The "Religion of peace" strikes again, Part MCMXXLVXVI

ISTANBUL, March 8 (CDN) — An Assyrian pastor the Iranian government accused of “converting Muslims” is being tortured in prison and threatened with execution, sources close to the case said.

State Security agents on Feb. 2 arrested the Rev. Wilson Issavi, 65, shortly after he finished a house meeting at a friend’s home in Isfahan. A city of more than 1.5 million people, Isfahan is located 208 miles (335 kilometers) south of Tehran.

According to Farsi Christian News Network, Issavi’s wife, Medline Nazanin, recently visited her husband in prison, where she saw that he had obvious signs of torture and was in poor condition. Iranian intelligence officials told Nazanin that her husband might be executed for his alleged activities.

Issavi is the pastor of The Evangelical Church of Kermanshah in Isfahan, a 50-year-old church body affiliated with The Assemblies of God that caters to the local Assyrian population.

During the raid, State Security police detained everyone in the house, later releasing all but Issavi and the owner of the home. Security officials also seized personal property from the home. Typically in Christian arrests in Iran, security officials confiscate all documents, media materials, computers, and personal documentation.

Issavi is being held in an unmarked prison, according to FCNN.

Last month’s arrest seems to be part of an anti-Christian sweep that is taking place across Isfahan. In addition to the politically motivated detentions and executions that have taken place after June’s contested election and subsequent nation-wide political protests, it appears authorities are rounding up Christian leaders.

More Arrests

On Feb. 28, Isfahan residents Hamid Shafiee and his wife Reyhaneh Aghajary, both converts from Islam and house church leaders, were arrested at their home.

Aghajary was at home with a group of other Christians when police came for her and her husband, who was not at home, according to Middle East Concern, a group that assists persecuted Christians. Police handcuffed Aghajary and, upon finding boxes of Bibles, began beating her.

The assault continued until eventually Aghajary was pepper-sprayed and removed from the scene. Her husband Shafiee was arrested an hour later when he returned to the house.

Their fate and whereabouts are still unknown.

Authorities assaulted another Christian visiting the house at the time of the raid when he protested the police action. Other Christians at the house were threatened, but no one else was arrested. Approximately 20 police officers raided the home, seizing Bibles, CDs, photographs, computers, telephones, personal items and other literature.

One regional analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Iranian government is set on crushing religious freedom within the country.

“The recent spate of church leader arrests provides clear evidence of the Iranian authorities’ desperate determination to strangle the growing church movement, along with all other forms of perceived political dissent,” he said.

February’s arrest was not the first time Shafiee has had run-ins with Iranian authorities. He has routinely been ordered to appear before police for questioning and then released. This arrest, however, was different. When family members contacted police on March 1, they were told that the couple’s case was under the jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Court and were turned away with no other information.

While the couple is imprisoned, family members are caring for their two teenage boys.

Frequent Harassment

Like Shafiee, Issavi has been harassed frequently by the Isfahan branch of the State Security police. He has been ordered to appear before the police many times, then arrested and interrogated. In addition, police have threatened members of his family and have broken into his house and taken items such as his computer.

On Jan. 2, 2010, police sealed the Kermanshah church and ordered Issavi not to reopen it. The church continued to have house meetings, and authorities charged Issavi with not cooperating with the government.

The Assyrians were one of the first ethnic groups in the Middle East to adopt Christianity. The existence of the Assyrian Christian community in Iran predates the existence of their Islamic counterparts by several hundred years. There are 10,000 to 20,000 Assyrian Christians living in Iran, according to unofficial estimates cited in the 2009 International Religious Freedom Report issued by the U.S. Department of State. The total Christian population is 300,000 nationwide, according to the United Nations. Most of those Christians are ethnic Armenians.

Isfahan has been the site of some of the worst religious persecution in Iran. On July 30, 2008, Abbas Amiri, a Christian man in his 60s, died in a hospital after being beaten by Isfahan security police. Authorities had arrested Amiri along with seven other men, six women and two minors during a July 17 raid on a house meeting. Four days after her husband died, Sakineh Rahnama succumbed to her injuries and a stress-related heart attack. Later, officials wouldn’t allow local Christians to hold a memorial service.

Iran, where Shia Islam is the official state religion, is known to be one of the worst countries for repression against Christians. The U.S. Secretary of State has designated Iran as a Country of Particular Concern every year since 1999 for its persecution of non-Shia Muslims, among others.

Last year, according to the International Religious Freedom Report, persecution of Christians and other religious minorities continued to get “significantly worse.” The state department placed the blame for this squarely at the feet of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s conservative media, who “intensified a campaign against non-Muslim religious minorities, and political and religious leaders” by issuing a continual stream of inflammatory statements.

“Christians, particularly evangelicals, continued to be subject to harassment and close surveillance,” the report states. “The government vigilantly enforced its prohibition on proselytizing by closely monitoring the activities of evangelical Christians, discouraging Muslims from entering church premises, closing churches, and arresting Christian converts.”

Evangelical Christians were required to carry church membership cards and provide photocopies to authorities, according to the report.

“Worshippers were subject to identity checks by authorities posted outside congregation centers,” it states. “The government restricted meetings for evangelical services to Sundays, and church officials were ordered to inform the Ministry of Information and Islamic Guidance before admitting new members.”

Liars who shut out the light of life

There is nothing else you can call these statements but lies, and nothing else you can call those who make them but liars.

During the Clinton era, apologists dismissed the former president's prevarications by saying he only lied "about sex." But the lies now holding sway as the Obama era unfolds are of far greater eternal import and consequence. Lies of this nature, spoken with such ease and comfort, are enabling a culture of death and darkness that is shutting out the light of life. As The Anchoress observes:

The reason they may get away with it, even with boldface lying like this, is because they are assisting in strenghtening the resistance of the world, that there may be no breach by which to “open up space for God’s life to pass through.”

Am I actually suggesting that at this point The Pelosi and The President are -knowingly or unknowingly, actively or passively, take your pick- serving a culture of death and darkness? Yeah. I guess I am. I’ve never seen more comfortable liars than these, and their faithful enablers in the press.

There is a degree to which the abortion question can become a distraction in the overall healthcare debate. Government overreach in the field of medicine is an evil in itself, regardless of whether or not such overreach includes specific endorsement of abortion coverage. But the desire of Obama, Pelosi, et al. to include abortion coverage in their so-called "reform" plan, and their mendacious efforts to hide that fact from the people, ought to tell you all you need to know about their trustworthiness in overseeing an industry rooted in the principle, "First, do no harm."

Also via The Anchoress comes this timely quote from Madeleine Delbrêl, delineating the difference between "the fundamental cultures of life, and of death" and of the church's place in the midst of the two.

What we are trying to do is realize that, while we are on earth, faith places us in the heat of battle, a permanent struggle, a constant choice between Jesus Christ and that which in the world remains hostile to God; to do so is to accomplish within ourselves the Church’s own vocation.

On the earth, the Church is made for fighting; by vocation, she wages war against evil; by mission, she stands on the front lines of evil; by office, she delivers from evil.

The Church’s combat will never cease to be bloody: the frontiers she defends will never cease being attacked and the liberation she fights for is always violent. A realistic love for the Church necessarily entails taking your blows and living with bruises. Now, what gives the Church’s combat meaning, what outlines the meaning of her history is hope.

To march ahead, to multiply, to liberate, the Church must fight, with her eyes and her heart set on God’s promises. Locally -or we could say physically- the frontier of the Church passes directly through each one of us. This is the line that divides good and evil; it si the line that separates the “with God” from the “without God,” the “for God” from the “against God.”

The place that Christian hope assigns to us is that narrow ridge, that borderline, at which our vocation requires that we choose, every day and every hour, to be faithful to God’s faithfulness to us. While we are on earth, this choice cannot help but tear us in two. But hope never allows us therefore to fall to self-pitying. It is the suffering of the woman who is bringing a child into the world. Each time we are thus torn apart, we become as it were breaches in the world’s resistance. We open up space for God’s life to pass through. Nothing can carry us more deeply into the inner reality of the Church.

Lights for Liberty, March 27

While Environmentalist moonbats who still haven't heard that anthropogenic Global Warming was a Global Hoax turn off their lights to appease the Climate Goddess, the Most Holy Pious and venerated Mother Gaia, and her High priest Al Gore and false prophet David Suzuki, we who believe that liberty, and the achievement and innovation that has resulted directly from men and women being able and motivated to offer the fruit of their minds for sale on the free market will turn on our lights and electric gadgets to full power to honor the ideas that have given man the best quality of life and health he has ever had since the dawn of time.

Junk Science did not invent the light bulb! Liberty did!

So turn 'em on, loud & proud on March 27th 2010 between 8:30 and 9:30 PM local time!
Spread the word! there are 900 000+ Kool Aid drinkers on the Earth Hour site... let's beat them!

Join Lights for Liberty.

Labib: Obama talks too much

Steven D. Labib examines Obama's tendency to talk too much and say too little (of substance).

The problem is that the intellectuals, as Sowell defines them, develop the belief that they know better than everyone else and because of it they should run society and make all of its decisions. This led to the title of his earlier work "The Vision of the Anointed." There is another possible way of describing this; the "Divine Right of Ivy League Graduates."

Of course, as Sowell also points out, the intellectuals often run their followers off of a cliff. This is a natural consequence of thinking that your knowledge in one field translates to brilliance in all fields, which is exactly the problem with Barack Obama. He thinks that he is an expert on everything. In fact, he many not even be an expert in law, despite his Harvard credential. So far he has no track record of scholarly publication, and his forays into constitutional discussions throw into high relief that fact that he apparently does not understand the intent of the authors of the Constitution, except when it suits his fancy. The sole example appears to have occurred when he, and others, protested the intent of the Senate to force an up or down vote on Bush Administration judicial appointees. Now that the shoe is on the other foot it is OK for him to force his health care plan on everyone by using the same process.

Which brings us finally to Representative Paul Ryan's unanswered questions and statements about the proposed legislation. Ryan had done his homework very well, and concisely pointed out that Obamacare would not lower spending, involved double counting of income, raided one government account to fund another, and would simply make a bad situation worse. Obama said nothing to rebut these statements. And he probably couldn't without making himself look like more of a fool than he already had with his attacks on John McCain and his accusations that the Republicans were using talking points and stage props; the same thing he does on a regular basis. Deprived of his teleprompter and control of the situation he was an ordinary person, or perhaps less than ordinary. Unlike Nestor, he was just running his mouth.

As Sowell would probably put it, he lacks the mundane knowledge of how an economy works, and how his proposals would affect the lives of millions of people. His ideas sound good to him, and they have an emotional appeal that a lot of folks fall for. But that doesn't make them good. The same types of programs have failed wherever they have been tried. The only difference is that he wasn't in charge. It is likely that he sees this as the critical difference. But changing the management of a broken down factory will not, overnight, make it a paragon of productivity; not without putting in new, working equipment. Taking the old broken equipment across the street to a new building will not work either.

There have been a lot of well-respected people who have called Obama extremely intelligent. I am not one of them. The reason why I don't is because of something my grandfather taught me many years ago. He said that a person who knows the limits of his own knowledge is smarter than someone who doesn't. That makes the average person a heck of a lot smarter than many a Harvard Law graduate. Obama's idea is, as Sowell puts it, that "Third parties will structure how millions of people adjust to millions of different circumstances." The reasonably intelligent person knows either instinctively or experientially that this is impossible. Intellectual don't care one way or another. They just want to experiment on society, as long as they are exempt from any negative results. That is not an intelligent or enlightened attitude. It is the attitude of a spoiled brat.

As Qui-Gon Jinn said, "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."

Woodrow Wilson redivivus: Obama holds similar dangerous view of "liberty"

Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst presidents in American history, bringing to the office a political philosophy utterly foreign to the nation's founding principles. In his ground-breaking study, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, Ronald J. Pestritto describes Wilson's understanding of "liberty" as an evolving concept, which was reflective of progressive thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In stating that liberty means different things in different times,Wilson turned the practical effect of the Declaration [of Independence]'s liberty doctrine on its head. For the framers of the Declaration, that natural-rights concept of liberty translated into a protection of the individual against the tyranny of government, even when such a tyranny might be powered by a majority--hence the clear emphasis in The Federalist on mitigating the effects of majority faction. For Wilson, the founders' view of liberty was, in fact, impeding the freedom of majorities to rule unfettered. So liberty in the new conditions of modern times, Wilson explained, must be understood as the liberty of majorities to use the power of government as they see fit. In Constitutional Government, Wilson wrote that "political liberty is the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs and interests." The problem during Wilson's time was that progressives wanted to use the power of government to manage a whole host of new social and economic problems; Wilson recognized that the old understanding of individual liberty against the power of the state was impeding the prospects of the progressive agenda. Because liberty is often at the center of Wilson's arguments on government, some scholars conclude mistakenly that he is concerned with defending the individual against the power of the state. But Wilson was concerned not with the liberty of the individual, but with the liberty of individuals as part of a majority to direct government in a manner that they believe the times demand. In an 1891 essay, he offered a particularly Hegelian understanding of what this modern concept of liberty actually means. Liberty, he explained, is not found in freedom from state action but instead in one's obedience to the laws of the state. Since the laws of the state are, in themselves, nothing but the manifestation of the free will of the people, obeying the state is the fulfillment of true freedom. Wilson contended that "law is the external organism of human freedom."

Any similarities between the view of Thomas Woodrow Wilson and that of Barack Hussein Obama are hardly coincidental. Such a duplicitous view of "liberty" is as dangerous today as it was during the heyday of the "Progressive Era."

Russell Moore on misguided Christian outrage

"For everything, there is a season," says the wise preacher, "and a time for every purpose under heaven . . . a time to keep silence, and a time to speak" (Ecclesiastes 3.1, 7b). In this day and age of frequent (and often ill-advised) Christian engagement with the culture, one might say, a time to express legitimate outrage, and a time to avoid showing one's ignorance, especially ignorance of of the biblical narrative which ought to frame Christian engagement with the culture. Such ignorance, all too often, is put on display when well-meaning, but ill-informed, Christians express misguided outrage, as Russell D. Moore observes:

I've been asked several times in the last couple of days about whether I'm upset about the new remix of "We Are the World."



The Christians contacting me about this are disturbed by what they see as a startling omission from the '80s-era song in its 21st century update, performed by artists in support of Haiti relief. Willie Nelson's line "As God has shown us by turning stone to bread..." is gone. These Christians are outraged, and they wonder if I am too.

Well, yes, I am outraged. Willie Nelson should have been invited to participate. He's still every bit as talented as he was in 1985, and if Nick Jonas can be invited, then certainly Willie should've been too.


Oh wait.



That's not what these folks are outraged about. They're afraid this is indicative of the secularization of American pop culture, and that there should be a Christian backlash.



But wait, again.



God didn't turn stones into bread. 

It was Satan, not God, who suggested our Lord Jesus turn rocks into bread (Matt. 4:3-4). God sends bread down from heaven (Exod. 16), a Manna he ultimately gives to us in the body of Jesus (Jn. 6), signified in the communion meal (1 Cor. 11).


I have always thought the original version of "We Are the World" was a textbook illustration of biblical illiteracy. Perhaps someone involved in the remake had the good sense to check the lyrics in question against the actual biblical account. As far as I'm concerned, misquoting Scripture is more offensive than not quoting Scripture at all. But, lest we forget, secular artists have, from time to time, put the actual words of Scripture to music with considerable success.

Germany: A case study in the danger of women bishops

An interesting post today at Evangel demonstrates the dangerous path a church takes when it allows the world to set its agenda. The Rev. Dr. Holger Sonntag reflects on the recent resignation of a high profile leader of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

On February 24, 2010, Dr. Margot Käßmann, the chairperson of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the bishop of the largest Lutheran territorial church in Germany, resigned from all her offices. She had been a bishop for a bit more than ten years and at the helm of the ECG for about four months. Prior to becoming a bishop she had held a parish pastorate for only a few years; instead, she had spend much of her time holding various functions in the global ecumenical movement.

What caused her to resign? On February 20, at 11 p.m., the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, she had been caught running a red light while intoxicated. The police established her blood alcohol content as .154%. While her fellow council members assured her of their ongoing trust in her in a telephone conference on February 23, but left the final decision up to her, she resigned nonetheless on the following day. As she put it once, she wanted her “personal power to convince” to be “unhampered.” And this public moral failure was apparently seen by her as a major hindrance to such authenticity.

The reactions in Germany range from dismay (not so much about her drunk driving, but about her resignation) to respecting her integrity. Many saw her as a dynamic, honest leader who made the church credible again in the eyes of non-members. Others, however, saw her as a divisive figure who felt constrained to comment on any number of social and political issues, even without (or against) God’s clear Word, and who personalized her office as probably no one had done before in recent history.

What can be said about this major event? First of all, it was perhaps providential that she resigned from her offices on the day of St. Matthias, the man who was chosen to replace Judas. Important are these words in Acts 1: “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it; and Let another take his office [episkopee, same word use for bishopric]. So one of the men [andres, males] who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us — one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” All apostles, thus, ought to be males; accordingly, all pastors ought to be males as well. This is what God’s Word here and elsewhere teaches. Therefore, even though Dr. Käßmann had occupied her episcopal office for over ten years and women’s ordination is seen by many in the Protestant church as normal, it bears repeating that she should not have held this office in the first place. What is more, not only did she hold this office illegitimately, she also, during her tenure as bishop, ensured that those objecting to women’s ordination would not be allowed to enter into the ministry in the first place. The fact that this totally unscriptural practice did not cause an outcry in Germany and around the world speaks volumes about the level of indifference and ignorance regarding the deformation of an institution of the Lord of the church.

In December of last year, the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, archbishop Hillarion of Volokolamsk, cancelled his participation in an event [celebrating] half a century of doctrinal discussions between the ECG and the Russian Church. In a letter, he did not blame Dr. Käßmann’s election alone; rather, he expressed his frustration in general with the direction Western Protestant churches have been moving in the past decades. While the Western churches have become more and more in tune with the liberal spirit of the age to the point of ordaining openly homosexual candidates, they still wanted to keep the dialog with the East going and, in fact, got angry when the East stuck to its traditional positions and raised certain issues time and again. Indeed, what is the point of dialog if one partner moves farther and farther away from the other against God’s Word, thereby deliberately diminishing the truths once held in common? This is, of course, also a serious questions for the dialog between various Lutheran churches in the US and around the world.

Perhaps it was because she did not hold her office legitimately, Dr. Käßmann made it all about herself: her views, her positions, her opinions, but also her integrity, her moral attitude. In a variation of Jesus’ saying, one could say: Those who live by authenticity will die by authenticity. Behind her Ego striving for societal stardom, the office and its actual tasks withered away. Since she did not allow the office to limit and focus her self, the office in turn then also offered her no support in times of need. Accordingly, the publicized media commentary asked only: with her moral stature and claim, can she still continue after such a public moral failure? The question was no longer asked, not even in the churches she led: does her teaching agree with God’s Word and the Lutheran confessions? Does she perform the duties of a bishop outlined in the Lutheran confessions based on God’s Word or is she, like the traditional bishops at Luther’s time, more interested in gaining and preserving political power and influence? And since she had reached such a high social status, no one dared asking anymore: should she actually hold this office? This is the power of facticity in action: what is is not only what it is; it is also right, especially when it agrees with public opinion.

Public opinion also supported her when she, at the beginning of the year, publicly criticized the engagement of the German army in Afghanistan. In fact, she clarified this later to mean that even though there is no theological justification for war at all (because all wars are horrible), German soldiers should still fight in that country until a peaceful conflict resolution with the Taliban could be worked out. What she was saying then, in essence, was that, even though soldiers sin when they carry out the duties of their vocation, they should keep sinning until further notice. One wonders: is this the apex of cynicism? Or is theology just a mind game without any real-world or spiritual implications? One cannot condemn sin and then encourage the sinner to keep on sinning, unless one does not really believe that sins have eternal consequences. One also wonders: what gave her the authority to condemn the vocation of soldiers in such a general way? Certainly not the bible (Luke 3:14) or the Lutheran confessions (Augsburg Conf., art. XVI, 2) or Luther (Am. Ed., vol. 46:95ff.). In an interview, she referred to a 1948 resolution of a committee of the World Council of Churches that, even though it was not even adopted by the general assembly, has become the gospel for pacifists in the church: in 1948, “the church” has said that war shouldn’t be. If this is how conscience-binding theology is made, then those supporting this kind of “resolution” have lost all right to criticize the Roman Catholic Church. For one of the key traditional Protestant criticisms of Rome has been that it, by its own authority as “the church,” decrees articles of faith and moral commandments that, even though they are not supported by God’s Word. Among those advocating pacifism, there is obviously little desire to endorse the Roman commandments for fasting (such as no alcohol during Lent). So the factor deciding what “human traditions” are necessary in the church is no longer God’s Word but personal preference or public opinion about what is the morally correct thing to do.

One can, finally, raise the issue of Donatism which is the heretical opinion that the moral stature of a minister determines the validity of his ministrations. Lutherans have, from the outset, joined the catholic condemnation of Donatism (Augsburg Conf., art. VIII; Apology, art. VII/VIII): the moral life of the minister might exclude him from the ministry as an unrepentant sinner or as one damaging the office by his lifestyle, but it has no effect on the power of God’s Word active in the means of grace, so long as the pastor is orthodox in his doctrine and practice. We, therefore, need not secretly wonder what pastor X does in the parsonage or during his vacation and thereby doubt the words from God he correctly teaches; we can simply focus on the word he proclaims as God’s own Word from heaven. The power of this word doesn’t rest on his imperfect authenticity or credibility, but on God’s perfect eternal faithfulness to his promises. Public opinion, fostered by the likes of Margot Käßmann, on the other hand, is naturally Donatist: moral credibility and authenticity is all it knows, both in political and ecclesiastical leaders (is this the hidden self-righteousness of the “little guy”?). And, of course, morality is here not measured by God’s Word, but by what everybody thinks is good, right, and salutary. Being for homosexual pastors, for divorce (Dr. Käßmann is divorced), and against war is then good, progressive, courageous, and loving. Being against women’s ordination, divorce, and for war, on the other hand, is bad, medieval, and discriminating against women.

This type of moralism, that is actually a characteristic of unbelievers, should not hold sway in the church. Here the first question should be: what is a teacher’s teaching? Does it agree with God’s Word? Moralism, to be sure, spurred many a reform movement before Luther (just think of John Wycliffe, but also Erasmus of Rotterdam), but it typically missed the doctrinal boat entirely. The corrupt life of a minister or bishop became the focal point of popular outrage; no one cared about his teachings. Pastors experience this even today: deny baptismal regeneration, and no one even notices; move the baptismal font by one inch, and you’re in hell. On the contrary, Luther emphasized: life is earth; doctrine is heaven (cf. Am. Ed., vol. 27:41-42). This is to say: every Christian’s life is going to be messy because we are and remain sinners, although we strive by the power of the Holy Spirit to be more and more holy in our lives as well. Yet our doctrine comes from God. It is not only perfect; it makes us perfect because it is God’s light brining us the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Tolerance ought to be extended to a messy life, not to messy doctrine. Because with doctrine, heaven and hell are at stake. For even though a person’s life’s example can move people in one way or another, it cannot change anybody’s heart. It is, after all, only a human power. This is possible only for God the Holy Spirit working in law and gospel through the means of grace, the Word and the sacraments, rightly preached and administered (cf. Augsburg Conf., art. XXVIII, 21).

Things have changed among Lutherans: So eager not to anger public opinion — no doubt, with the good intention of making church more attractive and appealing to unbelievers! — one is drawn into operating according to the rules of engagement established by the world. And the world cares little about doctrine and lots about life, e.g., about the church’s proposal for saving failing families or a failing ecosystem, depending on one’s political preferences. “The world sets the agenda of the church” — maybe Dr. Käßmann picked up that maxime of the ecumenical movement somewhere along her path through one of the many ecumenical organizations. Yet, if this slogan is embraced, then the world — it always changes but always remains the same: fallen — has become the lord and god of the church. Such a church is then no longer the church of Jesus Christ.

In summary, Dr. Margot Käßmann is not an isolated case. Pastors and churches everywhere strive to impress and please the public by displays of moral righteousness, also known as “authenticity,” that follows the public’s standards and thereby compromises or belittles doctrine. It doesn’t really matter whether that takes place in ultimately meaningless public pronouncements to any and all topics already digested in daily talk shows of the correct political persuasion or in the form of worship services that have been made devoid of any “offensive” characteristics of genuine Christianity. The thinking is: hey, if we buy into the world, maybe the world will buy into the church. Unfortunately, it’s working: the world is taking over the church more and more where such a course of action is followed. — Dr. Käßmann’s quick rise and fall is thus, above all, a cautionary tale for all Christians and church leaders. Let us focus on what God has given us to do and to speak in our respective vocations. Let us not do violence to the First Commandment by taking what he has not given us (cf. Large Catechism, I, 26-27).

The Sunday Comics: Al Gore is still full of hot air

Climate con-man Al Gore has emerged from hibernation with an op-ed in which he continues to perpetuate his (highly profitable) hoax despite the daily onslaught of evidence proving his claims false. Via Gateway Pundit:

It was all a lie.

The Top Climate Scientist Admitted in February That Man-made Global Warming Was a Farce–

* The data for the vital ‘hockey stick graph’ had gone missing
* There had been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before – but NOT due to man-made changes

In February one of the chief scientists at the center of the “Climategate” scandal admitted that there had been no significant global warming in the last 15 years.

But, Al Gore is still beating that dead horse.
At least The New York Times will still publish his crackpot propaganda:

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea…

…The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

OK. I’ll bring the tar. Who has feathers?

Saturday Morning Cartoons: Schism in the church of Dawkins

A schism in the atheist community was all but inevitable. But did anyone think it would be over something like this?

Richard Dawkins is accustomed to provoking the wrath of religious communities, but now a schism seems to have opened up within the atheist community who make up his fan-base.

The split occurred after he announced that a discussion section on his website, considered one of the busiest online atheist forums, would in future be tightly moderated and “irrelevant postings and frivolous gossip” would no longer be allowed.

The change was scheduled for next month but such was the torrent of abuse after the announcement that the forum had to be locked down, deepening the rift between Professor Dawkins and his 85,000 online fans.

Writing on RichardDawkins.net yesterday, in a posting entitled “Outrage”, he said that there was “something rotten” in internet culture and pledged to rid his website of its abusive element.

“Imagine seeing your face described by an anonymous poster, as ‘a slack-jawed turd-in-the-mouth mug’,” he wrote. “Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly to something so trivial.

“Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical.”

The cloak of anonymity under which many people contributed to discussions had led to a culture of extreme language that would not be possible if people wrote under their name.

Unwilling to be silenced, however, the members of the website and the 15 moderators, some of whom worked unpaid, vented their own outrage elsewhere.

“A lot of people have lost respect for Dawkins after this, although I do still support the work that he does,” said Peter Harrison, a former moderator.

“Thousands of loyal, intelligent, rational forum members have been misrepresented as a bunch of foul-mouthed, vitriolic thugs by the man who so inspired them.”

Another former fan said: “It may sound ridiculous to those not involved with online communities, but I feel hurt and displaced. It was like coming home to find the locks have been changed. My respect for Richard’s work is still intact but my respect for him as a person is in tatters.”

The forum typically attracted 3,000 postings per day, on subjects ranging from science to religion and ethics.

Professor Dawkins now faces a confrontation with his adversaries at the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne in two weeks.

He denied that the forum was closing but said that it was being improved. “The forum is going to be more tightly controlled and will be under more central control. So it won’t be available for anyone who wants to sound off freely,” he said.

He conceded that there was a good case for anonymity for some contributors and such contributions would still be allowed.

“I can see why people in America who lost their faith and do not want their families to know, or perhaps people of an Islamic background who have lost their faith or become Christian, have every reason to be anonymous,” he said.

The forum’s implosion has been jumped on by Christian groups as a sign that the Dawkins community is not as free-thinking as it is claimed.

The "Religion of Peace" strikes again, Part MCMXXLVXVI

(AP) The United Nations has deployed peacekeepers to a northern Liberian town where sectarian violence has left at least three people dead and forced hundreds to flee.

Local government official George Tengbeh says the violence in Voinjama was sparked after unconfirmed rumors that a mosque had been attacked by residents in another town in the region.

He says Muslim residents in Voinjama went on a rampage Friday, burning down two churches, a clinic, shops and the mayor's residence. Authorities imposed a daytime curfew.

U.N. spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane could not confirm any casualties, but says U.N. extra U.N. troops were deployed to Voinjama to help quell the unrest.

You can't make this stuff up (or maybe you can)

A laughable report from the U.K. Express:

CLIMATE scientists yesterday stunned Britons suffering the coldest winter for 30 years by claiming last month was the hottest January the world has ever seen.
The remarkable claim, based on global satellite data, follows Arctic temperatures that brought snow, ice and travel chaos to millions in the UK.

At the height of the big freeze, the entire country was blanketed in snow. But Australian weather expert Professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne, said yesterday: “January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we’ve ever seen.

“Last November was the hottest November we’ve ever seen. November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen.” Veteran climatologist Professor Nicholls was speaking at an online climate change briefing, added: “It’s not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven’t warmed in the past 50 years.”

His extraordinary claims came after the World Meteorological Organisation revealed 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade since records began in 1850.

But UK forecaster Jonathan Powell, of Positive Weather Solutions, said: “If it is the case and it is borne out that January was the hottest on record, it is still no marker towards climate change.

“It’s all part of a cyclical issue and nothing should be read too deeply into that.

“It’s been the coldest for 30 years in Britain but we predicted that and climate change always tends t o throw up anomalies. It’s all in line with predictions and I won’t be sold on climate change at all. The data is either faulty or manufactured to make it look like it shouldn’t.”

For the record, Australia is in the southern hemisphere. January is summertime down under.

McKnight on McLaren

Scot McKnight weighs in on Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity and finds nothing new.

Brian believes in an old saw—namely, the Constantinian Fall of the Church, the event and era in which the Greco-Roman narrative was developed. In short, this narrative teaches that humans were created in a Platonic, ideal, and perfect world in Eden; then the Fall occurred, which tumbled humans into the Aristotelian and real world of becoming (which is bad). Out of this becoming world, one can either escape or be saved into the Platonic-ideal heaven, or choose eternal perdition in a Greek form of Hades. Brian will later call this the "Greco-Roman soul-sort narrative," by which he means that life in the here and now is about sorting out the saved from the damned. McLaren's soul-sort narrative is a caricature of a narrative that no responsible thinker really believes or teaches in the bald, insensitive, and barbaric ways described in this book. It's a caricature of Romans 5.

The Greco-Roman narrative is directed and determined by a god whom McLaren calls "Theos," who is not that distinct from the Greek Zeus or the Roman Jupiter. Theos is much different from the Hebrew Elohim, the Lord of Genesis 1-12. How? This Theos loves spirit, state, and being, and hates matter, story, and becoming, since, once again, the latter involve change, and the only way to change or move from perfection is downward into decay. "As soon as something drops out of the state of perfection, Theos is possessed by a pure and irresistible urge to destroy it (or make it suffer)," Brian claims. Theos is "perfectly furious" about humans telling stories, because that is "something that should never happen in the world of Theos." There's more: "Theos stands above, holding his thunderbolts ready to strike, ready to melt the whole damned thing down to primal lava, ready to set it all on fire to purge all that is imperfect, so only perfect purified being remains."

This is, according to Brian, "conventional Christian theology."

The Theos-driven narrative is one in which salvation is equivalent to atonement. Justification and redemption and salvation happen "when Theos finds a way to forgive this fallen, dropout, broken, detestable creation for its descent from perfect holy being into pathetic detestable becoming." Because humans are immortal and partake in Theos's essential nature, the damned must suffer eternally while the saved experience God's joy forever.

I kid you not—this is how Brian sums up conventional theology. "This is," he says, "the 'good news' taught by much of Western Christian religion (not all of it, thank God), the religion in which I was raised, in which I have done my life's work, of which I am a part today."

Raising the bar

It was lingering animosity that finally got the best of Cain when he murdered his brother Abel. But, if we read Jesus' words carefully, we will find that Cain's downfall was a bitterness toward his brother which had taken root long before he committed his heinous act. "So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you," Jesus says, "leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

Had Cain been in a right relationship with his brother when he offered his gift, God would have received it. But because Cain was not in a right relationship with is brother he was, likewise, not in a right relationship with God. Bitterness bred jealousy, and jealousy manifest itself in Cain's murderous rage. He had offered his gift from a divided and unreconciled heart, thus allowing sin to gain a foothold in his life.

Read it all at Columbia Faith and Culture Examiner.

The door into abundant life

A meditation on John 10:1-18

"I came that they may have life and have it abundantly," Jesus says. Some have taken this passage and misled many into believing their life ought to be one of blessing upon blessing, joy without sorrow, comfort without suffering. Suffering is seen by these purveyors of the half-truth gospel as a sign of weak or inadequate faith. Life, for the victims of their false teaching, becomes one long guilt trip punctuated by the constant fear that they somehow lack the faith to inherit the kingdom.

But Jesus does not promise us a comfortable life, a luxurious life, or a life free from sorrow or suffering. Jesus says of those he came to save, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.”

Familiarity with the imagery Jesus uses is no less and obstacle to understanding what he is talking about than it was to his original hearers. Jesus says he is the "good shepherd" who "lays down his life for the sheep." Tending sheep was a common enough profession in Jesus’ day. Moreover, the Old Testament was replete with images of the shepherd. “The LORD is my shepherd. . .” What is Jesus doing, if not simply elaborating on what should be a very familiar tradition in the history of Israel? Yet, the people don’t understand this “figure of speech,” and many of us today are in the same boat. But why?

For the answer, we need look no further than the Scripture itself. “All who came before me,” Jesus says, “are thieves and robbers.” Now, think for a minute. This is all very, very basic. The coming of the Messiah, the true Shepherd of the sheep, is preceded by false teachers, pretenders, and those who would turn the truth on its head and deceive many. When Jesus arrives on the scene, a veil of deception has descended upon the people, stopping up their ears and turning their hearts to stone. They are enslaved by the false teachings of a religious establishment which has twisted the law so to make it an end in itself, rather than the means to prepare God’s people for the end, which comes in Jesus. When Jesus speaks of the shepherd who enters by the door, who calls the sheep by name and leads them out, he is employing the figurative language of apocalyptic. The shepherd gathering the sheep is an image of the end time, of the last day. It is Jesus gathering the elect, leading them out of the darkness of death and into the glorious light of the presence of God. But not only is Jesus the shepherd who enters by the door. He also says, “I am the door.” To enter through the door that is Christ is to enter into the life of Christ, which is the very life of God. That is the life, the abundant life, which Jesus came to give us.

Read it all at Columbia Faith and Culture Examiner

Devoted to destruction

The fall from favor of Saul, the first king of Israel, is a vivid illustration of the consequences of rebellion and a typical human attempt to rationalize disobedience into obedience. In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel instructs Saul on behalf of the Lord, "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (v. 3).

The instructions are clear. But Saul engages in one of the earliest recorded examples of hermeneutical gymnastics. "But Saul and the people spared Agag [king of Amalek] and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction" (v. 9).

When confronted by Samuel about his failure to obey the Lord's command, Saul denies that he has been disobedient. He says, "I have obeyed the voice of the LORD. I have gone on the mission on which the LORD sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal" (vv. 20-21).

Read it all at Columbia Faith and Culture Examiner.