Amidst the fawning press coverage of President Obama’s overturning of the Bush stem cell funding policy, it is important to understand a few basic facts about what he has and has not done.For all the facts and Obamafuscation, read the whole thing.
First, the stories about this decision suggest Obama has restored federal policy to what it was before George W. Bush’s 2001 stem cell policy announcement. This is simply not true. The federal government has in fact never before-even under President Clinton-used taxpayer dollars to encourage the destruction of human embryos, as it will now begin to do....
The president’s decision to take the unprecedented step of encouraging the destruction of human embryos with taxpayer dollars every day seems more removed from the scientific and ethical realities of the debate, and from the aspiration that underlay the policy he has chosen to end: that science and ethics might both be championed together, rather than set against one another.
So, for the thousandth time: is this the end of the printed book?
Don’t be silly.
The Kindle has the usual list of e-book perks: dictionary, text search, bookmarks, clippings, MP3 music playback and six type sizes (baby boomers, arise). No trees die to furnish paper for Kindle books, either.
But as traditionalists always point out, an e-book reader is a delicate piece of electronics. It can be lost, dropped or fried in the tub. You’d have to buy an awful lot of $10 best sellers to recoup the purchase price. If Amazon goes under or abandons the Kindle, you lose your entire library. And you can’t pass on or sell an e-book after you’ve read it.
"He is trapped and blind in a culture of deceit..."Watch it here.
The Moral Accountability Project trusts that those self-identified pro-life and pro-marriage Catholics and Evangelicals who helped to put Barack Obama into a position to accomplish his goals were sincere in their admiration for him. We are willing to believe that they genuinely hope that he will go back on his pledges to attack pro-life laws and repeal pro-marriage policies. Still, actions have consequences, and the actions of these intellectuals and activists will have consequences that are all too easy to predict. With each assault of the Obama administration on laws and policies upholding the sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage, we will ask all Catholics and Evangelicals, including those who supported Obama, to join us in resisting these assaults. That is what we will do at www.moralaccountability.com.
Our project is offered in a constructive spirit, not one of vilification. Our goal is to help ensure that never again will good intentions conspire with shoddy reasoning and wishful thinking to compromise the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our community and to undermine the institution of marriage. And so in a sincere spirit of friendship, we invite those Catholics and Evangelicals who joined Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and similar organizations in helping Obama join us now in repelling the attacks that will be launched against life and marriage in this administration.
A worthy effort.
The website notes that today will be the day Barack Obama reverses the "Mexico City Policy" which forbids the use of American foreign aid money to kill babies. Even he did not possess the "audacity" to do it yesterday on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
"Evangelicals" who supported the Obama campaign (Emergents Brian McClaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, among many others): The party's over. The Capitol Mall is littered with trash, the promises, platitudes and sophistry rang hollow and then were silent.
Today begins the grim harvest.
Of course Republican politics or politics of any kind are not the hope of the world. But a vote against this was the least you could have done for "the least of these." Can you not see the blood on your hands? May God have mercy on his church. Then, perhaps, on the United States of America.
Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.Now this could be taken in a couple of ways. It could be a compliment, it depends on what you mean by "embolden." Think of the (likely apocryphal) quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, "I would rather face 100,000 Italians coming from mass than 1000 Presbyterians rising from their knees." If my Calvin-informed sense of my own "depravity" produces greater humility and greater dependence upon God and leads to fearlessness in service of God and man, good. Humility and boldness are not necessarily at odds. On many levels Driscoll seems to represent that sort of refreshing audacity and courage. Good for him. If it stopped there, everything would be fine.
...there may be as much to worry about among the young reformed reaction to Emergent. There is a troubling growth of not-very-reformed authoritarian chatter among some of them...Almost as if the right reaction against the emergent loss of scriptural authority is to assert your own authority. Yikes!What I feared I was sensing in Driscoll and others was not lost on the New York Times (the essential facts, I think, are not disputed). Sometimes "...the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.":
Nowhere is the connection between Driscoll’s hypermasculinity and his Calvinist theology clearer than in his refusal to tolerate opposition at Mars Hill. The Reformed tradition’s resistance to compromise and emphasis on the purity of the worshipping community has always contained the seeds of authoritarianism: John Calvin had heretics burned at the stake and made a man who casually criticized him at a dinner party march through the streets of Geneva, kneeling at every intersection to beg forgiveness. Mars Hill is not 16th-century Geneva, but Driscoll has little patience for dissent. In 2007, two elders protested a plan to reorganize the church that, according to critics, consolidated power in the hands of Driscoll and his closest aides. Driscoll told the congregation that he asked advice on how to handle stubborn subordinates from a “mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighter, good guy” who attends Mars Hill. “His answer was brilliant,” Driscoll reported. “He said, ‘I break their nose.’ ” When one of the renegade elders refused to repent, the church leadership ordered members to shun him. One member complained on an online message board and instantly found his membership privileges suspended. “They are sinning through questioning,” Driscoll preached. John Calvin couldn’t have said it better himself.They are sinning through questioning? Yikes, indeed. This approach to church leadership has a rather pre-Reformation magisterial stridency about it to say the least! Very sad. I'm not worried about unconventional methods, blunt, even rough language (I like Luther, too) and in-your-face cultural relevance. I am worried about this.
I fear that the younger generation of evangelicals do not know enough about the remarkable life and achievements of Francis Schaeffer; instead they are opting for the trendy but intellectually barren hype of much of the emergent church movement-which claims to be "authentic." ("Authentic" often means little more than emotional, unconventional, and obsessively autobiographical.) Many older evangelicals may have forgotten many of the salient lessons from his life and teachings as well. Reading these two new biographies can help rectify this problem. But better yet, one can read or reread Schaeffer's own books and watch his two film series (the ten-part, "How Should We Then Live?" and five-part, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" which are both available on DVD). Indeed, Schaeffer did live an "authentic" life-a life of piety, truth, and courage-worthy of our attention and of our thanksgiving to God."Authentic" often means little more than emotional, unconventional, and obsessively autobiographical. Sigh. That is a good description of the spirit of this age isn't it? And it explains "reality" television: one minute of something happening followed by 3 minutes of participants alone with the camera telling us how they felt about that one minute.
Lord, we begin this year with our heads low and our hearts contrite.I'm a little uncertain about the "fiat currency" clause, but love the rest.
We have neglected your Word and commandments.
Forgive us Lord for embracing “Change” without repentance.
Forgive us for putting “Country First" instead of Christ.
Forgive us for worshiping our presidential choice.
For promoting pragmatism, and endorsing evil...
Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.Item: Eagles 26, Vikings 14. Did anybody really think...? From the Star-Tribune's only department still above the waterline:
A playoff berth didn't bring playoff-caliber football from the Vikings, who watched a confident and poised Eagles team rise up and disappoint a packed Dome house.
We are on slippery ground because humility cannot be attained directly. Once we become aware of the poison of pride, we begin to notice it all around us. We hear it in the sarcastic, snarky voices in newspaper columns and weblogs. We see it in civic, cultural, and business leaders who never admit weakness or failure. We see it in our neighbors and some friends with their jealousy, self-pity, and boasting.
And so we vow not to talk or act like that. If we then notice "a humble turn of mind" in ourselves, we immediately become smug—but that is pride in our humility. If we catch ourselves doing that we will be particularly impressed with how nuanced and subtle we have become. Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves. To even ask the question, "Am I humble?" is to not be so. Examining your own heart, even for pride, often leads to being proud about your diligence and circumspection.
Sure, Christmas is a time of commerce. The department stores are decorated to the hilt, the ad pages of the newspapers swell in size, and we tick off the number of shopping days left until Christmas. But why all the commerce? The high degree of commerce at Christmas is driven by one thing: the buying of gifts for others. To present our friends and families with gifts is not an ugly, ignoble vice. It incarnates the amorphous "spirit of Christmas." The tradition rests ultimately on the supreme gift God has given the world. God so loved the world, the Bible says, that He gave His only begotten Son. The giving of gifts is a marvelous response to the receiving of such a gift. For one day a year at least, we taste the sweetness inherent in the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
...the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing.
Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.The 39 essays that follow are funny, poignant and off the wall.
It describes two innocent children gradually growing at once omniscient and half-witted under the influence of the foul ghosts of a groom and a governess. As I say, I doubt whether Mr. Henry James ought to have published it (no, it is not indecent, do not buy it; it is a spiritual matter)...So, of course I had to read it. It's terrible. Not all old books are good books. My complaint is not about ghostliness, or preternatural terror, but that the author lead me on only to abandon me at the end. The reader feels the evil atmosphere but is left wondering: Were the horrors real or only in the mind of the narrator? Was the evil in the perceiving or that which was perceived? That may have been James' intent, and perhaps even his genius, I don't know. Like so much modern story-telling and unlike good fairy tales and good stories of terror, it ends without resolution or moral point of view. That's the reason, I suppose, for Chesterton's warning that it was a "spiritual matter."
From the beginning, the debate over “same-sex marriage” has been one of those topsy-turvy issues in which the side that is truly tolerant and fair has been characterized as narrow-minded and oppressive, while the side that is intolerant and blatantly coercive has been depicted as open-minded and sympathetic.Favoring government-enforced recognition of same-sex “marriage” is not, as the media invariably characterize it, a kindly, liberal-minded position, but instead a fierce, coercive, intolerant one. Despite their agonized complaints about the refusal of the majority of Americans to give in on the subject, those who advocate government recognition of same-sex “marriage” want to use coercion to deny other people their fundamental rights.
And, of course, change is coming.
