Civil Commotion

“So-called judge”?

Scientology gets smacked by the mayor of Clearwater, Florida.

Those people who are Scientologists who live in Clearwater care about our city as much as you and I do. What we’ve seen in the Leah Remini story is one, the Church of Scientology has a terrible PR department. They are just awful. And they also need to understand that … churches support families. They shouldn’t divide families. … The Church of Scientology ought to think twice about its policy on families.

Just so’s you know, in case you didn’t watch Remini’s documentary, the Scientologists teach exactly the same thing that Albert Mohler and tens of thousands of Southern Baptists pastors teach: The church comes first, and your family can have the leftovers.

The third theological fact about the family is the continued affirmation of the family within the redeemed people of God – the church. As the Gospels make clear, loyalty to Christ exceeds that of any family commitment, even as the church becomes the family of faith, embracing within its life all who come to faith in Christ and into the life of the church. And yet, Christians are explicitly instructed to honor marriage, to raise their children in the faith, and to order their family according to the Scriptures.

In a closely related vein, SBC Voices reminds the Pious that the world divides between them and us:

Not every athlete or actor who thanks God after a winning performance is “one of us.” Look at the gospels — the clearest confessions of Christ came from demons. I’m not trying to make too much of that other than to say that someone who stands up and says, “I want to thank my Savior Jesus Christ” or who sings a song about God is not necessarily a blood-bought, born-again, saved, sanctified, heaven-bound spiritual sibling. We need to be careful.

Now: Imagine this attitude made public policy.

Donald Trump vowed at this mornings Prayer Breakfast to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which bars clergy from endorsing candidates.

Warning that religious freedom is “under threat,” President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to repeal the Johnson Amendment, an IRS rule barring pastors from endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

“I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution,” Trump said during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, a high-profile event bringing together faith leaders, politicians and dignitaries.

Remember this: 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump last November — more than voted for John McCain, George Bush, or Mitt Romney.

The truth is always what people do: The past two weeks have shown plainly what the so-called Values Voters value, and it isn’t good for America.

If Americans were serious about religious freedom, we’d end entirely the compulsory public subsidy of the little white church on the corner. Benjamin Franklin had it right:

When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Well said. Churches ought to be taxed.

I’ve noticed recently that liar-for-hire Kellyanne Conway doesn’t seem to appear much on CNN nowadays, but I assumed that was because she is such a blatant, godawful liar that the network was sick of her. Fine with me; I want to reach right into the television and smack her every time I see her.

But … no. It seems, rather, that CNN falls short of the Trump administration’s high standards.

President Trump and his team at the White House are giving CNN the silent treatment, refusing to send official spokespeople on the network in what one reporter says is an attempt to push down the network’s ratings. An unnamed White House official confirmed the CNN boycott to Politico, but was less blunt about the reason:

“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.

CNN, and the New York Times, are the two most prominent news outlets to characterize the Trump administration’s obsession with crowd size at the inauguration as ‘lies.’

Since CNN is in the background all day long in my office, and the New York Times downloads to my e-reader as my first cup of coffee is brewing in the morning, I regard Trump’s hostility toward those news outlets as de facto affirmation of my good judgment.

But there is a worrisome aspect to this, too; Trump means to break the press to his narrative, and to injure — destroy, if he can — anybody that doesn’t parrot his lies. We need the press more than ever, and we need for it to be courageous. It’s important that we support them.

The latest installment of Bruce Gerencser’s Christians say the darndest things series goes directly to one of my pet peeves: Christianity degrades its followers. From a quote that Gerencser features:

Our problem is that we are more accustomed to looking for God’s voice in our intellect. Our intellect is generally an unsafe guide because it is usually clouded with a mixture of the world’s thinking, where much of our decision-making is based on our best interests. Most Christians have a difficult time hearing from God, because their soul which comprises much of their intellect, is clouded with self, mingled with the world and yet has some Word in it.

Of the many quotes along these lines that I’ve published over the years, this is surely among the most explicit: You’re no damn good, and your goal must be self-annihilation.

Friedrich Nietzsche was right: Christianity cannot flourish where men are healthy.

Decadence is only a means for the type of man who demands power in Judaism and Christianity, the priestly type: this type of man has a life interest in making mankind sick; and in so twisting the concepts of good and evil, true and false, as to imperil life and slander the world.

The Antichrist, §24

Long-time readers will recall that, a few years ago, I published Nietzsche’s Antichrist here, an aphorism a day. As America lurches backward toward a crude, authoritarian theocracy, and since it’s the sort of book that draws unfavorable comments if you’re seen carrying it around, I’m thinking of doing a repeat, maybe with more commentary this time. Thoughts? Is there an interest?