Friday, August 15, 2025

News and Views: August 15, 2025

Pastors Face Congregational Shift Toward ‘Two-Timing’ Churchgoers  While church attendance in the U.S. has remained stable and even increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, pastors are facing a new challenge of dealing with worshipers who adopt more than one denomination or congregation as their “home” church.
   According to a national survey published in June by the project on Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC), a staggering 46% of worshipers regularly attend or view multiple church services online, and 7% identify as having more than one “home” church.
   Approximately one in five Christians who regularly participate in worship services elsewhere are doing so within a different denomination or faith tradition.

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The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion  The Rationalist movement is a lifestyle as much as a set of ideas. The adherents have mixed their focus on A.I. with advice for how to live your life and manage your career. The community embraces unconventional ideas, including polyamory and the genetics of intelligence as well as Effective Altruism, which is also a lifestyle. And for aspirational A.I. developers, Rationalist events have become essential networking opportunities. 

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I Challenged Duke’s DEI Dogma – and Paid With My Job
By Dr. Kendall Conger  
Lest there be any misunderstanding, let me be clear: Everyone I know is opposed to racism, bias, and hate, but Duke distorted those words to indict white doctors and nurses for complicity in the poorer health outcomes of black patients. 
   My own form of resistance began in 2018 when Duke’s chief diversity officer gave a talk on implicit bias at a physicians’ meeting. I was shocked by what I heard. For the previous six years, I had been secluded from the world, working weekends in the ER while spending the week homeschooling my children. I was blithely unaware that academia had shifted from a love of Western civilization (a mandatory course when I was in college) to a disdain. The diversity officer told us that “society can be broken up into two groups, the oppressors (those with power - essentially, white males) and the oppressed.” With stunned incredulity, I wondered, “Who thinks like this?”  Excellent read!

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National Suicide Is Better Than Rudeness...Would Europe rather be polite than alive?  Why do the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany have a big explosion problem? Why were thousands of girls assaulted in the UK? Why were over 1,000 women and girls assaulted in Germany on New Year’s Eve? Why are cartoonists murdered in France? Why are churches turning into mosques all across the continent? Because Europeans are letting it happen.
   Unlike the zombies and vampires, this horror story is real. Europe is letting itself be colonized, assaulted and killed because the alternative is the stigma of violating perceived social norms.
   There is a species of politeness that requires not seeing what is going on around us until it’s too late. In the twentieth century, clearly spelling out the evils of Nazism and Communism was seen as rude. The gentlemanly thing to do was to believe that war was unnecessary and unneeded. By the time the wake-up calls arrived, courtesy of Hitler and Stalin, it was almost too late.

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Who Has Been Busy Destroying Democracy? -VD Hanson  Democrats decry “destroying democracy” while dismantling long-standing institutions, weaponizing agencies, and undermining the very systems they claim to defend.


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The world doesn’t stop to ask obvious questions. If Gaza were truly experiencing the scale of famine some claim, how are so many people visibly healthy? Why are there Instagram accounts for Gaza restaurants, showing upscale food? Why are Hamas leaders, living comfortably in Qatar, not using their millions to feed their people?
   Because outrage, not accuracy, is the goal. The narrative is set: Israel must be blamed, no matter the evidence...

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Toronto Film Festival Changes Mind, Will Show October 7 Documentary   TIFF worried about anti-Israel protesters and…Hamas copyright claims. What a joke. Image

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Because Washington stands in a unique relationship with congressional and executive power, it is also appropriate that the national capital be a showcase of law and order, not the morass of “restorative justice” and the latest liberal pipe dreams of “criminal justice reform” that exacerbate crime.  Therein lies the real liberal objection: If Donald Trump can make an example out of Washington, it calls into question the “policing reform” and “criminal justice” agendas of crime-ridden major cities, potentially auguring political realignments there that liberals do not want to see.
   Yes, the talking heads attacking Trump cited other cities as being more crime-ridden.  You do have a better chance getting murdered in Detroit than D.C.  But national tourism to Detroit hardly mirrors D.C., and most Americans don’t want to die in either.  So let’s stop the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” and address the reality of what’s behind this opposition: pursuing political ambition and defending failed policies.

Then there’s the fact that the head of the D.C. police union praised Trump’s takeover of law enforcement.
   “We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,” said union chair Gregg Pemberton. “Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.”
   By ignoring all this, the press is knowingly spreading misinformation about what is happening in the city as part of its own campaign to brand Trump a liar.

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posted by Pat Dague @ 11:39 AM   0 comments

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