Newt Gingrich Explains Why the Media Can’t Comprehend Trump

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President-elect Donald Trump’s successful candidacy is the result of an unequivocal disconnect between elite media and average Americans, says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Speaking Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation at the first of a six-part series on Trumpism, Gingrich explained how the media’s disdain for the American people ultimately led to Trump’s victory in November.

“Because the media had such contempt for the average American, they simply could not see what was happening,” Gingrich said.

Following his Heritage speech, Gingrich spoke to The Daily Signal about the divide that exists between the American people and the news media.

“There’s a huge gap between the world as reported by the news media and the world as it really exists,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich pointed to Hollywood’s display of hatred toward Trump at the Golden Globes as an example of the gap between Americans and Hollywood elites.

“Trump is anti-political correctness and that’s the heart of their self-delusion,” he said. “They think they’re wonderful humanitarians and they think they care about the whole planet. They don’t care about you, but they care about the whole planet. They cling together like a large collection of gerbils who all reinforce each other and the loudest gerbil the other night was Meryl Streep.”

According to Gingrich, Trump disrupts the left’s core identity of safe spaces, political correctness, and their vision of the appropriate behavior.

“It just was inconceivable to members of the establishment that someone this randomly noisy, running a campaign that was so radically different, articulating issues that were clearly politically taboo and at times engaging in behavior and language that was unthinkable to the establishment definition of appropriate leadership, that such a person could become president of the United States until it became a fact,” he said.

Gingrich said the biggest disconnect came from the media’s failure to cover the issues that resonated most with Americans, while instead scrutinizing the way in which Trump delivered his message.

“Because Trump’s substance was so out of the mainstream, it was defined by the establishment media as lacking substance,” Gingrich said. “The attacks at him were about his style not the substance. Voters were responding to the substance, while reporters and opponents were responding to how he said what he said.”

“The media kept saying this guy is noisy, he uses inappropriate language, he’s not clear and the average person would go yeah, but I get what he’s talking about,” he said.

Gingrich will return to Heritage on Thursday for part two of the Trumpism series. The speech takes place at 11 p.m. EST. (For more from the author of “Newt Gingrich Explains Why the Media Can’t Comprehend Trump” please click HERE)

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United States Included in Annual Christian Persecution Report

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For the first time ever, the United States was included in the International Christian Concern’s annual “Hall of Shame Report.” In the 2016 edition, released last week, the U.S. appeared in the “New and Noteworthy” category.

“The persecution in these countries is not anywhere near the same level of persecution as those in the rest of the list,” the report explains, “but events in these countries indicate declining religious freedom and are cause for alarm.”

International Christian Concern (ICC) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that advocates for, raises awareness of and assists persecuted Christians around the world.

The report’s introduction explains that previous editions simply listed the top ten worst countries for Christians’ religious freedom. The 2016 edition splits featured nations into three categories: “Worst of the Worst,” “Core Countries,” and “New and Noteworthy.”

The “Worst of the Worst” category includes North Korea, Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria. “Core Countries” include Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, Pakistan and India.

Russia and Mexico were also “New and Noteworthy.”

‘Alarming’ Decline in American Religious Freedom

On page 11 of the 16-page report, ICC details why the U.S. earned a spot in the “New and Noteworthy” category.

“Christians in the US are facing constant attacks in the media, where they are portrayed as bigoted, racist, sexist and close-minded,” the report states. It referenced as an example the fact that “numerous high profile media outlets” blamed last year’s nightclub shooting in Orlando on Christian attitudes toward the LGBT community, even though the shooter, Omar Mateen, declared his allegiance to ISIS.

The report also mentioned people like Eric Walsh, Joe Kennedy and Aaron and Melissa Klein, Christians who have been fired or faced penalties in the workplace because of their religious beliefs.

“Christians and all religious people are being marginalized through the law,” the report says, citing an annual study by First Liberty Institute. That report showed that attacks on religious people in the U.S. doubled between 2012 and 2015.

According to the ICC’s report, “the rise of these cases stems partly from a broad cultural shift towards secularism.” 23 percent of Americans now identify themselves as non-religious — compared with just 7 percent in 2007. “Anti-Christian entities have been able to leverage the growing secularization of society and culture to their advantage, utilizing the courts as a preferred venue to gradually marginalize and silence Christians.”

“Decades of accumulated poor judicial decisions and precedents have twisted the First Amendment,” the report notes,

so that the courts, in defiance of the Founders, are pushing religion out of the public square, and into the small space of private expression. In essence, the courts are deciding that you only have full religious freedom and expression in the church and your home. In the public domain, your religious views and thoughts must be restrained and controlled.

“While there is no comparison between the life of a Christian in the US with persecuted believers overseas,” the report concludes, “ICC sees these worrying trends as an alarming indication of a decline in religious liberty in the United States.”

‘Windows of Opportunity’

Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, previously told The Stream that 2016 saw “an increase in attacks on religious liberty.”

In an interview at the end of December, Shackelford expressed hope in the incoming presidential administration, saying that the future holds “huge windows of opportunity.” “There should be a big change in the hundreds of judges appointed being more favorable to religious freedom and the Constitution,” he said. (For more from the author of “United States Included in Annual Christian Persecution Report” please click HERE)

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Clock Boy Hoaxster’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed, Punitive Sanctions Sought Against Islamists for Frivolous Suit

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Following a nearly three-hour hearing held yesterday, newly appointed District Court Judge Maricela Moore dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Mohamed Mohamed on his own behalf and on behalf of his 15-year old son, Ahmed Mohamed.

Ahmed is better known as “Clock Boy” for bringing a hoax clock bomb to his Irving, Texas middle school in September 2015 and causing a bomb scare that led to his arrest and suspension from school.

The motion to dismiss was filed by lawyers from the American Freedom Law Center (“AFLC”) and local counsel Pete Rowe on behalf of the Center for Security Policy (“CSP”) and Jim Hanson, two of the defendants in the defamation case, which also named as defendants the local Fox affiliate, Glenn Beck, and Beck’s production company.

Mohamed had sued Hanson and CSP for statements Hanson had made on Beck’s program about the connection between the Clock Boy hoax bomb affair, the attendant media frenzy created in large part by his father Mohamed, civilization jihad, and the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”), the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in the United States that promotes civilization jihad.

During the hearing, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel David Yerushalmi explained to Judge Moore that the purpose of the lawfare-driven lawsuit was to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and Islam. As such, Yerushalmi argued,

“This case is a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or ‘SLAPP’ case and should be dismissed.”

During the lengthy hearing, Judge Moore pressed Mohamed’s lawyer, Fort Worth attorney Susan Hutchison, to provide any facts that would suggest that Hanson and the other defendants had said anything false or defamatory about Mohamed or his son during the television broadcasts. After spending a painfully embarrassing 15 minutes flipping through reams of paper, Mohamed’s lawyer was unable to provide any such evidence.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Moore took the matter under advisement but informed the parties that she would rule by the end of the day. Today, the Court published Judge Moore’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit against Hanson and CSP with prejudice.

Upon leaving the courtroom, Yerushalmi explained:

“This lawsuit filed by Clock Boy’s father is yet another example of Islamist lawfare, which is a component of the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization jihad.”

Yerushalmi further explained that the purpose of such lawsuits, formally labelled Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (“SLAPP”), is to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and Islam.

Yerushalmi added:

“The Islamists employ the progressive mainstream media to label any public criticism of a sharia-centric, jihad-driven Islam as ‘Islamophobic,’ and they add fear and financial ruin to the equation by utilizing the legal system to file SLAPP actions,”

Now that the lawsuit has been dismissed, AFLC will petition the court for its legal fees and will seek sanctions against both the plaintiff and his attorney.

Robert Muise, AFLC’s other co-founder and senior counsel, made clear:

“AFLC was formed in large measure to take on Islamists like CAIR who use and abuse the legal system with their cynical form of lawfare to undermine our constitutional liberties—notably free speech. We have confronted these lawsuits across the country in federal and state courts and have defeated CAIR and its minions at every turn. When appropriate, we have won sanctions. This lawsuit will be no different.”

(For more from the author of “Clock Boy Hoaxster’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed, Punitive Sanctions Sought Against Islamists for Frivolous Suit” please click HERE)

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Rand Paul Proves That Repealing Obamacare and Balancing the Budget Work Together Just Fine

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A, 92%) has been stealing the Senate’s thunder of late, coming out in opposition to the budget proposal that is supposed to lay the groundwork for a quick repeal of Obamacare.

So what’s up with Rand? Is he just showboating, placing perfection before finally achieving a long-sought conservative goal?
Or is Sen. Paul crazy like a fox by pointing out that the rush to repeal Obamacare need not require an abandonment of basic fiscal restraint?

The line coming from the GOP leadership in Congress is that the budget resolution that sets the framework for repealing Obamacare has to move quickly. There’s no time for monkeying around with current spending levels in this budget, they say, because it would cause unneeded distractions and controversies over what spending to cut and where. The battle to address the federal government’s massive spending and unsustainable deficit trajectory will happen later this spring, in the budget for fiscal year 2018.

(n.b., Remember that the budget Congress is working with is actually from last year, since they never completed the appropriations process for fiscal year 2017. This gives them the chance to pass a budget resolution for the rest of the fiscal year, through October 2017, and then start over on schedule with a second budget for FY 2018 this spring.)

But what Sen. Paul points out is that maintaining the current spending trajectory, even in a budget plan that sets up repealing Obamacare, means Republicans voted for a framework that increases the national debt by more than $9 trillion over the next 10 years. All while simultaneously advancing an Obamacare repeal plan that neither fully repeals the law right away nor proposes its replacement.

Agree or disagree with Paul’s approach, he’s got some real points here. And then he delivers the coup de grace to the leadership’s arguments by wrangling a vote on a substitute budget that actually balances.

Sen. Paul’s alternative proposal would have balanced the budget by 2024 while still setting the stage for Obamacare’s repeal. Most importantly, it didn’t lay out a specific blueprint for how the budget cuts would be realized to achieve that goal, instead setting target numbers for the individual committees in Congress to decide what to cut and how.

In other words, he did what leadership insisted it couldn’t do because there was no time. And yet only 13 Republicans joined Sen. Paul in his amendment to accomplish both Obamacare repeal and budget sanity.

The Republican deal-with-the-debt-later tactic would be more understandable if there were any reasonable standard of trust that conservatives could deal with. But after years under Obama — of Republicans promising that they would fight for balanced budgets “later” — the trust that later will ever come has been eroded.

And with Sen. Paul proving how easy a basic balanced budget proposal is procedurally, there’s simply no excuse to let there be any separation between balanced budgets and Obamacare repeal. (For more from the author of “Rand Paul Proves That Repealing Obamacare and Balancing the Budget Work Together Just Fine” please click HERE)

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Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery

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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. (C, 76%) penned an impassioned Facebook post Tuesday afternoon, calling out Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. (F, 14%) for testifying against Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. (C, 78%).

Sen. Cotton referred to the unprecedented event of a sitting senator testifying against another sitting senator nominated for a Cabinet position a “disgraceful breach of custom.”

Cotton expressed his belief that Booker’s “shameful” decision to cast aspersions on a fellow senator (whom, just last year, he was “honored to have partnered with”) is part of a ploy to be elected president in 2020:

“Senator Booker is better than that, and he knows better.” (For more from the author of “Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery” please click HERE)

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Netanyahu Is Sounding the Alarm on Obama’s Anti-Israel Terrorist Collusion

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While most politically-minded Americans were keeping up with the confirmation hearings Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was busy lambasting the Obama administration for colluding with terrorists to pass an “anti-Israel resolution” in the United Nations.

Netanyahu corrected the suggestion some have made that the U.N. Security Council’s decision, which ruled that Israel is illegally “occupying” its own land, follows the policies of previous United States administrations.

Netanyahu’s announcement came after Israeli news outlets reported Tuesday that the United States embassy could remain in Tel Aviv during Donald Trump’s presidency, breaking from the president-elect’s pledge to relocate to Jerusalem.

Other reports, however, stated that the Trump administration will move ahead with the relocation, despite liberals’ concerns that the decision would only lead to more violence in the Middle East. If Trump remains true to his campaign promise, it will send a clear message to Israel that America’s terrible foreign relations track record under Obama has come to an end. If he doesn’t, Bibi will surely take notice. (For more from the author of “Netanyahu Is Sounding the Alarm on Obama’s Anti-Israel Terrorist Collusion” please click HERE)

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4 Ways Obama’s Final Speech Was a Load of Crap

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Tonight, in Chicago — the nation’s murder capital, Barack Obama boasted of his self-styled achievements as president, and gave a preview of his future as the nation’s first activist former president. The setting provided a bitter irony for Obama’s self-praising. Chicago is both where Obama honed his activist chops, and is one of the places most negatively affected by his policies. A perfect allegory for a failed presidency.

In the final year of the Obama presidency, under the guidance of his former chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago’s murder rate has spiked. This is directly the result of president Obama’s war on cops. Rather than put themselves in danger through aggressive policing, Obama’s friends in the Black Lives Matter movement have made their neighborhoods more dangerous, with police just staying out of certain neighborhoods.

Chicago is Obama’s legacy. Tonight he tried to put a shine on his legacy. But the facts tell a different story.

Obamacare

Obama once again touted success with Obamacare. He crowed about millions more now insured. That may be true, but at what cost? He even, with no hesitation, said that health costs are growing at their “lowest rate in 50 years.” As CR’s Daniel Horowitz recently explained Obamacare is more expensive than if nothing had been done … especially when it comes to Medicaid.

The cost of covering an individual in the subpar Medicaid program was $3,247 per individual in 2011 before Obamacare was enacted. In 2015, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost of enrolling an individual in Medicaid doubled to $6,366 per individual. And that is only for the second year of implementation. The cycle of regulation, public funding, overutilization, and lack of ability to peg the cost to the service has created a circuitous death spiral of unaffordable costs and unsustainable subsidies.

But it’s not just that. Millions of middle class Americans now have coverage they can’t afford to use. Before the election Bloomberg highlighted the problem:

Harris is one of many people with Obamacare plans that feature high out-of-pocket costs that can put health services out of reach. That’s because the insurance coverage Harris and others like her have purchased is designed not to kick in until patients have spent thousands of dollars.

She’s not alone. While the Affordable Care Act has pushed the uninsured rate in the U.S. near a record low, a Commonwealth Fund study this year found that about four in 10 adults in ACA plans aren’t confident they could afford care if they got sick.

Obamacare has also been a drag on the overall economic outlook for millions of Americans. The full-time employer mandate has meant more people are working part-time and in need of multiple jobs. The CEO of Carl’s Jr., a Trump supporter, said in January of 2015 that ‘Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part time.” A statement that even Politifact had to rank as “half true” — a moniker they use when the facts buttress an argument but the editors of Politifact don’t like the outcome.

Oh and about that lowest health cost claim, CNNMoney reported in September of 2016 that healthcare costs rose the most in 32 years. Speaking of Politifact, they gave a similar claim by Hillary Clinton during the campaign a rating of FALSE.

National Security

Obama told the nation that we are safer because of his presidency. He touted that no foreign terrorist organization has attacked American soil. Of course, he is parsing words. As the Daily Wire wrote in December of 2016, many of the jihadi attacks in America have been inspired by jihadi organizations or the jihadis were trained by those organizations.

The list compiled by the Daily Wire reports on “the major, verifiable radical Islamic attacks over the last eight years.” The Daily Wire further explains that there have been other attacks in which jihad is suspected but not verified. The thirteen attacks highlighted include the Little Rock military recruiting station attack, the Fort Hood attack, the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent firefight, a beheading in Moore Oklahoma, a Queens hatchet attack, the execution-style murders of two cops in Brooklyn, the Garland draw Mohammed attack, the Chattanooga recruiting station attack, the San Bernardino Christmas party attack, the Orlando night club attack, the St. Cloud mall attack, the New York/New Jersey bomber, and the Columbus Ohio State University attack.

“Climate Change”

Obama also took credit for his climate change agenda. Something he has always believed poses a greater threat to world peace than radical Islamic terrorism. Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, explained on CNBC why Obama’s focus on climate change has hurt the nation as a whole.

Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, said Thursday the Obama administration’s heavy focus on combating climate change is “radical behavior” that’s holding back the economy.

A longtime GOP supporter, Welch told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” the priority on preventing climate change spills over into “all kinds of policies throughout the different agencies.”

The result, he said: “You get an economy that won’t move. You get ozone regs that are wacky.”

“You [also] get a reduced military,” he added — saying the U.S. needs to rebuild its national defenses to combat the threat from the so-called Islamic State terrorist group. “You can’t be sitting here with the real threat of a caliphate and ISIL … and talking about climate change.”

The Obama focus on ‘climate change’ has led to a weaker, less prosperous, and less safe America. Hardly an accomplishment to crow about. Not to mention that now some scientists think we are headed into a new ice age.

Jobs

Obama also once again tried to paint the nation’s employment picture as rosy. He boasted about how he “unleash[ed] the longest stretch of job creation in our history.” While it may be factually correct, it belies the type of job growth and the stagnant rate of growth.

Because of Obamacare, there have been a disproportionate number of part-time jobs created. The labor force participation rate is still anemically low.

CR’s John Gray has blown a hole in Obama’s jobs record. Back in 2015 he laid out the case, which hasn’t changed much.

Obama Touts This. Currently at 5 percent, the unemployment rate is at the lowest level since Obama became president. In addition, the president has “created” about 8.1 million net new jobs since 2009 – a little less than the 8.7 million that were lost during financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

But Not This. Those rosy unemployment numbers fail to factor in millions of people only marginally attached to the workforce, or those who would like to work, but have quit looking for employment out of frustration at the lack of opportunities. When those workers are factored in, the real unemployment rate, otherwise known as the underemployment rate is now 9.9 percent – nearly twice the rate of the “official” metric.

More importantly, a growing share of the population is no longer participating in the workforce altogether. The labor force participation rate has dropped to 62.4 percent, or nearly 94 million American not in the labor force; labor force participation has not been this low since 1977. Those are just a few of the areas that Obama tried to take “credit” for improving. He then went on to talk about areas he would be judging President-elect Trump on, signaling that he would not step aside quietly to let his successor govern, as is the precedent with past presidents.

Tonight’s speech was a powerful reminder of how much better the nation will be when the ink in Obama’s pen runs dry, and his government cell phone contract is dropped. Then all he’ll have is a soapbox, where he can utter “just words.” (For more from the author of “Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery” please click HERE)

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George Soros Is “Renting” Christian “Mascots” to Stop Jeff Sessions’ Nomination

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a longtime student and teacher of both Bible and Constitution, will meet this week in confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee, seeking approval as U.S. Attorney General. Like most Americans, including his fellow evangelicals, Sessions knows that lawlessness, open borders, crime and drugs destroy lives and weaken our nation.

George Soros will be at the hearings too. Not in person, of course, but in the form of evangelical and Catholic “mascots” who accept his funding and share in his agenda. Soros, an atheist billionaire, has also funded Ready for Hillary PAC, as well as activists for open borders, amnesty, Islamic “refugee” migrations to the West and many other culture-wrecking efforts in Europe and America.

Soros Knows how to “Rent-An-Evangelical”

The Soros network’s New America Foundation aptly refers to its sponsorship of religious mascots as “Rent-An-Evangelical.” Soros began funding Rev. Jim Wallis’s leftist journal Sojourners over a decade ago, to teach Biblical catchphrases and “the faith narrative” to previously secular Democrats, in the hope of peeling off Christian values voters.

In 2011, Wallis famously denied being on Soros’s payroll — until he was caught with the money. Richard Cizik, former policy head of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), admitted it. Wallis and Cizik are busy teaching a new generation to use selective Bible quotes and buzzwords to push a post-American, globalist agenda. Socialists have long beguiled Christian citizens with “faith” optics and words ornamenting their projects.

Their technique, tempting not only to liberals, is to cherry-pick Bible verses while ignoring the whole counsel of Scripture. The Soros-Left then organizes its network to swarm an event or person, like Senator Sessions. Their large, subsidized media then dutifully parrots their divisive message. Think: Saul Alinsky for the Digital Age.

Expect the usual suspects chosen from Soros’s tame Christian groups to appear at or comment on the hearings:

Sojourners, Wallis’s journal. Its recent diatribes include: “Resistance is Patriotic — and Christian,” “NAACP President and Colleagues Stage Sit-In at Sen. Jeff Sessions Office, and this pro-Islamist critique of Christians in government.

Faith in Public Life (FPL), a putatively Catholic organization which, as Wikileaks revealed, was paid by Soros to try to influence Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S., and spin it as a win for pro-choice Democrats. FPL’s leader, John Gehring, has chimed in against Sessions here and here. See Rev. Robert Sirico’s worthy critique of “Soros’s Catholic Useful Idiots” here.

People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), which also took Soros money to spin Pope Francis’ visit. PICO’s contribution to the Sessions debate was published here.

Members of the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), a public relations campaign, launched by the secular National Immigration Forum (NIF) of Soros, Ford, Carnegie and other foundations.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, one of the organizations which a Podesta email cited as part of a “revolution” Democrats hoped to support inside the Catholic church. This organization claimed during the election that “Trump-Pence is the Most Anti-Catholic Ticket in Modern History.”

The Bible is not Globalist or Open Borders

Thankfully Americans are waking up to the Progressive machine, fueled by Soros and friends. In 2016, thousands of Christians signed a “Call to Repentance and Renewal” to ministers advancing progressive chaos in our cities and nation. A short “must see” video followed, which documents Soros’s Formula.

Jeff Sessions is a faithful public servant who deserves our support against these heavily subsidized radicals. As a prosecutor in Alabama, Jeff Sessions worked to desegregate schools. He prosecuted and bankrupted the KKK. But leftists distort his record to pretend that he is somehow tainted by “racism.”

Nor are Sessions’ views on immigration in any way extreme or unbiblical, As Sessions wrote:

It is not mainstream, but extreme, to continue surging immigration beyond any historical precedent and to do so at a time when almost 1 in 4 Americans age 25 to 54 does not have a job. What we need now is immigration moderation: slowing the pace of new arrivals so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together.

Immigration laws are a necessary part of a just society. As we read the whole Bible, we’re taught to love ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our cities, as well as the stranger (ger in Hebrew) who comes lawfully as a blessing. What we see in the Bible is not open borders, but wise welcome.

Let us welcome Senator Sessions to the Trump administration. (For more from the author of “George Soros Is “Renting” Christian “Mascots” to Stop Jeff Sessions’ Nomination” please click HERE)

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Israeli Soldiers: Hand of God Protected Them Through Pillar of Cloud During Battle With ISIS

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Israeli soldiers captured on video a pillar of cloud that strangely hovered over the boundary between Syria and Israel, protecting the soldiers from ISIS during a battle.

The Israeli soldiers videotaped the phenomenon that occurred during a battle with ISIS in the Golan Heights. The men called the pillar of cloud the “hand of Hashem,” or the hand of God, which protected them.

According to Israel News Online, the cloud was comprised of dust, cloud and rain and “did NOT cross the border fence into Israel. It sat like a barrier between ISIS and Israel.” Israelis have called the storm “divine intervention,” reported Israel Today.

“Huge miracle! Notice how God stopped this enormous storm exactly on the border,” Yifat Romano posted on Israel News Online‘s Facebook page. “Thank you, Father!”

Nissim Nahoum wrote, “The Creator of the world is protecting us.”

When asked about how the cloud protected the soldiers, Israel News Online responded, “Well there have been no ISIS attacks since then. I wonder what they thought of it. That may be the case if the cloud was there or not as we retaliated at the time. Impossible to say for sure.”

Here is the video, which was captured by an Israeli soldier:

(For more from the author of “Israeli Soldiers: Hand of God Protected Them Through Pillar of Cloud During Battle With ISIS” please click HERE)

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Liberal Theology Empties Churches

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The Episcopal Church in America reached peak membership in 1959, with about 3.5 million baptized members, rising from just over one million in a decade. Since the population of the USA also rose during this period, another way to put it is to say the Episcopal Church had in 1959 about 19.4 members per every 1,000 citizens, rising from 17 per 1,000 in 1949. Total church membership has since fallen, with membership about 1.8 million in 2015, or 5.5 per 1,000, and dropping none too slowly.

Liberal versus Conservative

Similar rapid decreases are seen among the Presbyterian (PCUSA), United Methodist, and Lutheran (ELCA) churches. Episcopalians, Presbyterians (USA), Lutherans (ELCA) and United Methodists represent historical or mainline Protestant Churches in the USA,

The much more evangelical Southern Baptist Convention, because of its age, is similarly situated. Numbers are better in the large Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) than in the Mainline. But membership in SBC congregations has not been keeping track with population increases.

In contrast, evangelical denominations, such as for example the Assemblies of God, while still individually smaller than mainline Protestant congregations, have seen significant growth. The Assemblies of God had only about 300 thousand members in 1950 (about 2.1 per 1,000), swelling ten times to 3.1 million last year (9.8 per 1,000).

Broadly speaking, and using the colloquial understanding of the terms, conservative Protestant churches have had increases this past half century, and liberal churches have had decreases. It is, of course, of interest to shore up these loose expressions and discover just what “conservative” and “liberal” mean in this context.

Enter the paper “Theology Matters: Comparing the Traits of Growing and Declining Mainline Protestant Church Attendees and Clergy” by David Millard Haskell, Kevin N. Flatt, and Stephanie Burgoyne in the journal Review of Religious Research. The trio asked questions of the clergy and congregations of 22 Protestant churches drawn from the Anglican Church of Canada (5), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (4), the Presbyterian Church in Canada (8), and the United Church of Canada (4) all centered in southern Ontario. Of these, 13 had declining populations from 2003 to 2013 and 9 had increasing populations.

Now this isn’t an especially large or necessarily representative sample of churches outside Canada; however, as the survey questions will show, there is still much that can be learned.

Congregations in Growing and Declining Churches
Several questions were asked of the congregants, and many answers showed wide disagreement between the Growing and Declining churches.

For instance, 79% of Growing congregants agreed strongly with the statement “Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided a way for the forgiveness of my sins,” whereas only 57% of Declining congregants thought the same. About 19% of Growing congregants strongly agreed that “the beliefs of the Christian faith need to change over time to stay relevant,” whereas 31% of Declining congregants thought so.

Three questions in particular were revealing in the conservative-liberal gap. Only 7% of Growing congregants strongly agreed that “the Bible is the product of human thinking about God, so some of its teachings are wrong or misguided,” whereas over 15% of Declining congregants strongly agreed.

About 13% of Growing congregants strongly agreed that “all major religions are equally good and true,” but more than twice as many Declining congregants, or 25%, thought so. On the fundamental basis of the Christian religion, 66% of Growing congregants strongly agreed that “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh and blood body, leaving behind an empty tomb,” but only 37% of Declining congregants did.

Not surprisingly, about 29% of Growing congregants thought their church’s mission was evangelism, and 16% thought it was social justice, whereas the numbers in Declining congregations was 9% and 31%.

Clergy in Growing and Declining Churches

Questions were also asked of the clergy, and the differences between Growing and Declining congregations was starker.

The largest difference was in the statement “Jesus was not the divine Son of God,” where it might be expected no clergy member could agree. And, indeed, no Growing clergy member agreed in any way. Yet 13% of Declining clergy agreed at least moderately.

Likewise, no Declining clergy strongly agreed that “it is very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians,” but 77% of Growing clergy did. The statement “The beliefs of the Christian faith need to change over time to stay relevant” could not get any Growing clergy to agree in any way, but 69% of Declining clergy at least moderately agreed.

Some 70% of Growing clergy strongly agreed that “those who die face a divine judgement where some will be punished eternally,” but only 6% of Declining clergy moderately agreed, and none strongly agreed. On that same fundamental question asked of the congregation, 85% of Growing clergy strongly agreed (and none strongly disagreed) that “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh and blood body, leaving behind an empty tomb,” yet only 38% of Declining clergy thought so (and 19% strongly disagreed).

Has the call for liberalization failed?

Writing in the Washington Post, one of the authors of the study (Haskell), reminds us of the 1999 book by Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong Why Christianity Must Change or Die. “Spong, a theological liberal, said congregations would grow if they abandoned their literal interpretation of the Bible and transformed along with changing times.”

The Episcopal Church followed this advice. They have female priests and bishops. They allow “the ordination of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender clergy.” They even had a practicing homosexual bishop in a (government-defined) “marriage” to another man, a “marriage” which was further liberalized into a “divorce.”

Yet, even though Haskell says Spong’s theory “won favor with academics” and was “praised” at no less eminent a place than the Harvard Divinity School to assist in “shifting Christianity to meet the needs of the modern world,” the Episcopal Church’s membership dropped precipitously, with no sign of slowing. The Church even splintered, with the Anglican Church in North America forming from former Episcopalians who could not countenance Spong’s liberal theology.

As for the anti-climatic conclusion of his study, Haskell blandly writes, “Conservative Protestant theology, with its more literal view of the Bible, is a significant predictor of church growth while liberal theology leads to decline.”

Apparently theological liberalism empties churches. (For more from the author of “Liberal Theology Empties Churches” please click HERE)

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