Written by Megan Basham

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

“I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm—kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was why convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.

Christians and Conspiracy Theories

Stetzer’s efforts to help further the NIH’s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website, coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism’s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins’ arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now deleted essay, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, “If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.”

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of NIH-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to “repent” for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn’t take any great level of spiritual discernment — just plain common sense — to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn’t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins’ lead.

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a livestream event, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a “follower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life” despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he does not definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn’t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. “If you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,” he said, “you would never have designed this one … So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature … Humans did not make this one. Nature did.”

It was the same message his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations didn’t question Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn’t probe beyond the “facts” Collins’ offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing several essays that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one article by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church’s witness in the world.

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already heard from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding from the NIH itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to discredit and suppress opinions they didn’t like, such as questioning Covid’s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.

What Stetzer and others did know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was calling on evangelical leaders to be “ambassadors for truth.” And they were happy to answer that call.

The question was, just how truthful was Collins’ truth?

Evangelicals of a Feather

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

While a webinar featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, “This is not a political statement,” he asserted. “This is not an invasion of your personal freedom…This is a life-saving medical device.”

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly debatable among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in City Journal this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. “The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,” Prasad reported, “found that…cloth masks were no better than no masks at all.” [emphasis mine].

At this point, even the CDC is backing away from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat’s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one’s love for Jesus goes on.

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller’s joint interview with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur’s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the “bad and ugly” of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren’s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an “off-the-record” meeting between Collins and “key faith leaders.” Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins’ appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly lamenting the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. “Wearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,” the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government’s narratives about Covid.

“Let me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,” he said. “This is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that…One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to…trust the science. They’re not going to put out a vaccine that’s going to hurt people.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does have a record of putting out vaccines that “hurt people,” is it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to “trust the science?” Is it a pastor’s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his “ego doesn’t require” him to “have a live audience to speak to.”

And still the list goes on.

The same week MacArthur’s church was in the news for resisting California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an interview with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking “disturbing examples” of churches that continued meeting because they thought “the devil can’t get into my church” or “Jesus is my vaccine.” Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar’s agent, the friends finished with a guitar duet.

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still looked to him as the foundation of their Covid reporting.

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: “God is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.”

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins’ “right thing” and God’s “right thing” must necessarily be the same thing.

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: “He’s a man you can trust.”

A Man You Can Trust

Perhaps the evangelical elites’ willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to “The Simpson’s” character Ned Flanders, noting that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of “oh boy!” and “by golly!”

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government’s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.

He has not only defended experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even charged Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama’s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When Nature magazine asked him about the Trump administration’s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, “I think it’s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.”

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling Beliefnet, “I’m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena…But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.”

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing, speaking fluently of “structural racism” and “equity” rather than equality. He’s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is, implementing new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows — LGBTQ orthodoxy — Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically” and is “committed to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]” as an “advocate.”

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’ declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new initiative to specifically direct funding to “sexual and gender minorities.” On the ground, this has translated to awarding millions in grants to experimental transgender research on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another project, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like “condomless anal sex” on an app without their parents’ consent.

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.  When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to Time Magazine, such luminaries of the “Christiantelligentsia” as The Atlantic’s Pete Wehner and The New York Times’ David Brooks.

In October, even after Collins’ funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend’s reputation, saying, “I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.” That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French deemed Collins a “national treasure” and his service in the NIH “faithful.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his effusive praise, claiming that Collins possesses a “restless genius [that] is other-centered” and is a “truth-seeker in the best sense.”

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.

Since news began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to suppress the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven’t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins’ expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could’ve been more persuasive to this demographic.

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they’re willing to become mouth organs of the government.

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would’ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a misinformation campaign himself — one these Christian megaphones helped further.

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren’t willing to offer any pushback to Collins’ other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.

There’s an instructive moment at the end of Warren‘s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, “Get the facts at any price.”

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get wisdom at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.

This article was originally published by The Daily Wire, which is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. 

Yesterday, Joe Biden proclaimed the evacuation from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success” that was executed exactly the way “the mission was designed.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban celebrated this extraordinary success, also known as the Taliban’s humiliation of the most powerful military in history, in the only way tyrannical Muslims know how: through a shocking act of grotesque barbarism that makes civilized people weep—or vomit. They flew a U.S. helicopter from which was dangling a corpse.

Now, false god-serving radicals and other godless regimes that devalue human life are emboldened. And with Biden’s gift of “tens of billions of dollars’ worth” of materiel paid for by American taxpayers, the emboldened terrorists are better equipped to torture and slaughter friends of America and to enslave women and girls.

If we don’t turn our sinking ship of state around—starting now—in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections, what will our military look like in the future. Sure, we’ll have critical race propagandists; atheist chaplains; hormone-doping, cross-sex impersonators; homosexuals; and pregnant fighter pilots, but will we have a few good men?

Will young men enlist if they can’t trust the commander in chief?

Will young men enlist to defend and protect a country that they were indoctrinated to believe is a systemically and irredeemably racist country whose Founders were evil and whose Constitution should be shredded?

Will young men indoctrinated with the leftist belief that America the ugly must be reimagined and deconstructed be willing to say, “This We’ll Defend,” “Always Faithful,” “Not self, but country,” or “Aim High … Fly-Fight-Win”?

Elections have consequences. So too do the ideas driving voting decisions.

Sanctimonious Never-Trumpers like David French, Lincoln Project members, and Christianity Today writers whose flawed moral and political calculus led them to conclude that facilitating the election of a corrupt, senile recluse who supports the destruction of marriage, the legal right to slaughter the unborn at taxpayer expense through all nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason, and the mandatory indoctrination of children and government employees with critical race theory was preferable to Trump with all his acknowledged flaws.

In so doing, they are complicit in the harm that is befalling those Afghans who helped us.

They are complicit in the indoctrination of yet more American children who will be taught the destructive, disunifying view that America and white people are ugly oppressors.

They are complicit in the eradication of childhood innocence, sex-segregated bathrooms, and girls’ sports.

They are complicit in the growing toleration and even celebration of lawlessness. Biden incentivized illegal immigration that has resulted in human suffering far surpassing anything the press savaged the Trump administration for. Under Biden, police departments have been defunded, financially strapped cities permit looting, vagrancy and littering laws are flouted creating unlivable cities, and mandatory COVID restrictions are scorned by the rich and powerful.

Heeding the words of Biden’s pick to be our ambassador to Japan, Rahm-bo Emanuel, who famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”—this one, the Chinese Communist Pandemic—leftist government leaders are incrementally paving the way for a de facto social credit system akin to China’s. No vaccine? No job.

Add to that the requirement by Big Business and Big Brother Sister Sibling that employees must refer to colleagues who pretend to be the sex they aren’t by incorrect or silly pronouns and, voilà, America’s Social Credit System.

As lawmakers plunge America further into debt; as the last few coins are emptied from the pockets of Americans to fill the emptied coffers of the government; as First Amendment speech rights and religious liberty are undermined; as parental rights are stripped; and as deviant sexual obsessions grip the hearts, minds, bodies of Americans and the institutions that shape our lives, we have decisions to make. Will we accept the gift of self-government, messy as it is, and use it wisely? Or will we leave it to the foolish and spiritually blind who will greedily grip the gift and then crush it.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/What-Biden-and-Never-Trumpers-Have-Done.mp3

Some IFI readers may remember attorney and evangelical Christian, David French, former writer for National Review whom many conservatives formerly admired. Not so much anymore. He spent much of the last four years trying to ensure that Donald Trump did not win a second term. Apparently French plans to spend 2021 defending his own honor and urging Christians to repent of their sin of voting for a corrupt man—no, you silly people, not the corrupt Biden. In French’s view, voting for the morally corrupt, cognitively impaired, Chinese Communist colluder Joe Biden is a justifiable act for Christians.

French tweeted this on January 22, 2021:

Regarding Biden’s [Executive Orders], two things are true: 1. You can oppose the worst [EOs] (including through litigation, when appropriate), yet… 2. A handful of bad EOs do not mean it was better to support a deranged liar who’d incite the sacking of the Capitol to hold onto power.

“A handful of bad EOs”? The sexual integration of children’s private spaces is merely a “bad EO”? Allowing boatloads of American money to go to slaughter humans in other countries is merely a “bad EO”? What kind of Christ-follower says that?

And remember, Biden has just gotten started. Let’s see what the morally deranged Biden has done to speech rights, religious liberty, parental rights, abortion-funding, and the further corruption of public schools by the end of the cultural nightmare we’ve just entered.

Question for French: When Hillary Clinton repeatedly said the 2016 election was stolen, was she attempting to “incite the sacking of the Capitol”?

At dawn’s early light on Sunday, French posted an article in which he 1. calls for evangelicals who supported Trump to apologize and support impeachment, and 2. vigorously defends himself as a man of courage.

He spends nearly 400 words defending his honor and describing the despicable abuse he and his family have endured, presumably the work of evangelical Christians. I’m not sure what evangelical crowd French hangs with, but no evangelical Protestants or Catholics I know would execute “angry attacks on” the employers of those with whom they disagree, or call for their employment “termination,” or “mock” their spouses,  or damage their front doors while “trying to enter” their houses, or suspiciously case their homes, or contact “drug rehab and porn addiction centers around the country” posing as their ideological foes and “saying” they “need help,” or dox them, or text them “racial slurs,” or leave “voicemail messages” that sound like “recordings of people screaming.”

I believe those things happened to French and his family because those types of things have been happening to conservatives for years. Sadly, despicable abuse knows no political or ideological boundaries, but in my experience, theologically orthodox, Bible-believing committed Christ-followers do not do such things.

And herein lies the problem. French appears to lump all evangelicals together into an unseemly ball of corruption. He makes no distinctions between those who have defended or dismissed Trump’s corrupt behavior and done indefensible things to French’s family and those who have never defended Trump’s corrupt behavior or done anything to French’s family.

In French’s view, voting for a corrupt man is equivalent to endorsing corruption and undermining one’s Christian witness. It’s so much easier to anathematize one’s ideological foes by associating them with awful behavior of fringe nasties as French has done than to engage with their substantive claims.

But if voting for a man who has proven himself morally compromised is an unmitigated evil requiring public penance, what does it mean to vote for or facilitate the election of an inveterate liar and venal politician who has been accused of digitally raping a subordinate and of having an affair during his first marriage with the woman he married after his first wife’s death?

What does it mean for a Christ-follower to vote for a man who supports the legal right to exterminate babies in their mothers’ wombs, who supports taxpayer-funding of human slaughter, who supports and celebrates types of unions God detests, and who praised the sexual integration of children’s private spaces?

What does it mean to support a corrupt politician who seeks to undermine religious free exercise protections via the Equality Act, and who seeks to use the power of the government and taxpayers’ hard-earned money to promote the divisive and destructive Critical Race Theory?

French writes,

Christian Trumpism turned morality and reality upside-down.

What exactly is “Christian Trumpism,” and how does voting for the ethically imperfect Trump turn morality upside-down but voting for the ethically imperfect Biden does not?

How does voting for Trump turn “reality upside-down” but voting for a man who believes men can be women does not turn reality upside-down?

Are those who opposed Trump’s re-election guilty of Christian Bidenism? Does David French owe anyone an apology for his support of a man who lied to the American people when he said he knew nothing about his son’s corrupt business dealings? Does such a whopper say nothing about Biden’s character? Setting aside the fact that Biden has been credibly accused of sexual improprieties, on what biblical basis did French ground his belief that Trump’s sexual past is more sinful than Biden’s current lies, eager endorsement of homoeroticism and sexual impersonation, and belief that women have a moral right to order the slaughter of their children?

A sound argument can be made that no Christian should vote for any candidate or facilitate the strengthening of any party that seeks to cancel the expression of ideas it hates; that supports  firing employees who oppose same-sex faux-marriage; or who support the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors; that doesn’t recognized the right of Christian business owners to refuse to provide abortifacients to employees or photograph same-sex anti-weddings; or that wants to deprogram, deradicalize, re-educate and “uncover religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists” and “even libertarians.”

French has a solution to the grievous sin of voting for Trump over Hillary and Trump over Biden. First, those Christians who voted the wrong way must apologize, and then Never Trumpers must forgive. Phew.

In addition to public apologies, he wants impeachment:

But there’s more. Christian Trump supporters can no longer say, “We won’t tolerate serious wrongs.” That ship has sailed. They can, however, say “Enough. No more.” And it’s vital that they do. Only they can impose true accountability on Trump. Without them there simply isn’t sufficient support to bar Trump from public office and limit his malign influence on American life.

Biden and Harris, evidently, are going to have solely a beneficent, salubrious influence on American life.

If, or rather when, the left establishes policies so malign and oppressive—policies that rob parents of their parental rights; rob conservatives of the right to speak, assemble, and exercise their religion freely; rob scholars of the freedom to teach and publish; rob Americans of the ability to earn a living; rob citizens of the right to bear arms; and rob those deemed unfit for life of their lives—who or what will be culpable for the revolution that eventually comes? Will it be the rhetoric of those leading the revolution, or will it be the words and deeds of the oppressors?

As to French’s defense of his own honor: Facing adversity in the service of electing a corrupt man who will promote the malign policies Biden has openly committed to promoting is no honor.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/David-Frenchs-Marching-Orders-for-Christians-in-America_audio.mp3

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Some IFI readers may remember attorney and evangelical Christian, David French, former writer for National Review whom many conservatives formerly admired. Not so much anymore. He spent much of the last four years trying to ensure that Donald Trump did not win a second term. Apparently, French plans to spend 2021 defending his own honor and urging Christians to repent of their sin of voting for a corrupt man—no, you silly people, not the corrupt Biden. In French’s view, voting for the morally corrupt, cognitively impaired, Chinese Communist colluder Joe Biden is a justifiable act for Christians.

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s Cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Levine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Levine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Levine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

Oh, but that’s not all.

Biden has a plan to spread the leftist sexuality ideology within the United States and export it to infinity and beyond. Biden—the self-identifying Catholic—chooses to offend the God he claims to serve rather than offend the gods of homosexuality and “trans”-cultism he actually serves. In terrifying rebellion against God, Biden calls theologically orthodox biblical beliefs about homosexual acts “hatred,” specifically identifying Mike Pence’s beliefs as such.

Further, Biden says, “defeating” those beliefs “is an essential first step” in achieving the leftist goal of full societal approval of homosexuality, which he fallaciously calls “equality.”

Biden has committed to passing the Equality Act, which has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with eradicating First Amendment protections of religious free exercise. Biden has said that through the Equality Act, he will force women’s shelters to house biological men who pretend to be women. Those places where abused women and their children take refuge, often from abusive men, will under Biden, house men.

Biden has committed to reversing the ban on sexual passing in the military. In other words, female soldiers will be forced to bunk and shower with men who pretend to be women, and U.S. taxpayers will be forced to subsidize elective cosmetic procedures and ongoing cross-sex hormone-doping for delusional soldiers.

Biden has committed to forcing Christian adoption and foster care agencies to place children in the homes of homosexuals or lose access to all government funds. In other words, Biden will discriminate based on religion when funding adoption agencies.

Biden has promised that on his first day in office he will require all public schools to allow “trans”-identifying students to have full access to the restrooms, locker rooms, and sports of opposite-sex students. I’m sure that will go over well with Muslim parents.

We can’t forget that Biden has promised to restore funding to America’s abattoirs, Planned Parenthood. With Biden ensconced in the Oval Office, Christians from sea to shining sea will be forced to fund human slaughter. But at least now that the uncouth, boorish Trump is gone, Never-Trumpers will be able to sleep at night.

And this is just the tip of the cold, dark iceberg, Biden and Never-Trumpers kept hidden during the campaign.

Never-Trumpers, besotted with dreams of Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham (without the white skin, biological sex, or elitist title, of course) running for president, couldn’t abide the coarse, abrasive, pugilistic Trump winning a second term, so they colluded with leftists to kneecap him.

Never mind that Joe Biden is an inveterate liar and plagiarist. Never mind that he inappropriately touches women. Never mind that he has been accused by Jill Biden’s first husband of having an affair with her when Joe’s wife was still alive and Jill Biden was still married. Never mind that he was accused of digitally raping a staffer years ago. Never mind that there is good evidence that Joe and his corrupt son and brother colluded to line their pockets with the filthy lucre of America’s chief enemy. Never mind that with a straight but slightly confused face, he lied during election season, telling voters that he knew nothing about Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings. To Never-Trumpers, Biden’s plans to destroy America are trivialities to be ignored.

While facilitating the election of Joe Biden—a man who will enact policies that destroy the bodies, minds, and hearts of children—apparently has no bearing on our Christian witness, voting for Trump does—or so goes the argument of Ed Stetzer, dean and professor at Wheaton College and contributing editor at Christianity Today.

Stetzer thinks the dim view the world has of evangelicalism has everything to do with gullible, non-thinking, Trump-voting evangelicals. No mention of the hatred the world has for the word of God when it comes to homosexuality and sexual passing.

No mention either of the unconscionable cowardly silence of theologians and pastors who have said next to nothing as the world captured the hearts and minds of children in their own houses of worship and whose silence contributed to the spread of evil so dark and ugly that many evangelicals, when faced with the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, believed rightly that Trump was better.

Trump offered hope to parents who didn’t want their daughters sharing locker rooms with boys. He offered hope that Planned Parenthood would be defunded. He offered hope for a Supreme Court that would protect their religious liberty.

In Stetzer’s myopic view, expressed in a USA Today editorial devoid of nuance, “far too many [evangelicals] failed to live up to their promise of speaking truth to power.” Perhaps. But there are tens of thousands more evangelicals who voted for Trump than there are well-known evangelicals who had access to Trump to speak truth to power, and Stetzer lumps them all together.

What about the well-known evangelicals who have had opportunities for decades to speak truth to power about the poisonous, enslaving “LGBTQ” ideology and have said nothing either to the powerful or publicly. How does Stetzer think the world—whose opinion he seems to care so much about—would think about evangelicalism if every well-known evangelical spoke truth to power publicly about the “trans”-ideology and homosexuality?

Has Stetzer considered that maybe evangelicals wouldn’t have been so attracted to Trump’s muscular rhetoric, if evangelical leaders had not been speaking in such emasculated tones for so many years?

Maybe Stetzer doesn’t know any, but there are scores of evangelicals who see with clarity Trump’s flaws and who worship no political (or evangelical) leader. Those evangelicals were careful to distinguish between Trump the man and the policies of his administration. Given a choice between a corrupt man with terrible policies and a corrupt man with better policies, they chose the latter.

The dark shape of things to come

The 1619 Project has changed the date of America’s founding. All summer, Orwellian monsters—also known as Biden voters—rampaged through our cities, tearing down statutes and demanding that buildings and streets be renamed and artwork replaced. Birth certificates are now legally falsified to indicate a biological male was identified at the time of his birth as female. Birth certificates will now identify a biological woman who was impregnated by a biological man and birthed a baby as the “father.” Within a nanosecond after the announcement by a Hollywood starlet at age 33 that she will henceforth pretend she’s a man, the Internet was scrubbed of any past references to her by female pronouns. Her history was erased.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell wrote,

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

As I wrote several weeks ago, “Leftists See Orwell’s Novel 1984 As a Blueprint for Progress.”

So, tell me again, Mr. French, Mr. Stetzer, and Christianity Today, how exactly does facilitating the election of the patently corrupt Biden who heartily endorses sexual perversion, religious persecution, human slaughter, and the erasure of history enhance the witness of theologically orthodox Christians?

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Devine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Devine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Devine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

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On July 23, 2020, conservative University of North Carolina professor, Townhall writer, and Christian, Mike Adams, was driven to suicide by the vile and relentless bullying of devotees of diversity and teachers of tolerance who fancy themselves “progressive.” They were aided and abetted by spineless Christians who failed to come alongside a brother in Christ because of his “sins” of violating leftist language rules.

Leftists and some Christians were especially peeved by a metaphor Adams employed to criticize oppressive pandemic commandments issued by North Carolina’s Democrat governor Roy Cooper.

On May 29th, Adams tweeted, “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go.”

Which of the following metaphors is more offensive: Comparing a political leader who oppresses citizens with unjust orders to a slave master or comparing those with wealth who ignore the starvation of the poor to cannibals?

Is one acceptable speech and the other unacceptable? Are both acceptable? Neither?

Of course, the cannibal metaphor was employed by Jonathan Swift in his satirical essay “A Modest Proposal,” which we teach in public schools.

When Reverend Jesse Jackson referred to President Trump as a slave master and knee-takers as slaves, I can’t recall anyone on the left or right batting their exquisitely sensitive eyes. Are only blacks allowed to use slave metaphors, or does it depend wholly on whose ox is being gored with condemnation that determines whether metaphors should send adults to the fainting couch?

While their sanctimonious and empty proclamations of fealty to inclusivity, love, equality, tolerance, subjectivism, autonomy, freedom, and diversity echo systemically throughout American institutions, Leftists reveal their inky underbellies rotted with hypocrisy and depravity when they screech hater and hurl death wishes at those who dare to disagree with Big Brother, Critical Race Theory, or their anarchical sexuality ideology.

But it’s not just leftists, secularists, and atheists who faux-tie their own panties in a twist about bold language from conservatives. Even conservatives get the heebie-jeebies if Christians use bold language.

In a mostly moving tribute to his “close friend” Mike Adams, political pundit David French made sure to include that, although protected by the First Amendment, some of Adams’ writing was “acerbic,” “intemperate,” “insensitive,” “excessively provocative,” and “outright infuriating.” French further said, he “cringed at some,” of Adams’ comments and that “my friend could frustrate me. He could say things I disagreed with. He could say things that outraged me. He could be wrong.”

With “close friends” like French to write a tribute, who needs enemies.

New Testament professor and friend of Mike Adams, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, wrote about Adams’ sadness at the socially distancing of David French:

[W]hen [Mike] reached out to David by phone for help in his hour of greatest crisis in June 2020, he viewed David’s brush-off as due to the negative change in David in the Trump era. While he couldn’t be entirely surprised by David’s failure to help, there’s no question that it was a body blow to his gut. He twice initiated mention of David to me in mid-June and on July 1. I didn’t bring David French up as a topic of conversation. Mike did, unsolicited from me. …

Mike felt that David had abandoned him precisely because he didn’t share David’s NeverTrump stance and because of David’s heightened desire to distance himself from Mike’s tweets in order to preserve his (David’s) reputation with people on the Left. …

I would never say that David French single-handedly killed Mike Adams. … David was simply the most painful among many acts of silence and detachment toward Mike by Christian “elites” and “friends” at his end. The primary blame belongs with the vicious Left.

Every Christian on the frontlines of the culture war has experienced the voluntary social distancing of brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t want to be tainted by friendship with cultural lepers. We all know the experience of having friends or colleagues either secretly whisper their thanks for our work, or avoid us entirely, or turn against us. There’s no skin in the game for many Christians when the game gets rough. Instead of marching into battle accoutered with the armor of God, they scuttle into their safe havens accoutered with protective platitudes acceptable to God’s enemies.

Oddly, I’ve seen very little criticism of Andrew Klavan—another Christian who uses satire brilliantly and effectively to mock stupid and evil ideas that deserve mockery. For example, assuming the voice of a presumptuous Hollywood celebrity, Klavan recently wrote,

I take responsibility for being a fatuous, virtue-signaling, useless, celebrity knucklehead. Which is a much better life than yours by the way. For which I take complete responsibility… and then run away before you realize I haven’t done a damn thing for you and your life still sucks.

Before reading Klavan’s satires, all those legions of PC Christians holed up in their bunkers hoping no unbelieving colleague learns they disapprove of homosexuality better stock up on smelling salts.

Not quite a year ago, I wrote an article about the superintendent of a large Illinois high school district who sexually integrated all locker rooms in the five-school district—a decision so wicked that all Christians should have felt enraged.

He was aided and abetted by wealthy Hollywood Matrix director “Lana” Wachowski—a man who pretends to be a woman—homosexuals from outside the district, and a school board member with a vile sexuality podcast for children. In strong language, I wrote about this evil action and the vipers who promoted it.

In response, I received an email from a conservative Christian who identified herself as the “dean of rhetoric” in a “Christian co-school.” She chastised my “language and tone,” saying that she found them “disturbing.” She criticized the “vitriol and loaded language … name calling and hyperbole” and “uncharitable language,” saying it “would never be tolerated” in her rhetoric classes, that she was “disappointed to read” such language, and that she found my “writing style offensive.”

So, a Christian is teaching children that the use of biblical language and tone are sinful even when describing egregious sin.

I asked if she had ever sent an email with as much passion and strong language as the one she sent to me to any of the many political leaders, public school teachers, administrators, or heretical “Christian” leaders who promote sexual deviance to children. No response.

“Progressives” use the phrase “my truth” a lot—a phrase that Boston College philosophy professor Dr. Peter Kreeft describes as both oxymoronic and moronic. Much of what “progressives” affirm as “their truth,” seems to be sexual desires that originate in their dark bellies—or what in The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis calls the seat of mere animal appetites.

Lewis argues that to protect against domination by our imperious appetites, human emotions must be properly trained:

Without the aid of trained emotions, the intellect is powerless against the animal organism…. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.

Do tell, Christian brothers and sisters who favor warm milquetoasty language at all times, how do we train human animals of all sizes to feel disgust and hatred of those things which really are disgusting and hateful while using only warm milquetoasty language?

Lewis continues, describing what education should do:

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. … Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.

Yes, there are things—desires, ideas, images, words, and acts—for which we should properly feel hatred. The prophet Amos said, “Hate evil, and love good.” In Romans, Paul teaches us “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” For love to be genuine or true, we must abhor what is evil.

Children must be taught to feel love for the good and feel hatred for that which is evil, which is wholly different from hating people. True love requires first knowing what is true and good. Affirming in and to people that which God detests is not love; affirming in and to people that which God detests is detestable.

“Progressives” understand that the emotions must be trained, which is why they use the arts—especially our myth-making machine, Hollywood, and government schools to shape the hearts of America’s children. Tragically, since “progressives” don’t know truth, they’re training America’s children to love evil and hate good.

In our public schools, interactions with friends, and Facebook posts, we have at our disposal many tools for training emotions, among which are rhetorical tools. The Bible warns that the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” and that “Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” But such verses do not and cannot possibly mean Christians must never use strong language or sarcasm. We know that because the Bible includes numerous examples of the use of strong language and mockery.

Amos called women fat “cows” and warned that God would take them away by harpoons or fishhooks. Imagine how today’s evanjellyfishes would feel if a Christian were to use that biblical language.

Paul wrote this to Titus: “As one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true.” In other words, Paul called Cretans liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

Jesus said,

“You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! … You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”

Paul said this about sinners,

There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”

In Revelation, those who are not saved are called “dogs.”

Peter describes false teachers—of which we have many in the church today—as “irrational animals … born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant. … They are blots and blemishes. … Accursed children!”

Paul calls the Galatians, “foolish Galatians.”

John the Baptist called the multitudes a “brood of vipers.”

If the dean of rhetoric of the Christian co-school thinks calling a top school leader who sexually integrates the locker rooms of 12,000 minor children “depraved” undermines our witness—as she claimed I did—then logically she must think John the Baptist undermined his witness by calling the multitudes a brood of vipers.

Theologian and pastor Doug Wilson makes clear that the Bible does not mandate the kind of saccharine language that corrupts evangelicalism or prohibit bold, bracing, condemnatory language from which many evangelicals flee:

Evangelical Christians are very sweet people and there’s an upside to that. … But they’re so sweet they can’t be friends with diabetics. And what happens is, if you respond to the prevailing ungodliness with a response that’s tart, or serrated, or pungent, or satiric, you will have more than a few Christians taking you aside saying, “Hey brother, you probably don’t want to talk to them that way. … Would Jesus have responded that way?” And when you reply, “Well, yes, he would have. And here’s how he did it in Matthew 23 where he disassembles the Pharisees.”

[Evangelical Christians] don’t have a category for that. They’re so used to having Christlikeness defined by their ecclesiastical culture instead of having Christlikeness defined by the Bible, it is astonishing for many Christians to discover that this kind of verbal polemical engagement is preeminently biblical. It’s a very common biblical way of expressing righteousness. … If you take the smarmy, sweetie, nice discourse that many Christians think is supposed to be the norm and drive it into the Bible, you can’t find examples of that anywhere.

American philosopher and Catholic, Dr. Edward Feser, shares Wilson’s disdain for the unbiblical and unhelpful contemporary perversion of the Christian obligation to love our neighbors:

Niceness. Well, it has its place. But the Christ who angrily overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, who taught a moral code more austere than that of the Pharisees, and who threatened unrepentant sinners with the fiery furnace, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, was not exactly “nice.”

Feser finds fault with the unbiblical notion that “even a great many churchmen seem to have bought into,” which is that “inoffensive ‘niceness’ is somehow the essence of the true Christian, or at least of any Christian worthy of the liberal’s respect.” He argues that in,

innumerable vapid sermons one hears about God’s love and acceptance and forgiveness, but never about divine judgment or the moral teachings to which modern people are most resistant—and which, precisely for that reason, they most need to hear expounded and defended.

Feser argues against church “teachings on sexual morality” that are delivered “half-apologetically, in vague and soft language, and in a manner hedged with endless qualifications”:

Such “niceness” is in no way a part of Christian morality. It is a distortion of the virtues of meekness (which is simply moderation in anger—as opposed to too much or too little anger), and friendliness (which is a matter of exhibiting the right degree of affability necessary for decent social order—as opposed to too little affability or too much).

Maybe, just maybe, if every theologically orthodox Christian spoke in biblical tones and language about the perversity and corruption that confront our children every day in their TV shows, picture books, and government schools, and defile our society there would be less of it, and maybe, just maybe Mike Adams would still be alive.

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While theologians Dr. Denny Burk, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Dr. John Piper, and Pastor Douglas Wilson say Christians should not use incorrect pronouns when referring to people who pretend to be the sex they aren’t, increasing numbers of purportedly theologically orthodox Christians believe Christians should use them. They believe that refusing to use “preferred pronouns” will result in “trans”-identifying persons severing relationships. And to “woke” theologians and pastors, maintaining relationships supersedes truth.

Christian capitulation to sin will always be accompanied by theological rationalizations that will sound superficially reasonable. In a recent episode of his “Ask Me Anything” podcast, JD Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, proffered such rationalizations as he revealed that he uses incorrect pronouns when referring to “trans”-identifying persons. He argued that his complicity with the false and destructive “trans” ideology constitutes “generosity of spirit,” which he contrasts with “truth-telling.” Greear also claimed that Preston Sprinkle, president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, does likewise.

Before going further, I want to note that several of the quotes cited by Greear and to which I will be responding appear to be wrongly attributed by Greear to Sprinkle. These incorrectly attributed quotes come instead from a paper by Gregory Coles who identifies as a “celibate, gay Christian” and is part of the celibate, “gay” Christian movement criticized by many, including Denny Burk who wrote this about Coles’ memoir:

Coles seems to equate differences about homosexual immorality with differences that Christians have about second order doctrines. But how can homosexual immorality be treated in this way when the Bible says that those who commit such deeds do not inherit the kingdom of God.

Coles doesn’t merely say Christians may use incorrect pronouns. In his paper titled, “What Pronouns Should Christians Use for Transgender People,” which is littered with PC language created by the “LGBTQ” community to advance its ideology, Coles argues Christians should use incorrect pronouns:

… [T]he most biblical response to transgender people’s pronouns is a posture of unequivocal pronoun hospitality. That is, I believe that all Christians can and should use pronouns that reflect the expressed gender identities of transgender people, regardless of our views about gender identity ethics. If a person identifies herself to you as “she,” I hope you will consider it an act of Christ-like love to call her “she” out of respect, whether or not you believe that the way she expresses her gender identity is honoring to God.

Astonishingly, Coles grounds his defense of appeasement “Christ-like pronoun hospitality” in this passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Coles applies this passage to the current pronoun mandates, appealing also to “respect” to justify appeasement:

When we apply Paul’s linguistic approach to the pronouns we use about transgender people, I believe we arrive at a posture of pronoun hospitality: a willingness to accommodate the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity. That is, when we order our language toward making sure that the truth of the gospel can be heard in an understandable way by those around us, we are compelled to use pronouns in a way that effectively communicates our respect for transgender people, even if we still believe that followers of Jesus are called to express their gender identity in accordance with their appointed sex.

If, instead of referring to “our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity,” Coles had referred to “the truth of Christian ethics regarding gender identity,” the problem with his worldview would become clearer. Imagine a Christian saying, “We should be willing to use the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of the truth of Christian ethics regarding gender identity.”

Does the anger of “trans”-cultists toward Christians who refuse to mis-sex people signify lack of understanding or does it signal rebellion? Is it an act of respect to concede to demands to call someone something that is an integral part of an ideology that denies reality, affirms sin as good, and grievously harms both individuals and society?  Can true respect—like true biblical love—ever entail denial or even the appearance of denial of another person’s embodiment as male or female?

Coles’ interpretation of the passage in Corinthians is at odds with that of theologian Thomas Schreiner:

Cultural flexibility, however, is not infinitely elastic. For instance, Paul does not compromise on moral norms or on fundamental truths of the gospel.

Theologian Paul E. Garland shares a similar understanding:

[Paul] does not think that fundamental and distinctive Christian demands are negotiable depending on the circumstances. He did not eat idol food in order to become “as one  without the law to those without the law.” He did not tone down his assault on idolatry to avoid offending idolaters or curry favor with them. His accommodation has nothing to do with watering down the gospel message, soft-pedaling its ethical demands.

Evidently, Coles doesn’t view Genesis 1:27 (“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”) or Deuteronomy 22:5 (“A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.) as fundamental, distinctive, and non-negotiable.

It should trouble Coles, Greear, and Sprinkle that they are participants in what New Testament scholar N.T. Wright describes as a new and damaging incarnation of the heresy of Gnosticism:

The confusion about gender identity is a modern, and now internet-fueled, form of the ancient philosophy of Gnosticism. The Gnostic, one who “knows”, has discovered the secret of “who I really am”, behind the deceptive outward appearance. … This involves denying the goodness, or even the ultimate reality, of the natural world. Nature, however, tends to strike back, with the likely victims in this case being vulnerable and impressionable youngsters who, as confused adults, will pay the price for their elders’ fashionable fantasies.

To bolster his position, Coles points to Christianity Today (CT), which has now regrettably adopted secular journalistic practices, using incorrect pronouns for cross-sex passers.

A 2015 article by Dr. Mark Yarhouse in CT provides evidence that both CT and Yarhouse have capitulated to the wicked and deceitful “trans” ideology. Yarhouse writes,

I still recall one of my first meetings with Sara. Sara is a Christian who was born male and named Sawyer by her [sic] parents. As an adult, Sawyer transitioned to female.

Sara would say transitioning—adopting a cross-gender identity—took 25 years. It began with facing the conflict she [sic] experienced between her [sic] biology and anatomy as male, and her [sic] inward experience as female.

With absolute certainty, Sprinkle offers this dire warning about refusal to participate in the “trans” lie:

“If you want to immediately cut off a relationship with somebody, which is ending all opportunity to embody and share Jesus with the person, then don’t use the pronouns they want you to use. It is an immediate relational killer.”

He is saying that if unbelievers lost in spiritual darkness will become so angry at the refusal of Christians to participate in their reality-denying, body- and soul-destroying fiction that they sever relationships, Christians should capitulate. This position will result in an enfeebled relinquishment of culture-making to sinners lost in darkness.

The homosexual and “trans” communities use language as a tool to transform culture. They redefine words, emptying them of their former meanings, and invent new words that embody subversive and false assumptions. They become enraged at anyone who refuses to yield to their language diktats, and then some faith leaders say, “If we refuse to use their language, we kill relationships thereby killing our ability to witness.” What a diminished view of God’s sovereignty such a position reveals.

Moreover, enraged responses to encounters with truth sometimes signify the pricking of a conscience. Sometimes a respectful demurral from participating in serious sin is a seed planted. The ethics of speech are not determined by the subjective response of hearers of that speech. The ethics are determined by the content (i.e., is it true) and the delivery (i.e., is it civil).

Coles repeatedly appeals to the feelings of “trans”-identifying persons as determinative of the terms Christians should use. If, Coles argues, “trans”-identifying persons feel—or claim to feel—“shamed, invisible, sidelined, defiled, invalidated, microaggressed, disappeared, or leprous,” Christians should use whatever pronouns these people prefer, or we destroy our witness.

Is there any evidence that Jesus engaged in such “relational/missional” evangelism or fretted about how sinners would feel if he refused to affirm the sin they engaged in or placed at the center of their identities? When he encountered the rich, young ruler; the woman caught in adultery; or Zacchaeus, the tax collector, how long did Jesus dally in relationships before he told them to repent of their sins?

If refusing to concede through our language that a biological man is a woman makes such a man feel “defiled” or “microaggressed,” imagine if he had been part of the multitude that John the Baptist called a brood of vipers.

Dr. Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Text and Hermeneutics, makes clear what Greear’s, Coles’, and Sprinkle’s purported hospitality and respect signify:

It is not an act of “hospitality” or “respect” to the offender to use fake pronouns and proper names but rather (1) a scandal to the “weak” and young in the church and a rightful violation of conscience for many that will lead many to stumble to their ruin; (2) an accommodation to sin that God finds utterly abhorrent, to say nothing of the fact that it is an egregious lie; and (3) a complicity in the offender’s self-dishonoring, self-degrading, and self-demeaning behavior that does him or her (and the grieving ex-spouse and children, if there are any) no favor because it can get the person in question excluded from the kingdom of God.

What’s next? Treating as a married couple an incestuous union involving a man and his mother, allegedly as a show of hospitality and respect? Is that what Paul would have done at Corinth? Addressing the man and his stepmother as “husband” and “wife” so as to extend “hospitality” and “respect”? What kind of revisionist lunacy is this? Paul would not have taken this approach even for those who don’t profess to be believers.

Attorney, journalist, senior editor at the recently launched political website The Dispatch, and Christian, David French exposes the error in manipulative tactics used to shame Christians into rhetorical concessions to the destructive “trans” ideology:

When I use a male pronoun to describe Chelsea Manning, I’m not trolling. I’m not being a jerk. I’m not trying to make anyone angry. I’m simply telling the truth. I’m reflecting biological reality, and I’m referring to the created order as outlined in Genesis 1 — “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Nor is this a matter of “manners.” I’ve encountered many well-meaning people who’ve told me that I should acquiesce to new pronouns because it’s the polite thing to do. I want to avoid hurting feelings, don’t I? I want to treat someone the way I’d like to be treated, right? What’s the harm in a little white lie?

But when your definition of manners requires that I verbally consent to a fundamentally false and important premise, then I dissent. You cannot use my manners to win your culture war. I will speak respectfully, I will never use a pronoun with the intent of causing harm, and if I encounter a person in obvious emotional distress I will choose my words very carefully. But I will not say what I do not believe.

Coles asserts there are two assumptions “about the nature of language” on which Christians who reject “trans” language diktats rely:

Assumption #1: Pronoun gender always and only refers to an individual’s appointed sex.

Assumption #2: When our definitions of words differ from other people’s definitions, “telling the truth” means using our own definitions.

Assumption #2 implicitly rejects the Christian view that objective truth exists. Christians have no obligation to treat assumption #2 as if it’s true. It’s passing strange that a Christian would treat his own definitions of words like “he,” “she,” and “they” as just other assumptions. Coles seems to hold the view that Peter Kreeft disdains when he says the phrase “your truth” is both oxymoronic and moronic.

Burk reveals the sullied underbelly of Coles’ expectation that Christians treat their biblically informed definitions—not as true—but as merely one set of assumptions in the diverse universe of competing assumptions:

So much of the evangelical conversation on these issues has been colonized by secular identity theories. Those theories are premised on an unbiblical anthropology which defines human identity as “what I feel myself to be” rather than “what God designed me to be.” If there is to be a recovery and renewal of Christian conscience on sexuality issues, secular identity theories must give way to God’s design as revealed in nature and scripture.

Coles justifies the redefinition of pronouns by the “trans” cult by arguing—accurately—that language changes, but the reality of linguistic shifts doesn’t mean that Christians should acquiesce to politically driven changes that embody lies and which are increasingly imposed by force.

Greear also quoted conservative theologian Andrew T. Walker’s book God and the Transgender Debate in which Walker says,

“My own position is that if a transgender person comes to your church, it is fine to refer to them by their preferred pronoun.”

Greear failed to include what Walker said in an article published four months after publication of his book:

“Though it is politically incorrect to do so, I will not refer to someone with their desired pronoun in a public venue such as a talk. Those with writing or speaking platforms have an obligation to speak and write truthfully and not kowtow to political correctness or excuse falsehood.”

The abandonment of theological orthodoxy always happens incrementally, as it’s happening today. C. S. Lewis warned of this in The Screwtape Letters in which the senior demon Screwtape writes this to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter:

My dear Wormwood,

Obviously, you are making excellent progress. My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Pronouns_2.mp3

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Based on the response from the left, you would think that the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court would virtually guarantee the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Why, then, are some conservative and pro-life groups opposing his confirmation?

On the positive side, many pro-life leaders reacted enthusiastically to the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the highly-respected Susan B. Anthony List.

She said, “President Trump has made another outstanding choice in nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, keeping his promise to nominate only originalist judges to the Court.”

In her opinion, Kavanaugh was “an experienced, principled jurist,” who has a “strong record of protecting life and constitutional rights.”

Many others were enthusiastic as well, including conservative think tanks and long-term pro-life leaders.

On the negative side, Jane Coaston wrote an article for Vox.com explaining, “Why social conservatives are disappointed that Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh.”

She pointed to a number of top leaders in the conservative and pro-life movement who had reservations about Kavanaugh or who called for outright opposition.

Upon hearing of President Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh, the National Review’s David French wrote, “I’ll defend [Kavanaugh] vigorously from unfair critiques tomorrow, but tonight I join many conservatives in a slight sigh of regret. There was a better choice.”

Tim Wildmon, President of the highly influential American Family Association, wrote, “AFA has opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S Supreme Court for some very valid reasons. We are deeply concerned about how he might ultimately rule on issues related to abortion and religious liberty. For these reasons, we consider this nomination to represent a four-star appointment when it could have been five-star.”

Other groups, like Columbia [South Carolina] Christians for Life sent out e-blasts with titles like, “ROE VS. WADE protector Kavanaugh: Another red flag for Jesuit-educated, Jesuit school director, BRETT KAVANAUGH.” (This was sent out August 30.)

Another pro-life activist sent out links to this video, with this warning: “President Trump broke his campaign promise to pro-lifers when he nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Ricardo Davis of Georgia Right to Life calls Kavanaugh’s pro-abortion position ‘morally reprehensible’ and urges pro-lifers and conservatives to demand Kavanaugh’s withdrawal and for Trump to replace him with a real pro-life nominee such as Amy Coney Barrett.”

How can we make sense of this?

On the one hand, there is agreement that someone like Justice Amy Coney Barrett, if appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, would definitely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade should the opportunity present itself. The downside is that many believe that in today’s climate, despite the Republican majority, she would not have been confirmed.

Others have suggested that it’s unlikely that there will be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade as much as an incremental challenge. What if something like the Fetal Heartbeat Bill became law and was challenged up to the U.S. Supreme Court? How would Kavanaugh vote on that?

The real answer is that we simply do not know what a U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh would do.

According to Thomas Jipping, Deputy Director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and a Senior Legal Fellow, Kavanaugh’s “record meets the Schumer standard of a judge who does not predictably rule for a particular side. That is because Kavanaugh is the kind of judge who follows the law rather than his personal views.”

What, then, are we to make of the varied and passionate responses to Justice Kavanaugh? Does the left have reason to fear? Does the right have reason to rue a missed opportunity?

Here are a few things that seem clear.

First, we can be almost certain that Justice Kavanaugh will be a far better friend of the U.S. Constitution and of conservative values than any judge a President Hillary Clinton would have appointed. That is a very big positive.

Second, we who are pro-life do well not to put our ultimate trust in a man (Kavanaugh) or an institution (the U.S. Supreme Court) to change the direction of our nation. (This is not to deny the importance of both the man and the institution. It is simply to bring perspective.)

Third, it is possible that Kavanaugh himself cannot guarantee how he will rule if confirmed. There have been surprises in every direction from various appointees in the past, and even the best vetting process cannot guarantee the future.

Obviously, I hope that the leftist opposition to Kavanaugh is correct and that, should the opportunity arise, he would vote for life and for family and for our essential liberties.

But there may be a reason for the concern of some on the right, in which case we should be praying for Kavanaugh and the rest of the members of the Court that God would direct their hearts.

Scripture teaches that, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will.” Surely He can turn the hearts of U.S. Supreme Court justices as well.

More importantly, He can turn the hearts of a nation. That is the greater goal when it comes to cultivating a culture of life, and it must always remain the foremost goal for all of us who love life. As powerful as the Supreme Court has become, it alone cannot transform hearts.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com

In an email, conservative Chicago attorney Joseph A. Morris, former Assistant Attorney General of the United States, President and General Counsel of The Lincoln Legal Foundation, and frequent guest on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” told IFI that he is “thrilled by the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh,” elaborating,

Brett Kavanaugh is smart, learned, and honorable. He is exactly what President Trump promised to nominate and appoint: An originalist in the tradition of the late Antonin Scalia. With his hundreds of finely written, rigorously-reasoned opinions as a judge of the Court of Appeals, Judge Kavanaugh’s jurisprudence is literally an open book. He will make one of the finest Supreme Court justices in history.

While “progressives” work fast and furious to do what they do best—that is, manipulate emotions—Mr. Morris works to quell nerves jangled by the paranoia of people untethered to reality, wisdom,  or the Constitution:

Although the work of judges is not, and should not be, political, the nomination, confirmation, and appointment of Federal judges are necessarily political acts.

Much wailing will be heard, and ink will be spilled, this summer, regarding President Trump’s asserted “politicization” of the judiciary. A few simple numerical facts about the current staffing of the higher levels of the Federal judiciary may help put things in perspective.

Staffing of the United States Supreme Court:

Appointed by Republican:  4

Appointed by Democrat:    4

Vacant:  1

Total:      9

Staffing of the United States Courts of Appeals:

Mr. Morris is far from alone in his assessment of Judge Kavanaugh. All across the country, voices of support for Kavanaugh’s nomination are sounding. American Center for Law and Justice’s Jay Sekulow wrote,

The nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy created with the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy is a superb choice who is certain to serve this nation well. Judge Kavanaugh is a brilliant jurist who embraces the philosophy of our Founders—an unwavering commitment to the rule of law and the Constitution.

The Thomas More Society released a statement, saying in part,

The Thomas More Society applauds President Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States…. “We are excited to see the President nominate a great human being who is one of the finest legal minds of our time. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has a proven track record of judging fairly, always applying the Constitution and our laws as they are written. We look forward to his confirmation and anticipate that he will distinguish himself in his time on the high court.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote,

“By any measure, Judge Kavanaugh is one of the most respected federal judges in the country and I look forward to supporting his nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. For over a decade, Judge Kavanaugh has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often referred to as the second highest court in the land. He has over 300 published opinions, with a strong record of defending the Second Amendment, safeguarding the separation of powers, reining in the unchecked power of federal agencies, and preserving our precious religious liberties.

Even National Review’s David French, who was an impassioned proponent of Amy Coney Barrett, said, “Kavanaugh will be an excellent judge.”

Be of good, cheer, friends. This is most definitely not a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Thanks to President Donald J. Trump and his crack team of experts, it’s quite the opposite.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Be-of-Good-Cheer-About-Brett-Kavanaugh.mp3

IFI works diligently to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

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 massacre of seventeen students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is just the latest in what seems like an accelerating manifestation of school shootings. Parents, students, citizens, activists and law makers are justifiably angry.

Demands to “do something” are loud and urgent, driven by a dread that the next shooting will be at my child’s school. Even some staunch defenders of the Second Amendment are shaken, agreeing that “it’s time for a national conversation about the Second Amendment, gun violence, gun safety, protecting our children and self-defense.”

There is a problem—and it’s getting worse. “During the 1950s, there were 17 school shootings. In the 1960s, 18. In the 1970s, 30. In the 1980s, 39. In the 1990s, 62. In the first decade of this century (2000-2009), 60 school shootings. From 2010-2018, 153.”

In the search for a solution, tension inevitably develops between protecting our constitutional right to “keep and bear arms,” and preventing the horrific acts committed by people with guns who are bent on murder and mayhem. On the extremities, one side advocates for an all-out ban on guns, while the other fends off any attempt to diminish the weight of the Second Amendment. Between the two are myriad proposals for restricting everything from what type of guns can be bought to how they can be purchased to how many can be owned to what accessories are permitted.

If there is one point of agreement, it is that any kind of mass slaughter, whether in Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando or Richmond, is unacceptable. “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) is a universally recognized human ideal.

A gun ban is unconstitutional and impractical

We can rule out a ban on all guns for at least two reasons. First, American citizens have the legal, unassailable right to possess and carry firearms. Ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment was a prescient measure put in place by our Founders specifically as a counterweight to the centralized power of the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right as recently as 2008 (District of Columbia v. Heller) and 2010 (McDonald v. City of Chicago).

Second, while estimates vary, there are probably more than 300 million guns in the U.S., which has the highest gun ownership rate in the world at 88 guns per 100 citizens. Nine million Americans pack a loaded handgun monthly and three million carry daily. It is impossible to imagine confiscating or running a gun buy-back program for that number of weapons. Guns are here to stay.

Some restrictions are allowable

We can also rule out unrestricted access to any and all kinds of guns at any age that the constitutional purist may want. Political historian and pundit, Jay Cost, writes that a proper understanding of the Second Amendment recognizes that it “establishes an individual right for a public purpose — and it therefore follows that the people, acting through their representatives, can properly set the terms of how that right will be enjoyed.”

In other words, we have the individual right to keep and bear arms for the specific purpose of defending ourselves and our neighbors, and the weapons we bear should reflect that purpose. That gives us all some latitude to debate proper restrictions. For example, machine guns were banned from private ownership during the Reagan administration, a law that is still in effect today. Certain semi-automatic rifles defined as “assault weapons” were outlawed for ten years during the Clinton administration (though with little effect).

Laws like those prove that there are reasonable limits the public is willing to have imposed. Keep in mind, however, that “firearms are the most-regulated common consumer product in the United States.” It could be argued that our legal framework surrounding guns is in “infringement” territory already.

Some practical things to do instead

As we consider where to (re)draw the lines on the continuum between unrestricted access and sensible limits to gun ownership, there are other things we can do to reduce the risks of school shootings.

Train and arm teachers. Force must be met with force and the sooner during an incident, the better. After a 1974 attack at a school in Israel, the country “passed a law mandating armed security in schools, provided weapons training to teachers and today runs frequent active shooter drills. There have been only two school shootings since then, and both have ended with teachers killing the terrorists.” It’s already being tried in Colorado, where teachers “are being trained to carry guns in classrooms” in order to respond quickly to attacks.

Hire armed guards. Closely associated with arming teachers is the idea of employing security guards at public schools. We already have a pool of qualified candidates: many of America’s veterans are unemployed, yet are trained to use deadly force. We might also hire retired police officers. Having armed guards on location makes them first responders who can eliminate the unprotected gap between when an attack starts and law enforcement arrives.

Use gun-violence restraining orders. Writing in National Review, David French promotes the idea of Gun-Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs). As he explains, a GVRO is “an evidence-based process for temporarily denying a troubled person access to guns,” and that the “concept of the GVRO is simple, not substantially different from the restraining orders that are common in family law, and far easier to explain to the public than our nation’s mental-health adjudications.” Such an approach addresses an individual rather than an entire category.

Home school your kids. The Columbine massacre was a watershed moment for the country. It was also a watershed moment in our decision to home school our children. While it has its challenges, home schooling not only keeps your children physically safe, but you are the primary influence on their intellectual, emotional and spiritual development. If home schooling isn’t for you, consider a private Christian school. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

It’s not the guns: it’s us

Whatever we decide to do in response to this latest horror, one fact is inescapable: we are no longer a virtuous society that can be categorically trusted with firearms. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It is getting harder and harder for us to claim to be “a moral and religious people.” At one time we could plausibly make that claim, but not anymore. We are more like the nation of Israel during the time of the judges: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 17:6).

The issue is the human heart soaked in a secular culture that devalues human life, despises authority, promotes victimhood, mocks religion, glories in debauchery, embraces radical autonomy and rages at the slightest offense.

The breakdown of the family has led to a quarter of our children living in fatherless homes.  Psychotropic drugs are prescribed to more than 8 million children, some as young as 18 months, to control depression, anxiety, and a lack of focus. Ten percent of our children are addicted to video games, many of which are violent. Add a steady diet of movies, music and media that glorify unrestrained sex, violence and drug use, and we’ve got a volatile cocktail of generational depravity that would make Caligula blush.

It all started when we began to systematically remove God from the public square. C.S. Lewis summed up our situation in his work, The Abolition of Man:

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

By all means, let’s adopt additional measures for the safety and security of our children. But let’s also be clear that until we regain our virtue, new policies, laws and strategies won’t put an end to the violence. They never have.

RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

In his recent video for PragerU, National Review senior fellow David French illuminates the political buzzword of “transparency” and the Left’s illicit application of the concept to the private citizen. While the government possesses an obligation to be transparent in its exercise of your tax dollars, privacy is an individual right, and no government is entitled to know whether or not you donate to a nonprofit like IFI.

With echoes of Lord Action’s famous “power corrupts” aphorism, French explains the gravity of capitulating to the Left’s demand for citizen transparency—the disclosure of your personal donations to private nonprofits breeds governmental abuse through exposing you to your political opponents. A country where you only possess free speech if you disregard the repercussions is a country that violates your individual rights.

We highly recommend this five minute PragerU video to you and your family:

French concludes, “While government transparency is an obligation, privacy is an individual right, protected by the First Amendment.”

Here is David French writing at National Review:

Identity politics works like this: Progressives do everything in their power to explicitly and unequivocally stoke race- and gender-related resentments and grievances. Any push-back against identity politics is labeled denialism at best and racism or sexism at worst. Progressive ideas are so self-evidently superior that opposition is best explained as grounded in misogyny or the always-reliable “fear of change.”

“It’s a poisonous ideology,” French writes, and “it’s straining our national unity”:

In the aftermath of the election, the Democrats are doing their own soul-searching, with many of the questions boiling down to a battle between ideas and identities. Did they lose because they nominated a bad candidate who advanced insufficiently attractive ideas? Or did they lose because, in this election cycle at least, there were just too many racists and sexists?

It’s understandable and human that Hillary would point the finger rather than look in the mirror, but if her side wins the argument, look for Democrats to do their dead-level best now and in the future to inflame race- and gender-based grievances. They will tell millions of Americans that the color of their skin and their “gender identity” should dictate their thoughts and beliefs, and that opposition isn’t based on reason or logic but rather hate and fear.

Here’s the thing, though — that destructive narrative is so powerful that, next time, it might just win. If it does, Democrats will feel vindicated, triumphant liberal culture warriors will redouble their assault on conservative ideas and institutions, and the national fabric will continue to fray.

To our paraphilia of the day: Voyeurism. Here is Wikipedia:

Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature.

The voyeur does not normally interact directly with the subject of his/her interest, who is often unaware of being observed. The essence of voyeurism is the observing but may also involve the making of a secret photograph or video of the subject during an intimate activity.

Let me ask our readers to search their hearts for any bigotry that might be in there concerning voyeurs. It’s who they are.

And our closing question: Will the letter V be added to the LGBTQIA (etc.) abbreviation?

Up next: Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

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The liberal news media, which is ever more resembling a communications arm of the Democratic Party, has been determined to portray President Donald Trump’s immigration Executive Order as over-reach, inhumane, and anti-Muslim.

It is not new that American consumers of the news media should be wary of the daily narrative, but the need for it increases daily as nearly every step taken by the Trump Administration is going to be picked apart and pilloried on a daily basis.

The good news is that new media outlets are growing their reach, and old stalwarts like the National Review Online continue to produce a ton of material correcting the record whenever it is necessary. And since President Trump took office just weeks ago, a lot of correcting has been needed.

There is no better example of a need to correct the record is President Trump’s Executive Order ordering a 90-day halt to immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Why those seven and not the other 44 other Muslim-majority countries and territories? Because they are hotbeds of militant Islam, as even Obama conceded labeling them “countries of concern.”

What is in the Executive Order and why is being portrayed as almost a crime against humanity? We all know the answer to the second question — it is because many Democrats and Leftists and supporters of open borders see any limits as problematic.

What about the first question — what is in the Executive Order? Here is David French writing at National Review:

First, the order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast. Before 2016, when Obama dramatically rampedup refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms.

. . .

Second, the order imposes a temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. These are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments.

The ban, French writes, “is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the ‘information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.’”

French notes that the ban has an “important exception”:

‘Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.’ In other words, the secretaries can make exceptions — a provision that would, one hopes, fully allow interpreters and other proven allies to enter the U.S. during the 90-day period.

David French, noted for his role as a “Never Trumper,” also writes:

To the extent this ban applies to new immigrant and non-immigrant entry, this temporary halt (with exceptions) is wise. We know that terrorists are trying to infiltrate the ranks of refugees and other visitors.

“Unless we want to simply accept Muslim immigrant terror as a fact of American life,” French adds, “a short-term ban on entry from problematic countries combined with a systematic review of our security procedures is both reasonable and prudent.”

Reasonable and prudent? Seems so when even Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar Assad says that there are “definitely” some terrorists among the refugees.

A final note of interest. Thomas Gallatin writing at Patriot Post in an article titled, “Behind the Immigration Ban Hysterics: Trump’s travel ban on foreigners is not what the Left claims it is,” writes:

[T]he order will seek to revamp the refugee processing in order to prioritize those of minority religious groups fleeing the persecution of radical Islamists. This will specifically help Christians but also other minorities who have suffered from rising persecution over the last few years. This is a significant change from Obama’s policy that did not favor minority religions in the refugee processing.

Here are a few related articles:

First up is Dr. Michael Brown answering the question “”Is Trump’s executive order on the refugees fundamentally unChristian, or is it being misreported by the media?”

Next, for information on the legal challenge to the Executive Order, read Hans von Spakovsky’s article
“Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration Is Both Legal and Constitutional” at the Heritage Foundation website.

For information about “extreme vetting,” here is Middle East expert Daniel Pipes writing at the Middle East Quarterly: “Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting.”

IFI works diligently to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

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

The United States of America was founded as an extraordinary experiment in freedom balanced by an almost universal worldview — the Christian or biblical worldview — which supplied inward moral constraints and rendered heavy handed government unnecessary and even repugnant.

But today, over 240 years later, America is a battlefield of opposing worldviews: secular humanists who have no transcendent truth to constrain them, versus people of faith who still embrace a biblical worldview. That biblical worldview includes exhortation to all manner of good and godly works and attitudes.

But what of The Left? Those with no moral compass who subscribe to the situational ethics school of thought? How can Progressive leaders and gatekeepers motivate their followers? Simple: fear.

People, in general, are either motivated by love or fear. Many times a healthy dose of fear is not a bad thing: ask the parent who loves their child unconditionally, yet understands the efficacy of fear of consequences.

Consider the notorieties of The Left and some of their chronicled pronouncements intended to evoke fear.

National Review columnist David French writes of fearmonger Al Gore:

In January, 2006 — when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Gore declared that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a “point of no return” in a mere ten years. He called it a “true planetary emergency.” Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.

In case you missed seeing Al’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, here is the film’s synopsis:

Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with former Vice President Al Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change in the most talked-about documentary of the year.

An audience and critical favorite, An Inconvenient Truth makes the compelling case that global warming is real, man-made, and its effects will be cataclysmic if we don’t act now. Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way: often humorous, frequently emotional, and always fascinating. In the end, An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.

Notice the hyperbolic language — cataclysmic — and the ultimate goal of the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.” Shaken. Indeed. Trembling with fear. Now that’s some motivation!

Now consider the collective works and declarations of Hollywood heavyweight (pun intended) Michael Moore. Take a look at the PR description of Moore’s 2009 film, Capitalism: A Love Story:

Filmmaker Michael Moore explores corporate greed, the global economic meltdown, and their disastrous effect on American lives. As he travels from the Heartland to the financial epicenter of New York and the halls of government in Washington, Moore delves into the price the country pays for its love of capitalism.

Moore’s earlier 2002 movie, Bowling for Columbine, delivers a foreboding message concerning guns in America:

Political documentary filmmaker Michael Moore explores the circumstances that lead to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and, more broadly, the proliferation of guns and the high homicide rate in America. In his trademark provocative fashion, Moore accosts Kmart corporate employees and pleads with them to stop selling bullets, investigates why Canada doesn’t have the same excessive rate of gun violence and questions actor Charlton Heston on his support of the National Rifle Association.

Leftist Moore crafts his documentaries to support his radical worldview: capitalism is unadulterated greed which will destroy America and the globe; guns and the NRA and Charlton Heston are evil and the cause of violence in America. Each of Moore’s films seek to instill fear in the audience.

Another purveyor of fear, Nobel Peace Prize Winning Barack Obama has the bully pulpit and the Progressive mindset to disseminate chilling, but fictitious, dictums. With the looming danger of Islamic terrorism, Obama dons his blinders and preaches:

Today there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.

. . .

No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.

Secretary of State John Kerry warns:

It is [climate change], indeed, one of the greatest threats facing our planet today.

Even Veep Joe Biden gets in on the “scare-your-pants off with man-caused climate change doom” act:

Climate change is the threat multiplier.

Watch the video below with these and more scary quotes:

Now we all know we should live in fear and trembling of climate change, gun owners and capitalism. But wait, there’s more.

Slow Joe Biden warned the black community in August 2012, replete with his phony “black brother accent:”

[Romney] said in the first hundred days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.

Thus Americans can add Romney and all Republicans to the list of phobias. But, don’t put down your pen — if you’re taking notes.

President Obama decried flyover folks in 2008:

And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County.

“…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.”

So there you go. According to Obama, working class Americans are bitter, God-clinging, gun-clinging, xenophobics who should be objects of suspicion and loathing.

Our universities have been indoctrinating students for several generations with this nonsense, instilling fear of patriots and what were once considered solid American values. Colleges advertise “safe zones” and decry “micro-aggression and trigger warnings.”

Oklahoma Wesleyan University President, Dr. Everett Piper, wrote an excellent rebuttal to all the PC/Lefty nonsense in his 2015 article, This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!:

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university.

Let’s face it, The Left is motivated by, and only by, feelings — not facts nor solid intellectual argument. With a worldview wherein man is both intrinsically good and, strangely, the enemy of the planet, the best mode of motivation is fear. Pure, unsubstantiated fear.

Contrast that with the Judeo-Christian, the biblical, worldview. Those who revere the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those who read the Bible and try to live out its precepts. Those people of faith believe in right and wrong, in sin and mercy and grace. And they believe in absolute, transcendent truth.

If The Left motivates through fear, how does The Right, Conservatives of faith, motivate? Love.

There are over 360 passages in the Bible which tells us to “fear not.” And with great clarity the apostle John writes:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18

Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries notes:

We are fragile mortals, given to fears of every sort. We have a built-in insecurity that no amount of whistling in the dark can mollify. We seek assurance concerning the things that frighten us the most.

The prohibition uttered more frequently than any other by our Lord is the command, “Fear not …” He said this so often to His disciples and others He encountered that it almost came to sound like a greeting. Where most people greet others by saying “Hi” or “Hello,” the first words of Jesus very often were “Fear not.”

Our culture may be a war zone as we wrestle against principalities and powers who wield fear as a weapon of control.

The antidote for that fear is truth and love. We must be apologists of truth, striking down the nonsense of the fear peddlers. As John Mark penned:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Sorry fearmongers, you don’t have a chance of winning: perfect love casts out fear.

Join IFI at our Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Sat., Feb. 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!