Americans need a religious revival says famous agnostic

“The Founders were not really super orthodox,” Charles Murray observed. “They were all nominally Christians, but they wouldn’t pass the litmus test for a lot of evangelicals today. But they were absolutely, emphatically agreed that you cannot have a free society with a constitution such as the one they had created unless you are trying to govern a religious people. If you do not have religion as the controlling force, then the kinds of laws we have could not possibly work.” Without religion, Murray told me, there was simply no “intrinsic motivation” for people to behave morally — and no definition for what constitutes moral behavior in the first place."

Q&A with Charles Murray: Religious Revival That Could Save America | National Review

Evangelicals increasingly follow the mainline churches and the world

“The irony of the reshaping of the spiritual landscape in America is that it represents a post-Christian reformation driven by people seeking to retain a Christian identity,” noted Dr. George Barna, Director of Research at the Cultural Research Center. “Unfortunately, the theology of this reformation is being driven by American culture rather than biblical truth."

Among those associated with evangelical churches.:

--44% claim the Bible is ambiguous in its teaching about abortion

--34% argue that abortion is morally acceptable if it spares the mother from financial or emotional discomfort or hardship

--34% reject the idea of legitimate marriage as one man and one woman

--40% accept lying as morally acceptable if it advances personal interests or protect one’s reputation

--39% identify the people they respect as being only those who have the same beliefs as their own

And it's even higher in charismatic and Pentecostal churches.

 https://www.arizonachristian.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CRC_AWVI2020_Release11_Digital_04_20201006.pdf  American Worldview Inventory 2020

Why the women in white who cheered and chanted are so frightening

“I've spent the majority of the day today, as I do every day these days, feeling my unborn baby move. But today, I've been more in tune to the precious life that's growing inside of me. I feel her rearranging herself, kicking, and trying to get more comfortable. I feel her hiccups. I feel her react to different things I eat. Especially if it's cold or if it's chocolate. I feel her respond to her daddy's hand on my stomach or his voice talking to her. I feel her respond to music I play. I feel her excitement when she hears her sisters playing and laughing. I feel her stillness when things are chaotic, listening to hear what's going on. I feel her. Living. She's a living, breathing life. Right now. In my womb.

Last night, I sat and listened to the POTUS ask congress to put an end to late term abortion. LATE TERM ABORTION. As he spoke, half of the room erupted in standing applause. The other half is what completely perplexed me. I watched in horror as Nancy bit whatever it is she bit in her mouth the entire night. I watched as Chuck smirked and smiled about the murdering of babies at full term, in the birth canal. And I watched as the women in white sat stone cold silent, arms crossed, grimaces on their face, seemingly in opposition of this request.

When did this happen? How did this happen? When did LATE TERM abortion become ok or acceptable NATIONWIDE? Are you telling me that not a single one.... NOT ONE, of the women in white oppose the murder of innocent blood? Is that really a democratic thing? I know a ton of people on the left who oppose late term abortion. Some of them even oppose abortion in general. You're telling me not one of our elected democratic representatives oppose it up to the day of birth? I don't get it. Do they really lack in the most basic of morals? Or, are they scared? So scared to stand and applause the life they fight so hard for in other settings, in front of their fearless leader chomping at the bit behind the podium? Are they scared of their constituents? What are they afraid of? They sure aren't afraid of the God who breathed His own breath into these unborn children, the SAME God who created them. The God who says He Himself knit us in the womb, and that He knew us before He formed us. They aren't scared of Him.

I got the message loud and clear. You wore white. You stand in unity for "women's rights"- women who agree with you at least. You cheered, chanted, and applauded your own huge accomplishments of beating out your male opponents. You are proud. You should be. You have the chance to make a difference and to speak truth, to make changes. But last night, you failed. You were an embarrassment. You were a bunch of cowards. Your silence was selfish. You were selfish. You were everything a strong woman is not. And you do not represent me.”

Sarah Dolan Cox

This election is a continental divide for the United States in morality

This is well worth a listen.  Much longer than the sermons I'm used to, but you can get the gist in the first 20 minutes. My take away from this sermon at the Denton Bible Church: 

Both candidates are seriously flawed.  Both are children of the 60s, of modernism.  But now we’re in the post-modern age. There is no foundation for truth.  Assumptions of 200 years have vanished. We are being beaten with our own stick--relativism.   Our silence in the churches has contributed.   The post modern trajectory will either be slowed down or speeded up in this election depending on which party wins.  The Democrats are not the problem--this has been the direction for 100 years. We are voting for a party platform, and this year it’s a continental divide and it’s theological--what is right and what is wrong. It’s no longer just economics or defense or foreign policy.  Never in the history of America have concepts in these platforms been considered moral or right. The shift is from God to man, from man to modernism, from modernism to post modernism.  We are not voting just for a candidate.  The President of the U.S. is in charge of the military and appointing justices according to the Constitution.  Everything else is steering a barge, but electing a Democrat in 2016 is putting the presidency on jet skis.

"It must be said that probably few of us had Donald Trump as our first choice. He wasn’t mine. I was Cruz, Rubio, then Carson because they were open Christians. Most of us said, “What would you do if it came down to Trump?” Well it did because the Republicans Party chose Donald Trump and entrusted him with their platform.

We all recognize that he’s somewhat unlikeable. We also recognize that it’s somewhat scary to have a fellow as hard -nosed as he is to be in discussions with foreign leaders who can be on the edge. And we recognize that he is untested in politics and we could all have egg on our faces in the coming years. I assure you I will be praying earnestly for Michael Pence to guide him in the civility of politics. But those things “might be,” as indeed in all elections there is a “might be” involved in all leaders. But the Democratic platform is not a “might be.” It’s a “gonna be.” A “will be.”
 
Donald Trump is scary because of the unknown. Hillary is scary because of the fear of the known. . . I was taught not to lie down. I will vote to oppose the loss of our freedom and the loss of life and the loss of the traditional family."

Tommy Nelson, Denton Bible Church, The Continental Divide, Oct. 23, 2016. Available on sound cloud and YouTube (58 minutes) and print. https://www.dbcmedia.org/sermons/the-continental-divide/

Conservatives have a problem--moral relativism of liberals

"The problem for Conservatives is that they believe in morality and in recent days many conservatives found themselves in a gut-wrenching decision over whether to vote for or against Donald Trump. Individuals within the loop of moral relativism have no such problem. There may be one such person, but I have discovered no agony within the Hillary supporters.

• Fifty million abortions? No problem!
• 500 million dollars from the Federal Government to fund the new Nazis who run Planned Parenthood and sell off body parts? No problem! 
• Benghazi? No problem!
• Releasing of terrorists from Gitmo? No problem! 
• Emptying the jails of individuals who produced and sold cocaine and heroin? No problem! 
• Hundreds of millions in cash delivered to Iran in the middle of the night for ransom? No problem!
• Redefinition of marriage? No problem!
  
• Transsexual bathroom directives from Obama? No problem!
  
• No settlement of IRS harassment of Conservative groups? No problem!
  
• Continued chaos and suicides of veterans in the VA? No problem!
  
• Destruction of emails and servers by the Secretary of State? No problem!
  

When moral relativists in the Democratic Party demand that you do not vote for Trump, you have every right to make the same demand to the moral relativists to not vote for Clinton. If they, who do not believe in a moral universe, suddenly decide that there is such a thing; then, by all means use this fleeting opportunity to extract a pledge from them to not vote for Clinton."  Roland Lane​

Janice Shaw Crouse asks

Which is more "Moral?"

Crudity v. Corrupt
Loud v. Liar
Arrogant v. Criminal...
Bombastic v. Dishonest
Egotistical v. Angry
Pompous v. Phoney

These are important points to think about since this is a very unusual campaign with candidates neither party seems to really like. 68% say they don't trust Hillary, and ROR (regular old Republicans) are sharpening their knives for Trump instead of Hillary because he threatens their power.

You won't find it at my church either, Margaret

From a commenter at a Catholic blog:

"I have been to many Masses in many parishes over my long lifetime, and I can't remember the last time I heard a homily against abortion, gay "marriage," artificial birth control, cohabitation, etc.---all issues that have contributed to the "social disaster" in our country. The Sunday after the Supreme Court legalized gay "marriage", I heard not a word about it at Mass then or since, but we did have a "great" homily that Sunday on protecting the environment!"

Where do rights come from? God.

“The tradition of American civil rights is a noble — and fragile — enterprise grounded in the belief that all people have inherent rights. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…" Truths? Created? Creator? Almost makes you think the American Founders believed that God exists and that rights flowed from Him.

This declaration is a moral precept grounded in centuries of Western history. But as the Founders and countless others understood, any claim of rights must have at their source the belief that man indeed possesses "inalienable rights." Religion, in other words, is the wellspring of the morality that shapes and guides the culture. In our world, Christianity (and Judaism through it) is that wellspring.

Human rights then, depend on a religion that serves as the source of a shared moral tradition and shapes a consensus on basic matters of right and wrong. If that tradition is abandoned the consensus shatters, and our ideas of what constitutes a human right are shorn from their moral moorings. (Think a moral tradition doesn't matter? Reflect on Islam and see how its notions of rights differ from ours. Not religious? Think of the blood spilled over Nazism, Marxism, and other utopian replacements.)”

This quote is from this article.

Why the left wants to raise taxes on the rich

We don't have enough billionaires and millionaires to do what Obama wants--fund all our government programs, so why is he going down this road again for the 2012 campaign? If it doesn't help the poor and middle class, why do it? To punish the rich--it's a deeply held moral philosophy.

Republicans need to unmask the philosophy guiding modern liberalism when it comes to taxes. What liberals are interested in isn't growth so much as egalitarianism and redistribution for its own sake. For many on the left, increasing taxes isn't about economics as much as morality. They believe taxing the wealthy is a virtue, to the point that they would penalize "the rich" even if that has harmful economic consequences. Recall that during a campaign debate, when asked by Charles Gibson about his support for raising capital gains taxes even if that caused a net revenue loss to the Treasury, Obama sided with tax increases "for purposes of fairness."

The Incredible Shrinking Obama

Moral hectoring from the left

Someone commented at Ann Althouse's blog on Mrs. Obama's assessment of the Tucson tragedy: "Anyone else growing weary of moral hectoring from the Party That Frowns On Moral Hectoring?"

Mrs. Obama: "We can teach them [our children] the value of tolerance – the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us. We can teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they disagree."

An Open Letter to Parents Following the Tragedy in Tucson | The White House

I have trouble forgetting how she dissed us--all Americans--during the campaign and election period. Where was her tolerance for differences then?

There's not a shred of evidence and no dots to connect, but the party of misinformation just keeps rolling on. This seems to be the only transparent thing about the Obama administration.

The Tucson Witch Hunt - NYTimes.com

Liberals on Conservatives

A conservative who veers to the left is "growing," "sensitive to complexities," "nuanced," and "puts public interest ahead of ideology."

A conservative must not "impose their views" on the rest of society," and is suspect as a candidate for public life if those views are formed by Christianity (but not Islam, Buddism or Judaism).

Choice is good if killing an unborn child, but bad if the child's mother wants him to attend an alternative, charter school.

Murders at Ft. Hood trial of Muslim doctor need to be on the 5th or 6th page of the newspaper; bullying of a gay teen deserves front page story.

Serial murders of women that go on for years are just a crime, but a murder of a homosexual is a hate crime.

Disinformation in marketing by a for-profit company needs congressional hearings; disinformation in inflation (3000%) of illegal abortion death statistics to get Roe v. Wade passed was necessary for the greater good.

A gay politician like Barney Frank who is crooked and lies, whose partners have loose lips, is lauded and applauded, but a gay politican who is Republican like Mark Foley is hounded out of office. If a gay Democrat harrasses a staff member, it's business as usual; if a gay Republican does it he's a pervert especially if he's been in the closet. The victim, apparently, matters not at all.

Liberals push condoms, not marriage and fatherhood, and are very critical of conservatives who push chastity as a solution to poverty.

Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle, Republican candidates who have never spent a penny of your tax dollars or declared a war lost while our soldiers are still in harm's way are kooks and radicals, but Harry Reid, Chris Coons and Nancy Pelosi, entrenched Democrats, are just fine and trustworthy.

If bank employees don't read all the documents in a foreclosure, they are evil tools of the fat cat bankers; if congressmen or the President don't read a healthcare or a banking bill of 2,000+ pages, well, that's just the cost of doing the government's business.

More to come.

Decisions about disclosure

The opening paragraph of an essay titled, "Disclosure" by Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky of Boston in the May 5, 2010 issue of JAMA was stunning in the author's lack of understanding her role in protecting the general public and specific individuals from serious disease. Others I'd give a break, but she had an MD and MPH after her name! The paragraph really wasn't essential to the thrust of her topic, which was about being a woman (pregnancy, motherhood) in academic medicine. Here's what she wrote:

"Early in my career, one of my patients with HIV infection, Robin, a recovering heroin addict, had re-enrolled in school and was newly engaged. Her fiance was unaware that she was HIV infected and she would not discuss using condoms, let alone her HIV infection, with him. I encouraged her to confide her infection to her fiance--for the integrity of their relationship and for the value of his health--at each of our clinical encounters. Finally, she did so. He left her. She stopped taking her antiretroviral medications and restarted using heroin. Although the fiance may have reduced his risk of infection, the consequences of my intervention were tragic for my patient. Robin's case reinforced that disclosure is a risky business because the truth can trigger an unexpected, sometimes devastating chain of reactions."

No, it wasn't unfortunate that the fiance left her; it probably saved his life, assuming he wasn't already infected. No, Rochelle Walensky's intervention as a doctor and public health official wasn't tragic--it was probably a requirement of her job! No, Robin didn't start using heroin again because her fiance left her--she was an addict and no one, not even the love of a good man could change her if she wasn't up to the tough behavior needed to kick it. No, stopping the antiretroviral meds wasn't a tragedy because she would just become reinfected as the heroin addiction took over her mind. Part of getting well is a behavior change, chastity and monogamy, something she can't do on drugs. And finally, it's just entirely possible that the fiance left her because he realized she valued his life so little, that he would never again be able to trust her.

Obama's triumph?

"Last week, President Obama removed virtually all restrictions on fetal stem cell research, claiming a triumph of science over “ideology.” The hope, of course, is that science may find new ways to prolong and improve our lives, now that the shackles of moral restraint, humility, and ethics have been removed. It seemed fitting, therefore, to repost this older essay, pondering whether the “victories” which science now has in store for us will be indeed Pyrrhic." Continue here with Dr. Bob on what does it mean to be human.

What he'll miss about President Bush

"I remember coming to the West Wing one morning before the daily 7:30 senior staff meeting and seeing Mr. Bush at his desk in the Oval Office, reading a daily devotional. I remember the look of sorrow on his face as he signed letters to the families of the fallen. When he met with recovering addicts whose lives were transformed by a faith-based program, he spoke plainly of his own humiliating journey years ago with alcohol. When a Liberian refugee broke into tears after recounting her escape to freedom in America, the president went over and held and comforted her.

Little acts behind the curtain like these inspired intense loyalty by staff members. They spoke of someone never too busy or burdened to care -- like when he took time on Air Force One to call my wife when she was sick. The president's true character rendered his media image pure caricature."

Jim Towey writes a very touching remembrance of President Bush. He was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002-2006 and is currently president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. When I write analytically of the faith-based initiatives that are in almost every branch of the federal and state governments, I don’t do it to be mean or hostile to "good works." I am sounding an alarm based on Obama's promises. He may be too busy in the beginning dismantling the courts, but it will come.

People in social programs of housing, nutrition, food pantries, summer lunch programs, post prison work, nursing home ministries, fostering abused children, etc., particularly conservative Christians who are heavily involved in these areas to live out their faith with works, need to realize this can be taken away from you much faster than it was given (over a period of almost 20 years). Once you take government money (or, even if you don‘t) to train ex-convicts, or feed Somali immigrants, or provide outings for medicaid patients at the nursing home, the administrators of that program by law, law suit, regulation or political pressure can tell you who you have to hire (Obama has already said he will do this), can pull your tax exempt status which will destroy your funding, your building plans which need to pass code for an expansion, your retirement plans for your staff, your Medicare and Medicaid funding for the nursing home for your people, your right to have adoption programs limited to married heterosexual couples. And don’t forget what you’re allowed to preach from the pulpit about abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, or any type of morality from polygamy to sex with children in a society whose values come from Hollywood, Wall Street and the Federal government bureaucracy.

Christians, we need to get back to the business of God. Gospel first, works resulting from faith second. And stop depending on kick backs from the government to change lives. The Bible never tells you to do this, nor does it ever say that even if you do it without government help, that the service you perform to clean up, feed or house a person on the outside will change his life or turn him to God. That's an inside job, and it belongs to God.

Alliteration

The repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words is called alliteration. I wonder how long it took the author to come up with this title, "Commercialization, Commodification, and Commensurability in Selective Human Reproduction: Paying for Particulars in People-to-Be." It's almost too cute for a very serious subject, selective reproduction (also called "offspring enhancement") by author Dov Fox, of Yale Law School, appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics. This type of enhancement looks a bit more troublesome than rich athletes using steroids, don't you think? Other than taxing it or regulating it, I'm guessing Congress won't do much. Once God's been kicked out of the public square it's hard to invite him back in. As a nation we've decided that the less-than-perfect products of conception deserve a pre-natal death; so designing the uber-perfect baby is probably the next step in our moral decline.

Pre-natal screening and genetic modification may one day enable parents to pick individual traits for their offspring from among a range of available options. If Americans already enhance themselves at a cost of $50 per orgasm, $500 per patch of hair, $1,000 per SAT point, $2,500 per cup size, and $50,000 per inch of height, and if the unlikely prospect of biological design nevertheless became possible, why wouldn’t parents opt for mathematical aptitude, a witty disposition, or straighter teeth for their children-to-be? Fortune magazine gauges the prospective U.S. market for preconception sex selection alone at over $200-million-a-year annually.Abstract here, with links to downloading

Christians who expect the government to do their job

Chuck Baldwin writes about Christians who want the government to do the heavy lifting.

The idea that James Madison and the other authors of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights intended to prohibit children from praying in school, or state and local governments from posting the Ten Commandments and from erecting Nativity scenes is the invention of modern-age humanists, whose real goal is to eviscerate America's Christian heritage. Such reasoning is a complete inversion of the real meaning of the First Amendment. All the First Amendment was designed to do was recognize religious liberty, something Americans enjoyed until the infamous Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and '63.

That said, it is equally apparent that many Christians and ministers today have developed the attitude that somehow the federal government is supposed to enforce by law what only the Spirit of God can enforce through grace. Let's be plain: the federal government cannot do the church's job.

I suspect Baldwin is a libertarian by politics, because he states that although the government has the right to regulate pornography, prostitution and drugs, it shouldn't be in the business of legislating morality. I wouldn't go that far, because I see much of that as a mental pollution linked heavily to organized crime. But if he's talking about Christians who support it with crossed fingers hoping no one will find out, he's right. These businesses would probably collapse if all the Christians withdrew both their investments in these businesses and their patronage. Christianity Today a few years ago did a report on the millions of Christians addicted to pornography and gambling. Unbelievers like to think that Christians are smugly pointing fingers, but if they are, it isn't in my church, where in 30+ years I've never heard a sermon on any form of public or private morality.

Baldwin goes on to relate this to the upcoming election. And I do agree with him. You can't wedge a piece of dental floss between the theology of Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee--they are all Baptists and believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. I don't doubt their faith for a minute. If I don't meet them in this life, I know I will in the next. How they will translate their personal and political beliefs into policy, however, is very different. Gore and Clinton technically aren't on the ballot, but Clinton's persona, fake and flip-flopping as it may be, is very much a part of the campaign; and Gore's wingnut beliefs are invading every follicle and hair of our lives. Don't let the MSM frighten you about Romney or Huckabee. Look at policy and issues:

Therefore, instead of looking to presidential candidates who will use the federal government to accomplish everything we want done (even the good things we want done), we should support only those candidates who recognize the proper role of the federal government as being limited and narrowly defined (by the Constitution). And then, it behooves us to look to ourselves to be the parents we should be to our own children at home, and to look for pastors and churches that are not trying to be popular, but that are courageous and faithful custodians of the truth.