Christian Morality – The Conservative-Patriot Christian Right

Here’s How the New Christian Left Is Twisting the Gospel

Intro to ‘Here’s How the New Christian Left Is Twisting the Gospel’

Edited by John R. Houk

By Chelsen Vicari

Intro posted March 16, 2017

I found an awesome article at CharismaMag.com warning of the dangers of “Progressive” Christianity particularly among those ministries that describe themselves as Evangelical. In essence, the warning is the Progressive Evangelicals are diluting Christian Morality with feel-good secular sensualism and calling it in effect contemporary morality that fits the times we live in.

Here is the Biblical warning that I believe is a good introduction to the Charisma article by Chelsen Vicari:

Matthew 24: 23-26, 37-39; 2 Peter 2: 1-5, 9-10, 12-16 (NKJV):

Matthew

²³“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. ²⁴For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. ²⁵See, I have told you beforehand.

²⁶“Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it.

³⁷But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. ³⁸For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,³⁹and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

2 Peter

Destructive Doctrines

2 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. ²And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. ³By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does^[^a^] not slumber.

Doom of False Teachers

⁴For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; ⁵and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;

⁹then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, ¹⁰and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed. They are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries,

Depravity of False Teachers

¹²But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption, ¹³and will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, ¹⁴having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. ¹⁵They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, ***following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; ¹⁶but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet. (Editor’s bold text)

*** Blog Editor it is important to recognize what the sin of Balaam is:

Nevertheless I have a few things against you, for you have there those who hold to the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication… (Rev 2:14)

By the end of the fourth ‘parable’ of Balaam, both he and Balak the king were fully aware of God’s purposes for Israel. The utter impossibility of using any kind of divination against Israel was now obvious to the badly shaken king and to the seer also – whose eyes God had opened.

…

But Balak and Balaam each worshipped their own gods. Balak’s god had already proven impotent, unable to stop the Israelite advance, nor to even allow them to be cursed. Balaam’s gods were money, prestige and position. He would not defect from them even in the face of the power of the God of Israel!

It would be a long trip home for Balaam, this time he would not be accompanied by the Arab nobles who had crossed the four hundred mile desert twice previously to court him. There would be lots of time to think though. But there would be no reward, no honor nor prestige for him, he had failed to successfully overcome Genesis 12:3, he simply couldn’t curse Israel. The God of Israel could not be induced to turn against them.

…

Balak and Balaam met again apparently, and organized a Pagan festival at Baal Peor, that is “Lord of the Opening”, within range of the encamped children of Israel. Paganism was and is a sensual affair – altars to Baal were set up, choice offerings of beef were set upon the grills, sensual music was conducted and the wives, daughters and virgins of Midian and Moab were presented as sacred prostitutes to any and all who were drawn to the party.

And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. And they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people did eat and bowed down. And Israel joined herself to Baal Peor, and the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel. (Numbers 25:1-3)

To the ones who left the camp of Israel, following the siren sound of the pagan music, the festival to Baal could be rationalized as just a sensual experience and nothing more. The aroma of the choice steaks cooking on the altars of Baal, the pleasures of the wine and women of Midian was all just a little relief from the monotony of a lifetime in the desert eating manna. We don’t really believe in Baal, we just need to blow off a little steam.

But to God these experiences represented so much more. ISRAEL HAS JOINED HERSELF TO BAAL PEOR, she has yoked herself to an alien god, she has played the harlot! So it is today that too often even a confessing Christian can also rationalize that compromise with fornication, pornography, worldliness and false religion are meaningless when it isn’t. Perhaps a similar soul killing plague is broken out among us also, and we just don’t realize it!

When a plague broke out in the camp of Israel, it almost looked as though Balaam’s teaching would obtain the intended result. God had not turned against Israel, but by Balaam’s counsel, Israel had turned against God, and would now pay the price of judgment against them.

… READ ENTIRETY (Balaam: The Doctrine of Balaam Part 5; By Pastor Bill Randles; Believers in Grace Ministries; 6/20/10)

Enticing teaching of the Left is the very moral dilution that explains the general destruction of the Christian foundations that have made America that one time shining light on a hill. America’s beacon of righteousness is diminished and we can look at the Secular Humanist agenda that has been filtered down from Left Wing Activist Courts, the Democratic Party and most recently former President Barack Hussein Obama.

AND NOW, Chelsen Vicari’s waring on the effects of Progressive Christianity.

JRH 3/16/17

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Here’s How the New Christian Left Is Twisting the Gospel

By CHELSEN VICARI

March 15, 2017 12:00 PM

CharismaMag.com

Couple of Christian Millennials – © Istockphoto/Thomas_EyeDesign

Peek behind the curtain of some “progressive” or “hip” evangelical churches, past the savvy technology and secular music, and you will find more than just a contemporary worship service. You’ll find faith leaders encouraging young evangelicals to trade in their Christian convictions for a gospel filled with compromise. They’re slowly attempting to give evangelicalism an “update”—and the change is not for the good.

It’s painful for me to admit, but we can no longer rest carefree in our evangelical identity—because it is changing. No doubt you have seen the headlines declaring that evangelicalism is doomed because evangelical kids are leaving the faith. It is no secret that there is an expanding gulf between traditional Christian teachings and contemporary moral values. But the sad truth is that the ideological gulf between America’s evangelical grown-ups and their kids, aka the millennials, seems to be widening too.

Somehow the blame for this chasm is being heaped on traditional churches. They are accused of having too many rules as well as being homophobic and bigoted. Yes, we’ve heard those false claims from popular culture in its desperate attempt to keep Christianity imprisoned within the sanctuary walls. But now popular culture is being aided by Christ-professing bedfellows whose message to “coexist,” “tolerate” and “keep out of it” is more marketable to the rising generation of evangelicals.

The seasoned Christian soldiers are noticing these distortions of the gospel. But for young evangelicals, the spiritual haze is harder to wade through. Desperate for acceptance in a fallen world, many young evangelicals (and some older ones) choose not to take Christ out of the chapel, and so they are unwittingly killing the church’s public witness. In this uphill cultural battle, mired by scare tactics and fear, three types of evangelical Christians are emerging:

Couch-potato Christians:These Christians adapt to the culture by staying silent on the tough culture-and-faith discussions. Typically, this group will downplay God’s absolute truths by promoting the illusion that neutrality was Jesus’ preferred method of evangelism.

Cafeteria-style Christians:This group picks and chooses which Scripture passages to live by, opting for the ones that best seem to jive with culture. Typically, they focus solely on the “nice” parts of the gospel while simultaneously and intentionally minimizing sin, hell, repentance and transformation.

Convictional Christians:In the face of the culture’s harsh admonitions, these evangelicals refuse to be silent. Mimicking Jesus, they compassionately talk about love and grace while also sharing with their neighbors the need to recognize and turn from sin.

I know about these three types of Christians because at one time or another, I have fallen into each of these three categories. My parents will tell you that even though I was raised in church, I morphed into a full-fledged feminist, told my parents they were ignorant for not endorsing homosexuality and bought into the distorted social justice rhetoric that confuses caring for the poor with advancing socialist or big government systems and demonizing the United States for its free-market system.

I’m not ashamed to share my story because my experiences and those of my fellow bold evangelicals are a testimony of God’s awesome, transforming power. Being countercultural for Christ isn’t easy. What does the Great Commission say? Jesus commanded us to go, “teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20a).

Where Did We Go Wrong?

I see so many parents scratching their heads trying to figure out where they went wrong with young evangelicals. Following the instructions of Proverbs 22:6—”Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”—many evangelical parents took their children to church and prayed with them every night before bed. Yet the values those children now hold dear do not reflect the traditional teachings of Jesus.

To be perfectly clear, I want to let you know up front that this isn’t a parenting how-to guide that, if followed, will lead your loved ones to salvation. Instead, what I can offer you is a glimpse into the world of a 20-something who sees thousands of young evangelicals being spiritually and emotionally targeted on Christian university campuses, in college ministries and at churches nationwide by a growing liberal movement cloaked in Christianity.

Research tells us evangelicals are drifting further away from the orthodox truths their parents and grandparents held dear.

Our churches have rarely—if ever—faced the exodus we are seeing today. This will have a direct effect on the spiritual and moral values that will shape the nation in the coming years. That is why it is urgent that concerned Christians start acting now before the situation gets worse.

The Collision of Faith and Culture

Faith and culture will continue to collide in America. The culture wars, the growth of family, the success of missions, the prosperity of our great nation—the future rests on millennial evangelicals’ worldview. And that is cause for concern, because something has gone wrong with young evangelicals’ theology.

The millennial generation’s susceptibility to “feel-good” doctrine is playing a big part in America’s moral decline. Millennials’ religious practices depend largely on how the actions make us and others feel, whether the activities are biblical or not. For example, we only attend churches that leave us feeling good about our lifestyle choices, even if those choices conflict with God’s clear commandments. We dismiss old hymns that focus on God’s transforming salvation, love and mercy and opt for “Jesus is your boyfriend” songs. Or we contribute to nonprofits that exploit and misuse terms such as justice, oppressed and inequality because tweaking the language makes us feel more neutral, less confrontational.

Popular liberal evangelical writers and preachers tell young evangelicals that if they accept abortion and same-sex marriage, then the media, academia and Hollywood will finally accept Christians. Out of fear of being falsely dubbed “intolerant” or “uncompassionate,” many young Christians are buying into theological falsehoods. Instead of standing up as a voice for the innocent unborn or marriage as God intended, millennials are forgoing the authority of Scripture and embracing a couch potato, cafeteria-style Christianity, all in the name of tolerance.

This contemporary mindset is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian whose Christian convictions put him at odds with the Nazis and cost him his life, called “cheap grace.” In his book The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer wrote: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

Right now, cheap grace theology is proliferating around evangelical Bible colleges, seminaries and Christian ministries.

Christian Doctrine Hijacked

It is not that millennial evangelicals were not taken to church by their parents. It is that their training has been hijacked by ineffective and sometimes intentionally distorted doctrine.

As constant and pervasive as the attacks on Christianity are at public universities, it is important to remember that millennials’ worldviews do not start taking shape after they move out of their parents’ houses. Their understanding of Jesus’ teachings and cultural convictions begins to form while they are still at home and under the influence of their local church.

What I hope and pray evangelical parents and leaders come to realize is that the church has been too trusting. In our jam-packed lifestyles, parents have treated Sunday school as they do softball or ballet class—drop off the kids for an hour, then pick them up and hope they learned something.

Early on in my Sunday school teaching days, my co-teacher and I followed the curriculum pretty narrowly, the exception being that my co-teacher had an outstanding knowledge of biblical history that he imparted to the kids.

We taught all about Jesus’ birth, resurrection and saving grace. Thinking the fluffy kids ministry curriculum covered all of the necessary bases, I felt confident these kids had a firm grasp on their Christian worldview. Boy, was I wrong!

One day my co-teacher and I decided to play “True or False.” We casually went down a list of worldview questions with our class, sure that our little evangelicals would nail every question correctly.

No. 1: Jesus is God. “True.” Great job.

No. 2: Jesus sinned. “False.” Bingo!

No. 3: Jesus is one of many ways to heaven. “True.” What?!

Shocked is the only way to describe how I felt. Hadn’t they been listening to us? When I asked who taught them that, one girl said, “Coexist.” Yes, these young evangelicals had been listening to their Sunday school teachers and their parents, but they had also been listening to their public school teachers, TV celebrities and rock stars.

Youth ministers, volunteer leaders and pastors also have to start preparing these kids to deal with the very real hostility that faces young evangelicals.

If we never talk about abortion in church, how can we expect the rising evangelical girl to calmly explain the option of adoption to her frightened best friend who just admitted she is pregnant?

What will surprise you is how much young evangelicals actually crave honest discussions about abortion, sexuality, sexual exploitation, feminism and radical Islam. My friend and Evangelical Action adviser Richmond Trotter has two non-negotiable topics when addressing youth: creation and life. Having volunteered in church youth ministry since 1996, Richmond is not afraid to have serious discussions about what Scripture says about abortion, evolution and homosexuality. Make no mistake: The trend away from biblical truth is not concentrated in the hipster city limits. It is unfolding in the crevices of America’s plains, hills, mountains and swamplands. All across this nation, “old-fashioned” conservative evangelicalism is being traded in for a bright and shiny, mediocre Christianity.

If America’s evangelicals disengage from the public square and fail to engage the rising generation of Christian leaders, then we risk losing our public voice, then our religious liberty, then liberty altogether.

What Happened to the Religious Right?

The last several decades witnessed tremendous evangelical influence in the United States. Leaders such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Paige and Dorothy Patterson, James Dobson and James and Betty Robison made a bold impact on America’s families, churches and government. Now that those few leaders are aging or retiring, or have died, there are very few traditional evangelical leaders left holding the torch, and even fewer candidates to whom they can pass it.

But religious convictions in America are not on the verge of disappearance just yet. There is still hope. In the book God Is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America, Gallup Inc. Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport opines: “Christianity will prevail in the U.S. America will remain very much a Christian nation in the decades ahead, albeit less so than in the past because of an increase in Americans who don’t have a religious identity.”

Heed the Warning Signs

Evangelicals and culture warriors in the U.S. do not have to look far to discover what happens when Christian denominations give up on their traditional convictions and teachings. All we have to do is look at the dwindling memberships of mainline Protestant denominations.

In order to safeguard the trajectory of young evangelicals, we must uphold the authoritative Word of God. It is imperative that those in a position to influence millennials have transparent and honest discussions about the culture wars in which evangelical youth are already engaging. Otherwise they will be silent and accepting in the face of persecution and false doctrine.

The importance of arming the next generation of evangelicals cannot be overstated. If we continue to follow the example of mainline Protestants, evangelicalism will have a gloomy future. We must offer sorely needed leadership, but before we can do that, we need to know exactly whom and what we are up against.

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Chelsen Vicari serves as the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s evangelical program director. Prior to joining the IRD, she worked for Concerned Women for America. She holds a bachelor of science in political science and history and a master’s degree in international politics. Her articles on evangelicalism and public policy have appeared in TheBlaze, The Christian Post and RealClearReligion. She recently wrote her first book, Distortion, from which this article is excerpted.

In her book Distortion: How the Christian Left Is Twisting the Gospel and Damaging the Faith, Chelsen Vicari reveals the disturbing truths behind liberal teachings. Using her own experience, Vicari shows how the deception impacts Christianity and the church. This book can be found wherever Christian books are sold or at amazon.com or christianbook.com.

CHARISMA MAGAZINE — EMPOWERING BELIEVERS FOR LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

About Charisma Magazine

To passionate, Spirit-filled Christians, Charisma is the leading charismatic media source that inspires them to radically change their world. Since 1975, Charisma magazine has been a trusted source of news, teaching and inspiration to help spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

As the voice of the charismatic movement, Charisma has steadily combined award-winning news coverage of what the Holy Spirit is doing around the world with relevant, timely messages from leaders in the Spirit-empowered community. Yet even from its earliest days, Charisma has always been about more than what’s on the pages of a monthly magazine.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Charisma led the way for Christian news outlets through such vehicles as a news wire service, television news specials and a robust website. At the same time, the magazine’s live conferences and events, which featured a who’s-who list of today’s top Christian leaders, drew tens of thousands.

Today, Charisma continues to expand as a multifaceted media source that reaches millions each month. Charisma News has developed into its own brand under the Charisma umbrella, offering 24/7 coverage for believers who want the latest news delivered with trusted insight from a Spirit-filled perspective. Charisma magazine, meanwhile, has grown beyond print into the digital realm of apps, rich-media-filled tablet editions, a robust website, social media platforms and various other online vehicles.

While the charismatic movement in America has changed, the Spirit-empowered community is now the largest segment of evangelical Christendom around the world. And … READ THE REST

The Totalitarian Blueprint: William J. Murray’s New Book Documents the Horrors Unleashed by Utopian Dreamers

To my readers: I have been overcoming a horrible cold which is still lingers but is thankfully departing. Ergo I am a bit behind in my daily blog studying and posting. In an effort to reboot my posting let me share an interesting book plug email I received from WND today.

WND Books is plugging “Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World with Central Planning” By William J. Murray, son of former atheist apologist Madalyn Murray O’Hair. O’Hare is the gal responsible for contributing to the Left Wing transformationist agenda of removing Christianity from America’s public forum in which the Supreme Court found a case to reinterpret the Original Intent of the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (First Amendment – U.S. Constitution; FindLaw.com)

Atheists like Madalyn Murray O’Hair convinced a majority of Living Constitution-believing Justices that “… make no law respecting an establishment of religion” meant a government/public forum separate and without religion. Incidentally, “religion” as understood by the Founding Fathers meant “Christianity”. The word “separate” or “separation” is NO Where found in the U.S. Constitution in relation to faith.

Phrasing was originally and should be now, the People shall not have the government impose a religion (specifically – establish a State Church) but the People shall be free to exercise their faith in private OR public as in and on the auspices of government.

Consider this my intro to the WND Books plug for William J. Murray’s book “Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World with Central Planning”.

JRH 3/7/16

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The Totalitarian Blueprint: William J. Murray’s New Book
Documents the Horrors Unleashed by Utopian Dreamers

WND Books

Sent: 3/7/2016 11:45 AM

WASHINGTON — Utopian dreamers are deceived and deceiving. Their “fight for the people” rhetoric may sound good at first, but history proves the egalitarian governments and cultures they try to create destroy freedom, destroy creativity, destroy human lives, create poverty and misery and often spread beyond their borders to bring others under slavery. They believe that through their own personal brilliance a better society can be created on earth. When the belief in man as a creation in the image of God is completely rejected, the use of slavery and mass execution can be justified in the name of the creation of a utopian state for the masses. Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, together these so-called visionaries through their fanciful policies are responsible for the death of millions of people.

In Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World with Central Planning, William J. Murray, son of former atheist apologist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, describes the totalitarians throughout history and the current utopians who are determined to engage in social engineering to control the lives of every person on earth. From Marx to Hitler, Murray explains the progression of socialist engineering from its occultist roots to the extreme madness of the Nazi’s nationalistic racism. From Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the rebellious desire to be free from morality drives the “at-any-cost” campaigns such as abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, overreaching government provisions. From Woodrow Wilson’s “living document” distortion of the Constitution and his income tax to FDR’s New Deal to Obama’s executive orders, those who seek centralized power typically do so by proclaiming some utopian scheme that they claim will perfect mankind and eliminate competition, greed, poverty, and war.

To be released by WND Books on March 8, 2015, Murray’s Utopian Road to Hell masterfully educates us of the utopians’ swath of destruction in history and warns us of the dangers of present-day utopians fighting to hold power today. We must heed the warning of George Washington when he said in his 1796 Farewell Address that it is important for those entrusted with the administration of this great and free nation, “to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.” We must reclaim the freedom of the individual to avoid the continued path down the utopian road to hell.
William J. Murray is the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition in Washington, DC. For more than three decades he has been at the forefront of social conservatism. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC News and has authored hundreds of columns, which have appeared online and in print. William J. Murray continues to work for the rights of Christians in America and persecuted Christians around the world and is the author of eight books.

Utopian Road to Hell will be in bookstores nationwide on March 8, 2016.

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Liberty or Big Brother Order – YOU Choose

John R. Houk

© July 12, 2015

Somehow (probably of my own doing) I have found myself on the mailing list of the Campaign for Liberty. Undoubtedly since I reside in the great State of Oklahoma, the national organization has funneled my name to the local State chapter. The Campaign for Liberty is plugged into the Conservative-Libertarian views of former Representative Ron Paul. I confess I have an affinity for Ron Paul’s policy reforms on a national level; however his foreign policy ideals are something I am in great disagreement.

I’m not real big on Ron Paul isolationist policies to manage the national budget in a more efficient manner. It is my belief once America relinquishes the reach of its military prowess, ideologies (the variations of Marxist-Socialist transnationalism), religions of hate (viz. Islam and Islamic Supremacist ideologies) and various reawakenings of foreign American-hating nationalism (e.g. Russia and Iran); THEN America’s National Security will be vulnerable to outside intrusions into our way of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The thing is though, if America continues on the Left Wing path that Obama’s transformation agenda has sent we Americans, great turmoil will occur in our nation once the rest of the Americans awaken to the loss of the American way of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Once that awakening occurs then those who still are drawn to the Founding Fathers’ revolutionary paradigm will recall the words framed by Thomas Jefferson and signed by the representatives from Thirteen British-American Colonies demanding the bonds of tyranny from an unjust government be ended – by arms if necessary.

In that spirit I share this email not only with my fellow Oklahomans but also with the citizens of all these United States to take a moment and contemplate the posterity of American freedoms especially under the light of the Christian principles and morality those former Englishmen and other Europeans brought to the then British American Colonies to worship as freely as an equal to the Church of England.

It is time for Americans to unite under the Freedom and Liberty issues that draw us together and not to hold the slimmer issues in which we might be in variance to separate us. For example, I am not an isolationists. BUT a time may arise in which isolationism vs. international military power is rendered irrelevant in the face of any tyranny that threatens our moral Freedom, moral Liberty and our moral Common Good.

JRH 7/12/15

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They Want You to Stop Paying Attention

By Kirk Shelley – Oklahoma State Coordinator

Sent from: Oklahoma Campaign for Liberty

Sent: 7/9/2015 3:04 PM

After election season, legislators count on you to stop paying attention, go back to your daily lives, and forget about politics until they need your vote again.

They want you to blindly believe their legislative votes will line up with their party platform and campaign rhetoric.

What happens if you believe them?

The state apparatus will continue to bury your liberties and squander your resources.

And you can most certainly count on the horse-trading and backroom deals to continue.

They’ll sell your rights to the highest bidder . . . if you let them.

If you’re willing to take the lead and help Campaign for Liberty throw a wrench in their plans, please click here to let us know.

Every year, thousands of bills are passed across the nation. The vast majority of them limit your liberty in some way.

In fact, there are currently so many laws on the books at the federal level alone, the Congressional Research Service has admitted they can’t even keep track of all of them!

It’s said the average American is guilty of breaking 3 federal laws every day and they don’t even know it.

Imagine how that translates when you add in state and local laws.

Many (if not most) bills are passed every year because some powerful, establishment insiders and their well-financed cronies hit the right pressure points and bought the right legislators to get the job done.

And the result is a windfall to those same politicians and their powerful allies, but they annihilate your liberties.

Said to be one of the greatest historians, Gaius Tacitus said, “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.”

How right he was.

Will you help Campaign for Liberty fight back?

If you’re willing to help by taking the lead in your area, please click here to let us know.

All across the country, Campaign for Liberty grassroots leaders are taking on the status quo at the local, state, and national levels.

These activists have taken the time to learn and implement C4L’s winning model and they are defeating statist schemes at every level of government.

Do you believe in individual liberty and constitutional government?

Are you tired of Big Government’s attacks on your rights?

Are you ready to do what it takes to neutralize the anti-liberty politicians in your Township, School Board, City Council, and State Legislature?

If you’re willing to learn and apply our proven model, you’ll be provided with extensive training options and materials, as well as support from our volunteer leadership network and State Operations staff.

Do you have the desire to lead but lack experience? Don’t let that stop you! Some of the most successful C4L coordinators in the country started out with little or no experience.

Our training materials will provide you with:

· Tips on how to start and grow your local group;

· A clear understanding on why the typical “Access-Based” lobbying method does not work;

· Proven techniques other successful C4L groups are implementing;

· Tips on how to employ these effective techniques to achieve meaningful victory;

· And much, much more.

You don’t need vast experience in the field to be selected as a new coordinator.

If you are serious about learning what it takes to win, are willing to apply the C4L model, and have a desire to lead others to victory, we have the tools to help you succeed.

If you’re ready to foil the establishment’s schemes against your liberty, click here to let us know.

In Liberty,

Kirk Shelley
Oklahoma State Coordinator
Campaign for Liberty

P.S. Every year, thousands of bills are passed across the nation. The vast majority of them limit your liberty in some way.

Gaius Tacitus was correct when he said, “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.”

If you’re tired of Big Government’s attacks on your liberties, believe in limited, constitutional government, and are ready to join the winning team advocating for freedom, I want to hear from you.

Click here to let us know you’re willing to take the lead and help Campaign for Liberty throw a wrench in the establishment’s plans.

_____________________

Liberty or Big Brother Order – YOU Choose

John R. Houk

© July 12, 2015

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They Want You to Stop Paying Attention

Campaign for Liberty Oklahoma State Page

Campaign for Liberty (National) About Page

Statement of Principles

Americans inherit from our ancestors a glorious tradition of freedom and resistance to oppression. Our country has long been admired by the rest of the world for her great example of liberty and prosperity—a light shining in the darkness of tyranny.

But many Americans today are frustrated. The political choices they are offered give them no real choice at all. For all their talk of “change,” neither major political party as presently constituted challenges the status quo in any serious way. Neither treats the Constitution with anything but contempt. Neither offers any kind of change in monetary policy. Neither wants to make the reductions in government that our crushing debt burden demands. Neither talks about bringing American troops home not just from Iraq but from around the world. Our country is going bankrupt, and none of these sensible proposals are even on the table.

This destructive bipartisan consensus has suffocated American political life for many years. Anyone who tries to ask fundamental questions instead of cosmetic ones is ridiculed or ignored.

That is why the Campaign for Liberty was established: to highlight the neglected but common-sense principles we champion and reinsert them into the American political conversation.

The U.S. Constitution is at the heart of what the Campaign for Liberty stands for, since the very least we can demand of our government is fidelity to its own governing document. Claims that our Constitution was meant to be a “living document” that judges may interpret as they please are fraudulent, incompatible with republican government, and without foundation in the constitutional text or the thinking of the Framers. Thomas Jefferson spoke of binding our rulers down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution, and we are proud to follow in his distinguished lineage.

With our Founding Fathers, we also believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy. Inspired by the old Robert Taft wing of the Republican Party, we are convinced that the American people cannot remain free and prosperous with 700 military bases around the world, troops in 130 countries, and a steady diet of war propaganda. Our military overstretch is undermining our national defense and bankrupting our country.

We believe that the free market, reviled by people who do not understand it, is the most just and humane economic system and the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known.

We believe with Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and F.A. Hayek that central banking distorts economic decision making and misleads entrepreneurs into making unsound investments. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks’ interference with interest rates sets the stage for economic downturns. And the central bank’s ability to create money out of thin air transfers wealth from the most vulnerable to those with political pull, since it is the latter who receive the new money before the price increases it brings in its wake have yet occurred. For economic and moral reasons, therefore, we join the great twentieth-century economists in opposing the Federal Reserve System, which has reduced the value of the dollar by 95 percent since it began in 1913.

We oppose the dehumanizing assumption that all issues that divide us must be settled at the federal level and forced on every American community, whether by activist judges, a power-hungry executive, or a meddling Congress. We believe in the humane alternative of local self-government, as called for in our Constitution.

We oppose the transfer of American sovereignty to supranational organizations in which the American people possess no elected representatives. Such compromises of our country’s independence run counter to the principles of the American Revolution, which was fought on behalf of self-government and local control. Most of these organizations have a terrible track record even on their own terms: how much poverty have the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund actually alleviated, for example? The peoples of the world can interact with each other just fine in the absence of bureaucratic intermediaries that undermine their sovereignty.

We believe that freedom is an indivisible whole, and that it includes not only economic liberty but civil liberties and privacy rights as well, all of which are historic rights that our civilization has cherished from time immemorial.

Our stances on other issues can be deduced from these general principles.

Our country is ailing. That is the bad news. The good news is that the remedy is so simple and attractive: a return to the principles our Founders taught us. Respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, individual liberty, sound money, and a noninterventionist foreign policy constitute the foundation of the Campaign for Liberty.

The First Freedom

Justin Smith captures the essence of SCOTUS joining the American Left to destroy Christianity in a stealthy slow whittling manner.

JRH 7/6/15

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The First Freedom

By Justin O. Smith

Sent: 7/4/2015 1:41 PM

“Natural law – God’s law – will always trump common law. God will have the final word in this matter.” – Alveda King, a Christian leader and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece

The Supreme Court’s recent egregious and error-filled ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, favoring homosexual marriage, has seriously endangered the liberty of all Americans, through its gross distortions of the documents fundamental to American liberty. This ruling, facilitated by five Progressive Justices acting like oligarchs, created through judicial decree a previously non-existent “constitutional right” to sin-based “gay marriage,” and it showed all Americans that they can never again trust in the rulings of the Court, when Liberty hangs in the balance.

The First Freedom — Religious Liberty — is currently in crisis, because the many activist federal judges and “conservative” Justices, like Anthony Kennedy, are willing to move Left, even if they must defy the Constitution. Too many conservatives have refused to stand in defense of religious liberty, and they follow rules that Democrats ignore, as these Progressives unfold their Machiavellian plan. If religious liberty can be undone by decree, and the people allow it, then so too can every other liberty be undone.

The Framers of Our Constitution thought that Congress’s “power of instituting impeachments,” explained by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, would be an “important constitutional check” and would provide “a complete security against the justices’ deliberate usurpations of the authority of the legislature.” [The Essential Federalist Papers; Edited by Steve Straub; The Federalist Papers Project; 10/3/13; Federalist 81- pg. 24 of document – pg. 25 of PDF] But, with Congress currently lacking will and backbone, any prospect of impeachment is virtually non-existent and still offers no remedy.

In March of 1788, Robert Yates, a New York judge, published the ‘Anti-Federalist Papers’ under the name “Brutus.” [You can find the text to all Brutus Anti-Federalist essays HERE.] He noted that the Supreme Court would favor the increase of federal power at the expense of the states [Blog Editor’s opinion: These Brutus essays are must reads to ascertain Justin Smith’s exegesis of Robert Yates’ on SCOTUS, the States and Legislature – XI, XII, XIII and XV], just in the manner we now see state laws defining marriage as only between a man and a woman recently eradicated. Brutus also worried that SCOTUS could use its interpretive “principles, whatever they may be” to explain its own power and define that of the legislative branch through the threat of having its laws declared unconstitutional; so the precedent of Obergefell v. Hodges portends terribly evil events surrounding any future legislation on abortion or marriage.

Justice John Roberts’ dissent proves the truth of Brutus’s words:

“The majority’s ruling is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution … The majority expressly disclaims judicial ‘caution’ and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own ‘new insight’ into the ‘nature of injustice.'” [Entire Roberts Dissent]

Isn’t it curious and sickening that homosexuality, considered a mental disorder throughout the 1970s by the American Psychiatric Association and considered perverted and criminal by society until this century, is now supposedly acceptable, with homo-marriage “a constitutional right”?

Obergefell v. Hodges effectively nullified the votes of 50 million Americans, representing 60% of votes cast on the matter to date, and negated their affirmation that marriage is between one man and one woman. Thus, five Black Robes — the Court — trampled on the constitutional authority of the American people and our elected representatives to make marriage policy.

In part, Justice Antonin Scalia’s scathing dissent stated [Search Page: “SCALIA, J., dissenting”]:

“The five Justices … have discovered in the 14th Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds … John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand … Hugo Black … could not. ,,, These Justices know that an institution [marriage as defined as being between one man and one woman] as old as the government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until fifteen years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance and bigotry. … The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis.”

Any honest reading of the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause would conclude that Christians cannot be forced to violate their conscience through compulsory participation in, or recognition of, “gay marriages”; however, while the First Amendment guarantees the freedom to “exercise” religion, the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges omits any mention of the free exercise clause, suggesting only that the Keepers of the Faith may continue to “advocate” and “teach” our views of marriage.

Without a doubt, a total purge of America’s Judeo-Christian principles and values is underway in the public square and our education systems, and this “gay marriage” and sodomite deviancy nonsense is nothing more than a move to force Christ’s faithful, under penalty of law to abandon Biblical Truth and accept sexual sin in their midst, with the endgame essentially being the silencing of all Christian dissent: I will not let them silence me.

Pat Buchanan recently asked (in ‘Quo Vadis’),

“Does moral truth change? Are the Ten Commandments and Christian tradition and Natural law as defined by Aquinas just fine for their time, but not for ours?”

Todd Starnes (Fox News Radio) recently reported that Linda Barnette, from Grenada County-Mississippi, left her County Clerk position after 24 years of service, rather than issue marriage licenses to homosexuals. She wrote, “I choose to obey God rather than man,” in her one paragraph resignation letter. Unfortunately, the Court Clerk of Rutherford County, my home, did not have the same moral compass, resolve and strength of conviction, issuing homosexual “marriage licenses” immediately.

This homo-marriage ruling comes straight from Hell’s abyss, even though it supposedly still protects religious liberty. Aside from creating new furious debate, this ruling will also increase Christian persecution, through Leftist Progressive lawsuit abuse against Christian individuals, like Cynthia and Robert Gifford, who recently appealed a $13,000 fine they received for refusing to host a “gay wedding” at their privately owned Liberty Ridge Farm (Albany, NY) in June, as they argue that the lower court did not consider their constitutional freedoms and religious beliefs.

More than equality under the law — more than toleration — the “gay” community wants to force all Americans to validate their immorality. And, as such, Christians must refuse to comply with any ruling that forces us into any unwanted association with homosexuals, and we must demand that Congress restrains the Court by defunding it, if necessary: America — do not obey this rogue Court’s ruling.

Christians must tell the truth and fight back hard, if they don’t want to become second class citizens. Tell about a nation founded on Religious Freedom and rights that don’t end the moment we leave church, and fight for the 70% of Americans who claim to be Christians. Tell about the raw hatred for Christians that is driving the illiberal Progressives to crush religious freedom just as Marx and Engels mandated, and fight for religious freedom acts in all fifty states in order to counter today’s open warfare on Christians by the Left.

By Justin O Smith

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Edited by John R. Houk

All links as well as text embraced by brackets are by the Editor.

© Justin O. Smith

US Government Moves to Force Churches to Deny Christian Sexual Morality!

Matt Barber has written a very perceptive editorial on how America’s Leftists and homosexual activists have begun Orwellian Newspeak a la the novel “1984”. Dipping into ye ole Newspeak legislation is being pushed to FORCE Christians to acceptance ungodly morals whether they like it or not. Barber implies a fascinating yet horrifying illustration the future of Christianity might be that of wearing special sown on garment indicating the Christians as societal pariahs. Look back in history to what Jews endured during the Nazi German reign of terror.

JRH 5/1/15

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US Government Moves to Force Churches to Deny Christian Sexual Morality!

By Matt Barber

27 April 2015

EagleRising.com

Amid the cross-country race to election 2016, the secular left’s utter disdain for both our Creator Christ and His faithful followers is fast approaching critical mass. Self-styled “progressives” – that is, America’s cultural Marxist agents of ruin – typically disguise their designs on despotism in the flowery and euphemistic language of “reproductive health,” “anti-discrimination” and “multiculturalism.”

We see this Orwellian newspeak at play right now in Washington, D.C., where congressional Republicans endeavor to prevent, if only timorously, two unconstitutional pieces of legislation from taking effect. The first, the District of Columbia’s so-called “Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act,” would force pro-life groups, including churches and para-church organizations, to hire pro-abortion zealots and other godless rabble-rousers with worldviews and socio-political agendas overtly hostile to the express mission of those churches and organizations.

The second, the farcically mislabeled “Human Rights Amendment Act,” would jettison the longstanding “Armstrong Amendment,” which, as notes the Daily Signal, “was enacted by Congress in 1989 to exempt religious schools in D.C. from being forced into violating their beliefs about human sexuality by ‘promoting, encouraging, or condoning any homosexual act, lifestyle, orientation, or belief.’”

In other words, under this new legislation churches and religious schools will be forced, under penalty of law, to deny the Christian sexual ethic and, instead, promote, encourage and condone homosexual behavior and other pagan sexual immorality.

So much for “human rights.”

Still, while most on the left are careful to mask their totalitarian goals and anti-Christian animus by coating these poison pills in sugar sweet jargon, on occasion one of these God-denying goose-steppers will let down his guard, drop the euphemistic BS, and vomit forth that acidic bile, unfiltered “progressivism.”

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Tayler is one such goose-stepper. In an April 19 Salon.com screed headlined, “Marco Rubio’s deranged religion, Ted Cruz’s bizarre faith: Our would-be presidents are God-fearing clowns,” “freethinking” Jeffrey, a paragon of paganism, ably puts the “bigot” in anti-Christian bigotry.

In reference to the 2016 presidential candidates who call themselves Christian, Tayler bemoans that these “God-fearing clowns and faith-mongering nitwits [are] groveling before Evangelicals.” He further protests Christians’ “nattering on about their belief in the Almighty and their certainty that if we just looked, we could find answers to many of our ills in the Good Book.”

Right, it’s called the Gospel, Jeffrey. It’s the only hope that either you or any of us has.

“There will almost certainly be no (declared) atheist or even agnostic among the candidates,” he laments. “This is scandalous, given the electorate’s gradual, relentless ditching of religion.”

Gradual? That’s a gaping understatement when one considers that even today over 80 percent of Americans identify as Christian with the vast majority of those who don’t nevertheless acknowledging the transcendent reality of a Creator God. Every man, woman and child understands through both general revelation and human reason that this unfathomably intricate, staggeringly fine-tuned universe didn’t create and fine-tune itself. It’s a tiny minority of angry, self-deluded materialists like Jeffrey Tayler who deny this self-evident truth. Scandalous? Hardly.

Continues Tayler: “With the dapper Florida Sen. Marco Rubio we move into the more disturbing category of Republicans we might charitably diagnose as ‘faith-deranged’ – in other words, as likely to do fine among the unwashed ‘crazies’ in the red-state primaries, but whose religious beliefs would (or should) render them unfit for civilized company anywhere else.”

Sound familiar? Such hubristic elitism is so 1939. It was similarly “faith-deranged,” “unwashed crazies” in Germany who, at that time, were numerically branded “unfit for civilized company.” Shall we Christians be fitted with yellow crosses, Herr Tayler?

Our Darwinian disbeliever then distills the timeless Christian faith to “far-fetched fiction and foolish figments” before launching into a tirade against the left’s favorite candidate to hate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, while, likewise, knifing twixt the shoulder blades, the richly diverse, 100 thousand-plus student body at Liberty University.

“Cruz pandered fulsomely to the faith-deranged by choosing to announce at Liberty University, that bastion of darkness located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Once administered by the late Jerry Falwell, Liberty promises a ‘World Class Christian education’ and boasts that it has been ‘training champions for Christ since 1971′ – grounds enough, in my view, to revoke the institution’s charter and subject it to immediate quarantine until sanity breaks out.”

Are you getting this? Tayler’s not joking about revoking Liberty’s accreditation and otherwise consigning all faithful Christians to a constructive encampment beyond the margins of functional society. That’s their end-game. That’s the way their boxcars roll.

Neither do our papist friends escape unscathed. Tayler smears the Catholic Church as a “fanatical homophobic cult,” while blaspheming his own Creator. He inquires in litmus of some obscure atheist candidate, “[I]f you are indeed an atheist, will you come out of the closet about it? Will you utter that vilest of stock phrases ‘God bless America!’ to close speeches, thereby lending undue credence to the nonsense notion that an invisible tyrant rules us from on high?”

“Atheists can dream,” he pines. “They can dream of a candidate (and future president) who will, one day, say ‘I do not believe in God. I do not believe in a hereafter.’”

And why not? Russia had its Stalin and China its Mao. Who needs an “invisible tyrant” when we can elect one at the ballot box?

Or didn’t we already do that.

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About the author: Matt Barber

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war.

Homosexuals Attack Free Speech with Petition Threat

John R. Houk

© December 5, 2014

Do you know who Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are? If you do then good, you’ll already have an inkling about the nature of this post. Admittedly I never heard of them until I received an American Family Association (AFA) email alert about them. Evidently the Duggars – including their 19 children – are the stars of a family reality show on the TLC Network.

Duggars are a faith based family. Being Christians supporting Christian morality drives atheists, Leftists and – wait for it– homosexuals very apoplectic. Michelle Duggar has gone on record protesting a city ordinance in Fayetteville, Arkansas that allows transgender men in the Lady’s room in public places. And the real fits began against the Duggars when Michelle stuck to her Christian principles and got involved in some grassroots lobbying with robocalls condemning the Fayetteville ordinance.

Homosexual activists became so annoyed with Michelle Duggar that they began a Change.org petition to have the Duggar reality show “19 Kids and Counting” removed from the TLC Network line-up.

This is another example of the Left Wing war on Christians, particularly against traditional Biblical based Christians that adhere to Christian morality. The propaganda from the Left and Homosexual activists that Christian morality is aberrant and offensive belief system in the 21^st century.

It is both sad and joyous that America is in a day when homosexuals can call Christians an aberrancy and an offensive group of people. It is sad because Christianity is one of the hallmarks of America’s exceptionalism even as far back as colonial days. It is joyous because when society voluntarily falls away from the Christian faith it is one of the evidences of a soon return of Jesus Christ the Son of God to govern the entire planet as King of kings and Lord of lords.

³Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

⁹“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. ¹⁰And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. ¹¹Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. ¹²And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. ¹³But he who endures to the end shall be saved. (Matthew 24: 3, 9-13 NKJV)

¹ Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, ²not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ^[^a^] had come. ³Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin^[^b^] is revealed, the son of perdition, ⁴who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God^[^c^] in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

⁹The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, ¹⁰and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. ¹¹And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, ¹²that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

¹³But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, ¹⁴to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁵Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. (2 Thessalonians 2: 1-4, 9-15 NKJV)

Truthfully I doubt that I will ever watch the Duggar family reality show on TLC; but I can’t sit here and not do anything to stand against homosexual bullying of Christians and the opinions of Christians. The AFA email has link to their November 21 post of a petition. There are other supportive petitions to sign as well. Dear God sign every petition that supports the Christian faith above making ungodliness an accepted practice.

The First Petition: Life Site News

JRH 12/5/14

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The Duggar family is counting on you

Sent: December 1, 2014

American Family Association

In a short time, we will be sending our petition signed by hundreds of thousands of good people, who refuse to be bullied by a noisy group of angry homosexual activists.

Sadly, we’re missing your signature!

The Duggar family is standing firm on God’s word that marriage is sacred and can only be defined as God intended – one man and one woman. They (and we) would love to know you stand with them!

The cruel and hateful rhetoric coming from the liberal left against the Duggar family has been relentless, and their campaign strategy is always the same – attack everyone who disagrees with their unnatural view of same-sex “marriage.”

Can we count on you to stand with the Duggars by signing the petition to TLC, urging them to keep “19 Kids and Counting” on the air?

Support the Duggars by signing the petition to TLC now!

TLC needs to know you support the Duggars and 19 Kids and Counting. If TLC hears from enough viewers, they will not even consider canceling the show.

Help us reach our goal of 1,000,000 signatures by Christmas. Add your name to the petition today!

TAKE ACTION NOW!

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TLC stays mum on call for 19 Kids and Counting cancellation; 200,000 sign petition to keep the show

By Cath Martin

December 1, 2014

Christian Today

TV network TLC is staying silent in the battle of petitions over the future of reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting.

Pro-gay advocates have been calling for the show’s cancellation via a petition on the Change.org website, but their efforts have triggered a groundswell of support for the Duggar family from others who support their position on sexuality.

The Change.org petition was launched back in August attacking Michelle Duggar’s “fearmongering” and “hatred” after she publicly challenged an ordinance in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that would have allowed transgender women to use female restrooms.

It was also critical of the oldest son of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, Josh, because of his involvement with the conservative think tank, Family Research Council.

“Duggar words reek of ignroance and fear mongering. Just because someone is transgendered doesn’t mean they are a child predator or a rapist. The claim that this ordinance would provide predators with access to women’s restrooms in order to assault or leer at girls or women is nothing more than fear-mongering and spreading ignornace and hatred,” it read.

It has been signed over 170,000 times, and signatures spiked in recent weeks when it was widely publicised on entertainment media outlets.

The petition defending the family, launched a week ago on the LifeSiteNews website, has been signed by over 204,000 times.

“The Duggar Family is under attack from anti-marriage advocates for standing for traditional marriage,” the petition says.

“We commend The Duggar Family for their brave stand in defending marriage as ordained by God between one man and one woman. No individual’s sexual behavior and chosen lifestyle has the right to redefine marriage.

Its supporters include senator Rick Santorum, who told the website that the Duggars were “a wonderful family, and Karen and I support them and encourage folks to stand with the Duggars against these ridiculous attacks from the left”.

The Christian Post said it had contacted TLC for its reaction to the petitions and a spokesperson said they had no comment to make on the matter.

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Petition Calling for Duggars to Remain on TV Passes 200,000 Signatories; TLC Refuses Comment on Issue – 11/28/14

Don’t Let Them Perish – 11/28/14

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Homosexuals Attack Free Speech with Petition Threat

John R. Houk

© December 5, 2014

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The Duggar family is counting on you

American Family Association
P O Drawer 2440 | Tupelo, MS 38803 | 1-662-844-5036
Copyright ©2014 American Family Association. All Rights Reserved

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TLC stays mum on call for 19 Kids and Counting cancellation; 200,000 sign petition to keep the show

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Transforming to Conservatism with an Illumination of Heresy

John R. Houk

© August 8, 2014

Years ago when I became a Born Again Christian I began the ironic evolution (ironic because since being Born Again I am not a huge fan of Darwinian Evolution) of moving from a Center-Left Liberal to a downright Christian Right Conservative. And honestly there are quite a few Neoconservative ideas in which I have an affinity.

I began with this micro-bio of my faith because I read a fascinating article from the Acton Institute with the theme of heretics and heresy. I first became aware of the Acton Institute back in the days of the disillusionment I began having with the Democratic Party. Just think, back in the early 1980’s the Dems were not even close to being as anti-Christian as they have become under the direction of President Barack Hussein Obama. One of the last good Dems was still in the Senate – Henry (Scoop) Jackson – in Washington State where I grew up in Eastern Washington.

Senator Jackson was quite Liberal on most domestic issues (I am a bit uncertain social issues such as abortion and gay marriage). On the other hand before terms like Neoconservatism and American Exceptionalism was a political cause, Jackson was quite supportive of a strong military to confront Marxist expansionism embodied by the then Soviet Union. Jackson believed in supporting Western-style democracy in foreign governments to confront the totalitarianism that was the spread of the disease of Communism.

After abandoning the Dems I was not politically transformed enough to be a Republican. Hence in 1980 I did not vote for Ronald Reagan. Actually I don’t even remember the name of the Candidate I voted for in 1980 except it was the Libertarian Party’s candidate for POTUS. I voted Libertarian because of my disgust for Carter and my distrust Reagan (at the time) as a button pushing warmonger. It is in these Libertarian days that I found the writings of Lord John Acton, Ayn Rand (See Also HERE and HERE) and Ludwig von Mises. Libertarians promoted these people as pioneers of Libertarianism. Although my insight today is these guys though definitely espoused much of the Libertarian ideals, none of them would call themselves Libertarian in today’s sense of social Liberalism and Free Market Conservatism as expressed in this thought:

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property-rights that people have naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force-actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud. (Quote from Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz; Found at – What is Libertarian? Written for Institute of Humane Studies at George Mason University)

This train of thought sounded like a great compromise between the exploitive ravages of Left Wing Liberalism and the part of Conservatism I was not ready embrace, viz. a super military with the ability to threaten the people of Independent nations that live under a different political paradigm in which Americans are acquainted. Today I view the latter as naïve wishful thinking that people can just get along. The former sounded great from a Liberty point of view yet I came to realize Social Libertarianism did not comply with the Biblical view of God Almighty.

This social view hypocritically viewed the rights of female individuals trump the rights of unborn human beings in a woman’s womb. This social view deceptively justifies immoral living as acceptable as long as it doesn’t cause physical harm to another person. This is deceptive because if the Creator says it is wrong that means there is harm to the inner man (or inner person to feminists and Liberals) of an individual both in person and to those unwittingly exposed to immorality from another. And so, I abandoned Libertarianism.

I have found that the Acton Institute (actually founded in 1990) named after Lord John Acton promotes Conservative economics and Godly morality.

And hence I return to the fascinating article from the Acton Institute entitled, “Heretics and Heresies, New and Old”. Here Hunter Baker brilliantly demonstrates that a heretic can be something other than merely deviating from the orthodox principles of a particular faith.

JRH 8/8/14

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Heretics and Heresies, New and Old

By Hunter Baker

August 6, 2014

Acton Institute

You may not have realized it, but Tony Dungy is a heretic. Does the former football player, coach and now TV analyst hold beliefs that are considered heretical by his fellow Christians? No. But his recent doubts about Michael Sam as an NFL player (you’ll recall Sam as the All American college athlete who has publicly announced that he’s gay), caused Dungy to be viewed as a heretic by members of another sect that is gaining adherents at a rapid pace. They are more sure of themselves than ever. Where once they pleaded for tolerance, now they sense that they are gaining the upper hand. “There can be no tolerance for ideas that are wrong,” they explain. And they are thinking it might be time to exercise new power.

Whether the issue is the HHS mandate regarding the provision of contraceptive products or new attitudes regarding same-sex romance and marriage, the group holding what might be called “progressive” attitudes has demonstrated a willingness to push those who disagree into conforming. The Christian florist or baker must be brought to heel. Maybe even sent away for sensitivity training. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a narrow decision in favor of Hobby Lobby, the secular-progressives howled as though some peasant had failed to remove his hat in the presence of the king.

The issue hasn’t always been sex or bioethics. If we look back into the 20^th century, we can see the Soviets persecuting heretics of a different kind. In Russia, the heresy was the idea that the state should be limited or that people should be able to determine their own economic destiny. Some heretics even thought (gasp!) that citizens should be allowed to own property. While they were at it, of course, the Soviets, and the Bolsheviks before them, launched a massive persecution of Christians that heaped up martyrs by the millions.

China under Chairman Mao had heretics, too. These were people who had doubts about The Great Leap Forward and other plans set forth by the great leader who declared that “China has stood up!” Some of the heretics were people like college professors who had to be humbled by being sent out into the rural areas to perform farm labor. Others forgot to place pictures of Mao in their homes in prominent positions. During the Cultural Revolution, packs of enthusiastic teens beat such people, including their once esteemed elders, with belt buckles for a lack of proper revolutionary attitude. As of this summer, I think a few members of our own revolutionary vanguard may have wanted to take belts off and start swinging at the proprietors of a certain craft store.

The tragic thing is that we all seem to have a tendency to want to marginalize and hound the heretics among us. Deng Xiaoping was sent to a re-education camp by Mao Zedong for his incorrect thinking. You might think he would, in turn, be an advocate for greater freedom of expression. But who authored the outcome at Tiananmen Square? It was none other than Chairman Deng.

I am sorry to say that Christians, who are rapidly becoming the heretics of this age as they were in others, are far from innocent in this regard. They were persecuted terribly as an unacceptable cult in the Roman Empire. When they finally gained acceptance, it was a great deliverance for them. Official tolerance brought freedom. Eventually, there was power. While the first Christian emperor, Constantine, was not a great coercer of others, some of his successors were. And we all know that the experience of the church in the west includes acts of savagery in war and the torment of heretics in times of peace. Sometimes repression is due to a desire to retain power, but all too often we are willing to commit crimes against others because we want to bring the millennium. According to this view, Paradise won’t overtake us unless a few committed people are willing to do whatever it takes (perhaps by any means necessary) to get the job done.

It is one thing to pursue visions of moral and spiritual excellence in a positive fashion. We should feel free to exchange ideas and to persuade one another of the correctness of our views. That is the process by which we attempt to discover truth. But there is a human factor that turns healthy debate toward coercion. It is the penchant we have for finding disagreement and disconfirmation unpleasant and unsettling. We don’t like to hear that others hold a different view. Our understandings of the world are precious to us. It can be especially exciting to have some new view that seems to be enlightened in comparison to the retrograde mindsets of others. We don’t appreciate it when these knuckle-draggers don’t get with the program.

But the temptation is always there to finish the process of converting the group with a little intimidation here, some official marginalization there, and the loss of privileges. Maybe those people shouldn’t be able to run a school or have an important job or participate in the community in a variety of ways. Brendan Eich, another new heretic who co-founded Firefox and was evicted from his own organization, can tell you all about it.

_____________________________

Transforming to Conservatism with an Illumination of Heresy

John R. Houk

___________________________

Heretics and Heresies, New and Old

Acton Institute Core Principles

Integrating Judeo-Christian Truths with Free Market Principles

1) Dignity of the Person

2) Social Nature of the Person

3) Importance of Social Institutions

4) Human Action

5) Sin

6) Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government

7) Creation of Wealth

8) Economic Liberty

9) Economic Value

10) Priority of Culture

Dignity of the Person – The human person, created in the image of God, is individually unique, rational, the subject of moral agency, and a co-creator. Accordingly, he possesses intrinsic value and dignity, implying certain rights and duties both for himself and other persons. These truths about the dignity of the human person are known through revelation, but they are also discernible through reason.

Social Nature of the Person – Although persons find ultimate fulfillment only in communion with God, one essential aspect of the development of persons is our social nature and capacity to act for disinterested ends. The person is fulfilled by interacting with other persons and by participating in moral goods. There are … READ THE REST

Disputing Separation Church/State Part 5

John R. Houk

Here we go continuing to refute Dougindeap’s false belief the Church/State separation is as much a part of the Constitution as are the separation branch powers and checks and balances.

Similarly, they [i.e. the Founding Fathers] did not merely say there should be separation of church and state; rather, they actually separated them by … (2) according that government limited, enumerated powers, (3) saying nothing to connect that government to god(s) or religion, (4) saying nothing to give that government power over matters of god(s) or religion, and (5), indeed, saying nothing substantive about god(s) or religion at all except in a provision precluding any religious test for public office. (Dougindeap from: The Commonality between Leftist Paradigms & Scientific Theories; SlantRight 2.0; 3/13/14)

Dougindeap’s point two is vaguely cryptic. What in the world does he mean by “… they actually separated them by … (2) according that government limited, enumerated powers”?

An accurate statement might be seen in a rearrangement of the word order of the Dougindeap quote. How about something like:

The Founding Fathers separated powers (since power resides in the government that being separated must refer to the constitutionally defined Branches] by (2) according limiting government by enumerated the Branch powers.

This reordering of wording is a point I can get on board with because is a bit more clarity to extract an understanding. The Founding Fathers intent with the Constitution was to limit government in the context of affecting personal Liberty of American citizens. The object of employing checks and balances between the Branches was so that no single Branch could achieve despotic unchecked power over the government and hence over Americans promised Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as a way of life.

Government was to be limited to enforcing the rule of law that should be designed for the general welfare according to the moral of Nature’s God – the Creator – Who has placed the measuring stick for what is right and wrong for a good society.

I have established in Part Two that the Original Intent of the phrase of “general welfare” of the Constitution’s Preamble was in relation to the framing of Nature by Nature’s God the Creator. I quoted the Father of our Nation George Washington followed by an observation:

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts in the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. — Every step, by which they have been advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.” George Washington (Quote found, “SEVENPRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY: I LIBERTY IS OF DIVINE ORIGIN; By J. David Gowdy; Institute for American Liberty; Copyright © 1996)

As far as Liberty is concerned the Founding Fathers in the majority that religion (meaning Christianity in the 1780s) was essential for a virtuous and moral society to remain cohesive in the practice of Liberty or chaos will ensue that will only despotic rule could quell. (Disputing Separation Church/State Part 2)

The should and must recognize that this provides a context for the First Amendment that Justice Hugo Black must have willfully ignored in the majority decision of Everson v. Board of Education in 1947 which ONLY THEN not only upheld the intent of keeping government out of religion BUT ALSO extra-constitutionally added that religion must not have any contact with a taxpayer supported government operation on a Local, State and Federal basis.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (Bold Emphasis Mine First Amendment)

There is no place in the First Amendment that enumerates that Christianity should not be the moral basis for the rule of law foundation in the U.S. Constitution. That which is enumerated is that Congress – the vehicle for legislating law and establishing a government budget – MUST not make any laws establishing an established religion (meaning in the 1780s the Christian Church). And the First Amendment specifically enumerates that Congress shall prohibit the “free exercise” of religion (AGAIN meaning the Christian Church in the 1780s).

ERGO Dougindeap is wrong that the Founding Fathers created a Constitutional paradigm of Separation of Church and State in the sense that American practicing Christians must keep their faith out of the government. In relation to the State the only enumeration of power separation is that the government must stay out of the worship business of the Church in not establishing the preeminence of one Denomination over another Denomination whether that be Protestant, Catholic and by extension the Eastern Orthodox Churches that were not common in the USA in the 1780s and 1790s.

End of Part Five

o Part One

o Part Two

o Part Three

o Part Four

JRH 3/26/14

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Love Bird Seeking Sanctuary in US

Intro to ‘Love Bird Seeking Sanctuary in US’

Edited by John R. Houk

Salma Peter John and Shahbaz Bhatti

Shamim Masih writes about a scandal that apparently that is being ignored by the Christian community in Pakistan because of the tragic circumstances surrounding the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti. Shahbaz indeed died a hero being assassinated by the Taliban for being an activist against Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws. Shahbaz was the only Christian in Pakistan’s government Cabinet at the time of his assassination.

The scandal is Shahbaz Bhatti had a live-in mistress named Salma Peter John. Shamim provides a sympathetic and favorable link to a story and Vimeo video pertaining to Ms. John’s devastation over her sugar daddy’s assassination. I bluntly use the term “sugar daddy” because apparently Ms. John was a kept woman in Pakistan and Shamim wonders who is footing her bills in the USA where she is trying to attain political refuge.

Below is the video I placed on Youtube. I believe you need to watch the video to see how the writer of an article on PakistanChristian.org obviously sympathizes with Ms. John while only slipping in that Shahbaz’s father was not pleased with the living situation with Ms. John:

Both Salma and Shahbaz worked tirelessly to see the sprouting of the largest political party of Pakistani Christians, formerly Christian Liberation Front (CLF) and later All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), grow in all four provinces. Their three-directional-love for persecuted Christians, for each other and for Cammy’s traditional father was constantly at odds with each other. (Shahbaz Bhatti – “Remembering My Cammy”; By admin; PakistanChristian.org; 2/27/14)

VIDEO: Mera Masih Power Ballad Urdu, Hindi, and English

Here is Shamim Masih’s story.

JRH 2/28/14

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Love Bird Seeking Sanctuary in US

By Shamim Masih

Sent: 2/27/2014 11:01 PM

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minority Minister Shahbaz Bhatti was gunned down on March 02, 2011 by an extremist group in Islamabad. His followers planned to celebrate his death anniversary on Sunday, March 02 and his love bird (Salma Peter John) shattered her silence and shared a video link showing her unannounced relation with late Shahbaz Bhatti. She said, “Cammy was me and I was Cammy” (Cammy was Shahbaz Bhatti’s nickname). She claimed that she lived with him for fifteen years and so they had happy life but couldn’t manage to marry with Shahbaz Bhatti.

Salma worked as personal assistance – PA to Shahbaz Bhatti when he was Federal Minister for Minority Affairs. And that is what other knew about it……. A close circle of the minority minister was very well aware of his activities and thus others [were aware of] it as well, but didn’t disclose [the living situation]. On February 15, one of my articles was printed and my family friend wrote me that this article was great but I failed to mention Bhatti’s former “PA” fled to Philadelphia and is still living off another man supposedly active as a leader for Pakistani Christian cause. She mentioned that the big issue is why Christians should trust or respect these who not only deserted their own, but never lived a truly Christian life?

The real issue is the shame and scam these two brought on Pakistani Christians – but why no one wants to talk on that? If marriage is a Biblical standard and even more so a strong tradition of Pakistan, how could this “high profile” [couple] not be held to [Christian] standards? If a man loves and respects you he marries you – otherwise you are just being used. If the Bhatti family would not recognized her as even his partner in politics, much less romance, but [rather] wanted nothing to do with her, why should anyone else give her the time of day? And really when all is looked at what did S. Bhatti do to improve lives of Pakistani Christians?

From what I hear everyone knew she was S. Bhatti’s mistress, kept by him and that’s how she lived there. She is now shifted to the US but gets no dollars from the government until her asylum case is approved so she [can] get a car for a work permit. So how else is she living if not with and off someone else’s support or living on the savings from her time shacking up with Shahbaz Bhatti?

Be Blessed,

Shamim Masih

___________________________________

Edited by John R. Houk

Everything bracketed is by the Editor. The resource links within Shamim’s exposé are by him.

Special Correspondents

Daily Khabrian (PakBiz.com description) & Channel – 5

Human Rights Activist

Snapshot of Human Rights Activism from 2011

Christian Rights Activist
Freelance Journalist

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Editor: For Americans especially, I have discovered the best way to donate to Shamim Masih is via Western Union sending to a Western Union agent in Islamabad.

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Look at Black-American History to Comprehend Pakistani-Christian Persecution

John R. Houk

Shamim Masih has an article about the injustice of Christians living among the Sunni majority of Pakistan. I am a little late in posting his article because somehow I lost it in my inbox. I had the thought that we Americans have grown too used to our Constitutional Liberty and Freedom. Thinking about the plight of Christians in Pakistan, I thought it might be a good time to bring a snapshot from our history in the USA.

Slave life in the USA is an embarrassment of Civil Rights proponents and to those who believe in the Original Intent of the U.S. Constitution. Check out some excerpts of a house slave named Harriet Jacobs that wrote with the pen name of Linda Brent.

Mrs. Flint, like many southern women, was totally deficient in energy. She had not strength to superintend her household affairs; but her nerves were so strong, that she could sit in her easy chair and see a woman whipped, till the blood trickled from every stroke of the lash. She was a member of the church; but partaking of the Lord’s supper did not seem to put her in a Christian frame of mind. If dinner was not served at the exact time on that particular Sunday, she would station herself in the kitche n, and wait till it was dished, and then spit in all the kettles and pans that had been used for cooking. She did this to prevent the cook and her children from eking out their meagre fare with the remains of the gravy and other scrapings. The slaves could get nothing to eat except what she chose to give them. Provisions were weighed out by the pound and ounce, three times a day. I can assure you she gave them no chance to eat wheat bread from her flour barrel. She knew how many biscuits a quart of flour would make, and exactly what size they ought to be.

Dr. Flint was an epicure. The cook never sent a dinner to his table without fear and trembling; for if there happened to be a dish not to his liking, he would either order her to be whipped, or compel her to eat every mouthful of it in his presence. The poor, hungry creature might not have objected to eating it; but she did not object to having her master cram it down her throat till she choked.

They had a pet dog, that was a nuisance in the house. The cook was ordered to make some Indian mush for him. He refused to eat, and when his head was held over it, the froth flowed from his mouth into the basin. He died a few minutes after. When Dr. Flint came in, he said the mush had not been well cooked, and that was the reason the animal would not eat it. He sent for the cook, and compelled her to eat it. He thought that the woman’s stomach was stronger than the dog’s; but her sufferings afterwards proved that he was mistaken. This poor woman endured many cruelties from her master and mistress; sometimes she was locked up, away from her nursing baby, for a whole day and night.

When I had been in the family a few weeks, one of the plantation slaves was brought to town, by order of his master. It was near night when he arrived, and Dr. Flint ordered him to be taken to the work house, and tied up to the joist, so that his feet would just escape the ground. In that situation he was to wait till the doctor had taken his tea. I shall never forget that night. Never before, in my life, had I heard hundreds of blows fall, in succession, on a human being. His piteous groans, and his “O, pray don’t, massa,” rang in my ear for months afterwards. There were many conjectures as to the cause of this terrible punishment. Some said master accused him of stealing corn; others said the slave had quarrelled with his wife, in presence of the overseer, and had accused his master of being the father of her child. They were both black, and the child was very fair.

I went into the work house next morning, and saw the cowhide still wet with blood, and the boards all covered with gore. The poor man lived, and continued to quarrel with his wife. A few months afterwards Dr. Flint handed them both over to a slave-trader. The guilty man put their value into his pocket, and had the satisfaction of knowing that they were out of sight and hearing. When the mother was delivered into the trader’s hands, she said, “You promised to treat me well.” To which he replied, “You have let your tongue run too far; damn you!” She had forgotten that it was a crime for a slave to tell who was the father of her child. (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Chapter II – THE NEW MASTER AND MISTRESS; By Harriet Jacobs (nom de plume: Linda Brent); Original Publication – 1861 Boston; Edited by Maria Child)

Here is another Chapter from Harriet Jacobs the former slave in America.

DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint’s family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress. Though this seemed to me no more than right, I was grateful for it, and tried to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of my duties. But I now entered on my fifteenth year–a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master’s age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months. He was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes. Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims tremble; sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought must surely subdue. Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods, although they left me trembling. He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him–where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. …

… She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor how I am still pained by the retrospect. My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. …

…

In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men, and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity! (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Chapter V – THE TRIALS OF GIRLHOOD; By Harriet Jacobs (nom de plume: Linda Brent); Original Publication – 1861 Boston; Edited by Maria Child)

And in another chapter by Harriet Jacobs she describes the jealousy of her Master’s wife. The sad part is even after exposer Harriet’s Master did not care. Evidently according to Harriet’s observation many a wife of a Master were aware of sexual relations between their husbands and slave girls but were forced the indignity of living with it.

…

After a while my mistress sent for me to come to her room. Her first question was, “Did you know you were to sleep in the doctor’s room?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Who told you?”

“My master.”

“Will you answer truly all the questions I ask?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell me, then, as you hope to be forgiven, are you innocent of what I have accused you?”

“I am.”

She handed me a Bible, and said, “Lay your hand on your heart, kiss this holy book, and swear before God that you tell me the truth.”

I took the oath she required, and I did it with a clear conscience.

“You have taken God’s holy word to testify your innocence,’ said she. “If you have deceived me, beware! Now take this stool, sit down, look me directly in the face, and tell me all that has passed between your master and you. “

I did as she ordered. As I went on with my account her color changed frequently, she wept, and sometimes groaned. She spoke in tones so sad, that I was touched by her grief. The tears came to my eyes; but I was soon convinced that her emotions arose from anger and wounded pride. She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy. She pitied herself as a martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed.

…

My mistress grew weary of her vigils; they did not prove satisfactory. She changed her tactics. She now tried the trick of accusing my master of crime, in my presence, and gave my name as the author of the accusation. To my utter astonishment, he replied, “I don’t believe it; but if she did acknowledge it, you tortured her into exposing me.” Tortured into exposing him! Truly, Satan had no difficulty in distinguishing the color of his soul! I understood his object in making this false representation. It was to show me that I gained nothing by seeking the protection of my mistress; that the power was still all in his own hands. I pitied Mrs. Flint. She was a second wife, many years the junior of her husband; and the hoary-headed miscreant was enough to try the patience of a wiser and better woman. She was completely foiled, and knew not how to proceed. She would gladly have had me flogged for my supposed false oath; but, as I have already stated, the doctor never allowed any one to whip me. …

…

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this by passing them into the slave-trader’s hands as soon as possible, and thus getting them out of their sight. I am glad to say there are some honorable exceptions.

I have myself known two southern wives who exhorted their husbands to free those slaves towards whom they stood in a “parental relation;” and their request was granted. These husbands blushed before the superior nobleness of their wives’ natures. Though they had only counselled them to do that which it was their duty to do, it commanded their respect, and rendered their conduct more exemplary. Concealment was at an end, and confidence took the place of distrust.

Though this bad institution deadens the moral sense, even in white women, to a fearful extent, it is not altogether extinct. I have heard southern ladies say of Mr. Such a one, “He not only thinks it no disgrace to be the father of those little niggers, but he is not ashamed to call himself their master. I declare, such things ought not to be tolerated in any decent society!” (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Chapter VI – THE JEALOUS MISTRESS; By Harriet Jacobs (nom de plume: Linda Brent); Original Publication – 1861 Boston; Edited by Maria Child)

Christians in Islamic dominant nations too often live a life of a near slave. There may not be quite the White-Master/Black-Slave relationship among Muslims and Christians in Islamic nations; nevertheless Christians suffer today much like the freed Black Slaves have from the end of Civil War until the Civil Rights Movement has upped the stakes in opportunity for Black-Americans in a White Majority nation. There is still a ways to go for Black-Americans in the USA but for different reasons for being former slaves. Black-Americans lived so long as a Second Class Citizen in the USA that many have wasted the opportunity to upgrade their economic and educational situation. Leftists in America have taken advantage of Black-Americans by continually reminding them they were the victims of pre-Civil Rights oppression. This victimhood has forced a too large amount of Black Americans to congregate in poor urban areas in which many are dependent on the hand of the government for economic viability. No one moves in an upward mobile economic path from the static of the government hand-out. Being forced into static economic poverty by the government many Black-Americans are dependent and used to their government paycheck. Lack of opportunity and poverty coupled with American Leftists’ efforts to remove Christian morality out of American society have made Black-American urban communities a training ground for crime. I suspect Christian branded people in Islamic dominated nations are in the same situation that pre-Civil Rights Black-Americans experienced.

So think on this while you read Shamim Masih’s article about persecution and society neglect Pakistani-Christians live with every day.

JRH 9/6/13

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Constitution Avenue will Remain Quiet until you Sleep

By Shamim Masih

Sent: 8/25/2013 12:51 PM

ISLAMABAD: The distribution is not absolutely equal among the whole population, thus, demarcate among various socioeconomic groups of a country. One of the worst outcomes of income inequality is poverty, considered to be fatal for any nation’s development because poverty breeds more poverty which engulfs the whole nation. According to the World Bank, poverty manifests itself in many forms across time and place but it is an alarming sign, and experts call for action so that many others can be saved from becoming its victims.

It is reported that the poverty rate among ethnic minority groups especially Christians in Pakistan is twice as much as for Muslims. People in minority ethnic communities are being overlooked for jobs and are being paid lower wages, despite improvements in education and qualifications. A research organization has found that religious minorities in Pakistan are deliberately kept low in census-figures to deny them greater representation. Already Pakistan is listed seventh amongst top ten countries notorious to be dangerous for religious minorities. Even then the rulers are not serious to solve the issues. The present government (PML-N) does not have minorities’ support since they are engulfing to deny minorities their rights. Although I don’t support to celebrate minorities’ day and I see no cause for celebrating 11 August as Minorities Day. It is an aspersion on the Pakistan movement and the dream that was Pakistan. Even then it is observed that PML-N didn’t take any interest in minorities’ day.

The idea of an exclusive day for minorities that both Cecil Chaudry and Shahbaz Bhatti pushed has nothing to do with celebration. It was the beginning of a vibrant struggle that seems to peter away. The purpose was to reawaken Pakistanis across the entire [socio-political] spectrum to the reality of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s speech that underlined the need to cut across all religious, ethnic and sub nationalist divides to work for Pakistani nationalism. In any case, this day is rather a rejoinder that the Pakistani establishment and people are yet to live up to the dream of its founding father. If anything, it remains a black day for all Pakistanis that include religious minorities and suppressed groups.

It is time to contemplate and act. Three Christian human rights activists that formed a formidable trio are no more with us. Bishop John Joseph shot himself in utter frustration. Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated fighting for the release of Aasia Bibi and before that trying to bring the culprits of Gojra, Sambrial and Gujranwala to book. Cecil, fighting his last battle with cancer died a few years ago. So where are those who will now carry the baton?

Let us face the realities that haunt Pakistan in real time. With them no more amongst us, the chronology of events leading to Minority Day, leaves is no room to rejoice. It is a call for action. It is a reminder that the struggle must continue towards a plural and egalitarian Pakistan. And I am in the favor that this day should therefore as Brigadier Samson Simon Sharaf suggests be called a National Solidarity Day. In any case, these objectives cannot be achieved by one single community. It takes two to tango and in this Wild Pakistan we see today, it would take many more to despise hate and shake hands.

11 August 1947 is a far cry and lots of water has passed under the bridge. Pakistan is now divided beyond religious lines. Ethnicity, sectarianism, sub nationalism and militancy are all eating into the foundations of the country like a cancer whose tentacles have spread everywhere. The revulsion from within can only bring an internal change and hence the revival of Jinnah’s dream formulated with the close association of Christians, Hindus, Parsees, Baloch, Pashtuns and Sindhies. To jubilant of Minority day I say, ‘you have no desire and you can never do it alone’.

There was something ironic about 11 August this year. I saw the biggest joker of Christian rights in Pakistan – Julius Salik – join the election campaign of Advocate Ashraf Gujjar for NA 48. Yes he is the same Gujjar who garlanded Mumtaz Qadri and who feels he must be released. He is the same Mumtaz, who took law into his own hands and killed Salman Taseer before his blasphemous guilt could be proved. This is an ugly side of one of our leaders who is a self-proclaimed champion of human rights while he has done nothing practically for their rights. I found Basharat Khokhar better at helping Christians in Islamabad then this leader. J Salik arranged commiseration for Qazi Husain Ahmad after his death but has not spoken a single word for Shahbaz Bhatti. Qazi Husain Ahmad was the chief of Jammet e Islami – JI, a fundamentalist religious organization.

Again for the local bodies’ election to be held till September 15 as Supreme Court order, big Muslim political parties will bring puppets from minorities. There is no right to minorities to elect their representatives who can be their voice.

I am giving a wakeup call to all religious minorities in Pakistan, which may be the last chance to contribute before a local body election. We need to stand against discrimination hand in hand with all oppressed people of Pakistan. If the authorities don’t agree to give us our rights; we need to carve our space in Pakistan. We are sons of this land and we made Pakistan happen. I want the nation to stand up at once for their rights.

Be Blessed,

Shamim Masih

__________________________

Look at Black-American History to Comprehend Pakistani-Christian Persecution

John R. Houk

________________________

Constitution Avenue will Remain Quiet until you Sleep

Edited by John R. Houk

Brackets are insertions by the Editor

Snapshot of Human Rights Activism from 2011

Christian Rights Activist
Freelance Journalist

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