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Faith Not Permitted In The Public Square: How One Christian Was Forced To Resign
BY ARIELLE DEL TURCO/THE WASHINGTON STAND
NOVEMBER 23, 2022

Andrew Thorburn had no idea the whirlwind he was in for when he accepted the job of chief executive of Australian Football League club Essendon. He would be pressured to resign just over 24 hours after taking the job. At the center of this controversy was not a personal scandal nor an accusation of being unqualified -- rather, it was his association with City on a Hill Church, where he served as chairman.

It didn't take long after Thorburn accepted the role in September for activists to dig up publicly available sermons from the church about God's design for marriage and about the value of human life, including unborn lives. When these were brought to light, the punishment was swift.

Essendon President Dave Barham stated, "We acted immediately to clarify the publicly espoused views on the church's official website, which are in direct contradiction to our values as a club." Thorburn barely had a chance to start his role before he was pressured to resign.

A reaction like that might lead you to think that the church was caught up in inappropriate behavior or teachings. That's far from the case. Thorburn's church didn't express anything that is at all out of the ordinary for the Christian. The source of public controversy was that the church had articulated a biblical understanding of sexuality and a proper Christian response to the tragedy of abortion. For Thorburn, the takeaway was obvious. He said, "My personal Christian faith is not tolerated or permitted in the public square." It's a sobering statement for Christians in the West.

Australian media was quick to condemn Thorburn saying that it wasn't simply that he attended that church, but he was a chairman of the church -- a church which had featured sermons with biblical views on homosexuality and abortion. But when pastor of City on a Hill Church, which found itself at the center of the controversy, Guy Mason, was pushed on the issue on national television, he fumbled.

Interviewer David Koch told Mason, "Calling homosexuality a sin is not love, it's not inclusion. There are so many other churches that are tolerant, are inclusive. You all read the same book. Why do you have this hardline and not-so-loving view?"

While Mason deflected the question, the answer for Christians is obvious. Koch is wrongly conflating affirming an LGBT identity with love. Anglican minister Calvin Robinson recently answered similar accusations, saying, "Of course, Christ loves everyone, but He doesn't
want us to stay the way we are. Christ spent time with sinners -- but the sinners went away changed, not Christ."

That reining in of sexual desires and instead redirecting our affection to the natural order of marriage between one man and one woman is love. Loving our neighbor does not mean affirming any desire. It means being truthful about what's best for people with kindness and understanding. Christians have every right -- indeed, a responsibility -- to advocate for a lifestyle and a marriage policy that they believe is best for people. It is not something to shy away from.

Yet, it's no wonder that Pastor Mason was nervous to present his beliefs to the public. Christianity is regularly maligned in mainstream media. The reaction of the football club demonstrates just how far outside of the mainstream core Christian teachings have become in Western societies. With the marginalization of Christian beliefs and the rejection of Judeo-Christian values, there is reason to be concerned about rising hostility to Christianity.

Even Western governments are increasingly comfortable openly targeting Christians for their religious practice and their beliefs. In a report released this July, Family Research Council documented 99 incidents of government violations of religious freedom against individual Christians or Christian institutions across 14 Western countries since 2020.

Regardless of how anyone feels about Christian teachings rooted in Scripture, everyone should be allowed to have good faith debates about these topics in the public square. Christians ought not back down as soon as someone incorrectly calls our views "hateful."

A hurting and confused culture needs moral clarity. Holding and respectfully expressing differing views on abortion and homosexuality should be the norm in Western societies as we continue to debate key social issues. Sadly, Essendon football club's decision to placate LGBT activists required a competent Christian professional to lose his job.

As the U.S. Senate tries to pass a bill to codify same-sex marriage, it's important to remember the dangers that poses to religious freedom. When a political social agenda is valued above religious freedom, Christians will increasingly face hostile work environments. We must be prepared to articulate our beliefs with kindness and to defend the right for those of all faiths, or no faith, to do the same.

Originally published at The Washington Stand

https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5740

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CP VOICES | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2022
By Jay Richards and Jamie Hall, Op-ed contributor

Imagine that a progressive American city creates a financial incentive for residents to “transition” from man to woman or from woman to man.

That’s exactly what San Francisco has just done with a program called Guaranteed Income for Transgender People, or GIFT.

This is like using a fire hose to spray a burning skyscraper with gasoline. Talk about perverse incentives.

Anyone want to bet that, if this program expands, the number of San Francisco’s poor who say they identify as transgender also will expand?

Of course, San Francisco already is a lab for bad policy ideas. But giving guaranteed income to low-income residents who say they identify as transgender is surely next-level dumb.

The GIFT pilot program “will provide 55 eligible residents with $1,200 per month for 18 months, as well as health care and financial coaching,” the Los Angeles Times explains.

This scheme fuses bad fiscal policy with bad social policy. And the whole will be worse than the sum of its parts.

To see why, let’s look at the details.

First, note that this program doesn’t provide so-called universal basic income. It doesn’t target the whole population or even those in greatest financial need, but rather those with the greatest status in the intersectional hierarchy. In this case, that means residents, including minors, living at the intersection of economic poverty and transgender identity.

The announcement says:

"The program will prioritize enrollment of transgender, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and intersex (TGI) people who are also black, indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC), experiencing homelessness, living with disabilities and chronic illnesses, youth and elders, monolingual Spanish-speakers, and those who are legally vulnerable such as TGI people who are undocumented, engaging in survival sex trades, or are formerly incarcerated."

To keep this gift of $1,200 a month from hindering eligibility for other programs, San Francisco claims that it’s simply a research pilot program.

This is likely a ruse, however, since the city’s treasurer claims “there is no need to replicate broad-based ‘does it work?’ pilots or research studies.” In fact, San Francisco seeks to focus “on qualitative research that can tell the human stories about people receiving guaranteed income,” as we learn from the fine print. “Storytelling and narrative change are essential to build public will and debunk false narratives about poverty and deservedness.”

In other words, the purpose of the GIFT pilot program is to get moving stories that can serve for an ad campaign to expand the program. We can assume, then, that San Francisco will avoid the sort of rigorous scientific evaluation that might expose the program’s failures. And we can assume that it will expand.

Of course, we already have evidence that this scheme won’t reduce poverty in San Francisco. Over more than a decade, the federal government financed research on “guaranteed income” schemes. It supported randomized, controlled trials across six states conducted from 1968 to 1980.

Guess what the U.S. government found? Recipients’ motivation to work dropped, regardless of their sex, marital status, or status as a parent.

In fact, for every dollar in transfer payments, earnings fell by 66 cents.

At that rate, it would take three dollars of taxpayer money to raise a recipient’s net income by one dollar. These results were a disaster for fans of guaranteed minimum income, universal basic income, negative income tax, or an unconditional cash transfer by any other name.

But such facts don’t stand in the way of Aria Sa’id, executive director of San Francisco’s legally recognized Transgender District. After learning of the GIFT program, the transgender activist longed for more.

“My dream,” Sa’id said, “is to take a firetruck with millions of dollars of cash and have a wind blower and say, ‘Have at it.’”

Thankfully, most Americans have more common sense than to hose down city streets with twenty-dollar bills. More than 90% of the public agrees that “able-bodied adults who receive cash, food, housing, and medical assistance should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving those government benefits.”

This lack of public support is no doubt why national politicians don’t push such “guaranteed income” schemes with much zeal. San Francisco voters, however, are far to the left of the average American voter. So, the city’s politicians respond to different incentives.

Nevertheless, the bad outcome of this policy is still easy to envision.

Just consider: The number of people identifying as transgender, nonbinary, and so forth, has exploded in the last several years, especially among young people. This growth has been so alarming that it led Dr. Lisa Littman, a physician and researcher, to suggest a new diagnosis in 2017 that she called “rapid onset gender dysphoria.”

This pandemic among the young has gotten far worse in the past five years. As a result, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service has been overwhelmed and recently chose to press pause on cross-sex hormones and related surgeries on minors.

Anyone who studies the rise of gender ideology in schools, culture, and social media is bound to suspect that we are dealing with a new social contagion, not the rare gender dysphoria of the previous century.

Gender transitioning is now, for many minors, a trend.

But it so happens that this trend, unlike goth or grunge, leads to sterilizing cross-sex hormones and disfiguring surgery.

Originally published at The Daily Signal.

Dr. Jay W. Richards is director of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation, as well as the think tank's William E. Simon senior research fellow in religious liberty and civil society.

Jamie Hall is a senior policy analyst in empirical studies at The Heritage Foundation.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/san-franciscos-perverse-incentive-to-identify-as-transgender.html

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2:00PM EST 11/11/2022
MICHAEL L. BROWN

In the midst of the ongoing debate about Christian nationalism (see here and here), there are two fundamental questions that need to be asked. First, what does it mean to be a Christian nation? And second, is (or was) America a Christian nation?

How we answer these questions goes a long way in determining our attitude towards "Christian nationalism."

Do you remember back in 2006 when President Obama said that America was "no longer just a Christian nation"? In full, he said, "Given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation and a nation of nonbelievers."

Then, in 2009, speaking in Turkey, he stated that we Americans "do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Muslim nation, but rather, a nation of citizens who are, uh, bound by a set of values." Do you recall the outcry that followed?

To paraphrase what many of us were thinking: "What? America is not a Christian nation? Of course it is! And our country is just as certainly not a Muslim nation, like Saudi Arabia or Iran.


"Our founding colonies were explicitly Christian. Christian thinking informed our founding documents. Christian holidays are our national holidays. And the vast majority of our citizens profess to be Christians. Of course we consider ourselves to be a Christian nation."

As articulated in a press release by Don Swarthout, President of Christians Reviving America's Values, "When I actually heard our very own President saying the United States is NOT a Christian nation, I couldn't believe my ears. His statement is just not true and is a total fabrication on President Obama's part."

To quote further from this same press release, "One of our current Congressmen said in May, 'The overwhelming evidence suggests this nation was birthed with Judeo-Christian principles. I would challenge anybody to tell me that point in time when we ceased to be so (a Christian Nation), because (that time) it doesn't exist.'"

And this: "A columnist, Wayne Barrett said, 'But what is inescapable in what he (President Obama) keeps saying is the emphasis that the United States is not Christian. One would be hard pressed to describe exactly how Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism have helped shape America and its laws and culture.'" (See also here for a more detailed response.)

On the flip side, a 2012 article in the Los Angeles Times stated that, "the National Assn. of Evangelicals said that when it surveyed selected evangelical leaders about whether the United States was a Christian nation, 68% said no.

"'Much of the world refers to America as a Christian nation, but most of our Christian leaders don't think so,' said Leith Anderson, the association's president. 'The Bible only uses the word "Christian" to describe people and not countries. Even those who say America is a Christian nation admit that there are lots of non-Christians and even anti-Christian beliefs and behaviors.'"

In 2009, after highlighting both the unchristian and Christian elements in America's past and present, the left-leaning evangelical Sojourner said this: "This dichotomy is reminiscent of St. Augustine's teachings in "The City of God." Essentially, in the book he teaches that no human institution, even the institution which calls itself the church, can fully embody the teachings of Christ, but within these institutions are committed Christians who do God's will. This applies to America too. America is not a Christian nation, but there are followers of Christ within the country pushing the government and the nation to do the will of God. The only state, nation, principality or country that can call itself a Christian 'nation' is the kingdom of God fully ushered in by the second coming of Christ."

What are Americans thinking today in 2022? What do they understand when we speak of our country being a "Christian nation"?

I posed that question on Twitter, asking, "Broadly speaking, do you agree with the statement that 'America is a Christian nation'? Or do you believe that it was a Christian nation but no longer is? Or do you believe that no nation is truly Christian?"

Almost 12% voted for, "It's a Christian nation." Forty-one percent cast their vote for, "It was but isn't anymore." And 47% voted for, "No nation is Christian." How interesting!

To be sure, America today cannot possibly claim to be a truly Christian nation when: We have aborted more than 63 million babies since 1973. We are the world's leading provider of pornography by far. We have the highest rate of single family homes in the world. We reportedly lead the world in illegal drug use and drug overdose deaths, while we are among the world leaders in categories such as crime rates, murder rates, rapes and prisoners incarcerated.

And this is only to look at the most obvious examples of us not being Christian. (For a longer list, see here.) As a 2013 article in Salon announced, "8 appalling ways America leads the world: Welcome to the new American exceptionalism: Number one in obesity, guns, prisoners, anxiety and more ..."

Is this what a Christian nation is supposed to look like?

I have interacted with Muslims in other parts of the world who thought that "Christians" were highly immoral and ungodly. They based their opinion on their knowledge of our filthiest Hollywood movies, our celebration of near naked women on our magazine covers and our overall worldliness and carnality.

I have had to explain to them that, in reality, most Americans are not Christian at all, even if many profess to be. In that sense of the term, America is not a Christian nation, nor has it ever been.

On the other hand, I have Christian friends in India who say, "India is now a Hindu nation, but I believe that one day it will be a Christian nation!"

By this they mean that the vast majority of the people will become true Christians, which would then be reflected in the government, in the laws, in the schools and in the media. (Today, the opposite is true, as it is Hinduism that permeates the culture.)

In the same way, there are countries in Africa that are shifting from Islam, animism and tribal religion to Christianity, with Christians being elected to high government positions and schools becoming wide open to gospel influences. They want to see their nations become Christian.

Should we then want the same for America, especially in light of our origins? And is this what "Christian nationalism" is all about?

These are the questions we must answer first in the debate over Christian nationalism.

From my perspective, while no nation on earth will ever be fully Christian before Jesus returns, America in the past was more Christian than it is today (despite all of our major failings). And it would be good if we could be much more Christian in the future. But that to me, is something different than "Christian nationalism."

What's your take?

Dr. Michael Brown (askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program.

https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/in-the-line-of-fire/90664-will-america-ever-become-a-christian-nation-again

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SC Cloud | St. Cloud Times

Mike Aurelius
November 13, 2022

As I write this, the polls have been open for about an hour and a half for our biennial "courtesy flush." Although there will probably be some residue floating in the bowl after the polls close and they count the ballots, I suspect neither side will be entirely happy (as usual).

Elsewhere, the drums of treasonous insurrection continue to beat as the country inches closer and closer to a "hot" civil war. And this time, instead of pro-slavery vs. anti-slavery, the sides will be based on political stance, right vs. left. Ultimately, if the guns come out, it will be neighbor vs. neighbor.

I’ve written about the dangers presented by the wave of fascism sweeping across the nation in the guise of "Evangelical Christianity." One hallmark of fascism is the intertwining of government and religion. In the past few weeks, the former Vice President went on national television (Fox Business, Oct. 27) and stated that he believed “that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not protect Americans from having other people’s faiths forced upon them.” From the same article, “He also suggested that the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority has a duty to side with one faith over another. Today that means the GOP’s embrace of Christian nationalism.”

Scary stuff. What does this mean for anyone who isn’t Christian? I think it’s clear if you take a step back and look at the big picture. Imagine non-Christian churches losing their tax exemption certifications. Mandatory Christian “indoctrination” being taught in all levels of schools from kindergarten through 12th-grade high school. Going further down the rabbit hole: red-lining neighborhoods to prevent non-Christians from living in them. Banks and credit unions refusing to accept non-Christian customers. Formation of "ghettos," where non-Christians would be forced to live. Further? Pogroms and ethnic cleansing of non-Christians.

There is plenty of basis in fact and fiction to back up these ponderings. Factually, look no further than the Russian expulsion of the Jews in the 1900s or the Nazi Jewish cleansing before and during WWII. In fiction, Robert Heinlein’s “If This Goes On--,” 1940, or Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” 1985.

What’s that? You don’t believe it would happen? Huh. You really haven’t been paying attention, have you? Look no further than this past year, when the right-wing supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade. "That’s not a religious issue!" you might say. Heh… and you’d be wrong. Look at the players who pushed for its overturn. Look at the people who supported its overturn. Christian nationalists, all of them (even if they won’t admit to it.) And it is being forced on everyone, regardless of religion, in those states where abortion has been banned. Jewish religious teachings allow for abortion to save the life of the mother. Now, they can no longer follow their religion in that matter. The first domino has fallen, and the rest are balancing on a precarious foundation.

I, and others, have a fundamental problem with a religion that tries to force itself down our collective throats, especially when that religion teaches nothing but hypocrisy in the hands of its believers. Evangelical Christians, especially in the Southern United States, hate Democrats, people of color, anyone not born in the United States, anyone who wants universal healthcare, and so on. Essentially, they hate everything that Jesus, one-third of their God, remember, said they should love. Nothing they do in the name of their God follows what Jesus taught. So, what do they believe in? Strong nationalism. Disdain for human rights. Identification of enemies to unify their cause. Supremacy of the military. Rampant sexism. Controlled mass media. Obsession with national security. Protecting corporate power. Suppressing the power of labor. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts. Obsession with crime and punishment. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Fraudulent elections. Every single one is a red flag for fascism.

Until next month, you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat. Trust your doctor (unless they are a religious zealot) and the science community. Ignore the lunatics from the fringes of both parties. And above all, ignore the propaganda from China, Russia and their allies. —

Mike Aurelius is a member of the Times Writers Group.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/evangelical-christianity-politics-aurelius-113145579.html

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11:00AM EST 11/7/2022
SHAWN A. AKERS

As our nation continues to battle over for a set of values that will carry on into the future, A recent study released by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University reveals that less than one-third of Americans believe that the Bible should serve as the ultimate foundation for determining right and wrong.

The study notes that 7 out of 10 adults (71%) claim to support traditional moral values in America today. But there is a significant transition in the public perception of the Bible's role in defining traditional moral values.

The survey revealed that traditional moral values included integrity, justice, kindness, non-discrimination, trustworthiness, free expression, property ownership, individual self-expression and self-control.

Although most say they abide by traditional moral values, the Bible no longer holds its place as the ultimate authority on right vs. wrong, according to responses in a July survey of nearly 2,300 people. Instead, a whopping 42% of respondents say that should lie with "what you feel in your heart."

Majority rule, which both former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and political activist Kirk Cameron label as "mob rule," came in at 29% as a method of determining right and wrong. Only 29% of those surveyed expressed a belief that the principles in the Bible should determine the understanding of right and wrong. That figure rose to 66% among spiritually active conservative Christians.

The survey revealed that an overwhelming majority of Christians expressed support for traditional values (82%). The study said a strong majority of respondents who believe the Bible is God's true word have traditional moral values (83%), and 63% of those who do not view the Bible as the true and accurate words of God also hold traditional moral values.

Political views as it pertains to the Bible revealed some interesting figures, especially with one of the most important elections in history happening Tuesday, Nov. 8.

An outright majority of respondents who do not identify with a particular faith (53%), along with half of LGBTQ respondents (50%), self-described moderates (47%), political independents (47%), Democrats (46%), self-described liberals (46%) and Catholic church attendees (46%) expressed that "what you feel in your heart" should form the foundation of what Americans view as right and wrong.

The survey revealed that sizable numbers of members of a particular fait other than Christianity (45%) who identified as both Republican and moderate (38%) said that they feel they should do "what's right in their heart," as did pluralities of Americans between the ages of 18-29 (47%) and 30-49 (44%).

Shawn A. Akers is the online editor of Charisma Media.

https://www.charismanews.com/culture/90616-why-americans-no-longer-view-the-bible-as-the-ultimate-authority

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By Jerry Bowyer, Contributor
CP ANALYSIS | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Ambassador Sam Brownback is the co-author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and a former United States Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. He's been fighting for people who have been persecuted for their faith for his entire career. However, he didn't expect that he himself would become a victim of religious persecution by his own bank.

I recently talked with Ambassador Brownback on my podcast "Meeting of Minds." Below are a few highlights from that discussion, lightly edited for clarity and length.

This is part 2.

Jerry: Your system is coming out of ivy league universities and it kind of feeds into a lot of the managerial class, for whom the American experiment was evil from the beginning. "Why should we care about the Constitution?" The 1619 Project says that America is based on nothing but evil and racism. So these are code words for power. So when we appeal to the First Amendment, it's no longer common ground. Maybe it is for 60% of people, but it's no longer a shared good in universities. And the people who are hostile to it have gravitated to positions where they're able to censor and de-bank others. We can no longer assume when we're dealing with these large financial institutions, or business institution that were dealing with institutions that actually respect the Bill of Rights any longer.

Sam: I find the evolution of this topic kind of fascinating. When Chuck Schumer was a junior Senator from New York and I was in the Senate with him. He and I did a religious freedom bill together. The Sikhs carry a small ceremonial knife. It's part of being a male Sikh: they carry a 3-inch ceremonial knife. And they were being blocked from being able to do that at certain jobs. So we put together a bill that allowed them to carry their ceremonial knife. Religious freedom was a completely bipartisan topic. This is the First Amendment. We all agreed on this, these bills were passing 99 to 1.

Jerry: Which President signed that? Was it Clinton?

Sam: I believe it was. And the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed with 90-plus votes. But then it became controversial because some were standing for Religious Freedom as a part of their traditional set of values. Their traditional moral beliefs. And then it just started started fraying and becoming a divisive political issue when it had always been a unifying issue.

We have a number of Amish in Kansas and some of the Amish groups don't believe in having their children go to school past the age of 16. And so there was a controversy because the state requires it until 18. But we found a way to accommodate them by having them get a GED after the age of 16. That worked out. And and historically, that's what we've always done in this country: figure out a way to accommodate somebody's deeply held religious belief. Like carrying a 3-inch ceremonial knife if you're a Sikh.

Now, it's kind of like, "oh no, we disagree with you, and we're going to make it hard on you. We're not going to try to find a way to accommodate."

Jerry: We've seen situations in the last few years where, if a state legislature passes a state level version of the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act, which you helped bring into existence, which is identical in language to Federal legislation, they get threatened by large corporations with divestment! In other words, we're going to put your people out of work, we're going to move operations out of your state to punish you. So tat's how quickly, that's how quickly that flipped from being almost universal: you, Chuck Schumer, and Bill Clinton all aligned, to the point where large corporations treat that same kind of thing like it's hate. That's how quickly we've switched.

Sam: I saw it happen to me while I was governor of Kansas. So I become Governor after being a Senator. A state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Act bill comes in front of me as Governor. I say, "oh yeah, that'll be easy. That'll be big bipartisan bill. I'll be able to sign it." But instead it just blew up, and it was one of the most controversial bills that session. We had threats from corporations.

Frankly I think we're poorer as a nation when we fight about fundamental freedoms, like religious freedom and free exercise. I think that really is harmful to the very design of the nation. To have this big diverse nation with lots of different values that aren't accommodate to. And I think this hurts people that aren't even religious. I think it hurts atheists. You don't want your freedoms to be infringed upon either.

Jerry: Because the right to be an atheist is not, I would say, metaphysically different than the right to be a Catholic or a Muslim. In essence it's the right to decide in your deepest core, what you believe and what you'll pay allegiance. If you believe that humanity is the highest thing, you're a secular humanist. Essentially, sociologically, anthropologically, that is a religion. So any apparatus that can say, "you can't practice your Catholicism" could just as well say, "you can't practice your atheism" when the shoe is on the other foot.

Sam: It's not a hypothetical, either: it actually happens in places in the Muslim world. In Saudi Arabia you get persecuted if you're an atheist. When I was an Ambassador for Religious Freedom, we stood up for atheist in parts of the world that required that you be of a certain religion. Freedom of religion means you've got a right to not be religious. And this is a deep, precious human right. That's the human right of the soul.

And it's interesting to me that religion is the one institution that has enough alliance, and allegiance, and pull over the heart, to actually get a group of people to stand up to the government. There's just not any other kind of affiliation that has enough pull to get people to do that. That's why religious freedom is so important: it actually acts as a counterbalance to government.

Jerry Bowyer is financial economist, president of Bowyer Research, and author of “The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.”

https://www.christianpost.com/news/leading-religious-liberty-advocate-gets-de-banked-part-2.html

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The Telegraph

Laurence Rees
November 9, 2022·6 min read

What is the purpose of the Catholic Church? Is it a spiritual institution dedicated to saving souls and offering moral leadership to the world? Or is it a multibillion-pound organisation anxious to protect its wealth and power? Or, if it is a bit of both, what is more important: morality or pragmatism?

These are the questions at the heart of David Kertzer’s magnificent The Pope at War, an examination of one of the most contentious religious figures of recent times, Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII in March 1939. Kertzer won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for The Pope and Mussolini, which focused on the Italian dictator’s dealings with Pacelli’s predecessor as Pope, Pius XI, and this new book is every bit as good.

Pius XII is controversial – in some quarters, notorious – because he never publicly condemned the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War. With access to the newly opened Vatican archives, and in calm, unhurried prose, Kertzer’s book ought to silence any future debate about him: based on the evidence presented here, there can no longer be any doubt – as a moral leader, Pius XII was a disaster.

Part of the reason was the Pope’s character – he was naturally timid – but Kertzer also reveals that there was a whiff of anti-Semitism around the Vatican during the war. In March 1943 – after the extermination of the Jews was known about – Monsignor Giuseppe Di Meglio wrote in a report entitled “Palestine and the Jews” that “most Jews are mainly dedicated to industry and, for the most part, commerce. This commerce remains quite profitable for them when they find themselves living among Christians. If, on the contrary, all and only the Jews come together, one has an enormous gathering… of swindlers, while lacking those to be swindled. Therefore, most Jews had no desire to migrate to Palestine.” The report was subsequently seen by the Pope, and there is no evidence that he was outraged by the anti-Semitic slurs within it.

Anti-Semitism in the Vatican wasn’t just confined to individual clerics. Francis D’Arcy Osborne, the British envoy to the Vatican, wrote in a 1938 dispatch to the British Foreign Secretary that Lenin had benefited from “the mental agility, the cynical adaptability and the amoral ingenuity of the Jew”.

But Kertzer also demonstrates Osborne’s subsequent outrage at the Holocaust, writing in December 1942 of “the unprecedented crime against humanity of Hitler’s campaign of extermination of the Jews”. Osborne was appalled at the Pope’s lack of protest at Nazi atrocities, saying in September 1942: “A policy of silence in regard to such offences… must necessarily involve a renunciation of moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority of the Vatican.”

In his Christmas address on December 24 1942, the Pope did make one reference to the “hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or their race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction”.

But because he didn’t mention the Jews by name, these words could be taken to refer to the actions of a number of different nations – the Pope had a well-known fear of communism, for example, so he could have been condemning Stalin’s crimes. Kertzer reveals that “Osborne subsequently wrote that the Pope seemed ‘pained and surprised’ that these words had not satisfied those who had been calling on him to speak out”.

Both Hitler and Mussolini were – nominally, at least – Catholics themselves. But the Pope never moved to excommunicate them, nor to threaten to excommunicate the Catholic Germans who took part in the killing of Jews. Part of the reason may have been that he was worried speaking out might mean Hitler would escalate his campaign against Catholicism. Many churches in Poland had already been closed and Catholic priests sent to concentration camps. Perhaps he feared that even the Vatican, the immensely wealthy heart of the church, was at risk.

However, as Kertzer points out, there were Catholic priests who did take a stand against the Nazis. Some, for instance, tried to help Jews by hiding them on church property. While the Pope did not prevent them doing this, he wasn’t exactly encouraging, either.

Kertzer could have mentioned, by contrast, Bishop von Galen, who gave a sermon in Münster in Germany in August 1941 denouncing a different Nazi atrocity: the killing of the severely disabled. Significantly, although Hitler was furious at von Galen, he did not act against him for fear of alienating the local German population.

We can’t be certain, of course, what Hitler would have done if the Pope had protested openly about the fate of the Jews. What we do know for sure is that, if Pius XII had spoken out, he would have rendered humanity a service that we would still be celebrating today. Instead, unlike the long list of martyred Catholic saints who endured hideous tortures in defence of their moral and spiritual beliefs, Pius XII chose to remain silent.

The Pope at War is a long book, but unlike many scholarly works it is readily accessible to the general reader. Kertzer is a gifted writer, and the chapters are short and punchy. He is also to be congratulated on avoiding polemic. It would have been easy, given the evidence, to have suffused the pages with moral outrage. But because he lays the facts bare and presents all sides of the argument, he lets readers come to their own conclusion. And that conclusion ought to be a devastating one: Pius XII’s prime concern during the war wasn’t offering moral leadership, but protecting the interests of the Catholic Church.

The material from the newly opened Vatican archives largely speaks for itself. For example, several months prior to the outbreak of the war, the Pope was secretly negotiating with Hitler a better accommodation between the Nazis and the Catholic Church. The Nazis’ intermediary was a German aristocrat called Prince Philipp von Hessen. At their first meeting in May 1939, Pius XII, who had spent time in Germany and was fond of the country, told von Hessen that “No one here is anti-German. We love Germany. We are pleased if Germany is great and powerful. And we do not oppose any particular form of government, if only the Catholics can live in accordance with their religion.”

These remarks, we must remember, were made just months after the Nazis had unleashed a torrent of violence against German Jews during Kristallnacht. And even after the Germans had invaded Poland in the autumn of 1939 and committed a series of new atrocities, the Pope ended another secret meeting with von Hessen by asking that his “warm greetings” be conveyed to the Führer. Ultimately, these secret negotiations came to nothing, but they are the background against which we should see the Pope’s public silence during the war about the Holocaust. What a tragedy, the reader might think after finishing this groundbreaking book, that the Pope did not “love” the Jews as much as he “loved Germany”.

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/vatican-archives-reveal-hitler-pope-163642637.html

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CP ANALYSIS | MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2022
By Jerry Bowyer, Contributor

Ambassador Sam Brownback is the co-author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and a former United States Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. He's been fighting for people who have been persecuted for their faith for his entire career. However, he didn't expect that he himself would become a victim of religious persecution by his own bank.

I recently talked with Ambassador Brownback on my podcast "Meeting of Minds." Below are a few highlights from that discussion, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Jerry: You started your organization. You went down to the bank, the old fashioned way, to deposit a check with the teller...and what happened?

Sam: Well, we establish the account, and about three or four weeks later, I'm going down to put a deposit, an additional one, into it. My wife and I help get it up and going. And the teller says, I'm sorry, this account has been closed. And I was stunned. What? What did we do? We hadn't done anything. We had just gotten started, we had just opened it up, and then they're telling us the account has been closed. It was very startling to me at that time.

Jerry: It's almost a humiliation in some ways. I mean, for that to happen that way: to not get notified by your bank. To actually go there and suffer the kind of humiliation of "oh, that account's been closed. Why? I don't know" You know, there's something about that. It's unbusinesslike 

Sam: Well, some months later I got contacted by a lobbyist for Chase Bank who said "we want to apologize for our bad customer service. We're sorry about that." But then they didn't give me any reason for why they were shutting this down. And I thought "this goes beyond customer service. This seems to be far more than that."

Jerry: So you did have a conversation with somebody eventually? In other words, the teller didn't know anything, so of course you reach out to Chase, and you went through a few levels, got a little run around. And what did you find?

Sam: They just said the decision was made at the corporate level. It's secret. We can't tell you why, and it's irrevocable. We're not going to change our mind.

Later, as this matured more and more, the lobbyist for Chase got involved some and they said it was bad customer service and apologized. But they didn't say they were going to reestablish the account. So somebody else said, okay, if you'll disclose the people that are giving up to 10% of your funds, disclose your criteria for supporting candidates that support religious freedom, we might consider reopening it.

We said: "we're not going to disclose that kind of information. You're not requiring that of other comparable groups. We don't have to disclose that kind of information to the United States government."

Jerry: It's a 501(c)(4). The contributions are not deductible! Someone might want to say "well, we're subsidizing this." No you're not. 501(c)(4)s aren't tax deductible, if memory serves me correctly. So it's essentially none of the government's business. And it's not the bank's business, either.

Sam: Yeah. They were asking for this and we were thinking "that seems completely inappropriate." Is that something you require all of your non-profit groups? To disclose that type of information?

We've sent a letter to the CEO, Jamie Dimon, about this. We're going to write board members at Chase Bank about this, and we'll be asking them why this took place. Because we're hearing about this happening to way too many people, and we want to expose it. And we want elected officials, state Attorneys General, Treasurers, to get involved and start asking questions.

Jerry: And one wonders: you got de-banked for mysterious reasons, but I think they're probably not so mysterious. Religious liberty is now something that has moved into the controversial--even negative--category for some elements of society. In other words, if you're a free speech or religious liberty advocate, you can often be labeled as a hate group. It happened to Alliance Defending Freedom. They don't hate anybody, but they're for religious liberty.

And the other thing that occurs to me is: why in the world would you disclose the donors? If you get de-banked because of your point of view in your cause, what's to say that if you disclose your donors, they wouldn't get de-banked to for being associated with your cause? I mean, why would they be any different ?

Sam: I don't know why they would be any different. And it also obviously has a chilling effect on people's willingness to give if that sort of information is disclosed, and they have to then factor in themselves: do I want to go through the hassle? The hassle that comes up with me standing up for an explicit First Amendment right of freedom of religion, of free expression, of free
exercise. That's the actual wording: free exercise. You have the right to free exercise of religion in the Constitution's First Amendment. We're simply standing up for that. It seems to me there could hardly be something anything more American than free exercise, but I guess it's become controversial in some places.

Jerry Bowyer is financial economist, president of Bowyer Research, and author of “The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.”

https://www.christianpost.com/news/leading-religious-liberty-advocate-gets-de-banked.html

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CP VOICES | TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2022
By Joseph Mattera, Op-ed Contributor

Genesis 1:28 and its New Testament counterpart, Matthew 28:19, have been used by some to justify Christians exerting top-down dominion over society. While a case can arguably be made for cultural influence, we need to interpret said passages properly to not justify erroneous methodologies.

In Genesis 1:28, God blessed mankind and instructed them to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” This dominion was to be exerted over the created order. Some understand this as a cultural mandate, while others interpret it as a dominion mandate. It is a mistake to call this a “dominion mandate” relative to the church today since God never commanded Adam to have dominion over fellow human beings. The directive to have dominion was given to them before the earth was populated. Hence, it referred to dominion over the ecosystem, animal, and plant life.

A case can also be made that this was a command to all humanity, not just Christians. Adam was the federal head of all humanity, not just believers (Psalm 8:4-8 gives clarity to Genesis 1:28 and its reference to all humanity). Consequently, throughout history, all human beings have exerted dominion over creation by cultivating the ground, building civilizations, and utilizing ecosystems and raw materials for their benefit.

Nevertheless, some Christians can also rightly argue that God never initially intended to give the earth to those outside His covenant. From this perspective, the primary people who are the recipients of this command to exert dominion over the created order would be Christians. This is especially so since Jesus is called the last Adam by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:45. While there may be a lot of truth to this last point, the fact remains that dominion was never meant to be dominion over people. We cannot utilize this verse to justify the advancement of Christianity by force or even by a top-down political takeover. Voting and political influence remain a matter of Christian stewardship in democratic societies. These were never meant to be the only methods to influence culture.

In John 13:34, Jesus, as the last Adam, illustrated that the primary way to have kingdom influence was by washing the feet of others and being a servant-leader. He modeled for Christians, more than unbelievers, God’s mandate to cultivate the earth and serve humanity. He showed us how to become the greatest problem solvers and cultural creatives the world has ever seen. We can see that in the past 2,000 years since the birth of Christianity, especially in western civilization, the world experienced human flourishing as the Church developed hospitals, universities, classical music, and art and produced some of the world’s greatest scientists.

What about the call to disciple nations?

Many have interpreted Matthew 28:19 (to disciple all nations) to mean that the Church is called to use the Bible as a handbook to Christianize geopolitical nation-states. While there may be a ‘spillover effect’ after values derived from biblical ethics permeate every aspect of a society’s culture, this is not the primary meaning.

The word nation in the Greek language is “ethnē,” and in most places in the New Testament, it has been translated as "Gentiles" (Matthew 12:21, 25:32, Mark 13:10, Luke 12:30, 21:24, 24:47 and Acts 4:25). This refers to non-Jewish people groups, not necessarily a geopolitical construct that we see in the modern day. The modern-day geopolitical construct of nation-states didn’t start until the “peace of Westphalia” in 1648. Thus, this political arrangement is less than 500 years old.

Jesus wasn’t primarily giving a command for a top-down political takeover of a nation is made clear by the rest of the context in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, [even] to the end of the age.” In this context, “discipling the nations” meant planting churches in a non-Jewish cultural context among Gentile (ethnic) people groups, thereby expanding the influence of God’s Kingdom on earth.

We know this because Jesus described the process of discipleship as “being baptized” (which is part of the integration of a believer into church life), followed by “teaching” what Jesus commanded them (which has to do with catechism and teaching new converts the “first principles” - Acts 2:42 and Hebrews 5:12-6:3.)

Consequently, according to Jesus, the only ways ethnic groups will be transformed are by joining the church and becoming disciples. Many people vying for cultural transformation today make no mention of the impact of the local church. They make it seem like cultural transformation only depends on national elections. Although it’s important to elect godly leaders, we cannot focus merely on politics because, in doing so, we overlook the power of the Gospel and the Church.

History attests to how effective this biblical methodology can be. We have seen what happens when “a critical mass” of specific ethnic groups join the Church and are discipled. The evident changes to a community, city, and region’s culture are visible after-effects. This was observed in the Roman empire and many subsequent barbarian groups who experienced Christianization (in the Middle Ages). They adopted biblical law as a standard for cultural norms and ethics.

However, history also illustrates that a Christianized nation, without the strong thriving power of the Church, will eventually become as equally corrupt as any heathen nation. For example, a case can be made that the Church grew weaker after Rome was Christianized because it became politically advantageous for a Roman to become a Christian (in name only) and join the church. The result was that many became ‘minimalist Christians’, thereby compromising the power of the Church. Many committed saints felt they had to flee this carnality by secluding themselves, becoming hermits, and joining monasteries. As defined by the Lord Jesus Christ, the Church was to be built by Him to create a penetrating and lasting impact against which the gates of hell would not prevail.

My conclusion is that the political Christianization of a nation is not the ultimate answer. In my opinion, we are to perpetuate strong local churches that nurture disciples, who, in turn, will positively influence communities for the glory of God. The result is civilization's flourishing by the supernatural power of the Gospel and its inherent wisdom and revelation. This is the only way communities can be transformed without the Church being compromised.

Dr. Joseph Mattera is an internationally-known author, consultant, and theologian whose mission is to influence leaders who influence culture.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-mistake-of-the-dominion-mandate-in-the-church.html