Tag: Christianity

Mailvox: blaming the victim

RS mistakenly blames Christianity for the West’s civilizational suicide:

I’ve never read any of your books; just snippets of things here and
there.  Its safe to say we share the same politics, which is the reason
for my writing you. I am a wannabe Christian, but I am running up
against that wall of egalitarianism that seems to be a big part of the
faith.  Love your enemies and all that. Specifically, the Muslim
invasion that is happening in Europe right now.  I am furious over
that.  I have the suspicion that at the root of this civilizational
suicide is Christianity’s egalitarianism.  Now my concerns about this
“migration” are not racial or ethnic but rather cultural and
ideological.  I have a lot of sympathy for Christians who are fleeing
trouble; even if they are fleeing economic trouble.  Its the muslims I
fear and yes, detest.

Do you struggle with this?  How
can one be a Christian and still want to fight to protect the West
(since we are supposed to love even our enemies)?

Considering that Europe no longer calls itself “Christendom” and collectively flaunts its post-Christian status, I think it is absolutely bizarre to postulate that the roots of the civilizational suicide are to be found in Christian egalitarianism. After all, according to Christianity, there is neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ Jesus, but Christianity deems itself “in but not of the world” and does not even concern itself with interfering in the relationship between master and slave, let alone global wealth redistribution and population flows.

What you are reacting to is Churchianity and it has absolutely nothing to do with Christian theology, it is merely one of the wolves in sheep’s clothing about which the Apostle Paul warned us. Never confuse the wolf in sheep’s clothing for the sheep or the sheep-stealing thief for the shepherd.

In fact, the religion of Churchianity is the same as the religion of the multiculturalists and globalists, it is the worldly religion of Babel. The Christian perspective intrinsically takes “the nations” into account, each with their own identity and even ruling spirits. Transnational egalitarianism and globalism are not Christian; quite to the contrary, they are rabidly, viciously, feverishly opposed to Christianity. It was not Christians who made “egalite’” the motto of the French Revolution.

And don’t be surprised if the rise of European nationalism is accompanied by the widespread rejection of European post-Christianity. What you are seeing is the failure of secularism, not the failure of Christianity.

SJWs in the Church of Scotland

Here we not only see the consequences of entryism, but further evidence in support of the truism: SJWs always lie. In which David Robertson learns that he should have read the book before debating a Scottish wolf in sheep’s clothing:

At one level I was excited. Because the church was packed with over 250 people on a midweek evening to discuss theology; because I liked Scott when I had met him previously and believed that he genuinely wanted to have an open discussion about these vital issues; because it was a great opportunity to speak the good news in a different context. But I was also aware there was something else going on. I won’t go into details but I was under considerable pressure to back off and indeed even to give up and walk away. Even as I walked into the church I sensed not only the sense of anticipation but also the hostility from some, and also a strange sense that something was wrong.

This was made worse when I went into the vestry and met with Scott and Rev John Chalmers, the former Moderator who was there to replace the current Moderator, Rev Angus Morrison, who had called off because of a sore throat. John informed me at 7:25pm that the event would not be recorded. I was somewhat surprised at this because in setting up the event we had offered to film it and we were assured that there was no need to do so because the Church would do so and put it online.   This was an important aspect of the evening as this was a public discussion about subjects of vital importance to the whole church, and rather than rely on out of context quotes and sound bites reported on social media, it was important that people could hear and see the whole debate for themselves.(the interest and demand from people from people has been phenomenal). So I insisted that it be recorded and they agreed.

We went out, had the debate which went much as I had expected. Scott denied the Bible, called the atoning work of Christ on the cross barbaric (and Calvinist!) and at the end suggested that the future of the Church in Scotland rested on leadership styles like the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as ‘mindfulness’.  I did my best to answer him in as biblical and gracious a way as possible. (I accept that I got some things wrong, said some things in a wrong way, wish I had said others,  and sometimes let my tongue run away with things-  God have mercy on me, a sinner).  My concern was for Scott and also for those who hear him preach, that he would turn away from his heresy and man-made gospel which is no gospel at all.   At this point I would normally suggest that you go to the video and judge for yourselves. Except even as I write, the video has been destroyed…. I was informed on the Thursday that the video would not be put online because I had hurt Scott’s feelings by suggesting that I would excommunicate him if he were a member of my church.   He also thought that it would not be a good witness, and he did not want that statement put online (ironically of course it was put on line immediately and tweeted all over the place by some of his supporters).  He informed me today, after further correspondence that he had instructed that the tapes be destroyed.

Why destroy the tapes? What was so incriminating on them?  It was not to
preserve Scott’s hurt feelings. Nor was it because they are concerned
about Christian witness.

This quote from the following letter I received from a life long Church of Scotland couple helps explain why: “We
too were horrified to learn in March of Mr. McKenna’s denial of the
atonement. We protested to Edinburgh Presbytery expecting disciplinary
action. None was forthcoming and we felt made to feel wrong for
mentioning this fundamental aspect of the faith. We fear that Mr.
McKenna is not only risking God’s judgement on himself but also on his
congregation and the rest of us for doing nothing.”

The
unpalatable truth for evangelicals and traditional Presbyterians is that
Scott McKenna is not on the eccentric fringes of the Church of
Scotland. He is one of its mainstream leaders who I suspect is being
lined up for higher office. To have such a man openly and publicly
teach such heresy (which itself is against the standards and teachings
of the C of S) would be the last straw for many such people. So in order
to do damage limitation, and prevent more people joining the growing
exodus from the C of S, they decided to try and bury the evidence.

This is why you ALWAYS record interviews and debates YOURSELF. ALWAYS. No exceptions. It won’t prevent the media from cherry-picking any mistakes or controversies and making the most of them, but it will prevent them from lying about what you have said and hiding the mistakes and infelicities of their own side.

David Robertson made the mistake that most people make when dealing with SJWs. He fucked up; he trusted them. But SJWs always lie! You cannot trust them, you cannot trust one single thing they say.

The problem is that until recently, no one who has dealt with an SJW and been played for a fool has seen the pattern, much less explained it to anyone else. That’s why it is important to understand the pattern and spread the word about it; SJWs are a civilization-wide menace as Western civilization is under massive assault by the servitors of social justice.

So that is a prime directive. ALWAYS RECORD ALL INTERACTIONS WITH SJWs. Because First Law of SJW. If the law requires their permission and they won’t grant it, then don’t talk to them. I’ve put this into practice myself, as whenever I get a request for an interview these days, I inform them that I will be recording it myself.

UPDATE: Fortunately, someone recorded the audio and provided a transcript. And it is no wonder that the SJWs in the Church of Scotland tried to erase Scott McKenna’s words. They clearly demonstrate that he isn’t a Christian and he should be excommunicated from the Church without any need for further discussion.

I was talking about penal substitutionary atonement which is the notion that, in order to satisfy the wrath, the anger of God who had been offended by the wrath of God, that Jesus had to die as a blood sacrifice to pay for this sin, in order to satisfy the wrath of God. Now I would be saying that I think this leaves us with a fairly despotic… despot of a god; a barbaric god who is vindictive and immoral. Now this is not unique to me. This is not radical theology. You will find this theology in numerous places including a number of evangelicals.

That may not be radical theology, but it also isn’t Christian theology. And while some “evangelicals” do subscribe to it, they are not evangelical Christians, they are atheist evangelicals in the mode of Richard Dawkins.

Churchian cucks preaching Babelism

Terrible theology + kissing the world’s unwiped backside leads to cucky Churchians preaching the gospel of Babel:

As the Senate recently passed long
awaited immigration overhaul and the bill now heads to the House, the
long-standing national discourse on the issue of immigration will likely
heat up again. As we participate in these discussions, my hope is that
we, especially as Christians tasked with peacemaking and reconciling,
will find ways to build bridges instead of erecting walls. As a first
step in this bridge building, I pray that once and for all, we will stop
using the term “illegal immigrant.”
Here’s why:

1. The term “illegal immigrant” is a misleading and dishonest term, which violates the 9th commandment.

2. The term “illegal” singles out those who committed one, specific,
federal misdemeanor, but is never applied to other violations.

3. The term “illegal immigrant” has morphed into a racial epithet.

4. The term “illegal immigrant” cultivates hostility, animosity, and mistrust against our neighbors.

5. The term “illegal immigrant” is dehumanizing.   

  1. No, it does not. In fact, the author is lying. “Illegal immigrant” is an accurate and honest term that precisely describes the status of the individual so described.
  2. Considering that my father is often described as “a tax evader”, this is obviously false. Most “murderers” are not serial killers, after all.
  3. No, it hasn’t. What race does “illegal immigrant” refer to?
  4. No, immigration, especially illegal immigration, cultivates hostility, animosity, and mistrust against our neighbors. 
  5. This is ridiculous. Only humans are described as “illegal immigrants”. I have never heard of migrating birds being described that way.

Churchians are liars and deceivers. They worship the god of Babel, not the Christian God. They serve the world, not Jesus Christ.

    The dangerous faith

    I doubt it has escaped anyone’s attention that with a few exceptions, the atheists, agnostics, and pagans around the world are content to make common cause with very nearly any religion except for one particular faith. As J.B. Bury observed nearly 100 years ago in his epic Cambridge Medieval History, which I cannot recommend more highly, this is not a new development:

    Jesus Himself, had His followers allowed, might have had a place between Dionysos and Isis; but Christianity, which according to Porphyry had departed widely from the simple teaching of the mystic of Galilee, was sternly excluded from the Neoplatonist brotherhood of religions. Its idea of a creation in time seemed irreligious to Porphyry; its doctrine of the Incarnation introduced a false conception of the union between God and the world; its teaching about the end of all things he thought both irreverent and irreligious; above all things its claim to be the one religion, its exclusiveness, was hateful to him. He was too noble a man (philosopkus nobilis, says Augustine) not to sympathise with much in Christianity, and seems to have appreciated it more and more in his later writings Still his opinion remained unchanged: “The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious; he has become immortal, and by them his memory is cherished. Whereas the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed in error.” Christianity was the one religion to be fought against and if possible conquered.

    What Neoplatonism did theoretically the force of circumstances accomplished on. the practical side. The Oriental creeds had not merely gained multitudes of private worshippers; they had forced their way among the public deities of Rome. Isis, Mithra, Sol Invictus, Dea Syra, the Great Mother, took their places alongside of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, etc., and the Sacra peregrina appeared on the calendar of public festivals. As most of these Oriental cults contained within them the monotheist idea it is possible that they might have fought for preeminence and each aspired to become the official religion of the Empire. But they all recognised Christianity to be a common danger, and M. Cumont has shewn that this feeling united them and made them think and act as one.

    From Communists to Muslims to SJWs, various philosophies and religions have been more than happy to attempt to coopt Jesus Christ, because they believe he is dead. What they cannot countenance are the servants of the Living God, the followers of the Risen Christ, who despite our manifold failings, our observable flaws, our complete falling short of the glory of the God we worship, insist on attempting to tread upon the hard and narrow path rather than obediently follow the gentle, easy, thoughtless ways they advocate.

    Christianity is the dangerous faith because it is the one faith that is rooted in truth rather than lies. It is the one real connection Man can make to the Divine. Yes, our understandings are imperfect, yes, we see as though through a glass, darkly, yes, our interpretations are various and contradictory, and yet, only in doing so, only through relentlessly pursuing the truth to the best of our ability can we begin to approach Truth.

    Those who consider Christians to be self-righteous entirely miss the point, including those who consider themselves to be righteous Christians. To be forgiven is not the same as being sinless. To be repentant is not the same as to be blameless. It is not necessary to put on sackcloth and with Augustine melodramatically label ourselves the worst of all sinners to recognize that we are no better, and in some cases are considerably worse, than the virtuous pagan.

    For better or for worse, we are who we are. We have done what we have done and we can never change the past. But what we don’t have to do is remain broken, frightened, sin-enslaved beings. That, through the grace of God, is the one thing we can change.

    And that is what the enemies of God, in all their various guises, cannot abide. Because that is the one freedom they can never offer.

    So much for “Christian Zionism”

    All those evangelicals who are so keen to profess how they love Israel even better than they do America or Jesus Christ should perhaps consider that their affections are not returned

    The leader of a far-Right Israeli group has risked arrest by apparently voicing support for arson attacks on Christian churches amid an official crackdown on Jewish extremism.

    Benzi Gopstein, the outspoken head of Lehava – which has drawn notoriety for its violent assaults on Jewish-Arab assimilation – made the remarks at a panel discussion for Jewish yeshiva students when asked by a fellow panelist if he believed burning down churches in Israel was justified.

    He later tried to evade accusations of inciting his followers to fire-raise, saying it was the government’s responsibility to carry out what he presented as a religious teaching of the 12th century Jewish philosopher, Maimonides.

    “Did the Rambam [Maimonides] rule to destroy [idol worship] or not? Idol worship must be destroyed. It’s simply yes – what’s the question?” Mr Gopstein told the panel.

    His comment alarmed his questioner Benny Rabinovich, a journalist, who told him: “Benzi, I must say I’m really shocked by what you’re saying here. You are essentially saying we must go out and burn down churches. You’re saying something insane here.”

    Told by another panelist, Moshe Klein, rabbi of Israel’s Haddash medical centres, that the discussion was being filmed and that his remarks could lead to his arrest, Mr Gopstein answered: “That’s the last thing that concerns me. If this is truth, I’m prepared to sit in jail 50 years for it.” 

    This is a reminder of the fact that diversity+proximity=war. It’s also a reminder of the fact that immigrants transform the land, the land doesn’t transform the immigrants.

    I’m a Zionist myself, but not on the basis of being a Christian. Israel for the Jews, Germany for the Germans, France for the French, and so forth. If you want relative peace, that is the way to achieve it. But I would no more attend a church that flew an Israeli flag than one that featured a female pastor. Both are unmistakable signs of a church that follows the world rather than Jesus Christ.

    Post-Christian morality

    Or rather, the complete lack thereof:

    In The Future of an Illusion (1927) Freud refers to religion as an illusion which is “perhaps the most important item in the psychical inventory of a civilization”. In his estimation, religion provides for defense against “the crushingly superior force of nature” and “the urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt”. He concludes that all religious beliefs are “illusions and insusceptible of proof.
     
    Freud then examines the issue of whether, without religion, people will feel “exempt from all obligation to obey the precepts of civilization”. He notes that “civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers” in whom secular motives for morality replace religious ones; but he acknowledges the existence of “the great mass of the uneducated and oppressed” who may commit murder if not told that God forbids it, and who must be “held down most severely” unless “the relationship between civilization and religion” undergoes “a fundamental revision”

    Freud, like many 19th century men were so steeped in custom they could never conceive of the possibility that “educated men and brain-workers” would free themselves, not only of God, but all fixed taboos — of everything. He himself never imagined the Nazis were possible. At the end of his life, sick and old in Vienna — a Vienna he never thought could come to pass —  he was saved, as David Cohen writes, not by the harsh logic of supermen, but by bourgeois sentimentality: the kindness of friends, the intervention of admirers and the secret intervention of a Nazi admirer.

    The trouble with 19th century atheism is that it had not completely freed itself from the sentiments of Christianity: in many subtle ways they assumed that man after God would still have limits. They failed to understand until the middle 20th century that man’s need for power did not necessarily contain limits. They  learned, too late, that like the Bill of Rights understands, it is in the “won’ts” on men’s actions that earthly freedom lives.

    Freud made the same mistake that the irrational atheists of today still make. They think that because they are influenced by centuries of Christendom’s social inertia, that they possess a variant morality that is, if not necessarily better than Christian morality, at least equally valid.

    They don’t. They possess the increasingly tattered remnants of Christian morality, that is all, and as it fades with each post-Christian generation, the Men of the West devolve into paganism, and not the high paganism that was so virtuous as to compete with early Christianity, but the low paganism of the Celt, the Viking, the Mongol, the Aztec, and the African cannibal.

    A young Basongo chief came to our Commandant while at dinner in his tent and asked for the loan of his knife, which, without thinking, the Commandant gave him. He immediately disappeared behind the tent and cut the throat of a little slave-girl belonging to him, and was in the act of cooking her when one of our soldiers saw him. This cannibal was immediately put in irons, but almost immediately after his liberation he was brought in by some of our soldiers who said he was eating children in and about our cantonment. He had a bag slung round his neck which, on examining it, we found contained an arm and leg of a young child.

    We’re not eating little girls yet, but we’re already parting them out and selling them for profit. The post-Christian trend is clear. The abomination of Planned Parenthood is the sin and the horror of American society. It is the proof that God has turned His face away from the once-Christian America and ceased to bless her.

    The Rainbow Nazis attack conscience

    And, incidentally, civilization. That certainly didn’t take long:

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky has filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Rowan County couples, two same-gender couples and two opposite-gender couples, denied marriage licenses by County Clerk Kim Davis, a press release from the ACLU confirms.

    Davis is standing firm on her decision to stop issuing marriage licenses, despite dozens of protesters who gathered outside the courthouse.

    “My conscience will not allow me to issue a license for a same sex couple,” says Kim Davis, “because I know that God ordained marriage from the very foundation of this world to be between a man and a woman.”

    In explaining the ACLU’s decision to file suit on the couples’ behalf, ACLU of Kentucky Cooperating Attorney Laura Landenwich stated, “Ms. Davis has the absolute right to believe whatever she wants about God, faith, and religion, but as a government official who swore an oath to uphold the law, she cannot pick and choose who she is going to serve, or which duties her office will perform based on her religious beliefs.”

    The Rainbow Nazis really appear to be hell-bent on seeing the establishment of a post-democratic American theocracy. Because that’s what is most likely going to come out of this Sodom and Gomorrahstan totalitarianism in the end. They’re like children who can’t resist pushing until they discover where the limits are.

    Within a year, they’ll be attacking priests and pastors too.

    It appears that it won’t be all that much longer before everyone discovers what happens when enough people stop consenting to the consensual fiction known as “the law”.

    This is what happens

    When you put women in the pulpit  It doesn’t surprise me in the least. Notice how wide the approval is; the deputies were just itching to have an excuse to turn canon into parody.

    The Episcopal Church officially joined Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ this week in becoming the third mainline denomination to embrace gay marriage rites — a move that comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions.

    The new liturgy extending marriage to gays and lesbians was widely approved with a vote of 184-23 by the Episcopal Church USA’s House of Deputies during the denomination’s 78th General Convention; it will become available for use on November 29, Deseret News reported.

    In a separate vote of 173 to 27, the institution of marriage was changed from being comprised exclusively by a man and a woman to being between two persons more generally, with the line “both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman” being axed from the canon.

    Once the women start preaching, it’s only a matter of time before Jesus Christ himself is axed from the canon. Refuse to accept the authority of God’s Word in one thing, you may as well refuse to accept them all, because sooner or later, that’s where you’re headed.

    The headline is wrong, however. The Episcopal Church ceased to be a Christian church some years ago.

    They are the SAME war

    David Brooks manages to completely miss the point in the process of recommending that conservatives simply wave a white flag in the cultural war and dedicate themselves to performing good works deemed socially acceptable:

    Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.

    Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

    We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through.

    Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.

    The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

    This culture war is more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority. It’s doing purposefully in public what social conservatives already do in private.

    I don’t expect social conservatives to change their positions on sex, and of course fights about the definition of marriage are meant as efforts to reweave society. But the sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.

    As Jartstar commented, Brooks wants Christians to clean up the social wreckage being caused by people who reject Christianity, but neither prevent them from causing more damage nor even teach them how to stop harming themselves and others.

    Now, granted, there is a certain ironic propriety to telling people who already well accustomed to losing battles to engage in another equally hopeless one. But the fact is that conservatives didn’t have to lose those battles, they simply chose not to fight them. We could end the gay marriage battle by the end of the week if we wanted; ISIS has demonstrated that it requires little more than rooftops and gravity. That’s simply not how we prefer to operate.

    Regardless, we have options that range from winning the cultural war through extreme barbarism on the one side to abject surrender on the other. And that is why everyone, even our short-sighted opponents, should hope that the civilized cultural warriors win, because if they don’t, history strongly suggests that the uncivilized cultural warriors will. The pendulum always swings back, and the further it swings one way, the harder it swings back on its return.

    David Brooks fails to understand that the problems he laments can only be fixed by rejecting the ruling left-liberalism he supports and embracing a conservative philosophical outlook. But in any case, the answer is simple: no.

    Rod Dreher’s response is more genteel, as you might expect, but similar:

     I don’t believe my friend David understands the inseparable connection between Christian sexual morality and the familial and social instability David rightly decries. Family and social breakdown is inextricably linked to the abandonment of Christian sexual ideals — specifically, the idea that sexual passion should be limited to expression within the bounds of marriage. Chastity — which is not “no sex,” but rather the right ordering of the God-given sexual instinct — is a Christian virtue. It is not the most important Christian virtue, but it is not one that can be discarded, either.