Posts filed under 'Religion'
The other day at the Saddleback affair, when asked at what point a baby would be deserving of human rights, Obama responded, “Well, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”
From a theological perspective, the question remains a no-brainer:
Thou shalt not kill.
Pretty black and white, if you ask me. Especially given the innocence of the developing life in what should be the safety of a mother’s womb. So unless Barack Obama’s pay grade is below that which one would consider literate, it is my opinion that he is unfamiliar with his job description.
Obama’s theological ignorance aside, his reliance on the cloak of science from which to hide from his inequities hardly provides any meaningful cover.
Science is a discipline of facts, not of values. It is within the purview of exploring our ethics and values to determine how to interpret scientific data in the context of human interactions and the values of society. The question of what stage to assign a developing life form the title of “human being” and when to bestow all rights and privileges therein is necessarily a question of values, not of science.
Recognizing a child as a “human being” with the right to live from the moment of conception is most assuredly a values decision, just as assigning only live-born children rights concomitant with humanity is also a values decision.
But let’s take a closer look at the “values” involved in each of those mindsets, shall we?
In the former circumstance, assigning the title of “human being” to a child beginning at the moment of conception is a values decision, born of the belief that every human being, regardless of stage of development, or of ability to independently or otherwise function, is a manifestation of human life, must be held sacred, and is necessarily worthy of protection under the law.
In the latter circumstance, assigning the title of “human being” exclusively to children who are born alive (and I’m giving Obama wayyy too much credit for even this) necessarily stems from a value that the title “human being” and privileges thereof should be bestowed based solely on functionality; not on the mere existence of the child.
To assign humanity based solely on functionality rather than on merely “being” is a decision based on values, not on any “facts,” nor on any “science.”
When you assign humanity exclusively to born-alive infants, you have made the value judgment and choice to limit humanity and/or the value of a person based exclusively on functionality. At the risk of evoking Godwin, wasn’t that mindset pretty much the underpinnings of the eugenics movement? (Not ironically, Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a big fan of eugenics)
Obama at once tried to justify his moral malfeasance by claiming both religious and scientific ignorance; it is quite apparent that he failed in his attempted justification on both counts.
If this is indeed the extent of his “pay grade,” it may behoove the Obamessiah to set his sights on a somewhat more lowly ambition than POTUS.
Tags: abortion, Barack Obama, Obama Deceptions
August 20th, 2008
That was one of the questions at Saddleback, and McCain just flat out answered it - the way he failed in his first marriage. How many of us, I wonder, have the courage to go on television and give that clear a statement? Its on my mind a bit now - of course, the first thing I have to do is go through that mental Rolodex O’ Errors and try to sift down decades of sin into something which is clearly a great moral failure. In the context McCain used, it would have to be something I did which I knew in advance was the wrong thing to do, and yet I went right on and did it, anyways; or something that you know you should of done, but you slunk away from it like a coward. Its one thing to acknowledge in public one is a sinner (heck, from time to time we Catholics even do that in Church - “I confess to you, Almighty God and you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…”), but there is a gulf between a generalised statement of error and a specific acceptance of responsibility for failure.
Among my errors, I have these two things which weigh upon my mind:
1. Back when I was in the Navy, I stumbled across an attempted racial discrimination against a shipmate, and did nothing about it. Just happened to go into the room just as two very senior white enlisted men were in the process of attempting to screw out of a plumb assignment a black shipmate in favor of a white shipmate. I can take the excuse of youth, but that really doesn’t cut it - I should have done something specific about it, but I didn’t. The screwing failed, probably on account of my interruption of it, but that doesn’t lessen my failure an iota.
2. For very many years, I refused to forgive members of my family for their many failings, as if I were perfect and not in need of forgiveness, too.
As noted, there are many other errors - but my sins of commission pale in comparison, at least in many cases, with my sins of omission. You wish you could go back in time and do it right - but, you can’t; while your sins can be forgiven, they can’t be unmade. Always better to strive to get it right from the start, and forgive those around you who fail, because if you didn’t fail today, then its really more a matter of God’s grace rather than any perfection on your part.
Tags: John McCain, morality, Saddleback Church
August 18th, 2008
There’s really no other way to put this:
A quick reading of the measure that will go before San Francisco voters in November to decriminalize prostitution easily could leave you with the misimpression that the measure is an exercise in fairness that demands that prosecutors go after men who abuse prostitutes and implement policies “to reduce institutional violence and discrimination against prostitutes.” A careful reading of the initiative, “Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers,” however, shows a measure that shields child prostitution and traffickers of human beings.
“If I had just heard from the proponents, I would probably vote for it myself,” said the Rev. Glenda Hope, whose San Francisco Network Ministries helped found the Tenderloin AIDS Resource, in the mistaken belief the measure is meant “to protect women.” But as the executive director of SafeHouse, a residential center that helps women get off the streets, Hope knows too much.
…the San Francisco ballot measure completely ignores the prostitution of children. The measure simply states, “Law enforcement agencies shall not allocate any resources for the investigation and prosecution of prostitutes for prostitution.” Astonishingly, there’s no exemption that encourages police to enforce the law for minors.
If the measure passes, the city is likely to become an international haven for pimps who peddle girls and boys, and perverts seeking sex with minors.
And where does that leave Bay Area youth? “They want new and young,” Jasmine, a former teen prostitute from Oakland who now volunteers for the nonprofit SAGE Project, which fights sexual exploitation, explained to me.
Thus the tail end of the sexual revolution - a ballot measure to allow men (and it will be almost exclusively men) to legally procure boys and girls for sexual gratification. When you de-couple sex from marriage and child-rearing, this is precisely what you get as was predicted back in the 60’s when the concepts underlying the sexual revolution first gained a mainstream foothold. This is absolutely no surprise at all - its digusting, but not a surprise. The piece goes on to note that some are expecting the ballot measure to pass rather handily as San Francisco is a “sex-positive” city - meaning, presumptively, that there is so much selfishness and demand for personal gratification that San Francisco may very well cut itself entirley off from civlization and descend to a level of depravity untouched since the worst of Nero.
You see, back when it was first seriously proposed that we de-stigmatize pre- and extra-marital sex and all manner of sexual deviation those who opposed it weren’t just a bunch of squares with sexual hang-ups who just didn’t want anyone having fun. Not, it wasn’t like that at all - the concept was opposed because it was already known what would come of it. It was known - not guessed-at, not theorised over; known. This is because, waaaay back when, Christianity was (among other things, of course) the cure for a society which had allowed sexual licentiousness to descend to such a level that child-bearing and -rearing was considered a burden and personal sexual gratification trumped all, no matter how sterile and un-fulfilling it steadily became. Christianity knew this in 60, 560, 1060, 1560, 1960 and will continue to know it in 2060 - sex is a powerful thing, and unless carefully contained within proper limits this great gift becomes a taskmaster and a means of self-destruction.
And now San Francisco proposes to legalise the worst of it - because people want it and want it now and exactly how they want it and everyone else can go to Hell as far as they are concerned, San Francisco may do this horrible thing. And then we’ll await the inevitible lawsuit, claiming that the right to privacy means that not only San Francisco, but the whole nation must turn a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of youth. How it will come out will remain to be seen - unless, of course, it turns out there is some remaining level of human decency in San Francisco and this terrible, anti-human initiative is defeated.
UPDATE: And the Democrats endorse.
Tags: child abuse, Christianity, Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Wor, morality, San Francisco
August 17th, 2008
Just a bit amazing that such a person could be exposed enough to the Christian message to become a convert:
Masab-Joseph Yousef, a son of prominent West Bank MP Sheikh Hassan Yousef, has discussed his conversion to Christianity in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Praying that his family will “open their eyes to Jesus,” he expressed love for his enemies and claimed Muslims’ conversion to Christianity is the only way to have a chance for peace in the Holy Land.
Yousef, 30, said his first exposure to Christianity came in Jerusalem about eight years ago, when he was invited to learn about the faith. He converted four years ago, but did not tell his father. “For years I helped my father, the Hamas leader, and he didn’t know that I had converted, only that I had Christian friends,” he said to Haaretz.
His father, Sheikh Yousef, was a founder of the extremist group Hamas in the West Bank and was imprisoned for several years for his membership in the organization.
Masab-Joseph Yousef, the oldest of eight siblings, was expected to take an active role assisting in the political work of his father, whom he claimed is opposed to killing civilians. He characterized the Israelis’ arrests of his father as very influential events in his life.
“I only knew that the Israeli army had arrested my father repeatedly, and for me he was everything: a good, loving man who would do anything for me. He took care of us, bought us gifts, gave of himself, whereas the soldiers entered our house and took him away from me.”
Arrested at the age of 18 for his leadership role in his high school Islamic society, Yousef told Haaretz he discovered in prison that most Hamas members were not as admirable as his father.
“Their leaders in prison received better conditions, such as the best food, as well as more family visits and towels for the shower. These people have no morals, they have no integrity,” he said, alleging Hamas leaders also embezzle money meant for widowed families.
Yousef, who now lives in California, described how an invitation to learn more about Christianity led him to convert.
“I was very enthusiastic about what I heard. I began to read the Bible every day and I continued with religion lessons. I did it in secret, of course. I used to travel to the Ramallah hills, to places like the Al Tira neighborhood, and to sit there quietly with the amazing landscape and read the Bible.”
“A verse like ‘Love thine enemy’ had a great influence on me,” he continued. “At this stage I was still a Muslim and I thought that I would remain one. But every day I saw the terrible things done in the name of religion by those who considered themselves ‘great believers.’”
I am reminded of St. Francis’ project to end the Crusades by converting the Islamic world to Christianity, on the theory that it is better to make Christians than destroy Moslems - it didn’t work, of course, but not for lack of trying on St. Francis’ part. A very different world would it be had success crowned his efforts…
Aside from that, the story here is important because it shows that cross-cultural understanding between Islam and Christianity is possible. Someone looked past Yousef’s background and decided to introduce to him a new idea, and the courage that person showed has been rewarded by the development of a man who not only doesn’t kill for his religion, but can’t even comprehend the concept any longer. We need not fight each other forever, provided we recognise our common humanity and see in the other person another glorious creation of God, and not an enemy.
Tags: Christianity, Hamas, Islam, Israel, Masab-Joseph Yousef
August 16th, 2008
When your back is against the wall and your fundamental beliefs are challenged, just what do you do? McCain and the other residents of the Hanoi Hilton showed rare courage:
“There were many times I didn’t pray for another day and I didn’t pray for another hour — I prayed for another minute to keep going,” said McCain, who was brought up Episcopalian but now worships at North Phoenix Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church. “There’s no doubt that my faith was strengthened and reinforced and tested, because sometimes you have a tendency to say, ‘Why am I here?’ “…
…The prisoners decided that every Sunday, after they had eaten their rice, the highest-ranking officer would cough loudly and say the letter ‘c’ for church. The prisoners would then say the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. The psalm was said in plural: “Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we will fear no evil.”
Prisoners used diarrhea pills mixed with cigarette ash—or charcoal or dirt—to write lines of Scripture and surreptitiously share them.
The church riot erupted after U.S. Special Forces raided a site about 40 miles from Hanoi trying to rescue prisoners who, it turned out, were no longer there. The Vietnamese, fearing more such raids, rounded up American POWs and moved them from other outlying camps into Hanoi. That meant an end to isolation, as dozens of prisoners were packed together.
“We agreed that we were going to have a church service and told the Vietnamese, and they said no,” recalled fellow prisoner Bud Day. But on Feb. 12, 1970, the prisoners went ahead anyway, holding a service and singing songs.
“The Vietnamese broke in and seized the people who were standing against the wall doing the service,” Day said. “They marched them out of the room at gunpoint. So I stood up and started singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ ‘God Bless America,’ ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ and every song we could think of.”
The Vietnamese stormed back in, putting a definitive end to the service.
“We wanted to actually just have a chance to do what we felt was a fundamental human right … and we got spiritual comfort from being able to worship together,” McCain said. “We thought, look, if we’re going to be together, then we’re going to stand up. … They’d done so many bad things that we weren’t nearly as afraid of them as maybe we would have been if a lot of us hadn’t gone through what we’d gone through.”
There are some people who think that the act of saying something - like, for instance, giving an obscure speech against liberating Iraq - is an act of courage…but a real act of courage is when you do or say something which can put you in immediate risk of life and limb. John McCain has done this before, and so we can rely upon it that when its time to speak the truth and act upon it - regardless of how harsh - McCain will know that the worst thing that can happen to him, won’t happen. It already did. Character really does count in a President - all the intellect in the world is worthless if it isn’t joined with the simple courage to take a stand.
Tags: Acts of Courage, Hanoi Hilton, John McCain
August 15th, 2008
Europeans Moslems can’t seem to decide if gays should be executed, or not; rather run of the mill stuff for Moslems these days, but the real problem is how the government of Norway reacts:
For a case in point, I will refer the reader to an episode I’ve mentioned previously in this space — an Oslo debate last November at which the deputy chairman of Norway’s Islamic Council, Asghar Ali, refused to reject the death penalty for gays. When Senaid Kobilica, the head of the Islamic Council (which represents 60,000 Muslims), was asked where he stood on the question, he replied that he couldn’t give a definitive answer until he got a ruling from the European Fatwa Council. This week it was reported that he’s still waiting…
…What’s most chilling about all this, however, is not the positions of these Muslim leaders but the reactions of the Norwegian establishment. Or, one should say, the lack of reaction.
Consider this. After last November’s debate, it emerged that Asghar Ali not only was deputy chairman of the Islamic Council but was also on the board of the Oslo Arbeidersamfunn, the largest and most influential association within Norway’s ruling Labor Party. Asked about Ali’s views, the head of the Oslo Arbeidersamfunn, Anne Cathrine Berger, lamented that some people “can’t see the difference between a board member’s views and the organization’s views.” Despite scattered calls for his dismissal, Ali remained on the board. (When a new board election was held in February, Ali chose not to run again.)
That’s not all: Ali is, in addition, secretary of the 37,000-member Electricians’ and IT Workers’ Union…
…As for the Norwegian government, there has been no serious effort, as far as I know, to rescind from the Islamic Council its half million kroner a year in state support.
Does anyone in Europe realise that these peoples’ intentions are serious? They do propose to out-breed and out-immigrate non-Moslems and eventually take over and force through Islamic law. While European governments put the final touches on gay marriage the Islamists look forward to the day when they can hang all the gay people - the decision Europe made after World War Two to entirely secularise and welfarise Europe has proven disasterous on all levels, but the worst part of it seems to be that the will to live has gone out of the European population (or is it that during two world wars the best and bravest sacrificed themselves so much that there wasn’t enough physical strength to continue?).
There still is a living remnant in Europe - that small segment of the population which refused to surrender its Christian European identity. What remains to be seen is whether this remnant will be able to take over from dying secularism before the Islamists do. And we’ll also find out whether the United States will have to come to Europe’s rescue, again.
Tags: Europe, Islam
August 10th, 2008
You know, so that we can, for once, tackle a non-controversial subject here at Blogs for Victory? Well, then, lets have at it with Michael Novak’s piece over at First Things:
Let’s suppose there is no God. The same evils still exist. Are atheists suggesting that the nonexistence of God and the existence of evil fit neatly together in a logical argument? That, if little children, beaten into submission, sob in the night, it is somehow a telling argument for atheism?
Christopher Hitchens has argued that before our time human beings suffered 98,000 years of disease, cataclysm, bloodshed, and famine without intervention by any Creator. If a human creator had deliberately chosen to put hundreds of millions of his fellow humans in such a parlous state, he would be regarded as a monster. It follows that if God willed that long, bleak, agonizing history, God in his omniscience and omnipotence is an even greater monster.
Could it possibly improve things to believe that the long pain of human evolution was set in motion by chance alone? The atheist view of the world is actually rather bleaker than that of Jews and Christians: Suffering under the weight of evil is meaningless, and so is any struggle against evil. Everything in the atheist’s world begins and ends in randomness and chance…
…St. Thomas Aquinas posited the striking thought that for this world to be as good as it is, the existence of evil is necessary. Evil is not a “thing”—no substantial thing at all. Against the Muslims, Aquinas flatly rejected the centuries of Eastern philosophy that divided the world into good and evil, as if they were equal contestants, equally substantial and active and potent.
Not so, Aquinas reasoned. Everything that the Greatest of all Goods has created is suffused with good up to the brim of its capacity. But for the world as a whole to be good, it must be populated by the most beautiful and god-like creatures of all—creatures capable of insight and deliberate choice. It requires the liberty of human minds and wills. Only at this peak of nature can human creation be considered made in the “image of God.”
The Jewish Creator offered every woman and man in his creation his friendship, and in this way treated each as a free person, not as a slave. Such human liberty required God to create a world in which human beings can of their own deliberate choice turn away from the good. This is how Aquinas defined human sin: a considered and willful deviation from the good, an absence of the good, a deficiency.
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. The leaders of the Anglo-American Enlightenment believed that liberty was God’s underlying purpose in creating human beings, and in shaping the rest of creation accordingly. They believed that in the war between the Americans and the British in 1776, though both worshiped the same God, the God of liberty would favor those who fought for freedom, not against it.
A world in which liberty can flower must be a world of laws, regularities, and probabilities, but also a world of contingency, happenstance, serendipity, surprise, and suspense. All the stuff of a good story depends on creation being not just a world of iron logic and inflexible arithmetic, but also a world of immense crisscrossing variation and “blooming, buzzing profusion.”
Even the “angelic” light of advanced mathematics (so highly abstract and removed from corporeality) must in a world of liberty be constituted not only by arithmetic, geometry, and deductive reasoning, but also by the statistically random.
In such a world, there cannot be human freedom without the possibility of falling away from the good.
C.S. Lewis observed that God made a world in which the wood from a tree could be used to build a house - or to make a club. Now, God could have set things up so that as soon as someone made a club the material would transform into something which could do no harm…but that, of course, would be to deny us our choice. If we can’t choose to do wrong, then we have no choice at all, and God wants our choice to be voluntary. He’ll take us in if we choose him, and he’ll ratify our choice if we reject him. To say that because there is evil in the world there must be no God is to presume that the only good world is a world in which we’re all automatons doing what we’re programmed to do. As to why God made us this way rather than another way - well, he says it is good, and I’m not going to gainsay God.
To me, the logic of there being a God (outside of the unanswerable argument of there necessarily being a First Cause) rests upon the fact that I can think - that I can reason. No amount of materialist evolution would ever come up with an evolutionary product which could refuse its office. We can choose - we can decide to this, or decide to do that. And while we know what our brain is and a great deal of how it works, we haven’t the foggiest notion or what our mind is or how a thought is generated. You can tell what parts of my brain are working when I think of, say, the football game - but you can’t in the trial of a thousand years figure out why I think the Chargers are better than the Patriots, last year’s records be darned. Itis mind which doesn’t fit into the natural world - and so, in my view, mind must come from outside the natural world (as a side note, I recently read an interesting question: The Universe is expanding. What is it expanding in to?…if the universe is complete and yet growing larger, there must be something outside the universe, greater than it, which allows the universe to grow larger).
Take a First Cause and add a Mind, and what you get is a God who not only creates, but who can act in his creation..alter it and move it towards the goals he designed from the start. While such a belief does not, in and of itself, verify my Christian faith, it does leave aside any thought that we are either the result of random chance, or the result of an uncaring Creator.
Tags: creation, Evolution, Philosophy of Life
July 30th, 2008
The Christians of Iraq have suffered doubly - from Saddamit tyranny, and then as the easy target of terrorists and criminals. Things have improved remarkably in Iraq, and now we’re starting to see some signs of life in the Iraqi Christian community:
Christians in the southern Iraq have begun a campaign to restore churches which have been rendered unusable due to war and neglect.
Father Imad Aziz Al Banna of the Chaldean Archeparchy of Basra told Iraqlaan News Agency that the local Christian community has requested government funding for the restorations and is collaborating with the Ministry of Planning and the Basra Governorate Council, BaghdadHope.com reports.
Built in 1880, one of the oldest churches in southern Iraq, the Chaldean Church of Um Al Ahzan (Our Lady of Sorrows), recently reopened. Father Al Banna celebrated a special Mass and baptism there on June 29, Ankawa.com reports.
It presently serves only 18 Christian families. In the whole Archeparchy of Basra there are reportedly only one priest, two permanent deacons, and two religious sisters among 2,500 of the faithful.
Father Al Banna said there is confidence among Christians that the government can preserve the Christian religious heritage in the area. Some families who fled the region have even returned because of the new security situation.
The Christian community in southern Iraq dates back to the fourth century and reportedly was the launching pad for the spread of Christianity to the territories of the Persian Gulf.
The final test for the new Iraq is whether or not the Christian minority will be allowed to flourish - elsewhere in the Moslem world, under pressure from tyrannical regimes, the Christian communities, already small, have shrunk rapidly over the past few decades. Much has justifiably been made of the way Iraq’s Christians have suffered - but in Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere in the Moslem world, it has been a long, dark night of persecution.
There are stirrings of change, however - this news story about Iraq is one of them, but I have it on first-hand account that Mass is celebrated in Moslem countries thought to be 100% Moslem, and I recently read a story where the Catholic Church is, very quietly, negotiating with the Saudi government to construct a church for Saudi Arabia’s large Christian community, mostly made up of foreign laborers imported to Arabia to do the work Saudis simply won’t do. The real end of the War on Terrorism is when Christians and Jews can live and work in the Moslem world without let or hindrance ffrom the Moslem governments, so let us take this small sign as an idicator of a much brighter future.
Tags: Iraq, religious liberty
July 26th, 2008
Nothing like getting “backs agains the wall” to shake a person up and make them realise that they’re in the fight:
Two influential American Evangelical leaders have taken a new interest in the 2008 presidential race, with one saying that he leans toward the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, while another plans to host the first head-to-head meeting of the two leading contenders for the White House.
Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, told a radio audience: “While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.” Dr. Dobson, who commands a wide following among conservative Evangelicals, had previously said that he could not support McCain because of the senator’s support for embryo research and his failure to back a constitutional amendment protecting marriage.
However, Dr. Dobson said that the “radical positions on life, marriage, and national security” taken by Senator Barack Obama were pushing him toward McCain.
Meanwhile Rick Warren, the leader of one of America’s largest “mega-church” congregations, the Saddleback Church in California, has announced plans to hold a forum that would hear both Obama and McCain. Warren, the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, will bring the Democratic and Republican candidates together for an August 16 event that, he says, will be “an unprecedented opportunity for America to hear both men back-to-back on the same platform.” Warren, who has not previously taken an active role in partisan politics, will be the only person questioning the candidates at the August 16 event.
There was much talk as McCain emerged the clear front runner for the GOP nomination about sitting this one out - Evangelicals because McCain wasn’t 100% (in their view ) and movement conservatives because, once again, McCain wasn’t 100% (in their view). My grandfather had a saying that I’ve laid to heart - better to have 10% of something than 100% of nothing. Whatever McCain may or may not do in the White House, we can rest assured that Obama will be worse for Christian conservatives and movement conservatives….there is, actually, not one position Obama has staked out which can be called by conservatives and conservative Christians better than the McCain position.
As for me, I’ve grown “re-comfortable” with McCain - he was, after all, my main serious choice for 2000 (Bush came in after him, one other person came in front of McCain, but mostly for fun on my part). McCain did much to annoy me since 2001 - most notably on refusing to back the tax cuts and the “gang of 14″ nonsense in the Senate (immigraiton reform? Sorry, but I backed the McCain/Bush proposal, and still do), but I am one of those who understands that people are, well people and I’m certainly not perfect and if I’m going to refuse to support anyone but the perfect conservative then I’ll never be able to support anyone. McCain is a good man, a war hero, a solid patriot, a man of moral courage - these are the qualities I want in a President and, at any rate, I love a respectful, intra-party fight anyways, so I’ll still battle President McCain on such things as CFR. For me, McCain wasn’t my first pick, but he’s an excellent pick, all the same.
Given such things as Obama’s support for the fanatic, pro-abortion proposals and other Obama policies directly contravening basic Christian teaching, it is no surprise that Evanglicals are starting to swing behind McCain in a serious way. America can’t afford four years of Carter, Part Two. Obama is a catastrophe in the making - but one we can un-make, if we’ll just rally ’round the man who is best for President in 2008, John McCain
Tags: Evangelicals, John McCain
July 24th, 2008
In the opinion of some, yes:
London, Jul. 21, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A decorated British police officer has filed a complaint before a local employment tribunal, charging that he has been harassed by his superiors because of his Christian beliefs.
Officer Graham Cogman,a 15-year veteran of the Norfolk police force, says that he has been subjected to complaints and investigations because he strongly resisted a campaign to encourage support for Gay History Month among the members of that force. Cogman has already been forced to pay a fine of £1,200 for alleged violations of department regulations, because he encouraged colleagues to resist the department’s pro-homosexual campaign. He now faces further disciplinary hearings on charges that he has promoted “homophobic” viewpoints.
At particular issue was an official e mail encouraging Norfolk officers to wear a pink ribbon on their uniform during gay history month (whatever that is, exactly) - Cogman refused and sent a response e mail quoting biblical passages regarding the sinfulness of homosexual acts. I don’t know what denomination Cogman is, but the basic thrust of officialdom here seems to be that pointing out dissent from reigning liberal orthodoxy is wrong - it isn’t differentiated in the news report, but it would seem that whether you use the gentle Catholic remonstrance against gay sex or the more in-your-face views of Evangelicals it is considered out of bounds to dissent from liberalism on gay issues.. My guess is that Cogman would have been fine had he kept his opinions to himself, though we don’t know what sorts of official pressure might have been indirectly placed on Cogman to toe the secularist, PC line. By daring to go behond passive resistence to what amounts to moral indoctrination (officers wearing pink ribbons on their uniform amounts to government propaganda in favor of the homosexual rights agenda), Cogman got himself in trouble.
It is said that one way to look at the conflicts of the world is to think in terms of there is the Church, and Her enemies. It is well established that any denomination which follows Christian teaching will hold that homosexual acts are disordered and never to be approved - this isn’t central to Christian faith (that would be the cross and events related to it), but it is an important point to be held because alone amongst the religions of the world, Christianity (and its base, Judaism) understand the true worth and use of sexual activity. Over centuries a set of rules were developed in order to regularise sexual activity and turn it more and more towards the act of self-donation it is supposed to be - recently, however, there has been a strong effort to disorder sexual activity and turn it more and more into an act of self-gratification. As part of a genuine respect for the body, love, marriage, sex and a true freedom in these things, Christianity hedged sex about with careful strictures…along comes the secularist to toss that all aside willy-nilly and then the leftist comes up not with the idea of toleration for people’s sins, but an insistence that the sin be called a virtule and that anyone who says otherwise must be punished.
Christianity, of course, can’t become what is wrong - the Church, that is, can’t declare wrong to be right. And so Christianity - as truly understood - will never agree to gay marriages or, indeed, any act which delays the propect of the person in question having a conversion. So to call Christinaity homophobic is to essentially call Christ’s Church an evil upon the face of the earth.
What do you think?
Tags: Christianity, homophobia, homosexuality, religious liberty
July 23rd, 2008
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