Three Worth Reading Today

There are several good articles out recently worthy of your attention. At Bookworm Room, the author skillfully weaves together three thoughts, criticism of the left's superficial caricature of the Christianity, the actual purpose of Indiana's RFRA, and the motivations of the left in attacking the RFRA hidden behind the stated goal of protecting gay rights. Jesus Would Have Supported RFRA:

The only thing that the law does is to say, consistent with both Jesus’s teachings and the Constitution, that people of conscience cannot be forced to bring commerce or government diktats into their own inviolable area of faith. Put another way, to the extent marriage is a core sacrament to the faithful, the law cannot force them to sell themselves out — in effect, to become coerced money changers in their own temple.

Incidentally, while I’m on the subject of the gay lobby pushing ever harder on Christians and Christian doctrine, let me say that all of this was predictable. Years and years ago, I warned that gay marriage had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with toppling religion.

At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson takes a look at the pettiness and malevolence driving Obama's presidency, as well as the lawlessness with which it is being run. Obama's Chicago Presidency

Once that pen-and-phone threshold has been crossed, anything is possible — and even the critics of Obama now belatedly accept that. In brilliantly diabolical fashion, the president of the United States has all but ruined the Democratic party in Congress and the state legislatures, but has also confounded his Republican opponents by not caring a whit about his own nihilism — as if he is supposed to worry about ending the congressional careers of his supposed allies?

After all, if someone is going to ignore the law or what tradition demands, then why does he need a legislative majority to do it? Obama is more powerful in defeat than he ever was in victory. Like a seasoned Chicago pol, he reminds his auditors and critics that not only does he not care about the appearance of his actions, but also that no else does either. He all but says, “Each time I issue an illegal executive order, my polls go up, and the more my enemies howl and my friends cringe.” It becomes more hazardous — ask Senator Menendez or an audited Tea Party group — to object to an Obama abuse than for Obama to commit the abuse, which makes further abuse only more certain.

And also at National Review, Thomas Sowell discusses how the left has turned the liberal arts into a means for indoctrination rather than education. As he points out, the rights criticism is not of the liberal arts education, but rather what the left has made of it. Who Really Trashes The Liberal Arts:

The history of the 20th century shows soft-subject students and their professors among the biggest supporters of extremist movements, both fascist and communist — the former in central and eastern Europe before World War II and the latter in countries around the world, both before and after that war.

Those who want the liberal arts to be what they were supposed to be will have to profoundly change them from what they have become. Doing that will undoubtedly provoke more denunciations of critics for “trashing” the liberal arts by criticizing those who have in fact already trashed the liberal arts in practice.

Good articles. Happy reading.

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Nothing More Racist (Or Regressive) Than A "Progressive"

Pat Condell hits the nail on the head in his discussion of those who style themselves "progressives," from their complete lack of intellectual honesty to their regressive politics to their racism of low expectations:



Pat's take misses on one point and only alludes to another worthy of more specific citation. Condell describes the world view of "progressives" correctly, even down to their view of the West as imperialists with the stain of original sin (while ignoring that the most imperialist force in world history has been Islam). It is worth noting that this view comes directly from Karl Marx and his theory that all history is a struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. In the progressive world view, we are the oppressors while anyone who can be shoehorned into a victim group are the oppressed entitled to permanent special treatment.

What Condell misses in his analysis is the animus of progressives towards Christianity. To understand fully the motivation of progressives, one must note their abhorrence of Christianity. Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization; progressive are warring against it. Christianity must be removed from the public square for "progressives" to achieve their goal of remaking society with themselves as the sole arbiters of morality. Thus the "progressive" treatment of Islam is more nuanced than simply that "brown skinned" people are not to be held to the same standards. Muslims also seek to displace Christianity, and thus they are, in many ways, allied with progressives.

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Oct 28, 312: Constantine, In Hoc Signo Vinces & The Battle of Milvan Bridge

October 28, 312 A.D. Constantine defeated Maxentius in the Battle of Milvan Bridge. It was a battle that changed history. It was the first of Constantine's major victories in his consolidation of the Roman Empire, and it marked day when Christianity went from being persecuted to being on a trajectory to dominate Europe.

Christianity had been under periodic persecution by the Roman Empire ever since Nero used Christians as scapegoats for the fire that consumed Rome in 64 A.D. As late as 303 A.D., the most bloody of the persecutions came at the direction of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Constanine himself was not born a Christian. He would grow into Christianity over his lifetime, with perhaps the most notable event in his conversion being the events that took place just prior to the Battle of Milvan Bridge.

Constantine was born in 272 A.D., the son of a Roman sub-Emperor who held control over a portion of Rome's divided empire. By 312 A.D., Constantine had taken over his father's command and was drawn into a war for control of the empire. The night of October 27, 312, found Constantine north of the Milvan Bridge on the Tiber River, his army of 100,000 men preparing to attack an army twice its size led by Maxentius.

According to legend, on the march to the Tiber, Constantine had a vision of a cross arising out of the sun, marked with the phrase In Hoc Signo Vinces - under this sign, you will conquer. In camp on the night of the 27th, Constantine claims to have a dream of Christ, who explained to him the meaning of the sign and that, if he would but adopt the sign for his army, they would conquer. When battle was joined on the 28th, Constantine's forces marched under the cross - and Constantine won a decisive victory.

Maxentius chose to make his stand in front of the Milvian Bridge, a stone bridge that carries the Via Flaminia road across the Tiber River into Rome (the bridge stands today at the same site, somewhat remodelled, named in Italian Ponte Milvio . . .). Holding it was crucial if Maxentius was to keep his rival out of Rome, where the Senate would surely favour whoever held the city. As Maxentius had probably partially destroyed the bridge during his preparations for a siege, he had a wooden or pontoon bridge constructed to get his army across the river. . . .

The next day, the two armies clashed, and Constantine won a decisive victory. The dispositions of Maxentius may have been faulty as his troops seem to have been arrayed with the River Tiber too close to their rear, giving them little space to allow re-grouping in the event of their formations being forced to give ground.

Already known as a skillful general, Constantine first launched his cavalry at the cavalry of Maxentius and broke them. Constantine's infantry then advanced, most of Maxentius's troops fought well but they began to be pushed back toward the Tiber; Maxentius decided to retreat and make another stand at Rome itself; but there was only one escape route, via the bridge. Constantine's men inflicted heavy losses on the retreating army. Finally, the temporary bridge set up alongside the Milvian Bridge, over which many of the troops were escaping, collapsed, and those men stranded on the north bank of the Tiber were either taken prisoner or killed. Maxentius' Praetorian Guard seem to have made a stubborn stand on the northern bank of the river. Maxentius was among the dead, . . .

The Battle of Milvan bridge set the stage for triumph of Constantine and, with him, the triumph of Christianity in the Western World. In 313 A.D., Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan, ending all religious persecution in the Roman Empire and restoring to Christians their titles and property. Constantine became a dedicated patron of the Church. He "built basilicas, granted privileges to clergy (e.g. exemption from certain taxes), [and] promoted Christians to high office . . . His most famous building projects include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Old Saint Peter's Basilica." Constantine also called the First Eccumenical Council of the Church, the Council of Nicaea, in an effort to standardize Christian teachings and ritual.

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Abortion, Sonograms & The War On Women

Carolyn Jones has written a column in the Texas Observer about her experience under the new Texas law requiring a sonogram prior to having an abortion. She clearly considers the law a part of the "war on women."

Ms. Jones decided to abort a pregnancy after she found that the child had birth defects that would have, she tells us, required "life time medical care" and left the child "in pain." Curiously, precisely what the child's condition was, Ms. Jones seemingly takes pains not to specify. Irrespective, Ms. Jones does have my sympathy for finding that her unborn child had birth defects.

What is utterly ludicrous and disgusting is Ms. Jones's melodramatic recounting of the "ordeal" of having to undergo a sonogram and see the life she held in her womb prior to having the abortion. This short, non-invasive procedure, designed to make apparent the moral implications of abortion, is, according to Ms. Jones, nothing less than "torment." Fortunately, her "ordeal" was somewhat ameliorated by the good people at Planned Parenthood, whom she describes with a varying list of positive adjectives, from 'compassionate' and 'warm' to 'sympathetic' and 'professional.'

When told by the Planned Parenthood staff that she would have to have the sonogram per Texas law prior to the abortion, Ms. Jones tells us that she replied:

“I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.”

How much of a narcissistic, amoral if not immoral individual do you have to be to near hysterically center on 'your pain' and not the life that you are about to extinguish. But the extremes of melodrama were not done.

“I’m so sorry that I have to do this,” the doctor told us, “but if I don’t, I can lose my license.” Before he could even start to describe our baby, I began to sob until I could barely breathe. Somewhere, a nurse cranked up the volume on a radio, allowing the inane pronouncements of a DJ to dull the doctor’s voice. Still, despite the noise, I heard him. His unwelcome words echoed off sterile walls while I, trapped on a bed, my feet in stirrups, twisted away from his voice.

“Here I see a well-developed diaphragm and here I see four healthy chambers of the heart...”

I closed my eyes and waited for it to end, as one waits for the car to stop rolling at the end of a terrible accident. . . .

What it all boils down to is this - the far left, and most definitely Ms. Jones - do not want any moral considerations associated with abortion. This is part of the reason why the left is an implacable enemy of religion and any continuing role for Christian morality in the public square. They want an omnipotent government to be the sole moral arbiter, and abortion is one of the tools through which they are trying to accomplish that goal. And indeed, Ms. Jones goes so far as to cast her freedom from morality as a right. Ms. Jones does not believe that the state has any role in furthering the sanctity of life.

It is important to note that the Texas law, as currently interpreted, does not require a woman carrying a child with significant birth defects to undergo a sonogram prior to the decision to abort. The rule was so new at the time that Ms. Jones went for her abortion that Planned Parenthood went ahead with the sonogram out of an abundance of caution. But Ms. Jones makes absolutely clear that it is the sonogram for any woman seeking an abortion to which she objects. And as she says in conclusion to her screed:

[W]hat good is the view of someone who has never had to make your terrible choice? What good is a law that adds only pain and difficulty to perhaps the most painful and difficult decision a woman can make? Shouldn’t women have a right to protect themselves from strangers’ opinions on their most personal matters? Shouldn’t we have the right not to know?

What immoral arrogance. Countless people have been faced with pregnancies of children that they knew had birth defects. But Ms. Jones's point goes far beyond that, to every woman who is pregnant and considers abortion.

Abortion snuffs out a human life. Shouldn't the people of our nation, acting through the state, have the right to insure that the woman who makes the decision to abort at least understands the moral implications of that decision? Ms. Jones casts this as heinous. What is truly heinous is the belief of Ms. Jones and her ilk, who devalue human life and see in abortion no moral issue at all. A 10 minute sonogram under the Texas law is not part of a "war on women." It is Ms. Jones and her ilk who are in the midst of a war on religion and morality in the U.S. And that war goes beyond abortion. It is for the heart and soul of our nation. Pick your side.

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The "Turbulent Priest" To Leave Office

The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican Church, Rowan Williams, has announced that he will step down from the post in December. Williams has held the post of Archbishop of Canterbury for almost a decade. Whatever else he was in office, Williams was clearly one of a deeply misguided breed - a left wing Christian. He did nothing to protect and defend the Church, let alone further its interests. In my last post about him, I wrote:

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Cantebury, [is doing] to Christianity what Labour is doing to Britain. He is the man who prior to this day had praised Islam, damned America as an imperialist nation to a crowd of Muslims, blamed America for Muslim violence against Christians in the Middle East, refused to proselytize for Christianity among Muslims, and advocated implementing at least parts of Sharia law in Britain. The Archbishop's latest assault on the Christian faith has come in an apologia to Muslims for the violent history of Christianity and what seems an apology for one of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith - the Trinity. This from the Daily Mail:

Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.  Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity's history for its violence, its use of harsh punishments and its betrayal of its peaceful principles.  His comments came in a highly conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders calling for an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'.

But it risked fresh controversy for the Archbishop in the wake of his pronouncement earlier this year that a place should be found for Islamic sharia law in the British legal system.

. . . The Archbishop's letter is a reply to feelers to Christians put out by Islamic leaders from 43 countries last autumn.  In it, Dr Williams said violence is incompatible with the beliefs of either faith and that, once that principle is accepted, both can work together against poverty and prejudice and to help the environment.  He also said the Christian belief in the Trinity - that God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the same time - 'is difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims'.  Trinitarian doctrine conflicts with the Islamic view that there is just one all-powerful God. . . .

Read the entire article.

Rowan Williams has been a disgrace to his position and a disaster for Christianity in Britain. In addition to his unforgivable sins above, he has been fully in step with the secular left of Labour - a group virtually dedicated to removing Christianity and Christian influence from the public square in Britain. This deeply misguided man will not be missed when he steps down from office in December, 2012.

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Cambodia & The Socialist Ethic

One of my constant themes on this blog concerns the decades long effort of the left to drive Judaism and Christianity from the public square, thus allowing government to become the sole moral arbiter, unmoored from the Judeo Christian ethic.  In the Judeo-Christian world, human life is sacrosanct, and thus the government is limited as to when it subjects may be imprisoned, executed or otherwise subject to coercion.  The secular left devalues human life, elevating in its stead the power of government and the principle of "equality." Where that leads is discussed by Prof. Douglas Levene in Reflections on Cambodia, an essay at NRO:

Cambodia suffered deeply under the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps as much as 20 percent of its people were murdered in killing fields like Choeung Ek or died as a result of starvation or disease following the expulsion of the urban populations to the countryside and the forced collectivization of agriculture. But calling these murders “genocide” troubles me.

Cambodia is now and was then one of the most ethnically unitary countries in the world: 95 percent of all Cambodians are ethnically Khmer; the remaining 5 percent include Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Hmong, Cham, and others. And 95 percent of all Cambodians, of whatever ethnicity, are Buddhist. Most of the killings were Khmer on Khmer, although the Khmer Rouge did also target Cambodia’s very small Cham Muslim minority.

The term “genocide” historically refers to the mass extermination of a race or ethnicity, as with the Turks and the Armenians, or the Germans and the Jews, or the Serbs and the Bosnians. It doesn’t seem to fit what happened in Cambodia, except for the scale of the slaughter.

Rather, what happened in Cambodia is what happened in the French Revolution, and in Stalin’s purges and mass collectivization campaigns, and in Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, only on a proportionately larger scale. It was mass murder in the name of equality. It wasn’t “genocide”; it was Communist utopianism carried to its logical extreme. The Khmer Rouge, who called themselves Maoists, believed that the most important social and political value was equality and that in order to create their new, classless society in which everyone was equal, it was necessary to exterminate anyone who might be smarter, or better educated, or wealthier, or more talented than anyone else. Thus, they killed the educated, the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, and the rich; movie stars, pop singers, authors, urban residents, and workers for the former government; and anyone who protested — as well as the families of all the above. Towards the end, they also killed cadres who were thought to be a political threat. Whatever their crimes were, the Khmer Rouge do not seem to have been motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious hatred.

Why then do Cambodians and the world call the mass murders by the Khmer Rouge “genocide”? I can think of several possible reasons. One is the superficial similarity to other mass slaughters — as noted earlier, the pictures of the Cambodian killing fields look very much like the pictures from the German concentration camps. Surely many people who are largely ignorant of history know only that similarity. Another reason is the fact that the victims of genocide are sympathetic. The U.N. creates commissions, and wealthy countries send money. Cambodia today is filled with NGOs bringing aid of various kinds. The desire for international sympathy might explain why Cambodians use the genocide label.

However, I suspect that the most important reason for the usage worldwide is that many people in the international media, international agencies, and international NGOs (not to mention academia) are reluctant to face up to the crimes committed by Communism in the name of equality. To do so might call into question the weight attached by them to equality as the most important social value and undermine the multicultural faith that evil is predominantly the product of inequality, racism, ethnic hatred, or religious fanaticism. That cannot be permitted, so such crimes must be either ignored or mislabeled. . . .

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More News In The "War On Religion"

The left's "war on religion" is in full swing on both sides of the pond. In the UK, it is rapidly coming to the point where to be a Christian is to be a second class citizen. The Tory government has taken the position in the European Court of Human Rights that employers can fire someone for wearing a cross. Further, although same sex unions are recognized in the UK, the Tory government plans to allow same-sex "marriage" by 2015. This from CNS News:

Britain’s Conservative-led government [Note: The Tory's are "conservative" in name only - they are only a slightly less radical version of Britain's socialist Labor party] plans to argue in a European Court of Human Rights case that employers are entitled to ban the visible wearing of crosses at work because displaying the symbol is not a recognized “requirement” of the Christian faith. . . .

News of the government’s intervention in the case comes amid a raging dispute between the government and church leaders over Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to legalize same-sex marriage by 2015.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the final destination of two drawn-out legal battles, brought by Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, two women who fell foul of their employers for wearing crosses at work.

Eweida, a Coptic Christian and British Airways staffer at Heathrow Airport, was told in 2006 to remove or cover up a small cross she wears around her neck. She refused and was sent home on unpaid leave. Eweida noted that colleagues of other religions, including Muslims and Sikhs, were allowed to wear religious items such as hijabs, turbans and religious bracelets.

The airline policy won the backing of the National Secular Society, which complained that activists were “determined to push religion to the front line of British life” and accused Eweida of clearly being “motivated by a wish to evangelize at work.”

The following year British Airways changed its uniform policy and allowed Eweida to return to work, but refused to pay her for the period she was suspended. Claiming religious discrimination, she took the case to an employment tribunal, but lost.

After the Supreme Court declined to consider her case, she decided to take the matter to the ECHR.

Chaplin, a nurse in her 50s, was prohibited from working at a hospital after refusing to cover up a cross she said she had worn at work throughout a 30-year nursing career. An employment tribunal in 2010 ruled in favor of the employer, a government National Health Service (NHS) trust, saying its policy was based on health and safety grounds, not religion, and adding that wearing a cross was not a requirement for Christians.

Six senior Anglican bishops, including former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, backed Chaplin, saying in a March 2010 letter that that nurse “has worn the cross every day since her confirmation [40 years earlier] as a sign of her Christian faith, a faith which led to her vocation in nursing, and which has sustained her in that vital work ever since.”

“The uniform policy of the NHS trust permits exemptions for religious clothing,” they wrote. “This has been exercised with regard to other faiths, but not with regard to the wearing of a cross around the neck.”

The ECHR has also been asked to consider two other cases brought by British Christians claiming religious discrimination – a woman who lost her job with a London council in 2007 after she refused to conduct civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples; and a relationship counselor who was fired by a large national charity after refusing to provide sex therapy to same-sex couples.

Britain has given same-sex couples similar legal rights to married couples under civil partnership provisions introduced in 2005.

Now Cameron’s government is proposing to legalize marriage for same-sex couples in England and Wales, launching a public consultation exercise on the matter.

Although churches will not be forced to perform “weddings” for homosexual and lesbian couples, the proposals have ignited a storm of protest.

A letter by senior Roman Catholic archbishops, read at thousands of churches across England and Wales on Sunday, warned that that changing the legal definition of marriage would be a “profoundly radical step” that would “gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage.”

(H/T Sunlit Uplands and the Daily Gator)

As I wrote recently in A Historical Perspective On Religion & The HHS Mandate:

Socialism is a radical ideology that sprang up largely in response to the ills of the industrial revolution. The goal of socialism is to deconstruct traditional Western society and remake it under the auspices of an omnipotent government that would use its police powers to create a new order of ostensible social and economic equality. Socialists replace God with government as the source of morality.

That is precisely what is happening with this war on Christianity on both sides of the pond. It is a war that the left is winning - and if they fully succeed, history teaches us that the resulting society will more resemble the Soviet Union, circa 1919, than the U.S. in 1776.

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Another Anti-Democratic Court Outrage - The Ninth Circuit Upholds A Constitutional "Right" To Gay Marriage

Everything that is wrong with our of control court system is on display today in the Ninth Circuit Court's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, upholding a lower court ruling that the will of over 7 million Californians who voted for Prop. 8 doesn't matter. Morality based on ancient Christian moral precepts doesn't matter. Gay marriage is a "constitutional right" in California.

You can find the entire opinion at Legal Insurrection.

 There is no question that at the time of the drafting of the Constitution and, 70 years later, the 14th Amendment, homosexuality was a legally proscribed practice across our nation.  Thus, using the originalist theory of Constitutional interpretation, gay marriage cannot today be recast as a Constitutional right absent an Amendment to the Constitution.  And indeed, this finding of gay marriage as a Constitutional right by the 9th Circuit is pure judicial activism, creating new rights out of whole cloth.  This is in almost every respect a replay of Roe v. Wade.

Gay marriage is a social issue raised to the fore today on the basis of changing social mores. Since it was not a right envisioned by the drafters of our Constitution and 14th Amendment, gay marriage is an issue that should be solely reserved to the states - and very much more specifically, the states' ballot boxes. This is not an issue for the Courts.

What we see in the Ninth Circuit opinion is just one more group of unelected judges who deem themselves the final arbiters of what U.S. social policy should be and who have no problem with unilaterally amending our Constitution. This despite the fact that the Constitution provides two different methods for amendment, neither of which provides for the unilateral decision of a gay district court judge or two left wing judges on the 9th Circuit Court to depart from the original intent of the drafters.

This is also one more attack on religion in this country - with the left seeking to delegitimize it and raise in its stead their own "anything goes - as long is it doesn't disagree with what we want" morality and mentality. We have seen that morality at work in just the past weeks, with the Obama administration decision to force Catholic institutions to pay for health insurance covering contraception and Plan-B abortion, and we have seen that mentality at work in the left's utterly vociferous reaction to the Komen charity's decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood.

Professor Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection summarizes the Perry court holding thusly: "since there was a prior right to samesex marriage (based on a California Supreme Court decision which gave rise to Prop. 8 ) — the taking away of that right without justification violated the 14th Amendment." So yes, the Ninth Circuit danced around affirmatively finding a right of gay marriage in the Equal Protection clause. That still does not change the fact that they should have dispensed with this case on the ground that the Equal Protection clause allows for no such right and that the will of Californians who voted for Prop 8 should be honored.

So why wasn't ancient morality derived from the Christian religion a sufficient "justification" to uphold Prop. 8. That is because, as a matter of law, Christian moral views are now deemed "irrational" and not afforded any weight.  That is a complete, judicialy imposed break with how our founding fathers saw the role of religion in America.  Compare and contrast this with the Northwest Ordinance, passed by the same people who voted to approve the First Amendment, that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged;” [and compare as well as with] early Congresses [that] proceeded to make grants of land to serve religious purposes and to fund sectarian education . . ."

At any rate, the Supreme Court led the way in severing Christian morality from our laws when they held in Lawrence v. Texas that morality is no longer a justifiable basis for our laws. If you read that case, you will see that the majority simply disagreed with the Christian morality enshrined in the Texas state law proscribing sodomy. Ironically, what they did instead was to substitute their own moral choices. It was another major marker in the advance of secularism in this country over the will of the people and another major attack on the role of Christianity in the public square.

And thus today do we have the 9th Circuit Court in Perry v. Schwarzenegger ruling that there is no rational basis for denying gays the right to marry in California.  Newt Gingrich and Andrew McCarthy have this one right.  Our courts are completely out of control.  Something must be done to restore the constitutional balance - and preferably, that something will include tar and feathers.

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Merry Christmas To All

Nativity With St. Francis and St. Lawrence, Caravaggio, 1609

From the Homily of Pope Benedict XVI, 24 Dec. 2011:

. . . Christmas is an epiphany – the appearing of God and of his great light in a child that is born for us. Born in a stable in Bethlehem, not in the palaces of kings. In 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in Greccio with an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the mystery of Christmas came to light. Saint Francis of Assisi called Christmas “the feast of feasts” – above all other feasts – and he celebrated it with “unutterable devotion” (2 Celano 199; Fonti Francescane, 787). He kissed images of the Christ-child with great devotion and he stammered tender words such as children say, so Thomas of Celano tells us (ibid.).

For the early Church, the feast of feasts was Easter: in the Resurrection Christ had flung open the doors of death and in so doing had radically changed the world: he had made a place for man in God himself. Now, Francis neither changed nor intended to change this objective order of precedence among the feasts, the inner structure of the faith centered on the Paschal Mystery. And yet through him and the character of his faith, something new took place: Francis discovered Jesus’ humanity in an entirely new depth. This human existence of God became most visible to him at the moment when God’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.

The Resurrection presupposes the Incarnation. For God’s Son to take the form of a child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart of the Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. “The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed” – this phrase of Saint Paul now acquired an entirely new depth. In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem, we can as it were touch and caress God. And so the liturgical year acquired a second focus in a feast that is above all a feast of the heart.

. . . Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God’s humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love. Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.

Francis arranged for Mass to be celebrated on the manger that stood between the ox and the ass (cf. 1 Celano 85; Fonti 469). Later, an altar was built over this manger, so that where animals had once fed on hay, men could now receive the flesh of the spotless lamb Jesus Christ, for the salvation of soul and body, as Thomas of Celano tells us (cf. 1 Celano 87; Fonti 471). Francis himself, as a deacon, had sung the Christmas Gospel on the holy night in Greccio with resounding voice. Through the friars’ radiant Christmas singing, the whole celebration seemed to be a great outburst of joy (1 Celano 85.86; Fonti 469, 470). It was the encounter with God’s humility that caused this joy – his goodness creates the true feast.

Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but above all to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path of Saint Francis – the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable. Amen.

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Thanks Bibi, & A Happy Chanukah To All

(H/T Woman Honor Thyself)

I deeply appreciate the great respect that Israel shows for Christian historical sites in Israel. The Israeli government is a model of religious tolerance and, indeed, if you are a Palestinian, your best chance for a decent life is to be a citizen of Israel. And I deeply appreciate that the Israeli PM should take the time to wish us all a Merry Christmas - with an added, blatant plug for Israeli tourism. PM Netanyahu does many things well, but subtlety is not among them.

Meanwhile, today starts the Jewish holiday of Chanukah:



The above video taken from Robert Avrech's fine site, Seraphic Secret, that I urge you to visit for more on the Chanukah.

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The War On Religion: Mark Steyn, Ron Paul & Congress

Mark Steyn weighs in on modern Christmas traditions, the fear of even religious institutions to proclaim their faith out of fear of litigation, and what it all means:

Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions:

The sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular "holiday" tree.

The ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman.

The familiar strains of every hack columnist's "war on Christmas" column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing "Winter Wonderland" ...

This year has been a choice year. A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the "holiday" display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia — because, let's face it, nothing cheers the hearts of moppets in the Old Dominion like telling them, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — and he's hanging lifeless in the town square."

Alas, a week ago, some local burghers failed to get into the ecumenical spirit and decapitated him. Who are these killjoys? Christians intolerant of the First Amendment (as some have suggested)? Or perhaps a passing Saudi? . . . .

Across the fruitcaked plain in California, the city of Santa Monica allocated permits for "holiday" displays at Palisades Park by means of lottery. Eighteen of the 21 slots went to atheists — for example, the slogan "37 million Americans know a myth when they see one" over portraits of Jesus, Santa, and Satan.

. . . Perhaps Santa Monica should adopt a less theocratic moniker and change its name to Satan Monica, as its interpretation of the separation of church and state seems to have evolved into expressions of public contempt for large numbers of the citizenry augmented by the traumatizing of their children.

Boy, I can't wait to see what those courageous atheists come up with for Ramadan. Or does that set their hearts a-flutter quite as much?

One sympathizes, up to a point. As America degenerates from a land of laws to a land of legalisms, much of life is devoted to forestalling litigation. What's less understandable is the faintheartedness of explicitly Christian institutions. . . .

When an explicitly Catholic institution thinks the meaning of Christmas is "tenderness for the past, vapid generalities for the present, evasive abstractions for the future," it's pretty much over. Suffering no such urge to self-abasement, Muslim students at the Catholic University of America in Washington recently filed a complaint over the lack of Islamic prayer rooms on the campus. They find it offensive to have to pray surrounded by Christian symbols such as crucifixes and paintings of distinguished theologians.

True, this thought might have occurred to them before they applied to an institution called "Catholic University." On the other hand, it's surely not unreasonable for them to have expected Catholic University to muster no more than the nominal rump Christianity of that Catholic college in New England. Why wouldn't you demand Muslim prayer rooms?

As much as belligerent atheists, belligerent Muslims reckon that a decade or so hence "Catholic colleges" will be Catholic mainly in the sense that Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is still a cathedral: that's to say, it's a museum, a heritage site for where once was a believing church. And who could object to the embalming of our inheritance?

Christmas is all about "tenderness for the past," right? When Christian college administrators are sending out cards saying "We believe in nothing", why wouldn't you take them at their word?

Which brings us back in this season of joy to the Republican presidential debates, the European debt crisis and all the other fun stuff. The crisis afflicting the West is not primarily one of unsustainable debt and spending. These are mere symptoms of a deeper identity crisis.

It is not necessary to be a believing Christian to be unnerved by the ease and speed with which we have cast off our inheritance and trampled it into the dust. When American municipalities are proudly displaying the execution of skeleton Santas and giant Satans on public property, it may just be a heartening exercise of the First Amendment, it may be a trivial example of the narcissism of moral frivolity.

Or it could be a sign that eventually societies become too stupid to survive. The fellows building the post-western world figure they know which it is.

And then there is this worthy essay on the topic from Ron Paul in 2003.

As we celebrate another Yuletide season, it's hard not to notice that Christmas in America simply doesn't feel the same anymore. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and those who don't celebrate it overwhelmingly accept and respect our nation's Christmas traditions, a certain shared public sentiment slowly has disappeared. The Christmas spirit, marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.

This growing bias explains why many of our wonderful Christmas traditions have been lost. Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel's Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” Even wholly non-religious decorations featuring Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like have been called into question as Christmas symbols that might cause discomfort. Earlier this month, firemen near Chicago reluctantly removed Christmas decorations from their firehouse after a complaint by some embittered busybody.

Most noticeably, however, the once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation's history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people's allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation's Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

The war on religion is perhaps best captured this year by the fact that our elected Representatives in Congress have been advised by the Congressional Franking Comission that they cannot send out greeting cards to constituents on the Congressional dime that say "Merry Christmas."

The Supreme Court has so moved us from the true meaning of the First Amendment's anti-establishment clause that every one of the Founders - even the deist Thomas Jefferson - would be horrified at what has become of Christianity in the public sphere today. It is a travesty that is having a profound and lasting effect on our nation - and none of it is good. For a much more in depth explanation, please see the speech of James Buckley here.

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Islam & Blasphemy, Censorship & Hearings

Islam is a "religion of peace" unrelated to the terrorism, murder and mayhem that we see perpetrated throughout the world. Or so CAIR, virtually the entire left in America and Europe, and the Obama administration wants you to believe.

The only way they can maintain that meme is to ignore reality when they can, cover-up for it when they must, and refuse to allow any competing message whenever possible. Thus did we see the Washington Post recently refuse to publish the comments of distinguished scholar Dr. Willis Elliot, a long time contributer to the Post, in answer to the following from the Washington Post:

The Mutual Blasphemy of Christianity and Islam.

2011 began with some bleak news for Muslim-Christian relations around the world.

Recent attacks against churches in Iraq, Nigeria and Egypt have killed dozens of Christian worshippers. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is standing by the country’s controversial blasphemy law which critics say threatens religious minorities.

How should political and religious leaders in America and abroad deal with these challenges to interfaith relations?

You can read Elliot's entire offending response here. He merely pointed out some realities. One, while Christianity and Judaism, have at their core, the Golden Rule directing them to treat others as they would want to be treated by others, Islam is largely directed to be hostile to non-Muslims. And while promoting non-violence is a theme of the Christianity, it is not a theme of Islam. Elliot adds:

Muslims don’t know how to behave when they are not in power: it enrages them, makes them thin-skinned to “blasphemy,” drives them to achieve power and impose sharia, even motivates some of them to martyr-suicide in killing any they consider enemies of Allah.

Well, that is certainly true of "political Islam" that describes far too large a swath of the Islamic world. Elliot then pointed out:

[W]e can make no essential progress, religious or political, unless we honestly and courageously confront the reality that our two religions are essential enemies, antagonists each to the other’s essence, mutual blasphemers. Only with that realism can the mutual blasphemers begin to learn to get along with each other without violence.

How well said. Tolerance is the watchword, but there will never be tolerance so long as the left whitewashes both the nature of - and problems within - the Islamic world. Censorship, such as that done in this case by WaPo, contributes significantly to an already dangerous situation, as it allows the problems in the Islamic world to metasticize while much of Western civilization remains blissfully ignorant.

Fortunately, not all in our government are willing to accept the whitewash. Rep. Peter King has scheduled a hearing in Feb. on "the Times Square bombing attempt and the Fort Hood shooting, both involving American-born Muslims, as well as other incidents and on what he sees as the failure of Muslim leadership to combat extremism." Not surprisingly, he is getting a lot of push-back from people who do not want hearings like this to take place. On the other hand, Muslim reformers, such as M. Zhudi Jasser, are applauding the decision to hold the hearing. As Mr. Jasser wrote not long ago:

We are only playing defense against this growing threat with no signs of an offensive strategy. More and more, our homeland security strategy is turning out to be nothing more than a whack-a-mole program. This cycle will only be broken by the development of a national strategy that will counter the true root cause of Islamist terror-the ideology and continuum of political Islam that lies within the Muslim consciousness. This again calls for an American Muslim led strategy for reform against political Islam. . . .

As we move forward into 2011, Americans and particularly American Muslims need to wake up to their responsibility to frontally address the ideological threat that we are facing today. Mohamud's radicalization is not uncommon because the separatist ideology of political Islam is ubiquitous in Muslim communities. Condemnation of violence or terrorism is not enough. We can no longer allow the sound bite to be 'it is one deranged individual'. This is a Muslim systemic problem that needs a Muslim systemic reform.

American Muslims must teach our youth that the ideals of America and the principles embodied in our Constitution provide the best environment for Muslims to practice their faith. We must teach our youth that the idea of the Islamic State and governmental shariah (Islamic law) has no place in modernity and no place in America. Any other approach is mired in denial and avoidance of this core ideological problem."

Somehow, I doubt if Mr. Jasser's quote would ever make it past the WaPo censors, nor be referred to by Obama. That notwithstanding, for a much more realistic and in-depth discussion of issues related to the points raised above by Dr. Elliot, I urge you to read the text of a symposium involving M. Zhudi Jasser, Tawfiq Hamid, Robert Spencer and Timothy Furnish. It is not something you will see in the Washington Post or on the View, nor will you hear it discussed by Obama. But if we are to move forward, the starting point is knowing, realistically, where we are today.

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Monday Links

The NYT covers the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon. Obama's commission tasked to report on the blowout is now scheduled to issue its final report in mid-January.

Elizabeth Scalia lists the eight stories that shaped 2010.

At World Affairs, identifies a troubling, systemic and humorous lack of judgment in the Muslim World. Mossad trained rats and sharks indeed. These people are nuts.

Will Obama stand up for Iraqi Christians? I doubt it.

André Glucksmann explains our debt to the ancient Athenians in The Original Birth of Freedom

Per Sen. Coburn at No Sheeples, fiscal Armageddon cometh.

The top ten reasons businesses are fleeing California.

And on a related note, the 2010 Census shows that people are fleeing high tax / strong union states. They are settling in locales with little or no income tax and right to work laws that weaken unions.

If you have not read it already, do see Tom Blumer's great analysis of the Pelosi-Obama-Reid economy and the destruction it hath wrought. What amazes me is how these people sell themselves as protectors of the working man and minorities when the reality is that they are anything but. When will a Republican with some fire in the belly go on a crusade to point that out. Perhaps Marco Rubio might be best positioned to do that.

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Worship and Recipes

[W]ith all this confusion abounding, we do wonder if it isn’t a bit judgmental of the mainstream media to condemn the 18 percent of Americans who say they think Barack Obama is a Muslim. For one thing, this is fewer than the number of Americans who say that intelligent beings from other planets have made contact with humans on Earth. And it has gotten hard even for people of good will to keep things straight.

Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard

Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard weighs in on the question of whether Obama is a closet Muslim? No, of course not. He's a multiculturalist progressive.

Obama’s problem isn’t that people falsely think he’s a Muslim. It’s that the public is correctly concluding he’s a garden-variety multiculturalist progressive. So November’s election won’t just be a repudiation of one non-Muslim president. It will be a repudiation of a multiculturalist progressive worldview—and of the bitter elites who cling desperately to that worldview and are consumed by antipathy to most Americans, who don’t.

Well said.

There has never been any indication that Obama, since adulthood, has been a practicing Muslim. That said, it seems apparent that his time spent in Indonesia where he was living in a heavily Islamic environment has colored his views on Islam. He seems to have extrapolated from from what he observed of the benign form of Islam practiced in the Indonesia of his youth to the Islamic world as a whole. That is an incredibly naive error.

The Shafi'i school of Islam, practiced in Indonesia during Obama's stay there, is not the norm for the Islamic world. More and more the norm is Wahhabi-Salafi Islam, the far more militant, racist, misogynistic ideology at the heart of al Qaeda. As I have pointed out countless times on this blog, there is a war going on today for the heart and soul of Islam. It is a war between those who would reform their religion and those who would keep it mired in the backwaters of 7th century Arabian tribalism. Andrew McCarthy makes the same point today at the NRO. Unfortunately for us, our government is not engaging in this war. But that has nothing to do with Obama actually being a Muslim. It has everything to do with the fact that Obama has close experience with a benign form of Islam.

Obama claims to have been converted to Christianity after hearing one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's polemics, the one that took note of inequities created by "white man's greed." But that polemic seemed to have little or anything to do with Christianity and far more to do with socialism and the left's "social justice" construct.

I do not think Obama is a Muslim. Nor do I think he a Christian. I think he sees his deity every day when he looks in the mirror. Moreover, I think Afrocity hit the nail on the head in her post today, Obama is . . . . a recipe for disaster:

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A Fascinating Read

Bookworm Room's posts are invariably thought provoking. One of her most recent posts, Anne Rice & Neo-Paganism, is an incredibly interesting post indeed. It touches on pre-Christian paganism, Christianity, the Bible, syncretism, Medieval Church history, St. Augustine and the Just War theory, in addition to Ms. Rice and her recent un-conversion from Christianity. I highly recommend reading her post. I disagree with Ms. Bookworm on some of the historical points (see Comment #40), but any discussion that includes all of these topics is well worth a read. In addition, do see the Anchoress's take on Anne Rice's misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine.

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The Secular Left Loses One

Approximately a month ago, I posted on the case of Prof. Kenneth Howell. He was terminated by the Univ. of Illinois for opining that homosexuality was a violation of natural law. Prof. Howell made the statement explaining the Catholic Church's position as part of an introductory course on Catholocism. He was terminated when a student complained and the school took the position that Howell had violated the university's policy on inclusion. This was nothing more than left wing pushing its secular values to punish Christianity. It was also a blatant violation of Howell's right under the Civil Rights Act to be free from discrimination on the basis of his religion.

The university has now relented in part. This from the Catholic News Agency:

The Diocese of Peoria praised the University of Illinois' decision to reinstate Dr. Kenneth Howell, who had been told at the end of last semester that he would no longer be allowed to teach because he had stated in a class on Catholicism that the Church believes homosexual behavior violates natural law.

Despite high approval ratings on student evaluations, Dr. Howell's position at the university was terminated this past spring after an anonymous student complaint that his words in a class on Catholicism amounted to “hate speech.” The complaint referenced an e-mail to his students in which Howell contrasted the ways utilitarianism and natural law theory would determine the morality of homosexual acts.

On Thursday, the school's Office of University Counsel told Dr. Howell’s lawyers that “The School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics will be contacting Dr. Howell to offer him the opportunity to teach Religion 127, Introduction to Catholicism, on a visiting instructional appointment at the University of Illinois, for the fall 2010 semester. Dr. Howell will be appointed and paid by the University for this adjunct teaching assignment."

This should have been a much bigger case than the Shirley Sherrod affair, yet it has not made a single major newscast of which I am aware. Regardless, this offer from the Univ. of Illinois is nowhere near sufficient. I sincerely hope that Howell's attorneys push this much further to extract at least a tenure track position for Howell, an apology from the people who decided to fire Howell, and a written change to the University's policies to protect Christians in the profession of their beliefs.

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An Update On The War On Christianity

If the secular left - and Islamists - have their way, they will make of Christians second class citizens in America, subject to punishment by the police power of the state for professing their beliefs. And we see it this week, with a Professor of Catholicism fired for teaching Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and four Christians arrested for proselytizing among Muslims - in Michigan.

Case number one - Ken Howell, a professor of Catholic Studies for nine years at the Univ. of Illinois has been fired for the secular mortal sin of "hate speech." His specific crime was pointing out that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin:

Howell, who taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, says he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining some Catholic beliefs to his students preparing for an exam.

"Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY," he wrote in the e-mail. "In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same."

An unidentified student sent an e-mail to religion department head Robert McKim on May 13, calling Howell's e-mail "hate speech." The student claimed to be a friend of the offended student. The writer said in the e-mail that his friend wanted to remain anonymous.

"Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing," the student wrote. "Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another." . . .

The student here is making a distinction without a difference. Is he claiming that any professor who teaches the tenets of Catholicism can only do so if they profess to believe that the biblical authors and the Pope are false and wrong? It is tough to tell, but in any event, it seems ludicrous indeed. To continue:

In an e-mail to other school staff, Ann Mester, an associate dean at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said Howell's e-mail justified his firing.

"The e-mails sent by Dr. Howell violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us," Mester wrote. . . .

This is outrageous on just so many levels. One, this is an elevation of the homosexuality to the point that the University is demanding that it be accepted as a normal lifestyle, and they are threatening the livelihood of anyone who does not agree. The left has made of radical secularism its own state religion with severe penalties for blasphemy.

Two, could there be any clearer violation of the right of freedom of speech?

Three, the left labels any criticism of their victim classes as "hate speech." What the Professor said was that homosexuality was not moral or normal. So how does that quality as "hate?" What it is in reality is a means of crushing speech that does not conform with their idea of political correctness.

Four, is there anyone on the planet who does not understand that the bible makes plain that homosexuality is considered a sin. Hands? And thus, if someone is going to teach about Catholicism at a university, is the professor required to burn certain pages from the bible as sacrilegious under the new radical secularism?

I sincerely hope this professor files the mother of all civil rights law suits.

Then there are the Arabs in Dearborn and the local police:

Four Christian missionaries were arraigned today on misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace following their June 18 arrest at the Arab International Festival.

Negeen Mayel, 18, of California; Nabeel Qureshi, 29, of Virginia; Paul Rezkalla, 18 of New York, and David Wood, 34, also of New York, face fines of up to $500 each and up to 93 days in jail. Dearborn authorities said the four "chose to escalate their behavior, which appeared well-orchestrated and deliberate" as they handed out religious literature and talking with people at the festival. The woman and three men are members or founders of a group called "Acts 17 Apologetics." . . .

This is another case that screams out for a civil rights lawsuit.

And the war on Christianity continues ever onwards in America. God help us all if the left and the Islamists win.

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Atheists Don't Got No Songs

A great song from Steve Martin:



From American Digest

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Christian Beliefs Are The New Sins In A Secular Socialist Nation

The left's war on Christianity continues unabated. In Britain, it is now a sin to criticize homosexuality, one that the socialist Labour government is punishing with the police powers of the state. The most recent - the arrest of a preacher for the mere public expression that he sees homosexuality as sinful. This from the Daily Mail:

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and charged with a public-order offence after saying that homosexuality was sinful.

Dale Mcalpine was handing out leaflets to shoppers when he told a passer-by and a gay police community support officer that, as a Christian, he believed homosexuality was one of a number of sins that go against the word of God.

Mr Mcalpine said that he did not repeat his remarks on homosexuality when he preached from the top of a stepladder after his leafleting. But he has been told that police officers are alleging they heard him making his remarks to a member of the public in a loud voice that could be overheard by others. . . .

(H/T: Crusader Rabbit)

The arrest of Rev. McAlpine comes on the heels of a decision by Lord Justice Laws last week, likewise attacking Christianity and enforcing his own secular values on all Brits, even in matters of conscience (see here). Christopher Booker in the Telegraph and Peter Hitchens at the Daily Mail put these acts in context. This from Mr. Booker:

Lord Justice Laws last week ruled that Gary McFarlane was rightly given the sack as a relationship counsellor for refusing to give "sex therapy lessons" to gay couples because it was against his Christian principles. According to Laws, "law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds is irrational, divisive, capricious, arbitrary".

Climate change evangelist Tim Nicholson, on the other hand, was recently awarded £42,200 for his wrongful dismissal by a property firm, after last year's ruling by Mr Justice Burton that Mr Nicholson's "philosophical belief" in man-made global warming was on a par with religious belief and must therefore be given legal protection under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, issued under the 1972 European Communities Act to implement EC directive 2000/78.

So let us get this straight. Under a law designed to bar religious discrimination, it is now perfectly legal to discriminate against someone's beliefs so long as these are based on religion – eg Christianity (but not of course Islam) – because religion is irrational, capricious and arbitrary. But the same law must protect someone's belief so long as it is not based on religion – eg a devout faith in man-made global warming. . . .

And this from Mr. Hitchens:

Revolutions do not always involve guillotines or mobs storming palaces. Sometimes they are made by middle-aged gentlemen in wigs, sitting in somnolent chambers of the High Court.

Sometimes they are made by police officers and bureaucrats deciding they have powers nobody knew they had, or meant them to have.

And Britain is undergoing such a revolution – quiet, step-by-step, but destined to have a mighty effect on the lives and future of us all.

The Public Order Act of 1986 was not meant to permit the arrest of Christian preachers in English towns for quoting from the Bible. But it has. The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was not meant to force public servants to approve of homosexuality. But it has.

The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was not meant to lead to a state of affairs where it is increasingly dangerous to say anything critical about homosexuality. But it did.

And the laws of Britain, being entirely based upon the Christian Bible, were not meant to be used by a sneering judge to declare that Christianity had no higher status in this ancient Christian civilisation than Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.

But it has come to that this week.

How did it happen that in the course of less than 50 years we moved so rapidly from one wrong to another?

Until 1967, homosexuals could be – and were – arrested and prosecuted for their private, consenting, adult acts.

This was a cruel, bad law that should never have been made. It led to blackmail and misery of all kinds.

Those who repealed it did so out of humanity and an acceptance that we need to live in peace alongside others whose views and habits we do not share. No such generous tolerance is available from the sexual revolutionaries.

Now, as the case of Dale Macalpine shows, we are close to the point where a person can be prosecuted for saying in public that homosexual acts are wrong.

And officers of the law, once required to stay out of all controversy, get keen official endorsement when they take part in open political demonstrations in favour of homosexual equality.

We have travelled in almost no time from repression, through a brief moment of mutual tolerance, to a new repression. And at the same time, the freedom of Christians to follow their beliefs in workplaces is under aggressive attack.

Small and harmless actions, offers of prayer, the wearing of crucifixes, requests to withdraw from duties, are met with official rage and threats of dismissal, out
of all proportion. . . .

Daily the confidence of the new regime grows. The astonishing judgment of Lord Justice Laws last week, in which he pointedly snubbed Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, and mocked the idea that Christianity had any special place in our society, is a warning that this process has gone very deep and very far.

The frightening thing is that it has not stopped, nor is it slowing down. What cannot be said in a Workington street will soon be unsayable anywhere.

And if Christianity has officially ceased to be the basis of our law and the source of our state’s authority (a view which makes nonsense of the Coronation Service) who, and what – apart from the brute power of the manipulated mob – is to decide in future what is right, and what is not, and what can be said, and what cannot? . . .

Hitchens in particular makes several points that I have likewise made repeatedly on this blog. Christianity and the Judeo-Christian ethic have undergirded our laws and social framework for nearly two thousand years. It has been the avowed goal of socialists for over two centuries to rip Christianity from the foundations of Western civilization as part and parcel of their effort to remake society. But this comes with deeply fundamental - and likely existential - ramifications, for if morality and the law become unmoored from the Judeo-Christian ethic, then it is left to the whims of politicians and the "manipulated mob" to redefine morality based on whatever they see as the greater good. It is but a very short step from there to using the police power of the state to enforce that new morality. As I wrote here:

. . . For the better part of two millennium, the Judeo-Christian ethic has provided a rock solid framework for morality at the heart of Western society - one that puts maximum value on each individual human life and one that provides moral clarity in such things as Christianity's Golden Rule and Judaism's "Great Commandment." Take that mooring away from the ancient expressions of our deity and all morality then becomes dependant on what any particular person or government defines as the greater good.

When governments and individuals can define by their whim what is moral or immoral, what is desirable and what is punishable, human life is almost inevitably devalued. Certainly Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot, between them responsible for the murder of well over a hundred million people in the 20th century, held to socialist belief systems that devalued human life and elevated in its stead political ideology. Many in the green movement argue that man is a parasite on the world and call for strictly limiting his impact using authoritarian means - including population control, forced sterilization and other such methods. Far less destructive but no less insidious are the new age religions - for but one example, mystic beliefs based on the book and movie The Secret, where one only needs to really believe - and maybe click their heels three times - and then the "universe will provide." It certainly saves one the trouble of actually dealing with real world problems, at least until they come to crisis proportions. Or the neo-Druidism one can see in practice among the many robed figures gathered at Stonehenge each Equinox. Hopefully these modern day animists will not also seek to resurrect the Druidic custom of human sacrifice.

The bottom line is, regardless whether one believes in Judaism or Christianity, we will pay a very heavy price indeed for jettisoning them as the bedrock of Western society. Yet that is precisely what the left has sought for over two centuries, promising in their stead a secular heaven on earth. Ironically, should the socialist left fully succeed, history teaches us that their promised earthly heaven will be far more likely to resemble biblical hell.

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What Labour Hath Wrought

LIke the RMS Titanic, the UK's ship of state is sinking. British journalist William Shawcross, writing at the NRO, tells why in a damning indictment of Labour and its 12 year stewardship of Britain. This from Mr. Shawcross:

A Foreign Office diplomat’s proposal to mark the Pope’s visit to Britain with Benedict condoms and by having him bless a gay marriage, open an abortion clinic, and set up a hotline for abused children is a perfect example of the ruling Labour party’s degradation of Britain. Former ambassador Sir Ivor Roberts said on Sunday, “I cannot think of a papal visit anywhere in the world where the host government has had to apologize so profusely and abjectly…for the appalling behavior of one of its officials.”

The truth is that the Foreign Office is no longer fit for purpose after 13 years of New Labour dogmas and a succession of weak if not feckless ministers, in particular the incumbent, David Miliband. Under New Labour, the idea that the Foreign Office should actually fight for British interests is considered passé, if not racist and imperialist. Instead, New Labour has forced Britain to become a mere piece of the bland but increasingly oppressive Bambiland of the E.U., promoting such PC global issues as gay rights (except in Muslim lands) and man-made climate change. . . .

Charles Crawford, a distinguished ambassador who retired early in despair at New Labour’s destruction of British diplomacy, says that in Euroland, “religious pieties plus national identities and symbols, and thus the role of national embassies, are all essential targets of postmodern pastiche.”

He is right — “postmodernism,” the disastrous creed that there is no objective truth and that everything is relative, is the defining characteristic of New Labour. The only force of which Labour (like most E.U. ruling parties) seems to be in awe is Islamism. No Foreign Office official would have drawn up a document mocking Islam. “Postmodernism” is in effect a form of appeasement.

And Gordon Brown has been a disaster for this country. As the all-powerful chancellor, he spent the first ten years of New Labour undermining what might have been sensible Blairite reforms to education, health services, and welfare. Brown and his allies wanted no success for Blair — instead, they simply threw money at unreconstructed and inefficient structures. Billions upon billions of taxpayer money is still being squandered. Perhaps most tragic is the lack of welfare reform. Brown has perpetuated the growth of a wretched, demoralized underclass, unwilling and increasingly unable to work.

At the same time, Labour has continually expanded its client state (70 percent of the workforce in Northern Ireland), which produces nothing. Every person in the U.K. now has £40,000 of national debt to his or her name.

The list of horrors is endless: Brown sold our gold at about the lowest price imaginable, he destroyed the country’s strong pension system, he broke Labour’s promise for a referendum on the E.U.’s Lisbon Treaty, and he has mortgaged Labour back to the trade unions. Harold Wilson had more courage.

Unforgivably, Brown has treated our soldiers with contempt. He has never given the armed forces the resources they needed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many men have died in battle because of inadequate equipment. Recently Brown was forced to correct a lie he told the Chilcott Iraq Enquiry when he claimed that under him, defense spending had risen every year.

Labour boasts that 3 million new jobs have been created — but most went to immigrants. Labour deliberately let immigration rip but never put this controversial policy before the voters in a manifesto. Some leaked Labour documents suggest this was a deliberate policy “to dilute Britishness” and create a new class of voters grateful to Labour.

It is an outrage that the British people were never told the truth about Labour’s immigration free-for-all. Instead, Labour apparatchiks denounced anyone as racist if he or she complained. Those who hate the rise of the British National Party should blame Labour, not the poor white voters whom Labour abandoned and whose lives have been changed forever by uncontrolled immigration. Last week, two London taxi drivers told me that they were going to vote BNP because it’s the only party that cares at all about them.

It’s not just about immigration that they complain. People are grossly offended by the drunken anarchy that Labour has encouraged in so many town centres, with 24-hour drinking, the litter that everyone now feels free to throw, the noise, the anger, the increasing incivility. The quality of millions of peoples’ lives has really suffered.

This government has made countless attacks on our civil liberties and has constantly, carelessly undermined our constitution, which has been carefully crafted over centuries to protect us. The Lord Chancellor has gone, the Law Lords have gone, now the House of Lords, one of the last bastions of independent expertise, is also threatened by Brown, who wants to create an elected clone of the Commons. Nick Clegg would do the same.

Labour’s bullying “multicultural” ideology has been a catastrophe. The government has cosseted extremist Islamist preachers of hatred to a shocking degree. No wonder French security officials talk of “Londonistan.” At the same time, under New Labour’s “progressive” laws, ordinary Christians have been persecuted for their views. Gordon Brown boasts of being “a son of the manse,” but he cares far more about leftist ideology than he does about the religion of his father. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has now taken up the cudgels on behalf of Christianity, its followers, and the fine tradition of British tolerance. It is a measure of the illiberalism of this government that he should have to do so.

“Orwellian” is an overworked phrase, but at least everyone knows that it means something destructive to society. It is a fitting description of the debasement of language, the ignorance of history, and the oppressive culture of “postmodern progress” controlled by thousands of highly paid apparatchiks that Labour has forced upon us. . . .

In his conclusion, Mr. Shawcross calls for people to vote for the Tories as their best option to right Britain's sinking ship of state. Perhaps if anyone heard from David Cameron words similar to Mr. Shawcross, they might be able to do so with some confidence. But by all measures, David Cameron is nothing more than a base political opportunist himself who has, once having promised a referendum on EU membership, reversed himself not long ago. Unfortunately, it appears that the only real conservative party in Britain, the UKIP, is rudderless at the moment. The upcoming election will no doubt be interesting, but I seriously doubt indeed if it will result in a positive change in direction for Britain.

Just to highlight one other point, note that Mr. Shawcross credits "Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury" as being the nation's best defender of Christianity, That is because the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, elevated to his current position by nomination of Labour PM Tony Blair in 2002, has proven utterly worthless in standing up for Christianity and the Anglican Church.

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