A Little Venting

Open and Closed Minds Why are Conservatives the only ones who are supposed to have an “open mind” on an issue like abortion? Sen. Richard Durbin, a liberal Democrat, claimed that Judge Alito has a “mind that sadly is closed in some instances.” Since Alito seems to have ruled on the Conservative side of the abortion issue in past court decisions, Sen. Durbin is concerned that he won’t have an “open [...]

The Myth of Religious Neutrality

I received an email from one of the authors of the Mother Jones issue that attacked Christian involvement in politics and social issues (December 2005). Throughout this author’s article he continually misrepresented me and others. I’ve answered these objections previously in articles and books and I did not feel it was necessary to do again. It gets tiresome after awhile. Mother Jones (MJ) has an [...]

Taking God's Name in Vain

Pat Robertson has gone on record claiming that God punished Ariel Sharon with a massive stroke for “dividing God’s land.” How does Robertson know this? He doesn’t. Attaching God’s name to a claim does not make it so. Robertson violated the third commandment (Ex. 20:7) by using God’s name “in vain” to give authority to an unsubstantiated assertion. Pat Boone, yes, that Pat Boone, gets it right when [...]

Taking Lessons from Joe Camel

Legendary actress Laurette Taylor (1884–1946) described acting as “the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept.” As I mentioned in my article “Brokeback Morality,” the movie Brokeback Mountain is a Hollywood propaganda film designed to desensitize the American people so more will accept homosexuality as normative. The actors and setting of the story w [...]

One Unintelligent and One Intelligent Court Decision

A judge and his court have spoken. Intelligent Design is not science. Science classes cannot mention God as the Creator of life. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III made the following ruling in the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board case regarding teaching Intelligent Design as a competing theory to Darwinism: “Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of [...]

Can Pagans Perform Miracles?

We saw in yesterday’s article that modern-day illusionists are trying to demonstrate that Jesus could have been a very good magician and not a worker of miracles sent by God. Of course, the miracles Jesus performed hardly qualify as parlor or stage magic. But what about “miracles” performed by those outside the Christian worldview? Are they really miracles or just tricks performed by well-practice [...]

Miracles or Magic?

The miracles of the Bible are under attack from an unusual discipline. Usually biblical miracles are called into question by liberal theologians and atheistic materialists. Now, the entertainment field is getting into the act. Illusionists Barry Jones and Stuart McLeod will attempt to see if eight New Testament miracles can be duplicated by non-miraculous means. British television will air the Chr [...]

Brokeback Morality

Can we ever sing “Home on the Range”[1] again without the lyrics being spoiled by images of the latest in homosexual propaganda, Brokeback Mountain, a story about two cowboys in love—with each another? As expected, Hollywood is gushing over the latest finger in the eye of the movie-going public. There have been homosexual-themed movies before (Philadelphia and Boys Don’t Cry). Tom Hanks and Hillar [...]

The Persecution of the Christian Churches

Worldviews are comprehensive. No cultural stone is left unthrown in the battle against competing ideologies. Secularists who write their screeds against Christians who engage in politics have history on their side, and it’s not a very good history. Under Nazism, churches were “confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this narrow sphere were su [...]

Are Christmas Trees Pagan?

One group of Christians is trying to keep the name “Christmas tree” while a small minority of Christians is saying good riddance to the very idea of Christmas trees because they are of pagan origin. Who’s right? Some time ago, my wife was asked by a national ministry to create a quilted backdrop of a large sweeping rainbow for its presentation booth that was used at various conventions around the [...]

The New Theocrats at Mother Jones

American Vision has received some interesting emails and phone calls about the December 2005 Mother Jones that takes on numerous Christian ministries and their varied roles on social and political change in America. It shows we are making progress. The underlying flaw in every argument that proposes to divorce religion from government is that its advocates can’t offer an alternative that is not go [...]

Mother Jones Attacks American Vision

The editors of the December/January 2006 issue of Mother Jones magazine are on the war path. They have put together an issue that takes aim at some of America’s most impacting Christian ministries, American Vision included. Their beef is with the Christian religion and government. They want a completely secularized (atheistic) government, something similar to the Communist regimes of the former So [...]

Making Dumpster Diving" Possible"

If you are looking for day-old donuts or loaves of bread whose date has expired, you might want to try the dumpster behind your local grocery store. They’re still edible even if there’re a little stale. Pop them in the microwave for about ten seconds, and they’ll taste as fresh as they day they were made. Freegans are leading the way to minimalist consumption by plundering dumpsters looking for cu [...]

The Defamation Tactics of the ADL

Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is again attacking Christian conservatives and their involvement in politics, something the ADL does on a regular basis. Foxman wrote: “Today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than [...]

Michael Newdow is Stupid

My wife and I taught our two sons never to describe things or people as “stupid.” I explained that the use of a word like “stupid” shows a lack of critical thinking. If everything is “stupid,” then there is no way to assess differences and gradation in arguments. Also, saying “stupid” all the time dilutes the significance of the word when you really need to use it. Michael Newdow, the “under God” [...]

Taking It to the Enemy

Ted Kennedy, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, has been blasting President Bush for striking a hornet’s nest of Islamic terrorism and exporting its influence abroad. Kennedy wants to believe that if we had just left the Islamic terrorists alone, everything would have been alright. There are lots of Americans who think the same way. The truth is, Islamic extremism is a festering sore that one [...]

Pat Robertson is Wrong (Again)

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive (Gen. 50:20). How many times have you heard this verse quoted? Lots. How many people actually believe it? Pat Robertson doesn’t seem to believe it. The school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, was voted out of office in Tuesday’s election. Its members wanted Intel [...]

The Slow Asphyxiation of Europe

Paris is burning. The disenfranchised Muslim communities are storming the Bastille of French Socialism. The principles of the French Revolution are coming home to roost. North African Muslims were lured by Europe’s promise of economic Paradise. What they got was warehousing in French ghettos where unemployment is around 30 percent. The enlightened French believed that language, food, and culture c [...]

God and the Constitution

An emailer to American Vision made the following comment in response to a guest column written by David New, Esq.[1] Perhaps the author is not familiar with the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . .”, or Article 4, Section 3, “. . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” [...]

Backward, Moderate Christian Soldiers

John C. Danforth, an Episcopal minister and former Republican Senator from Missouri, has weighed in on Christian political involvement in social issues. His first broadside came by way of an article he had published in June 2005 with the title “Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers.”[1] More about this article below. Most recently, after a speech he had given to students at the Bill Clinton School o [...]