Christian Heritage News

 By Denny Burk Published May 30, 2023 One of the most astonishing developments of late modernity has been the mainstreaming of transgenderism. In retrospect, the path to our current moment is clear enough (see Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self ). Nevertheless, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing grown men in earnest behaving like a cartoonish caricature of an adolescent girl. And yet examples of this kind of thing are proliferating, and anyone refusing to go along with this risks all manner of social and perhaps even professional ostracism and recriminations. It is like Americans have gotten a really bad fever with no indication in sight that the fever will ever break. The worst part of this social contagion is how it has impacted minor children. The purveyors of this ideology have aggressively gone after the most immature and most impressionable among us. Your local gender clinic is all-to-ready to shoehorn your child into a transgender identity upon any expre

 By David Petersen - Posted at The Lutheran Witness: Christ calls us to love our enemies, to act with mercy. We should not as a knee-jerk reaction insist on our rights. We yield to the weak in faith and attempt to win a brother. There is a sense, however, in which that mercy has limits. Jesus does not command that we suffer abuse and injustice passively. He does not teach that our forgiveness means we completely forget what has been done to us nor does it eliminate boundaries. Stewards guard their resources to fulfill their vocations. Boundaries with the toxic There are times when Christians need to set extreme boundaries for their relationships and there can even be times to separate from others. Jesus instructs us to separate from those who refuse to hear godly rebuke from the church and amend their ways (Matt. 18:17). They aren’t to be indulged forever. Jesus commands us to leave those who won’t hear His Word (Matt. 10:14), to be shrewd as serpents in the world (Matt. 10:16) and eve

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None Of His Benefits: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.” -Revelation 11:15 The link imbedded here is an interview President Biden recently did where he explains why he has always been for “same sex marriage”, as he calls it; and why he thinks laws hindering children from transgenderism are “next to sinful.” "It doesn't matter whether it's same-sex or a heterosexual couple, you should be able to be married." @POTUS joins @KalPenn to discuss his evolution on same-sex marriage, and how the government can protect the transgender community. pic.twitter.com/HqurEvVctE - The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 13, 2023 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Here’s my question—how should western Christians in the public square (at work, in dialoguing at neighborhood parties, or in political discussions) where Christianity has been the predominant world view for 15

By Kim Roberts - Posted at  Ministry Watch: New Hope can continue offering services that align with its Christian views of marriage and family Syracuse-based Christian adoption agency New Hope Family Services has entered into a favorable settlement agreement with the state of New York and may continue offering adoption services to children and families. New Hope sued New York in federal court in September 2021 after the state’s Division of Human Rights threatened to investigate and penalize the agency because it only places infants with couples consisting of a married mother and father. New Hope was represented by attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a public interest legal group focused on parental rights and religious freedom. In 2022, New Hope won a similar case on summary judgment against the state when the New York State Office of Children and Family Services threatened it. Continue here.

 By Bob McEvoy - Posted at The Salty Scrivener: Victim Wars- Victimhood and Intersectionality – A Biblical Response Psalm 11 Have you noticed that nowadays it seems that victimhood is actually fashionable. Gone are the days of looking adversity in the face, determined to overcome it. We have great sympathy with those who have suffered, who are genuine victims, and there are many. But ‘fabricated victimhood’ is now a prevailing attitude in society. In this study, we will try to find out how this happened. 1. Critical Theories and the Roots of Victimhood. You may have someone talking about “Critical Race Theories.” CRT states that modern society is by its institutions and structures, is inherently racist, discriminating against ‘people of colour.’ Critical Theories are not confined to race. The essence of Critical Theory is that everything considered to be institutional in society is to be questioned and deconstructed. It’s important to look at the roots of critical theories to understa

 From Winchester RPCNA : Gordon Keddie went to be with the Lord on Friday, May 19th, at the age of 78 after a long struggle with prostate cancer. He was surrounded by his loving wife, Jane, sons and daughters-in-law Donald, Iain (Erin), David (Christina), and grandchildren Joshua, Sophia, Alexa, and one yet unborn.   Gordon was born on December 29th, 1944 in Edinburgh, Scotland and was baptized behind blackout curtains as the Second World War entered its final months. His father had been blessed with a brief leave in the spring to visit his wife between fighting in North Africa and invading Europe but wouldn’t see his son until the war was finished. Gordon spent his childhood sharing a three room apartment with his parents and brother John. Early jobs included delivering milk and groceries. Following his fifth year of primary school, after a bout where his hair fell out due to frustration from the rote education, he was taken on scholarship by George Heriot’s School.   From an early ag

 By Larry Ball - Posted at The Aquila Report: Believers can publicly call out the evil, e.g., in abortion, homosexual marriage, and transgenderism, and in so doing honor God and fulfill their obligation to call the civil magistrate to repent. The term “spirituality of the church” has become one of those phrases that often stops all further conversation about the relationship between church and state. Few Christians ever question the meaning of the phrase. It assumes that the church should remain silent about all political matters. Although the expression does not appear in any of our confessional standards, it has become a doctrine of Presbyterianism as sacrosanct as any one of the five points of Calvinism. No one is allowed to challenge it without being labeled with a pejorative term. It is my contention that rightly understood, it can be a useful phrase, but if contextualized in terms of either dualistic Greek thought, or in terms of present-day secular pluralism, it is not only fa

Source:  A Word about Spurgeon and Female Pastors – Denny Burk  By Dr. Denny Burk Published May 20, 2023 Earlier this week, it was announced that Rick Warren had been installed as the honorary Chancellor of Spurgeon’s College in London. After his installation, Warren took the opportunity to double-down on his support for female pastors and to claim that “ my views on ordination are identical to Spurgeon’s. ” I am no expert on Spurgeon, but I am reasonably certain that Warren’s views on ordination are not identical to Spurgeon’s—at least insofar as it relates to the ordination of female pastors. In his book Lectures to My Students, Spurgeon devotes an entire chapter to “The Call to the Ministry.”* In that chapter, I can see at least three differences between Spurgeon’s and Warren’s views on this point. 1. The Gender of “Pastor” Warren claims that the Bible permits women to serve as pastors in the church and that they should be afforded the opportunity to lead and teach as pastors. Sp

Image Source:  Timothy Keller - Tim Keller (pastor) - Wikipedia  By Michael Gryboski - Posted at The Christian Post: Timothy Keller, the notable Evangelical author, theologian and New York City-based pastor, has died following a lengthy battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was 72 years old. Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, a congregation that Keller helped found, sent a statement to members informing them that he died Friday morning. "We are forever grateful for his leadership, heart, and dedication to sharing the love of Christ with others. While we will miss his presence here, we know he is rejoicing with his Savior in heaven," stated Redeemer, according to Church Leaders. Continue here. See also: Vale Tim Keller - CultureWatch (billmuehlenberg.com) Tim Keller, retired New York megachurch pastor and bestselling author, dies at 72 – MinistryWatch Christian Leaders Respond to the Death of Pastor Tim Keller - Christian News Headlines (christianheadlines.com) De

By Chris Reimers - Posted at Wings of the Wind: In the past several months I have noticed article after article about the mental health of teenagers in America. The articles have come from media sources with every political bent. This blog post is an effort to summarize several of those articles dating back to December, and to add my own thoughts as to what is contributing to this problem. “ Understanding the mental health crisis afflicting American teens ” was aired on NPR on December 23rd. A reporter who has studied this subject was interviewed about his latest findings. Early in the interview, the host of the show made this statement: “While there’s no clear consensus among experts on the root of the problem, there is research that provides important insights into the nature of teens’ suffering and some treatments that show promise.” In this interview the major guess at the cause of these problems is that environmental factors have become too overwhelming for teens to process. Lo

Image Source:  Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (pcusa.org)  By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog: When, Dean Kelley published Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), the Protestant mainline was already in crisis. They were shrinking, and, as Kelley’s title suggests, the “conservative” churches were growing. This book was published the year before churches withdrew from the old Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS) to form the Presbyterian Churches in America (PCA), which would become one of the fastest-growing denominations in the USA for more than three decades. The solution Kelley proposed was unsatisfactory. It was written eleven years before the formation of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) in 1983, which was the result of the United Presbyterian Church USA merging with the PCUS. He argued that what the mainline churches needed to do was to believe something (anything really), stick to that belief, and throw out some people so that every

Source:  Serving God in Unglamorous Places (gentlereformation.com)  By Stephen Steele - Posted at Gentle Reformation: In 1848, during the Great Famine, there was a failed Irish nationalist uprising by the Young Irelanders. It culminated on 29 July in a gunfight which became known as 'The Battle of Widow McCormack’s Cabbage Patch'. One of the rebels was shot dead by the police. Another was fatally wounded. But even though it was a matter of life and death, it’s hard not to smile at the name. We would be quick to tell people about ancestors who fought at Waterloo or Gettysburg. But a cabbage patch doesn’t rank too highly when it comes to the great battlefields of history. Yet we’re not all called to take on the enemy on glamorous battlefields. As if there is such a thing anyway. Lentil fields need defended In 2 Samuel 23 we meet a man called Shammah who takes his stand in a plot of ground full of lentils. The Philistines had gathered. The men of Israel had fled. But Shammah ‘took

By Billy Hallowell - Posted at CBN: A constitutional attorney is sounding the alarm about a case he says could have sweeping religious liberty ramifications. John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, said his client, Rich Penkoski, was slapped with a five-year restraining order that prevents him from protesting online or in person the activities of an LGBT organization in Oklahoma. As CBN News previously reported , the situation unfolded after the preacher posted his moral and religious concerns online, expressing his beliefs about a church that purportedly supported same-sex marriage and a drag queen performance in front of kids. Penkoski also reportedly posted on Facebook about a lesbian couple’s wedding ceremony, sharing a church’s public picture of the gay nuptials; one of the women is allegedly the executive board president for Oklahomans for Equality Bartlesville. Romans 1:32 was allegedly shared along with that posting.

 By Simonetta Carr - Posted at Place For Truth: From the earliest times, mothers have felt the responsibility of training and instructing their children. We find plenty of examples both in the Bible and in church history. This desire has often been expressed in their letters. When Sons Leave Home During the Middle Ages, the Frankish noblewoman Dhuoda wrote a long and moving treatise to her son fourteen-year-old son William, who had moved with his father to the royal court. [1] She hoped her written words will continue to guide William and, possibly, that he would share them with his younger brother who had been taken from her as a baby. In the sixteenth century, Anna Bullinger wrote to one of her sons at college, “I ask you to be sound, hardworking, and to clean yourself, fearing God, honorable toward God, and all people,” [2] she said, adding words of advice about washing clothes and caring for shoes. But it is in the seventeenth century that the

 By Allen and Julie Quist - Posted at Christian News: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is widely used in public schools and is now infiltrating private schools, including Christian schools. This article will examine the suitability of SEL in any school, and especially in Christian schools. But first we need to understand what SEL is. It is defined, at least in theory, in a recent article in Education Week , 2023, called: “ What is SEL Anyway? Seven Experts Break it Down .” This Education Week article, however, does not actually define SEL; it does mention processes like “control emotions,” “build self-esteem,” and “facilitate empathy.” What then is SEL? As we will see below, SEL is a radical education program that indoctrinates kids with the basic principles of cultural Marxism . The godfather of cultural Marxism, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), said that for the Marxist revolution to succeed, it must take control of the educational program of targeted nations. SEL is

 By Tom Strode - Posted at Baptist Press: CHICAGO (BP)—A Southern Baptist Convention entity and a Baptist state convention have joined other organizations in defending before a federal appeals court the rights of Wisconsin parents challenging a school system’s transgender policy. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention (MWBC) signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday (May 8) that urged the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago to rule parents have legal standing to contest the guidance of the Eau Claire (Wis.) Area School District. The policy permits staff to conceal from parents their child is identifying at school as a gender different than his or her biological sex. The brief marks the third time in 14 months the ERLC has joined with a Baptist state convention and other organizations to support parents challenging a school’s guidelines regarding students who identify as transgender. Among the commission’s

By Linda Harvey - Posted at Mission America: Your child attending public school in the U.S. now has a 1 in 4 chance of declaring an “LGBTQ” identity before the end of high school. Do you see a problem with this? Perhaps you, like many Americans, accept the notion that some people are born homosexual. Or born in the wrong sex body. And that these identities/behaviors carry no inherent risks. How about bisexual...is that inborn also? And gender queer or non-binary... are those also genetically determined? If even a small part of you resists this notion, and doubts the conclusion that 25% of our population is not heterosexual or biologically male or female, then I ask you to read on and help me consider what we can do to change this deception. First, let’s look at the background and research. The latest report from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control presents a disastrous picture. It’s a survey of over 17,000 9th to 12th graders conducted every two

Source:  Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle (christianpost.com)  Featured at CP Podcasts - The Christian Post : The transgender craze is growing and metastasizing in America and worldwide. Confusion is abounding. And while Western cultures celebrate and elevate gender chaos, the societal and cultural costs are quickly mounting. Join enterprising journalist Brandon Showalter of The Christian Post for a no-holds-barred exploration of the topic in “Generation Indoctrination,” a documentary-style podcast series aimed at exploring the roots and impact of the transgender debate. In this five-part investigative podcast series, Showalter masterfully takes listeners through heartbreaking stories, expert opinions, and bewildered academics’ experiences as these individuals push back on the narratives being perpetuated and targeted at young hearts and minds. Learn more here.

Image Source:  (28) Midori Ito 🥈 - Albertville Games (1992) HD - YouTube  By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits: “Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.” – Revelation 16:15 Perhaps you remember the story of Midori Ito, the great Japanese figure skater, who was favored to win the gold medal at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. She fell in her final routine, and finished with a silver medal. The next day she appeared on national television in Japan, apologizing for her failure for letting down and disappointing her entire nation. This seems strange to many of us in the West and that’s because many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures are driven by shame. We in the West tend to be guilt based. We want to know if someone is guilty, if he has broken the law. In Middle Eastern Islamic cultures, if a young woman marries a Christian or converts to Christi

By Carole Novielli - Posted at Live Action News:  In August of 2022, Dr. Bhavik Kumar, the medical director of primary and trans care at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, told NPR that more than half of all Planned Parenthood health centers offer medicalization for transgender-identifying individuals, including cross-sex hormone injections. The news outlet noted that “Over 35,000 of Planned Parenthood’s patients nationwide sought gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy in 2021, and that number doesn’t include trans and nonbinary people who relied on other services.” Live Action News has estimated that between 2014 and 2019, Planned Parenthood saw a 669% increase — nearly 700% — in the number of facilities offering cross-sex hormone injections for transgender-identifying individuals, an increase from 26 centers to 200 centers. In other words, the nation’s largest abortion provider has now set itself up as the second-largest provider of transgender-related services in the nation. Con

 By Diana Chandler - Posted at Baptist Press: WASHINGTON (BP) – Lina Nealon, a sexual assault survivor and mother of four children, poses as a 14-year-old on Snapchat. Within minutes, Snapchat’s Stories section, marketed as “content from vetted media publishers and content creators,” recommends sexually suggestive videos. “Clearly Snap and I have a different idea of what is acceptable content to share with teens,” said Nealon, vice president and director of corporate advocacy for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). “It is long past due for them to make blanket changes to make our kids safe.” Nealon shares her story on Instagram in NCOSE’s release May 2 of its 10th annual Dirty Dozen List , accusing the companies of facilitating, enabling and profiting from sexual abuse and exploitation. Snapchat joins Apple App Store, Discord, eBay, Instagram, Kik, Microsoft’s GitHub, Only Fans, Reddit, Roblox, Spotify and Twitter in comprising NCOSE’s Dirty Dozen. “Those on our 2023 D

 By Elizabeth Prata - Posted at The End Time: He was comfortably retired. He was old. On a fine and bright winter’s day in Sunny Florida, an unconverted man left his fine and comfortable home, and drove toward town. Where he was going…only God knows. Perhaps to the store to pick up a newspaper or milk. Perhaps to the diner to commune with cronies. Perhaps just to take a nice drive along the shore and admire the day. He certainly expected to accomplish his drive, to circumnavigate his task of going then coming. He certainly expected that his plans for later would be accomplished, perhaps some reading, maybe a nap, or dinner out with friends. He expected to return to his wife as he had all the other days he drove around town on his errands. He certainly did not expect the abrupt curtailment on this earth of all his plans, all his thoughts, all his ideas, all his aims, all his goals, all his breath, all his existence. Continue here...

Molly Kearney - Image Source: Today.com By Grant Van Leuven - Posted at Reformation 21: Published April 28, 2023 On the April 15 airing of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” the show’s first openly nonbinary cast member, Ms. Molly Kearney, though still using her singular female name yet celebrated being referred to by obliging backstage staff with the neuter pronouns “they” and “them” (reflecting “their” references to her elsewhere). [1] In so doing she not only defies her God-given and biologically determined female identity but also denies the obvious reality that she is not plural—exposing the arbitrarily ludicrous LGBTQ+ agenda being pushed to new schizophrenic heights. While there is no mistaking Kearney’s unoriginal attempts at being the female version of Chris Farley in the segment, there also is no missing her intention to exit with the air of angelic authority being lifted up with ropes as she declared, If you don’t care about trans-kids’ lives, it means you don’t care about … kids’ li