I’m trying my hand at posting an article on Wolf’s great site. Hopefully all goes well! I’m sure Wolf will help edit as needed. (Hint, hint.)
As we constantly see the political battles and the palace intrigues of our day, it is easy to miss the other news. The MCM doesn’t want us to see the full picture of what’s happening, but only the bits and pieces that they approve of. Narrative engineering is the order of the day.
Felice does an amazing job of covering the stories of amazing Economic news, international trade and diplomacy, Energy news, Polling, ground level election data, and so much more!
There is however a ton of religious news that most people easily miss. Unfortunately, the Left is on the march against anyone who opposes them, and that includes the Christian churches…
Before we begin I want to reiterate: As much as possible I’m trying to relay useful and relevant information here. Just because I cite a link or a site does not imply that I am giving it a full endorsement.
With that said, let’s dive in…
Apple decides that pro-life opinions are “intolerant” and gives LifeSitenews the boot!
LifeSiteNews Says Apple News Gave Them The Boot. The Reason Why Is Absurd.
And the censorship continues…
Published 3 days ago on August 2, 2019 By Michael Stanley
https://flagandcross.com/lifesitenews-says-apple-news-gave-them-the-boot-the-reason-why-is-absurd/

Pro-life Catholic news website, LifeSiteNews, might be the next victim of Big Tech censorship if their allegations against Apple News are true.
According to the site, they’ve been banned from Apple News because according to the tech giant, their platform promotes “intolerance.”
So it’s apparently intolerant to want to save babies from being slaughtered in the womb now. Better mark that down in your political correctness pocket dictionaries.

LifeSiteNews Alleges Apple News Banned Their Channel For Showing ‘Intolerance’
“We don’t yet know the reason for Apple’s decision to delete our channel”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/50159/lifesitenews-alleges-apple-news-banned-their-paul-bois

“A little over one week ago, Apple approved LifeSiteNews’ application to publish our news on their Apple News platform,” the site claimed on Thursday. “Today, without warning, Apple News abruptly reversed course, telling LifeSite that they had deleted our channel and all of our content from their platform. “Apple claimed that LifeSite’s channel ‘didn’t comply with our Apple News guidelines.’ Specifically, they stated that LifeSite’s ‘[c]hannel content shows intolerance towards a specific group.’”
The Apple News app allows people to follow their favorite news sites and receive updates on their Apple devices. LifeSiteNews also alleged that the email from Apple cited no specific article or the “specific group” they allegedly targeted. The site claims it will soon be appealing the decision. Supporters of LifeSiteNews can sign a petition demanding that Apple reverse course.
“We don’t yet know the reason for Apple’s decision to delete our channel,” said LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen. “However, at a time when there is growing evidence that tech juggernauts are engaging in concerted censorship against even mainstream conservative viewpoints, Apple’s decision – made unilaterally, and without opportunity to appeal – is frightening.”

NOTE: LifeSiteNews for many years has been one of the most trusted names in news for the Pro-Life movement, earning a reputation for reporting on pro-life issues that has been unmatched anywhere else. When such a highly respected news source is arbitrarily given the boot by one of the Big Tech giants, we know that Big Tech is running scared!
Shame on you Apple for your cowardly actions!
LifeSiteNews.com has posted an online petition. More details can be found at the following link:
PETITION: Apple News bans popular pro-life site without warning: says it ‘shows intolerance’
https://lifepetitions.com/petition/petition-apple-news-bans-1-pro-life-news-site-without-warning-accuses-it-of-intolerance
JD Hall and Pulpit and Pen released a BOMBSHELL report about the “Justice Democrats!”
Remember in July that Daughn posted a huge deep dive on Zack Exley and all the major players in the Justice Democrats.
{DEEP DIVE : Justice Democrats}
Surprise, surprise, surprise! Pulpit and Pen finds the site where the radical left shows their intent to undermine and infiltrate churches using – guess what? – “Social Justice” propaganda, of course!
Guess who shows up? None other than Zack Exley himself…

The man behind Bernie Sander’s 2016 primary campaign, the one behind the election of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and the one who is behind the Green New Deal, is the one who is behind the ‘woke’ Social Justice movement in Evangelicalism.
We have uncovered archives of his now-deleted website from 2006-2010, in which he lined out how through big donors he could get evangelicals to adopt “Social Justice” and turn them into Democrats.
His name is Zack Exley, and he now works for George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and is funneling cash to groups like the ERLC and other ‘woke’ institutions. The evidence is all right here in this post.

BOMBSHELL: “Justice Democrats” Founder is THE Organizer of Evangelical Social Justice Movement
BY NEWS DIVISION · PUBLISHED JULY 29, 2019 · UPDATED JULY 30, 2019
https://pulpitandpen.org/2019/07/29/bombshell-justice-democrats-founder-is-the-organizer-of-evangelical-social-justice-movement/
 

Exley had a blog—now removed from the Internet altogether—called Revolution in Jesus Land. It has been scrubbed from the Internet, but we’ve managed to find a fix to the problem and pull up some old screenshots.

The Democratic operative and major political thinker spent time opining on the best way to get a powerful Republican voting block—ostensibly one that is impervious to Democrat infiltration—to change the way they vote. Exley wanted Republicans to either vote Democrat or stay home. And in doing so, Exley laid out the gameplan that was taken up by evangelical institutions (whose hands were greased by Riady, Soros, and Kern Family Foundation cash) to turn us leftward. The plan was focused on infiltrating conservative seminaries and parachurch organizations with Social Justice ideologies, in order to change their voting patterns, as you yourself can see in archives of Exley’s blog on the WayBack Machine.
You can see a screenshot below.
https://i2.wp.com/pulpitandpen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-28-at-9.59.56-PM.png
Revolution in Jesus Land stated its goals on its website. The following is a lengthy excerpt, but please read the whole thing.

This blog is a plea to the progressive movement, to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms. Here you’ll find interviews, commentary, analysis and other dispatches from all over “Jesusland.” This tour will explore everything from the workings of the local church, to the evangelicals’ vibrant, decentralized national leadership training infrastructure to theological questions such as, “How in the world DO they read the Bible literally?” and “Do they really think I’m going to hell?”
There are two really big reasons to come along on this tour:
First, progressives will never achieve their goals as long as they are hostile toward and ignorant about the faith of 100 million of their own people who are born again Christians.
Second (and we know how difficult this is to believe) there is an incredibly large and beautiful social movement exploding among evangelicals right now that stands for nearly all of the same causes and goals that secular progressives do. Those goals include: eliminating poverty, saving the environment, promoting justice and equality along racial, gender and class lines and for immigrants—and even separation of church and state. 
By learning to work together with “progressive” evangelicals, secular progressives will stand a better chance of achieving their goals and also learn an enormous amount from these remarkable people and their organizations that will help secular progressives strengthen their own movement. 
This evangelical “revolution,” as one Christian pollster has labeled it, is unquestionably the fastest growing and most surprising of American social movements today. Whichever way you measure, it probably dwarfs the secular left. From mega churches to tiny country churches, evangelical Christians are rediscovering the “gospel of the God of the oppressed.” Perhaps the most surprising among these are the suburban, white evangelicals who are stepping outside of their comfort zones to “get into relationship” with the poor, the oppressed, the homeless, prisoners—the people of whom Jesus said,
Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me….Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. —Matthew 25
They are building houses for and teaching job skills to homeless people, they are creating tutoring programs for kids in failing schools, they’re paying health care bills and sending off rent checks for people living on poverty wages—and there’s even a movement afoot among these people to move their young families out of wealthy suburbs and into forsaken inner city neighborhoods, putting their kids into broken and often violent public schools. And in their Sunday services and Bible studies they are questioning the very foundations of modern American capitalist ideology. 
On this blog we will attempt over time to provide evidence, and to explain the inner logic of this culture’s narratives, theologies and passions, and to flesh out the larger context of this movement that is shaking up nearly every American community and producing so many exceptional leaders.
So—welcome to Jesusland. We hope you enjoy the tour.

…Exley, a major Democratic thinker and progressive organizer, saw the handwriting on the wall and discerned the times… Exley wanted to capitalize on this movement and give evangelical institutions the cash it needed to move forward with their progressive slant.
Even though he spent several years trying to figure out how get evangelicals to focus on Social Justice, Exley only did so for the purpose of getting them to vote Democrat (or, at least, not vote at all). See the video below.

There’s more on this topic. Daughn was right to keep attention focused on the Justice Democrats – this group is a deep rabbit hole of corrupt Soros money!
I’m still working on tracking fallout from the announcements by Josh Harris in the last couple of weeks. Last week I posted a couple of articles about Josh Harris, with different but complementary takes on the matter.
My Thoughts on Josh Harris as a “Fallen Christian”
https://spiritualsoundingboard.com/2019/07/26/my-thoughts-on-josh-harris-as-a-fallen-christian/
Another Megachurch Pastor Renounces His Faith As He Caves to LGBTQ Mafia
https://reformationcharlotte.org/2019/07/26/another-megachurch-pastor-renounces-his-faith-as-he-caves-to-lgbtq-mafia/
For those of you who aren’t in the loop, let me rewind a bit.
As a young man in 1997, Joshua Harris released a book that became an instant best-seller in Christian circles: “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”. It promoted the notion that the dating culture was worldly and fundamentally broken, and promoted a set of ideas that became very influential with late Gen-X and early Millennials.
The popularity of the book launched Harris into a highly visible position in Evangelical culture. He married, became a pastor, wrote many more books. But the controversy around “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” never quite abated, and later he rescinded many of his earlier positions.
Like the song that never ends, the controversy simply would not die.
This July, Josh Harris announced publicly that he and his wife were going through a separation, calling into question much of Harris’ teaching and published books.
Now he has posted on Instagram confirming that he is actually going through a divorce and not just a separation.
He also has announced that he has abandoned his faith.
But he wasn’t done yet. Further, he has specifically gone out of his way to make a public apology to the “LGBTQ+ community”: “I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry.”
Why would someone who is having a marriage and faith struggle go out of his way to apologize to the LGBT? Just from the surface it doesn’t make any sense!
Unless, of course, there’s more going on under the surface, courtesy of the Fabian left.
This week we learn that apologizing was not good enough:
https://i2.wp.com/reformationcharlotte.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/harris.jpg
Purity Culture Pastor Who Renounced His Faith is Marching in Gay Pride Parade
Posted by JeffMaples
August 4, 2019
https://reformationcharlotte.org/2019/08/04/purity-culture-pastor-who-renounced-his-faith-is-marching-in-gay-pride-parade/

[I]mages are floating around on social media that have captured Josh Harris marching alongside other homosexuals and sexual deviants in a gay pride parade in Canada and munching on a rainbow doughnut.
…Josh Harris poses with his wife to announce a divorce. Several days later, he announces on Instagram that he has renounced his faith with a “heartfelt” apology to the LGBTQ community. Now, he’s seen marching in a gay pride parade wearing rainbow gear and eating rainbow food. Is there another announcement he will be making soon?

Meanwhile, in United Methodism, Mark Tooley asks whether the denomination has reached its Yalta moment.
Is division in United Methodism inevitable?
Methodism’s Yalta?
July 30, 2019
https://juicyecumenism.com/2019/07/30/methodisms-yalta/
https://2b2gdzjtaey3o01p41qinbri-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/img_7284-1-700×475.jpg

Recently I participated in a gathering hosted by three United Methodist bishops for dialogue among conservatives, liberals and self-identified centrists. Our topic was the impending division of the United Methodist Church. The day-long conversation was off record, but you can read the United Methodist News Service report, which includes my quote:

Tooley said he has opposed division and for 30 years has worked for a “vision of denominational revival.”
“I now admit division is inevitable,” he said. “It will happen of itself, chaotically. Or it will happen through negotiation and some leadership. The latter seems preferable.”

After the meeting, which was in Chicago July 19, a clergyman tweeted: “United Methodism held it’s own Yalta Conference in Chicago this week. I just hope we don’t get too bogged down in attempting to label the various attendants Chamberlain, Roosevelt, or Stalin. #umc”
Initially I laughed out loud in response to this wonderful absurdity. (Of course Churchill, not Chamberlain, attended Yalta.) But this tweet maybe was more insightful than I initially realized. United Methodism will tragically divide, as Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain after WWII. This division results from tragic necessity and shouldn’t be celebrated. But God is sovereign and His Gospel will prevail even in adversity.

Thank you Dora for bringing this to our attention:

Thomas More Law Center Files Federal Lawsuit On Behalf of Marine Dad Banned from School Property After He Objected to Islamic Indoctrination of Daughter
https://www.thomasmore.org/press-releases/thomas-more-law-center-files-federal-lawsuit-on-behalf-of-marine-dad-banned-from-school-property-after-he-objected-to-islamic-indoctrination-of-daughter/

The Woods’ daughter was forced to profess and to write out the Shahada in worksheets and quizzes. The Shahada is the Islamic Creed, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” For non-Muslims, reciting the statement is sufficient to convert one to Islam. Moreover, the second part of the statement, “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,” signifies the person has accepted Muhammad as their spiritual leader. The teenager was also required to memorize and recite the Five Pillars of Islam. …

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented: “Defendants forced Wood’s daughter to disparage her Christian faith by reciting the Shahada, and acknowledging Mohammed as her spiritual leader. Her World History class spent one day on Christianity and two weeks immersed in Islam. Such discriminatory treatment of Christianity is an unconstitutional promotion of one religion over another.”
Thompson added, “The course also taught false statements such as “Allah is the same God worshipped by Christians, and Islam as a “religion of peace. Parents must be ever vigilant to the Islamic indoctrination of their children under the guise of teaching history and multiculturalism. This is happening in public schools across the country. And they must take action to stop it.”
The Woods’ lawsuit seeks a court declaration that Defendants violated their constitutional and statutory rights, a temporary and permanent injunction barring Defendants from endorsing Islam or favoring Islam over Christianity and other religions, and from enforcing the no trespassing order issued against John Kevin Wood.

Look out Australia, the extreme abortionists have New South Wales in their crosshairs!
Lawmakers Seek to Legalize Abortion Up to Birth in New South Wales
Jonathan Abbamonte
AUGUST 5, 2019
https://www.pop.org/lawmakers-seek-to-legalize-abortion-up-to-birth-in-new-south-wales/

An attempt by pro-abortion lawmakers last week in New South Wales, Australia, to ram through a radical abortion bill has been delayed by strong pro-life and Catholic opposition led by the Archbishop of Sydney, Archbishop Anthony Fisher.
The bill, which was introduced into the lower house of the New South Wales (NSW) parliament on Thursday, would legalize abortion up to the point of birth with virtually no restrictions. The bill closely mirrors similar bills passed on the state level in the United States earlier this year legalizing abortion up until birth in states like New York, Illinois, Vermont, and Rhode Island.
Despite having only three-days notice that the bill was set to be introduced, hundreds of pro-life supporters gathered in front of the parliament building on Thursday morning to protest the bill.
Members of Parliament have attempted to fast track the bill in the lower house. Supporters of the bill had originally planned to introduce the bill on Thursday and open debate on the bill the same week. The bill had only been announced on July 28. Prior to Friday, the text of the bill had not even been made available to the public, giving NSW citizens little to no opportunity to contact their Members of Parliament to express their concerns about the bill.
However, following an outcry from conservatives and religious leaders, lawmakers have postponed opening debate on the bill until Tuesday.

And finally, an update from Dr. Dan Wallace!
From the Library: Decorated Letters in Greek New Testament Manuscripts
https://danielbwallace.com/2019/08/05/from-the-library-decorated-letters-in-greek-new-testament-manuscripts/

Two of my colleagues at CSNTM, Leigh Ann Thompson and Andy Patton, have co-authored a brief essay on decorated letters in New Testament manuscripts. This is in the series “From the Library” that Andy Patton and Andrew Bobo started some time ago for CSNTM’s newsletter. I’ve included a link to this latest offering here.
https://danielbwallace.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/colorfulekthesis.png

I hope this provides some helpful insights. There was a lot that I could have included and left out. Your contributions or added discussion in the comments are appreciated!