The Future of Liberalism/Progressivism

The recent weeks have given us a frightening look at what the future of this nation will be like under liberal/progressivism. It is a world defined by prejudice and intolerance clothed in the guise of tolerance and progressive understanding.  In all comes from the strange reaction to the following quote of Dan Cathy COO of Chick-fil-A on the Ken Coleman show, as Ken Colman writes:

While discussing fatherhood with me, Dan Cathy expressed the following thoughts that have contributed to the media firestorm:

"I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,'" Cathy said. "And I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about."

In modern liberal/progressive political circles this rather traditional support of traditional marriage definition became a rallying cry of hate. Somehow this religious statement is hate filled. But of course there is nothing hateful about it. He did not condemn Homosexuals or say anything against them or indicate that he discriminates against them. No those things are read into his statements.
To get to these extreme views the liberal/progressives have worked hard to redefine the language. Not simply trying to make the word marriage fit same sexes but by making hate groups out of normally mainstream religious groups. Thus Since Cathy supports certain religious groups those groups become known as hate groups. For example here is a comment from a recent article on Spectrum magazine website:

Keith doesn't mention that this business owner contributes huge amounts to anti-gay groups that spew hatred, prejudice, and lies about gays and lesbians.

Of course to actually name these anti-gay groups would show that they are not in fact anti-gay groups but religious groups holding traditional religious beliefs. The liberal/progressives get here by…well you guessed it lying. People like the writer of the comment simply believe the lies and then repeat them. One of the chief liars in all of this is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The Chick-fil-A corporation gives to the Family Research Council. SPLC names David Barton as anti-gay as well. Of course if they wanted they could put most any traditional religious group as anti-gay. They could have even put President Obama as anti-gay as just over 3 years ago he also opposed gay marriage. But of course opposing gay marriage is not being anti-gay. There are even gays against gay marriage. 

But why is an individual’s freedom of speech when expressing traditional marriage and traditional religious values hate speech? The answer is that in the new future delivered by the liberal/progressive movement their views are the correct views and anything opposed to or not in alignment with their view has to be hate. They are unable to make the case so they rely upon false generalizations against those who don’t think like them.

This is because these political movements do not respect freedom they desire power and control and their chosen method is through the government.  “Liberal” no longer even mean classical liberalism, which is more akin to what we call libertarianism and Progressive does not mean moving forward toward more freedom and individual responsibility but Progressive in terms of more centralized governmental control and decreased freedom of thought. Propaganda is the method they chose to employ and propaganda is frequently composed of lies and misinformation.

This is a future that we cannot afford to allow. Fortunately Millions of Americans still see the foolishness of the liberal/progressive movement and as we saw last week they took much time out of their busy lives to show their support for the Chick-fil-A even when numerous political figures like the Mayor of Chicago the protégé of President Obama Rahm Emanuel declared that “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.” It may well be that the Chicago way has no place for traditional Christians. 

This blog often takes on traditional Christianity but we must fight for their freedom of expression and belief; because their freedom is our freedom. The biggest disrespect comes from those who refuse to give others the respect of their beliefs and ideas.

The politics of emotionalism

In my previous two articles (not counting the fun one on American Pie lyrics) I have pointed out the deceptive practices of the political left in relation to the Adventist publications. Those two listed being Adventist Today and Liberty Magazine. I could and should include Spectrum Magazine (see this pathetic example) in this list as well. The troubling thing about this is that it reflects the puerile thinking of the political liberal/progressive who deal little with reality and heavily manipulate emotions. They assume that their listeners or readers are simply too stupid to think for themselves or question what they say, or they think that the reader/listener is just as prejudiced as the author. So they freely interpret usually incorrectly and with so much prejudice that their interpretations look more like arbitrary hatred then real analytical thought.

Since these gatekeepers of Adventist media have chosen to align with the political left and to use the same techniques of the left it becomes important for this blog to begin to deal with these political distortions. In the past this blog has rarely gone into political matters but it seems that they are too important to ignore since they infiltrate the church and it's leadership...even its alternative Adventist media leadership (in my opinion they have destroyed the Progressive Adventist movement).

As a particular example of the emotional manipulation of the political left here is a section from the Martin Bashir show on MSNBC as recounted by the Huffington Post:

MSNBC's Martin Bashir issued some extremely harsh words for Rick Santorum on Tuesday, comparing the GOP candidate to Joseph Stalin and Big Brother from the novel "1984." 
 
In his "Clear the Air" segment, Bashir said that watching Santorum speak before a crowd reminded him of the dictator in "1984," the classic novel about a totalitarian society under state surveillance. Bashir instructed viewers to "spot the similarities" between a clip of Santorum speaking, and footage from the movie based on the novel. 
 
He replayed clips from the film of "1984" featuring Big Brother proclaiming that "forces of darkness" must be wiped off the Earth and demanding the end of a "catalogue of bestial atrocities." Bashir contrasted them with Santorum's calls to end federal funding for contraception, among other things. "For example, he has asserted that the right to privacy does not exist and has equated same sex relationships with bestiality," Bashir added.
He then made his most severe comparison. He quoted a book reviewer who once dismissed Santorum as "one of the finest minds of the 13th century," and took the remark one step further. "If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like Stalin than Pope Innocent III," Bashir said.  

You can also see the video of the segment on the Huffington Post site linked above. The similarities between Santorum and the movie 1984 is that the crowd cheers. They cheer in the movie they cheer for Santorum at a speech. Apparently Bashir has never seen any other political speeches or crowds, though you would think with the cheering and chants and fainting that occurred during Barack Obama's campaign he would have seen it at some point. He then says Santorum sounds like a theocrat and the then concludes that Santorum sounds more like Stalin then a Pope. Stalin a rather famous atheist and now I guess a theocrat at least to Bashir.

But what does Bashir report about Santorum? What quotes does he use of Santorum? Answer, none, like the authors referred to in my two previous blogs, no quotes are used, no references given, we are left to accept his interpretation of what someone said, though to Bashir's credit unlike the two previous authors mentioned Bashir at least tells us who he is interpreting, not just giving hints about some candidate running for President. Bashir could have quoted Santorum but he must have felt it was more important to play clips from the movie “1984”. That is emotionalism, and it is childish because it assumes foolish things and simplify complex issues into trite sayings. Is that something that the courts have defined or you can find in the constitution? If I do something in private does that mean I can do anything I want in private? How would you define the right to privacy? You will understand better once you actually see the quote from which Bashir is referring. Then of course you see that it is not as Bashir interprets and that Santorum does not equate homosexuality with Bestiality. Even though they could both be done in private.

From the AP interview with Rick Santorum in 2003:

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you — this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.

AP: Sorry, I just never expected to talk about that when I came over here to interview you. Would a President Santorum eliminate a right to privacy — you don't agree with it?

SANTORUM: I've been very clear about that. The right to privacy is a right that was created in a law that set forth a (ban on) rights to limit individual passions. And I don't agree with that. So I would make the argument that with President, or Senator or Congressman or whoever Santorum, I would put it back to where it is, the democratic process. If New York doesn't want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn't agree with it, but that's their right. But I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in.

Now you may not agree with Santorum's reasoning but at least he is reasoning and not simply trying to manipulate with emotionalism. We can't really allow this kind of journalism or whatever people like Bashir call themselves to continue as it is extremely harmful to thinking people. And even produces a lowering of standards for other media. Of course few people watch MSNBC but Bashir's practices are done just as often in the mainline media and now even in Church media. Maybe not as ham handed as Bashir does on his show but the appeal to emotionalism over honestly dealing with the facts and representing someone else's point of view accurately is all too common.

The Decline of Christianity

I just read an interesting article entitled: Mainline Churches: The Real Reason for Decline

Benton Johnson, Dean R. Hoge & Donald A. Luidens. I encourage you all to take the time to read the article. It is from the archive of First Things magazine. While the research is predominately from the Presbyterian Church I think it can be more broadly applied to most main line churches and also the Adventist Church as well.

After listing two common ideas for the decline in Main line Christian Churches, a shift to greater individual autonomy and as a protest against the churches perceived lack of care for the poor and political issues like abortion, the article states:

A third intra-religious theory was advanced by Dean M. Kelley in his controversial book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, published in 1972. Kelly argued that the mainline denominations have lost members because they have become weak as religious bodies. Strong religions provide clear-cut, compelling answers to questions concerning the meaning of life, mobilize their members' energies for shared purposes, require a distinctive code of conduct, and discipline their members for failure to live up to it. Weak religions allow a diversity of theological viewpoints, do not and can not command much of their members' time or effort, promote few if any distinctive rules of conduct, and discipline no one for violating them. In short, strong religions foster a level of commitment that binds members to the group; weak religions have low levels of commitment and are unable to resist influences that lower it even further.

Since careful tests of these theories have never been made, no consensus has emerged as to which, if any, of them best explains why mainline churches have lost members. To gain new insights into the reasons for the decline, the three of us decided to interview a national sample of baby boomers who had been confirmed in mainline Protestant churches during the 1960s. To simplify our task, we concentrated on a single denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), formed in 1983 by merger of the nation's two largest Presbyterian bodies. In 1989, with a grant from the Lilly Endowment, we drew samples of names from confirmation lists of churches in six states and located as many people in the samples as we could. We completed 500 Gallup-style telephone interviews and forty face-to-face follow-up interviews.

What they found is interesting:

…In short, our baby boom drop-outs did not leave the Presbyterian church in search of salvation or enlightenment; they left because religion itself had become low on their list of personal priorities. They pray occasionally, they hold Jesus in high esteem, and they have some interest in such questions as the purpose of existence and the fate of the soul after death, but they do not consider it necessary to attend church in order to nourish what faith they have.

The underlying cause it appears is what they call “lay liberalism”:

…We have named this pattern the theology of lay liberalism. It is “liberal” because its defining characteristic is the rejection of the view that Christianity is the only religion with a valid claim to truth…

…Most lay liberals “prefer” Christianity to other faiths, but they are unable to ground their preference in strong truth claims. A few simply told us that Christianity is “true for me,” whereas Buddhism or Islam may be true for others, and some explained that they preferred Christianity because they were raised in that faith. But most lay liberals we talked to were uneasy with the nihilistic implications of this line of thought, and they proposed some universal grounding for their religious preference. Some believe that a common thread of truth runs through all the world's major religions and that at base all religions teach the same thing…

…If God helped write all the world's scriptures, there is no harm in belonging to any religion that one finds congenial. Lay liberals have a much broader notion of what is religiously respectable than old-time Presbyterians had. They are hard put to offer theological reasons why anyone should remain a Presbyterian, or even a Christian…

Ultimately the reason for the decline is:

Orthodox Christian belief of one variety or other, which the fundamentalists and other conservatives in our sample espouse, seems to impel people to commit their time and other resources to a distinctively Christian regimen of witness and obedience in the company of other believers. Lay liberalism, on the other hand, is not an empowering system of belief but rather a set of conjectures concerning religious matters. It supports honesty and other moral virtues, and it encourages tolerance and civility in a pluralistic society, but it does not inspire the kind of conviction that creates strong religious communities.

It seems to me that the answer is found somewhere between the foolish certainty of fundamentalism and worthless all roads lead home of the “lay liberalism”. Fundamentalism encourages the idea that they have the truth and that all other ideas are wrong but it is largely based upon fictional interpretations and beliefs which cannot be maintained under questioning. Both sides are based upon unreasonable methods of interpretation. To say that all sacred books are inspired by the same God even though they contradict each other makes no sense unless God is terribly confused. That does not mean that there cannot be good things in all the different sacred writings we know that there are, but they all carry an underlying goal or principle to which the various religions aspire. Having some good parts does not make the overall document all good or all inspired by God. Neither is the fundamentalist dismissal of all other religious ideas feasible either. Which is why we need to enlist our minds in the analysis of religious ideas. What has happened however is that we have become scared to discuss religion. Not just different religions but even religion in our own faith traditions. One more quote from the article:

Given the reluctance of so many baby boomers to talk about religion or to instill their own views in their children, the prospects that their offspring will make a serious Christian commitment are even dimmer than their own prospects turned out to be. And among the “religious” dropouts the prospects are dimmer still. They are virtually unanimous in wanting their children to have a religious education, but less than a third with children at home have actually enrolled them in Sunday School. Many hesitate to do so for fear of getting “roped in” to a round of church activities themselves. They are “too busy,” and they have a myriad of other commitments. Above all, they see no real point in getting involved.

Modern Christianity has become afraid to deal with “God talk”. This is just as true in the Adventist church as any other church. The fundamentalist style of God talk is largely the reason I think that Christianity has lost the ability to do what it was called to do. The fear most Christians have of looking like an intolerant uneducated narrow minded bigot. The fundamentalist camps have created their own internal support but they have poisoned the water of everyone else. Their ranks are not really growing they are just not shrinking as fast as the rest of Christianity. (see: Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/ )

Adventism needs to pull itself out of this guilt by association predicament. We need to be willing to engage in God talk without the enraging insistence that our interpretation is the only correct view or it is our truth or nothing. We must learn how to engage in the market place of ideas with respect and knowledge and make the case for Christ upon an intelligent argument from history and we must learn to include a new understanding of the information that science provides us. Faith does not simply believe in traditions, faith is believing in a God of grace and goodness who we can share as a relevant part of human life. God is not destroyed by evolution any more than He is destroyed by fundamentalism or legalism; somewhere in between there is something worth holding on to.

If our church can’t find that balance then some other church will most certainly find the balance and continue the work of God despite our pollution. Because certainly God has never given up because people misunderstood Him, at least that is something that history always makes clear.

Adventism and Social Justice

Today in an article on the Spectrum Website entitled: Theological Harmony in New Orleans By Bonnie Dwyer, she reports on the joint meeting Adventist Theological Society and the Adventist Society for Religious Studies, the article states in the opening paragraph:

Adventism’s two theological society presidents agreed on the biblical call for social justice and the significance of Scripture on people’s lives during a historic session in which the two societies met to not only share a meal but to present ideas for discussion.

She does not define what “social justice” means and that is a problem. Today it is often a code word for redistribution of wealth through the government. As this article The Scandal of Social Work Education NAS Study says:

Use of the term "social justice" today generally equates with the advocacy of more egalitarian access to income through state-sponsored redistribution. The phrase is also frequently used to justify new entitlement rights for individuals and whole categories of people, i.e., legally enforceable claims of individuals or groups against the state itself. ("Economic justice" is even a stronger term, largely confined to populist and radical rhetoric.)

Here is a University of Wisconsin student newspaper’s definition of social justice in response to an article by Dr. Hansen mentioned who asserted social justice is misleading rhetoric.

Dr. Hansen’s article proposes, “until ‘social justice’ can be precisely and understandably defined, programs to promote this goal cannot hope to succeed.” Well, is it really that difficult to define it? Social justice is a system, a process, and an end result where all members of society have equal access to resources and benefit from them equally without regard to their identity, specifically race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion, class and age.

You notice that the student newspaper author describes the goal not the system. Socialism and communism are the two most commonly used systems or processes which claim to end with this utopian goal. We know from experience that neither system ends in the utopian goal however. Notice the newspaper author included “ability” in the list, let us assume that the government had a medical school. By the social justice definition above anyone could go and demand equal access to the resources and the benefit of the medical school education whether they had any ability or not. We could hope that the person with no ability would not graduate from the school…but if you can’t differentiate due to ability everyone needs to graduate. Achievement and ability mean nothing under this type of social justice.

As one comment I read says:

From Sharpton to Wright, social justice has come to mean redressing the wrongs of the past in the form of government benefits or reparations. The expression has a hint of retribution as in “you owe us.” In actuality, the words haven’t any real meaning. There are always those who grieve, and as long as the government attempts to satisfy those with a gripe, the plaintive cry for social justice will have irresistible appeal.

There is one other definition which we need to look at, from Business Dictionary.com:

Fair and proper administration of laws conforming to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice. See also civil rights.

I guess if that is the definition that the two theological societies are agreeing upon that is good. They are agreeing upon the most basic idea or civil rights found in the latter half of the 20^th century. Hardly a newsworthy proclamation unless one of those groups had been opposing civil rights. I think common sense tells us that that is not really the meaning of social justice that is intended, but we have to hold out that possibility sense those involved seem unable to define what they mean…thought when you can’t define your meaning the chances become much higher that the use is a code word otherwise why not define your terms.

In conclusion there is this comment from a blog article which is Christian related under the title “what do you mean by Social justice” Which pretty much says all I could want to say on the subject.

"Social justice" is a phrase currently often employed by "emergent church" types who, in their reaction to the Church's nonparticipation (actual or perceived) in the world, suddenly believe they're the only ones interested in helping the poor and feeding the hungry.

Apparently among many, these problems -- and the world entirely? -- are viewed to have begun yesterday. There's no perspective of history, the fact that people in both the Church and governments have been aware and trying to alleviate poverty before -- especially when it comes to the failed attempts of federal governments to overextend their constitutional (and worse, Biblical) bounds and take the place of the citizenry and religious institutions in terms of charity.

Among such "social justice" advocates, there's also very little perspective of the actual Scripture in these quasi-utopian visions, which indirectly contradict the Bible's portrayal of the rest of human history.

Christ-followers certainly disagree on what end-times events occur when, but there is (or was) an overall consensus against the notion that people would eradicate poverty, hunger, all that sort of thing, without Christ or at least before He comes back to take a look at our planetary renovations.

But now we're back to the same stuff -- and while it's very, very true that Christ-followers are to be a means of "common grace" toward the poor and abused among nonbelievers, this is not the be-all-and-end-all of the Gospel. "Social justice" is only an outgrowth: at the center should be the actual truths of God as Creator, humans as rebels against Him, and Christ as redeemed. Are these professing evangelicals using "social justice" as a means toward proclaiming the Gospel? Or do they operate completely the opposite?

As it is, many of them are advocating a clone religion of Christianity And, as His Utter Subliminity Screwtape (from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters) said is such an effective strategy. In this case, the "new" idea is Christianity And Social Justice -- and it's not so new, either; it's a mere strain of "liberation theology" liberalism that's somehow been accepted as legitimately evangelical. (10 Dr. Ransom at 10:52 AM on Jul 22:)