Tag Archive for: Jesus

‘Faith in Jesus Christ Alone’: How Americans Agreed Christianity Is Core to Conservatism

/in , , , , , , , /by

In the years leading up to the birth of the nation we know as America, political discourse was exercised in pubs, in the pages of newspapers, in the town square, and on the steps outside courthouses. The patriots who forged America would define and refine together what liberty means and what responsibilities are carried with it, how men are governed and by what authority, and what a nation is and what it means to be an American.

Today, that same patriotic spirit that burns in the hearts of conservatives articulates itself largely on social media. On Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and even on less mainstream sites like Gab or former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social, conservatives carry on the work of their forefathers and clarify ideologies, debate traditions, and ask what it means to be an American conservative. Just as early American patriots made their voices heard in the streets of Boston, Philadelphia, and Annapolis, so American conservatives made their voices heard on Twitter last week, resoundingly declaring that Christianity is core to conservatism.

Lizzie Marbach, a former Trump 2020 campaign staffer and current Ohio pro-life advocate, tweeted last week, “There’s no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone.” The tweet itself garnered a moderate amount of notice and many social media users agreed with Marbach, who was essentially repeating longstanding (and, honestly, pretty basic) Christian doctrine. And then along came Max Miller. The Republican congressman from Ohio and former Trump staffer reposted his fellow former Trump staffer’s tweet with his own derisive commentary, saying, “This is one of the most bigoted tweets I have ever seen. Delete it, Lizzie. Religious freedom in the United States applies to every religion. You have gone too far.”

First of all, it is important to note that Marbach is not a sitting legislator, nor even a government employee. Her tweet did not advocate, endorse, or even remotely suggest the suppression or persecution of any religious group or set of religious beliefs. This makes Miller’s comments all the more infuriatingly ironic: while claiming to support “religious freedom,” a sitting U.S. congressman told an American citizen to delete her profession of one of the most fundamental doctrines of her faith — a faith shared, by the way, by an estimated 70% of Americans.

Miller, who describes himself on Twitter as a “proud Jew,” was instantly ridiculed, shamed, and flatly contradicted by conservatives. Political commentator and podcast host Matt Walsh asked, “Do your constituents know that you consider basic Christian teaching to be ‘bigoted’? They do now I guess. Good luck in the next election!” Journalist Jack Posobiec, senior editor at Human Events, posted a meme reading, “[T]he best time to delete this tweet was immediately after sending it, the second best time is now.” Media personality and former GOP congressional candidate Lauren Witzke quipped, “Mask off moment.” Countless others commented simple variations of “Christ is King.”

Miller went further than merely airing his ignorance, though; he complained to Marbach’s employer, Ohio Right to Life, where his wife is a board member, and she was fired from her position as communications director. Ohio Right to Life stressed that Marbach wasn’t fired due to “any single event,” but even the ol’ post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy might be a bit of a stretch in application to this particular scenario.

In 2020, President Trump famously said, “It’s called ‘we do a little trolling.’” Well, trolling works. After the torrent of purely-digital backlash from Americans, Miller was forced to apologize. He said, “I posted something earlier that conveyed a message I did not intend. I will not try to hide my mistake or run from it. I sincerely apologize to Lizzie and to everyone who read my post.” Now, whether the apology was sincere or simply a PR necessity in the wake of denigrating the beliefs of over two thirds of Americans is not yet clear, though it’s worth noting that Miller did not delete his tweet calling expression of Christian thought “bigoted” and ordering an American Christian to “delete” her tweet, nor has he apologized for his role in having Marbach fired.

In fact, Marbach herself showed Miller just how “bigoted” and threatening Christians are by publicly forgiving him. She tweeted, “Max, I accept your apology 100%. However the truth is that it is not me from whom you need forgiveness, but God himself. I genuinely pray you seek him and find salvation!” She also posted the text of Matthew 18:21-35, in which Christ tells the parable of the unforgiving servant and instructs His disciples to forgive others not just seven times but “seventy-seven times.”

Aside from Miller’s appalling behavior and lackluster attempt at an apology, this episode demonstrates the commitment of conservatives to Christian ideals. Those who do not identify as Christian — atheists and agnostics, even some of Miller’s fellow Jews, were among his detractors — but as conservatives recognize the inherent truth that, without Christianity, there is nothing to conserve. The entirety of the conservative movement is founded upon distinctly Christian principles, traditions, and culture: liberty, order, virtue, duty, sacrifice, and all those noble ideals Americans have fought, bled, and died for over the past 250 years. These ideals were practiced, preached, preserved, clarified, and dogmatized by Christianity.

While nations and empires have risen and fallen, while the Roman republic decayed into tyranny, while kingdoms and races warred across medieval Europe, while European powers pioneered new lands, while the dream called America was realized, while bloody revolutions felled and founded new cultures and governments, while world wars raged, and even now into the present age, Christianity has stood strong, lovingly maintaining the doctrines laid out 2,000 years ago by a Carpenter from Nazareth, Who was also told, “Delete it,” in the parlance of the day, and lost far more than just His job.

Just as American patriots once agreed on what liberty is while sitting around their drinks in pubs, just as they once proclaimed what they knew to be true in the pages of their newspapers and gazettes, just as they once shouted their common beliefs in the streets, so too have today’s American patriots, speaking in today’s town square, agreed that conservatives must not condemn or denigrate Christianity but embrace it.

Hopefully, today’s patriots will continue following in the footsteps of their forefathers and will not be content with pub-table conversations, printed words, and marching in the streets, but will speak at the ballot box too and elect representatives who respect and even share their beliefs, the beliefs that this nation was built upon.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Vladimir Putin, Man of Faith?

/in , , , , , , /by

At an Orthodox Easter service in April, a “somber looking” Vladimir Putin joined with other worshippers in saying, “Christ is truly risen.”

He probably believes this. Mark Hollingsworth has detailed how Putin’s religious allegiance has infused his life. He concludes that his Russian Orthodoxy is an essential part of his intense nationalism. For Putin, he writes, “promoting the mystical belief that Russia is the Third Rome, the next ruling empire of the earth, has been part of his appeal to the masses.”

This mystical belief has caused Putin to believe he, himself, is imbued with the spirit of his nation. Shortly before Lent, one of his business associates asked Putin about asking forgiveness before a priest. Putin responded, “‘I am the President of Russia. Why should I ask for forgiveness?’”

When a leader believes he is the personification of the state itself, specially chosen by God to lead his country to conquest and triumph, trouble looms — as the people of Ukraine have learned with great pain.

The German philosopher G.F. Hegel claimed that the state — a centralized government with power over every institution and person within the borders it controls — “is the march of God on earth.” This is precisely the approach taken by the Nazis concerning Adolf Hitler. The so-called “Fuhrer (leader) principle” was made clear by one of Hitler’s lapdog apologists, Rudolf Hess: “Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. Whatever he does is necessary. Whatever he does is successful. Clearly the Führer has divine blessing.”

This is why negotiating with Putin has proven so difficult. If he is filled with the spirit of his nation, and if Russia is uniquely a Christian space, then how can he be held accountable for anything he does? Using his reasoning, his purity of vision and action is axiomatic. He is incapable of error, a secular pope speaking from a place of political ex cathedra.

How does this factor into the invasion of Ukraine? That nation, Putin said in a speech last year, is “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” It is true that the leader of Kyiv “accepted Christianity in 988 and established a devout kingdom that became the predecessor to the modern states of Ukraine and Russia.” But it is not true that Ukraine has always been part of Russia, nor does it follow that Russia’s affirmation of Eastern Orthodoxy for 1,000 years justifies the violent and vicious assault on Ukraine today. This last proposition is so illogical it does merit lengthy refutation.

Putin gets heavy political backing from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill I. Kirill, reportedly once a KGB agent under the guise of his priest’s habit, has done quite well for himself for a man of the cloth. In 2006, prior to his accession to his church’s highest position, the Moscow News estimated he had a personal fortune of about $4 billion. As journalist Jason Horowitz reports, “Kirill has in recent years aspired to expand his church’s influence, pursuing an ideology consistent with Moscow being a ‘Third Rome,’ a reference to a 15th-century idea of Manifest Destiny for the Orthodox Church, in which Mr. Putin’s Russia would become the spiritual center of the true church after Rome and Constantinople.”

Late last year, Kirill said in a sermon of those Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine: “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins.” This is not unlike the Islamic promise that to die for Allah gets you into the Muslim heaven, a promise used to induce terrorists to tie bombs to their bodies and fly planes into buildings.

A “third Rome?” Putin’s enablers in his church benefit right along with the Russian president. “Putin has allowed the (Russian Orthodox) Church to return to prominence and supported it in a way unheard of since the Revolution,” writes religion scholar Ben Ryan. “The Church has, in turn, provided some of the intellectual and cultural backing for Putin’s Statist vision for Russia and the wider Russian sphere of influence.”

Putin could well believe in essential Christian teachings and even practice the rites of his church. He speaks fondly of his mother. “Mama gave me my baptismal cross to get it blessed at the Lord’s Tomb,” he once reported. Yet his faith is not the faith of the New Testament. It’s a perverse version of what Scripture teaches, one that “has a form of Godliness but denies the power thereof” (II Timothy 2:6).

Putin’s affirmations of certain biblical truths do not mean he has ever personally come to repentance and trust in a Savior Who alone can redeem. Until he does, he can, like the Pharisees of old, perform all the rituals and recite all the creeds of his tradition, but “neglect the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23-34). The suffering people of Ukraine can speak potently of this truth.

AUTHOR

Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder is Senior Lecturer in Regent University’s Honors College.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

How the Apostles Spoke of the Beauty of Christ

/in , , , /by

Note: I’ve been reading for years – in great souls like Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, Ratzinger, and many others – how “beauty will save the world.”  It seems more often that it takes many of us on a joyride to Hades. But it’s a part of our tradition that Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (the three transcendentals) are the main highways to things above us. And our friend James Matthew Wilson offers an interesting exposition today on what that means. Retrieving Catholic truths like this is just one part of what we are about here at The Catholic Thing. Day by day, we have to recover and advance the fullness of what God has revealed to the world – and that the world tries to ignore or deny. We’ve been at our mid-year fundraising for one week now, and as always we’ll take Sunday off so as not to be moneychangers in the temple. But all the more reason, if you haven’t already donated, to do so today. Many of you have signed up for automatic monthly payments, which is a great way to help with our work if you can’t make a larger one-time gift. You’ll find all that, with simple explanations, by just clicking the button. Life is beautiful, and so is the work both writers and readers are doing here. Let’s make sure we all do our part in affirming the Beauty that saves the world. – Robert Royal

James Matthew Wilson: The form Christ fulfills the “form” of time, space, and our interior yearnings for wholeness. It’s as if there were a pattern with a part missing. 

One of the most frequently quoted passages from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s many writings is his famous assertion that the “only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.” The beauty of holiness and the beauty of art are not mere ornaments but the strongest argument for what the Church teaches.

So, for all of the Church’s formidable intellectual achievements, including its great synthesis of classical philosophy and divine revelation in her theology, could it really be that the saints and works of art alone are truly “effective”? Does beauty move human beings in a way that truth alone cannot?

Ratzinger answered this question in his 2002 address to the members of Communion and Liberation, stating, “All too often arguments fall on deaf ears because in our world too many contradictory arguments compete with one another, so much so that we are spontaneously reminded of the medieval theologians’ description of reason, that it ‘has a wax nose’: in other words, it can be pointed in any direction, if one is clever enough.” In contrast with the arguments of reason, Ratzinger continues, “the encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart.”

Perhaps, however, the distinction between art and argument, between beauty and truth, is not so categorical as these passages, quoted out of context, suggest. From the very beginning, the Apostles indicated as much. In the Acts of the Apostles, we find examples of how the first Christians learned to speak about what had been revealed to them in Christ – and their several ways are striking.

Early in Acts, indeed on the day of Pentecost, Peter steps out to address Jews “from every nation” who have come to the city of Jerusalem. Peter quotes to them the prophet Joel, who proclaimed that God would pour out his Spirit so that “your sons and daughters shall see visions, / and your old men shall dream dreams.” He cites David on the promise of the Holy One who will not “see corruption.” This “Jesus. . .you crucified and killed” is the Holy One who has been “raised up,” and the Apostles have now received the Holy Spirit.

Peter shows, in other words, that Christ and the Church are the fulfillment of the prophets’ words. In a subsequent address, he argues for Jesus as the “Holy and Righteous one” promised by “the God of our fathers,” of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Peter’s addresses are but a foretaste of how Stephen, when arrested, will speak to the high priest. Stephen retells the whole history of the Jews, from Abraham to Moses, from the flight out of Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land. He shows that the Jews have always persecuted their prophets, Moses included, and that, by implication, Jesus is the new Moses and his fulfillment, who has now been “betrayed and murdered.”

After his conversion, Paul preaches in the synagogue and offers a similar history. He recalls the priest and prophet, Samuel, and the kings, Saul and David, before he shows that Jesus is the Holy One whom God has promised and resurrected, and who fulfills at once the roles of priest, prophet, and king.

In all these cases, the apostles appeal to their Jewish audience’s knowledge of salvation history to argue for Christ as the promised Son of God.

Something very different happens, though, when Paul addresses the loquacious, curious, and “very religious” men of Athens. He tells them Christ is the “unknown god” whom their philosophical desires seek. He quotes a Greek poet to show that the God of Jesus Christ is the one in whom “we live and move and have our being.” He appeals not to Christ as the fulfillment of history, but as the cause and logos of the cosmos, the whole world order.

Paul never repeats this argument to the Athenians, however, the way he and Stephen repeat Peter’s historical appeal to the prophets. When we next hear Paul preach, it is as a “witness.” He bears witness to the power of Christ to transform a life – his life. For, he was one who “persecuted the Way,” as he calls Christianity. Christ threw him to the ground and blinded him, and through his baptism at the hands of Ananias, he regained his sight, received forgiveness of sins, and now gives his life to Christ.

Paul bears “witness” a second time when he is brought before Agrippa and Bernice. Once again, he speaks of his devotion as a Pharisee, which led him to oppose Jesus, and repeats the story of his conversion on the road to Damascus.

In some respects, these three kinds of preaching could not be more different. One appeals to the Jews’ knowledge of their scriptures and sacred history and holds Jesus as their fulfillment. The speech to the Athenians appeals to the laws of the cosmos, the order of reality, gleaned through wisdom and metaphysics. Both of these argue from general truths, as it were, the truths of history and the truths of being. Paul’s bearing witness at his conversion may seem, by comparison, no argument at all. He merely confesses the great transformation that has been wrought in him by Christ’s word, power, and spirit.

All three, however, are arguments from beauty, at least as the classical and Christian world understood that word. For the beautiful was the term used for the wonder and delight born in us, when we see how parts fit together to make a whole when we see the orderliness, coherence, and inner meaning of things in a unified vision.

The Jews hear of the beauty of history, where the present makes sense of and fulfills the past. The Athenians hear of Christ as the logos, the principle of order that causes all things to be and to seek their highest good. Paul’s argument is an appeal to moral or ethical beauty, which was the most celebrated kind in the Hellenistic world in which he lived, for even the most skeptical ancient people still desired their lives to be full, that is to say, to become things of beauty or “glory.”

When we take them together, we see that the form of Christ fulfills the “form” of time, space, and our interior yearnings for wholeness. It’s as if there were a pattern with a part missing, whose shape we could discern, but now we see it fitted into place. They are all arguments for the truth. But they do not seek to convince their audience of the truth by proving a mere fact of is or is not, however. Rather, they show to the eye of the mind a more comprehensive order, an order we may eventually understand as truth, but which we at first see, and finally come to adore, as a revelation of beauty.

You may also enjoy:

Eduardo J. Echeverria’s Pauline Freedom According to Aquinas

Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky’s The Perfect Jew

AUTHOR

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson has published ten books, including, most recently, The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico) and The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (CUA). Professor of Humanities and Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas (Houston), he also serves as poet-in-residence for the Benedict XVI Institute, poetry editor for Modern Age magazine, and as series editor for Colosseum Books, from the Franciscan University at Steubenville Press. His Amazon page is here.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

A Trans Mohammad Trading Card is Unacceptable to Leftists Who Often Write of a Trans Jesus

/in , , , , , , /by

I just created my eighth Mohammad trading card, a Trans Mohammad trading card, in the face of the trans madness that the left has unleashed on the world. And trans madness it is, as even in the face of one trans terrorist after another murdering innocents, leftists skip right over the dead bodies and push trans as if nothing happened. And Biden, right after the latest trans terrorist murdered innocents, including children, declared a “Transgender Day of Visibility” at a time where there’s nothing more visible than trans. And it’s been going on for years, with The Huffington Post publishing an article in 2016 titled Jesus: The First Transgender Man, because they know that the pleasure they get from mocking Christianity is as deep as the fear they would have over publishing an article titled Mohammad: The First Transgender Man.

And I’ve been told by leftists who hate religion that I “shouldn’t mock religion,” which is their gutless way of saying that I shouldn’t mock Islam. And then I’m told by both leftists and Muslims, in a world where Muslims have murdered human beings over cartoons, that I shouldn’t be “insulting a religion”. Those who tell me that I should refrain from drawing Mohammad in order to show respect to Islam, in the face of savages who’ve murdered over Mohammad cartoons, are savages.

And I’m sure that the Ottawa school board’s “gender consultant” who calls Jesus a “drag queen” for wearing a “dress,” a.k.a. religious robes, would say the same about Mohammad, who wore religious robes. No, she never would. Leftists exclusively attack a religion whose followers don’t attack them, when the religion that most deserves criticism and condemnation is allowed to get away with mass murder without a word from them. It’s to be expected, but it doesn’t make it any less repugnant.

If you’re interested in my Trans Mohammad trading card, you can order it at my new website here.

AUTHOR

BOSCH FAWSTIN

RELATED ARTICLES:

UK: ‘There are so many LGBTQ+ Muslims out there…I’m a religious person and I’m also queer – that’s just who I am’

Biden’s New Muslim Liaison to Fight ‘Institutional Islamophobia’

Islamic Republic of Iran: Female human rights activist beaten, threatened with rape in custody

India: Muslims force two brothers to convert to Islam as punishment for supporting majority party

Muslim cleric prays that Allah would kill all the Jews, infidels, atheists, and polytheists

Italy declares state of emergency amid migrant invasion

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Good Friday and The War for Our Souls

/in , , , , , , /by

The name of this holiday is always jarring to me.

Good Friday, the day we observe the crucifixion of Jesus, first leaps upon our senses as everything bad. An illegal trial gone wrong; a miscarriage of justice; extreme acts of violence; an innocent man stricken, smitten, and afflicted. Not only that, but there’s also the loss of hope, the triumph and cruelty of the mob, and a people sent into hiding. It’s bad, it’s evil, and it’s everything nefarious rolled into one.

We only know Good Friday as good through the lens of Sunday’s resurrection. That’s why pausing too long on Good Friday is dangerous for our souls. God in his mercy moved the focal point of the fullness of time from Friday to Sunday. If we lag too long on Friday, we miss the movement of resurrection. If it all ends on Friday, our souls are stunted, and Friday is not good. The only hope for our souls lies on Sunday with Friday behind it.

Followers of Jesus remind ourselves of this movement year after year because by it our souls have been saved. And therefore we celebrate Christ’s death — a celebration of mourning that, with resurrection, turns into jubilation. The celebration is continuous because our memories are not. At minimum, we need this yearly reminder of what God has done for us in Christ. We needed it in the years following Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, and we need it in 2023.

Especially in 2023.

There is, of course, nothing new under the sun. Anything novel today has been seen before in one fashion or another. But still, 2023 has its unique challenges for Christians. There is a certain type of war being waged for our souls, and here in America, to say it’s under a microscope would be an understatement. It’s under the floodlights, and it’s by no means subtle.

Back in the 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden said in his nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention, “This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart, and yes, the soul of America.” Even the Trump campaign picked up on this language, producing a video mocking the rhetoric while asking people to give to their own campaign in order to “save America’s soul.” More recently, President Biden upped the ante on our nation’s soul during his infamous September 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Backdropped by ominous red lighting, a strangely imposing looking Biden railed:

“I ran for President because I believed we were in a battle for the soul of this nation. I still believe that to be true. I believe the soul is the breath, the life, and the essence of who we are. The soul is what makes us ‘us.’

The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God. That all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect. That all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence. And that democracy — democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible. Folks, and it’s up to us.”

The president made mention of “soul” eight times in that speech. And he’s continued to use the word gratuitously. In recent days declaring the Transgender Day of Visibility, he proclaimed, “Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul.” Make no mistake, while he may have grown up in suburban Pennsylvania, Joe Biden is most definitely a soul man.

Whether or not it’s Biden himself or one of his aides who is behind this overtly theological doctrine of the soul, it’s certainly a teaching at odds with the Bible’s concept of the soul. For Biden, “democracy makes all these things possible.” Contrast that with Paul: “For by him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16, ESV).

For Biden, transgender Americans shape our nation’s soul. The Bible’s view of shaping comes from a radically different frame: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29, ESV).

We who follow Christ in America must live in Biden’s world, but we must not live as students of his doctrine. We live as expatriates, as citizens of a kingdom that is far away, but that is also already present but not yet fully realized.

On Good Friday, Jesus was crowned by his captors with a garland of thorns. But what was meant as mockery served as a coronation. King Jesus ascended not a throne there in Jerusalem, but a cross. Jesus’s substitutionary death for his people revealed that the battle for souls was far more than a battle for what makes us “us.” As the late John R.W. Stott, in his classic work “The Cross of Christ” observed, “What God in Christ has done through the cross is to rescue us, disclose himself and overcome evil.”

The good news of Good Friday is that this battle — this war — is ultimately one-sided. Victory for souls is won on the cross of Christ and only on the cross of Christ. And we as combatants in this battle must be captured by the cross to have any hope of Sunday’s resurrection. The alternative leaves us stranded on Friday, and that’s anything but good.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Will Persecuted Christians Face in 2023?

/in , , , , , , /by

The Bible radically challenges the status quo. It speaks truth to power.

During a recent conversation with Margaret, a woman who suffered life-changing injuries after Islamists assaulted a Catholic church in Nigeria last Pentecost Sunday, I couldn’t help but reflect deeply on the words of Christ:

“Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5)

Indeed, who is it that can forgive their enemies and overcome hatred, violence and abuse of the kind suffered by Margaret but he or she who knows Christ?

In my work for the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) UK, I am frequently asked about how I deal with all the negative stories and the “doom and gloom”. But as St John’s letter reminds us, a strong faith in Christ’s ultimate victory upends this question: rather, how can I deal with all the pessimism and negativity without learning from the example of the modern-day martyrs?

Speaking to Margaret taught me two key lessons: that we in the West need the example of the persecuted Church, and they need us. The more that the opponents of the Church become emboldened in persecuting her, and the less we speak truth to power, the more severe will the persecution be this year. Our silence is a green light to violence.

2022 made this fact clearer than ever. More Christians suffer for their faith in Christ than any other religious group suffers for their faith, according to the Pew Research Center. This is borne out by fresh data from Aid to the Church in Need’s latest report Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2020-22.

The oppression or persecution of Christians increased in 75 percent of the 24 countries ACN surveyed. In Africa, the situation for Christians worsened in all countries reviewed amid a sharp increase in genocidal violence from militant non-state actors, including the jihadist groups Islamic State West Africa Province and Boko Haram. Nigeria is in particular trouble. In the Middle East, continuing migration deepened the crisis threatening the survival of three of the world’s oldest Christian communities located in Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

State authoritarianism has been the critical factor causing worsening oppression against Christians in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Burma (Myanmar). Religious nationalism has caused increasing persecution against Christians in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, among other countries. Fashionable holiday destinations like the Maldives fare poorly when it comes to the treatment of Christians. Football-famous Qatar has also been on our radar.

A key trend we are witnessing in the West which aids and abets the persecution of Christians is civil authorities’ frequent denial of the extent of the problem. This can stem from ignorance of and outright unwillingness to alleviate the suffering of Christians, but also takes the form of dubious arguments that reject explanations of the crisis rooted in anti-Christian hatred, instead preferring economic justifications or cries of “climate change”. But climate change alone cannot explain Christian persecution, as the UK parliamentarian Sir Edward Leigh MP explained in a recent article.

2023 will see these trends escalate, ACN’s research suggests. Our work proactively identifies the trends Christians face early on, rather than being purely reactive. This call to justice is crucial to waking up governments, decision-makers and the Church to the plight of the most vulnerable. We defend the persecuted Church and stand in solidarity with her but, perhaps even more importantly, we provide support and pastoral care so that she can persevere in her mission to preach the Gospel to all nations, whatever the cost.

Speaking to ACN last year after her release from captivity in Mali, west Africa, Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez said: “My God, it is hard to be chained and to receive blows, but I live this moment as you present it to me … And, in spite of everything, I would not want any of [my captors] to be harmed.”

The Franciscan sister was held by Islamist militants for over four years, during which time she was repeatedly physically and psychologically tortured. Sister Gloria made clear that her Christian faith was the source of the animus against her, describing to us how her captors became enraged when she prayed. On one occasion, when a jihadist leader found her praying, he struck her saying: “Let’s see if that God gets you out of here. Sister Gloria continued: “He spoke to me using very strong, ugly words…My soul shuddered at what this person was saying, while the other guards laughed out loud at the insults.”

As Christ says to the persecuted Church and to us: “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

When I read these words, the smiling portrait of a humble and persevering Nigerian woman comes to mind. This year, like so many other Christians, Margaret will continue to suffer and to triumph. This year truth and falsehood will be asserted variably in the courts of power.

Yet, however worldly justice deals with the cause of persecuted Christians, long may their suffering smiles ring out the joy of victory.

AUTHOR

John Pontifex

John Pontifex is Head of Press and Information at Aid to the Church in Need (UK), an international Catholic charity which supports persecuted and other suffering Christians. More by John Pontifex

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Life Activist Mark Houck Found Not Guilty Months After Family Home Raided By Biden’s FBI

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Yes, Elisjsha Dicken Is a Good Samaritan—and He Deserves a Medal

/in , , , , , , /by

On Sunday evening—July 17, 2022—at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana, a gunman opened fire in a food court. He killed three people and wounded two others. He might have murdered many more but for the quick work of a man named Elisjsha Dicken, who pulled out his own gun and blew away the assailant.

Dicken, who was legally carrying a firearm under the state’s constitutional carry law, was hailed as a “Good Samaritan” for saving lives. The next day, the Greenwood police chief added, “Many more people would have died last night if not for the responsible armed citizen.”

Gun control advocates immediately condemned the police chief for his “Good Samaritan” reference, drawn from a famous parable told by Jesus Christ. A local reporter exclaimed,

The term, ‘Good Samaritan’ came from a Bible passage of a man from Samaria who stopped on the side of the road to help a man who was injured and ignored. I cannot believe we live in a world where the term can equally apply to someone killing someone.

Who is correct here, the police chief or the reporter? A related question is, Did Jesus support self-defense, or the taking of a guilty life to save the lives of innocents?

In Chapter 10 of the Book of Luke in the New Testament, Jesus tells his parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan is judged “good” because when he came upon a man who was beaten and robbed, he chose of his own free will to help the injured man with his own resources. As I wrote in my 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist?, if the Samaritan had ignored the man or expected the government to help him, we would likely know him today as the “Good-for-Nothing” Samaritan.

The Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable did not commit a violent act himself. The injured man’s assailants were presumably long gone. He stepped in to assist the assailed. So strictly speaking, the Greenwood police chief’s reference was not entirely analogous to Elisjsha Dicken’s action in taking down the shooter at the shopping mall.

For centuries, many people have employed the term “Good Samaritan” to describe anyone who isn’t compelled to come to the aid of the innocent but takes the initiative to do so anyway. A Good Samaritan takes charge of a bad situation, improves it as best he can, and prevents further harm. That is exactly what Elisjsha Dicken did in Greenwood.

Undoubtedly, the critical reporter in this instance is a person of good intent. He can’t imagine Jesus endorsing Dicken’s action because Jesus was a man of peace. He might even cite Matthew, chapter five, in which Jesus urges us to “turn the other cheek” if someone insults us or physically slaps us in the face.

“The question of rendering insult for insult, however, is a far cry from defending oneself against a mugger or a rapist,” writes Lars Larson in Does Jesus Christ Support Self-Defense?. To “turn the other cheek” means to refrain from a needless escalation of a problematic situation. Elisjsha Dicken did not escalate anything; in fact, he dramatically and decisively de-escalated it in the only possible way, given the circumstances.

The reporter likely shares the widely-held, radically pacifist or “namby-pamby” view of Jesus—the view that he would never endorse an act of violence for any purpose, even if it’s necessary to save lives. It implies that Elisjsha Dicken should have run for cover and allowed the Greenwood shooter to kill another dozen or two people. That’s wrong, if not downright blasphemous.

When Jesus dined at The Last Supper, he gave his disciples specific instructions, including this one (Luke 22:36):

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 

Note that he did not advise anyone, then or at any other time, to stand idly by and allow wanton slaughter of innocents. And he offered support for the threat of force to prevent the theft of property as well. In Luke 11:21, Jesus said:

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted, and divides up his plunder.

This is the same Jesus who, in Luke 12:39, says, “If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” It’s the same Jesus who never criticized anyone for possessing a lethal weapon such as a sword, though he certainly condemned the initiation of force or the impetuous and unnecessary use of it.

In Jesus, Guns and Self-Defense: What Does the Bible Say?, Gary DeMar maintains that

Being armed and willing to defend ourselves, our family, and our neighbors is not being unchristian or even unloving. Self-defense can go a long way to protect the innocent from people who are intent on murder for whatever reason.

The Greenwood reporter’s errant perspective is not untypical of people who think they know Jesus and Christianity but spend more time criticizing them than learning about them. I see evidence of this all the time, most recently from a speaker at an April 2022 conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

“When it comes to the source of individual rights,” the speaker pontificated with misplaced confidence, “there are only three possibilities.” One, he said, is a Creator (God), which he summarily dismissed as a ridiculous, untenable proposition. The second is government, which he ruled out as equally ridiculous and untenable. The only logical option, he said, was “nature”—something which he suggested evolved out of nothing from nobody. As I listened with the largely student audience, I thought to myself, “This supposed expert hasn’t even considered a fourth option, namely, a combination of the first and third—which is to say that God, as the author of nature, is in fact the author of individual rights as well.”

The speaker added another uninformed dig at Christianity by claiming it was stupid for Jesus to ever suggest you should love your neighbor. “What if your neighbor is an axe-murderer? How much sense would that make?” he asked derisively. If he had known of the passages I cite above, he would have been embarrassed by his own ignorance. As a general principle, Jesus argued, you should love your neighbor but the same Jesus would urge you to arm yourself if your neighbor threatens your life or property.

In The Life and Death Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time, Christian theologians Norman Geisler and J. P. Moreland write:

To permit murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong. To allow a rape when one could have hindered it is evil. To watch an act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable. In brief, not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and an evil of omission can be just as evil as an evil of commission. Any man who refuses to protect his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally.

When Elisjsha Dicken pulled out his gun to stop a shooting spree, he had every reason to believe he might attract the shooter’s aim and be killed himself. Fortunately, he was not, and he is among the living whose lives he saved.

If Elisjsha Dicken had been killed, the rest of us could at least take comfort in the words of Jesus as quoted in John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Elisjsha Dicken is not only a Good Samaritan. He’s a very good one. Give him a medal.

Science is Affirming Creation, Not Accident by Lawrence W. Reed

What Does the Bible Say About Self-Defense?

Was Jesus a Socialist? by Lawrence W. Reed

AUTHOR

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed is FEE’s President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty, having served for nearly 11 years as FEE’s president (2008-2019). He is author of the 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist? as well as Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Follow on LinkedIn and Like his public figure page on Facebook. His website is www.lawrencewreed.com.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Black women who once hated guns are embracing them as violence rises

The Myth That Australia’s Gun Laws Reduced Gun Homicides

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Shroud of Turin Defies its Sceptics

/in , , /by

Even though it failed a carbon-dating test 40 years ago, new findings suggest that the scientists were wrong.

In April 2022 new tests on the Shroud of Turin — believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ — dated it to the first century. This dating contradicted a 1980s carbon dating that suggested the Shroud was from the Middle Ages. Some people would have been surprised, but not anyone who had been following the build-up of evidence indicating the Shroud is authentic.

A total of four tests have now dated the Shroud to the first century. In addition, an immense body of other evidence suggests the cloth, which appears to carry an image of Jesus’s crucified body, is genuine.

Experiment

Debate about the Shroud has been going on for centuries, provoking heated exchanges, revealing a tortuous trail of evidence full of unexpected twists and turns, and prompting more unanswerable questions than any other artefact in history.

Only days before the new dating results were announced, one of the main players in the drama, British filmmaker David Rolfe, issued a million-dollar challenge to the British Museum to replicate the Shroud.

The Museum oversaw the carbon tests on the Shroud and Rolfe explained: “They said it was knocked up by a medieval conman, and I say: ‘Well, if he could do it, you must be able to do it as well. And if you can, there’s a one-million-dollar donation for your funds.’”

Rolfe’s challenge might have seemed like a stunt, but it was serious. He said if the museum accepted the challenge, he would place a million dollars in a legal holding account pending the outcome.

You would think if anyone could copy the Shroud, the British Museum could. It certainly has the resources: around a thousand employees, including research scientists, links to major universities — and I’m sure the museum would not refuse outside help.

So, was Rolfe’s bet risky?

Those familiar with the evidence would say no. Given all we now know about the Shroud of Turin, and the fact that no one has ever been able to copy it or even explain how it was made, Rolfe’s million dollars appears safe. The reason he and so many others are convinced the burial cloth is genuine is that there is a mountain of evidence supporting that conclusion.

One reason most people don’t share this view is that they seem to know as little about the Shroud as they do about carbon dating. They are not aware that, contrary to the popular idea that the Shroud is a fake, it has become, in the words of a number of researchers, “the single most studied artefact in human history”.

Solid science

The most recent verification of its authenticity came in April this year. A member of Italy’s National Research Council, Dr Liberato de Caro, used a new X-ray technique designed specifically for dating linen.

He used a method known as wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), which he says is more reliable than carbon dating. He said this was because carbon dating can be dramatically wrong due to contamination of the thing being dated.

If you are one of those who know little about the Shroud, here are some basic details: It is a long strip of linen, covered in blood and carrying a faint image of the front and back of a dead man, apparently beaten and scourged, bleeding copiously from the scalp, and showing all the signs of Jesus’s crucifixion, including a lance wound to the heart. It first appeared publicly in western Europe in 1355 when it was put on display in France. The owners refused to say where they got it — understandable, given that it was probably stolen.

The Shroud’s sudden appearance set off the fiery debate that continues to this day. You may know that many books and articles have already been written. Over the years, I have read many of them, but none offered what I was looking for — an up-to-date introduction to the subject that was accessible to non-academics.

I couldn’t find one, so I decided to write it myself.

Overwhelming data

Soon, I felt like this was a mistake. They say the worst thing you can do to journalists is to provide them with too much information, and the information on the Shroud is very close to being too much. To get an idea of how much information is involved, search for “Shroud of Turin” on Google Scholar. You will get around 12,000 links.

Even a search on academia.edu turns up about 4,000 academic papers begging to be read. The oldest Shroud website, shroud.com, has among its extensive resources, one comforting list of a mere 400 “essential” scientific papers and articles. But even this is a lot if you are already struggling to get through books, videos and papers from academic conferences, podcasts and documentaries going back decades.

Most people, including myself (until recently), closed their minds to the Shroud when the 1988 carbon dating results were released. Those tests suggested the relatively high levels of carbon 14 on the cloth meant it came from around 1325 — give or take 65 years.

That sounds precise, but what most of us weren’t told was that carbon dating had been wrong many times, sometimes by as much as a thousand or more years, due to contamination of the article being dated. In the case of the Shroud, there is a long list of reasons it could be contaminated, including the fact that it has been handled by countless people, exposed to fire, water, repairs, and other materials capable of causing contamination.

Most interesting of all, as indicated by a growing body of evidence, its carbon levels could have been raised by the radiation that appears to be the most likely cause of the image it carries.

So, even though many people still assume the carbon date was the end of the story, it may be just the beginning. If, like me, you take the time to review the evidence, it wears you down. These days, if anyone asks me if I really think “that Shroud thing” could be Jesus’ burial cloth with his image on it, all I can say is: given the evidence, I can’t think what else it could be. I am open to being talked out of this view, but so far nobody has managed to do it.

Whatever your own view, following the trail of evidence is possibly the most fascinating and rewarding journey you will ever undertake. This is partly because the case for the Shroud does not hinge on a single fact — certainly not on the radiocarbon date. It involves many interlocking facts — a big picture painted by intriguing details. My experience is that the Shroud asks more unanswerable questions than anything on the planet.

Excerpted from Riddles of the Shroud with permission.

AUTHOR

William West

William West is a Sydney journalist. More by William West

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Netflix Declares War on Jesus [and Gun Owners]

/in , , , /by

Not content with glorifying pedophilia in Cuties, Netflix in season three of the animated Paradise P.D. features an episode that, according to NewsBusters, is not only devoted to “attacking gun rights,” but was also “blasphemous against Christianity, featuring a video of a gun-wielding Jesus that turns into a porno.” Great, Netflix! Edgy! Courageous! Cutting edge! Stunning and brave! Now, when is your cartoon show featuring, say, a machete-wielding Muhammad who takes up with a nine-year-old Aisha? If we had any actual journalists, they would be asking Netflix officials that question, and there is no doubt about what the answer would be: Netflix has far too much respect for Muslims and Islam to produce a show like that.

Ah yes, respect. As Bob Dylan’s character Jack Fate puts it in Dylan’s underappreciated movie Masked and Anonymous, “I got a lot of respect for a gun.” As everyone knows, the real reason why Netflix doesn’t hesitate to make fun of Jesus and Christians but wouldn’t dream of subjecting Muhammad and Muslims to the same treatment is because they know that Christians won’t kill them for doing so, not even those crazed “right-wing extremists” that we keep hearing about who are supposedly the greatest terror threat we face today. But with Muslims, it’s a different story: Netflix, if it ever dared to produce an animated show about Muhammad, knows that it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that a jihadi could emerge who would be intent upon separating the heads of Netflix executives from their bodies. That’s how “respect” is born these days.

But Netflix didn’t care to demonstrate any respect for Christians the fiendishly obscene episode of Paradise P.D. entitled “Trigger Warning.” In it, according to NewsBusters, a foe of disarming the populace offers to take proponents of that disarming on a tour of the National Rifle Association. “The tour includes a gun pit with a dead kid buried in it and the corpse of Charlton Heston used as a statue, complete with a quote – ‘Pry this gun from my cold, dead hands and win a Republican Senate seat.’ The head of the NRA, Mr. Chip F**k-Yeah, shows them a video using Jesus as a prop to show how “guns make a better world.” The video is horrifically offensive, with Jesus coming down from the Cross to kill his persecutors with machine guns then have sex with two women.”

Believe it or not, it just gets worse from there. But aside from this article and a few others, no one will take any particular note. The establishment media certainly won’t: today’s “journalists” generally hate Christianity as much as Netflix does. But a particularly piquant comparison comes from France. Shortly after a Muslim beheaded schoolteacher Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020 for showing a cartoon of Muhammad in his class, it came to light that French police called in Paty and interrogated him over allegations of “Islamophobia.” Paty told them, and he was right, that “I did not commit any offense.”

In today’s world, however, he did. It is a massive de facto offense against contemporary woke sensibilities to offend Islam and violate Sharia blasphemy laws. That is true in the United States no less than it is in France. When Pamela Geller and I held our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in 2015 in defense of the freedom of speech, and Islamic State jihadis attempted to kill us all, Geller was roundly condemned not just by leftists by even by prominent people who are often considered conservatives (including Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and Greta van Susteren) for daring to commit what they considered to be a gratuitous offense to Muslims. The idea that it is important to defend the freedom of speech against violent intimidation, and not validate that intimidation by giving in to it, did not impress them at all.

The freedom of speech is the foundation of any free society, and so Netflix is entirely free to depict Jesus in a lewd and ridiculous manner, and to mock gun owners as paranoid lunatics. The double standard, however, grows ever more glaring. If Netflix had been operating in France and made fun of Muhammad, police would have called in its executives for questioning. In the United States, if it had made fun of Muhammad, they might not have had to talk to the cops, but they would have been inundated with charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.”

What is all this going to look like five or ten or twenty years down the road, as Americans, and Westerners in general, grow ever more accustomed to the idea that one must adhere to Sharia blasphemy restrictions on mockery, or even criticism, of Islam, but the West’s own culture and traditions, rife as they are with “white supremacism” and “hate,” are fair game. It seems to be a recipe for cultural and societal surrender.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden’s handlers appear to be ‘using loopholes when dealing with Iranian regime’ in $1,000,000,000 ransom payment

Top PA official uses female jihadis as proof that women have equal rights in the Palestinian territories

Germany: Woman converts to Islam, joins ISIS, has her young teen son get firearms training at jihad training camp

Why Erdogan pulled Turkey out of European treaty aimed at protecting women from violence

Kenya: Muslims murder five people, injure dozens as bus drives over roadside IED

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Banish Sin, Transform the Church

/in , , , /by

David G. Bonagura, Jr.: Detractors say trivializing sin was part of Vatican II’s spirit and is still in the post-conciliar Church. But the perennial problem is really sin itself.

The Second Vatican Council is back in the news lately, with two prominent, tradition-minded bishops revisiting well-known arguments of conciliar interpretation in light two recent Vatican documents, Amoris Laetitia and the Abu Dhabi statement on world religions. Their analyses of the Council, the difficulties in reconciling certain expressions with tradition, and the frightening breakdown of the Church that followed – a breakdown that some even justified under the Council’s nebulous “spirit” – are serious, though faithful Catholics will find their premises and conclusions worthy of debate.

Yet their analyses are now also very familiar. Blaming the Council for the Church’s ills has been a hobbyhorse for 55 years now. At this point, when it comes to arguing about the Council, Ecclesiastes’ tired observation comes to mind: “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Just weeks earlier, as public Masses were resumed after the coronavirus suspension, a little-noticed controversy impressed on me that the problems in the Church today stem from something far more fundamental, and simple, than the formulation of documents that few know about and fewer have read. When the proposal circulated of having Mass without reception of Holy Communion, some faithful and some clergy blanched. Their issue was not solely the deprivation of union with our Lord. It was that they did not see the point of having Mass at all without reception.

Such a thought stems from a profound misunderstanding what the Mass – and the sacrifice that it represents – is for: the salvation of souls. And there is no wonder the goal of salvation has been forgotten, since sin, the tyrannical reality from which we must be saved, has itself been deliberately banished from view, trivialized as a human psychosis, or written off as an obsession of earlier, unenlightened times.

It is the marginalization of sin, more than Vatican II or anything else, that has transformed the life of the Church as we know it in the last half-century. Our entire faith and the structure of the Church rest on three acts: creation, fall, and redemption. By dismissing the fall, and every sin that has come after it, the understanding of redemption necessarily takes on new meaning.

If Jesus did not need to redeem us from sin, then essential doctrines and the sacramental economy have to be reconceived. Consider:

* Jesus Christ ceased to be emphasized as our Savior who sacrificed His life to atone for our sins. Instead, images of “Jesus is my homeboy” became popular. Without a message of salvation, Jesus was reduced to a “great moral teacher” on par with Socrates.

* Shifting the view of the Savior and salvation caused worship to shift as well. Witness how few people today know the phrase “the holy sacrifice of the Mass.” We know from the work of Dr. Lauren Pristas and Father John Zuhlsdorf that, after the Council, the formal prayers of the Mass were deliberately reworked to eliminate references to sin. The turning of the altars to face the people, never mentioned by the Council, heightened a new experience of a community celebrating itself above the sacrifice of Calvary. The general desacralizing of Catholic worship made the Mass seem as it were of no consequence rather than the enduring basis of our salvation.

* Sacramental Confession was abandoned by nearly all the faithful. There is no need to confess if we have not sinned. And if we do not need to confess, then surely there is no need for acts of penitence or reparation. Eight days of the year that still call for abstinence from meat is all that is left of Catholic penitential practice.

* If there is no sin, then everyone goes to Heaven, Catholic or not, virtuous or not. Funerals became canonizations, and Hell was dismissed as a tactic to coerce good behavior. Catholicism became just another world religion on par with the others, since it no longer had anything unique to offer.

* If people do not need to be saved from sin, then there is no need for priests to give up their lives in service of those seeking redemption. The collapse of vocations is a direct result of the banishment of sin.

* Catholic theology, morality, and education all took turns for the worse after this constitutive understanding of sin and redemption was morphed.

Were there other causes of the Church’s post-Conciliar malaise? Yes, of course. But it is not an oversimplification to home in on the trivialization of sin as the root cause of it all. Throughout Church history, lying at the root of heresy is not an intricately woven system, but a misunderstanding of the first principle of revelation. To minimize sin alters the view of God’s entire plan of salvation, from the covenant with Abraham, to the redemption by Christ, to the role of the Church in perpetuating His salvation.

Vatican II’s perpetual detractors will argue that the trivialization of sin was part of the Modernist spirit that infiltrated conciliar documents and the post-conciliar Church. Yet that implies the Council itself is not the definitive problem; the Council and its “spirit” have been invoked to cloak a deeper issue.

It is, therefore, this deeper issue of properly understanding sin and the need to be saved from it that requires our attention above all. For Benedict XVI’s hermeneutic of continuity to have the final word on interpreting the council, sound Catholic doctrines – Creation, Fall, Redemption – must first be restored to their proper place.

COLUMN BY

David G Bonagura, Jr.

David G. Bonagura Jr. teaches at St. Joseph’s Seminary, New York. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism (Cluny Media).

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The Decline of Christianity Since the Reformation

/in , , , , /by

David Carlin: The decline of Christianity is found not just in those who claim no Christian faith, but also in those who claim to be liberal Christians.

Modern history (by which I mean the history of the western world since about the year 1500) tells many stories.  I suspect that these many stories are subplots in one big story, and for years I’ve been trying to guess what this one big story may be.  My guess (but it’s only a guess) is that the one big story is the story of how the western world has been trying to get rid of Christianity.

The story begins with the Protestant Reformation.  None of the reformers intended to do away with Christianity.  Just the opposite.  Regardless of anybody’s intentions, however, a divided Christianity would be easier to destroy than a united Christianity.

This divided Christianity led in the 16th and 17th centuries to the rise of skepticism, especially in France.  But skepticism, while it continues even to the present day to erode Christianity, is too purely negative a thing to replace the old faith.  And a replacement is needed.  You can’t just get rid of Christianity and leave the world with nothing to believe in.

Skepticism was succeeded by a more positive thing in the 18th century, Deism, which professed to hold on to the good elements of Christianity (afterlife, morality, etc.) while getting rid of its bad elements.  But Deism was too “thin” a thing to replace Christianity.  Besides, it stopped well short of the ultimate aim of anti-Christianity, namely the complete eradication of the old religion.

Deism helped bring about the French Revolution, which showed for the first time that a powerful state could be used as a tremendous anti-Christianity machine.

In the second half of the 19th century, there was a great intellectual movement on behalf of agnosticism.  But agnosticism was simply another name for the old skepticism, still too negative a thing to get the anti-Christianity job done.

In the 20th century, two gigantic anti-Christianity movements took the stage, and each of them came to control an enormously powerful state: Nazism and Communism.  The former intended to get rid of Christianity while thinly disguising its intention; it deceived many Christians who wanted to be deceived.  The latter didn’t stoop to disguise; it was quite frank about its intention.  Both of them did great damage to Christianity, and when they failed (Nazism in 1945, Russian Communism in 1991) they left behind them a Christianity that had been greatly weakened.

In the postwar period (1945-present) the western liberal democracies (U.S.A., U.K., France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain [after Franco], Portugal [after Salazar]) have been subject to a non-statist kind of anti-Christianity.  These countries all experienced, some of them sooner, some of them later, the growth of an anti-Christianity public sentiment.

These countries all experienced the gradual asphyxiation of Christianity by the gradual growth of anti-Christian feelings.  For decades the state played little or no part in this smothering process – though this has changed recently.

This liberal-democratic, anti-Christianity got a tremendous boost beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the coming of the sexual revolution.  This “revolution” was about sex – but it was about much more than sex.  Sexual restraint and even downright chastity had been an essential element of Christianity from its beginning in the first century AD.  Get rid of Christian sex morality, and you’re well on your way to getting rid of Christianity altogether.

Once the average person decides that Christianity has been wrong about fornication, adultery, homosexuality, abortion, etc. for almost 2,000 years, it will be relatively easy for that person to believe that Christianity has also been wrong about many other things – including all the articles of the Nicene Creed.

Many would-be Christians – I have in mind “liberal” Catholics and Protestants – believe it is possible to have a “new and improved” Christianity that embraces and endorses the values of the sexual revolution.  They are mistaken – as certain a priori considerations should have persuaded them decades ago, and as experience has abundantly demonstrated over the last fifty years.

Throughout the western world (the world that used to be called Christendom), including the United States, Christianity is in steep decline today.  Evidence of this decline is found not just in those who claim no Christian faith (the “Nones”).  It is also found in those who claim to be liberal Christians – which means that they have dropped most of Christianity’s orthodox “baggage.”  And it is also found in those who, while claiming to be orthodox, really don’t take their orthodoxy seriously.

Two questions:

  1. Does one have to be an atheist to be anti-Christianity? Strictly speaking, no. For instance, the Deists of the 18th century were anti-Christianity without being atheists.  But if you want to get rid of Christianity, it helps to be an atheist.  A lot, because atheism is the most thoroughgoing kind of anti-Christianity.  If you want to get rid of the old religion, why not go all the way?  Why not destroy the very foundation of Christianity?
  2. Does one have to be a supporter of abortion to be counted among the haters of Christianity? Yes. For the right to abortion – and not just the legal right but the moral right as well – is essential to the sexual revolution.  If we don’t have abortion as a back-up when mistakes are made or accidents happen, how can we have a moral regime of sexual freedom?

Practically speaking, we can’t.  Think about it.  If abortion were to be banned throughout America, the next thing you know we’d have people recommending chastity.  And once people recommend chastity, guess what? – they’ll start recommending Christianity.

Well, we can’t have that, can we?  And therefore we must make sure that abortion is legal and is considered to be morally unobjectionable.  Indeed we must make it a praiseworthy thing – the kind of thing which, like public education and police and fire protection, everybody who needs it should have free of charge.

For what it’s worth, that’s my reading of the last 500 years.

David Carlin

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

RELATED VIDEO: Spike in anti-Catholic attacks.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Catholic and “catholic”

/in , , , /by

Fr. Paul D. Scalia: The Church’s children should resemble her. We ought to strive to be catholic (universal) in our zeal, our mercy, and our embrace of Truth.

In today’s Gospel, our Lord likens the Kingdom of heaven to “a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” (Mt 13:44-52) This net, which gathers not just one kind of fish but fish of every kind, serves as a good description of what we confess every Sunday: the Church is catholic.

Now, most people probably think of “Catholic” as the brand name of a particular Christian denomination. Yes, we speak colloquially of the Catholic Church as distinct from the Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist churches, etc. But that’s a fairly recent designation, only since the Reformation. Before the Church was “Catholic” she was already “catholic.” It’s a truth we find expressed in the Church’s earliest years. The word “catholic” means universal, embracing and bringing all things together into a unity (from the Greek kata holos, “according to the whole).

Now, the distinction and relation of “Catholic” and “catholic” is important: one cannot be Catholic without also being catholic. To be a member of the Church means to share in her catholicity. So, what does that entail?

First, the Church is catholic – universal – in the most obvious sense: for all people. “Here comes everybody” is James Joyce’s famous description of the Church. She welcomes all comers, embraces and incorporates all people – “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, all peoples, of every race, nation, and country throughout the world.” (Rev 7:9) She leaves no group or kind of people beyond her mission and solicitude.

Now, catholic in this sense does not mean everyone thrown together willy-nilly, as you might toss all your clothes into the closet. Rather, it means all people brought together as one, as a unified whole. In the United States, we are now witnessing what happens to a society when its various peoples have lost their principle of unity. The Church, however – and, in the end, only the Church – is truly universal because she both embraces all people and makes them one body in Christ.

The implications of this universality should be clear. It means, first, that we welcome all people into the Church. Anyone who repents and believes is welcome regardless of any accidental qualities.  Further, this catholicity requires that we actively seek to bring the Gospel to all peoples, and all peoples to the Church.

Second, the Church is catholic in the sense that she forgives all sins. This is a consequence of her being the continuing presence of Christ Himself in the world.  Our Lord has authorized her to act and speak in His Name. He entrusted to her ministers His own power to forgive, a power limited only by a person’s desire to be forgiven.

Through the ministry of the Church, any of our sins, from the most trivial to the most severe, can be forgiven when we repent and ask forgiveness. Which also means that we should desire the extension of that forgiveness and reconciliation. Indeed, we should participate in the Church’s ministry of reconciliation. As such, our own personal forgiveness should extend as far as the Church’s, from the most trivial slight to the gravest sin against us. As regards forgiveness we can never say, “thus far and no further.”

Throughout her history, from Tertullian to Calvin, the Church has seen plenty of rigorists who would like to shorten the reach of her mercy. Like the slaves in the parable of the wheat and tares (Mt 13:24-43), they want a Church of saints not sinners. In the current “cancel culture,” the mobs of secular rigorists give us a sense of just how brutal a society is that desires pure justice (or what passes for it) and no mercy.

Finally, the Church is catholic in the sense that she possesses all truth. Everything necessary for salvation is found within her doctrine. All religions possess some aspects of the truth. Only Christ’s Church possesses the fullness of the truth.

Notice that the net in the parable brings in “all kinds of fish,” both the desired and the undesired. Similarly, the Church holds both pleasing truths (human dignity, forgiveness, heaven) and hard truths (sin, judgment, hell). To be Catholic means to assent to all that the Church teaches – not just to the parts we like.

The Church’s history is littered with heresies, a word that indicates the choosing of one truth to the exclusion of others (Greek again haerisis, not kata holos). Those who do so cease to be catholic, because they are embracing not the fullness of the truth but only the parts they like. If we call ourselves catholic, we must show ourselves to be truly catholic, embracing all truths — not just the convenient ones.

Mother Church’s children should bear a resemblance to her. So it is that we ought to strive to be catholic in our zeal for souls, in the reach of our mercy, and in our embrace of the truth.

COLUMN BY

Fr. Paul D. Scalia

Fr. Paul Scalia is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington, Va, where he serves as Episcopal Vicar for Clergy. His new book is That Nothing May Be Lost: Reflections on Catholic Doctrine and Devotion.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Francis HATES America! He has drunk all the Kool-Aid.

/in , , , , , /by

RELATED ARTICLES:

NEW Allegation of Sex Abuse Inside Holy See Seminary

US bishops’ fidelity to Pope Francis challenged.

TRANSCRIPT

It’s become quite apparent that in his admiration for establishing a one-world government administered by a new world order, America is an object of hate for Pope Francis.

The handwriting was on the wall at least two years ago when yet another article from Eugenio Scalfari revealed that the pontiff has so little regard for the United States that he actually thinks we should simply give up our national sovereignty and submit to a new world order.

Maybe the Dems can nominate Pope Francis for their party’s candidate for president. He can assume presidential powers and then dissolve the U.S.A. After all, it seems like he’s got experience doing the same thing with the Church.

The old atheist Italian journalist says that in 2017, Pope Francis called him shortly after the G-20 summit and demanded to see him at four o’clock that afternoon. According to Scalfari, Francis had become agitated about the United States and other nations commanding such power in the world.

Pope Francis told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the United States of America has “a distorted vision of the world,” and Americans must be ruled by a world government as soon as possible, “for their own good.”

Now that’s an incredible statement to make, and as the article continued, the disrespect for the idea of national sovereignty mounted. European nations also came under the papal displeasure: “I also thought many times to this problem and came to the conclusion that, not only but also for this reason, Europe must take as soon as possible a federal structure.”

There is without a doubt an extreme dislike with this pope of anything that strikes of nationalism, meaning national sovereignty. Since America seems to lead the world in the area of national pride, the United States is never passed over in the papal condemnations of national sovereignty.

Somewhere, somehow, he has in his head that the idea of individual nations is bad because that translates into immigrants being mistreated, and among rich nations — the First-World nations — poverty escalates and the poor are taken advantage of.

That’s what he thinks, and so the solution for him is to introduce a one-world government, ruled by a single new world order, so all immigrants can get a fair shake out of life.

Last week the reports came out that Pope Francis thinks national pride, touted by political conservatives, is the beginning of Nazism reappearing. He said to an international group of specialists in penal law: “And I must confess to you that when I hear a speech [by] someone responsible for order or for a government, I think of speeches by Hitler in 1934, 1936,” adding, “They are inadmissible behaviors in the rule of law and generally accompany racist prejudices and contempt for socially marginalized groups.”

“It is no coincidence that in these times, emblems and actions typical of Nazism reappear, which, with its persecutions against Jews, gypsies and people of homosexual orientation, represents the negative model par excellence of a culture of waste and hatred,” he continued.

Pope Francis has drunk the Kool-Aid of the Left.

So there it is, perfectly framed by this pontificate: Immigrants and homosexuals need to be protected classes, and sovereign nations must give way to those who do not respect borders and those who reject natural law. And nations, now bordering on embracing Nazism, must surrender their independence because it is the will of God. For their own good, the nations of the world, especially the powerful ones, must pass out of existence, surrender themselves and abolish their borders for their own good.

When Americans are chanting “USA!” at sporting events or political rallies for Republicans, in Pope Francis’ head, that apparently rings as Sieg Heil!

This is dangerous, dangerous stuff. For the occupant of the throne of Peter to be outwardly demonizing nations — especially the leading nation which defeated the Nazis — as Nazis themselves, a line has been crossed from which there is no coming back.

To then turn around and underscore that part of what makes a person a modern-day Nazi is to not go along with the homosexual agenda and resist the evil, this is beyond the pale and must be called out.

Pope Francis has moved into territory that no pope has ever transgressed. He is transferring the mission of the Church from the salvation of souls to the foundation of a one-world government.

What precisely the role of the Church itself would be in that new world order still seems vague, but one thing is clear. Francis never criticizes Islamic nations. He never tells them to clean up their act and stop throwing homosexuals off roofs. He never has a word of criticism for their brutality of FGM (female gential mutilation) or sponsorship of world terror, or torture or forcing people in their nations to convert or have their heads cut off.

Yet he has no problem with hiding behind the Italian military surrounding the walls of the Vatican, protecting him from that same Muslim threat.

This pontificate is a political disaster, one gone completely off the rails.

Serious questions need to be asked about all this: homosexual men, many of whom are either abusers or covered up abuse placed into powerful posts; the theft of hundreds of millions of euros; constant lies and denials of repeated press reports; and multiple appointments of enemies of Christ to high-visibility positions within the Church. And now hurling accusations at political conservatives that their love of country makes them “Nazis,” and opposing the gay agenda means conservatives want homosexuals marched off to gas chambers.

This is outrageous. Francis hates America because America represents everything his twisted political worldview stands in opposition to.

This increased marxist view has been brewing in the Church for decades, and far from being ascendant is now practically the status quo. Love of the homosexual agenda, illegal immigrants, the abolition of nations and Islam’s “favored son” status is what Francis will be remembered for.

The Vatican has yet to comment on the Scalfari interview about Francis reportedly saying America should willingly surrender itself to a one-world government. And actually, no comment is needed. We’ve heard enough.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Of Workers and Wealth

/in , , , /by

Pope Leo XIII: Whether we have wealth or lack it makes no difference. What matters is to justly use what we have, especially if we are rich.

The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth.

Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.

Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.

Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss.

The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers – that is truly shameful and inhuman.

Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings.

Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine.

To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers. . .which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.”

Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?

But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death.

Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery.

The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation – that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place.

As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them-so far as eternal happiness is concerned – it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright. . . .

Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles; that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ – threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord – and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess.

– from Rerum Novarum (1891)

Liberals’ Holy War on Christian Orthodoxy

/in , , , , /by

When Sen. Dianne Feinstein told Amy Coney Barrett, who is now confirmed as a judge for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is a potential Supreme Court nominee, that “dogma lives loudly within” her and “that’s of concern,” she wasn’t voicing concern over the nominee’s religious orthodoxy as much as she was revealing her own.

After all, Catholicism, unlike progressivism, has never inhibited anyone from faithfully executing her constitutional duties—which the judge has done with far more conviction than Feinstein. Maybe Barrett should have been asking the questions.

Recently, by unanimous consent, the Senate approved a Ben Sasse resolution that declares that it is unconstitutional to reject nominees because of their membership to the Knights of Columbus. This move was instigated by a similar incident, when Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono criticized President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, Brian Buescher, for being a bit too Catholic for their liking.

The Knights of Columbus, a benevolent society that still clings to antiquated notions about the dignity of human life—from the very beginning to the very end—doesn’t exactly adhere to the new progressive moral canon.

Unlike many friends on the right, I’m less offended by questions regarding dogma and belief. It’s true that the Constitution explicitly states that a federal government officeholder or employee can’t be required to adhere to or accept any particular religion or doctrine as a prerequisite to holding a federal office or job. But it’s also true that the clause directly preceding that clause requires every federal and state official to take an oath to support the Constitution.

Rejecting someone over his faith alone is unquestionably a religious test. Merely asking a nominee whether her beliefs might stop her from fulfilling her constitutional duties is a relevant question.

For many liberals, though, the problem is that the beliefs of many Catholics and other adherents of various Christian theologies—or, for that matter, Jewish ones, as well—are increasingly undermining progressive ideals, not constitutional ones.

As Beto O’Rourke might ask, do the principles of the Constitution “still work”? When it comes to religious freedom, they most certainly do not. It’s progressive dogma that led a Harvard-educated Washington Post editor to incredulously ask how traditional Christian schools can even “happen” in contemporary American society.

She was questioning not merely whether second lady Karen Pence is right or wrong to teach at a Christian school—after all, Americans are free to be critical of people’s faith—but how a school that adheres to the teachings of a church that counter progressive dogma can exist at all.

This is the same progressive moral dogma that justifies yearslong attacks on the livelihood of Christian bakers and florists. It’s the same dogma that justifies coercing nuns to pay for the rite of birth control. If one doesn’t adhere to these commandments, the state, the most powerful institution in the world, will sue them into submission.

In this regard, liberals also like to claim that those who do allow traditional faith to inform their political views are somehow undermining a tenet of American life. (Well, as long as that traditional faith can’t be utilized for left-wing agenda items, such as immigration and socialized health care.)

As it goes, some of us, even nonbelievers, prefer the teachings of Jesus to those of Marx—which, in the non-celestial world, means free will over coercion. Whatever the case, our backgrounds and beliefs always color our opinions.

The Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, an apostate on this issue, recently argued in an op-ed that if the Knights of Columbus are a disqualifying group, “then President John F. Kennedy, and the ‘liberal lion of the Senate’ Ted Kennedy would have been ‘unqualified’ for the same reasons.”

Well, not exactly the same reason. The anti-Catholicism of the past was predicated on an aversion to new immigrants, conspiracies about the pope, and a general long-standing theological distrust among religious denominations.

In the political arena today, only the latter of those reasons is in play, and the denomination isn’t Protestant. The “liberal lion of the Senate” wouldn’t be disqualified by today’s standards, because in public life, at least, he was a doctrinal liberal.

“There are many people on the left who act like every political fight is going to bring about heaven or hell on earth—and so there are a lot of folks for whom politics is a religion,” Sasse said after his resolution passed.

Progressives are the most zealous moralists. And these lines of questioning from Democrats, increasingly prevalent in political discourse, are an attempt to create the impression that faithful Christians, whose beliefs are at odds with newly sanctified cultural mores, are incapable of doing their jobs.

Sasse is right. Political bellum sacrum is here. We’re just not looking at the right people.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist and the author of the forthcoming “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: @davidharsanyi.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured image of Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) is her from Facebook page.