DEI initiatives have emerged in business, academia, and government departments in the name of “diversity” and “inclusivity.” Bestselling author Heather Mac Donald and PragerU CEO Marissa Streit discuss how DEI policies that prioritize race and gender above merit are destroying Western Civilization by infiltrating key institutions, such as universities, medicine, and the arts.
I really enjoyed the insights and telling of true history of certain points. But I do have to say, posting the following doesn’t mean I support Mr. White in all his views. I just think this stuff is a must listen to. LANGUAGE WARNING included. To be clear, he is not Christian. He is very rude at times. But has moments of sharp clarity. As OFFICER TATUM notes, he is right twice a day.
Why Charleston White supports TRUMP!
(I just wish to note that didn’t seem to know the origins of the KKK. Sad.)
Here is the CARTIER FAMILY discussing the above:
Charleston White ROASTS Black Liberals And Defends Donald Trump
You won’t believe what Charleston White said about King Von!
LANGUAGE WARNING! The reason I am posting this has nothing ta do with this “king” Von…. it is the insight into rap itself.
What Charleston White Thinks About Black History And Ai
What’s your views on Black History? Do we need to keep teaching it? You will be surprised what Charleston White has to say. Alos what’s really going on with Ai.
Biden ALMOST says “Make America Great Again” — Biden struggled to read from a teleprompter after Trump Miraculously Survives an Assassination Attempt #MAGA
LOL!
Armstrong and Getty discuss the J.D. Vance issue, and discuss how many cats it would take to equal “crazy”
Damon Imani on Angela Carini losing to Imane Khelif in just 46 seconds in a women’s boxing match at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Here are some of my pics I cobbled together:
What is the response by the Left?
HOT-AIR has this:
Everybody I don’t like is Hitler, and every opinion I don’t like is Nazism.
That, my friends, is what leftists think, and there are no limits to their weirdness.
Are you a Nazi? Even if you don’t think you are, you are simply fooling yourself. Everybody who hasn’t rioted, looted, chopped off anybody’s genitals, or supported those who have had it done is a Nazi too.
A you not a member of the Communist Party or at least the Democratic Socialists? You are likely a Nazi. Have you kissed a person of the opposite sex? Do you have a coherent answer to the question “what is a woman?”
Nazi.
Nazi Nazi Nazi.
That, my friends, is the state of our discourse, or at least it is when you are talking with a leftist. …..
SOUTH PARK
The above graphic – which I will end with, along with a graphic by Shane Claiborn, and another by N.T. Wright discussing Christian Nationalism,* I unfriended a person who, since Trump has maligned a large swath of Bible believing brothers and sisters as white nationalists, who, in wanting to control the border well — THUS, offering the most compassion to people from other countries — as racists.
* SEE MY: Christian Nationalism? Conflating neo-Paganism with Christianity
SHANE CLAIBORNE
I have previously written on Shane’s close ties to radical Marxist organizations and radically left “Christian” institutions. But this will be a good refresher course in the failure of Shane’s views.
For instance, after showing a clip, a short clip, of Trump discussing immigration, Shane Claiborne said this:
I am troubled by Trump.
But I’m even more troubled by the Christians who support him.
This is white supremacy… full stop.
Trump is an opportunist… exploiting the fears and insecurities of white people. He stokes the deepest fears of scarcity, of being replaced, of losing power. And he unleashes Americas worst principalities and powers. This is racism on full display.
But the Gospel of Jesus is about love and compassion. It’s about the promise that perfect love casteth out fear. The Gospel is about advocating for widows and orphans and having compassion for those Christ called “the least of these.”
In fact, Jesus even says that when we welcome the stranger – the immigrant, the refugee, the homeless — we are welcoming HIM.
Follow Jesus. Not Trump.
Who follows Trump like they follow Jesus.
This is a repeated nonsensical line I hear repeated by #NeverTrumpers.
SMH… it is this over-generalized statement[s] that gets under my skin.
Dennis Prager notes that when he make a generalization, he will give an example to go along with it.
Why?
So a person can deal with the argument.
But saying someone is a white nationalist or lives his life today normalizing the “seven deadly sins” is just a broad, insurmountable statements used a broad brush to merely reject opposition rather than engage it.
Trump is not a pastor of a church movement that advocates Marxism and Liberation Theology, like Shane.
Here is an excellent gathering of some of his issues as it relates to me and my family – other than being white nationalists:
This is what Shane Claiborne had to say about revered Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler:
“I think even Bonhoeffer was wrong. There’s an interview with Hitler’s secretary in a movie called Blind Spot, and she tells about when the assassination attempt failed, and Hitler was very interestingly protected from the bomb, he was convinced at that point, more than ever before, that God was protecting him and his mission, and he went forward with renewed vigilence like ever before. So I would say on the day that Bonhoeffer did that, the cross lost, and that violence just perpetuated.”
[SEE HERE FOR MORE] Mark Tooley in the Weekly Standard writes:
“Shane Claiborne is a Christian counter-culturalist and pacifist who went to Baghdad in 2003 to express solidarity with Iraq when the first U.S. and Allied missiles landed.”
“CBS News asked him whether he was a traitor:
If this bloody, counterfeit liberation is American .??.??. I am proud to be un-American. If depleted uranium is American .??.??. I am proud to be un-American. If the imposed ‘peace’ of Pax Americana is American, I am proud to be un-American.”
“In Jesus for President Claiborne wants Christians to disavow their country and all civil governance in favor of exclusive allegiance to a nonviolent Jesus whose chief mission is resisting ‘empire.’ But Claiborne’s interpretation of Jesus, his few selective quotations from early church fathers notwithstanding, is largely divorced from the universal church’s understanding of the Savior. Instead, Claiborne insists on a narrowly reinterpreted Jesus as distilled by Yoder and several others in 20th-century America for whom Jesus is more social critic than Resurrected Redeemer.”
Barton Gingerich of the Institute on Religion & Democracy writes:
“Claiborne often touts radical political themes. His 2008 book Jesus for President likened American to the Third Reich and the biblical Whore of Babylon . . . Claiborne has also praised Occupy Wall Street and recently called for an ‘excorcism’ of Wall Street.”
[….]
“Shane Claiborne. . . warned on July 4 that ‘patriotism can be a dangerous thing if it leads to amnesia about the dark patches of our nation’s history.’ He proposed that instead of Independence Day, Americans celebrate ‘Interdependence Day,’ to recognize that ‘we are part of a global neighborhood.’”
In an Interview with Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne said, “One of the barriers [between religions] seems to be the assumption that we have the truth and folks who experience things differently will all go to Hell. How do we unashamedly maintain a healthy desire for others to experience the love of God as we have experienced it without condemning others who experience God differently?”
Here is another quote by Claiborne, “When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.” (see here)
Author Dave Hunt sums up Shane Claiborne’s teaching this way, “Some of Claiborne’s agenda toward the poor is commendable and may be well suited to social welfare programs such as the Peace Corps or UNESCO, but it does a terrible disservice to the biblical gospel. ‘Biblical’ needs to be underscored here because the gospel has specific content that can only be derived from the Bible. The gospel is what the Bible is all about. It is God’s way of salvation. . .Since the gospel has an eternal objective (e.g., it is a person’s only means for spending eternity with God), there is nothing of temporal significance that should be given priority over it. …
I am a huge fan of a Chinese Christian who started life as a committed philosopher of Buddhism, saw his coutry heading towards a cliff, was eventually forced to relocate under Mao, became a Christian and wrote veraciously about the Christian worldview and theology. Very few books are translated from Chinese to English. But in a missions class at seminary taught by Dr. Ray D. Arnold, who was one of the 1,000 missionaries that General MacArthur called to go to Japan at the conclusion of WWII. One blog notes this about the endeavor:
… taught by Dr. Ray D. Arnold, he introduced me to this prolific author and professor with a booklet he quoted from in class (I will emphasize the portion he used as a quote):
As Dr. Carl F. H. Henry pointed out: “The Chicago evangelicals, while seeking to overcome the polarization of concern in terms of personal evangelism or social ethics, also transcended the neoProtestant nullification of the Great Commission.” “The Chicago Declaration did not leap from a vision of social utopia to legislation specifics, but concentrated first on biblical priorities for social change.” “The Chicago evangelicals did not ignore transcendent aspects of God’s Kingdom, nor did they turn the recognition of these elements into a rationalization of a theology of revolutionary violence or of pacifistic neutrality in the face of blatant militarist aggression.” (Cf. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, “Evangelical Social Concern” Christianity Today, March 1, 1974.) The evangelical social concern is transcendental not merely horizontal.
We must make it clear that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who “deal only with surface phenomena. They seek to remove a deep-seated tumor from society by applying a plaster to the surface. The world’s deepest need today is not something that merely dulls the pain, but something that goes deep in order to change the basic unity of society, man himself. Only when men individually have experienced a change and reorientation, can society be redirected in the way it should go. This we cannot accomplish by either violence or legislation” (cf. Reid: op. cit.). Social actions, without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only create horizontal anxieties and perplexities!
Furthermore, the social activists are in fact ignorant of the social issues, they are not experts in the social sciences. They simply demand an immediate change or destruction of the social structures, but provide no blueprint of the new society whatsoever! They can be likened to the fool, as a Chinese story tells, who tried to help the plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course such “action” only caused the plant to wither and die. This is exactly what the social radicals are doing now! And the W.C.C. is supporting such a tragic course!
We must challenge them [secular social activists] to discern the difference between the true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says: “For the godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (II Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experiences of many former Russian Marxists, who, after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat, but not before God. They admitted that “A Russian (Marxist) intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed (Marxism) constrains him to hate” (cf. Nicolas Zernov: The Russian Religious Renaissance). “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one…. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10,23). A complete change of a society must come from man himself, for basically man is at enmity with God. All humanistic social, economic and political systems are but “cut flowers,” as Dr. Trueblood put it, even the best are only dim reflections of the Glory of the Kingdom of God. As Benjamin Franklin in his famous address to the Constitutional Convention, said, “Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Without reconciliation with God, there is no reconciliation with man. Social action is not evangelism; political liberation is not salvation. While we shall by all means have deep concern on social issues; nevertheless, social activism shall never be a substitution for the Gospel.
Lit-sen Chang, The True Gospel vs. Social Activism, (booklet. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co: 1976), 9.
But publications like this: “Lit-sen Chang (1904–1996) and the Critique of Indigenous Theology,” would be anathema to Shane and clan. The success, by the way, of the Evangelical Church in China today is in part to the hard work of Lit-sen Chang. The Chinese underground church would be in awe of Shane’s douchery in playing with Marxist fire and labeling it ecumenism.
DAVID FRENCH
Another person who is lauded by this recent unfriended friend is David French. He seems to link and recommend French a lot even though French believes I am a racist rube as well. So let us begin with a change from French as an “Evangelical who supports Mitt Romney” to maligning evangelicals in an atheists documentary.
Kylee Griswold via THE FEDERALIST hits this one out of the park for us:
… Long before French became a willing participant in atheist Rob Reiner’s anti-Trump “documentary” “God & Country” earlier this year, he was invoking white guilt to toss a cohort of Christians who vote differently than he does into the “Christian nationalism” basket. Evangelicals (specifically white ones) who were hesitant about getting the rushed and mandated Covid jab were actually “reluctant to consider the health of their community” and had a “spiritual problem.”
Less than two weeks after radical pro-abortion and pro-transgender candidate Joe Biden became the presumptive Democrat nominee in 2020, French said those who favored Trump were of low character and competence — even though, as Nathaniel Blake wrote in these pages, French was previously “behind ‘Evangelicals for Mitt’ and spent years arguing that our political leaders need not be avatars for our beliefs.”
Then there’s French’s evolution on so-called “gay marriage” in federal law. He says his views on traditional, biblical marriage have not changed. But during the fight over the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act — which requires every state and the federal government to recognize homosexual “marriages” and was signed into law by French-endorsed President Biden — French claimed:
Religious belief is not the same thing as declaring civil law. … I don’t want the law to discriminate against those Americans who sincerely hold different views of sexual morality, sexuality, and marriage and organize their lives and their institutions accordingly.
As Megan Basham wrote in The Federalist at the time, “In other words, he makes the same argument about marriage that Catholics Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have about abortion — he has personal views based on his faith but does not want those views, however endorsed they may be by the Creator of the universe, to be reflected in U.S. statute.”
He didn’t stop there, though. French thinks now that the institution has been legally desecrated, it should stay that way forever: “It would be profoundly disruptive and unjust to rip out the legal superstructure around which [gay Americans] ordered their lives.”
While David French was a senior editor of The Dispatch, the NeverTrump publication performed a dishonest “independent fact-check” of pre-2020 election advertisements from the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, which exposed Biden and Kamala Harris’ support for abortion until birth. Facebook then used that fake fact-check to censor the pro-life ads.
There’s plenty more where that came from. From launching character assassinations, to going after the weak, to defending the taxpayer-funded indoctrination of children with divisive racial politics, and more — the David “Winsome” French well never runs dry.
But the Pharisaical metanarrative is a familiar one: a self-righteous religious leader who sets his own rules, measures his opponents by them, morphs those rules when it suits him, and then boisterously gives thanks that he’s not like the unpalatable white Trump voters over there.
French is not so much a regime handmaiden as he is a court eunuch who became so by choice and nonetheless thinks he is in a position to lecture others on masculinity. He’s a turncoat who scolds others about loyalty, a liar convinced he’s the last honest man on Earth, and a party apparatchik whose vaunted principles always seem to align with his paychecks.
In recent years, he’s made a name for himself using Sunday — the traditional Christian day of rest and worship — to smear the faithful for the unpardonable sin of believing God’s law is superior to man’s law. ….
After Kylee wrote the above article… David French responded. In character of course.
Dissecting French’s Latest Delusion
French doesn’t name me in his self-obsessed screed, but I’m clearly the subject of his ire. The “professional polarizer” links to my article on the subject twice, once calling it “misleading” but without naming anything I got wrong — probably because he can’t. Every nasty thing he’s ever written about white evangelicals is public.
In his latest installment, French recaps how “apolitical” the PCA was when he and his wife joined it in 2004 through 2007 when he deployed (he can’t help himself). Then everything changed. This is the crux of his piece:
Two things happened that changed our lives, however, and in hindsight they’re related. First, in 2010, we adopted a 2-year-old girl from Ethiopia. Second, in 2015, Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign.
In other words, the religious and political landscape changed when “Trump’s rise” drew racists out of the evangelical woodwork, and principled David French, who just so happened to detest Donald Trump and made his living demonizing Trump’s supporters, couldn’t abide it.
This is absurd.
First, it’s either intellectually dishonest or completely delusional to ignore the actual catalyst that changed American politics during the period French identifies — and, in fact, birthed the Trump years. And no, it’s not the French family’s skin color nor sleeper racists inside the church who were just waiting for a “Celebrity Apprentice” president to make their move.
It was the Barack Obama years — a Rubicon-crossing era masked by smooth rhetoric, disdain for marriage, promotion of on-demand abortion, attacks on Christian consciences, the targeting of conservative political groups and their donors, the demonization of firearms, illegal power grabs to advance unlawful immigration, the introduction of campus kangaroo courts, the regular embrace of racism and antisemitism, and much, much more.
Besides Obama’s slick celebration of immorality and gaslighting of anyone who “bitterly clung” to social norms and biblical tradition, there was no going back after his egregious weaponization of the federal government against his political opponents, including secret spying on Republicans. Trump was the equal and opposite reaction to all of that, no matter what French says.
[….]
Now, lest French or anyone else accuse me of racism, it should go without saying that any attacks on a person’s Imago Dei child, including those based on skin color or heritage, are despicable. It’s wrong for trolls to exploit children and deploy threats, whether via direct message or in person.
But French is insane if he thinks he’s the subject of unique threats, that these threats originate from the church, or that they’re a defining characteristic of Trumpers. For just one example, look at who attacked another white mother of a black adopted child, Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Most people don’t feel the need to compulsively victimize themselves as French does, but since he went there, I guess I’ll bite: I don’t have half David French’s platform, but my life has still been threatened by left-wing nutjobs, something nearly all my colleagues can say as well. Threats and hate mail are an occupational hazard of public figures.
Additionally, I receive assaults on my faith, vulgar comments on my posts, and trolling of unsuspecting family and friends. And of course, some confrontations happen in real life or from people you know personally. It’s ridiculous, however, to view political and religious metanarratives through the lens of a few cynical anecdotes or DMs — especially when most people don’t live and breathe your Twitter feed, as French knows.
After earlier writing, “When I deployed to Iraq in 2007, the entire church rallied to support my family and to support the men I served with,” French writes this near the end of his piece:
I do not want to paint with too broad a brush. Our pastors and close friends continued to stand with us. Our church disciplined the man who confronted me about Trump during communion. And most church members didn’t follow politics closely and had no idea about any of the attacks we faced.
You don’t say. You mean more people offered support when you publicly deployed than when you privately received nasty social media messages and one-on-one attacks? Does this guy have an editor?
Pure Projection
It’s even clearer now than when French’s PCA panel was announced that my diagnosis was correct. French is a turncoat and a party apparatchik whose alleged principles seem to line up perfectly with his paychecks.
It’s not my job to judge the authenticity of French’s faith. But when, of the PCA’s General Assemby, he says he’s “now deemed too divisive to speak to a gathering of Christians who share [his] faith,” I wonder whether he means those nonwhite, enlightened parishioners who share his hatred for Trump or the untouchables he thinks are neo-Confederates.
“If you dissent [from particular pro-Trump arguments], yeah, there will be people in the church who still love you and support you and respect you, but there will be people who come after you,” French told Mika Brzezinski and race-baiter Al Sharpton on MSNBC Monday morning.
Never forget he went after them first.
David French & the Vapors of Civic Virtue Escaping from a Mystery Box | Doug Wilson
Now I would have some things to say to those who went into the Capitol that day. First, I do believe that their resistance on J6 was not in accordance with the Word of God. That’s not how you do it. This was not Protestant resistance theology, but more like Keystone Kops resistance theory. And related, in the second place, as Tallyrand so elegantly put it one time, it was worse than a crime—it was a blunder.
Wintery Knight has some articles as well worth your attention. Here are some issues I wish to highlight from his excellent coverage.
Secular Left Funding New David French / Russell Moore Church Curriculum
… This time, she [Megan Basham TWIX | DAILY WIRE] takes on 2 of the people who try to present themselves as Christians, even as they are doing everything they can to destroy Christianity in America: David French and Russell Moore.
Here’s her latest report in First Things:
Secular news outlets from NPR to the New York Times are hailing Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, for furthering the popular thesis that evangelicals have abandoned themselves to political idolatry. By “political idolatry” they mean “political conservatism,” as neither Alberta’s book nor the many prestige outlets enthusing over it have a word of criticism for Christians who advance left-wing causes. However, a curious passage in the book suggests that those leveling this charge may be most guilty of infecting the church with partisanship.
Alberta reports on The After Party, a forthcoming program led by Duke Divinity consulting professor Curtis Chang and developed with New York Times columnist David French and Christianity Today editor in chief Russell Moore. The program offers pastors and small groups a curriculum “reframing Christian political identity from today’s divisive partisan options.”
According to Alberta, during its germination phase, the project hit a roadblock. Evangelical donors had little interest in funding an explicitly political Bible study. Thus, to get The After Party off the ground, the trio (all frequent critics of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump) turned to “predominantly progressive” “unbelievers.” In fact, they turned to secular left-wing foundations.
I don’t want to say any more about what she found out in this post. I want you to read it yourselves – the whole thing. It’s just what you would expect, though. Wealthy left-wing billionaires, LGBT activists, pro-abortion activists, gender ideologues, transgender activists, and more.
She adds this, though:
Does anyone really believe these secular progressive grant-makers are interested in developing a church curriculum about politics without an eye toward affecting policy? Or that this curriculum will strengthen evangelicals’ commitment to the very causes progressives despise? Between 2013 and 2014, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Tides foundations contributed a combined $1.3 million to the Evangelical Immigration Table’s “Bibles, Badges, and Business” initiative, launched to mobilize evangelical support for amnesty legislation such as the failed Gang of Eight bill. Hewlett and a host of other major left-wing donors bankrolled the Evangelical Environmental Network’s Evangelical Climate Initiative with the aim of generating churchgoer support for cap and trade legislation. Secular progressive foundations have not hesitated to leverage new evangelical ministries to sway Christians to their political will.
[….]
… What we need are rank-and-file Christians to know what is going on, and speak up to make sure that their churches aren’t being led by secular leftists.
The funny thing about the secular leftists and their puppets David French and Russell Moore. They don’t realize this, but any Christian faith that is divorced from the Bible, and wedded to the Democrat party, loses it’s ability to save. …
David French Wants Christians Who Accept Jesus’ Definition Of Marriage To Be Persecuted
If you’ve been following David French’s writing closely, you’ll know that he no longer supports public policies that are consistent with the Christian worldview. In this post, we’ll take a look at Jesus’ definition of marriage, then we’ll see whether David French thinks that Jesus knows more about the definition of marriage than the Democrat party.
First, what does Jesus think about marriage?
Here’s what Jesus says about marriage.
Matthew 19:1-11 [WK’s link is to the NIV. I substitute the ISV below]:
1 When Jesus had finished saying these things,a he left Galilee and went to the territory of Judea on the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him in order to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?” 4 He answered them, “Haven’t you read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?, 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, man must never separate.”
7 They asked him, “Why, then, did Moses order us ‘to give a certificate of divorce and divorce her’?”, 8 He said to them, “It was because of your hardness of heart that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was not this way. 9 I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
10 His disciples said to him, “If that is the relationship of a man with his wife, it’s not worth getting married!” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this saying, except those to whom celibacy has been granted.”
To be a Christian, minimally, is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. That means that we accept what Jesus teaches, on whatever he teaches about. We don’t overturn the teachings of Jesus in order to make people who are rebelling against God feel better about their rebellion. It is central to the Christian worldview that Christians care more about what God thinks of them than what non-Christians think of them. In fact, Christians are supposed to be willing to endure suffering rather than side with non-Christians against God’s authority.
Here’s an article from The Federalist by conservative Christian lioness Megan Basham.
She writes:
[P]erhaps no one has done more to further the idea that Christians should not let the God they worship influence their policy views than one-time defender of traditional marriage, David French.
[…] As a political pundit, French has been singularly influential in evangelical establishment circles, referenced regularly not only in Christianity Today’s pages and podcasts but also giving speeches at Southern Baptist seminaries and winning praise from outlets such as The Gospel Coalition as “one of the few Christians who is able to bring gospel-centered arguments into the public square.”
In all three of his essays on RMA in the last week, French reveals that he, too, has evolved on marriage and… discourages Christians from resisting the enshrinement of gay marriage into U.S. law.
French… adds, “Religious belief is not the same thing as declaring civil law … I don’t want the law to discriminate against those Americans who sincerely hold different views of sexual morality, sexuality, and marriage and organize their lives and their institutions accordingly.”
What does David French think about same-sex marriage as public policy?
French reveals that… believes [the Obergefell ruling’s] argument for ushering in an entirely new form of marriage, unknown to previous ages, was well-founded. He writes that as far back as 2004, he believed, “In a diverse, pluralistic republic, granting the same rights to others that we’d like to exercise ourselves should be the default posture of public advocacy and public policy.”
Now that the fundamental transformation of marriage has taken place, French argues it should be permanent: “It would be profoundly disruptive and unjust to rip out the legal superstructure around which they’ve ordered their lives,” he writes.
When it comes to policy, David French thinks that the Democrat party’s definition of marriage is better than Jesus’ definition of marriage.
Previously, I noted how the Alliance Defending Freedom thinks that the “Respect for Marriage Act” will threaten the religious liberty of Christian organizations:
The so-called Respect for Marriage Act is a misnamed bill that expands not only what marriage means, but also who can be sued for disagreeing with the new meaning of marriage.
While proponents of the bill claim that it simply codifies the 2015 Obergefell decision, in reality it is an intentional attack on the religious freedom of millions of Americans with sincerely held beliefs about marriage.
The Respect for Marriage Act threatens religious freedom and the institution of marriage in multiple ways:
The truth is the Respect for Marriage Act does nothing to change the status of same-sex marriage or the benefits afforded to same-sex couples following Obergefell. It does much, however, to endanger religious freedom.
David French wants Christians who agree with Jesus about the definition of marriage to be persecuted by the secular left state. That’s why he supports this Democrat party legislation.
In an excellent end to a pretty lengthy article in THE FEDERALIST, Kylee Griswold nails her ideas expressed in her piece:
None of this is to say Christians ought to embrace apathy or be pacifists. The anti-religious newsrooms pushing cover stories about so-called Christian nationalism would love nothing more than to shame and bully faithful disciples into sitting down and shutting up.
The Capitol riot was a convenient hook for their narrative, but they don’t just believe the people who showed up in Washington that day were religious extremists. They think all Christians are. It isn’t that they don’t want you in Statuary Hall. It’s that they don’t want you on the school board, in journalism, or on campus. They want to chase you out of churches, out of public office, and even out of political conversations.
Believers, however, know faith without works is dead and that our faith isn’t confined to Sunday morning services. What we believe about God and man and redemption ought to affect every decision we make, including our civic engagement.
If we love God, love our neighbor, and wish to steward our resources and lead our families well, sitting on the sidelines of the political and culture wars is really not an option. Contrary to French’s assessment, it isn’t about making ourselves more culturally comfortable; it’s about being consistent in our beliefs and doing what’s right.
As long we remain on this Earth, Christians will be assailed as bigots and nationalists. This evergreen dynamic of Christians being not “of the world,” but striving to be faithful while they’re “in it,” is way bigger than Jan. 6, Donald Trump, David French, or America. Don’t confuse true believers who rightly fight for both faith and freedom as Christian nationalists. They’re just Christians.
One last reference to the divisive nature of French in his attacks that mirror what he rejects in whom he accuses. Here is a paragraph intro to the larger American Reformer excerpt via Rod Dreher:
Here is David French being his mean Trumpian self, via James R. Wood:
The Kellerites propound to abhor division among Christians, and yet I have found them far more divisive than they admit. This is captured in the common trope: “Punch right, coddle left.” Those who are devoted to the third-wayism of Keller generally appear to assume the worst from one side of the political spectrum and give the benefit of the doubt to—or at least provide an apologetic for—the other. (Case in point: David French’s recent piece on my essay.) Kellerites make up a significant portion of the “never Trump” movement among Christians, and this movement is unforgiving of those who have chosen, for whatever reason, to vote in that way (full disclosure: I did not in either election). They are also quick to join in the chorus of denunciations of “Christian nationalism,” which is often a bogeyman label for any robust pursuit of conservative Christian influence in politics. Make what you wish of Aaron Renn’s Three Worlds schema, but I think it is a bit obvious that, for example, in recent years conservative Christian political engagement that would have been seen as somewhat innocuous in previous years is quickly and regularly denounced as authoritarian “Christian nationalism.”
[….]
While few critics have echoed French’s imputation of malice…
[….]
It also encourages the sort of false equivalences French employs against Wood: “When it comes to negative partisanship, neither side has clean hands. If we truly live in a ‘negative world,’ then Christians helped make it negative.” French implies that Christians deserve the hostility they face. There are of course cases in which this is true, such as the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years, or those that seem perennially to plague the Catholic Church. But French’s writing over the past five years indicates that he has in mind the bogeyman of white Christian nationalism.
[….]
But time has revealed liberal universalism to be a parochial delusion. History is up and running again. The political has returned with a vengeance. And those who continue to mistake the third way for a universal doctrine are at risk of sleepwalking into political idolatry that insists upon a paradoxically post-political ideology.
… Moving on to Natalie Grace
The clip at the very top of this post by JIM G., was one of the final straws for someone who says he is a conservative. If it were just that one graphic he posted – fine. But time and time again he posts stuff by Leftist Democrats or “Christians” who call me a white supremacist – and use [debunked] examples/excerpts of Trump trying to prove he is racist as well. JIM G. found me originally by a critique I had done on the Emergent church… I assume he agreed then with my assessment. Which can be “summarized” here:
But as Trump came and went from office […] he has encamped in the same movement that is heretical to the historic Christian faith. As well as putting forward radical Dems.
… To Wit …
Natalie Grace
These people just say colloquial stuff to emote. Here is the rest of that graphic at the top:
In other words, I could say:
You could put a million recipes that show these people are just saying poetry to make themselves feel better than Trump. Or people like myself.
David Mamet dealt with this human proclivity well years ago:
One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.
But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.
When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.
Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.
A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.
What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.
The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.
One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.
Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.
These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135.
This is all people like JIM G. and Natalie Grace are doing. Transferring sainthood to fell better. To feel superior, morally.
In trying to get approval by the other side, or the New York Times/Washington Post crowd, these people find they have to think of “Christianity as a collection of theological bits and pieces to be believed or debated.” Rather than approaching the Christian “faith as a conceptual system, as a total world-and-life view” — Ronald H. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas. They have to grab some legalism from the O.T., sprinkle it with Emergent post-modernism, form a cudgel with flowers on it, and get busy beating Christians as racist white supremacists who support Trump and all the distorted ideas the New York Times and Washington Post says he has.
As for me?
I got better things ta do.
So I unfriended this tiresome attack[s] by a “friend.”
From GATEWAY PUNDIT:
A chilling new video of the World Trade Center Towers collapsing on September 11, 2001, following terrorist suicide attacks, has surfaced online, shedding fresh light on one of the darkest days in American history.
Kei Sugimoto, a Japanese-American who was 24 years old at the time, has released a nearly 1-hour, never-before-seen video on his YouTube channel.
Sugimoto was a Mainframe Operator at the time at Nissho Iwai Shoji when the terrorist attacks occurred and filmed the footage from the roof of 64 St. Marks Place in New York City.
He used a Sony VX2000 with a teleconverter to capture the harrowing moments, according to his Youtube description.
On July 22, Sugimoto first released a six-minute video [BELOW] on his YouTube channel, revealing the footage for the first time…..
You may have to manually change the settings to view the 4K version.
Footage I filmed of the World Trade Center Collapsing on 9/11/2001. Filmed from the roof of 64 St Marks Place in NYC on a Sony VX2000 with teleconverter. Upscaled to 4K 60p using Topaz Video AI. For historical archival purposes only.
Originally Posted in May of 2011
Shocking Excerpts Read at Tucson School Board Meeting From A Book Used In The Controversial Ethic Studies Curriculum For Grades 3rd – 12th.
MRCTV has this intro:
As Moonbat Tracker writes: “These outrageous and toxic books teach kids that the United States is an institutionally racist system filled with “bloodsucking capitalists” and Anglos who “rape Hispanic culture.”
Here are a couple of quotes from the books in which the lady recites:
“Hard drugs and drug culture is an invention of the gringo because he has no culture.”
“We have to destroy capitalism and we have to help 5/6 of the world to destroy capitalism in order to equal all peoples’ lives.
“The Declaration of Independence states that we the people have the right to revolution… the right to overrule the government…”
“Any country based on capitalism is based on greed…”
This video has been added to my Native-American vs. Settlers post:
They’re teaching Illegal Mexican children to hate Americans.
Jump To 2022 Update. | Jump To 2024 Update
Originally posted 11-30-2010 || Updated 3-4-2016
Keep in mind if you are saying one of the below issues is morally wrong… you are saying so by borrowing from the Judeo-Christian worldview. Atheism or pantheism cannot account for moral [absolute] wrongs. For more on this, see:
Philosopher and scholar Mortimer J. Adler rightly points out that while many Christians are quick in responding to the conclusions in an argument often times the Christian is unaware that the point of departure is not in the conclusion, but in the starting premise, the foundational assumptions.
Norman L. Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions About the Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2001), 20-21.
As someone who falls into the category of Protestant, some may find it odd that here I am defending Catholics from a recent attack by a left-leaning columnist, Gwynne Dyer. In his September 25th (2010) article entitled, “Why Pope can’t stand diversity and tolerance,” (at the New Zealand Herald online) Gwynne Dyer shows how he is in some dyer need of clarity of thought. I will deconstruct the parts I feel are always in need of addressing. Of course, out of the gate Dyer hits the Catholic Church with the priesthood molestation cases. While I would agree with Dyer that these are horrible instances of action on the priesthood’s part which should be held to the highest standards (as should pastors in Protestant denominations), we part company in his obvious statement that this emasculates any Christian from commenting on the culture around us:
In this statement Dyer is saying because priests molested and sodomized boys and girls this should stop the church universal to comment on other aspects of the culture in general. This doesn’t make sense, and I will show you how in some analogies based in cases of molestation and sodomy in other fields of specialty. This actually comes from a challenge laid out to me in a debate about the mosque at Ground Zero, and it too used a position of moral injustice to try and squash dissent on an entirely different issue. I was challenged with the following thought in regards to the location of said mosque:
UPDATE (7/21/2022)
before continuing to old post:
Nearly 200 K-12 educators are being charged with sex crimes involving children so far in 2022… But the left denies grooming at schools
While the left may deny child grooming in schools outright or claim that it is shockingly rare, this year’s arrest records prove them liars.
181 K-12 educators have been charged with sex crimes against children just in the first half of 2022, with 140 allegedly committing sex crimes against their students.
These crimes range from child pornography to rape and are all heinously vile.
The average for the 181-day period from January 1st to June 30th is one educator arrested for sex crimes every single day. That means that every single day these horrible acts are happening at schools.
Four principals, 153 teachers, 12 teachers’ aides, and 12 substitute teachers make up the 181 arrested pedophiles and groomers. Male teachers made up 78% of those arrested, some of the educators arrested, and about 40 of them were also women….(NTD)
UPDATE (7/26/2024)
Politically protected “classes” of people in the organization — racist organization — La Raza, were getting federal monies and using it to abuse children. Quite literally (via FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE):
….. A recent federal complaint revealed that “Southwest Key has engaged in a pattern or practice of severe or pervasive sexual harassment of children in its care”, and that “from 2015 continuing through at least the end of 2023, Southwest Key received complaints concerning the sexual abuse and harassment of children at the majority of its Casas.”
The litany of abuses included a worker molesting a 5-year-old girl and 8-year-old girl and threating to kill her family, a supervisor repeatedly raping a 15-year-old girl, and a “child” reporting a Southwest Key worker telling him he liked trangenders and asked him if “he dressed as a woman at night” while fondling himself as part of over 100 reports with numerous descriptions of workers who groped boys and girls of all ages and solicited them for sex.
According to the allegations in the federal complaint, Southwest Key employees helped cover up the abuses, threatening girls that they would face consequences if they spoke out and encouraging them to keep quiet about what happened.
These abuses might never have come to light except that once the Obama administration made way for the Trump administration, the detention of underage minors suddenly became controversial. Southwest Key shelters, once the embodiment of La Raza pride, were denounced as “baby jails.” Media outlets suddenly began reporting the multi-million dollar salaries at the non-profit. Reports emerged of a Southwest Key worker sexually assaulting 8 children.
By 2019, El Presidente Juan Sanchez had stepped down from his own organization.
La Raza was forced to suspend its former “affiliate of the year” to which it had provided $250,000 in grants, but multiple Southwest Key figures still had prominent La Raza ties including interim board chair Victor R. Grza, a founder of the La Raza Roundtable, its chief strategic partnerships officer Jose Velasquez, a former vice president of La Raza, and Anselmo Villarreal, the current CEO of Southwest Key who had been a La Raza board member.
La Raza’s fingerprints are all over Southwest Key and closely tied in with a network of Latino activist groups set up to profit financially and politically from the border invasion.
Under Obama it was Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, who were sounding the alarm about Southwest Key. Earlier this year, Sen. Grassley, citing whistleblowers, warned of “MS-13 gang affiliation” households and “possible child-trafficking rings”, and asked for reports of “potential cases of human trafficking” identified by Southwest Key employees.
When the Arizona Daily Independentrevealed in 2015 that whistleblowers were warning that children were being turned over to ‘drug families’ and that some of the minors were gang members, the story was buried. Only once Trump took office and tried to secure the border did the media suddenly become interested in investigating some abuses at Southwest Key. ……
Back to O.G. post:
I respond:
NUMBER TWO, I wish to discuss this issue of molestation by priests that you intimated about.
School counselors, dentists, Buddhist monks, foster parents, and the like — all have abused children. Men who are pedophiles look for positions of AUTHORITY OVER [*not yelling, merely emphasizing*] children that afford MOMENTS OF PRIVACY with these same children. Dentists do not violate children or women in the name of dentistry. Buddhists monks do not sodomize children in the name of Siddhartha. School counselors in the name of psychology, foster parents in the name of Dr. Spock, etc, … you get the point. Likewise, priests do not violate children in the name of Christ. (The many terrorist attacks are in the name of something… can you tell me what Nora?)
[….]
So I hope you can see that mentioning churches next to schools is a non-sequitur, I think we can agree that any church moving priests (Catholicism) or pastors (Protestantism) from one parish or church to another is a problem that has to be dealt with. Just like teachers who have the same issues levied towards them are moved from district-to-district (N.E.A.).
Read more: RPT Discussing Mosques and Men
Here is an updated stat for clarity on this subject:
While sexual repression might explain the horrific history of sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergymen, it does not explain the much greater incidence of sexual abuse by secular educators in the public school system.41
[41] “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.” Shakeshaft, C. Ph.D., U.S. Department of Education report. 2002. [The 2004 study can be seen here in PDF FORM. I believe the author meant 2004]
Vox Day, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, And Hitchens (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2008), 174.
Here is how LIFE SITE discussed the information:
…But according to Charol Shakeshaft, the researcher of a little-remembered 2004 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Education, “the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
After effectively disappearing from the radar, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by commentators seeking to restore a sense of proportion to the mainstream coverage of the Church scandal.
According to the 2004 study “the most accurate data available at this time” indicates that “nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.”
“Educator sexual misconduct is woefully under-studied,” writes the researcher. “We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets. There are many questions that call for answers.”
[….]
Weigel observes that priestly sex abuse is “a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared,” [see recomended book to the right] and that in recent years the Church has gone to great lengths to punish and remove priestly predators and to protect children. The result of these measures is that “six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members.”
Despite these facts, however, “the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young.”
[….]
In 2004, shortly after the Shakeshaft study was released, Catholic League President William Donohue, who was unavailable for an interview for this story, asked, “Where is the media in all this?”
“Isn’t it news that the number of public school students who have been abused by a school employee is more than 100 times greater than the number of minors who have been abused by priests?” he asked.
“All those reporters, columnists, talking heads, attorneys general, D.A.‘s, psychologists and victims groups who were so quick on the draw to get priests have a moral obligation to pursue this issue to the max. If they don’t, they’re a fraud.”
EASILY PUT:
…OR…
In other words, would Columbia University have to stop teaching about education because the N.E.A. shuffles around rapists and child predators? The argument is a non-sequitur designed merely to stir up feelings of animosity and then direct them towards an entirely different subject. There tends to be a blurring of subject/object distinction on the professional left. Here is a short list of what I alluded to above:
1) Religious News Online reports from an original India Times article, another source that cites this is Child Rights Sri Lanka:
Two Buddhist monks and eight other men were arrested on Wednesday, accused of sexually abusing 11 children orphaned by the island’s 19-year civil war, an official said.
Investigations revealed that the children, aged between nine and 13, had been sexually abused over a period of time at an orphanage where the men worked, said Prof. Harendra de Silva, head of the National Child Protection Authority….
2) Washington County Sheriff’s Office Media Information reported the following:
Mr. Tripp was arrested for sexually abusing a former 15-year-old foster care child.
The investigation started when the Oregon Department of Human Services was contacted by a school counselor who learned that there may be sexual abuse involving a student and Mr. Tripp. DHS workers then contacted Sheriff’s Detectives who took over the investigation.
Detectives learned that Mr. Tripp has been a foster parent since 1995 and has had at least 90 children placed in his home during that time. Sheriff’s Detectives are concerned that there may be more victims who have not yet reported sexual contact involving Mr. Tripp….
3) A therapist who worked at Booker T. Washington Middle School in Baltimore was arrested in Catonsville and charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy, Baltimore County police said yesterday.
Robert J. Stoever, 54, of the 1500 block of Park Ave. was arrested Sunday night after a county police officer saw him and the boy in a car in a parking lot at Edmondson Avenue and Academy Road, said Cpl. Michael Hill, a police spokesman.
Stoever was charged with a second-degree sex offense and perverted practice, according to court documents. He was sent to the Baltimore County Detention Center, Hill said….
4) A Bronx dentist was arrested yesterday on charges that he twice raped a 16-year-old patient whom he had placed under anesthesia during an office visit on Thursday, police said.
The girl, a patient of the dentist for several years, was hired for a summer job as his receptionist on Thursday, and had an appointment with him for treatment that afternoon, said Lieut. Hazel Stewart, commander of the Bronx Special Victims Squad.
[….]
“She went in and she changed into a little uniform that he gave to her, and he gave her some files to work on,” the lieutenant said. “Then he said that it was time to take a look at her teeth.”
At that point, Lieutenant Stewart said, “he used some type of anesthesia on her and he allegedly raped her.”
The young woman told officers that she was never fully anesthetized, Lieutenant Stewart said, but that “the effects of the anesthesia were strong enough to render her helpless to such a degree that he was able to rape her again.”
These folks that commit these crimes are atheists, Christians, Buddhists (which are epistemologically speaking, atheists), and every other ideology and from every stripe of life and culture in the world.
Thus, the argument is as strong as this:
The conclusion just doesn’t follow the premise.
In the case of religious comparisons, you would have to isolate the founders and their lives in order to properly judge a belief, not the followers. I would engender the reader to consider well this quote by Robert Hume:
The nine founders among the eleven living religions in the world had characters which attracted many devoted followers during their own lifetime, and still larger numbers during the centuries of subsequent history. They were humble in certain respects, yet they were also confident of a great religious mission. Two of the nine, Mahavira and Buddha, were men so strong-minded and self-reliant that, according to the records, they displayed no need of any divine help, though they both taught the inexorable cosmic law of Karma. They are not reported as having possessed any consciousness of a supreme personal deity. Yet they have been strangely deified by their followers. Indeed, they themselves have been worshipped, even with multitudinous idols.
All of the nine founders of religion, with the exception of Jesus Christ, are reported in their respective sacred scriptures as having passed through a preliminary period of uncertainty, or of searching for religious light. Confucius, late in life, confessed his own sense of shortcomings and his desire for further improvement in knowledge and character. All the founders of the non-Christian religions evinced inconsistencies in their personal character; some of them altered their practical policies under change of circumstances.
Jesus Christ alone is reported as having had a consistent God-consciousness, a consistent character himself, and a consistent program for his religion. The most remarkable and valuable aspect of the personality of Jesus Christ is the comprehensiveness and universal availability of his character, as well as its own loftiness, consistency, and sinlessness.
The World’s Living Religions (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 285-286.
All this is to show that Dyer’s article starts with a shallow logic that is more a straw-man than a real critique of anything the Pope said. As much as I disagree with the office and structure of the Catholic church, this line of attack is asinine to say the least. I recommend to those who seriously wish to know why this rash of molestations has taken place should read the book by Michael S. Rose, Goodbye Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church.
A Post on Buddhist Molestations
Deeper Thinking Here at RPT
Then… if reality is ultimately characterless and distinctionless, then the distinction between being enlightened and unenlightened is ultimately an illusion and reality is ultimately unreal. Whom is doing the leading? Leading to what? These still are distinctions being made, that is: “between knowing you are enlightened and not knowing you are enlightened.” In the Diamond Sutra, ultimately, the Bodhisattva loves no one, since no one exists and the Bodhisattva knows this:
“All beings must I lead to Nirvana, into the Realm of Nirvana which leaves nothing behind; and yet, after beings have been led to Nirvana, no being at all has been led to Nirvana. And why? If in a Bodhisattva the notion of a “being” should take place, he could not be called a “Bodhi-being.” And likewise if the notion of a soul, or a person should take place in him.
So even the act of loving others, therefore, is inconsistent with what is taught in the Buddhistic worldview, because there is “no one to love.” This is shown quite well (this self-refuting aspect of Buddhism) in the book, The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha. A book I recommend with love, from a worldview that can use the word love well. One writer puts it thusly: “When human existence is blown out, nothing real disappears because life itself is an illusion. Nirvana is neither a re-absorption into an eternal Ultimate Reality, nor the annihilation of a self, because there is no self to annihilate. It is rather an annihilation of the illusion of an existing self. Nirvana is a state of supreme bliss and freedom without any subject left to experience it.”
(From: Reincarnation vs. Laws of Logic)
(This is a h/t to Freepers) The Chicago Tribune has this story about Monks disappearing when needed in court. Buddhist Temples say, “not our responsibility”:
Buddhist monks walk away from sex-abuse cases
Across the U.S., temples frustrate investigators by insisting they have no control over monks’ actions, whereabouts
The meeting took place at Wat Dhammaram, a cavernous Theravada Buddhist temple on the southwest edge of Chicago. A tearful 12-year-old told three monks how another monk had turned off the lights during a tutoring session, lifted her shirt and kissed and fondled her breasts while pressing against her, according to a lawsuit.
Shortly after that meeting, one of the monks sent a letter to the girl’s family, saying the temple’s monastic community had resolved the matter, the lawsuit says.
The “wrong doer had accepted what he had done,” wrote P. Boonshoo Sriburin, and within days would “leave the temple permanently” by flying back to Thailand.
“We have done our best to restore the order,” the letter said.
But 11 years later, the monk, Camnong Boa-Ubol, serves at a temple in California, where he says he interacts with children even as he faces a second claim, supported by DNA, that he impregnated a girl in the Chicago area.
Sriburin acknowledges that restoring order did not involve stopping Boa-Ubol from making the move to California. And it did not involve issuing a warning to the temple there. Wat Dhammaram didn’t even tell its own board of directors what happened with the monk, he said.
“We have no authority to do anything. … He has his own choice to live anywhere,” Sriburin said.
A Tribune review of sexual abuse cases involving several Theravada Buddhist temples found minimal accountability and lax oversight of monks accused of preying on vulnerable targets.
Because they answer to no outside ecclesiastical authority, the temples respond to allegations as they see fit. And because the monks are viewed as free agents, temples claim to have no way of controlling what they do next. Those found guilty of wrongdoing can pack a bag and move to another temple — much to the dismay of victims, law enforcement and other monks.
A woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted by a monk at a Theravada Buddhist temple in Chicago holds her 11-year-old daughter, who was conceived, according to her mother, during the assaults. (Stacey Wescott, Chicago Tribune / July 24, 2011)
Question from Son’s Friend
A friend of my oldest son contacted me about questions his brother is shooting his way. One dealt with this topic and a specific article (of which I will give only the headline):
✦ Pennsylvania grand jury finds 50 Roman Catholic priests raped hundreds of children
Here is my response after my son’s friend asked for some help:
I do have a few responses.
To that story specifically, there is a specific response, as well as a broader issue at hand. First the specifics (and I encourage you as well to read and understand the main point as well…)
➤ [I linked to this post]
SIDE ISSUES
FIRSTLY, people do not realize that many of these cases took place decades ago… and some of these memories are gotten from hypnotism or bad interviewing by psychologists… or even by people who want money. There is a really good book on this called “Confabulations: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families.” Another book is called, “My Lie: A True Story of False Memory.” So how the memory is obtained from a childhood experience is important. This issue is partly to blame for some of the Satanic craze of a couple decades ago.
SECONDLY, in the late 60s and 70s till even currently, there has been a push to normalize homosexuality. I will use the Boy Scouts as an example. As the push [which has succeeded as of late] to allow gay men as Scout leaders… the obvious inference is that you will get more abuse. Men, in general, have a high sex drive/imagination. Marriage to a good woman will most times subdue this urge to have variety. Subdue it is a polite term… I as a man constantly fight my nature through a worldview to please my natural desires. We, as men, primarily fight two big issues in our life… our violent nature and our lustful nature. Gay-men do not have this leveling affect in their relationships.
So, as the priesthood had pressure applied to it to include gay-men looking for a celibate/priestly lifestyle, you had issues arise. A good book on this topic is entitled, “Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church.”
THIRDLY,and this segways into the main issue… these men who are attracted to boys or young people, typically look for jobs that they are in a control, or has moment of privacy and authority over their intended victims. Whether this be the Priesthood, a youth pastor, a Boy Scout leader, a dentist, a school counselor, a teacher, and the like.
THAT BEING SAID, of course not all these experiences are false. This has nothing to do with whether God exists or not. OR, whether the Catholic Church is the correct institution in its expression of Christian truth. (I happen to think that just like in my church, there are saved and there are unsaved persons… just like in the Catholic church.)
HOWEVER, if you say, “I doubt God’s existence because of this…” you would have to be consistent and apply this to other areas of your experience. For instance, the National Education Association and other local teacher unions often do the same. They cannot fire people because of the union contracts (or it is damn near impossible to and cost lots of $$$$$ to fire a tenured teacher). They cover-up their crimes and move the teacher from district to district. I make this point in my link, but to be clear… I still believe in the importance of education despite this. LIKE I still believe in the importance of God despite actions of people.
Another issue related to this is that without the Judeo-Christian worldview/ethic, one cannot say absolutely that such abuse is morally wrong. One need only look as far as atheists for this idea to be fleshed out: Hear Atheists Themselves on Evil and Absolutes
Hope this helps.
SeanG
PS: Always related to this topics are these issues… the first link is a response to an author in a small local paper:
Eric Metaxas Explains That Trump Is Our King Cyrus (and more)
What Eric was trying to get the laugh off of was that some Pentecostals on the fringe think Trump was prophesied about. Eric is just meaning that Trump is (a) probably not a Christian, and that (b), God can use him to help rebuild [so-to-speak] the chipping away the Democrats have for over 50-years. Not only that, but Jerusalem is now the recognized capital of Israel per our policy.
Cyrus in the Bible has, in recent years, been referenced frequently by prominent Christian leaders and by the media. It’s important to understand who Cyrus actually was and what role he played in the ancient world and in biblical history.
The Ancient Israelites referred to Cyrus as Cyrus the Great. What’s important to understand, however, is that the reason we know Cyrus’ name is so we would see how great our God is.
Who Is Cyrus in the Bible?
Cyrus was the King of Persia from 559-530 BC. He was also known as Cyrus the Great, Cyrus the Elder, and Cyrus II. We know from modern British royalty that it’s not uncommon for royals to be known by a variety of names and titles.
Cyrus was not a follower of the God of the Bible, but instead, he was a pagan king used by God to help His people. Just as God had used pagan kings from the Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians to chasten his people when they refused to repent of their idolatries, now He used a pagan king to help them return to their promised land and begin to rebuild.
[….]
The Jews of Old Testament times lauded Cyrus as “the Great” because it was under his rule that they were allowed to return to their homeland and rebuild the holy city of Jerusalem. …
Fox Nation host Piers Morgan compares former President Trump’s Michigan rally performance to that of a rock star after almost being assassinated a week prior on ‘One Nation.’
MSNBC’s ‘Chief Loon’ Host Slammed Over Latest Trump Remarks
Sky News host Danica De Giorgio has slammed “Trump’s super stalker” MSNBC host Joy Reid over her concerns that the former US president would ‘rewrite himself’ as both a ‘hero’ and ‘victim’ following the attempted assassination on him in Pennsylvania.
“Please, give it a rest, Joy. Take a break from Trump. Take a mental break,” Ms De Giorgio said.
“It must be exhausting being so broken all the time.”
