Archive for the 'Religion' Category

It just isn’t the right one.

Shareholder advocacy is nothing new for the Episcopal Church. With an investment portfolio worth about $400 million, the church has long used some of those investments to influence companies based on Christian principles and General Convention resolutions that set church policies and priorities.

What’s new is one of the investment tactics the church plans to implement in the new year to address gun violence.

General Convention passed a resolution in July that calls on Executive Council’s Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility to research investing in gun manufacturers to give the church a new voice in how those companies do business. The goal: “to minimize lethal and criminal uses of their products.”

“We’ve never purposely gone out and bought [shares in] what we’d consider a bad actor in order to press the company to change behavior,” said Brian Grieves, the outgoing chair of the committee, which oversees the church’s shareholder advocacy.

The resolution, B007, was proposed by Western Massachusetts Bishop Douglas Fisher, a member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, who will take over for Grieves as committee chair in January. Fisher’s diocese is home to the headquarters of Smith & Wesson in Springfield, and in March he participated in a rally outside the gun manufacturer led by high school students in the wake of a deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Fisher acknowledged a “sense of frustration” among anti-gun violence advocates in response to Congress’ inaction. “The federal government is doing nothing about the public health crisis of gun violence,” he said. “So where can the church engage this big issue?”

Here’s how.  Believe first in Jesus, that He is the only begotten Son of the living God, in His birth, death, burial and resurrection, His vicarious atonement, in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the infallibility of His Word, and then you’re more likely to get your politics right.

Focus first on leading people to Christ, and then preach good doctrine.  But since you don’t really believe in anything any more, you’re nothing but a vapid, vacuous and boring social club, and no one listens to you or comes to your “services” any more.  So no one will listen to you on this either.

I understand that you’re just following the lead of your masters, but you’re small potatoes, dude.

PJM:

When the Spanish Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella recaptured Granada on January 2, 1492, they ended almost eight centuries of jihad ravages (described by Bertrand in 1934, and in 2016 here) — massacres, pillage, mass enslavement, and deportation — and the grinding imposition of Sharia by Spain’s various pious Muslim conquerors, and rulers. Bertrand’s unsparing narrative describes the bitter, chronic fate of Spain’s Christians under Islam, both those fully subjugated and the populations never entirely subdued in the semi-autonomous northern regions:

The Christians of the interior were mastered. They had lost their leaders and their principal centers of resistance. The armies of the Caliph, the Arab and Berber chieftains, had massacred them, burned them out and pillaged them to the best of their ability. Thus decimated and humiliated, they nevertheless continued to exist, in a furtive and more or less precarious way of life …The Christians of the North scarcely knew the meaning of repose, security, or any of the amenities of life. They were continually at war with their Musulman [Muslim] neighbors. It was the fatality of that Arab conquest, a superficial and hasty conquest, never carried through to the end, that it had divided the country into two irreducible camps: that of the replete, and that of the hungry; those who held the best soil, and those who were relegated to the mountains or to desert plains…[The Muslims] interposed a desert between themselves and the Christians, and made a waste of the region which lay on the left bank of the latter [Duero] river. This was what they called “the Great Desert.” …

To keep the Christians in their place it did not suffice to surround them with a zone of famine and devastation. It was necessary also to go and sew terror and massacre among them. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, an army sallied forth from Cordova to go and raid the Christians, destroy their villages, their fortified posts, their monasteries and their churches, except when it was a question of expeditions of larger scope, involving sieges and pitched battles. In cases of simply punitive expeditions, the soldiers of the Caliph confined themselves to destroying harvests and cutting down trees. Most of the time they took the field to win booty. A district was allowed to re-people itself and be brought under cultivation; then it was suddenly fallen upon. Workers, harvesters, fruits and cattle were seized.

The religious Islamic jihad motivations for this devastation, and related “pious,” sadistic savagery of their triumphal execution, were underscored by Bertrand:

If one bears in mind that this brigandage was almost continual, and that this fury of destruction and extermination was regarded as a work of piety — it was a holy war against the infidels — it is not surprising that whole regions of Spain should have been made irremediably sterile. This was one of the capital causes of the deforestation from which the [Iberian] Peninsula still suffers. With what savage satisfaction and in what pious accents do the Arab annalists tell us of those at least bi-annual raids!A typical phrase for praising the devotion of a Caliph is this: “he penetrated into Christian territory, where he wrought devastation, devoted himself to pillage, and took prisoners. After that he brought the Musulmans back to Cordova safe and sound and laden with booty.” Abd er Rhaman [r. 912-961 A.D.], in the course of a campaign in Navarre, “did not fail, whenever a Christian retreat was to be found in the neighborhood, to carry destruction there and deliver the surrounding countryside to incendiarism, so that the Christian territory was ravaged by the flames to an extent often square miles.”

The same Caliph, when he laid siege to Toledo, began by destroying everything in the rich plain which surrounded the town. “He commenced by doing the rebels unimaginable harm. He remained there for thirty-seven days without ceasing his devastation cutting down the trees, pillaging and ruining the villages, destroying all the crops.” And again: “the strongholds of this region were reduced to ruins. Not one stone was left upon another…, The suburbs were surrendered to the flames, the harvests and all the property in the neighborhood were utterly ravaged and laid waste.”

Bertrand also chronicled the 11th and 12th century North African Berber Muslim Almoravid and Almohad invasions of Spain. These renewed jihad campaigns wrought not only further ravages and persecutions of Spain’s Christians, but massive population transfers:

From the outset of the Almoravid invasion the destruction of Christian churches had begun. … The faquis [Muslim clerics] commenced to persecute the Christian Mozarabs [dhimmis] so intolerably that they begged the King of Aragon, Alfonso the Warrior, to come and deliver them. The Aragonese did not succeed in taking Granada. When they retreated, the faquis avenged themselves on the Mozarabs in the most merciless fashion. Already ten thousand of them had been compelled to emigrate into the territory of Alfonso to escape their enemies’ repression. The remainder were deprived of their property, imprisoned, or put to death. Many of them were deported to Africa. They were established in the neighborhood of Sale and Meknes, where oppression of all kinds compelled them to embrace Islam.Ten years later there was a fresh expulsion. The Christians were again deported to Morocco en masse. Here, then, were cities and whole districts depopulated by massacres and proscriptions. This corresponded with a plan drawn upon in advance, a systematic course of action. “Sultan Yousouf,” writes [Muslim historian] Marrakeshi, “never failed to repeat at every one of his audiences: ‘To rid the [Iberian] Peninsula of the Christians that is our sole purpose … ’” Accordingly, after having expelled the Christians, he replaced them by Berbers. “To combat our enemies,” said Yousouf himself, “I shall fill Spain with horsemen and footmen who think nothing of repose, who do not know what it is to live softly, whose sole thought is to groom and train their horses, take care of their arms, and hasten to obey their orders.” The Almohads devoted themselves no less ardently to repopulating the South of Spain by filling it with Africans and Arabs.

The Washington Post, by three sociologists.

We’re now at a point when Americans are killed or injured in a mass shooting almost every month; by some definitions, almost every day. Despite this, resistance to stricter gun control in the United States remains fierce.

As researchers of religion, we know the power of religious identities and beliefs. And so we wondered: How does Christian nationalism influence Americans’ attitudes toward gun control?

In our newly published and freely available study, the connection between Christian nationalism and gun control attitudes proves stronger than we expected. It turns out that how intensely someone adheres to Christian nationalism is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone supports gun control. One’s political party, religiosity, gender, education or age doesn’t matter.

[ … ]

But what is Christian nationalism?

Christian nationalism is an ideology that argues for an inseparable bond between Christianity and American civil society. It goes beyond merely acknowledging some sincere religious commitments of the Founding Fathers.

Rather, Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalism believe that America has always been ― and should always be ― distinctively Christian in its national identity, sacred symbols and public policies. What’s more, for adherents to this ideology, America’s historic statements about human liberties (e.g., the First and Second Amendments) are imbued with sacred, literal and absolute meaning.

I happen to be trained in theology at the graduate level.  This may be the most stolid analysis I’ve ever read, and the lack of theological training of the academicians undermines and renders useless the study they have published.

There are a number of category errors in this commentary, and at the risk of sounding too much like Gordon Clark, I recommend that these folks retake their course work in logic, and specifically that they study Aristotle’s Logic and Metaphysics before tackling some more difficult texts in systematic theology like Hodge, Warfield, Calvin, Shedd and Turretin.

Seriously, this is a supremely dense run of prose and it’s almost impossible to know where to begin.  But let’s try anyway.

God is no respecter of persons or countries or tribes.  That’s over.  He is the creator of the universe and calls all men to account and all governments to His holy law.  It is equally wicked for America, Russia, China, South Africa or any other country to enact gun control schemes.  Indeed, all gun control is wicked.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

Defense of home and hearth is not just a duly recognized right in the Holy Scriptures, it is a solemn duty, something the Almighty expects of men because men are made in His image.  The second amendment is not given from God.  God didn’t write the constitution, the constitution is a covenant between men.  It has blessings and curses for obedience and breakage, respectively, just like any covenant.  It is the agreement under which we have concurred to live together, and that agreement includes the right and duty not only of self defense and defense of family, but the amelioration of tyranny.  It was understood that way by the founders.

Jesus, who wasn’t the Bohemian hippie flower child pacifist he’s made out to be in contemporary culture, demanded that His followers find weapons themselves.  It’s important to remember that this command involved disobedience to the state.  Jesus’ command involved civil (and if necessary, violent) disobedience, thus forcing his followers to become criminals if they followed His command.

… for some evidence, see Digest 48.6.1: collecting weapons ‘beyond those customary for hunting or for a journey by land or sea’ is forbidden; 48.6.3.1 forbids a man ‘of full age’ appearing in public with a weapon (telum) (references and translation are from Mommsen 1985). See also Mommsen 1899: 564 n. 2; 657-58 n. 1; and Linderski 2007: 102-103 (though he cites only Mommsen). Other laws from the same context of the Digest sometimes cited in this regard are not as worthwhile for my purposes because they seem to be forbidding the possession of weapons with criminal intent. But for the outright forbidding of being armed while in public in Rome, see Cicero’s letter to his brother relating an incident in Rome in which a man, who is apparently falsely accused of plotting an assassination, is nonetheless arrested merely for having confessed to having been armed with a dagger while in the city: To Atticus, Letter 44 (II.24). See also Cicero, Philippics 5.6 (§17). Finally we may cite a letter that Synesius of Cyrene wrote to his brother, probably sometime around the year 400 ce. The brother had apparently questioned the legality of Synesius having his household produce weapons to defend themselves against marauding bands. Synesius points out that there are no Roman legions anywhere near for protection, but he seems reluctantly to admit that he is engaged in an illegal act (Letter 107; for English trans., see Fitzgerald 1926).

“Christian Nationalism,” whatever that does or doesn’t mean, has no more to do with this than my dog.  Moreover, if I were a betting man, I wager that God is quite unhappy with America at the moment.

Any nation whose leaders usurp the power and throne of the Almighty by rendering the family and church powerless, which murders more than 70 million babies, which robs from men and women by the power of a badge and gun to redistribute wealth (wealth that God ordains will be redistributed by families and churches), that exists solely based on usury and debt, and which seeks omniscience through spying on its own people, cannot and will not be long blessed by God.

The researchers are counseled to learn theology so that we can keep the length of this essay to a minimum rather than attempt to repair the fault lines in their theoretical framework.

No one I know, and likely no one you know, believes that God handed down the second amendment or anything else contained in the constitution.  This dumbing down of thoroughgoing and full-orbed world and life views into jingoistic nonsense and word salads is insulting and worthless.

There are reasons that Christians believe in the ownership of weapons, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with belief in Christian nationalism.  God may decide to demolish this country on a bed of rocks with a mere breath, and if He does, we’ll have to start over.  Either way, His holy law stands forever as immutable truth because it is based on his immutable character, and the degree to which He blesses any such new country will be a direct linear function of obedience to His holy law.

To the “researchers.”  Go back to school and learn something.

Bill Foster:

The National Association Of Evangelicals seems a lot like a front group. How widely known is it that Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink/Family Policy Alliance political arm gets money form the Koch brother’s Freedom Partners? All this started once Focus on the Family’s board pushed out James Dobson. They got soft on sodomy and went all in on unlimited immigration, illegal and otherwise. In the case of Focus on the Family it seems to be all about the money. Remember, Satan is the great deceiver. Too many Christians today are being deceived by these Judas organizations and their leadership. Sadly it is the failings of the Christian Church in America that has opened the door for the fall of this once Christian country.

No.  I didn’t know that about Focus on the Family and James Dobson.  How sad.  It has become far too easy for “Christians” to compromise their faith, and when they do that, they aren’t really Christians at all.  They’re just imposters, and should be excommunicated and shunned as such.

NAE:

Dear Mr. President:

As evangelical leaders representing tens of thousands of local churches, campus communities, and ministries we are concerned that the new “zero tolerance” policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, recently announced by Attorney General Sessions and being implemented by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, has had the effect of separating vulnerable children from their parents. As head of the Executive Branch of the federal government, we are writing to ask you to resolve this situation of families being separated that you have rightly described as “horrible.”

As evangelical Christians guided by the Bible, one of our core convictions is that God has established the family as the fundamental building block of society. The state should separate families only in the rarest of instances. While illegal entry to the United States can be a misdemeanor criminal violation, past administrations have exercised discretion in determining when to charge individuals with this offense, taking into account the wellbeing of children who may also be involved.

A “zero tolerance” policy removes that discretion—with the effect of removing even small children from their parents. The traumatic effects of this separation on these young children, which could be devastating and long-lasting, are of utmost concern.

U.S. law currently allows individuals with a credible fear of persecution to request asylum whether the individual enters with a valid visa, requests asylum at a port of entry, or is apprehended seeking to enter without a visa. Not every individual arriving will merit asylum protection, but we would ask that families be kept together while ensuring each individual asylum seeker is afforded due process according to our laws.

We are also concerned that there are fewer legal possibilities for those with a well-founded fear of persecution to be considered for refugee status without needing to make it to the U.S. border. The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program has allowed many fleeing persecution in Central America and elsewhere to register as refugees abroad and be thoroughly vetted before coming lawfully to the U.S. However, with significantly fewer refugees being admitted in recent years, there are fewer options for those fleeing persecution. Those facing legitimate threats to their lives often feel they have no choice but to leave their countries and seek asylum elsewhere.

We respectfully ask you to work with Attorney General Sessions and Secretary Nielsen to reverse this “zero tolerance” policy and instead urge law enforcement entities to exercise discretion to protect the unity of families.

This is what happens when spiritual “leaders” no longer believe in the applicability of God’s law to individuals.  The state becomes responsible for everything, including administering grace rather than justice.  No mention is made of the fact that illegals are law-breakers.

And this is what happens when the church “leaders” no longer believe in the power of the Holy Scriptures to effect world-wide change.  It becomes anemic and powerless.  Thus church “leaders” begin to meddle in the affairs of state and turn globalist rather than focus on the preaching and teaching of the Word of God.

Say, you don’t suppose all of this will have any effect on second amendment rights, do you?

Stephen Halbrook:

For 20 years now, a well-meaning law professor has been peddling the fiction that the Second Amendment – guaranteeing the right of Americans to keep and bear arms – was adopted to protect slavery. He first proposed this in a 1998 law review article and trotted it out again in a recent New York Times op-ed.

The trouble is: It’s untrue. Not a single one of America’s founders is known to have suggested such a purpose.

When the Redcoats came to disarm the colonists, the American patriots relied on the right to “have arms for their Defense,” as stated in the English Declaration of Rights of 1689.

In 1776, Pennsylvania declared: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves, and the state.” Vermont copied that language in its constitution, which explicitly abolished slavery. Massachusetts and North Carolina adopted their own versions.

When the states debated adoption of the Constitution without a bill of rights in 1787-88, Samuel Adams proposed the right to bear arms in Massachusetts’s ratification convention. The Dissent of the Minority did so in Pennsylvania, and the entire New Hampshire convention demanded recognition of the right.

There was no connection to slavery in any of these historical antecedents.

In his articles, Professor Carl T. Bogus of Roger Williams University speculates that George Mason’s and Patrick Henry’s demands in the Virginia ratification convention could have been motivated to protect slavery. Not so.

Mason recalled that “when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised … to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

And Patrick Henry implored: “The great object is, that every man be armed.” The ensuing debate concerned defense against tyranny and invasion – not slavery.

New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island joined in the demand for what became the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms had universal support.

I’ve seen those claims before and dismissed them as the trivial contrivances they are.

The problem is that men tend to see history through their own eyes and the context they have in post-modern America, even if that isn’t the way historical studies works.

It’s also very difficult to understand American history without the framework of continental Calvinian doctrine and polity, and an understanding of the proper relationship of the three institutions ordained by God, i.e., state, church and family (Gary North also includes economics, or in other words, the market).  You can add the fourth if so inclined.

Balance between institutions means implementing covenant in all of its blessings and curses.  It means not allowing one institution to usurp the authority of God over the other institutions, and that necessitates something like the second amendment.

It wasn’t anything so pedestrian as slavery that created the second amendment.  It was a necessary doctrine in a nation to be founded on Biblical principles, albeit imperfectly.

Honest men understand that and use it as a framework to understand American history.  Dishonest men and imbeciles make up their own shit just because.

The Salt Lake Tribune, written by Robert Rees who teaches religion at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif., where he is director of Mormon Studies.

But no matter how much research we do or how much support we drum up to support our own prejudices about guns, we are likely just to go on shouting slogans at each other. Until we are able to permit one another’s views, we will continue to see only so far as the inside of our own heads — and reason only so far as defending our own axioms.

There is no doubt that the LDS takes a strong and unbending position against firearms except in the hands of law enforcement.

LDS Church policy restricts “lethal weapons” at church.

So do the Jehova’s Witnesses.

How a Christian chooses to protect himself, his family, or his possessions is, of course, largely a personal matter, as is his choice of employment. That said, Bible principles reflect God’s wisdom and his love for us. Out of regard for those principles, spiritually mature Christians choose not to keep a firearm for protection against other humans. They know that true and lasting security comes to those who demonstrate trust in God by living in harmony with Bible principles.​

During the great tribulation, Christians will rely on Jehovah and not try to defend themselves.

It’s truly a shame because were these folks more open minded and cared about proper exegesis of the Scriptures, it’s trivial to make an unassailable Biblical case not only for the right of self defense, but the duty to defend not only oneself but other lives as well with every means possible.

The first writer I quoted, Robert Rees, mentioned a world without “moral certainty.”  It’s no wonder that the LDS is screwed up with professors who are morally uncertain.  Moral certainty, sir, comes from the law-word of almighty God, found in the Holy Writ, and of that, I’m quite certain.

Via Matt Bracken, Gab.

That’s what it looks like in France today.  You can develop your own timeline for America.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Religious leaders across denominations spoke out in St. Louis on Wednesday against pending legislation that would allow concealed weapons in places of worship in Missouri without permission of the clergy.

“The bill would broaden Second Amendment rights at the expense of the First Amendment right of religious liberty,” said Most Rev. Robert Carlson, archbishop of St. Louis, who presides over some 500,000 Roman Catholics in the region.

What a strange thing.  The law doesn’t mandate that churches allow weapons, and since this is private property I support that because I support property rights.

What the law does is force them to post since this property usually comes with understood open invitations to join the services.  In other words, the “clergy” here doesn’t want the public to know their position, or at least be forced to wonder.

Perhaps they also don’t like the fact that in an ironic twist they are announcing the fact that they have decided to leave themselves without protection of any kind and thus a shooting gallery for would-be perpetrators.

I think it’s a wonderful thing that congregants and parishioners can now tell if they should enter at their own risk as soon as they set foot on the property.  I think it’s sad that the rest of the folk have been left with no protection.

These clergy aren’t clergy at all.  The churches are open sepulchers with dead men preaching to dead congregants.  They have no wisdom, no discernment, and couldn’t care less about the law of God, the pinnacle of which is the law of love, or protecting and caring for those around you.