Details

Hits: 2740

Dallas Theological Seminary prof. says film is misleading, ignores biblical context, other verses

CP  ENTERTAINMENT | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2022

By Ian M. Giatti , Christian Post Reporter

A new documentary claims that a “mistranslation” of the Bible is to blame for Christians believing that homosexuality is a sin.

The film, 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture , directed by self-identified “lesbian Christian” Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, attempts to chronicle how the word “homosexual” came to be used in the pages in Scripture and purports to offer “recently unearthed evidence that challenges deeply-held beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and their place in God’s kingdom.”

According to Roggio, the word homosexual did not appear in any version of the Bible until 1946, when translators for the Revised Standard Version (RSV) used it in their translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9.

The filmmaker argues that translators chose to use the word homosexual for the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai, which, according to the film’s website, “translate loosely” to “effeminacy” and “pervert” or “sexual pervert.” 

The site further claims, “The decision to use the word 'homosexual' instead of the accurate translations was voted on by the committee,” adding 1946 “explores how this mistranslation ignited the anti-gay movement within American conservative Christians.”

The film’s primary piece of evidence rests upon the research of Kathy Baldock, a “straight conservative Christian” who was “kicked out of her church for standing up" for LGBT members, and Ed Oxford, a graduate of The Talbot School of Theology and a “conservative gay Christian.”

While researching the topic, Baldock and Oxford claim to have uncovered a letter addressed to the RSV translation committee from a young seminarian identified only as “David S.”

The letter “points out the dangerous implications that could come with the mistranslation and misuse” of the word homosexual, according to the film’s website.

Despite a response from Dr. Luther Weigle, the head of the translation committee, to David S. to “acknowledge their mistake and commit to correcting their grave error,” the updated 1971 version of the RSV wasn’t published for more than two decades after the letter, the film argues.

According to Baldock, the RSV translation team did the translation work on 1 Corinthians between 1937 and 1941. The text was finalized and signed off on in 1941. 

“Their task as a team was to update the English Revised Version and American Standard Version as well as being informed by the King James Version and original Greek and Hebrew,” Baldock told The Christian Post via email.

When members of the translation team “looked out into the culture in the late 1930s and tried to find the modern word that would represent male-male sex that was excessive and abusive, the word homosexual, at the time, represented those behaviors,” she added.

Baldock said the RSV team created their translation based on “assumptions about what it meant to be homosexual.”

“We have to remember that [in] the 1930s, not very much was known about homosexuality,” she said. “Was it a crime? Was it a mental illness? The final translation was based on assumptions that we no longer hold to be true.”

As a result, the film argues, most contemporary translations of the Bible use the word homosexual, including 1 Corinthians 6:9  and 1 Timothy 1:10 .

Baldock said while she believes the Bible is “indeed inspired by God,” she said any effort to translate the Bible “will be impacted by human translators who indeed live in their culture with knowledge limited to their time.” 

“In this case, the word homosexual has had changing assumptions and baggage attached to it over a period of 150 years,” said Baldock. “We have a far better understanding of what the word homosexual is and who homosexual people are.”

According to Baldock, the verses in question refer to those who “use and abuse sex and those who use and abuse others.”

“Heterosexuals and homosexuals alike have the capacity to do both,” she added. “It is time to revisit those verses that are ladened with assumption and bring them into a modern context and modern language.”

So is there any merit to the theological argument posed by 1946?

None at all, according to Darrell L. Bock, senior research professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, who says the issue is not the term itself, but the context in which it functions.

“The background culturally is shown by texts like Leviticus 18:22  and 20:13 , which describe any laying down of a man with another man as one would with a woman as a sin,” Bock told CP. “In addition, the language from Paul in Romans 1:26-27  has Paul describe such acts in generic terms, not merely in abusive contexts that it is claimed limits the scope of what is referred to in 1 Cor. 6:9.”

Furthermore, Bock added, the passage in 1 Corinthians is simply detailing an active and more passive participant in the act, but the act itself is what is being discussed in either case, whether one is the active or passive participant. 

“In fact, noting both partners shows this is not merely an abusive situation as then the passive ‘victim’ would not be named,” he explained.

On the 1946 website, the film’s producers suggest this translation “has become the foundation for much of the anti-gay culture that exists today, especially in religious spaces.”

However, despite any apparent slights toward Christian orthodoxy, Roggio claims 1946 “is not an attack on Christianity, the Bible or God’s Word. It’s an intervention.”

“Many conservative religious leaders have used these biblical texts to condemn and marginalize LGBTQ+ Christians. And society at large has been shaped — at least in part — to believe the idea that sexual and gender minorities must choose between their faith and their identity,” wrote Roggio.

Luis Javier Ruiz, CEO of the ministryFearless Identity  and a survivor of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub terrorist attack  who has since walked away from homosexuality, told CP that regardless of the arguments over language, it’s more than just about the translation of one word.

“You can try to take out the word ‘homosexual’ from the Bible, but the Bible will still amplify and give charge to God’s order and design between a man and a woman,” Ruiz said. 

He compared 1946 and any effort to alter the transformative power of the Gospel to the response of the chief priests and Pharisees after one of Jesus’ greatest miracles.

“As a former identified [LGBT] man that’s lived decades in the lifestyle, I think this documentary just proved what they tried to do when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,” he said. “Many people wanted to silence, cancel and kill the miracle of when Jesus raised a dead person to life.” 

In a statement posted on the site, Roggio — whose father is an “unaffirming pastor” — says her goal with making the film is to “change the Christian narrative and liberate the many LGBTQIA+ people living in the dark … oppressed by bad theology.”

“I want us all to live and be acknowledged as equals, under God's love. There are truths that must be shared. We are here to share those truths,” she added.

In an interview  with The Daily Beast, Roggio appeared to express “concerns” against Christians who hold to biblical inerrancy.

“One of the biggest concerns that we see in America today is Christian nationalism and people using the Bible who are saying that it is inerrant,” Roggio was quoted as saying.

When asked whether she believes the film might change hearts and minds, she said:  “I’m doing this to provide equal protection for everyone under the law, because if we don’t get a handle on this now, with the Bible in this country, we’re all in trouble — no matter what you believe.”

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture is currently screening at the documentary festival DOC NYC, with screenings both in New York City and online.

Documentary says use of 'homosexual' in the Bible is a mistake | Entertainment News (christianpost.com)

Details

Hits: 2790

America is in turmoil. As the country sorts through the 2022 midterm elections, many Americans perceive even more unrest as a radical, "progressive" agenda is overtaking American culture. As society becomes disgracefully saturated with unbiblical ideologies, many Christians are asking how this downward spiral began. How did America become so broken?

Bestselling author Jonathan Cahn's latest book, "The Return of the Gods," outlines America's turning away from God and identifies the dark entities that are at work at this very moment to transform the nation and Western civilization. Since the book's release, "The Return of the Gods" hit No. 2 on the New York Times Bestsellers List—Cahn's highest ranking ever—as well as No. 2 in the Hardcover Frontlist Nonfiction category on the Publishers Weekly bestsellers list and No. 2 in nonfiction combined on the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list.

In the book, Cahn reveals that the gods that have come into the modern world have transformed America from a Christian nation to a pagan one, and are the same evil gods that were part of the apostacy and falling away of ancient Israel. The Bible reveals that behind these gods were entities known in Hebrew as the shedim or spirits, and in the New Testament as the daimonian, the root of the English word "demon."

"The gods of old now dwell among us," Cahn writes. "They inhabit our institutions, walk the halls of our governments, cast votes in our legislatures, guide our corporations, gaze out from our skyscrapers, perform on our stages and teach in our universities. They saturate our media, direct our news cycles, inspire our entertainments and give voices to our songs. They incite new movements and ideologies and convert others to their ends. They instruct our children and initiate them into their ways. They incite the multitudes. They drive otherwise rational people into irrationality and some into frenzies, just as they had done in ancient times. They demand our worship, our veneration, our submission and our sacrifices."

Cahn warns that these gods never die; it was the entrance of Christianity over 2,000 years ago that overcame their reign of terror and sent them into exile. It was the message of the gospel, of God's love and forgiveness, that caused the polytheism and pantheism of the Greco-Roman world to give way to the belief in one God, and activated the spell of the gods to be broken.

America's continual denial of God opens the door for these malevolent entities to return. The signs are everywhere—part of an ancient mystery that Cahn clearly outlines in "The Return of the Gods." In "The Return of the Gods," Cahn begins to identify these ancient gods and how America opened the door to their return. He outlines the timing of events that gave birth to the LGBTQ movement; how the use of the rainbow goes back to the tablets of ancient Babylon and how it contains a specific mystery that will surprise and shock readers; how the mysteries have even determined the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and the exact dates the rulings had to be handed down. "The Return of the Gods" promises to take readers on a fascinating, unforgettable and mind-blowing journey that will leave them stunned and with the ability to see the world as they never have before.

With the release of "The Harbinger II: The Return" in September 2020, multitudes of new fans have embraced Jonathan Cahn's compelling messages and prophecies, in addition to the millions that are already heeding the warnings and prophecies outlined in his previous books over the past decade.

The author has made multiple media appearances, including on CBN's "700 Club," TBN's "Praise," and "Family Talk" with Dr. James Dobson.

Cahn's first book, "The Harbinger," became an instant New York Times bestseller when it was published in 2012. His next four books were also New York Times bestsellers: "The Mystery of the Shemitah," "The Book of Mysteries," "The Paradigm" and "The Oracle." Along with Billy Graham, Cahn was named one of the top 40 spiritual leaders of the past 40 years who has radically impacted the world.

Called the prophetic voice of this generation, Cahn has spoken on Capitol Hill, at the United Nations, and to millions around the world. Cahn is known for opening the deep mysteries of Scripture and bringing forth messages of prophetic import. He leads Hope of the World ministry, an international outreach of teaching, evangelism and compassion projects for the world's neediest. He also leads the Jerusalem Center/Beth Israel, a worship center made up of Jews and Gentiles, and people of all backgrounds, outside New York City in Wayne, New Jersey. His ministry can be contacted at HopeoftheWorld.org and on his Facebook.

https://www.charismanews.com/culture/90650-jonathan-cahn-reveals-an-ancient-mystery-behind-america-s-political-turmoil

Details

Hits: 2662

CP POLITICS | MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2022
By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter

A new survey reveals that most Americans reject the idea that politics is “broken” and instead believe that the political system in the United States is being “abused” by bad actors as a prominent researcher is warning that the U.S. might soon face a “point of no return” if it does not change course quickly.

The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released the fifth installment of its America’s Values Study Thursday, documenting voters' attitudes about the state of American politics. This particular survey was a collaboration between the Cultural Research Center and AmericasOne, which describes itself as “a group of values-driven professionals who are looking to grow their families and businesses, and would like to share their ideas and challenges in a supportive and trusted environment.”

The survey results show widespread agreement about the need for “a new approach to governance” among the 1,500 U.S. adults
surveyed in July. A majority of respondents (71%) agreed that “our political system is not broken; it is being abused by people who are in politics for their own benefit or personal interests.”

The same group of respondents believed that “the system still works but it requires officials who will protect our freedoms by applying constitutional principles rather than changing the system to satisfy personal preferences or ideological ideals.” Majorities of conservatives (80%), Republicans (79%), liberals (71%), independents (71%), Democrats (70%) and moderates (67%) agreed with the aforementioned statement.

The overwhelming majority of Americans (71%), conservatives (81%), Republicans (78%), independents (71%), Democrats (68%), moderates (67%) and liberals (64%) indicated agreement with a statement proclaiming that “the future success of the United States depends on restoring stability to our system, institutions, and way of life.” At the same time, the aforementioned groups stressed the need for “consistency and steadiness rather than changes that redefine the character and goals of America.”

While respondents expressed some degree of consensus in their assessment of American politics, the research determined that “voters allowed themselves to be manipulated into one of three states of mind — indifference (the one-third of the voting public who simply accepted the situation); antagonism (some two-thirds of voters who held onto negative feelings or took negative actions against people of different political perspectives); or disconnection (the estimated 53% of the voting-eligible public who chose to sit out the election).”

George Barna, the director of research at the Cultural Research Center, reacted to the findings in written responses to The Christian Post, in which he expressed concerns about “how easily the public has been manipulated by the political class.”

“Granted, it has taken a combination of actors and efforts to disempower the public: repeated media narratives, disinformation distributed by high tech companies, radical shifts in educational content in public schools, and distractions and misdirection by politicians to get people focused on the wrong things,” he said.

“The fact that Americans have become oblivious or hardened to all of these immoral practices is perhaps the most tragic and frightening transformation.”

Barna predicted that the 2024 U.S. presidential election could amount to a “point of no return” where Americans will either choose to be ruled by a government “of, by, and for the people” or a “government of elites not unlike the monarchy we left behind in England more than 200 years ago.” He told CP that “we are approaching a point at which too much freedom has been surrendered to restore those freedoms without a violent civil war — and I do not believe the American people have the heart or passion for such a conflict.”

“The next presidential election is likely to produce one of two outcomes,” he contended. “One outcome would be to vote out the elitist government approach, rejecting a government that controls most aspects of people’s lives, as the Democrats wish to do. More than seven out of 10 adults (71%) say they want less government intrusion and control over their decisions.”

On the other hand, he maintained, “the other possible outcome is to vote for candidates who intend to increase the power and authority of government, eroding individual freedoms to such an extent that they cannot be regained without a civil war.” Barna envisioned the long-term implications of such a scenario, where “neither individual officials nor government bodies will voluntarily surrender power they have gained.”

Barna lamented that based on the results of his surveys, “the public gives lip service to wanting to retain their freedoms and limit government’s intrusion into their life, but their actions betray their unwillingness to back up that view with appropriate action.” He mentioned a particular paradox where “at the same time they say they want less government intrusion, we also find three out of four adults say they want the government to solve more social problems.”

The veteran researcher cited the results of the 2022 midterm elections as evidence to back up his theory. He recalled how “at the time of the election, America featured a weak and faltering economy, a military in disarray, a broken immigration system, a politically divided population, an ineffective criminal justice system, a declining public education system, and broad and deep conviction that the nation’s political leaders were corrupt, incompetent, deceiving, and self-serving.” He characterized these developments as factors that would help Republicans.

“Despite those realities, Democrats fared reasonably well in the midterm election, retaining control of the Senate and losing fewerthan-
expected seats in the House. Most of the incumbents seeking re-election won their seats back. And our surveys showed that barely more than one-third of voters made much of an effort to understand the candidates and the issues. It might not have mattered, since a majority of voters admit they really do not understand a large share of the priority issues anyway.”

Barna pointed to the results of the midterms as proof that “it was treated by voters as a business-as-usual election, while those in power have not been engaging in governance-as-usual; the Democrats, in particular, but with assistance in many cases from Republicans, are engaging in breaking and restructuring the system to their own liking and for their own benefit.” Adding that “no one is stopping them,” Barna reiterated that “if the next election fails to do so, we may well be beyond the point of no return.”

Barna cited the demonstrated rise in secularism and the increasing lack of religiosity in American culture as “huge” factors underlying Americans’ loss of confidence in national leaders, national parties and national institutions. AmericasOne Founder Marc Nuttle identified the erosion of trust in politicians and political systems as a primary takeaway of the study.

“Without the Bible as an objective and unchanging standard of truth, we have no foundation and vision for morality,” Barna insisted. “With most Americans saying that people, not God, hold the keys to decoding morality, and most of these people naming their feelings as the source of moral wisdom, if we have a ‘bad feeling’ about a politician, policy or institution, it can instantly be deemed immoral.”

“Lacking the transparency necessary to permit rational and factual accountability, the government can be suspect based on nothing more than a bad feeling. In fact, the refusal to be transparent, and the presence of a mountain of known lies and manipulations by the government has led to such feelings.”

Barna addressed Nuttle’s proposition that “the re-emerging governing authority of the United States is families, contributing to the collective national will for the definition of government policy.” He suggested that the breakdown of the nuclear family has an impact on its status as “the re-emerging governing authority of the United States.”

“In our nation today, we have a minority of families with a full-time, resident father present,” he explained. “Even fewer of those have a resident father who is a committed Christian. Less than 4 percent have a resident father with a biblical worldview. The focus of our families has thus shifted from honoring God and His ways to seeking happiness and comfort. The government then becomes a surrogate moral authority, passing a flood of laws that have replaced the wisdom and guidance of God as our new moral code.”

Additionally, Barna addressed previous research from the Cultural Research Center finding that Evangelicals, an important voting bloc in American politics, saw issues like inflation and rising gas prices as a larger determinant of their vote in the midterm elections as opposed to abortion. The researcher elaborated on “why abortion is overestimated in its influence upon conservative Christians.”

“First, Americans are suffering from issue fatigue. Most adults are burned out on abortion as a deciding factor in electoral politics,” he concluded. “Second, most people believe that abortion does not directly affect them. As a result, they focus on issues that are tangibly affecting them in the moment, issues like inflation, unemployment, crime, and supply chain shortages. It also appears that there is confusion about the lengths to which public policy must go to place limits on the moral choices of Americans.”

According to Barna, “We are uncertain as to whether the government should make moral boundaries regarding our sexual behaviors and choices. If such training had been achieved in homes and schools, millions of Americans would not be wrestling with such an ambiguity.”

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post.

Barna: U.S. may hit 'point of no return' without political reset | Politics News (christianpost.com)

Details

Hits: 2694

Jon Ward ·
Chief National Correspondent
October 31, 2022·12 min read

“Christian nationalism” has been a heavily discussed and hotly debated topic in American politics this year, but it’s not clear everyone is talking about the same thing.

Supporters of Christian nationalism often define it in vague terms that leave room for interpretation. “God instituted governments to promote good and punish evil and it is a duty of the Christian to inform the magistrate of what God calls good and evil,” wrote Andrew Torba, the founder of the far-right social media site Gab, who openly embraces Christian nationalism.

But some of the most influential leaders on the right who are labeled as Christian nationalists reject the term.

“I’m an Irish Catholic,” said retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn in response to a question about whether he is a Christian nationalist. Flynn grew angry at the question, from an Associated Press reporter, and ended the interview, as seen in a recent "Frontline" documentary on him and his political-religious efforts. “I’m a follower of Jesus. How’s that?” he said before he walked out.

Meanwhile, some critics of Christian nationalism describe it as an attempt to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, with laws derived directly from the Bible.

Conservative writer Paul D. Miller is trying to pick apart these strands and to clarify the issue. Many American Christians are Christian nationalists, he agrees, and that number is growing. He also says that does not mean they necessarily want a theocracy or to eliminate democracy — though some do — and that many critiques of Christian nationalism unfairly lump moderates together with extremists.

But finally, he argues, so-called moderates in the Christian nationalist community have a duty to publicly reject and condemn the extremists in their ranks.

Miller is no fan of Christian nationalism. Like Flynn, he’s a former Army intelligence officer. And whereas Flynn briefly worked as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Miller was a National Security Council staffer for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He now teaches at Georgetown University and is the author of “The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong With Christian Nationalism,” which was published this summer.

But Miller argues in his book and in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast, that critiques of Christian nationalism have to be precise and accurate, or else they risk making the problem worse.

“The movement has serious ideas which have serious problems and require serious debate. That means we need to engage with the strongest possible version of Christian nationalist ideology to understand it and its weaknesses,” Miller wrote in the book.

“Christian nationalism is not a catchall term for any kind of Christian political advocacy, and it is not the same thing as Christianity.”

Miller has strong words for some of the most well-known critics of Christian nationalism, such as Andrew Seidel, Katherine Stewart, Christopher Hedges and Michelle Goldberg. He accuses
those writers of “nutpicking,” which he defines as “taking extremists as representative of the movement as a whole.

”I think they discredit the body of scholarship examining [Christian nationalism] by focusing on the very worst examples and writing as if every mainstream, patriotic American Christian is just one step away from that,” Miller told Yahoo News. “Most average American Christians do not want Christo-fascism.”

In an as-yet-unpublished essay that Miller shared with Yahoo News, he argues that “social movements like Christian nationalism exist along a spectrum. There is a moderate end filled with Christians who love their country but have some confused theology about how church and state relate, and there is an extremist end filled with political agitators who use Christianity to cloak an illiberal, even violent agenda.”

At the same time, Miller said, “the extremists are real, and I fear they are growing. [Jan. 6] and the ‘ReAwaken America’ tour demonstrate that.”

Flynn, who was active alongside extremist groups in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and has refused to voice support for a peaceful transfer of power, has been a star attraction at those ReAwaken America rallies around the country.

These events are fusing together Christianity and politics to the point where there is little distinction between the two. They tend to attract, in the words of ReAwaken America organizer Clay Clark, “people who are not churchgoers” who come, initially at least, because they are pro-Trump and anti-vaccine.

“But,” Clark added, “then they experience genuine Christian fellowship, their minds are changed and their hope renewed that we really can turn our nation red — not red as in Republican, but red as in the color of our Lord’s blood shed for us to live in truth.”

Miller’s main concern is that millions of American Christians might be driven further into the arms of Christian nationalism and its more extreme versions by labeling “any and all Christian political activism” as Christian nationalism, or by critiques that might apply to extremists but do not apply to everyday people. “Being pro-life is not Christian nationalist.

Being pro-religious-liberty is not Christian nationalist,” he said.

And it is this larger group of moderate Christian nationalists, which includes many churchgoers and pastors, that Miller thinks is crucial to defeating the more extreme forms. Extremist Christian nationalists might get the attention and the headlines, in other words, but the movement’s rank-and-file members still have the power to reject its worst impulses.

“Within the ranks of Christian nationalists — probably a very large group of American Christians — moderates have an especially heavy duty to call out and condemn the extremists within their ranks,” Miller writes in his essay. “Extremists have hijacked the language and symbols of Christianity in America and are waging a campaign against democracy and the rule of law. Every Christian — every American — should join against them, especially if they are on your side.”

Flynn, despite his protestations, is the prototype of a Christian nationalist, according to Miller’s definitions of the term. In his 2016 book, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies,” Flynn wrote, “Let us accept what we were founded upon, a Judeo-Christian ideology built on a moral set of rules and laws.”

That’s a run-of-the-mill Christian nationalist sentiment. But a year ago Flynn went much further at a ReAwaken America event. “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God,” Flynn said.

A seeming call for state religion, or state-enforced religious uniformity, is extremist Christian nationalism.

Miller’s book dissects, with precision and a great effort to understand Christian nationalism on its own terms, how millions of Americans came to be sympathetic to Christian nationalism or are unaware of what he considers its dangers.

“Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way,” Miller wrote in a Christianity Today essay last year. “Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation.’”

This type of sentiment has been widespread among Christians for a long time. A recent poll by the University of Maryland found that 61% of Republicans surveyed supported declaring America a “Christian nation.”

For decades, evangelicals and other religious conservatives have been told by their leaders that they are under siege. But today that sense of existential crisis is more heightened than ever. America is much more secular and diverse than it was a generation ago. White Christians no longer make up the lion’s share of the electorate and increasingly see themselves as a minority group besieged by liberalism. They feel their way of life is being threatened.

“Right now, Christianity is practically persecuted in America,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told journalist Robert Draper recently.

Trump supercharged these tensions by telling Christians he was the only one who could protect them and by waging an assault on
the nation’s democratic order. He provoked his critics, and then held up the anger he aroused as proof that his followers must stay close to him.

But the term “Christian nationalism” entered the public lexicon in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, as analysts sought to make sense of the Christian symbols that were everywhere among those who attended Trump’s rally on the Ellipse and those who then stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overthrow a lawful election.

“Arm in arm we’re marching forward, till we reach the promised land,” sang one group of people, arranged in a semicircle like a choir, surrounded by Trump flags, along with a Christian flag. “We are the people of the Lord. We’re a holy nation, believers in Jesus, lifting up our voices to the Lord.”

Another woman watched Trump supporters assault police and enter the Capitol building while singing over a loudspeaker, “The blood of Jesus covering this place.”

“It doesn’t take much theology to understand that what many of them at the Capitol that day believed was that they were an army of God. And that’s what scares me about Christian nationalism here in America,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is a United Methodist pastor, told the New York Times.

Just as religious rhetoric and symbols were used to sanctify lawlessness based on a lie on Jan. 6, Miller says, many right-wing extremists use the language of freedom and democracy sincerely, but also to deflect criticism and draw in unwitting followers.

“I am fighting for our constitutional rights. And, you know, in a big way, to save America, I guess,” Flynn told the Associated Press. “Because I like to think about all of the people that came before us and all the sacrifices to create this great experiment in democracy. We’re going to lose it.”

Miller’s book unpacks the thought process that leads many, like Flynn, to apparently believe that America can remain free only if Christianity remains the dominant religion.

“The Christian Right interprets ‘virtue’ in a unique way: It asserts that Christian values are the necessary precondition of individual virtue. Thus, to sustain the American experiment in liberty, citizens must honor Christian values,”Miller writes.

“This political theory is false. Worse, this political theory is intolerant because in an increasingly pluralistic nation, citizens will not honor Christian values voluntarily, and so Christians must get and use power to do it for them.”

Miller, in his book, notes that “nationalism is usually authoritarian in spirit and violent in practice, founded on the raw assertion of power.”

“Nationalism is not patriotism,” he told Yahoo News. He said the core flaw of nationalism is that it seeks to define national identity based on arbitrary preferences — such as language, religion and culture — or even inherent traits such as ethnicity, rather than on the values of liberty and equality based in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

“I love America. I think it’s a great country. And I think that patriotism is a virtue. And I think basically, we should all be patriots,” Miller said. “I just don’t think it’s important for us to seek symbolic recognition of Christian preeminence in America. ... It’s not what Christianity is about. And so we should concern ourselves with equality and with justice for everyone.”

He says “human flourishing” based on “natural law” should be the benchmarks for how society decides what norms should be promoted and legislated, and that “Christians should join with Americans across the political spectrum of any faith in fighting to preserve religious liberty,” the separation of church and state “and the rights of conscience.”

Finally, Miller’s book demonstrates how Christian nationalism builds on the identity-based approach of nationalism and marries it with a belief that America is chosen by God to carry out a special purpose in the world and in history.

He says in his book that this belief is based on a mistaken reading of the Bible and a dishonest account of history. “American Christians stand in need of correction, rebuke, and remedial education on a rudimentary point of theology,” he writes. “[America] is not a chosen nation.”

The more prevalent form of Christian nationalism, Miller argues, is not a push for installing the Ten Commandments in place of the Constitution. Rather, it is when Christians act and talk about their faith as if it is “more like a cultural tribe, an ethnoreligious sect advocating for its own power and protection, rather than a people from every tribe and nation advocating for universal principles of justice, flourishing, and the common good.”

Some of Trump’s speeches early in 2016 were some of the clearest examples of this “ethnoreligious” mindset, Miller said. “Christianity will have power,” Trump said in a campaign speech that year in Iowa. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

That kind of Christian nationalism, Miller said, “turns our religion into a tribal identity instead of a universal faith. And Christianity should be a universal faith.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/a-conservative-scholar-looks-to-define-and-defeat-christian-nationalism-142138640.html

Details

Hits: 2726

CP WORLD | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 02, 2022
By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter

Scientists say they are using new technology that could allow them to properly date several military conquests depicted in the Bible and potentially validate the scriptures' historical authenticity.

A study published last Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences introduces an "approach that applies archaeomagnetic investigation to the remains of ancient towns that were destroyed by fire." The new approach enables researchers to examine "chronological insights" that will allow them to link archaeological contexts with Old Testament accounts of military campaigns against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Conducted by Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, the study involved 20 researchers from different countries and disciplines led by Yoav Vaknin of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology. The study purports that research accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel.

The researchers used readings from ancient geomagnetic fields that had been preserved through time to track changes in a method called archaeomagnetic dating. When subjected to high temperatures, archaeological findings such as pottery, bricks and roof tiles can record the Earth's temperatures.

Once heated, the findings' magnetic minerals are re-magnetized. The scientists connected them with the Earth's geomagnetic field at a time they were subjected to such high temperatures.

The team reported that the destruction layers provide evidence of the battles described in the Bible, waged by the ancient Egyptians, Arameans, Assyrians and Babylonians. In addition to this method, the team a so compared their findings to biblical and extrabiblical sources.

The researchers' findings indicate King Hazael of Aram-Damascus' army was responsible for the destruction of the cities of Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit and Horvat Tevet, in addition to Gath, a Philistine state.

The latter's destruction is detailed in 2 Kings 12:18. However, the team believes their findings refuted the theory that Hazael conquered Tel Beth-Shean.

"Based on the similarity or difference in intensity and direction of the magnetic field, we can either corroborate or disprove hypotheses claiming that specific sites were burned during the same military campaign," Vaknin said in a statement last week.

"Moreover, we have constructed a variation curve of field intensity over time which can serve as a scientific dating tool, similar to the radiocarbon dating method."

Other geomagnetic findings suggest that the Edomites razed parts of Southern Judah to the ground, appearing to affirm that Edom took advantage of Jerusalem's fall and began settling in the southern parts of Judah.

The team believes that one of the most interesting findings relates to the Kingdom of Judah and its end. As one of the project's supervising professors, Erez Ben Yosef, noted in a statement, the kingdom's last days are a matter of debate.

"Some researchers, relying on archaeological evidence, argue that Judah was not completely destroyed by the Babylonians," Yosef said.

"While Jerusalem and frontier cities in the Judean foothills ceased to exist, other towns in the Negev, the southern Judean Mountains and the southern Judean foothills remained almost unaffected."

The professor stated that the study's magnetic results appear to support the theory that Judah's demise was not solely the fault of the Babylonians.

"Several decades after they had destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, sites in the Negev, which had survived the Babylonian campaign, were destroyed — probably by the Edomites who took advantage of the fall of Jerusalem," Yosef said.

"This betrayal and participation in the destruction of the surviving cities may explain why the Hebrew Bible expresses so much hatred for the Edomites — for example, in the prophecy of Obadiah."

In a Tuesday interview with The Times of Israel, Vaknin said that the study is the first to have a "large enough database" to conduct reliable archaeomagnetic dating. He also elaborated further on how the dating tool settled the debate regarding the destruction of Tel Beth Shean.

"The dating was open. There was no clear date, but within the age range, the higher probability, according to the excavator Ami Mazar, who is also a co-author, it's most likely later, at about 830 BCE — also, like Hazael," the scientist said.

Vaknin said that the results suggest the destruction had to have taken place much earlier, meaning that Hazael couldn't possibly have been responsible. He hopes that archaeologists in Israel will continue utilizing this new dating technique.

"The more data we have, the more accurate and reliable this dating method is, and I think we are there already now," he said.

Earlier this year, an Italian scientist and his team claimed that a new X-ray technique, "wide-angle X-ray scattering," shows the Shroud of Turin may have originated during the time of Jesus's death and resurrection. The fabric is believed by many to have served as Christ's burial garment after his crucifixion.

Liberato De Caro of Italy's Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council and his colleagues determined in peerreviewed research the shroud could be around 2,000 years old.

The researchers' findings were published in the international journal Heritage in April.

"The Shroud of Turin challenges science, and each new piece of research could clarify part of the complex puzzle this relic represents," De Caro told The National Catholic Reporter.

"For example, the Shroud's image has yet to find a definitive explanation from those who have studied it, an explanation shared by the entire scientific community."

"It is as if a photographic plate had been imprinted by radiation," he continued. "By studying the traces left on the plate, one tries to trace the nature of the radiation and its properties. The same could be done for the Shroud's image."

The scientist's new dating technique involves examining the scale of atoms to date samples from linen fabrics. While De Caro admitted the technique is still in its "infancy," he wants to continue using it to study other samples of the the Shroud of Turin.

Scientists seek to confirm validity of Old Testament battles | World News (christianpost.com)

Details

Hits: 2600

The Daily Beast The Word ‘Homosexual’ Is in the Bible by Mistake: The Explosive Documentary That Is Under Attack
Kevin Fallon
Mon, November 7, 2022 at 3:29 AM·9 min read

The first time the word “homosexual” appeared in the Bible was in 1946. That year, a committee gathered to translate an updated English version of the book from the Greek. Religious scholars, priests, theologists, linguists, anthropologists, and activists have done decades of research and investigation into the instances where the word appears in the book. Their conclusion is that it was a mistranslation.

In other words, the Biblical assertion that homosexuality is a sin—the catalyst for an entire shift in culture, with political repercussions, religious implications, consequences for LGBT rights and acceptance, and, frankly, deadly results—was, they allege, a mistake.

As a new film asserts, it was “the misuse of a single word that changed the course of history.”

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture is a new documentary directed by Sharon “Rocky” Roggio. Ahead of its premiere this week at the DOC NYC festival, it has, as one might expect, gone viral within the conservative and Christian communities.

A grassroots campaign to promote the film on social media has gotten its official TikTok account more than 185,000 followers. That makes sense. For most people—practicing Christians or otherwise—what the film is stating is shocking.

There are layers to it: the realization that the Bible has been translated many times over the centuries, and that human error may have been involved in the process. That may be obvious, but it’s eye-opening. Moreover, there’s coming to terms with the notion that human error could be responsible for the stoking of homophobia—a mindset of hatred, oppression, and religious nationalism that has defined the last 75 years of our existence.

Before anyone has even seen the film, there has been an organized effort to attack and debunk the film’s claims. Roggio and others involved in the making of the documentary have received threats. Campaigns have been waged to get even innocuous social media posts taken down. An entire book was published to refute the evidence—even though the film has yet to be screened.

“The opposition is quite vocal about our film, trying to debunk it because they’re afraid,” Roggio tells The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview ahead of 1946’s New York premiere. “We’re literally unmooring them and pulling the anchors out from underneath.”

Those attacks are coming from all sides.

“We’ve been hit by the conservative audience,” Roggio says. “We’ve been hit by the atheist audience. We’ve been hit by LGBTQ people who have been hurt by the church and who have now left the church, because they feel that we are subscribing to religious supremacy by even playing along in this dialogue.”

1946 takes a journalistic, academic approach to substantiating these claims. Poring over thousands of historical documents, centuries of ancient texts, and Bible translations in many languages, the experts in the film conclude that two Greek words were mistranslated to mean homosexual. One more accurately means effeminate. The other connotes a person who was a sexual abuser and who had harmed someone.

As the film outlines, years after the translation, when the mistake was pointed out, the committee recognized and attempted to correct it. But, by the ’70s, the implications of those verses had become widespread. By the time the AIDS crisis arrived in the ’80s, that mindset was weaponized by the moral majority, particularly in the merging of politics and religion in the United States.

“A big point of our film has been biblical literalism,” Roggio says. “We do just think that it was a magical book that was just dropped down to us, but these are real people who have made these decisions that impact our real reality. People are going to feel unmoored by this idea that it’s man that has messed up, not God. As much as we are combating biblical literalism, we want our conservative audience to journey with us, in the sense that this is not an attack on God. This is not an attack on the Bible. This is a real issue of a mistranslation.”

Before 1946 premieres at DOC NYC on Nov. 12, we spoke with Roggio about the work she did (along with scholars and activists Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford) to meticulously substantiate the film’s claims, the challenge of getting through to a Christian community that refuses even to hear the evidence, and how a documentary like this could change the world. I grew up in the church, but I am still someone who found the idea of “homosexual” being a mistranslation in the Bible to be shocking. What has been people’s response to this?

We’re talking about the biggest book in the world. This impacts the three largest religions in the world. This impacts everyone.

And we don’t discuss these things. That was what intrigued me as someone who grew up in the church, was a victim of bad theology, and was discriminated against because I’m a member of LGBTQ community. Realizing that the word homosexual wasn’t in the Bible until 1946, that was a click for me. I think that it’s gonna be a click for a lot of people.

Even the basic principle that the Bibles we read were translated by a human, and there may have been a mistake in that translation—that’s a mind-blowing realization for people.

One of the biggest concerns that we see in America today is Christian nationalism and people using the Bible who are saying that it is inerrant. They are biblical literalists. It has sovereignty over us. It can’t be changed. The word is the word. That is dangerous. It’s dangerous for so many people. We see it playing out in our reality today, and I call that religious supremacy, really. My idea in finessing these themes is to hopefully get the conservative audience to join with us and be honest about this. Words have power and words have meaning. The way that we use the Bible and use these old texts is very important. So what we try to do is contextualize.

What is the goal of that contextualization?

Our movie is more than just theology. It’s history. It’s society. It’s politics. It’s law. It’s oppression. It’s how, again, these words have meaning. We as a group of people have had to negotiate the text. A group of people over time have had to pick and choose which verses stand out, which verses we follow—which verses play out in our land and our law. To really be an honest reader of Christian scripture, we have to find a way where we’re not oppressing people, where we’ve contextualized the text—we understand where it comes from and how it impacted a group of people.

When you’re introducing this idea, which is seismic and likely upsetting to a lot of people, how do you explain it to them at the most basic level?

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture is about the first time the word “homosexual” appeared in the Bible. We had a team of researchers who wanted to ask the question: Who made this decision, and why? What was discovered, through a series of letters written by the translation committee that put the word “homosexual” in there, is that it was a mistake. Then it was discovered how the word “homosexual” went viral in print in the ’70s. That impacted the ’80s and the moral majority, and how we see the merger of politics and religion, specifically in America. What we now see today is the dangers of Christian nationalism, and it’s only grown.

Can you talk more specifically about the mistranslation of the word “homosexual” and what happened there?

We’re talking about a word, a medical term that has a connotation of a group of people that have an orientation, as opposed to what the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts are referring to, which is an aggressor, somebody who was an abuser—somebody who has abused someone else, and there is a victim on the other side. It’s a very different connotation. So that was my drive for making the movie, because now I have tangible evidence, letters written from the committee [acknowledging this].

This translation committee also has not only recognized the error but continues to rectify it and make their translations reflect the connotation of abusive behavior. Whereas now we see malice in the conservative committees, who since the ’80s have done the opposite. They say it refers to consensual acts, so it’s been amplified as homophobia because of this mistranslation.

From my experience, I know there are many Christians who are unmoving in their beliefs, who operate from a point of blind faith. What is it like to arrive with all of this evidence, research, and proof—even just an ask to listen to what the movie is alleging—but be met with that stubborn certitude?

It’s like hitting a wall. You get two kinds of Christians. You get people like my dad. [Roggio’s father is a pastor who appears in the film and repeatedly challenges its claims.] They want us to think they love us so much, that they’re just trying to give us the truth. And my dad is very kind and he’s never hurtful. But there are other people that I’ll see, especially on social media, who turn their fear into anger and then hatred. They’re vicious. A lot of what I see on social media and TikTok is the epitome of the phrase “There’s no love like Christian hate.” They’re just so disgusting.

Is it ever productive? What is it like to encounter that, on a human level?

We have reached a couple of people who actually will listen and watch the movie. But there are so many people who are so close-minded. It’s heartbreaking that people aren’t even open to recognizing us as human. It’s just dehumanizing. With the church being comfortable othering people—it’s not us, it’s you—it’s easy for them to dehumanize the LGBTQ person. A key barrier is that even some of these theologians that will put out this harmful rhetoric, they don’t have relationships with LGBTQ people.

Do you think that makes a difference?

One reason why I wanted to put my dad in the movie and my story in the movie is because we are a prime example of that “hitting the wall.” Here’s an example of someone who I love very much, who is my biggest oppressor. There’s no getting through to him at all. And so the other thing is, you know, we’re not going to change everybody’s minds, and that’s OK. But at the end of the day, my dad needs to keep his beliefs where they belong, and stay out where my beliefs are.

I don’t impede his equal rights and he doesn’t need to impede mine. I’m doing this to provide equal protection for everyone under the law, because if we don’t get a handle on this now, with the Bible in this country, we’re all in trouble—no matter what you believe.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/word-homosexual-bible-mistake-explosive-082916707.html

Details

Hits: 2732

BY JOHN WHITEHEAD/ACTIVIST POST DECEMBER 14, 2022

You'd better watch out--you'd better not pout--you'd better not cry--'cos I'm telling you why: this Christmas, it's the Surveillance State that's making a list and checking it twice, and it won't matter whether you've been bad or good.

You'll be on this list whether you like it or not. 

Mass surveillance is the Deep State's version of a "gift" that keeps on giving...back to the Deep State.

Geofencing dragnets. Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother. Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by a vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.

This creepy new era of government/corporate spying--in which we're being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted--has been made possible by a global army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms. 

Consider just a small sampling of the tools being used to track our movements, monitor our spending, and sniff out all the ways in which our thoughts, actions and social circles might land us on the government's naughty list, whether or not you've done anything wrong.

Tracking you based on your phone and movements: Cell phones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users' movements and travels. For instance, the FBI was able to use geofence data to identify more than 5,000 mobile devices (and their owners) in a 4-acre area around the Capitol on January 6. This latest surveillance tactic could land you in jail for being in the "wrong place and time."

Police are also using cell-site simulators to carry out mass surveillance of protests without the need for a warrant. Moreover, federal agents can now employ a number of hacking methods in order to gain access to your computer activities and "see" whatever you're seeing on your monitor. Malicious hacking software can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones, offering another means of glimpsing into the personal business of a target.

Tracking you based on your DNA. DNA technology in the hands of government officials completes our transition to a Surveillance State. If you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you've already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database--albeit it may be a file without a name.

By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don't already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. After all, a DNA print reveals everything about "who we are, where we come from, and who we will be." It can also be used to predict the physical appearance of potential suspects. It's only a matter of time before the police state's pursuit of criminals expands into genetic profiling and a preemptive hunt for criminals of the future.

Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to identify and track someone's movements in real-time. One particularly controversial software program created by Clearview AI has been used by police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to collect photos on social media sites for inclusion in a massive facial recognition database.

Similarly, biometric software, which relies on one's unique identifiers (fingerprints, irises, voice prints), is becoming the standard for navigating security lines, as well as bypassing digital locks and gaining access to phones, computers, office buildings, etc. In fact, greater numbers of travelers are opting into programs that rely on their biometrics in order to avoid long waits at airport security. Scientists are also developing lasers that can identify and surveil individuals based on their heartbeats, scent and microbiome.

Tracking you based on your behavior: Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one's behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations. One smart "anti-riot" surveillance system purports to predict mass riots and unauthorized public events by using artificial intelligence to analyze social media, news sources, surveillance video feeds and public transportation data.

Tracking you based on your spending and consumer activities: With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases--whether at the grocer's, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store--and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we're helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time.

Consumer surveillance, by which your activities and data in the physical and online realms are tracked and shared with advertisers, has become big business, a $300 billion industry that routinely harvests your data for profit. Corporations such as Target have not only been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years, but the retailer has also funded major surveillance in cities across the country and developed behavioral surveillance algorithms that can determine whether someone's mannerisms might fit the profile of a thief.

Tracking you based on your public activities: Private corporations in conjunction with police agencies throughout the country have created a web of surveillance that encompasses all major cities in order to monitor large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of "large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals."

Defense contractors have been at the forefront of this lucrative market. Fusion centers, $330 million-a-year, information-sharing hubs for federal, state and law enforcement agencies, monitor and report such "suspicious" behavior as people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot's license as "suspicious activity."

Tracking you based on your social media activities: Every move you make, especially on social media, is monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are increasingly investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

This obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, observed, "We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal 'Game of Thrones' downloads... the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor."

Tracking you based on your social network: Not content to merely spy on individuals through their online activity, government agencies are now using surveillance technology to track one's social network, the people you might connect with by phone, text message, email or through social message, in order to ferret out possible criminals.

An FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone speaks to the ease with which agents are able to access address book data from Facebook's WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage services from the accounts of targeted individuals and individuals not under investigation who might have a targeted individual within their network. What this creates is a "guilt by association" society in which we are all as guilty as the most culpable person in our address book.

Tracking you based on your car: License plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars.

With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, affixed to overpasses, cop cars and throughout business sectors and residential neighborhoods, it allows police to track vehicles and run the plates through law enforcement databases for abducted children, stolen cars, missing people and wanted fugitives. Of course, the technology is not infallible: there have been numerous incidents in which police have mistakenly relied on license plate data to capture out suspects only to end up detaining innocent people at gunpoint.

Tracking you based on your mail: Just about every branch of the government--from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between--now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans' texts, emails and social media posts.

Headed up by the Postal Service's law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with "inflammatory" posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid "potentially volatile situations."

Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from these mass spying programs as long as we've done nothing wrong.

Don't believe it.

The government's definition of a "bad" guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, lawabiding Americans on a staggering scale.

Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people--weapons of compliance and control in the government's hands--haven't made America any safer. And they certainly aren't helping to preserve our freedoms.

Indeed, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.

Originally published at Activist Post -
https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5786

Details

Hits: 2597

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter

Are Christian conservatives who support former President Donald Trump confusing the temporal for the eternal?

That question is the focus of The Political Seduction of the Church: How Millions of American Christians Have Confused Politics with the Gospel, a new book from author and radio host Michael Brown that looks at whether the Trumpian political climate has hindered believers in Jesus from carrying out the Great Commission.

Brown says he voted for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections and wants readers to know there's nothing wrong with being involved in politics, as long as the ultimate goal is advancing God's Kingdom, not man's.

"I do believe Christians should be involved in politics and should have a positive impact on politics, but somehow, especially in the last election cycle, we became obsessed with politics," Brown told The Christian Post. "We became more concerned with winning the election than winning the lost."

And while Brown believes the 2024 presidential election will be just as consequential as the previous two, he says the problem occurs when Christians merge the Gospel with the elections "as if a political party was the key to advancing God's Kingdom on the earth."

Brown, a Messianic Jew, is a familiar voice for CP. He is the author of over 40 books and over 2,000 op-ed pieces. He also hosts the nationally syndicated radio show "The Line of Fire."

With Political Seduction, Brown hopes to take a deliberate and measured approach in assessing the marriage of politics and faith under Trump, including the ongoing national debate over Christian nationalism, both its definition and application.

For Brown, there are three basic versions of Christian nationalism. The first is what he calls the "healthy" version, which essentially says, "I love Jesus, and I love my country," approximating the sentiments of tens of millions of American Christians.

Brown says there's also the "unhealthy" version, which equates America and her destiny with the Kingdom of God, merging Christian identity
withAmericanism.

But it's the "very dangerous" version of Christian nationalism that most concerns Brown.

Just as the Founding Fathers waged a war against British tyranny in the Revolutionary War, there are modern-day Christians who say, "We're we're going to have to take up arms against the government in the name of Jesus."

"That's what I warn about in the strongest terms" in the book, Brown added.

While he wouldn't completely write off the distant possibility of another Civil War at some point, Brown said he doesn't think that's something that will happen anytime soon.

"I do not believe we are anywhere near that point, and I believe we need to be sober and careful in our rhetoric because there are a lot of irresponsible people — Christians in name only — that could get stirred by this, and it could lead to real harm," he said.

If Christians first begin to look in the mirror and "put emphasis on repenting from sin in our own lives" instead of prioritizing a political movement or political figure, the country will recover from the turmoil of recent years.

"If the Church will be the Church, we can avert bloodshed," said Brown.

It's no surprise that the first chapter of Political Seductiontakes a closer look at the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As Congress met to certify the election results, hundreds of Trump supporters — many of them Evangelical Christians — violently stormed Capitol Hill, claiming the election was either stolen or fraudulently conducted.

According to the DOJ, hundreds of individuals were charged with various offenses for their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riot, including a youth pastor from Colorado Springs.

Five people died during or after the attack, including four protesters and one police officer, while approximately 140 officers suffered injuries.

Unarmed veteran Ashli Babbitt was the only person killed by lethal force during the riot. She was shot trying to climb through a smashed door pane into the House Chamber. U.S. Capitol Police concluded the officer who shot Babbitt acted lawfully when using deadly force.

Three others died of natural causes, and 34-year-old Trump supporter Rosanne Boyland was trampled to death by protesters fighting a police line.

Brown said while "only God knows" whether the 2020 election was fraudulent, Christians across the nation "prayed and prayed" for God's will to be done.

"If this went all the way through the courts, and no one overturned what happened, then we must accept this is the result," he added. "Maybe it's divine discipline. Maybe things were stolen. But we prayed, we cried out, this is what we got."

"I accept this as the will of God," he said.

Despite his personal views, Brown said he understands why some Christians don't agree. He urged them to use "legal means" to expose any alleged fraud, adding: "Just don't break the law."

While he doesn't believe any "organized insurrection" was involved on Jan. 6, Brown said the way Trump handled the rally before the event was "abysmal." He pointed to crowds chanting, "Hang [former Vice President] Mike Pence."

"The rhetoric leading up to it was dangerous," said Brown. "It gave the Left all the ammunition they needed to make all of us who voted for Trump into 'white supremacist insurrectionists.'"

"This hurts our cause deeply, and it was part of the downside of the president," Brown stressed. "He was irresponsible in his actions on that day."

https://www.christianpost.com/books/christians-became-obsessed-with-politics-michael-brown-warns.html

Details

Hits: 2692

Joel Shannon,USA TODAY
Mon, December 19, 2022

It's the elevators that worry earthquake engineering expert Keith Porter the most.

Scientists say a massive quake could strike the San Francisco Bay Area at any moment. And when it does, the city can expect to be slammed with a force equal to hundreds of atomic bombs.

Porter said the shaking will quickly cut off power in many areas.

That means unsuspecting people will be trapped between floors in elevators without backup power. At peak commute times, the number of those trapped could be in the thousands.

To escape, the survivors of the initial quake will need the help of firefighters with specialized training and tools.

But their rescuers won't come – at least not right away.

Firefighters will be battling infernos that could outnumber the region's fire engines.

Running water will be in short supply. Cellphone service may not work at all. The aftershocks will keep coming.

And the electricity could remain off for weeks.

"That means people are dead in those elevators,” Porter said. 'Problems on the horizon'

The situation Porter described comes from his work on the HayWired Scenario, a detailed look at the cascading calamities that will occur when a major earthquake strikes the Bay Area's Hayward Fault, including the possibility of widespread power outages that will strand elevators.

The disaster remains theoretical for now. But the United States Geological Survey estimates a 51% chance that a quake as big as the one described in HayWired will occur in the region within three decades.

It's one of several West Coast disasters so likely that researchers have prepared painstakingly detailed scenarios in an attempt to ready themselves.

The experts who worked on the projects are highly confident the West Coast could at any moment face disasters with the destructive power to kill hundreds or thousands of people and forever change the lives of millions more. They also say there's more that can be done to keep individuals – and society – safer.

"We’re trying to have an earthquake without having one,” Anne Wein told USA TODAY. Wein is a USGS researcher who coleads the HayWired earthquake scenario and has worked on several other similar projects.

Such disaster scenarios are massive undertakings that bring together experts from various fields who otherwise would have little reason to work together – seismologists, engineers, emergency responders and social scientists.

That's important because "it's difficult to make new relationships in a crisis," Wein said.

Similar projects aimed at simulating a future disaster have turned out to be hauntingly accurate.

The Hurricane Pam scenario foretold many of the devastating consequences of a major hurricane striking New Orleans wellbefore Hurricane Katrina hit the city.

More recently, in 2017, the authors of “The SPARS Pandemic” called their disaster scenario “futuristic.” But now the project now reads like a prophecy of COVID-19. Johns Hopkins

University even issued a statement saying the 89-page document was not intended as a prediction of COVID-19.

“The SPARS Pandemic” imagined a future where a deadly novel coronavirus spread around the world, often without symptoms,as disinformation and vaccine hesitancy constantly confounded experts’ efforts to keep people safe.

The “SPARS scenario, which is fiction, was meant to give public health communicators a leg up … Think through problems on the horizon,” author Monica Schoch-Spana told USA TODAY.

At the time that SPARS was written, a global pandemic was thought of in much the same way experts currently describe the HayWired earthquake: an imminent catastrophe that could arrive at any time.

'It could happen tomorrow'

Disaster scenario researchers each have their own way of describing how likely the apocalyptic futures they foresee are.

"The probability (of) this earthquake is 100%, if you give me enough time," seismologist Lucy Jones will often say.

Earthquakes occurring along major faults are a certainty, but scientists can't predict exactly when earthquakes will happen – the underground forces that create them are too random and chaotic. But researchers know a lot about what will happen once the earth begins to shake.

Earthquakes like HayWired are “worth planning for," Porter said. Because “it could happen tomorrow.”

“We don’t know when,” Porter said. But "it will happen."

Wein says we're “overdue for preparedness.” You might say we're also overdue for a major West Coast disaster.

The kind of earthquake described in HayWired historically occurs every 100-220 years. And it's been more than 153 years since the last one.

Farther south in California, it's difficult to pin down exactly how at risk Los Angeles is for The Big One – the infamous theoretical earthquake along the San Andreas fault that will devastate the city. But a massive magnitude 7.5 earthquake has about a 1 in 3chance of striking the Los Angeles area in the next 30 years, the United States Geological Survey estimates.

A 2008 scenario said a magnitude 7.8 quake could cause nearly 2,000 deaths and more than $200 billion in economic losses.

Big quakes in Los Angeles are particularly devastating because the soil holding up the city will turn into a "bowl ofjelly," according to a post published by catastrophe modeling company Temblor.

Another scenario warns that a stretch of coast in Oregon and Washington state is capable of producing an earthquake much more powerful than the ones California is bracing for. Parts of coastline would suddenly drop 6 feet, shattering criticalbridges, destroying undersea communication cables and producing a tsunami.

Thousands are expected to die, but local leaders are considering projects that could give coastal residents a better chance at survival.

It too "could happen at any time," the scenario says.

Earthquake scenarios often focus on major coastal cities, but West Coast residents farther inland also have yet anotherdisaster to brace for.

"Megastorms are California's other Big One," the ARkStorm scenario says. It warns of a statewide flood that will cause more than a million evacuations and devastate California's agriculture.

Massive storms that dump rain on California for weeks on end historically happen every few hundred years. The last one hit around the time of the Civil War, when weeks of rain turned portions of the state "into an inland sea."

'Decades to rebuild'

Whether the next disaster to strike the West Coast is a flood, anearthquake or something else, scenario experts warn that the impacts will reverberate for years or longer.

"It takes decades to rebuild,” Wein said. “You have to think about a decade at least."

A major West Coast earthquake isn't just damaged buildings  and cracked roads.

It's weeks or months without running water in areas with millions of people. It's mass migrations away from ruined communities. It's thousands of uninhabitable homes.

Depending on the scenario, thousands of people are expected to die. Hundreds of thousands more could be left without shelter. And those impacts will be a disproportionately felt.

California already has a housing and homelessness crisis,and Nnenia Campbell said the next disaster is set to magnify inequalities. Campbell is the deputy director of the William

Averette Anderson Fund, which works to mitigate disasters for minority communities.

Campbell doesn't talk about "natural disasters" because there's nothing natural about the way a major earthquake will harm vulnerable communities more than wealthy ones.

Human decisions such as redlining have led to many of the inequities in our society, she said. But humans can make decisions that will help make the response to the next disaster more equitable.

Many of those choices need to be made by local leaders andemergency management planners. Investing in infrastructureprograms that will make homes in minority communities less vulnerable to earthquakes. Understanding how important a library is to unhoused people. Making sure all schools are built to withstand a disaster. Keeping public spaces open, even during an emergency.

But individuals can make a difference as well, Campbell said. You can complete training that will prepare you to help your community in the event of an emergency. Or you can join a mutual aid network, a group where community members worktogether to help each other.

Community support is a common theme among disaster experts: One of the best ways to prepare is to know and care about your neighbors.

If everyone only looks out for themselves in the next disaster, “we are going to have social breakdown," Jones said. 

What you can do

Experts acknowledge you'll want to make sure you and your family are safe before being able to help others. Fortunately, many disaster preparedness precautions are inexpensive and will help in a wide range of emergency situations.

Be prepared to have your access to electricity or water cut off for days or weeks.

For electricity, you'll at least want a flashlight and a way to charge your phone.

While cell service will be jammed immediately after a major earthquake, communications will likely slowly come back online faster than other services, Wein said. (And when trying to use your phone, text – don't call. In a disaster, text messages are more reliable and strain cell networks less.)

To power your phone, you can cheaply buy a combination weather radio, flashlight and hand-crank charger to keep your cell running even without power for days.

A cash reserve is good to have, too, Jones said. You'll want to be able to buy things, even if your credit card doesn't work for a time.

Preparing for earthquakes specifically is important along the West Coast, too, experts said. Simple things like securing bookshelves can save lives. Downloading an early warning app can give you precious moments to protect yourself in the event of a big quake. Buying earthquake insurance can protect homeowners. And taking part in a yearly drill can help remind you about other easy steps you can take to prepare.

There's even more you could do to ready yourself for a catastrophe, but many disaster experts are hesitant to rely on individuals' ability to prepare themselves.

Just as health experts have begged Americans to use masks and vaccines to help keep others safe during the pandemic, disaster scenario experts believe community members will need to look out for one another when the next disaster strikes.

Telling people to prepare as if “nobody is coming to help you” is a self-fulfilling prophesy, Jones said.

For now, policymakers hold the real power in how prepared society will be for the next disaster. And there are many problems to fix, according to Porter, including upgrading city plumbing, because many aging and brittle water pipes will shatter in a major earthquake, cutting off water to communities for weeks or months.

"Shake it, and it breaks,” Porter said.

Getting ready for the next big earthquake means mundane improvements like even stricter building codes, emergency water supply systems for firefighters and retrofitting elevators with emergency power.

The elevator change could prevent thousands of people from being trapped when the big San Francisco earthquake comes.

“A lot of that suffering can be avoided," Porter said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: California's Big One just one West Coast disaster worth preparing for

https://www.yahoo.com/news/could-happen-tomorrow-experts-know-230027986.html