Civil Commotion

Baylor University, a Baptist-identifying school, announced over the weekend that it may charter a LGBTQ+ student organization.

The Baylor University Board of Regents approved guiding principles of caring for all students on Friday, which includes LGBTQ+ students attending the university.

This includes the possibility of establishing a new chartered student group that adheres to the school’s core commitments, as well as its policies and statements, a news release said.

Y’all will probably not be surprised to learn that Albert the Pious, the Mightiest Theologian of Them All, is not happy.

Trying to say that it is maintaining some kind of commitment to an historic Christian understanding of marriage and sexuality, but it is going to be accepting an officially chartered student group that will oppose that understanding. By now, of course, it’s well known that Baylor University and its alumni and its student body, and no doubt in many of its faculty actually has moved to a very affirming position, but Baylor is in a cultural or denominational bind here, even though it does not have any direct accountability whatsoever to the Southern Baptist Convention and it made sure of that back in the 1990s, the reality is that it still wants to present itself as, in some sense, a Christian institution, in some sense, a Baptist institution. But what we’re looking at here is just another way of getting to surrender to the moral revolution without admitting that that’s what you’re doing.

Well.

Sexuality originates in our genes; that is a settled fact. Unhappily, the crowd which accepts the preposterous marketing lie that the Bible is inerrant can’t accept that and insist upon stoking a lot of controversy and misery. This is why we mustn’t accept the notion that religion in general, and the Bible in particular, ought to enjoy some sort of immunity from criticism. The Bible is wrong — period. We should stand up and say so frankly and end the tyranny of its ignorance.

Albert the Pious is in a regular snit today about women preaching.

There never was a moment when more than a handful of women served as pastors of SBC churches, but the mainline Protestant denominations were rushing headlong into the ordination of women as pastors and (Episcopal) priests, driven by two major energies — first, the demands of second wave feminism and, second, the impulses unleashed by liberation theology. In both cases, the main obstacle was the Bible, but, already compromised by theological liberalism, these denominations deployed revisionist arguments to defuse any argument from Scripture. The strategies of biblical subversion also took two basic forms. The argument was proffered that either the Bible was misread by Christians for nearly 2,000 years or the Bible is just hopelessly mired in patriarchy and oppression and the biblical authors were flat wrong.

This is one of the rare cases when, inexplicably, Mohler gets something right — the Biblical proscription against women preaching is plain, unambiguous, not susceptible of any intellectually serious misunderstanding.

But this is not a reason to prevent women from thinking, speaking, participating; it’s a reason to ignore the Bible. After all, women are doubtless as capable as men of peddling make-believe.

Apparently, Liz Cheney isn’t the only GOPer whose sound character has put him or her beyond the pale.

The Ohio Republican Party’s leaders called on Rep. Anthony Gonzalez to resign for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump, a stunning rebuke of one of their own.

On Friday, the party’s governing board called on Gonzalez, R-Rocky River, to resign in a divided vote. They also voted to censure Gonzalez and nine other members of Congress for “their votes to support the unconstitutional, politically motivated impeachment proceeding against President Donald J. Trump,” according to the resolution.

There once were honorable conservatives in this country; famously, it was Senator Barry Goldwater (R, AZ) who went to the White House and told Richard Nixon he had to resign.

That was a long time ago, though. The GOP has since degenerated into a malice-eaten cult whose locus is a crude, buffoonish, gang-boss wanna-be. I’m past worrying about the future of conservatism and the direction of public policy in this country; now I’m just worrying about the country. When nearly half of a country’s citizens are unable to smell the sewage surrounding Trump — it’s in serious trouble.

Apparently, a goodly number of Catholics are annoyed that Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights, continues to receive communion from his Bishop.

Having a U.S. president who attends Mass week after week and talks about his faith is powerful to millions of American Catholics. But to millions of others, a Catholic U.S. president enacting one policy after another in favor of abortion access is a source of shame. This conflict is now headed directly at the U.S. church’s leadership group, which plans a vote about it at its spring conference.

Catholic leaders, like their massive flock, are deeply divided about Joe Biden, only the second U.S. president to come from the country’s largest faith group. Since his election, the increasingly loud right wing of the church has made clear that Biden cannot continue to expand abortion rights and call himself Catholic and go unchallenged.

Yeah, well … ho-hum. The Catholic Church’s hostility to abortion is well-known, and if they want to say that Biden is not a full-fledged member of the club they are surely within their rights. No foul here, at least none that I can see.

More interesting is this: Why does Biden belong to a club whose policies/rules he so conspicuously considers misguided?

I am not going to be vaccinated. I’m going to be one of the survivors. I’m going to survive the genocide. I am not going to allow the COVID maniacs to convince me to be vaccinated or vaccinate me against my will. I know what I’m reading.

I know what I’m seeing. There is a mass death campaign underway right now — and I don’t care what people [say], they can they write any article they want to write about me, they can do everything they can to deplatform me — I’m going to survive a global genocide.

The only good thing that will come out of this is a lot of stupid people will be killed off. If the vaccine wipes out a lot of stupid people, well, we’ll have a better world.”

Pastor Rick Wiles

I am convinced that many of the Godly’s minds just don’t work properly.