A Liberal Order That Seeks To Shut Down Christian Charities Doesn’t Deserve To Survive

Christian post-liberals on the right have seen how readily the liberal center-left and the Chamber-of-Commerce right surrender to the extreme and illiberal left. It makes them wonder: Why not us?

Dec 26, 2019

It is a basic Christian teaching that good works are insufficient for spiritual salvation. We should also remember they are unlikely to suffice for cultural and political salvation either.

Chick-fil-A’s abandonment of The Salvation Army is yesterday’s news, but its lessons should be remembered, for they explain our cultural and political trajectory. That the chicken chain capitulated even though everyone was “eating mor chikin” is instructive regarding the power of the LBGT lobby and its allies. That they directed this power against a Christian organization dedicated to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless — including those who identify as LGBT — is even more instructive.

It exemplifies how hard-liners are driving the cultural left. It is not clear that a majority even of those who identity as LGBT hate The Salvation Army. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg volunteered for the organization (albeit for a photo op) a couple of years back. Now he is facing criticism from LGBT activists, as those running the movement want total victory, not coexistence. And they are winning.

The campaign included government officials from Buffalo, New York, to San Antonio, Texas, retaliating against Chick-fil-A for its support of The Salvation Army. Even without full control over the government, the left has been aggressive in its use of government power against Christians who believe traditional teachings on human sexuality. The left seems to target particularly those engaged in charitable work, rather than protecting them on account of their good works.

The left’s legal wing is trying to compel Christian hospitals to perform abortions and sex-change surgeries, Christian schools to affirm same-sex relationships, and Christian charities such as women’s shelters to pretend men can be women. A purportedly serious Democratic presidential candidate wanted to tax dissenting Christian organizations, including churches, into oblivion.

The left won’t even spare elderly nuns. When the Trump administration ended Barack Obama’s legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, various Democratic attorneys general made a point of continuing that unholy effort.

The Rise of Post-Liberal Christianity

This should not surprise us. Jesus promised that the powers of this world would hate his followers, not that they would love us if we were virtuous. While we Christians should always strive to be more like Christ, we should not succumb to a quasi-Pelagianism that presumes our winsomeness determines how others receive the gospel. Christ himself was crucified, and the grace and charity many martyrs exemplified did not save them from persecution unto death.

But that we should expect trouble in this world does not mean we should be disinterested regarding politics, nor does it excuse governments that oppose the church and oppress its people. That our nation seems to be starting down this path has intensified Christian reconsiderations of liberal political theory. Although our government ostensibly protects the freedoms of religion, association, and speech, procedural liberalism increasingly appears insufficient to protect our rights or to ensure a culture of tolerance and pluralism that includes Christians who maintain the traditional teachings of our faith.

The supposedly neutral principles of the legal left consistently restrict the rights and opportunities of orthodox Christians, and the left always pushes the envelope. Christian litigators should, of course, do their best to defend our rights, and thank God for their efforts, but it should be no surprise that more and more Christians are intrigued by varieties of post-liberal thinking, including previously marginalized ideas such as Catholic integralism. It is understandable that Christians are turning against the system of liberal democratic capitalism as it turns against them.

Post-liberal Christians are unlikely to find their minority status daunting, for they see that minorities can win if they are determined and the institutions they face are weak and full of cowards. After all, a minority of hard-line leftists control cultural, economic, and political pressure points that grant them power far beyond their numbers.

For example, the 2020 Democratic field is so radically pro-abortion that even The New York Times has noticed. The Democratic Party stands for abortion today, abortion tomorrow, and abortion forever, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren illustrated in promising that at her inauguration — angels and ministers of grace defend us! — she will wear swag to rep the nation’s largest abortion chain.

Christian post-liberals on the right have seen how readily the liberal center-left and the Chamber-of-Commerce right surrender to the extreme and illiberal left and wonder: Why not us? A decadent and despairing culture with weak institutions and degraded elites is precisely the sort that a determined minority might govern.

Thus, they see an opportunity as our culture disintegrates despite its wealth and technological prowess. Liberal individualism seems to be devouring itself: Fertility is down, loneliness and depression have increased, and deaths of despair from suicide, drugs, and alcohol are way up.

Should Liberalism Be Preserved?

Perhaps it is time to be bold and reorder society toward the highest good, rather than accepting liberalism’s dishonest promises of “live and let live” neutrality. As some post-liberal thinkers note, we increasingly live in a non-Christian integralist society that mandates belief in sectarian dogmas, such as the mystical belief that a man may become — indeed, may already be — a woman. Therefore, they see the alternative to post-liberal Christian politics not as liberalism, but as some sort of post-Christian illiberal politics.

I am sympathetic to some of the post-liberal thought developing on the right. I see the appeal, especially as liberalism’s promise of legal neutrality is exposed as so much fiction. I share many of the critiques of liberal political theory and find its discourse far more interesting than the stale talking points of neoliberals and neoconservatives.

But I am neither Catholic nor Calvinist enough to be much of an integralist, and I remain more skeptical of the likelihood of governmental efficacy and rectitude than many post-liberals seem to be. I also remain attached to many liberal practices, such as the right to trial by jury.

I am, in short, still thinking over these matters and am not entirely in either camp. From this in-between, I would recommend post-liberal thinkers reflect on the frailty and fallibility of human institutions. I also suggest that the defenders of liberal democratic capitalism take the critiques of post-liberals seriously. A liberal order that seeks to shut down Christian charities for nonconformist views on human sexuality does not deserve to survive.

Nathanael Blake is a Senior Contributor at The Federalist. He has a PhD in political theory. He lives in Missouri.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/26/a-liberal-order-that-seeks-to-shut-down-christian-charities-doesnt-deserve-to-survive/

Billy Graham mag calls out ‘lie of progressive Christianity’

Says Buttigieg, others seek to drive biblical faith to ‘outer margins of society’

 

The mantle of “progressive Christianity” is being claimed by more and more people these days – some megachurches, some old-line denominations and even some politicians.

It’s roughly a gospel that regards the Bible as a good book but insists it must be reinterpreted to comport with contemporary society.

But now Decision Magazine, the publication launched by Billy Graham and still run by his organization, has unleashed a broadside against that belief system.

Its June front-page headline, “The lie of ‘progressive Christianity,’” is plastered over the image of Pete Buttigieg.

He’s the Democratic presidential hopeful who just a few weeks ago attacked the faith of Vice President Mike Pence, whose beliefs align with traditional Christian views of marriage and sexuality.

“Back in April when Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg threw stones at ‘the Mike Pences of the world’ for their historic Christian beliefs about marriage, sexuality and sin, he drew rapt attention from the news media. He also raised the visibility of a religious movement that claims the term Christian but denies the full authority of Scripture on which ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3, NKJV) is based,” writes the author of the article, Jerry Pierce.

“Buttigieg’s ‘progressive Christianity’ allows him to claim a commitment to the faith that Jesus Christ taught in the Gospels and still remain married to his male partner,” he wrote.

But R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, says that’s a “distortion” of God’s Word.

Buttigieg attacked Pence’s faith as “social extremism” and, in effect, told faithful evangelicals to either “affirm the new sexuality embodied in the LGBTQ movement, or affirm the full authority of Scripture and be anathema in the postmodern culture.”

Mohler told Decision that it is tempting for Christians faithful to the Bible to hunt down a “middle ground” on such issues.

But that’s not what the Bible allows.

“I have made the argument that everybody’s opinion on these matters is going to be known,” Mohler told the magazine. “It may be when you run for office. It may be when you move into the dorm. It may be when a new neighbor walks in and you end up in conversation. But the point is, there’s nowhere to hide on these issues. There are a lot of Christians who are trying to hide in the tall grass, and that’s not going to work.”

The article says Buttigieg and others of his belief system are trying to drive biblical Christians “to the outer margins of society.”

Mohler explained “the new liberalism under the ‘progressive’ banner is encroaching on more conservative churches amid a culture that paints biblical values as oppressive and bigoted.”

He told Decision that Christians don’t want to appear hateful but issues such as homosexuality cannot be defined “on the world’s terms.”

The issue has brought untold grief to the United Methodists, now caught in a fight between conservative African and Asian members and progressives in the United States.

Lay leader Mark Tooley, a Methodist and president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, told Decision progressive Christians often affirm miracles, even the Apostles’ Creed, but deny the full authority of God’s Word.

“This is true for mainline Protestants, but also increasingly for many members of the post-evangelical left,” he told Decision.

Mohler said he is concerned that Christians eventually may be deemed as subversive as early Christians were in Rome, who were killed for their faith.

“There’s no middle ground between affirming and denying the bodily resurrection of Christ. There’s also no middle ground between defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman and saying it can be something else,” he said.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/06/billy-graham-mag-calls-out-lie-of-progressive-christianity/

VIDEO Do You Only Want To Change If It’s Easy? – The Spiritual Pulse of America

Do You Only Want To Change If It’s Easy? Then You Don’t Really Want To Change

May 4, 2019 By  David Mann

 

Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is openly “gay.” And he insists that God made him that way. He says that if someone has a problem with his homosexuality, they need to “take it up with my Creator.”

The “God made me this way” claim is a common excuse, and Buttigieg’s use of it is certainly not original. But Buttigieg has said something else that I find far more interesting.

He has said that, when he was young:

“if you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I would have swallowed it before I could get a sip of water.”

That’s a far more revealing statement than Buttigieg – or most other people, for that matter – would realize.

For one thing, it raises this question: If Buttigieg is so sure that his “gayness” is perfectly OK, and it’s just “the way God made him,” then why would he have been so eager in the past to find an easy way out of it?

Maybe he was mainly concerned about disapproval from his family. Or maybe he was afraid of societal disapproval (assuming that might still have been an issue at the time). But, contrary to what he might claim now, it’s a good bet that he truly knew, instinctively, that homosexuality was wrong. Eventually, though, knowing that there was no magic pill to make him “straight,” he did what he felt he had to do – and what current society leads people like him to believe is their only option: to try to be as much at peace with his abnormal sexuality as he could be, and to treat it as being “normal.”

But there’s an even more significant point to Buttigieg’s statement. He’s basically saying that, because he couldn’t change easily, he concluded that he couldn’t change at all.

In this age where so many things come easily, even instantly, it can be very hard for people to grasp that some things will only come with time, patience, discipline and assistance. And in a world where many people treat God as some vague concept with no real substance or power, too many don’t know how to deal with things that can only be handled with divine help – things like life-dominating sin issues, especially sexual ones.

Even many people who truly acknowledge their Creator nonetheless find themselves stuck in deeply-rooted, life-dominating sexual sin. I have been such a person myself. And every such person, at some point, prays something like this: “God, please change me.”

The problem is that, when someone prays such a prayer, they often really mean this (without necessarily realizing it):

“God, change my desires quickly. Make it easy for me to stop doing this.”

But God isn’t particularly concerned with what’s easy, comfortable or convenient for us. He’s concerned about the strength of our character. And he’s concerned with how serious we are about doing what’s right, against any and all opposition – even (or especially) when that opposition comes from within ourselves.

When a person faces such a formidable issue as an unhealthy attraction or an addiction, he is not meant to make peace with it. Rather, he is meant to engage in battle against it, never giving up, faithfully doing his own part and letting his Creator do the rest. And he is meant to experience ultimate victory over it.

Contrary to what many seem to expect, real change generally does not happen quickly. Temptations and tendencies don’t go away overnight, but approach the vanishing point over time. Both outward behavior and inward character are modified incrementally. And often, the more hard-won the victory is over a life-dominating issue, the more solid and sound it is.

Countless people, including myself, have lived out what I’m describing. Destructive issues of all kinds have been overcome for good that had controlled the lives of individuals for decades.

But for every person who has experienced this, there are more who have given up and given in – sometimes after seemingly long and hard battles. They have surrendered to the very things that they were meant to conquer with God’s help. They have even let these things become the very basis of their identities.

Many people state that they “tried to change” but couldn’t, as if their personal surrender somehow proves that victory is impossible for anyone. But all it proves is that they let something stand in the way of their own potential victory. They may not have expected there to be some kind of “magic pill” that would change them; but, in some way, they were ultimately unwilling to persist in battling the opposition that came from within themselves. And, in the end, their attraction or addiction ended up being more important to them than God was – if they had ever considered him to be important to begin with.

If someone had told the young Pete Buttigieg that he could be “straight,” but that it would take time, patience, diligence and total submission to his Creator, would he have been so eager to pursue that “straightness”? Or would he have still only wanted to change if it was as easy as taking a pill?

Sorry, Pete, but nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished by someone who expected it to become easy. If you have a problem with that, take it up with your Creator.

 

Original here

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Kennedy Classics: The Spiritual Pulse of America – Dr. D. James Kennedy

 Feb 20, 2014

 Dr. D. James Kennedy exposes the factors leading to America’s decline-and also shares some good news. America is becoming more secular, and the results have been staggering. At the same time, with God, we are never without hope. It’s vital, however, that we understand what’s happening around us from a biblical perspective.

 

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VIDEO America’s Anti-Religious Bigotry – Why Christians Are Losing Their Country

AMERICA’S ANTI-RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY

Exclusive: Jason & David Benham blast ultimate goal of leftist

April 7, 2019

Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

We’ve seen that to be true, which is why USA Today’s recent story grabbed our attention last week: “So Yale Law School endorses anti-religious bigotry now?”

Oh boy – what now?!

The story basically describes the digressive nature of the progressive movement’s goal to silence freedom of speech and slay freedom of religion. That’s why the ceiling consistently becomes the floor with these folks. First they want acceptance of their ideas, then appreciation, then celebration, then participation – and if you choose not to join the revolution, they’ll marginalize you, demonize you, and eventually criminalize you if they can (wow, that was a mouthful).

Because you can’t have free speech and free religion if you want to destroy American values, you need government coercion; and to get that, you need a crop of future leaders fully indoctrinated to hate freedom of speech and religion (well, at least freedom of speech and religion that’s different from theirs).

The article reported the Yale Federalist Society scheduled an event in February with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a premier legal organization with nine Supreme Court wins in the last seven years. But before the event took place, over 20 campus organizations condemned the group as “homophobic and hateful” because it has defended religious freedom – and won – on multiple occasions. Their most recent victory included the Colorado cake baker.

And, like a set of perfectly aligned dominoes, the dean of the school fell directly into line with the protestors. By late March, the school had adopted new policies that went even further than the protestor’s demands. Samuel Adkisson, himself a Yale grad, summed it up like this:

Under the guise of nondiscrimination, Yale Law School has announced it will blatantly discriminate. A student is barred from aid if she works at a synagogue that gives preference to Jewish applicants, but not if she works at an organization that peddles anti-Semitism yet hires all comers. A graduate is blocked from funding if she works for the Christian Legal Society, but not if she works for the Freedom from Religion Foundation. And a graduate is not eligible to receive loan assistance if she is a professor at Brigham Young University, but is eligible if she works for Berkeley.

Nice.

There are a couple key points I’d like to point out.

First, Lincoln’s quote was spot on – kids in college today do become leaders in government tomorrow. So it matters where we are sending our kids and what they are being taught.

Dr. Elton Trueblood, a former chaplain for Stanford and Harvard in the early 20th century, was asked what it would look like for Christians in America in the 21st century. His response was eerily prophetic: “By the year 2000, Christians in America will be a conscious minority surrounded by an arrogant, militant paganism.”

He saw the direction progressives were taking our colleges, and his discerning reply was our warning. Now it’s here.

Second, those saying all we need today is more “conversation and dialogue” should understand that it requires shared values and common goals with those to whom we converse to move forward as a society. But that’s not what the progressive left wants.

A traffic analogy works well here. Traffic flows in America, despite the cars we drive, what we listen to on the radio or think about other drivers, because we all have the shared value that red means stop and green means go – and we all have the common goal of making it to our destination safely.

But if people don’t share those values or goals traffic would quickly become unsafe – it would turn into chaos. And that’s the ultimate goal of the left.

Which brings me to my last point. God is not the author of chaos and confusion, the devil is. At the bottom of this struggle on college campuses (not to mention mainstream media and Hollywood) is a spiritual battle between good and evil, right and wrong.

It’s not a Republican/Democrat thing, conservative/liberal thing, black/white thing, citizen/immigrant thing, or any other thing the left decides to foment. It’s a spiritual battle that truly rages behind the scenes.

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
‘Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.’ (Psalm 2:1-3)

Matthew Henry, the 18th-century Bible commentator, said of Psalm 2 that people throughout history constantly seek to cast off “the bands of conscience and the cords of God’s commandments.”

That’s why conscience and conviction are in the cross-airs of the radical Left. It’s spiritual, even if they don’t know it.

And Revelation 12:17 reveals that Satan is behind it all:

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Those who choose to live by their conscience and conviction and honor God’s moral commands in today’s America find themselves directly in opposition to the dragon of Revelation – Satan himself.

Those on the radical left have no idea the spirit under which they are operating, so we are hitting our knees in pray more than ever for them to be set free.

Because the good news of the Gospel is still the good news – that Jesus defeated the devil at the Cross and is clothed with resurrection power.

Happy Easter.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/04/americas-anti-religious-bigotry/
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WHY CHRISTIANS ARE LOSING THEIR COUNTRY

Exclusive: Jesse Lee Peterson blasts left for attacking people for telling truth

April 7, 2019

America is a Christian nation, but that fact has been under attack by the children of the lie. The left has pushed immorality to the point we have so-called “same-sex marriage” and “transgender” nonsense trampling the rights of Christians. “People of color” and “women” join the attack on freedom of speech and our rights to self-defense. Good people are accused of “hate speech,” punished for telling the truth in public – or even in private!

Christians, men and especially white people are under attack. Christians are forced to bake “gay cakes” for homosexuals pretending to get “married.” Men are falsely accused of “sexual harassment,” “sexual assault” or of being “child molesters” – and they’re not allowed to say the women are lying! Children are abused by women, even killed in the womb, and the man can’t do anything to protect his children. White people are called “racist” just for loving their country, for telling the truth about “people of color,” or for standing up for white people.

A decade ago, the fallen messiah Barack Obama claimed America is “no longer a Christian nation.” He pushed homosexuality and transgender madness, and took up for Muslims at every opportunity. He was the first “feminist” president, and loved abortion.

Obama attacked whites and police, making blacks feel justified in their anger and false victimhood. He brought Black Lives Matter to the White House – a group worse than the KKK, founded by black lesbians, homosexuals and white “social justice warriors.” They killed the souls of black people by pushing anger, and their attacks on police resulted in an increase in murders around the country.

You cannot be a Christian and support the Democrat Party. After Obama, they’ve only grown more radical, electing far-left Muslims, homosexuals, and women – in order to attack a real men, President Trump. Donald Trump represents everything they hate – the goodness of America. The straight, white, conservative, Christian man of power built this country. But leftists don’t want America to be made great again, so they go after all males, white people, and Christians in order to take down Trump.

This week, they went after Democrat Joe Biden – Obama’s vice president. They accused him of sexual harassment with no proof. For years, Biden openly kissed and tried to flatter women and little girls in front of cameras – never trying to hide it. But now people impulsively judge him as “creepy,” watching suggestively edited videos that play on the imagination and people’s anti-male brainwashing. In the old days, men warned you to believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.

But Biden as a hated “white male” is not welcome in the Democrat Party. They want a woman or a “person of color” to run for president.

Men have been trained by women to show affection, to worship women, make them feel special – but only with “consent.” Meanwhile, women throw themselves on men, hug and kiss men without permission, sexually assault them, and even rape men and young boys. Even Christians join in on this double-standard, in which every man is a suspected “rapist” or “child molester.” At our recent Men’s Forum at my nonprofit BOND, a home contractor said he wears a camera on himself all day to prevent being accused!

The city of Chicago recently elected a black lesbian for mayor. She’s pretending she will end the corruption in the city. But she herself is morally corrupt – she has no values. She’ll go after the Christians, white people and men, and only further destroy the city.

There are homosexuals who are stuck in that lifestyle but know it’s wrong. But this new mayor-elect, Lori Lightfoot, is promoting wrong as right. Similarly, Pete Buttigieg, a homosexual Millennial mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is trying to run for president. The corrupt liberal media love him for being shamelessly homosexual. The mayor of Dallas, Annise Parker, is a lesbian with a pretend “wife.” Females on the Supreme Court and in Congress have conducted so-called same-sex “weddings.”

In Ireland, they have a homosexual prime minister who brought his gay “partner” to America for an official event with Vice President Mike Pence. This man, Leo Varadkar, gave a slap in the face to Christians, speaking against “discrimination.” The radical homosexuals are allowed to discriminate against Christians, but not the other way around. There is no freedom.

Christians have lost their countries because Christians are no longer any different from the world. They believe that they can be born again of God and continue to sin. The men are controlled by women – they kiss up to women in their personal lives and in politics. The whites are afraid to tell the truth to the people of color. The Christians have anger in their hearts, playing God – there’s no love in anger, but only fear, doubt, worry and insecurity. Christian parents are sacrificing their children to corrupt schools where kids come out liberal, turning away from God.

If you want your country to be right, you have to be right. As Christ said, you must become perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/04/why-christians-are-losing-their-country