Russia's Heresy Museum

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Museum-of-Christian-Culture-opens-in-St.-Petersburg-53335.html

It is entirely appropriate that this farcical museum contains a Constantine Room, for this form of counterfeit Christianity has its genesis in the fourth century. Begun by Constantine, the Christianisation project would be completed by the reign of Theodosius II. Seventeen centuries later the Church has never recovered from it and its poison has worked its way into the farthest recesses of the Church on Earth. Indeed there are few who seem able to question its basic suppositions, and even fewer who can divorce their thinking from its assumptions.

The Flemish Rambo and Right-wing Extremism in Europe

https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-jurgen-conings-manhunt-culture-war/

The Flemish Rambo is dead but there are no sighs of relief in Brussels.

The fact that someone like Jürgen Conings would appear on the contemporary stage is surprising to no one. That extreme Right-wing ideology and behaviour should arise in Flanders also makes sense. Flemish hatred of Brussels has only grown in recent years. For them Brussels is the seat of Belgium, a country they view as an artificial nineteenth-century contrivance and it is also the seat of the European Union, a political entity that many have also come to hate as it represents the breakdown and disintegration of not just regional autonomy but traditional culture.

Condemned by Her Own Words

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jun/14/fox-news-host-kayleigh-mcenany-never-lied-trump-press-secretary

Lauded by the broader American Christian community, Kayleigh McEnany continually demonstrates that she is both a serial liar and a person in the severest grip of self-deception. She continues to stand by Donald Trump, a person that essentially wears his reprobation on his sleeve and McEnany seems to equate her Trumpian fidelity with Christian virtues and ethics – demonstrating only just how lost she is.

Confused Ethics and Evil Library Displays in Pennsylvania

Northwestern Pennsylvania has been the site of a recent controversy that is starting to appear in some national media outlets. A school board member referred to a pro-sodomite library display as evil and as you might imagine this generated a significant backlash prompting both support and calls for his removal.

Catholic Sympathy for Central Asian Islamists

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Persecution-of-Tajik-Islamists-53398.html

This is a strange story coming from a Catholic news agency. Why is a conservative Catholic news network taking what is essentially a Pro-Islamist position?

Gülen, Kenya and Turkey's MIT

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57304094

Kenya was the scene of a previous Turkish intelligence (MIT) operation in the late 1990's when (with the help of the CIA) the head of the PKK was captured. This time it's unclear if Nairobi was a willing participant in the MIT operation though it seems unlikely that Turkey would have risked the international scandal to capture someone that frankly is not exactly a high-value target.

Erdogan's AKP is continuing its campaign against the Gülenist movement. They have been unable to get their hands on Fethullah Gülen himself who has lived in the Pennsylvania Poconos since 1999.*

FOX's Lipstick-Evangelical Feminism and its Fruits

https://www.christianpost.com/books/shannon-bream-god-never-viewed-women-as-second-class-citizens.html

The FOX channel is mistakenly perceived as conservative. It is certainly Right-wing but conservative is not a term that would apply. And overarching all the politics of the channel is the ubiquitous presence of tanned, blond women in tight short dresses – most of whom don't seem to own an outfit with sleeves. Several of them are former beauty queens and almost all put on airs of piety and religiosity. It's offensive, but the tactic has worked and over the past twenty years the entertainment-propaganda channel has played a profound role in re-shaping Evangelicalism.

Nuland's Appointment a Signal to Moscow

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/04/30/as-ukraine-simmers-victoria-nuland-is-now-highest-ranking-member-of-us-foreign-service/

Biden's appointment and promotion of Victoria Nuland sends a clear signal to all that his administration plans to aggressively pursue NATO expansionism and a policy of Russian roll-back and regime change. And, the fighting will be dirty. Nuland was point-man (as it were) on the Ukraine operation in 2014 that resulted in a Color-Revolution/Regime Change.

Hedges and the Decline of the American Empire

https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-unraveling-empire-united-states/276752/

Chris Hedges is in many respects a brilliant thinker. And yet reading him always saddens me a bit because of his distorted view of Christianity. But given his interaction with its politicised forms and his training under the auspices of theological liberalism, his less-than-Biblical views are hardly surprising. And while his understanding of the Scriptures is often wrong, he understands Right-wing Christianity well enough and thus his comments (though frustrating at times) are often insightful and contain no small degree of truth.

Dominionism and Mainstream Evangelical Orthodoxy

https://currentpub.com/2021/05/08/seven-mountain-dominionism-at-the-mississippi-national-day-of-prayer/

Seven Mountains Dominionism is simply the Charismatic iteration and packaging put on the Kuyperian doctrine brought to them by the Calvinistic world. It's a little more blatant and crude in how it sets out its agenda as it openly proclaims its desire to capture key cultural institutions.

The story here is that it's not a story. John Fea's Current may cover it, but no one else really takes notice. This kind of thinking and the doctrinal assumptions which undergird it have become normalised and normative – to the point that it can be publically proclaimed without any real controversy.

Rick Warren, Feminism, and Saddleback's Rejection of Biblical Authority

In this case, it's the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) once again. Rick Warren's business and therapy oriented approach to ecclesiology made him rich and famous. He became a friend of African dictators, was invited into the circles of the Atlantic political order, and built himself a global brand. In recent years he's become little more than a huckster, selling a diet plan that claims to be rooted in Scripture but can only do so by means of wishful thinking and tortured hermeneutics. Warren isn't one to let that stop him. He knows his audience and their ignorance and they continue to fall for his scams.

Central Asia Tilts Toward Beijing: Reflections on the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan

https://eurasianet.org/perspectives-xian-meeting-marks-a-new-chapter-for-china-in-central-asia

China is stepping aggressively into the gap left by four years of Donald Trump. The US has not wholly abandoned Central Asia by any means and the Biden administration has yet to act but at this point Beijing has the advantage and they're seeking to capitalize upon it.