Category Archives: Culture war

The Church will have to reconsider its position

It is being forced into a pre-Constantinian situation of marginalisation and persecution

Bionic Mosquito has read a book by Carl R. Trueman called “Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution” (2022) and written a multi-part review.

Here is an excerpt from his final part:

Trueman concludes his book with the recognition that the narrative he has told is a somewhat depressing one for traditional Christians.   What, then, is to be done?  First, Trueman notes: face our complicity in the expressive individualism of the day.

He offers an example that makes clear the reality that every Christian in the West is, in a manner, Protestant.  We are each free to attend any type of church – all forms of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches are available to almost all Christians.  It is, if you will, a manner of expressing our individualism.

We go to the church that makes us feel good, or that doesn’t stress us too much.  In other words, where our felt needs are met.  We are more concerned with how the church makes us feel than how well the church conforms to Biblical issues that might makes us feel…uncomfortable.

Do we look back to the Reformation for the model that offers the solution to our time?  The high Middle Ages in the Western Church?  The synergy of the Eastern Church?  No.  Trueman suggests we look back to the first and second century Church, a time when the Church was also the outlaw, the persecuted minority.  A time when Christianity was a marginalized sect, little understood, considered immoral and seditious.

This idea fits with something Justo L. Gonzáles writes in the first volume of his “The Story of Christianity” (2010), which I am currently reading, in the chapter on Constantine:

“[W]hat is of paramount importance . . . is not so much how sincere Constantine was, or how he understood the Christian faith, as the impact of his conversion and his rule both during his lifetime and thereafter. That impact was such that it has even been suggested that throughout most of its history the church has lived in its Constantinian era, and that even now, in the twenty-first century, we are going through crises connected with the end of that long era.” (p. 132)

Further on, Gonzáles adds this point:

Eusebius of Caesarea, “in all probability the most learned Christian of his time” (p. 149), a contemporary of Constantine and his “ardent admirer”, wrote about him in such a way that “one receives the impression that now, with Constantine and his successors, the plan of God has been fulfilled. No longer will Christians have to decide between serving the coming reign and serving the present one – which has become a representative and agent of the Reign of God. Beyond the present political order, all that Christians are to hope for is their own personal transference into the heavenly kingdom . . . Religion tended to become a way to gain access to heaven, rather than to serve God in this life and the next.” (p. 154)

And then, Gonzáles delivers what I perceive as a great promise:

“[A]s long as the Constantinian era endured, most individuals and movements that rekindled eschatological hope were branded as heretics and subversives, and condemned as such. It would be only as the Constantinian era approached an end, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, that eschatology would once again become a central theme in Christian theology.” (p. 154)

Eschatology is of course a main point discussed in the voluminous work of Gary North.

It’s also noteworthy that even in those early times “not all Christians regarded the new circumstances with like enthusiasm” as Eusebius (p. 155). The most noteworthy reactions were the monastic one and Donatism.

The monastic, one could say “escapist”, reaction to the Christian embrace of “Constantinianism” is highly interesting in that one can say that monks and monasteries did more than any other movement in the early middle ages to civilize the physical and spiritual wilderness of Europe. A point worth pondering.

The relationship between Christianity and feminism

Louise Perry has an unusual view of this

In a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, author Louise Perry (“The Case Against the Sexual Revolution”) and, as stated in the video description, “director of The Other Half, a new non-partisan feminist think tank, and the host of Maiden Mother Matriarch, a podcast about sexual politics”, says (prompted video):

“I have a slightly unusual view of the relationship between Christianity and feminism.” While most feminists see themselves as being in opposition to Christianity, Perry says that feminism is an “outgrowth of Christianity“, because the “fundamental idea of Christianity, which is so different from other religious traditions” is that “weakness is strength, the first shall be last, there is something valuable, rather than being despicable, about being small and vulnerable.” She thinks that feminism “completely relies on that idea, which is by no means shared by all cultures and certainly not by the ancient Roman culture from which Christianity sprung.”

In ancient Roman culture, Perry explains, the idea that a woman slave could be sexually violated simply didn’t exist. It just happened because it was perceived as “normal”.

Perry continues: “Into that came the idea of sexual equality at least on the spiritual level – and the idea that women, even slave women, who don’t have male kin, are worthy of protection.” Meaning that the community shares that responsibility of protection.

My (PwG) comment: Now that some feminists are beginning to realise that the state is not their friend and may not protect them against men (if these men claim to be women) if it suits the furtherance of the managerial class in power, this is a powerful message that churches should be amplifying.

The mainstream media have given up on truth

The Washington Post is openly calling on news outlets to abandon objectivity.

Writes Jenny Holland:

Journalism’s brief period of objectivity was an interregnum between the rough-and-tumble newspaper class wars of the early 20th century and whatever you want to call the pantomime hellscape of today. Now, that period of objectivity is officially dead and buried. It is clear from Downie’s article that the industry has been wholly captured. What used to be thought of as a workman-like job, in which you dug up facts and presented them to your readership, has been taken over by an elite clique of pampered millennials. Members of this clique went to all the same schools and have all the same opinions. Their sworn mission is to make sure their shrinking readership knows how ideologically pure they are. Factual reality – once the king of the newsroom – doesn’t come into the equation. The king is dead. Long live the king.

[…]

There is a silver lining in this op-ed, and I found it in the comments. Judging from the people commenting under the piece, even the ultra-liberal, vote-blue-no-matter-who readers of the Washington Post were not buying what Downie was trying to sell them.

One commenter wrote:

‘What’s really happening is young reporters are using emotional blackmail and not-very-sophisticated [postmodern] sophistry to excuse themselves from professional standards. I understand why new reporters would like to be liberated from dull, but necessary, professional standards, but I don’t understand why the grown-ups go along with it to the detriment of their profession.’

The biggest problem with journalists may not even be their recent swing to the left, their intolerance of differing opinions or their backstabbing newsrooms – all characteristics of younger, woke media staff. Instead, the biggest blindspot for journalists of generations new and old is their tendency to vastly overestimate their own importance, and vastly underestimate just how few people share their outlook outside their media bubbles.

I’m not sure this last conclusion is quite right. Journalists do not “vastly overestimate their own importance”. Among the “few people that share their outlook” are the vast majority of the policy makers. And that is all that matters.

Jordan Peterson wants to create an anti-WEF

The famed psychologist lays out his plans and vision in a discussion with Joe Rogan.

This is a very inspiring idea. However, lately JP has been somewhat uncritical to certain kinds of interventionist ideas that dovetail nicely with what typical WEF-types might say. Paul Joseph Watson commented recently on this. So it remains to be seen in which direction the Canadian sage is moving.

Creating Man in Our Own Image

Bionic Mosquito writes about a book titled “Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution”, by Carl R. Trueman.

Excerpts:

Modern culture sees the world as raw material to be shaped by human will.  Trueman sees technology as having played the biggest part in this change.  As noted earlier, is technology to be considered just another necessary but insufficient precondition, or was it the sufficient condition that enabled the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers to be put into effect?

Technology reinforces the idea of “individual.”  In almost every way today we can individualize our experiences – music, news, videos, recreation.  Again, the individual is placed at the center of his reality.  The world is seen simply as “stuff,” to be molded and shaped according to the will of the creator – the modern individual.

We are the ones with power, and we are the ones who give the world significance.

Technology is the addition, the rise of something that gives the individual power and authority.  On the other side is the collapse of traditional external sources of authority and identity.  Trueman offers three examples to demonstrate this reality.

First, the Reformation which fractured the Church in the West.  Institutional unity was lost, and with it the Church’s claims to authority.  Nations could choose the direction of their faith.  Eventually, the choice would be individual – completely upending who had power in the relationship: the priest or the parishioner.

[…]

Religion, family, nation.  Once, the answer to the question “Whom am I?” would have been “I am Carl Trueman, a Christian and the son of John, English by birth.  Today, almost every one of these traditional identity markers is subject of ridicule and derision.

Without these external markers of identity, we turn inward; as Trueman puts it, institutions are no longer authoritative places of formation, but of performance.

Trueman then goes to the loss of sacred order.  Cultures have traditionally justified their moral orders by appealing to traditions rooted in sacred order.  Moral codes have authority because they are grounded in something outside of, or beyond, this immediate world.  God, for example, or natural law, or the Tao, or created order, or the Oracle at Delphi.  You get the idea.

[…]

Arguments based on the authority of God’s law or the idea that human beings are made in the image of God no longer carry any significant weight in a world devoid of the sacred.

Instead we have arguments based on the authority of the inner self – creating myself in my own image.  Using my self as the yardstick by which I measure…myself.

Why has this played out so explosively in the realm of sex?

Once the authorizing of the inner psychological space happened, it was perhaps inevitable that sex would become more and more significant.  Sexual desires are among the most powerful inner feelings that most human beings experience.

The deepest of the inner self, the most powerful feelings of the inner self.  Hence, the most important manner by which one can express his inner self.  Historically it has been moral codes regarding sex that have been the primary focus across most societies.  Therefore, such codes are also the most important codes to kill.

Pfizer Exposed For Exploring “Mutating” COVID-19 Virus For New Vaccines Via ‘Directed Evolution’

Project Veritas video. (Update 30/01/2023: Youtube of course took the video down. No worries, it can be found here. And, BTW, here‘s the total meltdown of the exposed Pfizer employee.)

Paul Joseph Watson comments on the fact that this is being suppressed by the mainstream media here.

Update 30/01/2023:

Blogger Eugyppius has some competent things to say about the whole matter. Excerpt:

I’ll be honest: I don’t think what Walker describes is necessarily dangerous. The virus is already training itself against vaccine-elicited antibodies in billions of people. That’s a powerful force that I’m not sure Pfizer’s scientists have any hope of outpacing. Were such a tweaked virus to escape a laboratory, it would just have the antibody-evading properties of many other strains; we might not even recognise it as a lab product. Still, Walker’s revelations are significant, for they reveal how easily demand for vaccines becomes pressure to tinker with viral evolution. Similar research on potential pandemic pathogens that are poorly adapted to humans would indeed be truly dangerous.

Robert Malone, MD comments from the middle of the fray:

Almost immediately after the first Veritas video dropped, we all got a masters class in the amazing power and capabilities to control narrative and information which Pfizer has assembled. Important to remember that it was already well known that there is a very tight relationship between Pfizer and Thompson-Reuters. In fact, revealing that clear conflict of interest was the thing that got me kicked off of Linked-In the first time. The UK-based Daily Mail, one of the largest daily publications in the world, puts out a story summarizing the Veritas video, and it is almost immediately deleted. A decentralized army of internet warriors quickly goes to work seeking any intel concerning Jordon Walker, M.D.. I receive screen shots which fully dox the young physician, including email addresses and phone numbers. Do I dox or do I not, that is the question. Decision = not.

People are hitting Google like crazy with queries regarding Jordon Walker, Pfizer and Veritas. As they did when I said “mass formation psychosis” on Rogan #1757, Google manually interferes with the searches, returning wishy washy “these results are changing rapidly” screens instead of actual links. So, now we have a pretty clear smoking gun involving collusion between Pfizer and Google to suppress the story. Then everything, anything, having to do with Jordon Walker, MD gets memory holed. Wiped from the internet, including the Wayback machine. And then the chaos agents, bots and trolls descend on all social media channels. Sowing doubt that Jordon Walker is even a real person. Floating paranoid conspiracy theories that this is all a big deep-fake set up of Veritas, O’Keefe and myself. Which of course get amplified by the usual actors. Now THAT is an example of Fifth Gen Warfare power! And by the way, I gently advise that readers who were aware of this as it was happening set a check-bit in their brains on the names of those chaos agents who actively promoted this false narrative. Some show the signs of true controlled opposition, and some appear to have been acting as pollinating bees. By their actions you will know them. My advice, if you were one of the bees, is to own up and clearly acknowledge the documentation demonstrating that this Pfizer nightmare is real.

The following day, as promised, Veritas drops another amazing video in which James O’Keefe confronts Jordon Walker in some New York city eatery, and Dr. Walker comes unglued for all the world to see (I think that is about the kindest description possible). Veritas provides more documentation that Walker is/was, as advertised, a senior Pfizer employee with global Director-level responsibilities relating to their mRNA vaccine portfolio.

Clearly Pfizer has decided that the best response at this point is no response. They have disabled comments on all of their websites and social media outlets (except for those that they are “following”). Pfizer has managed to block every single major corporate news outlet from covering the story (except Tucker, who has considerable content freedom by contract with Fox). Jill posts a warning basically stating that we should expect the Empire to Strike Back.

And here‘s a link to a short video on Twitter by Project Veritas leader James O’Keefe commenting on the fact that Youtube deleted the above video. Sounds like PV are going to fight back. That will be interesting to watch.

Here‘s Tucker Carlson’s take on Fox News, the only mainstream outlet that reported on this so far.

And here‘s Dr. Malone again in a half-hour interview about the matter. I haven’t viewed it in full yet but want to keep the link.

Update 03/02/2023: Same Pfizer employee in the same sting as above admits (video) that his company is worried about the effect the “vaccine” is having on menstrual cycles.