Timothy Birdnow

Not sure if this is such a good idea; once established this thing will be at the service of future Democrat Presidents who will use it to abuse religions, not protect them.

EXCLUSIVE: White House Lays Out Policy Priorities For New Faith Office

If President Trump wants to protect religion from government the big thing he can do is get Congress to reform the tax code and allow churches to get directly involved in political issues - as they used to do until Lyndon Johnson changed things. Johnson changed them because he and his party were getting creamed by priests and ministers preaching from the pulpit. So he used bribery; you can preach politics if you want, but you lose your tax-exempt status. The result was destructive to most churches who suddenly found themselves watching everything they said out of fear. Even clear moral issues - such as opposition to transgenderism or homosexuality - disappeared in the eternal fear of losing tax exemption. Johnson completely muffled the Christian faith with this.

Yes, there were groups that were christian - like the Moral Majority - which were heavilly involved in politics, but they did not enjoy the tax benefits that the actual churches did.

Oh, and this has always been a one-way street; liberal churches simply ignore the prohibition and are not molested. You can organize a Black Live Matter rally if you are a mind, and even stump for Democratic candidates, but you can't organize a MAGA rally.

A return to the old law would fix most of this.

Anyone who has attended a Catholic mass (Novus Ordo, as my Latin Mass friends would call it) knows full well how weak and generic and simply pathetic the sermons are, and how it feels rather pointless to go to mass. There is no sense of doing something important. That is because from the seminary on the priests are instructed to preach that way. "Mustn't offend people!" meaning mustn't offend the government. So the pews are empty but there's plenty of pew coming from the pulpit.

Actually coming down to Earth and promoting the faith will reinvigorate most faiths. As it is often said, tax a thing and it will wither, subsidize it and it will flourish. We have seen a withering of Christianity under the government lash.

Also, this new office will be led by Rev. Paula White-Cain. While I know nothing about her, everything about her name screams liberal activist. A woman minister is not Biblical, and a woman with a hyphenated name is usually a big leftist.

So I looked her up; she's the wife of Jonathan Cain, which puts her in good stead. But she is a believer in Prosperity Theology, which I find disturbing. Prosperity theology makes God into a kind of glorified ATM. Prosperity was promised by God - to the Jews. Remember, they didn't get saved by Judaism and the Law, just were prospered. Christians get the big enchilada but are promised suffering in this life (I sure do hope the former is true as I can attest to the latter!) I think Prosperity Theology is a misleaading and perhaps dangerous idea.

At any rate I doubt she'll do much damage to us, and perhaps may do a lot of good. But I fear this whole thing may be a double edged sword.

The article says the duties of this new office will be:

"Working in tandem with the domestic policy center, White-Cain and her team will address poverty alleviation, religious liberty, strengthening marriage and family, advancing education, addressing substance abuse and addiction, crime prevention and reduction, supporting prisoner reentry and expanding health and humanitarian services, according to a White House official."

It's too broad a scope by far, and it will certainly be turned to evil in a Democrat Administration. And this being a government committee it will be making government policy proposals - which will mean government money being allocated. Why spend more money on this when DOGE is busy cutting waste elsewhere? Don't private institutions (like the Catholic Church) already do a lot of this stuff?

I do not like this at all.

The Inquisition was the Catholic Church's investigatory body and served the purpose that this committee is designed to serve. For those who do not know the Inquisition was not an abusive operation by and large (that was mostly the SPANISH Inquisition and even they weren't as bad as we are told - the Protestants pushed that idea and since they had the printing press made it stick, although they weren't choir boys) but they certainly stuck their noses in places that we today would not tolerate. This outfit could wind up being quite similar.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:41 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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