British Judge Does Not Allow Christians To Be Foster Parents

Worry Is The Absence of Fellowship With God

In the land of Whitefield, Wesley, and John Newton, the British Humanist Association is campaigning to discourage “cultural Christians” from identifying themselves as believers in the forthcoming census. One member of parlament wants to drop the prayer that traditionally opens Parliamentary sessions. Companies forbid Christian staff from wearing crosses to work. And now devout Christians are no longer worthy of becoming foster parents. Cristina Odone writes:

It’s official: Britain is no longer a Christian nation. In banning Eunice and Owen Johns, a devout Christian couple, from fostering children, Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson declared that we live in a secular state, and that the Johns’ religious convictions disqualified them from raising citizens of that state. We’ve outgrown Christianity, the judges professed. Instead, we have graduated to the status of a multicultural nation, blessed by a plurality of faiths.

Continue reading. . . .

A Christian Martyr In Pakistan

Shabaz Bhatti

The last Christian in Pakistan’s government was assassinated March 2. Shahbaz Bhatti was Pakistan’s minister for minorities. Bhatti was on his way to work in Islamabad, when a radical Islamic group opened fire on his car. The gunmen claim to be associated with the Taliban terrorist movement.

Bhatti was well known his desire to reform the blasphemy laws since a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, had been sentenced to death for “insulting” Islam. Bhatti, who had been receiving death threats, vowed that he would not stop speaking out against the blasphemy law.

TEC Wages War On Break-Away Churches

Historic Falls Church has many doctrinal differences with TEC (formerly known as the Episcopal Church USA). These include the Episcopal Church’s ordination of the first non-celibate gay bishop. Falls Church and seven others in northern Virginia, separated from TEC and created a parallel church network aligned with the Anglican Communion. TEC, however, has started a lawsuit to confiscate the property of these churches.

These churches predate the founding of the Episcopal diocese in Virginia itself. In fact, they are among its founding churches. Falls Church itself dates back to 1734 when George Washington was a member.

TEC is waging a very expensive war in court which is costing it and the eight churches $10 million to $16 million. The battle continues, however, after five long years. If you are wondering what TEC plans to do with these churches, look at what TEC did when it won its case in Binghamton, New York. The Church of the Good Shepherd had been in operation since 1879. The Episcopal Diocese of Central New York sold it for $50,000 which was only a fraction of its $386,400.00 value. Then, to rub salt in the wound, it was not sold to another Christian group, in order to fulfill its revenge it was sold to a Muslim group for use as an Islamic Center.

One interesting insight on TEC’s attitude is that Good Shepherd offered to purchase the property before any legal proceedings began. TEC refused and after winning the Binghamton suit, sold the church to the Islamic group for about a third of what the Good Shepherd congregation had offered.

Apparently, since TEC has broken away from following the Scriptures, it appears that TEC’s war strategy is to spend millions of its ministry dollars to destroy the churches whose belief in the Scriptures would no longer allow them to be a part of TEC.

Marriage And Children

"Leave It To Beaver"

From: The Heritage Foundation

Given the downward trends affecting marriage in the middle class over the last 40 years, the likes of Ward and June Cleaver may be added to America’s endangered species list. Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox, director of The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, discussed the decline of marriage in a Monday address at The Heritage Foundation about his recently released report, When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America. . . .

Wilcox found that middle-class Americans (those holding only a high school diploma) were much more likely to experience divorce and to have children out-of-wedlock than more highly educated citizens. While many Americans still hold a high regard for the institution of marriage, they are also increasingly tolerant of pre-marital sex, cohabitation, and non-marital childbearing. These attitudes are most prominent in the middle class, where the cultural battle for the health of marriage is raging.

The decrease in marriage and higher rates of divorce in Middle America signal trouble not only for the men and women who risk missing out on the economic and social stability of marriage, but also for their children. A child raised in a single-parent household is six times more likely to live in poverty than a child raised in a stable, married household. The decline in marriage also affects taxpayers, regardless of class, since in FY 2010 alone the federal government spent over $300 billion on welfare programs for low-income, single-parent families.

Continue reading here. . . .

Persecution Of Christians Increases In China And The Middle East

All conservatives and Christians should take time to visit the Patriot Post. Below is an example:

Quoting The Patriot Post:

China has reportedly launched another crackdown on local congregations known as house churches that don’t belong to the official state-sanctioned “church.” The China Aid Association, a U.S. group that supports Chinese Christians, says that Chinese authorities have labeled the house church movement a “cult.” The Communist government used the term “cult” in 1999 when it outlawed the Falun Gong meditation movement. Soon after, a major crackdown was launched against the Falun Gong, and a similar move against house church Christians may be in the works.

In Iraq, the purging of Christians from the country is an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. More than half of Iraq’s Christians have fled the country since 2003 due to Muslim persecution, and this exodus recently picked up steam. The Sunni terrorists who killed 51 worshipers and two priests when they bombed a Baghdad Catholic church earlier this year have vowed to kill Christians “wherever they can reach them.” Other bombings and murders are sending a clear signal that Christians are not welcome in Iraq. . . .

The human tragedy of these Islamist attacks is compounded by the historic one. Christians of the Middle East preserve the ways of the Apostolic era as no other Christians can. The followers of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch, Syria, and it was there that the Gospels were first written down. For a millennium, the churches of Iraq and Syria were great centers of Christian thought and culture. Today, however, the Christian population in every Muslim country in the region is declining. . . .

Read more here. . . .

Congress And Our Money

The Black Hole of Government Theft Through Taxes

The Declaration of Independence, particularly the second sentence, provides us with a sweeping statement of individual human rights:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The implication here is that God is the source of the rights of men and thus it is wrong to violate a human being’s self-ownership. This would include forcibly taking the fruits of one man’s labor to be used by another (which makes the first man a slave to the latter). Walter E. Williams explains further:

Do farmers and businessmen have a right to congressional handouts? Does a person have a right to congressional handouts for housing, food and medical care?

First, let’s ask: Where does Congress get handout money? One thing for sure, it’s not from the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus nor is it congressmen reaching into their own pockets. The only way for Congress to give one American one dollar is to first, through the tax code, take that dollar from some other American. It must forcibly use one American to serve another American. Forcibly using one person to serve another is one way to describe slavery. As such, it violates self-ownership. . . .

Some might argue that Congress forcing us to help one another and forcing us to take care of ourselves are good ideas. But my question to you is: When congressmen and presidents take their oaths of office, is that oath to uphold and defend good ideas or the U.S. Constitution?

When the principles of self-ownership are taken into account, two-thirds to three-quarters of what Congress does violate those principles to one degree or another as well as the Constitution to which they’ve sworn to uphold and defend. In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, James Madison, the father of our Constitution, stood on the floor of the House to object, saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” Did James Madison miss something in the Constitution?

You might answer, “He forgot the general welfare clause.” No, he had that covered, saying, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.”

Continue reading. . . .

The Avastin Battle

There is a drug which many people with different types of cancer have been grateful for. The drug is called Avastin. Avastin does not cure cancer. It does, however, starve tumors of nutrients and oxygen. It can slow the spread of cancer and improve the quality of a cancer victim’s life.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Avastin for colon cancer (2004), lung cancer (2006), and advanced breast cancer (2008). As usual, however, our government may soon be making a decision that hurts people with a certain type of cancer. The FDA is about to take the final step to designate the use of this drug as “off-label” for breast cancer. This means that government supported health insurance plans (such as for our military) will refuse to reimburse for this medicine because it is “off-label”. The real kicker here is that private insurance companies usually follow the lead of government insurers.

Last July, the Oncologic Committee of the FDA decided that Avastin did not represent a favorable risk/benefit analysis (FR/BA). Please understand that FR/BA has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the drug. FR/BA is all about population statistics and cost. Avastin breast cancer treatment costs as much as $88,000 annually. If the FDA designates this drug as “off-label,” most breast cancer patients will be unable to afford treatment with Avastin.

Targeting Christians In Muslim Lands

As the world continues to grow smaller, the Muslim world’s indigenous Christians are being identified with free Christians in the West. Muslim perceptions of the West affect the treatment of Christians in Muslim lands. Race or geography is not important; shared religion makes them all liable for one another. This practice of actually attacking one set of Christians or non-Muslims in general, in response to another — has roots in Islamic law. The Pact of Omar, a foundational text for Islam’s treatment of Dhimmis (i.e., non-Muslims who refused to convert after their lands were seized by Islam) makes this clear. The consequences of breaking any conditions that Christians were made to accept in order to be granted a degree of security by the Muslim state were severe. A rule broken by a single individual Dhimmis could result in jihad being enacted against the whole community. Raymond Ibrahim, the associate director of the Middle East Forum and the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, puts this ancient practice into a modern perspective:

In 2006, when Pope Benedict quoted history deemed unflattering to Islam, Christians around the Muslim world paid the price: anti-Christian riots ensued, churches were burned, and a nun was murdered in Somalia. That was then. Days ago, when a Christian in Egypt was accused of dating a Muslim woman, twenty-two Christian homes were set ablaze, to cries of “Allah Akbar.” Countless other examples of one group of Christians in the Muslim world being “punished” in response to other Christians exist.

In fact, the recent carnage in Baghdad, wherein Islamists stormed a church during mass, killing over fifty Christian worshippers, was a “response” to Egypt’s Coptic Christian church, which Islamists accuse of kidnapping and torturing Muslim women to convert to Christianity. (Ironically, the well documented reality in Egypt is that Muslims regularly kidnap and force Christian women to convert to Islam: these accusations are part of a new trend whereby Islamists project their own crimes onto the Copts.) And the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists who perpetrated the Baghdad church massacre have further threatened Christians around the world. . . .

Continue reading. . . .

Feds Force Bank To Take Down Christmas Symbols And Bible Verses

Here is another Christmas/Christian incident where the Feds recklessly violate the 1st Amendment to our constitution: “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.”

Congress (our government) is not empowered by the Constitution to make laws or rules concerning the free exercise of religious practices (In the context of the original discussion they were talking about differences in Christian Denominations.). This, of course, has benefited other religions that have come to our country. The church must obey fire codes, zoning laws, etc. These things do not interfere with the free expression of your religious beliefs and worship. What if a religious belief requires a human sacrifice? There are laws against murder which require the government to protect the lives of its citizens. The right to life, which is a fundamental moral principle of Western Civilization, therefore takes precedence over the practice of human sacrifice. The Feds, however, are prohibited by the First Amendment from interfering with the free speech of religious expression, which includes signs, buttons, internet Bible verses on a web site, nor individual or group decisions on how to express their faith during Christmas by the above means.  In other words, the First Amendment was adopted to protect religion from the government, not the government from religion. We have more of this story from Tim Wildmon:

According to Oklahoma City television station KOCO, the Federal Reserve has ordered a small-town bank in Oklahoma to remove religious signs and symbols on display.

Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Payne County Bank last week.

And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say “Merry Christmas, God With Us” were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank’s Internet site also had to be taken down, along with Thomas Kinkade paintings hanging in the bank’s lobby.

You can help by immediately sending an email to Kansas City Federal Reserve president Thomas Hoenig and other key executives, asking them to repudiate the order to remove religious signs and symbols from the Payne County Bank.

Read the entire article here. . . .

Chinese To Build An Aircraft Carrier

Quoting The Hindu:

The Chinese government has for the first time officially revealed that it has launched a program to build an aircraft carrier, an already widely-known project that has recently stirred debate over China’s naval intentions and capabilities. . . .

The announcement comes against the backdrop of rising naval tensions between China and several of its neighbors in recent months. Territorial tensions over claims in the South China Sea have resurfaced, as have maritime disputes between China and Japan over the disputed Diaoyu or Senkaku islands.

False Climate Science

From the pen of Dr. Tim Ball:

All the scares generated by the false climate science promoted by political agendas disappear from the mainstream media and are rarely heard of again. There’s no follow up in the mainstream media, no apologies for providing false or inadequate information.

Nasty old Mother Nature causes the demise by going about her normal business. As the old advertisement said, it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. The Northern Hemisphere winter is already proving once again that global warming is another undelivered government promise.

Continue reading. . . .

“Profiling” Can Be A Good Thing!

PROFILING!

Quoting Dan Miller:

Sensible people profile daily, and not only for law enforcement purposes. A guy walking into a convenience store with a bag over his head and carrying something which appears to be a pistol may intend to rob the store; he may just be en route to a Halloween party, but inherent situational awareness certainly makes us legitimately concerned. “Profiling” is commonly used by the police: if a young Latina (female) is seen robbing a gasoline station, the police presumably concentrate their investigations on young Latinas rather than on elderly males appearing to be Swedish — not because all young Latinas are considered more likely to rob gasoline stations but because the robber of that gasoline station was a young Latina.

Medical professionals often use profiling in diagnosing medical conditions. Members of various racial and ethnic groups show marked statistical susceptibility to various diseases. These factors should be and are considered. So, obviously, do males and females. Males are not generally screened for ovarian cancer nor are women normally screened for testicular or prostate cancer.

The government requires some profiling based on race, ethnicity, and sex. One aspect of this is called affirmative action, which mandates benefits for people in racial, ethnic, and gender groups deemed historically disadvantaged, without regard to whether the beneficiaries, as individuals, have ever been disadvantaged personally because of their race, ethnicity, or sex. Conversely, affirmative action mandates disadvantages for people not in those groups, regardless of their personal situations; it’s pretty much a zero sum game.

Affirmative action and medical screening based on group classifications are, it is assumed, intended to be benign, but profiling to detect people likely to be more dangerous than others is not thought specifically to increase their happiness or well being; it can easily subject them to enhanced inconvenience and worse. However, it can also enhance the safety of all, even those subjected to it.

Continue reading. . . .

Political Correctness In American Policy

Karl Marx

The ideas supporting political correctness were first articulated by a group of Marxist professors who, in order to escape Hitler’s wrath, escaped Nazi Germany before WWII. Historically then, we can see that political correctness is the result of cultural Marxism. It is economic Marxism translated into cultural terms. These German Marxists understood that Karl Marx was wrong about the inevitability of the socialist takeover of capitalism. They believed that Marxism must be turned into a stealth project in order to take over free capitalistic democracies. Many of these German Marxists resettled in America, where they and their followers have continued to advocate these ideas. Author and attorney Kelly O’Connell writes about the effect of political correctness on the US:

Political Correctness is first a movement of speech purification which is meant to remove any objectionable content that unfairly differentiates between the speaker and different subgroups. It is also supposed to change behavior by promoting these subgroups. It typically buries traditional morality along the way. The real problem with PC is that it is a theoretical standard which has real world consequences that can be quite appalling.

There is no lack of examples of bad, unintended consequences to the PC movement. Many claim America’s universities have been absolutely degraded by the absurd standards of PC. Another points out the harm it has done to medical services. But the worst influences may be upon US security and warfare. . . .

For example, did the Fort Hood Shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, get preferential treatment because he was Muslim then end up shooting 41 American soldiers while screaming, “Allah Akbar”, ie God is Great—as an Islamic declaration of Jihad? America is so PC friendly, US service people cannot even carry their own weapons on base. . . .

Imagine in how many different ways the PC movement has hampered the ability of America to wage war effectively. These PC-styled Rules of Engagement have so hampered US forces in Afghanistan that the enemy often can claim strategic advantage in planning attacks despite all their weaknesses. . . .

Here are two examples of Rules of Engagement:

If having been fired upon by a shooter who then drops his weapon to his side as soon as he comes under notice from coalition forces, he should no longer be considered an immediate threat and is not to be fired upon, even if he decamps to another location where it is likely he will take up another position to resume firing.

If troops come under fire from a dwelling place which could be considered to have women and children present they are to avoid returning fire and deploy to another safer area.

Read more on this subject. . . .

Junk Science And Climate

The recent global warming scandal was riddled with deliberate deception and imaginative propaganda that CO2 was causing harm to our planet. This led to completely unnecessary and devastating economic policies. Billions of dollars have been unnecessarily wasted on climate change programs. The world was deliberately deceived. The climate hucksters succeeded because they attacked anyone who dared to question them. They got away with it because the experts who knew better also knew it was all about access to government grants and were intimidated into silence. They got away with it because no-one wanted to point out that the emperor was nude. The human impact caused by trying to turn America into a third rate economic power was ignored. The global warming lobby held sway in the halls of Congress and so anti-business and anti-jobs were the constant themes of legislation on Capital Hill. Dr. Tim Ball writes:

How can they get away with such incredible arrogance and deception? Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres of the UN Framework Convention on Climate (UNFCC) said “Let me be clear – there is no magic bullet, no one climate agreement that will solve everything right now,” “To expect that is naive. However, I am certain the world can do this step by step, but only if we keep on walking firmly in the right direction, including at Cancun.” She is talking about stopping or controlling climate change. Clearly Ms. Figueres knows nothing about climate science or doesn’t want to know.

There is nothing to solve except how the world was deceived that humans are the sole cause of climate change and therefore it can be controlled. It’s a delusion of modern, technologically, and bureaucratically arrogant people. She should know the cost of the delusion that human CO2 is causing climate change has produced. How people are being subjected to serious social and economic harm that borders on atrocities. Maybe her degree in anthropology would help her resolve this and other resulting issues. Maybe she could explain how a group of people who falsified data, practiced inaccurate and inadequate science, convinced governments to introduce completely unnecessary and harmful policies, and fooled the Nobel Committee into giving them a Peace Prize. To call what they did a contribution to peace is an intellectual farce. But it is not a farce to consider that it appears to fit the definition of Crimes against Humanity. Mass atrocities are organized crimes whose perpetrators need money, weapons, transportation, and other means to commit widespread and systematic violence against civilians. A country, commercial entity, or individual enables mass atrocities when it provides resources, goods, services, or other practical support to the perpetrator, and when this support is a critical ingredient in the commission of the atrocities.

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Mosque At Ground Zero An Insult

Rudy Giuliani

Quoting Rudy Giuliani:

(Building a mosque at Ground Zero) sends a particularly bad message, particularly (because) of the background of the Imam who is supporting this. This is an Imam who has supported radical causes, who has not been forthright in condemning Islamic (terrorism) and the worst instincts that that brings about. So it not only is exactly the wrong place, right at Ground Zero, but it’s a mosque supported by an Imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism. Come on! We’re gonna allow that at Ground Zero? This is a desecration. Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor. Let’s have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let’s not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory. I mean, they died there because of Islamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy, we can say that, the world will not end when we say that. And the reality is it will not and should not insult any decent Muslim because decent Muslims should be as opposed to Islamic extremism as you and I are.