You're obviously lying..... Catholics and Protestants: The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist[17][18][19][20] conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998.[21] Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict,[22][23][24][25] it is sometimes described as an "irregular war"[26][27][28] or "low-level war".[29][30][31] The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.[6][7][32][33][34] Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe...... WIKI
Yup, thx. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it. Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.… Christianity is full of blind cultists who don't think for themselves, they blindly are led by more cultists who worship a jewish idol called the bible and its doctrine. In the meantime Jews have railroaded themselves into American politics where they've basically taken over the country, just look how American taxpayers foot the bill for Israels bloodthirst. Do we hear protests from American politicians or any politicians for that matter? Do we hear any protest from the church? Nup, they're complicit in war crimes on a grand scale imo and it all comes back to fake spirituality.
Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. Opinion David French The Line Between Good and Evil Cuts Through Evangelical America April 21, 2024 Credit...Jessie Wardarski/Associated Press By David French Opinion Columnist https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/opinion/christianity-fundamentalist-evangelical-pentacostal.html I’m afraid that an exit poll question has confused America. Every four years, voters are asked, “Are you a white evangelical or born-again Christian?” And every time, voters from a broad range of Protestant Christian traditions say yes, compressing a diverse religious community into a single, unified mass. It’s not that the question is misleading. People who answer yes do represent a coherent political movement. Not only do they vote overwhelmingly for Republicans; they’re also quite distinct from other American political groups in their views on a host of issues, including on disputes regarding race, immigration and the Covid vaccines. But in other ways, this exit poll identity misleads us about the nature and character of American evangelicalism as a whole. It’s far more diverse and divided than the exit poll results imply. There are the rather crucial facts that not all evangelicals are white and evangelicals of color vote substantially differently from their white brothers and sisters. Evangelicals of color are far more likely to vote Democratic, and their positions on many issues are more closely aligned with the American political mainstream. But the differences go well beyond race. In reality, American evangelicalism is best understood as a combination of three religious traditions: fundamentalism, evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. These different traditions have different beliefs, different cultures and different effects on our nation. The distinction between fundamentalism and evangelicalism can be the hardest to parse, especially since we now use the term “evangelical” to describe both branches of the movement. The conflict between evangelicalism and fundamentalism emerged most sharply in the years following World War II, when so-called neo-evangelicals arose as a biblically conservative response to traditional fundamentalism’s separatism and fighting spirit. I say “biblically conservative” because neo-evangelicals had the same high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God that fundamentalists did, but their temperament and approach were quite different. The difference between fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism can be summed up in two men, Bob Jones and Billy Graham. In a 2011 piece about the relationship between Jones and Graham, the Gospel Coalition’s Justin Taylor called them the “exemplars of fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism.” Jones was the founder of the university that bears his name in Greenville, S.C., one of the most influential fundamentalist colleges in America. Bob Jones University barred Black students from attending until 1971, then banned interracial dating until 2000. The racism that plagued Southern American fundamentalism is a key reason for the segregation of American religious life. It’s also one reason the historically Black Protestant church is distinct from the evangelical tradition, despite its similar views of the authority of Scripture. Graham attended Bob Jones University for a semester, but soon left and took a different path. He went on to become known as “America’s pastor,” the man who ministered to presidents of both parties and led gigantic evangelistic crusades in stadiums across the nation and the world. While Jones segregated his school, Graham removed the red segregation rope dividing white and Black attendees at his crusades in the South — before Brown v. Board of Education — and shared a stage with Martin Luther King Jr. at Madison Square Garden in 1957. But since that keen Jones/Graham divide, the lines between evangelicalism and fundamentalism have blurred. Now the two camps often go to the same churches, attend the same colleges, listen to the same Christian musicians and read the same books. To compound the confusion, they’re both quite likely to call themselves evangelical. While the theological differences between fundamentalists and evangelicals can be difficult to describe, the temperamental differences are not. “Fundamentalism,” Richard Land, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, once told me, “is far more a psychology than a theology.” That psychology is defined by an extreme sense of certainty, along with extreme ferocity. Roughly speaking, fundamentalists are intolerant of dissent. Evangelicals are much more accepting of theological differences. Fundamentalists place a greater emphasis on confrontation and domination. Evangelicals are more interested in pluralism and persuasion. Fundamentalists focus more on God’s law. Evangelicals tend to emphasize God’s grace. While many evangelicals are certainly enthusiastic Trump supporters, they are more likely to be reluctant (and even embarrassed) Trump voters, or Never Trumpers, or Democrats. Fundamentalists tend to march much more in lock step with the MAGA movement. Donald Trump’s combative psychology in many ways merges with their own. A Christian politics dominated by fundamentalism is going to look very different from a Christian politics dominated by evangelicalism. Think of the difference between Trump and George W. Bush. Bush is conservative. He’s anti-abortion. He’s committed to religious liberty. These are all values that millions of MAGA Republicans would claim to uphold, but there’s a yawning character gap between the two presidents, and their cultural influence is profoundly different. While the difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism can be difficult to discern, Pentecostalism is something else entirely. American evangelicals can trace their roots to the Reformation; the Pentecostal movement began a little over 100 years ago, during the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906. The movement was started by a Black pastor named William Seymour, and it is far more supernatural in its focus than, say, the Southern Baptist or Presbyterian church down the street. At its heart, Pentecostalism believes that all of the gifts and miracles you read about in the Bible can and do happen today. That means prophecy, speaking in tongues and gifts of healing. Pentecostalism is more working class than the rest of the evangelical world, and Pentecostal churches are often more diverse — far more diverse — than older American denominations. Hispanics in particular have embraced the Pentecostal faith, both in the United States and in Latin America, and Pentecostalism has exploded in the global south. When I lived in Manhattan, my wife and I attended Times Square Church, a Pentecostal congregation in the heart of the city, and every Sunday felt like a scene from the book of Revelation, with people “from every nation, tribe, people and language” gathered together to worship with great joy. Pentecostalism is arguably the most promising and the most perilous religious movement in America. At its best, the sheer exuberance and radical love of a good Pentecostal church is transformative. At its worst, the quest for miraculous experience can lead to a kind of frenzied superstition, where carnival barker pastors and faux apostles con their congregations with false prophecies and fake miracles, milking them for donations and then wielding their abundant wealth as proof of God’s favor. The Pentecostal church, for example, is the primary home of one of the most toxic and dangerous Christian nationalist ideas in America — the Seven Mountain Mandate, which holds that God has ordained Christians to dominate the seven “mountains” of cultural influence: the family, the church, education, media, arts, the economy and government. This is an extreme form of Christian supremacy, one that would relegate all other Americans to second-class status. Pentecostalism is also the primary source for the surge in prophecies about Trump that I’ve described before. It’s mostly Pentecostal pastors and leaders who have told their flocks that God has ordained Trump to rule — and to rule again. Combine the Seven Mountain Mandate with Trump prophecies, and you can see the potential for a kind of fervent radicalism that is immune to rational argument. After all, how can you argue a person out of the idea that God told him to vote for Trump? Or that God told him that Christians are destined to reign over the United States? When I look at the divisions in American evangelicalism, I’m reminded of the Homer Simpson toast: “To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” The American church has been the cause of much heartache and division. It is also the source of tremendous healing and love. We saw both the love and the division most vividly in the civil rights movement, when Black Christians and their allies faced the dogs and hoses all too often unleashed by members of the white Southern church. We saw this on Jan. 6, when violent Christians attacked the Capitol, only to see their plans foiled by an evangelical vice president who broke with Trump at long last to uphold his constitutional oath and spare the nation a far worse catastrophe. I’ve lived and worshiped in every major branch of American evangelicalism. I was raised in a more fundamentalist church, left it for evangelicalism and spent a decade of my life worshiping in Pentecostal churches. Now I attend a multiethnic church that is rooted in both evangelicalism and the Black church tradition. I’ve seen great good, and I’ve seen terrible evil. That long experience has taught me that the future of our nation isn’t just decided in the halls of secular power; it’s also decided in the pulpits and sanctuaries of American churches. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that the line between good and evil “cuts through the heart of every human being.” That same line also cuts through the heart of the church.
This gripping Australian expose should come with a horror warning on the cover By Barney Zwartz April 23, 2024 https://www.smh.com.au/culture/book...ror-warning-on-the-cover-20240419-p5fl8q.html SOCIETY Crimes of the Cross Anne Manne Black Inc., $36.99 This book should come with a “horror” warning on the cover. In the ignoble annals of clergy sexual abuse in Australia, it is hard to top the Newcastle Anglicans for depravity and cruelty – of the perpetrators and, yes, of the hierarchy who knew what was going on for decades and cravenly allowed it to continue. Successive bishops were strongly condemned by the royal commission into clergy abuse and one, Roger Herft – once spoken of as a possible head of the global Anglican Church who later became Archbishop of Perth – was even defrocked because of his failures. Had some earlier bishops of Newcastle been alive after the royal commission, they must have faced the same humiliation – Bishop Ian Shevill was actually an abuser. Christ Church Cathedral in Newcastle. Several bishops of the Anglican diocese were strongly condemned by the royal commission into clergy abuse.Credit: iStock Anne Manne’s harrowing account describes the abuse, how it flourished and was covered up, how the “halo effect” protected the abusers, and how accountability and justice finally arrived, if too late for many. In particular, it is the story of Steve Smith, a remarkable survivor whose courage, perseverance, determination and finally compassion over the decades kept pulling up the carpet under which the diocese had tried to sweep its shame. Manne observes the Newcastle Anglicans included “some of the worst of the worst … it was soul murder of little children who struggled ever after with what was done to them”. Credit: Steve Smith was a cheerful child who enjoyed what he called a Huckleberry Finn existence until just before his 10th birthday, when Father George Parker arrived at his parish. Parker immediately began grooming Steve’s whole family, winning their trust. The abuse started when Steve became an altar boy: Parker first bent him over and assaulted him outside his clothing. He would fondle the boy while driving him to different church services, then began digitally raping him before escalating to oral and anal rape. Steve’s nightmare continued for five years, including being raped on the church altar, shared among priests, raped at orgies, and seeing other boys abused. He believed Parker that there was no point in telling anyone, condemning him to live day by day with his enormous, explosive, shame-ridden secret. Later, seeking help from the church, he was repeatedly fobbed off. When he went to police, the investigation was obstructed by the entire church hierarchy, from the receptionist to the bishop, and especially the registrar, Peter Mitchell (later jailed for theft). The leadership, both clergy and lay, were concerned only to protect the church and, for some, to continue their pleasures. Here the long-time dean of Newcastle, Graeme Lawrence, was the key figure. Lawrence, finally jailed in 2019 for sexually assaulting a boy (he was paroled on April 10), was the fox in charge of the henhouse, the man responsible for overseeing the response to allegations. Graeme Lawrence, former dean of Newcastle, was released on parole last month after serving more than four years in jail for child abuse.Credit: Stefan Moore According to Manne, Lawrence was a formidable networker, far and away the most influential cleric in the diocese, who cultivated civic, political, legal and social relationships. In so doing, she writes, “he effectively groomed a whole city”. He established a “halo effect”, “a reservoir of admiration and goodwill, whereby people see the abuser as beyond reproach, enabling them to hide in plain sight”. Bishop Roger Herft was willing putty in the hands of people such as Lawrence. Herft was savaged by the royal commission, which simply did not believe much of what he said, and was deposed from Anglican holy orders in December 2021. Yet at the end of the hearing this most culpable of prelates finally seemed to grasp the seriousness of his failures. Manne records a touching scene after his evidence when he tremulously apologised to Steve Smith, who said he forgave him. There were heroes too, church and police who believed and championed the victims, particularly business manager John Cleary, diocesan investigator Michael Elliott, who both received death threats among other unpleasantness, the Reverend Roger Dyer and Detective Jeff Lantle. But things really improved when change came at the top in the form of Bishop Greg Thompson, himself an abuse victim who brought the experience, determination and authority to reform the diocesan responses to abuse complaints. Manne relies heavily on the royal commission, surely one of the most important and effective investigations in Australian history, and its case study 42 on the Newcastle Anglicans, itself 400 pages long. But she has immersed herself in the diocese and in the victims’ stories. Her narrative is all the more powerful for being mostly matter of fact and unemotional. She is too wise to gild the lily when it comes to the suffering of the victims and their supporters, a temptation to which some journalists succumb. The bald narrative contains all the power she needs, and I confess it brought me to tears several times. The paedophiles and their protectors have done incalculable damage, first to victims then to the institution. The light Manne casts is therefore all the more valuable. Barney Zwartz, a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity, was religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013.
I'm I the only one who enjoys Mickey's Jihad against Jesus That Pastor that ran of with Mickey's Wife 50 years ago has caused Jesus a lot of trouble on here! Even Jesus is probably cursing.