Friday, May 27, 2016

Coronal hole paints sun black in stunning NASA video; Pro-Life Actress Patricia Heaton...more links


Coronal hole paints sun black in stunning NASA video
Images of the sun usually show a burning ball of fire, shining bright in the sky. However, NASA has just released a stunning picture which captured the exact opposite – a giant dark area on the sun's upper half.
   
The image, snapped by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) from May 17-19, shows what is known as a “coronal hole” on the sun, described by the space agency as a “low-density region of the sun's atmosphere, known as the cornea.”...

Clarion Project: 'I was Raised by an Islamist Terror Cult in America'   A woman who grew up within Jamaat ul-Fuqra (Muslims of the Americas), a cultish Islamist terrorist group spoke to Clarion Project...

Conservative Christian, Pro-Life Actress Patricia Heaton: A Liberal's Worst Nightmare   ...Heaton is the star of ABC’s The Middle and formerly of Everybody Loves Raymond. Heaton is has previously identified herself as both a conservative and a Christian. Unlike many in Hollywood, Heaton’s words match her lifestyle, Heaton is known for being outspoken about her faith, stance of politics, and pro-life position. As a mother of four, Heaton walks and talks what she believes.

Heaton is taking heat not so much for her positions, but because she dares to defy the odds of being the typical liberal, Hollywood celebrity. Not only does she refuse conform to the cookie cutter mold that she is supposed to fit in to, but she is outspoken about it as well. Heaton is attacked less for conservative positions, but more for the fact that she is making it known to her fans exactly where she stands on politics, faith, and life. To liberals, it’s bad enough that such a thing as a conservative celebrity exists, but if you’re quite about it, they are more likely to tolerate you though. But because Heaton refuses to remain silent about her beliefs, she is bad news for liberals....

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

If we set out to serve God...

Sunrise Bird
If we set out to serve God and do His work but get out of touch with Him, the sense of responsibility we feel will be overwhelming and defeating. But if we will only roll back on God the burdens He has placed on us, He will take away that immense feeling of responsibility, replacing it with an awareness and understanding of Himself and His presence. Many servants set out to serve God with great courage and with the right motives. But with no intimate fellowship with Jesus Christ, they are soon defeated. They do not know what to do with their burden, and it produces weariness in their lives.  -Oswald Chambers image

The Christian Struggle with Mental Illness; Facebook admits bias against conservatives...more links

911 Call: Baby Born Alive After Abortion, “The Fetus is Breathing, We Can’t Provide Care”    but “Nobody did anything wrong,”

Obama Raided $500M for Zika to Finance UN’s Green Climate Fund   ...In March, President Obama gave the United Nations $500 million out of an account under bilateral economic assistance to fund the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.

Congress refused to allocate funding for the U.N. Climate Change Fund last year, so the president used this account designated for international infectious diseases to pay for his priority.

While I understand that intelligent people can disagree on the human effects on the global climate, it is hard to imagine a reason why the administration would prioritize the U.N. Green Climate Fund over protecting the American people, especially pregnant women, from the Zika virus...

Obama, The Great Bathroom War of 2016, and The Cultural Revolution ...The real significance of the Great Bathroom War of 2016? Obama’s action overrides the value of modesty, a subset of orthodox religious doctrine.

What may be inferred is that the left views orthodox sexual morality not as a legitimate creed but as something innately bigoted. The only way the right could hope to turn back the assault on its creed is to drop the hysterical cries of rapine and to take a dignified stand for the legitimacy of modesty...

Human remains suggest explosion brought down EgyptAir plane, forensic official says  The condition of human remains recovered from the crash site of EgyptAir Flight 804 suggests an explosion brought the plane down, a senior Egyptian forensic official told the Associated Press Tuesday...

Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives   Facebook announced Monday it was sending employees out for retraining and would discontinue some of its practices as it sought to defend itself against charges of political bias against conservatives.

The online giant denied that it’s shown “systematic political bias,” but admitted employees played a bigger role than previously acknowledged in determining what news is highlighted in the trending topics section.

Facebook also acknowledged that rogue employees may have unintentionally discriminated against conservative stories or even acted with malice in “isolated improper actions.”...

Stetzer: The Christian Struggle with Mental Illness  ...Part of the struggle is discerning the extent of the spiritual issue with mental health. How much is physiological and how much is spiritual ? Is mental illness a punishment for sin or a natural illness?
We all have spiritual struggles: struggling with our identity in Christ, receiving forgiveness, living with joy. With mental illness, the struggle becomes much more complicated.
 
Is it something that can only be resolved with a deeper understanding of the gospel and closer relationship with Christ and others, or can it be impacted by some external influence—medication, counseling, etc.?
 
Another paralyzing question that many people ask is whether mental illness is the direct result of a person’s sin. Answering that question in full would require more words than I have for this post. So, let me start that, in the Chrisitan worldview, all suffering is the result of sin...

The Nuns Who Charted the Stars
At the Vatican Observatory, these women were part of a global attempt to map the night sky...

The Backside Blessings of Blogging

Blogging, Twitter To Be Included As Means Of Grace In 2017 Westminster Catechism Update -The Babylon Bee

A.S. Haley: Wait: the Dept. of Justice Is Supposed to Do Justice??

A.S. Haley: Wait: the Dept. of Justice Is Supposed to Do Justice??
The courts are slapping Obama's US Attorneys with reprimands and sanctions, from all parts of the country. On Thursday, federal Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas filed an extraordinary order in the immigration case (Texas v. United States), in which his earlier injunction against DHS' implementation of President Obama's directions to delay deportation of millions of illegal aliens, as affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, is now before the United States Supreme Court, awaiting its ruling after oral arguments. The order will require (gasp!) certain US Attorneys based in Washington to take annual courses in legal ethics for the next five years -- as a sanction for repeatedly lying to him in his courtroom.

Meanwhile, in Washington itself, the US Attorneys defending the IRS against charges of selectively targeting conservative non-profits to delay or prevent their obtaining tax-exempt status also met with suspicion, if not outright hostility, from the appellate judges before whom they were arguing:...

Tutu's daughter leaves Anglican Church after marrying a woman 

Oxford Clergywoman conducts celebration of same sex marriage – updated   The Revd Charlotte Bannister-Parker, 52, is an assistant priest at St Michael and All Angels Summertown in the Diocese of Oxford, and acts as the Bishop’s Advisor for Special Projects, including inter-faith initiatives. She is an Associate Faculty Member of the Theology Department at Oxford University, and has a long Oxford pedigree, having been previously on the staff of the University Church of St Mary’s.

On 7th May, according to reports in Cape Town’s City Press, she officiated at a same-sex marriage in South Africa. Oxford has a long standing relationship with the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman in South Africa. Rev Bannister-Parker lived there for a while in 2008, helping the Church to develop its HIV/AIDS ministry.

Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth, the daughter of Desmond Tutu who has long been an advocate for the Anglican Church to welcome fully same sex relationships and bless gay marriage, was ordained in the Episcopal Church USA and now works as the Executive Director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

Marceline van Furth is Professor of paediatric infectious diseases at Vrije University in the Netherlands, and “Desmond Tutu Chair of Diversity” which has been working with the Foundation on fundraising and special projects. The Foundation’s aims include the support of “Healthy intimate partner relationships… happy families and safe, flourishing communities.”...

Becket's bones return to Canterbury Cathedral

Monday, May 23, 2016

Sweden's Holy War on Children's Books; Do Biological Facts No Longer Matter?...more links

Do Biological Facts No Longer Matter? ...The Darwinian worldview implies that the cosmos is merely a vast amoral machine. It reduces the human body to a lump of matter, a collection of atoms and molecules, not intrinsically different from any other chance configuration of matter. There can be no natural law ethic because humanity has no purpose to fulfill. Philosopher Charles Taylor explains, “The cosmos is no longer seen as the embodiment of meaningful order which can define the good for us.”

The implication is that our biological identity as male and female is a cosmic accident after all. The sexual differentiation of male and female has no special dignity or meaning. The body is reduced to raw material to be manipulated and controlled to serve human needs and preferences – like any other natural resource.

These are the assumptions lurking behind the language of the transgender movement. The Obama administration’s letter, sent out jointly by the Departments of Justice and Education, asserts, “A person’s gender identity may be different from ... the person’s sex assigned at birth.” What's the key word here? “Assigned” – as though a person’s sex at birth were purely arbitrary instead of a scientific, biological fact.

What does that language imply? That biological facts do not matter...

The most dangerous, and underreported, part of Obama’s transgender edict  ...The most offensive part of the new policy is that, under the Obama administration's federal guidance:

•School districts must allow biological males and females to spend the night together in the same hotel room on field trips;

•Colleges must let men who say they are transgender be roommates with one or more women; and

•School officials cannot even tell those young women or their parents in advance that their new roommate is a man, without risking a federal lawsuit.

The plain wording of the Obama administration's diktat is clear enough, yet it has not been reported, even by conservative news outlets....

Sweden's Holy War on Children's Books Taken to its extremes, the urge to cleanse a culture of elements that do not live up to the politically correct orthodoxy currently in political vogue unsettlingly echoes the Taliban and ISIS credos of destroying everything that does not accord with their Quranic views. The desire "not to offend," taken to its logical conclusion, is a totalitarian impulse, which threatens to destroy everything that disagrees with its doctrines. Crucially, who gets to decide what is offensive...

NYC Hits Peak Gender Idiocy
...Oh for freak’s sake. Volokh is not having it:
So people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie.

We have to use “ze,” a made-up word that carries an obvious political connotation (endorsement of the “non-binary” view of gender). We have to call people “him” and “her” even if we believe that people’s genders are determined by their biological sex and not by their self-perceptions — perceptions that, by the way, can rapidly change, for those who are “gender-fluid” — and that using terms tied to self-perception is basically a lie. (I myself am not sure whether people who are anatomically male, for example, but perceive themselves as female should be viewed as men or women; perhaps one day I’ll be persuaded that they should be viewed as women; my objection is to being forced to express that view.) We can’t be required to even display a license plate that says “Live Free or Die” on our car, if we object to the message; that’s what the court held in Wooley v. Maynard (1978). But New York is requiring people to actually say words that convey a message of approval of the view that gender is a matter of self-perception rather than anatomy, and that, as to “ze,” were deliberately created to convey that a message.
Facebook’s Troubling One-Way Mirror
...Throughout the media, a regular guessing game takes place in which editors seek to divine how the Facebook formula may have changed, and what it might mean for them. Facebook will often give general guidance, such as announcing last month that it had adjusted its programming to favor news articles that readers engage with deeply — rather than shallow quick hits — or saying that it would give priority to live Facebook Live videos, which it is also paying media companies, including The New York Times, to experiment with.
 
This gives Facebook enormous influence over how newsrooms, almost universally eager for Facebook exposure, make decisions and money. Alan Rusbridger, a former editor of The Guardian, called this a “profound and alarming” development in a column in The New Statesman last week.
 
For all that sway, Facebook declines to talk in great detail about its algorithms, noting that it does not want to make it easy to game its system. That system, don’t forget, is devised to keep people on Facebook by giving them what they want, not necessarily what the politicos or news organizations may want them to see. There can be a mismatch in priorities.

Europe: Allah Takes over Churches, Synagogues  In the Dutch province of Friesland, 250 of 720 existing churches have been transformed or closed. The Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam once was the Saint Ignatius Church. A synagogue in The Hague was turned into the Al Aqsa Mosque. In Flanders, in place of a famous church, a luxury hotel now stands. Catholic arches, columns and windows still soar between menus and tables for customers...

Clergywoman from Diocese of Oxford conducts high profile same sex marriage in Cape Town  ...Questions are now being asked about the participants in this story. A licensed clergywoman in the Church of England has conducted a same sex marriage, even though it is in a different Province. Many clergy travel overseas to conduct the increasingly lavish weddings of their parishioners or relatives – when they do so, are they bound by the canons of the Church of England? Were Revd Bannister-Parker’s actions approved by her parish Rector and by the Diocese of Oxford, given the high profile nature of the ceremony? Is there any connection between the Tutu Foundation funds and the Diocese of Oxford’s “Special Projects”?...

Church of Scotland votes to allow ministers to be in same-sex marriages The Church of Scotland’s highest law-making body has voted to allow its ministers to be in same-sex marriages.
The church’s general assembly, which opened in Edinburgh on Saturday, voted in favour of extending a law passed last May that permits ministers to be in same-sex civil partnerships.

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Anglican Unscripted Episode 230


May 21, 2016

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglicanink.com/donate

World's Largest Solar Plant Sets Itself on Fire; Target Suing Man Who Saved Teen Girl from Stabbing...more links

This Man Saved A Girl From Being Stabbed To Death, And Now Target Is Suing Him For It  ...“Suing Michael Turner is just Target’s way of trying to blame someone else for what happened under their own roof,” an attorney for the Meadows family said, “The family certainly doesn’t blame Mr. Turner and they are thankful he was there that day.”

Target, however, is no stranger to charges that it puts parochial corporate politics ahead of its customers’ safety.

Target has come under fire recently after announcing that all retail locations would allow customers to use whatever restroom they want regardless of their biological sex. As a result, women may suddenly find themselves sharing a bathroom with grown men. Many women’s rights activists believe Target’s new policy needlessly puts vulnerable women at risk of sexual assault and deprives them of their right to safety and privacy...

World's Largest Solar Plant Sets Itself on Fire-Improperly aligned mirrors redirected the sun's rays  ...The fire comes just months after reports that the facility may have to shut down entirely due to its inability to provide the amount of power that was originally promised, not to mention its tendency to fry thousands of birds in the process...

NYC: Businesses Must Use Transgender Pronouns or be Fined   ... In a column for the Washington Post, Eugene Volokh warns that this mandate, while seemingly harmless, may lead to restriction of freedom.
 
“So people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie,” writes Volokh.
 
Failure to comply with the new mandate could result in losing a job or being forced out of an apartment. It could also result in “civil penalties up to $125,000 for violations, and up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct.”...

Federal Government Waste Exploded Under Obama, Data Show
 ...Last year, the government made $126 billion in overpayments, nearly double the amount of made in President Bush’s last year.
Improper payments in Medicare, for example, went from $10 billion in 2008 to $43 billion last year; and for Medicaid, the figured jumped from $19 billion to $29 billion.

The Payment Accuracy site notes that the government also underpaid by $11 billion last year. Still, at $115 billion, the net overpayment just in 2015 is massive...
 
Zika virus strain 'imported from the Americas' to Africa  ...The WHO said it was concerned that the latest strain was spreading and was "on the doorstep of Africa".

It is currently circulating in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the north west coast of Africa...

Friday, May 20, 2016

A new Decalogue has been adopted...

A new Decalogue has been adopted by the neo-Christians of our day, the first word of which reads ‘Thou shalt not disagree;’ and a new set of Beatitudes too, which begins ‘Blessed are they that tolerate everything, for they shall not be made accountable for anything.’ It is now the accepted thing to talk over religious differences in public with the understanding that no one will try to convert another or point out errors in his belief. . . . Imagine Moses agreeing to take part in a panel discussion with Israel over the golden calf; or Elijah engaging in a gentlemanly dialogue with the prophets of Baal. Or try to picture our Lord Jesus Christ seeking a meeting of minds with the Pharisees to iron out differences. ...AW Tozer image

Plodding bloggers; How to block companies tracking you on Facebook...more stories

Challies: A Call for Plodding Bloggers
 I believe that blogs have been a blessing to the church in the twenty-first century. Maybe I have to believe this since I have blogged nearly every day of the century. Still, with every bit of objectivity I can muster, I say it and believe it: For all their problems and all their shortcomings, blogs have been a blessing. They have served the church and the cause of the church.

Over my years of reading and writing blogs, I have seen thousands of blogs and bloggers come and go. There are many reasons people have stopped writing: Some have had life’s responsibilities overwhelm the time they would otherwise dedicate to writing, some have had to refocus on family or local church, some grew weary of critics and criticism, some have simply run out of things to say. But I think the most common reason people have given up is that they grew tired of the plodding. Over time they grew discouraged by the distance between the effort and the reward, between the investment and the result.

And let’s not kid ourselves: Blogging is hard work. Far more often than not, it is mundane, unglamorous, thankless work. In that way blogging is a lot like most of what we do in this world. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes skill, and at the end of it all you wonder if it has made any difference to you or to anyone else...

Target stock continues to plunge amid boycott ...All told, this means Target stock has declined by over 19 percent since announcing its new open bathrooms policy...

How to see all the companies tracking you on Facebook—and block them Facebook is great if you want to stay in touch with friends and family. It's free, of course, but it comes with a price.

If you're using Facebook, you're giving up a ton of information about yourself, mainly to advertisers who track you.

Most people forget that when they download an app or sign into a website with Facebook, they are giving those companies a look into their Facebook profile. Your profile can often include your email address and phone number as well as your work history and current location....


REVIVAL IN WEST VIRGINIA
May 7, 2016

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Christian girl burnt alive by Isil; The Transgender Jesus...more

Christian girl burnt alive by Isil tells her mother before dying in her arms: Forgive them  ...Ms Isaac, vice president of the advocacy group Road of Success, said: "The ISIS [Isil] foreign fighters were at her door and they told her ‘you have two choices, you are to leave now or you are to pay the jizya’.

“She said ‘I will pay, give me a few seconds my daughter is in the shower’.

“They said ‘you don’t have a few seconds’ and they lit the house with a torch from the bathroom the daughter was showering in.”...

ISIS carrying out 'crucifixions,' atrocities in Libyan city of Sirte, rights group says  A leading international rights group on Wednesday released a report documenting atrocities by Libya's Islamic State affiliate — including instances of "crucifixions" and shooting a man to death for "cursing God" — in the coastal city of Sirte, a stronghold of the militants.

Human Rights Watch recounts "scenes of horror" that followed the city's seizure by ISIS militants in February 2015, with beheadings of dozens of residents accused of being spies or sorcerers.

Men were flogged for acts such as smoking or listening to music, and fathers were ordered to "marry off their daughters" to the group's fighters as ISIS spread a wave of terror among the townspeople...

Media Want To Make Sure You Never Hear About The Little Sisters Of The Poor'  ... A case of “Little Sisters of the Poor” vs. “Powerful Men in Government” is a gift from the editorial gods. But our media are too busy scare-quoting “religious liberty” and pushing an authoritarian agenda. Actually identifying the Little Sisters, much less neutrally profiling them, much less giving their story the weight it deserves, that just won’t do. We have stories to cover poorly and narrative agendas to push.

It’s not just the Washington Post that is hiding the name and story of the Little Sisters of the Poor. A reader noticed that David G. Savage of the Tribune News Service also hid their name. His piece, very sympathetic to the bureaucracy that seeks to limit religious freedom, waited until deep in the story to even mention the Little Sisters. Seriously, the piece reads like a press release from HHS if HHS had its press releases written by the savvy public relations teams funded by Planned Parenthood. He finally mentions the sisters in the 13th paragraph because he’s forced to put in a quote from their attorney and their attorney had the decency to name them. Here’s how it ran in the Los Angeles Times...

Why Transgender Advocates Don’t Believe Anything They Say ...Many conservatives, especially conservative Christians, are convinced that the root cause of this reality-denying self-identification insanity is the heavy diet of moral relativism that most Americans have been consuming for several generations. But moral relativism is really just the accelerant.

The cause is moral despair, a crisis of conscience that has grown and festered in those who desperately need to hear the Author of righteousness tell them how to find it yet have cut themselves off from the book and the house where the answers are given. The man created by God needs to find peace in the light of God, and when that man refuses to see the light where it shines, he will grow so tired trying to find peace in the darkness that he’ll gladly latch on to any ideology that promises it with little effort, no matter how absurd that ideology is...

Anne Kennedy: Because Of Course: The Transgender Jesus ...The writer of the piece self identifies as a Christian, and reasons it all the way out, sort of, and makes some amazing claims about the DNA of Jesus and Mary, which I guess she knows about by faith, or something. Funnily enough, we don’t have Jesus’ dead bones to DNA test, so we’ll just have to take her word for it.

Matt was all confused by the article. “I thought Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and was gay,” he said, “how can he be transgender?”...

GOP Blocks Bill Requiring Women to Register for Draft   The U.S. House of Representatives House Rules Committee, which is led by Republicans, has blocked a provision of the annual defense policy bill that would have required women ages 18 through 25 to register for a military draft.

FoxNews.com reports that last month the House Armed Services Committee voted 32-30 in favor of requiring women to register for the draft. Six Republicans voted for the measure, but most opposed it...


Court-Ordered Same-Sex Marriage Cannot Deliver on Its Promise

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

How authoritarian socialism caused Venezuela's collapse

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
May 18, 2016

Venezuela's economy is in freefall. It's probably the worst in the world — literally. The country tops Bloomberg's "Economic Misery Index," which looks at measures including inflation and unemployment to find the economy where things are worst for regular people.

Venezuela's GDP is expected to plunge by a jaw-dropping 8 percent this year, and inflation is an even more gut-churning 720 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. The Venezuelan government is imposing rolling blackouts on its citizens. Food shortages are rife, leading to lines and even looting. As The New York Times reports, in Venezuela's hospitals children are dying for lack of medicine. The country is on the brink of collapse. And let's keep in mind, Venezuela is one of the world's most oil-rich countries.

What's going on?

Venezuela's president blames foreign companies, the United States, and other dark foreign forces. But the actual reason is a mix of socialism and authoritarianism, which has systematically destroyed Venezuela's productive capacities. the rest

Venezuelan apocalypse: Some updates on the epic failure of socialism in oil-rich Venezuela Despite having more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, and in fact more proven oil reserves than any country in the world (8 times more than the US), oil-rich Venezuela’s economy is imploding and collapsing under the burden of socialism, and economic conditions there have deteriorated so dramatically that they probably now qualify as the “economic apocalypse” that some left-leaning economists were predicting just a few years ago would never happen in Venezuela...

WSJ: What’s Socialism, Dad?
Venezuela provides a lesson to anyone tempted to feel the Bern.

Venezuela Is Falling Apart

Misplaced Compassion and Truncated Tolerance...more

Misplaced Compassion and Truncated Tolerance (Don't miss this!)
...The perversion of compassion is part and parcel of the perversion of tolerance. We have bought a fundamentally flawed understanding of tolerance, and run with it just as any non-Christian will. Instead of thinking clearly and biblically, we simply embrace whatever mental and moral mushiness the world is dishing up at the time.

It is time to get biblical here, and say no to the world’s falsehoods and deceits. Some people were aware of all this decades ago. For example Bishop Fulton J. Sheen penned a terrific piece back in 1931 called “A Plea for Intolerance”. It is an absolute winner of an essay, and we all should have a read of it. You can read the whole article here: www.northamericanmartyrs.org/pdf/Plea-for-Intolerance.pdf

Let me offer a few snippets from it. He begins:
America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded. The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot; but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broadminded. A bigoted man is one who refuses to accept a reason for anything; a broadminded man is one who will accept anything for a reason – providing it is not a good reason.
And one more great quote:
What is tolerance? Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience towards evil, and a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. But what is more important than the definition is the field of its application. The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error.
Others have also sought to give us some clarity on these vital matters. For example, in his 1992 volume Uncommon Decency Richard Mouw wrote:
Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us. Civility doesn’t require us to approve of what other people believe and do. It is one thing to insist that other people have the right to express their basic convictions; it is another thing to say that they are right in doing so. Civility requires us to live by the first of these principles. But it does not commit us to the second formula. To say that all beliefs and values deserve to be treated as if they were on a par is to endorse relativism – a perspective that is incompatible with Christian faith and practice. Christian civility does not mean refusing to make judgments about what is good and true. For one thing, it really isn’t possible to be completely nonjudgmental. Even telling someone else that she is being judgmental is a rather judgmental thing to do!
John Stott put it this way:
Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God’s Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?
10 Reasons Why the Church Gathers


If Meat Eaters Acted Like Vegans

A.S. Haley: ECUSA Loses (Again) in Quincy...more

A.S. Haley: ECUSA Loses (Again) in Quincy; San Joaquin Seeks Review 
17 May 2016   
[Note to new readers: You may be surprised at the degree of bias evident in this post, but I do not apologize. After eight years of participating in and writing about all of the matters collected under the links at this page, your Curmudgeon can no longer even try to appear neutral. The long and short of it is that the Episcopal Church (USA) is a bully, and is a bully with unlimited funds behind it. So it would be inhuman not to sound delighted when -- now and again -- it loses a case in court.]

Two of the four pending court cases involving realigning dioceses had further developments this week. In Illinois, the Episcopal Church's protracted efforts to punish the Anglican Diocese of Quincy by freezing its bank accounts and suing for possession of its real property met with a resounding rebuff from the Fourth District Court of Appeals -- for the second time in two years. In California, the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin has filed a petition with the California Supreme Court to review the inexplicably obtuse decision by the Court of Appeal in Fresno to stand by its clearly erroneous reading of California corporate law. (I will write more about the latter case in a separate post.)

As we saw earlier with the Illinois Court of Appeals, its decision yesterday is a model of clear and succinct reasoning. Anyone reading it will be able to follow what happened in the case. Briefly, the Episcopal Church (USA) and its Potemkin shell of a plaintiff diocese sued the Anglican Diocese for everything it owned, based on their claims of "hierarchy" and the permanent, irrevocable trust supposedly embodied in the Dennis Canon; they lost their case in the Adams County Circuit Court in Quincy, Illinois, as reported in this earlier post. They appealed to the Fourth District in Peoria, which affirmed Judge Ortbal's thorough and thoughtful decision, as described in this post. Then they asked the Illinois Supreme Court for leave to appeal the case to that tribunal. In November 2014, it refused, so the decision by the Court of Appeals became final...

Illinois Appeals court rules dioceses can leave TEC and keep their property

The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey: At this point, why should we care about the Anglican Communion?  ...Christ-centered Anglican leaders should have no more part in perpetuating the current corrupt and broken system of Anglican Communion governance. Christ-following Anglican leaders (it’s a shame I must put it that way) should not contribute to efforts to undermine the ancient, catholic authority of bishops to guard the faith and order of the Church, a special responsibility that is inherent in their office. They ought to “stand up and stand out” [see sermon below] against any thought that exalts itself against the knowledge and glory of God uniquely in the face of Jesus Christ (II Cor. 10: 3-5; 4:3-5). These leaders must speak up and stand out even when those thoughts and actions are within the Church itself.

While structures are not the only answer, orthodox Anglican leaders need to create new structures that are genuinely conciliar and recognizable to other Biblically faithful Christians across the world. Such structures must serve the Church in fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.

It’s painfully obvious that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby cannot or will not do any of these things. However, there are leaders who could. I ask for your prayers that God would encourage such leaders to be courageous, stand up and stand out...

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Big Win for Little Sisters; Kids Will 'Torture and Kill for ISIS,'...more

Big Win for Little Sisters
First the good news: Though it was more a TKO than a straight-up ruling, the Little Sisters of the Poor prevailed at the Supreme Court on Monday in their fight against the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate.

True, the justices made clear that they were not ruling on the merits, which is why so many headlines speak of the court’s having “punted” on the case. Even so, in a unanimous decision they made the path forward much easier for the sisters and much more difficult for the Obama administration...

Kids Will 'Torture and Kill for ISIS,' German Intel Chief Warns Teenagers are being turned into "weapons" by ISIS, triggering fears that they could slip back to the West to launch attacks.

The head of the Germany's domestic intelligence service said authorities there had identified children aged as young as 13 who have left for ISIS territory or who are "prepared to stage attacks" in the country...

China to buy $90 billion gold vault in London
The Chinese state-owned ICBC Standard Bank (IDCBF), the world's biggest bank by assets, has agreed to buy Barclays precious metals storage business, including its state-of-the-art storage facility in London.
The deal will boost China's access to London's gold market, and expand the country's role in the gold business...

Transgenderism is Worse for Your Health than Soda or Smoking   Leftist leaning governments have been levying heavy fines and taxes on soda and cigarettes for people's health.

Well, did you know: Forty-one percent of transgendered individuals attempt to take their own life, according to the Weekly Standard. That's more than 25 times the national average.

The average life expectancy of a transgendered individual is about 32 years of age, according to the blog Transwoman Times...

California ballot measure blamed for shoplifting jump
Perry Lutz says his struggle to survive as a small businessman became a lot harder after California voters reduced theft penalties 1½ years ago.

About a half-dozen times this year, shoplifters have stolen expensive drones or another of the remote-controlled toys he sells in HobbyTown USA, a small shop in Rocklin, northeast of Sacramento. "It's just pretty much open season," Lutz said. "They'll pick the $800 unit and just grab it and run out the door."

Anything below $950 keeps the crime a misdemeanor — and likely means the thieves face no pursuit and no punishment, say retailers and law enforcement officials. Large retailers including Safeway, Target, Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies say shoplifting increased at least 15 percent, and in some cases, doubled since voters approved Proposition 47 and ended the possibility of charging shoplifting as a felony with the potential for a prison sentence...

Monday, May 16, 2016

Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare; The Cruel Compassion of Transgender Acceptance...more

NYT: Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare
Amy Moses and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created New York State exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: “We don’t take Obamacare,” the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president’s signature health legislation.

“Anyone who is on these plans knows it’s a two-tiered system,” said Ms. Moses, describing the emotional sting of those words to a successful entrepreneur.

“Anytime one of us needs a doctor,” she continued, “we send out an alert: ‘Does anyone have anyone on an exchange plan that does mammography or colonoscopy? Who takes our insurance?’ It’s really a problem.”...

Canada: Doctors want protection to ‘opt out’ of assisted suicide: ‘I just don’t feel killing them is compassionate’  ...As Bill C-14, the Liberal government’s assisted dying law, moves back to the House of Commons next week, an emotional debate is flaring over whether doctors should be free to refuse to participate in any way in a medical act they consider morally wrong.

Some are accusing their regulators of bullying and coercion for threatening disciplinary action if they don’t provide an “effective referral.” Groups such as the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada are demanding legislative protections for conscience rights across the country similar to those given priests who refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

Others, including a prominent bioethicist, argue no health system in the country should be obligated to accommodate doctors’ conscientious objections...

Millennials Embrace Socialism, but Do They Know What It Is? ...Writing in The Federalist, Emily Ekins and Joy Pullmann note that many of these young people think socialism is federally mandated niceness. A 2014 Reason-Rupe survey asked Millennials to define socialism. They had in mind a more generous safety net, more kindness and, as one put it, more “being together.”

But when asked if they agreed with a more technically accurate definition of socialism — government control of the economy — support dropped considerably (though not nearly enough). Given a choice between a government-managed economy and a free-market economy, Millennials overwhelmingly chose the latter. It seems young people realize that putting bureaucrats in charge of Uber wouldn’t work too well.

Still, it boggles the mind that anyone can see the folly of having the government take over Amazon or Facebook but be blind to the problems of having the government run health care...

UK Midwives revolt over abortion-Fury as their feminist union chief backs bid to axe ANY time limit on terminations ...And without consulting members, she signed the union up to the service’s campaign to ‘decriminalise’ abortion by scrapping the 24-week legal cut-off for terminations.

Last night, ‘appalled’ MPs said Prof Warwick should resign, and thousands of midwives and members of the public signed a ‘Not in our name’ petition, demanding that she reverses the policy which ‘represents a disgraceful betrayal of her profession’....

Obama doesn't think rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers are criminals-they are declared “justice-involved individuals.”   ...When you think about it, Jack the Ripper was merely a “cutlery-involved individual” while Jeffrey Dahmer was simply a “unconventional dietary-options-involved individual.”...

Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: ‘Transgendered Men Don’t Become Women,’ They Become ‘Feminized Men,’ ‘Impersonators’ ...When “the tumult and shouting dies,” McHugh continued, “it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest.”

“Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers,” said McHugh...

The Cruel Compassion of Transgender Acceptance
... Transgender people descend into despair when even all the medicine and medical advances that everyone encouraged can't change their biological reality. In fact, the medicine used on younger individuals prior to surgeries causes its own harms.

As gender dysphoria becomes more accepted as normal for children, "supportive" adults lead children to "helpful" doctors who use various "treatments" to block puberty. Some can merely delay puberty for a few years. But the blockers lock the child into sterility and health risks in their tweens and early teens...

Target CEO Defends Pro-Transgender Policy, Stocks Crash Down Another $2 Billion

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Anglican Unscripted Episode 229


May 13, 2016

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglicanink.com/donate

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Anglican Unscripted Episode 228


May 12, 2016

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglicanink.com/donate

Harvard Prof Urges Liberals to Treat Christians Like Nazis; Mississippi defunds Planned Parenthood...more

Harvard Prof Urges Liberals to Treat Evangelical Christians Like Nazis  ...
“For liberals,” Tushnet writes, “the question now is how to deal with the losers in the culture wars. That’s mostly a question of tactics. My own judgment is that taking a hard line (‘You lost, live with it’) is better than trying to accommodate the losers.”

“Trying to be nice to the losers didn’t work well after the Civil War, nor after Brown,” he notes, whereas “taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945.”
As author and commentator Ryan Anderson observes, Tushnet depicts the “losers” of the American culture wars—meaning primarily Orthodox Jews, Roman Catholics and Evangelical Christians—as “the functional equivalent of racists and Nazis.”..;

For some on the Left, all's fair when battling the Right   Is the American Right so wrong that the elites should use their power to exclude it from debate?

The Obama White House and Facebook both seem to think so, if recent stories are accurate...

Albert Mohler: The Moral Revolutionaries Present Their Demands: Unconditional Surrender The terms of moral surrender have been delivered to us, and they are absolute and unconditional. Just ask Japan and Germany what that means...

Mississippi governor signs bill defunding Planned Parenthood Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood on Tuesday.

The bill, Senate Bill 2238, prevents Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses from billing Medicaid for any services.

Mississippi is home to one Planned Parenthood, which says it doesn’t commit abortions, and an abortion center owned by “abortion queen” Diane Derzis...

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

North Carolina: It's About Crushing Dissent; Christians hacked to death in Congo...more

Obamas Lawsuit Against NC Isn't About Civil Rights. It's About Crushing Dissent ... In a broader sense, the suit is symbolic of the federal government’s eight-year crusade to decimate any semblance of federalism and streamline progressive morality. The administration ignores state laws that conflict with federal policy when it approves and it sues states when it does not. States that pass law enforcement bills President Obama finds unsatisfactory will see the full force of the Justice Department come down on them....

Krauthammer: Obama Admin Lied 'Point By Point, All the Way Through' Selling the Iran Deal  ...Krauthammer said, [relevant remarks begin around 4:35] “[T]he point about the scandal here is not that it was just spinning on either side. They were spinning beyond spinning. They were lying. And our side, the one that argued against it, was simply saying this is not true. Example, the ballistic missiles. We were told they’d be denied ballistic missiles for eight years, not true. They changed the language. [Under] the Security Council resolution, the Iranians are allowed. Secondly, they promised us, Kerry had said, there will be no deal unless the Iranians account for what’s called previous military activity, the work that was done on warhead miniaturization at Parchin. There was none of that, and the deal was signed. They lied. There was lying point by point, all the way through. That’s not spin. That’s lying. And it’s not just, I had to keep the negotiations secret. It’s that they told the American people stuff about what was in there that wasn’t true, and the 27-year-olds never looked into it.”...

The Spiritual and Physical Death of Europe: One Follows the Other ...Also lost in this conversation over Belgium’s future, Islam and its jettisoned Christian heritage, is that the nation has turned euthanasia into a fundamental right. As PBS put it, and everyone already knows, Belgium has “the world’s most liberal euthanasia laws.” Physician-assisted suicide there isn’t limited to the terminally-ill – people with psychiatric illnesses or even children can also be euthanized...

Thousands flee after dozens of Christians hacked to death in Congo  On May 3, suspected Islamic militants attacked Christian villagers in the eastern region of the DRC. Although local administrator Bernard Amisi Kalonda earlier said that the hacking had left 16 people dead, advocacy group Open Doors cited local sources saying 34 to 38 people were killed in the incident, according to Bos News Life....

Christian refugees in Germany fear violence by other migrants


NASA's SDO Captures Mercury Transit Time-lapse
May 9, 2016

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

The authority by which the Christian leader leads...

Jesus washes the feet of his disciples
The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve. ...John Stott image

Monday, May 09, 2016

Former FB workers say they suppress conservative news; ISIS Executes 7-Year-Old Boy for Blasphemy...more

St. Andrews Episcopal Church celebrates World Labyrinth Day ...According to the Labyrinth Society, the purpose of this day is to join others around the globe to "create a wave of peaceful energy washing across time zones."

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News ...Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users...

ISIS Executes 7-Year-Old Boy for Blasphemy
In yet another monstrous act exercising their reign of terror, the Islamic State (ISIS) executed a 7-year-old boy for “cursing divinity” in Syria last Thursday.

The boy, identified as Muaz Hassan, was playing soccer with some friends in Raqqa, Syria, when ISIS members overheard him speaking out against religion, an act which “was considered an insult to the Caliphate, regardless of the age of the boy,” a source told ARA, a Syrian news agency. Raqqa is the terror group’s de facto capital, accounting for the greater presence of IS members in the area.
 
Without any warning prior to the execution, Hassan was killed by a firing squad at a central square last week. He was shot dead in front of hundreds of people, including his parents, who collapsed in grief, witnesses told ARA....

London's Iconic Red Buses To Declare 'Glory To Allah'
Britain’s largest Islamic charity says it wants to “break down barriers” and portray Islam positively by launching a new advertising campaign which will slap the phrase “glory to Allah” on the side of London buses.

The new campaign by Islamic Relief is, ostensibly, targeted at raising donations for their Ramadan aid to Syria, but is attracting attention for the “hundreds” of buses which will be decorated with the phrase “Subhan’Allah”, or ‘Glory to Allah’...
 
Ben Rhodes Reveals How Obama Duped America On Iran 
 President Obama—with the help of an equally arrogant 38-year-old national security fabulist, Ben Rhodes—remade the Middle East to empower America’s most hated enemy...

Mohler: America has reached a crisis point ...To put the matter bluntly, we are now confronted with the reality that, in November, Hillary Clinton will likely be the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump the Republican nominee. This poses a significant problem for many Christians who believe they cannot, in good conscience, vote for either candidate. As a result, Christians are going to need a lot of careful political reflection in order to steward their vote and their political responsibility in this election cycle...

Monday, May 02, 2016

Anglican Unscripted Episode 226


Apr 30, 2016

Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan and Peter bring you news and prospective from around the globe.
Please Donate - http://anglicanink.com/donate

Interview with Archbishop Jensen on the occasion of the fourth CANA East Diocesan Synod in Wayne, PA