(1) Cuban Pastor Thrown in Prison During Obama’s Visit (Voice of the Martyrs)
Seeing news images of President Obama doing “the wave” at a baseball game in Cuba, it would be easy to think that this small communist country is now completely free and open to the gospel of Christ.
But while President Obama was watching baseball, Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso was sitting in a police station. Barroso, a Baptist pastor, blogger and friend of VOM, was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and detained at his home (which also serves as his church) just hours before Air Force One landed in Havana. A few hours after the president left Cuba, Pastor Barroso was set free and returned to his family. He was tired and weak, having fasted throughout his detention, but happy to be home.
***A “job finished” for work this POTUS committee began, in 2009
(3) C.S. Lewis predicted Donald Trump (The Washington Post)
…[Lewis] didn’t usually have much to say about politics.
Yet in The Four Loves—his book on the variety of human loves—Lewis talked at length about the horrible damage that can be done by patriotism, or love of country. And it sounds like he had Trump down pat, more than 50 years before the businessman ever decided to run for president.
(4) Robert P. George: Trump Is No Pro-Lifer
Mr. Trump evidently wants to show us how genuine his conversion is by depicting himself as severely pro-life. But pro-lifers are compassionate, seeking the good of unborn children and their mothers, never pitting them or their interests against each other. We are interested in saving babies, not punishing mothers. And we know that we don’t need to punish mothers to save babies.
What Mr. Trump has succeeded in showing pro-life Americans is that he is not one of us.
(5) Stands on social issues tear at the two main conservative bases (The Washington Post)
But the state-level battles between businesses and evangelicals demonstrate that the Republican Party’s troubles go beyond the concerns over Trump — pointing to a potentially irreconcilable divide between core elements of the GOP base.
Each side remains influential. Evangelical leaders can mobilize large numbers of activists and voters in key states and congressional districts. Corporations, meanwhile, operating in a post-Citizens United world of unlimited political spending, have the ability to put enormous pressure on policymakers.
“You are talking about two portions of the Republican Party who don’t fundamentally understand one another. That’s the bad news,” said Gregg Keller, the former executive director of the American Conservative Union. “The worse news is that they think that they do. What that leads to is further misunderstanding on top of disagreement.”
The anger among evangelicals was especially raw this week after [Georgia Gov. Nathan] Deal’s veto.
(6) Christianophobia is Big Business
…So what motivates America’s large corporations to get on the social justice horse? With the recent vetoing of the Georgia religious freedom law we might be tempted to say that it is their desire to protect sexual minorities. If that were the case, though, we would expect to see those corporations boycotting countries that routinely kill those minorities — which might be slightly worse than being forced to choose a different church to be married in, or a different baker to serve one’s wedding. So I suggest that it is not an empowering love for sexual minorities that has been driving the actions of Marvel, NFL, Salesforce, Disney and others.
So what drives these boycott threats, if not their concern for sexual minorities? My work on Christianophobia suggests another answer to this question. I found that those who are white, male, wealthy and highly educated are more likely than the average person to have animosity towards conservative Christians. If we were to describe who runs most of the corporations in our society, then white, male, wealthy and educated would be a good way to start. While I found in my research that the degree of anti-Christian animosity in our society is about the same as the degree of anti-Islamic animosity, I also found that those with anti-Christian animosity are more likely to be in powerful social positions.
(7) The Man of La Mainline, by Mateen Elass
***A critique of PCUSA stated clerk Gradye Parsons, who finds the time to critique U.S. policy on climate change and North Carolina for its bathroom bills, while ignoring genuine social justice issues around the world.
Gradye Parsons, the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) is our very own reincarnation of the Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote.
Riding on his tired old horse, Rocinante, whom he imagines to be a valiant charger, Don Quixote races into battle against ferocious giants that in reality are windmills. His sidekick, Sancho, tries to help Quixote see the truth, but the crusading knight will have none of it, and so becomes famous for “tilting at windmills.”Gradye, in his apparent quest to outdo do other mainline religious leaders at curing all manners of social injustice, has been busy this last month, riding the tired nag of the PCUSA and leveling his lance at some of the ferocious giants facing our world.
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