Tag: faith

The War Against Christianity: Sublimating Christianity For The “Will Of The State”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

American Christianity 2What is Fascism? Per merriam-webster.com, it is a

political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Remember this definition as you read the following…

Christianpost.com reports that

Three California churches have filed a complaint against the state over a recently implemented health insurance provision mandating the coverage of elective abortions.

Foothill Church of Glendora, Calvary Chapel in Chino, and Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch filed the complaint last Friday in U.S. District Court. The suit, filed against the director of the California Department of Managed Health Care, seeks injunctive relief from the abortion mandate.

“Plaintiffs believe, as a matter of religious conviction, that it would be sinful and immoral for them intentionally to pay for, participate in, facilitate, or otherwise support abortion, which they believe destroys innocent human life,” reads the complaint.

(Photo: Reuters/Robert Galbraith)California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown speaks at a news conference following his debate with his Republican opponent Meg Whitman at Dominican University in San Rafael, California, October 12, 2010.
“Because federal law requires plaintiffs to offer health insurance to their employees, the mandate illegally and unconstitutionally coerces plaintiffs to violate their religious beliefs under threat of heavy fines and penalties.”

In August 2014, the DMHC sent an official letter to Anthem Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente stating that insurance companies in California could not restrict abortion coverage.In their letter, DMHC stated that “it erroneously approved or did not object to such discriminatory language in some evidence of coverage filings.”

“The purpose of this letter is to remind plans that the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act of 1975 (Knox Keene Act) requires the provision of basic healthcare services,” read the DMHC letter.

“… [T]he California Constitution prohibits health plans from discriminating against women who choose to terminate a pregnancy. Thus, all health plans must treat maternity services and legal abortion neutrally.”

DMHC’s declaration that abortion coverage cannot be limited came in response to two Catholic academic institutions, Loyola Marymount University and Santa Clara University, seeking a reprieve for their insurance coverage regarding abortion.

In response to the announcement, the Life Legal Defense Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom sent the DMHC a letter of protest to the change.

“DMHC cannot deny approval to or otherwise penalize a health insurance plan for failing to provide coverage of some or all abortions and remain in compliance with the Weldon Amendment,” read the letter.

“In its failed lawsuit against the amendment, California admitted that all of its departments are subject to the amendment due to some of those departments receiving over $40 billion in federal funds for programs in the areas of education, health, and employment.”

The ADF is representing the three churches in their complaint. ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley said in a statement last week that congregations “should not be forced to pay for the killing of innocent human life.”

“The government has no right to demand that church health insurance plans contain coverage for abortion – something that violates these churches’ most sincerely held religious beliefs. California is violating the Constitution by strong-arming churches into having this coverage in their plans,” Stanley said.

There continues to be a lot of debate on Facebook Political Pages concerning whether Christians must sublimate our faith to the “Will of the State”.

The Kim Davis Case in Kentucky, in which two lesbians from Ohio, came into the County Clerk Office of Kim Davis, a known Evangelical Christian, elected by Christians, and demanded that she issue a Marriage License to them. Even though, there was another county clerk office a scant 15 minutes away from that location. Ms. Davis refused to issue one, on the grounds that it violates the tenets of her faith and God’s Holy Word. Cameras and lawyers swiftly following, as the “Gay Mafia” did its thing, attempting to bully Ms. Davis into sublimating her faith for the “Will of the State” and the appeasement of the god of popular culture.

Eventually, it was settled that the license would be issued, but, Ms. David would not and could not be forced to personally issue a Marriage License to a homosexual couple.

Others in the office would do it, instead.

On January 1, 2014, in a post titled, “The Hobby Lobby Decision: The First Amendment Holds. Religious Freedom Stands.”, I reported the following…

The Supreme Court, in a in a 5-4 ruling, found that “closely held” businesses do not have to provide contraception to their employees, if the ownership of said company opposes birth control on the grounds that it conflicts with the Religious Beliefs.

In other words, if you want to behave like Sandra Fluke, and if I am a business owner of a “closely held” business, I cannot be forced by the Obama Administration to provide your “protection”, either before or after that “special moment”.

The Supreme Court, in a in a 5-4 ruling, found that “closely held” businesses do not have to provide contraception to their employees, if the ownership of said company opposes birth control on the grounds that it conflicts with the Religious Beliefs.

In other words, if you want to behave like Sandra Fluke, and if I am a business owner of a “closely held” business, I cannot be forced by the Obama Administration to provide your “protection”, either before or after that “special moment”.

Rush Limbaugh, per usual made an excellent point on his nationally-syndicated radio program, yesterday:

…the thinking everywhere on the left, is either Obama’s gonna pay for it from his stash like they think exists in Detroit, or the insurance company will be forced to pay for it. But they won’t pay for it, they’ll just bill it back to Hobby Lobby. (interruption) No, the principle stands, that’s the point. When all this is said and done, the Supreme Court still ruled that the federal government cannot make a “closely held” corporation violate its own personal religious beliefs. I’m gonna have to double-check this, but I really do think that in that sense we’ve not had a ruling this direct in that regard before, whatever the issue was. I think I saw that somewhere this morning in the mounds of show prep that I was going through.

Look, it means here that Obama cannot unilaterally dictate how religion is to be practiced via laws or regulations or executive orders. It means that the First Amendment is not a casual plaything for cavalier statists whether in the executive branch or whether in Congress. There also was another ruling on the union’s and whether or not parents and nannies taking care of their own loved ones at home can be forced to pay union dues, and that was rejected, too. The headline says: “Sweeping Loss for Unions.” Oh, horrible, the Supreme Court just dealt a devastating blow to public unions. But this one really is kind of narrow. But the principle still stands.

What is really important, yet really small in this case, is that even after the Hobby Lobby decision, women can still go to Target or Walmart and buy a month’s worth of conception for nine dollars. What’s kind of being overlooked here in all this — and we did look at it in great detail on the previous occasion on this program — is that somehow we’ve gotten to the point where women should not have to pay for their own birth control. Somebody else is gonna pay for it, no matter how much they want, no matter how often they want it, no matter for what reason, somebody else is going to pay for it. That’s the root of all this. The employer should pay it, the insurance company will pay it, but in no way in 2014 America are women going to being pay for it, even though you can go to Target or Walmart and get a month’s supply for nine bucks.

So the ruling does not apply to, say, an Exxon or a General Motors. That’s not a “closely held” corporation. But the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby cannot be forced to fund the contraception mandate. Their liberty was defended here, no matter how narrow the left wants to say the ruling was, no matter what the practical application is, when it’s all over the First Amendment was enforced, or maybe reinforced today.

What applies to a closely held organization, most certainly applies to a Faith-sponsored Organization.

On March 8, 1983, President Ronald Wilson Reagan gave a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, which came to be know as the “Evil Empire Speech”. Here is an excerpt:

Well, I’m pleased to be here today with you who are keeping America great by keeping her good. Only through your work and prayers and those of millions of others can we hope to survive this perilous century and keep alive this experiment in liberty, this last, best hope of man.

I want you to know that this administration is motivated by a political philosophy that sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities–the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for others and respect for the rule of law under God.

 Now, I don’t have to tell you that this puts us in opposition to, or at least out of step with, a–a prevailing attitude of many who have turned to a modern-day secularism, discarding the tried and time-tested values upon which our very civilization is based. No matter how well intentioned, their value system is radically different from that of most Americans. And while they proclaim that they’re freeing us from superstitions of the past, they’ve taken upon themselves the job of superintending us by government rule and regulation. Sometimes their voices are louder than ours, but they are not yet a majority. [Applause]

An example of that vocal superiority is evident in a controversy now going on in Washington. And since I’m involved, I’ve been waiting to hear from the parents of young America. How far are they willing to go in giving to government their prerogatives as parents?

Let me state the case as briefly and simply as I can. An organization of citizens, sincerely motivated, deeply concerned about the increase in illegitimate births and abortions involving girls well below the age of consent, some time ago established a nationwide network of clinics to offer help to these girls and, hopefully, alleviate this situation. Now, again, let me say, I do not fault their intent. However, in their well-intentioned effort, these clinics decided to provide advice and birth control drugs and devices to underage girls without the knowledge of their parents.

For some years now, the federal government has helped with funds to subsidize these clinics. In providing for this, the Congress decreed that every effort would be made to maximize parental participation. Nevertheless, the drugs and devices are prescribed without getting parental consent or giving notification after they’ve done so. Girls termed “sexually active”–and that has replaced the word “promiscuous”–are given this help in order to prevent illegitimate worth/birth (quickly corrects himself) eh or abortion.

Well, we have ordered clinics receiving federal funds to notify the parents such help has been given. [Applause] One of the nation’s leading newspapers has created the term “squeal rule” in editorializing against us for doing this, and we’re being criticized for violating the privacy of young people. A judge has recently granted an injunction against an enforcement of our rule. I’ve watched TV panel shows discuss this issue, seen columnists pontificating on our error, but no one seems to mention morality as playing a part in the subject of sex. [Applause]

Is all of Judeo-Christian tradition wrong? Are we to believe that something so sacred can be looked upon as a purely physical thing with no potential for emotional and psychological harm? And isn’t it the parents’ right to give counsel and advice to keep their children from making mistakes that may affect their entire lives? [Slight crescendo of voice and emphasis–Long Applause]

Many of us in government would like to know what parents think about this intrusion in their family by government. We’re going to fight in the courts. The right of parents and the rights of family take precedence over those of Washington-based bureaucrats and social engineers. [Applause]

But the fight against parental notification is really only one example of many attempts to water down traditional values and even abrogate the original terms of American democracy. Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged. [Applause] When our founding fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

Truth is still truth.

Regardless of the recent law-making by the United States Supreme Court (whose job is to interpret the laws, not make them) Americans’ First Amendment Rights still stand.

If you try to talk to a Liberal about this New Fascism, they will deny that there is any Fascism going on at all. In fact, they will tell you that this is “the will of the people” and they will site Democratically-stacked push polls in order to back their opinion up.

When you ask Liberals if , for example, “homosexual marriage” is the “will of the people”, why did voters in the overwhelming majority of states, including California, vote against it? And, if there is “no Fascism”, what do you call the fact that 2% of the population is having activist judges overturn the actual will of the people in order to get their way, in their attempt to redefine a word that has meant the same thing since time immemorial?

In response, you will usually see their eyes glaze over, like a deer in the headlights, or experience a dramatic pause in posting, if you are on the Internet.

Liberals can not legitimately defend the suppression of the First Amendment Rights of Christian Americans.

During Hitler’s rise to power, the German Press demonized European Jews, betraying them as evil and money grubbing…painting them as being different from normal German citizens. It was this classification of the European Jews as the enemy that almost led to the extinction of them in that horrible attempted genocide, known as the Holocaust.

Now, in the early 21st century, the Far Left, the Democratic Party, and the Obama Administration (but, I repeat myself) are using propaganda to isolate and demonize average Americans, who through hard work, have risen to a high station in life or through their strong Christian faith and love of their country refuse to follow a popular culture- worshiping Administration, when it issues Executive Orders or has its Democratic Congress pass legislation which clearly contradicts the Word of God and the Judeo-Christian Belief System upon which America was built.

Considering what is happening in the world around us, thanks in a large part to Obama’s failed Foreign Policy, if America keeps on the path we seem to be headed on, we will find out why America is not mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools. – Romans 1 : 22

Until He Comes,

KJ

The War Against Christianity: Trying to Quantify the Unquantifiable

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

American ChristianityI am a Christian American Conservative. I make no apologies for that fact.

Depending on which poll you read, Christians comprise 70-75% of America’s Population.

During the Obama Administration, there has been a concerted and very visible effort to limit the role which Christianity plays in the day-to-day lives of average Americans.

This was already done, decades ago, in Europe, and now, they are suffering the consequences of their actions.

The Christian Post reports that

The Church of England is reportedly considering plans to keep some historic village churches across the country opened only on holy days such as Christmas and Easter due to population shifts and the ever-growing decline in attendance and church membership.

A major 66-page report by the CofE’s Church Buildings Review Group noted that many churches are no longer sustainable, and that about one in four parishes have fewer than 10 regular worshipers.

The report proposes turning some parishes into “festival churches” in order to ease the financial burden, suggesting that they will only be used for key dates on the religious calendar, or occasions such as marriage and funerals.

Festival churches are only one of the widespread changes proposed by the review group, which says it is focused on “securing spiritual and numerical growth and serving the common good.”

“We believe that — apart from growing the church — there is no single solution to the challenges posed by our extensive responsibility for part of the nation’s historic heritage,” the group added.

The CofE has had to deal with sharp decline over the past 30 years, as reported in May by NatCen Social Research.

The group’s Social Attitudes survey found that 40 percent of the British population identified as Anglicans in 1983, but that number is down to only 17 percent in 2014. Presently only 8.5 million Britons identify as Anglicans, the survey said.

People of no religious faith now make up close to half of the population in Britain, or 49 percent, which is up from their 31 percent count in 1983.

With the steady rise of immigration, the rise of non-Christian faiths has also been well documented, with Islam making up close to 5 percent of all Britons in 2014, up from 0.5 percent in 1983.

Could this happen in America?

It is a fact that a significant number of Americans have left Organized Religion, frankly, because by embracing Popular Culture, instead of God’s Holy Word, the church they attended LEFT THEM.

For example…

The Episcopal Church continues to experience losses in both church attendance and membership, according to recently released numbers from the denomination’s Office of the General Convention.

From 2013 to 2014, active baptized members in domestic dioceses went from 1.866 million to 1.817 million, representing a loss of nearly 50,000 members. 

The statistics reveal that in 2014 that average Sunday attendance was a little over 600,000 in domestic dioceses, down from approximately 623,000 in 2013.

2014’s numbers are even more telling when compared with 2009, when the theologically liberal Episcopal Church had about 200,000 more members and over 80,000 more Sunday worship attendees.

Jeff Walton, Anglican program director at the theologically conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy, noted in a blog entry last week other aspects of decline for the Church.

“Other measures of Episcopal Church vitality also saw decline: the denomination reported the shuttering of 69 parishes and missions, down from 6,622 in 2013 to 6,553 in 2014,” wrote Walton.

“Children’s baptisms declined 4.8 percent from 25,822 to 24,594 and adult baptisms declined during the same time-frame from 3,675 to 3,530, a decline of nearly 4 percent.”

The losses experienced between 2013 and 2014 are nearly double the roughly 27,000 fewer members between 2012 and 2013.

Why do churches who allow the world’s “Popular Culture” to influence their worship of God, tend to have to eventually close their doors?

Perhaps, it is because, instead of concentrating on the “Divine Mystery” of the Triune God, Liberal Churches are “trying to quantify the unquantifiable”.

Stream.org has posted an article on-line, in which scientists claim that they can change someone’s opinion about the existence of God and illegal immigrants, through the use of magnets.

In Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience Sally Satel (psychiatrist) and Scott Lilienfeld (psychologist) say “the half-life of facts can be especially brief” in this field. New results disprove older ones continuously.After the zapping, all participants were re-asked the same questions. Turns out participants “reported an average of 32.8% less conviction in positive religious beliefs” than those who weren’t zapped. That’s 32.8% and not 32.7%, mind you. In science we demand precision! A wee p-value confirmed that this change was “statistically significant.” There isn’t space here to explain the horror of this statistical approach, but interested readers can learn more here.

This is where it gets interesting. There was, as we have just seen, a small change in the answers to pseudo-quantified questions about positive religious beliefs, but there weren’t any “significant” changes in the answers to pseudo-quantified questions about negative religious beliefs. The same sort of thing happened in the questions about immigrants: Some had wee p-values and some did not. And there were no changes in any of the other questions asked. Yet which “findings” got the headlines?

We still haven’t answered the big question: why. Why did the authors design a study about belief in God and attitudes about immigrants? From their conclusion, written in the impenetrable prose typical of such “studies”:

“History teaches that investment in cherished group and religious values can bring forth acts of both heroic valor and horrific injustice. Understanding the psychological and biological determinants of increases in ideological commitment may ultimately help us to identify the situational triggers of, and individuals most susceptible to, this phenomenon, and thereby gain some leverage over the zealous acts that follow. …The results provide evidence that relatively abstract personal and social attitudes are susceptible to targeted neuromodulation, opening the way for researchers to not only describe the biological mechanisms undergirding high-level attitudes and beliefs, but also to establish causality via experimental intervention.”

Did you catch that? These scientists hope that in the future belief in God, or in some other politically incorrect question that might — only might — lead to “zealous acts,” can be treated, maybe even cured, by magnet zappings. And there you have the real danger that follows from believing you can quantify the unquantifiable.

Popular Culture, under the guise of “making the individual feel better about themselves”, actually constrains individual achievement.

These “millennials”, by believing that they are “their own god”, are limiting themselves.

History has shown us, time and again, what happens to a society, when man starts worshiping himself.

As Proverbs 16:18 tells us

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Right now, you’re probably saying to yourself,

Hold on, KJ, you just said that the individual CAN achieve.

Yes, I did.

Those who have gone before us, such as our Founding Fathers, our military leaders, our civic leaders, and our spiritual and familial leaders, all had one thing in common:

They all possessed a spirit of self-sacrifice.

Not sacrificing their will to achieve for the “good of the State”, but, rather, unselfishly sacrificing their time and talents for the betterment of those around them.

And, that is where the “Progressives” (i.e., Liberals), get it wrong.

It is not “the State”, nor the community-at-large, that drives, or allows, Individual Americans to succeed.

Anytime that man tries to limit God, he sets himself up for failure.

It is that “still, small voice” that resides within each one of us that has endowed us with our “certain inalienable rights” as Americans, of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”, that gives us the strength and discernment to succeed.

For without God, nothing is possible.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

My 2,000th Blog: Speak or Go Mad

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics5 Comments

American Christianity 2A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,…

Well, actually, it just seems that way…

It was April of 2010. I had been writing Guest Commentaries on the blog of an Internet Friend of mine, named Gene Hoyas, otherwise known as Colonel Manly Rash (I’m not kiddin’).

I decided, at that time, to go ahead and start my own blog, as a way to vent my frustrations regarding the direction that those who are supposed to be serving US, were taking the Greatest Country on the Face of the Earth. Little did I know, that, under the “leadership” of President Barack Hussein Obama, I ain’t seen nothing, yet.

The Internet is a fascinating, powerful tool.

Through it, one is connected with the world, being able to research any subject which one might call to mind, in the wink of an eye, or the upload of a byte of information.

It can be used to illumine or to obfuscate, to clarify or to confuse, to enlighten or to subjugate, or to build up or to tear down.

It can span the globe, bringing you beautiful images of God’s Creation or images of man’s inhumanity to man.

It connects people to one another, in a way never before seen in the history of mankind.

As demonstrated by the current political scandals, involving the Internet and the use of e-mails, this connectivity can be used for nefarious purposes.

I have never taken the use of this tool lightly.

In posting these 2,000 blogs, I have tried my hardest to stay true to what I believe, and in doing so, to inform and to entertain those of you who take some of your precious time during the day, to read the musings of this old Son of Dixie.

To those who worship at the Altar of Political Correctness:

Yes, I said “DIXIE”.  Get over it.

So, what do I believe?

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord. (The Apostles Creed)

I believe that America is still the GREATEST COUNTRY ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH…in spite of the efforts of our present Political Leadership to turn us into “just another country”.

I believe that America was founded by Christian men and women, who came here to worship their Creator, as they saw fit, eventually breaking away from an oppressive government, and writing documents to provide guidance for a new government, born out of, and heavily influenced by, their Judeo-Christian Beliefs.

I believe that, to this day, American is still the Land of Opportunity, where, if you are willing to work hard enough, you can succeed…through the Grace of God.

I also believe that this is a country in the midst of a Cultural/Political Crisis, purposefully brought about by those, who like Machiavellian Politicians, in previous generations, wish to divide America’s Citizenry, for the purpose of Political Expediency.

The popularity of non-politicians among the Republican Party Presidential Candidates, is a direct reaction from Americans to the self-serving nature of those whom they sent to Washington, DC, to represent THEIR wishes for the future of America, not the politicians’ own greed and avarice.

I believe in the Silent Majority, average Americans, like myself, living in America’s Heartland, who simply want to be left alone by Government, so that we may raise our children and grandchildren to love God and Country, as we were raised, in accordance with our Constitutional Rights, as detailed through the writings of our Founding Fathers, not as interpreted by a politically-active Judiciary.

I believe that the majority of young white Americans, do not act like Miley Cyrus, and the majority of black Americans, do not act like the human refuse whom we saw burn down Baltimore.

I believe that, while Man is a fallen creature, we are capable of acts of extraordinary kindness and heroism.

I also believe that, the only limits we have as human beings, are those which we place upon ourselves.

God gave us this life. He guides us through it. He presents with opportunities and gives us free will to make choices, right or wrong.

There are so many times I’ve seen Him move in my life … so many times that he has made a way for me… so many times that He has shown His Gracious Love for me.

I know that I’m not the only person that feels this way. If you look back now and you’re around my age, you realize what I am trying to say this morning.

God wants us to be happy. God wants us to live and enjoy the life which is given to us

He wants the best for us. He also wants us to take advantage of the opportunities which He presents to us throughout our life, so that when we stand before Him, we can hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

But what does that mean? Does it mean we have to live a life locked away in a monastery somewhere away from the temptations of the modern culture around us? Of course not.

However, we have to keep the main thing the main thing. We cannot sacrifice our Christianity, as Americans, for the sake of political expediency. Heaven is a far bigger tent than any political party could ever be.

I would rather find favor with God than favor with man.

Am I an extremist? You betcha.

God said it. I believe it. That settles it.

So, where do I go from here? Do I run away, with my tail between my legs, and live out the rest of my days in quiet desperation?

To any of you who repled, “yes”…you don’t know me very well.

Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world.

My Creator, while endowing me with certain inalienable rights, also endowed me with an indomitable will. Then, somewhere along my journey, He gave me the gift of being able to express my thoughts and feelings on this computer keyboard.

I will not give up. I will not surrender my Christianity, my love of the greatest nation on God’s green Earth, or my Conservatism, to appease those who wish everybody would just get in line and acquiesce to the prevailing “societal norms”.  I follow another set of guidelines, written a long time ago, but which remain as relevant as the moment in which the Hand of God guided those who wrote them down.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, – Colossians 3:23 (ESV)

In conclusion, there are people I wish to thank, who have invested a lot of time in me and my blogging.

First, I wish to thank my dear friend, Gene Hoyas, aka Col. Manly Rash/The Bulldog Pundit, who allowed me to be a regular contributor to any Blog in which he was involved, and whose guidance and writing tips were such a help.

I thank my lovely bride (I married up), who, since we got married in July of 2011, has put up with losing me to this endeavor every evening at 9:00 p.m.

I thank the rest of my family, my extended family of friends and faithful readers, and those of you who just drop in from time to time to check out what my latest rant is.

I thank my Earthly Father, who made me all that I am, and led me, in The Way in which I should go.

Finally, but most importantly, I thank my Heavenly Father, from Whom all blessings flow. Without Him, I would be nothing at all.

May God Bless you all.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Death of American Christianity Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics2 Comments

American Christianity 2Is America losing the “Faith of Our Fathers”?

In an article titled “Confidence in Religion at New Low, but Not Among Catholics”, gallup.com posted that

PRINCETON, N.J. — Americans’ confidence in the church and organized religion has fallen dramatically over the past four decades, hitting an all-time low this year of 42%. Confidence in religion began faltering in the 1980s, while the sharpest decline occurred between 2001 and 2002 as the Roman Catholic Church grappled with a major sexual abuse scandal. Since then, periodic improvements have proved temporary, and it has continued to ratchet lower.

At first glance, this article should be upsetting to the 74% of Americans, including myself, who, as seems to be the “cool” word this week, self-identify as Christian Americans.

“Organized Religion”, a term usually spoken in derision by those seeking to somehow impugn the generations-old practice of Christian Americans to be a member of and attend the weekly worship service of the denomination and church building of their choice, is being used here by the Liberals up in Princeton, NJ, to further degrade the spiritual backbone of the “Shining City Upon a Hill”, as President Ronald Reagan referred to our country.

For what now seems like an eternity, those on the left side of Political Aisle, have focused their attention on “radically changing” America.

They soon realized that they simply could not do it through popular culture and educational indoctrination, inundating America’s children with both overt and subliminal imaging designed to countermand the Traditional American Values that they were being raised with, in normal American Households, out here in “Flyover Country”, otherwise known as America’s Heartland…or “the Red States”.

Modern Liberals soon figured out that the way to program Americans into believing that “all paths lead to God” and that cradle-to-grave Nanny-State Government were the new American Standards for living our daily lives, was to turn Christian American Houses of Worship away from being instructors of the Word of God and a sanctuary in which to worship Our Creator, to, instead, being purveyors of the joys of Popular Culture. Wednesday Night Bible Studies were soon replaced by Yoga Classes and Encounter Groups. Religious Leaders were soon quoting philosophy, instead of the Biblem in their Sunday Morning Sermons.

And, instead of taking a stand against those things of the world which were directly opposed to what is found in God’s Word, these “new, enlightened” churches started standing up for the “right” of a woman to have her baby prematurely yanked out of her womb with a set of tongs, standing up for the right of Adam to “marry” Steve, when the Bible states that marriage is between a man and a woman, and standing up for the equality of all faiths, when the Son of God firmly states, in John 14:6, that

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So, is Christianity in America going to “fade away”?

Not any time soon.

Being filled with human beings, churches have made a lot of mistakes, However, they have also done a lot of good in the name of the Lord.

For example, the church I attend, houses a Food Pantry, operated in co-operation with other churches in our area, which feeds 2,000 people per month, counseling them, and getting them the assistance that they need.

Churches today have to walk a fine line.

The spiritual battle the influence of American Popular Culture and those seeking the Will of God in their lives, takes all the strength…and prayer, that Christians can muster.

Articles, such as the one which I quoted earlier, are usually written by Liberals, especially those found in a Liberal Publication like USA Today.

Modern Liberals seem to have great difficulty comprehending the role which Our Creator, the God of Abraham, played and plays in this Grand Experiment, known as the United States of America.

Why have Liberals ratcheted up their anti-Christian Vitriol and Negativity since January 21, 2009?

Why are they so focused on removing America’s Christian Heritage?

Well, as is usually my wont, I have been doing some “reckoning” about this.

It seems to this ol’ Southern Boy, living here in the Heartland, that America’s Christian Heritage and the very real fact of His influence in building and shaping America’s growth into the greatest country on the face of God’s Green Earth, not only stifles and interferes with Modern Liberals’ “anything goes”, “share the wealth”, “hive-mind”, “man is his own god” Political Ideology, but the reality of God’s very existence, somewhere deep in their miserable, bitter psyches, scares the mess out of them.

Why else would they be trying so hard to fight against the influence of Someone Whom they really don’t believe in?

I see them every single day on the television, on the Internet, on Facebook Political Pages, posting stupid meme (a picture with words on it) after stupid meme, attempting to make fun of The Great I Am and those of us who have given our lives to Him.

They are so hateful, and filled with such bitterness, that it is difficult to engage them in “conversation”.

Perhaps, somewhere in their back of their minds, all of these Modern American Liberals, realize that they are fighting a losing battle.

As I mentioned before, 74% of Americans, per that same source, gallup.com, continue to self-identify as Christians.

America was built upon a Solid Rock.

To ignore our nation’s Faith-Based Founding and Heritage is to live in purposeful ignorance.

As President Ronald Reagan said,

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

And, as Hebrews 13:8 tells us,

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Regardless of the Political Machinations of Modern American Liberals, God will have the final word.

He always does.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

Draw Mohammed Contests, Freedom of Speech, and Liberal Hypocrisy

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

 

 

Islam cartoonEvery lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. – A Time for Choosing, An Address by Ronald Reagan on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater, Rendezvous with Destiny, October 27, 1964

CNN.com reported yesterday that

Protesters at Friday’s “Freedom of Speech” rally outside a Phoenix mosque were met by counterprotesters.The two groups lined both sides of the street in front of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix and yelled at each other, with a line of police officers standing in the middle of the street to keep them separated, CNN affiliate KNXV reported.

Jon Ritzheimer, organizer of the rally, is a former Marine, and he has no middle ground when it comes to Islam.

His T-shirt pretty much says it all: “F— Islam.” Some of the counterprotesters wore shirts that said, “Love Thy Neighbor.”

The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix is the mosque that Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi attended for a time. They’re the men who drove from Arizona to a Dallas suburb to shoot up a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest there. Both were killed by police early this month.

Many Muslims consider demeaning depictions of Mohammed to be blasphemous and banned by Islamic law.

…”This is in response to the recent attack in Texas where 2 armed terrorist(s), with ties to ISIS, attempted Jihad,” the event’s Facebook page said.

Some 600 people said they would attend.

Yesterday morning, while driving to work, as is my habit as an All-American Adult Male, I was channel-jockeying on Sirius XM between the 60s, 70s, 80s, Christian Contemporary, and Southern Gospel music channels, when I landed on the audio simulcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends”.

Since it was Friday, the 70-something year old topless selfie-taker himself (I apologize for the image), Geraldo Rivera (Jerry Rivers) was pontificating concerning how awful the ex-military guy was to hold a “Draw Mohammed” Contest in Phoenix. According to the Finder of Al Capone’s (empty) Vault (look it up, kids),

“We’re” better than that.

Really, O Mustached One?

In 1987, a wannabe “artist and full-time whackjob named Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix in a bottle of his own urine, and titled it “Piss Christ.” It caused a public uproar, first because of the insulting treatment of a the Son of God’s Atonement for OUR Sins, and second, it was revealed Serrano received a $15,000 prize, partly from the taxpayer-funded National Endowment of the Arts.

In 1999,  New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani cut funding to the Brooklyn Museum after it displayed a painting by another whackjob named Chris Ofili. The painting depicted the Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ surrounded by pornographic images and covered in elephant dung. A judge later reinstated the funding.

I spent a great deal of time this morning, using my mysterious powers of Google Fu, in a vain attempt to find any quotes from Geraldo, in which he protested these two blasphemous pieces of cr…err…”works of art”.

There were none.

I wasn’t surprised.

Like the overwhelming majority of Modern American Liberals, ol’ “Jerry Rivers” is very selective in his condemnation of “affronts to religion”.

If you are a Liberal or a Squishy Moderate (but, I repeat myself), who believes that the “Draw Mohammed” Events are an “affront” to Islam and should be prohibited, and yet, you have no problem with “Piss Christ” and “Elephant Dung Mary”, or any of the truly stupid and awful “memes” posted in blogs and on Facebook attacking Christianity, the faith of 74% of Americans…

YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE.

And, you don’t have a cotton-pickin’ clue.

The historic, documented truth is that Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a faith.

These figures are a rough estimate of the death of non-Muslims by the political act of jihad.

Africa
Thomas Sowell [Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, BasicBooks, 1994, p. 188] estimates that 11 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and 14 million were sent to the Islamic nations of North Africa and the Middle East. For every slave captured many others died. Estimates of this collateral damage vary. The renowned missionary David Livingstone estimated that for every slave who reached a plantation, five others were killed in the initial raid or died of illness and privation on the forced march.[Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions, David Livingstone, p. 62, 1888] Those who were left behind were the very young, the weak, the sick and the old. These soon died since the main providers had been killed or enslaved. So, for 25 million slaves delivered to the market, we have an estimated death of about 120 million people. Islam ran the wholesale slave trade in Africa.
…120 million Africans

Christians
The number of Christians martyred by Islam is 9 million [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-10] . A rough estimate by Raphael Moore in History of Asia Minor is that another 50 million died in wars by jihad. So counting the million African Christians killed in the 20th century we have:
60 million Christians

Now, I am not saying that every Muslim is on a jihad against “the infidels”.

However…

When Christians become “radicalized”, we want to share the testimony of what God has done for us through His love, with everyone we meet. We get involved in our local church and we become better fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and American Citizens.

When Muslims become “radicalized”, they want to “kill the Infidels” in the name of “Allah the Merciful”.

In the case of the Chechen Muslim brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon, their immersion into Radical Islam led them to “kill the infidels” that horrendous day.

In the case of the barbarians of ISIS, it has turned them into doppelgängers of the Nazi Butchers of Dachau.

Islam and Christianity present two very different Deities, who may share some similarities, but who have different identities and ultimately different standards. To pretend they are the same is not only to be clueless of the faith of 74% (per gallup.com) of the citizens of this nation, but, to be ignorant of an integral part of our American Heritage, the legacy of Christian Faith, which our Founding Fathers bequeathed us.

For Liberals to deny that, is disingenuous at best, and just plain out-and-out lying at worst.

The Father of our Country, our First President, George Washington, once delivered the following mighty words to a fledgling nation:

You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.

The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger. The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

I now make it my earnest prayer that God would… most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of the mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion.

Please notice that the words, “ACCEPT CHRIST AS YOUR SAVIOR OR DIE” were nowhere in this transcript.

If organizations, such as CAIR, have the FREEDOM OF SPEECH to denounce America and hypocritical Liberals, such a Geraldo Rivera, have the right to denounce events such as the “Draw Mohammed” Contests, then don’t those Americans, who believe that Radical Islam, whose adherents have stated over and over again, that they want to kill each and every American, is Evil Incarnate, have the right to denounce this political ideology masquerading as a religion?

For those of you Liberals who still don’t get it, the answer is “YES”.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

Obama Lectures Catholic/Evangelical Summit on “Faith and Family”…No, Seriously.

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

thQ67Q4JEBBack in April of 2008, Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Hussein Obama, spoke the following words during a fundraiser in Pennsylvania:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Yesterday, the same individual spoke on the importance of faith and family in front of a bunch of Christian Leaders.

My hypocrisy knows no Bounds. – Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) to Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russeal, “Tombstone”, 1993

Seriously, boys and girls…you can’t make this stuff up.

The Christian Post reports that

President Barack Obama spoke Tuesday about the importance of faith and family during a panel discussion for the Catholic-Evangelical Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University.
“Faith-based groups across the country and around the world understand the centrality and the importance of [poverty] in a intimate way — in part because these faith-based organizations are interacting with folks who are struggling and know how good these people are, and know their stories, and it’s not just theological, but it’s very concrete. They’re embedded in communities and they’re making a difference in all kinds of ways,” Obama said.

The panel was moderated by The Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and also included Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.

“When I think about my own Christian faith and my obligations,” Obama continued, “it is important for me to do what I can myself — individually mentoring young people, or making charitable donations, or in some ways impacting whatever circles and influence I have. But I also think it’s important to have a voice in the larger debate. And I think it would be powerful for our faith-based organizations to speak out on this in a more forceful fashion.”

Obama also noted that asking churches to speak out more on poverty may “sound self-interested” because there are other issues where he disagrees with “the evangelical community and faith-based groups,” such as abortion and gay marriage.

“But I want to insist,” he explained, “… [working to end poverty] is more just a broader reflection of somebody who has worked with churches and worked in communities.”

Obama also noted that he speaks about the importance of fathers to, for instance, students at Morehouse College, an all-male traditionally black college, more than Barnard College, an all-female college, because “I am a black man who grew up without a father and I know the cost that, I paid for that. And I also know that I have the capacity to break that cycle, and as a consequence, I think my daughters are better off.”

Having that conversation, he added, “does not negate my conversation about the need for early childhood education, or the need for job training, or the need for greater investment in infrastructure, or jobs in low-income communities.”

The summit was on its second of three full days of events. It was organized by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and the National Association of Evangelicals. The goal of the summit is to “make overcoming poverty a moral imperative and urgent national priority.” Partner groups participating in the event represent both conservative and liberal evangelical and Catholic groups.

Obama said he has read Putnam’s new book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, which argues that a rich/poor opportunity gap has grown wider in recent years, such that poor kids find it more difficult to find success through hard work.

After Obama pointed out that anti-poverty programs have reduced poverty by 40 percent since 1967, Putnam noted that those programs have reduced poverty for the elderly but they have not helped children much.

Increasingly, he said, opportunities for success are determined by who your parents are. Poor children can be just as talented and hardworking, but their “fate is being determined by things that they had no control over, and that’s fundamentally unfair”.

I disagree vehemently.

This is the greatest country on the face of the Earth.

God gave us Free Will. And, with His help, “all things are possible”. (Matthew 19:26)

You determine your own success.

It is not so much as to who your parents are, but whether they fulfill their Parental Responsibilities in your life or not.

For example, look at the case of Trayvon Martin’s Mother. The second thing she did, after getting Barack Obama and the Justice Brothers involved in her 17 year old thug son’s death, is to copyright his name, and begin to make money off of  his image as an innocent 12 year old, which, of course, he was not.

I have never been able to stomach mistreatment of children. I know it is because of my upbringing, in a stable Christian home. Nowadays, that familial situation, which my generation was so familiar with, is becoming more and more scarce. In fact, despite his speech at Georgetown, it’s on the Obama Administration’s Hit List.

You see, Liberals, Progressives, socialists, Alinskyites, worshipers of Molech, or whatever you want to call these yahoos, , want the “gub’mit”, good ol’ Uncle Sugar, to raise , educate, and pay for (with OUR tax money) their “chirren”.

Oh…they also want US to pay for the killing of their “inconvenient” babies, as well.

The strength and vitality of America does not come from the benevolence of a Nanny-state Federal Government.

As the greatest American President of my lifetime, Ronald Reagan said:

The nine words you never want to hear are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.

Being enslaved to the Government Dole steals one’s ambition. It takes away any impetus or desire to create a better life for yourself and your family, to challenge yourself to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and pursue the American Dream. It makes you reliant on a politically motivated spider’s web full of government bureaucrats who view you and your family as job security.

By eliminating the will to succeed in life, the Government has created and perpetuated a seemingly inescapable Cycle of Poverty, in which irresponsibility is rewarded with a Government Check.

And, if these adults don’t care about succeeding in their own lives, you certainly cannot expect them to give a hoot and holler about fulfilling their Parental Responsibilities, now, can you?

These “parents”, if they are not “Pookies”, sitting around on the couch, drinking Purple drank and smoking Blunts all day, while waiting on their “benefits”, are middle-class, self-absorbed , materialistic heathens, who are 30 year old adolescents, caring more about their own careers and social lives, than they are about leading a child “in the way in which they should go”.

The children, in both instances, are left to fend for themselves, and grow up thinking that the behavior they see on television and at home, is the behavior of every adult in America.

And, that is how we have gotten to the point where mobs of Black Youths are assaulting innocent people in cities from coast to coast.

In the church I grew up in, in one of the Sunday School classrooms, was a painting of Jesus, seated, with a child on his lap, surrounded by little children, smiling and talking to them.

As a child growing up, I thought to myself, how great that must have to been to have Him for a friend.

Then, as I became older, I realized that I already did.

It breaks my heart that these young people, not unlike Trayvon Martin, who was made a meal of by Race-Baiting Vultures, were not introduced to such a Friend.

He would have made all the difference in their young lives.

A Nanny-State Government enslaves.

Our God-Given American Freedom empowers.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

The War Against Christianity: Hillary-“Religious Beliefs Have to be Changed” to Allow Abortion

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

American Christianity 2History has shown us that, no matter how hard a politician tries to hide the nature of their heart and soul, eventually, they will say something to reveal it.

In a speech this past week at a Women’s Summit, Democratic Presidential Hopeful, Hillary Rodham Clinton, did just that.

Breitbart.com reports that

“Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth. All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced,” Hillary Clinton said at the Women in the World Summit on Thursday night. “Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper.  Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

Clinton made it emphatically clear she’s not just talking about, say, the horrific abuse of women by Islamist extremists: “As I have said, and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century, and not just for women but for everyone… and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.” She pointed at the very ground she was standing upon, to emphasize the point.

As an aside, that has to be one of the strangest, clunkiest rhetorical devices I’ve ever heard: “As I have said, and as I believe…” Granted, with politicians in general and Clintons in particular, a disclaimer that what they’re saying really is what they believe is often necessary, but there’s no particular reason to believe such a disclaimer when Hillary Clinton delivers it.  If she really believed everything she was saying at this Women in the World Summit, why was she happy to rake in millions of dollars from countries that treat women horribly?

Quibbles about odd rhetorical devices aside, this vow to use government force to rewrite religious belief and make it more contraception- and abortion-friendly is deeply offensive, and par for the course with true believers in the Church of the State, as both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are. Clinton has been at it much longer. Back in the Nineties, she was high on the notion of the collectivist State as a spiritual vehicle – the “politics of meaning,” as the catch phrase went.

The difference is that Obama will occasionally use Christian symbolism and Scripture to advance his political agenda, as when he insists that charity can only be properly administered by the State, and Christians are therefore obliged to support high taxes, massive government spending, and regulatory power. Obama is also big on using Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” against Christians, as when he tried to shame them out of criticizing his foreign policy by pontificating about the Crusades.

Clinton, on the other hand, more explicitly views politics as absorbing religion, as in this example. Her Church of the State has made certain decrees concerning mandatory payment for other peoples’ contraceptives and unrestricted abortion; any organized religion that resists must be forcibly re-written to accept these judgments.

Unlike Obama, Hillary isn’t much interested in pretending to be a devout Christian. In this speech, she’s creating a continuum between Taliban savages murdering girls for daring to go to school, and American Christians who don’t want to pay for other peoples’ abortifacient drugs.  Genital mutilation, opposition to late-term abortion… it’s all the same to her. Religions must be reprogrammed until they’re fully compatible with the latest version of radical-feminist code.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Far Left Radical Follower of Saul Alinsky, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, should feel this way.

Hillary, like Obama, sincerely believes that she is the smartest person in any room that she happens to walk into.

There is no room in her ego-filled heart and mind, for a Supreme Being. Hillary, herself, believes that she is the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong in her life.

Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an ardent  pro-abortion supporter, either on Facebook or face-to-face? You won’t hear these “Champions of Tolerance” call those innocent lives, babies, human beings, a life, a soul, a gift from God, or anything remotely resembling something that they should feel remorse about killing.

Heck, Pro-Abortionists are opposed to the taking of sonograms of the woman’s womb, before she has a abortion. They’re afraid that the “seed-carrier” will realize that IS a HUMAN BEING inside her, and will decide not to kill that baby.

Here are some thoughts from The Book provided by The Author of Life:

Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15)

Yet Thou art He who didst bring me forth from the womb; Thou didst make me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. Upon Thee I was cast from birth; Thou hast been my God from my mother’s womb. (Psalm 22:9-10)

For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Thy book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:13-16)

Thus says the LORD who made you And formed you from the womb, who will help you, `Do not fear, O Jacob My servant; And you Jeshurun whom I have chosen. (Isaiah 44:2)

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the earth all alone, (Isaiah 44:24)

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

Why,  even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not;  you are of more value than many sparrows.”(Luke 12:7 )

From the scientific perspective, Dr. Carlo Bellieni, in his book “Dawn of the I: Pain, Memory, Desire, Dream of the Fetus,” writes:

As soon as it is born, the child shows in a scientifically demonstrable way that it recognizes its mother’s voice and distinguishes it from that of a stranger. Where has he learned that voice other than in the maternal womb?

There are also direct proofs. For example, we register how the movements and cardiac frequency of the fetus vary if we transmit unexpected sounds through the uterine wall. And we see that at first the fetus is startled, then it gets used to it, just like we do when we hear something that does not interest us.

In fact, the scientific evidence is immense. We cannot understand how it can be thought that it becomes a person at a certain point, perhaps when coming out of the uterus.

From the physical point of view, at the birth very little really changes: Air enters the lungs, the arrival of blood from the placenta is interrupted, the type of circulation of blood in the heart changes, and not much more.

As I often say, only blind faith in magic arts or some strange divinity can lead one to think that there is a “human” quality leap at a given moment — certainly not science.

I know that there are some of you that read my blog that are non-believers.  For you and for my Christian brothers and sisters, I offer the following closing thoughts:

There is a curious unique enzyme found in the human body.   Laminin is defined by the Webster Medical Dictionary as a “glycoprotein that is a component of connective tissue basement membrane and that promotes cell adhesion.”  In other words, a glue within the body.

Colossians 1:15-17 tells us:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

I believe that our nation and our leaders should realize that you cannot mock God. With actions come consequences. You know, that “cause and effect” thingy that “the Smartest people in the Room” are so found of bringing up.

Each and every life is precious to The Creator. That baby growing in her womb, is not the property of the mother. Each and every one of us belong to the One who made us. He is our Sovereign Lord.

All those who believe that “it is a woman’s right to choose”…think too highly of themselves.

For every life is a Gift from The Creator to be loved and cherished, as He first loved us.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Indiana Law: Liberals Call Christianity “Discrimination”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

 

 

 

American Christianity 2The state of Indiana has come out in favor of Freedom of Religion.

And, Modern Liberals have lost their minds over it.

Foxnews.com reports that

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said Sunday that a new state law that attempts to protect long-standing religious freedoms “is not about discrimination” and that he and other state lawmakers do not intend to change the legislation.

Pence, a Republican, said the legislation that he signed last week prohibits Indiana laws that “substantially burden” a person’s ability to follow his or her religious beliefs.

The definition of “person” includes religious institutions, businesses and associations, which is being interpreted as allowing a cake maker, for example, to legally refuse an order for a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Pence told ABC’s “This Week” the original federal law is more than 20 years old and that the purpose of the new Indiana one is to expand individual rights for those who feel government has impinged on their personal rights.

“This is not about discrimination,” he said. “This is about empowering people to confront government overreach.”

However, Pence did not answer directly when asked six times whether under the law it would be legal for a merchant to refuse to serve gay customers.

“The issue here is still: Is tolerance a two-way street or not?” he responded several times.

Since he signed the bill into law, Indiana has been widely criticized by businesses and organizations around the nation, as well as on social media with the hashtag #boycottindiana. Already, consumer review service Angie’s List has said it will suspend a planned expansion that includes Indianapolis because of the new law.

Pence said earlier this weekend that he’ll look at a bill to clarify the law’s intent if lawmakers send him one. He also told the Indianapolis Star on Saturday that he is in discussions with state legislative leaders and expects a clarification bill to be introduced in the coming week.

But Pence was adamant Sunday that the measure, slated to take effect in July, will stick.

“We’re not going to change the law,” he said.

Some national gay-rights groups say it’s a way for lawmakers in Indiana and several other states where such bills have been proposed this year to essentially grant a state-sanctioned waiver for discrimination as the nation’s highest court prepares to mull the gay marriage question.

Supporters of the law, including Pence, contend discrimination claims are overblown and insist it will keep the government from compelling people to provide services they find objectionable on religious grounds. They also maintain courts haven’t allowed discrimination under similar laws covering the federal government and 19 other states. Arkansas is poised to follow in Indiana’s footsteps, with a final vote expected next week in the House on legislation that Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said he’ll sign.

Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows exactly what my feelings are on the subject of gay marriage.

I agree with the Reverend Mitchell, former pastor of the old landmark church in Chicago Illinois who said, and I quote,

The Good Lord made Adam and Eve. He did not make Adam and Steve. Can I get a witness?

And, may I add, if he did make Adam and Steve, none of us would be here because, try as they might, homosexuals cannot procreate.

The Homosexual Lobby and their supporters, affectionately known as the “Gay Mafia”, arehave been stepping it up a notch for quite a while now, suing Americans and getting them fired over their Christian faith.

Even the real Mafia does not attack people’s faith. In fact, the legendary Mafioso, Al Capone, gave tons of money to Chicago’s Catholic Charities. And, when the Mafia has to terminate the employment of one of their soldiers, emphasis on the word terminate, they make sure that their family is taken care of.

Not so with the Gay Mafia. If you do not support their agenda, they will sue you, see that you are fired, make you lose everything that you have in this world, and will not care one bit, if you and your family are put out on the street.

Just as the decadent leaders of ancient Rome fed the early Christians to the Lions, so is the unconscionable Gay Mafia tossing aside Christians in their quest for their deviant sexual behavior to be classified as normal.

In fact, I’ll go you one better: these idiots’ fanatical insensitivity to the welfare of believers who have the moral courage to oppose their hedonistic lifestyle, is reminiscent of those Radical Muslims we know as the Taliban.

Which is the height of irony if you think about it, because Radical Muslims not only behead Christians, they remove the heads of homosexual Muslims as well.

You have seen me saying time and time again, that it is funny how those among us who claim to be the most tolerant, are actually the least of all.

The Gay Mafia or, more appropriately, The Gay Taliban, are prime examples.

As with any liberal, as long as you believe what they believe, you’re one of the smartest people in the room. However,as soon as you cross them, and stand up for your own Christian Heritage of Faith, you are labeled a stupid “Christianist” and/or an “intolerant”, inbred hillbilly.

Additionally, when the voters of a state get together to express their opposition to homosexual marriage through their right to vote, the Gay Mafia finds a sympathetic judge to rule that marriage is a “Civil Right”, instead of a Holy Sacrament…a bond between a man and a woman, ordained by God.

The problem that Christians and Conservatives alike face is the fact that being Pro-homosexual marriage is the “cool” thing to be now.

Even if it is at the expense of the First Amendment.

Those who are in the Pro-Homosexual Marriage Liberal Lobbying Group, or “Gay Mafia”, firmly believe that their right to force us to accept their belief system trumps our First Amendment Rights as Christian Americans to practice our faith in the workplace.

They’re WRONG.

So, what’s the answer?

Simple. Average Americans, like you and me, either stand up on their hind legs, ignore the push polls, open the window and shout “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” or we just sit back like lambs led to the slaughter and watch as our Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion fade away like the ancient Roman Empire.

And, I aint lion…err…lyin’.

Until He Comes,

KJ

American Christianity: The Catalyst Behind This “Grand Experiment”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

American Christianity 2In their ongoing quest to rewrite history and remake this country into a Godless State, a small minority of pitiful, bitter, little creatures are demanding that Americans no longer acknowledge the hand of “Our Creator” in the Birth of our Nation and the forging of our Constitutional Republic and the Precious Gift He gave us of our American Freedom.

ChristianPost.com has the story…

A national atheist organization is demanding that the chancellor of Troy University in Alabama apologize for sending a 98-second video to students that says Democracy works in America not because of government enforcement or because people believe they’re accountable to society, but because they know they’re “accountable to God.”

“Atheists are overwhelmingly ethical and upstanding people. It is not true that religion is necessary to keep people from becoming criminals,” wrote Americans Atheists’ President David Silverman in an open letter sent to Jack Hawkins Jr. on New Year’s Eve. “In fact, in the United States, in states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average. In the most-religious states, the murder rate is higher than average.”

Silverman, who disagrees with the opinions shared in Hawkins’ email and video that was sent to staff and students, has called for the chancellor to give “a public apology to the student, and other atheists whom you have disparaged with the video you included in your email.”

“American Atheists will be hosting its annual national convention the first weekend in April at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis,” continued Silverman. “We invite you to attend any or all of the events to experience for yourself what atheism and atheists are like. We believe that personal experience helps fight ignorance so we invite you to be our special guest.”

At the center of the controversy is the YouTube video about democracy, which was posted by the J. Reuben Clark Law Society on March 5, 2014.

In the 98-second video, Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen states that American democracy works because of the strong religious component in American society.

Christensen cites remarks he received from a Chinese economist and Marxist whom he had befriended at Harvard.

“In your past most Americans attended a church or a synagogue every week and they were taught there by people who they respected,” said Christensen, quoting his unnamed friend.

“My friend went on to say that ‘Americans followed these rules because they had come to believe that they weren’t just accountable to society, they were accountable to God.'”

As of Friday, the video garnered over 484,000 views, more than 2,200 likes and 400 dislikes, as well as over 638 comments of varying opinions.

According to American Atheists, Hawkins’ email message to students and staff related to the video and provided a link to it.

“As we approach a new year I am reminded of the blessings we enjoy within a democracy which is the envy of the world,” wrote Hawkins. “For your pleasure — and as a reminder — I am sharing with you a 90 second video which speaks to America’s greatness and its vulnerability.”

Whether the American Atheists are actually serious in their ignorance, or they are simply trying to garner publicity for their upcoming convention in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, they couldn’t be more wrong, as to the role our Creator played and plays in this Grand Experiment, known as the United States of America.

From adherents.com:

There were 95 Senators and Representatives in the First Federal Congress. If one combines the total number of signatures on the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution with the non-signing Constitutional Convention delegates, and then adds to that sum the number of congressmen in the First Federal Congress, one obtains a total of 238 “slots” or “positions” in these groups which one can classify as “Founding Fathers” of the United States. Because 40 individuals had multiple roles (they signed multiple documents and/or also served in the First Federal Congress), there are 204 unique individuals in this group of “Founding Fathers.” These are the people who did one or more of the following:

– signed the Declaration of Independence
– signed the Articles of Confederation
– attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787
– signed the Constitution of the United States of America
– served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)
– served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress

The religious affiliations of these individuals are summarized below. Obviously this is a very restrictive set of names, and does not include everyone who could be considered an “American Founding Father.” But most of the major figures that people generally think of in this context are included using these criteria, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and more.

Religious Affiliation
of U.S. Founding Fathers		 # of
Founding
Fathers		 % of
Founding
Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican 88 54.7%
Presbyterian 30 18.6%
Congregationalist 27 16.8%
Quaker 7 4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed 6 3.7%
Lutheran 5 3.1%
Catholic 3 1.9%
Huguenot 3 1.9%
Unitarian 3 1.9%
Methodist 2 1.2%
Calvinist 1 0.6%
unknown 43  %
TOTAL 204

Here are some quotes about God and Christianity from 3 Presidents of the United States, whom you might recognize:

John Quincy Adams

My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ and I cannot cavil or quibble away [evade or object to]. . . . the whole tenor of His conduct by which He sometimes positively asserted and at others countenances [permits] His disciples in asserting that He was God.

The hope of a Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the Divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail throughout the earth. Never since the foundation of the world have the prospects of mankind been more encouraging to that hope than they appear to be at the present time. And may the associated distribution of the Bible proceed and prosper till the Lord shall have made “bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” [Isaiah 52:10].

In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.

I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.

I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.

George Washington

You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.

The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger. The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

I now make it my earnest prayer that God would… most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of the mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion.

Recently, a Gallup Poll showed that a little less than 3/4 of Americans proclaim Jesus Christ as their Personal Savior and half of Americans attend Religious Services on a regular basis.

While the American Atheists, under the rights granted to us by our Constitution, have every right to speak their mind, blackmail and intimidation of the Majority, is not a guaranteed right.

 Additionally, without being anchored on the Solid Rock, America would have been a failed experiment, assigned to the dustbin of history, years ago.

That still, small voice which resides within each one of us, has led Americans to do great things, in service to their country and the concept of American Freedom, as personified by Lady Liberty, standing so majestically in New York Harbor.

God gave us this nation, ensconced in the concept of “Liberty and Justice for all”.

By His Grace, we will keep it.

Until He Comes,

KJ

“Who am I? Why am I Here?”: KJ’s 2014 in review

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

AFBrancoObamaPolicies12302014I am an anachronism.

I have been told that,  by “libertarians”, repeatedly, on Internet Chat Boards, on the World Wide Web.

Dictionary.com defines an anachronism as

something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time.

I suppose that’s me.

I started this Blog as a way to vent my frustrations with the ever-evolving “societal norms” and political mayhem around me. A lot of things just grated on my nerves. They still do.

I was “reared” (as we say in Dixie) by a Mother and Daddy (Southern colloquialism for a Male Parental Unit) who were members of the Greatest Generation. In fact, I was born 3 days before my mother’s 40th brithday. To this day, I believe that they were going to name me “Oops”.

My view of the world around me was shaped and nurtured by my Daddy, a Christian American, and the finest man I’ve ever known, who served with an Army Engineering Unit, as a Master Sergeant, in World War II, and who jumped off of a perfectly good boat into a hail of gunfire to join his American Brothers in the tide-turning American Victory known as “D-Day”.

Between him and my Mother, they taught me what it was to be a hard-working, Middle Class Christian American Conservative….and, to be proud of it.

But now, at 56 years old, trying to survive the presidency of an anti-American, Muslim-sympathizing, political-pandering, class warfare-preaching, racially-dividing, card-carrying Communist, who went golfing this weekend, displacing the wedding of two Army Captains (an actual male and female!), while more than 3,000 of our Brightest and Best, are serving in Africa, being exposed to a disease which has landed on our very shores, threatening our citizenry, I wonder if at times, if my self-assigned duty of writing this blog everyday, is actually worth the effort.  I’m beginning to feel like I’m beating my dadgum head against the wall until it’s bloody, and for no cotton-pickin’ reason at all.

Why am I feelng that way?

Well, there are several reasons.

1. This country re-elected an idiot. Now, I realize that’s been done before. But, they all paled in comparison to this guy. I believe that “Scooter”, my pet name for Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmm), burnt up the vast majority of his gray matter during his “Choom Gang” days in Hawaii, and now, as an old friend, a former Meth-head, who, sadly, later committed suicide this time of year, used to tell me, he has “2 brain cells left and they’re fighting to the death”. I pray we survive the next 4 years.

2.  Evidently, Americans, at least the majority of the ones that actually got up off the couch (Pookie, included) to vote on November 6th, want the Federal Government to take care of them, cradle to grave. Rush Limbaugh labelled this symptom, “The Baracky Claus Effect”.  I pray, that, just as the Proletariat eventually figured out in the old Soviet Union, Americans are going to wake up one day, to find that mega-dependence on The State to run your life, leads to the loss of personal freedom. And those, who believe that they are “the most enlightened people in the room”, will be the first ones hollering, when they discover that their freedom has been taken away.

3. America seems to be devolving into a collection of Libertines. Notice, I did not say “Libertarians”, although, both descriptive words come from the same root word. A Libertine is, per Merriam-Webster.com,

a person who is unrestrained by convention or morality: one leading a dissolute (lacking moral restraint) life

Being a Libertarian used to mean you wanted less Government in your life and less restrictions on your personal happiness. Notice I said used to mean. Now, Libertine and Libertarian both seem to mean the same thing to the majority of posters self-identifying as members of the latter group on Internet chat boards.

Caligula’s Horse approves.

I suppose I could pontificate on the fallen nature of Man at this point, but, that’s fairly self-evident…and, as the late Freddie Prinze used to say, “Ees not my yob, man.”

4. Finally, I have been told by Liberal Trolls on the Worldwide Web, that my blog was considered a “joke”. I used to allow this to hurt me very deeply. You see, since April of 2010, I have devoted a lot of time and effort to putting my ideas, however old-fashioned and cornball they are, down on paper. I truly enjoy doing it. I must. I haven’t made a dadgum dime off of it.

Have you ever stood back on New year’s Eve and tried to remember what you accomplished during the past year?

Since I began this blog in April of 2010, I have not had that problem.

jesterluteThe WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 51,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 19 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

For those of you who have not figured me out, yet, I, a Christian American Conservative, am a follower of Jesus Christ and a citizen of the United States of America (by the Grace of God), who holds to traditional values and attitudes.

So, where do I go from here? Do I run away, pummedled into submission by “The Smartest People in the Room”, with my tail between my legs, and live out the rest of my days in quiet desperation?

To any of you who repled, “yes”…you don’t know me very well.

Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world.

My Creator, while endowing me with certain inalienable rights, also endowed me with an indomitable will. Then, somewhere along my journey, He gave me the gift of being able to express my thoughts and feelings on this computer keyboard.

I will not give up. I will not surrender my Christianity, my love of the Greatest Nation on God’s Green Earth, or my Conservatism, to appease those who wish everybody would just get in line and acquiesce to the prevailing “societal norms”.  I follow another set of guidelines, written a long time ago, but which remain as relevant as the moment in which the Hand of God guided those who wrote them down.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, – Colossians 3:23 (ESV)

I pray that you, the reader, are able to glean that from my blogs.  Because, as Matthew 6:21 tells us:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

May God bless you and yours in 2015,

KJ