Day: October 13, 2020

Southern Baptist Seminary Implements Program to Pay Reparations to Black Students

SEE: https://news.sbts.edu/2020/10/12/sbts-trustees-retain-building-names-address-history-establish-5-million-scholarship-for-african-american-students/

SEE: https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/news/uploads/2020/10/The-Burden-of-History-and-the-Blessing-of-Heritage.pdf

SEE: https://www.sbts.edu/southern-project/

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SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/10/13/southern-baptist-seminary-implements-program-to-pay-reparations-to-black-students/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

The woke movement in the Evangelical Church has taken a nosedive directly into the muck and mire of leftist and progressive thought. Evangelicalism no longer stands apart from the world, but is now neck-deep into the same progressive garbage the world is part of. Partiality — a sin which God hates — is now par for the course in Southern Baptist institutions, and, somehow, the people who practice it have come to the conclusion that it’s a good idea.

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.” — Winston Churchill

The Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), under the leadership of Al Mohler, has now implemented a reparations program for blacks. The program will pay $5 million to black students over the course of fifteen years. Mohler proudly announced that SBTS would be practicing partiality on Twitter.

In a press release from SBTS, the plan is laid out:

Beginning with the 2022-2023 academic year, SBTS will set aside $1 million of endowed and restricted funds as an endowment to assist qualified black students at SBTS through the Garland Offutt Scholars Program, honoring the legacy of the seminary’s first African-American full graduate. Additionally, the seminary will set aside $1 million for this fund every three years until a goal of $5 million is reached. “We hope to assist in the development of African American pastors and theologians and scholars and leaders by means of this historic new initiative,” Mohler said. These funds will be in addition to the current scholarship and student aid programs of the Seminary.

White students are disqualified from this scholarship based on their skin color — or lack of. That Mohler and the leadership of this seminary think this is a good idea speaks volumes of his qualifications as a leader.

But what makes this really interesting is that while the seminary has decided to pay reparations to blacks out of a “special debt to African American Christians,” as Mohler puts it, is that the same leadership decided against changing the names of buildings on the campus that were named after slave-owners despite the repeated requests of Marxist Southern Baptists like Dwight McKissic.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary unanimously voted not to remove the names of the school’s founders from several campus buildings, but embraced steps to lament the institution’s racial history and provide up to $5 million in scholarships for African American students over the next few years.

“We’re not going to erase our history in any respect or leave our history unaddressed,” [Mohler] said. “We’re trying to do what is right for a Christian institution. I’m incredibly thankful to this board of trustees for its careful deliberation of these issues and its unanimity in supporting Southern Seminary in dealing honestly with the burden of history and dealing respectfully with the blessing of a heritage.

“We stand in conviction on the great truths of the Christian faith and in confessional agreement with our founders. Their theological orthodoxy and Baptist confessionalism are an invaluable inheritance, and we stand with them in thhttps://news.sbts.edu/2020/10/12/sbts-trustees-retain-building-names-address-history-establish-5-million-scholarship-for-african-american-students/eological conviction, period. But we deal honestly with their sin and complicity in slavery and racism. We are seeking to respond to the moral and theological burden of history by being a far more faithful institution in the present and in the future than we’ve been in the past and in this central respect we acknowledge a special debt to African American Christians.”

Clearly, this type of partiality is treated as sin by the Scriptures.

“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory … Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” — James 2:1,4

“For God shows no partiality.” — Romans 2:11

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:28

This is not biblical. This is not right. That skin color is the qualification for scholarship is nothing more than appeasing the woke crowd and walking in the ways of the world. It would be one thing if the scholarship were offered to anyone needing financial assistance irrespective of race or ethnicity. But to disqualify one ethnicity while qualifying another is punishing one ethnicity's sins they did not commit while rewarding another ethnicity for plight they did not experience. This is partiality and there is no excuse for it.

 

Southern Baptist Leaders Sign Statement Declaring Baby-Killers “Followers of Jesus”

SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/10/12/southern-baptist-leaders-sign-statement-declaring-baby-killers-followers-of-jesus/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Last week, when Billy Graham’s granddaughter signed an endorsement of Joe Biden dubbed “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden” — an oxymoron if there ever was one — it seemed as though it was settled that Evangelicalism had completely fallen. It seemed as though the Evangelical Church’s leadership has taken such a sharp left turn from biblical fidelity that it was no longer recognizable as the Church of Jesus Christ.

It seemed.

But now, Russell Moore, one of the most influential leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention and the head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, along with Ed Stetzer, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Research, and Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, have signed a statement declaring people who vote to advance the “right” to murder their children as “followers of Jesus.”

These Southern Baptists — who joined with rank apostates from far-left organizations such as the AND Campaign — have essentially endorsed not only the sin of abortion, but homosexuality and other forms of lawlessness that God hates as acceptable among the ranks of the Christian Church.

“As evangelical Christians, we are called by Jesus to love God and to love our neighbor,” the statement reads. “As citizens who follow this call, we must engage with humility, civility, intellectual rigor and honesty in the complex and contentious social issues that face our nation. We invite all followers of Jesus — whether Democrats, Republicans or Independents — to join us in seeking the health of the nation for the good of all people.”

Here’s the bottom line: you can be a Christian or you can be a Democrat — but you can’t be both. This seems like such a simple concept to those who profess Christ and actually believe what the Word of God says about morality. The Democrat party has made their party platform essentially the official opposition to the law of God. Everything God hates, the Democrat party platform loves; abortion, homosexuality, theft, lawlessness, and extremely important, they want to strip religious freedom.

Why would Russell Moore, Danny Akin, Ed Stetzer, and a host of other “Evangelicals” sign on to such an anti-Christ statement? Ten years ago, this would have been an extremely difficult sell and, fifteen years ago, impossible. But, today, it seems like par for the course. The vast majority of pew sitters are either clueless as to what’s happening in their denomination, or they are complicit. Increasingly, more and more are complicit.

The statement itself is nothing more than a replacement of the gospel with social justice activism — seeking to bring together politically-neutered professing Christians who won’t speak up about what’s actually biblically right and true, but, instead, want to make the gospel about man’s work bringing societal change through socialism rather than it being about Christ’s work on the cross the change hearts to advance the Kingdom of God that is “not of this world.”

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” — John 18:36

It has become evident and clear what “kingdom” these progressive church leaders are a part of.

 

Flashback: Harris Blocked Death Penalty in Four Brutal Murders

Flashback: Harris Blocked Death Penalty in Four Brutal Murders

BY R. CORT KIRKWOOD

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/flashback-harris-blocked-death-penalty-in-four-brutal-murders/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Even if she’s elected vice president, Kamala Harris’ opposition to the death penalty won’t mean much as a practical matter for state and local capital murder cases.

But her decisions not to pursue the death penalty in four brutal murders show just how far out in left field the candidate is.

One case involved the capital murder of a cop, which almost always invites a death sentence. Another involved an illegal alien who murdered a father and two sons. Even worse in the second, Harris’ San Francisco, where she was district attorney from 2004 through 2011, blocked deportation of the murderer, pursuant to its sanctuary policy.

Ally of Cop Killers
When Harris campaigned for district attorney, she opposed the death penalty, which was unsurprising. Thus, when a street thug using an AK-47 gunned down plainclothes cop Isaac Espinoza on April 10, 2004, Harris didn’t seek the maximum punishment despite the victim.

“Today I want to be very clear: in the city and county of San Francisco, anyone who murders a police officer engaged in his or her duties will be met with the most severe consequences,” Harris said at the time, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

But “most severe” did not include death at the end of a needle. And in refusing to seek execution even in the case of a murdered cop, Harris broke longtime, statewide precedent.

The Chronicle studied 90 cases going back to 1987 and “found that prosecutors sought the death penalty in nearly every case in which a suspect was arrested,” the newspaper reported at the time.

Legal experts “could not recall another California case in which prosecutors — given the option of seeking capital punishment for an accused cop killer — decided against seeking the death penalty.”

“She was only thinking of herself,” widow Renata Espinoza told CNN. “I couldn’t understand why. I was in disbelief that she had gone and already made her decision to not seek the death penalty for my husband.”

Protect Illegal-alien Murderers
Perhaps even more egregious was Harris’ prosecution of the illegal-alien triple murderer.

On July 30, 2008, Edwin Ramos — a Salvadoran whom San Francisco protected from deportation under the leadership of Harris and then-Mayor Gavin Newsom — murdered 49-year-old Tony Bologna and his two sons, Michael and Matthew.

The Bologna men were headed home from a family barbecue when Ramos, a member of MS-13, opened fire from another car. He thought they were rival gang members, the story went.

Though Bologna’s widow Danielle urged Harris to seek the death penalty, Harris coldly refused, the Chronicle reported:

Harris said outside court that her office will do everything it can to make sure Ramos “dies in prison for these horrific crimes.”

She said her office had spent “many, many months” reviewing the case, but did not give a specific reason for her decision.

“We have thoroughly reviewed the facts and the law in this case,” Harris said. “It was a complicated analysis that involved many issues, many facts and many laws.”

As with Espinoza’s widow, Danielle Bologna was furious. “She feels that the city of San Francisco has let her and her family down,” a spokesman told the newspaper. “She feels that not only did she lose half her family, she lost her home because she was forced to move so she could protect the rest of her family. With this decision, it will just never end.”

Adding insult to injury, the family lost its legal battle to hold San Francisco responsible for the triple murder because of its sanctuary policy, and later learned the FBI knew Ramos had murdered someone in 2006.

San Francisco also escaped punishment for its role in helping an illegal alien kill Kate Steinle.

Debate Commission Member Has Ties to Soros-Backed Transition Integrity Project & CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

ANTONIA HERNANDEZ, WHO SITS ON THE COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, IS AFFILIATED WITH TWO ENTITIES KEEN ON SECURING A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOE BIDEN: THE BERGGRUEN INSTITUTE, A THINK TANK WITH TIES TO THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, AND THE STAUNCHLY NEVER TRUMP, GEORGE SOROS-FUNDED TRANSITION INTEGRITY PROJECT.

The Berggruen Institute’s China initiative lists a bevy of Chinese government-run entities as partners including the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence.

THE BERGGRUEN INSTITUTE WEBSITE PROMINENTLY DISPLAYING CCP LEADER XI JINPING:

ANTONIA HERNANDEZ, COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES:

Antonia Hernández

BERGGRUEN INSTITUTE: https://www.berggruen.org/people/antonia-hernandez/

SEE ALSO: https://wearethene.ws/notable/150899

AND: https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/debate-commission-ccp/

AND: https://www.debates.org/about-cpd/commission-leadership/

Antonia Hernández

BY LUIS MIGUEL

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/debate-commission-member-has-ties-to-soros-backed-transition-integrity-project/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Many Americans take it as a foregone conclusion that the debates are rigged in favor of the Democratic candidate. Now we know who’s doing the rigging. 

Antonia Hernandez sits on the board of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates. She is affiliated with the Berggruen Institute, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party and to the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), the group that calls for “street fights” to secure a Biden win in the 2020 election.

As the National Pulse notes, the Berggruen Institute website lists Hernandez as a member of the “Berggruen network,” a network that also includes five fellows at Chinese Communist Party-funded universities and two members of the pro-China lobby group and Confucius Institute-sponsoring Asia Society.

Ronnie Chan, a fellow member of the Berggruen network, governs the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a controversial Chinese Communist Party-led foundation that offers American colleges donations that many universities refuse due to the organization’s communist ties. 

The National Pulse reports:

The Berggruen Institute hosts the Berggruen China Center and has funneled tens of millions of dollars into state-run universities such as Peking University.

The Berggruen Institute’s China initiative lists a bevy of Chinese government-run entities as partners including the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence.

The institute’s 21st Century Council, which aims to thwart “the anti-globalization backlash that brought nationalist and populist movements to power in major countries,” also features the Director of Shanghai-based Chengwei Capital Eric Li, who penned a Foreign Policy op-ed entitled “Xi Jinping is a Good Emperor,” extolling the brutal Chinese Communist Party leader while insisting “opportunism and shirking responsibility are not within Xi Jinping’s character.”

Still another Berggruen network member, Fred Hu, whose bio states he “advised the Chinese government” on finance, presently sits on the Hong Kong Government’s Strategic Development Committee and the Advisory Committee for the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission.

Additionally, Hernandez served on the Berggruen Institute on Governance Think Long Committee for California alongside founder Nicolas Berggruen; the two worked together with the Youth Policy Institute and participated in panels about “rebooting California’s government.”

The Berggruen Institute’s vice president of programs is Nils Gilman, co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project (TIP). Gilman has openly called for the execution of a former Trump administration official.

TIP claims to be a bipartisan group, yet it is staffed by leftists and NeverTrump Republicans. Its overarching aim is to ensure President Trump doesn’t “prematurely” declare himself the winner on Election Night. To that end, the organization is calling for mass street uprisings after the election, using the current Black Lives Matter movement as the building block for recruiting “racial justice leaders” who can be counted on to foment disturbances after the polls close.

TIP, notably, is funded by George Soros. The group has gone so far as to hold war games simulating what would happen should Biden refuse to concede the election.

Furthermore, while TIP claims to be “bipartisan,” it is, in fact, funded by Obama lawyers tied to Hunter Biden. The National Pulse formerly reported, “The critical connection comes through President Obama’s former associate White House Counsel, Ian Bassin, who heads the anti-Trump litigation efforts Protect Democracy Project and United to Protect Democracy.

“Bassin previously headed the far-left Avaaz network, founded in turn by the leftist MoveOn.org group, as well as the Truman National Security Project, which has featured lead Joe Biden policy advisor Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on its board.”

During the first presidential debate, moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, viewers criticized what they deemed bias against President Trump, with the president often debating both his challenger and Wallace simultaneously. 

Last week, former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole said there are no supporters of the president on the debate commission:

Clearly, the purpose of the debate commission, given its makeup, is not to provide an honest or fair forum for political discourse, or to serve as a platform for educating voters, but rather to give a bump to the campaign of the Democratic candidate.

It’s far past time the American public learns who the gatekeepers are and holds them accountable for their poor stewardship over the information stream.