Enemies of Christianity declaring new war on religion

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

July 30, 2017 8:00pm

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CHRISTIANS, prepare for persecution. Open your eyes and choose stronger leaders for the dark days.

I am not a Christian, but I am amazed that your bishops and ministers are not warning you of what is already breaking over your heads.
How mad that Queensland’s Education Department can now warn schools against letting students praise Jesus in the playground.
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The department has put out reports telling state schools “to take appropriate action if aware that students participating in (religious instruction) are evangelising to students who do not participate”.
It gives examples of what students must not say in the playground — such as “knowing about Jesus is a very important thing”, or “God, please help us to use our knowledge to help others”.
Nor may students hand out Christmas cards or decorations.
What do these bureaucrats fear from children inspired by Christ?
Is it that stuff about loving your neighbour? Or that instruction to respect the dignity of every human life that makes Christians the enemy of totalitarians?
But this ban on playground talk of Jesus is only the most shocking salvo of the new war on Christians.

Pastor Campbell Markham is facing an anti-discrimination complaint arising from blog posts he wrote relating to the marriage debate. Picture: Peter Mathew

Last week, two Christian preachers were summoned to Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Tribunal for preaching their faith’s stand on traditional marriage and homosexuality.Hobart pastor Campbell Mark­ham and street preacher David Gee, from Hobart’s Cornerstone Church, were denounced by an atheist offended by, among other things, Markham quoting a verse from the Bible.
We’ve seen this before. Hobart’s Catholic Archbishop, Julian Porteous, was two years ago ordered by this tribunal to tell by what right he spoke against same-sex marriage.
How cowed the churches have been before this looming persecution, now picking off vocal Christians, one by one.
Just this year, Sydney University’s Student Union threatened to deregister the university’s Evangelical Union unless it stopped insisting members declare their faith in Christ.
Meanwhile, same-sex marriage extremists bullied Coopers Brewery into taking down a video of a Christian MP Andrew Hastie debating same-sex marriage, and lobbied IBM, PwC and Sydney University to punish staff belonging to a Christian group opposed to gay marriage.
Last week, 70 pro-Safe Schools activists picketed a church to abuse people at an Australian Christian Lobby meeting as “bigots”.

A sign explaining why Coopers Beer is not being served at a hotel earlier this year. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Last year, an ACL meeting was cancelled after the hotel venue was bombarded with threats.The state-funded SBS joined in by banning an ad by Christians defending traditional marriage, yet ran one for an Ashley Madison dating service for adulterers.
The Greens are the political wing of this attack on Christianity, and are demanding churches lose their legal freedom to hire only people who live by their faith.
The media, too, often cheer this war, using as their excuse the sexual abuse of children by some priests and ministers decades ago.
Rarely do they admit the average gap between the alleged offences by Catholic priests and the lodging of complaints is 33 years. That suggests the churches did crack down on paedophiles decades ago.
But this vilification has had its effect. The Census shows the proportion of Australians calling themselves Christian has dropped from 74 per cent in 1991 to 52 per cent now.
No wonder, when the weaker churches cower before the persecution.
Last week, some even licked the boots of the anti-Christian ABC when it launched yet another attack, smearing churches as the haven of wife-beaters.

Christians are more inclined to volunteer, donate and keep families together, surveys show. Picture: Brendan Radke.

This ABC series led off with a ludicrously false claim: “The men most likely to abuse their wives are evangelical Christians who attend church sporadically.”A week after I proved this untrue, the ABC edited its reports to replace that false claim with another: “Overall, the international studies indicate that intimate partner violence is just as serious a problem in Christian communities, as it is in the general community.”
Wrong again. Professor Bradford Wilcox, author of the American study the ABC cited as proof, complained “the (ABC’s) story … does not square with the evidence that church­going couples, in America at least, appear to be less likely to suffer domestic violence”.
In fact, Christianity produce better citizens in many ways.
Surveys show Christians are more inclined to volunteer, donate and keep families together.
So what do the enemies of Christianity wish to achieve by smearing, silencing and destroying this civilising faith? What would they replace it with?
With the atheism that preaches every man for himself? With Islam?
Or with the green faith that has not inspired a single hospital, hospice, school, or even soup kitchen?
Yet the persecution is starting. Are the churches ready?
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Taken from: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/enemies-of-christianity-declaring-new-war-on-religion/news-story/043ebd5d04cf40934e983d391d5658bd

Kevin Donnelly: Christian values remain at heart of our culture

Kevin Donnelly, The Daily Telegraph

July 25, 2017 12:00am

There’s no doubt the ABC when falsely accusing Christian men of being more prone to family violence is guilty of a cultural-left bias. And it’s not just the ABC that’s running a secular campaign against Christianity.

Read the Fairfax Press and the impression is that paedophilia mainly involves Catholic priests (ignored is that most children are abused by family or relatives), that Catholic schools don’t deserve government funding and that there’s no place for Christianity in public debates on issues such as abortion and euthanasia.
Academics such as historian Tony Taylor argue against including Judeo-Christianity in the school curriculum as it’s a “Cold War rhetorical fiction” employed by “the Christian right”.

Kevin Donnelly.

In Victoria the Labor government has replaced religious instruction with its gender-free, anti-male Respectful Relationships program.
While secular critics are happy to undermine Christianity, especially Catholicism, what is ignored is Judeo-Christianity is central to Australia’s cultural, economic, moral and spiritual wellbeing and one of the foundation stones of Western civilisation.
As argued by English poet TS Eliot in Notes Towards The Definition of Culture, Christianity is central to Western cultures when deciding right and wrong, the common good and how we should live our lives.
Eliot even says “if Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes”. More recently, the atheist Douglas Murray also argues about the importance of Christianity when he describes himself as a “cultural Christian”.

Murray made the point in a debate with another atheist, Richard Dawkins, that in banishing religion the danger is people end up with “meaningless lives in a meaningless universe”.

Given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the dramatic increase in Muslim migrants in Europe and England, Murray also argues it’s vital “left-wing liberal progressives” recognise they are living “in the wake of the Judaeo-Christian tradition”.
Evidence Eliot and Murray are correct includes the fact that concepts such as the sanctity of life, free will, being charitable to others and the separation between church and state are primarily Christian in origin.
Many of the most evil crimes against humanity have been committed by secular, godless ideologies such as fascism and communism. Hitler’s gas chambers, Mao’s starvation and torture of millions and Pol Pot’s killing fields highlight the danger of denying the significance of religion, especially Christianity.

It’s also important to recognise the benefits of Christianity to Australia’s economic and social wellbeing. Catholic and other faith-based schools teach 34 per cent of Australian students, saving Commonwealth, state and territory governments the billions of dollars needed if those students enrolled in government schools.

Christian schools, compared to most government schools, achieve stronger Year 12 results and are better at addressing bullying caused by racism, and parents see such schools as having more disciplined classrooms.
Christian-inspired or managed hospitals, philanthropic organisations and charities such as the Salvation Army, Catholic Health Australia, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and World Vision Australia are also integral part of Australia’s health and welfare system.
Instead of presenting a negative and one-sided picture, secular critics such as the ABC and the Fairfax Press should acknowledge the benefits of Christianity and its central place in the life of the nation.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University.


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Taken from: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/kevin-donnelly-christian-values-remain-at-heart-of-our-culture/news-story/6565bec7132bf144651558c56186bbcd?nk=352b618923d01669efe86ba831788958-1500938655

Trumps asks if the West has the will to survive

At a speech in Warsaw, Poland, the U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday (July 6) that the defense of the West ultimately rests on the will of its people to prevail and questioned whether the West has the will to survive.

• July 7th 2017
• Miranda Devine, The Daily Telegraph

Ignore the Trump haters. His defence of Western civilisation is right
Trumps asks if the West has the will to survive

IF you doubted Donald Trump has what it takes to make America great again, and to lead the civilised world against a frightening array of enemies, then you will be heartened by his brilliant Warsaw speech.

He briefly named Islamic terrorism as the latest totalitarian ideology which threatens our freedoms. He was tough on Russia, while emphasising shared values, laying the parameters for a useful meeting with Vladimir Putin the next day.
But, most remarkably, he singled out for praise the unique moral virtues of Western civilisation, and referenced God ten times.
He spoke of nations being more than the sum of their GDP, with faith in God, family and “the dignity of every human life” crucial to our survival.
“We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive...
“Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield. It begins with our minds, our wills and our souls.”
Of course this all sent Trump-haters into Exorcist-style head spins, damning the speech as “muddled thinking and dark nativism”. The Atlantic said it was “racist” and paranoid. The Washington Post labelled it “dark and provocative”. Vox slammed it as an “alt-right manifesto”.
Judge for yourself.
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” said Trump.
“Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilisation in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”
It was powerfully symbolic for Trump to choose Poland to make such a speech before joining the sneering elitists of Europe at the G20, hosted by German chancellor Angela Merkel.
It comes at a time when Poland is resisting pressure from the EU to take in a “quota” from among more than a million asylum seekers, mainly young Muslim men, who have entered Europe from the Middle East and Africa since Merkel opened the borders in 2015.

Trump spoke in Krasinski Square, in a city entirely rebuilt after WWII, in front of a monument to 200,000 Poles killed in the heroic Warsaw uprising against the Nazis in 1944, as described in Norman Davies’ Rising ‘44.
A secret pact between Hitler and Stalin saw Poland invaded by Nazi Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east, and then the Allies betrayed Poland to appease Stalin. The defeat of Hitler only plunged the Poles into nearly 50 years of Communist oppression.
But with the help of their own saint, Pope John Paul II, Trump said “the Poles reasserted their identity as a nation devoted to God”.
“The story of Poland is the story of a people who have never lost hope, who have never been broken and who have never, ever forgotten who they are.
“And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and 1 million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish pope, that day every Communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down.
“They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer.
“A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles saying three simple words: “We want God….
“And with that powerful declaration of who you are, you came to understand what to do and how to live.”
That message is as true today as ever: “The people of Poland, the people of America and the people of Europe still cry out, ‘We want God’.”
Trump understands that the greatest threat we face is from our own postmodern elites who want to erase the history, tradition and faith of Western civilisation, which they find shameful and inconvenient.

His speech was a call to arms against the enemy within.
“If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies.”
Ultimately, Trump was optimistic, lauding Poland as an example for those “who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilisation…
“Just as Poland could not be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the west will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilisation will triumph.”
As imperfect and vulgar as Trump can be, his genius lies in his ability to create the “safe space” in which others can pursue freedom.
The condemnation shows how important this speech was. It marks either our civilisation’s last gasp or the beginning of the renaissance. Which way it goes depends on us.
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Taken from: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/ignore-the-trump-haters-his-defence-of-western-civilisation-is-right/news-story/833f2eebe05f490456f4473237b08920?nk=352b618923d01669efe86ba831788958-1499642403