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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Christian Professor "Clarifies" Stance on "Sexual Identity"

By Rick Pearcey • March 11, 2010, 10:35 AM

"A professor at an evangelical Christian college in Pennsylvania says his guidelines for 'sexual identity therapy' are being misunderstood by some Christian proponents of traditional marriage,"  reports OneNewsNow.

"Dr. Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College says he has not lost faith in God's ability to change people who are struggling with homosexuality, but believes most of those people are not likely to experience a 'diminishment' in same-sex attraction."

OneNewsNow also reports that "Throckmorton says he personally holds a 'traditional view of homosexuality and sexual ethics.' However, when asked whether he believes homosexuality is 'normal, natural and healthy,' he said he could not answer that with a simple 'yes' or 'no' response. He said 'in a professional therapy situation' it is accurate to say that 'homosexuals can live normal, natural, and healthy lives that are free of mental illness'."


Friday, March 5, 2010

Religious Left Rallies for Obamacare's Final Stand

By Rick Pearcey • March 5, 2010, 09:38 AM

"The Religious and Evangelical Left, plus the Islamic Society of North America and a few others, are making a final Custer-like stand on behalf of much cherished Obamacare," writes Mark Tooley at Frontpage magazine.

"In an ad featured in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper aimed at congressional staffers, a religious coalition called 'Faithful Reform in Health Care' demanded that Congress 'complete the task at hand on behalf of the millions who are left out and left behind in our current health care system.'

"Some of these groups, or at least their elites, have very little theology any more," Tooley explains. "But they are increasingly unified behind a single unifying spiritual principle: worshipping at the altar of the state."


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Judge Rules Against Religious Expression

By Rick Pearcey • March 3, 2010, 09:29 AM

"A judge in Montana has ruled against a high school valedictorian who wasn't allowed to speak at her graduation ceremony because she wanted to give God credit for her success," reports OneNewsNow.

"Last Wednesday," reports LifeSiteNews.com, "Judge Gregory Todd ruled in a summary judgment that [Renee Griffith,] a student at Butte High School was not unconstitutionally censored for refusing to remove references to Christ and God from her valedictory speech.  Her attorney has said that they will appeal to the Montana Supreme Court."


Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Homosexuals at CPAC: The Perils of Regress

By Rick Pearcey • February 24, 2010, 07:36 AM

The attendance of an openly homosexual group at CPAC 2010 helped Ron Paul win the presidential straw poll, writes Lisa Fabrizio at American Spectator.

"But far from anointing Ron Paul as their presidential nominee of choice," she explains, "the most indicative effect of including gays was this result from the poll: while the great majority of respondents named reducing the size of government as the most important goal of conservatism, only nine per cent cited the promotion of 'traditional values.' Scary stuff when you realize that the former is impossible without the latter for our particular constitutional republic."

Fabrizio cautions: "A smaller government that is not based on the moral underpinnings of our founders would have been just as repulsive to them as a larger one that is. As John Adams said, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other."

Read the rest of "The Perils of Progress," by Lisa Fabrizio.


Monday, February 15, 2010

1st Amendment Right to Challenge Immorality of Homosexuality

By Rick Pearcey • February 15, 2010, 10:03 AM

"A pro-family advocate in Michigan says he's honored to be on the front lines in fighting for First Amendment rights to speak out against homosexuality," reports OneNewsNow.

"Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, is concerned that the 'Hate Crimes Act' signed into law last year will be used to prosecute those who speak in favor of traditional biblical morality."


Friday, February 5, 2010

Boehner: "Anti-Catholic Bigot" in White House Should Resign

By Rick Pearcey • February 5, 2010, 11:51 AM

"House Minority Leader John Boehner (R.-Ohio) said [yesterday] that Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama’s faith-based advisory council, appears to be an 'anti-Catholic bigot' and should resign as a White House adviser," reports CNSNews.com.

"Earlier this week," CNSNews continues, "Knox said he stood by a statement he made last year that Pope Benedict XVI is 'hurting people in the name of Jesus' because the pope does not support promoting the use of condoms as a means to stem the spread of HIV."


Thursday, January 28, 2010

Udo Middelmann: Haiti and the Innocence of God

By Rick Pearcey • January 28, 2010, 10:44 AM

Speaker, author, and former atheist Udo Middelmann, president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation, writes:

The assumption that God is behind all things happening, behind the earthquake in Haiti, Katrina’s destruction in New Orleans, and catastrophes as large as the Tsunami or as little as a household accident, is built on the view of a closed system universe.

There is an effect: therefore there must be a cause. True, but who or what is the cause?

If there is a single cause, there is no distinction between good and evil. If there are many possible causes, we do well to discern and oppose the destructive ones.

To blame historic Christianity’s God is not justified in light of Scripture and the person and life of Jesus. The Bible speaks of a world which now gives God grief, where people and nature are not "at peace," and where God interferes precisely because, as the Lord’s Prayer tells us, His will is not yet being done "on earth as it is in heaven." God sent prophets because what people did was in opposition to the will of God, not in concurrence with it. 

Likewise, Jesus, who is God in the flesh and the exact image of the Father, does not walk about holding people’s hands in their misfortunes and accompany them through misery. Instead he aggressively opposes sickness, false teaching, vile government, and death itself.

Where other religions and secular philosophies start with the assumption of the normality of things and events, as sad as they are, God describes a sickening abnormality in his creation and acts, speaks, protests, and encourages us to do likewise.

There is no fatalism in Jewish and Christian teaching, though many times it seems to be in the language and explanations believers use to erroneously comfort themselves. There is the sound of false piety from what is in fact a total contradiction to what Jesus taught and did.

The faith and hope that God’s sovereignty is expressed in every event is something for the future.

For the time being, Haiti, Tsunami, Katrina, and your child falling out of a swing are things you should be upset about. We should not settle into acceptance, but rise for energetic and healing intervention to prevent each and recurrent tragedies.

For a more thorough development of these ideas you may want to consult my book The Innocence of God.

In addition to his work at the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation, Middelmann is also visiting professor of philosophy at The King's College in New York City. For more information, please contact Middelmann at The Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation, CH – 1882 Gryon, Switzerland.


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Olbermann vs. America

By Rick Pearcey • January 20, 2010, 01:01 PM

In many ways what you are seeing in Keith Olbermann's performance (Olbermann Renews "Teabagging" Attack on Scott Brown) is what American government and society would look like if secularist "liberalism" -- a worldview that rejects the Founding concept of a Creator who is the source of unalienable rights (and human reason and empirical data, by the way) -- wins the day.

That kind of secularism, if logically extended and lived upon, results in the abolition of unalienable rights, rational discourse, and the appeal to evidence. You will hear talk of "living Constitutions" and "values," but really all that's left is the inhumane application of raw power -- in the womb, the workplace, and the White House.

It is a recipe for America as wasteland.

For a Pretend Creator (i.e., a federal state) is not strong enough to carry the weight of rights, reason, and evidence. That kind of "god" will be crushed, and all that depends upon that kind of pretension will be crushed with it, including those who try to build a free society upon it.

Yesterday's vote in Massachusetts is a vote against estrangement from our national and creaturely identities. Yesterday stems the tide against freedom, and for that we give thanks.

But strategic victory and a strategic initiative await a critical mass of Americans who insist on returning homeward (and thus forward) to the Founding Vision -- the Declaration, the Constitution, etc. -- where a real Creator and not the pretend god of the secular state is recognized as the center of gravity of human freedom.

I have said and written many good things about the views of Sarah Palin, but it should be pointed out that her heartfelt affirmation of a "commonsense, independent agenda" may not be enough to meet the strategic challenge of our moment in history. For "commonsense" could have made you a slave in Athens, eaten by lions in Rome, headless in France 1793-94, "verboten" in Deutschland, and frozen in the workers' paradise. 

And perhaps rather surprisingly (ask King George), you could say that what the Founders gave us was actually uncommonsense, given the history of humanity in this hard world.

Yes: Extremely uncommon is the vision of the Declaration and content of the Constitution. Sadly, these brilliant documents do not keep us from making mistakes; happily, they do give us a basis for correcting them.

In contrast to secularists past and present, the Founding Vision gives a fixed point that liberates -- with a real Creator as the basis for real unalienable rights. Having a secure foundation is a good thing, because without a fixed point, talk of progress has no meaning.

I hope no one concludes from this a calling to hate an anchor on MSNBC, however heated or misguided the debate might be. The point is not hate, but love. Love of freedom and all the Blessings of Liberty from the One who gives the blessings, for everyone. This too is uncommonsense.


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

10 Commandments Display Stays

By Rick Pearcey • January 19, 2010, 12:43 PM

From OneNewsNow:

An appeals court decision favoring a Ten Commandments display in Grayson County, Kentucky, will likely not be appealed.

The display -- entitled "Foundations of American Law and Government" and found on the second floor of the county courthouse -- also includes the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, The Star-Spangled Banner and the national motto, among other things. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that it passes constitutional muster. Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel and Liberty University argued the case.


Monday, January 11, 2010

Bravo to Brit Hume

By Rick Pearcey • January 11, 2010, 08:08 AM

Selwyn Duke says he is "always amused when people object to others' effort to convert them, especially since it's a daily occurence."


Thursday, January 7, 2010

Brit Hume: Media Backlash Over Tiger and Christianity Remarks Reflects Double Standard

By Rick Pearcey • January 7, 2010, 06:33 AM

Karen Shuberg reports at CNSNews.com:

Brit Hume said he was “not surprised” by the media backlash over his Christian remarks to Tiger Woods on “Fox News Sunday” this week and that there is a “double-standard” when it comes to speaking publicly about Christianity versus other religions.

Hume, a Fox News analyst, told CNSNews.com: “There is a double standard. If I had said, for example, that what Tiger Woods needed to do was become more deeply engaged in his Buddhist faith or to adopt the ideas of Hinduism, which I think would be of great spiritual value to him, I doubt anybody would have said anything.”


Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Brit Hume: Tiger Woods Should "Turn to Christian Faith"

By Rick Pearcey • January 5, 2010, 10:33 AM

Said Mr. Hume on "Fox News Sunday" (transcript at Politics Daily):

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person I think is a very open question, and it's a tragic situation for him.

I think he's lost his family, it's not clear to me if he'll be able to have a relationship with his children, but the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal -- the extent to which he can recover -- seems to me to depend on his faith.

He's said to be a Buddhist; I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.

So my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'


Friday, December 18, 2009

No Minarets in Switzerland, Death Threats in Turkey

By Rick Pearcey • December 18, 2009, 07:46 AM

"In response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims this month went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest unless he tore down its bell tower, according to an advocacy group," reports Will Morris for Compass Direct News at Christian Post.  

Hat tip: Joseph Lawler


Wednesday, December 16, 2009

"Big Christianity" Watch: Shocking Response From Major TV Ministries

By Rick Pearcey • December 16, 2009, 12:58 PM

"I received an interesting note from Mary Hutchinson from Inspired Direct, a direct mail and fundraising company for non-profits, churches, and ministries," writes Phil Cook at The Change Revolution. "Her note really shook me, because it indicts so many national media ministries."

Among other things, in her letter, Hutchinson writes, "But here is the truth: I think all of these preachers would be horrified to know this happened. But they are too busy to know about it. They have messages to write, funds to raise, personal and personnel issues and TV programs to produce."

In fact, it is quite possible that some of these "ministries" are set up exactly the way the frontmen preachers/celebrities want them.

As for being "too busy to know about it" because "they have messages to write," and so on, the world might be shocked to know who among various best-selling "authors" and thinkers actually write very little of what goes out under their names, even while they take credit -- and thereby help rake in big donations, sometimes in the millions -- for being great writers, great thinkers, and all the rest.

Some of these dysfunctional organizations and household "names" are very well defended, and if America as a country is really to deal with its spiritual crisis, corruption in the midst of "Big Christianity" (as opposed to true sprituality) may have to undergo the kind of challenge we're beginning to see in the Tea Party resistance to corrupt, un-Constitutional "Big Government."

Don't be surprised come judgment day if more than one or two of today's "heroes of the faith" -- described as such by carefully orchestrated marketing and publicity programs in operation for years and years -- may be revealed as anything but. Scripture is quite open and honest about self-aware phonies in our midst, and we might do well to adopt that realism regarding some of today's big-time, hard-charging "leaders" as well.

As with Big Government, there's big money and big power in "Big Christianity," and that's why you'll find scoundrels finding refuge not just in "love of country" but in "love of God" as well. "Test everything."

Related
Homosexual Houston Mayor Fallout
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach
Francis Schaeffer: "The Central Problem of Our Age"
Plagiarism: Pretend People, Fake Work
Pastoral Plagiarism
Oxford, Cambridge, Plagiarism, and Christian Worldview

Al Gore's End Run Around Press in Copenhagen

By Rick Pearcey • December 16, 2009, 07:13 AM

In this clip from Copenhagen, see Academy Award winner "We're not doing interviews right now" Al Gore score a touchdown for ignorance, hubris, and blind faith.


Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Homosexual Houston Mayor Fallout

By Rick Pearcey • December 15, 2009, 08:49 AM

Dave Welch writes at WorldNetDaily:

I would like to take a point of personal privilege (to use parliamentary terms) and address the pastors of Houston, of Texas and of the nation on what happened last Saturday in our runoff election for mayor and several city council positions. . . . I will let the victor speak for herself on the nature of the outcome:

"This election has changed the world for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. . . . just as it is about transforming the lives of all Houstonians for the better."

So stated Annise Parker, lesbian mayor-elect of Houston, Texas, after 54 percent of the 16 percent of voters who cared enough to show up declared that her private moral life and radical agenda to redefine family was irrelevant. Eighty-four percent didn't care enough.

Here's part of the problem, as Welch sees it: "Liberals have mastered the art of building a farm team and winning by starting at the bottom and running to the top. Conservatives notoriously have the 'King Complex' that municipal districts, school boards and city councils are below us, and start at the top without either experience or political capital."

Do we see a "King Complex" among Christians? That this may be the case, to some degree, seems evident if we simply replace the word King with the word Celebrity.

If I were the Devil, I could think of few better strategies than to get Christians to put just about all of their eggs into a few celebrity baskets. A few big names, a few big organizations, with lots of well-meaning people sending in their checks because:

* Big Name so and so has access to the White House -- But maybe that explains why we heard little to nothing about the growth of un-Constitutional government, spending, etc., from the "spiritual" giant of the hour, during that President's administration. You see, that kind of Biblical critique on behalf of limited government might cut down on White House access and hurt a PR fundraising machine that really needs "I was talking with the President the other day . . ." Sometimes, it seems, "speaking truth to power" works best when directed toward targets of great fundraising opportunity.

* Big Name so and so is a great worldview thinker/writer -- But then, it turns out, he, she, or the machine is rather dependent upon ghostwriters, researchers, radio script writers, column writers -- "authoring" work that becomes "his" after the "name" inserts a few well-placed phrases into the text or simply asserts ownership of other people's ideas (You're On Staff!). In such a system it is often imperative to keep staff harried and busy -- and well-paid, if at all possible -- lest they begin to think about the deceptiveness of what they're doing and consider how the Lordship of Christ might apply even to methods of ministry.

* Big Name says, "It's not about me" -- This is the He's-So-Smart-and-Humble Factor, which as Karl Rove and Vince Flynn in one of his Mitch Rapp novels note means it precisely is about the person in question. The energy, the PR, the image, the fundraising, the website, the biography, the praise from others, etc., etc., in some organizations seem absolutely to be "all about" the Big Name. A name sometimes created through ghosted columns and books, etc., creating alliances aka fiefdoms to mutually support and guard eachothers' backs, and so on. But behind the scenes running over people who truly speak against a secularism that all too often has co-opted much of the good that many well-meaning regular people hope to accomplish.

These are just a few observations based on our experience before and during our time here in the Washington, D.C., area.

My hope: Help protect those who follow -- many of whom care deeply about worldview and political engagement -- from being fed into a religious machine. And maybe to save you 10 or 20 years of energy poured into an activism of questionable strategic and spiritual value, if verifiable Scripture is your guide and if you appreciate the centrality of applying the liberating Lordship of Christ across the whole of life, including political life and including one's methods of ministry in the midst of cultural engagement.

This seems key: Just as politics is downstream from culture, culture in general is downstream from Chrisitan culture in particular. And to the degree that Christian culture or ministry might be darkened by "aping the world" (as Francis Schaeffer so emphasized), to that degree we perhaps should not be surprised at the darkness around us. Perhaps we -- you and I and our methods of  ministry -- are part of the darkness.

But if that is true, there is hope. We know where to begin in the humanity of truly loving our neighbor. We begin by looking in the mirror. If we can deal honestly with that, then maybe the culture and the politics will begin to line up as well.

That may seem like a long way to fix Houston, but it's the shortest route I know of.

Related
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinctive Approach
Francis Schaeffer: "The Central Problem of Our Age"


Monday, December 14, 2009

Why "Merry Christmas" Matters

By Rick Pearcey • December 14, 2009, 06:04 AM

"The New York Times recently revealed that, before abandoning the idea, Barack and Michelle Obama had considered eliminating the White House’s traditional nativity scene as part of an effort to celebrate a 'non-religious' Christmas," writes attorney and commentator Carol Platt Liebau.

"In light of that story," she continues, "it wasn’t entirely surprising to learn that this year, for the first time, the President’s Christmas card contains neither any mention of Christmas itself nor a quote from the New Testament. Obviously, the Obamas aren’t fans of overt displays of Christian religiosity."

Related
Christmas Spirit in the Dirt


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Christians Are "The New Negro"

By Rick Pearcey • December 10, 2009, 08:28 AM

Let Freedom Ring -- "I did not become a Christian so I would have to fight for my constitutional freedoms all over again," writes Kenneth Hutcherson, former NFL linebacker and now pastor of Antioch Bible Church.

"Growing up in Alabama being black, knowing how that felt and the way I was treated in an all-white world of power and control, I had to fight for equal rights under the Constitution," says Hutcherson in a column at WorldNetDaily.

"How ironic now as a Christian to have those same thoughts and feelings again and to have to try and wrestle control of my constitutional rights from the secular community."

Related
Should Martin Luther King on God's Law Be Taught in Schools?
Uppity Update: Sen. Boxer's Race-Baiting Backfires
Michelangelo, Schaeffer, and the Kingdom of Washington


Thursday, December 3, 2009

Banning Minarets to Save the West

By Rick Pearcey • December 3, 2009, 09:41 AM

Care about living free of Islamic oppression? Think it's time to "draw a line in the sand before the scimitars of the crescent moon?"

Then you may agree that the Swiss vote to ban the construction of minarets in their country is "perfectly understandable," writes Phil Elmore at WorldNetDaily.


Monday, November 30, 2009

Mark Steyn: The Vast "Peer Reviewed" Censored Scientific Consensus Otherwise Known as Climategate

By Rick Pearcey • November 30, 2009, 07:53 AM

Thought Renegade Mark Steyn Offers Peerless Advice for the Climate Cultist: "Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you."


Friday, November 27, 2009

National Tea Party Convention as Cultural-Political Earthquake

By Rick Pearcey • November 27, 2009, 12:03 PM

The first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville next February, with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann among the speakers, has the makings of being a huge event -- and that may be a gross understatement.

For if the American people dig down deep to the Declarational and Constitutional bedrock of this country -- down to unalienable rights and the living, knowable, and verifiable Creator who is the basis and energizer of those rights -- we may well be on the edge of a cultural-political earthquake of freedom and liberty not seen since the Founding Era and the days of 1776.

But here's one of my primary concerns: That a political machine (either "left" or "right," with its attendant "leadership") or a religious machine (either "left" or "right," with its attendant celebrity "leadership") may find a way to co-opt what up to now appears to be a genuine cultural movement animated by a return to Declaration foundations.

That would be a tragedy, with another generation lost and another 20-30 years of Big Activism and Big Namism but so little effectiveness against the secularist usurpation. An America tipping toward tyranny may not be able to afford much more of that.

Update, Feb. 8, 2010: Please note that Michele Bachmann did not speak at the event. Here is a January 20 statement announcing that Palin will join Bachmann on the campaign trail.

Related
From Going Rogue to Going Constitutional
What Is "Mainstream" America? 
Francis Schaeffer: "The Central Problem of Our Age"


Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Children in Richard Dawkins' Atheist Ads From Devout Christian Family

By Rick Pearcey • November 24, 2009, 07:13 PM

"And a Little Child Shall Lead Them" (Isaiah 11:6) -- "The two children chosen to front Richard Dawkins’s latest assault on God could not look more free of the misery he associates with religious baggage," reports the UK Times.

"With the slogan 'Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself', the youngsters with broad grins seem to be the perfect advertisement for the new atheism being promoted by Professor Dawkins and the British Humanist Association."

But then: "Except that they are about as far from atheism as it is possible to be. The Times can reveal that Charlotte, 8, and Ollie, 7, are from one of the country’s most devout Christian families."

Says the father of the children Brad Mason: “It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free. They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children."


Monday, November 23, 2009

Sarah Palin Dines, Prays With Rev. Billy Graham in N.C.

By Rick Pearcey • November 23, 2009, 09:03 AM

"Billy Graham said it was an honor having Palin in his home to join his family for dinner and that they took the opportunity to pray together," reports AP.
 
"I, like many people, have been impressed with her strong commitment to her faith, to family and love of country," AP quotes Graham as saying in a statement. "I appreciated hearing her speak of her own spiritual journey and her life in Alaska."


Friday, November 20, 2009

Chinese Intellectuals Rejecting Atheism

By Rick Pearcey • November 20, 2009, 12:45 PM

In "The China President Obama Didn't See," an intriguing comment on Obama's recent trip to communist China, Leslie Hook in the Wall Street Journal muses upon why the Chinese government is so fearful of "unregistered" churches.

She writes:

Chinese and foreign observers alike believe the number of Chinese belonging to underground churches may now exceed 100 million people. That figure has grown rapidly as more and more Chinese, particularly well-educated city dwellers, turn away from Communist Party atheism. [emphasis added]

Life has never been easy for the underground churches, and recently it has gotten a lot harder. This is the result, according to the Christian charity group China Aid, of a state directive handed down in August. Why do China's powerful leaders fear these churches, most of which steer clear of politics? It may be that they have grown increasingly paranoid about the political power of religion given the unrest they have faced in Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang. Or it could be because dissident intellectuals, such as jailed human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, have sometimes tended toward Christianity. [emphasis added]

As a questioning and free-thinking human being who affirms the philosophic and reality-oriented answers given in the Judeo-Christian worldview to the basic questions of existence raised by life in a challenging universe -- answers superior to those offered by secular humanism, atheism, agnosticism, and so on (and superior, by the way, to that fragmentation that passes for political liberalism these days) -- one can appreciate in some small measure why "well-educated city dwellers" and "dissident intellectuals" are attracted to Christianity. 

As a person religiously committed to god-talk secularism, Mr. Obama seems blessedly ignorant of the vibrancy and intellectual strength of the historic Judeo-Christian worldview here in the United States. So I suppose, in this respect, it is hardly unexpected that he misses it abroad in the land of Mao.

Upshot for Mr. Obama and the Chinese: The next few years may hold a few surprises for him, them, and like-minded people of secular faith.

David Limbaugh: Sally Quinn on Sarah Palin -- Versus Reality

By Rick Pearcey • November 20, 2009, 10:31 AM

David Limbaugh writes:

It seems the mainstream media's favorite pastime is to ridicule Sarah Palin. Of all the screeds I've read, I don't think any are snarkier than The Washington Post's Sally Quinn's "On Faith" blog post "Sarah Palin's 'rogue' Christianity."

Do we need further proof of the secular orientation of our dominant media culture than the fact that Quinn, an avowed atheist, pens the Post's "On Faith" blog? That would be like featuring a column by Fidel Castro on free enterprise and individual liberties. . . .

Quinn -- convinced she has exposed Palin as confused, conflicted and acutely hypocritical -- volleys a series of rhetorical questions designed to reveal Palin's apparent inconsistency in believing that God is in complete control ("I don't believe in coincidences") and yet he allows or causes terrible things to happen to people.

Regarding the question how a good God can co-exist with evil in the world, readers may want to take a look at The Innocence of God, by Udo Middelmann. A former atheist whose family stood against the Nazis, Middelmann is president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation.


Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lutherans 2nd Church to Split Over Homosexuals

By Rick Pearcey • November 19, 2009, 08:57 AM

"Conservative members of America's largest Lutheran denomination announced that they are splitting from the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, making it the second mainline Protestant church to undergo a major schism over the issue of homosexuality and related matters of biblical authority," reports Julia Duin at the Washington Times.


Tuesday, November 17, 2009

How Hitler and Nazis Tried to Steal Christmas

By Rick Pearcey • November 17, 2009, 07:21 AM

"The Nazi Party tried their best to remove Christ from Christmas by paganising carols, producing glittering swastika, iron cross and toy grenade baubles for the fir tree, research for a new exhibition has found," reports the UK Telegraph.

"Many of the changes made under Hitler, put in place to remove the influence of the Jewish-born baby Jesus, are still in use today, much to the alarm of modern Germans."

Go here for a remedy to this kind of state-sponsored manipulation of Christmas.

Related
Fascism Is Back


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Italian TV: "Mohammed a Pedophile"

By Rick Pearcey • November 11, 2009, 05:00 PM

In a YouTube Moment, Movement for Italy Leader Daniela Santanche says: "He was a pedophile and we don't want to talk about it . . . He had a 9-year-old wife . . . Mohammed was a pedophile."

Here's the Movement for Italy website (in Italian).

Hat tip: Rachel Rose


Monday, November 9, 2009

Harvard Prof Equates Christians With Murderous Muslims

By Rick Pearcey • November 9, 2009, 09:05 PM

Clueless in Harvardville: In the process of attacking "religious fundamentalism," Harvey Cox commits a "number of egregious errors," writes Dave Pierre at Newsbusters. The scene of the crime is the Boston Globe.

"Surprise!" Pierre concludes. "A Harvard professor who doesn't recognize his own muddled thinking."


Thursday, October 29, 2009

Home Depot Fires Man for Wearing "Under God" Pin: Video

By Rick Pearcey • October 29, 2009, 10:03 AM

But Trevor Keezer Is Not Backing Down: According to Fox News, Home Depot says wearing the pin violated company policy. In that case, Home Depot needs a policy adjustment. Big time.

Otherwise, milions of Americans who are unashamed of the Creator, unashamed of the facts of our Founding as a nation under God, unashamed of a Pledge of Allegiance that declares, "One Nation Under God," may decide as an act of stewardship to take what's left of their hard-earned paychecks and spend them elsewhere.

This is not about a private religion, subjective values, psychological "faith," or relativistic company policy.

This is about freedom under the fact of a knowable, verifiable, and rational Creator who has endowed human beings, created in His image, with "certain unalienable rights." 

That's the mainstream of American exceptionalism.

Home Depot may have just declared itself outside of that mainstream of liberty and freedom. And that, my friends, is an extreme position against who we are as a nation "conceived in liberty" by the Creator of liberty.  

Instead of being fired, Trevor Keezer ought to be promoted. He can take the job of the unfortunate person who decided "Under God" is bad for Home Depot. 

So what is it, Home Depot? When it comes to affirming who we are as Americans: Are you in, or are you out?


Thursday, October 22, 2009

Meet White House Adviser Who Supports Islamic Law

By Rick Pearcey • October 22, 2009, 07:12 AM

"A senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, [Dalia] Mogahed was appointed to President Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships," reports WorldNetDaily.

"The Egyptian-born, hijab-clad adviser drew attention earlier this month when she defended Shariah, or Islamic law, on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist Muslim group, insisting the majority of women around the world associate Shariah with 'gender justice'."

Related
Books: Muslim Mafia -- "Now We Have Proof" Jihadis Infiltrating D.C.
Republicans Call for CAIR Investigations
Obama: Islam Has Shaped the USA


Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Evangelicals and Immigration: Following the National Council of Churches?

By Rick Pearcey • October 21, 2009, 06:46 AM

"The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has adopted a new pro-liberalized immigration stance that is creating ripples among its conservative membership," writes Mark Tooley at American Spectator.

"Although NAE had touted its board's supposedly unanimous backing, at least one prominent NAE member, the Salvation Army, has apparently already disavowed it."

What's going on? The AmSpec kicker puts it like this: "The National Association of Evangelicals moves in the direction of the National Council of Churches."

Members of the Presbyterian Church in America may want to take note:

Another prominent NAE member, the 340,00 member Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), issued a statement, more defensively, but also asserting that NAE does not speak for member churches. "The NAE Immigration Resolution of 2009 has not become the PCA position on immigration," insisted PCA Stated Clerk Roy Taylor, who also chairs the NAE's board. But he still affirmed his own support for it: "The NAE Immigration Resolution of 2009, in my view, is a biblically-based, theologically reflective, carefully balanced, concise document."

In his conclusion, Tooley notes that the National Council of Churches (NCC) "became mostly irrelevant when its Mainline Protestant voices stopped speaking for its churches and started speaking 'prophetically' to them. Similarly, the NCC moved beyond issues of Christian consensus to adopt more morally ambiguous, and ostensibly more fashionable, political causes du jour. This sad history should be familiar to evangelicals. But the NAE seems determined to repeat what has already been tried and failed."


Monday, October 19, 2009

Ben Stein: America's Cross -- The ACLU at It Again

By Rick Pearcey • October 19, 2009, 07:55 AM

The secularist ACLU is "suing to take down a cross on a huge public swath of desert in Southern California," writes Ben Stein at American Spectator.  Stein offers a few reasons the cross should stay.

To his reasons, let us add this: Nothing in the Declaration, the U.S. Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights forbids it. What is forbidden in the 1st Amendment is that Congress should make a law in this regard.

The atttempt to impose atheism and secularism upon American society represents a profound, ongoing Constitutional crisis and constitutes a threat to every individual inside our borders.

A free, dignified, and creative people under God, endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," would do well to rise up and throw off the shackles of this imposition.

Helping the oppressed citizens of the United States break free of this statist addiction to the pretend "God" substitute of the federal government -- exemplified by the negative spirituality of the Obama administration but also so easily given into by squishy Republicans -- is a surefire way to demonstrate respect for our true Creator, not to mention love of neighbor.

The alternative is tyranny, and that's not an alternative.

Related
Why We Revolt: Cheerleaders Violate Separation of Church and State?
Texas Chooses Science Over Secularist Dogma
What to Do With Enemies of the Constitution


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Pathetic Preaching Damages National Security

By Rick Pearcey • September 29, 2009, 08:50 PM

Dave Welch, founder of the U.S. Pastor Council, writes at WorldNetDaily:

One of the country's most articulate and credible voices on the threat of radical Islam within our borders stated last week that it is the greatest threat to our nation today beyond any other domestic issues we are addressing. In the strictly national security and geopolitical contexts, this person was right. As she stated, government takeover of health care and other industries are not a concern to those who are dead.

I'll have to admit, however, that my spirit rejected the notion that radical Islam is THE greatest threat to America any more than it was when Muhammad's hordes were sweeping on horseback through northern Africa, the Middle East and into western Europe a millennia ago. Imperialist Islam has been defeated and contained before and certainly can be again.

The question is whether there are as many Christians left in America willing to live and die for our faith, families and freedom as there are orthodox Muslims willing to kill and die for theirs.

The pathetic preaching that has created a generation of shallow, self-focused professing followers of Jesus Christ has done far more damage to our national security than any conspiracies of men of any religion or no religion, any race and any creed could do.

More . . .

Related
Francis Schaeffer: The Central Problem of Our Age
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Voice

Video: Community Organizers Appear to "Pray" to Obama for Deliverance

By Rick Pearcey • September 29, 2009, 11:42 AM

Breitbart TV has this video of community organizers apparently praying to Barack Obama: "Hear Our Cry, Obama . . . Deliver Us, Obama . . ." But is this what they are saying? See update below.

Update -- See the following "Editor's Note" from Breitbart:

We've updated this post with the longer version of the original event. As you'll see in the comments and related links there is a debate over what is actually being said. Does the crowd say, "Hear our cry, Obama" and "Deliver us Obama?" Or are they saying "Oh God?" In the longer version the first two repetitions seem to have a distinct "uh" sound at the end that resonates as "Obama." The later repetitions are a little fuzzier. Did some of the religious leaders present become uneasy? Or was there a mix of what was being said? Read some of the blogger analysis below. What do you think?

Related
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
Cult in the City: Obama

Pastors Defy IRS Ban on Political Sermons

By Rick Pearcey • September 29, 2009, 11:18 AM

"A Christian advocacy group says about 80 pastors have preached partisan political sermons -- daring the Internal Revenue Service to revoke their churches' tax exempt status," reports AP.

Few actions seem more timely, more humane, more liberating, more biblical -- and more patriotic today -- than Americans questioning authority and defying government when it violates the Constitution, shreds the Declaration, and sets itself up as the Creator and source of human rights, including the right of free speech. 

And later on -- O Defiant Ones -- when your educated, free, creative, and responsible kids and grandkids full of life and humanity under God ask what you did in the war, you'll have something to say. The blessings of the fathers will be visited upon the children.   

Related
Politics From the Pulpit


Friday, September 4, 2009

Calling 1,000s to Courthouses 9/11 to Pray for New "Great Awakening"

By Rick Pearcey • September 4, 2009, 02:11 PM

"America is in need of a new 'Great Awakening' -- an awakening that some Christian leaders say can only come about if Christians get on their knees," reports CNSNews.com.

That's the view of Rev. William Wilson, who is executive director of the International Center for Spiritual Renewal (ICSR), quoted by CNSNews: 

America right now is facing great complexities. We have a financial struggle that we’re in, we’re facing health-care issues that have us scratching our heads. Our place in the world has shifted. We’re a nation that really needs help from beyond ourselves. We feel like God is the help.

ICSR is a member of the Awakening America Alliance, which CNSNews reports is sponsoring "Cry Out America," a September 11 event challenging thousands to "gather at noon [Friday] at county courthouses across the nation in repentance, to pray for the lost, to cry out for God to send another 'Great Awakening.'"

While free-thinking Americans watch, pray, and rebuild, here are three resources we think provide timely and essential content for national renewal:

* Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, by Mark Levin

* A Christian Manifesto (DVD), by Francis Schaeffer

* Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity, by Nancy Pearcey


Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Would-Be Va. Governor Flip-Flops on Conservative Stance

By Rick Pearcey • September 1, 2009, 07:48 AM

From OneNewsNow:

The head of a Virginia conservative group is asking Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell to clarify his stances on traditional values issues in light of his attempt to distance himself from a master's thesis he wrote for an evangelical Christian school 20 years ago.

Did McDonnell just lose the election?

Why Big Government Hates God

By Rick Pearcey • September 1, 2009, 07:05 AM

The U.S. government was once the "God-friendliest goverment in the whole world," writes Joseph Farah. "But as Washington's power and reach grew well beyond its constitutional restrictions, something happened."


Thursday, August 27, 2009

"God-Talking" Obama Plays the Clergy Card

By Rick Pearcey • August 27, 2009, 10:09 AM

Or "How to use meaningless but emotive religious symbols to manipulate Americans into supporting an un-Constitutional, anti-Declarational, inhumane, anti-Christian atrocity otherwise known as Obamacare."

In "The Obama Clergy Call," Jan LaRue of the American Civil Rights Union has much to say on this latest episode of "Wag the Clergy."

Speaking of "Wag the Clergy," the storyline goes something like this:

Here Clergy, Clergy, Clergy.

Fetch. Sit. Beg. Slobber. Rollover.

Good boy. Your stimulus check is in the mail.

For a humane alternative to this indignity, consider the reality-oriented Judeo-Christian worldview, rooted in information from a knowable and evidentially available Creator (the kind our Founding Fathers knew about but political manipulators despise).

It ain't about "religion" stuck inside Grandma's closet. But truth. For the whole person. Applied across the whole of life, including political life.

Free-thinkers, please see "Christmas Spirit in the Dirt." 


Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Should Martin Luther King on God's Law Be Taught in Public Schools?

By Rick Pearcey • August 26, 2009, 07:50 AM

"On the 46th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, Education Secretary Arne Duncan declined to say whether King’s view that just laws are based on God's law should be taught in public schools," reports CNSNews.com.
 
"In his famous 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' King expressed his classical belief, based on the teachings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the Founding Fathers, that a just law is a law that comports with the law of God and an unjust law is a law that does not comport with the law of God."

Comment: The real factor prohibiting the teaching about the Creator in the public schools is an imposed secularism, not the U.S. Constitution.

The real threat to liberty in America comes not from teaching about our true Creator, upon whom the American republic is founded.

No, the real threat derives from a secular state, which seeks to impose an alien, false, and inhumane ideology upon American life and thought.

In that un-American, unconstitutional and anti-Declarational world, Martin Luther King and his "Letter From Birmingham" will forever be at the back of the bus. 

Far better for free-thinking Americans to act upon our "unalienable rights" -- endowed not by some privatized, abstract religiousity, "faith," or "value," but by a living, factual, and rationally knowable Creator who is a public figure.

Far better to show secularist tryanny the door at the next bus stop.

Let freedom ride. Up front. 


Friday, August 21, 2009

Christian Girl Begs State: Don't Let Them Kill Me!

By Rick Pearcey • August 21, 2009, 08:41 AM

"A young Christian runaway in foster care awaits her hearing [today] when Florida authorities will decide whether she will be forced to return to her Muslim parents -- whom she says will kill her for converting to Christianity," reports WorldNetDaily.

She is just 17, and her name is Fathima Rifqa Bary.

"I'm fighting for my life," she says.

Here is Rifqa Bary on YouTube.


Monday, August 17, 2009

How Conservative Christians Are Losing the Culture War

By Rick Pearcey • August 17, 2009, 07:24 AM

Here's Daniel Allott's take, writing at American Specator:

Religious conservatives have become a consequential force over the last few years by engaging in politics to defend the values of sexual restraint, marital fidelity and respect for human life.

That's a good thing.

But to win the culture war, their passion to defend these values in public policy must be matched by an equal amount of passion to live them in their own lives.


Monday, August 10, 2009

America Rising Against Tyranny

By Rick Pearcey • August 10, 2009, 09:14 AM

A defiant Craig Smith writes:

Recent media coverage of Americans speaking up with their concerns about the proposed health care legislation finally removes any doubt that those on the hard Left side of the Democratic aisle hate anything that remotely resembles traditional America.

When Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin protested the Bush administration they were heralded as brave Americans who loved their country enough to speak truth to power. They were treated to a level of favorable coverage like we have never seen -- coverage normally reserved for Mother Teresa or Rosa Parks.

But let 200, 300 hard-working, play-by-the-rules, taxpaying, law-abiding citizens voice their opinions about a government that has a deaf ear to the people and we hear words like "Nazis," "paid plants," "GOP operatives," "right-wing wackos" and worse spewing from the mouths of Democratic leadership in Congress.

The ease in which they use such terms without any critical analysis by the press is very revealing.

Let's be clear: What is being attack by the current regime and its allies in the collaborationist press is not just a vague America of "yesteryear," "traditional America," the "America we grew up with," or the "America that you and I love."

What is hated and what is being attacked are the very foundations of human liberty: The Declaration of Independence, as written; the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights), as written; and the Judeo-Christian philosophy of life, rooted and verified in history, which alone gives a consistent and adequate basis for human dignity and liberty across the whole of life, including poltical life.

On this sure and sacred basis, the American people have a duty, an obligation, and a calling, under God, to resist, to rise up, and to cast out the intruder in our midst. And to move forward on the basis of those timeless emancipatory prescriptions of liberty famously celebrated every July 4. 


Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Christians Burned to Death After Koran "Defiled"

By Rick Pearcey • August 4, 2009, 09:57 AM

"Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burned to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas," reports the UK Times.


Monday, August 3, 2009

Episcopalians Nominate 2 Homosexual Priests for Assistant Bishop of LA

By Rick Pearcey • August 3, 2009, 11:17 AM

From AP:

The Rev. John L. Kirkley of San Francisco and the Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool of Maryland will be among six candidates on the ballot when lay people and clergy vote in December, despite a long-standing request from world Anglican leaders for a moratorium on consecrating openly gay bishops.

Related
Betraying Christ
Perez Hilton: Foul Face of "Gay" Activism


Saturday, August 1, 2009

Pope Plans Christmas Album

By Rick Pearcey • August 1, 2009, 08:53 AM

Singing chants in the Vatican, reports the Telegraph.

Will he do the Letterman show?

Army Secretary Nominee Dumbs Down Chaplains' Role

By Rick Pearcey • August 1, 2009, 08:34 AM

From AP:

The congressman nominated to become Secretary of the Army says chaplains must be careful to give non-sectarian blessings and avoid proselytizing in non-worship assemblies.

From God:

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

Related
"Jesus" Banned, So Chaplain Resigns
Secularist Washington-Centrism Is Un-American


Thursday, July 30, 2009

Banana-Eating Jungle Monkeys

By Rick Pearcey • July 30, 2009, 11:18 AM

A policeman can be fired for calling a black man a "banana-eating jungle monkey."

But a scientist can be fired for not calling Man a "banana-eating jungle monkey."

The former penalizes people for their racism; the latter penalizes people for their lack of evolutionism. 

A bit odd, don't you think?

After all, if the evolutionary picture is the whole show, is not Mankind per se a "banana-eating jungle monkey"? Or at least a close cousin?

Racism is evil.

But we learn that from our true Creator. Not from nature.

Not from an impersonal, indifferent cosmos.

And not from the monkeys, from the bananas, from the jungle, or from those who believe in them. 

Surely, you understand the difference.

Our Founders did: "Endowed by our Creator . . ."

It takes a Creator to start a country. Well, at least a country worth living in.


Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Evil Religious Former Presidents Believe

By Rick Pearcey • July 23, 2009, 07:31 AM

Columnist Cal Thomas shares a few of his concerns regarding former Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter:

. . . who once attended and occasionally taught a Sunday school class in Washington, which I visited, then claimed to believe much of what Scripture teaches. In practice, though, he was pro-choice on abortion and recently announced his support for same-sex "civil unions." He says he sees nothing prohibitive in Scripture to such arrangements. Carter must have gotten hold of a Reader's Digest condensed version.

Carter has announced he is leaving the Southern Baptist Convention -- the nation's largest Protestant body -- because he claims it treats women as inferior to men. In a statement he said, "At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities."

Carter must have missed the passage about mutual submission between married couples and the requirement that a man love his wife "as Christ loved the church," a very high standard that implies such love be equal to the self-sacrifice demonstrated by Christ on the cross. Such sacrifice can hardly justify any of the sins against women that Carter unfairly ascribes to the Southern Baptist Convention.

Related
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
Betraying Christ: Obama Affirms Perverted Sex


Monday, July 20, 2009

Note to Church: Pray Dirty Harry Prayers for Our Nation

By Rick Pearcey • July 20, 2009, 09:37 AM

Central to a free-thinking citizen's resistance to un-Godly oppression in an "Obama-driven nation" is a not-so-new "Go ahead, make my day" kind of prayer, according to uppity pastor/columnist prayer warrior Doug Giles:

You must add to your repertoire of petitions you offer up to God Almighty what I like to call Dirty Harry prayers: radical prayers against the radically unrighteous direction our nation is headed. You heard me right. I said pray against this fetid mess.

Read the entire column at Townhall.


Monday, July 13, 2009

Joseph Farah: "I Agree With Rick Warren!"

By Rick Pearcey • July 13, 2009, 08:37 AM

Writing at WorldNetDaily, this from Joseph Farah:

Rick Warren told the Islamic Society of North America last week that he is not interested in interfaith dialogue; he's only interested in interfaith projects.

I agree with Rick Warren.

So let's get started. I have a project to suggest. It's very simple. It's very straightforward. I think it's a great starting point for Christian-Muslim action.

Let's get Muslims to stop killing and oppressing Christians and Jews around the world.

That would be the speech I would deliver to a group such as the Islamic Society of North America, a front group for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, which has incubated and supported terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida and Hamas.

More from "I Agree With Rick Warren!" . . .  

Related:
Warren Panders to Muslim Group, Omits Gospel
Wildmon: Carrie Prejean vs. Rick Warren
Rick Warren's Holy Week Crisis


Thursday, July 9, 2009

Warren Panders to Muslim Group, Omits Gospel

By Rick Pearcey • July 9, 2009, 09:38 AM

"The leader of a Messianic Jewish ministry has written an open letter to mega-church pastor Rick Warren in response to his address to a Muslim group with terrorist connections during its annual convention over the Fourth of July weekend," reports OneNewsNow.

"Warren . . . agreed to appear at the recent convention of the Islamic Society of North America and be part of its main session discussing the convention's theme -- 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.' He told the gathering of 8,000 that 'Muslims and Christians can work together for the common good without compromising my convictions or your convictions.'

"Jan Markell, founder of Olive Tree Ministries, comments on Warren's remarks," according to OneNewsNow:

"I'm sorry, that kind of a 'let's all get along' [solution] is not possible -- and what he needed to do was tell them the truth," she contends. "But that is not what Rick Warren does. He does not tell the truth, at least not when he's outside of his Saddleback Church."

More from "Warren Panders to Muslim Group, Omits Gospel" . . .


Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Sotomayor Supported Censoring Bible Verse on Homosexuality From NYC Billboard

By Rick Pearcey • July 8, 2009, 08:32 AM

"Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is again drawing fire from conservative groups, this time as the result of a 2003 ruling against a Christian group," reports CNSNews.com.
 
"In the case of Okwedy v. Molinari, decided in 2003, Sotomayor sat on a three-judge panel that upheld a lower court’s ruling (from 2001) against Keyword Ministries and its pastor, Kristopher Okwedy. The ministry had purchased billboard advertisements featuring Bible verses that condemned homosexuality."

Related:
Rush: Sotomayor the "Antithesis of a Judge"
To Obama and Sotomayor: Keep Your Tyranny Off Our Constitution


Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Betraying Christ: Obama Affirms Perverted Sex

By Rick Pearcey • July 7, 2009, 08:29 AM

It's rather odd, but entirely in tune with modern-day secular religion, to see the present occupant of the White House claim he is a "Christian" and yet affirm so much that flatly, and sadly, contradicts the content, character, mood, and philosophic worldview of Jesus of Nazareth.

We turn to skeptical Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, evaluating -- as he should and as every human being in principle is called to do -- Barack Obama's recent affirmation of sexual perversion a la the imposition of private homosexist "values" upon American society. Farah writes:

He has already managed to scrap the Constitution as a consideration in his policymaking plans. I have no doubts he would like us all to forget about the immutable standards put forth by the God of the universe in his Holy Word.

Barack Hussein Obama and his acolytes don't like being accountable to a higher authority. Obama would like to be the highest standard. He's one of those people the Bible describes as "being wise in his own eyes."

As Paul explained in Romans, homosexuality is not a "lifestyle." It's a judgment. When a society changes the truth of God into a lie and worships the creature more than the Creator, that society is given over to vile affections. That's where we are in the United States of America today.

Go here to read the entirety of Farah's column titled, "Worn Arguments and Old Attitudes."

Related:
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
Cult in the City: Obama
Breitbart, Rush, and the Cult of Secular Politics


Friday, July 3, 2009

The Declaration of Independence

By Rick Pearcey • July 3, 2009, 10:56 AM

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, 

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.


Thursday, July 2, 2009

The Curse of Comfortable Christians

By Rick Pearcey • July 2, 2009, 09:12 AM

Jane Chastain at WorldNetDaily issues a trumpet call to those who, unlike Christian President John Adams, are sleep-walking and hot-dogging it through July 4, in careless violation of their dignity as free human beings called to live in community with our Creator and our neighbors across the whole of life, including political life.

Those kind of carefree days and simple-minded celebrations may be gone for the foreseeable future. Especially if you envision a future worth foreseeing.

Remember: Politics -- not to mention little things like freedom and the survival of a nation -- is too important to be left to the vote-grubbers. 

To see how real hope and real change might begin on July 5, read Chastain's article here.


Thursday, June 25, 2009

Social Conservatives Falling Down

By Rick Pearcey • June 25, 2009, 09:21 AM

From the Washington Times:

Social conservatives, the once-powerful force that focused the Republican agenda on moral virtue and family values, have suffered a diminished brand on the national political landscape as a steady stream of their icons have fallen prey to the vices they once preached against.

Extramarital affairs, gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution and sexual pursuit of minors have taken a toll on the GOP.

Related:
Rick Warren's Holy Week Crisis
Plagiarism: Pretend People, Fake Work
Pastoral Plagiarism
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach


Monday, June 22, 2009

CNN Video: "Death of Neda" Becomes Symbol of Iranian Protests

By Rick Pearcey • June 22, 2009, 10:08 AM

This chilling video from Iran demonstrates something about the price of freedom, something about the high personal cost of standing up to government tyranny.

Our Founders understood something about this. Do we here at home in the U.S.?

Or have secularized Americans and "Christian" presidents such as Barack Hussein Obama forgotten about unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? Those real human rights, of course, violate the "separation of church and state" written into the "living" U.S. Constitution by the likes of the ACLU.

If that rewrite of history and the Constitution stands, then it may be Tehran today, but America tomorrow, for ideas have consequences. And bad ideas can have evil consequences.

If we despise the Founding Vision -- as elites and secularists preach and teach in Washington, Hollywood, Media, and academia -- one wonders on what basis American individuals and families can really hope to maintain their freedom and dignity.

Related:
If Sam Adams Had a Bulldozer
Jon Voight Calls for Resistance to "Obama Oppression"
Independence Day Tea Party Tally Explodes


Thursday, June 11, 2009

Dictatorship Watch: Holocaust Museum Shooter a Christian-Hating Socialist

By Rick Pearcey • June 11, 2009, 01:05 PM

Racists, socialists, Marxists, and fascists red and yellow, black and white may want to hold onto their seats and secure their pews.

Writing at Frontpage magazine, Ben Johnson makes the case that "longtime neo-Nazi" James Wenneker Von Brunn "was . . . not . . .     a . . . conservative."

Moreover, writes Johnson, the murder suspect "denounced the Christian faith as a dastardly Jewish conspiracy" and as a "'HOAX' invented by the Apostle Paul to 'DESTROY ROMAN CULTURE' from within by undermining its pagan virility." (Note: The CAPS above, as Johnson points out, "appear in the original.")

One does not mean to be redundant, but the stereotype-challenging information Johnson provides may also upset members of a) the Collaborationist Press and b) the Obama administration.

Why? Because, sadly and tyrannically, many of these folks are also "Christian-Haters." 

They constitute an elitist, secularist axis of those who despise -- in contradistinction to the genius of the Founding Fathers and the Founding Vision -- the humane, liberating, and dictatorship-challenging application of Creator-rooted information and thoughtforms to the public square.

Their way, including the Obama way, is the end of America the free.

The end of their way opens the door to humanity and dignity under God again. That's what the Declaration and Constitution are all about.

According to the evidence, Von Brunn hates this. As does the Washington-Centric establishment.

Related:
Jon Voight Calls for Resistance to "Obama Oppression"
Question the Collaborationist Media
Obama Nation's Low View of Christianity
The Evil Religious Presidents Do


Friday, June 5, 2009

Schaeffer Son Tries to Pin Tiller's Murder on His Father Francis Schaeffer

By Rick Pearcey • June 5, 2009, 10:10 AM

John Sexton writes at Verum Serum:

No surprise to those who’ve followed his career. Franky Schaeffer has found a new way to drag his father’s name through the mud, this time by blaming him for the murder of Dr. Tiller.

More on "Franky Schaeffer Dishonestly" . . .

Related:
Franky Schaeffer Plays Schaeffer Card, Again
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach
What Can We Learn From Francis Schaeffer?
Francis Schaeffer: "The Central Problem of Our Age"
Telegraph: U.S. Religious Right Concedes Defeat
Michelangelo, Schaeffer, and the Kingdom of Washington


Thursday, May 28, 2009

Should Christians Resist Tyranny?

By Rick Pearcey • May 28, 2009, 09:57 AM

"Whenever I question the timidity of today's church in America," writes Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily, "I receive lectures accusing me of violating a biblical principle that supposedly provides a blanket condemnation of Christian resistance to tyranny. . . . 

"Perhaps there is no better time than now to revisit this issue -- as we approach America's Independence Day and our nation moves ever closer to tyranny, this time directed not from London but from our own nation's capital."

More from Farah on "Should Christians Resist Tyranny?" 

Related:
Tyranny Watch: When Government Attacks
What About Obama, Mussolini, and the Unmentionable Herr Hitler?
The Evil Religious Presidents Do


Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Calif. Court Upholds Ban on Homosex "Marriage"

By Rick Pearcey • May 27, 2009, 10:57 AM

From the Washington Times:

Both sides of the debate over same-sex marriage said Tuesday's California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8, the second defeat in a row for gay-marriage supporters, may have ended the legal battle on the ballot initiative but not the fight over the issue.

In a 6-1 decision, the court rejected arguments that the November ballot measure amending the state constitution to state that marriage is the union of one man and one woman violated the "inalienable" rights of same-sex couples to marry. The justices, however, did let stand the same-sex marriages performed before the initiative's passage.

Two comments:

1) The court is correct in rejecting the attempt to claim homosexual "marriage" as an inalienable right. Inalienable rights, as the Declaration of Independence affirms, are ontological derivatives rooted in the Creator, in whose image human beings are made. That same Creator makes clear, in historical and ethical information He communicates in the verifiable data of the Old and New Testaments, that marriage is a liberating circle of life-long fidelity and community for male and female.

2) The California court is incorrect to allow homosexist "marriages" performed before the passage of Prop 8 to stand, for those "marriages" are only social constructs that have no real moral or, ultimately, legal validity. Relying on high-sounding but hollow religious and public relations absolutes such as "equality" and "tolerance," monophysicalist unions violate the moral character of the ultimate Lawgiver, that self-same Creator whom the Founding Fathers recognized as the source of inalienable rights in the first place. 

See also:
Secularist Washington-Centrism Is Un-American


Monday, May 25, 2009

ACLU "Dead Wrong" on Vet Cross

By Rick Pearcey • May 25, 2009, 10:50 AM

"Some see it as the universal symbol of sacrifice in World War I, others see it as the undisputed sign of Christianity, but it will be up to the Supreme Court to make a final determination as to whether a 7-foot cross remains standing in a California desert to memorialize war veterans," reports the Washington Times.

"The cross was first erected in 1934 in what is now the federally protected Mojave Desert Preserve by a group of veterans whose doctors advised them that the desert heat would help them recover from shell shock.

"Veterans today say this war memorial and others like it across the country that use religious symbols are under attack by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)."

More on "ACLU 'Dead Wrong' on Vet Cross" . . .


Wednesday, May 20, 2009

"Patriot Pastors" Challenged to Crush "Hate Crimes" Bill

By Rick Pearcey • May 20, 2009, 09:59 AM

"America has become a morally bankrupt society that embraces intolerance against Christians, including a new push for 'hate crimes' legislation, according to one pastor who believes it's all because church leaders have failed to do their jobs," reports WorldNetDaily. 

"But this Memorial Day weekend he is calling ministers to fight for those freedoms -- from their pulpits." (emphasis added)

More on "Patriot Pastors" at WND . . . 

Related
Admitted: "Hate Crimes" an "Invention"
Clergy in the Crosshairs
Beauty and the Beast: Resisting the Reactionary Extremism of Perez Hilton


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Pearcey and Prejean at WorldNetDaily

By Rick Pearcey • May 19, 2009, 04:28 PM

In case you missed it, WND recently linked (scroll down) to "Beauty and the Beast: Now This Is Extremism," with the following kicker: "Rick Pearcey: Miss California Has Upheld Founders' 'Humane and Liberating Worldview.'"

Here's the article at Pro-Existence.


Monday, May 18, 2009

Farah: Obama Wants Civil Dialogue Over Murder of Unborn Humans

By Rick Pearcey • May 18, 2009, 07:48 AM

Go ahead. Make Nice. But Notre Dame party-spoiler Joseph Farah of WND chooses not to play by Obama's pathetic, inhumane, and bloody rules:

If I were presiding over a public policy that called for the murder of unborn babies for any reason or no reason at all, that provided mandatory public funding of those procedures both domestically and in foreign countries, that required doctors and nurses to perform abortions even if they were conscientiously opposed, that permitted experimentations on living human embryos, that promoted even partial-birth abortions outside the womb and that called for the extermination of infants who somehow defied all the odds and managed to survive efforts to kill them before birth, I guess I would want to frame the debate in such a way as to diminish the hideous monstrousness of my morally indefensible position.

He doesn't really want people who recognize what abortion is to approach the debate with "open hearts." He wants us to harden our hearts.  

More on "The Blowback of Notre Dame," by Joseph Farah at WND . . .

Related
Obama OKs Killing Unborn in Notre Dame Speech
Episcopalian High Priestess: "Abortion Is a Blessing!"

What About Obama, Mussolini, and the Unmentionable Herr Hitler?
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
How to Argue Like a Fascist
American Fascism: Obama and Mussolini

Obama OKs Killing Unborn in Notre Dame Speech

By Rick Pearcey • May 18, 2009, 06:47 AM

"After receiving an honorary doctorate in law at the University of Notre Dame’s graduation ceremony yesterday, President Barack Obama delivered a speech to the school's graduating seniors that sought to legitimize his position in favor of the legal killing of unborn children," reports Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com.

"Obama told the graduates of the nation’s most well-known Catholic university that abortion 'has both moral and spiritual dimensions' -- although he did not explain why he had made this conclusion -- and made it quite clear that, even so, he has no intention of moving from his position that it ought to be legal for a pregnant mother to have a doctor kill her unborn child for literally any reason at any stage of pregnancy."

More on Obama at Notre Dame from CNSNews.com.

Related
Episcopalian High Priestess: "Abortion Is a Blessing!"
What About Obama, Mussolini, and the Unmentionable Herr Hitler?
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
How to Argue Like a Fascist
American Fascism: Obama and Mussolini


Thursday, May 14, 2009

Coulter: Liberal Taliban Issue Fatwa Against Miss California

By Rick Pearcey • May 14, 2009, 09:19 AM

Ann Coulter writes:

Not even Dick Cheney can incite the blood-curdling rage of liberals at the sight of a sexy Evangelical Christian. Paula Jones, Katherine Harris, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and, most recently, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, have all come under a frenzy of attacks from liberals.
   
Christians are supposed to be fat, balding sweaty little men with bad complexions. It's liberals who are supposed to be the sexy ones. (I know that from watching "The West Wing" and all movies starring Julia Roberts.)
   
But sadly for liberals, in real life, the fat, balding sweaty little guy with the bad complexion is Perez Hilton and the smoking-hot babe is Carrie Prejean.

More . . .

Related
Seriously Hot: The Carrie Prejean Story
Shuster Asks, "Can I Vomit?"
Miss California on Liberty Live Radio
Centrist Miss California Told to Shut Up "About Your Faith"
Resisting the Reactionary Extremism of Perez Hilton
BBC: On Murdering Miss California
Wildmon: Carrie Prejean vs. Rick Warren
Rosie's Coat


Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Barack Obama: The Quintessential Liberal Fascist

By Rick Pearcey • May 12, 2009, 08:05 AM

"While the left has been indulging and fostering the 'Bush Is Hitler' meme, they have just put a genuine ideological fascist heir in the White House," writes Kyle-Anne Shiver at American Thinker.

"There is an inherent danger in making scurrilous comparisons (as were perpretated unceasingly against George W. Bush), but there seem to be some very worrisome signs in the rise of Barack Obama that we Americans would be foolish to ignore."

More on Barack Obama: The Quintessential Liberal Fascist . . .

Related:
Can Obama Be an Economic Fascist?
Fascism Watch: Village Voice and Pro-Existence
American Fascism: Obama and Mussolini
National Obama Socialism
Regarding "Change" -- Liberals Drink Deeply From Fascist Well
Fascism Is Back
The Evil Religious Presidents Do



Friday, May 8, 2009

Episcopalian High Priestess: "Abortion Is a Blessing!"

By Rick Pearcey • May 8, 2009, 08:13 AM

"The Rev. Katherine Ragsdale will soon become the first female president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts," writes Mark Tooley at American Spectator.  

In addition to a sermon in which the "openly lesbian" (what bravery!) Ms. Ragsdale exclaimed the "blessing" derived from one class of humanity being able to destroy another class of humanity, she has on occasion "boasted" before the congressional gods of the Federal Empire "of chauffeuring a 15-year-old girl to get an abortion and vowed to do so again, no matter the law, because the 'vows' of her ordination supposedly require it," says Tooley.

PR is key when advocating such inhumanity out of accord with real Christianity and the American founding. "However provocative Ragdale's pronouncements often are," Tooley writes, "she is in demeanor calm and polished and seemingly disciplined."

In short: No sudden moves, "seemingly." Unless, you're a "doctor" at work in an aborcentration center on a mission from god. That's where Ms. Ragsdale's "blessings" are "safe, rare, and legal" -- unless you happen to be on the wrong end of the safety. "No sudden moves" is absolutey vital here: Baring teeth too soon, or in public, may scare the horses.  



Thursday, May 7, 2009

Tancredo: Obama "Truly a Cult Leader"

By Rick Pearcey • May 7, 2009, 07:31 AM

On Radio America, former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo said:

You have to admit, he is a cult leader and the cult will go with him anywhere he wants to go.

You just don't know about the size of the cult, how big it is, if it's shrinking or growing, but he is a cult leader and you have to realize that he's not just a political figure, he is truly a cult leader.

Much of politics today is divorced from a careful consideration of fact, logic, constitutional limits on power, and liberty as defined by the American founding. That we are left much of the time with recourse to cults of personality, hyped agendas, ideological passions, and raw power is hardly surprising. Or welcome.

As the American founders understood, a free-thinking people living in community with our true Creator will throw off this undignified nose-pulling that struts the world as some kind of "cool."



Monday, May 4, 2009

Pearcey Jolts Atlanta Journal-Constitution Writer/Editor on Miss California

By Rick Pearcey • May 4, 2009, 12:03 PM

It seems that accurately locating the affirmations of Miss California Carrie Prejean at the philosophic center of the American experiment in liberty was a bit much for Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Over the top," said Galloway.

Galloway describes himself as a "writer and editor with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 30 years," and he writes a blog called "Political Insider." He was responding to a column in RedState titled Beauty and the Beast: The Reactionary Extremism of Perez Hilton, also published at Pro-Existence, here

Note also this strange comment from a fellow who thinks I'm a "foreigner" who "would do well to draw from the actual well of Our Founders’ writing." He suggests I leave the country. 

Well, I think I've done well by the commenter and perhaps even Mr. Galloway. As a Christian, Miss Prejean affirms the existence of a Creator, as does the Declaration of Independence, which expresses the basic worldview and mission statement of the Founders of the United States. Both positions relate the Creator to questions of public life, including government and politics.

Miss California, therefore, is operating within the same philosophic universe as that shared by our Founders. She occupies the middle ground, the "center," as it were.

Those such as Perez Hilton who reject the application of verifiable information from the Creator to public life, including politics, operate in a totally different philosophic universe. In both outbursts and outlook, they are the extremists. 



Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Miss California on Liberty Live Radio Today

By Rick Pearcey • April 29, 2009, 11:45 AM

Miss California Carrie Prejean, who recently stood up for the moral fact of the superiority of the Creator's objective norms for human marriage over against the subjective inventions and impositions of the secular homosexual establishment, will appear on nationally syndicated radio today at 4-5:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time.

Prejean will join hosts Mat Staver and Matt Barber on Liberty Live, a video broadcast that can be accessed online at American Family Radio and OneNewsNow.

Listeners who want to ask Miss California questions on air may call 866-963-2037.

It is worth noting that Prejean's comments in defense of marriage at the Miss USA pageant place her at the vital center of the American experiment in liberty under our true and knowable Creator. This affirmation of male and female in lifelong and liberating community under God has earned Miss Prejean the scorn of intolerant extremists such as Perez Hilton, whose pro-homosexualist, anti-Judeo-Christian worldview could never have yielded the "the blessings of liberty" that alarm tryants past, present, and future. 

Related:
Centrist Miss California Told to Shut Up "About Your Faith"
BBC: On Murdering Miss California
Resisting the Reactionary Extremism of Perez Hilton
Wildmon: Carrie Prejean vs. Rick Warren
Limbaugh vs. Obama



Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Wildmon: Carrie Prejean vs. Rick Warren

By Rick Pearcey • April 28, 2009, 10:18 AM

In short, "America's Pastor" needs to grow a backbone. A 21-year-old California blonde might be able to show him how. Here's Tim Wildmon's take

Related:
Centrist Miss California Told to Shut Up "About Your Faith"
BBC: On Murdering Miss California
Resisting the Reactionary Extremism of Perez Hilton
Limbaugh vs. Obama



Friday, April 24, 2009

Perez Hilton: Foul Face of "Gay" Activism

By Rick Pearcey • April 24, 2009, 09:47 AM

The following column is by Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action. Barber also co-hosts the nationally syndicated “Liberty Live” talk radio program on AFR Talk. Brackets and ellipsis below indicate an editorial effort to keep Pro-Existence a family-friendly source of comment and analysis, an increasingly challenging proposition, given the rise of anti-family forces of secuarism and intolerance in the land, exemplified of late by a judge with the Miss USA pageant. 

You may have heard. During Sunday’s Miss USA pageant openly “gay” activist and pageant judge Perez Hilton -- the self-styled “Queen of Media” -- ambushed Carrie Prejean -- the openly Christian Miss California -- with a politically loaded question on so-called “same-sex marriage.” Prejean’s candid answer -- as both Hilton and Miss USA organizer Donald Trump later admitted -- likely cost her the crown. 

From the moment she opened her mouth, Prejean has given liberals a clinic in class.  Hilton, on the other hand (a.k.a. Mario Armando Lavandeira), has provided the world a sneak peek into the soul of homosexual activism.  

This is one for the up-is-down-black-is-white hall of fame. The media’s fabricated flap over Prejean’s answer -- a public defense of legitimate marriage -- has a reasonable America scratching its collective noggin in stunned disbelief. Not because of the answer she gave Perez -- which was both well received by the pageant audience and overwhelmingly shared by about 70% of Americans -- but, rather, because of Hilton’s hate-filled, misogynistic response to her answer and the disgraceful, knee-jerk defense of that response by liberals in Hollywood, the media, and organized homosexuality. 

After Hilton asked the lovely and talented Miss California whether “every state” should legalize “same-sex marriage,” Prejean responded: “In my country, in my family . . . I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be  -- between a man and a woman.”

Oh the humanity!

Evidently this was not the rooty-tooty-fresh-n’-fruity answer Hilton -- the creepy valley girl wannabe with a five o’clock shadow -- had hoped for. He promptly marked Prejean’s score card with a zero, plopped down in front of the television cameras and began blubbering away like a fussy little snot with a dirty diaper. 

Having already publicly called Prejean a “dumb b----,” he then yammered to a sympathetic Norah O’Donnell on MSNBC that not only was he refusing to apologize he was actually “thinking the C-word.” This, of course, one of the vilest things anyone can call a woman. Yet, rather than taking Hilton to task for the boy lover’s girl-hating poison, O’Donnell joined in on the bash-fest, criticizing Prejean for her traditional view.    

But Hilton wasn’t done yet. Ramping up his vicious attack on the Christian California bombshell, our lispy-wispy lil’ cupcake dove headlong into the annals of dirt-baggery lore. He defaced a photo of Prejean on his weblog scribbling . . . a crude depiction of [male anatomy].

How did Prejean react?

While talking to Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show she said, “I knew at that moment after I answered the question, I knew, I was not going to win because of my answer, because I had spoken from my heart, from my beliefs and for my God. . . . I wouldn't have answered it differently. The way I answered may have been offensive. With that question specifically, it's not about being politically correct. For me it was being biblically correct.”

On the Fox News Channel’s Hannity program, Prejean shared, “You know, I forgive him. I know that he's angry for whatever reason. I know there must be a bigger issue going on in his life.”

Like I said -- Class.  

Still, Perez Hilton -- Hollywood’s frothy-potty-mouthed little drama queen -- isn’t alone in his hatred for Prejean or the three-fourths of Americans who share her opposition to the novel and incongruous concept of “gay marriage.”   

For example, Wayne Besen, a prominent leader in the homosexual activist community, unbelievably went on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor to defend Hilton. He picked up Hilton’s anti-Christian torch, incredibly charging that it was Prejean, not Hilton, whose millennia-old recognition of biblical marriage “was divisive.” Besen then added insult to injury and revealed his true rainbow colors by tagging the 70% of Americans who oppose “gay marriage” as “bigots.” 

This whole hateful affair provides the perfect metaphor for the current divide between defenders of traditional sexual morality and the extremist “queer” activist movement. As Congress debates the constructive repeal of both the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of “equal protection under the law” and the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion through passage of discriminatory and wholly unnecessary “hate crimes” legislation, this little episode once again reminds us that the self-described champions of “tolerance” and “diversity” are the most intolerant and hateful among us. 

How soon we forget. Just hearken back a few months to the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which restored the definition of natural marriage to the Golden State. There we all played witness to “gay” activist calls for church burnings, Mormon Temple vandalism, death threats against Prop 8 supporters and quasi-riotous assaults against peaceful Christian marriage supporters. 

So, insofar as liberals continue to dig their own hole by defending Hilton and piling on Prejean, I submit they’re doing the other 70% of us a favor. In their biting anger, they’ve cast aside the sublime mask of “tolerance,” revealing an ugly, desperate and most intolerant countenance below.   

For that, I say thank you. For your treatment of Carrie Prejean, I say shame on you.

Related:
Beauty and the Beast: Resisting the Reactionary Extremism of Perez Hilton
Miss California: "God Was Testing My Faith"
Open Lesbian, CNN Anchor, Defends Miss America Judge
Anderson Cooper and the Crisis of Journalism



Thursday, April 23, 2009

Obama's Torture Policy for Pre-Born Americans

By Rick Pearcey • April 23, 2009, 08:35 AM

From George Neumayr at American Spectator:

Obama's liberalism is not an opponent of human rights abuses but an embodiment of them. The CIA restricts itself to methods far less ruthless than those permitted by the platform of the Democratic Party. When will Obama bring his own platform into line with the Geneva Accords?  

Related:
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
Chris Matthews: Pro-Life "Verbal Terrorism"



Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Miss California: "God Was Testing My Faith"

By Rick Pearcey • April 21, 2009, 09:10 AM

Her affirmation of the Creator's objective, verifiable, public, and liberating norm for married life in reply to a homosexual "marriage" question from judge Perez Hilton helped make Carrie Prejean the "most famous runner-up in Miss USA history."

But what was that blonde girl thinking?

There she was . . . publicly proclaiming foundational moral truth about marriage. So tyrannical.

There she was . . . taking a social stand that places her at the philosophical center of the American experiment in liberty and unalienable rights under God. So extreme.

There she was . . . daring to resist mass-marketed peer pressure and the unbending demands of tolerance. So rebellious.  

In all fairness, let us ask: Who does the uppity individual Miss Prejean think she is, brazenly resisting the secularist status quo?

And for all we know she's pro-life. That would fit the profile. Speaking of profiles, that "Right-Wing Extremism" report from the Department of Homeland Security, headed up by Janet Napolitano, couldn't have been more timely. 

Who now can doubt that the American people need to be educated and prepared to allow the federal government to deal with blonde bombshells, free-thinking individuals, constitutionalists, and other potential terrorists at large in the forward-looking land of change?

It's no accident: Only last week we had those Tea Parties. And now this pageant. Who knows what might be coming down the pike?

Yes, there is much to consider in the defense of America. Meanwhile, here's an exclusive interview with Carrie Prejean at FoxNews.com. 



Thursday, April 16, 2009

What Religion Is Joel Osteen?

By Rick Pearcey • April 16, 2009, 09:07 AM

It's the kind of question both journalists and Christians might want to ask. With "lukewarm pretenders" on his mind, Joseph Farah writes

Sometimes I get confused watching these mega-church preachers.

Are they reading the same Bible I'm reading?

Do they really have an intimate relationship with the same Jesus I know?

Is the Holy Spirit actually working within them -- providing the kind of discernment He promises believers?

These questions came to mind while watching Joel Osteen and his lovely wife, Victoria, on CNN's "Larry King Live" last week. . . .



Wednesday, April 15, 2009

T-Day -- April 15, 2009: "Americans today storm the beaches . . . "

By Rick Pearcey • April 15, 2009, 09:41 AM

Americans today storm the beaches to liberate a once-free land now under the heel of statist tyranny emanating from a foreign city in a land far, far away.

There will be casualities, ebbs and flows, and setbacks in the struggle against an oppressive empire. But we've seen this before, and, under God -- the living and verifiable Creator who endows every mother's son and daughter with "certain unalienable rights" -- we will win. There is no alternative.

Slavery in exchange for the forbidden fruit of Washington-centric "security" and "fairness" dolled out by a regime of secularist "values," political greed, and unquenchable thirst for power is no option for any self-respecting human being or his neighbor. We are better than this. We are created for higher things. And we will overcome.

Here's an offshore pre-invasion report from WND, noting that a "patriotic rocker, thousands more planning to 'take America back.'"

There goes a rocket even now. See the red glare?



Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Groveling Rick Warren Expresses Lack of Christian Mind

By Rick Pearcey • April 14, 2009, 10:16 AM

David Welch, founder of the U.S. Pastor Council, writes:

Whether it is Warren groveling before the militant sexual diversity power structure, Osteen floundering in whether eternal salvation through Jesus Christ is the only way or Wallis, Campolo and the other mouthpieces of the religious left serving as spiritual advisers to a Marxist president -- the American pulpit is indeed at a critical crossroads.   

See also:
Rick Warren's Holy Week Crisis


Limbaugh Blasts Gerson Take on Extremist Obama

By Rick Pearcey • April 14, 2009, 09:40 AM

"President Barack Obama's recent appointment of Harry Knox to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships adds another redundant nail to the coffin of the irresponsible myth that he is a bipartisan unifier," David Limbaugh writes.

"In light of the daily outpouring of evidence, one wonders whether our 'moderate' Republican Obama apologists will ever admit their error in willingly suspending their disbelief in Obama's radical leftism all because of what Michael Gerson refers to as 'his moderate instincts and conciliatory temperament.'"

See also:
Spiritual Warfare: Obama "Faith" Appointee Declares Bible "Not True" on Homosexuality



Monday, April 13, 2009

Telegraph: U.S. Religious Right Concedes Defeat

By Rick Pearcey • April 13, 2009, 03:13 PM

"Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle," reports the Telegraph.

"James Dobson, 72, who resigned recently as head of Focus on the Family -- one of the largest Christian groups in the country -- and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft, acknowledged the dramatic reverse for the religious Right in a farewell speech to staff."

Quoting Dobson (here is YouTube audio):

We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action. . . . We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.

One would do well not to accept this kind of reporting without a grain of salt. Having said that, if Christians want success in the culture war, they must drop the methods and practices of Madison Ave. (celebrityism, bigism, pretend authors, fake writers, phony columnists, fundraising-driven ministry, staffs who enable phony "thinking" "leaders") and embrace the methods and principles of the Lord's the the Lord's way, as Francis Schaeffer puts it in his No Little People (Try: real work by real people, for example). 

There's much more to be said, and we plan to say it, but for now, consider the following resources:

* "Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach" -- My view is that much of modern evangelicalism has missed or -- worse -- rejected perhaps the most important aspects of Schaeffer's prophetic, Biblical, profound, and humane insights regarding cultural engagement. 

* "True Spirituality and Christian Worldview," chapter 13 in Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Secular Captivity -- In light of the success, or lack thereof, of Christian cultural engagement, caring people may want to examine how the Lordship of Christ applies to one's methods of ministry. The discontinuity is alarming, to say the least. Frankly, if all I had to go on regarding the truth-claims of the Judeo-Chrisitan worldview is what I've seen of some "big time" Christian ministry up close and personal, I'd join Camus and the girls on the beach immediately.

* "The Church," chapter 13 in Schaeffer's True Spirituality -- I enjoy the Hodder and Stoughton edition. Or perhaps Crossway's Complete Works.


Maine Pastor Protests Taxation Without Representation

By Rick Pearcey • April 13, 2009, 10:54 AM

Rev. J. Curtis Lovelace writes:

On April 15, citizens around the nation will gather in "Tea Parties" to protest profligate spending of taxpayer money, by the elected "representatives" of the people. I will be among them. Let me first state that I am not against taxes. When they are used to meet the constitutionally-intended purposes for taxation, I am willing to put up my share. I am not willing to pay for unconstitutional activities. Nor am I willing to pay your share.

Many in the "movement" of tax protesters have stated that their complaint is not against taxation without representation as was the first Tea Party in Boston Harbor. That may be the case with those individuals. It is not my situation. I am unrepresented in Congress. Millions of others who wish to protect the Constitution of this country are also feeling disenfranchised.

More from Rev. Curt . . .


Rick Warren's Holy Week Crisis

By Rick Pearcey • April 13, 2009, 10:21 AM

In his handbook for living as a human being in a broken world with manipulative politicians, preachers, scientists, and used-car salesmen, the Creator liberates his fellow rebels against evil by exhorting them to "test everything" (1 Thess. 5:21).

Thus, Sandy Rios questions "America's Pastor" Rick Warren vis-a-vis his Larry Kingish running for the hills on the question of standing up for the Biblical, Gospel, and life-enhancing circle of life called marriage -- as between a man and a woman in community under God.

One might add, however, this to the Rios column: Let's refrain from calling Mr. Warren "America's Pastor." You can be his friend, his seminary classmate, etc., etc. I have never met Warren personally, and he may be a swell guy. But, please, "America's Pastor"? That's ridiculous.


Clergy in the Crosshairs

By Rick Pearcey • April 13, 2009, 09:18 AM

"A Texas congressman who is a former judge warns that the 'hate crimes' legislation reintroduced in the U.S. House could potentially lead to the arrest of Christian pastors who speak out against sexual immorality," reports OneNewsNow.

"Representatives John Conyers (D-Michigan) and Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) are sponsoring the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 1913), also known as the 'Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.' The bill would add sexual orientation to the list of categories covered under federal hate crime law. When Democrats passed the bill in 2007, they were divided over whether to add 'gender identity and expression' to the list."


GIVE Creating Obama Youth Brigades?

By Rick Pearcey • April 13, 2009, 08:34 AM

WND asks:

Supporters of an Americorps expansion plan pending in Congress laud its efforts to "leverage" federal dollars to boost state, local and other resources to "address national and local challenges," while critics say its fine print secretly would create an "Obama-styled army of community organizers modeled after Saul Alinsky's 'Peoples Organizations.'" So which is it?



Friday, April 10, 2009

Obama vs. Christian America

By Rick Pearcey • April 10, 2009, 08:38 AM

David Limbaugh corrects the record.


Campus Tyranny: Expulsion Threatened Over Prayer for Sick Teacher

By Rick Pearcey • April 10, 2009, 08:11 AM

Two college students in California prayed for a sick professor, with her consent. No question about it, says the College of Alameda: They should be kicked out. 



Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Osteens: Obama Doing Great Job, Loves the Lord

By Rick Pearcey • April 8, 2009, 03:08 PM

Joel and Victoria Osteen, interviewed by Larry King.


Farah Challenges Wishy-Washy Pastors

By Rick Pearcey • April 8, 2009, 11:20 AM

Beginning with The Rev. Rick Warren. The editor of WorldNetDaily steps all over Warren's soft shoe parade: 

America achieved its independence and freedom in the 18th century in large part because colonial pastors stood up for biblical principles, preached them, lived them and refused to back down from them -- even in the face of death.

The American War of Independence has been accurately called a "pulpit revolution" for this reason. It was inspired by great men of God who recognized evil and called it by its right name.

What a difference two centuries, combined with affluence and the corporatization of the 501(c)3 church culture has made.

A good example of this was on display on CNN's "Larry King Live" this week, as "America's Pastor" Rick Warren did a soft shoe act on his role in the same-sex marriage battle over Proposition 8 in California. . . . 

For more, go here.

See also: Video: Rick Warren -- "I Am Not an Anti-Gay Marriage Activist"


Spiritual Warfare: Obama "Faith" Appointee Declares Bible "Not True" on Homosexuality

By Rick Pearcey • April 8, 2009, 10:30 AM

CNSNews.com reports:

President Obama has named to his faith-based advisory council a self-professed Christian who holds that the New Testament's teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong -- which is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans -- “is not true."

The professed "Christian" appointee is Harry Knox, "one of 25 members of the advisory board of the White House Office Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Obama announced the formation of the office in early February, a continuation of a similar office started by President George W. Bush to issue federal grants to faith-based, non-profit charitable organizations," reports CNSNews.


Obama's Enemy: "Not Islam Abroad, But ..."

By Rick Pearcey • April 8, 2009, 09:46 AM

". . . Christianity at home."

Writing in American Spectator, here is George Neumayr on:

* The Obama Objective -- Liquidate Historic Christianity: "As far as Obama is concerned, the only religion to be 'reformed' -- which is to say destroyed -- is not the west's historic adversary but its progenitor. Islam is peaceful, he pronounces, while traditional Christianity is bigoted and dangerous. Islam is a friend to America, while traditional Christians are, as Obama supporter Tom Hanks described Proposition 8 supporters, 'un-American'."

* The Obama Ultimatum -- Follow Me, Not Christ: "Obama has in effect declared to Christians in America: either bring your understanding of Christianity into line with my liberalism or don't bother entering the public square. You want federal money? Well, then perform abortions, distribute condoms, hire homosexual activists, etc., etc. He would never dare talk to Muslims in those terms. He will give back ancestral swords to freed Muslims from Guantanamo Bay and hand forceps to Christian doctors."

* The Pathetic Response -- Dr. Obama: "If Muslims had to endure patronizing and lying secularist drivel from him like 'Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values,' they would riot. Cowed and secularized Christians just nod and offer him an honorary degree."

But here's a better way: Act Now -- In Praise of Tea Parties.



Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Nancy Pearcey Not Obama Faith Advisor

By Rick Pearcey • April 7, 2009, 04:58 PM

As noted by Julia Duin of the Washington Times.

Not that Nancy is looking for a White House appointment, but would it not be refreshing to have someone in the White House with a robust, humane, and rational Christian worldview who therefore can honestly affirm and protect the Founding Vision, the Declaration, and the U.S. Constitution?

The current regime, unfortunately but not surprisingly, may be a bit small and narrowed-minded for that kind of liberty. A free and brave people liberated by our True Creator can do better and that may well be something for which to work, pray, and build.


Video: Rick Warren -- "I Am Not an Anti-Gay Marriage Activist"

By Rick Pearcey • April 7, 2009, 11:04 AM

Here is video of Rick Warren's appearance on Larry King last night.

When Larry asks Warren about the Iowa court's repudiation of marriage, this: "I'm totally oblivious . . . not even my agenda . . ."

This strikes one as rather odd for a minister of the Gospel, for Christ clearly cared about family, marriage, and about male and female as both distinct partners in God-ordained community with eachother for life. He forgave sinners, but never tolerated sin. It's how you love people while acknowledging we live in a moral universe.

By way of contrast to some, despite being such a lovable, affable guy, a regular life-of-the-party guy, Jesus of Nazareth managed to get himself crucified. Quite purposefully, he took rather unpopular, offensive, intolerant, not-getting-on-Larry-King views on controversial matters. And the beautiful people of his day didn't like it one bit.  

So hardline was he that if you didn't maintain community with the Son of God, he promised your future would not be bright: 

Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of his father and of his holy angels. (Luke 9:26)

True enough, popular reverends get to be on Larry King, talk with presidents, oversee great big churches, pray before the kingdoms of this world, and sell lots of books. All for good causes, so really who can complain, who can question? Besides, half the money is given away to . . . well, you know the drill.

Silly Jesus. Talk about judgmental. He was one of "those" people that "hip" Christians know better than to be associated with when cameras are around. He knew about poverty -- but never let poor folk get away with demonizing those who were better off.

He knew about the hungry -- and he fed them miraculously with fish and loaves. But The Bread of Life never condemned people because they had full stomachs, big carbon footprints, and knew where their next meal was coming from. In fact, the reputed glutton and wine-drinker knew a thing about eating and drinking and celebrating. The politically correct people of his day hated him for it. Sometimes the guy hung with the scum of the earth.

He knew of course that the deeper problem wasn't that of preventing 1st century STDs, hunger, or poverty. But sin. Our great ability -- day in and day out -- to treat God as if he were some kind of pious symbol to be manipulated for political greed, religious gain, or private satisfaction. And there's that sin captured by our unending ability to treat others as so much fodder for the machine of our closed-down self-idolatry. 

Being one of "those people," intolerant Jesus managed to offend the powerful spiritual sensitives of his day. The esteemed people. The respected guides. Jesus was a guy without a press agent, and the klutz committed so many PR fumbles that the crowds turned against him and saw him nailed to a cross. Thank you, pagan faith-based office of Roman crucifixions.

If only he had been a sophisticated, nuanced evangelical squish with smiles in shirt sleeves.

But there he is. Scum of the scum of the earth. Not fit for the Green Room. Human leftovers stuck on a stick on a hill. Do you not realize how ugly, bloody, pathetic, and popular his crucifixion was? Maybe a TV preacher could have saved him. Get him a spot on cable TV, maybe a regular gig, an audience with a president. Save the world from hunger. Reimagine thine own divine self. Yeah, man, that's what I'm talkin' about. Abundant life. Oblivious.

Related:
Spineless, Silent Clergy
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach


Cal Thomas Right -- and Wrong -- About Christians in Politics

By Rick Pearcey • April 7, 2009, 08:04 AM

That's Dave Welch's take over at WND. What's yours?


Obama: Islam Has Shaped the USA

By Rick Pearcey • April 7, 2009, 07:46 AM

Robert Spencer at Frontpage observes and comments upon this from Mr. Obama:

"We will convey," said Barack Obama to the Turkish Parliament Monday, "our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world -- including my own country." (emphasis added)

Would Mr. Obama kindly explain just how Islam shaped the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution?

While we're at it, perhaps a reporter from the one or two remaining pro-statist hardcopy newspapers can ask Mr. Obama something like this: Sir, what is the evidence for your proposition?

Think of it, Mr. Reporter, as your good deed for the day. The Turks, among others, may be confused.



Monday, April 6, 2009

Proof That "Principled Christians Finished With Politics"?

By Rick Pearcey • April 6, 2009, 09:04 AM

After all, says Kathleen Parker, James Dobson "was captured on tape recently saying that the big cultural battles have all been lost."



Saturday, April 4, 2009

Silent Spineless Clergy Alert

By Rick Pearcey • April 4, 2009, 10:36 AM

Dear great spiritual leader of the flock, if a note like this appears nailed to your church door, fear not. Let your light shine.


Books: The Nazis Hated the Christians

By Rick Pearcey • April 4, 2009, 10:15 AM

Herbert E. Meyer writes in American Thinker on The Swastika Against the Cross, by Bruce Walker:

In The Swastika Against the Cross, Bruce Walker skillfully pulls together a huge amount of evidence to illuminate the great lesson of the twentieth century: Crazy, vicious people sometimes get political power, and when they tell you what they're going to do with that power -- believe them.  Today, as North Korea fuels that missile on its launch pad and as the lunatics in Iran build nuclear bombs, it's a lesson we need to learn -- fast.

Yes, the Nazis hated Christians and Christianity, perhaps just as much as do liberal statists today throwing stones from entrenched positions in Hollywood, academia, media, and Washington, D.C.

Thus the secularist war against the Creator, the smooth lip service given to the Declaration, and the audacious manipulation of the Constitution. Thus abortofascism, homofascism, and Washington-centric fascism, etc., etc. -- all tentacles of tyranny wrapping themselves around "the mind of man" and around the lives of a people endowed by our true Creator with unalienable rights, a free people in a land of slavery who even now are stirring up to reclaim their birthright under God. 

We resist, even if tyranny is cool again



Friday, April 3, 2009

Notre Dame Priest: Pro-Abort Obama Supporting "Evil"

By Rick Pearcey • April 3, 2009, 09:54 AM

From CNSNews.com:

Rev. Hugh W. Cleary, C.S.C., the superior general of the Catholic religious order that founded and now sponsors the University of Notre Dame, declared in an “open letter” to President Barack Obama that many good Catholics are scandalized by his pro-abortion policies, which, Cleary said, are “regarded by us as an intrinsic evil."

Here's the letter.



Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Texas Chooses Science Over Secularist Dogma

By Rick Pearcey • April 1, 2009, 01:52 PM

The Discovery Institute, where Pearcey Report editor at large Nancy Pearcey is a fellow of the Center for Science and Culture, announces an advance in educational and scientific freedom:

Austin, TX -- Today [March 27], the Texas Board of Education chose science over dogma and adopted science standards improving on the old "strengths and weaknesses" language by requiring students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence.” In addition, the Board -- for the first time -- specifically required high school students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations. 

The new science standards mark a significant victory for scientists and educators in favor of teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution.

“Texas now has the most progressive science standards on evolution in the entire nation,” said Dr. John West, Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute.  “Contrary to the claims of the evolution lobby, absolutely nothing the Board did promotes ‘creationism’ or religion in the classroom. Groups that assert otherwise are lying, plain and simple. Like the boy who cried ‘Wolf,’ the Darwin only lobby always screams ‘creationism!’ anytime educators or policymakers try to ensure a fair presentation of the scientific evidence both for and against evolution. Let’s be absolutely clear: Under the new standards, students will be expected to analyze and evaluate the scientific evidence for evolution, not religion. Period.” 

Regarding teaching creationism or religion in the public school classroom, a couple of points are worth noting.

First, this is a terrific win for academic freedom, but it should be remarked that nothing in the Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution forbids teaching creationism or religion in the classroom. Entrenched secularist dogma on this matter is less than convincing.

In fact, progress in the American experiment in liberty advances from the fixed point of a knowable and objectively existing Creator who endows humanity with unalienable rights. The Constitution is a legal contract designed to protect those rights so that what Mark Levin in Liberty and Tyranny calls a "civil society" might come to actuality, which is what happened in the course of human events that we call the American Revolution.

The 1st Amendment forbids Congress from sticking its Federal Nose into our business, educational or otherwise -- something those who embrace a secularist tryanny over the minds of free human beings seem to disapprove. The 1st Amendment does not forbid Texicans or the rest of us from exercising our freedom and our sovereignity in education.

Here's the 1st Amendment in its entirety:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  [emphasis added]

The question therefore is not whether creationism or religion can be taught in the classroom. Of course they can. The real question is this: What's the evidence? If the evidence for or against a particular theory of origins is scientific, then present the case for and against, let the students think for themselves, and let them make up their own minds. Even in biology class.

The second point is that the Creator acknowledged in the Declaration, and against whom Congress is prohibited from passing laws against, is not a matter of "religious" belief or "faith" in the poor sense of the word bandied about inside and outside of secularist circles today.

The more rigorous, concrete, humane, and Biblical concept of faith has to do with the commitment of the whole person to that which is rationally, empirically, and existentially knowable as true. It is a worldview commitment rooted in truth about God, man, and the cosmos -- that same worldview, by the way, which provided the critical intellectual mass needed to launch modern science in the first place.

This wholistic approach has nothing to do with subjectivist "values," privatized "faith," emotional crutches, blind believism, or other characteristics swimming about in congressional waters, "religious" meetings, secular baptisms, and marketing strategies of the ACLU. 

The wonder and dignity of humanity male and female created in the image of a knowable God who endows each of us with unalienable rights cannot be squeezed into such limiting, dehumanizing, and regressive nonsense. It's time we all broke free of those chains. Bravo, Texas!



Monday, March 30, 2009

Protest Notre Dame, Disinvite Obama From the Presidency

By Rick Pearcey • March 30, 2009, 03:06 PM

"The outrage over Notre Dame inviting President Obama as commencement speaker has not abated," reports OneNewsNow.

"Last week, pro-lifers strongly voiced their anger about a pro-abortion president being invited to speak at a prominent Catholic university, which supposedly upholds church doctrines such as the sanctity of life. But they also are objecting to the school's plan to give Obama an honorary Doctor of Law degree. Notre Dame has been flooded with complaints, but university President John Jenkins will not be deterred."

Says Notre Dame graduate Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League: 

If Jenkins won't do the right thing and disinvite Barack Obama, then we are absolutely going to have no choice but to go out and rain on Barack Obama's parade on May 17 in South Bend, Indiana. . . . We are already working with pro-life leaders around the country, especially throughout the Midwest, to put on the mother of all protests.

In his language and policy moves, this man Barack Obama is a rogue official occupying the office of the President of the United States.

Why rogue? Because, for example, he is in violation of the Declaration of Independence, which is the Foundational Vision Statement of the United States of America and which acknowledges that every single human being is endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," including the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Well, dead preborn American citizens are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And no American politican ought to serve who favors the liquidation of the preborn in aborcentration centers that mar and bleed the land.

One would think that governing according to the Vision Statement of the United States is not above the paygrade of the president of the United States.

One would think that respecting unalienable rights endowed by the Creator upon alive but preborn American citizens is not above the paygrade of the President of the United States.

One would think that elementary scientific and inclusive facts of biological life regarding the humanity of unborn human beings created in the image of God is not above the paygrade of the President of the United States.

What kind of man is this? Let us hope not, but is Barack Obama too much of a political ideologue to care about the facts, the Declaration, the Constitution, and that liberating vision of life that American heroes have bled and died for on battlefields across history and across the world, both within and without the borders of our homeland?

No only should Barack Obama be disinivited from Notre Dame, the American people should rise up and disinvite him from the presidency. His pro-abortion, anti-life policies are an embarrassment to civilized humanity under the Declaration, under the Constitution, and under God. Yes he was elected, but he now imposes tyranny. He now wars against the American experiment in liberty under God. 

Americans must take every opportunity to disinvite not just him, but his alien, anti-American, inhumane, and anti-Creator coup against the foundational Mission and Vision Statement of this land. We can yet still enjoy the "blessings of liberty," but this will require a return to the Creator to whom our Founders looked and from whom those blessings derive. It will require casting off the chains of the Federal Empire and its new Emperor on the Potomac.

No only should pro-life Americans "rain" on Obama's parade, they ought to thunder and lightning upon it, with a few cats and dogs thrown in for good measure. May the "mother of all protests" at Notre Dame have many children.


Tea With Obamalini: Fascism in the White House

By Rick Pearcey • March 30, 2009, 07:30 AM

Matthew Vadum at AmSpec on the firing of the GM CEO:

This aggressive assault on American capitalism is unprecedented and should give all Americans who care about freedom pause.  

Related
National Obama Socialism
Regarding "Change" -- Liberals Drink Deeply From Fascist Well
Fascism Is Back
The Evil Religious Presidents Do



Friday, March 27, 2009

Pre-Pub Update: Nancy's New Book

By Rick Pearcey • March 27, 2009, 11:54 AM

A hard-copy prepublication version of Nancy's new book arrived in the mail today. This edition is also being sent to expert readers who have requested such a copy. More about this later, but comments already coming in are quite positive, for which we are thankful.

Remembering that politics follows culture -- especially during these days of an oppressive secularism, governmental and otherwise -- I can honestly say that this next volume offers a mighty blow against the forces of manipulation, fragmentation, and inhumanity at large in so many areas of contemporary life, thought, and society.  

Nancy and I are thrilled with how this project has developed, and we appreciate the vision and support of Philadelphia Biblical University in producing this hard copy and in supporting Nancy's writing and thinking. Great job all!


Obama: 63, Notre Dame: 0

By Rick Pearcey • March 27, 2009, 10:38 AM

The Obama "Alinskys" are thrashing the Notre Dame "Girly Girls," and here's a bit of color analysis by George Neumayr:

The Catholic Church in America has bred her own destroyers, graduating from doctrinally corrupt catechetical programs, schools and colleges two generations of pro-abortion politicians. Barack Obama, in his effortless Alinskyite style, has exploited this phenomenon to the hilt, seeking out Catholics such as Joe Biden and Kathleen Sebelius to serve as his agents of destruction.

The controversy this week at Notre Dame is one more snapshot of this self-implosion. Here we have the American bishops' most prominent university planning to confer an honorary degree upon Obama even as he accelerates the destruction of its moral teachings.

Coach Alinsky surely must be beaming in his grave. "Were Saul Alinsky alive today," notes Neumayr, "he would have to smile at the ease of it all. Obama can not only thwart the Church at every crucial turn and still retain the Catholic vote; he can even expect over the next few years prizes and pats on the back from Catholic colleges for doing so."

See also: "Notre Dame Should Disinvite Obama."


Thursday, March 26, 2009

Jim Wallis: Obama's "Red" Spiritual Advisor

By Rick Pearcey • March 26, 2009, 10:36 AM

David Noebel of Summit Ministries writes:

Who is the president's latest adviser? The Rev. Jim Wallis. Frontpage Magazine (March 17, 2009) reports, "The most notable of [Obama's] spiritual advisers today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis." Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have "been talking faith and politics for a long time." He was picked by Obama to draft the faith-based policies of his campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year. Why should this alarm us?

First, Jim Wallis has had relationships with the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

Second, his "Witness for Peace" was an attempt to defend the Nicaraguan Sandinistas! Wallis, together with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor of 20 years) "rallied support for the communist Nicaraguan regime and protested actions by the United States which supported the anti-communist Contra rebels" (Family World News, February 2009, p. 7).

Third, Wallis and his Sojourners Community of fellow-travelers believe Fidel Castro's Cuba, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua and the other revolutionary forces "restructuring socialist societies" are the communist paradises the United States needs to emulate in order to establish "social justice." Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, Jacob Laksin notes, "Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of communist revolutions in Central America" (Laksin, "Sojourners: History, Activities and Agendas" in Discoverthenetworks.org., 2005).

The ugly truth is Wallis wishes to see the destruction of the United States as a nation and in its place "a radical nonconformist community" patterned after the progressive, socialist commune he established in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Laksin, Ibid.).

More from Noebel at WorldNetDaily.



Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Notre Dame Should Disinvite Obama

By Rick Pearcey • March 25, 2009, 10:23 AM

"Opposition is mounting to the University of Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to be a commencement speaker in May," reports OneNewsNow.

This is a sign of spiritual health. Inviting him to speak and conferring a degree upon him is a sign of spiritual weakness. Worldview confusion. Sellout.

By his language and actions, Obama inhabits a post-Catholic, post-Protestant, post-Christian, post-Declaration, post-Constitution, post-American, post-humane universe. Other than that, no problem.

Notre Dame would do well to disinvite the President with extreme unction. Just as the great and free people of the United States of America should show him and his Statist, Washington-centric worldview the door at the first opportunity. Exit stage left. Now, April 15, and forevermore. 

If asked to serve humanity in such a fashion, I'll be happy to stand in for the President at Notre Dame to explain the matter in further detail. You don't even have to confer a degree.


Amazing Octopus Fossil Proves Evolution?

By Rick Pearcey • March 25, 2009, 09:47 AM

Hardly. But, hey, "scientific" Darwin-thumpers need their comforting crutch. Truly free thinkers are willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

That's one reason I appreciate the information and approach given in the Biblical worldview. That liberating data calls for wholistic commitment based on objective truth, evidence, and sound reasoning vis-a-vis God, man, and the cosmos.

In other words, if something is not true to the evidence: Don't "believe" it. Not even if it's about "God." Especially if it's about God. Or kings, Presidents, preachers, used-car salemen, journalists, "hard-charging" leaders of ministries, and guys who wear white coats.

This approach is far more scientific -- and humane, by the way -- than what is allowed by the closed-down, reactionary attitude of ideological defenders of materialism disguised as science. Such silly peer pressure.

So don't be surprised when I say from time to time -- as I have said to the lovely, beautiful, and brilliant Nancy -- that I a) reserve the right to reject Christianity if the evidence requires such a decision, and b) that such an approach is utterly Biblical.

You might even call freedom of thought an unalienable right, endowed by the Creator, which, of course, religious and secular tyrants hate.



Monday, March 23, 2009

Indiana, God, and License Plates

By Rick Pearcey • March 23, 2009, 10:13 AM

"Indiana has scrapped a problematic policy that deals with personalized license plates," reports OneNewsNow. "Following the filing of a lawsuit, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in the Hoosier State has decided to abandon a policy against references to religion or a deity on what are commonly referred to as 'vanity license plates'." 

It's good to hear that mention of God is now OK in the great state of Indiana. Because said mention is already OK in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Founders' vision, and in any locale that respects the nonliberal, nonsecular mission statement set forth by the aforementioned documents and otherwise known as the American Experiment. 

Our true Creator is of course a public figure and has nothing to do with "religion" or "faith" in the poor, privatized, blind sense of those words in vogue in some circles today. In politics, for example, where elected officials on Capitol Hill vote for bills they have not read. Sometimes the President even signs them. Sorry, but this kind of blind faith is subhuman and pathetic. Any reasonable person or citizenry would revolt.

And that truncated view of "faith" has nothing to do with rich, evidentially grounded and reasonable call for wholistic commitment that shines so brightly in the public record we have of God's dealing with humanity in the history and information given in the Old and New Testaments. One wishes the politicians would live up to the Creator's high and humane standards of rationality and debate. Or at least make the effort.

Meanwhile, it's nice to see that the Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles has decided to rejoin America. The content of the Declaration affirms a real Creator and rejects a false patriotism reduced to geography.

Shout it from the mountain tops, put it on a license plate, but most of all, live it out with a measure of integrity in every sphere of your daily life. That kind of "vanity" we can live with.



Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Court Upholds Moment of Silence in Texas

By Rick Pearcey • March 17, 2009, 04:23 PM

"Texas students will continue to have the right to pray at the beginning of each school day," reports OneNewsNow.

"We just got a three-to-zero ruling in favor of the Moment of Silence law preserving the rights of kids to be able to pray silently at the beginning of the school day and be able to do that without government interference," explains Hiram Sasser of the Liberty Legal Institute.

Sasser says the lawsuit was brought by atheists offended that school children might pray silently in school. 

Speaking of Texas and freedom, one wonders: Do you think defenders of the Alamo prayed, silently or otherwise? Do you think they would have waited for a judge to OK such prayer? Do you think the likes of a Davy Crockett or Jim Bowie would have cared one Tequila whether Santa Anna or Karl Marx might be offended?

Which do you think more likely -- that the Alamo heroes saw their rights as human beings rooted in a secular, atheistic state or, rather, in our true Creator, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence?

Do you think the Creator, who is a public and knowable figure by the way, is upset when people created in His image and endowed by Him with "certain unalienable rights" honestly exercise those rights in public spaces such as schools, even the local government school?

Finally, who is more in line with the American mission statement as set forth in the Declaration and protected by the Constitution, atheists who want to shut prayer down in public places -- or citizens, including kids, who want to live wholistically in community with their true Creator?



Monday, March 16, 2009

"I Pledge Allegiance to Obama"?

By Rick Pearcey • March 16, 2009, 04:49 AM

Sweetness and Light has noticed "Obama's (Highly Creepy) 'Pledge Project'," complete with training videos and a commitment to "I'm asking you to believe." 

Says S&L:

Anyone who is a student of totalitarian regimes, especially Nazi Germany, should recognize this tactic. Mr. Obama has organized his own cadre of Brown Shirts (or, if you prefer, Red Shirts) to agitate for his agenda.

Mr. Alinsky would be proud. And rightly so. For this is simply the continuation of Mr. Obama’s perpetual campaign. A campaign, as we noted at the time, that was modeled on Saul Alinsky’s organizing principles.

Of course, Alinsky, had modeled his methods on the great communist and/or fascist agitators of the past. Hence, the unsettling resemblance to Soviet-style and Nazi Germany agit-prop.

If you think audacious initiatives such as this violate the mission statement of the the United States of America, you're right. "Pledge Projects" or any move that smacks of loyalty oaths to individual leaders, or to a secularistic Washington-centrism for that matter, have nothing to do with the liberating unity and diversity under our true and knowable Creator currently banished by the "faith" agenda of the paternalistic power establishment. The secular state is not God, and Barack Obama is not his prophet.

"Another polarizing move from Barack Obama," writes Thomas Lifson. "His permanent campaign is organizing a political organization loyal to him, bound by a pledge, outside the government and existing party apparatus. The historical precedents are ominous."

Hat Tip: American Thinker.



Wednesday, March 11, 2009

"Jesus" Banned, So Chaplain Resigns

By Rick Pearcey • March 11, 2009, 09:46 AM

From OneNewsNow:

A former chaplain [Rex Carter] with the Virginia State Police says he had no choice but to step down after a new policy took effect requiring generic prayers at department events.

Stepping down does not mean giving up.

“Why be silent on an issue that I have felt strongly about enough to resign from a program that I feel is so important,“ Carter said. He believes the prayer bill will eventually be re-introduced. In the meantime, he’s encouraging people everywhere to stand up for their religious rights. 

Consistent with the mission statement of the United States, the Founders stood up for their human right to publicly speak and publicly behave in ways consistent with their having been made in the image of God and endowed by our true, public, and nongeneric Creator with "certain unalienable rights," among them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Officer Carter seems to understand and respect this humane and liberating vision that defines American progress. May his efforts to re-establish the "blessings of liberty" enjoy the support of the One from whom those blessings derive. That approach seemed to work well for George Washington and company.



Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Total Truth Trekkies

By Rick Pearcey • March 10, 2009, 07:16 PM

We appreciate the way pastors and churches continue to find Total Truth a helpful book. Here's a recent recommendation.


Rick on Radio: "Revenue, Rush, and Revolt?"

By Rick Pearcey • March 10, 2009, 03:30 PM

My radio interview with "Changing Worldviews" host Sharon Hughes of KDIA 1640 AM in San Francisco aired yesterday.

We are also adding the Center for Changing Worldviews to our list of resources under "Groups" on the main page of The Pearcey Report.

To listen to "Revenue, Rush, and Revolt?," click here.



Saturday, March 7, 2009

Michelangelo, Schaeffer, and the Kingdom of Washington

By Rick Pearcey • March 7, 2009, 01:01 PM

The great Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo was born March 6, 1475, 534 years ago yesterday. He began work on his famed statue the David in 1501 and completed it in 1504. Michelangelo was 29 years old. 

Let's consider this man and his art and its relevance for our day, interacting with comments from Francis Schaeffer in his work How Should We Then Live? (Crossway: Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, Vol. 5, pp. 114-115).

Schaeffer begins inside the Accademia in Florence, where the David is located:

Here we see on either side Michelangelo's statues of men "tearing themselves out of the rock." These were sculpted between 1519 and 1536. They make a real humanistic statement: Man will make himself great. Man as Man is tearing himself out of the rock. Man by himself will tear himself out of nature and free himself from it. Man will be victorious. . . ."

I saw and touched (winning the polite attention of security) one of these statues during my first and only (thus far!) visit to Florence. I had hitched a ride from L'Abri in Switzerland and carried with me a copy of Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. Having that book in your mind was a tremendous way to see Florence.

"At the focal point of the room," Schaeffer continues, is the "magnificent statue of David (1504)."

As a work of art it has few equals in the world. Michelangelo took a piece of marble so flawed that no one thought it could be used, and out of it he carved this overwhelming statue. But let us notice that the David was not the Jewish David of the Bible. David was simply a title. Michelangelo knew his Judaism, and in the statue the figure is not circumcised. We are not to think of this as the biblical David but as the humanistic ideal. Man is great!

Man, human beings -- you and me, our neighbors, all of us red and yellow, black and white -- in fact are great. But not, as the unfinished statues of Michelangelo may suggest, because we have to tear ourselves out of nature. 

Rather, consistent with what the Declaration of Independence avows (which is the "Vision Statement" or "Mission Statement" of the United States), what makes humanity great is that we are the magnificent work of a Divine Sculptor, who happens to be the Creator by virtue of whom every single human being is endowed with "certain unalienable rights." And, by the way, Nature is also great and not a meaningless piece of particulate junk, because she too is a gift from the Creator and therefore ought to be cared for and respected, just like Genesis 1:28 liberates humanity to do.

As Schaeffer describes it, the political situation of Michelangelo's day bears some resemblance to our our own: 

The statue was originally planned to stand forty feet above the street on one of the buttresses of the cathedral, but was placed outside the city hall in Florence, where a copy now stands. The Medicis, the great banking family which had dominated Florence since 1434, had run the city by manipulating its republican constitution. A few years before David was made, the Medicis had been thrown down by the people and a more genuine republic restored (1494). Thus, as the statue was raised outside the city hall, though Michelangelo himself had been a friend of the Medicis, his David was seen as the slayer of tyrants. Florence was looking with confidence toward a great future. (Emphasis added.)

We see in our own day a manipulating of a "republican constitution" (think: "living" Constitution). Central to the truly living Mission Statement of United States (in the Declaration of Independence) is that a republic under the Creator would respect unalienable rights from that Creator, resulting in a balance of "form and freedom" (a phrase often used by Schaeffer). This amazing and unique balance maximized individual liberty among the people and states but without chaos, and it also established a unity of purpose nationally but without overweening control out of Washington.

To put this in contemporary parlance, it wasn't "unity is our strength" or "diversity is our strength," but rather "unity and diversity under God is our strength." All the difference in world.

To the degree that secular elites have imposed an alien agenda that casts away the founding Mission Statement of the United States (or keeps the form but denies the meaning), to that degree we have seen a corresponding loss of individual freedom, including direct attacks on the unalienable rights hardwired into humanity by the verifiable and knowable Creator. Not unrelated to this, the economic crisis we see today emerges in no small degree from a secularist, power-minded Washington-centrism and is the natural outworking of uprooting the American experiment in liberty from what the Founders knew is the soil of liberty as gifted to humanity by the Creator.

"Hope springs eternal," says the poet. And in the David is a "statement of what the humanistic man saw himself as being tomorrow!," says Schaeffer.

In this statue we have man waiting with confidence in his own strength for the future. Even the disproportionate size of the hands says that man is powerful. This statue is idealistic and romantic. There was and is no man like the David. If a girl fell in love with the statue and waited until she found such a man, she would never marry. Humanism was standing in its proud self and the David stood as a representation of that.

The challenge for humanism is not its ideals per se, but that it lacks an adequate intellectual basis to sustain those ideals, so that when crisis comes, we see breakdown instead of recovery. And we do see the breakdown, despite the concerted efforts of political, PR, and marketing types working overtime to simultaneously distract (e.g., attack Rush Limbaugh) and overlay a comfortable but Orwellian spin upon the breakdown (e.g., the president not concerned about market "gyrations").

However, in the world beyond the teleprompter, the press release, and the attack dog, what we are witnessing today is not just the loss of economic power and freedom, but also assaults on freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religious exercise, and so on. Man is great, but man is not God. You could put all the smartest people in the world in Washington and still the federal government is not God, as the original Vision Statement of the United States clearly understands. Secularist Washington-centrism must decrease if a humane American liberty is to increase. Read the directions.  

Our Founders understood this, but many of today's elites seem to reject it. It's not that the secularists are too smart for their own good, but that they are operating out of an inadequate philosophic framework. We'll recover as a nation if we return to the original Mission Statement and mark progress from that point forward. 

Perhaps the later Michelangelo can help lead the way forward:

[T]here are signs that by the end of his life Michelangelo saw the humanism was not enough. Michelangelo in his later years was in close touch with Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547), a woman who had been influenced by Reformation thought. Some people feel they see some of that influence in Michelangelo's life and work. However that may be, it is true that his later work did change. Many of his early works show his humanism, as does his David. In contrast stand his later Pietas (statues of Mary holding the dead Christ in her arms) in the cathedral in Florence and in the castle in Milan, which was probably his last. In the Pieta in the cathedral in Florence, Michelangelo put his own face on Nicodemus (or Joseph of Arimathea -- whichever the man is), and in both of the Pietas humanistic pride seems lessened, if not absent.

I began this post this morning simply as an effort to show an appreciation for one of my favorite artists, a person that I and a host of others would surely have liked to have known. He, like all of us, had his struggles. But even the Great Michelangelo of the Pietas was willing to place himself at the feet of a flesh and blood rebel condemned as a common criminal who happened to be the Savior and Son of God. That's right: A resurrected guy from the Middle East outback whose love and truth challenged and overturns the hopeful but inadequate humanism of then and now. 

The Founders understood the centrality and necessity of the Creator, and they rejected the idolatry of the federal state and the Kingdom of Washington. Many of us today get it. Hope and freedom never die. They are unalienable. They are hardwired into humane and human existence. Yes, we get it. Let's hope Washington hears before it's too late.  



Friday, March 6, 2009

The Evil Religious Presidents Do

By Rick Pearcey • March 6, 2009, 12:20 PM

Dave Miller writes at Facebook:

Rick, Have you noticed how all of these liberals and pseudo-conservatives are coming out of the woodwork and proclaiming shock that Obama is actually a radical leftist, possibly even a card-carrying socialist and outright Marxist? After all the stuff with Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground and Rev Wrong and Black Liberation Theology, you have to wonder exactly what they were thinking.

Of course we know what they were thinking. They were letting their liberal notion of "white guilt" lead them to vote for the first black president despite his views and positions, simply on account of his race. If anyone is a racial coward (sensu AG Holder) it's the cowardly left who blindly voted for Lord Obama.

And this is the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that they all knew exactly what they were getting and are now having second thoughts. Their leftist "bed-time story" is a heck of a lot scarier in person than in the text books and leftist think-tanks.

Comment: It is important to analyze the presuppositions and worldviews of those seeking office, because office-seekers always actualize them, or try to. This will help protect people from superficial, politically correct, and reactionary analysis of trends and current events.

Obama may employ the term Christian to describe himself and may throw in a Bible verse for good measure. But to the degree that he presupposes and works within Marxist categories (class struggle, class warfare, spread the wealth, blame and therefore tax "the rich"), those presuppositions will seek incarnation in Obama's policies. A Christian label -- often just political god-talk -- is no match for the actual thoughtforms that inhabit and move a person. (This analysis, by the way, holds for any politician or public figure, including Republicans.)

This worldview dynamic is how a "Christian" can advocate that which does not line up with real-world information we have from the verifiable and knowable Creator, creating a seedbed for hypocrisy, manipulation, distrust, inhumanity, and revolt.

This is one reason resistance is a civilized option to a "Christian" president who accepts the ugly fascist barbarism of abortion. To wave the bloody banner of "choice" contradicts reason, advances oppression, and constitutes a pathetic loss of dignity. Legalized theft to redistribute wealth and property is also inhumane and sinful, even if you throw a Bible verse on top of it and get a preacher to say a prayer. 

Journalists and observers of the political scene would do all a favor if their work addressed politicians at a more insightful level. Added benefit: Fewer unpleasant surprises and a more humane country.



Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Rick on Detroit Radio

By Rick Pearcey • March 4, 2009, 02:52 PM

Live From Detroit -- Tomorrow WLQV am 1500 talk show host Paul Edwards and I are scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

He tags his show "The Center for Study of God and Culture," and I look forward to joining Paul and his on-air academy again.

To call in, phone: 866-423-WLQV. Listen online here



Friday, February 27, 2009

Steamroller: Obama May Revoke "Conscience Rule"

By Rick Pearcey • February 27, 2009, 03:37 PM

Rick Moran writes:

Ah - state compulsion; the essence of tyranny. When the state demands that you do something that goes against your most deeply held beliefs, they are exercising the same level of control over you as any dictator or tyrant.

This report from the Chicago Tribune is what elicited Moran's remarks: 

Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration Friday will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows health-care workers to deny abortion counseling or other family-planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials.

The rollback of the "conscience rule" comes just two months after the Bush administration announced it last year in one of its final policy initiatives.

True enough, what Moran describes is of grave concern. But what Obama is doing may be even more troubling than Moran describes. For this move does not simply come up against mere "conscience" or against the "moral beliefs" of individuals.

The right to life is not merely a “moral belief,” it is a moral fact. On the basis of scientific data, we know that human beings are human beings from the moment of conception. This is a biological fact that has nothing to do with pay-grades. Even if you are unemployed, or just running for President of the United States, this fact remains true.

Also, on the basis of verifiable and knowable information from our true Creator -- the Creator upon whom the high freedoms of this nation are grounded, as is recognized in the Declaration of Independence and which the Constitution is designed to protect -- we know that human beings possess tremendous dignity and innate worth, even from the moment of biological conception.

It follows from these facts that human beings of course have the right and duty to protect their neighbors, even if their neighbors are the "least of these." Healthcare workers should be admired, not attacked or undermined, for their efforts in this area.

A humane government is one that recognizes and respects the God-given and therefore inalienable right of individual people, including healthcare workers, to counsel towards life and away from death.

To forbid this humane behavior is deep intolerance and tyranny, again, not just against privately held "belief systems" or "value sets" that secular elites can steamroll with impunity.

Rather, it is a Washington-centric system setting itself up as Deity -- a pretended absolute -- against the moral facts of life and against human obligations that attend living in community with our true Creator and with our neighbors, big or small, born or unborn.

What needs to be rolled back is not the freedom of the individual to express him or herself under God. What needs to be rolled back is a Washington-centric secular establishment at odds with the rights and dignity of humanity and at odds with the Creator whose character and existence form the basis of those liberating rights. The Obama move is inhumane and ill-advised.


Free Speech Victory for Montana Church

By Rick Pearcey • February 27, 2009, 11:10 AM

Homosexuals complained, the Constitution reigned.



Wednesday, February 25, 2009

"Feminist Courage, Feminist Cowardice"

By Rick Pearcey • February 25, 2009, 10:23 AM

That's how Frontpage boosts an article on feminism, domestic violence, and the Buffalo beheading.

But in addition to "feminist courage" and "feminist cowardice," what about the feminist contradiction?

Out of concern for our neighbor, this must be faced: "Pro-choice" feminists support acts of horrific, slasher violence against humanity every single day of their lives. It's called abortion. 

The point is not that this is an intellectual contradiction, which it is   -- power and choice for me, but not for thee.

Or that this is an ethical contradiction, which it is -- domestic violence inside the womb is an acceptable necessity, but outside the womb is an unacceptable evil.

The point is that pro-abortion feminists have accepted into their bosom a violent contradiction that liberates a spirit of raw will-to-power out into the culture.

In such a setting, consistent with that contradiction, no female is ethically protected or respected: inside the womb or outside the womb; inside the home or at the TV station; in Pakistan or in the U.S.

It's open borders. Contradictions have consequences. Time to rethink.



Friday, February 20, 2009

Freedom Question of the Day

By Rick Pearcey • February 20, 2009, 10:38 AM

What poses a greater threat to the American Dream of freedom and dignity under God -- predatory lending or predatory government?



Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A Beheading in Buffalo

By Rick Pearcey • February 18, 2009, 08:41 AM

An Islamic "moderate" backslides -- or does he?

Robert Spencer writes:

Now comes the clearest, most harrowing indication of all that Bridges TV’s founder was not the moderate he appeared to be, but was rather a man who had imbibed deeply the traditional Islamic understanding that women are possessions of men, to be punished severely when they get out of line.

Of course, this singular lesson of the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, who apparently had raised Muzzammil’s ire by filing for divorce, is the one that the mainstream media and the American Muslim community is doing its best to obscure.


Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Robertson "Throws Rush Under the Bus"

By Rick Pearcey • February 17, 2009, 01:35 PM

That's how Jim Foss sees it.

Robertson objects to Limbaugh's having said, "I hope Obama fails."

Here's Pat's analysis, at U.S. News & World Report:

That was a terrible thing to say. I mean, he's the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn't, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.

But here is Rush, pulling "against our president" -- "I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed."  

What's irrational about that?

Based on his rhetoric and action, President Obama is trying to impose a secular socialist regime upon this country, a Washington-centric vision of government that stands in total antithesis to the Founders and in total antithesis to that humanity and freedom rooted in the Creator so boldly acknowledged by our Declaration of Independence. 

On this analysis, to the degree that Obama succeeds, to that degree America courts failure. The rationality of success in liberty seems to require the lack of success in Obama.   

L'Abri Confab: Schaeffer Group Raps in Rochester

By Rick Pearcey • February 17, 2009, 12:25 PM

The Rochester, Minn., branch of L’Abri Fellowship, founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer, held a conference in town last weekend (February 13-14).

Bob Osburn, Executive Director of the MacLaurin Institute, was there:

"The annual Rochester L’Abri conference, an annual respite from winter’s bitter chill, is a combination family reunion and Chautauqua festival for Christians who have and are cutting their intellectual eye-teeth on Francis Schaeffer.  This year’s conference lived up to its sterling reputation, albeit with a slightly small crowd of 550 as compared with the usual 700.

"First, there are the L’Abri workers themselves.  Schaeffer was an evangelist with a deep feel for the human being in front of him, and his successors carry on that tradition of Christian humanism. They serve and serve and serve, all with good cheer and unusually sensitive attention to the person in front of them.

"Second, of course, there are the registrants, who vary in age from middle school all the way up to their 80s, with a large slab of Baby Boomers and an increasing contingent of 20-somethings. They are a combination of home-schoolers, thoughtful middle-aged professionals, college-aged students, and assorted others -- all questing for answers to deep questions, and finding them. This is no cult, just a community questing honestly for answers.

"Speaking of the content, over 40 different workshop and plenary sessions on topics ranging from gardening to Pascal to music were led by seasoned L’Abri veterans who are universally alarmed by facile answers and eager to get below surface issues to presuppositions.  

"This year’s thematic focus on creation provided needed compensation for those eager to hear -- but not hearing -- in their churches about the profound implications of the first two and the last two chapters of the Bible. Suffice to say, God loves His creation enough to redeem it, and we should too."

Here’s the website for Rochester L’Abri. More on Edith Schaeffer here.

By the way, Osburn tells Pro-Existence that as of March 31, he’s embarking on a “new venture with the Wilberforce Academy, an educational initiative aimed at training students to be redemptive change agents in their home societies.” We look forward to hearing more about this new work.    

Related: Francis Schaeffer: “The Central Problem of Our Age.”

12-Year-Old Steals Day With Pro-Life Speech

By Rick Pearcey • February 17, 2009, 07:56 AM

Toronto girl overcomes discouragement from teachers, disqualification by judges.

Here's her winning presentation.


Saturday, February 14, 2009

CEO of Muslim TV Beheads Wife

By Rick Pearcey • February 14, 2009, 01:49 PM

Horror. The accused is a "prominent moderate." He founded a TV network to "help portray Muslims in a more positive light."

Slogan: "Connecting people through understanding."

Hat tip: Mitch Majeski

Francis Schaeffer -- "The Central Problem of Our Age"

By Rick Pearcey • February 14, 2009, 12:00 PM

If politics is "downstream from culture" (as former Capitol Hill staffer Bill Wichterman has observed) and culture in general is downstream from Christian culture in particular ("You are the salt of the earth," Matt. 5:13), these guys -- Rick Ianniello, Ray Ortlund, Mike of On Coffee -- may be on to something regarding the "central problem of our age."

They quote from Francis Schaeffer:

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism [yes, Schaeffer was a Protestant!], nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them. [bold added] 

You can find this quote on page 66 of No Little People, a book of sermons that are absolute must-reading for any person who prefers not to have his life's work "eaten up" by the secularism of our age.

Not just the secularism in society at large, mind you, but also, very sadly, by the "real problem," by the secular "power of the flesh" we sometimes observe in the methods and mentality embraced in certain circles of big-time, hard-charging Christian ministry.

Nancy and I agree with Schaeffer and Scripture that this is not a secondary matter. Fortunately, we have been able to witness some of this first-hand, so that we might post a "warning label" to help protect others from going down splashy but spirit-eroding dead-ends. This is an issue we do well to focus on, simply as a matter of spiritual balance and humane vitality.

You may have seen and experienced something of this "in house" secularism yourself. In fact, it is very likely you have. If so, we know you are hurting. This is true no matter what the PR says, or what a politician might say while handing out an award or medal to the latest and greatest hero of the ga-ga crowd (ever-so-humbly accepted, of course). You can read all about it in next month's machine-cranked fundraising letter on a mission from God.

But running over people in an effort to "change the world for Christ" or "engage the culture" does not glorify God or evince love of neighbor. Quite the opposite. It's a practical expression of taking the Lord's name in vain.

In my view, what Schaeffer is helping to awaken us to (I know, it's hard to wake up at times) is central to the real crisis behind the crisis of our age. Moreover, it's an analysis that may help explain much that is retrograde, dehumanizing, undignified, and ineffective as a strategy of cultural engagement.

Look: We have had massive organizations at work for decades. Millions and millions of dollars. Years of blood and sweat and pounds of flesh. No one is saying we have nothing to show for this. And yet things seem to be getting worse on a weekly if not daily basis. Just turn on the TV. You begin to wonder if the current strategy is a cultural and spiritual loser.

Maybe Schaeffer was on to something. Maybe there's a reason the Lord had to get him out of this mess and over into Switzerland just so he could get his head together. Just maybe.

Secularism both cultural and religious is taking huge bites and chunks out of the freedom and dignity of humanity. As a way forward, as a way to begin crafting and living an authentic Biblical alternative, you might want to consider chapter 13 of Schaeffer's True Spirituality together with chapter 13 of Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth. These chapters make the central and humanizing case that the Lordship of Christ applies across the whole of life. Boards of big organizations might be shocked, but this Lordship applies even to the nuts and bolts and nitty gritty of ministries CEOed by really famous people whose big names sell lots of books authored or "co-authored" by other people.

Call me a romantic, but I think we can do better than ape the phonies of this world. It's a lot more fun and humane to be a real person doing real work. True enough -- Your hyped name may not be slapped on the covers of as many books, magazine articles, commentaries, radio broadcasts, Larry King's guest list, or White House appointment calendars. So what?!

As the Leader of this revolution pointedly says, those folks "have their reward" (Matt. 6). You can read about that too in No Little People.


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Ultimate Oxymoron: "Christian" Obama-Voters

By Rick Pearcey • February 11, 2009, 12:32 PM

La Shawn Barber wonders on Facebook "how one can follow Christ and support the slaughter of the unborn."

She was responding to "Christian Obama-Voters," the Ultimate Oxymoron at Breitbart's "Big Hollywood."

I replied: "There is no logical or worldview connection between following the Lord of Life and embracing the culture of death.

"Philosophical chop suey, cognitive incoherence -- a seedbed of hypocrisy and inhumanity -- is the unconscious mental menu of many people."

Any thoughts?

Let Freedom Ring on Darwin Holy Day

By Nancy Pearcey • February 11, 2009, 08:28 AM

It's Casey up to bat in U.S. New & World Report. Hits home run.


Monday, February 9, 2009

Christian Foster Mother Punished After Muslim Girl Converts

By Rick Pearcey • February 9, 2009, 07:15 AM

A council in northern England says the woman "failed to respect and preserve" the faith of the teen.

This call for respect rings a bit hollow. After all, the girl "made her own decision," according to the Telegraph.

The mom should resist and take captive this aggressive secularism, rather than deny her calling to live as a whole person in humane community, even in her professional life, with our true Creator.

And according to this report, that is what she's doing. Viva resistance.


Monday, July 14, 2008

Dembski Questions Famed Healing Ministry

By Rick Pearcey • July 14, 2008, 08:57 AM

William Dembski of Intelligent Design fame questions the healing ministry of Todd Bentley down in Lakeland, Fla.

Such questioning is legitimate, Biblical, humane, and necessary. Humaness, worldview, and discipleship are cut from the single cloth of truth.

We await a reply to Dembski's question: "Faith and Healing -- Where's the Evidence?"

Meanwhile, one way to test the validity of an organization is to examine its methods. Not just the PR methods evidenced on websites with glossy pictures, wondrous bios, and a Herculean list of accomplishments and books, columns, etc., "by" the latest version of "renegade-turned-modern-day-St. Paul."

No, sadly, not the methods on display for public view, but the ones kept "in the basement," as it were. That's where, so often, in the dark, the real work is done.

In this regard, and in liberating contrast, the Lord's work is meant to be done the Lord's way, across the board, and with application to the nuts and bolts of organizations put forward as "Christian ministries."

This was a central concern of Francis Schaeffer, as seen in chapter 13 of the beloved True Spirituality. It is also the concern of chapter 13 of Nancy Pearcey's book Total Truth. The Lord's work is meant to be done in the light.

To follow truth is to embrace beauty. To fake it, "nuance" it, and spin it for "the sake of the Gospel" (i.e., fundraising, etc.) is to demean people and take the Lord's name in vain.

Dances with deception set forth in the service of Celebriantity and its hard-charging gods are a disaster, no matter how much noise is made about "worldview" or "reforming manners," no matter how much access to Big Media or the White House is gained, and so on.

You know the song and dance. It's underlined in hundreds of thousands of "Dear Friend" appeal letters strategically underlined in blue and signed by machines. One might be tempted to conclude that some evangelical marketers think Christians are idiots waiting to be led around by their noses.

"Test everything," says the real Apostle Paul (1 Thess. 5:21). "Testing everything" is key to embracing love and avoiding the cruelty and ugliness of a truncated Christianity and inhumane "ministry."

One more thing: If this isn't fixed, it matters little who wins the election. Politics follows culture. Methods matter. It's a warning and a promise.

* Update: See discussion at Dembski's site, here. "Dembski Questions Famed Healing Ministry" is referenced at response No. 44.



Monday, April 7, 2008

How to Have a Race War

By Rick Pearcey • April 7, 2008, 06:59 AM

From Frontpage:

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says [black liberation theologian James] Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as "racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism."

Before you can have a race war in America, you must first set forth an ideology that legitimizes race hatred and keeps that kind of hatred at a boiling point. The theology of Cone seems to be on this path, absolutizing "blackness," which in turn gives the KKK, Aryans, and kindred spirits an excuse to absolutize "whiteness."

The result? Two gods vying for supremacy, locked in mortal combat, with no possible resolution, even if by fire, as some groups seem to want.

For neither god can afford rational discourse by free-thinking individuals who question authority. Such gods rooted in creation place skin color, race, or group hatreds above rationality, evidence, consideration, and discussion. Lost is the Biblical responsibility to ask questions, wonder, examine evidence, subject theology and putative prophets to information from the Creator. Instead, we see a media dash to charges of bigotry and other attempts at verbal terror and intimidation, all of them beneath the dignity of Man.

The only possible outcome of this recipe, if consistently pursued to its logical conclusion, is race warfare.

If you use racism to drive out racism, what you have is not a solution, but a new racism taking over from the old. This is called regress not progress. And it has nothing to do with information given by the Creator about all people having been created in his image and that the dilemma we all face is ethical not pigmentary.

Black liberation theology? White liberation theology? It's hard to imagine a better recruitment tool for fascists of every hue or stripe. Red, yellow, brown, pink -- the entire rainbow.

Related:
* Black Jesus Does Not Exist
* Church of Oprah Exposed



Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Fascism Is Back

By Rick Pearcey • December 12, 2006, 10:24 AM

Fascism is back," Gene Edward Veith tell us in Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview.

But the daily news makes this clear as well, with among other items, reports of a Holocaust-denying conference held under the auspices of an anti-Semitic government that says Israel should cease to exist.

Fascism "refuses to go away," says Veith. "Fifty years after World War II, it keeps intruding upon our attention in odd facts and disturbing news. . . .

"The lunatic fringe, of course, is always with us, but we are also being confronted by signs of fascism as a larger social movement. . . .

"The implosion of communism was a great victory for democracy, but the vacuum has been filled by an intense, violent ethnic nationalism and the revival of overt fascist movements that had been suppressed since World War II but are still very much alive. . . .

"Unsettling cultural trends are intensifying throughout the West: cynicism about democracy; a yearning for charismatic leadership; economic disaffection; moral skepticism; a cultural irrationalism that breaks out in acts of inexplicable violence."

Fascism Back in . . .
* Academic Circles: "Fascism is back in academia. A recent biography of the existentialist sage Martin Heidegger has uncovered his extensive involvement in the Nazi party. . .

"Far more disturbing . . . is the ideology that is coalescing . . . in today's intellectual establishment. Cultural determinism; the reduction of all social relationships to issues of sheer power; the idea the one's identity is centered in one's ethnicity or race; the rejection of the concept of the individual -- such ideas have become academic commonplaces.

"The project in contemporary thought of dismantling Western civilization and critiquing 'humanistic values' (such as liberty, reason, and objective moral principles) is not new. All of the ideas are direct echoes of the fascist theories of the 1930s."

* Pop Culture: "The popular culture is the most fertile breeding ground for fascism."

* Mass Politics: "Instead of rational analysis of issues and reasoned debate, our political discourse turns on image manipulation through or mass media. . . . This was Goebbels' dream."

* Morality: "Moral issues are today almost impossible to discuss in objective terms. . . . Morality is reduced to social utility or the assertion of the will. This was precisely the Nazi ethic."

What Is Fascism?
"Only five decades ago, the world was in the nightmare of war and Holocaust. We seem to have forgotten everything. Putting aside images of goose-stepping villains from the movies, does anyone remember exactly what the fascists believed?"

"We must know what fascism is so that we can recognize it when we see it. . . . Racism alone cannot explain the virulence of Nazi anti-Semitism. . . .

"The fascists aligned themselves not only against the Jews but against what the Jews contributed to Western civilization. A transcendent God, who reveals a transcendent moral law, was anathema to fascists. . . .

"Fascism was essentially a spiritual movement. It was a revolt against the Judeo-Christian tradition, that is to say, against the Bible.

"Some fascists believe that Christianity could be purged of its Jewish elements; other believed it should be completely replaced. Some advocated a syncretistic Christianity, revising the faith to make it accord with the new culture. . . .

"The fascist rebellion against transcendence restored the ancient pagan consciousness. With it came barbarism, a barbarism armed with modern technology and intellectual sophistication.

"The liquidation of the transcendent moral law and 'Jewish' conscience allowed the resurgence of the most primitive and destructive emotions."

Veith's book is as relevant today as when it was first published, in 1993.

-- Gene Edward Veith, Preface, Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview