Tag: Christianity

The face of the Devil

The Church of England is marking a new era in its history as the Rev Libby Lane becomes the first woman to be ordained as a bishop. More than 100 members of the episcopate from England and other parts of the worldwide Anglican Church will lay hands on the 48-year-old vicar from Hale, Greater Manchester, to formally consecrate her during a service at York Minster. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu will anoint her with oil in an ancient tradition tracing its origins to the prophets of the Old Testament.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, will also be present, alongside female bishops from churches in other parts of the world.

The consecration marks the conclusion of a decades-long wrangle over the role of women in leadership in the established Church, the last great institution of British public life to open itself to full gender equality.

Does that look like someone who is sobered by the burden of assuming spiritual leadership? Or the smirking triumph of someone who has finally managed to corrupt a once-great institution?

As the Church of England finally succumbs to its entryist invaders, we can safely predict that the church leaders will be disappointed in their expectations: “Church leaders hope it will mark a moment of reconciliation between
traditionalists and reformers on the issue.”

It won’t. It marks the death knell of the Church of England. The “new era” that is marked is the end.

The faux sociopaths

John C. Wright explains that the Left is evil, not stupid:

Leftists are people who have a conscience but act like sociopaths. If the Leftist were really a sociopath, he would not need excuses, justifications, and rationalizations to fill his yammering mouth and empty his wrathful brain.

Please note also that this behavior only surfaces on matters where the Leftist has turned Left and turned off his brain in a vain attempt to turn off his conscience, which he wrongly believes to be lodged in the brain. A Leftist can be a good coworker, even a good friend, if you stick to topics where the Leftist brain-parasite called guilt does not take root and bloom like ghastly fungi expanding from his hypothalamus and medulla oblongata to suck up all his gray matter and ooze sinuously out of eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears.

I have talked with social Leftists about economic issues, for example, without triggering their brain-fungi response. The Leftist will mouth the normal sounding American ideals about Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness provided you do not crowd him too closely to ask him what those things mean, or why their heroes Che and Mao and crystal meth dealer Matthew Shepard slain by his gay lover and fellow drug dealer Aaron McKinney fit into the idea of the American Way, then and only then will the brain fungi erupt, and the human-shaped skull be cracked and flung aside, revealing the fleshy lobes and convolutions of the nonhuman being beneath.

Leftists are reasonable and decent people except in their particular areas of sensitivity, by which I mean, of course, where they are hiding their smothering guilt, and — this point bears emphasizing — not all of them are sensitive about the same thing, because not all of them sold the same section of their brains to the Fungi from Yuggoth for the same reason.

No one has sold all his brain, and no one is an entirely self consistent Leftist, so what triggers one Leftist into frothing inanity is not what triggers another. But the behavior once triggered is the same. That behavior is flight from reason.

As stated above, Leftism is what you get when you stop reasoning.

Their reasoning is marred and crippled because they mar and cripple reason so that reason will not operate properly. They want reason not to operate properly because reason shows them a truth that they cannot abide. They cannot abide the truth because the truth condemns them. Truth condemns them because they do evil.

We are all potential Leftists. We are all capable of rationalizing away our own particular sins. How good I am, because I am not a glutton, says the slender whore. How good I am, because I am not a slut, says the obese woman as she stuffs her face. How good I am, because I am not a murderer, says the homosexual. How good I am, because I am not a thief, says the killer.

It is only when attention is drawn to their own particular sin, to OUR own sin, that the human mind goes haywire, because it is hard to look at yourself in the mirror and say: “I am a sinner. I am corrupt. I am fallen short of the glory of God.”

And yet, whether we admit it or not, we have.

We sinners of the Right are no better than the sinners of the Left. We are only more sane because we do not run from our sins, we do not hide from them, and we know better than to try to justify them. But we commit them, all the same. Don’t pretend otherwise, for doing so is the first step on the path to becoming differently and incompletely sane.

CS Lewis on Liberty and Statism

An interesting 90-minute talk concerning CS Lewis’s views on the evils of statism, by the president of the CS Lewis Society of California. It’s often forgotten that the third volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, was deeply and intimately concerned with the intrinsic evils of statism and bureaucracy, as was his Abolition of Man.

Christian revival in the heart of secularism

A Christian in France suggests one might be in the works:

On a recent Sunday, my family and I only showed up 10 minutes early for Mass. That meant we had to sit in fold-out chairs in the spillover room, where the Mass is relayed on a large TV screen. During the service, my toddler had to go to the bathroom. To get there, we had to step over a dozen people sitting in hallways and corners. This is business as usual for my church in Paris, France.

I point this out because one of the most familiar tropes in social commentary today is the loss of Christian faith in Europe in general, and France in particular. The Wall Street Journal recently fretted about the sale of “Europe’s empty churches.”

Could it be, instead, that France is in the early stages of a Christian revival?

Yes, churches in the French countryside are desperately empty. There are no young people there. But then, there are no young people in the French countryside, period. France is a modern country with an advanced economy, and that means its countryside has emptied, and that means that churches built in an era when the country’s sociological makeup was quite different go empty. In the cities — which is where people are, and where cultural trends gain escape velocity — the story is quite different.

But back to our parish. Is our pastor some outlier with megawatt
charisma? In terms of flair, he would win no public speaking contests.
But there is something that sets him apart from many of the Catholic
priests my parents’ generation grew up listening to: he is
unapologetically orthodox.

It may seem strange to suggest this at a time when liberalism in the mainstream churches and secularism without appear dominant. The Anglicans have made women bishops, the Pope is a demi-socialist, and everyone expects the Supreme Court to declare, ex nihilo, that the abominable parody known as “gay marriage” was magically written into the U.S. Constitution in hitherto undetected invisible ink.

But consider the logic of the situation. First, as with a market at its peak, there is no one left to buy into the mainstream denominations’ liberal quasi-Christianity. The pews, as they say, are already empty. The 60’s-era notion that being more tolerant, more accepting, more accommodating of the world would strengthen the Christian Church and bring in more believers had precisely the opposite effect. After all, if the Church is not only in the world, but of it, what purpose does it have?

At the same time that its intellectual bankruptcy has resulted in the undeniable material failure of inclusive, liberal, and tolerant Churchianity, the material and spiritual failures of secularism are being more apparent as well. People are beginning to realize that asserting a belief in nothing is not going to save them from either the fires of Hell or the bullets of a resurgent Islam.

Add to that the fact that the apparent wealth of the longest credit boom in world history has turned out to be mostly illusionary, and what we are seeing is the potential for a perfect storm of a return to the faith of an intensity that may be unprecedented. For decades, only prophets saw the danger. For years, only extremists were willing to speak out. But now, one has to have one’s head lodged firmly in the sand, or in one’s posterior, to fail to recognize four things:

  1. The failure of liberal Christian heresy
  2. The spiritual and material failures of secularism
  3. The danger of the third great wave of Islamic aggression
  4. The peril of the Christian West

Now, none of this means a revival is inevitable. It is not. But God works in mysterious ways and in His own time. He appears to enjoy waiting until the moment is dire, and then, using the most unlikely of sources. We cannot make it happen, but we can raise our voices and pray that He will make it happen, and that He use us as His weapons against those who have proclaimed themselves His enemies.

We are all sinful, corrupt, and fallen. I do not exempt myself from that, being worse than many, if not most, in those regards. But even I can see that something is stirring, something appears to be rumbling under the ground to which the flimsy secular chains that cover the inert corpse of Christendom are attached.

I know that there are those who believe that we are living in a permanently post-Christian era. But I suggest it is far too soon to count out a faith that began with nothing more than eleven frightened men. If Christians do not serve and worship a Living God, then Christianity should, by all reason and logic, continue to dwindle and fade. But if that does not happen, if there is, instead, a great revival, that will be meaningful evidence to the contrary.

An interview with John C. Wright

A Castalia House blogger interviews the leading Castalia House author at Castalia House:

Q: Your conversion story from atheism to Christianity is remarkable.  Some critics have been surprised to discover which of your books were written as a Christian, and which were written as an atheist.  You have said that in each case you simply followed the internal logic of the story to its conclusion.  How much has your faith influenced your fiction, if at all?

A: This is a very difficult question, because my firm resolution when first I converted was to simply tell stories to entertain.

I am often annoyed by stories that preach, even when they preach a sermon with which I wholly agree, such as Philip Pullman’s THE GOLDEN COMPASS. I was an atheist when I read it, a full-throat anti-Christian zealous in my love of godlessness, and even I could not stand the obtrusive excrescence of the preaching in that miserable book.

Now that I am in the other camp of the endless war between light and darkness, I confess I am still nonplussed and unamused by preaching disguised as entertainment, whether it supports my side or not. The idea of ‘Christian entertainment’ is a sound one, as long as it is entertaining as well as being Christian. There is an odor of self satisfied smugness and piety which is as repellant as the musk of a skunk clinging to much Christian entries into the literary world, which one never finds in older works, such as Milton or Dante, and never in the works of masters even in so humble as genre as science fiction. I challenge anyone to find anything nakedly and blandly pious or preachy in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, R.A. Lafferty, Gene Wolfe or Tim Powers, but there is clearly a spiritual dimension to all their works.

So I vowed a great vow never to let my personal feelings creep into my books, but merely to tell a tale for the sake of the tale, keeping faith with my readers. I am not their teacher, nor their preacher, nor their father confessor, and I have no duty to instruct them, and no qualifications to do so, no more than the jester in a King’s court has the authority to criticize the laws and policies of the King. My customers are my kings, and my job is to do pratfalls and take pies to the face to amuse them.

In the space of a single hour my great vow was overthrown when a reader, practically in tears, so deeply and thoughtfully praised the vision of spiritual reality presented in one of my short stories, the wholesomeness of the moral atmosphere portrayed there, that the reader likened it to a man trapped on some alien world of chlorine gas and sulfurous clouds being allowed to step on the fair, green fields of Earth for a single breath of wholesome, springtime air.

The reader was talking about my Christian faith, and the strength and firmness and clarity it lent to my writing. If I can wax lyrical about Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage, as I did in THE GOLDEN AGE, then surely I can wax lyrical about truth, virtue, and beauty.

The king is sad, and the jester needs to bring him comfort, for I know tales of a country where these sad things do not reign, but a king kindlier and mightier than any mortal king. As a jester, I owe it to my kings here on Earth and the King of Kings in heaven not to hide or waste my talents.

You’ll definitely want to read the whole thing. And afterwards, if you happen to find yourself still failing to be in possession of excellent books by the interviewee such as THE GOLDEN AGE, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM, and THE BOOK OF FEASTS & SEASONS, I find it impossible to imagine that you will not want to swiftly rectify the situation.

It’s an excellent interview with a fascinating author. Scooter did an excellent job of formulating much deeper questions than one generally sees in the SF genre, in addition to demonstrating that he was actually very familiar with the author’s material.

Merry Christmas

In the Year of Our Lord 2014, Christianity is under attack all over the globe. Tens of thousands of Christians have been murdered for their faith in the East and Middle East. In the West, what was once Christendom is under assault from a godless elite who fear and resent the threat that Christianity has always posed to secular authority. In the South, Christianity is growing, but it is as devoid of understanding as it is full of enthusiasm.

No ruler who is not himself a Christian will ever be entirely comfortable with subjects who do not view him as the highest and most legitimate authority. Most will be varying degrees of hostile, as we see across a broad spectrum from totalitarian dictators to democratically elected politicians. Augustus Caesar was the first, but was by no means the last, to insist that Christians accept his word as divine fiat, and future efforts in similar veins will be equally unsuccessful.

Predictions of Christianity’s eventual demise tend to strike me as little more than either fearful or wishful thinking; as the Church’s most serious enemies know, even the merest glow of an ember of faith is sufficient for the Lord God Almighty to turn it into a wildfire that scours the world. And one never knows when the winds of revival will again begin to blow.

A Time of Testing is upon us. Jesus said the world would hate us, as it hated him, but too many Christians, comfortable in the ruins of Christendom, still believe that it is possible to befriend the world, to be of it in good standing as well as in it. Soon enough, they will discover that just as tolerance of evil is not a virtue in God’s eyes, even a nominal Christian identity will be sufficient to damn them in the world’s eyes.

So choose this day, of all days, whom you will serve. If it seem to you that the world is good, a place of certain progress towards eventual human perfection, then serve those who are of the synagogue of Satan, the government, the elites, the world. Build your great global temple to Man, consecrate yourself as a human brick in the Pyramid of Progress.

But if instead you see the world as a place of evil, of corrupt men and fallen women, of darkness growing darker, of nihilism, of human liberty constrained where it is not twisted into libertinism, then the symbol of the child born in the manger will serve as a light against the darkness, a beacon of God’s Love and Man’s Hope.

Once, there was only darkness. But ever since the Star of Bethlehem shone in the night sky, the Light has been winning. That is what we celebrate today.

Merry Christmas.

As wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah

Thus spake the Rev. Billy Graham:

Reverend Billy Graham, arguably the most well-known and respected evangelical preacher of the last 50 years, said in a recently published commentary that America was “founded by men who believed in prayer” and that prayer can turn “the tide of history,” adding that while “America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah” and deserves “the judgment of God,” this judgment can be lessened through prayer.

“Even though America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah ever were, and as deserving of the judgment of God, God would spare us if we were earnestly praying, with hearts that had been cleansed and washed by the blood of Christ,” said Rev. Graham.

It’s hard to argue otherwise without throwing out the entire metric. Post-Christianity is a bitch, and a pretty nasty one at that, as the West is gradually beginning to discover.

Israel is not a Christian nation

Someone clearly needs to explain the difference to Sen. Ted Cruz, who is not someone that any sane conservative should be supporting for president:

Cruz, the keynote speaker at the new “In Defense Of Christians” organization’s dinner in Washington DC, had offered the crowd–a number of whom were Christians from the Middle East, including Palestinian Christians–public support for Israel. After doing so, some members of the crowd booed at Cruz, and they persisted until he left the stage, noting their hatred and saying he can’t stand with them if they don’t stand with Israel.

“Tonight, in Washington, should have been a night of unity as we came together for the inaugural event for a group that calls itself ‘In Defense of Christians.’ Instead, it unfortunately deteriorated into a shameful display of bigotry and hatred,” Cruz said in a statement provided to Breitbart News. “When I spoke in strong support of Israel and the Jewish people, who are being persecuted and murdered by the same vicious terrorists who are also slaughtering Christians, many Christians in the audience applauded.  But, sadly, a vocal and angry minority of attendees at the conference tried to shout down my expression of solidarity with Israel.”

Why on Earth is Cruz babbling about Israel and Jews when the topic is “In Defense of Christians”. It’s no secret that Israel is openly prejudiced against Christians and Christianity, although it does not persecute them. And Jews are not Christians; simply becoming acknowledging Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior is enough to legally render a Jew a non-Jew in the eyes of Israeli law.

From Wikipedia: “The Supreme Court of Israel ruled in 1989 that Messianic Judaism constituted another religion, and that people who had become Messianic Jews were not therefore eligible for Aliyah under the law.”

Now, I support Israel and defend its right to exist. But it was downright weird, and totally inappropriate, for Cruz to attempt to transform an event dedicated to the defense of persecuted Christians into public Holocaustianity.

How not to destroy Christianity

China is going about it the wrong way:

In China the government is now taking on Christianity, treating some practitioners as potentially dangerous to the state. Christianity has been in China for centuries and currently is about five of the population and growing fast. In some provinces where Christians are prominent (lots of churches) and numerous the government is shutting down churches and arresting clergy and prominent Christians for the least infraction of the law. This effort is most visible on the North Korean border, where foreign Christians (some of them ethnic Koreans or Chinese) have been assisting North Koreans who have escaped from North Korea. Another hotspot is the southeastern city of Wenzhou, long known as a “Christian city” (because about 15 percent of the population is Christian) where local authorities are shutting down dozens of Christian churches.

Even before the communists took over in the late 1940s Chinese governments had long seen religion as a constant threat. What is especially alarming is any religion that attracts too many members and become more visible, especially as critics of the government. Some Christian sects are doing this and now comes the usual government response.

While Chinese are free to worship any way they want, the government picks religious leaders and imposes discipline. Thus the ongoing war against Falungong and Tibetan Buddhism. Both of these religions refuse to accept government control and are persecuted for that. This included sending thousands of practitioners to slave labor camps and often using some of those prisoners for organ donors. These victims never survived this process. But the persecution has not wiped out these two movements, and this, government officials know, sets a dangerous example for other Chinese. Throughout Chinese history governments have been overthrown by religious movements that harnessed and directed mass discontent.

It should be obvious that if the Communist Party was serious about destroying the Christian faith in China, instead of outlawing Christianity, it would provide Christians with easy sex and money and require them to watch at least eight hours of American television every day. It’s incessant temptation that weakens the Christian, not hatred, violence, and persecution.

Two TIA reviews

Because it has been a long time since The Irrational Atheist was published, because my refutation of the “religion causes war” argument has been widely accepted, and because Richard Dawkins has increasingly rendered himself a parody of his former public persona, it’s easy to forget that the core arguments remain timeless. Here are a pair of recent reviews of the book, the first by a Christian, the second by an atheist. If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to consider picking up a copy sometime. 

Trench Warfare. Acerbic and Funny

I bought this the first time I saw it on a shelf in hardcover. I rarely ever buy books on impulse, but this was one of those times. It sat on my shelf for about six years, however. Finally, I had the time to delve into it. The Irrational Atheist is a direct response to “new” atheism that is unlike most other responses (most other significant responses being quite a bit more respectful than Day’s). If you enjoy reading about theological, moral and social issues AND sarcasm, well this book is for you.

Day focuses his arguments in the very thick of the new atheist’s claims. Christian apologists and philosophers have rarely taken these guys seriously, mostly because none of them (except Dennett) deserve to be taken seriously in the realm of philosophy. And while the response of the apologists has been necessary for the churches to hear, none have really focused on some of the “lower” issues. By this I mean issues such as whether or not atheism is gaining converts in the U. S., whether or not religion ‘causes’ war, whether atheists are smarter than non-atheists, whether religion stifles science, etc.

From knowing nothing of Vox Day other than what he has written in his book it’s very obvious that he’s an intelligent man. Imagine Dennis Miller writing a book in response to the new atheists and you will kind of get a glimpse at the wit and humor that comprise this work. These issues of history and social issues seem to be his strong point and he handles them with brilliance. The heart of the book includes detailed chapters into his personal beefs with each of these writers. My guess would be he has the least respect for Sam Harris and the most for Dennett, but Hitchens would be neck and neck with Harris.

The last few chapters discuss various other related issues: the Holocaust, Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, human sacrifice, atheism’s responsibility for the destruction of millions of lives, a chapter on some of the theological arguments used by these writers and an appendix of a discussion between the author and Socrates concerning the Euthyphro dilemma.

If this topic interests you I heartily recommend this be on your shelf. As I said, most Christian apologists or philosophers answer via way of philosophy or theological correction or biblical defenses, all of which are very important. Day prefers to get down in the trenches and battle them head-on, via some literary lex talionis. Not for the faint of heart.

This atheist loves the book. Logical refutations (finally!) of atheist talking points.

I am an atheist, and I really like this book. Vox Day’s style is a
direct and a refreshing relief from wheelbarrow loads of empty
platitudes. To summarize the book: “God loves you, but I don’t. Here’s why blindly following the high priests of atheism is stupid.”

The author says (paraphrasing, don’t remember exact phrasing): “This
book isn’t to convert you or argue in favor of God. I don’t care at all
if you believe or not. This book is to demolish the atheist arguments.”

Although
there is no chance I’m going to be converting to Catholicism, or any
other sky deity religions, I have to applaud the hard logical reasoning
and fresh insights as Vox takes a hammer to the arguments of Hitchens,
Dawkins & Harris. It’s a refreshing change from all the arguments
that boil down to “God exists, therefore God exists”.

That’s a fair summary. And before the Churchians leap in to wag their fingers, I will readily admit that my failure to love everyone is indicative of my imperfect Christianity. I’m also not particularly good on turning the other cheek, avoiding impure thoughts, and avoiding the use of rough language. But I fail to see that blatantly lying and erecting a false veneer of superficial spiritual perfection would be an improvement upon the open and honest expression of my thoughts and feelings on various matters.