News

Christians and conservatives should be careful where they bank

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I’m sure that my readers who have been following the story of what happened in Canada with the Trudeau Liberal Party and the peaceful trucker protests in Ottawa will know how much the secular left loves to freeze the bank accounts of people who challenge them. Well, you might be surprised to find out that it happens in America, too. Well, with certain banks.

My podcast partner Rose sent me this article by Jeremy Tedesco of Alliance Defending Freedom, which appeared in the Daily Wire (full text archived).

It starts by talking about a New York State case that is going before the U.S. Supreme Court:

[T]he National Rifle Association is challenging New York’s attempt to coerce banks and insurance companies to withdraw services from the group. The NRA alleges that the Department of Financial Services — at the behest of then-Governor Andrew Cuomo — used its vast power to regulate “reputational risk” along with back-channel meetings, public investigations, and threats of fines to punish the group for its Second Amendment advocacy.

What I liked about this article, but you might find it disturbing, is the list of other times when banks tried to “de-bank” Christians and conservatives:

 As Alliance Defending Freedom points out in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of the NRA’s position, pro-life group Heartbeat International was recently canceled by its insurance provider over its “anti-abortion” advocacy.

He linked to a whole list of de-bankings here. Some of the victims are famous, like former Republican Senator Sam Brownback! And The Ruth Institute – I’ve blogged many times about the founder of The Ruth Institute, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse.

More from the article:

[…]Former Brexit leader Nigel Farage’s high-profile case resulted in the ouster of megabank NatWest’s CEO. Serial offender JPMorgan Chase’s hit list includes the Arkansas Family Council, Defense of Liberty, and U.S Ambassador Sam Brownback’s National Committee for Religious Freedom.

You can check how bad your bank is at this link (from the article). I was happy to see that my bank was pretty good, but I chose them after looking at their political donations on OpenSecrets.org. Mind you, I’m trying to switch over to a state-level bank right now.

But another step I took was to move to a red state, and that’s something that might help me in the future:

The solution to this problem may lie with the states. This state legislative season presents an opportunity for states interested in protecting against politicized de-banking to act. Any such law should focus on the worst actors – the largest banks and payment processors.

The conservative states are more likely to do something about this, just like you see Texas fighting back against Biden to secure the border. I can’t imagine why someone would live in a leftist state – it’s just too easy for them to persecute you there.

Polemics

What are the historical arguments for the post-mortem appearances of Jesus?

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Eric Chabot of Ratio Christi Ohio State University has a great post up about the post-mortem appearances of Jesus.

The post contains:

  • a list of the post-mortem resurrection appearances
  • quotations by skeptical historians about those appearances
  • alternative naturalistic explanations of the appearances
  • responses to those naturalistic explanations

Although there is a lot of research that went into the post, it’s not very long to read. The majority of scholars accept the appearances, because they appear in so many different sources and because some of those sources are very early, especially Paul’s statement of the early Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, which is from about 1-3 years after Jesus was executed by the Romans. Eric’s post lists out some of the skeptical scholars who the appearances, and you can see how they allude to the historical criteria that they are using. (If you want to sort of double-check the details, I blogged about how historians investigate ancient sources before)

Let’s take a look at some of the names you might recognize:

E.P. Sanders:

That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know. “I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation. Many of the people in these lists were to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming that they had seen the risen Lord, and several of them would die for their cause. Moreover, a calculated deception should have produced great unanimity. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: ‘I saw him first!’ ‘No! I did.’ Paul’s tradition that 500 people saw Jesus at the same time has led some people to suggest that Jesus’ followers suffered mass hysteria. But mass hysteria does not explain the other traditions.” “Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the ‘resurrection’: the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died. They believed this, they lived it, and they died for it.”[1]

Bart Ehrman:

It is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. We know some of these believers by name; one of them, the apostle Paul, claims quite plainly to have seen Jesus alive after his death. Thus, for the historian, Christianity begins after the death of Jesus, not with the resurrection itself, but with the belief in the resurrection.[2]

Ehrman also says:

We can say with complete certainty that some of his disciples at some later time insisted that . . . he soon appeared to them, convincing them that he had been raised from the dead.[3]

 Ehrman also goes onto say:  

Historians, of course, have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record.[4]

Why, then, did some of the disciples claim to see Jesus alive after his crucifixion? I don’t doubt at all that some disciples claimed this. We don’t have any of their written testimony, but Paul, writing about twenty-five years later, indicates that this is what they claimed, and I don’t think he is making it up. And he knew are least a couple of them, whom he met just three years after the event (Galatians 1:18-19).[5]

Marcus Borg

The historical ground of Easter is very simple: the followers of Jesus, both then and now, continued to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death. In the early Christian community, these experiences included visions or apparitions of Jesus. [8]

The references to Paul are because of the early creed he records in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, and his conversations with the other eyewitnesses in Galatians. Eric has another post where he goes over that early creed, and it is something that every Christian should know about. It’s really kind of surprising that you never hear a sermon on that early creed in church, where they generally sort of assume that you believe everything in the Bible on faith. But skeptical historians don’t believe in the post-mortem appearances by faith – they believe it (in part) because of 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.

If you want to see a Christian scholar make the case for the resurrection appearances in a debate, then here is a post I wrote with the video, audio and summary of the William Lane Craig vs James Crossley debate on the resurrection.

News

Good news: Gavin Newsom loses battle against Christian preschool

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Mary from Marin tweeted out this article about California last night.  I expected it to be bad news, but it was good news. Gavin Newsom tried to force a preschool in El Cajon to deny their Christian convictions, and accept his atheist convictions. The school filed a lawsuit, they had a trial, and the school won. Pretty surprising for California! But this was more towards the San Diego end of it.

The article is from California Family Council:

The Newsom Administration’s California Department of Social Services (CDSS) tried but failed to force an El Cajon Christian preschool to abandon its religious beliefs on sexuality and gender or be kicked out of participating in a federally funded USDA food program. After the church filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Justice Department refused to defend the state’s actions and settled for nearly $200,000.

It’s wonderful that we have so many Christian lawyers. I know that I harp on how everyone has to do STEM degrees, but if you have a lot of family support, then it might be better to go to law school. Because look what you can do with that degree:

Attorneys for the Church of Compassion and its Dayspring Christian Learning Center were represented by the National Center for Law and Policy (NCLP), Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Advocates for Faith and Freedom (AFF). They filed a lawsuit and motion for preliminary injunction against the Biden administration and California state officials last year, challenging the suspension of the Church’s preschool from a federal food program due to their beliefs about human sexuality.

Comment from the ADF:

“Ironically, in the name of combatting discrimination, government officials have excluded the church and preschool from serving the El Cajon community based solely on their religious beliefs and exercise,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus. “This is antithetical to the First Amendment’s promise of religious freedom and only hurts needy families and children.”

So, the Christians who work at that school were seen as “good enough” to pay taxes to the government for this program, nut not good enough to be eligible for any grants. That’s always the way with the secular left. They think that taxpayers are smart enough to earn the money, but not smart enough to spend it. We need the secular left to tell us how to spend it.

Here’s the final result of the lawsuit ruling:

The settlement reinstated Dayspring in the Food Program, reimbursed suspended funds, removed the preschool from the National Disqualified List, and required the CDSS to issue clear guidance regarding the existence of exemptions for religious institutions in California’s food programs. The CDSS also agreed to pay $160,000 in legal fees. This outcome is a significant win for religious freedom in California and sets a precedent for similar religious institutions.

I thought this was interesting – the discrimination was caused by Joe Biden:

After the Biden administration expanded the definition of “sex” in Title IX to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity, California’s Department of Social Services (CDSS) implemented new mandates. But these new rules restricted religious organizations from participation in the food program if their orthodox biblical views on human sexuality affected they way they operated their church or ministry.

It’s so strange to me that people who claim to be religious vote for Joe Biden. And yet here he is going after people who take the Bible seriously. I guess the religious people who support him don’t really care about taking the Bible seriously.

Image credit: Babylon Bee