(Faithwire) While retailers in California are struggling to make ends meet under ongoing pandemic restrictions, legislators in the state are slated to consider a bill that would give the state government authority to mandate how they display their products.
Assembly members Evan Low and Cristina Garcia — both Democrats — introduced legislation last week to force retailers to offer their toys, clothing, and other kid-oriented items in a “gender-neutral” fashion, Politico reported.
Under the bill, retailers would still be allowed to sell the products they currently carry. However, they would be required to lump all the products together instead of separating them based on sex. California-based stores that sell products online would likewise be required to have pages on their websites offering the products in a collective “kids,” “unisex,” or “gender neutral” format.
Low, who serves as chair of the Legislative LGBT Caucus, told Politico he introduced the bill because he wants to make the shopping experience “more inclusive” for children. The idea, he said, came from…
A Gospel Coalition writer has condemned the consumption of all news that isn’t intensely local, suggesting that doing otherwise is Gnosticism, gives a God-complex, has no value, and makes one hate their neighbor.
D. J. Marotta is a “priest in the Anglican Church in North America and rector of Redeemer Anglican Church in Richmond, Virginia.”
Describing the consumption of news as “the greatest challenge to discipleship in the church,” Marotta argues that the need and desire to read the news and know what’s going on out there is a form of “Gnosticism,” whereby:
Such special insight is what news offers us. News media say, implicitly, ‘We’ll give you the inside scoop. Follow us and you’ll be one of the enlightened few and not in the mob of fools.’ The news offers salvation through special knowledge…the news offers a substrain of the temptation presented to the first humans in Eden: to be like God.
He explains that reading all the news makes us feel “God-like” and omnipotent and that this is dangerous for our souls. Because most news is inactionable, like an earthquake in China, a scandal in Christendom, or Christian persecution in Zambia, it causes us anxiety, anger, hatred, and loss of agency when we read about it.
This is why Christians who watch or read a lot of news usually end up hating, not loving, their neighbor. They have been spiritually deformed by truckloads of voyeuristic, inactionable horror stories.
The writer warns that reading this sort of ‘inactionable news’ has no use and no value, and cautions that “you should not seek to know everything or care about everything, because you should not aspire to be like God.”
Instead of reading international news, national news, statewide news, or even city news, he says Christians ought to avoid those things and really only read and engage in hyperlocal news, making that their primary source of information. Examples he gives are “news about a neighbor with a cancer diagnosis” or “news about the young couple down the street having their first child.”
Marotta concludes that because this sort of hyperlocal and immediate news is news you can do something about, it is acceptable to consume, and in fact virtuous to consume, unlike regular news, concluding that “this is news for the average human.”
A new study from Lifeway Research found that 25 percent of churches did not meet in person in the month of January, and of the ones that did meet, practically none are near pre-pandemic level, with 1 in 3 pastors reporting that their current Sunday service attendance is half what it used to be before the national lockdowns in March 2020.
Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research explains that “churches continue to evaluate when to meet in person based on local conditions and cases within their congregation. Even when a church determines it’s safe to meet, their individual members will return on their own timetable.”
The study further found that 88 percent say that a church attendee has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 29 percent say a member has died from it. Small groups have been decimated, with 40 percent no longer meeting. Children’s ministries have followed suit, with only 25% of churches having exclusively in-person activities.
With the odds of young, healthy people dying from COVID-19 being infinitesimally small, there is simply no excuse for churches to remain closed and congregants to be staying away. If your church is not open yet, it is time to leave that church. And unless a church member has very real co-morbidities and tangible health challenges, it is time to enact church discipline on wayward members who still are not gathering for either in-person services or drive-in services.
Pastor John Baker, the founder of the faith-based ministry ‘Celebrate Recovery’ which was created designed to help people overcome their addictions and break from their “hurts, habits, and hang-ups,” passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 72.
His ministry page made the announcing on Facebook on Tuesday.
Baker created Celebrate Recovery in partnership with Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in 1991, after recovering from alcoholism in his 30’s with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and finding faith in God. Believing that AA wasn’t a great place to talk about his faith and seeking to build on its deficiencies, he essentially fashioned Celebrate Recovery to marry the best of both worlds, giving it his own version of the 12 steps that over 2.5 million people completed.
It quickly spread to nearly 40,000 churches, and in large part destigmatized the notion of ‘addiction’ within the church and the role the church has in helping addicts recover, creating a welcoming and safe atmosphere for struggling people.
Theologically, it was a mess, with the insistence on calling addictions and destructive behavior “hurts, habits, and hang-ups,” rather than sin, and the idea of having to “forgive God” in the process. As the Cripplegate points out:
“(1) Though claiming to be biblically based, its teachings are often constructed from a misuse of Scripture and an erroneous hermeneutic. (2) Though claiming to be Christian based, its theology often clashes with sound Christian theology
Baker is survived by his wife and Cheryl, his children Johnny and Jeni Baker and Laura and Brian Gibney; as well as many grandchildren.
Update #1. Friday the 26th has been confirmed for the conditions hearing. If the conditions are not waived, he will spend the next three months in prison.
Pastor James Coates’ trial has been scheduled for May 3rd before Stony Plain provincial court judge Charles Gardner, according to a decision handed down today. Coates did not appear in person in the courtroom as the date of the three-day trial was announced.
The next phase of the case will see Coates having a hearing to determine whether or not his conditions of release will be lifted. The current conditions prohibit him from stepping back onto church property, effectively handing him a restraining order against the church he pastors at and the flock he leads. He has so far not consented to these tyrannical impositions, resulting in more than a week in prison.
According to the Winnipeg Free Press, “John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the organization representing Coates, said lawyer James Kitchen plans to file an application with the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench seeking the pastor’s release until the trial begins.”
Absent a bid to have the conditions of his release overturned, this ensures that unless he agrees to them at this point, or the crown prosecutor chooses to lay them aside, then the Gracelife Church pastor will remain incarcerated until the summer.
His lawyer, James Kitchen from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms was hoping for the early date, while the Crown wanted the trial in late June. With the May 3-5 date set, this means he will like spend nearly three months incarcerated.
Furthermore, with the church still choosing to remain open past the 15% capacity allowed under the shutdown, Gracelife is still firmly in the crosshairs of the Alberta Health Services who are seeking to shut them down and discontinue their gathering.
As a result, further Sunday services may result in the Associate Pastor being fined or likewise arrested. Or law enforcement officials will begin handing out $1200 fines to any congregants who step foot on Church property, with even another possibility that they will simply physically bar anyone from attending services and stepping on Church property.
On Saturday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Edmonton Remand Center, the maximum-security prison where Coates is being kept, worshiping the Lord, praying, and rallying either for his release or for the supposedly devout Roman Catholic Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenny, revise his strict lockdown rules imposed on Churches and let the pastors of the province open up their churches.
This past Sunday, Pastor John MacArthur who is the Chancellor and Professor of Pastoral Ministry at The Master’s Seminary, the school where James Coates graduated from years ago, publicly prayed for him and his congregation, as well as released a statement of support on him.
Hillsong Church is no stranger to controversy when it comes to their Christmas productions, most of which feature lascivious displays of writhing flesh and poor choices, resulting in Hillsong frequently deleting the videos so as to avoid criticism.
This time is no exception. The video is from Hillsong UK, where Senior Pastor Gary Clarke holds sway. Clarke, who is featured in the video, was recently chosen to take over for Brian Houston as the Global Senior Pastor role, overseeing the entire Hillsong empire as Houston steps back from some of his roles and responsibilities.
Now we have this video, posted to the church’s YouTube channel.
It prominently features members of the church leadership, including the Senior Pastor, several Youth Pastors, Hillsong’s Wildlife Director (whatever the heck that is) the Kids Pastor, Senior Youth Pastor, Young Adults Pastor, Young Adults Director, the Hillsong Fuel Director, and the Schools Project Initiative Director all getting a little wild and crazy to a thumping remix of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas is you.’
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President J. D. Greear took aim at his conservative critics in a speech to the SBC Executive Committee on February 22 in Nashville, comparing them to Pharisees and terrorists and suggesting those dominating the conversation are acting in a “demonic” fashion.
In what seemed like a speech dedicated to defending his record and pushing back at those who might besmirch it, Greear explained that the SBC “is in a crisis that comes from the recesses of our own hearts” and that “this last year has revealed areas of weakness in our beloved convention of churches, fissures and failures, and fleshly idolatries. COVID did not produce these crises, it only exposed them.”
Greear describes how “almost immediately after I began to lead our convention, the character assassinations and false accusations and innuendoes and exaggerations began,” and that people were accusing him of wanting him to turn people into Calvinists, gut state conventions, and soften statements on homosexuality. That he was friends with Nancy Pelosi, personally privately funded by George Soros, and that he was a Marxist and card-carrying member of BLM.
Of course, none of his serious and vocal critics were accusing him of these things, but rather had other, more specific grievances and criticisms that he does not list, which is a common tactic those want to obfuscate and misrepresent what the true concerns are.
Speaking of the influence of the Pharisees, he explains how they were “full of envy, slander, deceit, and backbiting. They made up stuff about Jesus and his apostles because they challenged their authority.” Bringing this into a discussion about what has surprised him most about his time as leader, he offers:
How loud, and how dominating, and how virulent are that relatively small cacophony of voices that seems bent on sowing division and anger in our midst. In fact, there have been times I’ve got a glimpse of who’s actually behind it, and it feels like that scene in the wizard of Oz where you know Dorothy pulls back the curtain or Toto pulls back the curtain and there the Wizard of Oz is just a scrawny little old man with a huge microphone and you’re like that’s it? You’re the one that’s making all the noise…
The people who are dominating the conversation are not representing Southern Baptist People, these things are demonic.
He further laments:
I am mainly grieved for many of our entity leaders and some of you who have been slandered and lied about. It was not what I expected us to be spending our time on.
Every moment that you or me or Dr. Floyd engages in a silly argument or spends time debunking untruths is a moment I’m not focused on the Great Commission. I think we need an attitude like President George W. Bush called for in 2001: We make no distinction between those committing terrorism and those who harbor terrorists.
Greear mentions 5 of 6 times through his short address how in the 1980s they “beat the liberals” and “repudiated the leaven of the liberals” and had some “hard-won battles of the 1980s and 1990s.” He argues that now that they’ve done that, it’s time to address those sowing divisions and “repudiate the leaven of the Pharisees.”
What is lost on Greear, however, is that he keeps on pointing to the “hard-won battles” against the liberals in the 1980s and 1990s as if it’s all done and dealt with just because they were able to kick out a few people and get a Baptist Faith and Message out of it. But he doesn’t acknowledge or recognize that you need to continue to fight those battles yearly, into 2020 and beyond, lest the SBC eventually become the St. Harvey Milk’s United Episcopalian Church.
The need to “repudiate the leaven of the Pharisees” now only exists because they took the pedal off the metal. The problems of 2021 exist because people have rested on the laurels of what they and their predecessors did decades and decades ago. As a result, while SBC heads sat around high-fiving themselves while giving 2003 George Bushesque “Mission accomplished” speeches, the enemy regrouped, and over the last 20 years, liberalism and progressivism crept in and saturated much of the SBC, particularly in the leadership, resulting in misdirected targets.
Greear finishes up by explaining that the SBC needs to engage in a robust theological discussion about critical race theory and need careful, robust, “bibles-open-on-our knees” discussion about what biblical justice looks like.
But we should mourn when closet racists and neo-Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color. And to be sure, for the vast majority of our churches that is not true, and if that is not true of you and your church then praise God.
But I have received the emails and phone calls from people in our Southern Baptist churches who do fit that description. The reality is that if we in the SBC had shown as much sorrow for the painful legacy that racism and discrimination has left in our country as we have passion to decry Critical Race Theory, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess.
(The PostMillennial) Police in Merseyside, a town in northwestern England, were forced to apologize after putting up a billboard claiming that “being offensive is an offence.”
An image circulated on Twitter showing Merseyside Police outside a market with a large advertising truck that read “Being offensive is an offence.”
Merseyside Police outside an Asda store today. “Being offensive is an offence.” Staggering. pic.twitter.com/VBeCJsDS2s
The Insurgency is an email list sent each day to many thousands of alternative news consumers. Born in the heart of 2020’s social media purge of conservatives from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, Google, Apple, and hundreds of other Big Tech companies censoring conservative and Christian viewpoints, The Insurgency was created by the Gideon Knox Group to get news directly to We the People without using Big Tech platforms.
Although we were banned by several email servers for sending “forbidden news” (they fact-check and censor your personal emails, in case you did not know), we have found an excellent platform to evade their censors and get you streamlined, simple news links to sites like The Federalist, Gateway Pundit, Rebel News, Zero Hedge, Todd Starnes, Steve Deace, and – of course – the Montana Daily Gazette, Protestia, Mile High Evening News, and all of our Gideon Knox Group websites.
Gideon Knox Group, which you can support on Patreon here or donate to via Giving Fuel here, is a conservative and Christian publishing group that specializes in getting info where it needs to go.
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While their pastor remained incarcerated in prison, more attendees than ever flooded to GraceLife Church on Sunday, forcing the church to turn some people away as they began to burst at the seams. The continued influx is the result of hundreds of people visiting one of the few churches taking a stand and opening to capacity in the province, including some guests who drove more than 2 hours to attend the service and show their support for the church body that has become a rallying cry across the province to open the churches amid strict COVID-19 lockdowns.
Assistant Pastor Jacob Spenst, a recent Masters Seminary graduate who studied under John MacArthur in California (Pastor James Coates is also a Master’s Seminary grad), preached on Phillippians 1:27-30, which was about striving and suffering for Christ.
He told the congregation that James was doing “fine” and that “more importantly, he wanted to let you know he loves you, he misses you dearly and certainly he’s very concerned for this church. We need to remain strong even as he is remaining strong, even as the Lord strengthens him moment by moment, even as he continues to remain in jail.”
Within 10-15 minutes before the service, the church reached the fire code capacity and had to close its doors. GraceLife set up large speakers outside the building by the door where another 30 people could listen from outside, or could listen to the livestream from the parking lot.
The province currently restricts church services to 15 percent of fire code capacity.
A half-dozen police cars hovered around the church, saying they were there just in case there were any problems with counter-protesters, although none showed up. A spokesman for the law enforcement agency said they were continuing their investigation into the GraceLife Church “as part of and ongoing allegations into the church’s non-compliance with the Public Health Order.” and noting that “observations were made that the church held a service beyond the designated capacity.”
Fairview Baptist Church, a church in the city of Calgary, likewise announced they were having church services in defiance of the restrictions, explaining in a statement on the church’s website, “It is…Jesus Christ, not civil government, that defines what is essential for the gathered church.” The pastor at Fairview, Tim Stephens, has been instrumental in encouraging the churches to gather and open at their full capacities.
Police in Alberta are consulting with Alberta Health Services over what their next course of action will be – if they will similarly arrest Pastor Jacob Spenst, begin mass ticketing of congregants, such as what Ontario police did a few weeks ago when they issued 47 congregants $880 tickets for violating lockdown orders, or some other action.
