Clive Palmer Signs Israel Folau, Speaks out against Christian’s Being Persecuted in Sport: “Religious Freedom is a fundamental right.”

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Australian businessman, Clive Palmer has signed Israel Folau to the Gold Coast’s Southport Tigers through his company Minerology.

Palmer played for the club in the 1970s, and is a key sponsor.

In a press conference breaking the news, the many faceted, adventure driven billionaire said he’s been a supporter for over 50 years.

Palmer told journalists that the Bronco’s (Folau’s last team) has cleared the decision.  

When asked if he agreed with Israel’s “views” around homosexuality, Palmer offered this sharp response,

“Look, I don’t know what his views are to be honest. All I know is he’s placed on the Twitter or something a quote from the Bible. And I know that the Bible’s used every day; quoted in Churches across Australia for millions of Australians.”

He then added,

 “I know when we go to Parliament, many parliamentarians refer to texts of the Bible, and they pray every day. I know that when you go to court and you swore in for evidence you put the hand on the Bible. So, to me it’s nothing extraordinary that someone makes a quote from the Bible.”

Palmer then took the media to task for blowing Folau’s 2019 social media post out of proportion stating, “I’d just say from the media it’s grown out of all proportions. It certainly shouldn’t affect a person’s livelihood, how he can support his children, or what he can do.”

The Southport Tigers alumni made it clear that he wants the club to lead in being open to religious diversity, saying, he didn’t want to bring a persecution of people for their religious beliefs into sport.       

Answering questions about the legality of signing Israel, Palmer said there is no legal prohibition on his participation in the sport, adding, ‘religious freedom in this country is a fundamental right.’

Asked whether Queensland Rugby League will be putting legal restrictions on him, Folau said he’d have to talk with Palmer, who was quick to address it, saying there is no legal prohibition on what Folau can and can’t say.

With this came the reminder that the Rugby Australia paid Israel for damages for doing exactly that, which Palmer said was an admittance by the RA of wrongdoing on their part.

His comments preceded a warning to Folau’s haters looking to cause new drama through litigation, ‘I’ve got some resources, and if it got down to a legal battle, I’m sure anyone opposing someone on the basis of religious persecution would go down very seriously, and they’d have to pay a lot of damages.’

Critics are already laughing off the “partnership,” in true compliance with the false narratives built up around both Australian celebrities by the largely leftist legacy media, who’ve painted Palmer as a mad, loose cannon, and conditioned people in the false belief that Folau as an anachronistic, homophobic “happy clapping gay basher.”

The Herald Sun, citing a February 2021 black flip from St George Illawarra Dragons on signing Israel, supported LGBTQAAI+ lobbyist and widespread legacy media accusations of “gay hate,” stating in its report that NRL has no jurisdiction over the QRL, and that the QRL will have to decide whether or not to let the “controversial anti-gay former Wallabies star” play.

ESPN didn’t follow the Herald’s lead. The sports magazine highlighted Folau’s talent, respectfully handled the controversy, and pointed out the Australia Christian Lobby’s ‘recent online petition, which garnered 12,000 signatures demanding Folau be allowed to play in the NRL.’

Super charging the Southport Tigers, Folau will be joining two of his brothers on the field in a first for the A-grade Queensland Rugby League team.

Folau said it’s a step in the right direction, and credited ‘his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ for the opportunity.

First published on Caldron Pool, 21st May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Chief CCP Propagandist Tells Mao’s Misguided Children to “Bomb Australia”

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

For the second time in six months, Communist Chinese propaganda bullhorn, the Global Times, has published false accusations about Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan.

The Maoist-state-affiliated organisation published a poster alongside a defamatory editorial, claiming Australian soldiers committed ‘sanctioned massacres’, were part of ‘cover-ups’, had ‘a kill list’, and photoshopped enemy activity to mask” ADF evils.

In the same month, the Marxist mouthpiece used selective comments from Australia’s Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo,  who the CCP rag accused of “sabre-rattling,” for warning against belligerency in his 2021, ANZAC Day speech,

“Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war.” 

Pezzullo doesn’t mention China, but The Global Times (along with the Australian Labor Party) responded to his speech as an attack on Communist China’s position on Taiwan.

CCP propagandists then falsely used Pezzullo as an example of Australian politicians exhibiting a ‘high zeal for war.’

The CCP’s manipulation of facts are its primary ingredient in their ramped-up belligerency against Australia.

There’s a clear, discernible pattern.

Take for instance, the bannable by Twitter standards, actions of Chinese Communist Party official, Zhao Lijian, who, in a Twitter post in November last year depicted photoshopped images of Australian soldiers beheading Afghan children. (The post inciting violence against Australians was reported, but Twitter neither blocked Lijian, or booted his account).

This follows The Global Times’ Beijing Bettys penning articles telling Australia to ditch the United States and embrace the CCP’s debt slave, ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, or else!

This includes the CCP’s incursion into Australian society, via money hungry Australian Universities, abuse of trade relations, and the bullying of Australian citizens, such as Australian swimmer Horton Mack.

Let’s not forget the unscheduled visit in June 2019 of three Chinese Warships who entered Sydney harbour unannounced, with sailors dressed in full combat gear.

This list doesn’t include cyber-attacks, the potential biological warfare origins of the Communist COVID virus, or the tariff war triggered by China’s Communist leaders, who view Australia as a puppet of the United States in need of some good ole’ Red Guard, gulag Marxist “liberatin’ lovin.”

Examine The Global Times’ latest song and dance routine.

Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of The Global Times, said Beijing should bomb Australia, if the Oceanic island continent decided to back a U.S lead defence of Tawain.

Affirming China’s ‘love for peace’, Xijin stated that ‘retaliatory punishment should include long-range strikes on the military facilities and relevant key facilities on Australian soil.’ 

Before reading Xijin’s military strategy, I said to my wife last week that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Communist Chinese Party did something like nuke a part of Australia in order to coerce submission through a show of force.

Although the CCP claim to adhere to a “no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy,” they’d appeal to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples; making out that our new “benevolent” and “glorious” Marxist rulers wanted to avoid bloodshed, or direct military confrontation.

America’s new Commander in Chief is weak. So is the jihadist leftist narcissistic party he serves.

Like the blind bats most of them in that category are, many on the Left would surrender and celebrate.

Biden would ramble out a few sentences through his mandatory mask, something like “that’s not nice, don’t do it again,” while the CCP laughs in his face, then maybe sinks a carrier battle group or two; as BLM, and PRIDE parades break out across America in celebration of the Communist destruction of the “racist and homophobic” West.

Think about it. There’s plenty of desert the CCP could use to scare the hell out of (paralysed by political correctness) fence sitting Aussies.

This kind of approach would also allow the CCP to encourage their Leftist sycophants in Australia to blame “warmongering right-wing extremists,” “racism” etc.; gaslighting Australians by saying: “you brought this on yourself; because of your “whiteness” warmongering. You only have yourselves to blame.”

Would it mean war? Not necessarily.

Australia would simply capitulate, ditching ANZUS, as quickly as Australia is ditched by the Pro-CCP Whitehouse Democrats. The surrender would be unconditional, with Australia’s leftist legacy media leading the charge – especially the ABC, and perhaps Eternity News – doing everything in their power to make that happen.

Led, as they would be, by former “glorious” leader Kim Il-Kevin07, or another power hungry wanna-be from the Left at the helm.

The U.N would applaud the smashing of “Sinophobia, the patriarchy, racism, and homophobia.”

Anyone who still stood in their way would be punished under puppet state rules established by the Communist Chinese Party.

I’ll stop there. You get the point.

If you think this is a stretch.

Precedence would beg to differ.

Founding member of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States, David Horowitz, now an ex-Marxist, stated in a 1985 piece marking the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon:

‘Let this be perfectly clear. Those of us who inspired and then led the antiwar movement did not want to just stop the killing, as so many [antiwar protesters from back then] now claim. We wanted the Communists to win.’

Horowitz adds, we operated from a double standard, holding America to account, while ignoring the crimes of those America was fighting against.

Some of us, says Horowitz, ‘like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, provided a protective propaganda shield for Hanoi’s Communist regime while it tortured American war-prisoners; others engaged in violent sabotage against the war effort.’ (“My Vietnam Lessons”)

He concludes, ‘my experience has convinced me that historical ignorance and moral blindness are endemic to the American [and Australian] left.’

Horowitz couldn’t have described the response from the Leftist elite in Australia to the increasing belligerence of the Communists in China, more accurately.

In April, Australian Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong aligned with the CCP in openly criticising Pezzullo’s ANZAC address.

Wong, according to the Sydney Morning Herald rebutted Pezzello by accusing him of not using ‘sober and cautious language.’

Labor responded in kind to Australia’s Defence Minister, Peter Dutton’s well publicised concerns for the Taiwanese people, and Australian sovereignty.

Fast forward to this week.

Australian Labor’s Shadow Trade Minister, Madeleine King, demanded LNP member George Christensen be ‘sacked.’

As Wong did with Pezzullo, King took Christensen’s’ words out of context, then accused him of being an ‘unhinged’ warmongerer, for pointing out Communist Chinese warmongering.

Christensen is right.

Contra to King, honest observers would acknowledge that it’s China, not Australia, who’s militarising the South China Sea, and its maritime navigation lanes.

Likewise, as much as the majority of Australians don’t like how it enslaves the Chinese people, Australia isn’t infiltrating Moa’s dystopian society by way of the wolf diplomacy, intimidation, or belligerency.

Australia isn’t invading Taiwanese airspace, or practising chest-beating invasion drills. Neither is Australia seeking militant global dominance.

More to the point, unlike China, Australia isn’t a nuclear power, with unelected bureaucrats encouraging its bureaucratic caste to bomb another country!

Despite the CCP’s claims to the contrary, – including criticisms from self-hating, clueless Leftists who have a distaste for ANZUS, The QUAD, Five-Eyes, and America’s close relationship with Australia – accusations from China’s Communist propaganda arm best fit the ‘sabre rattling’ of the Chinese Communist Party, not Australia.

With help from blind bats in the Australian Labor Party, Beijing Betty from the CCP’s cut and piece propaganda department is projecting.

No Australian wants a war with the Communist Chinese Party or its indoctrinated Marxist minions, but it’s treasonous to advocate we walk around ignorant of the drums of war.

Far better to draw a line in the sand, than bury our heads in it.

As I argued in May last year:

Appeasement of the Chinese Communist Party is treason.

First published on Caldron Pool, 12th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

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Finland Christian Leaders Face 6 Years In Gaol for Quoting the Bible on Homosexuality

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Christians in Finland are experiencing set-backs to their civil right to exercise their civil liberties.

Family Research Council reported on Monday that ‘Finland’s former Interior Minister and leader of the Christian Democrats, has been criminally charged for posting a picture of the Bible, opened to Romans 1:24-27.’ 

The Twitter post was a criticism of the ‘(ELFC) Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland joining an LGBTQAAI+ Pride parade.’

It triggered a two-year investigation, and could land the former Finish member of parliament in prison for up to two years, unless she recants.

Prosecutors are arguing that the post citing the Apostle Paul’s words verbatim, ‘violated the equality and dignity of homosexuals.’   

One report from Finland added that ‘the charges were filed on three separate issues’, pertaining to Räsänen’s staunch Christian conservative views on marriage, that she’s expressed publicly in writings, and on social media.

Another report cited Räsänen’s 2004 booklet, ‘“Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity” as the real centre of the charges.

In it, Räsänen respectfully argues that homosexuality is a ‘sexual anomaly;’ asserts the prudence of the age-old, man for woman, woman for man union; critiques cultural acceptance of “born that way” self-justifications for Same-Sex marriage, and outlines the danger posed by passing oppressive pro-LGBT laws based upon arbitrary propositions.

Such as, said Räsänen, ‘the Swedish act of 2003 concerning the right to teach the portions of Scripture dealing with homosexuality. Those who disseminate statements alleging homosexuality to be a sin can be sentenced up to two years in prison for incitement against a group of people. If the offence were considered minor or if suspects agreed to withdraw their statements, they might get by with only fines or parole.’

In addition, Räsänen writes of the hypocrisy from Same-Sex marriage advocates, stating,

“When the registered same-sex relationships were equated with marriage, a development was started which was difficult to halt. During the processing of this Act, it was affirmed to the Church, and to Christians concerned about the consequences, that the Church could retain its own values and views on homosexuality. Shortly after the Act was passed, a warning was issued to the Church about discriminating against its employees who intended to form homosexual partnerships. This was based on their fundamental rights against discrimination.”

In other words, the promise from Same-Sex marriage advocates that civil rights and civil liberties would be protected for all, not just some, was a blatant lie.

Instead of protecting civil liberties, Same-sex marriage laws created an untouchable, protected political class.

As a result, according to FRC’s Tony Perkins, former M.P. Päivi Räsänen has been charged for “hate speech.”

Räsänen has rejected the charge, telling prosecutors, “I do not see how I would have in any way defamed homosexuals whose human dignity and human rights I have constantly said to respect and defend.”

FRC recounted that Räsänen was determined to see that freedom of speech and religion, ‘both of which are guaranteed in international agreements and in [Finland’s] constitution, are respected.’

With the characteristic PRIDE flair for the melodramatic, Finnish Bishop Elect, Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, has also been charged.

Prosecutors allege that Pohjola, editor-in-chief of Luther Foundation Finland’s publications, is guilty of incitement against a group of people, due to his continuing to support of traditional marriage, and Räsänen’s publication.

Lutheran International said that the 2019 investigation follows, ‘an Helsinki Police investigation which concluded no laws had been broken.’

Finland made Same-Sex marriage legal in 2017, whilst the book was published in 2004.

The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF) was created as a move away from the State Church – Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland -, due to the ELCF’s distancing of itself from the Bible and the Lutheran Confession.

Rev. Juhana Pohjola was defrocked in 2014 by the ELCF for helping found the ELMDF, which seeks to maintain its Biblical roots due to concerns that about the continuing theological decline of the ELCF.

As a founding member of the ELMDF, Rev. Juhana Pohjola’s conviction, and potential prison time would bolster his opponents in the ELCF. It’s not a stretch to see how they could benefit politically from such a conviction of one of Finland’s high profile Christian leaders.

All of this is eerily similar to 1930s Germany.

The ELMDF appear to be the equivalent of the Confessing Church, which was founded on similar grounds. The Confessing Church was an ecclesiastical protest against nominalist German Christians surrendering Christian theology into the hands, and service of National Socialist ideology.

In its response to the charges against, Räsänen and Pohjola, the International Lutheran Council said,

‘“The implications of the decision to charge Juhana Pohjola and Päivi Räsänen are clear: if the authorities are willing to do this to a respected pastor, reverend doctor, and Bishop Elect, as well as a Member of Parliament and former Minister of the Interior, then that sends a message of fear and intimidation to everyone in Finland who follows the Scripture’s teaching on human sexuality.”

The ILC called on “Christians to demonstrate solidarity with their suffering Finnish Lutheran brothers and sisters.”

In the same response the ILC asserted that Christians,

 “We must not be silent but express righteous indignation at the actions of the Finnish authorities and demand an end to the persecution of those who adhere to historic Christian teaching on sexuality. I encourage Christians around the world to pray for Juhana and Päivi, and to follow the example and command of Jesus: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44).”

What can be drawn from all this is that Same-Sex marriage advocates acted deceptively.

Rather than reaffirm the legitimacy of their arguments, I’m more convinced than ever that “love is love”, was, and still is a lie. Their goal was domination, not “equality.”

Where civil rights are exalted over civil liberties, hell on earth is sure to follow.

First published on Caldron Pool, 7th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Leadership, Political Theology, Politics , , , , ,
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Yale Academic Claims Christian Home Schooling Is Breeding “White Supremacy”

May 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Hatred, or more generously put, disdain for Christian homeschoolers rears its pernicious, snarky head every year in one way, or another.

The main combatants are from the Left. They fire vitriolic salvos over the walls of their sheltered cloisters of higher learning into an area of education they view to be harmful.

They view it as harmful because the general curriculum used by most Christian homeschoolers is classically based, which is generally speaking, loathed by the Leftist hegemony.

The essential Christian Homeschooler’s curriculum would include a holistic embrace of subjects across a spectrum of genres that have built, informed, and sustained Western civilisation throughout the good and the bad.

If done right, Christian homeschooling gives students the best of Biblical Theology, antiquity, Shakespearean, Victorian, literary, and Philosophical classics, as well as age-appropriate exposure to multi-ethnic biography, art, community, logic, civics, General science, Math, grammar, English, language, and History.

Of course, not all Christian homeschoolers aim high. Neither do some schools.

This flaw doesn’t warrant vilification, such as Yale University Professor, Phillip Gorski’s claim on Twitter that ‘Christian homeschooling was -and is – often – if not always – a major vector of White Christian Nationalism.’

Gorski, according to a Campus Reform article, accused Christian homeschoolers of advocating a ‘fusion of Christianity with American civic life,’ which he says, ‘carries assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism.’

What Gorski means by ‘fusion’ is the belief in American exceptionalism, or ‘manifest destiny.’

His concern is that homeschooled students are being taught that America is a Christian nation, founded by white Europeans, which for better and worse, is one of the greatest Constitutionally Democratic nations to ever have existed.

In other words, they’re being taught the truth, not a revised history ordained by the Critical Theorist Marxists of the New Left.

While Gorski’s concern about ‘manifest destiny’ is to be recognised, it’s not evident that this, errant natural theology doctrine, is the be all and end all of Christian home-schooling curriculum.

I’ve never seen it present in the American Curriculum our family uses, and has used in 11 years of home-schooling.

To be fair, Gorski does admit that ‘not all Christians homeschool, and not all Christian homeschoolers learn Christian nationalism,’ but it’s banal for Gorski to make claims insinuating that ‘manifest destiny’ is the benchmark of Christian home education, when his definition of Christian nationalism is skewed to begin with.

As part of the Leftist academic apparatus, Gorski’s operating from his own assumptions, and learned bias.

To state it simply, for Leftists, Western Civilisation is white supremacism.

This is a fundamental belief among Leftists, evidenced by the irrational MAGA hat hatred in the United States, and here in Australia by loud, Leftist opposition to the Ramsey Centre For Western Civilisation.

Academics are protesting the presence of the Ramsey Centre on University campuses through agitprop op-eds, and a dedicated website, by which they accuse the philanthropic organisation of being narrow, Anglo-centric, Sinophobic, racist and patriarchal.

Never mind that they’re tenured positions of privilege only exist because Western Civ. grounded on Biblical Christian evangelical ethics, makes such positions and privilege achievable.

Simply teaching about Western Civilisation and its achievements is, to the majority on the Left, teaching racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, and the long list of thought cancelling nouns goes on and on.

This includes the assumption that students not being taught from Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Black Lives Matter, or LGBT programs, within or over-against the ABCs, and 1,2,3, are being taught wrong.

By wrong: Children are being taught at home, not force fed from the Unionised conveyor belts of the predominately Leftist education indoctrination complexes.

Though the Left does influence home education indirectly through the tragic history of the radical Left bludgeoning its way through the 20th Century, they have no control over what those children are taught, which translates into having no control over the adults those children become.

As is displayed by the way the Left farms racism and fear of catastrophic man-made climate change for political profit. Leftists, and some liberals, don’t want citizens, they want subjects.

I’m not advocating that “cancelling” CRT or QT, I’m saying – as I already do – like Islamism, Nazism, and Communism, teach about them, just don’t teach from them.

Teach from the Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other (Karl Barth).

In the end the contempt for Christian homeschoolers isn’t about people, it’s about politics, sex, and power.

The Left’s blind contempt for Western Civilisation merges with a learned prejudice against Christian homeschoolers.

The hate for Church and State informs the radical Left’s willingness to pervert, then vilify Christian home education on malicious grounds.

This fits in well with recent comments from Gene Veith, who wrote that “President” Joe Biden’s “American Families Plan,” was reminiscent of ‘Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which Government also breeds, reproduces (via in vitro hatcheries), and indoctrinates children in massive “nurseries.”

‘State Conditioning Centres’ took over the mum and dad role of raising children, and the curriculum, said Veith, taught “woke” ‘Elementary Class Consciousness.’

Brave New World analogies may seem overused, but we’d be fools to discount the loudness of its message here because, as Veith states, it ‘sounds disturbingly non-fictional.’

A.W. Tozer once said that ‘the complacency of Christians is the scandal of Christianity.’

If we allow the Leftist hegemony to dictate curriculum, on the sole basis of their own self-serving, misconstrued and false notions of Western Civilisation, we’re not just guilty of contributing to that scandal, (which in Biblical terms is scandalon; sin), we’re, as Tozer also said, ‘lacking in a moral wisdom that future historians will record as an Achilles heel, because though we had the intelligence to create a great civilisation, we lacked the moral wisdom preserve it.’

First published on Caldron Pool, 5th May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Homeschool, Political Theology, Politics , , , ,
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CRT is Racism

May 13, 2021 — Leave a comment

Seconded.

Critical Race Theory is racism.

—-> https://caldronpool.com/hate-whitey-is-racism/


—-> https://caldronpool.com/critical-race-theory-is-culturally-accepted-racism/

Mum challenges a school who wants to infuse Critical Race Theory’s false doctrines into the curriculum.

She’s right. Black Lives Matter Inc. and the whole CRT, “hate whitey”, money making industry has more in common with the Nation of Islam, and Malcom X, than it does Martin Luther King Jnr.

CRT is a rejection of the early civil rights movement. It does what David Horowitz has accused “Black Power” thugs of doing: keeping African-Americans chained to poverty through as politics of grievance, and bitter sense of entitlement.

Source.

In Politics , ,
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The Gospel According to Kevin Rudd

May 6, 2021 — Leave a comment

Criticisms from former Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, aimed at Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison’s Christian faith, are asinine, petty, and hypocritical.

In response to Scott Morrison’s speech at an Australian Christian Churches conference in April, Rudd told the ABC’s 7:30 Report,

“The idea that anyone leading a political party could believe that it is ‘God on our side,’ is just the stuff of real danger in my view.”

Rudd’s problem with Morrison is largely manufactured outrage.

Morrison never said or alluded to the absolutizing of the Church through the State by way of hyper-nationalism.

In ripping apart Morrison’s testimony concerning answered prayer, Rudd twisted what Prime Minister said, and skewed the message to serve his own ends.

No where in the speech – which was transcribed by Crikey  – does Scott Morrison say about the 2019 election that “God was on our side,” nor did Morrison suggest that Australia should become a theocracy.

The Prime Minister spoke of being the image bearers of God. A key part of healthy Biblical theology, and a major part of the fabric from which Western Civilisation was formed.

Contrary to Rudd’s self-centred accusations, Morrison asked those gathered to be what they are called to be: a landmark; a beacon of hope under the 24/7/365 Lordship of Jesus Christ.

In essence, Morrison was calling the Church to be image bearers of the self-revealing God in a sea of poisoned politics, societal division, ideological extremism, and the subsequent surge of political turbulence.

There’s nothing Morrison said that justifies Kevin Rudd’s venomous anti-Church and State tantrum.

Granted, his concerns about the excesses of Pentecostalism weren’t all that off the mark. I’ve seen some dumb stuff done in the name of the Holy Spirit.

While criticism of certain aspects of the Christian denomination are necessary, the more appropriate platform for such criticism is theological analysis, not trial by media.

Certainly not trial by ex-Prime Minister, who from his political pulpit, appears to be saying that the Christian faith should be constrained to four walls on a Sunday, and read through the lens of Das Kapital.

Rudd’s bourgeois leftist social justice Christianity, is as concerning as cultural Christians who keep Jesus in his Sunday box, bringing Him out for a cameo at Christmas, and Easter. Only apply if necessary. Particularly if there’s an election on, and the mood feels right.

By using Morrison’s Christian faith, to shove his own bigoted bourgeois leftist, Marxist Jesus of “Social Justice,” down the throats of Australians, Rudd appears to be completely unaware that his self-righteous chest-beating negates proclamations about his own Christian faith.

For example, Rudd, in his article for the Guardian placed his own “garden-variety theology” (whatever that is) against what he alleges is Morrison’s “radical political theology.”

His juvenile outbidding of Morrison should be read as it appears to have been written: “Morrison isn’t a real Christian. I know, because I’ve always been one.”

It’s not the first time.

In a quarterly essay discussing faith and politics, Chris Uhlmann explained how Rudd “compared his faith, with that of John Howard, and [did so] to find his opponent wanting.”

Could Rudd’s hypocrisy be any more blatant?

He condemns Scott Morrison for bringing “religion” into politics, but was not averse to using God in his 2006-2007 election campaign.

In a 2006 essay for the Monthly, Rudd appealed to the strength of German Evangelical (Lutheran) theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Rudd appears to have used Bonhoeffer’s Christian opposition against the Nazi state, to inadvertently portray the Liberal National Party as Nazis, and the Australian Labor Party as anti-Nazis, for the goal of winning the 2007 election.

Spot the irony. Kevin Rudd, a “Christian Socialist” employed an ecclesiastically Conservative Christian theologian, who stood up against National Socialism, to promote Christian Socialism.

Bonhoeffer wasn’t a fan of the all-consuming, and never satisfied, economic leviathan, stating, (and I’m quoting him verbatim): ‘a lack of obedience to Scripture is characteristic for the teaching of the social gospel.’ (DBW 12, Memorandum, p.242)

Around the time of the 2007 election, when it came to roles played in society by both the Church and State, Kevin Rudd was all for it, writing,

‘The function of the church in all these areas of social, economic and security policy is to speak directly to the state: to give power to the powerless, voice to those who have none, and to point to the great silences in our national discourse where otherwise there are no natural advocates.’

Adding to this, he then asks secular politicians not to reject the Christian perspective:

‘A Christian perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed.’

It’s telling. Kevin Rudd is okay with the Christian perspective in politics, as long as it’s the Leftist authorised version.

A deceptive, flowery version informed for the most part, by false doctrines that submit the Lordship of Jesus Christ to the tyrannical lordship of Karl Marx.

It’s not Morrison’s faith in politics that needs a health check-up, it’s Kevin Rudd’s.

‘Socialism’s real error’, said Christian, ex-Marxist and French scholar, Jacques Ellul, is ‘the one that lies behind all the rest, is that it ended up formulating a new religion, setting up gods: history, proletariat, socialism, revolution.’ (Jesus & Marx, 1988. p.139)

As Simone Weil asserted: ‘Marxism is a badly constructed religion.’

Rudd’s hypocrisy and its utterly self-important nonsense beg the question, why is #kevin07 still being taken seriously?

The former populist P. M has discredited himself by letting his lust for media attention assuage his narcissistic opportunism.

Watching Kevin Rudd’s responses to Leigh Sales on the 7:30 report was like watching a sketch from the Comedy Company.  

The election of Kevin Rudd ignited over a decade of destabilisation in Australian politics. Him calling the Prime Minister “wacky” is genuinely laughable.

To be in Christ, is to be in the Church.

Crucially, and perhaps most importantly, is that Rudd’s criticism of Morrison, not only misconstrues the role of church and state, it neglects vocation.

Vocation is God’s sovereign grace working through human hands, where, says, Lutheran scholar, Gene Veith, ‘His Word extends into the world.’

Through vocation the spirituality of the cross is lived out in ‘parenting, farming, labouring, soldiers, doctors, judges or retailers.’

It’s impossible for a genuine Christian to be separated from Jesus Christ.

The distinction between church and state is not to be understood as a separation between the secular and sacred.

A Christian defined by their church attendance record, melanin, ethnicity, or loyalty to a political ideology – is not a Christian.

Jesus is bigger than Sundays.

First published on Caldron Pool, 3rd May 2021.

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Australia, Australian History, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Political Theology, Politics , , ,
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NEW Redbubble T-shirt Design: “Cancel Cancel Culture”

May 6, 2021 — Leave a comment

Happy Thursday readers! For those interested, I’ve uploaded a new t-shirt design to my Redbubble “store.”

Link below.

Link: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Cancel-Cancel-Culture-by-gravitaslumen/77828685.FB110?fbclid=IwAR3QioTXcCdbgs2_pRX3y_jGRC_QEpZFajokMNj0VVhyvuV0VQzzAp8nsPA

©Rod Lampard, 2021.

In Art, Art and Theology
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