The candidates were asked by a YouTube questioner whether or not they believed the Bible to be the word of God, whether or not they believed “every word of this book” as he held a copy of the Bible to the camera. No genuine Christian should be able to continue supporting Giuliani and Romney given their extremely humanistic answers to this question:

Giuliani: The reality is, I believe it, but I don’t believe it’s necessarily literally true in every single respect. I think there are parts of the Bible that are interpretive. I think there are parts of the Bible that are allegorical. I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted in a modern context.

So, yes, I believe it. I think it’s the great book ever written. I read it frequently. I read it very frequently when I’ve gone through the bigger crises in my life, and I find great wisdom in it, and it does define to a very large extent my faith. But I don’t believe every single thing in the literal sense of Jonah being in the belly of the whale, or, you know, there are some things in it that I think were put there as allegorical.

Romney:  believe the Bible is the word of God, absolutely. And I try…

(Applause)

… I try to live by it as well as I can, but I miss in a lot of ways. But it’s a guide for my life and for hundreds of millions, billions of people around the world. I believe in the Bible.

Anderson Cooper (Debate host): Does that mean you believe every word?

Romney: You know — yes, I believe it’s the word of God, the Bible is the word of God.

The Bible is the word of God. I mean, I might interpret the word differently than you interpret the word, but I read the Bible and I believe the Bible is the word of God. I don’t disagree with the Bible. I try to live by it.

Huckabee: Sure. I believe the Bible is exactly what it is. It’s the word of revelation to us from God himself.

(Applause)

And the fact is that when people ask do we believe all of it, you either believe it or you don’t believe it. But in the greater sense, I think what the question tried to make us feel like was that, well, if you believe the part that says “Go and pluck out your eye,” well, none of us believe that we ought to go pluck out our eye. That obviously is allegorical.

But the Bible has some messages that nobody really can confuse and really not left up to interpretation. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “In as much as you’ve done it to the least of these brethren, you’ve done it unto me.” Until we get those simple, real easy things right, I’m not sure we ought to spend a whole lot of time fighting over the other parts that are a little bit complicated.

And as the only person here, probably, on this stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don’t fully comprehend and understand, but I’m not supposed to because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite God, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their God is too small.

CNN showed its bias once again when it allowed a video question from a former “gay” veteran at last night’s Republican CNN/YouTube debate. Turns out the “gay vet” is a member of Hillary Clinton’s steering committee on gays in the military. CNN carried the fiasco a step further by actually seating the questioner in he audience. After he heard the response to his question from the candidates (Duncan Hunter, Mike Hucakbee, and John McCain), he was handed a microphone on the floor and allowed to grill the candidates further.

Read these posts at Townhall.com for the full story:

http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/d91f3cba-6a87-4686-92ce-70a16edc311b

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2007/11/29/the_clinton_news_network_strikes_again

The Golden Compass is Book One of a fantasy trilogy written by English author Philip Pullman in the late 1990s called His Dark Materials. Philip Pullman is a militant atheist, unapologetically so. In a 2001 interview with the Washington Post Pullman is quoted as having said, “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

The title for the trilogy comes from a line in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Pullman views his trilogy as a re-telling of Milton’s poem, which means that His Dark Materials is in reality a re-telling of the Genesis story in fantasy form. Interest in the series has been revived as New Line Cinema is set to release their theatrical version of The Golden Compass on December 7, just in time for the holiday movie going season.

The preemptive strike from the conservative Christian community, led by William Donahue of the Catholic League and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association, has become more of a story than the release of the film itself. Donahue views the movie as an attack on Roman Catholicism, denouncing as “pro-atheist” both the movie and the book upon which it is based, and calling for a boycott of the film when it is released. In a recent press release The Catholic League warned their constituents that His Dark Materials “was written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism,” a charge Pullman denied in various interviews even before it was leveled. Donahue characterizes the trilogy as “atheism for kids” and the movie as “bait for the books.” The American Family Association, “because of Pullman’s clearly articulated anti-Christian motives,” is “warning all viewers to run from the film.”

In a strange twist of life imitating art, this reaction to The Golden Compass validates the image Pullman creates in his trilogy of Christians and of organized Christianity generally.

In Book Two of His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife, the Queen of the Witches says,

“I don’t know who will join with us, but I know whom we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history…it’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them, it cuts them out…That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other.”

Pullman is not completely wrong when he characterizes the Church as an organization obsessed with holding power by suppressing and controlling. But such a Church is not the true Church as defined by Scripture. Contrary to Pullman’s depiction of the Church, Jesus never sought positions of power. On the contrary, he retreated to a mountain alone when the crowds came to make him king, and refused Satan’s offer to be granted all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus mandated that His followers deny themselves, lead by serving, humble themselves like children, and achieve true greatness at the end of a path of suffering and humility. Pullman’s depiction of the Church is a false one, but it does not follow that the Church Pullman depicts does not exist.

Throughout history people who have identified with the Christian faith have done horrible things in Jesus’ name. In the New Testament times, when the Church was in its infancy, the true Apostles combated those who claimed to be apostles, but were not, and tested them and found them to be false (Revelation 2:2). In the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul identified men who were disguising themselves as apostles of Christ, calling them “false apostles” and “deceitful workman,” pointing out that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Such false apostles are still within the Church today. The Apostle John warned “many antichrists have come,” and that not all who profess the faith are truly “of us” (1 John 2:18, 19).

Pullman chooses to identify as true what in reality is a false religion in the garb of Christianity, ignoring the work of the true Church in the world. Redefining good as evil is a plot element Pullman uses throughout the trilogy, and not just in relation to the Church. The books are a prime example of what Isaiah warned against when he said, “Woe to them who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). Our response should not be to merely paint Pullman as a liar and deceiver, denying that the Church he depicts doesn’t exist. On the contrary we should agree with Pullman that such a Church has existed, and still exists, but that it is not the genuine Church, as Pullman leads his readers to believe.

If The Golden Compass is a lie passing itself off as truth, is the appropriate course for us to run from it, to bury our heads in the cultural sand, pretending that, if ignored, challenges to the faith aren’t real? Would you deem it a valid response if your college freshman merely ran from the challenges to her faith she can expect from her atheistic philosophy professor? If not, why then would you encourage your children to run from the challenges to their faith implicit in Pullman’s trilogy?

It seems to me the proper response from those who are convinced of the truth ought to be to engage error, not run from it. Rather than fearing our children might read a book or see a film that challenges their faith, such a scenario presents us with an opportunity to teach them to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. We should read the books and see the movie with our children, engaging the difficult issues raised by Pullman, and allowing the True Compass, the word of God, to guide us into all truth, to bring to light the hidden things of darkness. Any other response from true followers of Jesus Christ only validates Pullman’s thesis that we Christians suppress and control, rather than engage in open and honest debate in a vibrant, passionate, and intelligent defense of the faith. Why not counter Pullman by being a living demonstration of the Church he fails to portray in his trilogy rather than validating him by being exactly what he says we are?

Forty-four years ago today President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. I lived in the Dallas area from 1996 to 1999. During that time I visited the site of the assassination several times. For several months during those three years I made a project out of getting to the bottom of the conspiracy theories around the assassination.

Bottom line: the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a violent overthrow of a constitutionally elected president of the United States coordinated by the CIA with the full consent and involvement of Lyndon Johnson.

It is not an overstatement to suggest that America would be a much different country today had John F. Kennedy lived. The murder of JFK opened the door for LBJ to introduce his social welfare agenda which destroyed the social fabric that made America the great country it was until 1964.

Eleven years after the violent coup of 1963 political strategists in the United States Senate would execute a seemingly peaceful coup in overthrowing the constitutionally elected administration of Richard Nixon, replacing it with an administration the American people never once voted for. That puts “hanging chads” in perspective, doesn’t it? If the Supreme Court gave us George W. Bush (which it didn’t), then the United States Senate gave us an unelected president in Gerald R. Ford.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. As you gather at the table today may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ meet you there in the wonder of His blessings upon us this past year.

Modern Americans have forgotten Who it is we thank on Thanksgiving Day. Here is a reminder from President George Washington, who in all liklihood would have been harassed by the ACLU for the language he uses in his first Thanksgiving Day proclamation:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;– to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Logan Henderson, the young man whose “message from God” in a phone call to Houston’s KSBJ has circulated the world via the blogosphere, will join me along with his mother, Tee Jay, TODAY (Tuesday, November 20) at 4:30 pm ET. You can stream the program LIVE at http://www.godandculture.com. You can call Logan during the program TOLL-FREE at 866-423-WLQV (9578).

A friend made me aware of this sweet call a young boy made to a radio station. Logan is a 13 year-old boy who lives on a ranch in a very small town in Nebraska. Logan listens to Christian Radio station 89.3FM KSBJ which broadcasts from Houston, TX. Logan called the Morning Show with Mike and Susan distraught because he had to take down a calf . His words have wisdom beyond his years. Get your Kleenex. 

UPDATE: Logan and his mother, Tee Jay, will be LIVE on The Paul Edwards Program TODAY (Tuesday, November 20) at 4:30 pm ET. Stream it live at http://www.godandculture.com.

Just in time for your mad dash to the mall comes this year’s list of the top ten worst toys to buy for your child this Christmas. The annual list as been produced for the last 35 years by a group called WATCH (World Against Toys Causing Harm).

The list causes me to wonder whether our parents ever worried about the things this group says we should worry about, like putting out an eye out with the sticks in the Tinker-Toy box or the sparks from the cap gun burning us (or worse yet, the cap gun causing us to grow up with criminal intentions!).

The list also reminds me (with lots of warm fuzzies) about how as a very young child I used to anticipate the arrival of the Sears Christmas Wish Book each fall. As soon as it came I would lay across the living room floor with it spread open before me, all of its colors and the smell of the ink on its glossy pages putting me into a Christmas trance as I circled item after item throughout its pages. I would then present it to my mother after Thanksgiving as “my Christmas wish list.”

I never got everything I circled in that catalog. Looking back I don’t think I ever really expected to. The joy was in the wanting and the wishing, not in the receiving; in the recognition that there is a certain satisfaction that comes from not having your every whim satisfied. I fear today’s children don’t know THAT joy at all.

The memory of perusing that catalog for hours on end still brings a smile to my face even as I type. If you’re racking your brain trying to figure out what to get me for Christmas this year - how ’bout a Sears Christmas Wish Book? The Wish Book actually went online in 1998 - but when I put my nose to the screen of my laptop, it’s somehow not the same!