In its new State of the Church 2020 study, the Barna Group has uncovered how Americans are maintaining their connections to churches while at the same time “renegotiating” what those connections look like in terms of today’s society.

The study divided participants into two groups–practicing Christians and churched adults. According to Barna, practicing Christians attend services at least monthly and claim their faith is very important. Churched adults have attended church at least once in the past six months.

One of the study’s major findings was that nearly two in five churchgoers regularly attend multiple churches, which seems to indicate that loyalty to a single church body may be becoming a thing of the past.

Illinois Family Institute Executive Director David E. Smith noted:

This report confirms that church attendance is becoming more fluid. Their poll of church attenders finds that loyalty to their congregation has declined for many. That is so very sad, because we are called to be the local Body of Christ, dedicated to “each other,” bearing one another’s burdens and preserving under trial and in the faith. Faithfulness to one another, it would seem, is closely related to agape love of your fellow church member.

Barna refers to this declining loyalty as “church hopping” and noted that it “is becoming a common feature of churchgoing.” The study found that church hoppers were just as likely to attend weekly church services as those who loyally attend a single church. However, they select services from among a small group of churches that they attend.

According to the Barna Group, 63% of churched adults and 72% of practicing Christians attend church services with a single congregation. A small minority, or nearly two in five church adults (38%), and just over a quarter of practicing Christians (27%) “at least occasionally attend” other churches.

The report also finds that church membership is less important to Gen X (born 1965-1983) and Millennial (born 1984-1998) Christians than it is to Boomers (born 1946-1964). Nearly 7 in 10 Boomers (68%) officially join a church compared to 51% of Gen Xers and 48% of Millennials. Younger generations were also more likely to mark “not-applicable” on questions regarding church-membership. No significant differences appeared in membership rates between denominations.

Smith shared,

The results seem to indicate that many American churchgoers may be viewing their church attendance based upon personal choice or pleasure, much like a consumer looking at “what’s in it for me?” when purchasing a product.

The study also found that churchgoers are divided on the value of church. “Those who frequent worship services do so largely because of personal enjoyment, but many churchgoers also readily admit that they believe people are tired of church as usual,” observed Barna President David Kinnaman.

Sixty-five percent of churched adults say they attend church because they enjoy it, as do 82% of practicing Christians. Seventeen percent of churchgoers reported they attend because they “have to” and 15% do because it’s a habit.

Nearly half of Christians (48%) and more than half of churched adults (57%) admitted “people they know” are tired of the usual type of church experience. The report was careful to note that the “data showed no significant difference across denomination, generation or faith segment.”

Churchgoers also reported that for the most part they “experience—and have come to expect—positive emotions and outcomes by going to church.” Churched adults say they leave services feeling inspired (37%), encouraged (37%), forgiven (34%), connected with God or experienced his presence (33%), and challenged to change something in their life (26%) “every time.” At the same time, 32% reported feeling disappointed at least half the time and another 40% said they felt guilty.

The study also revealed that Christians and non-Christians are questioning the church’s relevance to the community. Practicing Christians believe churches “have a strong community impact”—66% very positive, 28% somewhat positive. However, not everyone sees it that way. Just over a quarter of Americans (27%) think churches “have a very positive impact”—the same percentage (27%) who say it has “no effect at all.” A plurality of Americans (38%) think the church has just a “somewhat positive” impact. Non-Christians reported indifference (39% no impact) or found churches’ local contributions to be “very negative” (8%) or “somewhat negative” (10%).

Younger generations of Americans were more likely to hold a negative view of the church. Barna found the “same percentage of practicing Christian Millennials who agree the Church is irrelevant today is the same as non-Christians who hold this view (25% each definitely agree).”

Responses were collected online between December 5-18, 2019 among 1,003 U.S. adults and 603 practicing Christian adults.

To read the report, visit www.barna.com/research/current-perceptions.

TOMORROW! IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on Saturday, March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Written by Cliff Kincaid

Billionaire George Soros was named “Philanthropist of the Year” by Inside Philanthropy magazine for his “…fight for academic freedom in Central Europe, and his resistance to the rising tide of authoritarianism worldwide.”  The former is a reference to gender studies programs and the latter concerns his ongoing campaign to undermine existing governments, causing chaos that makes more money for hedge fund currency manipulators and short-sellers like himself.

In the United States, he is best known for almost single-handedly creating a narco-nation through legalization of marijuana, causing human suffering and environmental devastation on a scale most people do not yet comprehend.

With the nation focused on the opioid danger, and President Donald J. Trump accusing China of pumping fentanyl into the veins of American victims through Mexico, the marijuana problem has gotten less attention. Indeed, liberal politicians and prosecutors, some of them getting Soros money, are treating the dope as a harmless substance and even a money-maker for local and state governments.

For one of the most sensational examples of a notorious pothead, consider Aaron Hernandez, the former NFL star who became a convicted killer and then killed himself in prison. The subject of a new Netflix series, “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez,” he was a chronic marijuana user throughout college and his NFL career who experienced brain damage from the drug. The case proves a direct link between marijuana, mental illness, and violence.

In California, legal dope was supposed to displace illegal dope. But illicit cannabis cultivation sites are proliferating, offering a cheaper product than the government-approved variety. The Siskiyou County (California) Board of Supervisors voted on a new Declaration of Local Emergency that refers to illegal growers being responsible for “hundreds of pervasive fire hazards, insecticides, pesticides, rodenticides, fertilizers, trash, and unsanitary conditions which severely impact health, safety and quality of life for countless county residents…”

It’s in Barack Hussein Obama’s state of Illinois that we see some of the recent damage being done.

Illinois last year became the first state to legalize the marijuana business through legislation rather than by referendum and placing excise and sales taxes on the “product.” We can already see the predictable result — marijuana-related emergency room visits are on the rise. The local ABC-TV station in Chicago quotes doctors as saying the most common symptoms of the new potheads in Illinois are restlessness, heart palpitations and anxiety, but that “In some cases we are seeing full on psychosis, agitation, hallucinations.”

Incredibly, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton was one of the first in line to purchase the dope. She bought clementine-flavored marijuana edible gummies and paid with cash. The scene was captured by CNN as she was pictured among hundreds of early-morning customers at a Chicago marijuana dispensary.  She probably went to the front of the line, but some people waited hours in order to buy their “recreational marijuana” and get “high.”

David E. Smith of the Illinois Family Institute comments, “Not only have lawmakers failed to do their due diligence before passing this marijuana law, but they also failed to heed the compelling research that indicates how regular use of marijuana affects young people, including an increased risk of psychiatric illnesses and a permanent loss of IQ points.”

In fact, this is the plan – dumb people down so they ruin their lives and then have to be dependent on the state for the rest of their lives. The potheads are fast becoming an important new constituency for the socialist-minded.

Before they actually navigate their way to the polls, they can relieve their pain by employing another “hemp” product – CBD or cannabidiol.  CBD is being hawked all over, even on the Rush Limbaugh show, and is being advertised as a treatment for “muscle soreness” and “everyday discomfort.” But many complaints have been filed with the FDA over the false medical claims made about CBD.

Dr. Kenneth Finn comments, “These products are everywhere, but there is little scientific evidence to support the hype that surrounds them.” He says unregulated CBD products hitting the market might be contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides, fungicides, rodenticides, insecticides, molds, E. coli, or fungus.

Official dope distribution is supposed to fill a financial gap. In Illinois, the sixth-biggest state, by population, Politico reporter Theodoric Meyer reports that it has seen its credit rating cut to near-junk status in the decade since the financial crisis. “Its bonds are now considered as risky as those of Russia and Romania,” he notes. “Its pension system is in worse shape than that of almost any other state.”

Writers Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner note that the population of Illinois dropped by 100,000 people between 2010 and 2018 and few of the state’s counties have been spared. “That means that 93 of the state’s 102 counties have shrunk since 2010,” they note. Adam Schuster, Director of Budget and Tax Research at the group, Illinois Policy, reports that 36 percent of the money the state allocates to education will be diverted away from teachers and students to meet required pension payments for retirees.

Former Illinois pension chief Marc Levine is quoted as saying a federal bailout may be required, making this a matter affecting all taxpayers, not just the saps remaining in Illinois.

The “progressive” politicians have virtually bankrupted the state, forcing thousands to flee, and have turned to the cruel exploitation of potheads as a sure-fire money-maker to stave off the final countdown to fiscal oblivion. But legalized dope means more wards of the state who need government help.

Now this is going national. “Once a politically dangerous subject,” notes Trevor Hughes of USA Today, “legal marijuana has become something of a de facto platform plank for the 2020 Democratic candidates: All support either legalizing or decriminalizing its use, and the differences lie in how far the candidates are willing to take it.”

Since 22.2 million people have used marijuana in the past month, this is fertile ground for votes. In a bid for votes, candidate Pete Buttigieg actually toured a “cannabis dispensary” in Las Vegas while commenting that he smoked dope a “handful of times a long time ago.”

President Trump, on the other hand, can just say no. He lost his brother to alcoholism and should consider speaking out against the Soros-funded marijuana craze before more lives are ruined and lost. His Surgeon General, Vice Adm. Jerome M. Adams, is already speaking out about the health risks of marijuana use. He needs the backing of his president.

Roger Morgan, author of Soros: The Drug Lord. Pricking the Bubble of American Supremacy, notes the elevated levels of mental illness, addiction, suicides, traffic deaths and the unseen mental and physical defects to babies and future generations from the use of marijuana and other mind-altering drugs.  He adds, “America can never be great again if a major percentage of its young people are brain damaged, mentally ill, addicted or dead.”​

This article was originally published at USASurvival.org. Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org

A coalition of Christian leaders, including the Illinois Family Institute’s Dave Smith, has sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling on him to move forward with his plans to revoke President Barack Obama’s policies regarding “transgenders” in the military. An article at The Center for Military Readiness (CMR) explains why the letter is necessary:

In recent weeks, two federal district judges exceeded their authority by ordering the Trump Administration to continue enforcing President Barack Obama’s policies regarding transgenders in the military. They did this even though President Donald J. Trump has initiated formal procedures to review and revoke those policies.

The administration can and should defend presidential prerogatives and sound policies to strengthen our military, but the problem requires immediate attention at the administration’s highest levels.  It would be dangerous to sacrifice the President’s constitutional military powers, and to disregard Supreme Court precedents while allowing judges to make military policy.

The Illinois Family Institute reached out to an attorney specializing in constitutional law to explain why federal district judges think they have the authority to make military policy. The attorney’s response was simple: Those judges are merely giving us another demonstration of lawlessness that we have been witnessing at high levels in our government.

Since it is an obvious overreach by those judges, the Trump Administration should just ignore the rulings. Instead, the administration has appealed the rulings to the D.C. Circuit Court.

In its article titled “‘Supreme Judicial Commanders'” Should Not Run Our Military,” CMR expands further:

President Trump has the right, and the responsibility, to resist these activist court rulings and more that may be handed down in the coming months.

The Commander-in-Chief also has the right, and the responsibility, to restore sound Defense Department policies that were in place long before President Obama took office.

The U.S. Constitution does not grant to any federal judge powers to make policy for the military. (See Article 1, Section 8, and Article II, Section 2.)  The judges’ bizarre rulings favoring transgender plaintiffs were issued without any constitutional authorization, and they are a direct affront to the authority of the Commander-in-Chief.

If the Trump administration fails to act, the result would “shift control of our military to unaccountable, activist judges.” This would, in turn, do the following:

…convey the devastating message that the administration does not have the political will to do what President Trump promised the voters he would do — end political correctness in the military.

The coalition letter explains why President Trump should resist the courts:

At a time when there is widespread concern over the decline of military readiness in the U.S. armed forces, our military has become involved in an extravagant and novel social program involving individuals who will be unable to serve effectively for extended periods of time due to their need for medical and psychological care.

There is no evidence to suggest that the DOD adequately addressed the impact President Obama’s policy experiment would have on military readiness given the costs and physical effects of gender transition. Additionally, no consideration was given to the conscience and religious rights of military personnel who may be required to share close quarters, including showers, with individuals of the opposite sex. Nor were the conscience and religious rights of military personnel addressed for those who may have objections to providing transgender health services, such as hormone therapy, gender reassignment surgery, or counseling.

The letter goes on to say, “The focus of military training should be combat effectiveness, not social engineering…. This will ensure our military focuses on its mission of fighting and winning wars, not experimenting with our troops’ social lives” (emphasis added).

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to President Donald Trump to encourage him to continue to focus on military readiness and the well-being of our military by reversing President Obama’s harmful transgender policy.

You can also call the White House comment line at (202) 456-1111 to leave a voice message for the administration.

Click here to read the coalition letter. Click here to read the article by the Center for Military Readiness. Click here and here for more information about the Constitutional role of the federal courts.

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, IFI has a year-end matching challenge to raise $160,000. That’s right, a great group of IFI supporters are colluding with us to provide an $80,000 matching challenge to help support IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2018!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

Recently, I posted this article: George Soros Gets It: When Will More Wealthy Conservatives?

My goal was to spur wealthy conservatives to increase their giving to organizations like the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) and Illinois Family Action (IFA). While it’s nice for someone to see their name on a building at their alma mater, to be frank, it’s more important to save our state.

And Illinois is in need of emancipation.

Leftist millionaires and billionaires are increasingly showing up in the headlines after writing enormous checks to Leftist causes. George Soros is one who has shown he’s all in when it comes to fundamentally transforming the West, the United States especially.

Not only are billionaires funding Leftist causes but smaller dollar donors are as well. And those dollars add up.

That is certainly the experience of the Illinois Family Institute. Small dollar donations are what fuel most of the work that is accomplished by IFI and IFA. Over the past five years, the average donation was $97 a year.  Last year that number was down a bit to $87 a year.

Those numbers do not lie.

We just passed “Giving Tuesday,” “a global day to give, fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.” (Thank heavens its over: my inbox was inundated with fundraising emails!)

Americans are a generous people. Google it if you doubt that. Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars are given to charitable causes, including to individuals, foundations, and corporations. There are over a million and a half non-profits registered in the United States.

[Note: After this article was published, Robbie Richards from Rawhide Boys Ranch in Wisconsin, brought this interesting article and “charitable giving map” to my attention.]

The reality is that not all non-profits are equal. Some have endowments and budgets that boggle the mind. Some have lists of active donors to die for. Some, like IFI and IFA, are, in my opinion, greatly underfunded.

IFI and IFA’s real bottom line is winning hearts and minds. We’re in this fight because we see the need for more Illinoisans to realize that the pro-family, pro-life and pro-freedom movement is offering solutions to a morally and fiscally sick state.

The IFI team is working hard to engage the battle and would like to do so more aggressively in 2018. But we need your help to be successful.

We must work harder and smarter and engage on more platforms to disseminate conservative principles and precepts.

That is exactly what the Illinois Family Institute is all about: giving the people of Illinois the information they need to make good decisions and to act on those decisions.

We read this in Matthew 5: 13-16:

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The Illinois Family Institute has the information necessary to equip every person living in our state and elsewhere to be salt and light.

But none of that life-giving information can do any good without your help.

You might be one of those people who read about George Soros-like donations and think that your donation of $25, or $50, or $100 a month to IFI is not important because it’s just a drop in the bucket by comparison, but that bucket is left half empty without smaller dollar donations. They are crucial!

To IFI and IFA’s current donors, we thank you for your continued support.

If you know others who share our vision of upholding and re-affirming marriage, family, life and liberty in Illinois,  please encourage them to visit our websites (Illinois Family Institute, Illinois Family Action) and support the work.

Click here to support Illinois Family Action (IFA). 
Contributions to IFA are not tax-deductible but give us the most flexibility in engaging critical political and partisan issues.

-OR-

Click here to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI).
Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible and support our lobbying, educational and grass-roots efforts.

You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 876, Tinley Park, IL  60477 or call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.

Recent articles of interest:

Philanthropy Booms In the Trump Era—But It Also Gets Political: Such advocacy fails to provide direct and tangible benefits to individuals in need.

The Billionaire Socialists: Soros, Steyer, Bezos and Bloomberg are the big four antagonists of Liberty. But we’re here to counterpunch.

Months before I started alternating between Identity Politics and Paraphilias, incest was featured in one of my articles. At the end of it was this question: “How will society respond when those who practice incest start self-identifying as such and begin clamoring for their ‘rights’?” “Rights” in this context means, among other things, the right to get married, complete tolerance and acceptance by society and for their incestual relationships to be viewed as completely normal.

Earlier this month, the Daily Wire featured a post with this headline and lede:

LOVE WINS: Cosmo Pushes Incest
“This Is What It’s Like to Fall In Love With Your Brother”

Recently, the Illinois Family Institute’s David E. Smith said that “this is no longer your father’s culture war.” Rather, he said, it has “evolved into a debate over identity politics and even common-sense biology. That’s a war we can win.”

Joshua Mitchell, a professor at Georgetown University, backs up Dave’s optimism in a 3500-word article at City Journal titled “The Identity-Politics Death Grip.” He makes many good points – here are just a few excerpts:

Normal politics—liberal politics, classically understood—involves speech, argument, and persuasion, followed by voting on ideas or proposals that can be overturned in the next election cycle. Normal politics presumes that we can rise far enough above our small-group attributes—our race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion—and that we can arrive at a political arrangement that works well enough for us to live together as part of a larger polity until the next election, when we commence the process again. But for the Democrats, absolute certainty has prevailed over normal politics—and the certainty, at bottom, rests on a single idea: identity politics.

Identity politics rejects the model of traditional give-and-take politics, presupposing instead that the most important thing about us is that we are white, black, male, female, straight, gay, and so on. Within the identity-politics world, we do not need to give reasons—identity is its own reason and justification. Because identity politics supposes that we are our identities, politics does not consist in the speech, argument, and persuasion of normal politics but instead, in the calculation of resource redistribution based on identity—what in Democratic parlance is called “social justice.”

The irony of identity politics is that it does not see itself as political; it supposes that we live in a post-political age, that social justice can be managed by the state, and that those who oppose identity politics are the ones “being political.” What speech does attend this post-political age consists in shaming those who do not accept the idea of identity politics—as on our college campuses. In the 1960s, college students across the country fought so that repressed ideas would receive a fair hearing. These days, college students fight to repress all ideas except one: identity politics.

“Thoughtful Democrats see that identity politics is a dead end,” Mitchell writes, but the “militants are hunkered down.” Hence, he adds, “the Democratic Party is on life support.”

That doesn’t sound like victory in the culture war to me. Later in the article Mitchell writes:

It may be that the only way that the Democratic Party can rise, Lazarus-like, from its deathbed is if African-Americans call out identity politics as the disaster that it has been—for them and for the country. If the party cannot find a cure for its confusion, it will expire in the paroxysm that identity politics produces.

David Smith also said that today, if you don’t bow to the reality of 63 genders “you’re on the wrong side of history. Yes, really, 63 – Google it.”

If you want to dismiss that kind of foolishness as just plain silly, you might want to read another City Journal article, this one by Seth Barron:

What’s in a Pronoun?
An awful lot, say transgender activists.

The word gender or transgender or gender-free (etc.) shows up 34 times. I challenge you to read it without laughing or rolling your eyes. I’ll close this post with a paragraph from Seth Barron’s article:

A new California law, the Gender Recognition Act, allows people to designate their gender as “nonbinary”—meaning that they “may or may not identify as transgender, may or may not have been born with intersex traits, may or may not use gender-neutral pronouns, and may or may not use more specific terms to describe their genders, such as agender, genderqueer, gender fluid, Two Spirit, bigender, pangender, gender nonconforming, or gender variant.” The Golden State has also required nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to “use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.”

That’s why Dave Smith is right — this is a war we can win.

Up next: Our next paraphilia of the day.

The Left is working overtime to silence and/or marginalize conservative voices in America
The time to support IFI is now!

Both as a candidate, and now as president, Donald Trump knows how to intensify attention on a topic. Since he launched his presidential campaign two years ago, manufacturing jobs and fair trade have been the focus of a massive debate on the political right.

Is this a topic for the Illinois Family Institute? Here are a few excerpts from an article by John Horvat II titled “Work without Men” that suggests it might well be. He writes that negotiating new trade arrangements, and lowering tax and regulatory burdens are all critical to bringing back jobs.

Such measures will indeed create jobs and open up opportunities, but they alone will not make America great.

America faces a grave moral crisis that needs to be addressed. As Charles Murray and so many other scholars have stressed, America is coming apart. A vast underclass has developed that is the result of broken families, shattered communities, a nonexistent work ethic, substance abuse, and godless education. The mantra of “bringing jobs back” is not going to reverse the downward path of a nation without finding ways to rebuild a strong moral foundation.

So much for the claim that economic issues are separate from moral issues.

“Americans have changed over the decades,” Horvat writes, and many “no longer have stable families.”

Here’s a shocking stat from the Manufacturing Institute I’d never seen before:

[N]early two million U.S. manufacturing jobs will remain vacant over the next decade if current trends continue. The crisis is aggravated by growing numbers of retiring baby boomers while the younger generations are not stepping up to the plate.

The reason for the lack of workers is a great talent gap between what is needed and what is available.

. . .

Thus, the problem is not a lack of jobs but a lack of skilled workers. In fact, one labor study found that the average U.S. manufacturer is losing as much as 11 percent of its annual earnings due to a talent shortage. Another survey concluded that almost half of executives would consider reshoring manufacturing operations back to U.S. yet are also concerned about the need for skilled workers.

The root of these economic problems is a moral problem.

“There are indeed many Americans who are out of the workforce to the point that they are not even looking for employment,” Horvat writes, and refers to Nicholas Eberstadt’s “masterful study,” America’s Invisible Crisis: Men Without Work:

The book documents a disturbing fact that “an invisible army” of ten million idle American men of prime working age, some ten percent of the male workforce, now “spend absolutely no time at a job.” Most don’t want to change their nonemployed status.

Horvat outlines how many of these men prefer to live — and it is not a pretty picture (you can read it here).

“[T]hat is why the focus must be expanded from just the jobs and infrastructure projects that are now all the rage. Unless the new administration concentrates on invigorating the moral fiber of the country, strengthening marriage and the family and limiting the power of the state, America will not recover from its present woes.

With Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania and Michigan voting for Trump because of his “bringing back jobs” promise, Horvat’s close might be a little overstated:

Indeed, when the jobs come back, there is the risk that no one will show up.

The “invigorating the moral fiber of the country, strengthening marriage and the family and limiting the power of the state,” reads a lot like the mission of the Illinois Family Institute and Illinois Family Action.

A few weeks ago, IFI executive director David Smith and I had the pleasure of visiting with John Westberg, a man who helped build the manufacturing powerhouse AutoMeter in Sycamore, Illinois, about sixty miles west of Chicago.

In the meeting, Westberg was vocal about the fact that the moral foundation of the country is the number one challenge facing us all. But he also has an idea of what to do about the problem of jobs being “shipped out of the country.”

John Westberg’s opinions and ideas deserve attention, since he led his family’s business from 25 to 625 employees, filling 3 plants in 2 states. AutoMeter received national honor by being voted “Manufacturer of the Year” in the automotive high-performance aftermarket. “This honor occurred not once but 4 times.”

After he retired and sold the company, Westberg started the New Hope for America foundation (NHFA), and its website has a plethora of materials supporting his proposed solution.

More on that next time.

Download the IFI App!

We now have an IFI mobile app that enables us to deliver great content based on the “Tracks” you choose, including timely legislative alerts, cultural commentaries, upcoming event notifications, links to our podcasts, video reports, and even daily Bible verses to encourage you. This great app is available for Android and iPhones.

Key Features:

• It’s FREE!
• Specific content for serious Christians
• Performs a spiritual assessment
• Sends you daily Scriptures to encourage and equip you
• You determine when and how much content you get

The Illinois Family Institute has been covering the scandal surrounding the Southern Poverty Law Center for years, and now IFI has joined forces with the leaders of over three dozen conservative organizations from coast to coast to raise awareness about the true nature of the SPLC.

Here is the opening of a letter signed by leaders of those conservative organizations:

Dear Members of the Media:

We are writing to you as individuals or as representatives of organizations who are deeply troubled by several recent examples of the media’s use of data from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC is a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a “hate group” label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it.

The Illinois Family Institute’s David E. Smith was one of the letter’s signatories. Smith was joined by leaders of groups such as the Media Research Center, the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, and Liberty Counsel.

The heavily footnoted 8-page letter also includes this:

The SPLC is an attack dog of the political left. Having evolved from laudable origins battling the Klan in the 1970’s, the SPLC has realized the profitability of defamation, churning out fundraising letters, and publishing “hit pieces” on conservatives to promote its agenda and pad its substantial endowment (of $319 million). Anyone who opposes them, including many Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and traditional conservatives is slandered and slapped with the “extremist” label or even worse, their “hate group” designation. At one point, the SPLC even added Dr. Ben Carson to its “extremist” list because of his biblical views (and only took him off the list after public outcry).

To associate public interest law firms and think tanks with neo-Nazis and the KKK is unconscionable, and represents the height of irresponsible journalism. All reputable news organizations should immediately stop using the SPLC’s descriptions of individuals and organizations based on its obvious political prejudices.

The letter has been released to the media, and is currently circulating to CNN, MSNBC, AP, ABC and others.

A hard-hitting social media post from the Family Research Council opens with this:

The Southern Poverty Law Center was too intolerant for the U.S. Army, too controversial for the FBI, and too inflammatory for the Obama Justice Department. Now, after receiving harsh criticism from conservatives across the country, GuideStar has decided to temporarily remove SPLC’s hate labels from their website. In addition to these prominent entities distancing themselves from the extremist group, two lawsuits involving SPLC are now in place: one from Liberty Counsel and one from former Islamic extremist turned anti-extremist activist, Maajid Nawaz. But despite SPLC’s baggage — which also includes connections to two liberal gunmen – they continue to be cited as a credible source by mainstream media and others. With SPLC in the spotlight, we must expose this organization for what it really is – a leftwing smear group who has become exactly what they set out to fight, spreading hate and putting targets on people’s backs.

The social media campaign is up and running, and IFI supporters are encouraged to help spread the word.

Here are other articles of note about the letter:

Newsbusters broke the story: Conservatives Urge Media: Cut Ties With SPLC Over Dangerous ‘Hate Map’

PJMedia was right behind with their own story: 47 Nonprofit Leaders Denounce the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate List’ in Open Letter to the Media

This scandal is also worthy of greater attention: The Southern Poverty Law Center Has $69 Million Parked Overseas

Please share through all your channels — this effort needs to be recognized by as many outlets as possible. Also, please share new content as it comes out today. Here are some of FRC’s tweets with links to stories today:

Conservatives Urge Media: Cut Ties with @splcenter over Dangerous 'Hate Map' @k_yoder @newsbusters https://t.co/upxxzIiYX4 #SPLCexposed

— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) September 6, 2017

JUST IN: Conservative Movement Releases Open Letter to the News Media: Beware of the Southern Poverty Law Center https://t.co/pFikHv7vV0

— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) September 6, 2017

We're joining 47 conservative leaders, orgs to ask the media to stop using data from discredited @splcenter. Letter: https://t.co/ulYk0qmvRF pic.twitter.com/me632tP1Ik

— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) September 6, 2017

All news outlets should immediately stop using SPLC’s descriptions of individuals/orgs based on its obvious prejudices. #SPLCexposed pic.twitter.com/I0BRpDm6kW

— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) September 6, 2017

.@splcenter has realized the profitability of defamation. This is what they're really about. https://t.co/ulYk0q4V07 #SPLCexposed pic.twitter.com/8Isn3lEZcq

— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) September 6, 2017

To associate public interest law firms and think tanks with neo-Nazis and the KKK is unconscionable. https://t.co/pFikHv7vV0 #SPLCexposed pic.twitter.com/H2b0bBuu0r

— Family Research Council (@FRCdc) September 6, 2017

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  

It does make a difference.

The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) and its sister organization Illinois Family Action (IFA) have posted “about” pages that summarize each group’s mission on their respective websites (IFI, IFA).

Occasionally IFI and IFA receive notes from friends and allies questioning some aspect of the organizations’ activities. One recent email expressed concern over our coverage of the tax code debate and other policy issues that the sender viewed as irrelevant to what he believes is IFI’s or IFA’s mission to advocate for conservative positions on only the social issues.

There are some IFI/IFA supporters who are “social issues” conservatives and, therefore, do not think IFI or IFA should take positions on economic issues. They request that IFI/IFA “not mix the two,” saying that “Jesus never took a political side,” and “Neither should you if you claim to speak with a Christian voice.”

Author and radio talk show host Dr. Michael Brown wrote a column on this topic, articulating the questions with which Christians wrestle:

Is it dangerous for Christian leaders to mix politics and religion? Is that a confusion of their calling? Or is it important for Christian leaders to address all areas of life, including politics?

In response to letters from people who agree with him on the social issues, Dr. Brown wrote the following:

Would Paul or Peter or John have gotten involved in the presidential elections? Would they have endorsed a candidate or advised a candidate or commented on the various party platforms? Would they have even voted?

Some point to Jesus’ comment in John 18 when He said to Pilate shortly before His crucifixion, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). If it were of this world, He explained, then His servants would have been fighting for him not to be delivered up to His captors.

But in saying this, Jesus hardly meant that we should not be involved in the affairs of this world. After all, feeding the hungry and clothing the poor and educating our children and working our jobs are all “of this world.” Should we stop doing these things and simply go on a mountaintop to pray, waiting for the Lord’s return? (Of course, we’d soon have to figure out how to get food and where to sleep–all issues of this world.)

In reality, what Jesus was saying was this: “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world’s order of things. If it did, my men would have fought to keep me from being arrested by the Judeans. But my kingship does not come from here” (Jn. 18:36, CJB).

Just because we are “passing through this world” and “it is not our eternal home,” Brown writes, “doesn’t mean that we don’t fight against injustice or champion the cause of the needy, nor does it mean that we remain silent on important political and social issues.” Brown clarifies the responsibilities of Christians:

After all, slavery was the paramount hot-button, deeply-divisive, political and social issue of the 19th century, yet it would have been very wrong for Christian leaders to remain silent on this, just as it’s very wrong for Christian leaders to remain silent on issues like abortion and homosexual activism today.

Abortion. Marriage. Parental freedom regarding education. Religious liberty. Obscenity. Those are a few areas easily categorized as issues that have a clear moral impact.

What about energy policy? Foreign policy? Health care policy? Tax rates? And there are almost countless other areas where government spending doesn’t seem to be obviously moral in nature.

Recently, IFI executive director David E. Smith had this to say on the topic:

The Illinois pension problem and state budget issues that we’ve been writing about are moral issues that affect families, businesses and churches across the state. It is not among the main issues that we’ve addressed over our 25 years of ministry, but the irresponsible and reckless stewardship of tax resources that plagues our state should be a growing concern to Christian citizens of this state.

Jesus told His disciples, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” in Matthew 22:21. In the United States, “we the people” are Caesar. As such, “we the people” will be accountable for the poor stewardship of our resources and the high level of corruption we tolerate in government.

We are blessed by God with the gift of self-government.  It absolutely matters how we steward it.

Over the years I have collected and linked to articles on this page at my website: On the Connection Between the Economic and Social Issues. One of the articles was written by Jim DeMint, former member of Congress and president of the Heritage Foundation. In “The Connection Between Economic and Cultural Policies”, DeMint writes:

Inside the Beltway, federal policymakers tend to think in terms that separate “economic” policy from “social” policy. But life in homes and communities around the country doesn’t organize into such neat categories.

“Cultural decline,” DeMint wrote, “did not emerge entirely on its own”:

Perverse incentives created by public poli­cies have contributed to social breakdown. The law is a teacher, and decades of policies undermining families and communities have taught neighbors to depend on the government rather than each other, with dire consequences for the very people those policies were designed to help.

DeMint is correct. For over half a century, immoral government economic policies have caused havoc when it comes to the family structure and stability. For even longer, government policy on health care has left many families struggling to afford both health insurance and health care. One of the greatest threats to the family in this state continues to be the use and abuse of tax dollars.

As part of its work in defending faith, family and freedom, IFI and IFA must cover economic issues. Spending future generations into debt, after all, is a moral issue.

We urge you to pray for our state and nation, for our elected officials in Springfield and Washington D.C.  

PLEASE also consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work. We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

The contentious debate about legalizing same-sex “marriage” in Illinois is now front and center.  Tune-in to the Total Living Network tonight, Friday, February 15th, at 9:00 P.M. for the premiere of cable TV’s Total Living Network’s (TLN) Special Report: Illinois Vote – Same Sex Marriage to learn more. A panel of leaders in the movement to defend marriage investigates the potential effects of this proposed legislation on religious freedom in Illinois. 

As you know, the Illinois Senate voted yesterday to pass the so-called “Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act.” The bill will now move to the Illinois House for consideration.  This bill would treat same-sex marriage as a civil right, but is it a civil right?  How would same sex marriage affect the church?  How would this bill alter the lives of Christians, Orthodox Jews and Muslims?  What actions need to be taken? 

Join moderator Greg Bogdan, Executive Director, TLN, and his guests Linda Jernigan, Rescuing Ministries; David E. Smith, Executive Director, Illinois Family Institute; and Dan Haas, Director of Ministries, TLN, as they tackle these difficult questions. 

Marriage is an institution created by God and is the foundation of our society.  We need to speak out for marriage as well as the religious freedoms guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Share the news with others and don’t miss the premiere of TLN Special Report: Illinois Vote – Same Sex Marriage on TLN Comcast 138, February 15th, at 9:00pm. The show will re-air (see the times listed below). You can also watch via Sky Angel or streaming live at wwwTLN.com/TLN-Online/ 

TLN Special Report: Illinois Vote – Same Sex Marriage Central Air Times: 

2/15/13 Friday at 9pm

2/15/13 Friday at 9:30pm

2/16/13 Saturday at 8pm

2/16/13 Saturday at 8:30pm

2/17/13 Sunday at 9:30am

2/17/13 Sunday at 1pm

2/17/13 Sunday at 6pm

2/18/13 Monday at 8pm

2/19/13 Tuesday at 12pm 

TAKE ACTION:  There are three very important things you can do to protect marriage and family in Illinois: 

1. Click HERE to contact your representative to voice your opinion on this same-sex “marriage” bill. Your opinion matters and can make a difference.  

2. Join IFI and many others at the IFI Defend Marriage Lobby Day: 

Defend Marriage Lobby Day
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
10:30 AM — 1:30 PM
Illinois State Capitol Rotunda
401 South 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois  62701 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION 

3. Pray.  This issue needs our prayers.  We need to prayerfully consider what we can do individually to protect marriage and family; and also pray for God’s sovereign hand of protection and guidance on this country.  Pray, and continue to pray, for our country and leadership.

Today, May 30, 2012, the homosexual activist organization Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Illinois have filed two lawsuits against the clerk of Cook County, charging that his office’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to 25 homosexual couples violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the Illinois Constitution.

The fact that Illinois’ civil union law grants homosexual couples all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage means next to nothing to homosexual activists. As IFI and many others warned, civil union legislation was merely a stepping stone to legalized same-sex marriage.  “It’s now painfully obvious that the purpose for securing civil unions legislation last year was to gain legal leverage in the attempt to overturn the Illinois law that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” said IFI’s executive director, David E. Smith.

It is not the legal benefits and responsibilities that homosexual activists most ardently desire. Rather, they seek the symbolic victory that legalized same-sex marriage represents. Homosexual activists want to eradicate any formal public recognition that homosexual relationships are different from heterosexual unions.

The Illinois Family Institute’s cultural analyst Laurie Higgins states that “Homosexual activists and their ideological allies will exploit any means to achieve their goal of eradicating moral disapproval of homosexuality, including censorship, propaganda, demagoguery, slander, and judicial activism.”

The means they are now using in Illinois are those they used to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa. Homosexual activists have announced they are bypassing the will of the people as reflected in their elected representatives. According to the Chicago Tribune’s cheerleader for the homosexuality-affirming movement, Rex Huppke, “[John] Knight, the ACLU attorney, said that he is confident same-sex marriage rights can be won through the state’s judicial system and that there is no reason to wait for lawmakers to act.”

Governor Pat Quinn (D) and Cook County Clerk David Orr (D) have both stated publicly that they believe same-sex marriage should be legalized.  While apparently believing that the criterion of numbers of partners is essential, they believe that sexual complementarity is irrelevant to marriage.

Let’s hope and pray our judges are wiser.