Mr. Obama’s Deafening Silence

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King envisioned the day when the black community would be at equal footing with those who oppressed them. And yet, I wonder if even Dr. King could have dreamed of an African-American president so few years after paying the ultimate price for seeking equality.

But to say that the occupant of the White House is in the same category of Dr. King and his many colleagues who suffered humiliation and persecution would be wildly inaccurate.

I wish that Mr. Obama had heeded the wise words of Dr. King regarding “silence,” but alas, when it comes to the persecution of Christians around the world, he has not.

One longs to hear a word of compassion from our president for Christians who are being killed or mutilated, and for the churches being destroyed—some of them ancient churches with great historic significance.

One would love to hear a word of sympathy for Christians burned alive or crucified in Nigeria, Central African Republic, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Pakistan; or a simple word of concern for the Christians being persecuted in earnest in more than sixty countries.

One would love to hear even the mildest of protests against the Iranians (for whom he lifted sanctions) on behalf of tortured and imprisoned pastors, such as Pastor Saeed.

One would have expected his conscience, as an act of integrity, to compel him to some modest level of fair-mindedness—if anything just to balance the advice he receives from the Muslim Brotherhood, the now-outlawed terrorist organization in Egypt.

But all we hear is the sound of silence.

Mr. President, if you claim to be a Christian and a friend of Christians, like Dr. King, then please heed his advice and break your silence.

Christians expect evil words and deeds from the enemies of Christ. But surely the silence of a world leader such as yourself, who claims to have knelt before the cross and asked for Christ’s forgiveness, is a more powerful statement.

We all know the mainstream media and the ACLU will go after Christians with a vengeance, depriving them of any right of the public expression of their faith. At the same time, those groups will maintain the silence of cowards in the face of Islamist tyranny.

But even those who have supported you, Mr. Obama, must have thought that all those sweet words of the campaigns would have translated into fair-mindedness in governing.

But who can really blame you when so many evangelical leaders are right there with you, also falling silent about the persecution of Christians? As some of them hawk their self-help books, or even diet books, they become tongue-tied when faced with the plight of their fellow believers.

It is difficult to know if the president is influencing them, or if they are influencing him. Only God knows.

Regardless of who starts it, however, their message is loud and clear; their silence is deafening. But they must never forget that there is a God in heaven who will reward the faithfulness of the martyrs, and who will never forget the sealed lips of the earthly powerful.

http://www.michaelyoussef.com/

The Bible vs. Heart

I offer the single most politically incorrect statement a modern American — indeed a modern Westerner, period — can make: I first look to the Bible for moral guidance and for wisdom.

 

I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia), where I learned nothing about the Bible there except that it was irrelevant, outdated and frequently immoral.

I say this because there is nothing — not any religious or secular body of work — that comes close to the Bible in forming the moral bases of Western civilization and therefore of nearly all moral progress in the world.

It was this book that guided every one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, including those described as “deists.” It is the book that formed the foundational values of every major American university. It is the book from which every morally great American from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to the Rev. (yes, “the Reverend,” almost always omitted today in favor of his secular credential, “Dr.”) Martin Luther King, Jr., got his values.

It is this book that gave humanity the Ten Commandments, the greatest moral code ever devised. It not only codified the essential moral rules for society, it announced that the Creator of the universe stands behind them, demands them and judges humans’ compliance with them.

It gave humanity the great moral rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It taught humanity the unprecedented and unparalleled concept that all human beings are created equal because all human beings — of every race, ethnicity, nationality and both male and female — are created in God’s image.

It taught people not to trust the human heart, but to be guided by moral law even when the heart pulled in a different direction.

This is the book that taught humanity that human sacrifice is an abomination.

This is the book that de-sexualized God — a first in human history.

This is the book that alone launched humanity on the long road to abolishing slavery. It was not only Bible-believers (what we would today call “religious fundamentalists”) who led the only crusade in the world against slavery, it was the Bible itself, thousands of years before, that taught that God abhors slavery. it legislated that one cannot return a slave to his owner and banned kidnapping for slaves in the Ten Commandments. Stealing people, kidnapping, was the most widespread source of slavery, and “Thou shall not steal” was first a ban on stealing humans and then on stealing property.

It was this book that taught people the wisdom of Job and of Ecclesiastes, unparalleled masterpieces of world wisdom literature.

Without this book, there would not have been Western civilization, or Western science, or Western human rights, or the abolitionist movement, or the United States of America, the freest, most prosperous, most opportunity-giving society ever formed.

For well over a generation, we have been living on “cut-flower ethics.” We have removed ethics from the Bible-based soil that gave them life and think they can survive removed from that soil. Fools and those possessing an arrogance bordering on self-deification think we will long survive as a decent society without teaching the Bible and without consulting it for moral guidance and wisdom.

If not from the Bible, from where should people get their values and morals? The university? The New York Times editorial page? They have been wrong on virtually every great issue of good and evil in our generation. They mocked Ronald Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” More than any other group in the world, Western intellectuals supported Stalin, Mao and other Communist monsters. They are utterly morally confused concerning one of the most morally clear conflicts of our time — the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict. The universities and their media supporters have taught a generation of Americans the idiocy that men and women are basically the same. And they are the institutions that teach that America’s founders were essentially moral reprobates — sexist and racist rich white men.

When the current executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, was appointed to that position she announced that “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion.” The quote spoke volumes about the substitution of elite media for religion and the Bible in shaping contemporary America.

The other modern substitute for the Bible is the heart. We live in the Age of Feelings, and an entire generation of Americans has been raised to consult their heart to determine right and wrong.

If you trust the human heart, you should be delighted with this development. But those of us raised with biblical wisdom do not trust the heart. So when we are told by almost every university, by almost every news source, by almost every entertainment medium that the heart demands what is probably the most radical social transformation since Western civilization began — redefining marriage, society’s most basic institution, in terms of gender — it may be wiser to trust the biblical understanding of marriage rather than the heart’s.

My heart, too, supports same-sex marriage. But relying on the heart alone is a terribly flawed guide to social policy. And it is the Bible that has produced all of the world’s most compassionate societies.

This, then, is the great modern battle: the Bible and the heart vs. the heart alone.

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a SRN radio show host, contributing columnist for Townhall.com and author of his newest book, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.

http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2013/04/02/the-bible-vs-heart-n1554814/page/full/

The Right to Bare Breasts? By Rev. Mark H. Creech , Christian Post Columnist

In my home state of North Carolina, legislation has been introduced making it illegal for women to fully bear their breasts in public. The bill was introduced by Representatives Rayne Brown (R-Lexington) and Tim Moffitt (R-Asheville), in response to constituents concerns about topless rallies promoted by a group called Go Topless, an organization that’s fighting for the so-called right of women to expose their breasts without violating any indecent exposure laws. They’ve already held topless protests in Asheville, North Carolina.

The legislation wouldn’t prohibit breast feeding in public. Its purpose is only meant to clarify something that is not clear in North Carolina’s statutes – that public indecency includes fully exposed breasts and should be a misdemeanor.

This is important legislation. It should be supported and the lawmakers behind it ought to be commended. Still, there is an underlying issue, I believe, even greater than the need for the legislative initiative itself.

Interestingly, the President of Go Topless, Nadine Gary, argued, “Our rallies are aimed at bringing attention to a serious matter of unconstitutional, unequal treatment…women are still persecuted or arrested for going topless, while men aren’t…To uphold the constitution, Representative Moffitt should honor its references to equality…Instead, he’s attempting to widen the inequality gap when he should be protecting women’s rights to go topless in his state or striving to see that men’s nipples remain equally private.”

Gary’s advocacy for bare breasts in the name of “equality” shows the ridiculous ends to which our culture has corrupted phrases like “all men are created equal” and “equal treatment under the law.”

When the Founders spoke of equality in the Declaration of Independence, they didn’t mean that everything we do should be of equal significance, or that we should erase the differences of the sexes ordered by nature’s God. Their emphasis was on the dignity of mankind – that all men are of equal significance to God – that all are made in His image. The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution essentially contends all people, regardless of station, whether rich or poor, whether man or woman, no matter their race, their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property should be zealously protected by the state.

Today, however, equal rights have come to mean something ludicrous – that women in the name of reproductive rights and equality with men should be able to destroy their unborn children, that marriage should be redefined to also include the homosexual, that wealth should be redistributed to equalize the plight of the impoverished, that children should be allowed the capacity of autonomous actions over their parents, that women should serve in combat positions, that tolerance should mean every truth claim is equally valid to its counterpart. This changes the traditional concept of equality into a modern absurdity.

Of course, historical revisionist will argue that the meaning of equality is something that has always been evolving in American society. They’ll cite how some Founders were slave owners and equal rights for blacks was a long time coming. But the fact of the matter is slavery was something imposed on the Founders 200 years before them. Most of them were opposed to slavery and prior to them there had been few serious efforts to dismantle the egregious institution. Our nation’s struggle with the civil rights of blacks was an unfortunate blemish on the country’s history. Nevertheless, it was the premise that the Founders laid down about equality – about everyone being of equal worth – that inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous civil rights speech to argue, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”

My point is a simple one: the true meaning of equality is being turned into lunacy. And there is no better example of this fact than the Go Topless organization striving to achieve “women’s rights to go topless…or striving to see that men’s nipples remain equally private.”

I’ll tell you if Go Topless ever gets its way, I make the motion that since diamond’s are a girl’s best friend and a man’s best friend is a dog, men henceforth forgo such expenditures for women, women always get a dog, or they come up with the loot for men too.

Please, give me a break!

http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-right-to-bare-breasts-89774/#gfu8PyAPpRCeaMcM.99

Is it Time to Throw in the Towel?

Republican leaders have capitulated, pro-family pundits have caved, and gay activists have announced that their struggle for equality is just about over. Is it time for biblical conservatives to throw in the towel?

What a ridiculous thought. Why in the world would we do that?

I’m fully aware that:

· Newt Gingrich recently announced his belief that same-sex unions are “inevitable” and that Republicans must accept this if they want to win future elections. 

· Pro-marriage leader David Blankenhorn has recanted his opposition to same-sex “marriage,” saying “the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do.”

· Recent polling indicates that “the public has gradually become more accepting of same-sex marriage . . . . More Americans favor it in 2013 than oppose, according to the Pew Research Center.”

· The 2012 elections marked the first time that any states voted to legalize same-sex “marriage” and President Obama, in his inaugural speech, declared that it is the task of this generation to legalize gay “marriage.”

· Last week, in a 400-175 vote, British “MPs approved the second reading of a bill legalizing [same-sex] marriage, indicating a significant majority of members support the measure” as it moves through the process of legal approval.

· A poll last week claimed that Americans, by “a margin of 55 percent to 33 percent” believe that the Boy Scouts “should drop its policy against openly gay members.”

 

Yes, I’m fully aware that gay activists have declared that the “National Movement Opposing Same-Sex Marriage Is Done,” and that, to quote pioneer gay journalist Mark Segal, what’s happening today is not a “watershed” but “a tidal wave.”

Long-time gay activist Cleve Jones has even stated that, “The opposition is just melting away. We have reached the hearts and minds of the American people,” and there is no turning back the clock. Yes, Jones said, “I am kind of beside myself. I have to pinch myself sometimes. I never thought I would live long enough to see this. Never. Ever.”

Things have gotten to the point that, on January 31^st, Hank Plante wrote on <href=”#ixzz2kzcbyo6r”>SFGate.com that, “I received a provocative e-mail from a prominent gay journalist this week. It had two words: ‘It’s over.’”

Is the battle for “gay rights” really over? Should conservatives who differ with these “rights” throw in the towel? After all, there’s no use wasting our time and energy and resources fighting against the inevitable. In fact, the longer we fight a losing battle, the more we make ourselves look irrelevant.

Why not consolidate our losses and live to fight another day? Surely there are other battles that deserve our attention. Why not throw in the towel when it comes to opposing the full acceptance of homosexual practice?

Here are four answers to these fair and weighty questions.

1) For many years now, the unspoken mantra of gay activists (going back to the famous “zaps” of the early 1970’s) has been, “We will intimidate and we will manipulate until you capitulate.” Today, when gay activists announce that we conservative believers are on the wrong side of history, it is just another form of intimidation. Surely they are not telling us these things so as to help us! So, in case it isn’t clear, let me say it plainly: We will not be intimidated.

2) We do what is right because it is right, not because it is pragmatic or popular. To quote the Oregon Christian baker Aaron Klein, “I’d rather stand up for what I believe in and what I feel is right and get totally annihilated when it comes in the end than to bow down to this and say ‘go ahead.’ Because that sets the standard for the next one, the next one, and the next one.” In the famous words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.”

3) Polls and popularity trends do not determine what is morally right and wrong. One generation ago, sex out of wedlock was frowned upon. Today, it’s accepted as a normal part of life. Yet a recent US Census report indicates that “Being raised in a married family reduced a child’s probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent.” Popularity does not necessarily equate with morality, and only a fool makes moral choices based on the polls.

4) I’m not in the least bit surprised by the victories of the “gay revolution.” In fact, when I first became involved in this specific aspect of the “culture wars” less than 9 years ago, I saw back then that our side had already lost the battle and that gay activism had won the day. So, these recent developments don’t faze or surprise me in the least. From day one, my trust was in God, not people, and that’s where my trust remains. Attempts to redefine marriage and family and to normalize different sexual orientations may have their day, but that day will pass.

In the end, I can truly thank gay activists for helping us understand their world better – including the pain of bullying and the unique struggles they have endured – and for that, I am grateful. And I can admire their zeal and courage, even while differing with their goals.

But just as they didn’t throw in the towel when they were a tiny, vilified, minority, much less we will throw in the towel when their revolution seems to be winning the day. This too shall pass.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 22 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire. Follow him atAskDrBrown on Facebookor @drmichaellbrownon Twitter.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2013/02/11/is-it-time-to-throw-in-the-towel-n1509786/page/full/

Hardness of Heart and the Celebration of Abortion

In 1995, feminist leader Naomi Wolf called for a pro-abortion movement “that acts with moral accountability and without euphemism,” noting that, “With the pro-choice rhetoric we use now, we incur three destructive consequences — two ethical, one strategic: hardness of heart, lying and political failure.” That hardness of heart was fully manifest in the profane video produced by the Center for Reproductive Rights celebrating the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

But let’s go back to October 16, 1995, when the New Republic published Wolf’s remarkably candid article entitled, “Our Bodies, Our Souls.” Wolf made reference to “Dr. Joycelyn Elders’s remark, hailed by some as refreshingly frank and pro-woman but which I found remarkably brutal: that ‘We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus….’”

She explained that “Second Wave feminists reacted to the dehumanization of women by dehumanizing the creatures within them. . . . Yet that has left us with a bitter legacy. For when we defend abortion rights by emptying the act of moral gravity, we find ourselves cultivating a hardness of heart.” And she urged that abortion must be treated with “grief and reverence.”

In stark contrast with that attitude, the Center for Reproductive Rights released an online video which is so obscene that author Eric Metaxas writes, “When I first watched this ad, I thought, this HAS to be a spoof. It employs the ugly racial stereotype of a smooth-talking [black] predator celebrating his freedom to use women at zero cost to himself: Hey, baby, hook up with me—and then go have an abortion. Are they kidding? No; this was no spoof.”

The “smooth-talking predator” is actor Mechad Brooks who sits in a chair holding a red rose in one hand and a drink in the other, saying to the camera (as if speaking to his spouse), “All these years so many people said we’d never make it. They’ve been trying to tear us apart. . . Put limits on you, on me, on us.” And then, Metaxas notes, “he roars with laughter,” a sardonic, mocking laughter at that.

“We’re going to be standing right by your side, today, tomorrow, and the years to come,” he continues. “Because that is how much you mean to me, baby.” And then, once more, the laughter.

To repeat: This was not intended to be a sick joke or a demented spoof. This was meant to be taken seriously, presumably by the same kind of people who shouted their approval of abortion at last year’s Democratic National Convention. Let’s celebrate the slaughter of 55 million babies in the womb, especially in the African American community!

Metaxas quotes Ryan Scott Bomberger, an African-American pro-lifer who runs the Radiance Foundation, who noted that, “With the black abortion rate as high as it is and black fathers as absent as they are, it’s just sick to see Mehcad Brooks shill for the number-one killer in the black community.”

More graphic still are the comments of Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who asked what her uncle would do “if he’d lived to see the contents of thousands of children’s skulls emptied into the bottomless caverns of the abortionists’ pits?”

Naomi Wolf wrote that, “The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifers’ practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics. We revile their placards showing an enlarged scene of the aftermath of a D & C abortion: we are disgusted by their lapel pins with the little feet, crafted in gold, of a 10-week-old fetus; we mock the sensationalism of The Silent Scream.”

Yet, she asked, “How can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that the truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy. Besides, if these images are often the facts of the matter, and if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted by them, then we are making the judgment that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision. This view of women is unworthy of feminism. Free women must be strong women, too: and strong women, presumably do not seek to cloak their most important decisions in euphemism.”

In light of these comments, I would like to make a simple proposal. The repulsive video described here has been pulled by its producer, but if someone can find a copy of it (legally), perhaps they can remake it, interspersed with these very images Wolf describes, terribly disturbing images which are now readily available online. Then let’s see if a single pro-abortion leader in the world will even attempt to minimize the horror of abortion.

Wolf argued that, “Only if we uphold abortion rights within a matrix of individual conscience, atonement and responsibility can we both correct the logical and ethical absurdity in our position and consolidate the support of the center.”

Let every American look at the pictures of these ripped up and mutilated babies and ask if it is possible for there to be an “abortion rights” movement that operates “within a matrix of individual conscience, atonement and responsibility.” And let every American ask what kind of human beings (and what kind of organization) could mockingly celebrate the slaughter of the unborn.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire, and his latest book is The Real Kosher Jesus.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2013/01/29/hardness-of-heart-and-the-celebration-of-abortion-n1500011/page/full/

Who Stole MLK? That is, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr By Paul de Vries , Special to CP

We live in a time of magical secularism. Right before our eyes the Gospel truth is ripped off, stolen, or at least seriously “dumbed down.” For what reason do we allow fables to replace facts – even when the marvel and splendor of the facts far exceeds the secularist’s ingenious fabricated fables.

Barely a year ago the majestic memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was dedicated in Washington, DC. Just prior to that dedication, I paid a visit to admire the park area, the inscribed walls and monumental creative sculpture, themed from Rev. Dr. King’s sermonic reference to the need for a “stone of hope.” (That is me in the picture talking with a park ranger in front of the Stone of Hope.)

How very grateful we are that there is such a memorial to a Christian giant who so positively impacted America and the world with his overtly Biblical values! He belongs in the company of Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington and F.D. Roosevelt, all of whose stately memorials stand nearby.

I speculate that the Lincoln Memorial is behind the monument to Rev. Dr. King because President Lincoln had his back, in a way of speaking. The monumental Rev. Dr. King is also staring forward, in the exact direction of the Jefferson Memorial, across the Tidal Basin. Is it his forward, hopeful perspective? Is it a grateful glance to the author of “All men are created equal” and “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” great words that had also inspired and empowered Rev. Dr. King’s leadership and ministry? Or perhaps is it a critical, disappointed look toward the historic, slave-holding Jefferson who was notably inconsistent in living those great words he wrote – and who never resolved the continuing crisis of his conflicted conscience? Or perhaps it is both divine gratitude and great disappointment. So I think.

Interesting as these artistic speculations are, everyone should be deeply disappointed in the complete absence of any reference to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, the Church or his ordination – all absolutely central to Rev. Dr. King’s awesome leadership. The entire monument area also ignores even that Rev. Dr. King was a Gospel minister. The nearby memorials include numerous references to the Lord, so the standard of telling the whole Godly truth was established long ago. Why suppress the most essential Truth about Rev. Dr. King –who was much more than an activist, but a church pastor for 14 years of his brief life, a Bible expositor, and an accomplished theologian? Public money has been spent to tell the truth about Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln and their sincere trust in God – and their frequent references to determinative dependence on our Creator. What pathology suppresses the truth when we honor someone with an even more explicit God focus – a model pastor and Christian thinker? That same magical secular pathology eliminates the true Rev. Dr. King in most approved school textbooks and teaching modules allegedly about the man. What keeps the rest of us quiet?

Why ignore that he was an ordained minister? Why pretend that he did not have a seminary degree from Crozer at age 22? Why disregard as well his PhD degree in systematic theology from prestigious Boston University when he was a young 26 years old? Why not a single mention that he was a professional theologian, minister, pastor and preacher? Why make the special effort to select fourteen quotes from Rev. Dr. King without a single acknowledgement that he drew his prime inspiration from the Bible? Why no mention of Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or the Father, or the Gospel, or Church or any one of his other significant spiritual anchors?

There is even a lovely waterfall at the memorial, but someone nixed the Bible verse (Amos 5:28) to go with it. Why keep the waterfall?

Why did the designers of the monument not even include a word about his extraordinary name that explicitly references Dr. Martin Luther (1483-1546), another monumental minister of the Gospel, transformative theologian, courageous civil-rights hero, and profound and passionate preacher.

And how did the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. get that unusual name? This story needs to be told. He was originally named Michael King, Jr., the eldest son of Rev. Michael King, Sr. (1899-1984) and Alberta Williams King (1906-1974). “Michael King, Jr.” was his name on his birth certificate. It is how he was first introduced to the world. His father and mother were proud of their first child. Everyone called their precocious child “Mike.” Mike King’s parents were also very bold in their efforts to transform their world toward the goal that all people would be recognized for their Divine human dignity and God-given inalienable rights.

Then the plot thickened. All this changed when Mike King, Jr. was five years old. Rev. and Mrs. Michael King, Sr. took a tourist trip to Germany, seeing a variety of sites over a few days, including visiting famed Wittenberg. That is the town in Germany where Dr. Martin Luther, a pastor and theologian, in the face people wanting to murder him for it, courageously took a stand for the Bible, for the Gospel, for the civil right to choose faith and to worship God as God guides. Luther had his flaws, but he was an articulate minister of the Gospel whose words so transformed the world around him that we all continue to benefit – especially in terms of religious choice, free market, and open access to the Gospel of God’s amazing grace. Rev. King understood that palpable courage of Luther. He already embodied it, and he and Alberta wanted to raise their children to have such Godly bravery, too.

Then the plot really thickened. Rev. Michael King, Sr. was so deeply moved by the Luther model that he decided to openly embrace the paradigm – in the most public statement possible. When he and Alberta returned home to Atlanta Georgia, he brought his son down to the courthouse with him to have both of their names legally changed! In an instant he became Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., and his five year old son became Martin Luther King, Jr. What a statement! Can you imagine a precocious five year old being told that he and his father are now walking monuments to Gospel clarity, human liberty and divine courage? Names matter so much. An official name change matters even more – especially to a young, impressionable, brilliant child. And by God’s amazing grace, the walking human monument Martin more than lived up to the awesome name change.

In one of the most stressful and dangerous times of his ministry, in the aftermath of leading the successful, lengthy Montgomery bus boycott, in 1957 the Lord spoke to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: “Stand up for righteousness; stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.” Three nights later someone bombed his home. No one was injured – and Rev. Dr. King was amazingly calm. Later he wrote about this crisis, “My experience with God had given me a new strength and trust. I now knew that God is able to give us the interior resources to face the storms and problems of life.” So he reported in his Strength to Love, 1963, at the end of one of 15 great sermons, “God is Able.”

We do not need a public acknowledgement of the Lord’s ministry through Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King for God to be present at the Martin Luther King Memorial. However, I am sure that Rev. Dr. King would then be much more pleased. And so would the Almighty.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/who-stole-mlk-88644/#hXlFf3McLWLmJr1g.99

Star Parker: Are MLK’s Christian Values Welcome Today?

The Rev. Louie Giglio, designated to give the benediction at this year’s presidential inauguration, has withdrawn, under apparent pressure, after the surfacing of remarks he made, some 25 years ago, about the sinfulness of homosexuality.

Note that the pastor of the evangelical Passion City Church in Atlanta has been pushed off the stage not because of a deed, but because of words he said — words expressing a widely held Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin.

Let’s recall that freedom of religion appears in the First Amendment of our constitution, alongside the protection of freedom of speech.

So what kind of irony do we have before us that two key aspects of American life, protected by our constitution, are up in smoke and the venue is inauguration of an American president, who will put his hand on a Bible and swear to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States“?

Adding more bitter irony, Rick Warren, who gave the benediction at the 2009 inauguration of this same president, America’s first black president, recently said that “the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, in all areas of life, will likely become the civil rights movement of this decade.”

And in what context did Warren — pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. — make this observation? In context of the refusal of Hobby Lobby, a firm owned by evangelical Christians, to comply with a new mandate, signed into law by this president, forcing firms, regardless of their religious convictions, to pay for employees’ contraception and abortion -inducing pills.

What we have is the ongoing march forward of tyranny in America, a tyranny of the left, in which moral chaos and political power are becoming a new national religion, and what was once understood as religion and tradition is now called bigotry and pushed off the stage.

One wonders if the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday coincides with this second inauguration of America’s first black president, would not himself wind up today pushed off the stage because of his Christian convictions.

A hint of how to think about this may be gleaned by visiting the new memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring King.

Visiting the memorial, what immediately struck this black Christian was the complete absence of any hint that King was a Christian pastor, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and who led a movement animated and inspired by biblical conviction and imagery.

No, the King celebrated at this memorial on the National Mall is a political activist and community organizer. Try to find a hint that this was a pastor, try to find a biblical quote, try to find a reference to God.

Absent is the King who concluded his “I have a dream” speech on the same National Mall pleading for the day “when all of God’s children … will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’ ”

In King’s famous letter written in 1963 while he was locked in a jail in Birmingham, Ala., he begins with the salutation “My fellow clergymen” and asks, “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?” The answer given by King was this: “A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”

Would a law such as the one forcing the evangelical Christian owners of Hobby Lobby to pay for contraception and abortion-inducing pills of employees, and exposing them to fines of $1.3 million per day for noncompliance — qualify as “just” under King’s definition?

Would King be ejected from the stage of this president’s inaugural if he called this law, produced by this administration, unjust?

Would there even have been a civil rights movement without the Christian values that today’s left calls bigotry?

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can do About It.

http://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2013/01/21/star-parker-are-mlks-christian-values-welcome-today-n1492788/page/full/

Godlessness Fails, Again By Paul de Vries , Special to CP

“Our experiment of godless society has failed. We have tried  to run our government by godless policies. We taught our children a godless  worldview. Our biggest mistake was subjecting hundreds of millions of people to  this failed experiment for so long, without recognizing or correcting its  failures.”

A failed experiment. Godless society does not work. Does that sound close to  home?

Several of my atheist colleagues argued this point 23 years ago as we met in  Moscow, then still the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I was  pleasantly surprised by their wisdom. We were together organizing a timely  research project on values changes, to record what would happen to Russians’  beliefs and behaviors as the oppression of atheism was gradually being lifted.  All these research colleagues had PhDs, all had been steeped in atheist  ideology, and all were now honest about official atheism‘s  many failures – including personal, family, social, economic and spiritual  failures.

Those same ideological failures seemed suddenly to be very close at hand as  we saw the unspeakably sad saga unfold of the massacre of tiny children and  their teachers at a school a short 60 miles northeast of New York City, my town.  Horrifying school house massacres are a relatively new form of murder, and  tragically they are markedly increasing in frequency. In interpreting our social  breakdown, though, our American commentators are presently far less spiritually  sagacious than my atheist colleagues were in Moscow, newly under glasnost. “Fix  the gun laws” is the best advice that most pundits are able to offer as a means  to stem this tide of terrifying tragedy in America.

Our hearts go out to all the people in Newtown, Connecticut. We pray  earnestly for them, for children and teachers everywhere, and for our country.  The massacre of those 20 children and their teachers is such malignant evil, we  all are deeply grieving, beyond words. And as proper, we are asking why such  horrific tragedies have increased in recent years – and what we can do to stop  them. The most vocal voices interviewed in the media are concentrating on the  need for changes both in gun laws and in security policies at schools. Good for  them. The external, legal constraints must be improved, for everyone’s benefit.  There are no partisan differences here.

But external, legal constraints will never be enough. Ever. Let us not kid  ourselves; wishful thinking will not help us. The murderous intentions of any  person even of mere average intelligence can certainly find a way around the  most stringent gun regulations. In this recent Newtown horror, the shooter stole  legal guns from his mother, in a state enforcing intensely strict gun  regulations already. More constraints may be needed, perhaps even in terms of  whether there are potential sociopaths in the same home, but regulations without  internal human constraints remain powerless.

Internal constraints help people to control their malignant desires – and  help others also to discern the potentially murderous character traits in some  people around them. These internal constraints enable people to find and receive  the timely spiritual assistance, mental therapy, and even legal constraints that  they need. Here my former scholarly colleagues in Moscow were exactly right.  Even though they regrettably remained atheist themselves at that time, some  deeply desired to believe in God. Nevertheless, everyone on our Moscow team was  firmly convinced that Godly belief strengthens positive moral fiber for all  citizens and for all leaders. Belief matters.

As I try to imagine the behaviors and beliefs of the Newtown mass-murderer,  based upon what we know, perhaps nothing quite compares to the Nazis and the  Communists conducting massacres of Jews and Christians during the last century.  Also, the hijackers who flew the airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon  on September 11 in 2001  must have had tragically little internal moral-spiritual fiber. How else could  their souls to be bought so cheaply by their Imam’s hellish lies about eternal  bliss with 72 virgins?

May I humbly suggest that we also consider discontinuing the failed American  experiment with godless policies and teaching? How can we sustain and brutally  enforce public health policies –such as requiring employers to facilitate abortion pills – that directly  violate long-established Godly consciences? In our schools and public  celebrations and monuments, how can we reinvent Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,  suppressing all reference to his being a pastor, being ordained, achieving  several degrees in theology,  and his overtly making all is powerful leadership  Bible-based and Christ-centered. And even in natural science,  of course we do not reference spiritual reality within scientific data, but if  we tell the truth about historic scientific discovery we will teach our students  the powerful place of prayer, divine visions, and God-inspired drives for  knowledge. Alongside teaching the information from science,  we should teach some of its thrilling history. Cutting public prayer and  Bible-reading out of our schools was part of a larger godless, American  ideology. Will we call it a failure now?

External constraints have essential roles. Now it is high time also to  acknowledge that the internal constraints, including our moral-spiritual fiber,  matter at least as much as the external ones. Our children and future  generations will all thank us if we coach, “disciple” and model the internal  eternal attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that should guide us, by God’s amazing  grace, into a more whole, healthier, happier and safer future. Time to try this  God-centered approach –since the alternative is obviously failing.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/godlessness-fails-again-86869/#t1li9thbvvFRkvsq.99