Angels and Demons

From The Telegraph:

The storyline for Angels & Demons, which stars Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor, centers on a plot by the Illuminati, a secret society of intellectuals, who are intent on gaining revenge for a brutal massacre of their predecessors by the Church centuries ago. Although the society once existed, there is no historical evidence that its members were butchered by Catholics.

The Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon, the Bishop of Nottingham, warned that the film could stir up anti-Catholic sentiment."This is so outlandish, it's total rubbish," said Bishop McMahon, who is one of the Church's most senior bishops. "It's mischievous to stir up this kind of anti-Catholic sentiment. It's a gratuitous knocking of the Church and I can't see any reason for it."

Ron Howard, the director of Angels & Demons - expected to become the first blockbuster film of the summer when it is released this month - has fired back that Catholics will enjoy the movie, which is based on a previous novel by The Da Vinci Code's author, Dan Brown.

His comments will intensify a feud between some prominent Catholic leaders and the Da Vinci Code team over claims that the film smears the Church.

The bishop, who chairs the Church's Department of Evangelisation and Catechesis, said that Catholics were "getting tired" of the sensational stories and plotlines contained in Brown's novels and subsequent film adaptations. "I don't think that Catholics will be interested in seeing this as it's so far removed from the truth," he added.

Brown's book includes a number of other episodes guaranteed to upset the faithful - including a Pope conceiving a child via artificial insemination, thereby circumventing celibacy rules. Sony Pictures has declined to say whether those incidents make it to the movie.

Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in the US, accused Howard and Brown of "smearing the Catholic church with fabulously bogus tales".

The frenetically outlandish plot of Angels & Demons centers on a race against time by Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) to thwart a plot by the Illuminati to blow up the cradle of Catholicism with an anti-matter bomb during the conclave to elect a new pope.

But Mr Donahue is exasperated by the way that he says Brown and Howard blend fact, fiction and conspiracy theory.

"I have never dealt with two more disengenous people," he told The Daily Telegraph. "They wouldn't dare treat any other religion like this."

Howard responded in forthright fashion, "Let me be clear: neither I nor Angels & Demons are anti-Catholic. And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church, will enjoy the movie for what it is - an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome."

. . . Sony Pictures is not backing away from the controversy and will stage the film's world premier on the Vatican's doorstep in Rome on May 4, 10 days before it opens in British cinemas.

"We do not believe the film is anti-Catholic, and we don't believe the nearly 40 million people worldwide who purchased the novel were confused by the fact that this is a fictional mystery thriller," said Steve Elzer, the studio's senior vice-president.

OK, let's take Ron Howard, Sony Pictures and Dan Brown at their word. They are not anti-Catholic and sincerely believe that the world's Catholics will enjoy their new movie - which, like the Da Vinci Code, is not meant to be critical of the Roman Catholic Church in even the slightest way. Then let us issue them a challenge.

Let Mr. Brown write and Mr. Howard and Sony Pictures film and distribute a movie, which would not be intended to be anti-Islam in even the slightest way, in which Mohammad is shown to be a shiftless failure and pedophile who concocts his stories about angelic visitations as a desperate attempt to gain the attention, respect and power he has always craved.

I'm sure that Muslims the world over would enjoy that picture just as much as faithful Catholics will enjoy Angels and Demons.

Of course we know that the idea of poltroons like Ron Howard and Dan Brown attacking Muslims the way they attack Catholics is laughable. To be a coward is to only pick on safe targets. The Catholic Church is a civilized institution. The corporate headquarters of Sony Pictures will not be targeted by a truck bomb. The last view of Dan Brown or Ron Howard the world will see will not be of them being beheaded by masked Jesuits shouting "God is Great" in Latin on a video tape sent to EWTN (the Catholic cable channel). The Vatican will not even attempt to use its status as a sovereign nation to go before the UN and attempt to have Sony Pictures condemned as hate criminals.

No all Brown, Howard or Sony need to fear is words. Words which will only feed the publicity machine of their movie and thus put more money in their pockets.

And that is fine. Better to be able to mock religion with impunity than to have to fear being burned at the stake, but we should also keep in mind that any religion that you can attack without needing to hire a team of ex-Green Berets to keep your head attached to your shoulders probably doesn't deserve your attack.

More reasons to love Sarah

From The Washington Times:

ST. PAUL, Minn. | Sarah Palin displays an Israeli flag in her governor's office in Juneau, even though she has never been to the country, and attends Protestant evangelical churches that consider the preservation of the state of Israel a biblical imperative.

Her faith makes her a favorite with the staunchly pro-Israel neoconservative elements in the Republican Party.

But other Republicans may be concerned that a John McCain-Sarah Palin administration will disregard the caution of former President George H.W. Bush and some of his top advisers and continue the tilt toward Israel.

Most Republicans and conservatives outside Alaska know little about Mrs. Palin's foreign policy views - on Israel or anything else.

But Tucker Eskew, who holds the title of counselor to Mrs. Palin in the McCain-Palin campaign, left no doubt where she stands.

"She would describe herself as a strong supporter of Israel's, with an understanding of Israel's fear of an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons," Mr. Eskew told The Washington Times.

In June, Mrs. Palin told ministry students at her former church that in going to war with Iraq, the United States is "on a task that is from God," the Associated Press reported.

Mrs. Palin's brand of evangelical Protestantism is especially well-disposed to the preservation of Israel for biblical reasons, said Merrill Matthews, an evangelical Christian and a Dallas-based health-policy specialist.

Mrs. Palin was baptized as a teenager at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church. She frequently attends the Juneau Christian Center, which is also part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God. Her home church is the Church of the Rock, an independent congregation.

"Historically, the Assemblies of God have been dispensationalists, which means they believe in 'the rapture' of Christians that takes them out of the world," said Mr. Matthews. "Central to that position is a very strong support for Israel. It's integral to their view of both prophecy and politics. Denying Israel is almost like denying the faith."

Meanwhile, she is getting rave reviews from Jewish Republicans.

"I think it is very telling that she has a flag of the state of Israel in her office," said Matthews Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "That was not inspired by domestic politics, since there is a very small Jewish population in Alaska.

"The fact that she keeps the flag of Israel in her office means she has Israel in her heart," Mr. Brooks said. "I am confident the Jewish community will be impressed with the strong pro-Israel views of Governor Palin as she begins to travel the country and ... discuss the critical issues in this campaign."

Want to see the left fall to the ground in paroxysms of foaming madness? Just wait till they figure out that she believes in the Rapture.

Governor Palin's support for Israel is also going to send the paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and the libertarians like Lew Rockwell into orbit as well.

Once again we see that a person's character is revealed by their enemies as well as their friends.

I think it's more than the name

From The Washington Post:

The Rev. Todd Thomason looked out at the nearly empty pews of his congregation at Baptist Temple Church last Sunday. He had preached long and hard about Abraham leaving all that he knew and setting out into an unknown future on nothing more than faith in God. He was hoping that, after the service, what was left of his flock would have the courage to do the same.

After 100 years, Baptist Temple, he feared, was dying. In its heyday in the 1950s, more than 900 members crammed into the sanctuary of the pretty white church in Alexandria that was built for 500. Now he was lucky to get 30. Perhaps the problem, he began to think, was the name itself.

"We're probably the most progressive church in the city, but 'Baptist Temple' sounds weird, like it's charismatic and conservative," Thomason said. He worried that the word "Baptist" had become indelibly tied to the political religious right and that when combined with "Temple" it sounded like a fundamentalist "bring out the snakes" kind of place.

I wonder. Perhaps it isn't the name but the doctrinal position that is causing people to abandon the church. You can get trendy left-wing politics and new age spirituality anywhere so why bother to get up early on Sunday and drive to church?

The same is true about conservative politics as well. You can get right-wing politics on talk radio so why get up early on Sunday for that either.

A Christian Church has one thing which the world simply does not and never can have and that is Christianity itself. A church should be a place where Christians can come together to receive instruction, exhortation, edification, comfort and council on matters of their Christian faith and it should be a place where people can participate in a corporate of worship and praise of God.

The church experience should also provide an opportunity for Christians to serve the Lord by serving their fellow man in various types of charitable activities but always with the understanding that such good works are not ends into themselves but are designed to earn a hearing for and provide credibility for the Gospel message.

If you look at the mainline Protestant denominations you find that most of them are not just "declining" but out-and-out dying. The reason for this is that they have abandoned biblical literalism for a watered down theology and political correctness.

To paraphrase Martin Luther, if I uphold all of scripture except for that part which the world and the Devil are currently attacking I have not confessed Christ no matter how loudly I profess Christ. Churches which act embarrassed about the Bible either ignoring or explaining away things like special creation or miracles or its teaching on homosexuality may receive praise from some activists but they only earn the contempt of ordinary citizens.

Sproul and Stein

R.C. Sproul interviews Ben Stein on the new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Mr. Stein's new documentary on the way the academic world has responded to the theory of intelligent design.



Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Christian charity does not take at gunpoint

From American Thinker:

Mike Huckabee said last Sunday on Meet the Press that his faith was important to him and that it drove his views on everything from the environment to poverty to disease and to hunger. Huckabee then went on to say that he thought the Republican Party needed to take a greater leadership role on these sorts of issues and that, as a Christian, he wanted to make sure that Republicans spoke out more on these issues.

Excellent. As a Christian Republican myself, I will express support for protecting God's Creation, fighting sickness, and ending hunger. All are profoundly Christian ideals. But Mike Huckabee, as a Christian, is not really talking about protecting Creation, fighting sickness or ending hunger. Mike is talking about using the coercive power of government to force other people to pay taxes and to comply with onerous and arbitrary laws to do what Mike thinks, as a Christian, he should be doing.

That is the salient fact: as a Christian, Huckabee can be a witness to Christian behavior; he can exhort others to themselves become a witness to Christian behavior; but he cannot demand the enslavement of others to do those things which, as a Christian, he feels that he should do. The term "enslavement," of course, is relative. Americans are comparatively free. But everything that Huckabee feels government should do requires a loss of freedom for every American. Moreover, Huckabee is not just asking for the greater enslavement of Christian Americans, but he is asking for the greater enslavement of all Americans. This is most un-Christian. Does my verdict sound extreme? Substitute "Rome" for "America" and substitute "publican" for "tax dollars."

Did Christ ever say his followers should ask Rome to do more for the welfare of its subjects? Or did Christ ask each individual Christian to personally do more to feed the hungry, to comfort the sick, to care for the widows and orphans, and to seek justice and mercy? Rome was a welfare state. The urban masses of Rome lived on bread and circuses. Roman power, outside Rome, build good roads, aqueducts, baths, bridges, libraries and undertook many other public works projects. Pax Romana was a very real blessing to nations who had fought wars around Mare Nostrum for centuries.

Despite the ways in which Roman power could be used to improve the world, Christ never looked to Rome to bring paradise or earth or even to be the agent of doing good in this world. Christ, rather, enjoined his followers to personally sacrifice and work for the rest of the world. He did not want Christians running for Roman offices to use the hated Roman taxes to "do good." His message was personal.

Christians have heeded that call. Newt Gingrich, for example, does care about the environment and ecology, but as a private citizen. Rush Limbaugh quietly and privately helps many charities. Each Christmas the Salvation Army has hosts of volunteers who raise money to directly help the poor. Christians throughout America have healed the sick, comforted the distressed, and preserved the glory of Creation - but they act personally, and not through the enslavement of other Americans.

Mike should want to be a disciple of Christ and not a consul of Rome. At the time of Christ, everyone knew just how much good Rome did, but they also knew the price of Roman benefits. It was by no means clear whether Rome, on balance, did more good or bad. But it was always clear that the Christian who gave of us own purse to feed the hungry did pure good. That is the distinction between using Rome (or any government) to try to do good and using one's own Christian conscience and will to do good.

But there are other problems with Huckabee's pining for more government intervention. Not only is the enslavement of others to do what one thinks is right fundamentally unchristian, but it is also horribly inefficient and produces much wickedness disguised as goodness. Creating bureaucracies of government employees to "care" for the poor, the environment, the sick and so forth has proven the least cost-effective way of helping people, but worse, these bureaucrats are not acting out of Christian love: they are just doing their job. These "dependency" bureaucracies actually coarsen the consciences of both recipients and administrators.

One of the worst things, if not the worst thing, about Elmer's candidacy has been the way he has created the impression that committed Christians desire bigger government.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Biblically educated Christians understand that not one word of the New Testament is directed to government. All of it is meant for individual Christians. Rather than support the idea of a welfare state the Bible actually forbids the giving of so much as one crumb of bread to the idle poor.

Real charity, the kind which has meaning before God, must be first of all voluntary. God loves a cheerful giver not someone who gives only because the government has sent men with guns out to take his money by force and redistribute it to those the government favors, at the moment.

Back to Sunday school for you

From The Brussels Journal:

What happens when a modern secular Brit tries to make a point about religion:

Romney and Huckabee would make any Englishman uncomfortable as we avoid mixing politics and religion, an irony considering that we have an Established State Church and the USA specifically does not.

Huckabee, as I understand it, is one of those gentle but intellectually challenged souls who believes the Bible literally to be true: that is a matter entirely for him, of course, but I do wish he would tell us how Moses managed to get two of every animal, plant and so forth that has ever existed on Earth into one vessel and just how big it was…

I'm sure Noah would have liked to know how Moses managed that as well.

Paging Father Merrin

Before reading this articlel from The Daily Mail understand that the Vatican says that it isn't true. Still it sounds kind of cool:
The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.

They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness."

Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.

The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican "exorcistinchief," to the online Catholic news service Petrus.

"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said.

"Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.

"Thankfully, Benedict XVI believes in the existence and danger of evil - going back to the time he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith." The CDF is the oldest Vatican department and was headed by Benedict from 1982, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, until he became Pope in 2005.

Father Amorth said that during his time at the department Benedict had not lost the chance to warn humanity of the risk from the Devil.

He said the Pope wants to restore a prayer seen as protection against evil that was traditionally recited at the end of Catholic Masses. The prayer, to St Michael the Archangel, was dropped in the 1960s by Pope John XXIII.

"The prayer is useful not only for priests but also for lay people in helping to fight demons," he said.

Father Paolo Scarafoni, who lectures on the Vatican's exorcism course, said interest in Satanism and the occult has grown as people lost faith with the church.

He added: "People suffer and think that turning to the Devil can help solve their problems. We are being bombarded by requests for exorcisms."

The Vatican is particularly concerned that young people are being exposed to the influence of Satanic sects through rock music and the Internet.

In theory, under the Catholic Church's Canon Law 1172, all priests can perform exorcisms. But in reality only a select few are assigned the task.

Under the law, practitioners must have "piety, knowledge, prudence, and integrity of life."

The rite of exorcism involves a series of gestures and prayers to invoke the power of God and stop the "demon" influencing its victim.

Be careful what you ask for

One presidential hopeful is a preacher, another proudly Mormon, and most openly tout their Christianity. In an arena where faith can make or break a politician, the one in 10 Americans who profess no religion feel left in the cold.

"They're very disconcerted," said Darren Sherkat, an atheist sociology professor specializing in religion at Southern Illinois University.

"They're horrified by both the Democratic and Republican rhetoric surrounding religion -- that people who are not religious ... are immoral, that they're not qualified to serve in public office," he said.

Ian Thomas, 25, got involved in political campaigning as a student and in 2005 ran for a place on the school board in his local district in Pennsylvania.

Days before the vote, a county council member emailed local community groups disparaging Thomas for having an atheist bumper sticker on his car, and for writing a letter about atheism to a local newspaper.

"They are entitled to their beliefs and free speech but it doesn't make a sound foundation for elected officials who makes our laws ... to promote an Atheist that we know anything about," read the ungrammatical email, shown to AFP.

"I was very, very insulted," Thomas said.

The small-town incident was part of a wider pattern of "disenfranchisement" of non-believers, according to Margaret Downey, president of the educational organization Atheist Alliance International.

She claims atheists are "the fastest-growing minority in America."


But they are also "the least tolerated group by conventional standards of religious toleration in the US," Sherkat said.

While church and state are constitutionally separate, politicians must reckon with a largely religious electorate -- some 160 million out of the 200 million adults considered themselves Christian, according to 2001 figures from the US Census Bureau.

Critics complain that candidates face a public "test" of their faith credentials.

"Atheists and agnostics find all the candidates distressingly religious," said Michael Shermer, an atheist writer and publisher of Skeptic magazine.

"Legally, there is no religious test for office, but culturally there obviously is," he said, as polls showed Republican Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, surging ahead in key early nominating states.

Religion surfaced prominently when Huckabee's rival Mitt Romney, a member of the Mormon church, made a bid this month to reassure the powerful conservative Christian voting bloc.

"I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from the God who gave us liberty," Romney said, fighting to dispel mistrust of his denomination, which some dismiss as a sect.

"Yeah, well, what about the approximately 30 million American nonbelievers, Mitt?" Shermer retorted, in comments to AFP. "You have no plans to represent us, or to protect and defend the constitution for us?"

More than one in 10 US adults have no religious affiliation, according to the census figures. But a Gallup poll in February found more than half of voters would not back an otherwise well-qualified candidate from their favored party if that person was an atheist.

"We're very saddened that people walk into the voting booth and do bring their prejudices, in terms of only voting for people who believe in God," said Lori Lipman Brown, head of the Secular Coalition for America, a Washington-based group campaigning for separation of church and state.

"People have this prejudice against non-theists and think that we don't have values or morals or share their ideas on issues, or live compassionate lives," she said. "All of which is not true. But they're going to vote based on those prejudices."

Two observations. One, an atheist friend of mine once told me that in his experience there were two kinds of people who termed themselves athiests. One group, and by far the smallest, were people who were genuinely persuaded that there was no God. The other, and by far the largest, actually believed in God, they were just really pissed off at Him.

The other observation is that while a person can be a moral and compassionate person and hold no religious faith that those who do so are free riders. They have adopted a mindset which comes from their cluture's Judaeo-Christian underpinnings while rejecting the reality of the Judaeo-Christian faith. They have wrapped themselves in the effect while rejecting the cause.

One can do this for a time, but with each generation the effect, divorced from its cause, grows weaker. Anyone who doubts this only needs to look at Europe where in some nations elderly people are afraid to go to the doctor for fear that he will decide that they have lived "long enough" and give them a lethal injection. An act which is illegal, but for which no jury will convict.

In Old Europe which has turned its back upon God we see a culture which has lost its faith in itself and it's future to the degree that people have stopped reproducing. Consider this; the old Soviet Union and Western Europe today share a birthrate which is below replacement levels. The USSR was a land of both political repression and material deprivation. Western Europe is a land of great personal liberty and material abundance. What they share was an abandonment of religious faith, or at least faith in the transcendent God of the Bible.

It is not an accident that the only group in Europe or Russia today which is growing their population are religious Muslims.

When confronted by those who have faith those who lack faith cannot stand. It is difficult to get someone to die on Thursday morning for the right to go out and party on Friday night. This is why Europe is slowly but surely being absorbed into a great Islamic Caliphate.

This is why America is willing to devote large amounts of its blood and treasure to the fight against Islamofascism and why the Democrat Party (which is the home of the faithless) is opposed to that fight. This is why observant Jew Joe Lieberman was driven out of the Democrat Party.

The atheist among us should get down on their knees and thank the God they don't believe in that they live in a nation which is so heavily Christian. They should be glad to see nativity scenes on courthouse lawns and crosses on city seals because those things remind us that we are still a nation which is Christian in character and will therefore fight to preserve the freedom to reject Christianity.

The dhimmi clergy

A tip of the hat to Ith at Absinthe and Cookies for catching this in City Journal:

On November 18, the New York Times ran a full-page ad entitled “A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You.” A Common Word is an October letter from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics “to leaders of Christian churches, everywhere.” It reads like an invitation to ecumenical tolerance and “peace and understanding” based on “the very foundational principles of both faiths”: “The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.” Over 300 Christian theologians and church leaders signed the “Christian Response,” including the heads of some of the nation’s most prestigious seminaries and theological schools. But if it accurately represents the thinking of mainstream Christian leadership, then Christianity in America is in deep trouble.

The response opens on a familiar self-loathing note, in the therapeutic style that has convinced jihadists that Christianity in the West is an empty shell, a mere lifestyle choice. Noting that Muslim and Christian “relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility,” the letter professes “that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the ‘war on terror’) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors,” and so “we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.”

The groveling self-abasement of this language, particularly its begging forgiveness of Allah, is matched only by its remarkable historical ignorance. “Outright hostility” has indeed existed between Muslims and Christians, for the simple reason that for 13 centuries Islam grew and spread by war, plunder, rapine, and enslavement throughout the Christian Middle East. Allah’s armies destroyed regions that were culturally Christian for centuries, variously slaughtering, enslaving, and converting their inhabitants, or allowing them to live as oppressed dhimmi, their lives and property dependent on a temporary “truce” that Muslim overlords could abrogate at any time.

And let’s not forget the seven-century-long Islamic occupation of Spain, the centuries of raids into southern Italy and southern France, the near-sack of Rome in 846, the occupation of Sicily and Greece, the four-century-long occupation of the Balkans, the destruction of Constantinople, the two sieges of Vienna, the kidnapping of Christian youths to serve as janissaries from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the continual raiding of the northern Mediterranean littoral for slaves from 1500 to 1800, and the current jihadist terrorist attacks against the West.

These historical crimes dwarf those committed during the few centuries of the Crusades, which, for all of their excesses and mixed motives, were fought to liberate from Muslim hegemony the lands that had been Christian for six and a half centuries before Islam burst forth from the Arabian Peninsula. Many contemporary Christians betray their moral and spiritual incoherence when they demonize the Crusades but excuse, as justified “liberation,” the numerous Arab assaults on Israel’s “occupation” of lands to which the Jews have a 3,000-year-old connection.

For its part, A Common Word makes no apologies for the violence that Islam has perpetrated against Christian people up to the present day. And the “Christian Response” repeats the “common ground” mantra, along with the usual calls to “interfaith dialogue,” and makes flattering references to the Muslim clerics’ “deep insight and courage” and their “generous letter.” This appeasing tone of the traditional dhimmi—an unreciprocated solicitude typical of the inferior when dealing with his superior––suggests once again that the West is spiritually dead, its Christian faith in the hands of those who will not defend it, even in print.

I'm glad that somebody knows his history. The Crusades were a counter-attack not an aggression. It was the Muslim forces which poured out of their homeland and spread their poisonous doctrine by conquest.

Peggy Noonan misses the point

From The Opinion Journal:

Ms. Noonan discusses Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls and speculates about the importance of religious faith in this campaign season:

The Republican race looks--at the moment--to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith. In my lifetime faith has been a significant issue in presidential politics, but not the sole determinative one. Is that changing? If it is, it is not progress.

[. . .]

I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I'm just not sure he'd be pure enough to make it in this party. I'm not sure he'd be considered good enough.

What Peggy fails to take into account is that there are two factors which have catapulted religious faith into the forefront of this race in a way that has never happened before.

One is the fact that the former front runner is a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage social liberal with the personal morality of Bill Clinton. The other fact is that Mitt Romney is a member of what is not just a "non-Christian religion" but an actual pseudo-Christian cult.

If Rudolph Giuliani is the Republican nominee it will signal that the GOP is no longer the pro-life party. It will simply be the pro-choice party with the most tolerance for pro-life positions. A Giuliani nomination will also mean that the Republican Party has accepted the agenda of the radical homosexual activists in pushing issues like gay "marriage". It will also invite those, like myself, who said that Bill Clinton's moral failings disqualified him from holding the office the President to either confess that they are hypocrites or walk away from the party.

Make no mistake about it. Many Evangelical Christians already feel that the Republican Party treats them the way that the Democrat Party treats blacks. But while most blacks seem content with crumbs from the table Evangelicals will not be. For most of the history of this nation Evangelicals have not been politically involved to any great degree.

It was Ronald Reagan, whose libertarian tendencies stopped with his economic philosophy, who brought Evangelicals off the sidelines not by his tax of national defense policies but by the way he made the pro-life cause his own. Ronald Reagan almost single handedly transformed the pro-life cause from a fringe movement dominated by Roman Catholics into a mainstream political movement which has made incredible progress in winning the hearts and minds of the American public.

Reagan held out hope that the rising tide of secularism that was engulfing our society and turning it into a New World copy of Old Europe could be turned back. Now over twenty years later many Evangelicals are wondering just how much they got for all the time and money they invested in the GOP. The choice of Giuliani by the Party will be seen by millions as one backstab too many and they will wash their hands of it for good.

The other factor bringing religion to the forefront of this primary campaign is that Mitt Romney, the one guy who might knock off Giuliani in the minds of many, is a member of a cult which preaches a false gospel. St. Paul had this to say about those who preach "another gospel":

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. [Galatians 1:8-9 NKJV]

Many Christians have difficulty with the fact that the Bible instructs them to maintain their friendships and associations with non-Christians but to have no fellowship whatsoever with false Christians. This is so that non believers will not be confused by Christians seeming acceptance of false teachings. This is an issue that those who believe the Bible have to take seriously because the mainstream culture already thinks that Mormonism is just another denomination of Christianity.

Personally I am willing to vote for Romney because I believe that God is using this controversy to give His people a teaching opportunity. If Romney is elected and stands by his stated positions he will probably be a good president and his Mormonism will give Christians the occasion to teach the difference between the true gospel and the false versions for years to come. But many Christians do not agree with me and I will not attempt to change their minds because it is a dangerous thing for a person to violate their conscience.

But back to exactly how Peggy Noonan misses the point. All of this would not be happening if Mitt Romney were a Jew. It is not that Giuliani and Romney are NON Christians it is that they are ANTI Christians. Giuliani through his personal conduct and public policy positions and Romney through his theology. It is not that Christians demand a good Christian to vote for it is that they have two people who are the sworn enemies of Christianity to vote against.

Like the child of an abusive alcoholic who grows up to become an opponent of not only drunkenness but all drinking many Evangelicals are being driven into the "comfort zone" of support for an actual Baptist preacher. But as the alternate media, including the blogs, spread the world about what Huckabee really stands for his support will slip. Let Fred Thompson make a good showing in Iowa and South Carolina and Huckabee will collapse and Thompson will surge.

The Episcopal split continues

FRESNO, Calif., Dec. 8 — The Diocese of San Joaquin voted on Saturday to cut ties with the Episcopal Church, the first time in the church’s history a diocese has done so over theological issues and the biggest leap so far by dissident Episcopalians hoping to form a rival national church in the United States.

Fissures have moved through the Episcopal Church, the American arm of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has 77 million members, and through the Communion itself since the church ordained V. Gene Robinson, a gay man in a long-term relationship, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

In the last four years, the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest Christian body, has edged closer to fracture over the issue. In the United States, several dozen individual congregations out of nearly 7,700 have split with the Episcopal Church. But Saturday’s vote was the first time an entire diocese has chosen to secede.

Traditionalists at home and abroad assert that the Bible describes homosexuality as an abomination, and they consider the Episcopal Church’s ordination of Bishop Robinson as the latest and most galling proof of its rejection of biblical authority.

The reason why this is a good idea goes beyond the simple acceptance of homosexuality and is illustrated perfectly in this comment:

“The church will inevitably leave the Bible behind at point after point,” said Bishop John David Schofield of San Joaquin to the diocesan convention on Friday, “but since on this view the Bible is the word of fallible men rather than of the infallible God, leaving it behind is no great loss.”

By what authority does Bishop Schofield decide what parts of the Bible are the words of "fallible men" rather than "infallible God"? It would seem that the test of which parts of the Bible are true or not is whether they offend Mr. Schofield and his progressive friends or not. In claiming the power to judge what parts of the Bible are true or false Mr. Schofield is attempting to establish his own judgement as the final guide to faith and practice. This attempts to take God off the throne and elevate Mr. Schofield to His place.

Some time back another person had a similar plan. It went like this:

"But you said in your heart,
'I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.
'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.'
[Isaiah 14:13-14 NASB]

How did it turn out?

"Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit. . . " [Isaiah 14:15 NASB]

Not the course I would recommend.

Other Episcopal authorities are weighing in with their own opinions, some of which give good reason to question their judgement and understanding of scripture:

“It will be a huge, huge legal battle,” said the Rev. Ephraim Radner, a leading Episcopal conservative and professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto. “The costs involved will bleed the Diocese of San Joaquin and the Episcopal Church, and it will lead only to bad press. You have to wonder why people are wasting money doing this and yet claiming to be Christians.”

Rev. Radner the reason they are doing this is precisely because they are Christians! As Martin Luther said, "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. And to be steady on all the battle fields besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

A true Christian places fealty to God's word above every other consideration. I can't believe a man who calls himself a Christian teacher is bleating about "bad press". Doesn't he know that the ancient Hebrews said exactly the same thing in response to the prophet's warnings that they were heading for God's judgement for their idolatry?

Some people in the Episcopal Church value keeping their organization value keeping their organization in the Body of Christ more than they value the convenience of going along to get along.

God bless them.

The SPEECH

Today Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a much anticipated speech in response to concerns voiced by many voters about his Mormon religious faith (full text here). Rather than directly address Mormon beliefs the speech Mr. Romney spoke about the place which religious faith has occupied in America from its very founding.

The speech was very well written and very well delivered. It hit upon points which very much needed to be addressed in our increasingly secular age. I believe that Mr. Romney hit a "home run" in his effort to reassure voters that his faith would not adversely affect his conduct as president.

In listening to the reactions of talk radio hosts and callers today two separate and completely distinct issues were raised which, it grieves me to say, were completely confused by both hosts and callers - as well as by numerous bloggers.

First there is the issue of whether Romney's Mormonism disqualifies him for the presidency. In the legal sense the answer is absolutely not. The Constitution specifically disallows any religious test for those wishing to hold any public office. The other part of the question is whether electing a Mormon to the presidency is a good idea even if it is not illegal. To that question I can only answer from my own perspective as an evangelical Christian and a political conservative.

As a Christian I realize that we are electing the nation's president not the nation's pastor. As long as the man is honest and of good character and holds to conservative fiscal, moral/social and foreign/military/national security policy it matters not if he is a Christian, Jew, Mormon or even atheist.

Mitt Romney clearly is saying the right thing on all those topics. This is not surprising since Mormons are, as a rule, conservative. They tend to be pro-life, pro-gun and pro-family. They tend to vote Republican; they do have their moonbats, like Harry Reid, but in the main they are intelligent when it come to politics.

Of course there is plenty in Romney's record to make one wonder how truly committed to conservative principles he is, but that is not a matter of his professed religious faith.

The second issue I've heard discussed today is whether Mormonism should be considered a legitimate part of the greater Christian Church. This is what has had me tearing my hair out all day long.

First of all in the interest of full disclosure I will tell you that I am an Evangelical Christian and I consider myself a fundamentalist. I have been a Christian for over 25 years and have studied Christian theology extensively. I am an elder in my church, teach Sunday school and lead the Wednesday night adults' service.

I have known a number of Mormons and have liked every one I have met. I have been impressed with their good character, honesty and loyalty. However my study of both Biblical theology and the Mormon religion has convinced me that the Mormon faith, however laudable it is in some respects, is not a legitimate form of Christianity. It is another religion and because it claims to be Christian it is "another gospel" and stands under the curse of God.

It is a cult and there is no salvation in it. Those who die having placed their faith in its doctrines are condemned to eternal hell just as those who died following Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, the Buddha, Zoroaster or any other non-Christian religion.

What I have been hearing today is an attempt to redefine Christianity to include any religion which uses the name "Jesus" and upholds conservative political and moral principals. Sean Hannity, who I have come to believe is a true and total idiot, has been the worst.

I am sick of being scolded by hypocrites who try to use the Constitution's exclusion of a religious test for public office as a club to beat people of conscience into abandoning any consideration of faith in their choice of whom to support.

Why do I call them hypocrites? Because they do not really mean their words. These people obviously do not believe that no religious belief could disqualify a person from support. They would never in a million years vote for an Islamofascist who wants to put America under sharia. They would not vote for a follower of Moloch who thinks we should worship the god by tossing infants into a bonfire. They would not support anyone who wanted to cut out the beating hearts of of 20,000 people in one day and toss them into a stone urn as an offering to the Feathered Serpent.

What these people mean is that because they personally don't find Mormonism too far "out there" to automatically reject a Mormon candidate that no one else should either.

Sorry, but I bow down to no pope, either the one in Rome or a self-appointed nag here in the US. The last human who I hold to have had the power to bind my conscience laid down his pen nearly 2000 years ago (the Apostle John, if you were wondering). Christians who feel that electing a Mormon president would give the Mormon cult too much credibility and aid their recruitment have a valid point, but not ultimately a convincing one. The Mormon cult gains far more credibility from dolts with microphones who point out that the Presbyterians have differences with the Methodists who have differences with the Baptists and so on, implying that the massive theological differences between Mormonism and Christianity are mere trifles like whether you sprinkle or immerse at baptism or drink wine or grape juice during communion.

By all means support Romney in the primary and the general election (if he is nominated) if you feel he is the best candidate. I am a Thompson man, but if Romney is the candidate I will have no problem voting for him. But do not attempt to make Romney more palatable by redefining the Gospel.

Another warning about Giuliani

I came across this post by Joe Carter on The Evangelical Outpost and thought it fit in very well with what we have been disusing here regarding the wisdom, or lack thereof, of nominating and then electing Rudolph Giuliani to the presidency:

There are two broad political camps in the pro-life community: the incrementalists and the absolutists.

The absolutists are political idealists. They want a "Human Life Amendment" and a Federal ban on all abortion. Some of them don't even want Roe overturned since it would give the power to the States.

Incremenatlists, on the other hand, are political realists. They know that the issue of abortion won't disappear when Roe is overturned. Their position is that the best that can be hoped for is that the issue be returned to the people and to the individual states.

Once in the states, they will have 50 separate fights, some of which they will win (Louisiana, South Dakota) and many they will lose (New York, California). It's a fight that will take several decades, perhaps even a century, before the moral issue is completely resolved.

I am a political realist, which is why I am an incrementalist. Because I'm a political realist, I also believe than in the long run electing Rudy Giuliani will be even more detrimental to the pro-life cause than would a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Before I explain my reasoning, let me clear up one of the most common counter-claims that is used to justify Giuliani as the "lesser evil." Many well-intentioned pro-lifers believe that it doesn't matter if Giuliani is pro-abortion so long as he appoints judges to the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe. That point was raised yesterday in a post by my friend Justin Taylor:

I think there are good reasons to believe that Giuliani would appoint constructionalists and originalists, as he has promised to do--in part because I think he will want to placate the Republican base. (Even if he does this for only one term in order to win reelection, which I think is doubtful, then the next point still stands.)

I completely agree and think that Giuliani will indeed appoint "strict constructionist" judges as he understands the term. Pro-lifers hear that term and assume it means a justice that would overturn Roe. But Giuliani has been clear--crystal clear--that this is not the case.

Back in April, Giuliani was interviewed by CNN reporter Dana Bash on this topic:

BASH: And many people see that as code to conservatives who say that means
that he is giving me a wink and a nod saying he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Do you want to overturn Roe v. Wade?

GIULIANI: Dana, I don't wink and nod. I'm a very direct person. I tell people what I think. Sometimes I get in trouble for it.

BASH: So what is the direct answer?

GIULIANI: The direct answer is, a strict constructionist judge can come to either conclusion about Roe against Wade. They can look at it and say, wrongly decided 30 years ago, whatever it is, we will overturn it. They can…

BASH: But what is your personal deal on Roe v. Wade?

GIULIANI: They can look at it and say, it has been the law for this period of time, therefore we are going to respect the precedent. Conservatives can come to that conclusion as well.

If Giuliani gets elected, pro-lifers can't complain that he lied to them about appointing "strict constructionist" judges. He'll be able to say that as he understands the term a judge can be a strict constructionist and still believe--as he does--that a woman has a constitutionally protected right to abortion.

Any pro-lifer who thinks Giuliani's position on judges makes him the "lesser evil" is only fooling themselves. (Pro-lifers should keep in mind that Justice Alito can't necessarily be counted on to overturn Roe either.)

During that same interview, Giuliani also restated that he believes in public funding of abortion:

BASH: So you support taxpayer money or public funding for abortions in some cases?

GIULIANI: If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right, yes, I mean, if that the status of the law, then I would, yes.

Giuliani supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion. He supports public funding of both abortion and embryo destructive research. Giuliani is unapologetically in favor of the right to end the life of the unborn. His position is almost indistinguishable from that of Hillary Clinton.

Anyone who thinks that Giuliani would disregard his deeply held commitment to abortion rights to placate a constituency who he despises doesn't know the former Mayor of New York. He will relish sticking it to social conservatives, a group that will have done nothing to help him get elected. He will reason that his socially liberal positions will help win over enough Democrats to help him during his reelection efforts. And besides, if conservatives were willing to compromise and vote him in as the "lesser evil" in 2008, why would they do otherwise in 2012? Will the Democratic candidate be any better?

So on the issue of abortion, there will not be a shred of difference between Clinton and Giuliani. What will be different is that Clinton and the Democrats are already members of what Ramesh Ponnuru calls the "party of death":

The party of death should not be confused with a conventional political party: It has members (and opponents) within both of America's major political parties, although it is much stronger today among Democrats than Republicans.

However, if Giuliani is elected everything changes. Despite what a plank in the party platform might say, when the de facto leader of the GOP is pro-abortion then the party has crossed the line over into the "party of death."

A pro-abortion Republican President would be devastating, leaving the pro-life movement without a viable political party. As a friend of mine recently wrote in a personal email:

No more cynical notion can be imagined than the idea that a President has nothing to say about abortion policy. Theodore Roosevelt coined the phrase "bully pulpit." And the ability to communicate directly to the American people has been the hallmark of every successful President since.

People who make this false argument must have been asleep during the Reagan Presidency. President Reagan chose to defend unborn children in his State of the Union messages. Those addresses are delivered to the broadest audience imaginable. People who pay no attention to politics at least watch that. And they heard their President siding with them on this fundamental question of justice.

President Reagan did not stop there. He regularly addressed the Right to Life March. He issued a host of Presidential Proclamations defending the sanctity of human life. He wrote hundreds of letters affirming his commitment to unborn children.

He appointed hundreds of pro-life officials to his administration. He thereby legitimized an entire social movement that the academic/media/juridical elites were desperately trying to marginalize. There was even a pro-lifers' Inaugural Ball in 1985. If people are policy, Ronald Reagan made pro-life people policy makers.

Reagan was the first sitting President to publish a book of any kind. The President chose to write "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation." It was not to him simply an issue among issues. It was a question of simple justice. A nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal cannot long endure if it denies those great principles upon which it was founded.

Even worse than Rudy Giuliani's stance on the great questions is the bottomless cynicism of those who say it doesn't matter. If it truly does not matter, then politics--democracy itself--does not matter.

During the past year that I've been in D.C. I have noticed the attitude among Republicans to the pro-life cause veers between apathy and scorn. Even the "conservatives" in this town tend to become more exercised over "earmarks" than they do the destruction of human life in the womb.

Still, I am shocked that Republicans are willing to signal their utter disregard and disrespect for social conservatives by considering Giuliani as a tenable candidate. They used to think we were a force that had to placacted. Now, they have gauged our resolve and realized they can treat us with impunity since we will set aside our principles in the name of pragmatism.

Recently, several Christian conservative leaders attempted to fire a warning shot by making it clear that Giuliani is a completely unacceptable candidate. And how did the social conservative movement respond? By denouncing these committed pro-lifers and reassuring the GOP that, though we may not like it, we'll willingly vote for a pro-abortion candidate since he is the "lesser evil."

I can only speak for myself but I want to make the message clear: If Republicans choose to spurn the field of pro-life candidates, chooses to spit on the values of social conservatives, and chooses to remake the GOP into the "party of death", they will do so without me. This isn't a bluff; it’s a statement of principle. I'm a pro-life conservative who will never cast a ballot for a pro-abortion liberal.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. And God help this country if social conservatives aren't willing to stand with me.

I can only speak to my fellow Christians on this. If you believe that there is no God or that he is powerless to intervene in human affairs or that he is the cold and distant god of the Deists who will never bestir himself to aid his creation then I can understand your fear and desperation over the subject of keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House for she is well and truly evil.

However I do not believe that I am on my own in a dark and lonely cosmos. God is real and he is not far away and if we do not break faith with him he will not break faith with us. This does not mean that if we all vote against Giuliani that God will miraculously keep Mrs. Clinton out of the White House. It does mean that if we do the right thing that no matter the outcome of the election that God will be with us.

The fact is that God is sovereign and has already decided who the winner of next year's election will be. In fact he chose the winner of that election and every election before he laid the foundation of the world in eternity past. All that he requires of us is that we hold fast the principles which he has laid down for us in scripture and trust that he will honor his promise to cause all things to work together for our good, even if we have to wait till we are standing before him in heaven to understand how all the pieces fit together.

Another Coulter controversy

Yesterday The American Thinker had three articles up on its main page about the recent flap over Ann Coulter's remarks to left-wing talk show host Donny Deutsch about her belief that America would be a better place if everyone were a Christian and that everyone, even Jews, need to place their faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved, that is have their sins forgiven and be granted eternal life in Heaven.

The first article, by Richard Baehr who is described as the political director of American Thinker, is titled Ann Coulter is Not Helping. Mr. Baehr believes that Ann has made it more difficult to bring conservative leaning Jews into the Republican Party. Here is the meat of Mr. Baehr's article:

I say this in part based on the number of emails I have received today from Jews, many of whom I have been working with for years to consider switching to the GOP, given President Bush's very strong record of support for Israel, and the much stronger commitment to national security on the GOP side of the aisle. If a strong US-Israel relationship and promoting a tough American response to the global jihad are the main issues that move you, then the GOP should be your party.

So to get back to medieval arguments that Judaism has been replaced by Christianity (a replacement theology), and that Christians are the perfected Jews, and that Jews need to become Christians to be perfect, and that America would be better if we were all Christians, ignores the shift in thinking on these issues among Christians in recent decades, especially among Catholics. The Pope has called Jews our "elder brothers".

Coulter appears to either be unaware of much of modern Christian theology, or just prefers to slap down the non-Christians for their imperfection. . While Coulter calls for all to join her religious ranks, evangelical Christians and Jews have become allies in support of Israel, and shown that clear theological differences between the groups can be respected, and common causes can be
advanced.

Mr. Baehr uses the term "Replacement Theology". Replacement Theology is an error which crept into the Christian Church early in its history and in short it holds that the Church has permanently replaced the Jewish people in the plans of God and that the Church is in fact now the "True Israel".

The entire eleventh chapter of the New Testament book of Romans was written to refute that error, here is the key scripture:

11 I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. 12 Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! 13 For I speak to you Gentiles; inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, 14 if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them. 15 For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? [NKJV]

The false doctrine of Replacement Theology has been used as a justification for the persecution of the Jewish people and attempts to eradicate Jewish culture. It is an emotionally loaded term for many Jews and is guaranteed to bring a negative response. Nothing that Ann Coulter said indicates that she is a subscriber to Replacement Theology - and implying that she did is "not helping".

What Ann said simply reflects clear biblical New Testament theology as regards salvation in that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, who wish to be saved from their sins and have eternal life in the presence of God must place their faith in Jesus Christ and acknowledge his deity, his atoning death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead and his eventual return. Rather than being somehow "anti-Jewish" this teaching is imminently Jewish.

Christians believe that in order to be saved that one must worship a Jew, Jesus Christ, as God. They believe that the Hebrew God sent the Jew Jesus to the Jewish nation in fulfillment of Jewish prophecies given in the Jewish bible to offer the Jews the promised Jewish millennial kingdom. Obviously a doctrine which could only be held by people who are filled up to the nose holes with hatred for the Jews. [snort]

Mr. Baehr then goes on to imply that anyone who holds a biblically correct view of salvation cannot be a supporter of Israel. Mr. Baehr needs to review the history of the second half of the 20th century. The more literally one takes the Bible the more likely he is to be a supporter of Israel. Biblical literalists believe not only what the Bible teaches about salvation but also what it says about supporting Israel and the Jews. God promises the Jews that he will bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them (Genesis 12:3).

For an example of how this blessing and cursing can work itself out consider Berlin before and after Germany's attempted "final solution to the Jewish problem". Before a beautiful and prosperous city and after a pile of smoking rubble full of Red Army soldiers. This is your nation. This is your nation on antisemitism. Any questions?

Mr. Baehr's reference to "the shift in thinking on these issues among Christians in recent decades, especially among Catholics" brings us to the next article on AT. This one, titled My Opinion on Ann Coulter's Opinion of the Jews, is written by Kyle-Anne Shiver. This is one of the saddest things that I have read in a long time.

Ms. Shiver summarizes the current teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the subject of salvation and in doing so demonstrates that the modern RCC is a cult on the order of the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but those who teach that one can reject Jesus Christ and still earn salvation through good works (even magnificent and heroic good works) are not Christians. They are, in fact, the enemies of God and fulfill the apostle Paul's prophecy given in the 20th chapter of Acts, "29"I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Finally we come to the last of AT's commentaries on Ann and in this case I have saved the best for last. In On Coulter, Christians, And Jews Steven M. Warshawsky, who describes himself as a "secular Jew" demonstrates that he "gets it".

. . . Coulter's crime is that she violated one of PC's most sacred taboos: Expressing belief in the correctness of one's religion. The only thing worse than this in PC land is asserting the superiority of one's race.

Well, at least when it comes to white Christians. For the rules of PC do not apply equally to all. They do not apply to Jews or blacks or women (except to the extent these groups express "conservative" points of view). The strictures and penalties of PC only apply to the majority of the American people, as well as to the Founding Fathers who established this great country, and to the many generations of overwhelmingly white Christian Americans who built this nation into the freest, richest, and most powerful country on earth, and defended our country through several bloody wars against its enemies, foreign and domestic.

The ideology of PC is anti-American to its core. Its fundamental purpose is not to ensure that "minority" Americans share more fully in the American Dream. Its goal is to tear apart this nation -- its people, its culture, its history -- root and branch, and replace it with a miasma of atheism, socialism, and multiculturalism. [. . .]

Moreover, for Jews of any political persuasion to take offense at Coulter's comments strikes me as deeply ignorant and immature. Do Jews truly expect Christians to pretend that they do not believe in the teachings of their religion? Why? Because so many Jews have discarded the teachings of their own religion? (I myself am a secular Jew.) The "logic" at work here seems to be that, because so many Jews can imagine, along with John Lennon, a world in which "there's no heaven" and "no religion too," it is offensive and outrageous for other folks to disagree with this sanitized vision of the future. Many Christians, however, still believe in their religion, still believe it is the path to eternal salvation, and fail to appreciate what is so wonderful about the fairy tale world invoked in Lennon's song. From a PC perspective, this makes them "insensitive" and "bigoted" and "hateful."

I say, thank god that so many Christians in this country still believe in their religion! That is the only thing that will prevent the violent and tyrannical expansion of the Muslim world. And that is the only thing that will preserve the existence of the Jewish people. [. . .]

Today, the leaders of Iran -- the most powerful Islamic nation, with aspirations of regional, indeed world, domination -- speak openly of eliminating the state of Israel, i.e., the largest concentration of Jews outside of the United States. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed repeatedly to "wipe Israel off the map." Just this week, the former president of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani (often referred to as a "moderate"), commented during a sermon (yes, during a religious service) that the Nazis "saved" Europe from the evils of Zionism. In other words, the Nazis did Europe a favor by murdering six million Jews. Where was the outrage from western leftists? Where were the screams of protest from liberal Jews? What will these idiots say when the nuclear bombs start falling on Israel? Probably that Israel caused it, or could have prevented it, or even deserved it. The mere existence of the Jewish state will be deemed sufficient justification for its total destruction. My stomach is sick with the thought of how easily Muslim genocide of Jews will be excused, even by Jews themselves. [. . .]

But measured by the amount of heat and vitriol her comments generated, the real enemy apparently is Ann Coulter. How dare she assert the truth of her religion? True or not, I know that Christianity is far preferable to Islam. Would Donny Deutch and Michael Savage and all of the other critics who are blasting Coulter rather live in a Muslim country? One does not have to be a scholar of the world's religions (and I am not) to know the answer to that question.

This is the real choice facing Jews in this country, and even in Israel. John Lennon's fantasy of universal peace and love and brotherhood does not exist, and never will exist. The fate of the world's Jews, and Christians for that matter, ultimately depends on the ability and willingness of the Christian West, especially the United States, to prevail in the steadily intensifying struggle we are witnessing across the globe between Islam and Christianity.

What Deutch and Savage and the other critics fail to understand is that only a Christian people who truly believes in the correctness, indeed superiority, of their religion will be able to win this fight. A secularized people who believes in nothing but watery principles of tolerance and democracy inevitably will succumb to the combination of violent Islamic intimidation and the "nondiscriminatory" imperatives of their own multicultural worldview. If sharia ever does come to the United States, I am quite certain that its handmaidens will be atheists and liberals, not believing Christians.

As a Jew living in this great country, I have no doubt who my enemies are, and who are my allies. And I know to which group Ann Coulter belongs.

Amen.

"Damn, that kettle sure is black" said the pot

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 25 — Bishops of the Episcopal Church on Tuesday rejected demands by leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion to roll back the church’s liberal stance on homosexuality, increasing the possibility of fracture within the communion and the Episcopal Church itself.

After nearly a week of talks at their semiannual meeting in New Orleans, the House of Bishops adopted a resolution that defied a directive by the Anglican Communion’s regional leaders, or primates, to change several church policies regarding the place of gay men and lesbians in their church. But the bishops also expressed a desire to remain part of the communion, and they appeared to be trying to stake out a middle ground that would allow them to do so.

Still, up to five American dioceses led by theologically conservative bishops may try to break with the Episcopal Church and place themselves under the oversight of a foreign primate in the coming months, said the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, a conservative Episcopal strategist.

“We’ll have the chaos here increase as more individuals, parishes and dioceses begin moving,” Mr. Harmon said. “What will happen is that we will see more of the disunity here spread to the rest of the communion.”

In a voice vote, all but one bishop supported a resolution, called “A Response to Questions and Concerns Raised by Our Anglican Communion Partners.” Several conservative bishops who are considering leaving the Episcopal Church were not in attendance.

The worldwide Anglican Communion needs to realize that the issue of whether to ordain open and unrepentant homosexuals to the ministry and to sanction homosexual unions is the difference between real Christianity and a false faith with no power to save the soul.

Once they have framed the issue properly as a difference between real churches and false churches all the dithering about whether to break fellowship and expel the heretical churches should end.

A large part of the trouble the Anglicans are having in formulating a response to the dissident churches is that they abandoned the Bible as the sole guide for faith and practice when they began ordaining females to the priesthood.

If you have structured your church in such a way as to be in open defiance of Biblical commandments it is very difficult to condemn others for doing the same thing just because the sin they embrace is different from the sin you embrace.

Understanding the enemy

Ralph Peters makes a good point about the motivations of the Islamofascists in the Middle East, and about why Western Elites cannot seem to understand them:

June 19, 2007 -- HAMAS won its shut-out victory in Gaza with alarming ease. And the reason Hamas won is even more alarming: Fanaticism trumps numbers.

You'll hear no end of explanations for the terrorist triumph: Hamas was backed by Iran; Gaza is Hamas' base of support; some Fatah units ran out of ammunition . . .

All true. And all secondary factors.

Fatah's security forces in Gaza outnumbered the Hamas gunmen. Fatah had stockpiles of weapons and military gear (now in Hamas' arsenal). Fatah even had the quiet backing of Israel and America.

And Fatah folded like a pup tent in a tornado.

Hamas won because its fighters are religious fanatics ready to die for their cause. Fatah runs an armed employment agency under the banner of Palestinian nationalism. Most of the latter's security men are on the payroll because relatives or ward pols got them jobs. And they want to stay alive to collect their wages.

The result was predictable. Our government pretended otherwise. Now hairs should be standing up on the backs of thousands of necks, from the White House to the Green Zone.

[. . .]

At the height of last week's fighting in Gaza, one Palestinian in 300 carried a weapon in support of Hamas - a third of one percent of the population. Now Hamas rules 1.5 million people.

Numbers still matter, of course. But strength of will can overcome hollow numbers. And nothing - nothing - gives men a greater strength of will than religious fanaticism.

We don't want to hear it. Secular virtues were supposed to triumph. They didn't, but we still can't let go of our dream of a happy-face, godless world where nobody quarrels.

Our refusal to acknowledge the unifying - and terrifying - power of extremist religion has deep roots. As academics rejected and derided faith in the last century, even the Thirty Years' War - the horrible climax of Europe's wars of religion - was reinvented as a dynastic struggle, or a fight for hegemony, or a class struggle.

But the Thirty Years' War was about faith. All the other factors were in play, but the core issue, from the Protestant coup in Prague in 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was religious identity. And the atrocities committed on both sides make Iraq look like amateur hour: Wars of religion always demand blood sacrifice. (It was a compromise of bloody exhaustion that ended the Thirty Years War.)

Our problem is that, of those who rise in government, few have witnessed the power of revelation or caught a life-changing glimpse of the divine. They simply can't imagine that others might be willing to die for all that mumbo-jumbo. Our convenience-store approach to faith leaves us numb to the passion of our enemies.

The true believer always beats the feckless attendee. The best you can hope for is that the extremist will eventually defeat himself.

I have said this myself. The leadership of the West cannot understand the religiously motivated fighter because they cannot understand religion. They are either outright atheists or agnostics or their form of belief is a watered down civil religion with no true power.

I'm afraid that in the West even capitalists have adopted an essentially Marxist view of Man, seeing him as homo economicus, a being whose every motivation is at heart materialistic. To persons who hold this worldview the Muslim terrorist must be acting out of a rational desire to either protect himself or his people from a material threat or because he feels that he has been robbed of or denied some concrete thing to which he has a legitimate right (like land for the Palestinians upon which to found a nation).

The idea that the Muslim terrorist might want to kill non-Muslims because he sincerely believes that they need to die for no other reason than that they are non-Muslims does not compute. To the modern Westerner this is irrational and entire nations/cultures/religions do not act from irrational motives. Only mentally ill individuals or small brainwashed groups under the dominating control of charismatic leaders (like those at Jonestown) behave with that kind of irrationality.

You see homo economicus does not willingly act against his material self-interest. Yet every Christian of Rome who allowed him/herself to be fed to wild animals when they could have saved themselves by saying "Caesar is Lord" and every Jew who marched into a bonfire in the plague pogroms of the Middle Ages when they could have saved themselves by saying "Jesus is Lord" and every Muslim who straps on a suicide belt and detonates him/herself in a crowded pizzeria in Tel Aviv (or maybe Chicago in the near future) proves that the human spirit can embrace a reality infinitely deeper than the mere material.

The difference, of course, is that the Christians of the Empire and the Jews of Europe only wished to be left in peace and did not wish ill to those who worshipped differently from them while the modern believing Muslim wishes nothing but ill to the "other".

We must understand that this war will not be won by giving the Palestinians a state or by building a Wal Mart Supercenter in Tehran.

Fact of the day

James VI of Scotland (and I of England) was born today in 1566. The son of Mary Queen of Scots, James became the first ruler of Britain in 1603, with the death of Elizabeth I of England (Mary's cousin). James was an intelligent and capable man but for various reasons was not a popular monarch in England. His son, Charles proved even less popular and became the catalyst of the disastrous Civil War that (temporarily) ended royal rule in Britain. For more information on King James visit heritage.scotsman.com

James the VI and I was also the royal patron who commanded the work of creating a revised and improved version of The Bishop's Bible which, when finished, came to be called The King James Bible.

I think we found a winner for the "Idiot of the Year Award"

From The Seattle Times:

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.

Episcopal priest. You don't really have to go any further than that. But it might be interesting:

She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.

Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she's also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.

By the way, in the English language a female priest is called a "priestess". Words mean things and priest is masculine gender and priestess is feminine gender.

Her announcement has provoked surprise and bewilderment in many, raising an obvious question: How can someone be both a Christian and a Muslim?

The answer is that you can't. Muslims believe that God is a unitary being, not a trinity. They also believe that God does not beget and is not begotten. Christians, on the other hand, believe that God is a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They believe that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity assumed a human body and nature when the Holy Spirit, at the command of God the Father, impregnated the Virgin Mary.

You cannot be a Christian and deny the immaculate conception and virgin birth of Christ and you cannot be a Muslim and accept them. Her "I'm a Christian and a Muslim" claim is an insult to people of both faiths who take their scriptures seriously.

As a Christian I am not so much offended by her apostasy as I am by her sheer stupidity.

As much as she loves her church, she has always challenged it. She calls Christianity the "world religion of privilege."

I'm sure the Christians who were coated with tar and set on fire to light Emperor Claudius' garden parties would have agreed. As would the Christians who were sent to the GULAG or Red Chinese prisons. I also know that the Christians living in Islamic countries must see themselves as members of a "religion of privilege".

She has never believed in original sin. And for years she struggled with the nature of Jesus' divinity.

I'm sure she denies original sin and doubts the deity of Christ since those are things that make you a real Christian, and she obviously isn't.

She found a good fit at St. Mark's [I'm sure she did], coming to the flagship of the Episcopal Church in Western Washington in 2001. She was in charge of programs to form and deepen people's faith until March this year when she was one of three employees laid off for budget reasons. The dean of the cathedral said Redding's exploration of Islam had nothing to do with her layoff. [I'm sure it didn't, see the part about St. Mark's being a "good fit"]

There were moments when practicing Islam seemed like coming home.

In Seattle's Episcopal circles, Redding had mixed largely with white people. "To walk into Al-Islam and be reminded that there are more people of color in the world than white people, that in itself is a relief," she said.

Here we get to the crux of the matter. Redding finds her identity as a black person to be of greater importance than her identity as a Christian (not all that surprising since she isn't a Christian). In this she is no different from whites in pseudo-Christian racist cults like Christian Identity or the Aryan Nations. She is no more "saved" than they are and no more destined for Heaven than they are.

Like I say. It isn't so much the apostasy that turns my stomach. It's just the damn stupidity.

Of course there's a double standard

From The Scotsman:

SOME would call it the Devil's work. Two ancient religions have locked horns in a bizarre "freedom of speech" row that is echoing around the corridors of one of Scotland's oldest academic institutions.

The University of Edinburgh has granted permission to the Pagan Society to hold its annual conference - involving talks on witchcraft, pagan weddings and tribal dancing - on campus next month. Druids, heathens, shamans and witches are expected to attend what is a major event in the pagan calendar.

But the move has enraged the Christian Union, which accuses the university of double standards after banning one of its events on the "dangers" of homosexuality.

Notice the scare quotes around the word "dangers". I guess The Scotsman doesn't consider the vastly higher rates of sexually transmitted disease, including but not limited to HIV, in the homosexual community and the sharply higher suicide rate and the higher rates of domestic violence to be "dangerous".

Matthew Tindale, an Edinburgh-based Christian Union staff worker, claimed some faiths and beliefs appeared to be more equal than others on campus.

"This seems to be a clear case of discrimination," he said. "It's okay for other religions, such as the pagans, to have their say at the university, but there appears to be a reluctance to allow Christians to do the same. All we are asking for is the tolerance that is afforded to other faiths and organisations."

The Union has won strong backing from the Catholic Church in Scotland, whose spokesman, Simon Dames, felt that allowing the pagan festival to go ahead while barring the Union meeting was an example of "Christianphobia".

"This appears to be a clear case of double standards," he said. "The principles of a pluralistic democracy revolve around an acceptance of competing ideas and universities should be enshrining this principle. Anti-racism groups would never be asked to put up posters saying there are alternative views."

Of course they wouldn't and if you really believe that your arguments will actually carry any weight inside a European Union member state you are an idiot. The EU is considering sanctions against several member states because of their supposed "homophobia" which is defined as the failure to promote homosexuality in schools. More on the EU's attempts to bludgeon member states into compliance on the "party line" on homosexuality can be found here.

If the Christians want to stop the pagans from being able to use the university campus they're going to have to do more than point out the unfairness of the situation. I know they should start a rumor that the pagans are Islamophobic! That will get them shut down.

BTY, check out the picuture of the witch up top. Why is it in Asheville the witches tend to look more like Janet Reno?

Now that would be hell

In the comments to some of my post about the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell I mentioned that the best response to his critics both on the left and the secular right was the simple fact that he is now in heaven and they will never be. Unless they repent and become like the Rev. Falwell.

This reminded me of certain verses from the bible.

. . . but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 8:11-13

. . . and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 13:41-43

"Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' Matthew 22:12-14

and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:50-51

"Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 25:29-31

" In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out. Luke 13:27-29

All of these verses refer to the souls of the lost being cast into eternal hell. All of them have in common the phrase "gnashing of teeth" on the part of the damned. It would be easy to think that gnashing teeth is a sign of profound grief; however it is not.

Acts chapter 7 puts the phrase into context. After Stephen, one of the 7 original deacons, had caused a stir by his powerful and convincing preaching accompanied by the performance of miracles he was arrested and brought before the authorities in Jerusalem. When asked to give an account for his actions he delivers a brilliant and inspired oration about the work of God in the history of the Jewish people and about their consistent failures in their service to Him. He ended this way:

54 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.

55 But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God;

56 and he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

57 But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse.

58 When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

59 They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"

60 Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!" Having said this, he fell asleep.

Notice that when Stephen's preaching convicted the hypocritical leaders to the point where their rage overflowed into murderous fury they were said to "gnash their teeth" at him.

What will drive the damned souls being judged and cast into hell to "gnash their teeth" is the realization once and for all that the Falwells of the world were right all along. What will generate the weeping is the magnitude of the tragedy which has overtaken them and the utter hopelessness of their situation. But the fury will come from the fact that those damn stupid fundamentalist thumpers were right and that the educated and sophisticated intellectuals were wrong.

In that day Marx and Lenin and Nietzsche and Darwin will not be able to do anything but writhe beside them in the flame. And that knowledge, at least at first, will be the worst punishment of all.