From the article -- It is not incidental that God has called American Christians to live in this time and country. Pastors can help people steward their citizenship in a way that is redemptive. This looks different depending on our callings. Some are called to run for office, work in policy organizations, or write and speak in public ways. Others are called to do more quiet and local actions.
All of us, however, are given the stewardship of living in this country and helping shape the policies and people who rule over us. So, a pastor must engage at the level of preaching, teaching, and equipping his people to live faithfully.
We first must recognize that the gospel itself is inherently political. When the first-century Church gathered weekly to declare that Christ, not Caesar, is Lord, they were making a political statement. By the way we are called to live, there is no way to avoid politics in this sense.
Pastors should prioritize preaching the Bible in a systematic, faithful way every week. It’s also helpful at times to have special series, whether from the pulpit or in classes, that address specific cultural issues. However, people should be able to tell the difference between “thus saith the Lord” and “thus saith the pastor.”
* "Life on the Ballot" (Nebraska Family Alliance)
1) Allow late-term abortion on babies who can feel pain in the
second and third trimesters.
2) Abortion throughout pregnancy: “Health” is determined solely by
the abortionist and can include non-medical factors such as
mental, spiritual, financial, or familial health.
3) Enable abusers and traffickers by eliminating parental notification
requirements.
4) “Without interference from the state” eliminates all laws
regulating the abortion industry, including women’s health and
safety requirements.
5) “Viability” is determined solely by the abortionist and would not
include any baby who may need “extraordinary medical measures,”
such as a stay in the NICU
* "America’s Military Can’t Endure Another Four Years Of Democrat Rule" (Shawn Fleetwood, Federalist)
From the article -- But what happens to America and the global security environment when the former’s greatest security system gets hijacked by Constitution-hating leftists? Unfortunately, it’s a question Americans are getting answers to in real time.
While largely ignored by corporate media, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing late last week about a U.S. Army base designating several pro-life organizations as “terrorist groups.” Yes, you read that correctly. The Army instructed roughly 9,100 soldiers over a seven-year period that Operation Rescue and National Right to Life are entities affiliated with terrorism.
Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, the branch’s deputy chief of staff, told lawmakers the briefing materials were pulled after they were exposed, but declined to say whether the individual responsible for their creation has faced any disciplinary actions, according to the Military Times.
* "The Coming Strangulation of Free Speech" (Joel Kotkin, American Mind)
From the article -- Under Harris, the censorship regime would likely get even stronger. She has spoken openly about wanting to “censor misinformation and hate.” Already under Biden, there has been strong support for suppressing online dissent, even proposing to create a “disinformation” board. This likely would be used not only to cover COVID-related issues but also climate change, with the Biden Administration’s top climate adviser Gina McCarthy casting censorship as a “health issue.”
To be sure, the U.S. will have to get much worse to beat our erstwhile democratic allies’ abandonment of free speech; unlike the U.S., the U.K. has no First Amendment. Even as authoritarian regimes are expanding all around the world, notes Freedom House, other Western nations seem to be tilting toward greater restraints on free expression, with “hate speech” laws already surfacing in Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada...
At the same time, similarly-minded progressives increasingly control what happens in our museums, while woke censors proliferate at large publishing firms on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps more remarkable, the journalistic profession itself, particularly at the elite level, largely follows a single orthodoxy that often defines its output. Although even in the past most reporters were not conservatives, the tilt today is extreme. By 2018, barely 7% of U.S. reporters identified as Republicans, and some 97% of all political donations from journalists went to Democrats.
* "The Democrats’ Joy Of Hating America" (I & I Editorial Board)
From the article -- The Democratic Party, Kamala Harris now its titular chief, unleashed illegal immigration after Donald Trump nearly closed the spigot. The lawlessness returned on Jan. 20, 2021, when the new president, Joe Biden, used executive orders to begin rolling back Trump’s border security policies. They were too successful for the left’s refined tastes, so Biden had to kill them.
Two months later, Biden named Harris “border czar,” which only encouraged illegal border crossings. During Biden’s first three years, an estimated 7.4 million illegal immigrants invaded the country, more than three times the number that crossed during Trump’s four years. There were also nearly 2 million “gotaways” who jumped the border in Biden’s first three years but weren’t caught.
The border crisis was not the product of incompetence. It was a matter of deliberate choice. Thomas Klingenstein, principal in the investment firm of Cohen, Klingenstein and the chairman of the Claremont Institute’s board of directors, laid this out four years ago when he said “the multicultural movement, which has taken over the Democratic party, is a revolutionary movement.” He was not talking about a “metaphorical revolution,” but a real “revolution, an attempt to overthrow the American founding.”
And a bonus pick this weekend...
* "Rape is Resistance and Beepers are Genocide" (Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute)
From the article -- Those same organizations [that condemned Israel's exploding pagers] and activists had nothing to say about the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages that turned tens of thousands of Jews into refugees in their own country...The Democrat political establishment can't seem to get around to condemning the Islamic groups attacking synagogues and marching through the streets praising the rape and murder of Jews.
Every Israeli tactic is illegitimate because the cause, a Jewish State, is illegitimate, but no Islamic tactic is ever truly illegitimate because its cause, replacing Israel with an Islamic state, is legitimate. The liberal anti-Israel establishment in D.C., human rights groups and the media have played a cynical game of focusing on Israel tactics as if they actually cared how Israel takes out terrorists, and as if there were any means of taking out terrorists that would win their approval.
