Sri Lanka will mark its fifth Easter since the harrowing April 21, 2019, jihadist suicide bombings that killed 275 people and injured dozens of others, deliberately targeting crowded churches and popular hotel brunch spots.
The post Sri Lanka Grapples with Trauma of Jihadist Easter Massacre Five Years Later appeared first on Breitbart.
The communist regime in Nicaragua announced the conviction of 11 pastors associated with the Evangelical Mountain Gateway ministry and humanitarian organization, this week on dubious and unspecified charges of "money laundering," sentencing the accused to between 12 and 15 years in prison.
The post Communist Nicaragua Sentences Christian Pastors to 12-15 Years in Prison on Holy Week appeared first on Breitbart.
The establishment media and members of the far-left are attacking Donald Trump for promoting the "God Bless the USA Bible."
The post Establishment Media, Left Attack Donald Trump for Promoting Bibles appeared first on Breitbart.
Former President Donald Trump has teamed up with country music star Lee Greenwood on a new, patriot-themed edition of the Bible -- the "God Bless the U.S.A." Bible, which comes with copies of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance.
The post Donald Trump Teams with Country Music Star Lee Greenwood on New ‘God Bless the USA’ Bible Edition appeared first on Breitbart.
Fairfax County Virginia has named Easter Sunday 2024 as “Transgender Visibility Day,” in what many Christians see as a hijack of their most sacred holiday.
The post Fairfax Democrats Choose Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Visibility Day’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Boston, Massachusetts, Christian leaders are calling on "white churches" to dole out millions of dollars in reparations to black people to rectify their history with slavery.
The post Boston Christian Leaders Call on ‘White Churches’ to Pay Millions in Slavery Reparations appeared first on Breitbart.
A pastor, recently released after spending seven years in prison, is stranded in China without legal documentation to help him get basic services.
The post Chinese Pastor Freed After 7 Years in Jail Is Trapped in Communist China Without ID appeared first on Breitbart.
Before October 7th of last year, if you were an anti-Semite, liberals called you a fascist. Now, if you are not an anti-Semite, liberals call you a fascist.
The pro-Palestine protestors have called for genocide against Jews and Israel, engaged in violence and threats, and torn down pictures of Israeli hostages. They justify their actions by taking the moral high ground, claiming that Israel killed civilians, children, bombed schools and hospitals, and prevented people from leaving Gaza or receiving aid. Now, the media, Greta Thunberg, Hollywood celebrities, and the usual suspects are claiming that Israel committed war crimes or even genocide. And the most outrageous accusation of all is that Israel is Hitler.
According to the pro-Hamas propaganda on Twitter, everyone in Gaza is a child and they have all been starved, killed, or maimed by Israel, intentionally. But this is false; half the population of Gaza is over the age of 20. The propagandists are targeting small children, not Israel.
The charges that Israel is killing civilians stem from the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization. As such, they do not wear uniforms. Under the Geneva Convention, to be considered a non-combatant, they must meet three criteria: no uniform, no weapons, and no participation in combat. The Hamas terrorists wear civilian clothes, carry weapons, and engage in combat operations. When they are killed, their compatriots remove their weapons, take a video, and claim that an innocent, peaceful man was killed on the way to his kid’s soccer game.
Another important point is that the Geneva Convention only applies during a declared war, and it should apply to both sides. However, nearly all of the Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7th were civilians.
Charges that Israel is targeting children are misleading. A child, by definition, is under the age of eighteen. Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Middle East regularly use fighters as young as fourteen, but they use boys under ten to throw rocks, start fires, and sometimes drop explosives. They also intentionally put these children in danger by harassing Israeli soldiers, hoping to spark an incident so they could claim that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) killed a child.
There were videos online of Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas at children peacefully playing with kites. However, on closer examination, they were right next to a fortification full of IDF soldiers, and the fathers were standing back, watching what happened. The kites are sometimes used for spying, arson, or to drop explosives. The fathers stood ready with cell phone video to capture the IDF’s response, post it online, and accuse Israel of atrocities.
If anyone is endangering children, it is Hamas and the fathers who use their children as pawns in this war.
The accusation that Israel bombed schools, hospitals, and other civilian structures again stems from the fact that Hamas does not have any military structures. They operate out of civilian structures, particularly favoring hospitals and schools because they know that the IDF is less likely to attack them. Or, the IDF was less likely to do so before Hamas killed 1,200 Israeli civilians.
The claims that Israel is preventing aid from getting into Gaza are also false. Israel is not allowing aid to come overland because Iran and wealthy Arab nations have been known to send weapons and ammunition hidden in aid packages. They even had Hamas terrorists posing as UN aid workers. Additionally, Hamas is the authority in Gaza, and all aid goes through them. Hamas taxes all imports, and they would decide how aid is distributed. Providing them aid would only further legitimize and empower Hamas. Now, the US is delivering aid via air and sea ports. It’s not ideal because Hamas will still get most of it, but at least if Americans oversee the packing, they know there are no weapons inside.
And finally, this brings us to Hitler, a name that has become synonymous with anything the left does not like. The term “worse than Hitler” has ironically been used against Israel, along with accusations of genocide. In reality, no human being has ever committed acts as evil as Hitler’s. There have been other genocides, but they were confined within the borders of a single country. Hitler exported genocide. He coerced, and/or forced, other countries to deport their Jews to him so he could exterminate them. He also closed borders and prevented Jews from leaving. This is not what is happening in Gaza.
Naturally, Israel has closed the border from Gaza to Israel to prevent a repeat of the October 7th attack. However, Israel is not preventing them from leaving through Egypt. However, Cairo has ordered the border closed. Egypt is preventing Palestinians from fleeing a deadly situation. Why is no one bringing sanctions against Egypt?
To conclude, the people responsible for the deaths of so many Gazans are Hamas. They committed the terrorist attack that ignited this crisis, failed to release the hostages, and failed to surrender to end it. They operated out of hospitals, hid weapons in aid shipments, had terrorists posing as aid workers, and neglected to provide for their own people’s well-being. Additionally, the fathers who endanger their children for propaganda purposes must be held accountable for their actions. Egypt is also to blame for not allowing the Palestinians to flee. And finally, Lebanon and all of the surrounding Arab nations who claim to be so concerned about this situation are refusing to accept refugees.
But no worries, Smokin’ Joe will let them stay in the U.S.
The post Hamas Apologists: Taking Moral High Ground to Shield Terrorists appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Gaza_Ceasefire_Now_Rally_NYC_DSA,_Oct_20,_2023
By 4kbw9Df3Tw - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=143464793
Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla said in a recent television appearance that so-called Christian nationalists believe our rights “come from God,” rather than “any earthly authority.”
After getting eviscerated online, she backpedaled to nuance her position. After all, Thomas Jefferson would qualify under her definition, since he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights … .”
But rather than clarify her point, she retreated into vagueness and equivocation—all the better to camouflage her own parochial views.
“The phenomenon of Christian nationalism may be relatively new, but the larger questions it raises have been around for a long time,” she wrote in Politico. “Any group of activists asserting a religious imprimatur for their policy agenda should be prepared to answer a couple questions.”
First, she wrote, “are they respecting the American principle of separation of church and state?” According to Przybyla, some Christian nationalists “have made plain in their public rhetoric that their aim is to blur or even erase this line.” And second, “are they ready to play by the same rules that everyone in a democracy must as they try to influence our laws[?]”
“No doubt some people feel so strongly in their views, and the righteousness of their position, that they would like to glide right over these questions,” she asserts. These people “seek to impose their views on the rest of us by claiming that heaven is on their side.”
So, who are these people? Przybyla doesn’t offer a single example. But a glance at her previous reporting gives us a good idea of whom she has in mind.
In a February article, for instance, Przybyla and co-author Alexander Ward warn of conservatives planning to infuse “Christian nationalist” ideas into former President Donald Trump’s administration should he win a return to office in 2024.
The authors fixate on Russell Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget and current president of the conservative think tank the Center for Renewing America.
Politico apparently obtained documents that reveal CRA’s agenda. The authors admit that the documents “do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies.” They still say the think tank is “Christian nationalist,” though, because “Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda … .”
That “agenda” is likely the standard conservative view that a nation has the right to defend its borders and prevent hordes of illegal aliens from flooding in.
The reporters then sloppily attribute to Vought the claim that it isn’t a person’s background that defines whether he can enter the U.S., but rather whether he “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”
In the Vought article they’re presumably referring to, though, he’s citing Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony’s description of ancient Israel, not describing the conditions for American citizenship. And in the very same piece, Vought affirms the institutional separation of church and state.
In a December article, Przybyla argues that conservatives are also trying to infuse sectarian dogma into the judiciary. Among those targeted are Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert George and Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard Leo.
The pair, she claims, were key influences in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. George filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, in which he and legal philosopher John Finnis offered a cogent defense of the right to life of the unborn. (See George’s response to Przybyla here.)
According to Przybyla, amicus briefs like George’s apparently trace back to the nefarious efforts of Leo and a network of conservative nonprofits. “In major cases involving cultural flashpoints of abortion, affirmative action and LGBTQ+ rights, Politico found information cited in amicus briefs connected to Leo’s network in the court’s opinions,” she wrote.
The conspiracy, she thinks, goes even deeper. “The picture that emerges,” she reveals, “is of an exceedingly small universe of mostly Christian conservative activists developing and disseminating theories to change the nation’s legal and cultural landscape.”
Why is it bad that legal scholars like George have sought to shape judicial decisions through amicus briefs, or that Leo has contributed to various political causes?
Przybyla claims that amicus briefs used to be “vehicles for neutral parties to make suggestions based on fact or law.” But when, say, a pro-life legal scholar submits an amicus brief, she implies that that’s sectarian.
Of course, submitting amicus briefs to the Supreme Court isn’t illegal, immoral, or undemocratic. It’s a common way of working to advance one’s views in our judicial system.
Liberal and leftist groups such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, and NARAL do it all the time. Do they count as “neutral parties” for Przybyla? Presumably so.
The claim that when Christian conservatives do what left-wing groups do all the time, it’s evidence of a creeping theocracy would be laughable if she made it so plainly.
Yet, if we survey her other recent articles on the subject, that seems to be her view: When religious conservatives seek to legally influence policy, they’re trying to be “subversive to democracy” by pushing a sectarian agenda. In contrast, when her seemingly favored left-wing groups do the same thing, it’s neutral, commonsensical, and universally applicable.
But Przybyla’s views on these subjects are hardly neutral or rooted in American principles. Her claim of a “right to abortion,” for instance, is supposedly based on a “right” to privacy mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. What’s more, it contradicts the right to life of the unborn. And in Dobbs, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the Constitution protects or enshrines any such right.
She has also warned that Christian nationalism threatens “LGBTQ+ rights” and “sex education in schools.” She’s vague about what these things mean. But the terms are the common parlance of gender ideologues who want to smuggle in radical aims, like indoctrinating kids in queer theory without parental consent and offering them “gender-affirming care” (doublespeak for the medical and/or surgical mutilation of a child’s body).
The Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on this debate. If the justices ultimately side with the critics of such indoctrination and medical interventions, will Przybyla report this as another victory for those sneaky Christian nationalists?
Given her written record to date, it seems highly likely. But her confused musings on the subject look like a classic case of leftist projection. She treats her own radical views as neutral, and accuses her opponents, whose views are arguably more consistent with American principles, as sinister and sectarian.
In her most recent, “clarifying” article, Przybyla claims that those who try to impose their religious views on the public should “expect fair and well-reported coverage of their political aims and the tactics used to advance them.” And, she emphasizes, they should not expect “any extra deference for their political words or actions simply because they are motivated by religious belief.”
Fair enough. But given her own confused and sectarian views, she might as a journalist consider the wisdom of a proverb Jesus once referred to: “Physician, heal thyself.” Or would that be Christian nationalism, too?
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
The post Politico Reporter Backpedals on Definition of ‘Christian Nationalism,’ Further Exposes Her Bias appeared first on The Daily Signal.
International media and the European Parliament blamed climate change for the 2023 Christmas Massacre, which claimed the lives of 200 Nigerian Christians.
While Queers of Palestine and anti-Semitic protestors take to the streets around the US and Europe to support Hamas, Christian civilians are being killed, and the religion is being repressed at an accelerated rate across the globe. With the exception of four countries—North Korea, China, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka—most of the repression and violence against Christians occurs in Muslim-majority countries or at the hands of Islamic extremists.
Christian nations are broadly accepting of Muslims, but Muslim nations are increasingly intolerant of Christians. At the same time, formerly Christian nations are taking fewer steps to protect Christians at home and abroad.
Since 2020, violence against Christians has increased around the world. Last year, more than 5,000 Christians were killed in faith-related slayings, over 90% of which took place in Nigeria. The countries with the highest rates of overall persecution against Christians were North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, and Yemen. The trend is toward greater repression of Christians, with the number of countries added to the Open Doors Watch List for Christian repression now standing at 78. It was only 55 two years ago.
The definition of persecution used by Open Doors is: “Any hostility experienced as a result of one’s identification with Christ. This can include hostile attitudes, words and actions towards Christians”. This broad definition includes (but is not limited to) restrictions, pressure, discrimination, opposition, disinformation, injustice, intimidation, mistreatment, marginalization, oppression, intolerance, infringement, violation, ostracism, hostilities, harassment, abuse, violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
Both China and North Korea have an official Marxist-atheist political and social system. However, the constitutions of both the DPRK and PRC grant citizens freedom of religion; however, that religion must be free of foreign influence and must not undermine state security. Since Christianity originates from foreign countries, it is closely monitored and suppressed as a national security threat.
In both countries, a state Protestant church and a state Catholic church exist. However, the liturgy of both Christian denominations must be approved by the Communist Party and must incorporate party ideology. The Catholic Church is not allowed to communicate with the Vatican. The Communist Party appoints religious leaders, who must be loyal to the party. While the state-sanctioned churches exist, members may be excluded from rights and freedoms such as government jobs and promotions.
Those seeking to study the Bible or practice a brand of Christianity not infused with communist dogma meet in underground home-church congregations. These illegal religious gatherings are frequently raided, with the members and pastors being severely punished. Currently, hundreds of thousands of Christians are in prison, work camps, or undergoing reeducation in the two countries.
Twenty-six nations in Sub-Saharan Africa were found to have high levels of violence and repression against Christians, while 16 were ranked as “Extremely High.” This marks an increase from 13 countries a year prior. During 2024, there has been an escalation in violence, including a surge in attacks on churches, as well as Christian residences, schools, and businesses.
The conflict in Ethiopia has resulted in Christians being targeted, and their businesses are being looted and burned. The same is happening in the Central African Republic. A string of coups in the Sahel region of Africa, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania, has resulted in an increase in Islamic extremist violence. The anti-Western sentiments of coup leaders have crippled the ability of the United States and other Western nations to conduct counterterrorism operations.
As a result, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a long-standing group with roots in Algeria, has expanded its reach into the Sahel. Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), an affiliate of the Islamic State group, has gained notoriety for its brutal attacks. Other groups include the Macina Liberation Front (MLF) and Ansaroul Islam. These groups exploit local grievances and ethnic tensions to recruit fighters and spread their ideology.
It is important to note that extremist groups also target other Muslims; however, they have a categorical hatred of Christians. Al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates in the Sahel target violence against Christians, whom they see as infidels threatening their extremist vision. Extremist groups may target Christian communities to seize resources, intimidate the population, or force conversions.
In countries where Christians are a minority, extremists may see them as an easy target, particularly if the government and security forces turn a blind eye. Sadly, even in Europe and the U.S., violence and repression against Christians are rising. Christians are generally not protected under hate crime laws. Crimes and discrimination against Christians are rarely recognized as such, and the word “Christian” does not appear in most government publications about hate crimes, although “LGBTQ+” generally does.
The post Persecution and Violence Against Christians: Don’t Expect Protests appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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By Anton-kurt - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4429047
Is America on the verge of establishing a theocracy? The Left’s recent warnings about the rise of “Christian nationalism” suggest that a powerful, conservative Christian cabal is pulling the strings behind the scenes to forcibly convert the entire nation, or something.
In the past week, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla has been hammering the drum on this issue, first claiming—apparently without concrete evidence—that former Trump administration official Russell Vought has prioritized “Christian nationalism” by name in documents for a potential Trump second term, and then defining Christian nationalism as the doctrine that rights come from God, not government.
“The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists—not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalism’s very different—is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority, they don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God,” Przybyla said in an appearance on MSNBC. She also complained that “it’s men” determining “what God is telling them.”
Although Przybyla admitted that “so-called natural law” has done some good in the civil rights movement, she went on to warn against “an extremist element of conservative Christians who say that this applies specifically to issues including abortion, gay marriage,” and in vitro fertilization. She later noted that conservatives are applying natural law to surrogacy and “sex education in schools” as well.
Shortly after Przybyla’s article about Vought, radical leftists have widely echoed her rhetoric and suggested that America’s future may resemble a dystopian “Handmaid’s Tale.”
What’s really going on here?
First, Przybyla’s fearmongering has nothing to do with reality. According to her definition of “Christian nationalism,” the Declaration of Independence is a Christian nationalist document.
Not only does the declaration ground Americans’ ability to declare independence from Britain in “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” but it explicitly roots the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in an endowment from the “Creator.” It addresses its appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the world,” with “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
That’s not exactly subtle.
Przybyla’s real problem with “Christian nationalists” isn’t the whole rights-derive-from-God thing. It’s the content of those rights and the mere whiff of a possibility that the government won’t impose her preferences for what those rights should mean.
America isn’t on the verge of a Christian nationalist theocracy, you see. No one is seriously arguing that we should throw out the Constitution and replace it with the Bible, or that we should make citizens, candidates for office, or government officials recite the Nicene Creed before they may enjoy legal rights.
What conservatives are seriously arguing, however, is that some rights of the sexual revolution should be curtailed in the interests of more fundamental rights.
Przybyla unwittingly revealed her cards when she addressed the issues she thinks should be off-limits for these “extremist Christian nationalists.” The heart of her complaint isn’t some quibble with the Fourth Lateran Council but with the very idea that natural law should apply to abortion, same-sex marriage, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and sex education in schools.
You see, Christian nationalism isn’t the real threat to the free exercise of religion in America today. The real threat is the ideology of the sexual revolution imposed on the people by government force, and Przybyla can’t stand the idea of that establishment being challenged.
That’s why the Left has a conniption when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and allows the states to make their own laws on abortion. According to Catholic Vote, vandals attacked at least 88 pregnancy centers and pro-life groups after the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in that ruling, and they also attacked 236 Catholic churches since the leak.
The Biden administration moved to aggressively support abortion, even though President Joe Biden himself had been a staunch defender of the Hyde Amendment, which previously barred federal funds from supporting the killing of the unborn. A Department of Justice official even said the overturning of Roe increased the “urgency” of DOJ efforts to enforce a law disproportionately applied against pro-life protesters at abortion facilities.
The Left demonized all the conservative justices on the Supreme Court after the ruling, with ProPublica launching an inquisition into Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Left isn’t objecting to the Right’s imposing its worldview on Americans by force—it’s objecting to the Right’s finally getting a say on issues springing from the sexual revolution. We’re not witnessing the rise of Christian nationalism, but the weakening of an anti-Christian establishment.
Other news items should make it clear what’s actually happening in America today.
Last week, the Supreme Court refused to take up a case in which a person who holds traditional views on sexual morality is considered “presumptively unfit to serve on a jury in a case involving a party who is lesbian.” As Justice Samuel Alito noted, this case exemplifies a danger he warned about when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), “that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.”
Oregon’s Department of Human Services treated a widowed mother of five children in this way when it denied her the right to adopt a pair of siblings from foster care. Why? Because she disagrees with Oregon’s state religion, the religion of LGBTQ identity.
The Biden administration is also considering a rule to bar “non-affirming” parents from foster care. People who dare to dissent from the idea that a male can become female just by saying so have no business raising children in Biden’s America, it seems.
As for sex education in schools, parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty are reacting to the Left’s extreme overreach in education. They’re not “banning books,” they’re calling for sexually explicit materials to be removed from school libraries.
Many of these groups exist because parents got a sense of what their kids were “learning” in school when the kids “attended class” via Zoom during the pandemic—and leftist indoctrination in racial lessons and transgender identity rightly shocked moms and dads.
This isn’t some exclusively Christian movement, either. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, and others have joined Christians of every denomination in supporting parental rights to opt their kids out of having to read sexually explicit books.
I’ve reported exhaustively on the Southern Poverty Law Center because I see that organization as the tip of the spear in the Left’s efforts to demonize any dissent from its agenda, and its ties to the Biden administration horrify me. The SPLC brands mainstream conservative Christian organizations as “hate groups” in an effort to raise money and to demonize its opponents into silence. It represents the institutionalization of the effort against “Christian nationalism.”
Many Americans think the Civil War was about slavery, and they’re not entirely wrong. Abraham Lincoln didn’t actually oppose slavery when he ran for president in 1860, though. He ran against the expansion of slavery into the federal territories.
You see, the Southern Democrats had such a stranglehold on the federal government that they couldn’t imagine needing to compromise. They had also begun to think of slavery as a positive good, not the “necessary evil” the Founders called it.
Southern Democrats couldn’t live with losing the ability to force their ideology on the rest of the country, and that ambition became their undoing.
“Christian nationalism” is the modern equivalent of Southern Democrats’ demonizing Lincoln, kicking and screaming as they lose the ability to foist their beliefs on the rest of the country. If history is any guide, this trend does not bode well for the Left—or America’s civil tranquility.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
The post What Is the ‘Christian Nationalism’ Fearmongering Really About? appeared first on The Daily Signal.