Christian Heritage News

 By Tom Ascol - Posted at Founders Ministries: In the providence of God, the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was handed down five days after I began an exposition of Romans 13:1-7 . My first sermon on that passage (which came during an ongoing study of the whole letter) involved an overview of it, outlining the argument that Paul makes and the way that he makes it. I also explained the nature of authority and the jurisdictional realms in which God has delegated His authority in His world, namely the home, the church, and the state. My sermon after that decision focused on verse 1, which states the thesis for the whole paragraph: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Because God has instituted civil governments, everyone is obligated to be submissive to them. The idea of government and governmental authorities comes from God. This

By Grant Van Leuven - Posted at The Place for Truth : Published June 9, 2022 During this month, as the LGBTQ+ community annually parades its banner colors they blasphemously hijack from God’s noahic covenant, [1] Christians will benefit revisiting Genesis 19:1-25 [2] ( as Carl Trueman has recently called for such posts in this World Magazine article ). Here, God visited Sodom and destroyed the sexually wicked majority while mercifully rescuing the righteous remnant within it. Look to Lot as your example of righteous living amidst wickedness. Lot responded to the angels’ presence exactly like his uncle Abraham, with reverence, deference, supplication, faith, and obedience. While in the midst of a diseased orchard of wickedness, yet Lot grew and produced different fruit while righteously grieving over the filthy debauchery of his neighbors ( 2 Peter 2:7-8 ). As God’s chosen, Christians must carefully choose how to live where they live. You are not to be anything like those living

By Tom Strode - Posted at Baptist Press : WASHINGTON (BP)—The U.S. Supreme Court delivered what most religious liberty advocates declared an important victory in ruling Monday (June 27) the post-game, midfield prayer of a high school football coach did not violate the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion. In a 6-3 opinion, the justices decided the Bremerton (Wash.) School District actually violated the First Amendment rights of Joseph Kennedy by removing him as a coach because of its concerns his practice infringed on the Establishment Clause. In doing so, the majority acknowledged it no longer abides by a more than 50-year-old standard in church-state cases known as the Lemon test. “[A] government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment,” Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the court’s opinion. “And the only meani

 By George Grant - Posted at Ligonier Ministries: Circumstances change. Laws, courts, and administrations come and go. Elections raise up and cast down the mighty. Popular opinion waxes and wanes. But through it all, the callings and responsibilities of Christians in this poor, fallen world remain the same. Taking our stand for life wasn’t first thrust upon us by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and we are not relieved of that duty by its now overturning this year. The pro-life movement is not a recent phenomenon or innovation. Rather, it is two thousand years old. It was inaugurated on an old rugged cross, on a hill called Calvary. It is best known as Christianity. Caring for the helpless, the deprived, and the unwanted is not simply what we do; it is who we are. It always has been. It always will be. Life is God’s gift. It is His gracious endowment upon the created order. It flows forth in generative fruitfulness. The earth is literally teeming with life ( Gen. 1:

 By Jesse Johnson - Posted at The Cripplegate : Published June 24, 2022 I don’t know how people on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate will respond to today’s ruling overturning Roe—I can only guess that there will be rage, protests, and perhaps even rioting. One thing I am sure of though is this: Molech will not speak , and he will not hear the prayers of his worshipers ( 1 Kings 18:26 ). What a contrast with Yahweh. This morning the Supreme Court reversed Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 case that established a woman’s right to abortion. It was a ruling that was transparently flimsy and politically motivated. There is a reason that news stories don’t quote the original case. It is embarrassing for the pro-choice movement. Written in a world without ultra-sounds or neo-natal surgery, it reads like something from the flat-earth society. It created a legal precedent that both sides of the abortion debate grant was unworkable and too superficial to pass the test of time. When President Obam

 By Daniel Darling - Posted at Christian Headlines: As expected, after the recent leak of Justice Alito’s opinion, the Supreme Court has reversed the Roe versus Wade decision. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of this decision, coming after almost fifty long, hard, excruciating years. Contrary to popular opinion, the end of Roe doesn’t mean every unborn life in America is protected, it doesn’t mean the end of abortion. But what this ruling does mean is that this issue can be debated and legislated by a democratic process rather than by judicial fiat. So, what now? How should faithful Christians respond now that Roe versus Wade has been reversed? First, we should take time to give thanks. I’m convinced Roe versus Wade will go down as one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history, alongside decisions like Plessy, Dred Scott, and others. Roe’s reversal is a triumph of constitutionalism. We should rejoice that because of the courage of the five justices who voted to strike

By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits : “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this day. . . Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them.” -Romans 11:8,9 Shortly after seven a.m. on February 21, 1916. . . an eight mile sector of the German lines a hundred and fifty miles east of Paris erupted in a blaze of artillery the likes of which the world had never seen. More than twelve hundred guns, among them thirty of the gigantic mortars that had destroyed the Belgian forts at the start of the war and naval cannon capable of firing two-thousand pound projectiles twenty miles, suddenly began blasting away at French positions on the eastern bank of the River Meuse. All through the morning and most of the afternoon they sent up a hundred thousand rounds of high explosives, shrapnel, and gas per hour—12,500 shells hourly on each mile of the front.[1] By December of that year both the Germans on

 By Kevin DeYoung - Posted at World : In case you haven’t heard, June 1 no longer marks the end of the school year or the unofficial beginning of summer. It’s the start of Pride Month. Initially conceived in 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots , Pride Month has become a government-promoted, corporate-sponsored, 30-day celebration of LGBTQ acceptance and achievements. When rioters threw bricks and tried to burn down the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village with police officers barricaded inside, even the most optimistic gay liberation proponent could not have dreamed that an illegally operated, Mafia-owned gay bar would eventually join the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon on the select list of protected national monuments. Pride Month is at once a brilliant marketing strategy and a striking reminder that the conscience is a terrible thing to waste. By linking gay liberation to “pride,” LGBTQ advocates—and it’s worth mentioning, that the f

By Stephen Spinnenweber - Posted at Reformation 21 : If you have ever been called a “single-issue voter,” chances are it was not meant as a compliment. “Single-issue voter” is to political discourse what “flat-earther” is to scientific discourse—a label for low intelligence. The sins commonly associated with single-issue voting are narrow-mindedness, obliviousness to the complexity of American politics, and a stubborn refusal to recognize nuance in voting determinations. To be sure, politics is complicated, and one must not allow their passion for a particular issue to blind them entirely to matters of justice and equity elsewhere. Christ rebuked the Pharisees for this very thing, fixating on select portions of the Mosaic law to the exclusion of others: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others

 By Bill Muehlenberg - Posted at Culture Watch: Some ups and downs in the trans debate: The agenda items of the left are a litany of destruction and devastation. It has always been this way, but the more recent trans revolution has taken things to a whole new level. Women, reality and biology are all being denied as the militant ideologues smash everything in their path. One can argue that the trans madness is one of the most daft, diabolical and destructive movements now afoot. That we as a culture have come this far is not very reassuring when we consider the survival of the West. But let me offer some good news on all this – along with some further bad news. Good news The swimming world’s governing body FINA has just made a decision about men in women’s swimming. Meeting in Budapest, some 72% of 150 countries involved voted in support of a ban on transgender women from female events once they reach puberty or the age of 12 – unless they have already transitioned... Read more...

 By Michael Foust - Posted at Christian Headlines: Southern Baptists elected a new president, passed recommendations from a sexual abuse task force, and commissioned more than 50 new missionaries during their annual meeting, which was held this week in Anaheim, California. All total, the convention drew 8,133 messengers, representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Baptist Press , the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was the highest-attended annual meeting in a western state since 1998 when the convention was held in Salt Lake City. Meetings in Phoenix in 2017 and 2011 drew less than 5,500 messengers. Here are five key takeaways from the convention: 1. A NEW PRESIDENT WAS ELECTED Bart Barber, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas, was elected the new president of the SBC in a runoff, receiving 60 percent of the vote to 38 percent by Tom Ascol, the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida. Ascol was endo

 Posted at Morning Star News: Proposed high fines, shutdowns and onerous regulations submitted for feedback. HANOI, Vietnam ( Morning Star News ) – When the “Government of Vietnam” posted two draft religion decrees the first week of June, even ranking staff members of the Government Bureau of Religious Affairs were taken by surprise and encouraged religious leaders to strongly object. The decrees with ancillary documents were posted online for input by government departments and the public. The document dump was 151 pages. One draft decree would take the place of Decree 162/2017, which provided implementation guidelines for the penultimate Law on Belief and Religion (LBR) that went into effect Jan. 1, 2018. After three years, the government authors of the draft decrees admit to shortcomings in the original implementation decree and offer this attempt to fix them. In practice the revisions would only tighten control. Most concerning is a draft decree stipulating remedies and punishments

 By Michael Foust - Posted at Christian Headlines : June 13, 2022 The U.S. House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack held its second day of hearings Monday, asking questions of in-person witnesses and playing recorded clips from previous witnesses, including President Trump's attorney general, campaign manager and advisors. Here are five key takeaways: 1. BILL BARR: TRUMP WAS' DETACHED FROM REALITY' Bill Bar, Trump's attorney general, said he disagreed with Trump's argument that Dominion machines had skewed the election results. "He went off on a monologue saying that there was now definitive evidence involving fraud through the Dominion machines," Barr said, referencing a Dec. 14 meeting. "... He said, you know, 'This is absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged. The report means that I'm going to have a second term.' And then he gave me a copy of the report." Barr said the report looked "very amateurish" and

 By John Stonestreet and Heather Peterson - Posted at BreakPoint : A couple weeks ago, a Title IX investigation was opened for three middle school boys from Wisconsin who used the pronoun she for a biologically female student who wished to go by they . Under the Biden administration , refusing to use misaligned pronouns is considered sex discrimination. Even style guides today encourage the use of they if it is the chosen pronoun of an individual. One rationale given is that someone really is whatever gender he or she claims, and to not recognize that with pronouns is to contribute to that person’s psychological distress. This is the case even if, as Abigail Shrier describes as being increasingly common, a person’s gender dysphoria is socially conditioned. So, according to our own government, we are now in a zero-sum game: Either use individuals’ chosen pronouns or be blamed for their suicides. Thankfully, many are beginning to recognize that even using the pronoun they for an i

 Posted at The Christian Institute: An openly homosexual Church of Scotland Minister has claimed Scripture does not have the final word on sexual ethics. On BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme, Revd Scott Rennie said that scriptural teaching against same-sex acts should be reinterpreted in the light of contemporary thinking. Rennie was being challenged by fellow minister Revd Professor Andrew McGowan over the Kirk’s recent decision to allow ministers to conduct same-sex weddings in its churches. Read more...

 By Scott Barkley - Posted at Baptist Press: NASHVILLE (BP) – A Twitter post by Guidepost Solutions in support of LGBTQ+ causes brought controversy among Southern Baptists as well as discussion on the merits of a working relationship between a secular company and faith-based institution. On June 6 the Guidepost Global account tweeted its commitment “to strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion” as an organization that welcomes employees to “bring their authentic selves to work.” It further positioned the company as “an ally to our LGBTQ+ community” accompanied by the image of a rainbow flag. Guidepost Solutions was contracted by the Sexual Abuse Task Force (SATF) last year to investigate allegations that SBC Executive Committee leadership mishandled sexual abuse claims during a 20-year span. The group delivered a 288-page report on May 22 that included correspondence among EC leadership disregarding or stonewalling sexual abuse advocates. The report also revealed new allegations of

 By Bill Muehlenberg - Posted at Culture Watch: We need to keep speaking truth in the public arena, despite how hard it is: Trying to have a public voice to share our side of the story is getting progressively more difficult in the West, certainly when it comes to the mainstream media. And that is why the alternative media has taken off so spectacularly in the past few decades. Christians and conservatives especially are being squeezed out of the public square and barred by most media outlets, so using our own media is one way to go – and sometimes the only way. Here I want to discuss my own experiences in dealing with the media – in this case overwhelmingly with the mainstream media. So this piece will be rather autobiographical in nature, as I talk about being a conservative and a Christian (read: ‘controversial’) commentator in a mainly hostile media, and how things have changed over the past several decades. As such, you might call this: “Bill’s Adventures in Medialand” – or someth

 By ERLC Staff - Posted at Baptist Press: Friday was the 100th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although there has been an ongoing war since 2014, the conflict escalated significantly with the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. Here is an update on recent developments in the war. Russia currently controls 20 percent of Ukraine territory In a recent address to the parliament of Luxembourg, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia now controls about 20 percent of his country’s territory (between 2014 and 2022, Russian had controlled about 7 percent of the country). The total square miles captured by the invading army – 48,260 sq miles – is larger than Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands combined. Claims of torture in Russian-occupied territories The BBC has documented numerous allegations of civilians being tortured by Russians in the region of Kherson. The claims include rape, electrocution, beatings, strangulation and burning – including people’s hands, feet and g

 By Carl Trueman - Posted at World : If anybody wants to understand what is happening to the public square in America—indeed, if anyone wants to know how America, or at least her ruling class, wishes to understand itself, they need look no further than Pride Month. If the arrival of the Pilgrims, the founding of the nation, and even the contribution of Martin Luther King Jr. receive no more than 24 hours on the national calendar, the LGBTQ+ alliance has an entire month to party in the streets. And this street party is enabled by the countless commercial ventures that post rainbow flags in their windows and on their websites. For anyone not completely hoodwinked by the erotic obsessions of our day, taking pride in one’s sexual identity—indeed, even considering sexual desire to be an identity—would seem at best pitiful and at worst a deep perversion of what it means to be human. Yet, here we are. And we should not underestimate the power of what it signifies. It is a basic fact of histor

 By Tim Challies At the end of the Second World War the Allied nations began to “denazify” Germany. After the final surrender, they began the long process of identifying Nazis and uprooting the influence of Nazism across all of society—in culture, media, economics, and politics. The goal was to create a Germany that was post-Hitler and, therefore, post-Nazi. It seems to me that in the West today we are witnessing an attempt to “dechristianize” our society—to identify and destroy the influence of Christianity wherever it exists. The goal, of course, is to create a society that is post-Jesus and, therefore, post-Christian. Christian sexual morals are now said to be bigotry, Christian understandings of marriage and family are now said to be oppressive, Christian notions of justice are now said to be discriminatory. On and on it goes and over time this seek-and-destroy mission is transforming society around us. But there is a strange irony to all of this—an irony few people are willing to

 By Heather Clark - Posted at Christian News Network: LOCKPORT, N.Y. — An ex-lesbian who fled the United States over a decade ago to protect her daughter from having further unsupervised visitations with her former partner is now free after spending more than a year behind bars. She had surrendered herself to authorities in January 2021, months after her daughter turned 18. “Praise the Lord with us. Our sister, Lisa, has been released,” reports Pablo Yoder , a Mennonite pastor who serves in Nicaragua. “After about thirty minutes of hearing comments from both sides, Judge [Richard] Acara gave Lisa’s sentence as ‘time served’ … [T]he judge agreed with the others, yes, even the prosecution, that it’s time to ‘move on.'” A reported 50 to 60 Christians were present for the May 23 hearing to support Lisa Miller, who had pled guilty to a charge of “international parental kidnapping” in February 2021. She had been held at the Niagara County Jail in Lockport, New York, about 40 minutes nor

 By Amanda Casanova - Posted at Christian Headlines: Family members of Josh Duggar, the former reality TV star who has been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in federal prison on charges of possession of child pornography, are speaking out about the sentence. According to Fox 8, Duggar’s brother, Jason Duggar, said the decision was “fair.” “In my opinion, Judge Timothy L. Brooks was fair in his ruling, giving Josh a sentence that would be considered below the median for the crimes he has committed,” he said. “My heart is grieved over the choices my brother has made. "His actions do not reflect that of a Christian believer and have doubtlessly defamed my Lord and Savior’s name!!” Read more...