Nuns with Guns III

Wisconsin Fight

ELCA Deceit

from http://commonsenseforasenslessworld.blogspot.com/2011/03/great-deceiver.html

The Great Deceiver

Genesis 2:16-17, “And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” God gave free rein to man with only one condition, that he must not eat of just one tree in the entire Garden. Man was given dominion over all the earth with only one law given to him by the Lord. Sounds pretty easy. Not so much. Genesis 3:1-7, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” The first time humankind is tempted by Satan, the decision is made to accept those words more pleasing to their ears, believing that they could be as enlightened as God Himself. And by using their limited experience and knowledge, original sin is given birth and thus begins humankind’s continuing discord within our relationship with God.

Jesus said in John 14:5-7, “Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” No one comes to the Father except through faith in the Risen Christ. But, the leaders of the ELCA promote a kinder, gentler way. They want to please all those that want what their itching ears long to hear. They promote that all faiths have a path to heaven and all faiths are to be valued, even to the point of embracing the tenets of other faiths and blending them into their own. Their false gospels of univeral salvation and affirmation deceive their members with lies. These false gospels do not recognize sinful behavior and do not require a Savior, because this deceitful doctrine promotes no repentance for sin and salvation for all, regardless of your faith. If one would accept these false teachings, why then should we accept and have faith in the Risen Christ? Because, the leaders of the ELCA promote that although there are many ways to gain one's salvation, Christianity is a “better” way than some of the other world religions. So, according to the doctrine of universal salvation, one is free to accept Christ or not, just continue in fellowship with the diversity that is the ELCA and continue to give your money to help them spread their message. Does this sound like the church that Jesus commanded us to build?

In the Great Commision, Jesus commanded His disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations. Matthew 28:18-20, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” The leaders of the ELCA have determined that it is inappropriate for those appointed as missionaries to proselytize. In other words, they are not to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations where they serve the Lord. Using the concept of "accompaniment” they forgo their responsibility to proclaim the Gospel, instead deferring to their mission partners and decide that they better accomplish their mission for the Lord as a facilitator, not as evangelists. The leaders of the ELCA claim on their website, that in the past they established, funded, and directed mission around the world. Now as a result of missions established around the world, they have become a partner in the global mission. These newly established churches will take on the command of the Great Commission and proclaim the Gospel. Apparently, the ELCA views it’s work around the world as done, needing only to supervise the few seeds they have planted. This is apparently why the mission budget for the ELCA took the brunt of the loss of revenue due to many congregations leaving and those redirecting benevolence. There is much more to do in this world since our Lord's message has yet to be heard by all.
  

Incest, adultery, bestiality, and homosexuality were forbidden by God. Numerous passages reiterate these laws against sexual immorality. Homosexuality was called detestable. Bestiality was a perversion. Incest was called dishonorable. Adultery was wickedness. Using clever and appealing words the leaders and biblical scholars of the ELCA have contrived doctrine to deceive their membership into believing that homosexuality is acceptable to God. Bound conscience was invented to legitimize “same gender oriented individuals living in loving monogamous relationships”. The ELCA enacts doctrine that disregards Scripture in order to placate those that wish to remain in sin without remorse, free to continue to feed the desires of the flesh without the need for repentance. Wouldn't it be nice if all could engage in their chosen sinful behavior without the necessity of asking for forgiveness? Wouldn't our children be happy if we allowed them to eat as much candy as they wanted?

Just as Satan appeals to our innermost desires and uses words that are so convincing, the leaders of the ELCA would have us believe that God is now telling us something new and we are within our rights to put aside those obsolete laws from the Bible. With friends like this, who needs enemies? This misguided denomination continues to uphold the things of the world while minimizing our Lord. There are so many well intentioned Christians that are falling into the trap set by the leaders of the ELCA. We must accept the responsibility to expose the heresy that is so prevalent in the doctrine of this church. We must continue in prayer, asking God to open the eyes and hearts of His children that remain trapped within the ELCA and errantly acquiesce to these false doctrines. These leaders and scholars of the ELCA use the same tactics as the “Great Deceiver”. We must remain diligent in proclaiming the true Gospel of Jesus Christ since we can no longer rely on the ELCA to conduct God’s business as He has commanded.

Lady Gaga - Telephone - Afghanistan Re-Make - GI Style

This is a couple of guys located in Afghanistan, that re-made the music video  Telephone by Lady Gaga. Prepare yourself for a fantastical journey.

The Purpose of the Book of Concord in the Lutheran Church

What is the Purpose of the Book of Concord in the Lutheran Church

from: http://cyberbrethren.com/2011/03/26/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-book-of-concord-in-the-lutheran-church/


Martin Chemnitz, a key theologian and developer for the Book of Concord.



The true church is gathered not around Scripture, but around the rightly understood, the purely and correctly interpreted Bible. It is the task of the church’s confession to express the right understanding of Scripture which the Church has reached. Thus pastors are helped to proclaim only the pure doctrine, and congregations are protected against the whims of the preacher and the misinterpretation of Scripture. In this sense the church’s confession is servant of the Word.

From Church and Confession (1941), English translation by Norman Nagel in We Confess: Jesus Christ (Concordia Publishing House, 1984) p. 84. Thanks for Pastor Mark Henderson for posting this.

Geert Wilders: The Failure of Multiculturalism

Geert Wilders: The Failure of Multiculturalism and How to Turn the Tide posted at http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/03/geert-wilders-the-failure-of-multiculturalism-and-how-to-turn-the-tide.html
Geert Wilders's speech at the Annual Lecture at the Magna Carta Foundation in Rome on March 25:

Signore e signori, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of the Magna Carta Foundation, molte grazie. Thank you for inviting me to Rome. It is great to be here in this beautiful city which for many centuries was the capital and the centre of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture.

Together with Jerusalem and Athens, Rome is the cradle of our Western civilization – the most advanced and superior civilization the world has ever known.

As Westerners, we share the same Judeo-Christian culture. I am from the Netherlands and you are from Italy. Our national cultures are branches of the same tree. We do not belong to multiple cultures, but to different branches of one single culture. This is why when we come to Rome, we all come home in a sense. We belong here, as we also belong in Athens and in Jerusalem.

It is important that we know where our roots are. If we lose them we become deracinated. We become men and women without a culture.

I am here today to talk about multiculturalism. This term has a number of different meanings. I use the term to refer to a specific political ideology. It advocates that all cultures are equal. If they are equal it follows that the state is not allowed to promote any specific cultural values as central and dominant. In other words: multiculturalism holds that the state should not promote a leitkultur, which immigrants have to accept if they want to live in our midst.

It is this ideology of cultural relativism which the German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently referred to when she said that multiculturalism has proved “an absolute failure.”

My friends, I dare say that we have known this all along. Indeed, the premise of the multiculturalist ideology is wrong. Cultures are not equal. They are different, because their roots are different. That is why the multiculturalists try to destroy our roots.

Rome is a very appropriate place to address these issues. There is an old saying which people of our Western culture are all familiar with. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” it says. This is an obvious truth: If you move somewhere, you must adapt to the laws and customs of the land.

The multicultural society has undermined this rule of common sense and decency. The multicultural society tells the newcomers who settle in our cities and villages: You are free to behave contrary to our norms and values. Because your norms and values are just as good, perhaps even better, than ours.

It is, indeed, appropriate to discuss these matters here in Rome, because the history of Rome also serves as a warning.

Will Durant, the famous 20th century American historian, wrote that “A great civilization cannot be destroyed from outside if it has not already destroyed itself from within.” This is exactly what happened here, in Rome, 16 centuries ago.

In the 5th century, the Roman Empire fell to the Germanic Barbarians. There is no doubt that the Roman civilization was far superior to that of the Barbarians. And yet, Rome fell. Rome fell because it had suffered a loss of belief in its own civilization. It had lost the will to stand up and fight for survival.

Rome did not fall overnight. Rome fell gradually. The Romans scarcely noticed what was happening. They did not perceive the immigration of the Barbarians as a threat until it was too late. For decades, Germanic Barbarians, attracted by the prosperity of the Empire, had been crossing the border.

At first, the attraction of the Empire on newcomers could be seen as a sign of the cultural, political and economic superiority of Rome. People came to find a better life which their own culture could not provide. But then, on December 31st in the year 406, the Rhine froze and tens of thousands of Germanic Barbarians, crossed the river, flooded the Empire and went on a rampage, destroying every city they passed. In 410, Rome was sacked.

The fall of Rome was a traumatic experience. Numerous books have been written about the cataclysmal event and Europeans were warned not to make the same mistake again. In 1899, in his book ‘The River War,’ Winston Churchill warned that Islam is threatening Europe in the same way as the Barbarians once threatened Rome. “Mohammedanism,” Churchill wrote – I quote – “is a militant and proselytizing faith. No stronger retrograde force exists in the World. […] The civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” End of quote.

Churchill is right. However, if Europe falls, it will fall because, like ancient Rome, it no longer believes in the superiority of its own civilization. It will fall because it foolishly believes that all cultures are equal and that, consequently, there is no reason why we should fight for our own culture in order to preserve it.

This failure to defend our own culture has turned immigration into the most dangerous threat that can be used against the West. Multiculturalism has made us so tolerant that we tolerate the intolerant.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: Our opponents are keenly aware of our weakness. They realize that the pattern which led to the fall of Rome, is at play today in the West. They are keenly aware of the importance of Rome as a symbol of the West. Over and over again they hint at the fall of Rome. Rome is constantly on their minds.

• The former Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan said – I quote: “The whole of Europe will become Islamic. We will conquer Rome”.
• Yunis al-Astal, a Hamas cleric and member of the Palestinian Parliament said – I quote: “Very soon Rome will be conquered.”
• Ali Al-Faqir, the former Jordanian Minister of Religion, stated that – I quote: “Islam will conquer Rome.”
• Sheikh Muhammad al-Arifi, imam of the mosque of the Saudi Defence Academy, said – I quote: “We will control Rome and introduce Islam in it.”
Our opponents are hoping for an event that is akin to the freezing of the Rhine in 406, when thousands of immigrants will be given an easy opportunity to cross massively into the West.
• In a 1974 speech to the UN, the Algerian President Houari Boumédienne, said – I quote: “One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.” End of quote.
• Libyan dictator Kadhafi said, I quote: “There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent today and their number is on the increase. This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted into Islam. Europe will one day soon be a Muslim continent.” End of quote.

Our opponents are aiming for a repetition of the fall of Rome in the 5th century and want to use exactly the same methods. “The strategy of exporting human beings and having them breed in abundance is the simplest way to take possession of a territory,” warned the famous Italian author Oriana Fallaci.

However, the situation today could be worse than it was when the Roman Empire fell. The Germanic Barbarians who overran Rome were not driven by an ideology. After having sacked Rome, they eventually adopted the Judeo-Christian civilization of Rome. They destroyed Rome because they wanted its riches, but they realized and recognized that Roman civilization was superior to their own Barbaric culture.

Having destroyed Rome, the Germanic tribes eventually tried to rebuild it. In 800, the Frankish leader Charlemagne had himself crowned Roman Emperor. Three hundred years later, the Franks and the other Europeans would go on the Crusades in defence of their Christian culture. The Crusades were as Oriana Fallaci wrote – I quote – a “counter-offensive designed to stem Islamic expansionism in Europe.” Rome had fallen, but like a phoenix it had risen again.

Contrary to the Barbarians which confronted Rome, the followers of Muhammad are driven by an ideology which they want to impose on us.

Islam is a totalitarian ideology. Islamic Shariah law supervises every detail of life. Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to our values. Respect for people who think otherwise, the equality of men and women, the equality of homosexuals and heterosexuals, respect for Christians, Jews, unbelievers and apostates, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, they are all under pressure because of islamization.

Europe is islamizing at a rapid pace. Many European cities have large islamic concentrations. In some neighbourhoods, Islamic regulations are already being enforced. Women’s rights are being trampled. We are confronted with headscarves and burqa’s, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honour-killings. “In each one of our cities” says Oriana Fallaci, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.” – End of quote.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake: The multiculturalist Left is facilitating islamization. Leftist multiculturalists are cheering for every new shariah bank, for every new islamic school, for every new mosque. Multiculturalists consider Islam as being equal to our own culture. Shariah law or democracy? Islam or freedom? It doesn’t really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire leftist elite is guilty of practising cultural relativism. Universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians. They are all betraying our hard-won liberties.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is happening in Europe today has to some extent been deliberately planned.

In October 2009, Andrew Neather, the former advisor of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, confirmed that the British Government had deliberately organized mass immigration as part of a social engineering project. The Blair Government wanted to – I quote – “make the UK truly multicultural.” To achieve this end, 2.3 million foreigners were allowed to enter Britain between 2000 and 2009. Neather says this policy has “enriched” Britain.


Ordinary people, however, do not consider the decline of societal cohesion, the rise of crime, the transformation of their old neighborhoods into no-go zones, to be an “enrichment.”

Ordinary people are well aware that they are witnessing a population replacement phenomenon. Ordinary people feel attached to the civilization which their ancestors created. They do not want it to be replaced by a multicultural society where the values of the immigrants are considered as good as their own. It is not xenophobia or islamophobia to consider our Western culture as superior to other cultures – it is plain common sense.
Fortunately, we are still living in a democracy. The opinion of ordinary people still matters. I am the leader of the Dutch Party of Freedom which aims to halt the Islamization process and defend the traditional values and liberties in the Netherlands. The Party of Freedom is the fastest growing party in the Netherlands.

Because the message of my party is so important, I support initiatives to establish similar parties in other countries, such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, where they do not yet exist. Last month, a poll in Britain showed that a staggering 48 percent of the British would consider supporting a non-fascist and non-violent party that vows to crack down on immigration and Islamic extremists and restrict the building of mosques. In October last year, I was in Berlin where I gave a keynote speech at a meeting of Die Freiheit, a newly established party led by René Stadtkewitz, a former Christian-Democrat. German polls indicate that such a party has a potential of 20 percent of the electorate.

My speech, in which I urged the Germans to stop feeling ashamed about their German identity drew a lot of media attention. Two weeks later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that multiculturalism is “an absolute failure.” Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Bavarian Christian-Democrats, was even more outspoken. “Multiculturalism is dead,” he said.

Last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “We have been too concerned about the identity of the immigrant and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him.” – End of quote.

Five weeks ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron blamed multiculturalism for Islamic extremism. “We have allowed the weakening of our collective identity,” he said. “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live […] apart from the mainstream.” – End of quote.

In his speech, David Cameron still makes a distinction between the Islamist ideology, which he calls extremist and dangerous, and Islam, which he says is peaceful religion. I do not share this view, and neither did Cameron’s great predecessor Winston Churchill. Stating that Islam is peaceful is a multiculturalist dogma which is contrary to the truth.
Politicians such as Merkel. Sarkozy and Cameron still do not seem to have understood what the problem really is. Nevertheless, the fact that they feel compelled to distance themselves from multiculturalism is a clear indication that they realize they need to pay lip-service to what the majority of their populations have long understood. Namely that the massive influx of immigrants from Islamic countries is the most negative development that Europe has known in the past 50 years.

Yesterday, a prestigious poll in the Netherlands revealed that 50 percent of the Dutch are of the opinion that Islam and democracy are not compatible, while 42 percent think they are. Even two thirds of the voters of the Liberal Party and of the Christian-Democrat Party are convinced that Islam and democracy are not compatible.

This, then, is the political legacy of multiculturalism. While the parties of the Left have found themselves a new electorate, the establishment parties of the Right still harbour their belief that Islam is a religion of peace on a par with peaceful religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and others.

The problem with multiculturalism is a refusal to see reality. The reality that our civilization is superior, and the reality that Islam is a dangerous ideology.

Today, we are confronted with political unrest in the Arab countries. Autocratic regimes, such as that of Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Kadhafi in Libya, the Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, and others, have been toppled or are under attack. The Arab peoples long for freedom. This is only natural. However, the ideology and culture of Islam is so deeply entrenched in these countries that real freedom is simply impossible. As long as Islam remains dominant there can be no real freedom.

Let us face reality. On March 8, the International Women’s Day, 300 women demonstrated on Cairo’s Tahrir Square in post-Mubarak Egypt. Within minutes, the women were charged by a group of bearded men, who beat them up and dragged them away. Some were even sexually assaulted. The police did not interfere. This is the new Egypt: On Monday, people demonstrate for freedom; on Tuesday, the same people beat up women because they, too, demand freedom.

I fear that in Islamic countries, democracy will not lead to real freedom. A survey by the American Pew Center found that 59 percent of Egyptians prefer democracy to any other form of government. However, 85 percent say that Islam’s influence on politics is good, 82 percent believe that adulterers should be stoned, 84 percent want the death penalty for apostates, and 77 percent say that thieves should be flogged or have their hands cut off.
Ronald Reagan was right when he called Kadhafi a “mad dog.” However, we should not harbor the illusion that there can be real freedom and real democracy in a country where Islam is dominant. There is no doubt that the results of the Pew survey in Egypt apply in Libya, too. It is not in our interest to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tripoli and install a khalifate in Libya.

Of course, the world has to stop Kadhafi from killing his own people. However, as UN Resolution 1973 stated last week, this is primarily the responsibility of – I quote – “in particular [the] States of the region.” End of quote. Why does a country like the Netherlands have to contribute six F16 fighter jets to enforce the arms embargo in Libya, while Saudi Arabia does not contribute a single plane from its fleet of nearly 300 fighter jets? Arabs are dying, but the Arab countries are shirking their responsibilities.

And one of the major threats of the current crisis is not even addressed by our leaders: How are we going to prevent that thousands of economic fugitives and fortune seekers cross the Mediterranean and arrive at place like Lampedusa? Now that Tunisia is liberated, young Tunisians should help to rebuild their country instead of leaving for Lampedusa. Europe cannot afford another influx of thousands of refugees.

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is time to wake up. We need to confront reality and we need to speak the truth. The truth is that Islam is evil, and the reality is that Islam is a threat to us.

Before I continue I want to make clear, however, that I do not have a problem with Muslims as such. There are many moderate Muslims. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.

Islam strives for world domination. The koran commands Muslims to exercise jihad and impose shariah law.

Telling the truth about immigration and warning that Islam might not be as benevolent as the ruling elite says, has been made a hate speech crime in several EU member states. As you probably know, I have been brought to court on charges of hate speech. That is the paradox of the multicultural society. It claims to be pluralistic, but allows only one point of view of world affairs, namely that all cultures are equal and that they are all good.
The fact that we are treated as criminals for telling the truth must not, however, deter us. The truth that Islam is evil has always been obvious to our ancestors. That is why they fought. It was very clear to them that our civilization was far superior to Islam.

It is not difficult to understand why our culture is far better than Islam. We Europeans, whether we be Christians, Jews, agnostics or atheists, believe in reason. We have always known that nothing good could be expected from Islam.

While our culture is rooted in Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, Islam’s roots are the desert and the brain of Muhammad. Our ancestors understood the consequences very well. The Koran, wrote the historian Theophanes, who lived in the second half of the 8th century, is based on hallucinations.

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,” the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II said in 1391, adding: “God is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonable is contrary to God’s nature.”

For 1,400 years, Westerners have been criticizing Islam and its founder because they recognized evil when they saw it. But then, suddenly, in the last decades of the past century, especially from the 1970s onwards, Western intellectuals stopped doing so.

The moral and cultural relativism of Marxism led the West’s political and intellectual elites to adopt a utopian belief in a universal brotherhood of mankind.

Multiculturalism is a culture of repudiation of Europe’s heritage and freedoms. It weakens the West day by day. It leads to the self-censorship of the media and academia, the collapse of the education system, the emasculation of the churches, the subversion of the nation-state, the break-down of our free society.

While today – at last – our leaders seem to realize what a disastrous failure multiculturalism has been, multiculturalism is not dead yet. More is needed to defeat multiculturalism than the simple proclamations that it has been an “absolute failure.” What is needed is that we turn the tide of Islamization.

There are a few things which we can do in this regard.

One thing which we should do is to oppose the introduction of Sharia or Islamic law in our countries. In about a dozen states in the United States, legislation is currently being introduced to prevent the introduction of Sharia. In early May, I will be travelling to the U.S. to express my support to these initiatives. We should consider similar measures in Europe.

Another thing which we should do is support Muslims who want to leave Islam. An International Women’s Day is useless in the Arab world if there is no International Leave Islam Day. I propose the introduction of such a day in which we can honor the courageous men and women who want to leave Islam. Perhaps we can pick a symbolic date for such a day and establish an annual prize for an individual who has turned his back on Islam or an organization which helps people to liberate themselves from Islam. It is very easy to become a Muslim. All one has to do is to pronounce the Shahada, the Islamic creed, which says – I quote “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” It should be equally easy to leave Islam by pronouncing a counter-Shahada, which says “I leave Islam and join humankind.”

A third measure to turn the tide of Islamization is to reemphasize the sovereignty of the nation-state. The peoples of the free world will only be able to fight back against Islam if they can rally around a flag with which they can identify. This flag, symbolizing pre-political loyalty, can only be the flag of our nation. In the West, our freedoms are embodied in our nation-states. This is why the multiculturalists are hostile to the nation-state and aim to destroy it.

National identity is an inclusive identity: It welcomes everyone, whatever his religion or race, who is willing to assimilate into a nation by sharing the fate and future of a people. It ties the individual to an inheritance, a tradition, a loyalty, and a culture.

I want to elaborate a bit on this since we are gathered here today in Rome. Again, it is appropriate that we are in Rome. In this city, in 1957, and – what an ironic coincidence – on this very day, the 25th of March, the Treaty of Rome was signed. This Treaty obliges the member states of the European Union to aim for “an ever closer union.”

Unfortunately, this union, like other multinational organizations, has become one of the vehicles for the promotion of multiculturalism. The EU has fallen in the hands of a multiculturalist elite who by undermining national sovereignty destroy the capacity of the peoples of Europe to democratically decide their own future.

The new government in my country, which is supported by my party, wants to restrict immigration. That is what our voters want. But we are confronted by the fact that our policies have to a large extent been outsourced to “Europe” and that our voters no longer have a direct say over their own future.

On account of international treaties, EU legislation prevails over national legislation and cannot be reversed by national parliaments. Indeed, in 2008, the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the EU, annulled both Irish and Danish immigration legislation. The Court stated that national law is subordinate to whatever is ruled on the European level. In March 2010, the European Court of Justice annulled Dutch legislation restricting family reunification for immigrants on welfare.

The ease with which Europe’s political elite conducts an immigration policy aimed at the deracination of Europe shows the insensitivity of this elite. It willingly sacrifices its own people to its political goal, without any consideration for the people involved.
Lower class blue-collar people have been driven from their neighborhoods. There is no respect for their democratic vote. On the contrary, people who do not agree with the multiculturalist schemes are considered to be racists and xenophobes, while the undefined offence of “racism and xenophobia” has been made central to all moral pronouncements by the European Union, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, and other supra-national organizations. This represents a systematic assault by the elite on the ordinary feelings of national loyalty.

In 2008, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that the member-states must – I quote – “condemn and combat Islamophobia” and ensure “that school textbooks do not portray Islam as a hostile or threatening religion.” – end of quote.

In March 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution criminalizing so-called “defamation of religions.” The resolution, authored by Pakistan, mentions only one religion by name: Islam. With its 57 member states the Organization of the Islamic Conference systematically uses its voting power in the UN to subvert the concept of freedom and human rights. In 1990, the OIC rejected the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and replaced it by the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which states in articles 24 that – I quote – “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia.” – end of quote.

This “human rights” charade has to stop if Western civilization wants to survive. Human rights exist for the protection of individuals, not religions and ideologies.

The EU’s aim, meanwhile, seems to be to destroy the old sovereign nations and replace them by new provincial identities, which are all clones of each other. Britanistan will not differ from Netherlandistan, nor Germanistan from Italiastan, or any other province of the European superstate in the making.

We must reclaim Europe. We can only do so by giving political power back to the nation-state. By defending the nation-states which we love, we defend our own identity. By defending our identity, we defend who we are and what we are against those who want to deracinate us. Against those who want to cut us from our roots, so that our culture withers away and dies.

My friends,

Twenty years after the ordinary people, Europe’s mainstream conservative leaders, such as Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron, have finally – better late than never – come to the obvious conclusion, namely that multiculturalism is a failure. However, they do not have a plan to remedy the situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for change. We must make haste. Time is running out. Ronald Reagan said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow”. That is why I propose the following measures in order to preserve our freedom:

First, we will have to defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. If we are free to speak, we will be able to tell people the truth and they will realize what is at stake.

Second, we will have to end cultural relativism. To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity.

Third, we will have to stop Islamization. Because more Islam means less freedom. We must stop immigration from Islamic countries, we must expel criminal immigrants, we must forbid the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in Europe already. Immigrants must assimilate and adapt to our values: When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Fourth, we must restore the supremacy and sovereignty of the nation-state. Because we are citizens of these states, we can take pride in them. We love our nation because they are our home, because they are the legacy which our fathers bestowed on us and which we want to bestow on our children. We are not multiculturalists, we are patriots. And because we are patriots, we are willing to fight for freedom.

Let me end with a final – and a positive – remark: Though the situation is bad and multiculturalism is still predominant, we are in better shape than the Roman Empire was before its fall.

The Roman Empire was not a democracy. The Romans did not have freedom of speech. We are the free men of the West. We do not fight for an Empire, we fight for ourselves. We fight for our national republics. You fight for Italy, I fight for the Netherlands, others fight for France, Germany, Britain, Denmark or Spain. Together we stand. Together we represent the nations of Europe.

I am confident that if we can safeguard freedom of speech and democracy, our civilization will be able to survive. Europe will not fall. We, Europe’s patriots, will not allow it.

Thank you very much.

Posted by Robert on March 26, 2011 9:30 AM

Egypt: Arab ‘Democracy’ Giving Way To A New Islamist State

Egypt: Arab ‘Democracy’ Giving Way To A New Islamist State

Posted by Rob Miller, Mar 25th 2011 at 12:23 pm, at http://bigpeace.com/robmiller/2011/03/25/egypt-arab-democracy-giving-way-to-a-new-islamist-state/#more-99252

Remember when the pundits, columnists and the newsrooms in the dinosaur media were practically jumping out of their shoes touting the Egyptian ‘pro-democracy’ movement? How wonderful it all was, and how Egypt was going to be the new liberal paradise in the Arab world? How sagacious and wise Obama was for encouraging it all and dumping Mubarak so quickly?

Well, it appears that some second thoughts and some serious walking back are in order as reality rears its ugly head.

They’ve finally noticed that the secular unemployed and underemployed twitter addicts and students in Cairo aren’t the ones who will be running the new Egypt…it will be the military in partnership with the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

In other words, something more along the lines of Iran, just as I predicted.

And the ‘youth’ will go along with it, as will the military…just as they did in Iran.

Whaddya know about that?

The folly of the whitewashing of the ’secular’ Muslim Brotherhood by the Obama Administration and people like their shills at the Times is about to become all too plain.

The Egyptians, urged on by their imams and the Ikhwan turned out in record numbers to vote for early elections that favor the Brotherhood, not the nascent ‘liberal’ movements. And it is the new Brotherhood dominated parliament that will revamp Egypt’s laws and create a new Islamic Republic that will be absolutely sharia-licious.

The rabid response Ikhwan leader Yusef Qaradawi received when he returned to Egypt should have been one clue to the boys and girls at Parvda-on-the Hudson. So was Lara Logan’s gang rape while the crowd screamed “Jew! Jew!”

Islam and the western notion of freedom and democracy don’t mix, for the most part.

I’m also going to make another prediction, one that seems quite obvious to me. The Obama Administration’s policies in Egypt and the Middle East are almost certain to lead to a new war in the region between Israel and the genocidal Hamas, with a good chance of Hezbollah joining in and Egypt participating, at least tacitly and perhaps overtly.

Mubarak was no friend of Israel, but after seeing the Muslim Brotherhood murder his predecessor Anwar Sadat, he realized that they were a threat to his regime and made efforts to suppress them at home and keep Iranian arms out of the hands of Hamas, the Ikhwan branch in Gaza.

The new Egyptian regime is going to be much more sympathetic to Hamas and isn’t likely to make any such efforts, even if they elect to go through the motions of observing the Israel-Egypt peace treaty to keep that fat $2 billion US subsidy coming in. As soon as Hamas feels it’s ready, we’ll see another war against the Jews.

Since Hezbollah now owns Lebanon and is an Iranian proxy like Hamas, they will almost certainly join in. And we could actually see a scenario where Egyptian popular opinion and religious fervor has the new regime putting their US trained and armed military into the mix as well.

Rob Miller blogs at Joshuapundit

Rev Conner on the Rise and Fall of the ELCA

It Was Only a Matter of Time

By CJ Conner, published: March 23, 2011, Posted at http://revcjconner.com/?p=511

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America lies in utter disarray. With a budget nearly half that of twenty years ago, and hundreds of it’s largest churches fleeing for Christian Freedom, some Bishops and Synods have seen their membership drop by half or more.

Meanwhile, denominations like Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ and North American Lutheran Church (which recently became endowed to the tune of about 2 million dollars), have become the crucibles for the deconstruction of one of the worst church merger stories in American history.

The ELCA was formed primarily by the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America, or ALC and LCA respectively. The ALC brought with it all the money to the table- hundreds of millions of dollars- while the broke poor LCA brought all the grand ideas for a brave New Church of the 21st century. Many congregations chose not to join the new Lutheran merger, and pastors today, in hindsight, recognize that the balance of power in the body politik as well as the retreat from historic Christian teaching and doctrine, has left the ELCA in this peculiar position: Reverse engeneering of a merger that was once hailed the world over as one of the greatest ecumenical moments in Lutheran history.

I’ve played some small roll myself over the last ten years in seeing these days to fruition, not because of any disdain for church mergers and diverse opinion, but rather for the sake of the Freedom of the Christian that Luther talks about: "A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one."

Through Christ’s death on the cross, and through Christ alone, we are free and subject to none. Christian identity can’t be found in the historic episcopacy, social statements, or a constitutional denomination. We find it only in the salvation won for us by Jesus Christ, not through works of social justice, and are pointed to Christ only through God’s Holy Word, the Bible- not through Bishops and not through the votes of the constitutional conventions of man where the Holy Spirit may or may not be moving.

I say all this only to highlight why denominations like the ELCA are in great tumult- "The Watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out." – John 10:3

Congregations are leaving the ELCA because they hear the voice of Christ. He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.

It took a long time before so many sheep heard the faint voice, yet growing ever-stronger, calling them out to lives of faith in the midst of a denomination that has once upon a time controlled all of the information, all of the literature, and all of the preparation of pastors and teachers. By the Grace of God, Christ continued to call. By the Grace of God, Good Lutherans have discovered the Bishops and professors and pastors who have been wolves in sheeps’ clothing, carving out paths that lead away from the Good Shepherd. By the grace of God, faithful Lutherans are reclaiming in record number their identity of Christians- Salvation is found in scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and the cross alone- all Glory be to God.

So for me, finally, on to other things as I see God’s work for His lutheran church in this country made manifest before my very eyes- as many many others, younger and with more energy than I or those who first sounded the clarion calls nearly twenty years ago- take their places upon the walls of God’s Kingdom, looking out into the vast distance as hundreds of thousands of God’s people here in America hear the Good Shepherd’s voice, and follow him.

He calls for me too- to return from the spiritual battlefields and sit once again at his feet. I hear his voice, and I follow- thankful to the hundreds of thousands who have used my material, visited my websites, and have put on the whole armor of God themselves.

To God be the Glory!

A Message for Lutherans Out on a Limb

A message for Lutherans out on a limb

Posted: Friday, October 2, 2009 12:00 am | Updated: 7:17 pm, Tue May 11, 2010.

By BARNABAS POWELL, The Pueblo Chieftain, http://www.chieftain.com/life/local/article_aae4b5b4-e3ed-5c08-8fdf-f2c31bff82fe.html

As a former Lutheran and a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., I feel compelled to comment on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's recent decision to permit individual congregations to appoint openly homosexual, partnered clergy, and to bless same-sex marriages.

Although I was raised outside any faith, my parents did have me baptized in the Evangelical Lutheran Church as an infant. I came from a long lineage of German Lutherans, and when I reached a point in my adolescence where I felt called to find my faith, I gave my ancestral church first crack at the job.

I was catechized and confirmed, yet within a few months I left through the back door.

Was I outraged that my denomination was violating the human rights of those who live beyond the norms of an outmoded, patriarchal morality? Not quite.

I left because I sensed that rejecting the 2,000-year context of Holy Tradition, the cornerstone Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, left Lutheranism vulnerable to forces intent on manipulating the Bible to fit a modernist agenda.

I'm no clairvoyant, but I was able to read the handwriting on the wall. My suspicions were further piqued on my first day of college, when I took my seat in the Honors Seminar and our professor introduced herself.

"Good morning. My name is Doctor —- and I will be your instructor. As I am a lesbian-Marxist-feminist, this course will be taught from a lesbian-Marxist-feminist perspective. If you hope to do well, you will need to check your religious baggage at the door before you enter the room."

What she meant by "religious baggage" was not faith itself (she and her partner, the co-lecturer, were both committed Unitarians), but an unreconstructed acceptance of "outdated" mores.

Once biblical interpretation is divorced from the context of the Church's collective, historical mind, all that remain are convenient opinions.

The issue doesn't have to be homosexuality. It needn't concern morality at all. The health, wealth and prosperity Gospel is among the most unbiblical heresies around.

You can substitute premarital sex or cohabitation, abortion or euthanasia. We are coming to a day when even polygamy among consenting adults will be accepted and affirmed on the basis of a utilitarian version of love.

Love without the cross is mere passion. We no longer let Scripture define what love is. We define love ourselves, then use our fallen understanding of the term to reject parts of Scripture we disagree with.

Despite appearances, my challenge is not to proponents of the new morality (though I do object when tyrants of tolerance automatically label dissenters "haters”). At least they are being consistent with the tradition (or rejection thereof) they've received.

They will continue to triumph whenever they confront an old guard that no longer knows what it's fighting for because it's lost any sense of asceticism.

My concern is for the holdouts, those who feel their church has abandoned them. I'll resist the urge to say, "I told you so."

My question is, "What will you do now?” Will you slowly be brought to boil like frogs in a kettle, vainly hoping things will go back to the way they were?

Reports suggest disaffected ELCA congregations may join a breakaway splinter called Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. Is that the answer?

As a continuing Anglican-turned-Orthodox seminary classmate put it, "When they started sawing at the branch I was standing on, I first went farther out onto it. Then I realized I needed to head for the trunk."

If those who feel oppressed by traditional morality are free to vote with their feet and join churches that affirm their lifestyles, then those who feel betrayed by the new morality must have the same freedom.

But please, don't create yet another, redundant denomination. Why not consider the established Missouri Synod? Better yet, why not grab hold of the trunk?

Barnabas Powell is pastor at St. Michael's Orthodox Church. He may be reached at barnabaspowell@yahoo.com .

A Tale of Two Pakastani Women

from: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/



A tale of two Pakistanis: The Muslim woman on the left was welcomed
 as an immigrant to America 10 years ago, but is complaining of
emotional trauma from having been bumped from an airline flight.
The Christian on the right still lives as a minority in Pakistan and
is just happy to be home after having been chained to a tree,
gang-raped, and ordered to embrace Islam by her kidnappers.

President Obama Backs Al Qaeda in Libya

from: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/

Well, you have to hand it to Obama, he is consistent in his extreme anit-Americanism. Throughout his presdiency and all of the Islamic revolutions sweeping the Middle East and Africa, he has sided with the Islamic supremacists at every turn. His fierce islamophilia threatens free men the world over. Taking his marching orders from vile America hater, Jew hater devout Muslim Sheik Qaradawi, Obama paves the way for an Islamic state in Libya. not the it was good before, hardly. But there are degrees of evil. It can always be worse, but little matches the anti-human brutality of Islamic regimes in the twenty first century.

He backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
He's backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
He backed the brutal mullahcracy in Iran during their bloody march for freedom.
He's backed Hezb'Allah in Lebanon.
He's backed Islamic law at the UN in co-sponsoring a resolution of the restriction of free speech.
And he is backing Al Qaeda in Libya.

Libya: the West and al-Qaeda on the same side The Telegraph (hat tip Armaros)

Statements of support for Libya's revolution by al-Qaeda and leading Islamists have led to fears that military action by the West might be playing into the hands of its ideological enemies.

WikiLeaks cables, independent analysts and reporters have all identified supporters of Islamist causes among the opposition to Col Gaddafi's regime, particularly in the towns of Benghazi and Dernah.

An al-Qaeda leader of Libyan origin, Abu Yahya al-Libi, released a statement backing the insurrection a week ago, while Yusuf Qaradawi, the Qatar-based, Muslim Brotherhood-linked theologian issued a fatwa authorising Col Gaddafi's military entourage to assassinate him.

Col Gaddafi has pinpointed the rebels in Dernah as being led by an al-Qaeda cell that has declared the town an Islamic emirate. The regime also casts blame on hundreds of members of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group released since the group renounced violence two years ago.
Although said by the regime to be affiliated to al-Qaeda, most LIFG members have focused only on promoting sharia law in Libya, rejecting a worldwide "jihad".

"Only promoting sharia law." So they are OK with honor killing, killing of aposates, clitorectomies, woemn as property, amputations for stealing, stoning for "adultery." hangings for gays, Jewish genocide, ethnic cleasning ........

Florida Circut Court Processes Case under Islamic Law

Abortion Numbers from NYC

Abortion is the Leading Cause of Death in NYC -- BY FAR

from:http://pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.com/2011/03/abortion-is-leading-cause-of-death-in.html

In 2008, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, there were 55,391 total deaths in New York City. Also in 2008, according to the New York State Department of Health, there were 82,475 induced abortions in New York City.

Let’s break it out with some leading causes of death in New York City in 2008:

Cause of Death, Number of Deaths
Heart Disease, 21,844
Cancer, 13,116
Influenza/Pneumonia, 2,578
Diabetes, 1,708
Stroke, 1,669
Deaths by All Causes (excluding abortion), 55,391
Induced Abortions, 82,475

The number of people who died from abortion in 2008 in New York City is 149% of the number of people who died from all other causes. Put another way, abortion accounts for 60 percent of all deaths in New York City.

Bishop Zellmer Rejects Holy Cross' Vote to Leave ELCA

Holy Cross to leave ELCA

By Jeff Bahr, American News reporter11:57 a.m. CDT, March 14, 2011 posted at
http://www.aberdeennews.com/news/aan-holy-cross-to-leave-elca-20110314,0,620902.story

The members of Holy Cross Lutheran Church voted 61 to 30 Sunday to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. That election was the second and final one necessary for the church to sever its ties with the ELCA. A two-thirds vote was required in each election.

The departure from the ELCA will become official when Holy Cross sends a letter to the Sioux Falls-based synod. That letter will probably be sent this week, said Jack Hieb, president of the church’s congregation council.
The vote leaves Aberdeen with three churches that belong to the ELCA — Bethlehem Lutheran, Good Shepherd and Zion Lutheran. It is expected that Holy Cross will join the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.

The Rev. David Zellmer of Sioux Falls, the bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the ELCA, was at Holy Cross for the vote. “He stood up immediately after the vote and said that he’s not going to recognize the vote because he felt like it wasn’t appropriate,” Hieb said. The bishop, Hieb said, has a history of not accepting such votes.

“He has refused to acknowledge that anything we’ve done is valid,” Hieb said. “And I guess at the end of the day, from my standpoint — I’ve said this all along — the bishop doesn’t run this church.” The bishop, Hieb said, “is the bishop of an organization that this church is no longer a part of.”

Jesuit Joke I

What is similar about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?
Well, they were both founded by Spaniards, St. Dominic for the Dominicans, and St. Ignatius of Loyola for the Jesuits.  They were also both founded to combat heresy: the Dominicans to fight the Albigensians, and the Jesuits to fight the Protestants.

What is different about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?
Well, have you met any Albigensians lately?

[Note: This joke is obviously told from a Dominican perspective. The Jesuit response would be: "That because we didn't use swords!"]

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

Anti Planned Parenthood Ad

I Am a Muslim Too

From: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

The photograph above shows a handful of non-Muslim New Yorkers protesting an investigation into radical Islam by staging a "Today, I am a Muslim, too" rally, last week.

The photograph below is from an "I am an actual Muslim" rally held elsewhere.

Ash Wednesday 2011

Lutheran Food Pyramid

A plug for a new product from our friends at http://www.oldlutheran.com/ - The Center for Lutheran Pride (but not too proud)

Paparazzi - Lady Gaga

Acoustic

Charlie Sheen - Winning

Every other communication outlet has done a story on Charlie.  Why not me?

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Hassled by U.S. ICE

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Hassled by U.S. Immigration Service
Posted by Clare M. Lopez Mar 7th 2011 at 2:32 pm at http://bigpeace.com/clopez/2011/03/07/elisabeth-sabaditsch-wolff-hassled-by-u-s-immigration-service/

Recently acquitted in Austria on charges of “incitement to hatred” stemming from comments made in a seminar series about Islam, Austrian citizen Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff now also has been subjected to lengthy questioning by the U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) service upon arrival in Miami, FL on 4 March 2011. Wolff, who lived in the U.S. as a child, now lives with her family in Vienna, Austria but returns regularly to the U.S. for visits. Although acquitted of “incitement to hatred,” Wolff was convicted in February 2011 of the lesser charge of “denigration of the teachings of a legally recognized religion” and assessed a fine. She is appealing.

When she arrived in Miami on 4 March 2011 en route to a West Palm Beach conference on shariah Islam at which she was to deliver a presentation, Wolff was pulled out of the line by ICE officers and subjected to lengthy pointed questioning. Her belongings also were thoroughly searched by hand. The questions focused on her purpose in visiting the U.S. but after the ICE officers had a look at the text of Wolff’s speech, which she showed them to substantiate her reasons for this trip, the questions from ICE officers became even more pointed and frankly inappropriate.

In addition to querying Wolff about her speech and the conference, the ICE officers wanted to know why she was traveling alone, where her husband was, how she earned a living, and most inappropriate of all, whether she were a “practicing Christian.” A Dutch colleague of Wolff’s, also to speak at the conference, was similarly subjected to lengthy and hostile questioning by ICE officials, both in Amsterdam and at JFK Airport upon arrival in the U.S. After looking at the text of his speech, one of the ICE officials in Amsterdam flatly told the Dutch citizen that his activism against shariah Islam “is discrimination.”

Both Wolff and her colleague ultimately were released and permitted to continue their travel in the U.S., but were sent off with the explicit warning to Wolff that she should “tone down the rhetoric.”

While ICE and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have the legal duty to scrutinize would-be visitors to the U.S. at points of entry, what appears to be gratuitous harassment on grounds apparently related to issues of free speech is inappropriate. Wolff was convicted in Austria under laws that are incompatible with the right to free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. No American could ever be convicted in the U.S. for “denigration of the teachings of a legally recognized religion.” Belief systems, Ideology, and religious teachings are not off-limits from criticism in this country. Not yet anyway.

Wolff’s conviction on such wrongful charges in Austria should have been no impediment to her U.S. travel; nor should her participation in a conference about defending American foundational principles against the encroachments of Islamic law against those principles. So, to see representatives of American national security community essentially reprising the Austrian court’s assault on Wolff’s right to free speech is deeply troubling. The separate but similar treatment accorded her Dutch colleague by ICE officials in both Europe and the U.S. furthermore would seem to indicate a deliberate, premeditated, and coordinated effort to intimidate these two champions of Western civilization.

The insidious expansion of the concept of “hate speech” directly challenges the rights of free citizens to speak truth and express opinions, especially when applied to speech about Islam, Islamic law (shariah), or even the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Islamic organizations such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and front groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), work ceaselessly to achieve the criminalization of free speech directed toward Islam. Enforcement of shariah laws on blasphemy, slander, and insult to Islam not only stifles the individual’s right to free speech, but also, as intended, destroys the ability of national security leadership to know and understand the nature of Islamic doctrine, history, ideology, and law.

The United States is the last true bastion of protected free speech in the world. We cannot allow the precious freedoms we hold dear to be eroded under the assault of an alien legal system that would replace them with a totalitarian world order. The ICE treatment of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolf and her Dutch colleague should sound a warning to all of us that shariah can happen here, too, if we let it.

Lutheran Congregations Split in Centerville OH

from: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/lutheran-congregations-thriving-after-split-1099109.html?cxtype=rss_local-news

New church outgrows temporary home; Epiphany has new leader.

By Jill Kelley, Staff Writer 8:52 PM Saturday, March 5, 2011


CENTERVILLE — In January, the Rev. Todd Kornahrens left Epiphany Lutheran Church to form Living Water Lutheran Church.

Two months later, he is leading a mission church that has 450 members.

“We are literally off the charts for mission development in a mainstream church,” Kornahrens said. “It is going better than any of us imagined.”

Breaking away

Kornahrens and the Rev. John Bradosky left Epiphany after a year and a half of strife, which was spurred by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s social statement and policy changes in August 2009.

The ELCA’s decision to accept noncelibate gay ministers proved controversial for many Lutherans, who saw it as indicative of the difference of opinion within the ELCA about how Scripture should be interpreted.

Like many other Lutheran churches, this led to a schism within the Epiphany congregation and church leadership.

Both Bradosky and Kornahrens broke with the ELCA to join the North American Lutheran Church, a more traditionally focused Lutheran denomination.

“If the only issue confronting the ELCA was that social statement, I wouldn’t have left,” Kornahrens said. “I would have still disagreed with it. But it was all the decisions that followed. Then it becomes systemic.”

While Bradosky became the general secretary of the NALC, Kornahrens formed Living Water.

“I think, for me, it was an opportunity to start something fresh,” Kornahrens said. “We (Living Water) want to be about outreach and be welcoming to everyone, without compromising our principles.”

Living Water

Living Water had been holding services at Weller Elementary School in Centerville while waiting for a permanent site on East Franklin Street to be ready.

But the church has since outgrown the East Franklin site, and has signed an interim lease to hold services at Jonathan Wright Elementary School, 40 Florence Drive, Springboro.

Living Water’s last services at Weller are Sunday, and it will hold its first services at Jonathan Wright at 7 p.m. March 9, for Ash Wednesday.

Kornahrens said his church would like to find a permanent home, but stressed that the mission is more important than a building.

“We want to go out and be the church,” he said, referring to the congregation’s outreach efforts. “There’s a hunger to do something. It’s about being bigger than just us.”

Kornahrens said Living Water is still forming its identity, but mission and evangelism are key.

“The goal is to connect people with Christ,” he said. “We’re not going to be the anti-anything church. We’re going to be pro — pro-God, pro-family, pro-working for community.”

Kornahrens said there is no animosity toward those who remain at his former church home.

“No matter what happened, there are still some great people at Epiphany who I love and respect,” he said. “It was a matter of my core beliefs not matching the direction of the church.”

Epiphany update

The congregation is moving forward at Epiphany Lutheran Church, as well. In February, the congregation welcomed an interim senior pastor, the Rev. Peter Rudowski.

Rudowski grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and served as a parish pastor for 33 years — 28 of those at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Cincinnati.

Rudowski, who was hired for one year, joins the Rev. Sara Cutter, who grew up with Epiphany and has been on the staff for 2½ years.

Cutter said Epiphany is doing very well in the wake of the changes.

“We are very blessed,” she said. “We were spending so much energy debating things between one another. Now we have more time and energy freed up to devote to the church.”

Cutter said the Epiphany congregation is down from 3,000 to 2,600-to-2,700 members.

“We certainly have lost a number of wonderful people,” she said. “And numbers-wise it might be shocking, but percentage-wise it’s not.”

The church has kept its services at the Far Hills campus the same, but reduced the number of services at its Austin Campus.

“We plan to bring in a pastor to take the lead down there in the next few weeks,” Cutter said.

The Heart of Our Culture

From: http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/03/heart-of-our-culture.html

The Heart of Our Culture

Over the years there has been much discussion in this space about the reasons why Western Civilization was (and still is) the greatest in history. What are the characteristics of our common culture that enabled it to explode out of Europe and achieve undisputed dominance throughout the entire globe over the brief span of five centuries?

Native intelligence obviously played a major role. Without the genetic basis for high IQ, European ingenuity and inventiveness would not have been sufficient to give our civilization the technological and organizational edge that enabled it to establish and administer far-flung empires.

However, as Fjordman has often pointed out, intelligence alone is not a sufficient explanation, since the average IQ of East Asians is higher than that of Europeans. The Chinese established a complex and sophisticated urban civilization a full two millennia before the European explosion, yet they never managed to achieve more than regional dominance.

Fjordman’s hypothesis is that the incidence of IQ “outliers” — the number of people with extraordinarily high or extraordinarily low intelligence — is much greater among Europeans, which may account for our ascendancy by providing our civilization with a pool of gifted innovators whose work drove the advancement of European civilization.

Now that Western Civilization seems to be in the throes of cultural suicide, China stands as the likely inheritor of what remains. For that reason, it’s no surprise that the Chinese have a keen interest in figuring out what made Europeans so successful. Unlike many of our own analysts — to whom some topics are too repugnant to be considered, no matter how politically incorrect the scholar — the Chinese are interested in discovering the real reasons for the success of the West, whatever they may be.

A member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — a government functionary in a totalitarian atheist state — has come to a surprising conclusion. His analysis will not sit well with orthodox secularists in the West, who have done their best to drive a stake through the heart of Christianity for the past hundred years:

Christianity the reason for West’s success, say the Chinese

In the West we are doing our best to destroy our Christian heritage but in China, Chinese intellectuals are coming around to the view that it is precisely this heritage that has made the West so successful.

Former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Dominic Lawson, in a review in the Sunday Times of Niall Ferguson’s new book, ‘Civilisation: The West and the Rest’, carries a quote from a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in which he tries to account for the success of the West, to date.

He said: “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world.

“We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.

“Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.

“But in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.

“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

Note the source. It isn’t from a religious leader, or some religious think-tank. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is an instrument of the Chinese Communist government which spends a not inconsiderable amount of time and money persecuting Christians and is officially atheistic.

If this is the conclusion it has come to, maybe Europe needs to reconsider whether it mightn’t be an idea to encourage rather than eradicate Christianity.

Incidentally, just to drive home the point, Lawson also refers to this data point in Ferguson’s book: Wenzhou, the Chinese city which is rated as the most entrepreneurial in the country, is also home to 1,400 churches.

[..]

Even if secular Western intellectuals were able to accept this explanation for the European ascendancy — which I consider unlikely — it would not help re-establish Christian faith among Westerners.

Religious faith is not adopted by an entire people out of expediency. Christian fervor did not arise because its adherents reasoned that it would help their drive for world dominance. It was not established for instrumental reasons. Its phenomenal success was merely a by-product of belief, and not its raison d’être.

After religious faith becomes widespread, cynical opportunists may mimic it in their ambition to get ahead, or exploit those who do believe. Power-hungry leaders may abuse it to enhance their positions. And vast numbers of ordinary citizens will simply go through the customary motions of belief out of deference to societal norms.

Yet the core of faith remains, and its causes lie beyond the reach of reason. I do not believe in God because I find it expedient, nor was my faith derived logically from empirical premises. My belief arises directly from an experience of God, and can neither be reasoned into nor out of existence. Because I was born into it, Christianity was the natural framework into which I could fit my own experience.

The disappearance of traditional Christianity cannot be reversed by a collective act of will, no matter how urgently Christian faith is needed. Western Civilization may well continue to destroy itself, and the realization of what we have lost is not enough to save it.

Even in 1867, at the height of the power of the British Empire, Matthew Arnold could sense what was coming, and expressed his foreboding in “Dover Beach”:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

And withdraw it did. It has retreated so far across the mudflats that a spectator on the shingles of the earth’s shore can barely distinguish the glint of it, even with binoculars.

But tides are cyclical, and Faith will surge across the foreshore again. There’s no guarantee about what form it may take, however; next time it may even be Islamic.

Republican Jane Russell Passes Away at 89

From: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/03/01/screen-legend-outspoken-republican-jane-russell-passes-away-at-89/

Screen Legend, Outspoken Republican Jane Russell Passes Away at 89 by John Nolte



We lost a another irreplaceable legend yesterday and one of our own, an outspoken Republican — an independent-thinking feminist in the best sense of the word. Here are some of my favorite Jane Russell quotes:


–”I have always been a Republican, and when I was in Hollywood long ago, most of the people there were Republican. The studio heads were all Republican, my boss Howard Hughes was a raving Republican, and we had a motion picture code in those days so they couldn`t do all this naughty stuff. We had John Wayne, we had Charlton Heston, we had man named Ronald Reagan, we had Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Clark Gable.”

–”These days I am a teetotal, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist.”

–Asked what she thinks of Hollywood liberals George Clooney, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn: “I think they`re not well.”

–”I had a botched abortion and it was terrible. Afterwards my own doctor said, `What butcher did this to you?` I had to be taken to hospital. I was so ill I nearly died. I`ve never known pain like it.”

–”People should never, ever have an abortion. Don`t talk to me about it being a woman`s right to choose what she does with her own body. The choice is between life and death.”

–Asked why modern Hollywood is so liberal: “I think the Sixties have happened between when I was there and now. A lot of the actors and actresses, their parents were Sixties people and they just have a Democratic left wing – they flipped.”

–Asked about the apparent conflict between her faith and her image, Russell replied, “Christians have bosoms, too, you know.”

Russell starred most famously in “The Outlaw” (1943), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), and two terrific comedies with Bob Hope, “Paleface” (1948) and the even better sequel “Son of Paleface” (1952). For my money, though, her best work can be seen in the two films she did with Robert Mitchum: 1951’s “His Kind of Woman” and 1952’s “Macao,” two of the truly outstanding noir films of the fifties that are just as hard-hitting today as when they were first produced. In fact, there are those who consider the former to be one the greatest noir films period.

The chemistry and steam Mitchum and Russell generate is off the charts, the kind of starpower you just don’t see anymore. Thanks to DVD and Turner Classic Movies, both films are finally receiving more of the attention they deserve — and Russell’s good in them, very good. She didn’t think much of herself as an actress but she proved herself enough of a screen comedienne that no less than Bob Hope worked with her twice and she more than holds her own in a gritty black and white world convincingly playing the kind of woman capable of getting under Mitchum’s skin.

No small thing.

Jane Russell was 89.