Missouri Atheist Group Says It Will Take Part in St. Patrick’s Day Parade Despite Ban

An atheist organization in Missouri banned from taking part in a citywide St. Patrick’s Day Parade has stated that it will participate despite the ban.

According to Fox 4 of Kansas City, the leader of the Kansas City Atheist Coalition announced earlier this week that his organization would hold an event along the parade route titled “Ask an Atheist.”

“We want to help people understand that atheism is not a negative worldview,” said Josh Hyde, vice president of the KCAC, in a statement.

“As atheists, we believe it is up to us – not a deity – to make the world a better place, which is why we do volunteer work, raise money for charity and work to promote equality and human rights.”

Last month, the KCAC submitted an application to be part of the city’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, set to be held Sunday.

However, the application was rejected. Sarah Hargreaves, a member of the KCAC, told Fox 4 that the rejection was “discrimination.”

“The idea that they are presenting now that this is a very Catholic event and they were celebrating the patron saint and his Christian legacy, I think makes for a good response but I don’t think that’s their reason,” said Hargreaves.

“I think people on the parade committee are personally offended by atheists in a similar way that there are people in this country that are offended at the existence of people who are gay.”

Organized by a group of private volunteers since the 1970s, Kansas City’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade is listed on its website as a nonprofit 501C3 corporation.

In addition to the parade, festivities included in the celebration include a Gaelic Mass at Redemptorist Catholic Church and a food drive. Fr. Patrick Tobin will be this year’s Grand Marshall.

Erin Kiekbusch of the parade board of directors forwarded a statement to The Christian Post from the 2013 Parade Co-Chairs Sharon Bundy and Anne McKeown.

“Kansas City’s parade celebrates the Feast Day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, and the Christian teachings and beliefs that he lived and suffered for. The Atheist Coalition’s published mission is to advance godlessness through activism,” reads the statement.

“[Its] stated intent regarding the 2013 parade was to carry banners with phrases such as ‘positively godless’ and ‘morals without mythology.’ It was with respect for the legacy of St. Patrick that the parade committee turned down the Atheist Coalition’s application to participate in this year’s procession.”

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/missouri-atheist-group-says-it-will-take-part-in-st-patricks-day-parade-despite-ban-91982/#2clzsT10wFhSc0D7.99

America: Is it Time to Be Consumed with God?

By Tim Rowe

Are you consumed with God? What an intriguing and life-changing question! Or is God just another contact in your Rolodex of life that you mean to catch up with and try to fit Him in your schedule, but the busyness of life has just swept away this opportunity. It is unfortunate to say, but most of us are more consumed with our grocery list than we are with God. God has pressed this question into the very fiber of my soul, and as I examined my life with an open and honest eye I would have to say I have fallen woefully short of being consumed with God. We are consumed with our television shows, consumed with our music, consumed with our movies, consumed with our schedules, consumed with our careers, consumed with our education, consumed with our politics, consumed with our family, consumed with our health, consumed with our success but how many of us are consumed with God? We are just too busy for our Creator and would rather spend time at a Starbucks with some latte rather than in the throne room of the living God becoming intimate and acquainted with God Almighty. 

Just think of all the people we would offend if we were consumed with God! We would be labeled a wacko, a religious nut, an intolerant fool, a misguided idiot and an unenlightened, dogmatic jerk if we dared to be consumed with God.  We have so “evolved” in culture, science and behavior that we just don’t need to be consumed with God anymore or so we are told. Who needs God anymore as long as I have my iPod? Who needs God when I have the world at my fingertips from my computer in my cozy house? Who needs God when I have Netflix, iTunes, DroidX and Xbox? Who needs God when I can TiVo? God has to be more than just on our mailing list. God has to be more than just on our wish list. God has to be a living, burning fire in the depths of our heart. God has to be more alive, more real, more present, more close and more looked to than any earthly thing. An electronic device may fascinate you for a moment, but it can never bring you peace, love, joy or true satisfaction. It is a sad characteristic to this “enlightened” world that God is so dead in the hearts of people.  

We have a whole religious culture in society today, but God is most often a million miles away as its heartbeat long ago quit being synchronized to the heartbeat of God. Unfortunately there is no place where God may be deader than in the church. We rationalize that we go to church for 60 minutes a week and offer sporadic thirty-second prayers to God throughout the week and that is enough as I just have too many other things going on. My schedule is packed. I am overwhelmed with everything I HAVE to do. You just don’t understand. 

It is sad to say that there are Ten Thousand and Eighty (10,080) minutes in a week and Five Hundred Twenty Four Thousand One Hundred and Sixty (524,160) minutes in a year and we think we are doing God a favor if we spend sixty minutes of the over ten thousand minutes a week for Him or three thousand minutes a year of the over half a million available. Wow we are spending one half of one percent of our time with God, and we wonder why spiritual anemia and lack are rampant in our lives. We wonder why God is just not all that real to us and why we are so lacking of the demonstration of the power of God in our lives. We wonder why our heart is dead to God. 

God must become more to us then a fleeting thought or a desperate prayer when we are in trouble. God must become our life. God must become our passion. God must become what we chase after with an unrelenting tenacity of heart and soul. I dare you to be consumed with God and see how God will move to transform your life into the realm of the miraculous, the amazing and the extraordinary. Nothing compares to God, absolutely nothing. Nothing is more satisfying than Jesus Christ. We have settled for second best. We have been consumed with the counterfeit, the second-rate, the cheap thrill and the moment of glory.  We love to have our senses tickled with the latest fad. All the while God is crying out like in Isaiah 65 (Message Bible): 

“I’ve made myself available to those who haven’t bothered to ask.
I’m here, ready to be found   by those who haven’t bothered to look.
I kept saying ‘I’m here, I’m right here’   to a nation that ignored me.
I reached out day after day to a people who turned their backs on me,
People who make wrong turns,  who insist on doing things their own way.”  

How long can a nation afford to ignore Him? Isn’t it about time that we seek God with our whole heart and find Him? He has and always will be right there with His arms stretched out towards us. He always invites us to come and turn to Him and experience life, joy and peace in a new dimension far above the glitter of the world. What is holding us back? What is preventing us from being consumed with God?                                      

Do you know that God is consumed with you? Do you know that God thinks about you all the time? Do you know that God’s love for you is immeasurable and unfathomable and to such a degree that it transcends human understanding? Do you know that God longs for you to fall into His embrace and to cleave unto Him with all your heart and strength? Do you know that God wants to be wanted by you, He wants to be loved, He wants to be cherished, He wants to be adored, He wants to be treasured, and He wants to be worshipped?  The Psalmist says that God’s thoughts toward us are so many and so wonderful that they cannot be numbered. 

God has always loved you no matter what you have done. God has always been there even in your darkest hour even though you may not have ever realized it. God will never give up on you for He is a loving God and not just a fickle person (Hosea 11). God will never quit chasing you for His love for you burns deep and true. God is pleading to you, please let me be your God, your everything, your reason for breathing and let me bear my mighty arm for you and show you my goodness and glory. God has never forgotten you, not ever, not even for a second. Don’t you want to know this God? 

Are you desperate for God or does God only enter the picture when you are on your last rope with nowhere else to turn? Do we place God on shelf only to take Him off the shelf when we have tried everything else? Do we realize deep inside of every man and woman is the intense desire to know His Creator because we were all made in the image of God. This hunger is never satisfied by things or people or addictions or success, but can only be quenched by an intimate relationship with God Almighty. Is your love for God all-consuming or as affectionate as a peck on the cheek? Have we allowed the routine of life to replace the adventure of knowing the only true God whose love is boundless, whose mercy is everlasting and whose grace is abundant? Are we too busy, to tired or just too lazy to spend time with God daily? Do we run to do everything else first before we even consider time with God?  

Do you know God gave everything so you could be brought as an honored son or daughter into the family of God? Would you give all you have to Him without reservation as act of devoted love? Let us cry out like Job “My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you!” Do you long to experience God on a deeper level? Do you long to enjoy God in all the richness of everything He is? Why not be consumed with God? You will never be disappointed from now throughout all eternity. He is calling you now to come to Him and experience the healing wholeness and deliverance that is available in His Son Jesus Christ. He crushed all captivity, sin and bondage and paid the ultimate price so we might live. Doesn’t he deserve everything? Doesn’t He merit all our passion, all our love, all our devotion, all our worship, all our priorities, and all our heart? How we could advance the kingdom of God if we were consumed with God! Do you dare to take God at His Word and be consumed with Him? Your life will never be the same and the lives of all those around you. It is time to take the leap. We have nothing to lose. Let’s be consumed with God from this moment forward. Let us cry out like David with a yearning heart:                                   

Psalm 65:1-8 (NIV): 

 ¹ You, God, are my God,
   earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
   my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
   where there is no water.

 ² I have seen you in the sanctuary
   and beheld your power and your glory.
³ Because your love is better than life,
   my lips will glorify you.
⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
   and in your name I will lift up my hands.
⁵ I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
   with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

 ⁶ On my bed I remember you;
   I think of you through the watches of the night.
⁷ Because you are my help,
   I sing in the shadow of your wings.
⁸ I cling to you;
   your right hand upholds me.

Comedy Central Allows Mockery of Christianity on South Park but Bleeps the Name ‘Prophet Muhammad’ from a Recent Episode

Contact: Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, 540-538-4741, 202-547-1735  

WASHINGTON, April 23 /Christian Newswire/ — Network “censors” South Park after radical Islamic group makes threats about the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.
 
http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/04/south-park-censorship-.html 

It is bigotry and discrimination at its worst to protect one faith tradition, Islam, and allow others to be mocked and ridiculed.

South Park has a long history of mocking Christianity and its values which Comedy Central has repeatedly aired.

By bowing to the pressure of radical Islamic extremists, Comedy Central shows their utter contempt for free speech, their cowardice and their distain for religious tolerance and equality.

Sadly, this double standard by Comedy Central toward Christianity, reflects the prevailing attitude in pop culture toward the Christian faith and their values.

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, states,
 
“It is bigotry and discrimination at its worst to protect one faith tradition, Islam, and allow Christianity and others to be mocked and ridiculed.
 
“South Park has a long history of mocking Christianity and its values which Comedy Central has repeatedly aired.  Yet, they bowed to pressure from Islamic extremists and bleeped the name the ‘Prophet Muhammad’ out of one of their recent episodes.  This is an absolute disgrace.

“Let’s be clear.  By caving in to pressure from extremists, Comedy Central has shown they are cowards, have no respect for free speech or protecting artistic freedom in the shows they air. 
 
“This network is not progressive, edgy or forward thinking.  Rather, they are religious bigots who sacrifice free speech when facing a bully. Comedy Central shame on you.
 
“Sadly, this reflects a growing trend in pop culture where it is ‘open season’ and a double standard regarding Christianity and its values.  This may be reflected in the National Endowment for the Arts funding a picture of Jesus in a vat of urine or HBO airing an episode of Larry David urinating on a picture of Jesus.
 
“In America, all faith traditions should be treated with equality.”

Tiananmen Square Leader Chai Ling Embraces Christian Faith and Freedom

BOSTON, April 22 /Christian Newswire/ – More than 20 years ago, a young woman named Chai Ling mourned the death of political and economic reformer Hu Yaobang, a symbol of freedom and hope for the forward-thinking students of China. Hu’s funeral, held on April 22, 1989 seven days after his death, was attended by 50,000 students.

Chai Ling, then a 23-year-old top-ranking national honors student at “Bei Shi Da” Beijing Normal University, became a galvanizing force in the Tiananmen Square Student Movement, rallying thousands of hopeful students, and later becoming the top leader of the protest movement. Following the bloody Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, Chai Ling skyrocketed to a place on the “21 most-wanted” students list in China for organizing the demonstration. With the help of Chinese Buddhists and Hong-Kong organizations, she escaped from China in 1990, eventually arriving in the United States.

Following her immigration to the U.S., Chai Ling settled in Boston, MA, where she met and married her husband Robert Maginn, Jr. Together, they built the software company Jenzabar, which now employs more than 280 employees. Chai Ling earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1998, and has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. She has used her success to give back to the marginalized in China, helping fund orphanages and humanitarian efforts in-country. Last year, she pledged to give millions to fund organizations supporting human rights in China.

“I stumbled on this idea that if only I could become a very successful entrepreneur, like Bill Gates, I could make lots money and set up a giant foundation, then I could once for all overcome and free China,” Chai Ling said. Despite her fruitful actions, she began to lose hope, feeling too weak to accomplish her goal of bringing freedom to China.

In November 2009, Chai Ling attended a hearing in the U.S. Capitol on the effects of China’s One Child Policy. On hearing the personal story of one woman’s brutal forced abortion, Chai Ling was finally convicted that only God could stop such brutality. Through the encouragement and prayers of several mentors and friends, Chai Ling became a Christian on December 4, 2009.

Chai Ling’s goal of freedom and hope for the Chinese people has not changed since her days as a student. But her perspective and focus is fresh and renewed. She now has hope for bringing God’s love and freedom to the people of China, as well as raising awareness of and fighting against the One Child Policy. At her baptism on Easter, April 4, Chai Ling presented her testimony. Her story is a rousing testament to the transformational power of the Gospel, and the hope of Christ in a broken and sinful world.

Read Chai Ling’s testimony

Read more background on Chai Ling

Chinese Premier Offers a Tribute to a Reformer

Chuck Colson on The Tiananmen Massacre

As the memorial of Tiananmen Square approaches, ChinaAid expresses gratitude for a Chai Ling’s life and testimony, and for the thousands of Chinese who have become Christians in recent years. We encourage Chai Ling and other advocates to continue raising awareness of the evils of China’s One Child Policy and to pursue religious freedom as their basic human right.

See the article at ChinaAid.org

ChinaAid grants permission to reproduce photos and/or information for non-fundraising purposes, with the provision that www.ChinaAid.org is credited. Please contact: Annee@ChinaAid.org for further information.

The Greatest Threat to Liberty in America is not Radical Islam but Nominal Christianity

America is sounding the clarion call-wake up out of your slumber Christians for the lamp of liberty is beginning to dim and  flicker out. The greatest threat to liberty in our country is not radical Islam but nominal Christianity. The Bible boldly declares ”where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty,” and that Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus  who preached the gospel to the poor, healed the brokenhearted, set the captive free, restored sight to the blind and set at liberty those who were crushed. He led captive to the cross every bondage, every addiction, every depression, every captivity and everything that holds a person in the chains of slavery. He is the Captain of liberty for every soul that comes to His open arms and is redeemed by his saving blood. This same Jesus can deliver a nation that is broken with sin and full of idols. A nation that has turned its heart from God and worshipped the things, ideas and philosophies of humans. God is not needed or wanted by so many, and the voice of the ungodly has risen up with great boldness to eradicate righteousness and justice from every segment of society.

Where are the Christians? Why are they silent? Where are the mighty works of power that are delivering the crushed in the name of Jesus Christ? Where is the great movement of the Spirit of God in the lives and heart of men, women and children? Our nation and our generation needs an awakening of first century, radical and life-changing Christianity. We have too often let the agnostics, the atheists, the ungodly, the unrighteous, the unpure, and the unholy control our culture, our politics, our courts, our schools and our families. We have let them erode the foundations of this great country which was founded on a deep love and trust in God into a bed of secular humanism and the glory of man.

How did this happen? Because most of us practice a nominal Christianity.  We wind up God for an hour a week in church and forget about Him the rest of the week. We watch hundreds of hours of television that weakens our heart for Him while we barely even crack open the greatest and most powerful book about life ever written, the Bible. We say a quick prayer as we rush out the door as we are just too busy to give God much time during our busy day. We let bitterness, criticism, hatred, pride, envy and anxiety rule in our hearts instead of God’s great love.  The greatest power for change, Christ, resides in us with all His fullness but we never activate it but choose to suffocate it with our own fears, insecurities, doubts and apathy. We have more passion for a football or baseball game then we have for the calling of God Almighty. Our love has far too often waxed cold and we are at best lukewarm for God. We have failed to let God build the character of Christ in our words and actions. We have failed to let Him use our hands, our feet, our mouth and our heart for His glory. 

These are the proving hours, the critical time for liberty and we must restore the power, love, deliverance and holiness to the church of a Christ that is alive and setting the hearts of men and women on fire and freeing them from every bondage that holds us back from giving our utmost for Him. We cannot be silent,  but we must speak the word of God with great love and power, fueling the lamp of liberty. We must become involved in our communities helping people and reaching out to those in need. We must be the voice of truth in our schools and our city halls and our courtrooms. We must walk in great wisdom with all the authority of Christ making a difference in every life we meet. Silence is not an option. For our country, failure is not an option. Wake up Christians and let us really make Christ the Lord of our life. Let him direct our lives on His path and inspire us to do great things for Him. The best history of the Christian church can be written by our lives and our churches. The best can be yet to come.  We can be a city upon a hill that shines the light of Christ to a nation that is desperately in need of healing. 

Deepen your relationship with God. Love Him. Read His instruction book for life and meditate upon its great transforming truths. Pray, pray and then pray some more. Help someone in need. Speak encouraging words that build up rather than tear down. Love like you have never loved before and trust God to develop great fruit in your life. Tell others about how great God is and the great things He has done for you. Speak about the gift of eternal life and salvation that Christ gave his life for. Ask God to use you to heal and strengthen our nation. Trust him to direct every step of your life. Have great compassion and forgiveness in all things and never forget there is a day coming that Christ is coming back so you can live with Him forever. Nothing in life compares to God and the great deliverance and freedom He offers in Christ. Never forget we are in a spirtual battle and that God is our coach, captain, defender, protector and banner. Time is of the essence. We cannot delay. Let’s not be nominal Christians anymore as we refuse to let the lamp of liberty go out in our generation.

California city may face legal action over prayer vote

LOS ANGELES — LOS ANGELES (AP) – When Lancaster’s flamboyant mayor R. Rex Parris calls the City Council to order at its next meeting, it’s a good bet he’ll open the proceedings with a prayer.

A controversial measure calling on residents to allow the City Council to continue beginning its meetings with heads bowed passed by a vote of more than 3-to-1 in Tuesday’s municipal election.

The issue seems far from resolved, however.

Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said Wednesday the ACLU is considering taking Lancaster to court if the prayers keep singling out Christianity over other religions.

Parris, who was up for re-election, had exhorted people to vote for the prayer initiative even if they didn’t want to vote for him.

Apparently quite a few listened, as he won re-election over four challengers by collecting 57 percent of the vote. Voters also extended the mayor’s term from two to four years beginning in 2012.

Nonbinding Measure I, the prayer measure placed on the ballot by the City Council, put the spotlight on the dusty, high-desert community of 145,000 located 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

City officials say clergy of different faiths are invited to lead the opening prayer, but critics have complained that Christian prayers are usually delivered. The Antelope Valley Press reported in February that 11 of 14 prayers over one stretch invoked the name of Jesus Christ.

Parris said Wednesday that isn’t surprising, estimating that as much as 90 percent of the community’s faithful is Christian. But the mayor, a prominent litigation attorney, said he is confident the measure will hold up in court. He said city officials were careful to phrase it in a way that gives all religious groups the opportunity to take part in leading some prayers.

Eliasberg said there is precedent for allowing nondenominational prayers at a public meeting, but that constitutional boundaries protecting religious freedom are crossed when such prayers almost always advocate a particular religion.

“We don’t allow the voters to decide what’s the official religion in the city of Lancaster,” he said.

The controversy was fueled in part by Parris’ statement earlier this year that he was “growing a Christian community” in Lancaster. He later apologized, saying he realized his words had offended non-Christians. He said Wednesday he’s proud that some of his most ardent supporters are members of Lancaster’s Sikh community.

Courtesy of http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/apr/14/calif-city-may-face-legal-action-over-prayer/

Christophobia-Anti-Christian bigotry is the last fashionable hatred

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner

Christianity is dying. It was once the bastion of Western civilization. Now, Christianity is a pitiful remnant of its former greatness. Across the West, it is in full retreat.

The sex-abuse scandal is ravaging the Catholic Church – tarring Pope Benedict XVI himself. The Anglican Church has been eviscerated, losing members as it succumbs to the liberal winds of female ordination and gay rights. Many Protestant denominations are abandoning their beliefs and fervent missionary zeal, embracing chic environmentalism and watered-down socialism as a cheap substitute for the traditional Gospel. Europe, the ancient stronghold of Christendom, has been transformed into a secular neo-pagan culture. For Europeans, God is dead; He has been replaced by materialist man.

The secular tidal wave has also hit and overwhelmed America. Since the 1960s, the United States has been the victim of the sexual revolution that glorifies hedonism and personal liberation. Pornography, abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, the AIDS epidemic, soaring out-of-wedlock births, sky-rocketing divorce rates and the breakdown of the family – these are the poisoned fruits of the Playboy philosophy. MTV morality is in; Jesus is out.

The war waged by liberals on Christianity, however, has gone to a new, more dangerous level – one bordering on soft totalitarianism. Recently, the city of Davenport, Iowa, removed Good Friday from its municipal calendar. The Davenport Civil Rights Commission sought to change the name of the holiday to one that is less “divisive” and more ecumenical. Hence, a memo was sent to municipal employees stating Good Friday would be officially known as “Spring Holiday.” City administrators stressed that celebrating Good Friday violates the separation of church and state.

“We merely made a recommendation that the name be changed to something other than Good Friday,” said Tim Hart, the commission’s chairman. “Our Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Davenport touts itself as a diverse city and given all the different types of religious and ethnic backgrounds we represent, we suggested the change.”

After an uproar by outraged Christians, the city council decided to resurrect the name Good Friday. The multicultural secularists in Davenport have been defeated – for now.

Yet, the controversy is an ominous sign: The left is determined to extirpate Christian holidays and symbols from our society. Liberals are determined to smash traditional values and drive Christians underground. The American left is following in the shameful – and much more bloody – footsteps of Marxist regimes. Instead of eradicating religious faith through the barrel of a gun, leftists use bureaucratic dictates and mass propaganda.

The result is the same. Christianity is gradually being purged from the public square. Christmas celebrations have become offensive. “Merry Christmas” is now considered to be politically incorrect; the proper greeting is “happy holidays.” The Ten Commandments cannot be displayed in courtrooms or classes. Prayer has been banished from public schools. Christians are regularly mocked in movies and TV. Taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize “art” that depicts Christ in unflattering ways. Hollywood makes films – such as “Angels and Demons” – portraying the Catholic Church as a repressive, sinister and primitive institution.

Anti-Christian bigotry is the last fashionable hatred. It is easy for Davenport’s Christophobes to pick on Good Friday. What’s the worst that could happen? Angry phone calls and e-mails? Town-hall meetings? Maybe public protests? But, in the end, progressive commissars realize they will not pay much of a price – in fact, they will be celebrated by liberal elites for their “enlightened ideals.”

The same standards do not apply to Islam. Davenport’s multiculturalists would never dare to remove say, Ramadan, from the calendar and rename it “Fasting Month” for fear of offending Muslims – and possibly triggering a fatwa. Self-preservation – and cowardice – dissuades them from attacking certain religions.

Christians, however, are an easy target. They do not believe in jihad or suicide bombing. Unlike radical Islamists, they espouse the rule of law and human rights. They accept persecution – even state-sanctioned persecution – as part of their religious burden. Liberals realize that Christianity is a genuine “religion of peace.” This is why they do not fear systematically smearing it.

The Founding Fathers emphasized that the constitutional republic depended upon a vigorous religious society.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” said John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The Founding Fathers were not secularists. On the contrary, they were devout Christians (with the exception of some Enlightenment deists like Thomas Jefferson), who feared an established church – especially, the Church of England – which persecuted dissenters. They would regard it as bizarre and repulsive were they to witness how the concept of the separation of church and state would be twisted in our time into a form of radical secularism and anti-Christian bias.

Our Judeo-Christian heritage provides the underpinnings to our constitutional government for one simple reason: It acknowledges the transcendental nature of man. Our fundamental liberties flow from God almighty – not the state. This is why individual rights – to life, liberty and property – are the essential bulwarks against government power: What God has given, no man – or regime – can take away. Once America loses its Christian identity, it will inevitably lose its freedoms.

Christophobia forms the basis of modern liberalism. Leftist progressives are determined to destroy traditional America and its seminal institutions – the Constitution, capitalism, national sovereignty and the family. This is why they have declared war on Christianity. If Christians do not rise from their apathy and man the ideological barricades, they will be driven into the catacombs once again. And with their defeat comes the end of our great republic.

We must boldly stand against any who attempt to degrade our Christian heritage. We must identify them as practicing one of the last acceptable forms of bigotry and hatred: Christophobia. Our right to embrace Christ is no less than their right to embrace a perverse lifestyle.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank. He is the daily host of the “Kuhner Show” on WTNT 570-AM (www.talk570.com) from noon until 3 p.m.

Courtesy of Washington Times at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/02/christophobia/

Paganism vs. the Gospel

By Chuck Colson

Recently, a man in Pakistan’s Sindh province took a bath, met with his family, and then killed his three daughters and himself.

• 

This was not your run-of-the-mill murder-suicide. It was human sacrifice to a god who couldn’t be more different from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That god was the Hindu deity Kali, who is often depicted wearing a garland composed of severed human heads. When the British arrived in Calcutta in the 18th century, a boy was sacrificed every day at her temple.

Over the years, pumpkins, effigies, and goats have replaced people in the sacrifices. What hasn’t changed is the belief in Kali’s appetite for blood. Thus, while what happened in Sindh was rare, it was not unheard of.

Several devotees, known as “tantrics,” have been arrested for performing human sacrifices. In every case, the goal was the same: to appease Kali and obtain favors such as wealth, happiness, and, ironically, children.

I want to emphasize that Hindus are among the most peace-loving people in the world. The actions of these people are by no means representative.

What is representative, however, is their belief that worship largely consists in appeasing the deity. In order to obtain favor, the worshipper must offer the proper sacrifice. Get it wrong and your prayers aren’t answered. Or worse.

This worldview is very similar to that of the ancient world into which Jesus became incarnate. The pagan gods were a fickle and demanding lot who demanded blood and abasement from their worshipers-and even then “answered” prayers only on a whim.

This is why so many classical philosophers, like many of their Indian counterparts throughout history, were put off by popular religious practices. So they substituted an “unknown” god and an unknowable god.

Once you understand the options, it’s easy to see why the Gospel turned the classical world upside down. It revealed a God who was neither remote nor capricious. He wasn’t driven by human-like appetites and petty emotions. He is motivated by love for His people and the good of His worshippers.

This God desires “mercy, not sacrifice,” and to prove how much He meant it, He sacrificed his only Son so as to render all other sacrifices unnecessary.

This message took the classical world by storm-and continues to do the same thing in our world today. Its message that Christ has triumphed over death and “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” is liberating, not only on a personal level but also on a societal level.

The idea of man made in God’s image revolutionized ideas about human life and ethics and provided a whole new way of seeing life in the Western world.

How ironic that we in the post-Christian West are exchanging belief in the “personal, benevolent God” of Christianity for a sanitized paganism. Whether it’s “new age” mumbo jumbo or Wicca for Dummies, we have forgotten the dread these beliefs caused our ancestors and the awful things it made them do.

This weekend, as we commemorate Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice on the cross, we’d do well to remember that we are no longer slaves, we are heirs-children of God. And that is very good news, indeed.

Courtesy of Christian Post at http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100403/paganism-vs-the-gospel/index.html

Prophets of the New Atheism

By David Klinghoffer

Special to The Times

While the American cultural landscape includes many religions, it’s still fascinating to watch closely when we have the chance to observe a new faith being born. Consider, for example, a religious phenomenon that has been dubbed the “new atheism,” prominently represented by some bestselling books.

Can disbelief in God be considered “religious”? Sure. Just ask Zen Buddhists, who worship no deity. By religion, I mean any faith-based set of values that makes exclusive claims for its truth and explains the mysteries of the universe. Yes, atheism begins with a faith, namely that only material and physical (not spiritual) causes make the world run.

Two recent atheist gospels, by Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”) and Sam Harris (“Letter to a Christian Nation”), are the country’s top two bestsellers among “religion” books, according to Publishers Weekly. The books are outselling even a Christian megahit like Rick Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life.”

These leading lights contend that traditional religions are not only false, but dangerous and morally grotesque. The title of another hot atheist tract, by journalist Christopher Hitchens and forthcoming in May, says it all: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

Who are the new atheists? While only 5.2 percent of Americans identify themselves as atheists, according to 2006 Baylor University polling data, it’s a privileged demographic category, disproportionately college-educated and affluent. Atheists tend to live on the West Coast or East Coast. In its polling sample, the Baylor study found not one atheist African American. Meanwhile, those of us from Jewish backgrounds are represented well out of proportion to our national numbers, with 8.3 percent rejecting belief in God.

You can see how influential atheism has become by noting how the media and academia deal with traditional faith. A recent New York Times Magazine cover story detailed the big debate among academic psychologists: Did God-centered religion evolve in prehistoric man as a useful adaptation or as a surprising byproduct of other evolutionary processes? The possibility that it developed in response to a living God was not considered.

The new religion has a scientific appeal, with orthodox evolutionary theory recruited to provide a rationalistic “proof” for atheist teaching. For this reason, Oxford University biologist Dawkins devotes the “central argument of [his] book” to an attempted refutation of intelligent design (ID), the alternative to neo-Darwinian evolution that has been spearheaded by Seattle’s Discovery Institute (where I work).

Unfortunately, Dawkins does not grapple with the latest arguments for intelligent design as formulated by their chief proponents. Harris is similarly preoccupied by ID, which evidently provoked the new atheism’s present evangelistic push.

Darwinism, of course, is hardly new. The novelty here lies in the new faith’s missionary fervor. Dawkins writes explicitly about making “converts.”

Another novelty: In the 18th and 20th centuries, respectively, the atheist French and Russian revolutions sought political power above all else, with terrifyingly violent results. Luckily, far from being politicians, the new atheists seek religious influence for its own sake.

Despite these novel features, in other ways the new atheism will be familiar to historians who have studied the trajectory of upstart faiths. A favorite strategy of such groups has long been to attack cartoon versions of older rival religions.

Dawkins, for his part, mocks the God of the Hebrew Bible as “arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Such a wild caricature will be unrecognizable to any believer (like me) in the God of Israel. But Dawkins and Harris seem unfamiliar with religious tradition as biblical monotheists know it from personal experience and deep study. Frankly, the success of the new atheist faith would be hard to imagine without today’s soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy.

Which might sound like the new religion has a promising future. I doubt it. For one thing, God gives objective definition to our ideas of right and wrong, crucial for civilization. Equally important, he provides meaning to life itself.

Certainly, you can have an ethical individual atheist, an instinctively caring, generous person who happens to disbelieve in God. But an atheist society could not survive. It would first live on the fumes of ancient moral traditions. In the end, racked by despair at life’s apparent meaninglessness, its members would return to more nourishing faiths.

That’s what we see happening now in formerly communist Russia, with its Christian and Jewish revivals. The evaporation of atheist communism is a lesson worth pondering, and a sobering one, for the new atheists.

Courtesy of nwsource.com at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003653502_klinghoffer06.html

Faith and the Law Note: The new atheists should tune into faith and the law for our weekly top five list. Here is a sample of some of the latest top five lists pertaining to atheists.

Top Five Reasons Atheist Billboards Don’t Work

1) Freethinkers?  No comment. LOL.  

2) Hard time getting IRS to grant tax-exempt status as a charity organization. —

3) Like trying to convince people that air does not exist. Arguments are so insane that they are comical. —

4) Those all night “there is no God” telethons just aren’t raising the money.  —

5) In Sacramento alone $6400 a month for a billboard to convince people not to believe in God?  Am I missing something? 

 

TOP 5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT JOIN AN ATHEIST COLLEGE CLUB

 

1) For a college, one of the most ignorant groups on campus.

 

2) Who wants to worship Darwin or have faith in junk science.

 

3) Pepto-Bismol not help that empty feeling have inside.

 

4) Too hard to answer your own prayers.

 

5) “Eat, drink and be merry” t-shirts are a bit pricey.

 

 

TOP FIVE REASONS WHY ATHEISTS ARE JUST A MESS

 

1) ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE. OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT THE WONDERS OF CREATION AND THE HUMAN BODY. ARE YOU TELLING ME A GENERIC, NO NAME, ETHEREAL, VAGUE, UNDEFINED CONCEPT OR PROCESS BROUGHT THIS PERFECT CREATION INTO EXISTENCE FROM NOTHING? WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?

 

2) GOD LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY OF YOUR COLLEGE PROFESSORS OR FELLOW NON-BELIEVERS.

 

3) SIMPLY SUBSTITUTING THE WORD “NATURE” FOR GOD DOESN’T GET RID OF YOUR CREATOR

 

4) YOUR STAR TREK SPOCK LOGIC JUST IS NOT ENOUGH TO OUTSMART GOD.

 

5) WOW! A BUS-BILLBOARD CAMPAIGN TO TRY TO GET PEOPLE NOT TO BELIEVE IN GOD. WHAT WILL YOU THINK OF NEXT?

Christianity is Not to Blame for the Holocaust, Atheism and Secular Humanism Is, Author says.

Contact: Anthony Horvath, Athanatos Christian Ministries, 202-280-7971; Joseph Keysor, keysor@hitlerandchristianity.com

LA CROSSE, Wisc., Feb. 26 /Christian Newswire/ – In his book, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” author Joseph Keysor confronts the rising chorus that Christianity is to blame for all the world’s evils, and especially the more recent charges that the Holocaust itself is the fault of the Christian religion and Hitler was guided by his Christian principles.

“Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” is available for pre-ordering now.

Originally published on Hitler’s birthday in 2009, Athanatos Christian Ministries is releasing an updated edition in both hard and soft covers on March 8th, 2010.

Author Joseph Keysor takes special aim at the claims of the so-called ‘New Atheists,’ in particular Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Mr. Keysor states, “It has become convenient to summarily dismiss religion on the grounds that it does more harm than good. Obviously, rewriting history to fit the same paradigm is the next step. Atheists have even managed to blame the millions who died at the hands of atheistic communists as being the fault of religion, too, calling communism a ‘religion.’”

Keysor continues, “The argument seems to be that if something is bad, it is religiously motivated, but if it is good, it’s humanistic. For those who think this way, it is natural to latch on to the occasional statement by Hitler that seems to indicate he was a Christian and dismiss countless reasons to know that, without a doubt, he was anything but.”

“Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” does more than just respond to critics, but fights back, showing that the true sources of Nazism and the Holocaust were not the Bible, Martin Luther, and Christian anti-semitism, but rather secular, atheistic and evolutionary thinkers such as Wagner, Nietzchke and Haeckel.

Keysor concludes, “This isn’t a dry academic dispute. Many of the same attitudes that fueled the destruction of millions of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped people are percolating around us as we speak. You can even openly advocate for eugenics without anyone thinking less of you. Remember the saying: ‘If you do not learn the lessons from the past, you are bound to repeat them.’ My book will teach some of those lessons.”

Orders for both the soft and hard covers are being taken now. More information about the book and how to order is available at www.hitlerandchristianity.com. Joseph Keysor is available for interviews.

Please make your initial contact by email at: keysor@hitlerandchristianity.com.