Category Archives: News

News

National School Board Association wanted Biden to deploy military against parents

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I know that a lot of people put their children into schools, thinking that the schools will teach children useful skills that will help them to get jobs and move out. Unfortunately, it seems as though the school boards, teacher unions and education bureaucrats don’t want to help parents. In fact, they view parents as their enemies. They want to indoctrinate children, and they want parents to let them.

Here’s a news story from Daily Wire:

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) considered calling for the federal government to use the “Army National Guard and its Military Police” against parents who made threats toward school officials before deleting the language from its September 29 letter to President Joe Biden, according to an independent review released on Friday.

This is the letter that the school boards sent to the Biden administration, asking for the FBI to investigate parents for “domestic terrorism”. What domestic terrorism? Opposing the indoctrination of their kids in transgenderism and critical race theory.

More:

 Days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to investigate a recent spike in “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school board members — a move seen by many parents as an attempt to chill free speech among those concerned about progressive curricula in public schools.

The idea of using the military against “domestic terrorist” parents seems to have been fine with the Biden administration, since they collaborated with the National School Board Association on the letter that the National School Board Association eventually sent to the Biden administration.

The Washington Free Beacon explains:

The country’s largest school board association collaborated with the Biden White House before sending a controversial letter calling on the FBI to investigate parents as potential domestic terrorists, according to previously unreported emails.

[…]The emails also show that the White House asked the association for examples of threats against school board members days before Attorney General Merrick Garland created a task force of officials from the FBI and the Justice Department to determine how to prosecute alleged crimes at school board meetings.

The letter makes clear that the White House was aware of the letter before it was released, while raising questions about whether the White House colluded with the association on the letter to prompt federal action.

So what exactly is it that the Biden administration wants to enforce with the military? Well, maybe they don’t want parents objecting to what this teacher is doing, as reported in The Post Millennial:

As if things could not go more downhill from an elementary school teacher suggesting that sexual orientation and gender identity is suitable classroom curriculum for 3-year-old children, an unidentified school teacher took to Facebook to post a series of disturbing confessions.

The teacher posted in a “Trans, Intersex, and Non-Binary School Professionals” group on Facebook saying, “So this is me feeling my best teacher self because I’m wearing panties on a work day for the first time ever and I feel so good!”

He goes on to identify his appearance to the group as “a tall bearded demiboy with pomaded hair and glasses, wearing a purple and white checked shirt, a gray sweater vest, and a brown jacket with black jeans.” For those not keeping up on the infinitely expanding gender dictionary, “demiboy” is someone who identifies as male only in part.

The teacher continued on to confess his jitters before coming out with his sexuality and gender identity to a group of children:
“I signed up to lead an affinity group for LGBTQIA+ students at my school a while back. The first meeting is this afternoon, and I’m going to be coming out to a bunch of high schoolers as bi [bisexual] and enby [non-binary]. I’m a bit nervous. Good vibes/encouragement are needed and welcome.”

Affinity groups are groups, typically reserved for those of specific disability, religion, race or ethnicity, so students can come together to discuss their common identities or interests.

Amidst what is being deemed the “Groomer Epidemic,” with 135 school teachers and aides being charged with sex crimes in 2022 alone, there are a concerning amount of teachers targeting these groups of children who already feel ostracized in one way or another to satisfy their own perversions.

I think what the secular leftists are saying is that if you disapprove of this person teaching your children, then you are domestic terrorist who needs to be silenced using the military.

We have an election in 2022.

News

Knight and Rose interviewed by Brian and Chad on the Apologetics 315 podcast

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Desert Rose and I were so thankful when our friends Brian and Chad over at the Apologetics 315 podcast asked us to come on and talk about our backgrounds, and the new podcast. A lot of people have been asking me about who Rose is, and how we met, and how we decided to the podcast. Well, we talked about all of that on their show. I’ve got an outline and an MP3 download link below.

You can listen to the episode on Spreaker, but I was able to embed their player right in this post!

Here is the outline:

In this episode Brian Auten & Chad Gross interview Wintery Knight and Desert Rose about their new podcast: The Knight & Rose Show.

0:23 – Intro
1:25 – What’s new with Wintery Knight
2:11 – Who is “Desert Rose”?
5:05 – How Knight and Rose got started
7:27 – An overview of the Knight and Rose Show
12:15 – Mentoring people in apologetics and using evidence and facts
19:36 – Why serving the boss is the number one priority
22:15 – God’s not our cosmic butler
24:51 – Why are people leaving the church these days?
25:26 – How to start equipping the church in apologetics
29:08 – What you win them with is what you win them to
31:09 – Masculinity in the church: what does it look like?
37:58 – Should Christians be interested in politics? Why?
46:09 – Where to find Knight and Rose online…

Further Resources:

Wintery Knight blog:
http://www.winteryknight.com/

The Knight and Rose Show:
http://knightandrose.podbean.com

On YouTube:
https://a315.co/KnightandRose

Don’t forget to fill out the PODCAST SURVEY for a chance to win a prize!
https://airtable.com/shr14Kl8px7izEcan

We welcome your feedback!

If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com

#apologetics, #christianity, #policy

My thoughts

Rose and I are delighted that Brian and Chad had us on their show. They just interviewed Casey Luskin, who has several chapters in the book “The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith“, which I am reading right now.

Future episode topics

If you made it this far into the post, I will give you a sneak peek ahead at our future topics! This week’s episode is about masculinity related to marriage. After that, we have already recorded and edited episodes on Christianity and Politics, and Black Lives Matter. We’re recording episodes on the Problem of Evil, and Classical Movie Wisdom next. (If you have any classical movie suggestions, send them in!)

Rose has been having a lot of fun lately talking to all of her friends and neighbors who are all listening to the podcasts. They are asking her for book recommendations, what they should major in, etc. I love when people listen to the podcast, and get motivated to have adventures.

How to listen to our podcast

I thought this might be a good place to explain how to listen to podcasts using your smartphone, in case people are reading and don’t know how.

You will need:

  • a smartphone
  • a podcast “catcher” app

Basically, if you have a smartphone, then you’re probably used to download apps from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.

    1. You can download the free PodBean app from either app store. It’s free. They give you a guest account, so you don’t have to register or give them any information.

  1. And then just subscribe to the podcast by searching for it in the Podbean app:

Or if you don’t have a smartphone, you can just listen on the PodBean web site, from your computer, tablet or phone.

You don’t have to use PodBean’s app or web site to listen. The podcast is available on ALL the major podcast sites – 18 of them! So just pick the one you’re already using: Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Samsung, etc.

News

How does church appear to someone raised in a non-Christian home?

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My friend Wes posted an article about how communication is set up in the church, and why it’s not effective at equipping Christians to defend their worldview in hostile environments. The article describes what I encountered in church, after I was raised in a non-Christian home and become a Christian on my own by reading the New Testament. The view presented in the essay is how I viewed the church, and is probably how most outsiders view church. I think it explains why young people leave the church in droves once they move out of their parents’ houses.

The author writes:

On the Internet, one soon discovers that many respected church leaders are quite unable to deal directly with opposing viewpoints. In fact, many of them can’t even manage meaningful engagement with other voices. Their tweets may be entirely one-way conversations. They talk at their audiences. They can talk about other voices, but fail to talk to them, let alone with them. Their representations of opposing viewpoints reveal little direct exposure to the viewpoints in question.

[…]Around this point, it can start to dawn on one that many church leaders have only been trained in forms of discourse such as the sermon and, to a much lesser extent, the essay. Both forms privilege a single voice—their voice—and don’t provide a natural space for response, questioning, and challenge. Their opinions have been assumed to be superior to opposing viewpoints, but have never been demonstrated to be so. While they may have spoken or written about opposing voices, they are quite unaccustomed to speaking or writing to them (not to mention listening to or being cross-examined by them). There are benefits to the fact that the sermon is a form of discourse that doesn’t invite interruption or talking back, but not when this is the only form of discourse its practitioners are adept in.

Many church leaders have been raised and trained in ideologically homogenous cultures or contexts that discouraged oppositional discourse. Many have been protected from hostile perspectives that might unsettle their faith. Throughout, their theological opinions and voices have been given a privileged status, immune from challenge. Nominal challenges could be brushed off by a reassertion of the monologue. They were safe to speak about and habitually misrepresent other voices to their hearers and readers, without needing to worry about those voices ever enjoying the power to answer them back. Many of the more widely read members of their congregations may have had an inkling of the weakness of their positions in the past: the Internet just makes it more apparent.

One of my friends who comments here as “Wintery’s Friend” actually did his M. Div, and I think it was he who told me that his seminary had dropped the lone course in apologetics that had been part of the curriculum. Now seminary grads don’t learn any opposing views. They just pre-suppose that the Bible is true in the same way that Mormons pre-suppose their Bible is true, or Muslims pre-suppose their Bible is true, etc.

More:

If one’s opinion has never been subjected to and tried by rigorous cross-examination, it probably isn’t worth much. If one lacks the capacity to keep a level head when one’s views are challenged, one’s voice will be of limited use in most real world situations, where dialogue and dispute is the norm and where we have to think in conversation with people who disagree with us.

The teachers of the Church provide the members of the Church with a model for their own thinking. The teacher of the Church does not just teach others what to believe, but also how to believe, and the process by which one arrives at a theological position. This is one reason why it is crucial that teachers ‘show their working’ on a regular basis. When teaching from a biblical text, for instance, the teacher isn’t just teaching the meaning of that particular text, but how Scripture should be approached and interpreted more generally. An essential part of the teaching that the members of any church need is that of dealing with opposing viewpoints. One way or another, every church provides such teaching. However, the lesson conveyed in all too many churches is that opposing voices are to be dismissed, ignored, or ‘answered’ with a reactive reassertion of the dogmatic line, rather than a reasoned response.

You can imagine that the first questions that you’ll be asked by a non-Christian co-worker would be things like “why think God exists?” and “why think the Bible is history rather than legend?”. In order to answer those questions, you would have to know how to counter what a non-Christian believes. You would have to show them the reasons for your view.

Unfortunately, many of the conservative Christian leaders we trust think that the best way to be convincing is not to show your work, but just to speak Bible verses at people who don’t accept the Bible as an authority. Some people attend church for 20 years, and they never meet a single person who didn’t just assume that the Bible is trustworthy without doing an investigation first.

What’s most surprising is that this fideistic view of Christianity is not even Biblical. The Biblical view of faith is that faith is trust in God, based on evidence. This is why Jesus offered his own resurrection as evidence to a generation of unbelievers. His miracles were also evidence offered to unbelievers. And the Old Testament is filled with examples of people like Isaiah presenting evidence to unbelievers. The fideist view sounds more like the Mormon “burning of the bosom” view. We can do better than that!

Look:

That debate has over 6 million views on YouTube. That’s a debate with Christopher Hitchens, one of the most famous atheists of the last 100 years. In the post-debate comments, the atheist admitted he lost. Watch it. You won’t find it in most churches, so you’re going to have to learn it on your own. Without anyone’s help. Don’t be a spectator. Don’t settle for youth pastor Christianity.