Religion (general)

Real Christianity?

BreakPoint | Stephen Reed | Jan. 13, 2009

More than any other world religion, Christianity asserts an intimate relationship with the divine, lifting human beings above their trying circumstances. So it is that oppressed peoples across the globe have found not only solace but genuine strength and purpose from Christianity, when brought to them in a positive fashion.

But today, with fewer Christian missionaries, Parris says a blanket of human passivity has fallen over the land. So in the most curious of politically incorrect comments, an atheist says that what nations like Malawi need most of all is more Christian missionaries. Kudos to Matthew Parris for seeing what other non-believers (and many believers) refuse to acknowledge, namely that belief in Christ has some powerful and positive effects. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

California: Court says private school can expel lesbians

San Francisco Chronicle | Bob Egelko | Jan. 28, 2009

A private religious high school can expel students it believes are lesbians because the school isn’t covered by California civil rights laws, a state appeals court has ruled.

Relying on a 1998 state Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Boy Scouts to exclude gays and atheists, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Bernardino said California Lutheran High School is a social organization entitled to follow its own principles, not a business subject to state anti-discrimination laws. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

33 Pastors Defy IRS Ban On Political Endorsements

Washington Post | Peter Slevin | Sep. 29, 2008

Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of “severe moral schizophrenia.”

The Rev. Ron Johnson Jr. told worshipers that the Democratic presidential nominee’s positions on abortion and gay partnerships exist “in direct opposition to God’s truth as He has revealed it in the Scriptures.” Johnson showed slides contrasting the candidates’ views but stopped short of endorsing Obama’s Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain.

Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

In the Name of God(lessness)

FrontPageMagazine | Dennis Prager | Aug. 19, 2008

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion — intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of “heretics,” holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion.

What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism — the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution, and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

God’s Welfare State

FrontPageMag | Mark D. Tooley | Aug. 7, 2008

Christianity, Judaism and Islam do all commend helping the poor, of course. But the Book of Deuteronomy, a law book for the ancient Hebrews’ theocracy, does not provide detailed policy guidance for modern political parties. How interesting that left-leaning religious groups can quote from the Old Testament and its supposed counsel about welfare programs and environmental regulations. In contrast, conservative religious groups that cite the Scriptures about their moral and political issues are widely derided as aspiring theocrats. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Knowing Obama by the Company He Keeps

American Thinker | Kyle-Anne Shiver | Mar. 16, 2008

I learned more about staying on the narrow path and avoiding trouble from my grandmother in five minutes than Barack and Michelle Obama seem to have learned in their whole lives. This lesson in human nature and relationships is pretty darned simple. And it gives no quarter to anyone; it applies to all human beings. “People will know you by the company you keep,” my grandmother told me. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

The National Church of Socialism

FrontPage Mag | Mark D. Tooley | Dec. 28, 2007

The financially and demographically struggling National Council of Churches (NCC) is mulling over a new “Social Creed for the 21st Century” that will succinctly articulate its left-leaning political activism. Many of the NCC’s heterodox officials and activist supporters could not affirm traditional Christian theological creeds. For them, political creeds are the desired alternative. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Intolerable Secularists

Interview With Author of “The New Fundamentalists”

ROME, AUG. 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Aggressive relativism is the newest form of fundamentalism, according to author Deacon Daniel Brandenburg, and Catholics are called to stand up and do something about it.

In this interview with ZENIT, Deacon Brandenburg, who will be ordained a priest of the Legionaries of Christ this December, comments on his book “The New Fundamentalists: Beyond Tolerance,” recently published by Circle Press.

Q: In a nutshell, what is the new fundamentalism that you address in your book?

Deacon Brandenburg: When we hear fundamentalism, what normally comes to mind is religious narrow-mindedness, perhaps with an irrational or even fanatical bent, like that displayed by some Muslim followers after Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address.

The “new” fundamentalism that I describe in my book often displays the same intolerance, irrationality and extremism. The key difference, however, is that the new fundamentalists profess to be secular followers of no religion. Yet closer examination shows that the relativistic dogma underlying their worldview excites more religious fervor than do many tenets of the great world religions.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Trenchant self-reflection by a Canadian Anglican on the crisis in his Church

The Age to Come Blog

Those who marry the spirit of this age will find themselves widows in the next.

[ … ]

vangogh.png

Above (left) is a reproduction of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, which he composed in 1885. You will notice that there are two books. The larger of the two is the Bible. The other book is entitled: La joie de vivre (Joy of Life) by Emile Zola. Zola was the leading French novelist in the latter part of the 19th century. In 1884 he wrote La Joie De Vivre. It was part of a series of twenty novels he wrote rooted in a philosophical school called Naturalism. Zola helped establish this school.

In summary naturalism taught:

Individual characters were seen as helpless products of heredity and environment, motivated by strong instinctual drives from within and harassed by social and economic pressures from without. As such, they had little will or responsibility for their fates, and the prognosis for their “cases” was pessimistic at the outset.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail