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AR 27:1 - Feeling helpless in the face of evil
In this issue:
AMERICAN RELIGION - big surprise: 'many young Americans pick narratives that have simple answers to their fears'
COLLINS, FRANCIS - covert efforts to discredit The Great Barrington Declaration
NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION - failed pro-Trump prophecies examined at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
Apologia Report 27:1 (1,554)
January 6, 2022
AMERICAN RELIGION
We begin with a curious December 24 take from TRT World (Turkey’s state-owned broadcaster <www.bit.ly/3sNHY9f> based in Istanbul), which despite the headline, reveals little about TikTok even though it's conclusion appears to be not far off the mark.
"New cult: Young Americans practice spirituality on TikTok" (no byline) -- "Are Americans turning away from religion? Or do they find going to places of worship meaningless?
"A recent Gallup study has shown that the percentage of the US population who are members of a church, mosque or synagogue is now just 47 percent, down from a healthy 70 percent two decades ago. The data, compiled in 2019, reveals the number has come down below 50 percent for the first time.
"Gallup began asking Americans about their church membership in 1937 - and for decades the number has almost always been above 70 percent. That began to change in 2000, however, and the number has steadily dropped ever since. ...
"According to Pew Research Center, the religiously unaffiliated share of the US population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” in 2019 stands at 26 percent, up from 17 percent in 2009. ...
"Data shows a wide gap between older Americans and Millennials in their levels of religious affiliation and attendance. Only half of Millennials (49 percent) describe themselves as Christians; four in ten are religious “nones,” and one-in-ten Millennials identify with non-Christian faiths. ...
"A recent report on Vox explained that many young Americans feel helpless in front of evil and they pick narratives that have simple answers to their fears." <www.bit.ly/3sJw5RM>
Evangelical scholar Thaddeus Williams offers believers a welcome antidote: "In 2022, Christians Can Be Counterculturally Fearless" on The Gospel Coalition, Jan 3 '22 <www.bit.ly/34pTQUS>.
POSTSCRIPT, Jan 11 '21: Stuart Wright, Gordon Melton, and Damon Berry presented the session, “What Really Happens When Prophecy Fails,” at the SSSR 2021 Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon on Friday, October 22, 2021
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COLLINS, FRANCIS
Ending 2021, the previous issue of AR used the subject line: "The disputed legacy of Francis Collins." Since then, we've discovered further news about Collins' dark activity.
We begin with "Anthony Fauci, Political Thug" by John Hinderaker (Power Line, Dec 19 '21) from which we learn that "Recently disclosed emails <www.bit.ly/32Pl1rg> show how political hack Anthony Fauci was enlisted to bully scientific voices on the coronavirus into silence:
"New emails released by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed that last year, outgoing National Institutes of Health Dir. Dr. Francis Collins instructed Dr. Anthony Fauci to carry out a 'quick and devastating' takedown of The Great Barrington Declaration, a document <www.gbdeclaration.org> authored by experts who advocated for herd immunity to stop the pandemic, and 'focused protection' for the most vulnerable populations over universal lockdowns.
"With hindsight, the tens of thousands of medical professionals who signed the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) were plainly right, and Fauci and Collins were wrong." <www.bit.ly/3FAhNX8>
The Wall Street Journal (Dec 21 '21) used this headline: "How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate: They worked with the media to trash the Great Barrington Declaration." The story begins: "In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to 'follow the science.' In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That's the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research.
"The tale unfolded in October 2020 after the launch of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement by Harvard's Martin Kulldorff, Oxford's Sunetra Gupta and Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya against blanket pandemic lockdowns. They favored a policy of what they called 'focused protection' of high-risk populations such as the elderly or those with medical conditions. Thousands of scientists signed the declaration - if they were able to learn about it." <https://on.wsj.com/3FQH7bm> (paywall awaits)
The disclosures are even more unsettling given that Collins is known for "The Language of God," <www.bit.ly/3qKI8vu> a 2007 Christianity Today book award-winner in apologetics described in its Amazon blurb as providing "the best argument for the integration of faith and logic since C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity."
On a broader scale, which aspect of this news is more disturbing - the health of multitudes hanging in the balance, or the creepy idea of the media controlling our lives more than we imagined? We'll deal with the latter first.
Since 2020 various worldwide media companies have been working together in the Trusted News Initiative <www.bit.ly/3JsqxAP> to prevent the public from hearing criticism of COVID policy. The European Broadcasting Union statement (above link) also fails to include criticism. For that, visit <www.bit.ly/31LZGym> and <www.bit.ly/31LZGym>
The last link above reveals that "In July 2019, before the pandemic, the UK and Canadian governments hosted the FCO Global Conference on Media Freedom, where then BBC Director-General Tony Hall announced: "Last month I convened, behind closed doors, a Trusted News Summit at the BBC, which brought together global tech platforms and publishers. ...
"The initial Trusted News partners in attendance were the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google, The Hindu, and The Wall Street Journal. ...
"The [TNI] media partners had now expanded to include Twitter, Microsoft, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism." That's just the beginning of the current list. If you keep reading you learn that "The TNI next agreed to engage with a new verification technology called Project Origin, led by a coalition of the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, Microsoft and The New York Times - with a mandate to identify non-authorized news stories for suppression."
Two of the more prominent GBD-signers are Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection, and Dr. Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH; a board-certified cardiologist who has testified before committees of the US and Texas Senate regarding the treatment of COVID-19 and management of the ongoing pandemic. He is the author of an early treatment Covid protocol used worldwide. Both men recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Spotify, which has the largest viewing audience in the United States averaging 11 million. Both men broke the podcast’s previous audience record. You can view the podcast videos on Spotify here. Dr. Malone - <www.spoti.fi/3JQZaku> Dr. McCullough - <www.spoti.fi/3pXhYqa>
You can also see the same videos on Rumble. Dr. Malone - <www.bit.ly/3zv3QHM> Dr. McCullough - <www.bit.ly/3t0dOje>
Here is commentary regarding the mainstream media’s reaction to Dr. Malone’s interview with Rogan. <www.bit.ly/338tjuu>
POSTSCRIPT, Nov 25 '22: "The U.S. Government’s Vast New Privatized Censorship Regime: Censorship of wrongthink by Big Tech at the behest of the government is government censorship, which violates the First Amendment" by Jenin Younes, litigation counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance (Tablet Magazine, Sep 20 '22) -- includes: "Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins of the NIH publicly and vociferously repudiated the 'dangerous' declaration, smearing the scientists...." <www.bit.ly/3tYGR5V>
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NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION
Religion Watch (36:12 - 2021) describes a recent meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion which focused in part on the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and its failed prophecies.
NAR leaders who "prophesized" that Donald Trump would be reelected, "show few signs of recanting their predictions, according to scholars assessing the movement...." NAR is described as being made up of emerging "denomination-like networks [and] a coalition of charismatic megachurches, church networks, and evangelists teaching that the biblical prophetic and apostolic offices are being restored."
Specifically, "Stuart Wright of Lamar University <www.bit.ly/3EZX8e7> has been compiling a growing database of 49 of the movement’s prophets and found that 70 percent still say the election was stolen and that Trump should be president, with some prophets even claiming that Trump was declared president in heaven. Meanwhile, 10 percent have remained silent on the matter, at least for now, while seven percent have stated that their prophecies were wrong and have apologized to their followers, most notably Jeremiah Johnson and Chris Valentin [sic]. ...
"Wright argues that there is a strong 'party line' among prophets and pressure to maintain the validity of their prophecies. As reported in a paper by Damon Berry, any reassessment of the prophetic ministry that might be discerned came in the issuing of a 'prophetic standards statement' last spring that sought to establish protocols for making prophecies. <www.bit.ly/3EZX8e7> In another paper, J. Gordon Melton of Baylor University <www.bit.ly/31tjVBc> reported that there are now 220 apostolic networks that often function like denominations." <www.bit.ly/3HmS4Sw>
Caveat - the unsigned RW article is the only specific online reference we can find to this SSSR panel, and no source (so far) offers a date or location for the event.
Valuable background: "Give the charismatic world's 'new prophets' more ink? Julia Duin has said 'yes,' over and over" by Terry Mattingly on GetReligion, Jan 3 '22 <www.bit.ly/3zt48ip>
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