What’s REALLY At Stake In The ‘Religious Liberty vs. ObamaCare’ Fiasco

When I go to the grocery store, there is frequently someone outside asking me for spare change.  When I go to a fast food restaurant, there is more than occasionally someone outside asking me for spare change (although, it’s happened quite a few times that I’ve had people INSIDE these places asking me for spare change, too).  When I get gas, there is often someone outside asking me for spare change.

Here is my response to them:

“Let me ask you a question: why should I give you anything?”

That’s a head scratcher for most of the people I deal with, I mean, beyond the pure “entitlement” mindset of, “Because you OWE me for being so wonderful.”

“Because I’m a human being,” I often hear.

“What does that mean to me?”  I demand.  “According to the theory of evolution, human beings are nothing more than a random-chance accident and you are nothing more than a slightly smarter version of a monkey.  According to Darwinism, the stronger ought to survive and the weaker ought to have the decency to perish and get the hell out of the stronger’s way.  When the lion or the wolf kills the weakest members of a herd, environmentalists point out that they’re actually doing the herd a service by winnowing out the genetically inferior members who would otherwise undermine the herd.  Frankly, according to Darwinsim, I ought to be taking what little you DO have instead of weakening my own prospects to help an inferior.

So again, why should I give you anything?”

Well, as it so happens, there is only ONE correct answer.  And here it is:

“Because I’m a human being created in the image of God, and because God loves human beings as demonstrated in His sending His Son to seek and to save me even when I’m lost.  And because Jesus cares for the poor, you should care for the poor and help me.”

And with that lesson – along with my pointing out that I am NOT giving a damn thing to you because I’m a good person, but ONLY because I’m following the example of my Savior and Lord, Jesus – I buy them food (I don’t give money to self-destructive people who will only use it to further destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol and cigarettes).

So here’s the question: is there any connection between “morality” and “religion,” or is “morality” whatever the hell Obama or the government says it is?

In my own personal case, and very definitely in the case of orthodox/genuine Christian theology, morality has EVERYTHING to do with religion.

Let me get in the face of atheists here who would interrupt me and say that they’re atheists and they’re “moral.”  Bullcrap.  And here’s why: if you are an atheist and a situation arises and a lie or doing something wrong would benefit you and you don’t think you would get caught, why wouldn’t you do what would benefit you?  And your answer as an atheist MUST be entirely subjective and completely arbitrary.  Lying, for example, is “unchristian.”  But how would lying by “unatheist?”  What IS “atheist morality” such that if you do X you are a bad atheist???  And of course there is nothing, because atheism and morality have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.  Whereas as a Christian, as a religious person, as someone who believes in God, I would tell the truth or do the moral thing in a given situation even to my own immediate harm because I BELIEVE THAT GOD REWARDS GOOD AND PUNISHES EVIL AT JUDGMENT DAY.  WHICH ATHEISTS DON’T BELIEVE.

Morality and religion are intimately connected.

Any other view on that is morally depraved.

The founding fathers had a word for the latter (non-Christian) view that Obama is taking: treason.

George Washington said, ““Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.  And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

So yeah, the view that morality comes from anywhere OTHER than religion is TREASON.  Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are traitors to America according to the father of our country and our greatest American hero.

John Adams pointed out that the Constitution was written ONLY for people who believed in God and received their morality from Him: “We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Samuel Adams put it this way: “Religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness.”

Patrick Henry had this to say: “The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor…and this alone, that renders us invincible.”

You need to understand that when it comes to ObamaCare, “morality” is quite simply whatever the hell Obama says it is.  “Morality” is a game of “Simon Says,” and Obama has appointed himself as “Simon.”

Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform America.”  And he’s largely done it.

If morality can be completely and fundamentally severed from religion, then what IS morality?  It is nothing more than whatever Obama or whoever is in charge of the government says it is.  And nothing more.  That ought to terrify you, if you aren’t a complete moral idiot.

Here’s another question: Can the government grant Hobby Lobby a waiver when it comes to forcing them to provide the four forms of “birth control” (read “abortifacients”) given that Hobby Lobby provides coverage for the sixteen forms of birth control that DON’T actually kill fertilized eggs (babies)???

Given that Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  The purpose of the LAW was to prevent any laws that substantially burdened a person’s free exercise of religion., doesn’t it seem like Obama and Democrats ought to do anything possible to prevent forcing people to perform abortions or fund abortions against their religiously-informed consciences?

Consider all the other damn waivers Obama has issued in hopes of keeping his Democrats in power in the Senate.  There is clearly another way around this because Obama has found another way at least 25 times when it came to protecting his Democrats from the consequences of their evil socialist health care takeover law.

As an example:

Could the administration extend the deadline to buy ObamaCare beyond March 31st?  Absolutely NOT, they assured us:

Coincidentally, Schrader filed his bill the same day Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified on Capitol Hill that, “there is no delay beyond March 31st.” Of course, that wasn’t the first, or last, time she made that claim. And, as our colleagues over at Wonkblog explain, the administration is adamant that it’s not so much an extension as an accommodation.

Heritage provides a montage of such assurances as well as some well-deserved mockery:

No, it cannot happen. It will not happen. The Obama administration absolutely, positively will NOT extend the deadline to sign up for Obamacare.

This isn’t even a laugh line anymore. It’s just an eye roller. And how silly these guys look now:

“We have no plans to extend the open enrollment period. In fact, we don’t actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014.” — Health and Human Services (HHS) official Julie Bataille, March 11

“Once that 2014 open enrollment period has been set, they are set permanently.” – HHS official Michael Hash, March 11

“March 31st is the deadline for enrollment. You’ve heard us make that clear.” – Press Secretary Jay Carney, March 21

“There is no delay beyond March 31.” – HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, March 12

There was no delay…until there was. The Washington Post reported last night that March 31 is not, in fact, the final word. To get more time, you tell the government that you haven’t been able to sign up yet:

Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth.

My favorite there is Obama mouthpiece Jay Carney, who says, “March 31st is the deadline for enrollment.  You’ve heard us make that clear.”

Until he made it clear that Obama had tooted his ObamaHorn and imperiously re-issued “morality” to say that what would be wrong was now right and what is right is no longer wrong.

Kind of like what he did with homosexual marriage.  Yes, Obama said that marriage was the union between one man and one woman.  But he hadn’t said, “Obama Sez.”  And so when he said the exact opposite, well, THAT was “morality.”

So it turns out the answer mimicked Obama’s campaign slogan: “Absolutely NOT” turned into “Yes, we can!”

And they could have protected Hobby Lobby from violating their consciences, too.  They simply chose not to do so.  Kind of like homosexuals had the right to marry whatever adult of the opposite sex who would have them and they chose not to exercise their right.  Which is another way of saying that marriage between one man and one woman doesn’t violate anybody’s “rights.”  It merely rightly defines what marriage IS.

So ObamaCare didn’t HAVE to substantially burden Christians who wanted to exercise their basic rights to form a corporation.  Obama merely wanted to violate Christians’ rights because that’s the kind of demonic man he is.

There is no question whatsoever that Barack Obama is violating the Constitution and violating the law.  He is imposing a substantial burden on religious freedom when there are very clearly ways to have avoided this fascist mess.

My point in the above is to simply demonstrate that Obama didn’t have to force Hobby Lobby to violate its conscience, either as individuals or as a corporation.  There was another way, because as Obama has now proven over and over and over again, there has been another way around EVERY ASPECT of this idiotic failed law.  And so there was a way around this too.

Here’s another thing: nobody knows what the Supreme Court is going to do on this one.  It’s basically like, “Let’s spin the wheel of chance to find out what the Constitution means today!”

Laws no longer mean what they say in this country.  Which is another way of saying they no longer mean ANYTHING.

America is no longer a nation of laws.  Obama abrogates the law as he sees fit and simply issues unconstitutional waivers and unconstitutional extensions.  It is a nation under a Fuehrer, rather than under God as we mouth in our Pledge of Allegiance.

And that’s important because that’s what Hitler did: he had his minions pledge allegiance directly to HIM.  That’s what we all might as well be doing now, under Obama and his God damn America.

This is a morally sick nation that is at this point experiencing the curse of the wrath of God according to Romans chapter one, thanks to our antichrist president.

Democrats are liars without shame, without honor, without virtue, without integrity of any kind whatsoever.  They are falsely claiming that Hobby Lobby is somehow denying women birth control when in fact they provide SIXTEEN different forms of birth control on the health insurance that they offer.  This isn’t about health care OR birth control; it is about abortion and Obama wanting to demonically force Christians to violate their faith and their conscience and fund the murder of ANOTHER 55 million innocent human beings.

What does the Bible say about abortion and where babies come from?

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

I stand for human LIFE.  Which is another way of saying that I stand AGAINST this demon-possessed president and his demon-possessed Democrat Party and their genocide that is already more than nine times as murderous as Hitler’s.

And I stand for America as “One nation under God” as opposed to “One nation WITHOUT God” as godless Democrats are now demanding.

This also isn’t even about corporations.  Obama and his wicked, godless Democrat left have been persecuting small business owners (i.e., “individual Christian believers”) for refusing to participate in homosexual “marriage”.  They are being forced to either photograph queer “weddings” or participate in aforementioned “weddings” by making the wedding cakes against their consciences.

So, again, Democrats are demon-possessed LIARS for saying this is about a corporation not being a “person” and therefore not able to have religion.  Because it is a FACT that Democrats don’t want ANY PERSON to be able to practice his or her religion unless it is a “religion” of demons.

In fact, this isn’t even about “health care” at ALL.  What did liberal “Justice” Sonia Sotomayor and “Justice” Elena Kagan say?  These Injustices told Hobby Lobby that they could just drop ALL their employees from their generous health care plans and just pay the damn fine:

“Those employers could choose not to give health insurance and pay not that high a penalty – not that high a tax,” Sotomayor said.

Clement said Hobby Lobby would pay more than $500 million per year in penalties, but Kagan disagreed.

“No, I don’t think that that’s the same thing, Mr. Clement,” Kagan said. “There’s one penalty that is if the employer continues to provide health insurance without this part of the coverage, but Hobby Lobby would choose not to provide health insurance at all.

So how can this be about “health care” when these liberal judges are literally telling Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties NOT to provide health care, but to just dump their poor bastard employees into the sewer of ObamaCare???

The crazy thing is, as Christians, Hobby Lobby would ALSO have to violate their consciences to refuse to provide their employees health care.

Liberals are evil, pure and simple.  This isn’t about “health care.”  This is about liberals trying “to control the people.”

This is about Obama and his government having a messiah complex, pure and simple.

We’re about to lose what little is left of America.  It’s all up to the throw of the dice in the Supreme Court where a bunch of unelected judges get to sit and dictate what “religion” is and what “morality” is.

This is what “God damn America” looks like.

Obama Imposes Abortion Agenda On Catholic Church Hospitals And Charities To Drive Them Out Of Business

Today marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Let’s celebrate the milestone by driving the Catholic Church out of its mission of caring for the sick and the poor by forcing them to either do something that is anathema to their theology or forcing them to abandon their hospital and charity work:

[Important Updates] Obama Admin Decides to Require Religious Institutions to Cover Free Contraception & Sterilization
by Thomas Peters
January 20, 2012

Liberals are crowing about what they see as a huge victory for them — and they are right — because this victory comes at the expense of religious liberty.

Welcome to the Obama 2012 reelection plan: ignore and marginalize people of faith, pander to the far-left’s sexual-political priorities.

This via the far-left site ThinkProgress:

Today, in a huge victory for women’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles. This means that after years of trying to get birth control covered to the same extent that health plans cover Viagra, our country will finally have nearly universal coverage of contraception.

Opponents of contraception had lobbied hard for a broad exemption that would have allowed any religiously-affiliated employer to opt out of providing such coverage. Fortunately, the Obama administration rejected that push and decided to maintain the narrow religious exemption that it initially proposed. Only houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt. Religiously-affiliated employers who do not qualify for the exemption and are not currently offering contraceptive coverage may apply for transitional relief for a one-year period to give them time to determine how to comply with the rule.

Liberals always complain when the Church acts in the public square, tossing out the red herring “separation of church and state!”

But they are perfectly happy to have the state compel the church to do what they want the church (and people of faith) to do.

More from me soon, but there you have it.

UPDATE: Michael Sean Winters, who I have deeply disagreed with in the past, posts his reaction to the news — calling it much more than a disaster:

One sentence in the statement from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stands out: “The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good.”

What can those words “fully committed” possibly mean? They have punched Sr. Carol Keehan and Fr. Jenkins and many other Catholics who have taken shots for this Administration in the nose. They have jumped over the First Amendment to coerce religious organizations to do something we find morally objectionable. They have given people who loved the Affordable Care Act reason for pause, great pause. They have given the Republicans a huge battering ram with which to beat swing voting Catholics over the head.

I say “they,” but the full responsibility for this decision rests with the President. NCR has learned that the President called Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, this morning to tell him the news. Wouldn’t you have liked to be on an extension to listen in on that conversation. The president looked Dolan in the eye in November and said he would be pleased with his decision. I am guessing that Dolan is not pleased. He is not alone.

Winters is right that this decision is a huge blow to liberal Catholics who have tried to cover for Obama. But Winters is wrong that the President’s decision comes as any sort of surprise. Of course Obama would throw his liberal Catholics supporters under the bus to please his leftist secular supporters. Obama’s wedding with liberal Catholics has always been one of convenience and he just filed the divorce papers. I therefore find it hard to sympathize with liberal Catholics who are shocked by this decision, because I’ve been warning for years that their relationship with Obama was bound to end in heartbreak.

I do, however, respect Winters for being right to stand up for religious liberty and criticize a President he supported as a candidate. For that I applaud him and I hope that more liberal Catholics acknowledge how foolish they have been to support Obama’s anti-Catholic policies. I urge them to join me and other Catholics in common cause to begin to address this deplorable state of affairs.

UPDATE 2: Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, in a video posted (on the right side) of the USCCB website, calls on Catholics to contact the Administration and demand they rescind this anti-religious liberty, anti-first amendment mandate. Read the full press release just sent out by the USCCB here.

UPDATE 3: Grace-Marie Turner writes at NRO’s The Corner blog:

This is another assault on the Constitution and the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called the federal regulation an “unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom.”

The Obamacare regulation gives faith-based institutions, like Catholic universities and hospitals, the choice of violating the fundamental tenets of their faith by covering the federally mandated coverage in their employee health plans, or of dropping health insurance for their employees — in which case they would be fined for violating the employer mandate.

…As I told Kathryn Lopez for a recent article, there is a war on religion from the Left, and it is very dangerous to the institutions that make our civil society function.

The Catholic Church historically has been a vital part of the safety net — providing aid for the poor, care for the sick, shelter and food for the homeless, and care for mothers in need, as a few examples.

The health-care law threatens to tear gaping holes in that safety net by forcing Catholic health plans to cover contraception, by denying funds to Catholic adoption agencies, and ultimately by forcing taxpayers — including Catholics — to fund abortion.

This is dangerous to the very fabric of our society. It’s a crucial reason why the whole health law, with its centralized control over health-care decisions, must not stand.

For the record, I am not a Catholic.  I believe that life begins at conception, rather than being present in the male “seed,” and I do not have any issues with birth control that merely prevent a birth rather than actually killing a child (such as RU 486 – which also can kill the mother).

But the Catholic Church has consistently held over the centuries that any form of birth control is tantamount to abortion.

Barack Obama, I have said over and over again, is a genuinely evil man.  This is God damn America and it will continue to be God damn America until the American people wise up and utterly reject him.

This is Barack Obama’s version of Sophie’s Choice: He is trying for force the Catholic Church to either begin performing what it considers murder or to stop helping the poor and the sick.

How on earth is it going to help society to drive the Catholic Church out of helping people???

Obama doesn’t give a damn about the sick and the poor; in fact, he hopes there will be more sick and poor desperate people who must come groveling to him and bow down to his toxic agenda.

This is the most cynical form of naked partisan politik I have ever seen: Obama wants to destroy all forms of health care that he can’t directly control so that there will be nothing left but his precious ObamaCare.

The Manhattan Declaration As The New Barmen Declaration

Christians are hearing about the Manhattan Declaration with great excitement.  It is a tremendous document with tremendous support from some tremendous Christian figures.

The actual declaration (linked to above) is some 4,000 plus words long, and is available to read at the link above.  But here is the nutshell version:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I hope you stand with me – and with (at last count as of November 24, 2009) 106,738 other believers – and sign this declaration.

It reminds me of another time, and another declaration: the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which was a point-by-point denunciation of the fascist and racist ideological doctrines of Nazism and a positive expression of true Christian faith against a government and a culture that had become evil.

Adolf Hitler attempted to redefine – or “Nazify” – the Church and transform it into a component of his ideological agenda.  At one point in its history Germany had been the seat of the Protestant Reformation, and while Germany had since become the most secular humanist nation in Europe, there was still a vestige of Christianity remaining.  And Hitler wanted to harness that still-influential vestige toward his own ends.  The government thus passed resolutions to limit the influence or dictate the agenda of the church.  One demanded the purging of all pastors who rejected “the spirit of National Socialism.”  Another resolution categorically rejected the very foundations of Judeo-Christian transcendent morality even as it tried to conflate “being a German” with “being a Christian”:

“We expect that our nation’s church as a German People’s Church should free itself from all things not German in its services and confession, especially from the Old Testament with its Jewish system of quid pro quo morality.”

The German Confessing Movement was a reaction against the German government’s attempt to impose its agenda upon the Christian Church in Germany.  As Gene Edward Veith put it in his book Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview:

The Barmen Declaration thus sets itself against not only the German Christian aberration but against the whole tradition of modernist syncretism that made it possible.

[Article 1 affirmed Christ as the transcendent authority and source of values (as opposed to the German race, the Nazi revolution, or the person of Adolf Hitler)].  Article 2 asserts the sovereignty of Christ over all of life.  Article 3 asserts Christ’s lordship over the church and rejects “the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political conventions.”  That is to say, the world does not set the agenda for the church.  Article 4 teaches that church offices are for mutual service and ministry, not for the exercise of raw power.  Article 5 acknowledges the divine appointment of the state, but rejects the pretensions of the state to “become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church’s vocation as well.”  Article 6 affirms the church’s commission to proclaim the free grace of God to everyone by means of the Word and the sacraments.  “We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans [pp. 60-61].

One article, entitled “Hitler’s Theologians: The Genesis of Genocide,” takes time to describe how various key German liberal theologians systematically tore apart the Bible and orthodox Christianity – and in so doing systematically undermined the ethics and morality of the German people in preparation for the hell to come.  The author begins with Friedrich Schleiermacher, called “the founder of Liberal Protestantism,” and profiles the “contributions” of Friedrich Nietzsche, Julius Wellhausen, and Adolf von Harnack.

Georg Lukacs has observed that tracing the path to Hitler involved the name of nearly every major German philosopher since Hegel: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthy, Simmel, Scheler, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Weber [page 5, The Destruction of Reason].  And Max Weinreich produced an exhaustive study detailing the complicity of German intellectuals with the Nazi regime entitled Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People.  Ideas have consequences, and it was the ideas of these liberal theologians, philosophers and scholars who provided the intellectual justification and conceptual framework for the Holocaust.  Thus Nazism did not merely emerge from a liberal theological system, but from a distinguished secular humanist intellectual tradition as well — a distinguished intellectual tradition that had repudiated all the moral and spiritual values inherent to the orthodox Christianity of the Confessing Church.

Josef Hromadka wrote that:

“The liberal theology in Germany and in her orbit utterly failed.  It was willing to compromise on the essential points of divine law and of “the law of nature”; to dispose of the Old Testament and to accept the law of the Nordic race instead; and to replace the “Jewish” law of the Old Testament by the autonomous law of each race and nation, respectively.  It had made all the necessary preparation for the “Germanization of Christianity” and for a racial Church.”

Veith subsequently says, “in deciding whether or not to sign the Barmen Declaration … the dividing line was clear.”  And he states, “The German Christian theologians predictably denounced the confessional movement as being ‘narrow’ and ‘fundamentalist.'”  He rightly described the opponents of the Barmen Declaration as being “modernists,” “existentialists,” and “dialectical” in their thinking.  The theologians who rejected Barmen were men like Emanuel Hirsch, who taught that the resurrection of Christ was only a spiritual vision, and that the idea of a physical resurrection distorted Christianity by focusing attention to the hereafter rather than to the culture and community of the present.

In short, it was Christians who thought like the evangelicals and fundamentalists of today who signed the Barmen Declaration and openly opposed Nazism, and it was “Christians” who thought like the mainline liberals of today who stood for the German Christian Nazification of Christianity and for the resulting Nazification of German ethics and morality.

Confessing Church pastors and priests who resisted this Nazification of the church paid dearly.  Thousands of clergymen were hauled away to the concentration camps.  According to the Niemoller archives, 2,579 clergymen were sent to Dachau alone – and 1,034 of them died in the camp.  And that only refers to the priests and pastors – not the untold thousands of devout Christians such as the Ten Booms who perished in the death camps for their opposition to Nazism.

An article entitled “Asking ‘Why Nazism?’” reviewing a book by Dr. Karla Poewe has this:

“One of the dangers of liberal Christianity, where all sorts of interpretations are permitted, is that it can easily slip into becoming a new religion,” Poewe says. “This is what happened. In a bid to rid Germany of what it saw as Jewish Christianity, several home-grown practices sprang up, including some that incorporated Icelandic and pre-Christian sagas, as well as ideas from German Idealism.”

Although initially these new religions were separate and disorganized entities, they eventually came under the umbrella of what was known as the German Faith Movement. Hitler saw in it a mechanism for transmitting and reinforcing the National Socialist worldview. “He shaped its followers into a disciplined political force but dismissed its leaders later when they were no longer needed,” Poewe says.

We’re clearly not to the point where Jews, or Christians, or anyone else are being gathered by the thousands and placed in death camps.  But we’re beginning to see a trend that is frightening, as government, with the assistance of liberal “Christian” churches and organizations, are trying to impose their will upon the church and its agenda.

We’ve had a “hate crimes” law imposed upon us that makes homosexuality a protected behavior.  And one evangelical expresses the Confessing Church position in a nutshell:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a written statement the bill “is part of a radical social agenda that could ultimately silence Christians and use the force of government to marginalize anyone whose faith is at odds with homosexuality.”

In another recent case, a Christian mother who has homeschooled her child is being forced to put her ten-year old child in public school, not to improve her academic education, but to limit her exposure to Christianity and forcibly expose her to a government-approved “public” point of view:

According to the court order, the guardian concluded that Amanda’s “interests, and particularly her intellectual and emotional development, would be best served by exposure to a public school setting in which she would be challenged to solve problems presented by a group learning situation and…Amanda would be best served by exposure to different points of view at a time in her life when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief and behavior.”

This is a shocking case, in which the government is usurping both parental and religious freedoms.  And there are many similar usurpations today, in which our government is actively opposing Christian values.

Nearly fifty million babies have been killed in this country by a government-sanctioned “pro-choice” system.  Gene Edward Veith addresses the “pro-choice” movement and its philosophical underpinnings:

Existential ethics brackets the objective issues on abortion entirely.  At issue is not some transcendent moral law, nor medical evidence, nor a logical analysis.  The content of that choice makes no difference.  If the mother chooses to have the baby, her action is moral.  If she chooses not to have the baby, her action is still moral.  If she bears a child against her will or aborts a child against her will — then and only then is the action evil.  Those who believe that abortion should be legal do not consider themselves “pro-abortion.”  They are “pro-choice.”  The term is not only a rhetorical euphemism but a precise definition of existential ethics.

Existentialism is also reflected in those who are “pro-choice” but personally oppose abortion.  They do not believe in abortion for themselves, but refuse to impose their beliefs on others.  In this view, a belief has no validity outside the private, personal realm of each individual.  Moral and religious beliefs are no more than personal constructions, important in giving meaning to an individual’s life, but not universally valid.  Or, to use another commonly accepted axiom, “what’s true for you may not be true for me.”

Such a view of truth flies in the face of all classical metaphysics, which sees truth as objective, universal, and applicable to all” (page 96, Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview).

We can return to the historical analysis of Nazism presented by Karla Poewe, and what happened when such “anything goes” belief systems were allowed to rule.  [I have written an article describing how existentialism became a primary component of Nazism, and link to it HERE].

Before we leave the issue of abortion as a vile violation of Christian ethics and morality, let us consider one more voice:

“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of the innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” — Mother Teresa

Christians should fight for life.  And allowing a human being to live should not be a “choice,” but a duty.

In 2003 one David Allen Black wrote an article bearing the question, “Do We Need A New Barmen Declaration?”  No Christian with a knowledge of history can answer any other way than, “YES!”

The Barmen Declaration was written in 1934, but in many ways it was already too late: The Nazis were already in power.  Hitler was in his second year of power; and the ideas of the liberal theologians, the existentialist philosophers, and the amoral intellectuals were already firmly in place.

It is my fervent hope that we finally have that “New Barmen Declaration” to answer the evils of our own day.  If we already should have written one, then every day that passes is one more day wasted; if we are acting pro-actively, then let us thank God that we acting before it is too late.

From the UK Telegraph:

At last, Christians draw a line in the sand against their PC secularist persecutors

By Gerald Warner UK Last updated: November 24th, 2009

At long last, Christian leaders have faced up to their persecutors in the secularist, socialist, One-World, PC, UN-promoted axis of evil and said: No more. In the popular metaphor, they have drawn a line in the sand. For harassed, demoralised faithful in the pews it will come as the long-awaited call to resistance and an earnest that their leaders are no longer willing to lie down supinely to be run over by the anti-Christian juggernaut. This statement of principle and intent is called The Manhattan Declaration, published last Friday in Washington DC.

It is difficult to believe that so firm an assertion of Christian intransigence in the face of persecution will not have some beneficial effects even here. For this Declaration is no minor affirmation by a few committed activists: on the contrary, it is signed by the most important leaders of three mainstream Christian traditions – the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and Evangelical Protestants. For an ecumenical document it is heroically devoid of fudge, euphemism and compromise.

The Manhattan Declaration states that “the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions”.

For Barack Obama, the PC lobby, the “hate crime” fascists and, by implication, their opposite numbers in Britain, the signatories have an uncompromising message: “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” That is plain speaking, in the face of anti-Christian aggression by governments. The signatories spelled it out even more unequivocally: “We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but we will under no circumstances render to Caesar what is God’s.”

In a world where a Swedish pastor has been jailed for preaching that sodomy is sinful, similar prosecutions have taken place in Canada, the European Court of Human Rights (sic) has tried to ban crucifixes in Italian classrooms, Brazil has passed totalitarian legislation imposing heavy prison sentences for criticism of homosexual lifestyles, Amnesty International is championing abortion, David Cameron has voted for the enforced closure of Catholic adoption agencies, and Gordon Brown’s government has just been defeated in its fourth attempt to abolish the Waddington Clause guaranteeing free speech – this robust defiance is more than timely.

The signatories are unambiguously expressing their willingness to go to prison rather than deny any part of their religious beliefs. Those signatories are heavyweight. On the Catholic side they include Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia; Adam Cardinal Maida, Archbishop Emeritus of Detroit; the Archbishops of Denver, New York, Washington DC, Newark, Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Louisville; and other Bishops. The Orthodox include the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America and the Archpriest of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. There are also the Anglican Primates of America and Nigeria, as well as a host of senior Evangelical Protestants.

In terms of influence on votes and public opinion, this is a formidable coalition. It has served notice on the US government that further anti-Christian legislation will provoke cultural trench warfare and even civil disobedience. As regards the sudden stiffening of resistance among the usually spineless Catholic leadership, it is impossible not to detect the influence of Benedict XVI.

We need more declarations like this, on a global scale, and the requisite confrontational follow-up. This is Clint Eastwood, make-my-day Christianity – and not before time. From now on, any governments that are planning further persecution of Christians had better make sure they have a large pride of lions available for mastication duties. The worm has turned.

As a young Christian, I was inspired by the music, lyrics, and album cover of Keith Green’s album, No Compromise.  The cover says it all:

The Manhattan Declaration – like the Barmen Declaration – calls for Christians who are willing to stand up and be singled out even in the face of persecution or punishment.

I hope you are willing to be one of those Christians.