godly” lines and limit sinful human institutions. Perhaps as a result, most Enlightenment democratic theorists came from Calvinist families or had a Calvinist education, even if they were either not theologically orthodox or personally religious (e.g., John Locke, Rousseau, Hugo Grotius, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton), and they secularized ideas previously articulated by Calvinist theologians and jurists. For example, Hobbes’ and Locke’s social contracts are secular versions of Puritan and Nonconformist covenants, and Locke’s ideas about the equality of all people are explicitly religious.

I would add that the perhaps most famous definition of representational democracy, Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people” was not original but an almost direct quote of John Wycliffe. Whose influence echoes down to us through not only his Bible, which strongly influenced Tyndale’s, but he also influenced Martin Luther, Jan Huss, and I think, John Calvin as well. Here is perhaps the first expression of what would be the major strains of the Reformation.

Moreover, the religious context influenced whether Enlightenment-linked revolutions gave birth to stable democracy. The Protestant English and Scottish Enlightenments were not anti-Christian, and where they spread, democracy flourished. The “Catholic” French Enlightenment was virulently anti-Christian (particularly anti-Catholic), and where it spread, stable democracy did not. The French Revolution devolved into violence and inspired both totalitarianism and democracy. Similarly, anticlerical Enlightenment governments formed in virtually every independent Catholic country in Europe and Latin America, but did not lead to stable democracy. […]

For example, even in nineteenth-century Great Britain, expansions of suffrage and reforms of the electoral system were directly tied to pressure by Evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists—in this case, including nonstate Catholics.

Ideas are powerful things, but if those who hold them are crushed and killed, they don’t become the conventional wisdom. So, if power wasn’t dispersed enough, or secular and religious forces came to blows too much, democracy often did not last. In the next sections, we’ll look at how CPs fostered greater separation of church and state, helped to disperse power and, create the conditions which helped form stable democracies.

Next: PRINTING, NEWSPAPERS, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Source: The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy

Planned Parenthood: Profiting from Infanticide

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences, Politics, Uncategorized

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plannedParenthoodLogo-2And so, Planned Parenthood continues to make its founder, Margaret Sanger proud. You remember her, of course, the racist friend of Woodrow Wilson, who admired Hitler, and wanted to end the black race. But PP has found a new way to make money, actually it’s not new, but it is arguably illegal and certainly immoral. or perhaps the word is amoral since its coldness reminds me more of Joseph Mengele than anything else. PP has decided that it’s an excellent idea to sell parts of aborted fetuses, in my universe murdered babies, to make a bit of extra profit.

You know, I’m both single and likely too old anyway to have kids, and increasingly those are two of the major regrets of my life, and while this story sickens me terribly, some will say it shouldn’t concern me. But as Methodius of Olympus reminds us in his On Life and Rational Action, in the new translation by Ralph Cleminson, commissioned by Roger Pearse:

 

[4.] But what sort of men are we, bearing a burden of filth which besets us?  When we see those things that are necessary, we are glad only of those which give us pleasure, thinking that this is good; thereby we take delight also in fair deceits, and imagine that only these are of use to us. [5.] But God, who created us and made us, as he desires man not to be saved just by being given things, does not bestow on men as much pleasure as they can enjoy (the end of which would be death). [6.] Over-abundant feeding and rich food weaken a man, and those who have made themselves weaker through much feeding are unfit for obedience to the commands of God.

And so it concerns us all. But still, I tend to defer to others, who are better informed than I am. One of these is Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist,

 

At 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, a pro-life group released two videos showing Planned Parenthood executive Deborah Nucatola munching on a salad and sipping red wine while discussing the harvesting of organs from babies killed by abortion. One was a nearly nine-minute edited video of the nearly three-hour discussion. The other was the unedited discussion.

Because of the graphic nature of the discussion — Nucatola specifically discusses altering abortion procedures to procure hearts, brains, lungs, and livers from the babies whose lives Planned Parenthood ends by abortion — the video immediately lit up social media. Unlike most significant stories about major hot-button social issues, however, no major media reported on the news until 4:30 p.m. that afternoon. Some are still working on (or working on hiding) their coverage of the story. Let’s look at some of the major media outlets and how they did.

You’ll note, I am sure that both versions of the video are linked there, no question on context, at all. Also via Mollie is a link to John MacCormack at the Weekly Standard who has the background documents from PP’s public relations firm, asserting that this is a humanitarian endeavor. Whatever, is my reaction to that bovine excrement.

A few years ago, I worked in a packing plant. The joke amongst the maintenance people was that it was a disassembly plant for cows. It was never a particularly funny joke, but it described the environment quite well. But cows are one thing, human babies are another, I just can’t get my mind around how a woman (actually any person) can be so cold and uncaring. Mollie also did the Federalist Radio Show about this with Ben Domenech, it’s well worth your time, and will make you wonder even more how this type of story always gets buried by the media. It’s at this link:

http://app.stitcher.com/splayer/f/64217/39734302

Mollie, like me, is a Lutheran, but this is not a religious issue really. It is a moral one. Another writer whom I respect is S. E. Cupp of Townhall, who also has much to say. Here is part of it.

Americans, with their tax dollars, are required to pay for countless things they find objectionable. From wars they might oppose to studies they definitely find absurd — just this week we learned we’re funding one to determine why lesbians are disproportionately obese — it’s infuriating to know that we have no say over how the government spends our hard-earned money.

One controversial recipient of government funds, Planned Parenthood, has gone beyond objectionable into the realm of downright unforgivable. A horrific undercover video came to light this week of a Planned Parenthood doctor casually discussing over lunch how she and other affiliated abortionists expertly “crush” babies they are aborting to keep their organs intact for donation (and potentially sale).

I am pro-life. I’m not religious, but I believe that killing babies for convenience is morally wrong, and a society that condones, and in many cases celebrates, the practice has lost its way. But even if you support legal abortion, I have to think it’s impossible to watch the now-viral video without recoiling in disgust at the frankness with which Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical research, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describes the destruction of a life. Frankly, as a new mother — and a human being with even the slightest sense of common decency — I found it hard to write this column without getting physically ill.

In the video, Nucatola discusses using ultrasound to know where to crush the fetus with forceps. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver because we know that, so I’m not going to crush that part,” she says.

Bioethicist Art Caplan of New York University says altering procedures to get the best tissue is a “big no-no,” telling CNN that “your sole concern has to be the mother and her health,” not preserving fetal organs.

The legality and the ethics of what Planned Parenthood is doing certainly merits serious scrutiny and a national debate. But the more important conversation that we likely won’t have is about the morality of abortion in general, and whether the explicit nature of this video will make us question our embrace of such a grotesque institution.

Along those lines, Planned Parenthood offers a telling defense, insisting now that the donation of fetal tissue is valuable and “lifesaving.” That may be true. But if it’s such a noble cause then why doesn’t Planned Parenthood advertise fetal tissue collection on its website to lure potential abortion customers and brag about its philanthropic contributions?

Planned Parenthood: using tax money for infanticide, and then increasing the profit by selling the leftover body parts of babies.

A Brave New World, indeed.