(Lifenews) Walt Disney World, a company founded to bring joy and entertainment to children, now openly supports the killing unborn children in abortions.
Townhall reportsDisney, NBC Universal, Google and other companies have partnered with the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (AII) to encourage college students to create films promoting abortions.
In August, the initiative launched a new $25,000 grant to help students produce short films that “focus of reproductive health and political storytelling.” The Reproductive Rights Accelerator Program wants films that persuade audiences to believe abortions can make “somebody’s life easier,” according to Townhall.
Stacy Smith, founder of the AII, said the overturning of Roe v. Wade prompted them to create the new grant.
“With the curtailing of reproductive rights, it is not only necessary to find legal solutions….to continue reading, click here.
Editor’s Note. This article was written by Micaiah Bilger and posted at Life News
Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, considered one of the largest charities in the United States, hit $1.2 billion dollars in revenue this year, the first Christian organization of this nature to do so, and is poised for an even bigger year in 2022.
By way of background, the organization has been operating for over 50 years, sends out tens of thousands of volunteers, trains hundreds of thousands of workers, provides medical aid and relief in war-torn hellscapes and the harshest of conditions, engages in large-scale relief efforts, and operates in over 100 countries. They also oversee Operation Christmas Child, which has given out over 150 million shoeboxes of children with toys (and frequently with gospel literature). Christians donating and giving charitably have paid for the whole effort almost exclusively, all being done at no cost to anyone receiving aid, given unconditionally without preconditions.
They’ve been particularly busy in Ukraine, and have been fundraising for that goal. If trends hold true, they will likely raise another $300 millions dollars over last year. Samaritan’s Purse estimates they’ve helped nearly 6 million Ukrainians with food, water, and medical supplies. They’ve been running an emergency field hospital for months, treating an estimated 18,000 patients and supporting a dozen other medical facilities. In the first five months of the invasion, they have distributed 21,000 metric tons of food in partnership with the local churches, constructed freshwater wells that provided more than 8.5 million liters of water, and transported more than 200 metric tons of medical supplies. According to the CP:
“The organization’s 160,000-square-foot warehouse and offices in North Wilkesboro employ 385 people who buy, repair, maintain and retrofit millions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment, generators and water filtration systems, much of them donated. The warehouse has six emergency field hospitals ready to ship, four with tents, hospital beds, anesthesiology equipment, X-ray machines, and surgical suites—all engineered to fold into a plane’s fuselage. There are also miles of plastic tarps, mountains of clothing and boxes full of small brown teddy bears with the Samaritan’s Purse logo—a cross inside a circle.
In a series of posts on Twitter, musical artist and producer Lecrae has challenged the notion that Christian ‘deconstruction’ is always bad, arguing that there are two types; one ‘healthy’ and the ‘dangerous’. One type of deconstruction is healthy and involves “using scriptures to deconstruct unhealthy ideas and practices” and the other is unhealthy because it “questions the bible on account of it not lining up with culture.
It is clear by every measurable standard that the deconstruction Lecrae is so grateful to have undergone is not healthy, but rather is the picture of unhealth that is leading to death. Let’s look at his life over the last two years:
Kanye West, answers questions from Joel Osteen, during a service at Lakewood Church Sunday, November 17, 2019, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)
In what is likely a very, very bad idea, professing Christian Kanye West has opened up ‘Donda Academy,’ his own private school Christian school whose mission is to “prepare students to become the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and innovators” using an “an ethic of integrity and care.”
Previously envisioned as “Yeezy Christian Academy,” the school advertises that Donda students will “grow in their faith and community through daily all-school worship and celebration at Sunday Service” so that they can “be a reflection of God’s glory in the world.”
Information about the academy is very vague. There are about 100 students who started classes in September, with a school uniform consisting of West’s clothing designs. Tuition is $15,000 a year, and there are 16 full-time teachers whose names and educational backgrounds are unknown.
The kid’s daily schedule consists of “full school worship; core classes of language arts, math, and science; lunch and recess; enrichment courses including World Language, Visual Art, Film, Choir and Parkour.” Any parent sending their kids must sign a non-disclosure agreement or some other ‘informal agreement’
A core part of the school also seems to be the choir, with their website explaining, “We are looking for kids who love to sing and lift up the name of Jesus to audition for the DONDA Academy Gospel Choir.”
There is no sense of what type of religious courses will be offered. With Kanye’s understanding of the gospel and his manifestation of the fruits of the spirits growing more scattered and unbiblical over time, there is little reason to presume they will have solid, faith Christians instruction.
Following the heels of the last four films, Pure Flix and Pinnacle Peak Pictures have announced they are releasing a sequel to the storied series, with drop date somewhere in 2023. The plotline follows:
“(After) a favored incumbent suddenly suspends his candidacy for Congress, an embittered but brilliant campaign strategist is lured out of retirement and convinces Reverend Dave Hill to run for office. The race pits them both against formidable opponents from their past, each with plans to inexorably remove religion’s influence on public policy. Set against a backdrop of unprecedented political, civil and spiritual unrest, Dave struggles to answer an increasingly relevant question of our time: Is God dead in American politics?”
According to the Friendly Atheist the films are earning less and less with each sequel, and this one is likely to follow suit.
The first God’s Not Dead truly was a phenomenon, making more than $64 million during its run in theaters in 2014. The sequel, which came out in 2016, made over $24 million. That likely covered all the production costs and then some, but it wasn’t a blockbuster by any means.
God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, the third film in the series, made about $7.4 million. Not even close to the other two.
God’s Not Dead: We the People, the fourth film in the series, was only released in a handful of theaters for a limited run and made just over $1,100,000. But it was used as a promotional tool to get Christians to subscribe to Pure Flix’s paid streaming service.
Another way of analyzing the success of a film is looking at how it did in its opening weekend.
God’s Not Dead made $9,217,013 in 780 theaters its first weekend… which was just astonishing.
Following criticism from conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention for the permanent appointment of Brent Leatherwood as the head of the ERLC by the SBC institutionalist establishment, SBC President Bart Barber, hell-bent on spreading disunity and misrepresenting the pastors he’s supposed to be leading, took to Twitter with some spicy criticism for conservatives and abolitionists in the SBC. Barber focused his vitriol on SBC pastor Dusty Deevers, the abolitionist producer of the documentary A Storm Comes Rolling Down The Plain.
Institutionalists in the SBC who continue to support the incrementalist position, despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pretend that Deevers and the abolitionist movement attacked the incrementalists first. In reality, the real battle between the two positions began when incrementalist pro-life organizations, including the ERLC, threatened primary pro-life legislators who promoted any incrementalist legislation and funded campaigns to defeat any abolitionist legislation.
The scenario of ERLC-supported incrementalists fighting against abolitionist bills played out in Louisiana just prior to this year’s SBC national convention. ERLC leaders, including Brent Leatherwood, rejected abolitionist overtures at the SBC annual meeting and refused to honestly answer for their actions that led to the defeat of Louisiana’s abolitionist bill.
Ironically, Barber accuses Deevers of “selling out to the crass tone of secular politics instead of following the way of Christ”, an act that most accurately describes what the ERLC did in Louisiana and other states. Deevers is merely calling out the SBC for celebrating the promotion of a man who, as interim head of the ERLC, led the opposition to abolition in the state of Louisiana.
Barber claims that the SBC’s position on abortion has been solidly conservative for the past 40 years, a pretty sketchy claim. Consider that the slogan for the pro-life movement and Southern Baptists was “Abortion is Murder” during the 1992 pro-life Summer of Mercy Campaign. The recently announced “Make Abortion Unnecessary” slogan of the 2022 ERLC illustrates how the incrementalist pro-life movement and the ERLC have moved away from the proclamation of the Gospel as the ultimate goal of their anti-abortion efforts.
The incrementalist position teaches that women who choose to murder their children are victims. In reality, women who choose abortion overwhelmingly do so for personal convenience, knowing that they are snuffing out the life of a person in their womb. Many are unashamed of celebrating or “shouting their abortion.”
Barber claims that incrementalism is the only strategy that has ever saved any babies. Of course, the Louisiana abolitionist bill, if enacted in May, would have abolished all abortion in that state upon the overturning of Roe V. Wade, saving thousands more babies than existing laws in the state. In reality, the only thing that keeps abolitionist efforts from being effective is the constant sabotage of abolitionist bills by organizations like the ERLC.
Evangelical leftists are well known for flip-flopping from one position to another. During the summer of 2020, many evangelical leaders dove headlong into the social justice movement, embracing critical theory in open defiance of Biblical teaching on justice. This embrace was followed by backpedaling in some cases, as many pastors received pushback from their congregants.
Flip-floppers went from pedaling social justice-aligned books like Jamar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise to denying that Critical Race Theory was actually being used in churches and seminaries to indoctrinate Christians into Marxist ideologies that contradict the gospel. Now it appears that many of the leftist flip-floppers in evangelicalism may once again be poised to accept critical theory as a “useful analytical tool” and even attempt to syncretize the theory with the gospel.
Tim Keller, Gospel Coalition founder and promoter of some of the most subversive “Christian” ideologies in the last twenty years, is known for taking foul secular ideologies and baptizing them in the waters of Christianese. Keller regularly partners with Biologos and its founder Francis Collins in promoting theistic evolution, the baptism of the false secular humanistic teaching of evolution in the waters of Christian language.
Through the Gospel Coalition, Keller has been a leading promoter of leftist political ideology under the false premise that political parties are morally neutral. Keller has even gone so far as to register as a Democrat, aligning himself with a political party that has advanced the cause of normalizing sodomy, establishing child-abusing transgender policies, legalizing preborn baby murder, and advocating numerous other anti-biblical policy.
Keller wrote the foreword in Watkins’ upcoming book “Biblical Critical Theory,” which is set to be released in November. According to Watkin, he wanted to write a book that took the Bible seriously while also taking Critical Theory seriously.
I am scrambling around as an undergraduate, trying to find books that take both the universe of these critical theorists seriously, that really understand them, and that take the Bible seriously, and seek to remain faithful to it, and I just couldn’t find anything, and I was sure that there was a book out there to be written.
The real question that Watkin and Keller should be asking is, “Why should Christians be engaged in the practice of syncretizing a Biblical worldview with the many godless ideologies of the world.” Believers have a duty to answer the world’s questions through the sufficient words of scripture, but Christians should never expect that scripture will satisfy the carnal desires of a fallen world that is bent against God.
A closer examination of Watkins’ beliefs reveals that, while he claims to hold to a “Biblical critical theory,” the lens he views the world through looks much like the lens of other leftist Critical theorists who have made their mark on evangelicalism in the last five years. Watkins is currently in the middle of a four-year Australian-government funded research project to investigate the role that the church and Christian institutions can play in the “new social contract” (aka new world order).
When Watkins explained his theories on social contract in the past, they resembled Keller’s views on how social gospel-infused into society by Christian institutions can benefit society. As with all presentations of social gospel, the presentation of the gospel is made subservient to a desire to find common ground with the false ideologies of the world. Watkins has fallen prey to the Critical Race Theory narrative pervasive in the United States, as he has paid homage to false race-based narratives and left-wing organizations in his writings on social contract.
I would like to finish by quoting an account from a meeting of faith-based leaders gathered in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, who was killed by a 28-year-old white police officer. The account is written by Michael Ray Matthews from the PICO Network (People Involved in Community Organizing).
As I continued to lead songs and chants in the pouring rain, one of the seminarians grabbed the bullhorn and asked if we could change our chant from ‘show me what democracy looks like’ to ‘show me what theology looks like.’ She was calling her sisters and brothers in the faith to go all in—to be totally immersed in mind, body and spirit, to bring the richness of our faith into the public space.
The book has received endorsements from a number of critical theory proponents on the left, including egalitarian feminist theologian Michael Bird.
Albert Mohler has gone off on Christians who choose to vote for Democrats in the coming election, or do not vote at all, calling anyone who does so ‘unfaithful; and ‘voting wrongly’. He made these comments at the 2022 ‘Pray, Vote, Stand Summit’ this past week, setting off a firestorm of critiques from the usual suspects.
Every single election matters. But every single election is followed by the next one. And faithfulness now is absolutely necessary and frankly, just given the temporality of life, we’ve got to give primary attention to faithfulness right now. 2022 in the United States means votes matter. And we have a responsibility to make certain that Christians understand the stewardship of the vote, which means the discipleship of the vote, which means the urgency of the vote, the treasure of the vote, and they need to understand that insofar as they do not vote or they vote wrongly, they are unfaithful because the vote is a powerful stewardship.
Speaking at the "Pray, Vote, Stand" summit, Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, declares that it's "absolutely necessary" for all Christians to vote in the 2022 midterms and that any Christian that votes "wrongly" is being "unfaithful" to God. pic.twitter.com/VajTTiFiHK
Though once a never-Trumper, Mohler has changed his beliefs and has previously said: “I’ll speak bluntly. I voted for Donald Trump for president of the United States. I encouraged others to vote for him too.Based upon the binary choice we faced on November the third, I believe then that that was the right action to take, and going back to November the third, I would do the same thing again.“
Representative of a wealth of pushback from the progressive left is noted pro-choice SBC pastor Dwight McKissic, who wrongly asserts that Mohler’s suggesting that one is not a Christian if they don’t vote Republican. That’s not what he’s saying, and the fact that the one-person hysteria generator can’t recognize it is unsurprising and par for the course.
One can still be a Christian and do sinful, unfaithful, and stupid things, such as choosing to lie, or gossip, or attend McKissic’s church and give him any sort of credibility.
Mohler has responded to the offense, offering that this is the same message he’s been preaching his whole life, and is unapologetic about it.
After nearly two years of silence, Carl Lentz has remerged on social media, updating his Instagram profile with a photoshoot of his family, captioned:
Its been a challenging road but we are alive, we are at peace and thanks to the grace of God we are TOGETHER. Not sure what the future holds for us, but we do know that we face it as a family and for that I am so thankful. My deepest thanks to our friends and family that have shown us such unconditional love and grace when we have desperately needed it. Forever grateful.. we are hopeful about what is ahead!
His wife Laura has echoed this sentiment, explaining that she’s proud of Carl for humbling himself and not defending himself, but instead kept quiet publicly:
Yep, it has been challenging and hell yeah it’s taken a LOT of work the past 22 months (but who’s counting 😂) to make our marriage what it has become, & we will never stop working on ourselves, for this marriage and for our kids! I know there are many that don’t or would never do what I chose to do, and that’s ok, it’s not for everyone!!
I look forward to sharing our story, how I came to that conclusion and I think it’s going to help a lot of people.. But I am so proud of my husband & for the responsibility he’s taken! Mostly I’m grateful for a man who humbled himself & didn’t try to defend himself, he has kept quiet publicly and he has remained focused on the one thing that matters most-our family!
18 months-2 years is the time when most Christian pastors emerge to announce that they are starting new churches as part of the Evangelical Ministry Restoration and Reintegration Process, which we’ve discussed here. It is the system whereby disgraced pastors who get kicked out of their churches, usually for sexual sins and committing adultery, become reintegrated into Christendom and restored to their former glory, through a 10 step process. Currently, Lentz is one phase two.
These posts from Laura are more conciliatory than they have been in the past. Days after the Hillsong-commissioned, 51-page barn-burner of a booklet titled “Internal Investigation Report Regarding Carl Lentz and Other Matters” was leaked where her husband outlined to investigators several different instances of sexual misconduct he engaged in, along with stories of dysfunction and the culture of sin that permeated the leadership at Hillsong NY, she broke her silence.
In an Instagram post, Laura, who is now an interior decorator and previously revealed that the last year gave her PTSD-like experiences, went on the offensive, saying that they soon will share their truth in the face of “RELENTLESS lies, accusations and hypocritical scapegoating that has sadly been so prevalent” as it pertains to their time at Hillsong, writing:
My family has remained silent throughout this ordeal because our priority has been the healing of our family.”
“This does not mean we do not have a lot to say! When the time is right we have a lot to say about what has happened as well as speaking directly to the RELENTLESS lies, accusations and hypocritical scapegoating that has sadly been so prevalent. Until then, we are so grateful for the constant support of so many. Your kindness has meant the world to us. We are looking forward to a brighter day!”
While Laura was wronged by her husband’s infidelity, she is far from innocent in the rest of it. As one of the primary leaders of Hillsong NYC during its heyday, she oversaw the years of spoils, excesses, and scandals, benefitting from all the bad behavior that was going on at the church and being fully complicit in it.
The Lentz family is already allegedly threatening legal action against the Christian Post for sharing leaked details of the confidential investigation into Hillsong.
