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The difference a day makes – Another interpretation

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The voters of Oklahoma amended its state constitution in November 2004 to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Following a suit filed in Tulsa County, U.S. District Judge Terrance Kern ruled the ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. Because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal, gay marriage became legal in spite of the wishes of approximately 75% of Oklahoma’s electorate. [1] Toby Jenkins, head of Oklahomans for Equality, hails the decision as a sunrise on a new day that ended “marriage discrimination” in Oklahoma. He cites four examples of such alleged discrimination: failure to process loan applications by same-sex […]

America’s malaise

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Malaise seems an inadequate word to describe what’s happening in and to America. Synonyms for “malaise” are sickness, illness, disease, disorder, anxiety, depression, and discontent. It appears all are needed to describe America’s mood and condition. One magazine cover reads, “Is the world falling apart?” [1] Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan laments the nation’s decline in a recent column titled “Things fall apart for many public institutions.” [2] He lists numerous examples of this brokenness in recent years including the Center for Disease Control’s fumbled response in protecting Americans from an Ebola epidemic; basic security breaches in protecting the president at and away from the White House; the invasion of the southern United States by 60,000 children and young people from Central America; the Obamacare rollout […]

How we choose to deal with our sin defines our destiny

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Bishop Edward J. Slattery, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, recently wrote of the confusion within the Catholic Church regarding its teaching on divorce, cohabitation, and people who experience same-sex attractions (“We are not defined by our sin”). He states that much of this confusion resulted from the Vatican’s October publication of a working paper (Relatio post Disceptationem) of the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family whose purpose was to raise awareness of significant pastoral issues concerning divorce, cohabitation, and homosexuality. The document was designed “…to raise questions and indicate perspectives that will have to be matured.” [1] [emphasis added] One of Bishop Slattery’s concerns is that much of the confusion results from contemporary commentators and even some in […]

The synchronization of the American church?

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“This court has no jurisdiction over me, I am a German,” insisted Herman Goring as he stood with other Nazi war criminals in 1946 before an international military tribunal in Nuremburg, Germany. But Robert Jackson, chief counsel for the United States, responded that “…there was a ‘law above the law’ that stood in judgment of all men in all countries and societies.”[1] These contrasting views of the source of laws by which men should be judged continue to be at the heart of the cultural conflict in America—is the ultimate source of law to be God or man? Modern America and the American church face the same dilemma as faced by Germany and the German church of the 1930s. We have previously quoted Eric Metaxas […]

Connecting the dots: The homosexual agenda

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For many Americans who have been clueless about the homosexual agenda and its ultimate goal for American culture, the rapidity of recent events has caused their understanding to become clearer as the relevant features of the agenda reveal the big picture. Much like connecting the dots on a child’s line art puzzle, Americans are increasingly able to connect the dots of the homosexual agenda as each event/demand/right is connected with a preceding event/demand/right until what was once a jumble of seemingly unrelated and innocuous platitudes, occurrences, demands, and actions becomes a recognizable and frightening reality. One of the major tools for winning concessions for the homosexual agenda is the plea/demand/right for tolerance and equality as defined by humanism. The humanists would force all to bend […]

The quest for equality and the loss of respect – Part II

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As noted in Part I, another name for equality is egalitarianism which is a fundamental tenet of humanism whose worldview has captured almost all of the institutions of American life and its leadership. The purpose of Part II is to reveal the undeniable linkage between humanism’s quest for equality and the consequent loss of respect in every facet of America life. The defining characteristic of humanism is the exaltation of self, and this emphasis on self leads to inward focus and results in egotism. Humanist Manifesto II preaches that “The preciousness and dignity of the individual person is a central humanist value.”[1] The practical outworking of humanism’s view of self invariably leads to a quest for equality, the roots of which reach back to the […]

The quest for equality and the loss of respect – Part I

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Loss of respect for authority and time-honored institutions, customs, and traditions is one of the major casualties in the quest for equality in all facets of American life. Here we do not mean the equality spoken of by John Adams who defined equality as—a moral and political equality only—by which is meant equality before God and before the law. The humanist understanding of equality is synonymous with egalitarianism: a belief in human equality especially with respect to social, political, and economic rights and privileges. Basically, it is a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among men.[1] When we speak of equality in this article and the one to follow, it is meant to describe the humanists’ definition of equality. To properly understand the corrosive […]

Quran verses taken out of context? Thousands of Christian deaths say “No.”

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Rep. John Bennett, R-Sallisaw said: “The Quran clearly states that non-Muslims should be killed. Arab is the ethnicity, not Muslim or Islam. Be wary of the individuals who claim to be ‘Muslim-American.’ Be especially wary if you are a Christian.” Mike Jones’ in his editorial[1] (“Out of Line-Bennett’s Muslim-bashing goes too far.”) accused Bennett of cherry-picking verses from the Quran and using them out of context. However, Jones is either naive or woefully uninformed with regard to the Quran and Muslim persecution of Christians around the world in the name of Islam. There are 109 verses in the Quran that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Unlike practically all of the Old Testament verses of violence which are limited […]

Seduction of the American Church

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This article should be of interest to Christians and those who may not be Christians by confession and lifestyle but who believe in the importance of maintaining a biblical Christian worldview in America. Christians are the church. The church is not the buildings or organizations that serve the church body. So when we speak of the seduction of the church, we are speaking of the seduction of individual Christians and particularly the leadership of churches and other Christian organizations. To seduce means to lead away, to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty, or to lead astray. Only one of its definitions refers to the enticement into unchastity.[1] Seduction was Satan’s original weapon used to attack God by separating man from Him. At his first encounter with […]

Why I believe

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A child-like faith I became a Christian as a child of six. Owasso was a tiny little hamlet of about 250 people, barely four blocks long and two blocks wide straddling a two-lane concrete highway meandering southward towards Tulsa through the perennially-flooding bottom lands and across an old bridge over Bird Creek. This little wide spot in the road had two or three churches, a grocery or two, a school, a collection of small houses, and not much else. Our children’s church teacher and her husband (a nonbeliever) were dairy farmers as were my parents and as my mother’s parents had been. Our teacher helped with the milking and some of the farm work, but on Sunday mornings after chores, she would pick up her […]

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