If anti-abortion protesters threw stink bombs into abortion clinics, and threatened to demolish the building, what would happen to those protesters?  Well, they’d probably get thrown in jail and decried in the media.  (Perhaps get called a "Christianist" by Andrew Sullivan.)

But, change the cause, and those tactics become, as the LA Times says, "compelling" television.  Yes, terrorize for the right cause, and you get your own TV show.

Jill Stanek has the details on "Whale Wars", a Discovery channel show documenting the life and times of an crew of anti-whalers.  I saw an episode where they made it appear that they were going to ram the offending ship.  If people trying to save babies tried this, they’d be pilloried (by, no doubt, the LA Times). 

But do this in the name of animals, and the Left and the media put you on a pedestal.  Priorities, folks.

1. Four links on Iran.
2. 2009 Bulwer-Lytton noted.
3. The too many regulations and laws problem.
4. Victims strikes me as the wrong word.
5. Tax and oppression … is this where the left wants to go?
6. At least some on the left are unimpressed with Mr Obama’s tactics.
7. I think in some way those on the left who are pleased as punch with Mr Franken’s win betray themselves as pure partisan animals. After all, Franken is basically the left’s less talented equivalent of Ms Coulter. If she had won a highly contested Senate seat … how would they view those on the other side of the aisle praising that event?
8. Health care and the Baucus plan.
9. Consequences of policy.
10. Virtue leaves the room.
11. Bigots in places of power.
12. This keeps happening …
13. I’m not catholic but that’s a debate I’d enter.
14. Cars and US manufacture … and party … which I link as a GOP supporter driving a VW (diesel) and two Honda Insights (original version) which we got used.
15. A geek debate.
16. In which “possible worlds” means ones which are not in any way realistic.
17. Marriage.
18. Culture and Orthodoxy.
19. For the 4th. Here too.
20. And some patristics.

An interesting interview of Michael Horton on the Stand to Reason weekly radio broadcast, on June 8th (rss feed for weekly podcasts).

Horton, the author of Christless Christianity: the Alternative Gospel of the American Church, made some claims about Charles Finney that were quite astounding. In discussing the premise of the book, namely, that the American church has pushed Jesus aside and essentially put a self-help, therapeutic gospel in His place, Horton alluded to the theological stance of Finney, that which Horton posits is more tuned in with Pelagianism than with Arminianism. From the book,

As I will make clearer throughout various points within this book, ever since the Great Awakening, especially evident in the message and methods of evangelist Charles G. Finney, American Protestantism has been more Pelagian than Arminian.

In his essay, The Legacy of Charles Finney, Horton is more blunt,

Thus, in Finney’s theology, God is not sovereign; man is not a sinner by nature; the atonement is not a true payment for sin; justification by imputation is insulting to reason and morality; the new birth is simply the effect of successful techniques, and revival is a natural result of clever campaigns.

…

Needless to say, Finney’s message is radically different from the evangelical faith, as is the basic orientation of the movements we see around us today the bear his imprint: revivalism (or its modern label, ‘the church growth movement’), Pentecostal perfectionism and emotionalism, political triumphalism based on the ideal of ‘Christian America,’ and the anti-intellectual, anti-doctrinal tendencies of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It was through the ‘Higher Life Movement’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Finney’s perfectionism came to dominate the fledgling Dispensationalist movement through the auspices of Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Seminary and author of He That Is Spiritual. Finney, of course, is not solely responsible; he is more a product than a producer. Nevertheless, the influence he exercised and continues to exercise to this day is pervasive.

Wow!

I’m certainly not an authority on Finney, but an initial hearing of Horton has revealed many issues with which I agree on. That American evangelism, in the alleged Finney sense, could be the catalyst for many of the ills within the church, as well as cults outside it, which we see today, is astonishing.

From Politico (HT: Holycoast), former Governor Mark Sanford writes,

Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign – as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise – that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes – but that if my spirit wasn’t right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.