Who is benefitting from corona hype? Democrats and big business

Is the constant hyping of the corona virus part of the plan to defeat Trump? Sure looks like it. It's served Democrats well. Even though it's the governors who have shut us down, not the President, their ratings are better in Covid approval than the President--Americans actually approve of having their freedom restricted by government. And they call Trump a fascist? They play with words, not facts, not data.

It's too dangerous to go to church, but not to Target or the liquor stores (or the marijuana stores in Ohio). It has bankrupted small businesses, but benefitted big business like Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart. Who are more likely to be regular church goers, Democrats or Republicans? Urban knowledge workers can sit at home using Zoom and not suffer any set backs. This all benefits the Democrats; Republican strengths are small business and rural people.

Woodstock was held during the Hong Kong flu epidemic, which killed 100,000. No one in the 1960s expected the government to make them safe. No one closed businesses, schools, or churches. The media pretty much ignored it. And the young people enjoying the music certainly weren't social distancing.

Alex Berenson, Sept 23: “For six months, many big media outlets have done everything possible to attempt to spread panic about the coronavirus. In March, the crisis was ventilator shortages, which proved to be nonexistent. In May, they hyped the almost nonexistent risk Covid presents to children. Over the summer, they pretended that hospitals in the Sunbelt were near collapse. Now they focus relentlessly on a single figure, the death count.”

https://youtu.be/xCn5LuZOFZI There are a few brave souls out there who think the governors' and mayors' handling of Covid19 (lockdowns, school closing, shutting down churches, businesses destroyed) were unconstitutional. I certainly think so, but I'm no expert. But I know enough to know the first speaker on this YouTube misquoted the first amendment, but he was basically on the right track.

Spokes model for millennials

Alyssa Ahlgren is a millennial who's made a name for herself by being blunt and unapologetically conservative, calling out her generation, including AOC, for being spoiled and naive.

She wrote a nice piece in late May about standing up to fear. Now it's nearly October and I think maybe she was wrong about Americans and what they would put up with.

"Americans were willing to take temporary hits to their liberties to flatten the curve. We followed the rules. We were compliant with the “15 days to slow the spread.” What we are not compliant with is the continued abuse of power backed by zero evidence and practiced in the name of the “common good” and “safety.” As the country’s leaders remain divided on locking down and reopening, Americans are starting to stand together. We will not be vulnerable. We will not be complacent. And we will not shrink in fear. After all, the American spirit was derived from rebellion and the desire to be free. Good luck keeping that locked down."

My church has timidly offered some parking lot and mid-week services, and my library still has closed branches and appointment only computers. I guess our walk doesn't match our talk, especially on the First Amendment.

https://alphanewsmn.com/alyssa-ahlgren-what-the-shutdown-has-taught-us/

Unacceptable

This is not acceptable. Upper Arlington Lutheran Church (UALC) still doesn't have an opening date, and when it finally gets there (I guess we need more money and more staff?):

• The Traditional service will be held during the week with the day and time yet to be determined. A video recording of the service will be available on the following Sunday morning. Holding the service during the week allows us to:

o Make good use of our preaching and presiding staff.
o Record the service for online worshipers.
o Potentially increase the number of services (and thus allow for more worshipers) by adding services on additional days. This will keep us from having to turn over the sanctuary between worship hours and helps to minimize risk for all involved.

And it's all for the health of us old folks.

Our nearby neighbor, St. Andrew reopened in May. "On Tuesday, May 26, we will resume the celebration of public daily Masses at 6:30 and 8:30 a.m. May 30/31 will mark the return to Sunday Masses with our NEW SCHEDULE: 4:30 p.m. (Saturday Vigil) and 7:30, 9:15 and 11 a.m. on Sundays. The sanctuary will reopen for prayer throughout the week beginning Tuesday, May 26 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m."

Saturday night in Lakeside

Last night in the park at Lakeside, Ohio, we enjoyed a Fleetwood Mac tribute group. They were as happy to see us as we were to see them. They hadn't had a gig since Valentine's Day. It's not my music, but it was a large crowd, socially distancing and wearing masks. We were all happy to be together, while safely apart. It baffles me that with all the talent, skill and college degrees we have on the staff of our churches, no one can come up with a plan that serves God and man.

It seems Christians don't have ushers who can pass out masks, or volunteers to wipe down benches and pews after use, or organizers who are as flexible as other non-profits, or soloists in place of community singing, or parking lots and parks.

We are facing enemies every bit as evil as those warned about in the Old Testament, yet we have a spirit of timidity and fear that I could never have imagined in my parents' generation, who by the time I was 5 years old had lived through WWI, the 1918 pandemic, the Great Depression and WWII, and increasingly outbreaks of polio. To my knowledge they never closed their little rural churches, some of which may not have had indoor plumbing let alone fancy high tech computers and Bible studies using Zoom.

Did the churches have options?

There have been many times in history when churches (the people) needed to go underground, and they grew. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," and so forth. But now all they've done is contribute to the steady loss of the "nones" who already believed they could worship at a concert or stay home and play with their computers. Like some of the businesses that were forced to close and scatter their employees, I think we'll see mass closings. Wealthy churches like UALC had options, and one would have been to graft in some backbone in Christians who have been losing ground for 30 years and caving to the culture.

Sunday musings on the Trump critics

I've noticed some strange behavior among the Trump haters.

In addition to calling me names like stupid Fox News watcher or Trump cult member, they ridicule Trump's appearance, his 3 marriages, his children, his speech and his Christian faith.

Odd. With a 50% divorce rate among Americans, how many divorces are OK with these folks? Did his critics just shack up or sleep around and not bother with legalities? Is that wagging finger pointing back at the speaker with a tinge of guilt?

And his appearance? 69% of women are either overweight or obese and 75% of men. How slim are his critics? Could the critics keep up his schedule?

His children? Have you checked out the Kennedy genealogy and Roosevelt kids lately? Didn't Cuomo and Schwarzenegger both marry into the Kennedy clan and then dump their wives, one for a cook the other for a maid?

The way Trump talks? It was OK with Trump critics that both H. Clinton and B. Obama would change their speech patterns with their clothing to try to ingratiate themselves with certain ethnic groups or income levels. But Trump never changes. He tweets, he talks, and he jokes, but it always drives the left crazy that he doesn't change to suit them. They don't want him to talk like a deal making businessman--they want him to sound like a washed up, has-been politician who has been failing for 40 years in government.

Christian faith? With 35,000 different denominations, independents, and Bible churches among Christians who can't even agree on how to baptize or when Jesus is coming back, just which group is OK with his critics? The one they belong to? The one they don't honor with their presence or tithe?

It's puzzling.

The churches and BDS

IF you attend a liberal, mainline church (can be either Catholic or Protestant) you'll hear about BDS (boycott-divestment-sanctions) as a response to Israel. It's plain and simple Arab anti-Semitism and you've been snookered. Its advocates swarm on college campuses, social media and late night TV. Liberals particularly seem to love BDS. The objective is the killing of Jews and returning those who are left to the statelessness of pre-1948. I don't know exactly how they got such a foothold in academe, the founder, Omar Barghouti attended university in the U.S., so we must have birthed him. Can someone shake the money tree?

Which churches?

Here’s the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, a merger of 1988 of 3 major Lutheran synods. download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/PNW_elca_bds.pdf?  Our church, UALC is no long in that synod.

Here’s Church of the Brethren, UCC, Disciples of Christ,  UMC, Presbyterian Church (USA)   https://disciples.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016DNSStatement-on-Anti-BDS-legislation-Aug-22.pdf

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/121645/chutzpah-omar-barghouti-daniel-greenfield

Fake history as well as fake news

Shocking isn’t it how most of us were taught fake history, for me beginning in 5th grade in Forreston, Illinois?  There was no Dark Ages after Rome fell to the barbarians. In fact, those barbarians were Roman citizens enjoying a  fairly high level of culture and more likely assimilated Rome. There was no Enlightenment where suddenly the world of learning exploded.  There was no scientific revolution, only a group of secularists who denied the truths the church had taught all along. And what about that awful Spanish Inquisition? More people died from the death penalty in the first 70 years of the 20th century in the U.S. than in 350 years of the Inquisition.  To bring us up to today’s headlines, there is also no HIV Pandemic, just very risky behavior by a small segment of the population in multiple countries, mostly young, gay and bisexual males, which spreads disease and death around the world.

There were incredible advancements in technology, science, agriculture, literature and art all through the era I was taught to call “the Dark Ages.”  And without an era that had gone  “dark,” how could there be an era when the lights suddenly came on--the Enlightenment--a time when Europeans looked back and copied what the Greeks and Romans did.  How could scientists of the 18th century pat themselves on the back if they had to be standing on the shoulders of the giants of science of the middle ages? They needed the myth of a Scientific Revolution. There was slavery in ancient Rome, but it had virtually disappeared in Europe by the time of the so-called Enlightenment.  So where did it go?  Changes in technology, agriculture, war and economics made it useless.

But who can we blame for all this misinformation about darkness and slow progress? Why were we taught this? Christianity, of course, say the atheist academics, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church say the non-Catholic academics. The United States arose from the English Reformation view of world and European history, so that’s what we were taught; most of our colonies excluded Catholics owning land or building churches. That’s why the religious history books on my office shelves begin around 1517 for Lutherans and Reformed or 1600 for Baptists, or 1850 for Restorationists and 1900 for Pentecostals and Charismatics, and 10 years ago for the Rock City Church, the fastest growing Christian church in Columbus, Ohio.  That’s why we could watch five seasons of Downton Abbey without asking why aristocratic Anglicans in the 20th century were making their home in an abbey built by Catholic monks who lost their home, life’s work and probably their lives for Jesus in the 16th century.

The other day I looked through the introduction of a book of evangelical Christian literature, “Valiant for the truth,” by David Otis Fuller (c. 1961). Let me quote, “It has been said that after the close of the Apostolic Age theology fell over a cliff until restored by the great formulated creeds of the church. . . “ And that’s pretty much the mother’s milk we were all nourished with whether mother was a Lutheran, Calvinist, Mormon, Congregationalist, secularist or atheist.