Northam Exposure on Virus Hypocrisy
The radical leader broke his silence with a slew of new rules.
While California, New York, and other states have gone off the deep end on coronavirus restrictions, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) has been unusually quiet. That changed Thursday, when the radical leader broke his silence with a slew of new rules. And, like every other liberal leader, he didn’t mind shaming churches in the process.
“This is a holy time for multiple faith traditions,” Northam said at his press conference on Thursday. “But this year, we need to think about what is truly the most important thing. Is it the worship or the building? For me, God is wherever you are. You don’t have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers,” Northam said. “Worship with a mask on is still worship. Worship outside or worship online is still worship.”
Northam stopped short of the gathering orders that other liberals have watched the Supreme Court overturn. But he didn’t mind shaming churchgoers all the same. “Quite frankly,” he said, “we know that a lot of the spread is coming from this, because these individuals that are in a place of worship and contract the virus then go out to their place of work or to the grocery store or the convenience store or wherever and that’s how this is spread.” No one knows quite how Northam arrived at that conclusion since most of the contact tracing — at least in overwhelmed cities like El Paso — has led back to big box stores like Walmart or Costco. If anything, churches have been some of the safest indoor spaces, as pastors go to great lengths — and expense — to keep parishioners safe.
Justice Neil Gorsuch made reference to that in his opinion on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) unconstitutional restrictions. “No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions, in churches or synagogues — especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of ‘essential’ businesses and perhaps more besides.”
Liberals, who constantly accuse President Trump of making baseless claims, are doing exactly that here! Most churches who’ve opened in a reasonable manner haven’t witnessed a single case — let alone an outbreak. Maybe Northam, who wants to make infanticide a choice between “a woman and her doctor,” ought to leave worship between a pastor and his parishioner.
While Northam resorts to public pressure, other states are stubbornly slapping churches with outrageous citations. In San Jose, Calvary Christian Fellowship was hit with more than $55,000 fines for meeting indoors. Earlier this week, Pastor Mike McClure was found in contempt of court for exercising his congregation’s First Amendment rights. Still, he told “Washington Watch,” he isn’t budging. “I just think this is a time when we need to get together more than ever… They want us not to meet at all.” But, he says, there’s a higher law than man’s law, and when the Bible tells us that we need to gather, that’s what the body of Christ should do.
“They’ve been pushing against the church for a long time,” he said, “and now they’re inside the church telling us what we can and can’t do [under] the First Amendment. So [we] have the right to redress… [They] have the right give me an answer to why we can’t meet, because the virus is not killing everyone. And they have everybody scared to death.” And yet, he went on, there are these double standards — even in San Jose — where people could riot, and that was fine. You could protest, and not hear a thing. So you know what, he said? I decided to “peacefully protest every week [by having services].”
In other states, like Colorado, pastors are having success by pushing back on one-sided restrictions. At High Plains Harvest Church, Senior Pastor Mark Hoteling won a major victory in Colorado. After he and others stood up and refused to be bullied, “the state is now back-peddling,” he cheered. “They have lifted the capacity restrictions against churches, and we are now treated as any other essential business… Our intent all along,” he said, “has been not to get an injunction to benefit High Plains Harvest Church, but all churches in Colorado.” And, thanks to the court’s order, that’s exactly what happened.
Look, Hoteling urged, Christians need to keep pushing forward, because the reality is, “the state can do whatever it wants until it’s stopped. And we’re just a small rural church. But, you know, it’s like David. I mean, we’ve got a small stone and a sling and we’re going to keep swinging.” And other churches — all across the country — should do the same.
Correction: Andrew Cuomo is D-NY, not R-NY as originally stated.
Originally published here.
In Company of China’s Spies
America’s college campuses have been a problem for years, but lately, for reasons no one is talking about. The Chinese Communist Party is here, Secretary Mike Pompeo warned — and they’re hiding in the shadows of our liberal schools.
“These aren’t hypotheticals,” he insisted earlier this year. Speaking at Georgia Tech, Pompeo was blunt. “They know that Left-leaning college campuses are rife with anti-Americanism and present easy targets for their anti-American messaging.” This has gone on too long, he told the audience. And what is “this,” exactly? According to top State Department officials, it’s a massive network of Chinese communists fanned out across the country with one goal: penetrate higher education and, as Pompeo said on “Washington Watch” Thursday, “steal, replace, and repress.”
Not only have they infiltrated these places of higher learning, he explained, but they’ve begun to “exert enormous influence there — both by their presence and by their connectivity to students who are studying there.” Although not all of the 400,000 Chinese students studying here are involved, he was quick to point out, a good number “have deep connections to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.” The FBI has been monitoring this situation for months — including cases where the Chinese government is trying to pressure the students studying here to pass along information. That’s not fair to them either.
“Our institutions of higher learning have a responsibility to protect their students, including the Chinese nationals who are studying there.” They also, he explained, have an obligation — legally — to disclose whatever money they’re getting, so that our government can “make sure that they’re using these funds in a way that’s consistent with the American mission that they’re all engaged in.” Even in secondary schools, experts warn, the Chinese have an agenda. In some communities, they’ve quietly built a foothold with local school boards, K-12 administrators, and county officials that’s giving them a powerful voice they should never have.
In terms of threat level, Pompeo explained, “it’s not remotely close.” China is the “largest, most significant threat to our national security anywhere on the global stage today.” And is he concerned with how a Biden administration would handle that threat? Absolutely. “It would be unacceptable for the American people to go back to where we were before the Trump administration came in,” he insisted, “and I don’t mean that as a partisan attack. Frankly, there were Republican administrations before President Obama that didn’t confront China in the way that it demands to keep us all safe and prosperous.”
In these last several months of the coronavirus, a lot of Americans’ eyes have been opened. People have finally started to see China through the lens of the pandemic, their horrible treatment of religious minorities, and crackdown of Hong Kong. If anything, Pompeo hopes that our country finally realizes the gravity of the situation. If they do, it might help keep Joe Biden, who’s signaled his intent to cozy back up to China, in check. “I think whoever has the burden and the opportunity of being president of the United States, [not] just in February of 2021 but February of 2025 and ‘29 and '33 — I think every one of those leaders will feel the challenge and recognize they have a duty and responsibility to confront this in a very real way,” he said.
Originally published here.
Secular Activists Tackle Agenda Religiously
Like every other radical group hoping to cash in from a Joe Biden presidency, the Secular Democrats for America have come forward with a blueprint of their own (Emphasis on the word blue.) Claiming to be the fastest growing non-religious religious group, they’re demanding a seat at the administration’s table to dismantle 240 years of American freedom. Will they get it? Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, anything is possible.
It’s a document that will make anyone’s head spin. Lashing out at Donald Trump’s four years of what they call “anti-democratic, anti-scientific” policy, they argue that now is the time to take back the country from the Christian conservative movement. Help us, they implore, “dismantle its grip on our government and counter its inaccurate and revisionist messaging around our nation’s founding.”
How? With a laundry list of changes that would take a bulldozer to our religious foundations. They call for things like dropping God from the Pledge of Allegiance and our national motto, ending government partnership with faith-based groups (including hospitals!), abolishing conscience rights, canceling contracts with religious adoption and foster care centers, forbidding the mention of religion or God in federal buildings and offices, banning pastors from speaking on cultural issues, nominating judges that would put secularism ahead of any legitimate First Amendment grievance, putting non-religious people on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, force government officials to check their faith at the door of public service and 25 other pages of dangerous and unconstitutional ideas.
In one portion, they even “support the recognition of humanist chaplains” in the military. Now, wait a minute. They call themselves non-religious but they want to be included in a religious dialogue? That only validates the point that’s been made for years about secularism — which is that it’s a religion. And, as we see in this document, they want to be treated like one. Atheist chaplains? That’s like vegetarian carnivores. It’s an oxymoron. They don’t exist.
In true hypocritical fashion, they call out the Trump administration for advancing a conservative Christian agenda, and then offer a path for the Biden-Harris administration to “restore the secular government envisioned by our nation’s founders.” A minute ago, they were accusing evangelicals of being too political. And yet, here they are, demanding that their own religion — secularism — reign supreme in the policies of the federal, state, and local governments. Washington, D.C. is just the first wave. Your community is next. “We are hopeful,” they write, “that soon there will be secular or Freethought caucuses in legislative bodies throughout the country.”
They don’t just want to attack your freedom through the federal legislative and executive branches. They want to fight this battle in your state! “We implore you,” these activists go on, “to help educate the American public by reasonably defining what religious freedom really means…” In other words, you can believe what you want in your head, but you can’t live it out in society. That’s what they want.
As hostile as Barack Obama was to religious liberty, his two terms were a love pat compared to what these activists want. This is a nationwide, top-to-bottom cleansing of any faith-based idea, institution, or tradition. Would Joe Biden go through with all of it? Probably not, but let’s be honest: he’s a puppet on the strings of the radical Left. And if there’s one group of people they all have in their crosshairs, it’s the faith community. The church needs to understand what’s coming and prepare to stand aggressively against it.
One way we can do that is in Georgia, where two Senate seats can make the difference between giving Joe Biden a blank check and ensuring there is a check on his incoming agenda. Coming up next week, FRC Action is hosting a rally on December 15 at 7:00 p.m. Join us at Truett McConnell University, along with Reps. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Ralph Reed, and Todd Starnes. To RSVP, click over to PrayVoteStand.org.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
