My own definition of "Christian nationalism" would be this: An orientation for engaging in the public square that recognizes America as a Christian nation, where our rights and duties are understood to come from God and where our primary responsibilities as citizens are for building and preserving the strength, prosperity and health of our own country. It is a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society. It is a belief that our participation in the political system can lead to beneficial outcomes for our own communities, as well as individuals of all faiths.

etba_ss
8 hours ago

I understand the hesitancy to question those who claim to be representatives of their faith and I often share it, but it's okay to speak truthfully about those who are actively manipulating Christianity for their own selfish ends.

We, as Christians, have to be willing to do this. It isn't just allowed, but it is required. These people are agents of Satan intent on leading people astray. We have have significant theological differences and still acknowledge we serve the same God and are all Christians. People like this woman are not. This stuff is heresy and it sticks a finger in God's face and declares that He is wrong and they know better. Sure, they pretend to group it all around love and kindness for their neighbor, but it is all a lie. We should remember that from the very beginning, Satan loves to use a little bit of God's word, twist it, distort it and then lead people astray. We see that with Adam and Eve in the garden and we see it again when he tempts Jesus.

We must call this stuff out. When at all possible, we should reject this garbage and refuse to sit in attendance and listen to it. There is no such thing as an interfaith prayer service. You can have an interdenominational prayer service, but not an interfaith one. Christianity holds that Jesus is THE way, THE truth and THE life. No one comes to the Father but through Jesus. So if you are praying to "mother god" or Mohammed or even rejecting Jesus as the Son of God, we cannot have a prayer service together. That doesn't mean we hate each other and slit each others throats or we can't be good friends or neighbors, but we aren't going to pray together.

Heresies were a problem even in the early Church. Paul repeatedly dealt with various heresies. That was when there are a real societal cost to being a Christian. In a society where there isn't a big societal cost for being a Christian like the United States (yet), these heresies run wild. You don't have much of a problem with them in the Middle East where claiming to be a Christian is really dangerous and very few would do so who weren't actual followers of Christ.

KJSpeed etba_ss
6 hours ago
A million upvotes etba!

To your point of Christians calling this charlatan out - isn’t that exactly what we expect Muslims to do when an Imam goes off the rails? The same standard should also apply to Christians.

Sixty-four scholars and theologians have signed on to a “Wesleyan witness,” a six-part, 62-page document they hope will shape the future of Methodism, define orthodox Wesleyanism, and ground more Christians in the story of sanctification and restoration through grace. //

“The Faith Once Delivered” was first drafted in January at a summit for “The Next Methodism.” Scholars allied with the evangelical wing of the United Methodist Church, as well as holiness and Pentecostal denominations, came together, formed five working groups, and co-wrote statements on five theological topics: the nature of God, Creation, revelation, salvation, and the church. A sixth section on eschatology or “the fullness of time” was added later.

Heroes. They encourage us to hope, to trust, to believe, and to achieve. For 50 years, Moody Bible Institute’s Stories of Great Christians informed and inspired listeners with biographies of real people . . . average men and women . . . who were called and equipped by God to show His love to the world. These dramatized, 15-minute stories bring to life 600 years of heroes of the faith. Listeners hear the voices, music, and sound effects of classic radio. They’ll be reintroduced to historic men and women they admired since childhood and meet new heroes whose stories will expand their world and deepen their Christian faith.

https://www.crossway.org/NEWSLE

Friday’s drag-queen parody of Christ at the Paris Olympics opening shows yet again that people who hate Jesus just can’t escape His art, archetypes, created realities, or authority.

The exhibition replaced Christ in the iconic Leonardo Da Vinci painting with a queer activist who describes herself as “a fat, Jewish, queer lesbian” and his disciples with cross-dressing sex performers. It immediately prompted an international backlash that can’t benefit queer acceptance. Neither can the performance, which portrayed queer people as creepy sex maniacs.

The show also backfired symbolically. In their attempts to slime what they see as their enemies, queer activists reinforced things they’re trying to destroy. //

The most obvious demonstration of this is the derivative nature of the “art.” The best the queer Paris Olympics “artistic director” and sex performers could come up with is badly deforming others’ artistic triumphs. They didn’t think up their own world, symbols, and referents, they just sabotaged others’ then pretended what any three-year-old can do is brilliant. This doesn’t compete with or replace Christianity and its symbols, it reinforces them.

If one wanted an entire civilization to forget about Christ’s Last Supper, one would adopt the left’s usual strategy: the memoryhole. Indeed, that seems to be already happening for the Paris blasphemy show, with clips of this massive event oddly difficult to find online. //

The savvy thing for Christ-haters would have been to keep the Last Supper imagery in the cultural attic, with the dust bunnies, catechisms, and two-parent nuclear families. Instead following the sadistic urge to hate on their self-chosen enemies has millions searching “Last Supper” and learning about this keystone of faith. //

Biology is not bigotry, but desecrating Christianity’s sacred symbols at every turn certainly is. God has the last laugh, though, because even when people blaspheme, they reinforce what God says. It’s another clear indicator that Christianity is true and Jesus is God. He has created the frame that we all live inside, and even those who hate it cannot escape.

Rev. Ben Johnson
@TheRightsWriter
In 1878, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, warned that ministers had become apostles of Marxist doctrine.
“German rationalism, which has ripened into socialism, may yet pollute the mass of mankind,” he said. “Deadly principles are abroad, and certain ministers are spreading them.”

“I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian socialism,” Spurgeon exhorted his congregation 11 years later.

Any efforts to build a utopian kingdom on earth, overseen by fallen men, would prove futile. “To attempt national regeneration without personal regeneration is to dream of erecting a house without separate bricks,” he said.

https://acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2018/07/10/video-rush-limbaugh-clergy-who-accept-socialism
10:50 PM · Jul 26, 2024

Without a civic life shaped by Christianity, there can be no American republic. //

Some will acknowledge the Christian inheritance of America but insist that it’s a point of departure, that once the American experiment was launched, it could be safely separated from the religion that launched it. They think it’s possible to take the “best” parts of the Christian faith without the need to continually affirm Christ. “Christless Christianity,” you might call it.

But it doesn’t work like that. A few months ago the famous atheist Richard Dawkins wondered aloud in an interview why his own country, England, could not just go on having “cultural Christianity” without actual, believing Christians. He said he liked the cathedrals and the Christmas carols, and would like to enjoy them without the bother of actual Christianity. He wants fewer believing Christians and more cultural Christians.

It never occurred to Dawkins that you don’t get to keep the culture without the cult. The sad spectacle of modern England should suffice to prove the point. If there is no one to worship in the cathedrals, they will become concert halls or, in England’s case, mosques. If no one really believes what the Christmas carols proclaim, eventually people will stop singing them.

The same goes for us here in America. The American proposition that all men are created equal is a religious claim, specifically a Christian one. Not to belabor the point, but the American founders only ever believed that all men are created equal because they believed that we are God’s children, created in His image. Our entire system of government flows from that belief; without it the whole system collapses. //

America is supposedly a secular country, with separation of church and state, free exercise of religion, and so on. Yet we find ourselves in the middle of what amounts to a religious war. How could this be?

Because America, like all nations, is founded on religious claims, and relies on those claims for its coherence. We’ve long been accustomed to talking about America as a “propositional nation,” a phrase taken from Abraham Lincoln’s famous line in the Gettysburg Address that America was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The idea is that America is fundamentally different from the ethnic nation-states of Europe, which were based on blood and soil and religion. America supposedly transcended all that. It was based instead on an idea — a proposition. Anyone could become an American if he agreed to the proposition.

And this is true. But nearly everyone who says America is a propositional nation is wrong about what the proposition is. America is not a collection of Enlightenment tropes at the intersection of Locke and Rousseau, a grab bag of philosophical sentiments about the rights of man. America is the creation of Christian civilization.

The proposition at the heart of America, undergirding our nation’s existence, is not just “all men are created,” but Christianity and all that comes with it. Without Christianity, you don’t get free speech, liberty, equality, freedom of conscience. All of it relies on the claims of the Christian faith, none of it stands on its own. //

To be clear, the contest is not between secularism or “wokeism” and Christianity. If we reject Christianity, the future of America will not be a secular liberal utopia, where we go on living off the capital of our Christian inheritance without replenishing it. It’s going to be a new version of paganism, and you’re not going to like it. //

The American founding is therefore not comprehensible in strictly secular, rationalist terms. Our nation begins with a proposition about the nature of God and man. If that proposition is discarded or denied, whatever comes after that isn’t America. It might call itself America, it might even deploy the familiar vocabulary of rights and liberties, but it is not America. //

To fight this new paganism, Christians in America will have to shed the false notion that their religion is a purely private matter, that there must be a “wall of separation” between our religion and our politics. We have to argue, without apology, that public life in this country should be shaped by Christian morality and ordered by its dictates, as it was for most of our civilization’s history.

Most of all, we have to accept that our American culture of self-government and liberty under law cannot long survive cut off from its source, which is and always was the Christian faith.

Without that faith, alive and active among the people, there can be no American republic. If we want to save the republic, we’ll have to become a Christian people once again. And that means we’ll have to fight — and win — a religious war for America. //

We see now that there is more than one way for a nation to fall. There is the Roman way: a centuries-long decline eventually succumbing to wave upon wave of invaders. There is the British way: a dwindling to irrelevance and impotence, passive in the face of an assertive Muslim immigrant population.

And then there is the American way: not to decline and fall, not to dwindle into irrelevance, but to become evil.

 There are things we take for granted until, one day, we are made to realize how unique they are. For atheist and historian Tom Holland, a trip to the war-torn Iraqui town of Sinjar gave him a different perspective on one of the most commonly accepted symbols of our culture: the Christian cross. //

If we take a deeper look at the fundamentals like Holland did, there can be no comparison. Holland was working on a book about the impact of Christianity on history when he was invited to visit Sinjar, a town that had been held captive by the Islamic State for two years. When he arrived with the film team, they encountered destruction beyond belief.

https://youtu.be/cDa4vpkNKeQ?si=_osxjy2uBmD4_tVz&t=1353

BUTKER: Our love for Jesus, and thus, our desire to speak out, should never be outweighed by the longing of our fallen nature to be loved by the world. Glorifying God and not ourselves should always remain our motivation despite any pushback or even support. I lean on those closest to me for guidance but I can never forget that it is not people, but Jesus Christ I’m trying to please.

(...)

For if heaven is our goal, we should embrace our cross, however large or small it may be, and live our life with joy, to be a bold witness for Christ."

For a movie based on the life of a saint, it is decidedly non-religious. I suppose this was focus-tested at some point along the way, but it really detracts from the movie. God is maybe mentioned once. Jesus is not mentioned. The only prayer in the movie is one scene where the nuns say grace before a meal, and it is done in a very non-Catholic way. The characters are almost archetypes. //

Also interesting is the subtext of the position of recent immigrants as portrayed by David Morse in the role of Archbishop Michael Corrigan. They are so interested in not making waves and blending in with native New Yorkers that they ignore the plight of immigrants like their parents suffered. Cabrini's persistence and goodness come through. I think Cabrini's actions are straight from the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1-8). In a society that is increasingly paralyzed by inaction and indecision, seeing what one person, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, can accomplish is a tonic. //

The opportunities for the Christian faith to be effortlessly incorporated into the movie were limitless. Cabrini never prays and never contemplates her pain in terms of sanctifying suffering. She never has doubts about her mission or her abilities. She never prays for guidance or assistance. All of this is very un-Catholic, particularly in the context of a nun. At one point, the Archbishop tells her he often wonders if she is acting out of her religious calling or from ambition. It's a question that needed to be explored and answered but ended up as a toss-away line in the script. //

The decision to make a film that doesn't fit into the "Christian movie" genre results in attributing Cabrini's work to her efforts rather than to the greater glory of God. That is unfortunate.

Remember Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign slogan? "I'm with her." Not "I'm in favor of her proposals or political track record." No, it was, "I'm with her." How modest.

No matter how much I may respect any given politician, I'm not "with" them. For them, yes. But not "with."

The new Cephas Hour discusses this and other matters, including doing the right thing and a certain amount of longing for heaven, or the Lord's return to earth. Whichever comes first. //

Ofttimes in recent years, I have seen people become caught up, be it pro or con, with the false god of identity politics. For this definition, identity politics consists of over-association with an individual politician, becoming so enveloped and enraptured with them that there is at least in part an identity fusion, an overidentification with the person. The flip side is when we run across a politician we oppose so profoundly that even when their actions and views mirror our own, we immediately run in the other direction for fear of any association with that individual. Said positive or negative opinions can become so enmeshed in our being that they can stretch far beyond the realm of rational discussion regarding political ideology, policies, platforms, and practices.

This is dangerous in the extreme. Over-identification with a politician is a form of cultism. Be alarmed when someone professes themselves to be a leader, yet instead of preaching, “These are truths we must follow,” preaches, “Follow me,” and people do so. //

The only human being worthy of true devotion, following, and emulation is Jesus. //

They, like us, are sinners in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. Our prayer should be they know this and act upon it. Everything else is secondary. Not unimportant, mind you. But it’s still secondary. //

I do not welcome death, but nor do I fear it. My faith and trust is in Christ alone. Despite my stubborn, failing, and often misspent humanity, He has remained faithful throughout. He is faithful today and will be faithful through all the tomorrows. To Him, and Him alone, belongs all the praise and glory.

“We believe in objective truth. We believe that there are often right and wrong,” Woodruff told me when asked about its editorial process. “There are many times when our entire staff agrees on a specific issue, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to only present that side. We trust our readers to be able to be discerning.”

That purported neutrality is built on the hope that Christians avoid “falling into culture wars that promote hate of the other group” and instead seek greater understanding and love for “political enemies.” Concerned by how Christians, and Americans in general, are becoming siloed in ideological media echo chambers, Woodruff wants Pour Over readers to understand what “both sides” are saying about the news of the day.

But Woodruff’s philosophy conflates the understanding of other political opinions with the belief that they should hold equal weight, a fatal conclusion that misleads and misinforms his readership. While I resonate deeply with the idea that all Americans need an accurate view of what their political others believe, these perspectives shouldn’t be framed in an amoral vacuum. Political neutrality has never been the silver bullet that some presume it to be. //

Presenting all perspectives as equal creates a false binary and results in an unwillingness to hold firm, journalistic principles for the preservation of democracy and human rights, all while eroding public trust. According to reporter Sean Illing, “The issue for many people isn’t exactly a denial of truth as such. It’s more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth is knowable.” //

In these ways, The Pour Over is not so different from the mainstream outlets it’s seeking to distinguish itself from. In chasing the biggest news of the day, The Pour Over magnifies the vices of the mainstream press by framing its own view of objectivity as in line with the divine. The daily news is not all-encompassing, and holding a long-term perspective is important, but it also has real material and spiritual consequences. Good journalism should inform readers not only of the facts but also of the stakes.

By framing the news as all-but-equal, The Pour Over pushes readers toward an unbiblical political indifference.

What is Christian Nationalism besides a slur to put in scare quotes that let the left discredit an opponent without having to talk about issues? It starts with the fact that America was founded by Christians who acknowledged the role of Christ in establishing a just government. The Mayflower Compact states three reasons for founding Plymouth Colony, "the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country." Similarly, the Jamestown Charter says the goal of Virginia Colony is "the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of his divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian religion to such people, as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages, living in those parts, to human civility, and to a settled and quiet government."

From there, there is a straight line to the Founders. The First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion only applied to the federal government, with several states maintaining religious tests to hold office. Some state constitutions still require officeholders to profess a belief in God. It wasn't until Torcaso v. Watkins (1961) that religious tests were struck down. The purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent any Christian denomination — the target was explicitly the Anglican Church because of its close ties to England, which had served as a quasi-governmental agency for the Crown before independence — from achieving national church status. //

Christian liberty only happens within the context of a correctly formed conscience. Doing what you want because it feels good is not liberty; it is licentiousness and anarchy. Over the last 60 years, we've discovered that the glue holding America together was not individualism but our common Christian heritage. Without that glue, we see our culture disintegrating before our eyes. It is only by viewing the Constitution and the rights stemming from it through the lens of our Christian founding that we will survive. //

Dieter Schultz streiff
a day ago edited
I searched for the passage that they had written, I thought, in the Federalist but without a doubt, one of the Founders, that specifically addressed the Judeo-Christian teachings that allowed what they created with the USA. Noting that none of the other religions (Muslim, Hindu, or any of the others) allowed the type of government that they created, they were all missing in one way or the other what they needed when they created this country.

I didn't find it but I'm certain that the Founders knew and stated that right from the start that what they did recognized the unique Judeo-Christian tradition of what they created and none of the other religions allowed it. //

Laocoön of Troy Dieter Schultz
a day ago edited
George Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island might be interesting to you:

Gentlemen:

While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.

If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy. ~ G. Washington

Not much room for being a busybody, judgemental Karen is there? Not much room for Jew hatred and bigotry is there? And how does savage lefty lawfare and compulsion square with Washington's "just administration of a good government"?

Since World War II, most American Jews have believed that the more secular American society is, the more secure their status.

This has been, as I have argued all of my life, a colossal error. Indeed, it may turn out to be a fatal error.

With the outburst of unprecedented levels of antisemitism, American Jews are living the famous warning: “Beware what you wish for; you just may get it.”

The primary reason American Jews have lived in the most Jew-friendly, even Jew-honoring, country in history is that most Americans have been Christian. But we must make a key distinction here. American Christians have been not just Christian, as Europe was, but Judeo-Christian. //

In a famous study published in the American Political Science Review, Donald Lutz, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, surveyed the political literature of the American founding. He found that the Bible was cited more frequently than any other work or any other author. The Bible accounted for approximately one-third of the Founders’ citations. The single most frequently cited work was Deuteronomy, the fifth of the five books of the Torah.

The late great Catholic theologian Michael Novak wrote that the roots of the doctrine that “all men are created equal lie in Judaism, carried around the world by Christians.”

As American society and Americans individually become less religious, i.e., less Christian, the Jews become less significant.

Yet, many, perhaps most, American Jews, have bought—and promulgated—the idea that Jewish security in America lies in secularizing, i.e., de-Christianizing, America. //

Look around, my fellow Jews. Are you happy with the results of the secularization of America? Do you feel more secure? Or less?

I ask you: Is it not obvious that when more Americans attended church every Sunday, America’s Jews were far more secure?

For those unfamiliar with William Shakespeare’s masterpiece, King Lear is about an old British king who decides to leave his kingdom to his two older daughters. Lear’s older daughters flatter him while he repudiates and disowns his youngest daughter because she tells him the truth. Sure enough, the older daughters quickly seize their inheritance and kick their father out, leaving him to wander the countryside with his court jester. As this happens, the daughter whom he rejected works to save him despite his former behavior.

Something similar is happening with Francis, an old and distinguished monarch who has surrounded himself with shameless yes-men. These advisers are inept ideologues with ample personal baggage. They have absolutely no clue how to address any of the challenges facing today’s Christians. Sadly, Francis evidently prefers the sweet nothings of his circle to the harsh truths of men like Strickland. His circle has kept him safely insulated from reality for years now. This fact was recently revealed in his bizarre rant on priests acting like dandies.

Just as Lear and his kingdom could only be saved by the daughter he spurned, Francis and his church can only be saved by Catholics who remain loyal despite it all.

Most Catholics, if they are paying attention, can see that the Catholic left’s supposed victories will soon evaporate. They will pass away with the Boomer generation. Francis is 86, and the average cardinal is in his early 70s.

Waiting in the wings are much more conservative clergy ready to swing the ideological pendulum the other way. According to a recent report from the Catholic News Agency, “a full 85% of the youngest cohort describes itself as ‘conservative/orthodox’ or ‘very conservative/orthodox’ theologically. Only 14 percent described themselves as “middle-of-the-road.” //

Thus, for the foreseeable future, the best thing Catholics can do is to exercise the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Our king is out in the wilderness, and his evil daughters are in charge, making a mess of things. Moreover, his advanced age has not made him wise but has only caused him to double down on his folly.

I would be remiss in not providing an example of getting it right, as written by the 20th-century British minister Frederick William Pitt, and recently beautifully voiced by Rachel Wilhelm and Phil Keaggy:

The maker of the universe as man for man was made a curse
The claims of laws which He had made unto the uttermost He paid
His holy fingers made the bough which grew the thorns that crowned His brow
The nails that pierced His hands were mined in secret places He designed
He made the forests whence there sprung the tree on which His body hung
He died upon a cross of wood, yet made the hill on which it stood
The sky that darkened o’er His head by Him above the earth was spread
The sun that hid from Him its face by His decree was poised in space
The spear which spilled His precious blood was tempered in the fires of God
The grave in which His form was laid was hewn in rock His hands had made
The throne on which He now appears was His from everlasting years
But a new glory crowns His brow and every knee to Him shall bow //

There are few things more abhorrent than attempting to weaponize Christianity, or should I say, trying to use Christianity as a weapon against others. //

The true believer says “Christ is King” not as an assault against others but as an admittance of personal failure. The valid believer names Jesus as their Lord and not only their Savior. Accepting Christ’s Lordship is acknowledging the utter need for that Lordship. Even as He welcomes us into the fellowship bought at the ultimate price, we must bow before Him and follow His command to serve others, not exalt ourselves. There is no pride in being part of the Lion of Judah’s pride.

Ali has come to the realization there can be no liberalism apart from the Christian faith from which it emerged. She’s right. //

Over the weekend, Ayaan Hirsi Ali revealed in an essay at Unherd that she has become a Christian. For Christians, this is welcome and joyous news. But it’s also instructive. A former Muslim who very publicly rejected Islam and became an avowed atheist in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Ali has been speaking and writing in defense of Western civilization and liberal values for decades.

Now she has come to the conclusion that there is no way to maintain Western civilization and no way to preserve its liberal values apart from Christianity. Just as she came to discover the fundamentalist Islam of her youth was a dead end, she has also discovered the atheism she adopted in response to it is also a dead end. //

She’s also right about that but wrong to think Christianity is primarily about countering those forces or preserving a particular civilizational or political project. As great as Western civilization is, it arose as a byproduct of the Christian faith, the sole object of which is communion with Almighty God by means of salvation through Jesus Christ. Things like freedom of speech, rule of law, and human rights are fruits of the Christian faith, but they are not what Christianity is about. '//

There was a lot of discussion after 9/11 about how Islam needed its own Reformation to tame and secularize it, as Christianity had supposedly been tamed and pacified by the Protestant Reformation (never mind the century of continental war that it triggered). What the atheists promised Ali and other disillusioned Muslims was rationalism, freedom of inquiry and expression, and scientific objectivity — all of which would flourish in Muslim societies just as it had in the West, if only Muslims would set aside their backward religion and embrace the secular humanism of Western elites.

According to this theory, Christianity itself had served its purpose in the West, bestowed all its gifts, and could safely be discarded. We could live forever, drawing on its capital, which we assumed would never run out. The Islamic world needed to do likewise, and all would be well.

But something very different happened instead. It turns out, the capital was gradually spent and never replenished. Liberalism always depended for its vitality on something it cannot itself supply: the Christian faith, active and alive among the people. As the French philosopher Rémi Brague wrote back in the 1990s, “Faith produces its effects only so long as it remains faith and not calculation. We owe European civilization to people who believed in Christ, not to people who believed in Christianity.”

Ali’s conversion, which is laudable on its own (even if she doesn’t quite yet grasp the true object of her new faith), is a stark reminder that the liberal, secular West cannot survive without the Christian faith from which it emerged. Indeed, the secular elites who once promised apostate Muslims like Ali that they could have all the benefits of Christianity without Christianity itself are now abandoning the principles they once espoused.

In recent weeks, we have seen this abandonment most potently in the Red-Green alliance between the global left and the pro-Hamas crowd, who have been marching through the streets of Western cities in a show of force reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. The naked antisemitism of the Hamas people, together with the deafening silence of the elites of the global left, tells you everything you need to know about the durability of secular humanism.

There is no room anymore for freedom of speech, open inquiry, or rational debate among the people and institutions that once espoused these ideals. There is only the brute force of the mob. It’s easy to see this at work throughout Western society, not just on the Israel-Hamas issue.

Helsinki prosecutor Anu Mantila argued Finnish courts should ban from the internet the booklet, Rasanen’s tweet, and an audio recording of Rasanen defending Christian views. Mantila also seeks punitive fines. “Male and Female He Created Them” was published in 2004, several years before Finland adopted the antiterrorism laws now being used to prosecute the two Christians for “hate speech.”

“With the right police and prosecutor, we could expect to see similar cases crop up across Europe and in fact around the world,” noted Alliance Defending Freedom International lawyer Paul Coleman, who is assisting the Christians’ legal defense. Hate crimes laws like Finland’s are on the books in many European nations and American states and cities.

Rasanen said the most difficult part of her prosecution has been the prosecutor’s false accusations against her, including that Rasanen considers homosexuals inferior. She said that is “against my conviction” as a Christian. Christianity teaches that every human is made in God’s image and so beloved by God that He sacrificed His own Son to wash away every sin ever committed.

“We represent the common traditional classical understanding of family and sexual ethics, and now this has been labeled widely in our society and also in the established Lutheran church as something which is … not only offending and extremist but it’s also criminal,” Pohjola said.

Pohjola is the bishop of a small non-state church body that adheres to the Bible’s teachings, which Finland’s state church has in large part abandoned. The Federalist interviewed Pohjola in person in 2021, and Rasanen in person in 2022.

anon-89ic
8 days ago edited
It's not just evangelicals. One of the weird things about Israel is that you have to view it through a biblical lens or you miss the point. The IDF truly believes its hand is guided by G-d in this war, which means that no one is going to convince the government to stop what its doing, because this is blasphemy, and the Bible is full of people who got bonked for that conduct. Example: tomorrow, millions of Jews around the world will be celebrating Yigal Amir Day. November 4 is the day that Amir executed Rabin for his existential crime against the Jews. As a reminder of what happened, Rabin had succumbed to demands of the Clinton Administration to a cease fire and halt of military campaigns against the PLO, and raised a stink about proportionality and humanitarian "pauses." As a result, Amir, much like Pinchas in the Torah, rose up amongst the Jewish people and slayed Rabin. And the people rejoiced because they had been spared Rabin's ongoing crimes. How is the Biden Admin celebrating this event? By sending the Secretary of State to Israel to the Prime Minister for a cease fire and halt of military campaigns against the PLO, and raising a stink about proportionality and humanitarian "pauses." If you are Bibi, how do you react to the cluelessness of this timing? The Progressives see what Blinken is doing as "progress." The Israelis view it as "sin." If the United States can't figure this out, and figure out how to work around it, which means not trying this foolishness on Nov 4, then we are nothing more than a paper tiger here in the US while Israel remains the lion of Judah. That's why the evangelicals love Israel and the progressives do not. In the old days, this is why I advised political leaders in Washington, because Washington used to know how to listen. Today, its the bull in the china shop and consequences be damned and Amir had to the bear the burden off Clinton's sins.