I received a phone call from a friend who goes to a conservative Baptist church. She asked one of the assistant pastors to help promote Justice Sunday. The purpose of Justice Sunday is to involve Christians in the political process. The pastor argued that Christians should not be involved in politics or social issues because Jesus and the disciples did not vote, rally support for social issues, or [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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” [...]
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 [...]
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.” [...]
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 [...]
The men and women of “Monster Garage” turn ordinary vehicles into extraordinary monster vehicles. The show’s driving force is Jesse James, who’s great-great-grandfather was the outlaw’s cousin. All who work on the show are very talented. I would guess that many of them had difficulty sitting still in school and keeping their mind on their work. (How many times have yo [...]
Noah Feldman, author of Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem—And What we Should Do About It, makes some valid points in his article “God, government and you” that appeared in USA Today on October 17, 2005. He writes, “The Framers believed to a man in the importance of the liberty of conscience, and they barred a national established religion in order to protect that value.” Feldman admit [...]
It is easy to understand why the human rights idea came into popularity in Christendom. It is simply that men living in Christendom enjoyed that “blessed liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” to such an extent and over so many centuries that they found it easy to take for granted. Liberty, instead of being recognized as the gift of Christ and the reward of Christian justice, was [...]
The following article was written in 1996 in response to an article that former President Jimmy Carter wrote on the topic of “Judge Not” as it relates to homosexuality and abortion. I decided to revive it for two reasons. First, it’s been reported that Carter’s son Jack may run for the Senate in Nevada. He is described as a “social liberal with conservative Southern roots.”[1] That’s exactly what [...]
Many who are arguing for “under God” to remain in the Pledge of Allegiance are doing so by declaring that the phrase has no particular religious meaning for our nation today. This was the view of Solicitor General Theodore Olson when the Pledge issue first came before the Supreme Court in 2004. “Olson argued that the phrase is viewed as an ‘acknowledgment’ of religion’s role in the lives of Americ [...]
The official emblem of the city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is adorned with three crosses. A federal lawsuit alleges the crosses, which are religious symbols, are unconstitutional because they appear on public property. **“**The crosses serve no governmental purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christian citizens,” said the lawsuit filed by Paul F. Weinbaum, a member of the recent [...]
The blame game will continue as politicians and political action groups jockey for position and funding for the upcoming elections in 2006 and 2008. Acts of heroism, self-sacrifice, and just plain hard work will be rightly honored. Religious organizations will gain new respect from the people being ministered to in both body and spirit. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will probably be rebuilt after [...]
Pat Robertson has put his foot in his mouth again by calling for the assassination of the president of Venezuela. A minister of the gospel and the leader of a world-wide Christian ministry should not be calling for the death of the head of state of any nation. A better approach would be to meet with international church leaders to promote a comprehensive biblical worldview around the world. Effect [...]
