Showing off in Moscow, Idaho, by refusing to cooperate

Some Christians in Moscow, Idaho, who attend the infamous Christ Church staged a public “Psalm Sing” but didn’t wear masks or physically distance. When local officers approached the participants and asked for ID so they could be given citations, three refused to cooperate. 

Moscow-Pullman Daily News said three arrests were made for resisting or obstructing an officer, included Latah County Commissioner candidate Gabriel Rench.

Following the arrest and release from custody, Rench posted a Facebook live on his podcast’s Facebook page called, “CrossPolitic Studios.”

In the Facebook live, Rench told his account of what happened.

“The cop came to talk to me and said, ‘give me your license I’m going to write you a ticket.’

“I said, ‘you don’t need to do this, you don’t need to write me a ticket.’

“And the cop kept repeating, give me your license, so I said ‘you’re better than this,'” Rench said on his podcast.

According to Rench, the officer asked one more time for his license, telling him it was the last time he would ask.

In a video from CrossPolitic Studios, the officers who placed Rench under arrest said, “he is charged with a violation of the city’s ordinance 20-3.”

The arrested were violating a law they disagreed with by not wearing masks. Fine. But the problem came when they refused to cooperate with the police. I don’t see biblical grounds for that as long as they’re not asking you to do something immoral. Do these men and women also think that other people should refuse to cooperate with police who are doing their job?

Of course, the incident is being framed as a case of the people being arrested for “singing hymns without “social distancing.” The key isn’t the hymns. The group gathered in the city hall parking lot in order to basically provoke authorities into arresting them. Even then, the cops apparently waited until the psalm sing was done before issuing the citations.

It was also good PR for one of the arrested, a church member who is running for county office.

The mask law didn’t interfere with the Christians’ ability to practice their faith. This was not a religious freedom issue.

Here’s what the Bible says about obeying the authorities:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God (Romans 13:1).

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work (Titus 3:1).

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people (1 Peter 2:13-15).

If this was a matter of the police asking the Christ Church members to stop singing psalms in public, that’d be different. The officers only asked for ID so they could write citations regarding the masks. The psalm singers had a hissy-fit because they didn’t want to wear masks and made Christians look bad.

Unsurprisingly, the event was orchestrated by Douglas Wilson, pastor at Christ Church.

Thanks to a Catholic priest

I spent several years at a newspaper dealing with reports of priests abusing young people. I want to try to balance that by talking about a priest who, in my experience, was nothing but a friend to young men.

Father Duane Leclercq, now retired, was an assistant pastor at St. Mark’s Parish in the 1960s and ’70s when I was an altar boy and student there. He would engage the older boys by having us come over to the school on Saturday mornings for workouts. Those would involve running laps through the school (those stairs were rough, but we got to run through the halls without getting in trouble!), tumbling, lifting weights, doing calisthenics, and even being able to shoot the occasional hoop. Father also organized a boys schola, with after-school rehearsals in the rectory basement and performances not only at daily Masses but on the local “Mass for Shut-ins” broadcast as well, taped at the old WMBD-TV studios. He would treat the altar boys by taking us to the occasional movie (I first saw Disney’s Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea at the Palace Theater that way) and then out for ice cream afterward.

Then there was golf, which seemed to be Father’s passion in those days. I caddied (poorly) for him once at Newman Golf Course. If he needed someone to shag golf balls behind Immaculate Conception convent in West Peoria, just down the street from where I lived, he’d simply knock on our front door and I’d head there with him. He tried to coach me on a proper golf swing, too, but that was a lost cause.

I lost touch with him after he was transferred to another parish, but I’ve always appreciated his effort to be a role model in a Catholic boy’s life.

 

Editorial cartoon combines fallacies

Scott Shepler’s editorial cartoon in a recent Community Word is an interesting example of a combination of the straw man fallacy and an ad hominem argument.

The art was run in conjunction with an editorial by Clare Howard about the Feb. 11 Defund Planned Parenthood rallies, so it appears to be referencing that event.

I realize editorial cartoons involve exaggerations, but this one was too extreme, irrational and ironic to pass up, especially considering that its depiction of the event was the opposite of what actually transpired on that day in the 2700 block of Knoxville Avenue in Peoria.

Scott’s cartoon was an ad hominem attack in one sense because it tried to make the side he disagreed with look ridiculous. It was a straw man argument because it misrepresents arguments made by the pro-life side.

The person on the left, wanting Planned Parenthood to be defunded, is portrayed as practically ejaculating his opinion, nearly apoplectic. The person on the right, defending PP, is calm and cool and rational in her responses.

For the two hours that I was at the actual competing rallies, however, the pro-lifers exhibited self-control and respect, while some—not all, but some—PP supporters didn’t. Here are a few observations that conflict with Scott’s cartoon:

• The main organizers and most of those appearing on the pro-life side were women, not men.
• Profanity and vulgarity were used among the pro-PP group, both on signs (“This is my bitch face”) and in speech. Not true with the pro-lifers.
• As pro-lifers gathered at the northern end of the block, several Planned Parenthood supporters, not content with superior numbers, decided to move down the street and stand in front of the pro-lifers to block passing drivers’ view of them (see photo below). One of those blocked from view was a pro-life woman in a wheelchair. To accomplish this, the PP supporters had to stand in the street. Police came by to tell them to get back onto the sidewalk, which they did for a minute. Then they stepped back into the street.
• Pro-lifers extended kindness to those supporting Planned Parenthood, going through the crowds of the latter and offering hot chocolate (it was a chilly morning), granola bars, and bottles of water. Again, portraying pro-lifers as belligerent contradicts what actually went on.
• As food and drink were being offered, some Planned Parenthood supporters either tried to block the path of the person offering the treats or told others “Don’t take it.” 
• One PP supporter entered the ranks of the pro-lifers yelling insults.

As for the arguments being made in the cartoon, real life is, of course, more complex. Here is one organization’s “Top 12 Reasons to Defund Planned Parenthood Now.” They’re not quite as simplistic as Scott  would have us believe.

Religion has a bad rep among Christians

You hear it often: Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.

I kind of wonder how often that’s expressed in other languages, since there’s an alliteration thing going on in English that makes the slogan punchy. It may be, like so many evangelical things, more of an American concept, but I could be way off.

The concept is frequently heard from evangelical pulpits. Christians are told to avoid “religion” so they don’t become entangled or dependent on ritual and credal forms.

It’s not the only slap at “religion,” of course. The concept routinely comes under attack from humanists, who believe it’s the root of most if not all evil, and new-agers, who say they’re “spiritual but not religious.”

I’ve always understood what evangelicals were getting at when they protest ritualistic forms of religion: They are trying to say that we shouldn’t rely on religious practices for our salvation, but rather what our relationship with Jesus is. But I think they go too far with their religion-bashing, and I think it actually reveals something about their relationship with Christ.

I like to look at the meaning of words when someone defines themselves against certain words. “Religion” apparently comes from the Latin “religare,” which means “to bind.” So when an evangelical says they don’t want to engage in religion, even if they are (which we’ll address in a minute), they’re saying they don’t want to be bound to something, whether it be a ritual or requirement.

There are a few reasons that I think that approach is off-base.

For one thing, as you can see in the first five books of the Bible, the people of God were involved in religious activities—by the command of God. They sacrificed animals, they fasted, they blew trumpets, they wore special clothing, they prayed specific prayers, they burned incense, they lit lamps, they ate special food in a special way at special times. And what they did was not much different from what surrounding cultures did. The difference, of course, was that they did it (or were supposed to do it) specifically as God had commanded it.

And yet, those ancient Israelites definitely had a relationship with God. A very passionate one, in fact, and a rocky one most of the time. But it’s what the Old Testament is all about. God said, in essence, if you’re going to be My people, you’ve got to do certain things.

Religiously.

The epistle of James doesn’t back away from religion, either. It actually defines what “pure religion” is: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27, ESV).

It doesn’t sound from this like James is against “religion.” Like the Jewish prophets, he is explaining to his readers what the best kind of religion is. But note he doesn’t say, “A relationship with Jesus Christ that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this …”

Or does he? Maybe to James, like the ancient Israelites and God, his religion and his relationship with Jesus were one and the same. James is big on writing about how we work out our relationship with Jesus, and I think this is one good example of it.

Can religion overwhelm or detract from one’s relationship with Jesus? Yes, of course. Become more concerned with the rituals and less with their meaning and you’d incur disapproval no less than the ancient Israelites did when they either carried out their religion with no meaning or in the wrong way.

I think the “relationship-not-religion” angst is more fueled by a few factors that have been buried under a few layers of time silt.

1. Anti-Catholicism. Even if an evangelical is not aware of being hostile toward Catholicism, this is a result of it. Catholics are only rivaled among Christians in their ritualism by Eastern Orthodox. The anti-religious instinct is an anti-Catholicism that started with the Reformation and has continued to this day. Like most other things evangelical, it’s birthed in rebellion.
2. An effort at “purity” that the Bible doesn’t legislate and that becomes an idol, not to mention bad church design. Anybody walking into a typical evangelical church today would think that to be in a true relationship with Christ, one has to worship in as ordinary and boring a building as possible.
3. The problem of “tolerance.” Admittedly, talking about religion means putting Christianity on an equal plane with other systems of belief. As a Christian, I disagree with that, obviously, since Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father except through Him. So talking about Christianity as a relationship with Christ at least sets us apart from false belief systems. 

And then we have the fact that no matter how non-ritual an evangelical thinks he is, he and his church have rituals, too. It can be found in the order of worship used every week, the food and drinks that are put out every week, and even in a simplified communion service. 

So religion, with its rituals, is not a bad thing unless, as it did with the Pharisees, it gets in the way of loving God and neighbor. 

 

A bump in the road or a massive roadblock? | Power Line

A bump in the road or a massive roadblock? | Power Line.

Paul Mirengoff seems to have the same reaction I did to Obama’s “bumps in the road” quote.

The curious thing wasn’t that the president referred to the deaths of several U.S. embassy personnel as “bumps in the road”–that’s typical of a president who has no perspective on history or international relations. The curious thing is the part of his quote referring to Islam as “the one organizing principle” in “a lot of these places.”

Where are the protests? Where’s the indignation from the Council on American Islamic Relations? If this comes out of the mouth of anyone else, it’s fuel for fire. But it comes from the Zero and … nothing. Unless you’ve heard something I haven’t.

Why Barack’s Silence On Obamacare? – Forbes

Why Barack’s Silence On Obamacare? – Forbes.

From “BFD” to silence by Biden and Obama at the DNC. Why the change? Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute takes a look.

Teachers ‘in charge of our nation’s children’?

Yesterday, a CNN anchorette interviewing Chicago Teachers Union head Karen Lewis about the teachers strike there said the following:

You are in charge of our nation’s children.

The statement was in the context of trying to express the importance of teachers staying in the classroom, I think. All I can remember for sure is my shock at her statement.

I didn’t hear Lewis’ response, but I doubt that even she would agree with the CNN anchorette, although perhaps she did. To be fair, I don’t know of many government education bureaucrats or teachers who would agree with such a statement, at least not publicly. But it does illustrate the conclusion to which at least one person outside of that bureaucracy has come thanks to decades of propaganda.

As I noted on Facebook, it’s the tagline for a new movie: “In Loco Parentis Gone Wild!”

No, neither teachers nor bureaucrats nor government are in charge of our nation’s children. Parents should be in charge of our nation’s children, but many of them have given up that responsibility to government. Many, however, retain that authority, especially among homeschool families like ours.

Related articles

• Striking Chicago teachers on picket lines (cbsnews.com)
• Chicago Teachers Strike: Union, Emanuel Disagree On Bottom Line (huffingtonpost.com)
• Chicago mayor: Teacher strike ‘unnecessary’ (cnsnews.com)

Dazbog: Good-lookin’ logo, good-tastin’ coffee

While in Loveland, Colorado, recently, I needed to get some quality coffee before heading into the Big Thompson Canyon and happened upon a place called Dazbog. It’s a Denver-based chain with some great coffee and superior graphics. It took all my willpower to resist buying this mug to add to my already overflowing collection. I did, however, buy some coffee to bring home. Their Ethiopian is killer. But I think the best thing about Dazbog is their logo.

Finally, it’s not business as usual

We’re seeing it all over, in federal government and state governments. Here’s an example:

Kansas’ decision to take federal family planning funds away from Planned Parenthood has put the state in a vise.

That any state, and there are now several, would dare to challenged an entrenched NGO like Planned Parenthood is amazing.The states that have done so are now being challenged by the federal government, setting up a conflict there as well.

We’ve got a long way to go before we get back to sanity in this country, but at least it’s not business as usual.

Northminster Presbyterian in Peoria holds to Scripture

This is terrifically encouraging.

Rev. Doug Hucke and the other leaders of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Peoria have always taken principled stands in the past when their denomination, Presbyterian Church USA, has taken unprincipled stands. One example is PCUSA’s effort to divest itself of Caterpillar Inc. stock because Cat sells equipment to Israel, equipment which the denomination accused Israel of using illegally against Palestinians. Representatives of Northminster, which includes many Cat employees among its members, questioned why the denomination would take action that would financially harm some of its own members and why it would single out Israel for such action but take such a light approach toward Palestinians who attacked Israel.

Recently, PCUSA voted to drop requirements that its ministers “live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman, or chastity in singleness.” In other words, opening the door for ordination of anybody engaged in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.

Northminster’s session made this statement:

This is a very troubling development and one that Northminster Presbyterian does NOT endorse. Our standards for church officers will remain unchanged. Northminster will not knowingly ordain people engaging in sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage between a man and woman. The change that took place this week does not alter our position on this issue. Nor will the change be forced upon us in any way.

Way to go, Northminster. Hang in there.

Related articles

• Presbyterians approve change that opens door to gay clergy (knoxnews.com)
• Run, don’t walk, from the Presbyterian Church USA (4simpsons.wordpress.com)
• Presbyterians to ordain gays & swinging singles (geneveith.com)