Will Covid kill the Church?  It is a question that demands our attention.

The late Frank Devine once said, during the debate over saying "sorry", that the Aborigines should just forgive us.  In the age of the politicisation of everything, of group rights, of cancel culture and of the rejection of Christian forgiveness in public life, Frank's implied hope is forlorn.  We are unforgiven, even when we have done nothing wrong, and they are a-coming for us.

The Christian churches, their beliefs, their sacred practices and their pastors are under attack.  From new atheists, secularists, progressives - and from the state itself.  The state's assumption of extraordinary and dictatorial powers during the year of Covid has not been without impact on the Church.  The Covid state has imposed all sorts of restrictions on the faithful.  Caesar has taken more than his due.

The great Margaret Court is under attack.  Again.  For being a Christian with mainstream Christian beliefs, about marriage.  Our society stands at the brink, when citizens are vilified for having mainstream beliefs.

It is fashionable to deride the Middle Ages.  "Medieval" is normally an insult, a term of abuse.  A new book begs to differ.  Pondering the lessons of the book, one is drawn to massive contrasts between our own age and that of "the medievals".  And the contrasts are mostly not in our favour.

The Covid crisis has thrown up many conundrums, and ideological positions.  The politicisation of death is distressing, so called "Covid death porn".  But there are other dimensions to this, not least the other, less reported Covid porn epidemic.  Returning to real science is critical, as is moral and political perspective.

The Cancel Jesus Project is well and truly underway.  The killing of the statues proceeds apace.  The attentions of the revolutionaries have already turned to Christian icons.  Killing God is an old project.  We are now witnessing the final phase.

The state has now officially declared war on conservative Christians.

I love my Catholic brothers & sisters in Christ so much. Christianity has so much to learn from them in this generation about our prophetic voice to the nations on issues of Biblical justice and in ministering to those affected by abortion. So it breaks my heart to see a moment of unfettered pagan idolatry at their Youth Festival in Perth in recent days.

Australian George Cardinal Pell has been found guilty in a Melbourne court of sexual abuse of two boys under the age of 16, including oral sex, and is now in prison awaiting sentencing: probably a term of several years. An appeal is being lodged by his legal team.

   But is he guilty?

We live in dark times. There is just no getting around that fact. Truth no longer means anything, feelings trump everything, and confusion abounds as to even the basics in life. Now we can’t even tell if someone is a boy or a girl, and we are said to be hateful and bigoted if we even try. Sadly, as anyone who seeks to present truth in the public arena and the social media knows, this has massively impacted our churches as well. Today most young people who call themselves Christians know little or nothing about their own faith, run on emotions, and tend to just drift along with the dominant secular culture. The church in the West is in a real bad way as a result, and things will likely only get worse. And as one of the most recent examples of this, consider the recent uproar taking place over Mike Pence, his wife, and Lady Gaga.

A friend posted something today on the social media that caught my attention. It concerned a rather disturbing fact: one half of all Russian young people know nothing about their own nation’s murderous Communist past, including the Gulag, the crimes of Stalin, and so on. I chipped in by saying that just as worrying is the likely fact that probably a full three quarters of Australian and American young people don’t know about this either. The dumbing down of our young people, including their blatant historical illiteracy, is a huge worry indeed. Being ignorant of one’s own history is a recipe for disaster – as history proves. But of course we will never learn the lessons of history if we do not know history. So things will simply get worse as more and more people are cast adrift from their own past, and any knowledge of it.

Where do we come from? How did we get here? So asks almost every child. And thinking adult. Customers in the Tavern offer answers, and few, if any, seem to satisfy the critics. Especially the atheistic ones.  Offer the most compelling - (well, to me )- that my Supplier made us, and a chorus arises from beyond the hedges. No. It has to be 'nature' they shout.

We come from the Primordial Soup !

(Photo credit: JStorDaily) Just over 75 years ago some very brave and passionate young people were executed in Germany for daring to resist Hitler and the Nazis. Two of the main players were sister and brother, Sophie and Hans Scholl. Their stories are now engraved in history, and they have inspired millions along the way. Robert and Magdalena Scholl had six children, including Sophie and Hans. They were raised as Lutherans and a Bible in the home was there to be read and studied. Her mother was the more religious of the parents, and her father early on came to oppose the Nazis. As the Nazis came to power, all the Scholl children at first became keen supporters of the Nazis, and some even joined the Hitler Youth, much to their father’s horror. But they soon grew very uneasy with what was happening in their country as they began to see what was really going on.

The following extract is taken from the book, "The Great Heresies" by Hilaire Belloc, first published in 1938. Born in 1870, Belloc wrote over a hundred books on history, economics, military science and travel, plus novels and poetry, as well as hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. Belloc died in 1953.

Written on Easter Saturday, March 26, 2016

Wednesday, 28 September 2016 13:04

Friends, Family & Collateral Damage in the Culture Wars

Written by Rissa Hann

There's really no such thing as friends and family when it comes to freedom of speech... at least not when you are a conservative Christian. (Dedicated to Pops) It's almost the three year anniversary, to the month, since I met my good friend, and now mentor Bill Muehlenberg via Facebook and found the mass of resources contained on his website Culture Watch .It was through these channels, and many others, that I was exposed to the Christian conservative, political and public discourse on the issues of the day, in what I now know to be 'the culture wars'. This was to be the beginning of a new path for me, as a spark was lit in my soul, and I have been on a steep learning curve ever since.

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Thursday, 28 July 2016 12:41

A Brief Overview of Christianity's Influence in Shaping Western Democracies

Written by Eleni Arapoglou

We should relish the freedom of expression that a Christian culture established and particularly that it was not founded on the moral vacuum of atheism, given the tragic outcomes of secular humanistic governments of the past (such as Communist Russia, Romania, Cambodia, China, Nazi Germany, etc.). But ancient history fares no better, it is replete with the continual narrative of ‘blood feuds’, that is, the perpetual generational ‘right’ to avenge the spilling of blood or the threat of imperialist expansionism from Greek, Ming, Khan, Persian or Roman Empires. Here the ‘peace’ of millions was dependent on the submission of subjugated nations, such as the Roman Empire’s “Pax Romana”, or the Islamic Empire’s dhimmi status for conquered people. Against this brutal backdrop comes what some historians have called the “softening effect” of Christianity.

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