BSA Putting Churches at Risk

The National Executive Board of Boy Scouts of America (BSA) voted this week to end their prior ban on homosexual troop leaders.  Churches and religious organizations who continue to host BSA units are at increased legal risk even though the BSA is offering assurances that their new policy poses no risk.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) recent Obergefell v. Hodges decision … declaring same-sex ‘marriage’ a “fundamental right” and homosexuality an “immutable” characteristic … changes the legal landscape.  This decision … coupled with the BSA’s new membership policy changes … place the religious liberties of churches at even greater risk for legal attack and litigation. 

The dissenting justices on the High Court gave clear warnings that:

·         “… people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.” (Justice Roberts);

·         “… has potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty.” (Justice Thomas); and

·         “… will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.” (Justice Alito).

Public accommodation laws and non-discrimination laws are about to become major challenges as a result of the SCOTUS’ rulings.  Attorney Richard Mathews (who served as Legal Counsel to the BSA for 11-years and National General Counsel for 3-years) says, “While the BSA may be well-meaning in its intent to create a local troop option for membership standards for churches, this decision will be unsustainable over time given the hostile nature of the courts and their “evolution” on issues related to gay rights and human sexuality.  Some courts have already declared the BSA to be a public accommodation, and such rulings are likely to increase.  This could have a direct effect upon churches chartering troops in those jurisdictions if they were to face litigation over revoking the membership of the homosexual member who wears his uniform in the Gay Pride Parade, an adult who publicly marries his same-sex partner, or to the girl who believes she is actually a male.”

Matthews goes on to say, “Pastors and priests must also realize that the new local troop option only applies to adult members.  Churches are still prohibited from denying any openly homosexual youth ‘membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference.’ ”

The new BSA resolution clearly affirms that homosexual acts can be “moral, honorable, committed, and respectful.”  This opinion is wholly incompatible with historic Christian theology and ethics and will make it even more challenging for a church to integrate a BSA unit as part of a church’s youth ministry offerings.  [The BSA will no doubt have to modify its oath where it reads – “morally straight” … no pun intended.]

For me (personally), all my life I’ve sat on the three-legged stool of Church, Scouting, and the military.  I was well invested in each of these mainstay institutions of our society.  But in the past 5-years, two of those legs have been kicked out from under me via the progressive gay activists in the armed forces and in this character developing youth program.  All that remains to be conquered is the Church … within which many have already capitulated.  God help us!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

The Gay Agenda is About Crushing Christian Dissent

It isn’t rocket science nor does it require an advanced degree to realize that the true agenda of the homosexual activists is far beyond same-sex ‘marriage.’  One need only look at a lawsuit filed against a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples.

After 5-lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court found a constitutional right to same-sex ‘marriage’ last month, homosexuals applied for licenses in the Rowan County Clerk’s office. The clerk, Kim Davis, refused – citing her faith as a Christian for not recognizing a lifestyle God refers to in scripture as an abomination.  She is now being sued.

Davis’ attorney is Roger Gannam of Liberty Counsel, whose client recently took the stand to testify in the suit against her.  “We were able to see through her testimony that this case, more and more, is really about the plaintiffs wanting to force Kim Davis to issue a marriage license despite her sincerely held religious beliefs,” the attorney explains.  “It’s not about the plaintiffs’ desire to get married.”

Kentucky law stipulates that marriage license applicants can get a license in any county – so the plaintiffs could have driven a short distance to obtain the license elsewhere.  Instead, they drove 2-hours to the Rowan County Court House … having passed several other county court houses. .  As Gannam points out, “They drove an hour last week to court to a county where they could’ve gotten a license if they wanted one.”

Gannam argues that the case is about “crushing dissent” and forcing Christians out of public office.  “Just as Justice Alito predicted in his dissent in Obergefell [the same-sex marriage case], secularists are trying to ‘stamp out every vestige of dissent’ by targeting people of faith who do not agree with same-sex marriage,” Gannam states in a press release.

The court could issue a decision in Davis’ case by mid-August.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Gov. Walker Signs Pro-Life Law While the Curtain is Pulled Back on Planned Murderhood

Lost in the news … with so much reporting on the candidates on the campaign trail … Life News reported: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a pro-life bill that would ban abortions after 20-weeks of pregnancy. States do not have the ability under Roe v. Wade to ban all abortions, so pro-life groups are using a 20-week ban as a test case to get the U.S. Supreme Court to roll back the legalization of unlimited abortion on demand.

“At five months an unborn child can feel pain,” Walker said before signing the bill.  “As a society we should be protecting that child.”

Needless to say, the timing of this law couldn’t be better for presidential candidate Walker.  Its passage will no doubt serve to confirm his credentials as a social conservative and pro-life warrior.  As a Christian and pro-life advocate, Walker believes that banning the evident painful abortions after 20-weeks gestation is morally right and justified.  The majority of Americans also happen to agree with him.  Politically speaking, the passage of such a controversial law also underscores Walker’s growing skill and effectiveness as a chief executive.

Wisconsin becomes the 15th state to ban abortions at 20-weeks … which is just a couple weeks before unborn babies are viable and can survive outside the womb.  Under the law, an abortion practitioner who kills an unborn baby in an abortion after 20-weeks faces 3-years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

At the federal level, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a similar bill last spring — which (among other things) outlaws late-term abortion in all 50-states.  The measure will be taken up and debated by the US Senate later this year.

It’s never too soon for Christians to communicate with their respective senators to vote in favor of this bill to ban late-term abortions.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Tennessee Tragedy Results in States Arming Their Military, While Federal Troops Remain Clay Pigeons

Week before last, Four U.S. Marines died in the initial attack by Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, and an U.S. Navy Sailor … who had been injured in the shooting … died a few days thereafter.  In the wake of the tragic shootings in Tennessee at military facilities in Chattanooga, several governors are taking matters into their own hands, authorizing military personnel to be armed.

According to an NBC News report, the governors of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Florida and Indiana have ordered that full-time National Guard members should be allowed to carry arms in order to “deter attacks and allow the ability to protect themselves and civilians in case they are targeted.”

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin remarked, “It is painful enough when we lose members of our armed forces when they are sent in harm’s way, but it is unfathomable that they should be vulnerable for attack in our own communities.”

Thank God for some adult leadership in governance, because Lord knows it’s absent at the Federal level!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Civil Disobedience: Is Now the Time?

Last week, I devoted two of my blogs (July 13 & 15) to the subject of civil disobedience as expressed by Matt Barber (founder and editor-in-chief of BarbWire.com).  In this blog, I’m sharing the words of Pat Buchanan (founding editor of The American Conservative magazine).  Both have eloquently raised the thought – Is it time for civil disobedience?

Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Supreme Court (in a 7-2 decision) ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments be removed from the Capitol.  They called the Commandments “religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths” … therefore, the monument must go.

Gov. Mary Fallin has refused; and Oklahoma law-makers have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked.  Some legislators want the justices impeached.

Buchanan believes, “Fallin’s action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America – an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are defied and laws ignored in the name of conscience and a higher law.  Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.”  Buchanan goes on to point out, “Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking.  What else was our revolution but a rebellion to over-throw the centuries-old rule and law of king and Parliament, and establish our own?”

Buchanan observes several cases of civil disobedience in our American history:

• “U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been defied, and those who defied them lionized by modernity.  Thomas Jefferson freed all imprisoned under the sedition act, including those convicted in court trials presided over by Supreme Court justices.  Jefferson then declared the law dead.
• Some Americans want to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, who, defying the Dred Scott decision and fugitive slave acts, led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
• New England abolitionists backed the anti-slavery fanatic John Brown, who conducted the raid on Harpers Ferry that got him hanged but helped to precipitate a Civil War.  That war was fought over whether 11-Southern states had the same right to break free of Mr. Lincoln’s Union as the 13-colonies did to break free of George III’s England.
• Millions of Americans, with untroubled consciences, defied the Volstead Act, imbibed alcohol and brought an end to Prohibition.
• In the civil rights era, defying laws mandating segregation and ignoring court orders banning demonstrations became badges of honor.  Rosa Parks is a heroine because she refused to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus, despite the laws segregating public transit that relegated blacks to the ‘back of the bus.’
• In ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ Dr. King, defending civil disobedience, cited Augustine – ‘an unjust law is no law at all’ – and Aquinas who defined an unjust law as ‘a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.’  Said King, ‘one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws’ ”

But who decides what is an “unjust law?”

Buchanan responds, “If, for example, one believes that abortion is the killing of an unborn child and same-sex marriage is an abomination that violates ‘eternal law and natural law,’ do those who believe this not have a moral right if not a ‘moral responsibility to disobey such laws’?  Rosa Parks is celebrated.  But the pizza lady who said her Christian beliefs would not permit her to cater a same-sex wedding was declared a bigot.  And the LGBT crowd, crowing over its Supreme Court triumph, is writing legislation to make it a violation of federal civil rights law for that lady to refuse to cater that wedding. … And if cities, states or Congress enact laws that make it a crime not to rent to homosexuals, or to refuse services at celebrations of their unions, would not dissenting Christians stand on the same moral ground as Dr. King if they disobeyed those laws? … Already, some businesses have refused to comply with the Obamacare mandate to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees.  Priests and pastors are going to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.  Churches and chapels will refuse to host them.  Christian colleges and universities will deny married-couple facilities to homosexuals. … Laws will be passed to outlaw such practices as discrimination; and those laws, which the Christians believe violate eternal law and natural law, will, as Dr. King instructed, be disobeyed.  And the removal of tax exemptions will then be on the table.”

Buchanan concludes, “If a family disagreed as broadly as we Americans do on issues so fundamental as right and wrong, good and evil – the family would fall apart, the couple would divorce, and the children would go their separate ways.  Something like that is happening in the country.  A secession of the heart has already taken place in America, and a secession, not of states, but of people from one another, caused by divisions on social, moral, cultural, and political views and values, is taking place.”

It can’t be denied that we are entering into a post-Christian and anti-Christian era in America … a time that rejects the beliefs, values and laws of just 50-years ago.  America is disuniting, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 25 years ago.

As one who takes the spoken word seriously, it’s getting increasing difficult to pledge allegiance to the flag and say “indivisible” … let alone “under God.”  And because I love this country, and gave 25-years of my life in its military service “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies – both foreign and domestic,” I can’t just sit back and say, “whatever!”  Perhaps this is the time of civil disobedience.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Court Ruling Ravage Religious Liberty of Little Sisters

Last December (2014), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit heard oral argument from the Little Sisters of the Poor about the religious order being required to comply with Obamacare’s abortion mandate – forcing the group to pay for birth control and other drugs that may cause abortions.  [read my posting dated January 15, 2014 – “Big Brother Bullies Little Sisters”]

Last week, the Tenth Circuit ruled that the government can force the Little Sisters to either violate their faith or pay massive IRS penalties.  The court held that participating in the government’s contraception delivery scheme is “as easy as obtaining a parade permit, filing a simple tax form, or registering to vote” and that although the Sisters sincerely believe that participating in the scheme “make[s] them complicit in the overall delivery scheme,” the court “ultimately rejects the merits of this claim” because the court believes the scheme “relieves [the Little Sisters] from complicity.”

“As Little Sisters of the Poor, we simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith.  And we should not have to make that choice, because it violates our nation’s commitment to ensuring that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives,” Sister Loraine Marie Maguire (Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor) said in a statement. “For over 175 years, we have served the neediest in society with love and dignity.  All we ask is to be able to continue our religious vocation free from government intrusion.”

The Little Sisters of the Poor received a temporary injunction from the U.S. Supreme Court last year, which protected them from the mandate.  In an effort to extend that protection, the group then went before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which ended up ruling against them.

“We’re disappointed with today’s decision,” Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor, said in a statement.  “After losing repeatedly at the Supreme Court, the government continues its unrelenting pursuit of the Little Sisters of the Poor.  It is a national embarrassment that the world’s most powerful government insists that, instead of providing contraceptives through its own existing exchanges and programs, it must crush the Little Sisters’ faith and force them to participate.  Untold millions of people have managed to get contraceptives without involving nuns, and there is no reason the government cannot run its programs without hijacking the Little Sisters and their health plan.”

The fight for religious liberty is not over yet, however.  “We will keep on fighting for the Little Sisters, even if that means having to go all the way to the Supreme Court,” said Daniel Blomberg, Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

According to a recent poll, a majority of Americans (53%) oppose Obamacare’s HHS mandate.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Call to Christians: To Arms! To Arms!

Well before the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) announced the previously unknown constitutional “right” to impose same-sex “marriage” on all 50-states, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was prepared for their next move.

For a couple of decades, the ACLU has cited the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as a defense of religious liberty in a number of; but not anymore.  The ACLU has decided that the unalienable right to religious freedom embodied in the 1st Amendment must give way to newly coined claims by newly empowered groups.

In a Washington Post column, ACLU Deputy Director Louise Melling said this in reference to RFRA: “It’s time for Congress to amend the RFRA so that it cannot be used as a defense for discrimination.  Religious freedom will be undermined only if we continue to tolerate and enable abuses in its name.”  As a prime example of “abuses,” Ms. Melling cited the SCOTUS’s decision last year in favor of Hobby Lobby’s refusal to provide employees coverage for abortifacients, which she described misleadingly as “contraception.”  She warned that this sort of liberty could proliferate: “Religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations such as universities are taking the argument further,” she wrote.  “They invoke the RFRA to argue not only that they should not have to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, but also that they should not even have to notify the government that they refuse to do so.”

The ACLU seems more concerned than ever that conservative religious people might retain some rights of conscience in the face of ever-increasing demands.  Its website has a “Using Religion to Discriminate” page that sights all sorts of religious freedom claims.

New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer, writing in TIME, cuts to the chase in his June 28 piece entitled, “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.” In it he argues that, “Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.”

Like many on the Left, Mr. Oppenheimer sees religious tax exemptions not as a recognition that the state has no authority over churches and church property, but as a favor (“subsidizing”) that the state has extended.  Viewed that way, it’s not a stretch to have the government assert taxing power over ecclesiastical property.

As for “settled public policy,” he means that the Court’s ruling is final, something that the Left never accepts when they lose.  For example, the ACLU and others stepped up their legal attacks on the Boy Scouts after the SCOTUS in 2000 upheld the group’s right to enforce their moral standards. Whenever the pendulum swings left, we’re told the law is “settled.”  If it swings right, that’s just an incitement to do more.

In the near future, conservative religious business owners, academic institutions and any individual who will not genuflect to the Left’s version of reality will face subtle and outright discrimination.

Not missing a beat, atheist activist Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is now calling for the Pentagon to weed out conservative Christians from the ranks.  In a Daily Kos posting, he wrote that chaplains who teach biblical marriage “don’t belong in the military. … At this stage, the only honorable thing that these losers can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers, and get the hell out of the American military chaplaincy.  If they are unwilling or too cowardly to do so, then the Department of Defense must expeditiously cleanse itself of the intolerant filth that insists on lingering in the ranks of our armed forces.”

Given that this is what passes for tolerance, it’s not surprising that the ACLU and others on the Left want to render meaningless the free exercise of religion guarantee of the 1st Amendment and any federal and state laws that fortify religious liberty.

Christians: Are you prepared for battle?  Are you ready to fight for liberty in the land of the free and the home of the brave?  The battle cry has sounded.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Christians: Is It Time For Civil Disobedience? (Part 2)

I commend to your reading these words primarily from Matt Barber – founder and editor-in-chief of BarbWire.com.  [If you’ve not read my previous posting of July 13, read it before reading this blog.]

“Central to Christianity, and clearly delineated throughout both the Old and New Testaments, is the unambiguous and timeless proposition that any sexual practice outside the bonds of true man-woman marriage constitutes sexual immorality and results in separation from God.  This, of course, includes sexual acting out between members of the same sex, whether or not such acting out is tied to the novel notion of so-called ‘same-sex marriage,’ says Barber.

Barber goes on to clearly explain, “Christians, true Christians – regenerate, Bible-believing Christians who strive their level best to maintain fidelity to the Word of God and honor His commands – will not, indeed cannot, participate in, approve of, facilitate or encourage certain behaviors deemed by the Holy Scriptures to be immoral or sinful.  This is both our constitutionally affirmed human right and our Christian duty.  It is not so much that Christians wish, willy-nilly, to call homosexual behavior, polyamory, fornication, adultery, bestiality, incest or any other disordered sexual proclivity ‘sinful.’  It is, rather, that we must.  For the true Christian, God’s objective truths will always trump man’s subjective desires.”

Over the past 2,000 years of church history, whenever such conflicts have arisen, Christians have placed the laws of God above the laws of man.  In the early church the Christians refused to bow a knee to Caesar in worship.  So, will today’s Christians refuse to obey any court opinion or man-made law that presumes to make sin obligatory?  If the ancient church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, was able to face the lions in hopeful anticipation of joining Jesus, then why wouldn’t today’s Christians, under the same Spirit, face anything today’s pagan left can threaten?

“In the ongoing culture war, it seems there are no rules of engagement.  The secular left will accept nothing short of unconditional surrender.  That is to say, the pagans demand that we Christians abandon the biblical worldview altogether, and adopt their own.  This will never happen,” says Barber.

In his “letter from the Birmingham jail,” the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously declared, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.  Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”  He explained, “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.  An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”  An unjust law is, in point of fact, lawlessness.

Barber concludes, “ … [Justice] ‘Kennedy’s folly,’ will result in, must necessarily result in, widespread civil disobedience – disobedience of the sort we haven’t seen since the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s. … One can imagine nothing more ‘out of harmony with the moral law,’ than the twisted and oxymoronic notion of so-called ‘same-sex marriage.’  And so, Mr. Kennedy, our answer is no.  Come what may, we will not obey your unjust lawlessness.”

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Christians: Is It Time For Civil Disobedience? (Part 1)

In last week’s postings, I shared the words of Dennis Prager of SRN radio.  This week, I commend to your reading these words primarily from Matt Barber – founder and editor-in-chief of BarbWire.com.

“The push back has begun,” says Barber.  “Christian business owners, lawyers, parents, judges, county clerks, organizations, universities, hospitals, adoption agencies and other individuals and groups have been given an ultimatum by five unelected, unaccountable liberals in Washington, D.C.: “You must now obey us and disobey God.  You must pretend, with us, that sin-based same-sex ‘marriage’ is an actual thing.”

To which I profoundly say – Hogwash!

“Absolute truth is a stubborn thing,” says Barber.  “Attempts at marital alchemy notwithstanding, the highly contentious, wholly contemptible 5-4 ‘gay marriage’ opinion (and that’s all it is, an opinion) released last week by five pagan extremists in black robes is altogether illegitimate and should be treated as such.  From a moral, biological and legal standpoint, the court’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges is a complete farce. It’s an absurd missive, a bohemian word salad that was roundly, and rightly, condemned by the court’s four dissenting justices.”

“The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie,” mocked Justice Scalia.

These “five lawyers,” as Chief Justice John Roberts called them, can no more suspend the laws of natural marriage, than can they suspend the laws of gravity.  “[D]o not celebrate the Constitution,” wrote Roberts.  “It had nothing to do with it.”

Barber goes on to say, “This opinion, which has been branded ‘the Dred Scott of marriage,’ has not changed, one iota, the fixed and immovable reality that the institution of marriage, an institution as old as mankind itself, is, and shall forever remain, centrally defined by its binary male-female requirement … Indeed, as the four dissenting justices noted, the majority failed, at every level, from a precedential, historical, moral and, perhaps most importantly, a constitutional standpoint, to make the case for redefining marriage – something no man can do.”

So how should we Christians react to this haughtiness – to this rebellion against God?

In Acts 5 we read of the apostles being persecuted and jailed for preaching publically of Christ Jesus.  And when brought before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest for their disobedience to the order not to teach in His name, Peter and the others said – “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Jesus told us this would happen when He said, “Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’  If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also.  If they obeyed My teaching, they will obey yours also.” (John 15:20)

Like the prophet Daniel (of old) and the contemporary prophet (the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), we Christians must engage in peaceful response to the imposition of same-sex ‘marriage’ in widespread civil disobedience.  It’s the right thing to do.  

It is sinful not to engage in civil disobedience.  In James 4:17 we read, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

No doubt some of you would prefer the path of least resistance.  Perhaps some of you would be quick to quote (out of context) various verses of Holy Scriptures to avoid the possible persecution that will come as a result of obedience to God … such as, “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.” (Romans 13:1)

Listen: Under our form of government as a constitutional conservative, “We the People” are “the governing authorities” … not our elected officials in Congress and the White House. They are subject to us, and we are all subject to the Creator [God] … who endowed us with certain unalienable rights and is the final Authority.

Barber concludes, “These nine unelected, unaccountable justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are appointed and confirmed by the elected officials we hire to represent us.  Five of the nine have now presumed to defy both the sovereign will of tens of millions of ‘We the People’ who engaged the constitutional process and voted to defend the immutable definition of marriage, as well as, and more importantly, the sovereign will of God Almighty, the very Author of marriage itself.”

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Peace: Liberals Call for Pacifism – Conservatives Call for Power

As a continuation from my previous two blog postings, I share (again) the profound explanation of the difference between liberals and conservatives … largely in the words of SRN (Salem Radio Network) host Dennis Prager.  [If you haven’t read the Monday, July 6 and Wednesday, July 8, 2015 postings, consider reading them before this one.]

A third example of contrasting liberals and conservatives is “peace.”

Prager says, “The left has a soft spot for pacifism – the belief that killing another human being is always immoral.  Not all leftists are pacifists, but pacifism emanates from the left, and just about all leftists support ‘peace activism,’ ‘peace studies’ and whatever else contains the word ‘peace.’ ”

“The right, on the other hand, while just as desirous of peace as the left – what conservative parent wants their child to die in battle? – knows that pacifism and most ‘peace activists’ increase the chances of war, not peace,” says Prager.  “Nothing guarantees the triumph of evil like refusing to fight it.  Great evil is therefore never defeated by peace activists, but by superior military might.  The Allied victory in World War II is an obvious example.”

Prager points out, “Supporters of pacifism, peace studies, American nuclear disarmament, American military withdrawal from countries in which it has fought – Iraq is the most recent example – do not ask, ‘Does it do good?’  Did the withdrawal of America from Iraq do good?  Of course not.  It only led to the rise of Islamic State with its mass murder and torture.”

So, then, if in assessing what public policies to pursue, conservatives ask “Does it do good?”, what question do liberals ask?  The answer is, “Does it make people – including myself – feel good?”

Why do liberals support a higher minimum wage if doesn’t do good? Because it makes the recipients of the higher wage feel good (even if other workers lose their jobs when restaurants and other businesses that cannot afford the higher wage close down) and it makes liberals feel good about themselves.

Why do liberals support race-based affirmative action?  For the same reasons.  It makes the recipients feel good when they are admitted to more prestigious colleges.  And it makes liberals feel good about themselves for appearing to right the wrongs of historical racism.

The same holds true for left-wing peace activism: Supporting “peace” … rather than the military … makes liberals feel good about themselves.

Prager says, “Perhaps the best example is the self-esteem movement.  It has had an almost wholly negative effect on a generation of Americans raised to have high self-esteem without having earned it.  They then suffer from narcissism and an incapacity to deal with life’s inevitable setbacks. But self-esteem feels good.  And feelings – not reason – is what liberalism is largely about.  Reason asks: ‘Does it do good?’  Liberalism asks, ‘Does it feel good?’ ”

Prager concludes, “Liberals find it too painful to look reality in the eye and acknowledge that human nature is deeply flawed.  This is especially so because left-wing thought is rooted in secularism, and if you don’t believe in God, you had better believe in humanity – or you will despair.”

Amen, Dennis!  Amen!

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

L & R Difference: Social Revolution v. Character Development

As a continuation from my previous blog posting, I share (again) the profound explanation of the difference between liberals and conservatives … largely in the words of SRN (Salem Radio Network) host Dennis Prager.  [If you haven’t read the Monday, July 6, 2015 posting, consider reading it before this one.]

The difference between the ‘Right’ and the ‘Left’ concerns a fundamentally different method that each utilizes in order to improve society.

Prager says, “Conservatives believe that the way to a better world is almost always through moral improvement of the individual – by each person doing battle with his own moral defects.  It is true that in particularly violent and evil societies such as fascist, communist and Islamist tyrannies the individual must be preoccupied with battling outside forces.  Almost everywhere else, however, and certainly in a free and decent country such as America, the greatest battle of the individual must be with inner forces – that is, with his or her flawed character and moral defects.”

Prager goes on to say, “The Left, on the other hand, believes that the way to a better world is almost always through doing battle with society’s moral defects (real and/or as perceived by the Left).  Thus, in America, the Left defines the good person as the one who fights the sexism, racism, intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia and other evils that the Left believes permeate American society.”

This accounts for why the liberals are so preoccupied with politics … as compared to conservatives.  Whenever the term “activist” or “social activist” or “organizer” is used, one infers that the term refers to someone on the Left.

“One consequence of this difference is that conservatives believe that good is achieved far more gradually than liberals do,” says Prager.  “The process of making a better world is largely a one-by-one-by-one effort.  And it must be redone in every single generation.  The noblest generation ever born still has to teach its children how to battle their natures.  If it doesn’t, even the best society will begin to rapidly devolve, which is exactly what conservatives believe has been happening to America since the end of World War II.”

Prager goes on to say, “The Left does not focus on individual character development. Rather, it has always and everywhere focused on social revolution.  The most revealing statement of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, the most committed leftist ever elected president of the United States, was made just days before the 2008 election: ‘We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,’ he told a large rapturous audience.”

“Conservatives not only have no interest in fundamentally transforming the United States, but they are passionately opposed to doing so.  Fundamentally transforming any but the worst society – not to mention transforming what is probably the most decent society in history – can only make the society worse,” says Prager.  Of course, conservatives believe that America can be improved, but not transformed, let alone fundamentally transformed.

The Founding Fathers understood that the transformation that every generation must work on is the moral transformation of each citizen.  Thus, character development was at the core of both childrearing and of young people’s education at school.  John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  And in the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”

Why is that, you ask? – Because freedom requires self-control; otherwise, external controls (which means an ever more powerful government) would have to be imposed.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Liberal & Conservative Views of Human Nature Define the Great Divide

This blog posting is primarily the words of SRN (Salem Radio Network) host Dennis Prager.  I found them so helpful in clarifying the difference between liberals and conservatives.  It might well help you to identify where you stand and help you to explain your position or the position you oppose.  Prager asks: “If you can’t explain both sides, how do you know you’re right?”

“Left-of-center doctrines hold that people are basically good.  On the other side, conservative doctrines hold that man is born morally flawed – not necessarily born evil, but surely not born good.  Yes, we are born innocent – babies don’t commit crimes, after all – but we are not born good.  Whether it is the Christian belief in ‘original sin’ or the Jewish belief that we are all born with a ‘yetzer tov’ (good inclination) and a ‘yetzer ra’ (bad inclination) that are in constant conflict, the root value systems of the West never held that we are naturally good” says Prager.

To those who argue that we all have goodness within us, Prager offers two responses:

“First, no religion or ideology denies that we have goodness within us; the problem is with denying that we have badness within us.

Second, it is often very challenging to express that goodness.  Human goodness is like gold.  It needs to be mined – and like gold mining, mining for our goodness can be very difficult.”

This is so important to understanding the left-right divide because so many fundamental left-right differences emanate from this divide, says Prager.

Perhaps the most obvious one is that conservatives blame those who engage in violent criminal activity for their behavior more than liberals do.  Liberals argue that poverty, despair, and hopelessness cause poor people, especially poor blacks – in which case racism is added to the list – to riot and commit violent crimes.

Here is President Barack Obama on May 18, 2015:

“In some communities, that sense of unfairness and powerlessness has contributed to dysfunction in those communities. ... Where people don’t feel a sense of hope and opportunity, then a lot of times that can fuel crime and that can fuel unrest.  We’ve seen it in places like Baltimore and Ferguson and New York.  And it has many causes – from a basic lack of opportunity to some groups feeling unfairly targeted by their police forces.”

So, says Prager, “Poor blacks who riot and commit other acts of violence do so largely because they feel neglected and suffer from deprivations.  Since people are basically good [liberal view], their acts of evil must be explained by factors beyond their control.  Their behavior is not really their fault; and when conservatives blame blacks for rioting and other criminal behavior, liberals accuse them of ‘blaming the victim.’ ”

“In the conservative view,” says Prager, “people who do evil are to be blamed because they made bad choices – and they did so because they either have little self-control or a dysfunctional conscience.  In either case, they are to blame.  That’s why the vast majority of equally poor people – black or white – do not riot or commit violent crimes.”

Likewise, many liberals believe that most of the Muslims who engage in terror do so because of the poverty and especially because of the high unemployment rate for young men in the Arab world.  Yet, it turns out that most terrorists come from middle class homes.  All the 9/11 terrorists came from middle and upper-class homes. [Osama bin Laden was a billionaire.]

Therefore, Prager concludes, “Material poverty doesn’t cause murder, rape or terror.  Moral poverty does.  That’s one of the great divides between left and right.  And it largely emanates from their differing views about whether human nature is innately good.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

Five References to God in the Declaration of Independence

In his article titled “Five References to God in the Declaration of Independence,” Dr. Harold Pease, political science instructor at Taft College, wrote: “It always amazes me when otherwise intelligent people are unable to find evidence of God in our governing documents.  The Declaration of Independence, the signing of which we commemorate July 4th, alone has five references to God – two in the first paragraph [Laws of Nature, Nature’s God], one in the middle [endowed by their Creator], and two in the last [Supreme Judge, Divine Providence].”

As historian David Barton explained, we often are taught that the primary reason the Colonists revolted from British rule was taxes, but taxation is the 17th among 27 reasons given in the Declaration of Independence for the Colonies seceding from Great Britain.

For the 56 signers, it was their trust in God and commitment to one another – not “no taxes” – that that served as the pillar of their rebellion and our republic.  They wrote, “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel