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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Evangelical Insiders, Outside the Will of God (Part 1)

Posted in Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , on October 5, 2015| 2 Comments »

Marco Rubio, neo-evangelical favorite.

Marco Rubio, neo-evangelical favorite.

Have you ever noticed this strange phenomenon, that those at the forefront of a movement or discipline generally are the ones doing the most to undermine it? Take, for example, the legal profession. Among lawyers, there is no more prestigious assignment than to be named to the US Supreme Court. And yet these high-powered legal minds – supposedly the best and brightest the profession has to offer – routinely made a hash of the Constitution, the very document on which they claim expertise. Economists are in the same boat, the majority of whom are intellectual thralls to the economy destroying nonsense taught by John Maynard Keynes. Business leaders are anti-business, favoring programs of crony capitalist government bail-outs over the free market that allowed them to prosper in the first place.

To this list you can add another category of prominent individuals doing their best to undermine the very cause for which they claim to stand: evangelical insiders. According to a poll released by World Magazine, the favorite 2016 presidential candidates of these anointed insiders – World does not tell us what criteria it uses to select these insiders, describing them only as “well-connected evangelicals” – are, drum roll please…Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Somehow, I’m not surprised by this. In fact, given the long-standing Romeward and feminist drift of the neo-evangelical movement. it was almost inevitable that the poll would turn out as it did.

But are these evangelical insiders thinking Biblically? Even posing this question may come as a surprise to some. What may be even more surprising to them is to hear that there are sound arguments against Christians supporting either one for president.

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Antichrist in America: A Few Closing Thoughts on the Visit of Pope Francis

Posted in Economics, Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , , , , on September 28, 2015| 2 Comments »

Pope Francis_Unholy MixThe past five days have seen the citizens of the United States subjected to a most extraordinary propaganda campaign. As the result of pope Francis’ visit to Washington D.C., New York and Philadelphia, the airwaves and newspapers of our nation have been filled with countless images of and reports on the pope’s activities, nearly all of which serve to cast Francis and his church in the most positive light possible. If it wasn’t clear before, it should now be abundantly evident to anyone, Catholic or not, that the mainstream media in this country is more than willing to prostitute itself as a megaphone for the Man of Sin. This shouldn’t be surprising. The Roman Catholic religion is designed and built to appeal to the flesh, and papal pomp certainly makes for good television.

But for all its gaudy appeal, Rome lacks that most important mark of a true church of God: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Justification by Faith Alone. All Rome’s smells, bells, mitres, and masses put together cannot save a single soul. They cannot do so much as remit the guilt of a single sin. It is the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to believers by faith alone that saves sinners from death eternal. But this Rome flatly denies. And not only that, but it actually curses and damns all who believe this simple truth. The Roman Catholic Church-State is a false spiritual harlot of a church, teaching a false faith plus works non-gospel, presided over by the Son of Perdition himself. And yet this Babylonian Harlot-drunk-with-the-blood-of-the-saints institution is lifted up by the American press as representative of the best of Christianity. Watching this spectacle is enough to prompt any thinking Christian to repeat the words of the apostle John, who, when confronted with the vision of the Whore of Babylon, was astonished, declared, “And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.”

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Antichrist in the House: Pope Francis Addresses Congress

Posted in Economics, Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , on September 25, 2015| 7 Comments »

“Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.” – Pope Francis I

Pope Francis addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, making history as the first pontiff to do so. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Pope Francis addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, making history as the first pontiff to do so. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Antichrist continued his assault on our nation’s capital, breaking new ground as pope Francis became the first pontiff to address a joint session of Congress. The reaction from the members of the House and Senate was as expected, enthusiastic. The same with the press. The headline on Fox News was “Pope Francis delivers message of ‘hope and healing’ in address to Congress.” The New York Times proclaimed “Pope Francis Challenges Congress to Heal World’s ‘Open Wounds.’ ” The truth be known, the pope’s speech was a chock full of the standard collectivist claptrap we have come to expect from the Vatican.

One could spend a great deal of time unpacking all the economic, political, and theological errors in the pope’s address, ideas that are incompatible with the constitutional and capitalist foundation of the United States. But to keep this discussion brief, I shall mention only three: the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity.

The term “common good” is a buzzword in the social teaching the Roman Catholic Church-State invoked as a call for socialism. By my count, the pope used this term six times in his speech before Congress. In Roman Catholic social teaching, the common good is not merely used as justification for Rome to interfere in the economies of individual nations, but it is the basis for Rome’s long standing call for world government. John Robbins explains it this way,

The “common good” is the great fiction used by the Roman Church-State to justify government control of society and economy. It is also useful in arguing for a world government, as many popes have done. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that “Human interdependence is increasing and gradually spreading throughout the world.” The unity of the human family, embracing people who enjoy equal natural dignity, implies a universal common good. This good calls for an organization of the community of nations able to “provide for the different needs of men…food, hygiene, education…” (Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 187, 188).

Yes, the common good sounds so wonderful, Who could possibly be against it? But how many understand that behind such silken language lies the call for world government?

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Stupid and Evil: Congress’ Invitation to Pope Francis I

Posted in Economics, Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , , on September 21, 2015| 1 Comment »

Pope Francis Bobbleheads

Pope Francis Bobbleheads

“In America we have a two party system,” explained the Republican congressional staffer to a group of visiting Russian dignitaries, “the stupid party [Republicans] and the evil party [Democrats]. “I’m a proud member of the stupid party.” “From time to time,” the staffer continued, ” the two parties get together and do something that’s both stupid and evil. This is called bi-partisanship.” Although there is some debate as to who actually said this – some attribute it to the late conservative columnist Samuel Francis – it’s a funny quote. And one that rings true as well. And in light of the endless propaganda blitz from the mainstream media about Jorge Bergolio’s (dba Pope Francis I) upcoming visit to the United States, it seems particularly apropos.

The visit, a result of a bi-partisan invitation to the pope by John Boehner (Republican) and Nancy Pelosi (Democrat), is the very definition of stupid and evil. During his stay in the US, the pope will, among other things, meet with President Barak Obama at the White House, parade through the streets of Washington D.C., deliver a speech to Congress, address the United Nations, visit Independence Hall and there deliver a speech using the same lectern used by Abraham Lincoln for the Gettysburg Address, and hold a Papal Mass for the World Meeting of Families.

The invitation is stupid, because politicians representing the people of the United States, supposedly a nation that values constitutional capitalism, have voluntarily brought the Antichrist head of the aggressively globalist, anti-republican Roman Catholic Church-State to our shores. Throughout its long, bloody history, the Babylonian Harlot of Rome has always favored repressive monarchies over against Biblical, representative government. It has always hated capitalism and favored collectivism of one sort or another. The pope is no friend of the Biblical ideas of limited government and laissez faire capitalism on which US was founded. Inviting him to trample three of our greatest cities with his parades, speeches, masses and blasphemies is an act of the crassest stupidity on the part of Congress.

The invitation is evil, because promoting the pope and his agenda is the same as putting light for darkness and darkness for light. While visiting the US, not only will the pope promote the unbiblical politics and economics of the Roman Catholic Church-State, but more importantly, he will be given the biggest possible stage, amplified by all the hype a star-struck media can muster, on which to advance Rome’s soul-destroying false gospel of faith and works, while those who believe the true Gospel of justification by faith alone are cast into the shadows.

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The Mainstream to Kim Davis: “Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up!”

Posted in Politics, tagged , , on September 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Shut Up“Marriage equality is the law of the land,” sniffed democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a recent tweet. She was referring to Kim Davis, the Rowan County Kentucky clerk recently jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. Continued the democratic front runner, “Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law – end of story.” The phrase “law of the land” has always sat ill with me. I say this, not because I am opposed to the idea of law. Rather, it is the way it is used that bothers me. For in my experience, when someone utters the words “the law of the land,” it is generally some statist imperiously lecturing the opposition that such and such a statue has been declared by the courts, that they need to deal with it, and that they should get out of his face and take their sorry, procrustean, Bible-thumping selves and slither back to whatever hillbilly holler they crawled out of. In other words, just shut up!, shut up!, shut up! already.

Of course, coming from Hillary Clinton these words, particularly the part about “Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law,” serve not only as further evidence (as if any were needed) of her overbearing arrogance, but are more than a bit rich. After all, this is the woman who, contrary to law, while serving as Secretary of State, knowingly used a private server to conduct state business, lied about it, and then, when forced to turn said server over to the FBI, first had it professionally wiped clean. It would be hard to imagine a more dishonest, lawless public official than Hillary Clinton. She is the last person who has any place lecturing anyone on how to conduct official business.

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Book Review: Slavery & Christianity

Posted in Book Review, Politics, Scripturalism, Theology, tagged , , , , on August 17, 2015| 2 Comments »

Slavery & Christianity
by John W. Robbins (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 2007, 84 pages).

Slavery & Christianity

Slavery & Christianity

As Christians, we are called to bring every thought into captivity to Christ. That is to say, we are required to judgeallthings by the Word of God. And by doing so, Christians living in the West more and more find themselves at odds with their own societies. To the cheers of just about all the movers and shakers in the US, this summer the Supreme Court of the United States legalized so-called gay marriage in all 50 states.

Many Christian writers have objected to this very clear rejection of the Law of God by citing the Bible. The Bible, they say, condemns homosexuality not only as a sin, but also as a crime. And indeed, they are right in what they say. But arguing from the Bible can be dangerous too. For someone, and it usually doesn’t take very long for this to happen, will be sure to bring up the topic of slavery. “So, you say that the Bible condemns homosexuality,” they will say. “Very well. What about slavery? The Bible support slavery, doesn’t it? After all, Peter tells servants to be submissive to their masters. Even Christian writers have endorsed slavery. The writers of the New Testament were nothing but bigoted, homophobic, misogynist racists. Why should anyone listen to them?” This line of attack is designed to put Christians on the horns of a dilemma. By arguing this way, the opponents of Christianity hope to force Christians into the uncomfortable position either of defending slavery and misogyny, or dropping their Biblical opposition to homosexuality. Too often, this line of questioning reduces Christians to embarrassed silence or incoherence. Chalk up another win for the secularists. Game. Set. Match.

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Jeffrey Tayler’s Deranged Attack on Christianity

Posted in Politics, Roman Catholicism, Scripturalism, tagged , , , , , , on August 10, 2015| 2 Comments »

Jeffrey Tayler does not like religion in general or Christianity in particular. He makes his stance quite clear. Writing

2016 US presidential candidates. From left to right: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

2016 US presidential candidates. From left to right: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

in an article in Salon.com, the contributing editor at The Atlantic made manifest his intense dislike for Christianity and its adherents when he wrote,

Aspirants to the White House, both Democratic and Republican, have, as we all know, begun “announcing,” thus initiating from a rationalists point of view, a media carnival featuring on both sides, an array of supposedly God-fearing clowns and faith-mongering nitwits groveling before Evangelicals and nattering on about their belief in the Almighty and their certainty that if we just looked, we could find answers to many of our ills in the Good Book (Marco Rubio’s deranged religion, Ted Cruz’s bizarre faith: Our would-be presidents are God-fearing clowns).

Tayler, who we learn from the article is both a rationalist and, apparently, an atheist, is all kinds of upset at even the slightest suggestion that God may have something to do with politics. Tayler’s fulmination continues,

The candidates will cloak their true agenda – serving the Lords of Wall Street far more zealously than Our Father who art (or really, art not) in heaven – in pious patter about “values,” about the need to “restore America” and return us to the state of divinely granted exceptionalism President Obama has so gravely squandered. This Season of Unreason will end with the elections of November 2016, but its consequences – validation of the idea taht belief without evidence is a virtue, that religion, and especially Christianity, deserves a place in our politics, our Constitutionally enshrined secularism notwithstanding – will live on an damage the progressive cause…

Professing belief in a fictitious celestial deity says a lot about the content of a person’s character…

With the dapper Florida Sen. Marco Rubio we move into the more disturbing category of Republicans we might charitably diagnose as “faith-deranged” – in other words, as likely to do fine among the unwashed “crazies” in the red-state primaries, but whose religious beliefs would (or should) render them unfit for civilized company anywhere else…

Among the faith-deranged, Rubio stands out. He briefly dumped on magic book [apparently the Bible] for another, converting from Roman Catholicism to Mormonism and then back again…

Yet even as a re-minted Catholic, Rubio cheats on the Pope with a megachurch in Miami called Christ Fellowship. As religion and politics blogger Bruce Wilson points out, Christ Fellowship is a hotbed of “demonology and exorcism, Young Earth creationism and denial of evolution,” as is so intolerant it demands its prospective employees certify they are not “practicing homosexuals” and don’t cheat on their spouses…

It’s a safe bet, in fact, that most scientists have a better grasp on the vital verities than anyone rummaging around in Rubio’s beloved “sacred” tome [again, apparently a reference to the Bible] of far-fetched fiction and foolish figments. Yet of the Republicans, the most flagrant irrationalist is clearly Texas junior Sen. Ted Cruz. For starters, Cruz pandered fulsomely to the faith-deranged by choosing to announce at Liberty University, that bastion of darkness located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Once administered by the late Jerry Falwell, Liberty promises a “World Class Christian education: and boasts that it has been “training champions for Christ since 1971” – grounds enough, in my view, to revoke the institution’s charter and subject it to immediate quarantine until sanity breaks out.

Tayler goes on to suggest that reporters should challenge the religious beliefs of the candidates, rightly asserting that, “After all, they [religious convictions] are essentially wide-ranging assertion about the nature of reality and supernatural phenomena.” He then proceeds to propose a line of questioning that, at least in his mind, will catch Christian candidates on the horns of an unanswerable dilemma.

We will examine Tayler’s questions in a moment. But before doing so, a couple of clarifications are in order. First, many of those attacked by Tayler for their Christianity are themselves likely not Christian, and it is not my intention to defend them as though they were. Marco Rubio, for example, is a practicing Roman Catholic, and thus part of an organization that, not only expressly denies the essential Biblical doctrines of sola scriptura and justification by belief alone, but whose head is the great papal Antichrist of Revelation. Of course, one cannot be too hard on the atheist Tayler for confusing Roman Catholicism with Biblical Christianity. Most professing Evangelicals in the US, and this goes double prominent Evangelical leaders, don’t know the difference either. If Evangelicals can’t get their own story straight, it’s unreasonable to expect an atheist outsider to know perceive there’s a difference. That Rubio suffers no intellectual qualms about combining his Catholicism with attendance at an Evangelical megachurch simply underscores this point.

Second, because Tayler uses the term “Christian” in his article to refer generally to anyone who names the name of Christ, I shall follow him in this. To distinguish Bible believing Christians from those who name the name of Christ, I shall use the terms Evangelical, Bible believers, and Protestants.  In like fashion, I shall distinguish Christianity generally from the religion as taught in the Word of God by referring to the latter as Biblical Christianity.

Third, many of the proposals put forth by presidential candidates under the aegis of Christianity in fact have nothing to do with it. Rather, by their very nature they are actually anti-Christian. The “compassionate conservatism” and “faith-based initiatives” advanced by George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential election cycle are good cases in point. Evangelicals and atheists – some atheists inconsistently hold to the Evangelical principle of limited government – can both denounce such ideas for the fascist claptrap that they are.

That said, let’s look at Tayler’s supposedly unanswerable line of questioning.

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Book Review: Christ and Civilization

Posted in Book Review, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Scripturalism, tagged on July 19, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Christ And CivilizationChrist and Civilization by John W. Robbins (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 48 pages).

Many in the West have a vague sense that something is seriously wrong with our civilization. Predictions of decline and collapse are not especially new. They go back as least as far as Oswald Spengler’s 1918 Decline of the West. But the years following the 2008 financial crisis have seen anxiety about the long-term viability of Western civilization go mainstream. Government surveillance grows. Individual freedom shrinks. National debt spirals out of control, while politicians and central bankers talk openly about banning the use of cash, the better to control a financial system that threatens to collapse. There seems to be a general loss of trust in the mainstream institutions of society, and the rise of the alternative internet media is one sign of this.

In the opinion of the reviewer, people are right to be concerned about the future of the West. An unstable and unsustainable financial system, increasingly lawless government, and the decline of public morality are all hallmarks of our civilization in the early 21st century. Someone once made the witty observation that things which cannot go on forever, don’t. And from all appearances, the West seems to be on an unsustainable course. The question seems to be when, not if a major systemic shock will occur.

One of the few hopeful signs during this degenerate time has been the rise of the internet, which has provided a forum for commentary which in earlier times never would have seen the light of day. As one with a special interest in finance, this reviewer has been delighted at the remarkable amount of interesting and knowledgeable commentary about the ongoing financial crisis that is to be found on various blogs and You Tube channels.

But while many bloggers pour their heart and soul into documenting the decline of the West and advising people how to protect themselves against it, there is something missing from what they have to say. In this reviewer’s opinion, their biggest problem is that they lack a clear understanding of what made the West great in the first place and what has been the cause of its decline.

Christ and Civilization by John W. Robbins is the antidote to all that. Writing in the lucid, concise style that is characteristic of him, Robbins takes there reader on a tour of history beginning in ancient Greece and Rome, carrying through to the middle ages and the Reformation, and ending in modern times. This would be an impressive feat for any book. But what makes this book all the more remarkable is that Robbins accomplishes all this in the space of a mere 48 pages.

Originally published in The Trinity Review as an essay by the same name, Christ and Civilization posits that the West owes its origin and its success, not to Greece and Rome, but rather to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Form most modern westerners, subject as they are to secularist propaganda, this likely will come as a new thought. And herein lies the importance of Robbins’ work.

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Sodomy and the Supreme Court – A Few Reflections

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Scripturalism, tagged , on July 6, 2015| 5 Comments »

Supreme Court rainbow.

Supreme Court rainbow.

Shocked but not surprised, that was my reaction to the recent Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states. Shocked, because it is difficult for me as a Christian to process how a law so repugnant to the clear teaching of the Word of God could become law. It had been my prayer and my hope that God would intervene and put a stop to the madness. Such was not the case. On the other hand, I’m not surprised at the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges either.
 Governments, including the U.S. federal government, sometimes do horrible things. And the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, in the US is such that a victory for gay marriage seemed almost preordained long before the official ruling was handed down.

But now that the deed is done, now that sodomy is the law of the land, now that our government has called good evil and evil good, what are Christians to think? What are they do? Below are a few of my thoughts on the subject.

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Darkness for Light – The Apotheosis of the Homosexual Agenda

Posted in Politics, tagged , on June 29, 2015| 1 Comment »

Same-sex marriage supporters rejoice outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling regarding same-sex marriage. The high court ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry in all 50 states. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Same-sex marriage supporters rejoice outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling regarding same-sex marriage. The high court ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry in all 50 states. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“When Christians go wrong,” my minister friend remarked me over coffee and doughnuts one morning, “it’s usually over something simple.” He had a good point. When a man falls into flagrant heresy, when he stumbles into gross sin, it generally is related to some simple issue. King David was a good case in point. It doesn’t require any deep knowledge of theology to understand that adultery and murder are wrong. These things were clearly condemned in the Law of Moses. They are ideas so basic that Children can grasp them with perfect clarity. Surely David did as well. But for all that, David fell and fell hard.

The past several years have seen, at least in the West, a debate over something so basic that it is astounding to this author that there was even a debate at all. Of course, I speak of the debate over the definition of marriage. Chapter 24 of the Westminster Confession defines marriage thus: Marriage is to be between one man and one woman: neither is it lawful for a man to have more than one wife, nor for a woman to have more than one husband at a time. This is not complex theology. It really is a very simple idea. And yet the entire Western world seems to have stumbled at this point. Intellectuals, government officials, legal scholars, the business community, and the mainstream media for years have waged war on the Christian definition of marriage. This past Friday, they won their biggest victory yet. For on that day, the Supreme Court of the United States voted 5-4 to dump a bucket of the vilest moral filth imaginable on the collective head of the nation. It did so by its ruling that the Constitution requires states to recognize gay marriage. The will of the American people, large numbers of whom have vehemently opposed gay marriage, large numbers of whom have spoken out against it, large numbers of whom will never accept it, mattered not a whit. This decision represents the apotheosis of decades of deliberate and sinful effort by the homosexual lobby to legalize what is an abomination in the sight of God.

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