January 2022

Culture Wars: Readings for this week. Each week, I recommend reading for Christian culture warriors living amid an increasingly hostile culture. I select the essays, articles and posts that will provide you with valuable information, enabling you to stand firm in your faith amid increasing attacks from a non-believing culture.

My mission for this blog is to offer help and encouragement to live out our faith amidst the moral decline of our culture. One month into the new year and challenges to religious freedom, free speech, biblical morality, innocent and defenseless human life continue unabated. That the prevailing culture is becoming more hostile to Christianity is without question. But do not despair. Standing firmly on the Word of God, we can resist evil and shine as lights, offering hope to a darkened world.

Emulating Islam: The Left’s War on the Christian Cross

As this essay shows, the progressive left (well represented in the Biden administration), apes radical Islam in opposing Christianity.

In many ways, the “secular Left” and Islam appear to be diametrically opposed: the Left is sexually promiscuous, Islam isn’t; the Left believes in countless genders, Islam doesn’t; the Left believes in all sorts of freedoms, Islam believes only in draconian sharia — and so on and so forth.

When it comes to Islam’s views on Christianity, however — that it is an inferior faith to be subjugated and discriminated against (Koran 9:29) — the Left appears to be in agreement.

Crazed Left-Wing Courses Signify the Downfall of the American Mind

This essay by a recent college graduate exposes how many of our colleges and universities have succumbed to critical theory and the leftist agenda.

“Marxism, Anarchism, and the Black Radical Tradition,” “Witchcraft and the Cultural Imagination,” “Trans-bodies in Horror Cinema,” “The Problem of Whiteness,” and “Transnational Queer Politics and Practices” are not course titles invented by “The Babylon Bee” to mock the state of America’s universities. Rather, they are real classes I came across this year while scrolling through the course listings for the University of Chicago’s winter quarter.)

I desired to be in a class where I would actually learn, with the help of a fair and open-minded professor who is intellectually confident enough to include multiple perspectives in his assigned readings. Unfortunately, it was incredibly easy to find swaths of leftist courses but quite difficult to come across classes aimed at genuine intellectual exploration.

 Joe Biden Making Database of Christians Who Object to COVID Vaccine Mandates – LifeNews.com

This is the thing one would expect in Nazi Germany, Putin’s Russia, and communist China. But as this article shows, it is happening in our own nation.

If the ruling powers begin with anti-vaccers, it will soon be those who refuse to attend a same-sex wedding.

The Pretrial Services Agency announced Jan. 11 that it will begin storing the names and “personal religious information,” of any employee who makes “religious accommodation requests for religious exception from the federally mandated vaccination requirement.”

Count on Putin to Wage War on Religious Freedom

Putin’s regime is among the worse enemies of religious freedom.

This unfortunate reality is evident in Russia’s repression of religious freedom in the occupied regions of eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Today, Russia ranks among the worst violators of religious freedom and human rights.

There is no sign that its persecution of religious minorities and foreign missionaries is coming to an end. And what is perhaps most troubling is that this repression is not limited to its own borders.

It is no secret that the Putin regime is threatened by religious freedom.

The Breyer Paradox

Justice Breyer, liberal as he is, conveniently retires while Biden has hopes of appointing an equally liberal, pro-abortion successor.

Make no mistake, Breyer is a liberal jurist who stands in the liberal tradition that dominated the court over the last half of the 20th century. He is a committed pragmatist in jurisprudence. He believes that judges should decide cases largely based on what they see as the likely outcomes of a judgment and choose the one they think is the best. The judge, according to Breyer, should rationally and carefully trace expected results and outcomes and decide accordingly.

Post-Christian Christianity

The liberal mainline denominations have questioned Christian doctrine echoing the Bible for a long time. However, now some evangelical and conservative Christian leaders are finding it uncomfortable as the culture turns further away from Christianity.

But now many evangelical ministers and erstwhile conservative seminaries are also revising and toning down Christian doctrine. The Trinity, as understood in the ecumenical creeds, is being re-examined and re-considered by prominent evangelical theologians. The Atonement of Christ for the sins of the world–the foundation of the gospel for which evangelicals name themselves–is being criticized. The “New Perspective on Paul,” widely accepted by evangelicals, maintains that the Law from which the Gospel frees us is only the Jewish ceremonial law, so that salvation is by works after all.

Are Transgender Thoughts Inerrant?

I was born a male and lived as a male all my life. But, if I change my mind and believe I am a woman, am convinced of it, does that make it true? Does that make my belief irrefutable?

Up until this recent moment in human history, if you thought your body didn’t match how you felt on the inside, the solution was to pursue counseling or therapy to change your internal states to match your external body. Not so today. If you have a male body, but believe you are female, today’s solution is to change your body to match how you feel on the inside.

Culture War Forever? – The American Conservative

Insights worth reading by Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies, both are must reads for Christians in our hostile culture.

There is a common fallacy one observes on the Left, which holds that in instances of Culture War, conservatives are always and everywhere the aggressors, whereas the Left just wants to live in peace and rationality. This is absurd, of course, but unless you live and work in heavily liberal environments, you might not appreciate how sincerely so many people on the Left believe this self-serving myth.

For the contemporary Left, the most important Culture War battle is that over transgenderism, and gender ideology more generally.

Cold War and Culture War – The American Conservative

Here’s a very, very good analysis of the US-Russia standoff over Ukraine, by Richard Hanania. Hanania says that the anti-LGBT media law in Russia is what made the American elites think of Russia as the Great Satan (that they believed Russia engineered Trump’s presidential victory only sealed the deal). People who do not deal professionally with American elites often find it hard to understand why homosexuality and transgenderism mean so much to members of that class.

Some Additional Articles to Consider 

Sam Brownback Heads New National Committee for Religious Freedom

Cultural Liberalism vs. Cultural Socialism – The American Conservative

 

Big Tech Embraces Cancel Culture

 

Getting “Political”—Vice or Christian Virtue?

 

Why I’m Not Afraid to Bring More Children Into a Broken World

This week’s recommended book: Live Not by Lies

 

Please comment and let me know which of these articles was most beneficial to you.

May you have a blessed, productive, and peaceful week.