The Forerunner Weblog

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:38:47 PST

You have got to like a 4,732-word manifesto that calls Christians to civil disobedience on pro-life and pro-family issues and gives a brief history of biblically-based resistance to tyranny throughout the ages. It even quotes the second century Epistle to Diognetus (one of my new favorite patristic texts) as a bonus. Go to the Manhattan Declaration website and sign it. I did.

Here is the full text:

October 20, 2009

Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. - Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. - John 10:10

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion.

The President says that he wants to reduce the “need” for abortion—a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as “the culture of death.” We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called “therapeutic cloning.”

This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

Marriage

The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. - Genesis 2:23-24

This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. - Ephesians 5:32-33

In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society—indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as “holy matrimony” to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits—the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling—and alarming—indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society—and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average—is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to “a more excellent way.” As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being—the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual—on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being “married.” It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality—a covenantal union of husband and wife—that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as “marriages” sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

Religious Liberty

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. - Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. - Matthew 22:21

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.[1] Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Pray for Obama - Psalm 109:8

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:24:58 PST

Psalm 109:8 - "Let his days be few; let another take his office."

So reads a popular bumpersticker. Interestingly, "Psalm 109:8" was a top Google search term yesterday. When millions of people are Googling the imprecatory Psalms, let the enemies of God be very afraid!

The 109th Psalm concerns the time when King Saul was seeking to kill David, whom Samuel had prophesied would take Saul's place. In those days, taking a king's place meant that the king would die. In case there is any doubt that David is imploring God to take Saul's life, verse 9 reads: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

No, this bumpersticker is not imploring God for a 2012 election day defeat, but for an untimely death due to the curse of God on a covenant-breaker.

Of course, right away the liberal elite and many Christian leaders are decrying this "unloving" use of the imprecatory Psalms to pray for our president.

The question they ask rhetorically is, "When is it ever right to pray for the death of a president?"

The answer: "Always!"

There is a common misconception about prayer. Many people believe that prayer is a form of magic. We pray and God supernaturally answers us according to our whims. Without going into a deep theological treatise on all the reasons why this is wrong, I will quote Bob Dylan here from the 1979 album Slow Train Coming:

Do you ever wonder just what God requires?
You think He's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires.

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

Likewise, Ray Davies of The Kinks recently produced a solo work, Working Man's Cafe, which contains a reference criticizing the popular antinomian view of prayer. While "A Hymn for a New Age" is lacking a positive affirmation of Christian orthodoxy, Davies is correct about one thing:

I don't believe that God is a man with white hair
Sitting in a big chair
Judging the world and its morals
Forgiving today so we can sin again tomorrow

But I believe
I need something to look up to
I believe
I wanna pray but don't know what to

Indeed. Prayer does not move God. God is already moved. Prayer puts us in the position to receive the blessings and promises of God given before the foundation of the earth. We pray according to the model of scripture to know the will of God so that we might obey Him.

Further, all professing believers are in a covenant with God. When we were baptized, the covenant was initiated. This covenant is confirmed by the sacrament of Holy Communion each time we partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

In the Christian church, sacraments are covenant-making and covenant-renewing oaths. The Apostle Paul went as far as to say that those who partake of the sacrament in a state of unrepentant sin are knowingly entering into judgment (1 Corinthians 11:26-32).

Even the pagan Roman officials could see this connection in 112 AD. Pliny the Younger, making a report to the Emperor Trajan wrote:

They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, and they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath (sacramentum), not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up. Afterward, it was their custom to ... partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.

To be a Christian is to be a covenant-keeper. But what happens when the covenant is broken?

Throughout scripture we see the covenant of God and the corresponding blessings and curses that come when we keep or break the covenant.

Barack Obama is a professing Christian. He was a member of a church that holds to the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and the Heidelberg Catechism. Among his greatest sins, Barack Obama is also pro-abortion. He has fought hard to keep abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy, by any method, for any reason. Obama even opposed the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act in his home state -- a bill that even Planned Parenthood and NARAL refused to oppose because it essentially outlawed the infanticide of children born-alive after botched abortions.

When not only liberal commentators, but also squeamish preachers condemn those who condemn Obama, they are reaching the height of hypocrisy. They cite a so-called "Christian love" that includes looking the other way rather than oppose our president's open support of child murder.

Those who would pray Psalm 109:8 for Barack Obama need to understand that imprecatory prayer is not a magical formula. If God blesses us, who can curse us? For how can our enemies curse whom God has not cursed? We may curse those whom God has already cursed, but in the next breath, we need to also bless those whom God has blessed. The focus must always be God's sovereign glory and the honor of His name.

However wrong the intentions might be, it is no more of a sin to pray the covenantal curses of God on President Obama than it is to remain silent about his sin. Scripture assures us that if Barack Obama, one of God's covenant people, is graced with the gift of repentance, then God will surely bless him.

In short, don't pray Psalm 109:8 for President Obama. We are not to judge or curse our enemies. We are to pray and proclaim what God himself has already decreed before the foundation of the world toward both His friends and His enemies. Pray all of Psalm 109. Pray all of the blessings and curses found in the Law-Word of God.

For reference, here is a list of articles on imprecatory prayer from The Forerunner.

An Imprecatory Prayer Proclamation: Barack Obama

What is Imprecatory Prayer?

The Attitude of the Godly Toward God's Enemies

Imprecatory Prayer: Enforcing the Covenant of God

Imprecatory Prayer! - The Church's Duty Against Her Enemies

Psalm 109 (KJV)

1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.
4 For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.
5 And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
6 Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.
7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
16 Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.
17 As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.
18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
20 Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.
21 But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.
22 For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.
25 I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.
26 Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:
27 That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.
28 Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.
29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.
30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

NBC's Law & Order "Dignity" episode takes script material from pro-life website

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:25:14 PST

"Two weeks ago, my son had less rights than a dog or a cat."
- Gaulberto Garcia Jones, Director, Personhood Colorado
Press Conference, July 2, 2009

Speaking to District Attorney Jack McCoy, Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) says, "My God, cats and dogs have more rights than the unborn. Roe v. Wade wasn't written in stone. It could stand another look."
- Law & Order, "Dignity," air date: October 23. 2009

"The timing is perfect because the polls show now that more people are pro-life then pro-death."
- Leslie Hanks, Vice President, Colorado Right to Life
Press Conference, July 2, 2009

"Its time to face the facts, the tide has turned. Most Americans are pro-life now."
- Law & Order, "Dignity," air date: October 23. 2009

Pierre Renelique: Hialeah abortion doctor on the run!

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:34:15 PST

I especially like the part in this video report where the abortionist starts running from the reporter even while he continues giving the interview. Finally, not being able to keep from incriminating himself by running his mouth even while he is literally on the run, he does the logical thing and attacks the microphone.

The irony is that this is essentially what we tried to do in the 1990s with Jay's Killer Web Page, to expose abortionists' evil deeds to the public. Of course, we were sued (unsuccessfully) and labelled terrorists for giving out much the same information on a website. That was back in the days prior to Fox News.

MYFOXNY.COM - The case made national headlines: A botched abortion in Florida and an elaborate cover-up. The physician involved -- Dr. Pierre Renelique -- was banned from practicing medicine there. But nine months after Florida revoked his license, he is seeing patients in the Bronx. Fox 5's Arnold Diaz tracked him down for an exclusive report.

WARNING: Some information in this report is graphic.

MORE INFORMATION ON DR. PIERRE JEAN JACQUES RENELIQUE:

• NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH DECISION
• FLORIDA BOARD OF MEDICINE

View MyFox Tampa Bay's February 6, 2009, report on Dr. Renelique's Florida license revocation hearing:

Baby Rowan Revisited

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:58:13 PST

Can a pro-life video save unborn children? A friend of mine, Patte Smith, has been using this video at Dr. Pendergraft's abortion clinic, where she stands for the unborn as a sidewalk counselor and evangelist. I've been blessed to hear a few people changed their mind on abortion by viewing these videos I have put together in the past few years. Many have been convicted that abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy is a heartless policy. Below is one such testimony Patte received by email. Dr. Pendergraft owns the clinic where little baby Rowan was born alive and left to die.

My name is KC and I’ve been pro-choice as long as I can remember. Yesterday, I took my dear friend to Orlando Women’s Health Center for an abortion. To my surprise, you and a few other demonstrators were there. Of course, my friend and I ignored your calls out to us and went inside. But, then I needed a cigarette. When I went outside to smoke, I was listening to your pleas, just taking it all in. After four hours of waiting @ OWHC, the staff told my friend that they couldn’t do the procedure there. We were instructed to go home and get $300 more and meet the Dr. @ EPOC. We did as instructed. The doctor started the procedure and then told my friend to be back @ 9am the next day (today). They sent her home in the middle of an abortion. So while we were getting the runaround by Dr. Pendergraft’s employees, I couldn’t get your pleas out of my head. After a long and trying day, I came home and tried to get some sleep. Instead, I tossed and turned as your cries nagged at me.

So I gave up and went to youtube.com as you instructed. I typed “baby rowan 911” into the search bar but couldn’t find the courage to press to search button. What was I so afraid of? I’m pro choice. There is nothing anybody can say that will change that, right? So after this little battle with myself, I pressed search. I listened to the horrific 911 call and cried. I couldn’t believe it, so I did more research. I couldn’t believe to horror stories that I found. I was mortified when I found that it is not uncommon for aborted babies to be born alive and the staff just leaves them alone to die. I guess I just figured when babies are aborted they don’t even look like babies yet. I always figured they just kind of looked like a blob of tissue and cells. As I did a little research, my heart broke and my opinion changed. So I wanted to thank you. Thank you for being the voice of these dead babies. Because of you my views are changing. You made me more aware. Keep doing what your doing and try not to get discouraged. Even if people don’t let you know it, you are touching lives. Again, thank you.

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 5)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:56:01 PST

Summary: Is Luke the authentic author of the two New Testament books attributed to him?

Here are just a few external and internal evidences for a dating of not later than 63 AD for the Gospel of Luke.

1. External Testimony: The Church Fathers

Irenaeus explained that Luke wrote under the direction, if not at the dictation, of Paul. This would place the Gospel of Luke as having been written before the Acts, whose date of the composition is generally fixed prior to 64 AD for a variety of reasons. One common view is that this Gospel was written about 62 or 63, when Luke was at Caesarea in attendance on Paul, who was then a prisoner prior to his second imprisonment in Rome. On the other hand, if the tradition related by Jerome is correct, that it was written at Rome during Paul's first imprisonment, then it would date earlier, prior to 60 AD.

Here is Irenaeus (c. 185) concerning the authorship of the four Gospels:

Indeed Matthew, among the Hebrews in their own dialect, also bore forth a writing of the gospel, Peter and Paul evangelizing in Rome and founding the church. But after the exodus of these men Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself also delivered to us in writing the things preached by Peter, and Luke also, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by that man. Afterward John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, himself also published the gospel, passing his time in Ephesus of Asia (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1).

But that Paul taught with simplicity what he knew, not only to those who were with him but also to those who heard him, he does himself make manifest. For, when the bishops and presbyters who came from Ephesus and the other cities adjoining had assembled in Miletus, since he was himself hastening to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost, after testifying many things to them and declaring what must happen to him at Jerusalem he added: I know that you shall see my face no more. Therefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed, therefore, both to yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the church of the Lord which he has acquired for himself through His own blood. Then, referring to the evil teachers who should arise, he said: I know that after my departure shall grievous wolves come to you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. I have not shunned, he says, to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Thus did the apostles simply, and without respect of persons, deliver to all what they had themselves learned from the Lord. Thus also does Luke, without respect of persons, deliver to us what he had learned from them, as he has himself testified, saying: Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.14.2-4).

The Muratorian canon (c.175) has:

The third book of the Gospel is that according to Luke. Luke, the well-known physician, after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had taken with him as one zealous for the law, composed it in his own name, according to [the general] belief. Yet he himself had not seen the Lord in the flesh; and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John.

Jerome (c. 375) has a more detailed history of Luke, claiming that the Evangelist was born in Antioch, and finally buried in Constantinople. According to Jerome, Acts was composed in Rome, and chronicles the events until “the fourth year of Nero,” which is according to our modern reckoning 58 AD.

Luke, an Antiochene doctor, as his writings indicate, was not ignorant of the Greek speech. A follower of the apostle Paul and companion on all his journeying, he wrote a gospel about which this same Paul says: “We have sent with him the brother whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches, and to the Colossians: Luke the dearest doctor salutes you, and to Timothy: Luke alone is with me.” He also published another distinguished volume which is known by the title Acts of the Apostles, whose story comes down to the two years of the remaining of Paul in Rome, that is, until the fourth year of Nero, from which we understand that the book was composed in the same city.... Certain people suspect that, whenever Paul in his epistles says: According to my gospel, he means the volume of Luke, and that Luke was taught the gospel, not only by Paul, who had not been with the Lord in the flesh, but also by the other apostles. As he himself also declared in the beginning of his volume: Just as they who themselves from the beginning saw and were ministers of the speech delivered to us. Therefore, he wrote the gospel just as he heard; the Acts of the Apostles he composed just as he himself saw. He was buried in Constantinople, into which city, in the twentieth year of Constantius, his bones with the relics of Andrew the apostle were translated (Jerome, On Illustrious Men).

John Chrysostom (c. 375) has:

But the greater part of this work is occupied with the acts of Paul, who labored more abundantly than them all. And the reason is that the author of this book, that is, the blessed Luke, was his companion, a man whose high qualities, sufficiently visible in many other instances, are especially shown in his firm adherence to his teacher, whom he constantly followed. Thus, at a time when all had forsaken him, one gone into Galatia, another into Dalmatia, hear what he says of this disciple: Only Luke is with me. And, giving the Corinthians a charge concerning him, he says: Whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches. Again, when he says: He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, and: According to the gospel which you received, he means the gospel of this Luke, so that there can be no mistake in attributing this work to him; and when I say to him, I mean to Christ. And why then did he not relate everything, seeing he was with Paul to the end? We may answer, that what is here written was sufficient for those who would attend, and that the sacred writers ever addressed themselves to the matter of immediate importance, whatever it might be at the time; it was no object with them to be writers of books: in fact, there are many things which they have delivered by unwritten tradition (On the Acts of the Apostles).

2. External Testimony: Manuscript Evidence

Manuscript evidence from the second century onward has the following inscriptions:

Matthew: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ (Gospel according to Matthew).

Mark: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ (Gospel according to Mark).

Luke: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ (Gospel according to Luke).

John: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ (Gospel according to John).

The earliest is the beautiful manuscript, P75, from the second century showing the end of Luke and the beginning of John. These say clearly in Greek, "Gospel according to Luke" and "Gospel according to John."

You will see near the top of the page.

ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ

ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ

A full-page photo of the manuscript may be found at:

http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/tc_pap75.html

There are no earlier Gospel manuscripts with endings and beginnings that have no title and author.

2. Internal Testimony

The internal evidence of this text consists of the use of the first person “we” and “I,” which is an eyewitness claim. Luke claims to be a companion of Paul, and Paul claims that Luke is his companion. The eyewitness claims in John’s writings are even stronger. We have to only establish genuine authorship and eyewitness credibility in Luke and John, to surmise that Matthew and Mark, likely written earlier or around the same time, were also genuine and credible.

Luke is said in Colossians 4.14 to have been a physician and an associate of the apostle Paul.

Luke is mentioned in 2 Timothy 4.11 and Philemon 24.

The Acts of the Apostles claims by its preface (Acts 1:1-2) to have been written by the same individual as the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:1-4) and the style is undoubtedly the same.

The narrative of Acts shifts to the first person first person when Paul comes to Troas and leaves from there to Macedonia (Acts 16.9-18; 20.4-16; 21.1-18; 27.1-28.16) this use of “we” suggests that Acts was written by a travelling companion of Paul. Since Luke is the traditional author, it “fits” that Paul picks up with the author of Acts either at or before arriving in Troas, since Luke is elsewhere associated with Asia Minor. Troas is a region of Asia Minor between Colossae and Ephesus (the location of Philemon and Timothy) and Macedonia. In other words, independent accounts show Luke being at the right place at the right time.

A seldom used argument is the very nature of the diēgēsis as being self-contained and self-authenticating. The Gospel of Luke comprises a self-contained universe that assumes the corroboration of his audience. In other words, the narrative is addressed to a person who is already familiar with the Gospel by a narrator who places himself within the story through the use of the first person pronoun, “I” and “we.” In other words, Luke is not simply a third-person narrator, but places himself within the framework of the story as it opens, claiming to be the same person who composed the previous Gospel and therefore intimately familiar with the characters in the story, and also claiming to be part of the narrative in the last few chapters.

Additionally, the book of Acts not only purports to be a historical narrative, but it addresses and was delivered to people in cities that were at the center of much of the same narrative. Some of the hearers were people who would have been at Pentecost or who had parents or older church acquaintances who were at Pentecost. The story begins by claiming that the miracle was witnesses by Jews and God-fearers were “from every nation under heaven … Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:5,9-11).

These people would have corroborated the miracle or they would have rejected it. Luke writes at the beginning of his Gospel that it is “a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.”

Throughout the book of Acts, he assumes that his audience can attest to many of the events because they lived in cities that Peter, Paul and Luke would have ministered and preached. In other words, he describes events to some hearers who could have been present in the narrative itself – or who would undoubtedly would have known those who were able to corroborate the story.

Without going into further detail here, I’ll use my novel analogy once again. Suppose I gave a copy of The Acts of Ronald Reagan to my father, who still lived near Washington, D.C. where I was born in 1962. Suppose the copy of my book was then delivered into the hands of my brothers, sisters, children, nephews and nieces. Even if they were ignorant of who wrote the book and didn’t have access to newspapers, media and other historical accounts, they would know that the story was a fantasy based on the numerous anachronisms and fictitious additions. They would already know the correct versions of the events they would have heard undoubtedly from their parents and grandparents.

On the contrary, the account of Luke and Acts had the strength of self-authenticating corroboration due to the eyewitness status of its immediate audience.

My challenge to liberals and skeptics:

1. Where is the external evidence showing that the Gospel of Luke and Acts were anonymous, pseudonymous or written late?

2. Where is the manuscript evidence showing these books without authors attached to the title?

3. Where is the internal evidence that Luke was not claiming both to have interviewed eyewitnesses of Jesus and to have been himself an eyewitnesses to some events in Acts?

For further reading:

http://bibleencyclopedia.net/index.php/Gospel_Of_Luke#Date_of_composition
http://www.textexcavation.com/gospelluke.html
http://bible.org/seriespage/luke-introduction-outline-and-argument

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 4)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:16:10 PDT

Meet Luke – the 800 pound gorilla

If the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written as late as 85 AD by a person claiming to have interviewed eyewitnesses of Jesus and claiming to have been a living companion of Paul, it would have been known by those still living who witnessed those events whether the account were true. If it were not, it could not have been accepted and quoted by the Church Fathers as genuine and quoted approvingly. The brief “JFK allegory” (part 1) explains why such an obvious fiction so close to the time span of the account could not have been accepted as authentic and reliable.

But beyond this, we should consider why a late date is deemed necessary in the first place. The culprit thesis behind the late dating of Luke is the wide – although by no means universal – acceptance of the priority of Mark. The date for the second Gospel is most often used as the anchor and all other books of the New Testament are arranged around this date.

The following is from Craig Davis’ e-book, Dating the New Testament:

There are three observations about the synoptic gospels that all seem true from a conservative perspective. However, on the surface, they are not consistent and at least one of them must be false. These observations are:

1. Luke was written before 63 A.D., based on the ending of the book of Acts.
2. Luke is dependent on Mark, so Mark was written before Luke.
3. Mark was written after 65 A.D., after Mark was in Rome.

The most common rejection is number one. However, there are two compelling points for an early dating of Luke. There is no persecution by the Roman authorities mentioned in Acts. Yet we know from several sources that Nero began a mass Empire-wide persecution of Christianity in 64 AD. There is no mention of the death of James, the brother of Jesus, the presiding bishop of the church at Jerusalem. We know from several accounts that James was martyred around 63 AD.

The Dating of Luke and Acts

J.A.T. Robison – a liberal theologian and New Testament scholar who denied the divinity and resurrection of Jesus and biblical accounts of miracles – once did a study using all the internal and external evidence available to determine the earliest possible dates of each of the New Testament books. The result of the study was published as the book, Redating the New Testament. Robinson came to the conclusion that there is nothing that would preclude a date of early composition for all four Gospels – between 40 to 60 AD.

Since even most conservatives place them later – the Synoptics from 61 to 67 AD with a later date for John – Robinson’s thesis constitutes “admission against self-interest.” The author is simply being intellectually honest in demonstrating that there is no internal evidence that would preclude early dating, and in light of the external testimony of the Church Fathers, this early end of the spectrum becomes more likely than the later extremes favored by his colleagues.

In the 19th century, liberals put the Gospels much later, even toward the end of the second century. That was the scenario offered until the discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri which almost without doubt places every New Testament book in the first century. Yet liberals and skeptics cling to an old paradigm. They place the dates at the latest possible time, now thought to be from 70 to 85 AD, for the three Synoptic Gospels and 90 to 100 AD for the Gospel of John. However, a number of other liberal scholars have defected from the late date view, Eta Linnemann being another of the most recent and well-known. The Gospels could very well be earlier than many people suppose – even as early as 40 AD. Conservatives are actually in the main stream by putting most New Testament books from 55 to 67 AD.

Most scholars see an ongoing oral tradition that preceded the Gospels with a few written source-Gospels (or “proto-Gospels”) that later became the basis for the Synoptics. These source Gospels are often thought of as the compilations that Luke mentions in the introduction to his Gospel.

Many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-3).

It is often assumed that Mark, (and sometimes) Matthew, and at least one other source, are among the “many who have undertaken to compile an account.” However, the word for “undertaken” or “taken in hand” is the Greek word, epicheireō, which occurs two other places in the New Testament.

And he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Hellenists, but they attempted to kill him (Acts 9:29).

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches” (Acts 19:13).

The word epicheireō can be translated many different ways, but the meaning is simply “to make an attempt.” It does not follow that the idiom used in some English translations, “taken it in hand,” means that Luke is referring to written Gospels. In fact, the word for “account,” diēgēsis, in English is a “recitation” or a “narration.” The classical usage of diēgēsis is a complete account comprising a self-contained universe in which the presence of the narrator intrudes into the story. In Greek drama, this was contrasted with mimēsis, a story in which characters appear and action is described, but into which the narrator never intrudes as a character.

The Gospel accounts take a form in which the narrator is an eyewitness or is relating a story by known eyewitnesses. Matthew intrudes into the Gospel according to Matthew as the “tax collector,” who in the other Gospels is known only by his surname Levi. According to patristic tradition, Mark intrudes into his Gospel as an unnamed “youth” who flees the arresting soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. John intrudes into his Gospel as one of the few unnamed Apostles, know only as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” These literary devices are part of the diēgēsis of the account.

Scene from Blazing Saddles (1974)

To use a familiar example, diēgēsis is sometimes used as a gag in modern comedies. In the Mel Brooks’ film, Blazing Saddles, the new sheriff rides on horseback across the desert to swelling sound. The audience is accustomed to think that the character must not be aware of the music, because soundtracks in movies usually serve as a mimēsis, a musical representation or descriptive soundtrack to complement what is being watched. But as the camera pans across the scenery to follow the horse’s tracks, eventually the audience sees Count Basie and his big band playing “April in Paris” in the middle of the desert – a ridiculously funny juxtaposition. The diēgēsis works as an joke because the audience is taken by surprise to see a conductor and his musicians intruding into the film as characters – a sort of reverse dramatic irony.

Likewise, the sudden occurrence of the word “we” in the later narrative of Acts is just as odd and startling. It appears without explanation. However, the author is assuming that his immediate audience, Theophilus, already knew that Luke was a companion of Paul. Therefore, as Luke already stated in his “former account” (Acts 1:1) the immediate audience assumes that Luke is giving sure chronological knowledge of the events through careful investigation. Further, the Acts of the Apostles is similar to a Greek drama in which one of the characters is the narrator himself who finally intrudes into the concluding scenes. If this were not the case, then the sudden use of the first person would seem just as illogical as the appearance of Count Basie in Blazing Saddles. But why is the intrusion so sudden with no explanation? If the author was intending to create a believable fiction, then why is the false claim to participation restricted to just a few passages? Why doesn’t the narrator assert himself more forcefully in such a way that the reader might not miss the point? The most probable conclusion is that Luke's audience was already aware of the relationship. Luke is the reliable narrator of the story. The first person, “I” and “we” is simply a reminder that the diēgēsis of Acts includes Luke’s actual presence and intimate involvement with the narrative.

It is extremely difficult in the world of fiction to create a self-contained universe in which the audience can suspend all disbelief. The more complex the story, the more difficult it is to portray a self-contained world with no internal contradictions. Blazing Saddles makes fun of movie-making conventions by having several off-camera audience presumptions spill over to the on-screen action. We suspend our disbelief in order to allow for a musical soundtrack. But this presumption comes crashing down when the camera pans on to a full orchestra playing in a western landscape. However, this is the way that liberal critics view Luke’s Gospel and Acts – as a work of legend written by a anonymous author who expects his audience to simply suspend their disbelief and accept the backdrop of a first person narrator as an accepted literary convention even when he stumbles clumsily into the action.

The person to whom Luke is writing his Gospel, Theophilus, a Christian in Asia Minor, had heard Gospel accounts compiled by people who had in turn heard one or more of the Apostles preach – Paul, Peter, Apollos, or some other disciples of Jesus – and now wished to put it all together. Since Luke was Paul’s traveling companion and had heard many of the Apostles preach, he had memorized the narrative and had also investigated what had happened in the correct chronological order plus a few other important facts that were often left out of these other accounts.

We also have to grapple with the statement by Luke that the Gospel is being written “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” The obvious intention is to convince the reader of truthfulness of the events described in the book. Taken with the narrative of Acts, it can be assumed that the immediate audience already knew of Luke’s association with the Apostles, especially Paul, and therefore Luke can appeal to their authority in claiming his account is correct. Further, the phrase, “the things you have been taught,” indicates a prior familiarity with at least portions of the account that Luke is about to relate.

According to the Church Fathers, Luke's Gospel is essentially the Gospel that Paul preached. If this were true, then it is reasonable to assume that there should be some internal evidence within the New Testament itself that demonstrates that Paul’s Gospel is the source of the narrative written by Luke. Here the relationship of Luke’s narrative to Paul’s letters is too often neglected or downplayed by the liberal critics. The letters of Paul are usually placed first in the chronology of New Testament books.

However, there are a number of direct quotations and allusions to the Gospels in Paul's writings. The most notable one is a direct quotation from Luke 22:19,20 in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25. This would seem to prove a date of early composition for at least a form of a Gospel identical to Luke 22:19,20 prior to 55 AD when 1 Corinthians was written. The two most logical explanations is that either Luke wrote prior to 1 Corinthians or that this quotation is actually “Paul’s Gospel” from which the Gospel according to Luke assumed its final written form.

Using the same reasoning, the audience to whom the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles is addressed would also be either familiar with the events described in Acts or would know other Christians who had lived during the time of these events. To concoct a narrative with fictional elements would be an absurd exercise even as late as 85 AD. To then have the narrative quickly pass into the canon of inspired writings would be even more absurd. Yet this is the scenario proposed by liberals and taught as accepted fact in their divinity schools.

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 3)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:11:30 PDT

Isn’t it true that the four Gospels were chosen from “many” Gospels?

I’ll take a brief pause here from dealing solely with Luke's writings to answer a question I just received from a viewer of The Real Jesus video podcast. Inevitably, someone is going to ask a question about the dating of the so-called Gnostic Gospels.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:18 AM, YouTube Service wrote:

Was there a massacre around the time of Jesus birth?

You guys seem a lot more learned about the historical dating of the Gospels. I don’t think anything in the New Testament can be trusted. I have heard a few times from different places that there were over 80 gospels and the oligarchy chose what Gospels it wanted when a lot of people just wrote them up and sold them.

The “many Gospels” referred to here are writings from the second century and later composed by a group called the Gnostics. This was a world-wide religious movement in the ancient world that believed the material world was evil and taught that salvation was spiritual and could only be obtained through “secret knowledge” or gnosis. The Gnostics syncretized the tenets of many other religions into their writings. As Christianity began to become widespread, the Gnostics made use of the sayings of Jesus in order to popularize their own teachings. But we do not see any of these Gnostic Gospels until the mid to late second century.

If one wants to know about the flavor of the Gnostic Gospels, just read them. They contain just the sayings of Jesus and usually claim that a particular disciple of Jesus received “secret knowledge” that the author of the book is now revealing. They are fundamentally different than the four Gospels. Judaism and Christianity are holistic religions, while Gnosticism is dualistic, pitting the evil material world against the spiritual world. Since history of the material world is evil, there is no attempt to give the reader a sense of a connection to history. Just as I have been arguing for the historicity and authenticity for the canonical Gospels, the Gnostic Gospels reveal a blatant agenda to distort the teachings of Jesus with no respect for even an appearance of factual reality.

The “many gospels” hypothesis is the brain-child of professors and popular authors such as John Dominic Crossan, Elaine Pagels and Marvin Meyer. Their writings make for brisk sales and media attention because they are so sensationalistic. No university wants to pay researchers to publish papers and books reiterating the view of the Church Fathers on the dating and origin of the Gospels. Researchers are paid to publish “new findings” and are under a considerable amount of pressure to get some media attention.

There is also an underlying motive by some to promote an “original” form of Christianity that was more liberal and less patriarchal. Whether or not the Gnostic Gospels provide this point of view is debatable. However, this might be one reason why there has been such a flurry of interest in recent years over these “new discoveries.” (In fact, most of these writings have been known through archaeological discoveries since the late 1800s and much of the content of the books has been documented ever since they appeared in the second, third and fourth centuries.) Dan Brown has even made this burgeoning Neo-Gnosticism the thesis of his best-selling novels, which he claims are “based on history” even though his plots are fictional.

The conspiracy theory goes as follows: Gnosticism was the “original Christianity” – in fact, there were “many Gospels” and “many Christianities” based on Gnostic mysticism. Then about 180 AD, Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyons appeared. He and his followers were intolerant bigots who hand-selected and/or edited the four Gospels they felt most represented the patriarchal view of the Apostle Paul toward women and sexuality. (Or in some far-fetched versions, this historical revisionism didn’t occur until the Council of Nicea in the fourth century.) According to this hypothesis, the New Testament canon was a response to a perceived Gnostic threat to the authority of the bishops.

This view is in contrast with the testimony of Irenaeus and Tertullian who explained that various Gnostic sects each adopted one of the four Gospels that they believed best supported their views often editing out parts they disagreed with. The Ebionites used only the Gospel according to Matthew, because they thought it represented a more “earthly” Jesus. The Adoptionists made use only of Mark, because they felt it separated “Jesus” from “Christ.” Marcion used only the Gospel of Luke because he felt it represented a more “spiritual” Jesus. Finally, the Cerinthians and Valentinians used only their warped interpretation of John to show that Jesus was a separate spiritual being from the evil demiurgic God who created the material universe.

By the end of the second century, the Gnostics had already begun writing their own books of “secret knowledge” based on the writings of Jesus that had little regard for the historical-narrative structure of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Some liberal scholars, such as Crossan, Pagels and Meyer, have tried to turn this scenario on its head by saying the Gnostic Gospels came first and the canonical Gospels drew from them. It is true that Gnosticism existed prior to Jesus, but the religion borrowed bits and pieces from Judaism and Christianity, not vice versa.

But here is the bottom line: The four canonical Gospels have a remarkable pedigree. The four Gospels were known and quoted numerous times by other Christian writers in the late first and second centuries. In the late 1800s, some liberal Higher Critics placed the Gospels very late, even at the end of the second century, but due to more recent archaeological discoveries and scholarship, almost every scholar now agrees the four Gospels are first century books. One would have to ignore the writings of the Church Fathers in order not to see this.

My view is that all the books of the New Testament were probably written before 70 AD. The exception to this might be the Gospel of John and the letters of John.

First, there is the Didache and 1 Clement, both written in the late first century, which quote heavily from the New Testament. Then by 90 AD there isn't a decade in which there isn't a work that draws on the New Testament. Around 125 AD, another early yet seldom mentioned Christian apologist, Aristides of Athens, wrote the following to the Emperor Hadrian.

Take, then, their writings, and read therein, and lo! you will find that I have not put forth these things on my own authority, nor spoken thus as their advocate; but since I read in their writings I was fully assured of these things as also of things which are to come. And for this reason I was constrained to declare the truth to such as care for it and seek the world to come.

This shows that within 60 years of the lifetime of the Apostles, the New Testament writings were known throughout the Roman Empire.

In fact, it has been demonstrated that the majority of the 7958 verses in the New Testament could be reconstructed just from the writings of the Church Fathers up until about 200 AD. This includes 268 citations by Justin Martyr, 1,038 by Irenaeus, 1,017 by Clement of Alexandria, 9,231 by Origen, 3,822 by Tertullian, 734 by Hippolytus (Geisler and Nix, General Introduction to the Bible, 431).

As you look at the following timeline, consider that the earliest of the Church Fathers lived early enough to have known the Apostles and that the overlapping lifetimes of all these men indicate a great certainty for the transmission of Apostolic writings. The four Gospels are quoted very early, but the Gnostic Gospels are unknown until after the middle of the second century.

Patristic Writings Timeline

The following authors cite the New Testament. The timeline indicates the most likely dates of their works.

The Didache – c. 70-100 AD
Clement of Rome – c. 96 AD
Ignatius of Antioch – c. 110-117
Polycarp of Smyrna – c. 110-155
Papias of Hieropolis – c. 125
The Epistle of Barnabas – c. 100-132
Aristides of Athens – c. 123-127
Quadratus of Athens - c. 123-127
Hermas of Rome – c. 125-135
Mathetes - c. 130-150
Aristo of Pella - c. 140
Justin Martyr – c. 150-160
Tatian - c. 150-165
Theophilus of Antioch - c. 169-182
Melito of Sardis - c. 172-177
Irenaeus of Lyons – c. 175-185
Athenagoras - c. 176-178
Muratorian Canon – c. 175-200
Clement of Alexandria – c. 180-200
Tertullian of Carthage – c. 200-220
Origen of Alexandria – c. 200-230
Hippolytus of Rome – c. 220

"Dignity" Law & Order episode infuriates pro-aborts, can be watched on iTunes

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:33:35 PDT

What's going on? Pro-abortion advocates are ripping ABC-TV (yes, that ABC!) for being unbalanced on the abortion issue.

They've thrown down the gauntlet: "Cry 'God for Barry, pro-choice America and St. George!'"

(As they laud George Tiller, the baby killer, whom the L&A episode thinly veils in its depiction of the trial of an assassin who gunned down a late-term abortionist in a church.)

What they don't get is that over 92 percent of Americans actually do think that killing viable children and infants born-alive is murder. And even if they do not, no one wants to rush out to battle in the name of "abortion rights" to endorse what almost everyone knows is infanticide. Not too many people are actually that arrogant.

I haven't seen the episode, but apparently it gives a nod to the Personhood of the fetus as "deserving of another look," so maybe something good is happening?

If you have an iTunes account, the whole episode can be watched there. If not, you can download the application. It's easy.

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 2)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:23:00 PDT

Can the Gospels be authenticated?

One of the almost universally held notions of liberal theology is that the Gospels are anonymous writings and the names of the authors were not attached to the original manuscripts. Although we do not have the original manuscripts, this is stated as a certain fact. However, the earliest codices are not anonymous. Here is an image of P75, a papyrus codex that was copied at the end of the second century from an earlier copy.

This is the earliest example that we have of a manuscript in which one Gospel ends and another begins. Even if you can’t read Greek, it is clear that the title and author of the two books appear here near the top of the page – the Greek words say: “Gospel according to Luke” and “Gospel according to John.”

So why do the liberals claim the original autographs were anonymous? There are two reasons for this. The first is scientific skepticism. In any hard science, a theory is not proven unless data exists that can confirm a hypothesis. Scientific skepticism doesn't accept something as fact unless it can be proven. Textual criticism, although not a hard science, uses the same methods. The skeptics will assume the latest date possible until an earlier date can be established. They will assume anonymity or pseudonymity until authorship can be proven. They do not, however, try to prove their position.

When the liberal critics say books are anonymous or too late to be the authentic works of the named authors, they don't have proof of this. They just don't accept the evidence to the contrary as compelling. The problem is that others frequently cite this skepticism as fact, when no textual critic is really ever certain of his dating. They simply assume the latest possible dates based on the evidence. However, there are a surprising number of liberal scholars who have become convinced of early dates based on the evidence available. Two of the most notable are J.A.T. Robinson and Eta Linnemann.

Second, it is stated as a foregone conclusion that the authors' names were added to the manuscripts later on -- perhaps as late as the second century. The critics assume that the Gospels were written too late to have been by eyewitnesses. Mark is assumed to be the first Gospel and the date of 70 AD is assigned. The rest of the Gospels are thought to be at least 10 years later. Certainly, books written so late after the deaths of Jesus and the Apostles could not be by contemporary eyewitnesses of the events.

External testimony is routinely ignored. We have author attributions as early the extant fragments of Papias’ work, Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord, which according to C.E. Hill was written “as early as 110 and probably no later than the early 130s, with several scholars opting for the earlier end of the spectrum.” We also have Irenaeus’ statement (c. 180 AD) that Papias was “a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time” (Against Heresies 5.33.4). If we take Irenaeus’ statement at face value, there is no reason to suppose that the Church fathers, who wrote between 96 to 115 AD, did not know the names of the authors of the four Gospels and Acts. Papias names Matthew as the author of a Hebrew Gospel according to Matthew, and Mark as the author of what was preached by Peter, the Gospel according to Mark.

If the Gospels were not written by those whose names appeared on the books by the early second century, there is little possibility that they could have had the influence they did in the early church. It is unlikely that such a falsification of authorship could have occurred intentionally or even unintentionally.

Likewise, my fictitious novels about Joseph Fitzgerald Kennedy (see part 1) and his followers might fool a few children and some illiterate hillbillies who have lived their entire lives cut off from written communication, But this was not the civilization of ancient Rome and the early church. Although not everyone could read and write, literacy was the norm for Rome’s citizens and Jewish men especially were highly literate and aware of their own history as a people. The Gospels, to the contrary to the story of Joseph Fitzgerald Kennedy, are historical accounts that may be corroborated with other works, such as the histories written by Suetonius, Tacitus and Josephus. If they were not, they never could have risen to the level of acceptance as inspired and canonical writings recognized as scripture by the end of the first century.

There are two remarkable early examples of New Testament writings being quoted as scripture. The first is 1 Clement 13.8, which has the phrase, “the words of the Lord Jesus,” prior to a quote from the Gospels. Before and after this Gospel quotation, The Epistle of Clement (c. 96 AD) appeals to the authority of Old Testament scripture prefaced with the phrases, “for the Holy Spirit says” and “For the holy word says.” In 1 Clement 22.1, Christ is the source of the words of Psalm 34:11-17 and 2:10, “Christ calls us through his Holy Spirit.” It has been argued by some scholars that the use of the phrase “the words of the Lord Jesus” in chapter 13 indicates scriptural authority for the simple reason that Clement cites Jesus as the speaker of the Psalms in chapter 22.

The other example is Ignatius (c. 117 AD) who was the first Church Father to use many more quotations from the New Testament than from the Old Testament in his writings. Ignatius rebukes those who doubt the authority of the Gospel in his Epistle to the Philadelphians. In chapter 8, Ignatius plainly states that whenever he speaks the words of the Gospel with the phrase, “it is written,” then the Gospel has the same authority as Old Testament scripture. In the same passage, he likens those who would reject the authority of the Gospel by directly quoting the words of Jesus to the Apostle Paul in Acts 9:6, “It is hard to kick against the pricks.” This demonstrates the acceptance of Luke and Acts as scripture by Ignatius.

When was the New Testament written?

No matter your theological disposition, liberal or conservative, the dating of several New Testament papyri in the second century establishes that there is early and late window for the writing of the New Testament. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, thousands of manuscript fragments discovered by the renowned archaeologists, Grenfell and Hunt, in Egypt in the 1890s, yielded over 100 New Testament fragments that were older than any manuscripts that had been preserved up to that point.

Facsimile of P52, the oldest known surviving Gospel fragment, c. 115 AD

The most startling discovery was a small scrap of papyrus called P52 that contains a portion of the Gospel of John. The consensus among paleographers is that the handwriting is circa 115 AD – also incidentally the approximate date of Papias’ Exposition. Since John was likely written in Asia Minor and P52 was found in Egypt, this fragment is likely at least a copy of a copy. This also indicates a wide distribution of copies of John at an early date.

Given the events of Acts, which end abruptly in about 60 AD, the earliest possible date for Acts is about 60 AD. In the world of critical literature and especially on the Internet, we still find people claiming a date as late as 130 AD for Luke. However, it should be obvious that a book could not have been written later than its earliest copy. Due to the almost universally accepted fact that the three synoptic Gospels were written prior to John, and since John was surely written prior to end of the first century, the three synoptic Gospels probably could not have been completed prior to 90 AD.

That's a 30 year window – 60 to 90 AD. That means if the Gospel of Luke was composed, according to the liberal dating, by 85 AD, the book of Acts would have been written soon after that date. In light of the point I made with the fictitious story of JFK, the date of 85 AD by an anonymous or pseudonymous author is impossible. To have gained acceptance among Christians at the beginning of the second century, the authenticity and historical reliability of both of these works would need to be airtight.

Numerous quotes from Luke, Acts, the other three Gospels and most other New Testament books appeared in the works of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias and the writer of the Didache just a few years later. These men lived from the mid-first century onward and wrote their books from 96 to 115 AD. To quote Irenaeus, these writings of the church fathers were composed by men “who had seen and conversed with the apostles, while their preaching was still sounding in [their] ears, and their tradition was still before [their] eyes. Nor were they alone in this, for many who had been taught by the apostles still survived.”

Again, we are presented with the inevitable scenario in which the four written Gospels must have been composed and transmitted among a tight knit community that had some still living who had known and heard the Apostles preach.

Of course, one could make the charge that the letters of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp are not genuine either and therefore are no witness to New Testament reliability. The problem with this hypothesis is that these books are accepted even by liberals as being completely authentic and genuine -- the simple reason being that the church fathers of the late second century quote from them as well. There is a living link of flesh and blood from generation to generation. The Apostles who were with Jesus passed on their writings to the early bishops who transmitted them to their successors. After 96 AD, the supposed date for the Epistle of Clement, there is hardly a decade in which we don't have a record, a witness, a writing of some type that confirms an earlier record, witness or writing. The New Testament has an incredibly strong pedigree in this regard.

What is meant by “anonymous” Gospels?

There are some accomplished scholars who dispute the authenticity of the Gospels. Bart Ehrman is a world-renowned New Testament scholar. In a brief Internet conversation with Ehrman earlier this year, I asked him about his insistence on Gospel anonymity. He gave his answer:

By definition (is this really a speculation? I thought it was a truism), a writing whose author does not identify him/herself is anonymous…. The authors of the Gospels of the New Testament (unlike other Gospels outside the New Testament, and unlike other books in the New Testament) do not indicate their identity. These books are therefore anonymous. If you want to identify the authors with one person or another, that's fine – and you may have historical grounds. But in doing so you are attributing a book to someone, not indicating what the book itself says about its author.

Ehrman therefore insists that any writing in which an author does not identify himself by name within the text itself is by definition “anonymous.” However, there is absolutely no reason to think that the four Gospel authors’ names were not known or that they were not part of the titles of the books. Everyone knew who wrote The Annals in ancient times, but Tacitus did not put his name within the text. The Annals is not by definition “anonymous.” Consider also that there were four Gospels, each being copied hundreds of times, all the copies going in hundreds of different geographical directions, all ending up thousands of miles apart, yet each called by the same names no matter where they ended up decades later. The logical explanation for this is that before they were distributed throughout the known world, the titles and author names were affixed to them in some way.

I have no doubt that Bart Ehrman and other such critics are scholars and gentlemen. However, to conservative Christians, who have studied the Bible and then hear the speculations of liberal critics, they seem to us as complete idiots. As Paul says: “They profess to be wise, when really, they have become fools. They have been turned over to a reprobate mind.” I am reminded of the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room that the skeptic does not want to see.

- to be continued

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 1)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:50:45 PDT

Gone with the Wind by Ronald Reagan: A Pseudonymous Gospel

Let's pretend for a moment …

In 1985, at the age of 23, I decided to write a story about a statesman hero of mine, Joseph Fitzgerald Kennedy. The novel and its sequel became a best-seller and changed American culture. But for those who have never actually read the two novels, here is a brief outline.

"JFK" was born on December 24th, 1896 in a small town in Maryland on the outskirts of Washington D.C. His parents, two Jewish immigrants from Philadelphia, were traveling to Washington to celebrate the holidays with family members. They were forced to stop in a small hotel for several days due to the onslaught of a sudden blizzard. Since the roads were overrun by wayward holiday travelers, the only person who could take them in was a hotel keeper who gave them a small shed outside his house. The baby was born in these impossible conditions and both mother and child survived by a seeming miracle. A touring group of circus side-show workers staying in the hotel heard the story and decided to share their room with the young family. Noticing the oddity of a Christmas baby born outside an inn, some fortune tellers in the company gathered around and predicted that one day this baby would go to Washington to become president of the United States. In that dark hour, this young president would defeat America's enemies. He'd be responsible for reestablishing the state of Israel and would bring a golden age of peace and prosperity to America.

My first novel goes on to describe a brief detail about the young boy debating professors at George Washington University at age 12, then picks up with him as a Harvard professor at age 29. In a short time, JFK was famous for his public lectures and humanitarian initiatives. He toured the country a few years later giving speeches finally announcing his candidacy for president, though he had never held political office. He received the endorsement of his cousin, William Jennings Bryant, shortly after the famous Scopes Monkey Trial during which Bryant suffered disgrace and died a short time later. Many startling supernatural occurrences followed Joseph F. Kennedy throughout his career. Snippets of his many speeches were recorded in my novel, "Ask not what your country can do for you," "Give me liberty or give me death," "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and perhaps his most famous speech given shortly before he died, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

He was loved by young people and the poor. He was the people's hero. But he ruffled the feathers of both the Republican and Democratic Party leaders. They were unsure which side he stood for – he had populist appeal although he often leaned toward the right in public policy. In a dark speech in the spring of 1933, Joseph predicted that America would soon become engulfed in wars that would lead up to the establishment of Israel as a state. In less than 40 years, he prophesied Israel would be surrounded by its enemy Egypt, but the Israelis would not only prevail, but would recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Palestinians. Joseph also implied that he would not live to see it, but would be betrayed to death by those closest to him.

In 1933, Joseph seemed poised to win his party's nomination for presidency the following year, when an awful occurrence horrified his followers. An embezzling associate, named Jacob Isaacson was suddenly and inexplicably overcome with insane jealousy. While it was widely thought that Kennedy was an Irishman, it was known only to a few that he was a Jew who had designs on the presidency for the purpose of establishing Israel as a nation. Isaacson, although a Jew himself, leaked the truth of Kennedy's Semitic roots to The Washington Post, but the story was suppressed by a few editors. A rigorous campaign season ensued and Kennedy seemed poised to win the nomination of the Bull Moose Party in 1934 with the slogan "Walk softly, but carry a big stick."

Tragically, Kennedy was assassinated by American Nazi sympathizers who learned that Kennedy was a Jew. He was shot in the neck by the son of Charles Lindbergh, whom the Nazis had kidnapped and brainwashed a few years earlier, while Kennedy was watching the premiere of Gone with the Wind in a movie theater in Baltimore in 1934. JFK's followers mourned but vowed to fight on. The tale of JFK sightings persisted among his youthful following. He was seen as a gas station attendant, a gardener, and even some imagined they saw him while traveling in snow storms on Christmas Eve.

The book was originally published as a series of untitled, anonymous articles in Harper's Magazine, but soon became known as Gone with the Wind. A later edition appeared in 1984 under the name of one of Kennedy's most faithful supporters, Ronald Reagan, a washed up B-movie actor who had never met JFK, but ran for office on the Bull Moose Party ticket achieving the governorship of California in 1966.

I later wrote The Acts of Ronald Reagan, an unauthorized pseudonymous autobiography of sorts, which tells the events from Reagan's perspective of Kennedy's death in 1934 up to Reagan's support for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. I was never able to finish the story of Reagan as it abruptly ends with Goldwater's speech at the 1964 Bull Moose Party convention.

**************************************************

Obviously, there is no such presidential candidate as Joseph F. Kennedy. I conflated several factual stories about United States presidents with stories from the Bible, many anachronisms and much outright fiction. I took the framework of the story of Jesus and the Apostles of the first century and brought it about 1900 years into the future. I supposed I was a second generation non-eyewitness writing a legendary story about Joseph F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

I took a perspective that would have been similar to that of the Church Fathers (Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias) the youngest of whom was probably born no later than 65 AD. Since I was born in 1962, I simply fast-forwarded about 1900 years to use that as an anchor date in this fictitious allegory.

But let's now consider something even more outrageous …

Suppose that during Ronald Reagan's second term of presidency, there were JFK followers who had long since grown into a religious cult, who believed that JFK was still alive and ruling as the president of the United States from heaven, waiting come back to earth to supplant the Republican Party with the Bull Moose agenda. These fanatical cultists then took my work of fiction, which I never intended to be taken literally, and assumed it was true. They gathered some other stories about JFK and circulated these throughout the United States, reading them at weekly meetings.

Now it is almost 2010. Would it be possible to sell my novel series to the American people as non-fiction? Is it really possible that some would mistake these stories as a historical narrative?

Of course not!

The reason for this should be obvious. There are many people alive today who were born in the 1930s. They were taught well in school and have a good understanding of United States History. Many of them can remember Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, World War Two and many of the historical events that were misrepresented in my story. Many of them voted for John F. Kennedy, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. A story that conflates nonsense with reality could never be thought of as anything but an entertaining work of fiction. And even 50 to 100 years from now, there is no way that any of this could be misconstrued as a work of history.

Yet this is exactly how liberals, skeptics and atheists view the New Testament – as a compilation of Jewish midrash of Old Testament stories by anonymous or pseudonymous writers whose works were then taken as fact just a few years after they died by a burgeoning cult who had their roots in similar beliefs and experiences. Exactly 1900 years ago, after the last of the Apostles had passed away and the Church was in the hands of the bishops, someone had already collated the four Gospels and Acts into several codices, as well as the letters of Paul and some other Epistles. By the second century, someone had made numerous copies and distributed them among the churches. Liberal theologians assume that the bishops, deacons, and the rank and file believers of the late first and early second century were so woefully unaware of history that they were capable of taking a colorful collection of "urban legends" and interpreting it as "truth."

- to be continued

Why the Florida Catholic Bishops are wrong to oppose the pro-life Personhood Amendment

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:00:46 PDT

It is our opinion, and that of the legal experts with whom we have consulted, that passage of this amendment would not achieve the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade.

If such an amendment were to pass, a feat more difficult in our state due to the requirement to achieve support by 60% of voters, we are convinced that a federal district court would strike it down based on Roe. This decision would undoubtedly be affirmed by an appellate court, and the case would either not be granted further review by today’s U.S. Supreme Court, or worse, lead to a reaffirmation of Roe. The unintended effect would very likely jeopardize current protections in state law and cause a loss of momentum in the ultimate goal of establishing full legal protection of the unborn from the moment of conception.

- The Catholic Bishops of Florida

In a nutshell: Based on the idea that the Personhood Amendment would cause the Supreme Court to rule on Roe v. Wade, no one should support this. Instead we should focus on incremental measures.

This is wrong for several reasons.

Yes, it is the culture that changes the law, but it is meaningless to talk about changing the culture unless we are actively involved in changing the beliefs, values and laws that govern us as individuals. We must do this through constant discussion, debate and education. Advocating for a Personhood Amendment is an excellent way to do this.

Furthermore, incremental measures may be seen to be counterproductive in our attemp. Every law that places a restriction on abortion is in fact a legal precedent that affirms Roe v. Wade. Even if Roe were struck down tomorrow, these incremental measures would stand even in states that had a ban or restriction on abortion prior to Roe.

"You must have parental consent, a five day waiting period, and an ultra-sound, then you have the legal right to kill your baby!"

That is the standard presented by the Catholic bishops of Florida at this time. This is no way to build a culture of life. We cannot affirm the right to life by sanctioning legal child murder only in some circumstances. The way to affirm a culture of life is to legally define the personhood of a human being from the beginning of biological development.

It is an incremental step in that regard.

We can legally define "the beginning of biological development" as constituting a human life, a legal "person" and a "natural person." That will change the culture.

To get 60 percent of the voters to agree to this, first we must ask eight percent to think about it and agree with their signatures that such an amendment is needed. Even if we fail to get the signatures needed, we are actively engaging in evangelism, getting the hearts and minds of people lined up with truth. People who have never evangelized before will lead people to Christ through their petitioning. That will change the culture.

When we get the amendment on the ballot, there will be a huge fight. A debate over abortion and when life begins has never occurred in our culture at large. Legalized abortion for any reason through all nine months of pregancy was enforced from the top down in most states by a Supreme Court decision. Even in states that had legal abortion, there were restrictions that were knocked down by Roe and Doe v. Bolton. For the first time in 37 years, we will be calling on the free will of the people to decide for themselves. That will change the culture.

If the measure fails in Florida, we will keep trying in other states until one passes. Within 24 hours there will be a legal injunction by a higher court that calls on the state to not enforce laws regulating or banning abortion. At that point, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case. Even if we lose, we win. It will establish a clear cut division between the will of the courts and the will of the people. That will change the culture.

Then we will seek to pass such amendments and resolutions in other states. That will change the culture.

We will eventually get such an intitative passed in 34 of the so-called "red states" -- enough for a United States Constitutional Amendment that will protect the life of a person from the beginning of biological development. Roe will be moot. Now longer will it be the fiat "law of the land" enforced by judicial tyranny. It will only apply to Roe and Wade. And I hear Jane Roe is now pro-life.

We can change the culture, but it must come from the will of the people, not through the courts. It must come through the states.

Key facts

1. Through 2008, there were 24 voter petition initiatives on the Florida ballot since the process began in 1978 (in addition to legislative initiatives).

2. Of those 24, 20 were approved by voters.

3. Florida voters have approved a higher percentage of their statewide ballot measures than voters in any other state.

This position paper is not copyrighted and may be forwarded and distributed to anyone without prior permission.

- Jay Rogers
http://forerunner.com/

Why we should create cognitive dissonance on the “pro-life / pro-choice” issue

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:56:14 PDT

I found the following poll interesting because as I am out collecting petitions for Florida's pro-life Personhood Amendment, I find that many people are confused about the term “pro-life.”

More than 25 percent of people who say they are “pro-choice” on abortion really take a “pro-life” position against most abortions.

The Marist College Institute of Public Opinion conducted a survey between September 24 and October 3, 2008.

Of the “pro-life” group

13 percent say abortion should never be permitted.
15 percent say abortions should only be allowed to save the life of the mother.
32 percent say abortions should be allowed in that rare case and when the mother is a victim of rape or incest.

A full 60 percent of Americans say abortions should never be allowed or only in rare circumstances, such as danger to the life of the mother, rape and incest, that constitute less than two percent of all abortions nationwide.

Of the “pro-choice” group

24 percent said abortion should be allowed only in the first trimester.
8 percent believed abortions should be allowed any time during the first 6 months of pregnancy.
8 percent agreed that abortions should be allowed any time during pregnancy for any reason.

Just 40 percent took one of these three pro-abortion positions.

A confusion of labels

Even though the survey found 60 percent of respondents took a pro-life position against all or most abortions, 50 percent of Americans called themselves “pro-choice” while only 44 percent said they were pro-life.

Of the so-called “pro-choice” group

5 percent of people who self-identified as “pro-choice” said abortions should never be permitted.
3 percent said only to save the life of the mother.
20 percent said only in cases of the life of the mother, rape or incest.

In other words, 28 percent of Americans who call themselves “pro-choice” actually oppose 98 percent of all abortions.

More cognitive dissonance among “pro-choice” advocates

71 percent said they favored more abortion limits.
15 percent of those describing themselves as “pro-choice” favored unrestricted abortion throughout a pregnancy.

- LifeNews.com

Commentary by Jay Rogers

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is that mental or emotional internal conflict caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. It is believed by some to be a possible source of mental illness. In the field of Christian apologetics, cognitive dissonance can be used by the evangelist to call for the “renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). Those hearing the Gospel must choose between one of two alternate understandings of reality or worldviews. Even as Christians, our thought patterns often conform to the pattern of this world. To remain torn between two worlds is the state of a sick mind and a suffering heart. The more we hear the Gospel preached, the more we must align ourselves with either the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light. The more we align our thinking with the Word of God, the more we move from doubt and unbelief to positive faith.

One of the most baffling phenomena in my experience as a pro-life activist consists of the various smokescreens surrounding the abortion issue. Two of the greatest misconceptions are the following:

1. That abortion is needed for cases of rape and incest.

2. That abortion is restricted in some way beyond the first trimester.

This was essentially the language of Roe v. Wade when it was enforced upon the American people in all 50 states. The pro-abortion advocates won the legal battle and then proceeded to wage a public relations propaganda war surrounding the so-called “exceptions.” But in fact, Roe’s companion decision Doe v. Bolton allowed abortion for any reason through all nine months. The irony is that vast majority of “pro-choice” and “pro-life” Americans are completely unaware of this.

This is one reason why I am convinced that the national campaign to pass Personhood Amendments to the constitutions of 34 or more states is the right language and the right strategy at the right time. The fact is that America has never had a national dialog on the ethics of abortion either before or since Roe v. Wade. By pressing for ballot initiatives that would enact the anti-thesis of abortion “rights,” we are conducting this needed debate. The “mushy middle” will no longer be able to ignore the facts.

As we push for these legislative and ballot initiatives to enact Personhood Amendments, we are simultaneously challenging those who hold to “only the exceptions” as to why they really believe abortion ought to be illegal in 98 percent of all current cases. In other words, why in fact should abortion be restricted for the most common excuse of convenience or economic situations? If abortion is morally objectionable because it is the killing of an unborn human person, then one must grapple with the issue of allowing killing in “only certain circumstances.” We need to create cognitive dissonance in the minds of these people.

What most pro-life advocates don’t realize is that it is possible to drive people away from a pro-abortion view simply by asking questions. No argument or debate is needed. All we need to do is offer an antithesis -- that is, to expose an accepted contradiction -- and seek to create as much cognitive dissonance as possible. Here are some questions to ask those caught in the mushy middle.

Why would we ever allow the killing of an unborn child who is the product of rape or incest, but not call for capital punishment in cases of battery-rape and pedophilia?
If abortion is wrong after the first trimester, then why is it wrong?
If abortion after the first trimester is wrong because it is the killing of a human person, then what about the child at two months or one month? When does this developing human life become a “person”?
When is it ever morally acceptable to kill a person? Why? Do any of these reasons include killing an innocent person?
Does abortion “to save the life of the mother” include first making every effort medically available to save the life of both the mother and the unborn child? -- If so, why is this called an “abortion”?

By asking such pointed questions –- many more can be formulated -- we are pressing our advantage simply because as William Cullen Bryant once wrote, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”

If we continue to ask for truthful answers to these questions, we will win. In fact, we will find that we have already won, but most are just unaware of the victory. Due to their cognitive dissonance, they are unable to act accordingly.

By confronting the inevitable conclusions, those “pro-choice” advocates who advocate killing in only two percent of all cases will be forced to come into the light and admit that they would allow child murder. If they can live with this cognitive dissonance, then so be it. But I am convinced that the darkness cannot hide from the light.

This position paper is not copyrighted and the words and ideas it contains may be reproduced and distributed without prior permission.

Personhood: The Right Language and the Correct Strategy at the Right Time

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:14:37 PDT

In 1972, when Chief Justice Warren Burger appointed Harry Blackmun to write the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade it was at first rejected. Blackmun at first argued that a woman had a right to do whatever she pleased with her own body. This argument was rejected by Burger because it did not apply to drugs, public nudity, suicide attempts, and so on. It was too unsophisticated an argument for such a difficult case. Blackmun filed for a reargument and waited for Nixon to fill two vacancies on the nine member court (Roe was originally decided with seven). In October, the court heard rearguments with new appointees Powell and Rehnquist. This time Justice Stewart asked Sarah Weddington if it was critical to her case to say that the 14th amendment did not protect the fetus as a "person."

He asked: "If it were established that the fetus is a person, within the protection of the 14th amendment, you would have almost an impossible case here, would you not?"

"I would have a very difficult case," Weddington said.

Robert Flowers, representing the defense, asked, "Is the life of this unborn fetus paramount over the woman's right to determine whether or not she shall bear a child? This court has been diligent in protecting the rights of minorities, and, gentleman, we say hat it is a minority, a silent minority, the true silent minority. Who is speaking for these children?"

Weddington responded that her case was not to advocate abortion. It was to advocate that the decision was within the purview of the woman and her doctor and not the state. This has been the pro-choice argument all along -- that "choice" is protected by a constitutional right to privacy. Without getting into all the arguments over whether such a "right to privacy" can be established in the United States Constitution (and I think it cannot) let's suffice it to say that most Americans are sympathetic to this idea. They are not, however, sympathetic to abortion on demand through all nine months for any reason.

To make a long story short, Blackmun compromised and decided that late term abortion was problematic, but first trimester abortion and up to the time of viability could be protected in certain situations (rape, incest) under the "right to privacy." The decision said that the states still had a compelling interest to regulate abortion after the time of viability. In effect, it recognized the Pershonhood of the fetus after viability.

Blackmun stated that "... it must be stressed that the court does not hold that the Constitution [provides] abortion on demand."

In fact, he wrote in the decision, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."

It's ironic that pro-choice advocates have used this to argue that we cannot know ever when life begins "because of the wide range of beliefs on this sensitive issue." But this postmodernist statement leaves open the possibility that we cannot ever make moral judgments about anything. If the vast majority of Americans see it as self-evident that killing a baby in the womb for the sake of convenience is murder, then we can legislate this moral truth into civil law.

The vast majority of Americans believe that the baby is fully human at viability. Yet we have abortion on demand through all nine months. A sizeable majority in at least 34 states (enough to enact a Constitutional Amendment) believes that life begins at conception or sometime in the first six weeks (the time when virtually no elective abortions are performed). Yet we have abortion on demand through all nine months for any reason.

"Personhood" is therefore the right language.

What happened after Roe.

Roe v. Wade still allowed states to restrict abortion. Doe v. Bolton then extended the right to privacy throughout all nine months. It swept away any notion of Personhood overriding the right to choose. Here it is important to understand the long term strategy. Even if a state-by-state Personhood Amendment fails to overturn Roe, it could result in returning the states to a pre-Doe scenario which might eliminate the 95 to 98 percent of abortions, which are provided on demand for any reason.

The Supreme Court fiat law had the effect of liberalizing abortion even in the few states that already had the most liberal abortion laws. Even the pro-choice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has written that the Court "went on to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law in force.... the Roe decision left virtually no state with laws fully conforming to the Court's delineation of abortion regulation still permissible. Around that extraordinary decision, a well organized and vocal right-to-life movement rallied."

It's interesting to note that even one of the most outspoken pro-choice Supreme Court Justices sympathizes with the thinking of the pro-life movement due to the top-down comprehensive enforcement of a policy that she agrees with. It is not impossible that even some of the "liberal activist" justices would side with the idea that the states should decide the issue for themselves. In fact, it would be even more difficult for our pro-abortion opponents to argue that this is a "Republican regime" instituted decision if even one Democrat-appointed Justice recognized the constitutionality of the Amendment -- by virtue of the fact that it was decided by the people of one of the 50 states.

"Personhood" is therefore the right language and the correct strategy.

The Supreme Court is not the only avenue through which to overturn the effect of Roe.

Here's a truly radical idea. Let a majority of the voters or state legislators in 34 states decide when the life of a person begins. In the current climate of distrust and creeping federal tyranny, this strategy to go back to the root of our democratic process -- the will of the people -- is well-timed. Still it might seem to some on the surface a random, quixotic campaign to go after the difficult liberal states such as California and Colorado. Admittedly it is a Herculean task to collect 700,000 or more signatures in the huge state of Florida. But in doing so, we are pressing the antithesis. We are trying to raise the bar, so to speak, in the most difficult states so that when we have our first victory in a state like Mississippi, it will cause a tidal wave of support in more conservative states where it will pass more easily.

All that is needed is a "yes" vote in 34 state legislatures to enact a Personhood Amendment to the United States Constitution. Even if this is struck down in one state by the Supreme Court, they can't resist the two-third majority clause in the Constitution itself.

"Personhood" is therefore the right language and the correct strategy at the right time.

Does the culture change the law or does the law change the culture?

It is meaningless to talk about changing the law unless we are actively involved in changing the beliefs and values that govern us as individuals through discussion, debate, teaching, symbolism and active demonstration. Even with a Supreme Court overturn of Roe, we would still have a long way to go in changing the United States from a culture of death to a culture of life. Every law currently in place that places a restriction on abortion is in fact a legal precedent that affirms Roe v. Wade. Even if Roe were struck down tomorrow, these incremental measures would stand even in states that had a ban or restriction on abortion prior to Roe.

"You must have parental consent, a five day waiting period, and an ultra-sound, then you have the legal right to kill your baby!"

That is the standard presented by many "pro-life" measures at this time. This is no way to build a culture of life. We cannot affirm the right to life by applauding legal child murder only in some circumstances. The way to affirm a culture of life is to legally define the personhood of a human being from the beginning of biological development.

Personhood is an incremental step in that regard.

We can legally define "the beginning of biological development" of an individual. We can further define that biological development as constituting a human life, a legal "person" and a "natural person." That will change the culture.

In the state of Florida, to eventually get 60 percent of the voters to agree to this as a ballot proposition, first we must ask eight percent to think about it and agree with their signatures that such an amendment is needed. Even if we fail to get the signatures needed, we are actively engaging in evangelism. We are working to get the hearts and minds of people lined up with truth. People who have never evangelized before will lead people to Christ through their petitioning. That will change the culture.

When we get the amendment on the ballot, there will be a huge fight. A debate over abortion and when life begins has never occurred in our culture at large. Legalized abortion for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy was enforced from the top down in most states by a Supreme Court decision. Even in states that had legal abortion, there were restrictions that were knocked down by Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. For the first time in 37 years, we will be calling on the free will of the people to decide for themselves. That will change the culture.

If the measure fails in Florida, we will keep trying in other states until one passes. Within 24 hours there will be a legal injunction by a higher court that calls on the state to not enforce laws regulating or banning abortion. At that point, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case. Even if we lose, we win. It will be establish a clear cut division between the will of the courts and the will of the people. That will change the culture.

Then we will seek to pass such amendments and resolutions in other states. That will change the culture.

We will eventually get such an intitiative passed in 34 of the so-called "red states" -- enough for a United States Constitutional Amendment that will protect the life of a person from the beginning of biological development. Roe will be moot. Now longer will it be the fiat "law of the land" enforced by judicial tyranny. It will only apply to Roe and Wade. And I hear Jane Roe is now pro-life.

We can change the culture, but it must come from the will of the people, not through the courts. It must come through the states.

Key Facts

1. Through 2008, there were 24 voter petition initiatives on the Florida ballot since the process began in 1978 (in addition to legislative initiatives).

2. Of those 24, 20 were approved by voters.

3. Florida voters have approved a higher percentage of their statewide ballot measures than voters in any other state.

This position paper is not copyrighted and may be forwarded to anyone without prior permission.

Would the Florida Personhood Amendment ban birth control?

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:17:12 PDT

The following person wrote to express her concern about the proposed Personhood Amendment:

I am very pro-life but I cannot in good conscience vote "yes" on this.

I take birth control for medical reasons. I have been married for over 11 years and want nothing more than to have a baby. However, due to medical problems beyond my control, I MUST take birth control to ensure I have a monthly menstrual cycle. If I don't take birth control, I do NOT get my period and have suffered from hemorrhaging that almost killed me, anemia, scar tissue build-up on my reproductive organs, etc.

If this group would at least eliminate the proposed ban on birth control from the language of the amendment, I would support it. However, as is, they do not have my support.

Posted by: Maureen on September 30, 2009 1:07 PM

The proposed ballot initiative defines a "person" and a "natural person" as a human being "from the beginning of the biological development."

The language of the amendment says nothing about birth control.

This is what this amendment will say when it is eventually passed:

The words “person” and “natural person” apply to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

For information on how to download and circulate petitions go to http://personhoodfl.com/ On the petition form itself is the language of the amendment.

How did this "ban birth control" distortion get started in Florida? The media asked Dr. Patricia McEwen at a press conference in Tallahassee on September 11, 2009, if the amendment would ban abortifacient birth control because some think estrogen-based birth control pills work by causing an embryo not to implant in the wall of the mother's uterus. Dr. McEwen correctly explained that it would first need to be established which forms of birth control are abortifacient and which are contraceptive. As an experienced researcher with a PhD, Pat said she believes that this is far from a settled issue. The latter portion of the statement didn't make it into most news reports.

The next day we saw headlines around the state of Florida with this nonsense proclaiming that the amendment would "ban birth control" and grant human rights to a "fertilized egg." This was dishonest reporting and it even made many pro-life advocates confused about the amendment's language.

Obviously, if and when the abortifacient nature of certain types of chemical birth control can be demonstrated, there would need to be better and safer methods prescribed. In fact, the therapy Maureen is describing might be able to be done with progesterone, which does not affect implantation. On the other hand, estrogen is often used for contraception, but it may also affect implantation and cause spontaneous abortion.

Additional study and legislation would be needed to define legal contraception and hormonal therapy as methods that do not kill a human being. Such methods are already available that are much safer and more reliable than methods that may cause spontaneous abortion. Hormone replacement therapy for example is seldom prescribed now because of the complications involved. These dangers, mostly cardiovascular (heart attack or stroke) are also true of the "pill." It is simply not a "safe" method of contraception. In fact, natural methods are safer and more reliable if used correctly.

The language of the Personhood Amendment simply does not deal with this question. It just tells us what the legal definition of a "person" is.

Commentary

Most Americans would ban most abortion on demand because it is the killing of a human person. This is supported by biblical law, but even natural law supports this view. It has been demonstrated through intra-uterine photography, fetal photoscopy, and now with 3-D and 4-D ultrasound, that a "person" is a human being from the beginning of biological development.

A "person" is described in the United States Constitution and all state constitutions as having inalienable rights given to us by our Creator God. Still we needed an amendment to define blacks and minorities as "persons." Now we need to define all human beings as persons at their biological beginnings. And we must begin to do this state-by-state until enough states are on board to pass a federal Constitutional Amendment.

"All human beings are persons from the beginning of biological development."

Memorize that phrase and repeat it as often as possible!

It is a mistake to let the other side define the language of debate. We can win by emphasizing what most people in most states already believe -- that all human beings are persons at their biological beginnings. I am excited about Personhood because I believe that this is the way we will eventually win. But I am discouraged to see the language being shifted by the pro-aborts to emphasize "birth control" and "fertilized eggs" instead of keeping the emphasis on the definition of a "person."

An embryo is not a "fertilized egg." This is an oxymoron. An embryo is a tiny biologically developing human being. In any case, the language of the amendment speaks only about the beginning of biological development. It doesn't deal with questions about contraception, implantation and whether biological beginnings must be observed. The gist of the language must be interpreted to mean that when we are certain of biological beginnings, then this tiny human being must be considered a person.

It's simple language and that is the reason for the distortion. The pro-abortion media are the lap dogs of Planned Parenthood and NARAL. They get their talking points directly from them. They know our language is powerful and that is why they are trying to distort it. They know where the public is moving on the issue of developing human life.

And they know we will win with this language!

The way to begin to create a culture of life is to affirm the personhood of a human being from the beginning of biological development. Forget the "life begins at conception" or "life begins at fertilization" argument. Forget about "fertilized eggs." Forget discussions about abortifacient birth control. We can't legally determine the moment of conception for every individual -- at least not at this point in our scientific and medical knowledge. And if we could ever determine this, a law regulating abortion shortly after the moment of conception would continue to be almost unenforceable due to the lack of visible evidence in most cases.

While it is a biblical truth that life begins at conception, the civil law is constrained to operate on a much narrower parameter. And practically, elective abortions are never done until we know that life has begun -- at six weeks and later – long after the "little one" in the womb shows compelling signs of biological development. The issue of abortifacient birth control is another issue. RU-486 is another issue to be regulated by specific laws. It's related to the implications of such an amendment, but the amendment does not even address that idea. The amendment simply says that when we can discern the beginning of the biological development of a human being, then that is a "person" according to legal definitions.

It is an incremental step in that regard.

Feel free to use any or all of the above when countering this media myth. Please help us to circulate over a million of these petitions. We need over 600,000 valid signatures from registered voters to get this on the ballot. And be prepared to help us counter the distortions. There is a big fight coming! We pray it will have a peaceful outcome.

Personhood Florida - How to circulate ballot petitions

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:48:29 PDT

Cal and Corrie Zastrow train volunteers in Longwood, Florida.

Watch this video and then download a copy of the petition at:

http://personhoodfl.com/resource-kits/

1. Post this video on your web page or blog. (Get the code at YouTube.)

- or -

2. Forward the url to every pro-life Christian you know.

Let's get Personhood initiatives started in 35 states!

Senator Bob Smith endorses the Florida Personhood Amendment

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:09:38 PDT

This letter has been out for a few days, but it's the first time I've seen it. It's exciting, because as a former US Senator, Smith has the experience and the credibility to do well in the upcoming Senatorial race. Even if he doesn't win the primaries in a crowded Republican field, the significance of this is that it will force at least some of the other Republican candidates to support the initiative as well. This is really good news!

From: Senator Bob Smith bob_smith@bobsmithussenate.com
Subject: I Strongly Endorse the Personhood Amendment
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 1:20 PM

Fellow Members of Florida's Pro Life Community:

I wholeheartedly support the initiative for a Personhood Amendment to our state constitution. Not only does pro-life include protecting the unborn, but all people at every stage of their lives. Every individual has dignity and it is not the function of government to decide which lives have more value than others. You have my pledge that as your U.S. Senator I will pursue this at the federal level as vigorously as I led the fight to enact the Partial Birth Abortion Ban during my previous tenure in the U.S. Senate.

May God bless our efforts on this vital issue.

Senator Bob

--
Robert C. Smith
Former United States Senator (1991-2003); and
Candidate for United States Senate from Florida

This is an official communication authorized by Friends of Senator Bob Smith. Paid for by Friends of Senator Bob Smith. Not authorized by any other candidate committee or political action committee.

www.friendsofsenatorbobsmith.com

The Freudian Cult of Victimization

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:07:06 PDT

I was recently having a discussion with a young woman who was explaining how people like her had been victimized by a church denomination I used to be a member of 20 years ago. I am open to such discussions whenever I believe they can bring people toward reconciliation. In the course of the discussion, she made this intriguing statement. (Since it was posted on a public message board, I cite it here only for the purpose of showing an example of a common idea.)

Truth is objective, yes -- but postmodernism does contain in it this very real truth (which is, as far as I can see, it's only objective statement) -- that for humans, objectivity is a myth. Only God can be truly objective; only God can be the arbiter of truth. We humans are finite and fallible, and the kind of wisdom we are called to walk in is not the wisdom of objectivity -- because we are limited to our own heads, tied by our own cultures and experiences.

The postmodernist idea that we are too flawed to know truth is nonsense. We can't know all of God's truth obviously, but God gave His Word to us so we can know truth. Jesus prayed to the Father on our behalf:

"Sanctify them by your Word. Your Word is truth." - John 17:17

God enables us by the Holy Spirit to understand truth. Yes, we are limited by fallibility and sin. But truth is transcendent and objective and we can know it. However, I am glad for the recognition of postmodernism's inherent contradiction: If we still insist that objectivity is a myth, then we must at least admit that we can never be too sure about that!

Freudian Cultism and "Christian" Counseling

One of the most destructive postmodernists in history was Sigmund Freud. Likewise, one of the biggest problems in the church today is pastors who want to counsel church members along the lines of psychotherapy, rather than instructing them to obey what they already know God's Word says to do. Unfortunately, the philosophy of counseling that has come into the church is traced directly from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud taught that there is an unconscious mind that is chaotic. There lies buried unresolved conflicts from our childhood that were constellated around one of three "psycho-sexual stages." With the exception of the "startling insight" that bad parents can cause problems for children even later in life, Freud was wrong about almost everything.

Freud was a buffoon.

His personal life showed that he cared only about himself and fulfilling his own need for carnal gratification. He taught that neurotics need to vent their repressed memories and that healing can come only through catharsis. This is completely wrong. In fact, the more we dwell on past hurts the more ingrained they become. Sometimes it helps people to have their feelings validated. "Of course you feel that way, you are right to feel that way! You would be crazy not to feel that way!" It feels like a relief to hear that, but it doesn't solve the problem ... ever.

No matter how much we vent our repressed feelings, this is not the way to heal inner emotional conflict. In fact, prior to Freud no one taught this. It's not biblical and it's never been proven that it can help to restore emotional and mental health. Almost all studies show that psychoanalysis does little more than make the patient dependent on it. At $100 an hour. What a racket!

Healing comes only through forgiveness and prayer.

Where does it say that in the Bible?

"And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil."

- Matthew 6:12-13

All of us deserve hell, so when we realize that we can forgive even as God forgives us, then that becomes a source of joy, healing -- and most importantly -- deliverance from evil. But if we keep talking about how much others hurt us, then we haven't really forgiven, nor have we accepted God's power to deliver us from evil.

If another Christian has hurt me, I believe in seeking justice through directly confronting the person who has sinned against me. If he refuses to repent, then I should go a second time with a witness. If he repents, I have won my brother. If he still refuses, then I can tell it to the church. Or I can just walk away from the conflict with a clear conscience (Matthew 18:15-17).

Whenever I have done the right thing in confrontation, God always has given me a sound mind about it in time. And whenever the person has refused to see his error, God has always brought providential sanctions on him further down the road. And whenever I have thought someone else wrongfully confronted me, I have stood my ground and God himself has shown who was right in the end.

God is great. God is good. God is just. In the grand scheme of things, if you just obey what He says, no one can ever rip you off.

We all need to be a bit more like Joseph and David and a lot less like Judah and Saul.

The problem is that we have this cult of victimization that teaches us that we need to dwell on our hurt, nurture it and then use it to validate our status as a loser. Somehow we think this makes us a winner. It's all Freudian nonsense and Christians should know better.

This cult of victimization has a very strong pull. People go on daytime television and spill their guts to an audience that only loathes and pities them. They think that by portraying themselves as losers that some type of justice will prevail. But the catharsis they experience as the American viewing public dines on their wretched bile makes them all the more loathsome.

Then Jerry Springer appears at the end of the show and says:

"Well, what did we learn today?"

We learned, Jerry, that a God-hating, womanizing coke-fiend from Austria named Sigmund Freud still has the ability to wreck havoc in American culture even though he's been dead for 70 years. And more tragically, the church is partly responsible.

"And God bless you, Jerry! See you next week!"

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 4)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:33:13 PDT

Here is a great postmodernist quote by Frank Schaeffer from his blog:

While the term postmodernism is often used to describe an aesthetic, artistic worldview characterized by a distrust of theories and ideology, I think it usefully applies (or rather should apply) to the "certainties" on both sides in the religion vs. atheism debate.

Brilliant! In other words, "Postmodernism doesn't mean uncertainty; it means certainty." Or does it? One can never be too sure about these things!

In any case, one thing is certain, Frank Schaeffer has learned to use blogspot.com and since August has been blogging from his parents' basement. (Metaphorically speaking of course!)

In part two, of this series, I claimed that the best way to confront Frank Schaeffer's attacks on common sense is to realize that he's just another angry postmodernist. The way to counter him is to first realize that virtually everything he says is complete drivel.

It reminds me of the passage in Through The Looking Glass in which Alice is talking to Humpty Dumpty:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.

Puzzled? That's exactly how I feel when reading or listening to Frank Schaeffer. I say: "But words mean things!" Franky Dumpty says: "No, they don't! They sneer whatever aesthetic I confuse they brrg snrffle!"

Ironically, after posting part two, in an episode of postmodernist doubt, I wondered if Frank Schaeffer himself has ever criticized existentialism and postmodernism as being an unviable philosophy, as his father, the late great Francis Schaeffer, had done so forcefully in How Should We Then Live? So I did a little research by reading his new blog.

Frank frequently quotes the 19th century philospoher Søren Kierkegaard, who was simultaneouly existentialist, neo-orthodox, postmodernist and humanist. One could sum up the entire philosophy of Kierkegaard as "uncertainty about God." Some of the most comic philosophical quotes of all time were offered by this crazy Dane. I say these are comic quotes, because they have the quality of sounding both obvious and profound, while really being nonsense. Kierkegard's philosophy is reminiscent of the "sound of one hand clapping" cliché of Zen Buddhism, which is meant to show that meaning comes only through accepting paradoxical truths. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" the Zen master asks. It's a rhetorical question. In other words, "People who know, do not know; just as people who do not know, do not know."

I must find a truth that is true for me.

Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

So let others admire and extol him who claims to be able to comprehend Christianity. . . . I regard it then as a plain duty to admit that one neither can nor shall comprehend it.

William Blake: "Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels"

Both Blake and Kierkegaard emphasized the belief that fear and anxiety come from not recognizing the tension of opposite forces. In Blake's case, this idea took the form of a Neo-Gnostic dualism.

Thus Kierkegaard represents the erupting existential angst among 19th century thinkers who feverishly sought out truth and meaning, but were never content with biblical truth and historic Christian orthodoxy as a source and thereby missed the forest for the trees.

Of course, not everything Kierkegaard said was wrong and it is subject to interpretation. If understood in a Christian context, Kierkegaard's idea of a "leap of faith" has some antecedents among the writings of the Church Fathers. But to understand Frank Schaeffer, one must understand that he -- like Kierkegard, Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer, and Rudolph Bultmann before him -- is self-consciously neo-orthodox. The term, neo-orthodoxy is somewhat misleading in that it isn't a "new orthodoxy," but a mid-20th century revision of the Historical Critical method espoused by the liberal theologians 50 to 100 years prior to that.

Today Frank has ventured to express his admiration of Kierkegard and Barth. Don't be surprised that if tomorrow you hear him echoing Bishop Shelby Spong and John Dominic Crossan. He's an iconclast who has taken to disagreeing with anyone who stands for certainty and objective truth. His mode of operation is first contradiction and then affirmation in the next breath. In this way, he is impossible to pin down.

The promo to his new book says:

Frank Schaeffer has a problem with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and the rest of the New Atheists — the self-anointed “Brights.” He also has a problem with the Rick Warrens and Tim LaHayes of the world. The problem is that he doesn’t see much of a difference between the two camps. As Schaeffer puts it, they “often share the same fallacy: truth claims that reek of false certainties. I believe that there is an alternative that actually matches the way life is lived rather than how we usually talk about belief.”

I too have a problem with Dawkins, Hitchens, Warren and LaHaye. But it isn't because they speak of certainties. On the contrary, it is because Dawkins and Hitchens are postmodernist atheists reveling in ad hominems designed to provoke an emotional response and making all sorts of illogical appeals. On the other hand, Warren and LaHaye, while being orthodox in the essentials, have spouted all sorts of bizzare minor heresies in their best-selling books. It's not an issue of "certainty" being false in and of itself, but of them being certain of their error.

Frank Schaeffer is criticizing these men not for merely being wrong. He is essentially saying that anyone who thinks he is absolutely right about something is wrong. And that is one thing he is absolutely sure about.

If everything I've written here only makes your head spin. Don't worry, it's a sign that you are sane. The point to remember is that Frank Schaeffer, supposedly a one-time champion of Reformed Orthodoxy, has succumbed to Gnostic dualism. He's adopted an elitist attitude that sneers at every Christian who grasps at the fixed anchor of biblical truth.

In part five, we'll look at whether Frank Schaeffer ever even understood Reformed theology to begin with.

Don't be fooled by Obamacare, it includes abortion!

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:15:15 PDT

I am on the NARAL Pro-Choice America email list because I like to see what they are thinking. As McArthur said, "Know your enemy."

This is from today.

Anti-choice politicians have drawn a line in the sand: they won't be happy until women who now have private insurance coverage for abortion lose it in the new health-care system. The stakes for women could not be higher in the health-care debate.

That's why we're meeting with key lawmakers all day today to drive the point home—and making sure that anti-choice legislators don't succeed in banning private insurance companies from covering abortion care in a reformed health-care system.

So according to NARAL, if Obamacare passes with a public option, then your tax dollars will pay for abortion. Commentators on the left have called us liars for saying the public option includes abortion, but when Nancy Keenan writes that they are making sure "anti-choice legislators don't succeed in banning abortion in a reformed health-care system," then we know that it is part of the public option. They know it is and want to save it.

Don't be fooled by the distinction between public and private. If healthcare stays in the hands of private companies then we still have a choice of what type of plan we pay into. If it becomes "public" (i.e, socialized) then you will pay for abortions.

Call your congressman and senators and do the opposite of what Nancy Keenan of NARAL says to do! And feel free to foreward this message to everyone you know.

- Jay Rogers
www.forerunner.com/blog

Franky Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 3)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:20:20 PDT

What to say about the murder of pro-life activist James Pouillon?

Mark Browne, M.Ed, a speech-language pathologist from Melbourne, Florida offered this expert comment: "Frank Schaeffer's hateful demonizing speech against pro-lifers has created a culture where such things can occur, with little fanfare from the media."

Sal Lonberg, an ornithologist from Palm Bay, Florida said, "Like the vast majority of pro-life advocates, Jim was non-violent and never condoned violence. The great irony here is that the same people who rushed to canonize Tiller the Killer have remained deafeningly silent and have even celebrated the death of this gentle soul."

Carol Matthews, a scientist at Kennedy Space Center, was a bit more austere: "'Where do we go from here?' As Dr. Martin Luther King once said: 'When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: "Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, "We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome."'"

In my last post, I pointed out the number of pro-abortion related homicides is huge. It's not surprising that a profession that makes it's living from legalized child murder has a huge number of homicide convictions among its practitioners.

There have been other pro-lifers besides Pouillon who have been murdered as well. It's usually a blip on the radar screen of liberal journalism so most people don't know about this.

Huntsville, Alabama — In 1993, pro-abortion activist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon in Huntsville, Alabama. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible." In October 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison.

Monterey, Tennessee - On the morning of October 19, 1998, pro-abortionist Byron Looper, a Monterey, Tennessee county property assessor running against pro-life state Senator Tommy Burks, shot Burks in the left eye with a large-caliber handgun near a pumpkin patch where he planned to take schoolchildren on a hayride that same day. A witness said that Looper told him after the murder that "I did it, man, I did it! I killed that dude!" In 2000, Looper was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Owosso, Michigan - James Pouillon, 63, was killed Friday morning while protesting across the street from a high school in Owosso, about 70 miles northwest of Detroit. Pouillon was in his usual spot holding a sign that pictured a chubby-cheeked baby with the word "LIFE" on one side and an image of an aborted fetus with the word "ABORTION" on the other. Authorities allege Harlan Drake, 33, of Owosso pulled up to Pouillon in a truck and opened fire. Prosecutors say Pouillon's methods irritated Drake, particularly when used near the high school. Drake also is accused of killing a local business owner earlier that day.

These are just three of over 95 convicted homicides committed in pro-abortion related incidents. The full list is found at Human Life International's pro-abortion violence Web site at http://www.abortionviolence.com/. This Web site shows detailed state-by-state and city-by-city documentation of more than 8,000 incidents of pro-abortion violence and lawbreaking.

In contrast, there have been nine homicides committed in anti-abortion related incidents: four doctors and five abortion clinic workers.

People on both sides of the debate are trying to argue that these were mentally unbalanced people whose actions do not represent the advocacy of either pro-life or abortion rights. For the sake of non-argument, I agree with that statement.

But where do we go from here?

From 1993 to 2000, I lived in and later owned a house directly across the street from one of America's most notorious abortion clinics, Aware Woman Center for Choice. The trustee of the property prior to my purchase was the National Director of Operation Rescue, Keith Tucci.

Keith once told me that before he got involved in Operation Rescue in the late 1980s, he confronted its founder Randall Terry with a serious question, "Do you think it is possible that anyone could die as a result of direct action against abortion clinics?" Randall said without hesitation that it would likely happen. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a peaceful movement, he reasoned, which encouraged direct action similar to that of Operation Rescue. Numerous arrests occurred. Yet although it is known for being a peaceful protest movement, many deaths on either side occurred as tensions rose and even the peaceful protesters sometimes broke with the pledge to non-violence advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King. In addition, 40 Civil Rights advocates were murdered.

This memorial in Montgomery, Alabama is dedicated to the 40 Civil Rights advocates were murdered including Dr. King.

Not many people know this, but Operation Rescue, and the various pro-life resistance movements that still go on today at abortion clinics, have formed the largest civil disobedience (we prefer the term "biblical obedience") movement in history. I was arrested five times from 1989 to 1996. I know other pro-lifers with dozens of arrests for their peaceful protest of child killing. In all there have been over 75,000 pro-life activists arrested for their peaceful resistance to child killing. In all that confrontation, it is amazing that more people have not been killed.

In the time that I lived across from Aware Woman until now, I have known of many pro-lifers who have received death threats and others who have been attacked, such as Patte Smith who made this video of a doctor who assailed her while she was sidewalk counseling at Orlando Women's Center.

Those holding pro-life signs along US Highway 1 often had oncoming cars swerve in their direction honking their horns at them. My property was vandalized several times.

What do we expect? We are in a war. We strive to use prayer and the preaching of the Gospel as the weapons of our warfare. But occasionally this real spiritual war is going to spill over into physical violence, which is always detrimental to the pro-life cause no matter who is harmed. The great irony is that there have been far many more murders, acts of violence and other illegal acts by pro-abortionists. But the media won't cover it because it rocks their worldview.

Into the fray steps Frank Schaeffer.

And when you look at what happened to Dr. Tiller, there's a direct line connecting the rhetoric that I was part of as a young man and this murder. And so people like me are responsible for what we said and what we did and the way we raised the temperature on this debate out of all bounds. And so when O'Reilly talks about the fact that these people of the far left are against Fox or against him or trying to muzzle debate, he's telling a lie.

I am not a member of the far right. Until I voted for Barack Obama in the last election I was a lifelong Republican and I am still pro-life. I also believe abortion should be legal, but I agree with Barack Obama when he says we ought to find ways to help women, help children, give contraceptives, sex education to lessen the number of abortions. I think abortion is a tragedy. But I also think that pretending that you can call abortion murder and Tiller the baby killer, etc., etc., etc. and that these words don't have an impact is crazy. So this is what helps unhinge a society, talking like that. And I apologize and I will apologize again. I am sorry for what I did.

Question:-- When Frank Schaefer says that pro-lifers who call abortion "murder" are "unhinged" and "responsible" for Tiller's death, can we also draw a direct line between those angry words and the death of our gentle friend, James Pouillon?

Question:-- When Frank Schaeffer says, "I am still pro-life" what does that mean? Does it mean that he dislikes abortion because it is messy and distasteful? Or does he oppose abortion because it is the wanton taking of an innocent baby boy or girl in violation of God's commandment, "You shall not murder"?

In the next installment of "Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up?" I'll examine the discontinuity of Franks' so-called "pro-life" stance and explain further why he really needs to shut up.

A list of 95 convicted homicides by abortion doctors and pro-abortion advocates

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:40:13 PDT

Here's interesting trivia question:

Q:-- Not counting legal abortions, which legal profession has the highest per capita homicide rate committed by its full-time practitioners?

A:-- Abortion doctors.

If you care at all about the abortion issue, you already know about the pro-life activist who was killed by a pro-abortion advocate. It's not the only incident.

In 1993, pro-abortion activist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered 51-year old pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible." On October 27, 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to life in prison. During trial, she admitted that she had shot Simon to prove her love of Satan.

World Magazine, September 18, 1993; "Pro-Life Leader, Pastor Murdered by Avowed Satanist."

This and the recent murder are two of the most outrageous examples. But there have been other murders committed by abortionists. The number of homicides per capita in the US is less 1 in 20,000 per year -- or 1 in 2000 in the past 20 years. But according to the following, the number of homicides committed by abortionists and pro-abortion advocates (of born people) is 95. If there has been an abortion doctor for every abortion clinic that has ever existed in America (about 2000 -- and I think that is a high estimate) then that would make the homicide rate among abortion doctors much higher than the per capita homicide rate for all Americans. I'll leave it to someone else to do the math (the list includes both abortion advocates and doctors) but even a rough crunching of the following data shows it is no contest as to which profession commits the most convicted homicides.

This list of 95 murders is from Human Life International's pro-abortion violence Web site at www.abortionviolence.com. This Web site shows detailed state-by-state and city-by-city documentation of more than 8,000 incidents of pro-abortion violence and lawbreaking.

ANDERSON: In November 1999, Pasadena abortionist Kevin Paul Anderson strangled his business partner, neonatologist Dr. Deepti Gupta, a mother of two young children who was expecting her third. They were involved in an extramarital affair, and she was carrying his baby. Anderson was arrested by the police when a passerby noticed him pushing Gupta's Mercedes off a 450-foot cliff in the San Gabriel Mountains, after dousing her with gasoline, to make it appear that she had been killed in an accident. He confessed to Gupta's murder. In December 2000, Anderson was convicted of second-degree murder by a Pasadena jury (Los Angeles, California).
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BALDWIN: Michael Paul Baldwin, 21, had a 15-year-old girlfriend, Amanda Lynn Hanson, who was four months pregnant with his baby. He lured Amanda Lynn into a secluded area, and killed her by jamming a branch an inch in diameter down her throat with such force that her tongue was nearly torn loose. Several of her teeth were also broken out. Baldwin then jammed sticks into her other body orifices, one 10 inches inside her body. After he strangled her, Baldwin beat her and crushed her skull with a 30-pound rock. Baldwin was charged with first-degree murder, rape, and several other felonies. He confessed and, in November 2002, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Sheriff John Anderson called the killing "the most vicious I've seen in my 30 years in law enforcement" (Colorado Springs, Colorado).
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BARREIRO: Abortionist Hipolito Barreiro was charged with manslaughter for the January 1983 death of Shirley Payne. Barreiro had previously killed at least three other women with his "safe and legal" abortions, including Ruth Montero in August 1979; Maura Morales in May 1981; and Marta Baptiste in December 1982 (Miami, Florida).
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BENJAMIN: Abortionist David Benjamin killed Guadalupe Negron, a mother of four, in July 1993. During the abortion, he lacerated Negron's cervix and punctured her uterus, causing severe bleeding. Then the abortionist abandoned her. Negron's autopsy report attributed her death to massive bleeding causing shock and cardiac arrest. Benjamin was indicted and convicted on murder charges due to "depraved indifference to human life" (New York, New York).
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BENSON: 16-year-old Vanessa Youngbear of Weatherford, Oklahoma, was 7 months pregnant by her boyfriend, Trevor Wayne Benson, who did not want the baby. So Benson and one of his friends took Vanessa for a little ride. They took her to a deserted field, shot her in the head, and pushed her body into a ditch. Police arrested Benson and his friend the next day and charged them both with first-degree murder for the 2002 killing (Weatherford, Oklahoma).
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BICKHAM: Abortionist Arnold Bickham aborted Sylvia J. Moore in December 1986, using first-trimester techniques for a second-trimester pregnancy. He lacerated her internal organs so badly that she collapsed. Bickham called her "lazy" and ejected her from his abortion mill. Moore then bled to death. The postmortem report stressed "gross negligence and abandonment on the part of the original treating physician. In consideration of the above, the manner of death is determined to be homicide" (Chicago, Illinois).
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BISHOP: Richard Bishop's ex-girlfriend, Tiffany Watkins, was nearly seven months pregnant, and he was not happy about it at all. So, on March 30, 2004, he awakened Tiffany, saying that he wanted to talk to her about her pregnancy. Then he repeatedly stabbed her in the chest, back and arms. Tiffany was rushed to a hospital, where she lost her viable preborn baby. Bishop was charged with murder and attempted murder for his attack (Richmond, Indiana).
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BISKIND: In April 1998, Phoenix abortionist John Biskind aborted Louann Herron's 26-week-old preborn child, then left the abortion mill while she bled to death. In February 2001, a jury found Biskind guilty of manslaughter and clinic administrator Carol Stuart-Schadoff guilty of negligent homicide in the Herron case (Phoenix, Arizona).
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BOLER: DeShone Boler was married, but was committing adultery with Emily Garrison, who was pregnant with his child. His wife, Crystal Michele, was understandably unhappy with this cheating, so she decided to take action. She went to Garrison's home, beat her up with a gun, bit her severely on the shoulder, stabbed her in the neck with a knife, and finally shot her five times (Brazoria, Texas).
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BOYD: 29-year-old Mark Boyd of St. Louis hired Malik J. Nettles to do a little job for him. His 15-year-old girlfriend, Kyunia Taylor, was pregnant with his child, and he did not want the child. So Nettles murdered Kyunia as she rode home on a school bus in February 1996. He boarded the bus and began firing, killing Kyunia and her preborn baby, named Diamond, who was delivered by Caesarean section three months premature. The baby lived for 23 days but died. Nettles also shot the bus driver, Richard Lanman, three times, but he survived. Boyd was arrested after being indicted on murder charges in both deaths (St. Louis, Missouri).
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BROWN: On January 22, 1999, the 26th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, pro-abortionist Eric Laquinne Brown of Pontotoc, Mississippi strangled to death his pregnant ex-girlfriend Shorlonda Moore and left the bodies of Moore and her preborn child in a burned-out car in Memphis, Tennessee. In November 1999, Brown received a life sentence for the murder of Moore and a concurrent 20-year manslaughter sentence for the killing of her preborn child after pleading guilty to the charges (Memphis, Tennessee).
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BULLOCK, ERIK: Erik Bullock of Little Rock, Arkansas, wanted his girlfriend, Shawana Pace to have an abortion. She refused, so he hired three thugs to kick her repeatedly in the belly and kill her full-term preborn baby. Pace pleaded for her baby's life as she was kicked, choked and punched on August 26, 1999. One of the attackers told her "Your baby is dying tonight." Pace had to have her spleen removed, and also suffered a broken left wrist, black eye and bruised face. Bullock and the three thugs were charged with capital murder in the first test of Arkansas' new Fetal Protection Law. A jury convicted Bullock of capital murder (Little Rock, Arkansas).
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BULLOCK, MATTHEW: Matthew Bullock strangled his girlfriend to death. She was six months pregnant and he did not want his baby. So he decided to abort both her and her preborn child. He then tied up her body and hid her in a closet (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania).
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BUNYARD: Jerry and Elaine Bunyard had been married for three years, and Elaine was ecstatic that she was about a week away from delivering their first child, a little girl, in 1979. But Jerry Bunyard wasn't as excited. He was carrying on an adulterous affair with a Tracy woman and thought his wife would "take him for everything he had" if he divorced her, a witness said. So Bunyard approached a biker-type boyhood friend, Earlin Popham, and offered him $1,000 to kill his wife. When Elaine Bunyard was alone in the kitchen, Popham broke an iron skillet on her skull. He then shot her in the head with a shotgun and tried to make the crime look like both a robbery and a suicide (Stockton, California).
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CALAC: On February 15, 2004, Andre F. Calac shot his pregnant girlfriend, Marlene J. Magee, in the head. He was charged with murder (San Diego, California).
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CANO: Gilberto Cano's live-in girlfriend, Martha Isela Moreno, was nearly seven months pregnant, and was looking forward to having her little girl. But Cano was not quite so happy about it, so he decided to abort both her and her preborn child. In April 2002, he stabbed her several times in the abdomen with a long kitchen knife and then strangled her to death. Cano was arrested that night, jailed, and charged with two counts of murder (San Francisco, California).
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CARLOS: Kansas City, Missouri abortionist Lynn D. Weller was shot to death in his home in September 1973 by two masked gunmen who were hired by rival abortionist William Carlos. Carlos was angry that Weller was having an affair with his ex-wife (Kansas City, Missouri).
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CARRUTH: Carolina Panthers football player Rae Carruth's girlfriend, Cherica Adams, was eight months pregnant. He did not want to pay child support, and demanded that she have an abortion, but she refused. So he hired a hit man to shoot Adams. Carruth and three accomplices laid a trap, and Carruth helped close it by blocking Adams' car so another man could pull alongside and shoot her. In March 2001, Michael Kennedy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Adams' death. The triggerman, Van Brett Watkins, also confessed (Charlotte, North Carolina).
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COOPER: Abortionist Boyd Cooper performed a 23-week abortion on a 2-pound, 2-ounce infant boy, who gasped and attempted to breathe after he was aborted. Cooper made no efforts to revive or help the little one because his parents wanted him dead. So the little baby was placed in a utility room used as an infant morgue. Cooper instructed a nurse, "Leave the baby there -- it will die." The nurse testified that the infant was still gasping in the closet when she returned to work 12 hours later (New York, New York).
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DAVIS, TERRANCE: Sonya Hayes was just days away from giving birth to a full-term 7-pound boy when her boyfriend, Terrance Davis of Toledo, Ohio, gunned her down in her car as she waited to pick up her 5-year-old son. Davis was wearing a Halloween mask to impede identification, and shot Sonya six times in the belly and upper torso, emptying his revolver. Prosecutors said it was obvious that the shooter was aiming for Sonya's belly in an attempt to kill their unborn child. Davis was charged with three counts of aggravated murder for shooting and killing Hayes and her unborn child (Toledo, Ohio).
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DAVIS, WILLIAM: Matthew Elliott and William Davis of Magnolia, Arkansas, dug a grave for 15-year old Brittni Pater, who was 12 weeks pregnant. Then they lured her into the woods and bludgeoned her repeatedly with a long, heavy metal bar wrapped with heavy tape around one end, as though the person who wielded it wanted to make sure he was able to get a good grip. Then they ran her down with their car and dumped her battered body in an old gravel pit. Elliott immediately bragged to his friends about how he had killed Brittni. Elliott and Davis were both charged with capital murder after giving statements in which Brittni's pregnancy was cited as the reason she was killed. On November 2, 2000, a Columbia County jury found Davis guilty of capital murder for his part in the fatal beating (Magnolia, Arkansas).
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DEHENRE: Jackson, Mississippi abortionist Malachi Dehenre, primary abortionist at the New Women's Clinic abortion mill, was tried and convicted in April 1998 for murdering his wife, Nyesha Dehenre, who worked with him (Jackson, Mississippi).
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DRAGIN: Notorious Chicago abortion mill owner Kenneth "The Creep" Yellen literally died in the gutter after his gangland-style execution in November 1979, from five shots in the head as he walked to work. The primary suspect was Robin Dragin, a professional burglar with mob connections, who organized a Chicago abortion clinic that had been in competition with Yellin's operation. Before abortion was legalized, Dragin was a principal in the operation of an illegal abortion ring in the north-west suburbs (Chicago, Illinois).
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EASON: Marc Eason was a vocal pro-abortionist who worked at the Dadeland abortion clinic in Miami. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for the ax-murders of his two roommates. Eason claimed the murders were "justifiable homicide" because the roommates had "complained about his sloppiness." He also stabbed his abortionist mother, Betty Eason, in the neck with a steak knife (Miami, Florida).
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EDELIN: In January of 1975, Boston abortionist Kenneth Edelin aborted a live and viable baby boy and then deliberately smothered him. He was subsequently convicted of manslaughter, but the conviction was overturned because of improper jury instructions (Boston, Massachusetts).
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FOAT: In 1965, Ginny Foat, president of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), bludgeoned Argentine businessman Moises Chayo to death with a tire iron outside a bar, and murdered San Francisco hotel employee Donald Fitting after picking him up in a bar (San Francisco, California).
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FOUNTAIN: Ex-convict Tony Fountain had an affair with 17-year-old Chavanna Prather, a high school junior, and she became pregnant by him. He did not want the baby, and, in April 2001, he shot Chavanna in the stomach, abdomen and hand, then strangled her and repeatedly stabbed her in a crime so vicious that it shocked even hardened investigators. Fountain was charged with first-degree murder and the intentional killing of an unborn child (Chicago, Illinois).
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FRANKLIN: In February 1980, abortionist James Franklin killed Betty Jane Zellers Damato during a botched criminal abortion and was sentenced to three years for manslaughter (Denver, Colorado).
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GANDOTRA: San Diego abortionist Suresh Gandotra killed Magdalena Orteg Rodrigues during a botched abortion in December 1994. Gandotra fled the country to his homeland of India before authorities could formally charge him with an upgraded charge of murder (San Diego, California).
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GOINS: Even by pro-abortion standards, this case is grisly in the extreme, and perfectly illustrates the vile and murderous nature of anti-life thinking. 22-year-old Glenn Isaac Goins confessed to murdering 24-year-old Amanda Wood of Johnson City, who was at least four months pregnant, in January 2004, after police told him they had found her body in the basement of his mother's house. An investigator testified that Goins said "I did it. I killed her." Goins said he had seen Amanda, watched her a couple of times, and wondered what it would be like to kill her. Goins testified that he said "And I said "I'm going to kill you." She said "Please don't" or something like that, and I smacked her in the face and told her to shut up. She was sitting on the bed, and I took a towel and started choking her with the towel. I kept on choking her until she died." Goins then told how he stuffed Amanda's body in a sleeping bag and moved her to the basement, and then tried to clean up the scene. Goins then wrapped her body in plastic and duct tape. He said "I never felt bad about what I have done. Whenever I let her in my car, I knew I was going to kill her and nothing would stop me." Goins was charged with first-degree murder in Amanda's death. But hers was not the only murder he confessed to. On January 12, 2004, Goins was indicted in Louisville, Kentucky, on charges of murder, first-degree rape and first-degree robbery in the 1999 slaying of country singer Melissa Januskevicius, 20, of Stevens Point. He was also charged in two other cases of the murder of women. When questioned about one of his murders, Goins admitted that he "liked killing people." According to police investigators, at no time did Goins show a scrap of remorse for any of his murders (Johnson City, Tennessee).
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GRATTON: Edward Gratton, 34, of London, Ontario, raped 16-year old Glenda Tedball repeatedly, and she became pregnant. When her pregnancy became known, Gratton grabbed Glenda and held her down while her own mother, Norma Poore, forcibly aborted her. Glenda died soon after (London, Ontario, Canada).
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GREEN: On January 3, 2004, Lawrence Green savagely beat his pregnant girlfriend, 21-year-old Rashawn Peterson. He kicked her twice in the abdomen and then beat her with a broomstick and his fists at their home, causing her to go into premature labor at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Medical examiner Dr. Michael Graham said that the beating resulted in bleeding behind the placenta, resulting in the baby's premature birth. He ruled the death a homicide. Rashawn named her dead baby "Rosie" (St. Louis, Missouri).
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GREGG: Raymond Gregg's live-in girlfriend, Angela Russell, was pregnant, and he was not happy about it. So he solved his `problem' in the most direct manner possible. He admitted to police that he killed Angela, and then buried her body in woods off Statem Gap Road in Hamblen County. In October 2003, Gregg pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given the maximum possible sentence, 25 years in prison without parole (Morristown, Tennessee).
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GWYNNE: Abortionist John Gwynne was convicted of the first-degree murder of his nineteen-year-old girlfriend (Los Angeles, California).
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HAMILTON, JOHN: Prominent Oklahoma City abortionist John Baxter Hamilton was having an affair with a topless dancer he had aborted, and his wife was considering leaving him. On Valentine's Day 2001, Hamilton choked his wife with a necktie, beat her over the head with a heavy blunt object hard enough to smash a hole in her skull, and then slammed her face repeatedly onto the floor. In December 2001, a jury convicted Hamilton of murdering his wife. Amazingly, pro-abortionists tried to get all charges dropped against Hamilton by sending death threats to at least three news agencies, District Attorney Wes Lane and state witnesses against Hamilton. Even more incredibly, Hamilton's lawyer said that police should be investigating local pro-lifers as suspects in the murder, not the abortionist! (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
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HAMILTON, MICHAEL: In November 1981, 27-year-old Michael Hamilton gunned down his pregnant wife Gwendolyn with a shotgun on a rural road near Fresno. Her preborn child was killed in the assault as well. Then he tried to collect on her $100,000 life insurance policy. In 1982, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death (Fresno, California).
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HANNA: Abortionist Alicia Ruiz Hanna was convicted in 1994 of second-degree murder after Angela Sanchez, a mother of four, died at Hanna's abortion mill. Hanna tried to stuff Angela's body into the trunk of a car in order to dump her body across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. Hanna was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for murder (Los Angeles, California).
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HAWKINS: Leah Hawkins of Lamar, Kansas, testified that her husband Jason beat her with a log from a woodpile while she was pregnant and after she refused to have an abortion. Her 10-month-old daughter witnessed the beating. Her son was born three months premature as a result of the beating and died December 26, 1999, at a Kansas City hospital. Jason Hawkins was charged with second-degree murder (Lamar, Missouri).
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HERRERA: Carlos Herrera and Brenda Chavez were having an affair, and Chavez became pregnant. Herrera did not want the child, so he solved the problem in the most efficient way possible. In February 2001, Herrera and Chavez met for one of their late-afternoon trysts at the Southern Ute Sand and Gravel pit. Herrera beat Chavez to death and disposed of her body and vehicle by running the vehicle off a steep embankment into a grove of trees (Durango, Colorado).
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HOHBERGER: Henry C. Hohberger III of Philadelphia found out that his pregnant girlfriend, Diane Grant, was carrying a baby girl, and he was upset about this because, as he told a maternity nurse, "I already have a daughter. ... It's supposed to be a damn boy." He also did not feel like paying child support, so he repeatedly tried to get Diane to have an abortion, but she refused every time. In November 2001, when the baby girl -- named Nicole -- was just seven weeks old, Hohberger beat and shook his little girl so severely that she suffered skull and rib fractures, and died five days later. Among Nicole's injuries were four broken ribs that were healing. The little baby girl also had eleven newly broken ribs, two fractures to her skull, and multiple hemorrhages to her head and eyes, the coroner's report stated. In November 2001, Hohberger was charged with capital murder and criminal homicide (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
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HOLLIMAN: High school student Tanika Fox of Greensboro, North Carolina, was pregnant by her boyfriend Shawn Kristopher Holliman. He did not want to be a father, and demanded she get an abortion. She refused. So, on December 14, 1999, he shot her twice in the head at point-blank range. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 2000, the students at Tanika's high school dedicated their yearbook in her name (Greensboro, North Carolina).
*
HURD: Lorie Renee Hurd gave birth to full-term twin baby girls in the bathroom of her home. Then she stuffed them into a plastic bag, cinched it closed, and abandoned her dying babies. Hurd had had previous several abortions (Los Angeles, California).
#
IDELFONSO: On January 5, 2004, Antonio Dejesus Idelfonso and Eliseo Marcelino-Quintero were driving their pickup truck past a woman walking on the road when she fell down next to them. They stopped to see if they had hit her. 32-year-old Tracy Owen, who was so heavily pregnant she might have even been in labor at the time, was lying on the road, crying for help. Idelfonso told police that he responded, "Here's your help," and shot her five times in the upper body. One of the bullets struck her preborn child. Metro police detective Robert Swisher said "In my 22 years on the job, I have never seen anyone executed, and I mean executed, because someone thought they had hit the person with a vehicle. It sickens me." Both men were charged with murder (Nashville, Tennessee).
*
JANEZIC: In 1993, pro-abortion activist Eileen Orstein Janezic murdered pro-life activist minister and radio talk show host Jerry Simon in Huntsville, Alabama. After killing Simon, she held police at bay with a pistol for six hours while spouting quotes from Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible." In October 1994, a jury found her guilty of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison (Huntsville, Alabama).
*
JOHNSON, COLEMAN: Tammy Lynn Baker of Charlottesville, Virginia, was eight months pregnant by her boyfriend, Coleman L. "Mike" Johnson Jr. The only problem was that he did not want the baby to be born. He had demanded that Tammy Lynn have an abortion, but she had refused. So he planted a pipe bomb on the sidewalk outside Tammy Lynn's apartment. She picked it up, it exploded, and both she and her near-term preborn baby were killed instantly. In May 2001, Johnson was convicted of capital murder (Charlottesville, Virginia).
#
JOHNSON, RICHARD: Deborah Denise Randall was eight months pregnant by her boyfriend Richard Johnson and was happily awaiting the birth of her child. The only problem was a major one -- Johnson was 18 years older than her and did not want his baby. He beat her up repeatedly, at one point squeezing her as hard as he could to induce miscarriage. When repeated beatings did not cause her to lose her baby, he emptied his pistol into her, firing bullets into her head, neck and chest (Richmond, Virginia).
*
KARMAN: Harvey Karman of Los Angeles, the developer of the menstrual extraction technique of early abortion, had a three-page police record, including an arrest for murder in the death of an abortion client (Los Angeles, California).
*
KEEBLE: Sundance Medicinehorn Keeble was living with his 20-year-old sister and his 21-year-old girlfriend, who was four to five months pregnant. On November 21, 2003, Keeble deliberately stabbed his girlfriend in the stomach and savagely beat his own sister. He punched her in the mouth so hard she lost several teeth, and his girlfriend's preborn baby died as a result of his attack, although the girlfriend survived. Keeble was charged with fetal homicide, three counts of aggravated assault and simple assault. Brown County prosecutor Mark McNeary said "This was a heinous act. The defendant intentionally stabbed the woman in the stomach, causing the death of the unborn child" (Aberdeen, South Dakota).
*
KETCHUM: When New York legalized abortion on demand in 1970, abortionist Jesse Ketchum immediately set up shop in a Buffalo motel suite and began performing late-term abortions. Soon after, Ketchum was convicted of criminally negligent homicide after killing Margaret Louise Smith. A pathologist determined that Margaret bled to death from "laceration of the entire length of the cervix, lower segment of the uterus, and the broad ligament" (Buffalo, New York).
*
KLVANA: In 1989, Los Angeles abortionist Milos Klvana was sentenced to 53 years in prison after being found guilty of the intentional murder of eight newborn babies and the stillbirth of another infant (Los Angeles, California).
*
LAUFE: Abortionist Leonard Laufe aborted the 32-week pregnancy of a woman who falsely claimed that she had been raped. The prostaglandin abortion resulted in the baby being born alive. He then allowed the fully viable baby to die. The entire episode, including closeups of the baby gasping and kicking, was filmed for "educational purposes" (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
#
LAGRONE: Pro-abortionist Edward Lewis LaGrone had repeatedly molested ten-year-old Shakeisha Lloyd, and she learned that she was 17 weeks pregnant. He offered to pay $1,500 for her to get an abortion, because he wanted to cover up his sexual abuse. She did not get the abortion, so LaGrone decided to abort not only the preborn baby, but Shakeisha's entire family. LaGrone went to Shakeisha's home and shot her uncle. Then he opened fire on two elderly women, Zenobia Anderson, 83, and Caola Lloyd, 76, who was blind and bedridden with cancer, killing them both. Shakeisha paused to pick up her 19-month-old sister and shield her behind some boxes. She was shouting to her mother to hide when LaGrone walked up to her and shot her in the head, killing her instantly. LaGrone was convicted of multiple counts of capital murder and was sentenced to death (Fort Worth, Texas).
*
LEACH: On January 18, 2004, Dan Leach murdered his 19-year-old girlfriend, Ashley Nicole Wilson, who was pregnant with his child. He strangled her and hung her body in her apartment. Her mother discovered her body, and the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. Leach left a letter written by Ashley near her body, which said that she was despondent because she was pregnant and the father did not want to help raise the child. This was intended to make people think she had killed herself. After seeing Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" on March 7, 2004, Leach felt severe remorse for his murder, and confessed to it. He said that he killed Ashley because she was pregnant with his child and he did not want to be involved with her anymore or care for their child. Leach said "And so, after watching that movie, I was very emotional, and so I thought about the things I had done." Leach was charged with murder after his confession (Houston, Texas).
*
LETOUR: Michael Letour's live-in girlfriend, Jenny McMechan, was 36 weeks pregnant with his preborn child. She was just two weeks away from delivering a healthy baby boy. On New Year's Eve of 2001, Latour brutally shot her in the head and neck as she stood outside a friend's home in Plainfield (Plainfield, Connecticut).
#
LINGLE: On January 19, 1999, Harold R. Lingle and two of his friends drove to the home of 36-year-old Erin Vanderhoef, who was just days away from giving birth. Lingle drove Erin to a nearby grocery store to buy donuts with food stamps. While they were gone, Lingle's friends strangled Erin's children, eight-year old Darlene, ten-year old Chris, and eleven-year-old Jimmy. When Lingle brought Erin back to her home, the three strangled her with an electrical cord as well, and her full-term preborn baby died as a result. One of Lingle's friends kicked Erin in the head so hard that he had a limp for several days. This was the worst mass murder in the history of Springfield, Missouri. Lingle was convicted on five counts of first-degree murder (Springfield, Missouri).
*
LOOPER: Pro-abortionist Byron Looper, a Monterey, Tennessee county property assessor running against pro-life state Senator Tommy Burks, shot Burks in the left eye with a large-caliber handgun near a pumpkin patch where he planned to take schoolchildren on a hayride that same day. A witness said that Looper told him after the murder that "I did it, man, I did it! I killed that dude!" (Monterey, Tennessee).
*
LUSTER: On January 28, 2003, Aaron Luster and his girlfriend, Christine Karcher, who was seven months pregnant, began arguing in his car as they drove down a road near the Pittsburgh International Airport. Luster attempted to strangle Christine, then pushed her out of the moving vehicle. She fell to the pavement, and was immediately struck by a following car. When police officers arrived at the scene, they found Christine's mangled body. During Luster's trial, jurors heard Christine's frantic cell phone call for help just nine minutes before she died. Luster's voice, encouraging her to jump from the moving car, was clearly audible. On March 26, 2004, a jury found Luster guilty of two counts of murder, one for Christine and one for her viable preborn baby (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
*
MACGUIRE: Roger MacGuire shot his ex-wife, Susan MacGuire, to death in January 2001. He was angry about her pregnancy by her fiance and deliberately aimed at her unborn child. He was tried and convicted of two counts of murder (Salt Lake City, Utah).
*
MARSHALL: Tjane Charmeise Marshall's girlfriend, Shameka Fludd, was already the mother of two children, and was four to five months pregnant with his child. Marshall did not want his baby. He said that the unborn child would "ruin his life" and that "he was going to do something about it." He certainly followed up on his threat. In May 2003, Marshall borrowed a rental car from a friend, drove to Fludd's apartment, where he shot her in the head, killing her instantly (Baltimore, Maryland).
*
MCBEATH: Roger Lee McBeath killed his former girlfriend, Ashley Lyons, who was 5-1/2 months pregnant with a preborn baby boy she had already named Landon. He shot her in the head three times with a handgun to make absolutely sure she was dead. Ashley kept a journal for her little boy. On October 31, 2003, she wrote "Your father wanted me to have an abortion. Your father told me he was going to commit suicide, that you would ruin his life." McBeath was charged with first-degree murder (Lexington, Kentucky).
#
MCGRORY: Michael G. McGrory and Matthew Eshbach had committed many acts of armed robbery, and operated an armed robbery "ring." In November 2002, McGrory and Eshbach went to the home of Kerry Schadler, 21, and his 20-year-old wife, Katherine, who was 20 weeks pregnant, in order to threaten them, because they knew about the robbery gang. McGrory and Eshbach tied up the Schadlers and forced them at knifepoint into McGrory's vehicle. After driving some distance, McGrory pulled Kerry Schadler out of the car and squeezed his neck until "his body went limp," Carroll said. Returning to the car, McGrory began to look for a place to unload the body. He stopped the car, put his arm around Katherine Schadler and started to strangle her; Eshbach finished murdering her. Then they dumped the bodies in Tow Path Park in East Coventry Township (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
MELNICK: In May 1990, abortionist Joseph Melnick was convicted of allowing a viable and healthy 32-week baby girl, who weighed 3 pounds and 9 ounces, to die by ordering `no care' to be given her after she survived his botched third-trimester abortion attempt. The aborted girl was only 13 years old (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
MESHACK: Teshibra Bell, who was only 15 years old, met a man at a convenience store in Southern Dallas. The man, pro-abortionist Shannon Meshack, was 25 years old. She eventually began to have sex with him. In June 2003, Teshibra was five months pregnant with Meshack's baby. She was looking forward to having the child, but Meshack did not want a child. So he strangled Teshibra. He then dragged her body into his back yard, piled up some debris, and tried to burn her (Dallas, Texas).
#
MINERD: In January 1999, Joseph P. Minerd firebombed Deana Mitts' Connellsville townhouse, which killed Mitts, her 3-year-old daughter Kayla, and her unborn child. He did this since co-workers refused to help him use a stun gun to shock Deana into a miscarriage of his child. Witnesses heard Deana screaming in agony after the explosion, and saw her engulfed in flames "like a human torch." Three-year-old Kayla was so badly burned in the fire that her bones fractured from the heat. United States District Attorney Leo Dillon said "It's hard to imagine more anguish than Deana and Kayla Mitts endured before they died." Minerd was sentenced to life in prison for the murders and was prosecuted under the same law used to convict Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
*
MONTALVO: Abortionist Angel Acevado Montalvo killed at least two women during the time period 1984-1988 and was prosecuted for one of the botched abortions. The day after he was found guilty in trial, he was back scheduling illegal abortions for women in Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico).
*
MYERS, CALVIN: On December 3, 1994, Calvin Shane Myers, his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Irene Christensen, and another man, Steven Paul Howard, were driving toward Park City shortly after midnight in heavy snow. They came upon an unplowed road, and the three got out and walked toward Rockport Reservoir State Park. Myers and Christensen embraced, and then Myers stabbed her at least 12 times with a rusty 4 1/2-inch hunting blade. The two men then left the area, leaving Christensen in a snowbank. Her frozen body was found by a snowmobiler two weeks later. Myers confessed to the crime and was charged with two counts of murder. In February 1996, pled guilty to one count of capital murder (Salt Lake City, Utah).
*
MYERS, TIFANY: On January 20, 2000, Tifany Ann Myers, who was baby-sitting for 21-month-old Joel Vasquez, shook him and slammed him to the floor, causing his death, when he would not stop crying. Myers was charged with first-degree murder. She filed a notice of diminished responsibility, alleging that an abortion she had had just two days before the incident exacerbated her preexisting depression. As a result, her mental state was "greatly compromised" (Des Moines, Iowa).
#
NIEVES: After mailing suicide notes to both of her ex-husbands, Sandi Dawn Nieves told her four young daughters that they were going to sleep in the kitchen in a kind of "slumber party." She bedded the girls down comfortably. Then Nieves, who had just had an abortion, set fires at several points throughout the house to make sure that her little daughters could not escape. All of them burned to death in the fire (Los Angeles, California).
*
PARR: LaMarr Parr of Massillon, Ohio, was charged with the September 16, 2000 fatal stabbing of his ex-girlfriend, Jean K. Toles, and the killing of her 2-1/2-month-old preborn child. She wanted the baby and he wanted her to get an abortion. After he killed her, Parr dumped her body in a ditch (Canton, Ohio).
*
PECK: In October 1995, Joseph Peck beat and murdered his 25-year-old wife Jennifer, who was four months pregnant, because she refused to have an abortion. He stuffed her body into the trunk of her car at the Clique Lounge on North Dale Mabry. Homicide detective Greg Stout said that "We believe that because his wife had become pregnant and would not get an abortion, that he began making threats to her." He was indicted on first-degree murder charges by a Hillsborough County grand jury (Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida).
*
PERRY: Jake Perry and his girlfriend, Patricia Smith, were expecting a child. In November 2002, Perry grabbed Patricia by her hair, slapped her, punched her and jabbed her in the stomach, head, arms and legs. He threw her into a box of plates, and both her legs began to bleed from cuts she received. Perry finally agreed to take her to the hospital to treat her injuries, but first he demonstrated his touching concern for her safety by forcing her to drive him to his mother's house, where he stole an amplifier. Then he had her drive him across town so he could sell it and buy crack cocaine. Smith miscarried, and the next day Perry was charged with the reckless homicide of an unborn child, among many other charges (Milwaukee, Wisconsin).
*
PINKSTON: On December 18, 2003, James "Herc" Pinkston beat up his pregnant girlfriend Toni Koonce at his apartment. Five days after the beating, doctors at Magee Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh performed emergency surgery on Toni, because the embryonic membranes had ruptured and the leaking fluid could have resulted in a fatal infection which might have killed her. Her preborn baby died during the surgery. Pinkston was charged with criminal homicide for the attack (Pittsburgh, Pennsyvania).
*
PONDER: Jerold L. Ponder and Zaneta Browne were carrying on an affair, and Browne was 14 to 15 weeks pregnant with boy and girl twins by Ponder. Ponder urged Browne to get an abortion, but she refused. So, on July 14, 2002, Ponder and his wife Keya shot Browne, a 29-year-old Rochester mother of three, in the face and back of the head on land owned by Jerold Ponder's family in rural Orleans County (Rochester, New York).
*
REYNOLDS: Oklahoma City Abortionist Joe Bills Reynolds performed breast implants, a hysterectomy, and numerous liposuction procedures on his wife. He tried to collect $500,000 on his wife's life insurance after she bled to death after he opened a two-foot long incision in her abdomen, ostensibly for liposuction, on September 7, 1989. Reynolds would not allow paramedics to aid her until he had finished stapling the huge incision. He told his wife's father that she was assisting in surgery and just "fell dead." The abortionist was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter. The punishment the abortionist received for carelessly killing his own wife? A one dollar fine! (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).
*
RINGER: Tony Ringer's girlfriend, Cassandra Betts, was pregnant by him, and he did not want the baby because he wanted to marry another woman. So, in December 2000, he shot her in the head as she sat in her car, killing her and her 6-week old preborn child, with Betts' seven-year-old daughter watching from the back seat. Ringer pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter (Cincinnati, Ohio).
*
RIVERA: Lawrence Rivera of Barstow, California, killed his pregnant girlfriend, Kristina Garcia, in May 2002. Rivera had a previous manslaughter conviction on his record, and was also implicated but never charged in the manslaughter death of his live-in girlfriend's daughter in Germany in 1998. His former wife testified that "if I didn't get an abortion that he would pull it out of my stomach." Rivera is still at large (Barstow, California).
*
ROBINSON: 38-year old Kevin Robinson repeatedly stabbed and killed 15-year-old Daphne Sulk in November 1997 because he had gotten her pregnant, and she refused to get an abortion. Authorities found Sulk's frozen body at a highway rest stop. In December 1998, Robinson was convicted of murder (Laramie, Wyoming).
*
SHERMAN: Abortionist Robert Sherman killed 16-year old Carmen Rita McDowell by intentionally performing an incomplete second-trimester abortion upon her in March 1975, so he could collect additional fees. The girl collapsed and was taken to a hospital, where emergency treatment removed a mangled preborn child. She died the next day from a septic abortion. The abortionist was paroled after 22 months in prison. His indictment said that he had a "malicious interest in making more money, cutting his costs and saving his time in disregard for the life and health of his patients." After he was paroled, he began doing abortions again in Massachusetts and Virginia (Washington, D.C.).
*
SHOWERY: During an April 1984 abortion, Raymond Showery tore Mickey Apodaca's uterus and severed her uterine artery. She hemorrhaged for two hours before Showery would allow her transfer to a nearby hospital. She bled to death during emergency surgery to remove her uterus. The abortionist was indicted for manslaughter. Amazingly, while Showery was in jail, six pro-abortion women protested in Showery's defense outside the courthouse, asserting that Showery "is a good man who helps the poor." He performed this abortion while still on bail pending appeal of his conviction for murder in the case of a late-term aborted baby (weighing five pounds) who survived his 1979 abortion attempt. Showery deliberately drowned the viable baby. Showery was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Showery is an Adolph Hitler aficionado who owns an arsenal of guns and reads voraciously about Hitler. Showery said that "Hitler was one of the most misunderstood men in history. He was really a great man" (El Paso, Texas).
*
SMITH, ALFRED: A jury found pro-abortionist Alfred E. Smith guilty of second-degree murder in the death of his ex-girlfriend Denna Moody. Smith killed Moody in April 1997 because she refused to abort their preborn child. Her charred body was found in her burned car near the Van Nuys Amtrak station (Los Angeles, California).
*
SMITH, NATHANIEL: Nathaniel Dee Smith killed his 21-week pregnant girlfriend Lorena Rivera because she refused to have an abortion and he didn't want to pay child support. He beat her and shot her twice, then buried her body in a garbage bag in a shallow grave. Smith was charged with first-degree murder in Rivera's death and manslaughter in the death of their unborn child. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).
#
STEELE: Sean Steele had impregnated his 15-year old girlfriend, Barbara Watkins, and she was seven months pregnant. Steele pressured her to have an abortion, but she refused. So Steele told Barbara that they were going to buy baby clothes. Instead, he lured her to a wooded area, smashed her with a rock, stabbed her repeatedly with a broken beer bottle, and finally strangled her and left her body in the woods. He confessed to the killing after construction workers found Watkins' decomposed body in a wooded ravine (Cincinnati, Ohio).
*
STEIR: Abortionist Bruce Steir was charged with murder after Sharon Hamptlon bled to death after Steir ignored her perforated uterus during a December 1996 abortion. Showing a callous and total disregard for the safety of women, pro-abortionists raised money for Steir's defense on the Internet, encouraged their friends to put pressure on elected officials and the California Medical Board, and urged the Riverside County prosecutor to drop the charges (Los Angeles, California).
*
STUART: Jerry Lynn Stuart and his live-in girlfriend, April Renee Greer, were expecting a baby. In fact, April was eight and a half months pregnant, and just days away from delivering her child. But Stuart did not want the child. So he solved his problem by beating April to death, chopping up her body, and stuffing the pieces of her and her near-term preborn baby into a trash can sealed with duct tape (Burlington, North Carolina).
*
TAN YEN: In January 1989, abortionist Connie Tan Yen was charged with infanticide after allowing a third-trimester aborted baby to die of deliberate neglect (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
*
TARVER: Paul A. Tarver II's girlfriend, Keisha Lewis, was three months pregnant with his preborn child, which he did not want. So he hired a gunman to shoot Keisha dead. The gunman deliberately aimed for Keisha's abdoment, but failed to kill her, although her preborn baby died in the attack. In July 2002, Tarver was indicted by a grand jury and was charged with complicity to commit aggravated murder. The gunman was charged with aggravated murder (Canton, Ohio).
*
THOMAS: Ronnie Thomas beat his pregnant girlfriend with a steering wheel security locking device and then threw the screaming woman from an overpass onto an expressway. She was immediately killed, either by the impact of dropping onto the pavement, or by one of several vehicles that struck her -- including a semi truck (Crown Point, Indiana).
*
UNKNOWN ABORTIONIST: Nurse witnesses testified that an unnamed abortionist from San Vicente Hospital, California, aborted a 7-month old preborn baby live. Some time later, he noticed that the baby was still moving, and drowned the little child in a vat of formaldehyde (Los Angeles, California).
*
VILLAGOMEZ: In October 2002, after an argument in which he demanded that she have an abortion, Jesus Villagomez stabbed his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach. The stab wound resulted in the death of her 18-week-old unborn child (Las Vegas, Nevada).
*
WADDILL: In March 1977, abortionist William Waddill, Jr. committed a third-trimester abortion saline abortion and delivered alive a viable baby girl, whom he then strangled to death. This was the second time he had been charged with infanticide (Los Angeles, California).
#
WALRADT: In September 1999, Brodie Edric Walradt raped, tortured and murdered Beth Kennard, who was near-term and had already named her preborn baby Alexis Ann. She had refused his demands to have an abortion. He suffocated her and bludgeoned her with a log. Wadradt received a life sentence for his crimes (Seattle, Washington).
#
WARD: Lavern Ward of Chicago was upset that his girlfriend Debra Evans was pregnant with his child and would not consent to getting an abortion. So, in November 1995, he shot her in the head and killed her. Then he stabbed Evan's ten-year old daughter in the neck and killed her. Finally, he hacked the unborn child out of Debra's body. He then abducted her seven-year old son Joshua and stabbed him to death. Ward was convicted of three counts of murder, two counts of kidnaping and one of armed robbery for looting the home (Chicago, Illinois).
#
WIEDEMAN: 16-year old Stephanie Nicole Burnett of Athens, Georgia, told her boyfriend, Matthew John Wiedeman, that she was pregnant. He demanded that she have an abortion, and she refused. So, in April 2002, Wiedeman attacked her from behind with a heavy solid steel barbell, while a friend, Raymond Soto, stabbed her with a long-bladed knife. Deputy Coroner Grover Tuten said "I think it's one of the most gruesome [murders] I've ever seen." A Richmond County grand jury indicted Wiedeman and Soto on charges of malice murder (Athens, Georgia).
*
WILCOTT: On June 8, 2002, at a graduation party, pro-abortionist Corinne Wilcott sneaked up behind Sheena Carson, who was 15 weeks pregnant, dragged her to the ground by her hair, punched her in the face, and kicked her repeatedly in the side, shouting "I hope the bastard dies! I told you I was going to get you for sleeping with Kareem!" [Wilcott's husband]. An autopsy revealed that Sheena's unborn child died four days later from blunt-force trauma to the mother's placenta. During the trial, medical experts testified that Sheena's unborn child suffocated in her womb because a blow broke the life-giving bloodlines that connected the child to his mother. Wilcott was found guilty of third-degree murder (Erie, Pennsylvania).
#
WILSON: Pro-abortionist Garrett Wilson began to sexually molest 12-year-old Debbie Oliver, and emotionally browbeat her into having at least four abortions before she was 15 years old. He finally married her in 1980 when she could not have another abortion because she was too far along. Baby Brandi Jean was born shortly after the marriage. Wilson took out extensive life insurance policies on the baby girl and then smothered her to death when she was just two months old. He took the resulting $40,000 settlement and bought a brand-new Pontiac Trans Am. Wilson married Missy Anastasi in March 1986, and, in March 1987, they had a child, Garrett Michael. Wilson bought $150,000 of life insurance on the five-month-old baby and then smothered him to death. In July 1999, a jury took just two hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Garrett Michael, and he received a sentence of life in prison without parole (Washington, DC).

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 2)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:42:56 PDT

In a response to my last blog entry on Facebook, a friend asks:

Q:-- It looks like to me that each person has just resorted to demeaning the others and calling names. Is this what we have come to?

A:-- A polemic is a harsh, strongly worded response to an entrenched viewpoint. It’s sometimes used as a way of eliciting a response when an opponent will not offer a defense. A polemic is meant to stir controversy and get others to think about an issue they would rather accommodate or sweep under the rug. There is a time for tactful wisdom and tender love when dealing with Christians who have erred. But there is also a time to attack aggressively, because it is the only course that is left when compassion and understanding have failed to curb abuse and error.

For instance, Paul writes of the Judaizers, those who taught that converts from Gentile paganism still needed to be circumcised in order to partake of Jesus Christ’s New Covenant: "I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off!" (Galatians 5:14). Here Paul makes a play on words saying that those who are behind the circumcision controversy ought to go the whole way and be done with it. In other words, “Go castrate yourself!” Paul doesn’t mean it literally, but he is using a clever pun. To be “cut off” in Greek (and English) is a way of saying to be “shut up.” He also recognizes that it is a waste of time trying to persuade some people. They just need to be cut off. It was not “unloving” for Paul to take this hard stance against heresy because he was protecting the peace and sanctity of young lambs who otherwise would be savaged by wolves if their error was allowed to roam free among the churches of Galatia.

Paul warns in the next breath about divisions. “But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!” (Galatians 5:15). One could be misled by this. If Paul wants unity in the church, then why does he use such rough language to describe the Judaizers? Isn’t this fostering disunity? First, Paul had already spent enough time confronting these people. Second, doctrine offends; orthodoxy divides. Today’s pietistic Christians often want doctrinal orthodoxy without offense or division – but ironically, this is what doctrine is meant to do. Truth is the dividing line against all that is false. On the other hand, we can have tremendous doctrinal unity and covenant love with other Christians if we simply focus on creedal orthodoxy as we discuss our differences. As you may not know, I’ve written on this in my e-book, Why Creeds and Confessions?

Irenaeus, Tertullian and Martin Luther were just a few of the most notorious Christian polemicists in confronting heresy. Much of their harsher language is actually satire and parody. It’s meant to be tongue in cheek. But it is only funny if you understand the specific references, such as when Irenaeus in the second century catalogs the pantheon of Gnostic “aeons” with the names: Gourd, Utter-Emptiness, Cucumber, Melon. This is more along the lines of a Monty Python sketch than what is found in the usual patristic apology – if you get the joke, that is.

This tactic is often misunderstood by today’s Christians. For instance, I found myself in tears of laughter reading Gary North’s paper aloud to friends when it first came out. It’s so funny because it is so true. However, I am sure many found it harsh and offensive. Likewise, today’s Neo-Gnostics tend to portray Ireneaus as an intolerant boor. However, I like to think that Paul, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Luther and their ilk were a barrel of laughs to be around, unless you were promoting heresy in their church, that is.

When Gary first published his position paper on blasphemy excoriating the younger Schaeffer for his idiocy, Frank was still sought after as a speaker raising money for crisis pregnancy centers. (I am sure he still advocates CPCs, but I don’t know how many pro-lifers would want to hear him now.) I remember thinking back in the early 1990s that it was okay for Frank to raise funds to help save babies, despite his defection from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy. I too wondered if maybe Gary was being a bit too harsh even if it was in good fun. Now that Frank argues for legalized abortion and homosexual marriage, I think it was right on the mark. It’s merely the weakness of his deficient theology brought to a rigorously logical conclusion. Thankfully, most Christians are not that consistent. I’ll comment more on that in part three.

Polemics is also good for provoking a first stage of dialog. It is in one sense “guerilla warfare” that is meant to flush out and identify the enemy in order to engage him in a thesis-antithesis debate. I don’t expect to actually flush out Frank Schaeffer himself. He has bigger fish to fry than to deal with the likes of me. (But who knows?) What I hope to do is to categorize and critique his most egregious errors. And since there is nothing new under the sun, the reader will see that the same errors are repeated by other religious liberals such as Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, Bill Hybels and Bill Moyers. Such postmodernist errors are also endemic in the Contemplative/Emerging Church movement.

Ironically, Frank Schaeffer's entire style continues to be polemics. He often doesn't know what he is talking about – and as the son of a famous theologian he has no excuse for his ignorance. In part three, I’ll outline some of Frank’s fallacies, which are all the more outrageous once you understand that he was steeped in doctrinal orthodoxy for many years.

Is Frank Schaeffer really a danger to anyone but himself?

Although few conservative Christians at this point take Frank Schaeffer seriously, there is the danger that some will give credence to his renunciation of his conservative political activism because it is coupled with the accusation that his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, were insane, dysfunctional, abusive hypocrites.

I am also persuaded that Frank doesn’t mean a lot of what he says to be taken seriously. He is just trying to rile us up. And it’s always done with a condescending postmodernist know-it-all sneer. His first line of argument is ad hominem, strawman fallacy, and non-sequitur. Unfortunately, his arrogance is mistaken for real conviction by sympathetic listeners on the left. They erroneously believe he is a voice of reason crying in the evangelical wilderness, a true convert to progressive thought, one whom Jesus would approve. He complains that few on the left understand the Christian right. Only he does, because he was one of them. In fact, he helped found the Christian Right, he claims. Then he proceeds to get it all wrong. As Gary North points out, this was unnerving even when he was supposedly “on our side.” It is better in one way that he is attacking us now instead, because he is a buffoon.

The way that Frank defends himself to sympathetic listeners is to retreat into theoretical pluralism, which is that Kantian abomination that proposes that since the universe is chaotic by nature and our minds ill-equipped to know truth, then all knowledge is at best a theory or a model, but we can never know anything to be absolutely true. Theoretical pluralism is something that Frank Schaeffer would deny, but the self-deception of the human heart is something no man can fathom. Consider the following points.

First, instead of giving a reasoned rebuttal to evangelical theology and politics, he attacks the character flaws of his well-known family and acquaintances (even though these are unquantifiable, i.e., his parents were “crazy,” Billy Graham is a “weird” man, etc.) as if this negates their positions. Anyone who knows anything about theology, philosophy or history can see that he is factually challenged. He simply makes things up as he goes along regardless of how wrong it is. If this is not purposeful, then he is just stupid. And since Frank is reputedly quite brilliant, then he must be doing it on purpose or else he's psychologically unbalanced. Or perhaps both?

Second, Frank writes a character assassination of his deceased father and 95-year-old mother Edith, who once confessed to Os Guiness that she even doesn't read her son’s writings anymore because it just makes her cry. Think about it: Would you attack your mother in a book while admitting that she prayed for you every day of your life since you were born? Frank dishonors his parents by portraying them in their most dysfunctional moments. He defends it by saying in effect, “We are all dysfunctional. I am just doing Christians a service by helping them see it.”

Third, Frank claims in an interview with the Rutherford Institute that those who were there know his charges about his parents being abusive toward each are true.

Living in the community of L’Abri with people in our house and other workers coming and going, there are plenty of people walking around the world today who either heard or saw things that would make them draw that conclusion. That was actually not much of a secret.

It’s easy enough to rebut him as Os Guiness does in a 2008 Christianity Today article.

I challenge this central charge of Frank's with everything in me. I and many of my closest friends, who knew the Schaeffers well, are certain beyond a shadow of doubt that they would challenge it too. Defenders of truth to others, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were people of truth themselves. For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding.

Os Guiness counters by saying in effect, “I was there. I was one of Frank’s mentors. And I know he is lying.” And then he gives a quantifiable example of one of his lies.

… he bucked at all formal education and serious tutoring, and his claim that he then received a "'great books' British university-level literature course" comes as quite a surprise to his tutor.

Fourth, when Frank loses ground due to confounding facts, he resorts to values-relativism. He'll go on TV and defend same sex marriage. Then he’ll defend his stance later in another interview saying that homosexuals who want to be married are no worse than adulterers who want to stay in the ministry.

How do we respond?

The best way to deal with such relativism is to be irreverent, sarcastic and mocking. To Frank, the gift of language is a weapon by which to deliver an impressive front of intellectualism. In reality, it is just a smokescreen. There is little of real substance behind it. He attacks for no reason, retreats for a few months or a few years, then appears again to change subject just to keep attacking. He is the perpetual guerilla, never able to form a lasting front of resistance. And most of the time, it’s difficult to see who he is fighting. Perhaps he is really fighting himself?

If someone, such as Os Guiness, points out proof that Frank is a hypocrite for accusing the Christian right for lying when he's a liar, he already has a retort handy, “Well, we’re all hypocrites.” Then he’ll say that there is no sin that is worse than any other, pride, lust, sodomy, adultery and fornication are all equally bad.

Well, no we're not all hypocrites. We are not all liars either. It’s true that we are all sinners, but all sin is not equally bad. This is due to a faulty interpretation of James 2:10.

“For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.”

The point here of course is that since no one has kept the whole law, no one can be justified by the law. We are justified by faith; but “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). In other words, it is not true faith if on one hand we continue to justify ourselves by the law, or if we use grace as an excuse to continue in sin. The meaning is here not that all sin is equally bad. There are no “Christian homosexuals; Christian abortionists; Christian fornicators,” etc. Christians are sinners saved by grace.

“But those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).

Of course, Frank is only a relativist when he's defending his point of view against reason, evidence and logic. You can’t really ever win an argument with a relativist. All you can do is expose his worldview as nonsense. My goal here isn’t to portray the man as a traitor to the pro-life movement or to vilify him. The goal is to show the danger of his way of thinking because it is all too readily swallowed by a weak American Christian culture that is easily seduced by postmodernism in the form of irrational appeals to emotion.

I believe that Frank still cares more about the abortion issue than most Christians. It affects him on a deeply emotional level, but he is completely unprincipled. He says he is pro-life, but then says abortion should be legal. He holds forth the pro-choice apologetic of the Clintons: Abortion is a necessary evil; so let’s work to make it safe, legal and rare. He honestly believes that by attacking the pro-life movement’s errors (and I actually agree with some of what he says) he can gain the trust of the left and persuade them to be more reasonable in order to moderate their pro-abortion stance.

What we’ve tried up until now hasn’t worked, he reasons. It is now time to try finding common ground with the pro-choice advocates. Abortion is always going to be legal, so let’s work with the abortion advocates to reduce the number of abortions.

So he is seeking dialogue with the left to try to do some good. But in every case, finding common ground with the death industry is a false premise. He is actually sniping at his allies and comforting the enemy. And the moment he stands for truth his newfound friends will turn on him.

To court liberal commentators such as Rachel Maddow as though she were a sister in the Lord is abominable. Maddow openly mocks everything that is good and holy with a wry smirk out of one side of her face. In fact, he speaks to her as though she were more of a true Christian than those who actively oppose abortion. If Frank Schaeffer’s attempt to speak as an authority on moral issues on the Rachel Maddow show wasn’t so scarily bizarre and surreal, it would be funny. In fact, it should be seen as a new genre of political theater, that of “comic treachery.”

The best defense against this error is a good offense. You don't win by dialoging with these people. You win by attacking their nonsense aggressively with scorn and mockery. And that is what I intend to do.

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 1)

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:56:39 PDT

One of my favorite polemics of all time is a piece by Dr. Gary North, Franky Schaeffer, Please Shut Up! (no copyright; reprint anywhere), a March 1992 postion paper on blasphemy published by the Institute for Christian Economics (ICE). You won't find the PDF file easily on a Google search, so I've posted the correct link above.

In the paper, Gary takes issue with Franky Schaeffer’s bad theology. Schaeffer apparently was appalled at the wares being hawked by Christian t-shirt companies at a book-sellers conference he attended. According to Franky (who now goes by just “Frank”) those who produce these schlocky evangelical icons are somehow guilty of "blasphemy." Gary North, in his inimitable style, takes Frank to the woodshed. The writings of his father, Dr. Francis Schaeffer, were that of a momumental genius who made an important early contribution to both the burgeoning Christian Reconstructionist movement and the so-called "Religious Right." Gary rightly points out though that Schaeffer Sr. stopped short of being postmillennial and theonomic. Further, the publishers of Schaeffer's complete theological works edited out some of his Calvinistic doctrines that they thought would be distasteful to their readers. (But this is just a rough and dirty synopsis of the paper. To read it all, follow the above link.)

Frank Schaeffer is a product of this inconsistent theology. Afraid to go "too far" into the austerity of Puritanism, he swung toward Eastern Orthodoxy around 1990. Now 20 years later, he's done another about face and has even renounced his father's pro-life views. He states that he’s personally against abortion, but it should be legal. We recently saw him on the Rachel Maddow show, claiming, “And when you look at what happened to Dr. Tiller, there is a direct line connecting the rhetoric that I was part of as a young man, and this murder.”

On his website, he substitutes personal attacks for reasoned argument. Those who oppose government imposed health care are "the gun-toting fringe." He speaks with mock authority on the motivation of pro-life movement as a "psychological sickness that is the basis of the Religious right's power to delude other people who are also needy and unstable."

He’s now making the news talk show rounds in an attempt to promote his new book claiming that we who work to repeal Roe v. Wade are evil Pharisees – even while he pontificates on why Roe was a bad decision. To those who admire his father’s legacy, seeing Frank the younger go through such convolutions is not only infuriating, but also dizzying.

I'll comment more on this in part 2, but here is a snippet from Gary North. Reading this, keep in mind that it was written prior to Frank Schaeffer’s slide into complete apostasy. It turns out that Gary North is a prophet.

In the fall of 1984, Franky cancelled all his future Christian audience speaking engagements, and he disbanded his own Christian Activist tabloid newspaper a few months later. He sold the tabloid’s mailing list and then disappeared from the evangelical scene. For a while, anyway. Franky simply could not sustain the theological battle without the inspiring presence of his father and without biblical law.

He goes away periodically, but he refuses to stay away. This is our problem. He has nothing positive to show for the last fifteen years of his on-again, off-again tantrums, nothing of quality to bring to the table, no published theory of Christian aesthetics, no plan of action, and no money. But he reappears periodically to perform his routine, which can be best described as whining for artistic relevance. Each performance gets more frivolous, and each one is directed not at the increasingly decadent humanist culture of our day, but at the tentative steps of evangelicals to respond, a century late, to the enormous threat of a now visibly debauched humanism.

Ironically, Franky’s father was the primary public literary figure in the appearance of the Christian cultural resistance movement. But Franky spends his time these days battling what he regards as the Philistines of fundamentalism rather than the Assyrians of humanism. Fundamentalists do not meet his standards, he tells us. Not his theological standards – he has none to speak of – but his artistic standards.

This, from a washed-up producer-director of an R-rated teenage violence film. “Physician, heal thyself!”

Freddy and Franky

There is a stupid horror movie series, enormously profitable, called Nightmare on Elm Street. The character of the series, Freddy Krueger, is like Dracula: he keeps rising from the dead. He has a shriveled up face and wears gloves with long metal blades. The advertising for each sequel announces, “He’s back!” Freddy Kruezer reminds me of Franky Schaeffer. We think he has gone, but he keeps coming back.

I think of Freddy’s long, blade-like fingers. I think of Franky, always ready to point the finger. Yet when I visualize Franky as Freddy, it is always with his “pointing finger” firmly implanted in his right nostril. “Look at me, look at me, everyone; see how outrageous I can be this week!” No matter whose reputation suffers.

There comes a time for Christian social commentators to discuss theology. Franky refuses. There also comes a time for Christians to grow up. Franky refuses. For years, Franky Schaeffer has been playing the role of Young Turk. He is not aging gracefully.

Francis Schaeffer was a serious man who devoted his life to evangelism. His son has devoted his life to whining. Even when he is on the right side of an issue, he whines. Francis Schaeffer was a self-taught, self-disciplined scholar, not a Young Turk with bad manners. I do not recall that he ever called a fellow Christian a blasphemer.

Franky Schaeffer has capitalized on his father’s name and reputation for over fifteen years, squandering a valuable legacy. He has little spiritual or intellectual capital remaining. It is time for him to go out and look for a job.

In the 1960’s, liberal talk show host David Suskind bored America weekly with his five-hour interview shows on late night television. A humorist wrote a song about him: “David Suskind, Please Shut Up.” Someone needs to write one for Franky Schaeffer. It needn’t be funny.

I think I can at least give it a shot:

Sung to the Beatles’: Obla Dee Obla Da

Franky throws a tantrum in the marketplace
Says his father’s writings are a sham
Franky says to Rachel, “Girl I like your face.
Thanks for the free promotion, Maddow ma’am!”

Please shut up, please shut up, please shut up! NOW!
Franky Schaeffer, please shut up!

And so on. Maybe someone who is good at this sort of thing can help.

Where did Cain and Seth get their wives?

jrogers@forerunner.com (John C. Rogers) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:50:31 PDT

A reader writes:

Dear Mr. Jay Rogers,

I have a question on ethics that I am hoping that you can clarify for me. The question is on sexual ethics and is in reference to incest. Could you explain to me how we as Christians can claim a universal and absolute standard of morality in the realm of sexual ethics when God created both male and female and there was interbreeding between direct family members until the prohibition later in the Law of Moses? How can we claim that moral absolutes are universal, abstract and invariant and an extension of God's character when this prohibited sexual practice was the original design for God’s created order?

From looking at the situation throughout the whole of creation and salvation-history, and considering the fall of mankind into sin, I understand that it is sin that has corrupted the practice of any and all sexual acts. Thus, it would not be God’s standard that has changed but rather, the standard of a fallen world that has changed. Just like in pre-fall where mankind was naked and not ashamed, it would be the same for sexual ethical practices. Am I on the right track here and could you please give me your opinion and wisdom on this topic if you get the chance? Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you and yours always.

- J.K.

Dear Mr. J.K.,

Incest between brother and sister, and one's parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., is prohibited by the law of Moses. This prohibition also included in-laws in all but one case, that of a brother marrying his deceased brother's wife.*

Marriage between first cousins is allowed.

However, it is implied in scripture that Seth and Cain married one of the daughters of Adam. Obviously that would be their sister. The Bible account says Adam became father to "sons and daughters."

"And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years and and he begot sons and daughters" (Genesis 5:4).

The Bible further tells us that Eve was the mother of all living people. So it was a natural sister.

There are two ways of looking at this. Both ways include your point of view.

1. The sin of incest is a product of the Fall of Adam.

We are all products of a sinful man and carry original sin. The consequence is that all of Adam's grandchildren were conceived in the sin of incest.

"And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth" (Genesis 5:3).

Even as Seth was in Adam’s fallen image and likeness, so also are every one of us. We are all sons and daughters of Adam, born in sin even as Adam was fallen. It is redundant to say it, but every person since then has been born in Enosh's image and likeness (Seth's son) who himself was a product of incest.

This sin would have produced a curse on all mankind, just as the Moabites and Ammonites were accursed due to an incestuous beginning between Lot and his daughters.

However, the curse can be reversed after several generations of continued obedience to God's moral law. Let's not forget that Jesus himself was a product of incest (Tamar and Judah). He was also the product of a Gentile (Ruth and Boaz); a prostitute (Rahab and Salmon); and adultery (Bathsheba and David). Thus Jesus' genealogy mentions only four women. These were four unions that, according to the law, were not supposed to happen. I believe these marriages are purposefully listed to show that redemption occurs after several generations. The curse is lifted eventually. This is meant to be a type of the curse of original sin being destroyed once and for all by Christ.

One solution to the problem is to admit unlawful incest with the union of Adam's children and that it was part of the curse. But the debt of sin has been redeemed by Christ.

We could also conculde that since many years passed between Cain's birth and the arrival of Seth's first child, Enosh, that Seth could have married one of Cain's descendants.

"And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died. Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh" (Genesis 5:3-6).

Genesis records that 235 years passed between the creation of Adam and the birth of Enosh. Genesis does not record how old Cain was when he had his first son. However, if Cain was born early on in this chronology and began having children at a young age, then even though Cain was forced to marry his sister as a result of the Fall, Seth would have had had the opportunity to marry a grand-grand-niece, a relative further removed than a first cousin, a union not prohibited later on by the law of Moses. One could argue that the line of Cain was much more prolific than the line of Seth in light of the fact that only eight righteous people from Seth's line, Noah's family, survived the Flood. It is not impossible that the curse of incest affected only the line of Cain.

In contradiction to this, Jewish folklore preserved in the apocryphal Book of Jublilees (which is not to be considered inspired or inerrant) tells us that each patriarch in the line of Adam took a sister to be his wife until the fifth generation of Mahalalel when men began marrying their cousins and distant relatives.

2. The prohibition against incest occurred only after the days of the Flood.

The law against incest was not originally instituted by Moses. We see that even before Moses, Abraham deceived Pharaoh into thinking that Sarah was his sister, and therefore could not be his wife. So we know that by Abraham's deception, marriage with an immediate sibling was unlawful even prior to Moses. We also see Judah recognizing his sin when he discovered that he had committed incest with his daughter-in-law, Tamar.

It is possible that this covenantal shift took place only after the days of Noah. That would not be unprecedented, since there are several provisions of the law that changed after the Flood. When Cain slew Abel, God did not allow him to be found and killed (Genesis 4:15). However after the Flood, God did not allow a murderer to go unpunished by execution (Genesis 9:6). Prior to the Flood men were vegetarians (Genesis 1:29). After the Flood they are given the flesh of clean animals to eat and enmity between man and beast was established by God himself (Genesis 9:1-3).

If the laws concerning homicide and the relationship between men and animals changed after the Flood. It is therefore logical that the relationships between family members may also have been changed. Just as the laws concerning what foods we may eat have become more liberal -- for example we are no longer constrained not to eat unclean animals under the New Covenant -- the laws governing marriage have become more strict.

Prior to the Flood the gene pool would have been much more divergent than it is today. For example, I had a discussion with an atheist recently about Neanderthal man. Some scientists claim that recent DNA studies show that Neanderthal was not an ancestor of modern man. I argued that nothing would preclude him from being a descendant of Adam, a subspecies of Homo sapiens whose line was cut off. It is conceivable that there were many other varieties of man prior to the Flood that were far more diverse than today.

I've also had atheists argue that this union of Seth and his sister would have been impossible since it would have resulted in a human race with massive birth defects; that the gene pool from two people wasn't large enough to account for the diversity we see today; and so on. But we can assume that the genetic information in Adam and Eve was capable of producing a much more diverse population than exists today, because after the time of Noah, all humanity was reduced to the genes of just six people. Noah's grandchildren would have had only the opportunity to marry their cousins. Since the gene pool became more limited, the marriage between brother and sister suddenly would have had a more negative effect and therefore was prohibited.

We might also look at "sin" from a practical point of view. The Bible says all unrighteousness is sin (1 John 5:17). According to Strong's, the word "unrighteousness" in Greek is adikia:—(legal) injustice (properly the quality, by implication the act); moral wrongfulness (of character, life or act):—iniquity, unjust, unrighteousness, wrong. So the word "unrighteousness" simply means something that is not right for us.

Why is sin not right? The legalistic way of looking at it is that God arbitrarily decided that certain behaviors are sinful and therefore wherever there is a law against something, there is sin; and wherever the law is silent there is no sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sin is unrighteous because it results in death. And there are many things that are obviously sinful that are not mentioned in the Bible. These can be derived from principles in the Bible, but there is no law prohibiting them.

For instance, many people think it is lawful to be addicted to tobacco, to gamble, to smoke marijuana, and to commit abortion because these things are not specifically prohibited by civil law or by biblical law. I would argue that all of these are sinful because they each lead to death.

However, if something does not result in death, it is not sin. For instance, it would be unlawful to jump off a cliff because you would die, and God forbids homicide. However, to jump off a cliff with a parachute would not be unlawful, foolish perhaps, but not a violation of the sixth commandment necessarily. In the same way incest between a brother and a sister would not be unlawful if there is no natural harm done -- if it did not result in death. Since there was no harm done to the human race by the union of Seth and his sister, then there was no sin involved.

I hope that answers your question.

* This isn't meant to open a can of worms, but theonomists also ought to explain why the Levirite marriage is no longer in effect. Among the Hebrews marriage with a brother's widow was forbidden as a general rule (Leviticus 18:16; 20:21), but was regarded as obligatory (Deuteronomy 25:5,6) when there was no male offspring, and when the two brothers had been dwelling on the same family estate. (This is actually an easy one.)