Contraception: The Solution to All the World's Problems

Howard Dean Clarifies The Choice Between Barack Obama and Rick Santorum

On Morning Joe, Howard Dean said today that "Rick Santorum has said a lot of incredibly intolerant things." I would point out that this clarifies things immensely. In fact, this helps distinguish him from Barack Obama, who has done a lot of incredibly intolerant things.

Thanks for clearing that up, Howard.

He also says later in the clip that most Americans don't think sexual morality is the business of the Church. I guess that is the next constriction on freedom of worship: "You can have freedom of worship as long as you leave morality to Caesar."

Yeah, shouldn't be a problem there, Howie. Clearly only fundamentalists think morality has anything to do with religion.

He also says that most Americans don't think sex is any business of the Government. Which, apparently, is why the Democrats are insisting that Government forbid any organization from refusing to pay for contraception and abortions for all women, including unmarried ones. The government wants nothing to do with your sex life but it stands ready to provide you with all the free stuff you need to indulge all you want and punish any employer who does not pay for your orgies.

Great logic, wouldn't you like to see what the Government would be doing if it did think your sex life was any of its business?

You want to know what comes next? My prediction is that if Obama wins in November, Catholic hospitals will be required to perform surgical abortions. (They have already been told they must perform chemical ones by this new Obamacare mandate.) Why? Not because any more abortion providers are needed, but just for the principle involved. It is kind of like getting people to offer a pinch of incense to Caesar as a way of keeping them in line and separating out the highly-principled ones for special harassment.

If Obama wins, civil disobedience will undoubtedly become necessary.

The Best Books I Read in 2011

My daughter got me a T-shirt from a bookstore in Washington, DC with a great slogan on the back: "So many books, so little time." Says it all, really.

Theology

1. Heavenly Participation: the Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry - Hans Boersma (Eerdmans, 2011) Boersma advocates going back to the Platonist-Christian synthesis of the Great Tradition as the way forward. Terrific reading for those who are convinced that Modernity is a dead end.

2. Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, Authorship - Kevin Vanhoozer (Cambridge, 2010). This is a substantial theological proposal from a fabulous writer. Best line in the book is: "We need a fully Christianized ontology." That is what Boersma proposed we can find in the 5th and 13th centuries.

3. Christianity and Liberalism - J. Gresham Machen (Eerdmans, 1929). I re-read this old classic this year and found it well-worthwhile. It is amazing how similar the issues are now to the ones he dealt with nearly a century ago.

4. Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine - Jason Byassee (Eerdmans, 2007). This is a wonderful book that gets down to a serious engagement with Augustine. If we Evangelicals don't shake off the chains of modernist, historical criticism and go back to the way the apostles and fathers read Scripture, we are all going to end up liberal.

Ethics

1. Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control 1873-1973 - Allan Carlson (Transaction, 2012) Don't read this book if you hate having your nice, 20th century, Evangelical presumptions trampled.

2. True Sexual Morality: Recovering Biblical Standards for a Culture in Crisis - Daniel R. Heimbach (Crossway, 2004). The title is in your face and Heimbach doesn't get out of your face for the next 400 pages. He never pretends that there isn't a war going on. My favorite part was him describing how they had to clean the porn out of the campus after the conservative take-over of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Fiction

1. The Father's Tale - Michael O'Brien (Ignatius, 2011). This is a wonderful novel by my favorite Canadian writer of all time. It is a modern re-telling of the parables of the prodigal son and the lost sheep. Too short at 1076 pages.

2. Father Brown - G. K. Chesterton. I find as I get older that I love to re-read books from the past that meant something to me at the time. It is fascinating to discover if they are as good as I remember them being at the time. This collection of Father Brown stories is better than I remember. What could be better on a cold Winter's evening than an overstuffed, recliner chair, a cold drink, an afghan, Bach playing in the background . . . and another case to solve with Father Brown?

So, what am I reading right now?

In connection with the book I'm writing . . .

Paul Gravilyk's wonderful The Suffering of the Impassible God: the Dialectics of Patrisitic Thought

Stanley Fowler's More Than a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal Sacramentalism

Khaled Anatolios's Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine

And for fun and pure enjoyment . . .

Ian Ker's G. K. Chesterton: A Biography

Divide and Conquor: Tyrants Always Try This But Unless We are Very Stupid It Won't Work

Obama is a liberal Protestant who was formed in a church that preached black liberation theology and it is an open question as to how much of orthodox Christianity he actually believes. One would not have to believe much to fit comfortably into Jeremiah Wright's congregation and it is very difficult to believe that a person with orthodox Christian doctrine could have endured 20 years of Wright's rants.

But one thing Obama knows is that the Christian Church in America is an obstacle to his vision of a giant, all-powerful State directing the lives of individuals with as few as possible intermediate institution in between. The family is one such mediating institution and the Democratic Party has been following policies that weaken the family ever since they used the opening provided by the civil rights movement to implement the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. The Church is another such institution and as George Will remarked the other day on ABC's This Week, every institution of civil society must be broken to the saddle of the progressive state.

The Christian Church is hardly a monolithic entity and so the opportunity exists for Obama to try to divide and conquer. A frontal assault on the whole thing never works, so chipping off groups here and there is the obvious way to go if one's goal is to neutralize Christian opposition to the out of control Leviathan.

Two obvious fissures exist in the Christian Church in America that can be exploited by shameless politicians eager to neutralize the Christian moral witness. First, the Roman Catholic Church, which is dangerous because of its size and hierarchical organization, has a liberal wing that regularly dissents from the hierarchy and is perfectly positioned to be used as dupes for Big Government. Second, the Evangelical-Catholic alliance, which has become so dangerous to Leviathan in recent years, is always inherently fragile. Witness the way that the pro-life movement is winning the moral argument and the political fight over abortion ever since the Catholics and Evangelicals got together and liberal Protestantism declined to insignificance.

Enter the contraception issue. Why is Obama so anxious to turn a referendum on Obamacare into a referendum on contraception? It is his administration's strategy to defend Obamacare and the march toward ever Bigger Government. How so? Evangelicals and Catholics, on the one hand, and liberal and mainstream Catholics, on the other, disagree on this issue. The Evangelical-Catholic alliance on abortion is so strong now that abortion is losing its value as a wedge issue for liberals (which is why they now accuse conservatives of using it as a wedge issue). So they need a new wedge issue to divide Christians from one another.

The liberal Catholics who support Obama are dupes. He is just using them and will toss them aside like so much excess baggage once they have served their purpose. If it were not for the fact that the Pope and the Bishops are a genuine threat to Obama's re-election, they would be under the bus already.

Evangelicals should be wary of this strategy and should remember who their true allies are. And, let it be said, it is past time for Evangelicals to re-think their support for the whole contraceptive mentality. What I am surprised is not being emphasized right now is that Evangelicals and Catholics are equally opposed to the "morning after pill" and other poisons that cause abortions. And the government is determined to make every Evangelical college and seminary in America pay for such abortion poisons. We Evangelicals have every bit as much at stake as Catholics do in this sort of fight if we are serious about being anti-abortion.

If Obama can peel off some Evangelical support from the Evangelical-Catholic alliance and then get liberal Catholics fighting his battles for him against the hierarchy, then he dilutes the voting impact of traditional Christian opposition to his pro-sexual revolution policies. But if we are on to his game, we can ensure that there is no daylight between our position and the Catholic one. After all, this is not really about contraception; it is about religious liberty and limited government.

You Will Be Sexually "Liberated" or Else!

George Weigel cuts through the distractions and gets to the nub of the issue at stake between the Obama administration and the Christian Church in a piece entitled "The Libertine Police State."

Weigel recounts a story told to him by a Vatican official who attended one of the UN meetings leading up to the 1994 Cairo World Conference on Population and Development and then makes some trenchant comments:

But it was in the INGO meeting that things really got down and dirty — and clarifying. There, as the Senior Vatican Official told the story, a somewhat scruffy Dutch activist got up and announced to all and sundry, “Let’s stop fooling around here. What we’re talking about is our right to f*** whoever we want, however we want, whenever we want.”

The Dutchman’s formulation may have lacked elegance, but it certainly didn’t lack precision. For that was precisely what was at issue 18 years ago, and it is precisely what is at issue today: Will the sexual revolution, which reduced sex to a recreational activity of no moral consequence, be protected, advanced, and indeed mandated by the coercive powers of the modern state?

There is irony in the fire here, of course. What began as a movement to liberate sexuality from the constraints of moral reason, custom, and law has become a movement determined to use the instruments of law to impose its deconstruction of human sexuality and its moral relativism on all of society. That is what drives those who urged the Obama administration to issue its “contraceptive” mandate, which is of course an abortifacient and sterilization mandate. That is what drives those who loosed the furies (including such viragos as Senator Barbara Boxer) on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which had had the temerity to suggest that Planned Parenthood actually provide the mammograms Komen’s grants were paying for. It’s all about Leviathan as enforcer of the sexual revolution.

Anyone who doesn’t understand that — from Catholic bishops to upper-class foundation executives with previously immaculate reputations — is going to get rolled over by Leviathan. For Leviathan cannot be met at some mythical 50-yard line of “accommodation.” Leviathan can only be beaten.

If we do not understand what is going on we will be steamrolled by those who would rather be controlled by their appetites and lose their freedom rather than practice self-control and live as dignified, free, human beings.

Three Observations:

1. All the talk about over-population is just a smokescreen designed to deflect attention away from the real agenda. The world faces a population crisis all right; we are going to witness a devastating decline in population in the second half of the 21st century.

2. Tolerance is a sham. The Libertines never wanted tolerance; they wanted to impose their lifestyle on everyone else. The State is just as intolerant and heavy-handed in enforcing the New Morality as it was in enforcing the old one. Cecile Richards should wear jackboots.

3. The Left is the unrelenting aggressor in the culture war. With all the problems facing America, Obama is preoccupied with sex. To listen to Rachel Maddow, you would swear that contraception must be illegal and unavailable in America. It is hilarious that people listen to her talk about the Republican "war on contraception" in a country where universities hand out condoms like Halloween candy! Will they ever be satisfied? Will they ever give up pushing the sexual revolutionary ideology into every nook and cranny of life? Weigel is right. They are totalitarians and they can only be stopped by force. Compromise is just delaying the next round of the war. Fortunately, American can still vote and we can only pray that the next election offers them a real choice.

Good for Rick Warren!

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren tweets:

I’m not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure

and

I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a govement mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29

Warren delivered the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration.

via Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online

Freedom of Religion versus Freedom of Worship

Which do you believe in? Did you know there was a difference?

The Obama administration has been seeking for some time now to redefine religious freedom down to mere freedom of worship. This distinction is between having the freedom to worship as you please with worship meaning specifically religious ceremonies held in designated buildings consecrated for that purpose led by professional clergy. But anything outside that context is fair game for the government to regulate to death as the ruling class sees fit.

So the following kinds of organizations and institutions may no longer defined as religious: hospitals, Christian schools, summer camps, pregnancy help centers, campus groups such as IVP, inner city ministries, Bible colleges, liberal arts colleges, seminaries, universities, think tanks, counseling centers, community centers, publishing companies, prison ministries, community-based youth groups etc. Christians do a lot of ministry outside the local church itself and have always had the freedom to hire Christians only, have distinctively Christian policies and allow Christian morality to shape practices. All this is threatened as the net of secularism tightens.

Freedom of worship narrowly defined is what the Soviet Union had in its constitution. But it was defined so narrowly that even parents taking their own children to Sunday School was forbidden.

How wide or narrow the definition of religious freedom is allowed to be is a measure of how free a country is. Religious freedom should be defined in the widest way possible. The narrowing of religious freedom to mere freedom to worship is heavy-handed and totalitarian. It must be resisted by the Church at the earliest stages because, like cancer, the further it progresses the harder it is to stop and the more traumatic it is for the body politic to reverse.

The Obama administration is at war with the Christian Church because it wants to replace Christianity with the Church of Secularism as the civil religion of the American people.

This is an attempt to roll back the clock and pretend that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ never happened. It is an attempt to return to pre-Christian paganism. But it is doomed to fail because the cosmos has been shaken and altered by the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ who rule at the right hand of the Father. The kingdoms of this world are destined to become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ.

Let the Secularists rage, the Jihadists roar and the United Nations plot the advance of the culture of death. They have already been defeated - all of them.

"The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Annointed saying, "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us." He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds then in derision. (Psalm 2:2-4)

Evangelicals Speak Up for Religious Liberty

Well, it took a while for the Evangelicals to show up to support the Catholics on the religious liberty fight over contraception and abortion pill issue, but at least they brought their big guns.

Here is an open letter from Charles Colson and Timothy George calling Evangelicals to stand up to the Obama administration's attempts to restrict religious freedom.

Even liberal Catholics like E. J. Dionne and the Jesuit magazine America are up in arms. (When Obama has lost E.J. and the Jesuits, you know the end is near.) But the Evangelical Left is silent. Where is Sojourners? Where is Tony Campolo? Where is Brian McLaren? Silent. Complicit. Accommodated. Sold out. Irrelevant.

Meanwhile on the front lines:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

As you probably know by now, Obama Administration has refused to grant religious organizations an exemption from purchasing health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, surgical sterilization, and contraception.

The Catholic bishops in America have responded quickly, decrying the Administration's decision for what it is—an egregious, dangerous violation of religious liberty—and mobilizing a vast grassroots movement to persuade the Administration to reverse its decision.

We evangelicals must stand unequivocally with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Because when the government violates the religious liberty of one group, it threatens the religious liberty of all.

Many bishops have already declared that they will not obey this unjust law. The penalty for such a move would be severe. Catholic hospitals, universities, and other organizations would be forced to pay punitive fines ($2,000 per employee) for refusing to purchase insurance that violates the teaching of their church.

For some institutions, it would spell the end of their existence—and their far-reaching service to the public and the needy.

But Catholic institutions aren't the only ones affected by this mandate. Prison Fellowship, for example, which employs 180 people, could not purchase insurance for its employees that covers abortifacients. Nor could the world's largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families afford the fines we would incur.

Three years ago, when we co-authored the Manhattan Declaration, we predicted that the time would come when Christians would have to face the very real prospect of civil disobedience—that we would have to choose sides: God or Caesar.

Certainly for the Catholics and for many of us evangelicals, that time is already upon us.

We would urge you, therefore, to raise your voice against this unjust mandate that violates our first freedom as Americans. First, please sign the petition to President Obama prepared by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which we have posted at the Manhattan Declaration site, demanding that the President extend exemptions from this onerous mandate to all religious employers.

Second, write to your representative and your senators in Congress.

Third, sign the Manhattan Declaration. Join with 500,000 people who have committed to "fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."

Fourth, pray. Pray that God would soften the hearts and minds of the president and the leaders within his administration so that they would reverse course.

We do not exaggerate when we say that this is the greatest threat to religious freedom in our lifetime. We cannot help but think of the words attributed to German pastor Martin Niemoeller, reflecting on the Nazi terror:

First they came for the Socialists, and I
did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did
not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was
no one left to speak for me.

In Christ,
Chuck Colson
Timothy George

This Election is about Morality and God: Everything Else is Details

Well, blogging is still light around here because I'm deep in the fourth century but before I dive back into Athanasius' smackdown of Arian exegesis again, I just checked what is going on in the 21st century and, oh what a night for Rick!

All over America millions of people are saying something like this to each other: "The only thing I ever had against Santorum is that I never thought everybody else would vote for him."

Exactly. That is what you were programed to think by your media manipulators. Romney is inevitable. Romney is the choice of all the smart people in the Republican establishment. Santorum is a nobody. He belongs to some creepy cult called Roman Catholicism whereas Romney is a fine, upstanding, mainstream Mormon.

Enough. This is not a beauty pagent. More than any other election I can remember in my lifetime it is an election of big ideas. Here are a couple of comments I noted well from the Big Government website this morning. Big Government leans libertarian not social conservative, so they are all the more significant for that.

First, from Joel B. Pollack:

Santorum’s (belated) victory in the Iowa caucuses owed much to his campaign’s explicit appeals to evangelical voters on social issues. Yet even voters who disagree with him on those issues may be attracted by the fact that he has a set of values that he is not willing to sacrifice under any circumstances. After a year of frustrating compromises in Congress–for both sides–Santorum’s strong stances on social issues may be a plus. . . .

The church is an imperfect guardian of individual liberty, but Obama’s expansive state is liberty’s clear enemy. That is why 2012 could see a social conservative revival after all.

Secondly, from Charles C. Johnson:

But Santorum understands something that few of the other candidates can put into words: that the power to mandate is the power to compel and compulsion must be grounded on something higher than the mere will of the sovereign. This is a very effective argument against Barack Obama, but it it also a very effective one against Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, who also supported the Wall Street bailouts, cap and trade (taxing breathing) and of course, the individual mandate in health insurance. Both Gingrich and Romney are essentially progressives in their view that there is nothing government mustn’t do.

Santorum is totally correct when he says that government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything away or to force you to accept their “gifts” on their terms. We got a vision of what an Obamacare regime will look like this week when the Obama administration forced Catholic universities, hospitals and other church-affiliated employers to implement a new policy that requires health insurers to offer birth control coverage. For Catholics and many Americans who rightly argue that life begins at conception, forcing their institutions to provide the morning after-pill is tantamount to forcing them to countenance abortion.

The truth has always been that the left were the aggressors in the culture wars and this week they dug their trenches and prepared their assault on three key issues: homosexuals, the murder of the unborn, and compulsory subsidizing of birth control. Each of these issues is tied to the freedom of conscience and each of these issues is a battleground that the left has chosen. Suddenly the pushy Catholic, as the left would describe Santorum, doesn’t seem so pushy when the Catholics get pushed around. So much for if you like your health plan you can keep it. The fine print was apparently: you can only keep your health plan if we like it. Oh, and if you are a charity that doesn’t want to fund our left-wing causes, we will hack your websites, destroy your reputation, and threaten your employees.

(My bolding) The two sentences I have bolded represent the crux of this election. Do Americans still believe, as the Founders did, that ultimately morality and law must be based on something higher than the will of the sovereign (or the people)? Not all the Founders were orthodox Christians, but this was something they nevertheless believed to a man. There is an objective order of right and wrong in this universe and our job is to try to measure up to it, not redefine it.

Sometimes we fail and sometimes we don't even try. But the objective standard remains the same. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Etc.

A country that has a standard it fails to live up to, like an individual, can always repent. So there is always hope. But when you deny the standard, re-define it, assume the role of God, what comes next? Solzhenitsyn talked about this in his Harvard commencement address, "A World Split Apart." He criticized the failure of the tyrannical Soviet Union as rooted in the tragedy that: "Men forgot God." But he scandalized the leftist intelligentsia of America by telling them to their faces that unless they remember God they face the same fate.

Social conservatism cannot, as Mitch Daniels suggested, be cordoned off and ignored while the real business of economics is taken care of by the government. Why? Because the basic economic problem in America is whether government should be limited or unlimited. And the answer to that question depends on whether or not we believe that God exists.

To put it bluntly, God limits government and that has always been the secret of the West's greatness. And when the West forgets God - it will fall too.

UPDATE:

If you want to watch Rick Santorum's victory speech last night, click here. It is about 14 minutes and the best part, if you are short on time, is the second half, especially the closing. He talks about "honour" for heaven's sake! Honour! In the modern world. No irony. And it is credible. Honestly, conservatives have waiting for another Reagan since 1988. Could this finally be what they have been waiting for?

Germany's Top Environmentalist Denounces the Global Warming Scam

Hmm. . . I wonder why this has not been front-page news in the left-wing media in North America. Die Zeit reports that:

Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of Germany's environmental movement, no longer trusts the forecasts of the IPCC. Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. "I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate change were similarly sloppy. I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”

He has written a book to expose the sloppy science of the IPCC.

Undeniably there’s a feeling that the stars are now aligned, the mood has swung, and key players are changing their minds. As FOCUS reports, even the most die-hard of warmists are converting, or at least softening their tones. Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, a renewable energy expert, was once one of the fathers of the modern green movement in Germany and believed everything the IPCC preached – until 2 years ago. FOCUS writes:

"Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the green movement, no longer trusts the forecasts of the IPCC.”

and FOCUS tells us why, quoting Vahrenholt:

Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. ‘I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

In his book he explains how he dug into the IPCC climate report and was horrified by what he had found. Then add the 10 years of stagnant temperatures, failed predictions, Climategate e-mails, and discussions he had with dozens of other skeptical elite scientists. That was more than enough. FOCUS quotes:

"I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”

Malthusian disaster-prediction has been going on for 50 years now. First it was the population explosion. Then it was global cooling. Then it was global warming. Now they talk about "climate change" which is so vague it could be anything. The science is not the point. The point is the UN gaining power to tax every country in the world, a massive transfer of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third world and global socialism. Now that makes the blood run cold.

Obama Twists Scripture to Support His Liberal Works Righteousness Theology

Obama's shameless campaigning was not his most serious lapse in judgment at the National Prayer Breakfast. He twisted Scripture in order to pretend that his socialist policies have something to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Laura McInnis, "Jesus's Teaching Inform My Economic Policy, Obama Says" (National Post)
- she reports on Obama's words at the National Prayer Breakfast where he says his liberal Protestant theology guides his actions as president (Is the ACLU listening?)

Money Quote:

U.S. President Barack Obama sought to emphasize his Christian faith on Thursday, telling a key election-year voting bloc that he prays every morning and has crafted elements of his economic policies in line with Jesus’ teachings.

Obama, who rarely goes to church and speaks far less about his religion than his White House predecessors, told about 3,000 people at a National Prayer Breakfast that the challenges facing the United States required him to listen to God, avoid “phony religiosity,” and pursue “bold action” in the face of resistance or indifference.

“I wake up each morning and I say a brief prayer, and I spend a little time in scripture and devotion,” Obama told the annual gathering at a Washington hotel, also saying that pastors periodically stop by the Oval Office, phone him and send emails so they can pray together.

“I don’t stop there. I’d be remiss if I stopped there, if my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends,” he said. “I must try to make sure that those values motivate me as one leader of this great nation.”

Tina Korbe, "Biblical Principles Prompted Me to Push for Dodd-Frank and Obamacare" (Hot Air) - she gives Obama a little lesson in exegesis

Money Quote:

"Obama maintained that his call for the wealthiest to give up their tax breaks, he’s doing so out of economic necessity, but also in line with biblical teachings.

“And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

It surprises me to encounter the president using this tactic. In the first place, the specific example he cites above is misapplied. When the president establishes a policy direction — and Congress follows it — his decisions don’t just affect him. When he promotes increased taxation of “the rich,” he’s not merely giving up his own tax breaks as he implies — he’s also suggesting the government should be able to force others to pay more in taxes, as well. That’s just obvious — and to say otherwise actually makes the president look more confused than anything. Here, we seem to have an out-of-water Obama who wants very desperately to pander but doesn’t quite know how."

Breanne Howe, "Give Me Your Money in the Name of Jesus" (Red State)
- she continues with the exegesis lesson and makes the important point that Obama's liberal works righteousness theology is more like Islam than Biblical Christianity

Money Quote:

"While Obama may have been correct in saying that government mandated, shared responsibility is equal to the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, he is incorrect to group in Jesus’ teaching, “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” Aside from the fact that Jesus was discussing requirements from God, not the government, he was actually teaching his disciples that they were stewards of God’s gift of Revelation. Their requirement was to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. It’s the crux of Christianity that Obama seems to miss. Jesus came because we are imperfect. We could never fulfill all the requirements that the pharisees loved to lord over the people. Jesus’ coming ended the rule of law and the began the acceptance that our only way to God was through Him. Yes, Jesus very much emphasized the importance of giving to the poor, but as a reaction in joy to what we’ve been given; not because of a law. Giving out of obligation is not truly giving, it’s merely following the rules."

What is most troubling is the statement that the Christian Gospel is the same as the teachings of Islam and Judaism on good works. This shows that he is a liberal Protestant in the sense of being apostate, not in the relative sense of being "to the left" of someone else. His idea of the Gospel seems to be that we should all do good works and love each other and that if we do then we are Christians.

First They Came for the Catholics . . .

I'm deep in the writing process on my book, The Triune God and the Acids of Modernity, and I don't have much time these days for blogging. (Why are sabbaticals so darn short?)

But I would like to provide a few links to comments on recent developments in the Obama administration lawless attack on religious freedom. Below are some links to some of the best writing on the subject.

Mark Steyn, "The Liberal Enforcers" (National Review Online)
- what we love about Mark Steyn is that he is brutally honest

Money Quote:

"Modern “liberalism” is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to “celebrate diversity” coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity. Thus, the Obama administration’s insistence that Catholic institutions must be compelled to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. This has less to do with any utilitarian benefit a condomless janitor at a Catholic school might derive from Obamacare, and more to do with the liberal muscle of Big Tolerance enforcing one-size-fits-all diversity."

Michelle Malkin, First They Came for the Catholics" (Michelle Malkin blog)
- Malkin understands what this is really all about

Money Quote:

Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the non-profit law firm, the Becket Fund, which is representing the schools boiled it down for Bloomberg News: “This is not really about access to contraception. The mandate is about forcing these religious groups to pay for it against their beliefs.”

How did we get here? The first salvo came in December 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union pushed HHS and its Planned Parenthood-championing secretary, Kathleen “The Shredder” Sebelius, to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn.

"The ACLU called for a litigious fishing expedition against Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide “emergency” contraception and abortions to women. In their sights: Devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church’s ethical and religious directives for health care.

ACLU and the feminists have joined with Obama to threaten and sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities. The agenda is not increased “access” to health care services. The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers – Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers – whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers."

Christopher Badeaux, "Excommunicate the Bishops" (Red State)
- he excoriates the Bishops of his church for being so limp-wristed on abortion for so long that it has come to this point.

Money Quote:

It was easy to sell out the unborn, wasn’t it? To just wish away an infallible teaching that — let’s be honest — has been such a headache since a Catholic Supreme Court Justice helped its mass breaking, and Catholic Democrats abandoned everything else to protect that breach, right? To let others commit a sin that our Church treats as so grave that it incurs the automatic sanction of excommunication? All in return for a goal you’ve shared with your Democrat masters since the 1940s — a chance to drive healthcare costs through the roof with the fig leaf of social caring. All so you could work with the sorts of people who are elected to office by publicly calling you theocrats and misogynists for more-or-less upholding the two-thousand-year-old Tradition of our Church.

Thirty pieces of silver must buy one Hell of a lot more for you than it does for me.

Thomas Peters, "Cartoon: Obama vs. the Church" (American Papist
- you have to click through to see the cartoon but it is worth the click

Al Mohler, "The President, the Pill, and Religious Liberty in Peril" (Albert Mohler.com)
- Mohler points out that this is not just a Catholic issue; it affects every single Evangelical institution as well

Money Quote:

"The inclusion of Plan B and other forms of “emergency contraception” raises the stakes considerably, since the issue of abortion is now unavoidable. Will evangelical colleges and institutions now comply with a law we know to be both unjust and unconscionable?

The National Association of Evangelicals made a statement that described the situation well, but promised no particular action: “Employers with religious objections to contraception will be forced to pay for services and procedures they believe are morally wrong.”

Erick Ericson, "The Perversion of the Words of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Sinner Barack H. Obama" (Red State)

Money Quote:

The President this week chose to pervert God’s Word to make the case for a tax increase, but he also chose to ignore God’s word on life and is ordering Christians, while he claims to be one, to violate their Christian conscience on abortion — requiring Christian organizations to provide health insurance that will cover the cost of drugs that induce abortions.

He is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to use God’s Word to defend a tax policy that dissuades individuals from giving gladly and charitably to the poor as God instructs and is ignoring God’s Word in order to force fellow Christians into violating their Christian conscience — something about which God cares a great deal.

This cannot end well for him, particularly doing this claiming to be a Christian. And it might not end well for the rest of us either. Barack Obama has gone to war with Christians’ consciences and he is perverting God’s word in the process to get his way on public policy.

Nine months to go until the American people have the chance to throw off tyranny through a presidential election. It seems like a long time to wait.