Bill Muehlenberg, Author at Refcast

Christophobe Kamala

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

While Christians might well want candidates that are more moral, more pure, more faultless, and more pristine, they need to be reminded that Jesus is not running in this election – or in any election. In a fallen world we are ALWAYS left with less than ideal choices. But some are clearly better than others.

We have known for quite some time now that the Democrats in America are overwhelmingly an anti-God and anti-life party. This has been the case for decades now. They had not always been this way, but the hyper-left is now firmly in control of the party, and it seems that these two ‘A’s now reign supreme: atheism and abortion.
All this is easy enough to document. As but one example, consider this: In just this past week Kamala Harris has demonstrated even more of her intense hatred of Christianity:-She and her party makes a blasphemous TV ad mocking Holy Communion.-She tells pro-lifers who said “Jesus is Lord” that they are at the “wrong rally”.-She deliberately refuses to go to the 60-year-old Presidential Catholic charity dinner in NYC.
And some “Christians” think they should support her?! Go figure.
But let me speak to each of these a bit further. The ad featuring Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer feeding feminist podcaster Liz Plank a Dorito was blasphemous at worst, and just bizarre at best. Christians, and certainly Catholics, know exactly what it was meant to parody. If you have the stomach to view this cringe-worthy and awful ad, you can see it here, with a bit of sensible commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiDJerqeaCc
As to the Christian pro-lifers not welcome at her rally, she had said this: “I think you guys are at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.” Kamala in effect kicked Jesus out of her meeting, just as the Dems long ago kicked God out of their party. And this was the real Kamala speaking: an unscripted moment with an off the cuff remark. This Christophobe is simply diabolical.
Concerning the presidential dinner, the last person who failed to attend was Walter Mondale some 40 years ago. And as Trump reminded the audience, that did not go so well, as he went on to lose 49 of the 50 US states in the election. It is reported that Kamala was told by her handlers not to go to the Al Smith dinner because it would alienate her liberal base – all the pro-aborts and pro-alphabet people. Hmm, another disastrous call.
When other Dems recognised that refusing to go to the dinner was actually a massive mistake, she went into panic mode and hastily made a video for the event. That too was utterly cringe-worthy and weird. Yet Walz calls Vance and the Republicans weird!
Just how dumb is Kamala and her hardcore progressive machine? While folks in San Francisco and New York might love her anti-God and anti-life agenda, most Americans do not see things that way. There are plenty of Catholic voters in places like Pennsylvania, one of the key swing states that she needs to win.
And her ugly attack on the Christian pro-lifer was in La Crosse, Wisconsin, another place where plenty of conservatives and Christians reside. But she does not give a rip about ordinary Americans. She is hellbent on pleasing her radical leftist supporters at all costs. Appointing Tim Walz as her running mate was another crystal-clear demonstration of this.
If this misotheist baby-hating candidate does win the election in a few weeks’ time, we will simply see much more of this. Consider just one recent case in point. A Tennessee Christian, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, has been prosecuted by the Biden/Harris administration for praying in front of an abortion clinic.
The 33-year-old pro-life activist and mother was convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. For daring to stand up for the unborn, this woman has been sentenced to a three-and-a-half-year prison term! I kid you not. More details can be found here: https://dailydeclaration.org.au/2024/10/18/pro-life-mother-imprisoned-3-years/
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Universities, Hate Speech and Anti-Semitism

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

Countless examples of ugly anti-Semitism have been the norm at so many Western university campuses. And very few of those in charge have lifted a finger to bring this to an end and ensure that all students can safely go about getting the education they have paid for. In his new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (Spiked, 2024), English commentator Brendan O’Neill has spoken to this matter in some detail.

All over the Western world, especially since the horrific October 7 attack, we have seen universities pushing radical Islamist and pro-Hamas hate speech. Radicals have set up tent cities and occupied classrooms as they shout ugly anti-Israel chants. All the while Jewish students feel increasingly threatened and unsafe on their own campuses.
Examples of this are legion. One of the most recent and despicable cases involves an American academic who spoke at a pro-Palestine rally in Sydney a week ago. Khaled Beydoun of Arizona State University actually said October 7 was a day of “considerable celebration, considerable progress and considerable privilege”!
Not only have the Australian sponsors not called this out, but the American university where he teaches at has said there was nothing wrong in what he said, and that it is all good because it is “free speech”. As one media outlet reports:
Beydoun was also quoted as saying at the rally, “I want to talk about some good things because it’s a good day, and we’ve got to mark some of the good news that comes about that we often times neglect.” In response to inquiries from Sky News Australia, a spokesperson on behalf of Arizona State University said, “The university is aware of the professor’s remarks and is respectful of the First Amendment privileges associated with academic freedom and free speech.” https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/arizona-state-university-defends-american-professor-who-told-sydney-rally-october-7-was-a-day-of-celebration/news-story/cdc85ef23a92c6233f793819999501fd
Countless examples of ugly anti-Semitism have been the norm at so many Western university campuses. And very few of those in charge have lifted a finger to bring this to an end and ensure that all students can safely go about getting the education they have paid for.
In his new book, English commentator Brendan O’Neill has spoken to this matter in some detail. I have already penned two articles on his brief but valuable volume, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (Spiked, 2024). My earlier pieces can be seen here:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/13/clear-thinking-on-october-7-and-beyond/
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/12/feminists-duplicity-and-hamas/
Chapter Seven of his book looks at how so-called safe spaces at campuses are certainly not of any use for Jews being targeted by the militants. Indeed, the double standards of the radical left is apparent to all. Consider his opening paragraphs:
So, we live in an era when you can be banished from a university for saying women don’t have penises, but you’ll be fine if you say ‘kill all Jews’. We live in a time when asking someone where they’re from is considered a ‘racial microaggression’, but hollering ‘Globalise the intifada’ in the aftermath of an ‘intifada’ in which a thousand Jews were slaughtered is apparently okay. We live in a culture in which students will demand access to ‘safe spaces’, complete with colouring books and bean bags, if a speaker they hate turns up on campus. And yet these same students who fear words like the rest of us fear death, will happily cheer the invasion of Israel and the murder of hundreds of its citizens. No safe space for Jews, it seems.
This was one of the most unsettling revelations in the aftermath of the 7 October pogrom: that snowflakes have a secret genocidal streak. That student activists who wail about feeling ‘erased’ if you fail to use their preferred pronouns don’t seem to have much of a problem with the literal erasure of hundreds of citizens of the Jewish State.
Overnight, students who had bristled at such ‘micro-aggressions’ as ‘Don’t you want a family?’ – it is an act of unforgivable ‘heteronormativity’, apparently, to assume everyone wants a family – (p. 114)
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Feminists, Duplicity and Hamas

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

Ignoring Israeli women and the deplorable sexual violence they are experiencing simply because they happen to be Jewish really beggars belief and tells us all we need to know about so much of modern feminism and the MeToo movement.

The Australian Sky News host Sharri Markson has done a terrific job reporting from Israel this past week. Of course this was mainly done as an acknowledgment and a reminder of the horrific atrocities that happened on October 7, 2023 by Hamas, and are still happening by the terror organisation. We must never forget.
In her programs from Israel she had a number of moving interviews with victims of all this, including those who survived the day and were able to speak about it, and some who were finally released as hostages. We heard such tragic and shocking stories, especially as to what the women had to endure at the hands of their Islamist captors.
Sharri and others asked some obvious questions that still deserve answers: Where are all the Western feminists when you need them? Why have hardly any of them been speaking out for the Israeli—and other—females being treated so diabolically by Hamas? Why the silence? Why the selective outrage?
Yes, some voices over the past twelve months have been heard on this, but far too few. For example, late last year Candice Holdsworth asked, “Why can’t “intersectional feminists” condemn Hamas’s misogyny?” She said in part:
It is surely possible to express opposition to Israel’s military action in Gaza without whitewashing Hamas’s crimes. But in recent weeks it has been disturbing to learn just how many people are willing to deny Hamas’s atrocities, or to view its sadistic violence as a legitimate form of “resistance.”
When self-declared feminists join in with this apologism, they make clear that they do not see all women as worthy of the same moral consideration. The woke belief in an “intersectional” hierarchy of oppression, which paints Palestinians as eternal victims and Jews as oppressors, seems to have blinded them to the brutal violence that so many Israeli women were subjected to six weeks ago. Their rigid ideology will not let them see Hamas’s mass rape of women for the atrocity that it is.
Condemning Hamas’s violence against women really shouldn’t be difficult. It is a very peculiar kind of feminism that insists otherwise.
And a half year ago Nils A. Haug wrote about this as well:
The reality is that for all advocates for women’s welfare, especially in the area of sexual violence, the crucial concern at this time should be the terror perpetrated on defenceless females of all ages through acts of sexual depravity, torture, and death by Hamas in Israel on October 7.
The moral obligation of lovers of peace, and those who hold to the sanctity of human life, is to speak out against injustice. This is particularly so in crimes of violence against the defenceless. It is therefore fitting to expect women’s rights groups to speak out on behalf of traumatized females of all ethnic and religious categories.
This approach was ratified in by Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel in his 1986 acceptance speech: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Archbishop Charles Chaput remarked that “tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil.”
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Meaning, Purpose, and the Will to Live

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

“What is it about the kingdom that is of such profound value? It is a multifaceted treasure, but at the center of its value is the possibility of ultimate meaning. Jesus’s gospel of the kingdom is good news because it offers us deep, durable meaning powerful enough to sustain us through life and through suffering and dying. Our story becomes part of God’s grand story, the story behind all of our stories. it is the story in which our suffering is shown to be for good, to be meaningful, to matter, to be worth it.”

Let me preface things by saying that I am about to ban the word “coincidence” from my lips – and my fingers on the keyboard. As happens so very often, a number of different but related things happen at almost the same time, not only giving me the stuff of another article, but making me see how God’s hand is behind what we experience in life.
In the period of a day or so, three quite separate events occurred, all centring on the issue of suicide, self-worth, and why we must resist the culture of death. The first one was this: in a radio interview speaking of rock stars and rejection, the conversation steered to how sometimes when things get really bad, we can see that God is there to help us out of our downward and dead-end spiral.
So I ended up briefly recounting one example of this in my own life when as a depressed and bummed-out hippy I was quite suicidal. I had no sense of purpose or meaning, no sense of self-worth, so the idea of ending everything seemed to be the way to proceed. That episode is recounted in an earlier article of mine: link
The second thing that occurred during the same period was stumbling upon one of those many cop shows on television. The episode was about an officer called to deal with a woman on a bridge threatening to jump to her death. It turns out she was a youngish mother who kept shouting about how she was a failure and there was no reason to go on.
It was quite a tense and traumatic situation, and she was obviously in great distress and turmoil, thinking she was of no use to anyone, not even to her own children. The problem was, she was on the outside of a curved (from bottom to top) fence, which was over another busy road some thirty feet below. So it was quite difficult for the policeman to get to where she was at on the other side of it.
He had to try to comfort her and talk her out of it , telling her that she was not a failure and she was needed. She kept shouting “I’m sorry” as well, so he had to say she had nothing to be sorry about. He had to draw upon all he learned in his training to deal with people in this situation.
Soon a female officer came along, and as she talked to the distraught mother, the officer managed to get to the top of this fence thing, and tried to grab a hold of her. She still seemed intent on jumping, so he finally managed to get her two wrists into handcuffs which he also connected to the fence so she could not jump. A fire truck crew came and finally managed to get her down.
It was quite an intense and lengthy standoff, but finally ended with a good outcome. But what would have driven a mother like this to want to end her own life? How low of a view of her own worth and value did she have? And as the police told her, her children certainly needed her.
The third thing involves – no surprises here – a new book. It is on euthanasia and I was reading it at the same time. It is Ewan Goligher’s How Should We Then Die? A Christian Response to Physician-Assisted Death (Lexham Press, 2024). Although a brief book (140 pages) it offers a helpful look at this crucial issue of how suicidal thoughts are so closely connected to our sense of worth and importance as human beings.
Obviously those with a deep awareness of their own value as a person and their importance to self and to others will be far less tempted with thoughts of taking one’s own life. It is only when we lose all sense of meaning, purpose and value that the will to love is radically undercut.
Of course the idea of meaning and purpose contributing to our will to live is well-documented, and has been written about by many. One famous work on this is Man’s Search For Meaning by concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl. I have discussed him before, and Goligher also mentions him and his book.
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DEI and the Cultural Revolution

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

Christopher Rufo: America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023). In it he has a chapter on DEI and its role in the Cultural Revolution. The chapter’s final paragraphs are just as true of Australia and other Western nations: If critical race theory should succeed as a system of government, it is easy to imagine the future: an omnipotent bureaucracy that manages transfer payments between racial castes, enforces always-shifting speech and behavior codes through bureaucratic rule, and replaces the slogan of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” with the deadening euphemism of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

There is a real cultural revolution underway. The culture wars have been fought for a number of decades now, and they present a very real threat to the West. The fact that I have over 2500 articles on this matter is but one indication that this has been a key battleground between the radical left and those who think Western civilisation is still worth preserving.
As has been explained so often now, the earlier calls for violent political revolution largely fell on deaf ears. The workers of the world did not rise up and revolt as Marx had predicted. So later Marxists determined that internal evolution through the taking over of the institutions would be the way to achieve what external armed revolution could not.
So now we have the whole gamut of critical race theory, wokism, political correctness, intersectionality, tribalism, victim politics and the like being pushed throughout the West. And by targeting all the major institutions of power and influence – the schools, the media, law, politics, and even the churches – it has been largely quite successful.
All this is part of the attempt by the revolutionary left to remake the West in its own image, and to undermine all things they consider to be toxic and counterrevolutionary. Everything must go, but by using internal subversion and upheaval, much of what is being done can be presented in platitudes and euphemisms.
Consider DEI for example. It sounds pretty good, right? Who is not in favour of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Of course, it all depends on what is meant by these terms. Kamala and the Dems in America, and Albo and Labor in Australia for example are constantly using these words. But what they mean by them is not what most of us mean.
The examples of DEI are everywhere to be found, sometimes with really quite tragic consequences. One of the most recent and egregious cases in point almost cost Donald Trump his life. The utter bungling and failures of the US Secret Service to protect the former President at his rally in Butler, PA some 12 weeks ago showed the whole world just how dangerous DEI can be.
Sure, it was not the only reason for this colossal fail by those meant to be protecting Trump, but it was a major component nonetheless. Recall what was the main priority of the then head of the SS, Kimberley Cheatle. DEI was a consuming passion of hers, and her stated goal was to have at least 30 per cent of all personnel female.
Now in many areas, it does not matter if 90 per cent of your workers are female, be it flipping burgers or developing software. But when it comes to protecting the leaders of a nation, it is not quotas that we need, but those who are fully qualified. Merit and not mere numbers is what matters. Many women can fit the bill here, but when the quite short female agents could not even properly protect Trump (he is 6’ 3” after all), then DEI should be left out, and those who are qualified should be the primary consideration.
But that is just one example of many. Hiring people simply to fill quotas is a recipe for disaster. I have written on this matter often. In one such piece I quoted a woman – yes, a woman – who put it this way:
Quotas suck. Women will only be equal when there isn’t an artificial incentive for women to be promoted. If management staffing decisions are made with a frame of ‘we don’t have enough women so we should pick a woman’ then how can a woman ever be respected in that position? If quotas exist, how will women ever be considered worthy of their roles, deserving of them and equal to the task, rather than equal to the quota? https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/03/09/women-quotas-and-affirmative-action/
Of course it is not just women we are talking about here, but Blacks and others. The noted Black American economist Thomas Sowell has written numerous works on this. Here is just one quote – from his important book Race and Economics:
“Perhaps the greatest dilemma in attempts to raise ethnic minority income is that those methods which have historically proved successful—self-reliance, work skills, education, business experience—are all slow developing, while those methods which are more direct and immediate—job quotas, charity, subsidies, preferential treatment—tend to undermine self-reliance and pride of achievement in the long run.”
And he of course has more recently written on DEI as well.
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On Humility

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

As William Law (1698-1761), the English author of A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life once put it: “Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.” That’s it. True humility is knowing who we really are, in the light of knowing God as he really is. Not only that, but when we contemplate Christ and his work, that too can only lead us to humbling ourselves and getting on our knees before him.

I make no claim to being a paragon of Christian virtues, including the virtue of humility. So as usual, I am writing a piece like this as much for myself as for anyone else. And I will say it at the outset: please pray for me in this regard. I have a long way to go in reflecting real biblical humility – and in eschewing carnal pride.
But I can perhaps say a few words about this matter. Sadly, most of us have known Christians, including too many Christian leaders, who may lack in basic humility, love and grace. They can be rather full of themselves, they can be proud, they can look down on others, they can be condescending, and so on.
And this might especially be true of those who are more intellectually inclined, be they teachers or writers or theologians or academics or scholars. Great learning need not make one proud, but often it can lead in that direction. So care must be taken here. And again, since I tend to be rather cerebral, I too certainly need to be on guard here.
Like you, I have experienced some of these folks who seem to have little time for me, as they busy themselves in their academic pursuits. They can ignore you or slight you and make you feel like you are a nobody. But on the other hand, I have also known some very bright and very-well known Christian leaders and scholars who have been quite the opposite.
They will take time out of their busy schedules to acknowledge me or reply to me or even thank me for something. This has happened to me at times when I write a book review of some well-known and distinguished author for example. Sometimes they will respond to me on the social media or on my own website and thank me for my review and say a few kind words.
So being full of ‘smarts’ does not of necessity mean you will become proud, aloof, arrogant and out of touch with the mere masses. But too often this can be the case. So let me speak to this a bit more, including looking at what steps we might take to ensure this is not the case in our own lives.
On Humbling Ourselves
Scripture of course often speaks about humility, and its opposite, pride. I want to draw upon just one passage here, James 4:10. It says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” One major question I at least want answered is this: How do I humble myself?
Again, while not claiming to be an expert in this area, I can offer a few worthwhile answers. It was John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion who famously spoke of the need for a proper basis of all true knowledge: the knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.
And in that order. As we begin to know God as he really is, that cannot but help impact us and help us to see ourselves more truly and more accurately. As we get more and more genuine knowledge and understanding of God and self, the only real result should be for us to be humbled.
How can we not become humble as we contemplate who God really is in all his majesty and greatness and holiness and purity and perfection?
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The Believer and “Strange Things”

By Bill Muehlenberg — 4 months ago

God did sometimes ask his people to do some rather odd things as recorded in the Bible. It is possible he might ask us to do some strange things as well. But generally speaking, we have the whole of Scripture to give us directions and guidelines as to both proper speech and proper action.

Christians have the Bible to guide us in what we are to believe and what we are to do. The Scriptures offer us helpful guidelines on how God’s people should think, speak and act. But there are many things we may not have specific guidelines on, or clear instructions.
Thus we may not have certain details about a future marriage partner. But certainly, important guidelines are there: a member of the opposite sex; someone who is also a believer; and so on. Some of this has to do with discerning God’s will in various areas.
However, some of the things God asked his people to do have confused believers over the years. A major example would be when God wanted Abraham to be willing to offer his own son as a sacrifice. Of course in the end it does not take place, since God provides his own sacrificial lamb. See my writeup about this difficult Bible passage here.
But often believers will question other believers, including about things such as worship styles and the like. Some think believers are too Pentecostal and charismatic. Some think believers are too cold, lifeless and formal. There can be some truth in both critiques.
Consider just one biblical example of a ‘worship style’ that bothered some others. One time King David was praising God, but not everyone approved of the way he went about it. In 2 Samuel 6:12-16 we read this:
Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.
The point is, we are not all the same, and some Christians will do things differently than other Christians. Sure, some things are simply out of bounds. If a Christian regularly resorts to theft, he has violated a clear Commandment—the Eighth. Or if a Christian claims that God told him to dump his wife and take off with the church secretary, that is another obvious no-no.
So in some areas there are clear boundaries, whereas in some other areas there can be some room to move. Some believers might think what others are doing is rather strange, and sometimes it is! But the point of my piece is this: At times God asked his people to do things that certainly do seem to be quite odd and quite weird. Consider just four obvious examples of this:
Isaiah 20:1-4 In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it—at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot. Then the Lord said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared—to Egypt’s shame.
Jeremiah 13:1-11 This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water.” So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it around my waist. Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time: “Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, and go now to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.” So I went and hid it at Perath, as the Lord told me. Many days later the Lord said to me, “Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.” So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless. Then the word of the Lord came to me: “This is what the Lord says: ‘In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt—completely useless! For as a belt is bound around the waist, so I bound all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah to me,’ declares the Lord, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.’
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More on Shepherds for Sale

By Bill Muehlenberg — 5 months ago

“No one, least of all Christians, should welcome civil war in the Church. But too many Church leaders have grown arrogant due to the rank and file’s reluctance to seem unpleasant or uncharitable by confronting their deceit and manipulation, and a unity based on acceptance of false teaching is a unity of the damned. As Aragorn says to Theoden, king of Rohan, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, open war is upon us whether we would risk it or not. Or, as Moses says to the Gadites and Reubenites in Numbers 32, “Should your fellow Israelites go to war while you sit here?”

One of the most important books of the year is Shepherds for Sale by Megan Basham. Yesterday I did an 1800-word review of this very much needed volume. What I said in my write-up briefly lays out what is found in it, and why it is such a significant book for Christians to be aware of: Link
But one can only do so much in a short review. So I need another article or two to properly do the book real justice. Here I can get to some of the areas/chapters that I was not able to cover in my previous piece. As already stated, this book primarily focuses on American evangelicalism and how so many leaders, pastors, organisations and denominations have been selling out to radical leftist agendas and ideologies.
Thus the subtitle of her book: “How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.” In yesterday’s piece I mentioned other books that have done similar sorts of things. But this one may be the best so far in offering a wealth of detail and documentation: fifty pages of endnotes in small print is an indication of this.
Chapter Five of the book is on the Covid wars and how the government used pastors and churches to spread its message and methods, including the need for total lockdowns, mandatory medicine, forced vaccinations, and highly questionable science.
The chapter especially zeros in on Francis Collins, the National Institutes of Health director. A quick look at the index reveals that she spends more time on this individual than any other person in the book. And there is very good reason for this.
She actually had a chance to interview him for the book, but oddly enough the interview was dropped at the last moment. Hmm. She was keen to ask him some tough questions, something the mainstream media had refused to do with him and Fauci.
She explains in great detail how Collins almost single-handedly did the bidding of the State as he readily and fully pushed the party line. She writes: “In late August 2020, BioLogos, a faith and science organization Collins founded that merges Darwinian evolution and Scripture, released a public statement titled ‘Love Your Neighbor, Get the Shot’ in favor of vaccines, masks, and lockdown orders.”
Many well-known evangelicals were happy to be signatories to this, including N. T. Wright, Philip Yancey, David French, Timothy Dalyrmple of Christianity Today and Walter Kim of Baker Publishing. These folks took a pledge ‘because of their faith in Jesus Christ’ to do the following, and more:
-“Wear Masks” because “Mask rules are not experts taking away our freedom, but an opportunity to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 6:31).
-“Get vaccinated” because “Vaccination is a provision from God.”
-“Correct misinformation and conspiracy theories when we encounter them in our social media and communities.” Because “Christians are called to love the truth, we should not be swayed by falsehoods (1 Corinthains 13:6).”
…Elsewhere the document got a lot more specific, and it suggested that the signers were agreeing to treat medical opinions that didn’t align with those of Collins and Fauci as conspiracy theories as well. (p. 95)
In this regard they worked overtime to demonise experts who dared to hold a contrary point of view, including Stanford professor of medicine and health policy Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Says Basham:
Bhattacharya and some of his “non-consensus” colleagues – like biostatistician and Harvard professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff and Oxford infectious disease epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta – opposed pandemic policies like lockdowns, and they questioned conventional scientific wisdom about the severity of the virus. They were beginning to advocate publicly for different approach, one that didn’t require everyone to isolate and social-distance but instead focused on protecting vulnerable populations, like the elderly and the immunocompromised. This non-consensus group would eventually release their public proposal for herd immunity as the Great Barrington Declaration, and tens of thousands of epidemiologists and public health scientists, including a Nobel Prize winner would sign it. As the pandemic progressed, they also spoke out against mask and vaccine mandates and called for more serious consideration of vaccine injuries and risk. (p. 96)
When that first came out I wrote it up and quoted from it. It is still a vitally important document: Link
But Collins and Co wanted nothing to do with it:
In private emails in October 2020, Collins deemed the Great Barrington authors “fringe epidemiologists” and worried that they were “getting out of control, and getting too much traction.” He urged Fauci to make sure the work of the Great Barrington doctors faced a “quick and devastating takedown.” This didn’t mean seriously engaging with the scientific arguments presented in the Great Barrington Declaration – neither Collins nor Fauci ever did that. It meant relying on media connections to ensure the declaration was dismissed as quackery. (pp. 96-97)
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On Many Paths to God

By Bill Muehlenberg — 5 months ago

Pope Francis, once again, has landed himself in hot water by stating that there are many roads to God – not just Christianity. And it was not enough for him to state this once, but he doubled down on it again a few days after his first remarks. He said this a week ago at an inter-religious gathering of young people in Singapore: “Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true? There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.”

When the current Pope first made some worrying remarks about how all religions are basically taking us to the same God, I thought I would let others deal with it. And many have of course, both Catholics and non-Catholics. But given that he seems to want to keep pushing this, I suppose I should finally weigh in on it.
Pope Francis, once again, has landed himself in hot water by stating that there are many roads to God – not just Christianity. And it was not enough for him to state this once, but he doubled down on it again a few days after his first remarks.
He said this a week ago at an inter-religious gathering of young people in Singapore: “Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true? There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.”
And just the other day in a video message to an ecumenical youth gathering in Tirana, Albania, he reaffirmed this stance: “I invite you to learn together to discern the signs of the times. Contemplate the difference of your traditions like a richness, a richness God wants to be. Unity is not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identities is a gift of God. Unity in diversity. Let mutual esteem grow among you, following the witness of your forefathers.”
Let me say a few things before some people get all bent out of shape about this. One, I have long made it clear that while I am an evangelical Protestant, it is not my purpose with this site to incessantly attack Catholics. I certainly have many major theological differences with them, but I count many of them as my friends, I speak at their meetings, and some of my fav authors are Catholics, and so on.
Two, some have said that we need to take his words in context, and that he does not really mean what he has said. Well, it seems pretty clear to me just what he was trying to say, especially in that first comment. It is very hard for anyone to weasel their way out of what was declared. He even specifically mentions Muslims, Hindus and so on as he makes his point.
Three, forget my views if you like. It is not just Protestants who have very real problems with all this. There are plenty of orthodox Roman Catholic groups which have also spoken out about his remarks. See here for just one of many such pieces: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pope-francis-every-religion-is-a-way-to-arrive-at-god/
And I have plenty of Catholic associates, friends and acquaintances who are all equally disgusted with this and many other things the current Pope has done and said over the past 11 years. One gal who is as devout and gung-ho a Catholic as you will ever meet actually told me once: “Pope Francis is a heretic.” Plenty of folks within the Roman Catholic Church are quite concerned about these matters.
Is Jesus just one of many ways?
Not only does biblical Christianity unambiguously affirm that Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to the Father, but this is even basic Roman Catholic teaching. Always has been. And no one actually reading the New Testament can ever come up with any other ideas.
You will not find there any idea that Jesus thought of himself as just one of many great religious leaders and teachers, and that he was just one path among many that would take us to God. Indeed, simply consider some of the things he said about himself:
Matthew 11:27 All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
John 3:3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
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Scruton on the Death of England

By Bill Muehlenberg — 5 months ago

Roger Scruton often wrote about his beloved England and how he was witnessing its tragic collapse. In 2000 he penned England: An Elegy (Bloomsbury). While focusing on just this one nation, much of what he says there can be applied to other parts of the West. Here I simply want to offer some quotes from the volume. In his Preface he writes: “What follows is a memorial address: I speak of England as I knew it, not as the country might appear to the historian. My intention is not to add to the store of factual knowledge, but to pay a personal tribute to the civilisation that made me and which is now passing from the world.”

That everything in life, including ourselves, our families, our loves, our relationships, our communities, our cultures and our countries are all transitory is a given. But we tend to live as if this were not the case. Things that we really love and value we tend to want to continue forever. But as George Harrison once put it, “All things must pass”.
Our life and our world will come to an end soon enough. The Bible also speaks to these realities. In James 4:14 we read: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” And Hebrews 13:14 says this: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”
My youth is gone. My wife is gone. My very life will soon be gone. And many things I have loved will also one day be no more. But still, we can and should appreciate the good things that we have known. And that can include cultures and nations. Love of country can be a good thing, and grief over a country that was once great but is now in decline is also appropriate.
I grieve over the fate of the once great West, and the places I have spent most of my time in: Australia, America and Europe. Others also lament the decline of their own nations. One such figure is the late Roger Scruton. He often wrote about his beloved England and how he was witnessing its tragic collapse.
In 2000 he penned England: An Elegy (Bloomsbury). While focusing on just this one nation, much of what he says there can be applied to other parts of the West. Here I simply want to offer some quotes from the volume. In his Preface he writes:
“What follows is a memorial address: I speak of England as I knew it, not as the country might appear to the historian. My intention is not to add to the store of factual knowledge, but to pay a personal tribute to the civilisation that made me and which is now passing from the world.”
Various chapters look at such things as English character, culture, religion, law, society and government. But here I want to focus on his final chapter: “Epilogue: The Forbidding of England.” As with so many other Western nations, the demise of England is not due to external forces so much as inward decay. Self-loathing, guilt-tripping, and a determined repudiation of the past are all part of this.
The chapter begins with these words: “England consisted in the physiognomy, the habits, the institutions, the religion and the culture that I have described in these pages. Almost all have died. To describe something as dead is not to call for its resurrection. Nevertheless, we are in dangerous territory.”
He admits of course to the country’s many weaknesses and defects. He lists some, but then he says, “I find myself confirmed in the desire to praise the English for the virtues which they once displayed, and which they were taught even in my youth to emulate.” He continues:
This does not alter the fact that these virtues are rapidly disappearing. Having been famous for their stoicism, their decorum, their honesty, their gentleness and their sexual puritanism, the English now subsist in a society in which those qualities are no longer honoured – a society of people who regard long-term loyalties with cynicism, and whose response to misfortune is to look round for someone to sue. England is no longer a gentle country, and the old courtesies and decencies are disappearing. Sport, once a rehearsal for imperial virtues, has become a battleground for hooligans. Sex, freed from taboos, has become the ruling obsession: the English have the highest rate of divorce in Europe, regard marriage as a bore, are blatantly promiscuous and litter the country with their illegitimate, uncared-for and state-subsidised offspring.

Gone are the congregations and the little platoons. Gone are the peaceful folkways — the children’s games, parlour songs, proverbs and sayings — that depended on a still remembered religious community. Gone are the habits — the stiff upper lip, the aloof sense of duty, the instant assistance to the stranger in distress — that went with imperial pride. Gone are the institutions — the village shop, the market, the Saturday-night dance, the bandstand in the park — through which local communities renewed themselves.
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