June 25, 2023

Will we ever recover from the political mess the far right has made of American politics?

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/will-we-ever-recover-from-this.html

Every succeeding human generation tends to think it has mastered and conquered the problems of its past, the things that led to hatred, war, destruction, the stunted growth of cultures and societies and nations, the evil that led human beings, who are theoretically the most intelligent beings on the planet, to torture and murder each other and bring down each other's civilizations because they were perceived as weak and inferior. And yet here we are, in the United States of America, in the twenty-first century, with serious problems that have the potential to bring down our 247 year old democracy.

I don't expect that there will be a quick turnaround in the thinking of those who have become caught up in the anti-patriotic, un-American MAGA movement or the subversive white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and anarchists that direct its movements. That kind of dark, negative ideology lasts a long time. We're still dealing with the effects of the racism and hatred that spewed out of the old Confederacy after Reconstruction was brought to an end. But we can keep it from spreading, growing, and render it ineffective in achieving its goals. I do have a few suggestions.

1. The former President must be brought to justice, not only for stealing classified documents, or in business fraud or civil sexual assault cases, but for charges of seditious conspiracy and inciting insurrection on January 6th, 2021.
2. All Americans who have seen this for what it is, must make a commitment to use the tools that Democracy gives them, which are free expression and THE BALLOT BOX! All elections matter.
3. The public education system, from pre-Kindergarten to the graduate level of colleges and universities, need to experience major reform in civics education.

June 24, 2023

Far Right wing political influences holding back Southern Baptist "progress" on clergy sexual abuse

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/abuse-survivor-says-not-even-minimum.html

Dealing with a sexual abuse scandal by clergy and denominational leaders that was exposed in a 2019 investigation by The Houston Chronicle, and The San Antonio Express-News, Southern Baptists have made little progress, according to a long-time survivor who has advocated and pushed the denomination to take steps to prevent sexual abuse by its pastors and church staff members for years.

Instead, the headlines made by the SBC at its 2023 annual meeting in New Orleans were about kicking out churches with female pastoral staff, including its largest, most evangelistic church, Saddleback Valley, in Orange County, Caiifornia. The convention did approve a database which will incude the names of pastors and church staff who have been convicted or "credibly accused" of abuse but the abuse survivor in this case, Christa Brown, an attorney who runs a website called "Stop Baptist Predators", says that is less than acceptable minimum progress.

The failure to make progress on sexual abuse has been accompanied by public pushback and accusations against several of the women who reported abuse in high-profile cases, and a general attitude among some Southern Baptists that this is some kind of satanic attack designed to push a feminist agenda into the denomination. The pushback against abuse victims, the foot dragging on making real progress in establishing a data base and the determination to expel churches with women serving in pastoral ministry roles is all a sign of the influence of far right wing politics which is corrupting the denomination from within, carrying it away from a mission and purpose centered on the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Racism is also a factor wihin the convention, as there has been pushback against what turned out to be a deflection of a far right wing resolution proposed by some messengers at its 2019 meeting. Known as Resolution 9, this resolution re-wrote one on Critical Race Theory that was full of false narratives, misinformation and conspiracy theories that would have made a Christian denomination a liar if it had passed. The deflection was due to the work of several African American pastors and committee members who turned it back and re-wrote it. So far, attempts to undo Resolution 9 have been turned back.

June 20, 2023

One American's Perspective: Justice Should Not be Delayed

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/one-americans-perspective-justice.html

And no one, not even a former President running another campaign for the White House, is above the law.

The "foot soldiers" of the insurrection have been brought to justice fairly quickly. The leaders of the extremist, terrorist groups that followed the plan for attacking the Capitol are facing prison sentences that, for the most part, send the message that the American people will not tolerate insurrection against its government or the Constitution. I hope that the sentences given to the hundreds of individuals who participated in the violence and destruction, either out of complete ignorance of how democratic government works, or because they were too selfish to care about the rights of others, sent the right message. Most of those people have also suffered consequences beyond the prison time they are serving.

But as time has passed, the questions have mounted over why it was taking the Department of Justice so long to gather evidence and build a case against the core of the conspiracy itself, including the former President of the United States. We've been told, "Cases like this take a long time to prosecute," and "Because of the difficulty in finding a jury that will be fair, the case has to be ironclad and the evidence has to be solid and irrefutable." And perhaps the most vocal defense of the delay in prosecution has been that the Department "Doesn't want this to appear 'politically motivated.'"

That didn't really make much sense to me. Congress had already investigated, and laid out some pretty damning evidence. We had months of televised hearings. It was clear that the message being sent was convincing Americans, or at least, a majority of informed Americans with the intelligence, educational background and commitment and dedication to this country, that a serious attempt had been made to overthrow the government, and steps needed to be taken to bring those involved to justice as a means of guaranteeing this never happens again.

June 19, 2023

On Nicole Wallace right now: Garland, Wray, prevented FBI, DOJ from investigating Trump

role in January 6th and the conspiracy around fake electors. The delay is the result of their intentional slowing it down and focusing on the "foot soldiers."

I think MSNBC posts videos of current shows the next day. This will be a bombshell to watch. If it is accurate, and she usually is, it will be confirmation of what many people here have been saying.

June 19, 2023

How do these people get elected to Congress?

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/how-do-these-people-get-elected-to.html

From Rodney Kennedy, a pastor in New York, author of Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy:

"We are dealing with people who will insist that even Jesus said he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. The people using this rhetoric are losing all restraint. They have decided they are so righteous they do not have to tolerate this age. They believe they have the freedom and the conviction to act on the threat of a civil war. In their eyes, they are reasonable, sober, honorable people acting on behalf of the good of the nation. They believe a civil war would usher in a new age. "

"There's plenty of room for for conservative and liberal points of view," says Kennedy, "But surreptitious calls for civil war go beyond the pale."

June 17, 2023

Why Americans shouldn't dismiss Shiny Happy People's Warnings of a Christian-controlled nation.

https://baptistnews.com/article/why-americans-shouldnt-dismiss-shiny-happy-peoples-warning-of-a-christian-controlled-nation/

"An unexpected twist to the documentary comes when the filmmakers show the grooming of future homeschooled politicians who would go into our nation’s capital to push for strict Christian views and policies. This information creates conflicting responses among viewers. There are the believers and the naysayers. There are those who feel personally attacked, who feel including this piece of information was so far-fetched, it was an unnecessary addition.

In my case, I watched this twist and nodded along in agreement because, well, it was no real twist to me. I already knew this about those like the Duggars because I used to be just like them."

Except from the full article.

June 17, 2023

After everything that has transpired this week, I needed a good, patriotic rant today.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/this-neither-breaks-my-leg-nor-picks-my.html

History teaches us that the two most prolific influences on the development and writing of the Constitution of the United States were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Madison was the key developer of the amendments, designed for the purpose of getting the constitution ratified by the states. Already certain that the constitution sufficiently limited the powers of government, Madison developed these ten amendments to be added as a guarantee of securing individual freedom.

Both Madison and Jefferson had witnessed the struggle of American colonists to combine religious expression with governance. Madison noted in Virginia that the enforcement of the Anglican church's doctrine and rules by the legislative body led to the persecution of those who had determined, by conscience and conviction, not to be part of the Anglican church. Many of those were Baptists, followers of Roger Williams who believed that any government involvement in the church would corrupt it. Jefferson echoed Williams' conviction in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association when he assured its leaders that a "wall of separation," a term originating with Williams, existed in the Constitution between the church and state. The first amendment solidified this conviction.

It has been pretty common in American History classes for school children to be taught that the basis for the Constitution, and for most laws in the United States, is the Bible, because that's what the founding fathers used to write the Constitution. No doubt, among the delegates at that first constitutional convention were men who were Christians, who belonged to churches and studied the Bible and believed in the Christian gospel. James Madison would have been one of those. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, writing to Madison to express his views because he was not at the convention. primarily with regard to a Bill of Rights, was not. Madison had a theological education, Jefferson was an Enlightenement disciple. Yet these two agreed on the establishment clause, the separating of church from state and the freedom of conscience of all Americans with no religious test applied.

June 16, 2023

An Ex-Southern Baptist provides an explanation of the denomination's banning of women as "pastors"

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-southern-baptist-convention-made.html

As one who grew up in a small, rural Southern Baptist church, and attended one of its undergraduate universities, knowing the history of the denomination explains the error they are making in excluding women from the pastorate, which happened in New Orleans this past week at their annual meeting.

The SBC was founded by church leaders who made a theological and doctrinal error related to the context of slavery and racism in their interpretation of the Bible, and separated from the Triennial Baptist Convention in 1845, which had prohibited slaveowners from becoming missionaries. So while the Triennial convention took an abolitionist position on slavery, the Southern Baptists were founded on belief in white supremacy and what they considered support for slavery in the Bible.

The churches in the southern states were overwhelmed by the culture around them and in order to please their members, endorsed it with mis-quoted and mis-interpreted scripture verses. They were largely separated from the educational institutions and seminaries, mostly in the north, which trained pastors and church leaders, and so relied on many uneducated lay pastors to interpret the practice of Christianity for them.

They are making the same error, allowing the culture of the ancient time and place in which the Bible was written, to lay down a prohibition that is steeped in the cultural circumstances of women, ignoring the New Testament's words which proclaim spiritual equality regardless of race or gender, including words and actions of Jesus himself. They claim this is part of a liberal "feminist" movement, but the arguments put forth by the churches they expelled were anything but that. Basically, they argued that the decision of who to call as a pastor was an act of local church authority with which the denomination had no right to interfere, and that is a historic Baptist principle, one of four upon which united Christians as Baptists in the early 1600's.

June 14, 2023

Wake up Floridians! Your politicians are passing bad laws and they need to be stopped!

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/wake-up-floridians-this-is-what-your.html

What's it going to take to wake people up in Florida?

A single mother of four was shot through the door of a home where she had gone to talk to the owner about incidents involving her children. I don't know any of the circumstances involved that led to the shooting, the issues that had occurred between the shooter and children in the neighborhood which allegedly let up to this incident. According to the news reports, the woman who committed the shooting had been engaged in a long-standing neighborhood feud with neighbors over children playing in a nearby vacant lot. But in the information from the media, and from The View today, where the victim's family was invited to speak, the incident was motivated by the shooter's familiarity withFlorida's "Stand your ground" law.

Ajike Owens is the name of the single mother of four who lost her life because of this ridiculous law. In her memory and in her honor, Floridians need to commit to beat a pathway to the ballot box and vote against anyone who supports these draconian, conspiracy-driven laws.

June 14, 2023

We are sick of hearing about Trump, Trump, Trump. Let's celebrate the victorious achievement of the

Biden administration in creating 14 million jobs, more than the last three GOP Presidents combined (who all presided over job losses).

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/06/still-winning-on-economy-president.html