Lee Ardis

Video: Church recites ‘The Sparkle Creed,’ which proclaims belief in ‘non-binary God whose pronouns are plural,’ Jesus Christ who ‘had two dads’

A Minneapolis church’s livestream Sunday caught the moment when one of its pastors led the congregation in the recitation of “The Sparkle Creed,” which proclaims belief in the “non-binary God whose pronouns are plural” and to Jesus Christ who “had two dads,” among other things.

What are the details?

Anna Helgen, one of the pastors at Edina Community Lutheran Church, asked those in the sanctuary to “confess our faith today in the words of The Sparkle Creed,” which is a radical variation of “The Apostles’ Creed.” Here’s what was recited:

I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. I believe in the church of everyday saints, as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in Wonder. I believe in the calling to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief. Amen.

After “The Sparkle Creed,” Helgen led a congregational prayer to the God of “expansive and inclusive love” for “the summer solstice” and for “honey bee populations experiencing extreme loss,” as well as “climate justice,” Pride events, and “all LGBTQIA+ leaders.”

IRELAND TO INTRODUCE ANTI PRAYER ZONES

Ireland’s government has very little to boast about over the past decade, but it can successfully brag about one achievement, it has successfully reduced birth rates by 25%.

These apocalyptic policies have brought us to a stage where paying a doctor €450 for the intentional killing of an unborn is more of a priority for the government than virtually anything else related to children, apart from perhaps their plans for gruesome new sexual education that includes lessons on pornography.

In a complete panic after the overturn of Roe vs. Wade in the United States, Ireland’s incompetent government is now moving to establish anti prayer zones across the country, where a person can be jailed for praying against abortion or for encouraging people to give birth to their baby instead of killing it.

The establishment has waged a long and lackluster war on prolife prayer in an effort to justify such zones, yet now they are proceeding regardless of any real evidence and are doing so in defiance of the public advice of Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, who has repeatedly rejected the need for such legislation, stating that it was not necessary.

Some of the efforts by the establishment, and we include Sinn Fein, the Social Democrats and Labour in that list, have been ones of pure desperation.

In 2020, Simon Harris claimed that women attending hospital for miscarriages were being asked ‘Are you going to murder your child?’, however the claim was quietly dropped when it emerged that it was linked to an anonymous Antifa Twitter account from someone claiming to have been working in the Department of Justice. In the resulting controversy, proaborts threatened to murder the prolife advocates across social media.

Footage also emerged of Antifa, who appear to support the government, pelting elderly Catholics with eggs because they were praying the Rosary.

In another effort, the Social Democrats, who were founded by current Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, waged a campaign against Catholics who wished to pray outside their closed church under state restrictions. An English born politician was deeply unhappy with this, though thankfully it was captured on film.

Most Americans don’t like Christian celebrity culture, megachurches: study

While a majority of Americans have a positive view of Jesus, most, including Christians, also have a negative opinion of celebrity Christian culture, celebrity pastors, Evangelicals, megachurches and famous worship bands, a new study from Barna Group shows.

And the situation is among a number of drivers inching the nation toward a post-Christian era.

The data for the study, conducted online from Dec. 13–22, 2022, via a consumer research panel, was based on a survey of 2,005 U.S. adults and teenagers called the Spiritually Open project. Gloo and He Gets Us partnered with Barna for the research.

“When we asked Americans whether they have a positive or negative opinion of Jesus, seven in 10 (71%) say they view him positively. Of all U.S. teens and adults, 63 percent say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today,” Barna researchers said. “This is actually most common among millennials, of whom 70 percent say their commitment to Jesus is still important to them.”

For celebrity pastors, only 19% of Christians and people of other faiths had a positive view of those ministers, while just 17% of respondents overall said the same.

Famous people or celebrities who are Christian are also not seen positively. Only 26% of respondents overall in the survey and 30% of Christians approve.

Twenty-six percent of respondents in the study overall also had a positive view of famous or well-known worship bands. Among Christians, just 30% view these bands positively, along with 29% of people from other faiths and 12% of people who profess no faith at all.

Lab-Grown Meat Suffers Significant Setback With Shocking New Scientific Findings

Earlier this year, the Grocery Gazette reported that the UK was set to be a world-leading developer of lab-grown meat. In the recent past, Guardian climate hysteric George Monbiot claimed lab-grown food “will soon destroy farming – and save the planet“. Alas, such boosterism is being challenged by hard facts. Lab-grown meat is up to 25 times worse for the environment since it needs ‘pharmaceutical-grade’ production to make it fit for human consumption. In particular, there is a need to remove endotoxin from the cultured mix, a substance that in concentrations as low as one billionth of a gram per millilitrie can reduce human IVF pregnancy success rate by up to four fold.

These are the startling conclusions of ground-breaking work recently published by a group of chemists and food scientists from the University of California. It turns out that ‘pharma to food’ production is a significant technological challenge. The major problem with lab meat is that it uses growth organisms that have to be highly purified to help animal cells multiply. Compared with environmental savings on land, water and greenhouses gases, the whole bio-process is noted to be “orders of magnitude” higher than rearing the actual animal.

“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” said co-author Edward Spang, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology. The study found that even across scenarios using lower pharma standards, efficient beef production outperforms cultured meat within a range from four to 25 times. This suggests that investment to advance more ‘climate-friendly’ beef production may yield greater reductions in emissions.

The route to New Zero is littered with improbable technologies that promise much – and give endless opportunities for virtue signalling – but deliver little. While many countries press ahead with plans to destroy conventional animal husbandry, the options for new ways of actually feeding populations look thin on the ground. To be fair to Monbiot, he has picked up on the problems of lab meat, noting in a recent blog post that “the more I’ve read about cultured meat and fish, and the more I’ve come to appreciate the phenomenal complexities involved… the more I doubt this vision will come to pass”. Always the worrier, Monbiot asks, “How can mass starvation best be averted”? Not removing the 337.18 million tonnes of global meat production in favour of flaky factory solutions might be a start.

The California study could throw a major stick into the spokes of the lab-grown meat bandwagon, which to date has had a largely uncritical mainstream media ride. Grocery Gazette’s cheer-leading report noted that the sector was predicted to “rapidly increase its market share within the food industry”. Research was quoted suggesting cell cultured meat was expected to make up almost quarter of global meat consumption by 2035.

The authors in California acknowledge that lab-grown meat ventures have attracted around $2 billion of investment to date. Early reports on feasibility were bullish with some predicting a 60-70% displacement of beef by 2030-2040. But of late, sentiment has waned with more conservative estimates noting a 0.5% share of meat products by 2030. As noted, the huge problem in producing lab meat is the presence of endotoxin which is said have a variety of side effects including harm to in vitro fertilisation. In pharmaceutical labs, animal cell culture is traditional done with endotoxin having been removed. There are many ways to remove the unwanted substance, but the use of these refinement methods “contributes significantly to the economic and environmental costs associated with pharmaceutical products since they are both energy and resource intensive”.

The Bible Will Stay in a Utah School District

After facing removal, the Bible will remain in Utah’s Davis School District. Tuesday the district’s board of education unanimously voted to keep the Bible in school libraries. The Bible will not be taught in schools, but will still be available for students to read.

Local TV station KSL notes that the district reviewed the Bible and then voted earlier to remove it from elementary and junior high school students. The complaint that started the controversy was from a parent who was angered by a state law that made it easier to remove books that contained what many consider to be obscene material. This complainant pointed out that the Bible contains passages depicting violence and sexual themes, and should therefore be removed along with books that parents found objectionable. And the district concurred.

That sparked outrage among parents and state lawmakers alike. Fox 13 reported that, during a June hearing, State Senator Curt Bramble highlighted explicit content in a book that was approved to remain in the schools after the Bible had been banned. He commented, “Adults can tell the difference between a religious text from the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, even though they depict historic or evidence of various acts, relative to pornography, that which is sexually explicit. I mean, come on, folks!”

Rep. Kera Birkeland queried, “How do we write and change this law to where books where a woman naked over a man with a gun to his head is allowed in the libraries of your junior high, and the Bible is not?”

Prophetic Anticipation Builds: Unblemished Red Heifers for Temple Ceremony Soon Come of Age

Last September, five red heifers arrived in Israel amid great fanfare, because some Jews and Gentiles believe red heifers are a key element leading to the building of the Third Jewish Temple.

The heifers are now in a secure, undisclosed location in Israel. Plans include moving them, sometime soon, to a visitor’s center in Shiloh, where the tabernacle of the Lord once stood for nearly 400 years.

The book of Numbers explains that ashes of the red heifer are used to purify priests for their service in the Temple:

“Now, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying: Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come.  You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him … its offal shall be burned … for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin.’” (Numbers 19:1-5)

These red heifers are now between 1 ½ and 2 years old. To replicate the ceremony mentioned in the Bible, they need to be at least 3 years old. And within that time span, they cannot have a blemish or anything that would disqualify them for the ceremony, even one white or black hair.

According to those working on the project, the ceremony of the red heifer needs to be performed on the Mount of Olives, and in a place that would have looked directly into where the Temple stood. The land directly east of the Temple Mount, purchased 12 years ago, meets both of those standards.

Rabbi Yitshak Mamo owns that land on the Mount of Olives. Mamo is with Uvne Yerusalim, a group that preserves Israel’s history and works to educate future generations.

Concerning the specifics of the land, he told CBN News, “It had to be exactly at the front of the place that the priest that made this ceremony can see the Holy of the Holy Place.”

Rabbi Mamo added, “And we hope that in a year and a half from today, we can make here in this area the ceremony of the red heifer that actually will be the first step to the Temple.”

He says the ceremony needs priests who have not been defiled by touching anything dead.

“The Temple Institute actually have, nine pure priests,” the rabbi explained.  “They didn’t born in hospital, okay? They born at home. Because they are priests. So anyway, they don’t go to any cemetery. And the parents keep them in a situation that they will not get to any cemetery, not going to other, any problematic place.”

He added, “And they are pure, and they are waiting.  So, we have the priest, we have the red heifer, we have the land.  We have everything ready. We just need to wait another one and a half year.”

Byron Stinson from Boneh Israel helped find the red heifers in the United States.

“So we believe that it’s very likely that the ceremony would happen somewhere in the area of Passover, 2024, out to the possibility of Shavuot, 2024,” Stinson said. “Somewhere in that timeline, the cows would be old enough and it would be the proper timeline for that ceremony.”

Stinson believes this would be the first possibility for such a ceremony in 2,000 years, and that the process toward building a Third Jewish Temple began when the Jewish people started their return to the Promised Land from the four corners of the world, culminating with Israel becoming a nation.

“And then in 1948, in one day, they were reborn as a nation, and nobody said that could happen. And then, you move forward, and Israel continues to be this strong nation and all of these prophecies start fulfilling,” he said. “There’s so many now being fulfilled, is just incredible. The evidence of what God is doing with Jerusalem is the center of that. And the Temple is the center of Jerusalem, and so how can it happen and how will it happen?  I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.”

Girl Scouts Encouraged To Earn Rainbow Patch By Reading LGBT Books, Attending ‘Pride Parade’

Girl Scouts as young as kindergarten age can earn a rainbow-striped “fun patch” by celebrating Pride Month through activities such as drawing, creating an LGBTQ+ music playlist, or attending a Gay Pride parade.

According to the Girl Scouts’ website: “The Girl Scout LGBTQ+ Pride Month Celebration Fun Patch is designed for Girl Scouts of all levels and their leaders to honor LGBTQ+ history, to celebrate the diverse cultures and identities of LGBTQ+ people, and to acknowledge the many contributions of the LGBTQ+ community has made and continues to make across our nation,” Girl Scouts of the USA states on a webpage for its multicultural community celebrations.

In a document directed to troop leaders and guardians, the Girl Scouts of the USA details how child participants can earn the “LGBTQ+ Pride Month Fun Patch.”

The Daisy, Brownie and Junior Girl Scout levels, which consist of younger children, must participate in three pride-related activities to earn the patch. Older Girl Scouts at the Cadette, Senior and Ambassador levels must participate in six activities to earn the patch.

In addition to attending a pride parade with their troop or family, the document lists a barrage of other things scouts can do to earn an LGBTQ+ fun patch, including identifying five books by LGBTQ+ authors to read, sketching a portrait of a member of the LGBTQ+ community whom they admire and writing a paragraph about why they chose them, and creating rainbow flags. T artist.

But before starting the activities, Girl Scouts must “familiarize” themselves with the appropriate terminology, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer-identity. Those terms and concepts are provided by a gay activist group called GLSEN (formerly known as Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network).

The document also contains a glossary of LGBT terms, with definitions from the Human Rights Campaign, another advocacy group, designed for elementary school children. It identifies transgender or trans as “when your gender (how you feel) is different than what doctors/midwives assigned to you when you were born (girl/boy or sex assigned at birth).”

The American Family Association (AFA) says Girl Scouts USA’s pride month focus is another sign of the youth organization’s moral decline. The Girl Scouts received backlash years ago for entering the LGBT culture war by announcing that it would allow boys who identify as girls to join.

THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IS ON THE RISE WORLDWIDE

In recent years, Christian persecution has been sharply on the rise, and its terrible impacts have only begun to be felt. In fact, according to Pope Francis, conditions for Christians are worse now than they were in the days of the early Church.

The merciless targeting of Christians—driven by hatred of Christians and the faith itself—emerges as a common denominator in hundreds of testimonies of persecution received by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) from countries around the world. As a Catholic charity providing emergency aid and pastoral support to the persecuted and suffering Church in 140 countries, ACN is committed to chronicling and assessing the evolving phenomenon of the persecution of Christians around the world today.

Today, according to ACN research, almost 340 million Christians around the world—or 1 out of every 7—live in a country where they suffer some form of persecution, such as arbitrary arrest, violence, a full range of human rights violations and even murder.

“It is difficult to be chained. It is difficult to be hit. But I lived in the moment as God presented it to me, and I wished no harm to my captors,” said Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez after being released from captivity in Mali, where she was tortured by Islamic extremists for four years. “Let’s see if your God gets you out of here,” one of her captors had said. She couldn’t believe their hatred.

Sadly, Sister Gloria is not alone. She is one of the many thousands of Christians around the world who suffer because of their faith. Aid to the Church in Need is committed to comforting and supporting these innocent victims. Our mission is twofold. First, we provide persecuted Christians with pastoral and humanitarian aid. Second, we document and report on the hardship they face. Through our fundraising, advocacy, and journalism, we highlight and provide for the needs of these endangered faithful.

Unholy Communion: Chatbot Leads Services at German Church

There have been many articles and videos posted about the decline in the doctrines and worship in many churches. Of course, that has been going on for hundreds of years for a number of reasons, but it has become particularly noticeable as the mainline protestant denominations have skewed left, followed closely by many evangelical churches and some pockets of the Roman Catholic Church. But the latest development in Germany should make all believers sit up straight and take notice, even when they aren’t in the pews.

St. Paul’s Church in Fuerth, Germany, recently held a service in which everyone in attendance was a live person, but the preacher was not. Welcome to 21st-century worship where your pastor is generated by ChatGPT. The attendees at the Lutheran church experienced a service in which the prayers, the songs, and even the sermon were generated by AI.

In most cases, sermons are usually delivered by an ordained minister. This time it was an AI-generated image that delivered a homily in a flat tone devoid of emotion. The bot’s avatar began the sermon with, “Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany.”

According to Breitbart, the service was created by Jonas Simmerlein, who is a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna. But Simmerlein shied away from taking credit, saying that he “accompanied” the service, rather than creating it. He explained that 98% of it had been created by AI. Simmerlien stated, “I told the artificial intelligence, ‘We are at the church congress, you are a preacher … what would a church service look like? You end up with a pretty solid church service.

Heiderose Schmidt, who works in IT, was not as impressed, stating, “There was no heart and no soul. The avatars showed no emotions at all, had no body language, and were talking so fast and monotonously that it was very hard for me to concentrate on what they said.” Others refused to recite Lord’s Prayer with the avatar, and others laughed at its monotone delivery that did not quite match the message. But then again, this was the beta test, I guess. I’m sure someone will get the bugs worked out.

Schmidt however, summed it up perfectly in stating that the AI had no heart or soul. While she was referring to the delivery, she touched on the most important factor. Those attending the service were asked to put their souls in the care of something that has no soul. Is it not bad enough that we will be asked in the future to place our bodies and our jobs in the care of something that has no body? Will we be told to put our spiritual welfare in the hands of something that knows nothing of humanity except through the algorithms it has been fed?

Pastors have multiple things with which to contend: finances, programs, attendance, and physical plant issues, just to name a few. But a pastor’s primary calling is to shepherd his flock. That must always be his first duty. And a good pastor shepherds his flock not as an autocrat or a businessman, but through compassion, sympathy, empathy, and catharsis. Qualities that AI, no matter how well it is programmed to respond will always lack. AI can recite God’s Word, but it cannot interpret or apply it. It cannot help members of a congregation bear their burdens or find God even in the dark places. In other words, AI cannot minister.

Jonas Simmerlein has created a curiosity but not much more. And if we are not careful, that curiosity could become a monster that may come much closer to succeeding where men such as Nero and Diocletian failed. If nothing else, it could become an effective tool for diluting the relationship to God that people seek through worship. After all, God does not mistakes, but people make them relentlessly. And AI may make it easy to sever our ties with God.

Software VP Fired for Using ‘Assigned by God’ as Preferred Pronoun Sues Employer

A software engineer fired for putting “Assigned By God” as the preferred pronoun on his employee profile has filed a civil rights lawsuit against his company.

Chard Scharf was fired by the software company Bitwarden, an online storage service for sensitive information. Scharf served as Vice President of Software Engineering at the Jacksonville, Florida, location.

The lawsuit alleges that Bitwarden violated Scharf’s Title VII rights against religious discrimination by allowing other employees to post preferred pronouns on their employee profiles, but prohibiting Scharf from using his preferred pronoun based on his religious beliefs.

“Had Chad set aside his religious beliefs and acquiesced to Bitwarden’s promotion of gender ideology, he would not have been fired,” Scharf’s attorney Jennifer Vasquez told The Epoch Times, “which means his religious beliefs were the cause of his termination.” Vasquez is with the Florida law firm Campbell, Trohn, Tamayo & Aranda.

Neither Bitwarden nor its attorney B. Tyler White of Jackson & Lewis, responded to multiple inquiries from The Epoch Times about Scharf’s lawsuit. The company has not yet filed a response to the federal complaint.

“Bitwarden violated Title VII when it placed Mr. Scharf into a disfavored class by promoting its gender ideology, when it failed to approve his reasonable request for accommodation, and when it terminated his employment,” the lawsuit states.

According to the lawsuit, Scharf was repeatedly pressured to add his preferred pronouns to his Slack employee profile under his company’s “inclusivity initiative.” Slack is a platform utilized for intra company communication.

When Scharf added “Assigned By God” to his employee profile page, he was told to remove it, his complaint alleges.

Scharf, a Catholic, told his company he would not participate in its request to choose preferred pronouns because it was part of a gender ideology that went against his religious beliefs.

He told Bitwarden executives that it was his belief that there are only two sexes and “that gender cannot be changed, chosen, or manipulated,” and that it was the company discriminating against him for failing to accommodate his beliefs.