No, the video below is DEFINITELY NOT mocking a man of god.
Just the opposite. Copeland is a false teacher, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a
Kenneth Copeland
fraud who exploits gullible people to line his own pockets. Jesus and several New Testament writers warn God’s people to avoid and condemn the destructive antics of men and women like Copeland.
In case you don’t the name, Copeland is a multi-millionaire “televangelist” whos preaches a prosperity anti-gospel. He owns three private jets and a $200,000 Lamborghini SUV. Of course, the opulent mansion goes without saying.
Mockery and condemnation is the only type of attention he deserves.
Dr. Francis Collins is a devout Christian who has never been hesitant in talking publicly about his faith. Thoughtful, responsible churchgoers ought
FILE – In this May 7, 2020 file photo, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins speaks during a Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool, file)
to pay attention to his advise.
NPR has posted an article by Tom Gjelten accompanied by a 4 minute video describing Collins’ advice to the country.
The fact is that both rates of infection and death from covid19 are MUCH higherthan they were earlier in the year when the initial lockdown orders were issued.
This past Wednesday, more than 3,500 Americans died of covid….in a single day. The virus is running rampant in large part because people are ignoring medical advice and listening to right-wing disinformation campaigns instead.
Why are any churches continuing to hold on sight congregational services right now at a time when the virus is infecting and killing more people than ever before?
All those who continue to insist that the new infection rate is itself proof that lock downs and isolation don’t work are conveniently ignoring the fact many locations across the country have never abided by the lock down measures or mask wearing from the beginning.
Below is an excerpt of the NPR article, or you can read the entire story here.
With COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths at record levels, a top public health official called on religious leaders to keep their worship spaces closed, despite rising protests from some church leaders.
“The virus is having a wonderful time right now, taking advantage of circumstances where people have let their guard go down,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “Churches gathering in person is a source of considerable concern and has certainly been an instance where super spreading has happened and could happen again.”
Collins, himself a regular churchgoer who speaks often about his Christian faith, discussed measures that church leaders can take to protect their congregations in a Zoom conversation on Thursday with Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Most churches really ought to be advised to go to remote services, if they’re not already doing so,” Collins said.
Below is a 2 minute video showing Israeli soldiers randomly firing tear gas and rubber bullets in a West Bank Palestinian neighborhood.
I have witnessed and photographed identical behavior many times. I have also watched a video filmed by one of my friends showing Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas onto a neighborhood playground, causing little children, mothers, and grandmothers to flee.
The soldiers do not need “a reason” for doing these things. Their only reason is the fact that Palestinians are not Jews (even though there are Arab Jews in Israel called Mizrahis).
The fact that Palestinians dare to live on land that the Zionists want for themselves is all the reason Israel needs for making Palestinian life as unbearable as possible.
The Israeli army calls it “the searing of consciousness.” It’s similar to the torture techniques used by the CIA to reduce detainees to a state of “learned helplessness.”
Israel’s theory is that, eventually, the entire Palestinian population will learn that resistance is futile. They will learn to always do exactly as they are told; or, better yet, move somewhere else so that Israel can take all of their property without a struggle.
AP News today released a story by reporter Michael Balsano covering an announcement from the Justice Department. It’s entitled, “Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud.”
We should remember that William Barr is a Trump appointee who has bent
Attorney General William Barr
the the Justice Department rules a number of times while in office. Thus, his public contradiction of the president’s claims is noteworthy.
So far, over 30 of Trump’s lawsuits have been thrown out of court, generally due to lack of evidence, and often by Republican judges, a few even appointed by Trump himself.
The president’s legal team has made zero headway in its efforts” to prove” that Biden only won the election through fraud.
Unfortunately, those who depend on OAN and Newsmax for their news, will never hear about any of these things…
Below is an excerpt of the AP story, or you can read the entire piece here.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
His comments in an interview with The Associated Press come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the election was stolen, Trump’s effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.
Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election. Barr was headed to the White House later for a previously scheduled meeting.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.
The comments are especially direct coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voter fraud could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail. . .
. . . Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud. That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position because of the memo.
Nathan J. Robinson has a good article at Current Affairs entitled, “A Guide for High School Students on How to Avoid Propaganda.”
The article addresses students because of the increasing number of school
Nathan J. Robinson
districts using videos produced by Prager University (a conservative propaganda mill) for classroom instruction.
If you or your friends have wondered how to distinguish fake news from legitimate reporting, I highly recommend taking the time to read this article carefully. It is very good.
In a world where more and more people are wondering if ANY media outlets can be ever be trusted to tell the truth, Robinson offers a clear examination of media bias. He also walks the reader through 4 recent news stories and explains how to separate the “wheat from the chaff” to discover the truth of the matter.
It’s a longer article but well worth your time.
Below is an excerpt, or you can find the entire article here.
It would be nice to think that we ourselves are smarter [than the ancients], that we could never end up being so delusional. But anyone can be fooled, for a very obvious reason: most of our knowledge isn’t arrived at rationally. We develop our understandings of the world through trusting what other people are telling us. That does not just go for religious believers. All of us have to have “faith” that we are being told the truth, because it is impossible for us to prove all the things we need to believe. George Orwell noted that most people believe the Earth is round not because they have personally deduced it to be the case, but because they have been taught it. Orwell said that if we encountered a Flat Earther who asked us to prove it, many people would struggle. Orwell himself was somewhat confident he could deal with a Flat Earther, but less sure he could take on someone who argued, say, that the moon is a flat disc.
Caitlin Johnstone has another good media analysis comparable to the Chris Hedges article which I recently posted.
The corporate media in this country plays a huge (though not exclusive)
Caitlin Johnstone
role in creating the unbridgeable divisions that now scar this country, probably beyond repair.
Her essay is entitled, “This is Your Brain on Echo Chambers: Right Calls Biden a Xi Puppet as He Packs His Cabinet with China Hawks.”
Below is an excerpt, or you can read the entire article here.
. . . This complete schizm from reality, where you’ve got an incoming administration stacked with Beltway insiders who want to attack Chinese interests running alongside an alternate imaginary universe in which Biden is a subservient CCP lackey, is only made possible with the existence of media echo chambers. It’s the same exact dynamic that made it possible for liberals to spend four years shrieking conspiracy theories about the executive branch of the US government being run by a literal Russian agent even as Trump advanced mountains of world-threatening cold war escalations against Moscow in the real world.
You see this dynamic at work in conventional media, where plutocrat-controlled outlets like Breitbart are still frantically pushing the Russiagate sequel narrative that Hunter Biden’s activities in China mean that his father is a CCP asset. You also see it in social media, where, as explained by journalist Jonathan Cook in an article about the documentary The Social Dilemma, “as we get herded into our echo chambers of self-reinforcing information, we lose more and more sense of the real world and of each other.”
“We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants,” writes Cook.
The article is entitled, “The Ruling Elite’s War on Truth.” The fact is, we are all being scammed on a daily basis by our ruling plutocrats.
Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire article here.
Joe Biden’s victory instantly obliterated the Democratic Party’s longstanding charge that Russia was hijacking and compromising US elections. The Biden victory, the Democratic Party leaders and their courtiers in the media now insist, is evidence that the democratic process is strong and untainted, that the system works. The elections ratified the will of the people.
But imagine if Donald Trump had been reelected. Would the Democrats and pundits at The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC pay homage to a fair electoral process? Or, having spent four years trying to impugn the integrity of the 2016 presidential race, would they once again haul out the blunt instrument of Russian interference to paint Trump as Vladimir Putin’s Manchurian candidate?
Trump and Giuliani are vulgar and buffoonish, but they play the same slimy game as their Democratic opponents. The Republicans scapegoat the deep state, communists and now, bizarrely, Venezuela; the Democrats scapegoat Russia. The widening disconnect from reality by the ruling elite is intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by predatory global corporations and billionaires.
The wildly different responses of the Republican party and the Religious Right to the religious convictions of Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Rev. Raphael Warnock demonstrate the hypocrisy of our political debates over religious liberty.
When Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett that she was worried about how” loudly the dogma lives within” Judge Barrett, Republicans went bananas in deriding Feinstein’s “assault” on Barrett’s religious freedoms.
Barrett became the latest poster-child illustrating the supposed liberal hatred of Christianity and the Democratic party’s continuing attacks on religious liberty in America.
But now the tables have turned.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock is a Democratic senatorial candidate in Georgia,
Rev. Raphael Warnock
where he is waiting for the run-off election in early January. He has been the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005.
Now, the Republicans are deriding Rev. Warnock as unfit for office because . . . wait for it . . . you guessed it: because the dogma lives too strongly within him.
Having gone through the pastor’s old sermons, the Republicans are calling him unfit for office. Listen to Warnock’s most offensive words:
Setting aside the abortion issue, the simple fact of the matter is that pastor Warnock is being condemned for proclaiming the words of Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is clear: no one can serve both the military and God, neither can anyone serve both God and money (Matt. 6:19-34).
The conservative hypocrisy in this backlash is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
CBN News continues to demonstrate that it is nothing more than a “Christianized,” civil religion cut-out of Fox News as it carries water for the Republican party.
The whole escapade is really quite disgusting.
I have very clearly demonstrated in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America, (Eerdmans, 2018), just how biblical Rev. Warnock is when he decries Christian involvement in the military. He represents an ancient Christian tradition.
And Jesus’ condemnation of excessive wealth is a signature trait of his teaching. Remember, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25).
In this respect — not forgetting that Warnock is an African-American running for office in the southern state of Georgia — those who condemn this southern, black pastor are imitating the godless leaders who condemned Jesus of Nazareth to hang on a cross.
We are seeing a vivid example of what happens when the truth of the gospel confronts sinful human beings.
It also exemplifies how difficult (if not impossible) it is for a faithful, Christian witness to flourish in the midnight garden of political power.
I recently posted about Trump’s efforts to interfere in the Michigan state presidential election results. I credited state officials for having more integrity than their national counterparts.
Now, it turns out that I spoke too soon.
I am grateful to my friend, Suzanne McDonald, professor at Western Theological Seminary, for sending me more accurate information and the ongoing shenanigans in Michigan.
Sadly, it turns out that the state Republican officials are NOT showing the integrity that I originally thought. Yep, they are playing Trump’s overturn-the-election games as well.
The story in The Detroit News, by Craig Mauger, is entitled, “Michigan House Speaker Floats Possibility of ‘Constitutional Crisis.'” Below is an excerpt, or you can read the entire article here:
Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield referenced the possibility of a “constitutional crisis” during an interview on Fox News Sunday morning, two days after he huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House.
The board features two Republicans and two Democrats. Many legal experts believe the panel has a duty, under Michigan law, to certify the results Monday. .
“The Board of State Canvassers participates in a very straightforward and perfunctory process,” John Pirich, a longtime elections attorney in Michigan, said in the groups’ press release.” Auditing the election is not within its scope of duties; the board is only responsible for reviewing the vote calculations and signing them.
By the way. Michigan state law requires the vote to be certified before an investigation into possible irregularities can begin. But, of course, since when has breaking the law ever deterred Donald Trump?
Many religious leaders are convinced that the answer to that question is YES. White evangelicals, for example, have been persuaded that president-elect Biden is a raging socialist who, by definition, is bent on eradicating Christianity from the public square.
Vice President Pence accuses all Democrats of religious intolerance suggesting that a Biden presidency will threaten our Christian liberties.
But, of course, in issuing these warnings Pence and others fail to mention that Joe Biden is a devout Roman Catholic and Kamala Harris grew up attending a Church of God in Oakland, CA. Her mother also took her to visit Hindu temples when she was a child and her husband is Jewish. There is no lack of religion or an appreciation of its free exercise on this ticket.
So, what’s going on?
It’s simple. The real issue here is the implicit redefinition of terms that has occurred through the court cases and propaganda campaigns led by the Religious Right. Nowadays, whenever a white evangelical complains about the loss of religious freedom in America today, he/she is actually complaining about challenges to longstanding traditions of Christian privilege.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
For a Christian in America, the Bible and the First Amendment give direction for the free exercise of Christian faith. Christians are free to gather for worship, to talk and write about their faith, to possess and to study the Bible, and to perform whatever other activities or “sacraments” Christians are directed to perform by scripture.
To the best of my knowledge there are no laws anywhere in this country prohibiting any of these religious activities. Christianity has not been outlawed. Group gatherings are not prohibited (those who think that church buildings housing many people in a confined space are the only legitimate place to worship fail to understand the New Testament; John McArthur ought to be ashamed of himself).
So what’s the problem?
The real issue is that Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, generally don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else when they step into public space. The traditions of western Christendom have handed the Christian church many benefits that live on in our society today.
The popular face of these benefits appears in the preferential treatment Christian individuals and organizations receive in shaping the public square (i.e. Christian iconography in public buildings) and gaining access to the public purse (i.e. generous tax exemptions). Christian business owners also benefit when their for-profit businesses are given special consideration, exempting them from regulations applied to others.
The development of religious schools, hospitals, adoption agencies, and other public services is a wonderful thing. I am happy they exist, but let’s not get confused. None of them are required for the church to be the church. Neither is it clear why Christian entrepreneurs deserve special considerations not provided to others.
Our Lord’s Great Commission does not say, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Build institutions, service organizations, and businesses wherever you can enjoy tax benefits and profit by special treatment excusing you from the standards required of others.”
As far as I am aware, the persistent warnings about the imminent loss of religious freedom in this country are typically complaints about a perceived loss or reduction of a Christian privilege.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that the white evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby should be exempted from providing health insurance coverage to their female employees for certain contraceptives. The owners of Hobby Lobby objected to those particular drugs on the basis of their religious conscience.
The court ruled in their favor, agreeing that the Christian owners could not be asked to violate their religious convictions by being required to include the full range of contraceptive options in their health insurance coverage for female employees (Note: although Viagra for men is always covered).
The recent case of the Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v.
Sister Loraine McGuire with Little Sisters of the Poor speaks to the media after Zubik v. Burwell, an appeal brought by Christian groups demanding full exemption from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under the Affordable Care Act, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 23, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Pennsylvania is very similar. The Roman Catholic spiritual order of the Little Sisters objects to all contraception, which of course is their right.
They, therefore, also asked for an exemption so that they would not be required to provide that particular piece of health insurance coverage to their employees. The Little Sisters also won their case on the basis of defending religious freedom.
Evangelicals and Catholics alike rallied around both cases, warned of government attacks on religious freedom, and cheered both decisions as victories for religious liberty in America.
Yet, to my mind the definitional over-reach on display in both cases is startling.
No one was forcing either the owners of Hobby Lobby or the Little Sisters to take any of these contraceptives themselves. Their own religious liberty was not under threat. They not being told how they could or could not worship, pray, gather together, or circumscribe their personal behavior.
Rather, in both cases the Christians wanted permission to enforce their beliefs onto others. They did not want to pay for a full coverage health plan that allowed others access to personal options that they (the employers) did not approve of.
Neither case was about religious freedom, not really.
Both cases fought for the maintenance of Christian privilege in the public square. They both exhibit the modern vestiges of western Christendom and the hold it continues to exercise over Roman Catholic and evangelical thinking in this country.
Both cases were about control and the ability of “religious organizations” to maintain that control through the smoke and mirrors of bogus complaints about government assaults on the freedom of religion.
biblical Rev. Warnock is when he decries Christian involvement in the military. He represents an ancient Christian tradition.
YES. White evangelicals, for example, have been persuaded that president-elect Biden is a raging socialist who, by definition, is bent on eradicating Christianity from the public square.
white evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby should be exempted from providing health insurance coverage to their female employees for certain contraceptives. The owners of Hobby Lobby objected to those particular drugs on the basis of their religious conscience.
that allowed others access to personal options that they (the employers) did not approve of.