April 15, 2026

04a Faith

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly Vetoes Two Pro-Life Bills to Help Pregnant Women– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser April 7, 2026 0

Blurb:

This evening Governor Laura Kelly vetoed H.B. 2727 and H.B. 2729, two measures designed to strengthen women’s ability to enforce their statutory rights and ensure they receive clear, accurate information before an abortion.

H.B. 2727 created a streamlined path for a woman to bring a claim when her informed‑consent rights under Kansas law have been violated. The bill allowed her to bypass the medical malpractice screening panel—an expensive and time‑consuming process intended for complex medical disputes—and instead pursue a straightforward statutory claim. The bill also placed a cap on recovery.

Christian Professional Athletes Stand Behind Jaden Ivey– thefederalist.com

pgnewser April 7, 2026 0

Blurb:

NBA guard Jaden Ivey was cut from the Chicago Bulls on Monday after he expressed the basic Christian belief that sexual immorality and pride are “unrighteousness.” In response, multiple professional athletes have come to Ivey’s defense by similarly standing firm on God’s word.

“They proclaim Pride Month. And the NBA, they proclaim it. They show it to the world. They say, ‘Come join us for Pride Month, to celebrate unrighteousness.’ They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it in the streets. Unrighteousness,” Ivey said. According to The Athletic, the comments were a part of a series of livestreams Ivey hosted on his Instagram over the last week after he was ruled out for the remainder of the season due to knee pain. In these streams, he “spoke extensively on his religious beliefs.”

Gang-rape survivor, 25, becomes youngest person euthanized in Spain– www.foxnews.com

pgnewser March 31, 2026 0

Blurb:

Noelia Castillo Ramos dies by euthanasia after legal fight

Spain is grappling with the death of a 25-year-old woman from Barcelona who was euthanized following a series of tragic events despite multiple legal challenges from her father.

Noelia Castillo Ramos’ case galvanized international attention after her father, Gerónimo Castillo, mounted a legal battle against the authorization of various Spanish courts for his daughter to receive euthanasia in 2023. Aided by Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers), a conservative Catholic organization, Mr. Castillo exhausted all appeals to the Spanish courts.

The father argued that his daughter wasn’t fully psychologically able to make a decision regarding euthanasia and that she needed better medical and psychiatric care. His legal battle was ultimately shut down by the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, on March 10.

Louisville to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Christian Baker

pgnewser March 26, 2026 1

An attempt by the city of Louisville, KY to force Christians to bake gay wedding cakes has cost the city $800K. That is the amount the city was ordered to pay out to Chelsey Nelson, who sued the city after it tried to threaten Nelson with unspecified damages if she did not make a gay marriage affirming cake.

Blurb:

Christian Photographer Wins $800K From Louisville After Fighting Same-Sex Wedding Mandate – legalinsurrection.com

Louisville taxpayers will fork over $800,000 to end a long-running federal lawsuit between a Christian photographer and the city.

Chelsey Nelson has been battling the city since 2019 over an ordinance that would require her to take photos and write about same-sex weddings, despite her Christian beliefs. She also could not explain her religious beliefs and objections to same-sex unions on her website.

The law in question “threaten[ed] Nelson with unspecified damages, compliance reports, and court orders” if she did not praise LGBT “wedding ceremonies” in the same way she does heterosexual weddings, according to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

The Christian legal group announced on Tuesday that Nelson has won attorney fees in addition to the nominal damages a court had already awarded her. Federal courts have barred city officials from enforcing the law since 2020.

 

Iconic Actor John Cleese Warns Against Islamic Takeover in Britain– www.cbn.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

English actor and screenwriter John Cleese is coming out in defense of Britain’s Christian heritage.

The famous “Monty Python” writer posted to X this month that Great Britain has been impacted by “Christian values” at the “deepest level” and warned against Muslim influence in the U.K.

“Despite the many mistakes made by churches,” Cleese wrote, “for centuries, British people have been influenced by Christ’s teaching. If these values are replaced by Islamic ones, this will not be Britain any more.”

Planned Parenthood IL Pays $500K After Discrimination Investigation– thefederalist.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

A Midwest affiliate of the nation’s No. 1 killer of unborn children will pay $500,000 to settle a federal investigation into its alleged discriminatory practices, including promoting racial segregation.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois violated federal civil rights laws when it conducted training sessions in which the organization “segregated employees by race [and] subjected white employees to harassment,” according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The abortion provider also engaged in “disparate treatment against white employees regarding terms, conditions, and privileges of employment,” the EEOC discovered in its class investigation into “charges brought by multiple Planned Parenthood employees.”

Perhaps it comes as little surprise that the affiliate of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, founded by a woman who embraced the racist and discredited theories of eugenics, would be investigated on racial discrimination charges.

California Loses Attempt to Force Taxpayers to Fund Abortions– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 1

Blurb:

The American Center for Law and Justice, which repeatedly has assembled for court cases the facts about America’s abortion industry and the millions of dollars it has been demanding from taxpayers to fund its unborn infant-killing operations, has confirmed that a major battle in that war has been won.

But not by the abortion behemoths who went to court insisting they had a constitutional right to tax money.

The ACLJ said the 1st Circuit court has granted a stay that allows Section 71113 to take effect even in the states that sued.

New Hampshire Defeats Bill for Right to Kill Babies in Abortions– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

The New Hampshire Senate has defeated a bill that would have codified abortion as a fundamental right and provided legal shields for abortionists who kill babies, including protections against out-of-state legal actions.

In a 16-8 vote along party lines on March 5, senators rejected SB 551, the Shield Law for Reproductive Health Care Access.

Sponsored by Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, and co-sponsored by all Senate Democrats, the legislation sought to declare a right to kill babies in abortions and shield New Hampshire abortionists from external interference.

San José State sues Trump admin over Title IX ruling on trans volleyball player– www.thecollegefix.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

Key Takeaways

  • San Jose State University is suing the federal government over a Title IX ruling that found it violated regulations by allowing a trans-identifying male player to participate on its women’s volleyball team, prompting claims of unfairness and safety concerns from female players.
  • The U.S. Department of Education ordered SJSU to apologize to affected female athletes, restore awards, and implement changes to comply with Title IX, but SJSU is contesting these demands, arguing that the findings are unfounded.
  • SJSU’s leadership asserts it has acted lawfully and is dedicated to fostering an ‘inclusive’ environment, though critics accuse it of neglecting the well-being of female athletes in their policies.

Every public Illinois university must offer abortions. None provide prenatal care.– www.thecollegefix.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

While Illinois’ 12 public universities are beginning to roll out plans to provide abortion pills on campus, as state law now requires, none offer prenatal care and only a few advertise referrals for it, a College Fix analysis found.

Illinois recently began requiring public higher education institutions to provide or offer referrals for contraception and abortion pills to students for free if the campus has a student health center. If the center includes a pharmacy, the school must provide abortion pills to students on campus, according to the law.

The Fix recently looked at the campus health center websites of all 12 public universities to see which offer abortion pills (sometimes referred to as medication abortions), which offer abortion referrals, and whether any offer other services for students who are pregnant. The Fix also contacted each university to ask about these services, but only three responded.

University Pushes Human Rights for Trees While Babies are Killed in Abortions– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

The University of Sussex has published a “toolkit” to enable political and legal action to grant “rights” to trees. This is consistent with the radical environmentalist activism seen in many universities, such as Harvard Law, which is now teaching “nature rights” principles and strategies to students.

“Tree rights” is a subset of the overarching “nature rights” movement, which also includes “river rights,” “ocean rights,” and even “rights for the moon.” I don’t have space to discuss the entire 186-page advocacy treatise — developed over three y

Vatican Urges Halt to Mining – A sin against Pachamama– www.lifesitenews.com

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Blurb:

The Vatican has issued a new directive discouraging investment in mining, framed as a matter of environmental responsibility. But the Faith and Reason panel sees something else: a Church that blessed Pachamama idols in 2019, whose current Pope knelt to Pachamama in 1995, now imposing an anti-human ecology that prioritizes the earth over the people who live on it.

The hosts defend their reporting on the newly surfaced photographs of Pope Leo XIV participating in a Pachamama ritual, not to scandalize, but to demand clarity. If cardinals condemned Pachamama as “demonic” and “apostasy” under Francis, what do they say now that the man in the photo sits on the Throne of Peter? The silence, they argue, is gaslighting: pretending the obvious is not happening.

Final Thought: The American Brave Need Amendments

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Originally published March 20, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor

“For those of us who are not black men, imagine watching the news and seeing how people who look like you are portrayed. Imagine seeing men who look like you executed by police, arrested in impossibly high numbers and seeing the entire political system of our nation fighting to keep it that way.

“Think about really what effect that would have on you and how you felt about this country and your participation in its institutions. It’s a centuries-old problem, but we can’t be centuries-old in the solution. We need to fix it now. We need to stop the efforts to make it harder for people of color to vote. We need to fix what’s broken in America.” – Alysa Milano, white millionaire Progmerican actress

“Imagine being a black man and being told by some white lady with a microphone that you and the criminal on TV are one and the same because you look alike. Imagine being told by society that white people can be all they can be, but you as a black man, the content of your character is completely irrelevant, you are the color of your skin, and that is all you’ll ever be.

“Imagine being told that you can’t figure out how to vote because of the color of your skin. Socioeconomics affects everybody, but apparently you’re not as smart as the poorest white person.” – Savanah Edwards, black middle-class American woman

In past reports, we’ve talked about the concept of “language wars,” of using “language games” to create unwinnable outcomes for your opponent. It is the use of language wars that has largely led to the rise of a host of ideological constructs we will simply refer to as “woke.”

What all these ideological constructs have in common is this; the white heterosexual cis-gendered male created a whole host of institutions to assert and preserve his superiority over all other classes of people. This underlying assumption is implicit in some (they’ll even deny it) and explicit in others.

Systemic “whiteness” prevails, even when the standards are changed to no longer favor the white man, even when the institution’s leaders are replaced by “woke” leaders, even when the new standards now openly discriminate against the white heterosexual cis-gendered male.

This means the only way to end “whiteness” is to end the institutions altogether. Progmerica’s Harvard is gone altogether in Progtopia.

The language game they create for America is based on America’s sins. The “woke” serve as Absolom (2nd Samuel 15) outside the gates of Jerusalem, whose beauty and hair were the pride of Jerusalem.

The woke equip themselves in outfits and hair that appeal to children, their main source for recruitment. The schools, the kids’ shows, the news sources for their favorite influencers, are all spaces for wokeness to tell children there is injustice, but with them in power, there will be justice.

They tell the children enough truths, that America was born with slavery written into her constitution, to tell the children a whole series of lies. They whisper, shout, and subliminally imply, “Were we the new power, we would judge rightly with ‘social justice.’”

The root of all their lies that enables what follows (overt violations of American standards) is the lie that the white heterosexual cis-gendered male invented slavery. After they sell the lie that the white devil invented slavery, they then continue with the lie that the white devil invented Christianity. After that, the American republic itself falls under their flames.

These flames are created by the real fear of the white devil, who invented evil and intends on murdering all hope. These flames also create opportunities to pillage the white man, which gains them more recruits, recruits they desperately need to recruit the children, white middle-class women.

It is this class of woman, the Progmerican white woman, who is the primary enabler and driver of the lies being told to our children in public schools every day. They account for 62% of all public-school teachers, a 24-point majority built into the system, a system that is aggressively Progmerican in its teaching. I would argue they have also been the biggest benefactor of the new wokeness.

Their intended “allies’” benefits weren’t nearly as enriching to the communities as a whole as they have been to the white middle class Progmerican women’s community (this is in large part why transgenderism has gotten the check it has, for it began to threaten white Progmerican woman power).

Our public schools are leading children to believe they are either the victim of a white devil that is built into their very school desks or they’re born of a white devil whose skin covers their own bones, their own flesh, leaving them naked and exposed as an unredeemable sinner. Like the black man that could not hide in a white man’s crowd, the white child cannot hide in a “person of color’s” crowd.

The Progmerican language game began by feeding on America’s rightly earned guilt for having a couple of centuries of real white supremacist history that was only broken in the 1980s (the 50s-70s were the transition away from a fundamentally white supremacist culture).

The stewards of American power, the leaders of the institutions that train our teachers, were not able to keep the woke out of their institutions.

They had no mechanism to filter them with because they operated under largely Americanist standards. They also had no mechanism COMPELLING them to filter such anti-Americanists from their institutions. Dissenting views should be welcome in academia, so cutting out American citizens who happen to have some unamerican views would be antithetical to Americanism.

This is what let the woke in, but the woke do not share our views; the woke are NOT American.

When they entered our institutions, they quickly set about slowly freezing Americans out of their own institutions. Then the process of exaptation began, of repurposing a design to serve a decidedly different end.

Every American institution was converted to what we are calling a Progmerican one, which represents the scaffolding underneath, the bones of the American institutions, with their new head, Progressivism.

I chose the term progressive because it has been the most consistently used term by leftists who knew from the start that their project was about exapting America-making institutions so they become Progressive-making institutions. Neo-liberals and neo-cons alike have been variably comfortable with that term.

It is only the rise of disruptive decentralizing technologies that have prevented the project, Progmericanism, from reaching its fulfilment, its ability to shed the bones of America altogether.

It wants to openly be what it always was, Progtopia. This project will officially jettison the U.S. constitution and replace it with something radically different, something that allows central planners to move on the fly to dramatically alter human action, with violence, if necessary, for the good of the whole.

Progmericans are like the Iranian Islamists, who believe it is proper to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to usher in the age of Utopia. This makes it easy for them to use the language of Americanism, but with radically different definitions. This is pre-emptive deception.

They know they are attempting to alter your heuristics, without your consent, using de facto threats of social ostracism and market death to cement that heuristic conditioning in you. Now, without realizing it, you are already becoming a Progmerican in uncritical habits of being.

This ethical duplicity allows them to appeal to free speech in the American sense when the courts have an American judge, and THEY are the defendants.

Yet as prosecutors and judges in that same court, they will implicitly use the woke standard of “free speech.” The woke standard holds that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, and the consequences they are describing involves mob threats of gatekeepers to economically assassinate you. Any effort by an American to find relief in a Progmerican-controlled court is already doomed to fail before the case is ever heard.

When they say freedom of speech among themselves, they understand it means speech that aligns with the woke orthodoxy as mostly defined by academia (as I believe it still mostly is). That “freedom of speech” also includes the compulsion to speak when others violate the woke orthodoxy as defined by academia.

It also includes the compulsion to not call abortion murder or homosexuality sinful because that affects “marginalized” groups (meaning higher castes in the woke hierarchy of caste value).

Their language game allows them to chastise you ONLY if one of these conditions is true; 1. You seek to be justified according to their standards; 2. They have the power to compel gatekeepers to cut you out of public space.

For the former, if you are an Americanist, you understand what they’re demanding is a violation of the spirit of America, our bravery. We ARE the home of the brave so long as we have a people that are NOT AFRAID of losing fairly in the public square and are NOT AFRAID of others being wrong in public space.

Their standards require a denial of both. They require a gaming of the system by gatekeepers, from the top down, to assure only their kind gets through to the public space where the world might see them. They empower the mob and/or the gatekeepers to be the arbiters of “right” and “wrong” thought that should be tolerated in public space.

From a governance standards perspective, they are not Americans, right from the start. They refute the individual in favor of the social. This is why they say, “social justice” and not “American justice,” for “social justice” is based on caste-system justice, where the punishments and mercies are based primarily on your caste position, not the merits of the situation being adjudicated.

At this point, their only effectiveness over you is their ability to end your public face. Yet that isn’t going as well as it has in the past, but that doesn’t mean the future might not restore that power for them, or even increase it.

America had no defense against the wolf coming into the sheep pen. And now the wolf is just about out of his sheep costume altogether, ready to devour America from within and declare the sheep pen a den of wolves, Progtopia.

In future issues, I hope to expand on my thoughts for what we as Americans can do to at least create an invitation for the people of this land to choose Americanism over the competing new civilizations, which include Progtopia and what I am calling, for now, Trumpmerica (the liminal state between Progmerica and America that, if chosen, will collapse into Progmerica soon after).

I wanted to plant a seed, one that illustrates the critical fail problem of America, its inability to keep the wolves out. Our openness is our strength, but it is also our weakness.

We want to sustain and restore as much openness as possible without allowing closed system thinkers to enter into our institutions and shut the door behind them.

What I propose, in general is the creation of a Bill of Rights coalition of people willing to plumbline their local, state, and national leaders with a questionnaire on whether or not they support the Bill of Rights. From this, we begin to identify Americans, not just among the leaders (there are still a few) but also among ourselves.

The leaders we will target will be market, social, civic, and sacred leaders. We will make their views known, and their refusal to participate in the survey known.

Our purpose is to find Americans among our leaders and make it visible to everyone who is in defiance of these standards. Our secondary purpose is to find enough Americans to form two political parties, both of which agree to run in a special primary open to the general public. The losing party will support the winning party in the general election.

One party will be the Americanist Right. It will support conservative ideas, limited government, strong military, etc., but all within the boundaries of the Bill of Rights.

One party will be the Americanist Left. It will support leftist ideas, like taxing the rich more, having more government social welfare programs, but ALL within the boundaries of the Bill of Rights.

BOTH parties should be pro-self-defense.

The state’s position on abortion, within the Americanist framework, is ambiguous, therefore abortion should be settled by the states, preferably through direct voting by the people, not the legislatures.

This writer holds that states that legalize abortion undermine the fundamental Americanist presumption, that ALL individuals have self-stewardship “rights” given to them by someone/something outside of creation itself. Let the states bear the fruit of allowing or preventing abortions. Let the states that thrive lead the other states to follow their lead.

BOTH parties would be committed to rallying support to pass two amendments, one which would make citizenship a consensual contract the resident must decide to enter into. There would be no more birthright citizenships, not even for children born to American citizens.

The resident would have to go through a form of Americanist “catechism” of sorts and demonstrate in some form a profound understanding of what it means to be citizen in the land of the free, the home of the brave.

This amendment would take effect 6 months after final ratification. It would not be retroactively applied.

Residents would have all the basic rights of citizens other than facing limitations on free speech, having the right to bear arms, and voting in most elections. Residents can vote in any election in which a tax rate that affects them is being voted on.

Residents would pay less taxes than citizens, they couldn’t serve in the military (or be drafted, if we preserve that anti-American standard), nor could they be compelled to serve on juries.

The second amendment would make it a citizenship violation to express gatekeeping standards in the civic, market, sacred, or social public space that would fundamentally impede the ability of Americans to participate in these public spaces or practice their own standards in private spaces.

If you call for gun control laws outside of calling for an Amendment to change our 2nd Amendment standards, then you have committed a citizen violation. There would be levels of punishment based on the severity of the offense and the frequency of offenses. Most offenses would require a fine and some form of remote training in citizenship standards.

One basic requirement for a charge would be having an audience of a certain number (whatever that might be) to protect citizens from private secret-police-type machinations. The speech in homes, for instance, is not intended to be monitored, nor is public speech to a handful of people (other than the limits that are already there, like making death threats).

Above all else, the mechanism must have a path for restoration for all but the most egregious and repetitive offenses.

Any creation of any tool risks exaptation, meaning this tool in the hands of progressives would be used to eliminate Americans from the citizen roles PERMANENTLY. Such a tool has built-in risks.

But what we can see today is that having NO MEANS of filtering out from citizenship privilege the truly anti-American subversive is absolutely unsustainable.

What I propose here might not be the optimal solution (if there is one). The challenge is significant. It is to sustain as broad a coalition of people without becoming so indistinct it collapses into nothing. With no real barrier to natural-born citizenship, and no real standard for excluding citizenship, our enemies have no need for Trojan Horses.

All they have to do is wave the American flag coming in, saying “equality,” not liberty, and once they are in, wave their Progtopian flags (they have many, including the flag of Hamas).

But with these two amendments, they now must publicly CHOOSE American standards and CHOOSE to be held accountable by them, else they lose the privilege of being an American citizen, the “right” to be a self-stewarded individual (for they demonstrated no respect for the self-stewardship capacity of their neighbors).

I have a domain name, Americanist.Party, which could be used for this project should it gain enough traction. If you have your own thoughts on what we can do to restore, fulfill, and preserve Americanism in these lands, write to us at MIAMailroom@gmail.com

Transitions: Pt. 2 – From Judges to Kings How Israel Became a Kingdom of Men

pgnewser March 26, 2026 0

Originally published March 20, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor

“I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” – Hosea 13:11

INTRODUCTION

The nation of Israel began as a household of some 70 souls entering the land of Egypt. These peoples were the descendants of a Chaldean named Abram, who answered the call of God to become a sojourner in a land his descendants would one day possess.

Abram became Abraham, who begat Isaac at the age of 100. Isaac would give birth to Esau and Jacob, with Esau building his own household that later became the nation of Edom. Jacob had 12 sons from four women; The 12 tribes that make up the nation of Israel come from these children.

It should be noted that God chose to create a people by first selecting two nonagenarians to be the mother and father of those people, a sure sign God chooses the weak to give his power perfection, which testifies to his greatness to all of creation.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

One of those sons, Jospeh, would be ostracized by his brothers, sold to Midianite traders, only to become the second most powerful man of Egypt. He would prepare Egypt to become the incubator for the nation of Israel, a nation that would be born under slavery.

Jospeh’s small household would enter Egypt as free men, become enslaved, and exit Egypt as free men. After establishing a nation of Judges, the people one day called for a King, and God said yes, but not out of kindness.

This report focuses on the transition from Judges to Kings, their major similarities and their major differences. We’ll start off outlining how the nation of Judges was born and end that outline with the sanctification of the first temple by Solomon. We’ll end the report with an analysis of the similarities and differences between these two nations.

A. THE SEED

  1. ENTERING EGYPT AND BECOMING SLAVES – When a famine hit the land of Canaan, Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy provisions. The sons could not know Joseph had already prepared Egypt for the famine by interpreting the dreams of the pharaoh. This is how he became Pharaoh’s righthand lieutenant (Genesis 41).

Five chapters later, the nation of Israel began. It began when Joseph finally gave favor to his brothers, welcomed his father, and set aside land especially for them to govern over, the land of Goshen. It began when he exhorted them to take on an identity that would separate them from Egypt:

“When Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’ you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,’ in order that you may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”’ – Genesis 46:33-34

Joseph compelled them to identify in such a way that they would naturally be separated from the nation of Egypt, even though, by his example, they are also called to serve her.

This is the model that is also illustrated in the captivities of Daniel, Esther, and Mordeci, all of whom were good servants to their captive nation while also being faithful first and foremost to their God (though in Esther that is never explicit since it is the only book in scripture not to mention or refer directly to God).

I theorize by this time this little band would have had the oral traditions of Genesis leading up to Jacob and possibly the book of Job, in oral form, not written form. If I am right, then this little band already had a sacred script to unite them that, by its claims, goes back a few thousand years.

This is how the seed of Jacob entered Egypt, as free people willing to be good servants to their host nation. This is NOT how they would exit.

  1. EXITING EGYPT – The arrangement between Egypt and the Israelites held for a couple of centuries before the Egyptians began to be threatened by Israel’s prosperity and numbers. They grew from a nation of 70 people to hundreds of thousands (or more).

The Egyptians chose to put them under bondage, and eventually sought to kill the male babies in what can only be described as an attempted genocide. One male child, Moses, was set adrift on a river, to be rescued by the Egyptians, an Egyptian princess who took Moses in for herself.

He grew up a servant of Egypt, but in the Pharaoh’s court. As he saw his people enslaved, he turned against them. His first effort at rebellion was a failure, and it would send him into the desert for 40 years before God called him to try a different way.

It is during this process that Moses began to build a unique law for the people. This law includes instructions for feast days and sacrifices, the first one being the Passover. The people learned that the source of their Law was God, the same God who delivered them from slavery using supernatural signs and wonders, as well as words directed to them (and chiseled, written down) through his servants Moses and Aaron.

The foundation of the Judges nation had already been set. It would be governed by the law of God as delivered through Moses his true prophet, and righteous judge of the people. But Moses from the start was also a General, so he fulfilled both the civic and sacred leadership role of the people, though he was no King and no royal inheritance was assumed for the role he was foreshadowing, the role of the Judge anointed by God to lead.

Their full exit from Egypt before they first came to the Promised Land took two years. At the end of those two years, the people would rebel from God and assume they knew more than him, questioning the soundness of attempting to conquer a people as powerful as what they saw.

By this time, Moses had already given them the ten commandments (twice, for good measure), the laws for sacrifice and feast days, the tent of meeting, including the inner sanctuary which included the ark of the Covenant, and even the divisions of labor and camp arrangement for the 12 tribes, especially for the Tribe of Levi, the now-priestly class.

B. BECOMING THE NATION OF JUDGES WHOSE GOD IS THE LORD

  1. ENTERING THE PROMISED LAND – The first attempt to enter the promised land was felled by human fear overcoming God’s promised certainty. After 38 years in the desert, anyone who was 20 years or older was dead, outside of three men (which would be only be two before they cross over the river Jordan). Those three men were Moses, Joshua, and Caleb.

The people entering into the promised land would have been young by this fact alone. Counsel from elders would not be readily available as all of the elders were dead, save for the three mentioned. Yet this generation would conquer the Promised Land in less than 20 years and stay true to the teachings of the Law given to them by Joshua, who received it from Moses,

It was not until this generation died out that the cycle of rebellion, repentance, deliverance through a chosen Judge, followed by rebellion, etc., would begin.

“And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.” – Judges 2:7

  1. THE RIGHTOUES GENERATION – While the generation that conquered Canaan was faithful until the end, it did not act with complete faithfulness. As a result, the Promised land was not fully conquered.

The tribe of Dan is a good example of how Israel failed to conquer what they should have, and how rebellion was not completely absent from them either. Dan was intended to take a coastal land on the southwest corner of the boundaries of Israel, but ended up failing to take that land, so they set up at the northeast corner of Israel instead (Judges 17-18).

They also set up their own temple worship system and chose the line of Moses through his son Goshen to be their priestly line. Jonathon, the son of Goshen, was the first chosen in the Goshen line by Dan in Judges 18.

By this time, they had their Pentateuch and the book of Job. Through the Pentateuch, they had basic laws for governance, a complex temple system, a national identity, and a national story. They were the people God chose to demonstrate to the world his glory through. Already they understood that through them would come deliverance for the whole world.

They also had distinct tribal identities, which also included prophecies from both Jacob and Moses specific to each tribe. Judah already understood its special prophetic narrative, that Judah would hold the scepter of the nation (Genesis 49).

  1. ISRAEL EMERGES – For over 300 years, the tribes were run by chiefs. The only documented case of a successful attempt at Kingship is in Judges 8, when Abimelech, the son of the judge Gideon, killed all of Gideon’s sons and proclaimed himself King of Shechem (though scripture “credits” him with ruling over all Israel).

He ruled for 5 years before he was killed by an old woman during a siege.

For the most part, this was a land which prided itself in being different than all the nations around them, a nation without a King, whose tribal allegiances through one shared father, Jacob, was enough alone to make them a nation in their hearts, without a king.

During times of rebellion, after the nations around them oppressed them for a season, they did not cry for a King, they cried for God, who delivered them over and over through numerous Judges, starting with Moses, a Judge-Priest, and ending with Samuel, a Judge-Priest, in 1st Samuel 8.

C. THE TRANSITION

While Samuel is considered to be a righteous judge, and justly so, he was not immune to the same vulnerability the man who trained him, the penultimate judge of Israel, Eli, would fall prey to. Eli’s great sin was in not punishing his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who were being unrighteous priests, taking parts of sacrifices they were not entitled to (1 Samuel 2).

It would be through the ongoing sins of his sons that Eli’s priestly line would be cursed, the line from Ithamar, which would come to an end a few generations later, leaving only the line of Eleazor to continue.

The ark of the covenant itself was taken from a battle led by these same unrighteous priests, both of whom would die in the battle. Yet, before this moment came, Samuel had been brought to Eli by his mother Hannah after Eli prayed for her to have a son. He recognized Samuel had the Holy Spirit in him and so he personally instructed him in his formative years (1 Samuel 3).

Eli transferred the nation of Judges to Samuel, who would prove to be the transition to the nation of Kings.

Samuel himself had two sons, Joel and Abijah, whom had been appointed judges in Beersheba and appeared to be next in line to be Judges of Israel. The people protested, considering the sons’ rule a burden on them, so they cried out for a King.

“‘… Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.’” – 1 Samuel 8:5-7

Whereas previously they cried out to the Lord, this people cried out for a King. The people had spoken, and even the Lord was inclined to give them what they wanted, but they should have heeded the warning Samuel gave them through God in 1 Samuel 8: 10-18, Samuel’s warning against Kings.

But Samuel wanted to assure parts of the Judges foundation remains the foundation of the Kingdom nation.

“Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home.” – 1 Samuel 10:25

In Samuel’s farewell speech to Israel, he reiterated the Nation of Judges foundation and combined it with the new Nation of Kings.

“If you will fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.” – 1 Samuel 12:14

He bounded Kingship under God’s law and established God as the source for the legitimacy of Kingship, and even the plumbline for it.

With a nation of Kings, the Kingdom of Israel had greater central identity as well as greater standing with the nations around them. Their adoption of divine monarchy was less of a threat to the kingdoms around them than their Judges nation had been. Now, their kingdom “justified” their neighbors kingdoms.

While Israel had a story, the story was not fully aligned with the Word, for the house of Benjamin through Saul would be picked by God, not the house of Judah. The nation of Kings that would be Israel was not fully formed. Under Saul, this was still a nation in transition, with a story not FULLY aligned with their reality.

D. THE HOUSE OF DAVID

“‘Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.’” – Genesis 49:8-11

All of Judah would no doubt know the prophecy of Jacob, which preceded Moses words and also suggested a much greater promise. Moses said Judah, “Hear O Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him to his people. With your hands contend for him and be a help against his adversaries” (Deuteronomy 33:7).

Moses reserved his greatest prophetic glory for Joseph and his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim (who were destined to become the half-tribes of Joseph), in Deuteronomy 33:13-17.

He says blessed be Jospeh “with the best gifts of the earth and its fullness and the favor of him who dwells in the bush. May these rest on the head of Jospeh, on the pate of him who is prince among his brothers” (Deuteronomy 33:16).

Yet the nation of Israel just watched God select Saul as King, of the tribe of Benjamin. Saul was a good-looking man who stood head and shoulders among other men, but his tribe was considered the least of the tribes of Israel, and his father’s house, Kish, considered the weakest. God anointed Saul before the people by leading him to prophecy rightly like the prophets.

Samuel validated Saul’s anointing by acknowledging Saul was the man God chose to be the first King of Israel (if you don’t count Gideon’s rebellious son, Abimelech). Saul had an opportunity to build a lasting kingdom that his son, Jonathan, might one day take over.

In the days of Judges, Benjamin was almost destroyed. They had to be saved by allowing Benjamin to “steal” virgin girls from Manasseh and Ephraim (Judges Chapters 19-21). They were a lowly tribe, both in terms of reputation and numbers.

Yet Benjamin’s choice by God to hold the kingship was not unsimilar to Israel’s own story, for they were a small household of 70 who entered the land of Egypt as dependents and would become a nation as slaves to that same nation. God chooses the weak to confound the strong.

This notion of God working through weakness would carry through to followers of Christ, through Paul:

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

Still, the prophecy of Jacob must have gnawed at some of them.

As it would turn out, Saul would not be the righteous King he was set up to be. Rather, he chose human approval over God’s approval; He acted in fear of men rather than fear of God; But above all else, he refused to execute God’s command to destroy the Amalekites and not take possession of the spoils.

Whenever life got in the way of following God’s laws, Saul found ways to circumnavigate those laws. Even when it became apparent to Saul that David was God’s new anointed one set to replace him, he yet plotted to kill him.

David modeled for Christians how to both obey God’s commands and civic authority’s commands. David understood full well the unrighteousness of Saul; even Saul’s own son, Jonathan, recognized this reality. Jonathan himself serves as a shadow of John the Baptist, eschewing his own potential authority in favor of the authority he is seeking to help usher in.

For John, that authority is Christ. For Jonathan, that authority is David, a shadow of Christ, and from the same tribe, the same line as Christ.

While David would not allow Saul to hunt him down and kill him, David would also not take up arms against Saul. Twice he had opportunity to strike Saul down, and twice he delivered mercy, witnessing to Saul his own unrighteousness, which Saul also acknowledged, but in both times to no avail.

Saul would end his days on the mountain of Gilboa, felled in battle by the Philistines. Along with him would fall Jonathan, leaving the path open for David to take the throne. Yet while David was proclaimed King in Hebron, Ish-bosheth, son of Saul, was declared King in Israel.

David would have to wait seven more years before he was finally crowned the King of all Israel, all 12 tribes, having previously only ruled over Judah alone. It was shortly after David was anointed King in all of Israel, in Hebron, the resting place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that David finally took Jerusalem from the Jebusites, a Canaanite people who founded the city.

From David to Solomon, the foundation of the Judges nation was set.

That foundation is this: God is the law giver whose authority is greater than the King’s and that he has left us a law that servants of Kings can use to hold the Kings accountable. Scripture is a plumbline of the King.

David would conquer the land that would give great treasure to Solomon, who would use it, in part, to build the first temple of Jerusalem.

The nation of Judges was nearly 400 years. The transition to the new nation, the Kingdom nation built on the bones of the past nation, took roughly 90 years. During that transition time, within our experience of creation bound by time, space, and place, the nation could have leaned more completely into the kingships of the lands around them.

These nations offered no way for the people to plumbline their Kings, other than through violent revolt.

Fortunately for them, and us, the Israelites preserved the most essential part of their nation of Judges, earthly authority bound by a law outside themselves, a law that prophets and priests can appeal to when the King oversteps his God-given authority.

Now, with the ascendance of Judah as the kingship, the nation of Israel had a story more in sync with their reality, which certainly must have fostered a great national identity.

While this national identity still exists to this day, the state unity of the nation would dissolve within a generation. This left them with two kingdoms, Samaria and Judah, and one nation, Israel. These two kingdoms would drift further apart until Samaria’s unrighteous culture absorbed Judah.

Yet the foundational principle that held Israel together during Judges would never fully disappear, an earthly authority bounded by a lawgiver who left a plumbline that his anointed, his priests and prophets, can use to check the power of the King.

This seed will one day become the “western civilization” seed that America herself would emerge from.

E. JUDGES VERSUS KINGS

  1. JUDGES – The nation of judges exists roughly from the 14th to the 11th Centuries BC. This period of time is defined, in Mesopotamia, by the rise of global diplomacy and treaties, the birth of the world bureaucratic class.

While the nations around Israel all operated primarily on the Bronze Age governance model, the justification of authority through a local god and through the blood of the chosen family, the nation of Judges had no King but God.

Their governance was mostly adherence to and enforcement of the laws of God by non-government-acting agents. Murder, for instance, was expected to be adjudicated by the offended family, not the state.

Another major difference between the nation of Judges and the nations around them is the source for truth. For the Bronze Age Kings, truth was declared by the only truth teller in the Kingdom or the Empire, the King or Emperor himself (or herself). Truth was defined by the truth teller, not by a plumbline anyone could apply.

The nation of Judges had truth tellers, Judges, but they themselves were plumblined by the Word of God itself, and anyone could rightly challenge their truth claims using scripture as their standard. To be fair, “anyone” would be a small group of people as the printing press would not come into existence for another two millennia.

As we have no record of scripture before the 10th century BC (and that is merely a fragment), it is difficult to know how many complete books of the Pentateuch would have existed, or how many smaller books or collections might have existed.

In material reality, most Israelites would have to rely on the testimonies of priests and rabbis to understand scripture, having little to no access to the text in and of itself. But in the spirit, the idea of a state authority being limited by a text provided by the one True God was most assuredly part of the spiritual DNA of the Israelites.

This made them radically different than the nations around them, and that’s before you consider their mostly decentralized authority being led in times of crisis by God’s anointed Judges. While scripture doesn’t show it, one cannot help but believe there were many (or at least a few) false judges, with scripture only telling us about the true ones.

Perhaps we can say Abimelech is the one example of a false judge, so false he tried to take a kingship God did not grant and only Shechem (Ephraim) cried out for).

This civilization is one based on a sacred script that gives them the means to govern and mitigate sin. Its authority comes from its adherence to the laws of God. Its governance is primarily at the familial, not state level, though state authority comes more directly into play during times of war and conquest.

The holiest of holies for this nation was the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Book of the Law in it. The temple had not been built; Jerusalem hadn’t even been conquered. David would conquer it shortly after he was declared King of ALL of Israel in Hebron.

The tent of meeting was a mobile shadow of the temple to come, and it was not fixed to one place, though it spent most of the time during Judges in Shiloh up until the death of Eli and his sons (1 Samuel 4).

Still, there was no official centralized site for worship in the Judges nation. Jerusalem itself was still occupied by the Canaanite tribe, the Jebusites. During the time of Judges, no one even knew Jerusalem would be the final choice for God’s “earthly dwelling.”

From the Jebusites would come Araunah (2 Samuel 24), or Ornan (1 Chronicles 21), who would sell his threshing floor to David. This would be the site for the temple.

As the 12th Century BC approached, the whole region went through what was called the Bronze Age collapse, which would lead to the emergence of a new civilization to replace the old, the Kings civilization of Israel.

This civilization was radically different than the Judges civilization, but yet was built on the foundation of that Judges civilization, a foundation that remained for the new civilization, the Kingdom civilization.

  1. KINGS – The transition from Judges to Kings lasts roughly 90 years, culminating in the sanctification of the temple by Solomon, the son of David. By the time we get to Solomon, we have the new civilization of Kings fully formed.

Like the nation of Judges, the Kingdom derived its authority from the one true God, not a local god recognizing the authority of other local gods. Like the nation of Judges, the Kingdom had a sacred script that served as the ultimate plumbline for state authority. The script was assumed God-given, reflecting the wisdom and will of God.

By Solomon’s time, they would have more of a script to meditate on, mainly Judges and Ruth (in addition to the Pentateuch), if my assumptions are true.

While the nation of Judges and the Kingdom of Israel are significantly different, they had far more in common with each other than they did with their neighbors. What makes them still similar with each other and radically different from their neighbors is the foundation of a divine law in text form assumed given to them by the one true God of all creation.

Yet their differences were still profound.

First and foremost, Kings were sometimes chosen by God in a transparent way, like he did with Saul and David, but mostly Kings were chosen by blood, making them more like the nations around them (and, as I stated earlier, probably less of a threat to their neighbors because of it).

And even when God prophesies downfalls and new Kingships, these events would have been experienced at the time simply as violence overcoming authority, which they ultimately allowed, having rewarded some vanquishers, like Omri, with dynasties (which, for Omri, included Ahab).

Kings also had far more authority than Judges, both in terms of earthly realities of power and even as far as what God ordained for them. There were no Judges’ palaces, for instance.

Kings were always intended to be plumblined by scripture, and sometimes by divine Words from God through prophets. Both things happened, but more often than not they didn’t, even when they should have.

When Jeremiah confronted one of the last Kings of Judah, Jehoiakim, with God’s newly received Word, the King had God’s Word burned, which symbolizes the final break from that foundation at the end of the Kingdom.

Kings became more and more absolute and authoritarian. The ideal of earthly authority checked by divine wisdom that anyone could use to challenge authority with was still a key part of the Israel story, but in practice, it was happening less and less, and then not at all.

Under Solomon, the centralized temple system was established. Jerusalem became the fixed center of their worship. Once the House of Judah claimed the whole kingship of the 12 tribes of Israel, the Kingship was aligned with the prophecies of Jacob, making the Israel story a more complete one through the state.

SUMMARY

The most significant difference between the two civilizations is the fixed centralized authority and worship of the new civilization, the Kingdom, versus the mostly decentralized authority and worship of the old civilization, Judges.

The Kingdom still ostensibly claimed God as King, but their King would, more often than not, gain more praise from the people than God would. While God ordained it and allowed it to happen, it was not his desire. He knew the hearts of men. He knew one day his own people would call for a King even after they had one supernaturally deliver them from slavery.

“I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” – Hosea 13:11

While they held on to the foundation of the Judges nation, what they built on top of it, kingship, would ultimately undermine the foundation that gave them legitimacy, which ultimately led to the death of the Kings nation and the eventual rise of the 2nd Temple province of many Empires (save for the era of the Maccabees).

The differences between the two are, to me, radical enough to identify them as two civilizations (but one people). The second civilization sought to compromise with the civilizations around it. The kingdom sought the approval of neighboring Kings, not that of the King of Kings they once declared their sovereign.

The Judges nation lasted nearly 400 years. It was mostly united in the broad sense of the term, with some internecine wars, but mostly it fought together against other nations and kingdoms. The 90-year transition from Samuel to Solomon’s temple sanctification led to almost 400 years of the Kingdom civilization. The two civilizations existed for almost the same number of years. The Kingdom civilization was finally felled by Babylon in 586 BC.

The Kingdom as the culmination of the promise iterated by Jacob would fall not soon after Solomon died, with his son Rehoboam losing 10 of the 12 Kingdoms to Jeroboam of Nebat. He is the one who set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan, dividing worship into three places, Jerusalem, Dan, and Bethel.

The sin was so egregious that the tribe of Jeroboam of Nebat, Ephraim, and the tribe of Dan are BOTH removed from the call to the 12 tribes in Revelation 7.

Though from a Christian perspective the Kingdom of Israel leads to the birth, execution, and resurrection of our King of Kings, Christ, the Kingdom’s replacement of God as the direct sovereign with a direct sovereign King who submitted to the true sovereign, was a failed experiment.

Ironically, at a time when superpowers like Midian, the Hittites, and Egypt roamed the deserts, the decentralized Judges nation was able to hold together and resist the onslaught for nearly 400 years. The Kingdom model IMMEDIATELY produced a schism less than 20 years after the new Kingdom civilization was fully established.

Judah became just the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, with its kings more faithfully following God than the Israelite kings would (not that Judah was without unrighteous rulers).

That schism was never restored. To this day, the nation of Israel under Solomon would never be found again after the schism between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Even today’s Israel is not unified, for it has no possession, directly, or completely, even of Samaria and Jerusalem, let alone Gilead, the former home of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh (in present-day Jordan).

For the purpose of this series (leaving theology out of this), this is a transition that saw the new civilization build on the old in a way that eventually undermined that same foundation, leading to its ultimate collapse.

The Kingdom civilization would almost survive four centuries, but those centuries would be filled with even more turmoil than the time of Judges (not that the Judges were without turmoil).

In striving to be more like their neighbors, they lost what made them so powerful, their differences from their neighbors.

Their insertion of what was an effective mediator between the authority of God and man empowered that same man to become, more and more, a law unto himself. In the time of Judges, each man did as he pleased, meaning his unrighteous actions, when he took them, didn’t affect the whole kingdom. When kings do as they please, whole peoples become corrupted by that action.

In the Christian Kingdom, we are all Kings and Priests, which makes none of us uniquely King as you saw in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In the prophecies, from Old to New, there is no future for a King of Israel, only a King of Kings, Christ, through which we will all rule in the new earth to come.

The Israelites asked for a King, and God gave him to them, to demonstrate to them that the path to salvation, the path to flourishing on earth, is only through God, not man. The less you trust in God, the more you trust in men. The more you trust in men, the further you are led from God, until your kingdom is consumed from within and without. Such a thing happened to Israel. Such a thing is happening to America.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

The Religion of Ancient Israel – Th. C. Vriezen

Ancient Israel (A New History) – Niels Peter Lemche

Ancient Israel: The Old Testament In Its Social Context – Edited by Philip Esler

Ancient Israel and Judah – Beth Tanner

 

 

 

 

US military deploys drones to Nigeria as fears mount of Boko Haram insurgency– www.foxnews.com

pgnewser March 25, 2026 0

Blurb:

The U.S. military has sent MQ-9 Reaper drones to Nigeria, a U.S. defense official reportedly told The Associated Press, as fears are growing of a renewed insurgency by the terrorist group Boko Haram.

The drones were deployed after 200 U.S. troops arrived in Nigeria last month to provide training and intelligence. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is battling a complex security crisis, especially in the north of the country.

A spokesperson for AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, told the AP that U.S. troops “are working alongside their Nigerian counterparts to provide intelligence support, advisory assistance, and targeted training in support of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”

Among the most prominent Islamic militant groups active in Nigeria are Boko Haram and its breakaway faction, which is affiliated with the Islamic State and is known as Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP.

Coloradans Get Opportunity to Vote on Transgenders in Sports and Transitioning Children

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

In Colorado, two ballot initiatives have been approved that both deal with transgenderism. One measure would prevent physicians from performing surgeries on children to change the appearance of their gender. A second measure would prevent boys presenting as girls from participating in female sports.

The Colorado Times Recorder demonstrates Progressive media agit prop with its headline “How Christian-Right Activists Got Anti-Trans Initiatives on Colorado’s Ballot.” The headline vilifies opposition with a negative term (one this same media helped vilify), “Christian right” and stigmatizes being opposed to surgically transitioning children and allowing boys to participate in girls’ sports.

From Ballotpedia:

Initiative 109

The first measure that Colorado voters will decide on — Initiative 109 — would require school- and association-sponsored athletic teams to be classified in one of three categories based on sex: (1) males/men/boys, (2) females/women/girls, or (3) coeducational or mixed. Teams designated for females, women, or girls would not be open to male students or participants. Teams designated for males, men, or boys would not be open to female students or participants unless no corresponding female team is offered for that sport. The measure would not limit participation in teams designated as coeducational or mixed.

Initiative 110

The other measure on the General Election ballot in November — Initiative 110 — would prohibit healthcare professionals from performing surgeries on minors “for the purpose of altering biological sex characteristics,” as well as prohibit state and federal funds, Medicaid reimbursements, or insurance coverage from being used to pay for such surgeries. The phrase altering biological sex characteristics would be defined as “treatment in response to a minor’s perception of sex or gender” and would exclude treatment for medically verifiable disorders of sex development or acquired physical or chemical abnormalities and male circumcision.

Blurb:

How Christian-Right Activists Got Anti-Trans Initiatives on Colorado’s Ballot  Colorado Times Recorder
from news.google.com

Last week, a set of anti-trans initiatives was approved for Colorado’s 2026 ballot. The Colorado Times Recorder has been tracking these initiatives, and the anti-LGBTQ activist group Protect Kids Colorado that has pushed them with help from conservative politicians and religious ministries, for over two years. Here’s all the news you might have missed.

‘God Is Really Using Them:’ Fort Collins Activist’s School Lawsuit Spearheaded by Christian Extremists

By Jamie O’Rourke, Aug. 22, 2023

“I’ve been working with Erin [Lee] for the last year or so on that documentary she mentioned,” former state senator Kevin Lundberg said. “And I want to assure you and all your viewers that she and her husband, John, are the real deal. God is really using them to spread the word on what’s happening.”

Lee and Lundberg would go on to become founding members of Protect Kids Colorado.

Ballot Initiatives Target Transgender Students

By Sean Beedle, Feb. 21, 2024

Relegated to minority status in the Colorado legislature, Republicans are turning to ballot initiatives in an attempt to pass laws targeting transgender people.

Proponents of Anti-Trans Ballot Initiatives Falsely Claim ‘Furries’ Run Rampant in CO Public Schools, Biting and Scratching Other Students

By Jamie O’Rourke, May 20, 2024

“A lot of children now are identifying as a cat or dog or an animal,” said Rich Guggenheim, a member of the anti-LGBTQ coalition Protect Kids Colorado, in a radio interview. “And this is part of the furry movement. And so kids are going to school. And in some schools across the country, we’re hearing stories where kids are using litterboxes and doing their bathroom duties like they would if they’re a cat or a dog.” His statement effectively rehashed stale, debunked right-wing talking points from 2022.

Anti-Trans Ballot Initiatives Fail to Collect Enough Signatures; Cannot Appear on 2024 Ballot

By Jamie O’Rourke, Aug. 5, 2024

“Well, we didn’t quite make it to the ballot with this petition effort … but I echo everything my friends at [Gays Against Groomers] said!” proponent Erin Lee posted to X shortly after. “We educated, we inspired, we built a grassroots Army, we brought people together… And we got more than 1/2 the required signatures with less than 1/2 the timeline!”

Opposition to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide is Growing Stronger– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

Robert Clarke, a lawyer and the director of advocacy with ADF International was published in the Federalist on March 23, 2026 with his article: Around the World, Assisted Suicide Laws Are Losing Support. Clarke outlines how campaigns to legalize euthanasia and/or assisted suicide have lost their luster and a new direction has begun to begin rolling back laws that already exist.

Clarke writes:

Last week, Scotland resolutely rejected assisted suicide. Alberta announced major new legislation to protect individuals from the practice. And the clock is ticking in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords on a bill that would legalize the practice in England and Wales.

Christian Preacher Scores Big Win for Religious Liberty After Liberal Supreme Court Justice Authors Surprising Opinion– www.westernjournal.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

The Supreme Court gave Christian street preacher Gabriel Olivier of Mississippi the green light to proceed with a federal lawsuit after he was arrested for violating a city ordinance preventing him from ministering outside a public amphitheater.

This is a massive win for advocates of the First Amendment and religious liberty.

The 9-0 opinion, announced Friday, was authored by Justice Elena Kagan, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama.

A unanimous opinion about religious freedom, written by a liberal justice? That should tell you everything.

In a world where the tentacles of partisan politics constantly creep into America’s courtrooms, this is a surprising outcome.

UK: Starmer Calls for More Muslims to Become MP– gellerreport.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

 

Yes, that is exactly what the UK needs, more jihad. More sharia. More antisemitism. More Jewish ambulance burnings.

Robert Spencer: He will get his wish. But as the transfer of power takes place, and shattered, staggering, dhimmi Britain comes under Muslim rule, no Muslims will ever call for greater non-Muslim representation in parliament.

Former bishop defends Pope Leo’s Pachamama participation as ‘interreligious act’– www.lifesitenews.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

German former bishop Reinaldo Nann has come to the defense of Pope Leo XIV in light of his participation in a 1995 Pachamama-related ceremony, arguing his presence was only an “interreligious” cultural gesture to honor the “soul of the Earth.”

On March 22, Spanish language news outlet Religión Digital published a defense of Pope Leo XIV by Nann defending Leo XIV against accusations that he participated in an act of idolatry during a 1995 ecological and theological congress in Brazil, where then-missionary Father Robert Prevost was photographed kneeling in the context of a ceremony associated with Pachamama, a pagan goddess linked to Andean religious traditions.

Gavin Newsom’s Wife Says Pro-Life Christians are “Pulling Us Back as a Country”– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is attacking pro-life Christians.

She has criticized pro-life Christians and evangelicals as living in an “evangelical, conservative silo” that is “pulling us back as a country.”

Meanwhile, Newsom is arguing that the term “pro-life” should be redefined to mean government-funded social programs rather than protecting unborn children from abortion.

In a 2022 interview with journalist Elex Michaelson of a local Los Angeles station, Siebel Newsom promoted her documentary “Fair Play” on gender roles in the home and praised progressives for redefining the meaning of “pro-life.”

“I appreciate that so many people, so many progressives, are leaning into redefining what pro-life is really about, and that’s what we’re doing in California,” Siebel Newsom said. “You know, pro-life is about prenatal care and universal preschool and universal after-school and universal healthcare and taking care of foster kids and feeding, you know, universal meals and childcare. Like, that’s pro-life. It’s not conception.”

UK Catholic bishops decry House of Lords vote to decriminalize abortion up until birth– www.lifesitenews.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

Catholic bishops in the United Kingdom are condemning a recent House of Lords vote on a proposal that would decriminalize abortion in certain cases, including up until birth.

The plan, which passed the House of Commons last summer, would remove criminal penalties for women who seek abortions beyond the legally permitted time frame.

Archbishop John Sherrington of Liverpool, the lead bishop for life issues in the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, immediately condemned the vote, expressing his deep “distress.”

“I am deeply distressed by the decision by the House of Lords to reject Baroness Monckton’s amendment to remove clause 208 from the Crime and Policing Bill,” wrote Archbishop Sherrington.

“The clause decriminalises on-demand abortion up to birth in England and Wales in some circumstances. This move is likely to lead to more late-term abortions putting pregnant women and their babies at risk. Many women could likely also face even greater risks of isolation, coercion, and pressure.”

Iran war’s latest casualty: Christian celebrations of Holy Week in the Holy Land– www.theblaze.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

 

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem has announced that at least some traditional Holy Week observances have been canceled or postponed as the military conflict in the Holy Land rages on.

On Sunday, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa issued a statement to note that the ongoing war in the region and the “restrictions” imposed as a result will not permit the faithful “to experience the traditional Lenten journey in Jerusalem.”

‘The empty tomb is the seal of the victory of life over hatred, of mercy over sin.’

In particular, the traditional Palm Sunday procession from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives has been canceled, he said. The Chrism Mass, a Mass traditionally offered during Holy Week, during which a bishop consecrates sacred oils, has been “postponed to a date to be determined.”

New Report Shows 1.1 Million Babies Killed in Abortions Last Year– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

A new report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute estimates that more than 1.12 million babies were killed in abortions in 2025.

That is a heartbreaking figure that remained virtually unchanged from the previous year despite state-level restrictions following the 2022 Dobbs decision. It provides more evidence that pro-life states need to keep fighting mail-order abortions and President Donald trump and the FDA need to step in to reverse the Biden rule allowing them.

The analysis put the estimated total at 1,126,000 abortions in the U.S. in 2025 — “that’s pretty much unchanged from 2024,” according to Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist at the Guttmacher Institute.

Pro-life advocates have decried the persistent high number of abortions as a continuing tragedy, noting that it equates to more than 3,000 unborn children losing their lives each day.

Media Paint Mom Charged With Murder As Victim Of Pro-Life Laws– thefederalist.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

A Georgia woman is facing murder and drug charges after her born-alive baby died shortly after she used illegally obtained drugs in an attempt to end her pregnancy.

Corporate media want Americans to believe that the charges levied against Alexia Zantail Moore are unprecedented, unfair, and all about abortion, since Moore allegedly tried to abort her baby with mail-order misoprostol, a drug often used in combination with mifepristone to initiate chemical abortions.

Yes, People Are Already Worshipping AI as a Deity– www.breitbart.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

Author Wynton Hall reveals in his new book Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI that the worship of artificial intelligence as a literal deity is not science fiction. It is already happening, complete with IRS-registered churches, robot priests, and AI confessionals.

CODE RED explains that a former Google AI engineer and self-driving car pioneer named Anthony Levandowski filed paperwork with the IRS in 2017 to register a new church called “Way of the Future.” Its stated doctrine was centered on “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.” In an interview with Wired, Levandowski described AI in blunt terms: “What is going to be created will effectively be a god. If there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”

Some Women Believe They “Communicate” With Their Babies Before They Abort Them– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser March 24, 2026 0

Blurb:

Pro-lifers are often accused of opposing abortion solely for religious reasons. If you follow Secular Pro-Life on Twitter long enough, you will see tweets from pro-choicers claiming SPL is really a Christian group. Some pro-abortion people say that atheists like me who oppose abortion are closet Christians who have no reason for our views except for our (alleged) faith.

Pro-abortion people have also used this argument to discredit religious pro-lifers. Even when a religious pro-lifer relies solely on secular arguments, they almost invariably hear that they only oppose abortion because their religion tells them to.

Sometimes, though, it is pro-choicers who have religious beliefs that drive them to support abortion. Some people having abortions use their religious beliefs to justify their choices. Many times, these religious beliefs, and the excuses and justifications derived from them, sound absurd.

“Reiki master” and spirit guide claim baby is happy to be aborted

In a 2006 article in The Daily Mail by Natasha Pearlman and Jenny Nisbet called “Abortion: The Legacy,” one woman tells her abortion story and gives a good example of this.

Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter).

The article isn’t online, but you can read an excerpt here [https://clinicquotes.com/woman-says-her-baby-was-happy-to-be-aborted]. (Note: This link contains a graphic photo.)

The article quotes a British woman who was considering aborting her baby. She wanted advice, but says, “I felt there was no one else to turn to for impartial advice; all my family and friends were emotionally involved.”

So instead of turning to someone she knew, she contacted a woman who referred to herself as a “Reiki master and spiritual healer.”

This woman, like many new age practitioners, claimed to be in contact with a “spirit guide,” — a deceased disembodied spirit that helped her communicate with other spirits.

The women telling her abortion story asks the “Reiki master” to have her spirit guide connect with the spirit of her preborn baby. This is what the “Reiki master” says:

She said she had a very strong sense that the baby wasn’t 100 percent perfect and that he was happy to go to the other side but would be back again soon.

The woman said, “Immediately, I felt enormously relieved because I’d been feeling so guilty.”

Satisfied that her preborn baby was fine with being aborted and would return to her at another time, she booked her abortion appointment in a local hospital.

At the hospital, she says she “couldn’t bear” to look at the ultrasound. However, a nurse told her that her baby was a boy.

She was in her twelfth week of pregnancy, which means she was carrying a ten-week-old preborn child. (This is because length of pregnancy is counted as days from the last menstrual period, about two weeks before conception.)

As you can see from the ultrasound below, her child was already very developed.

 

The baby she aborted had had a beating heart for seven weeks. He had a brain that was giving off waves.   A baby at 12 weeks responds to touch and shows a startle reaction.

This woman’s baby was already right or left-handed. Not only did he have hands and fingers, he even had fingerprints.

In a first-trimester abortion, the powerful suction would have torn the child apart violently, limb from limb.

Despite her belief that her child was okay with being aborted, the abortion was hard for this mother. She says, “[T]he only way I got through the termination was knowing that the spirit of my foetus had forgiven me and that he was going to come back.”

There have been other cases where pregnant people have allegedly communicated with their preborn babies and gotten permission from them to have abortions.

Telling your baby he is loved – before you kill him

Consider the article “Conscious Abortion: Engaging the Fetus in a Compassionate Dialogue” by Claudette Nantel, which appeared in the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health [https://www.birthpsychology.com/wp-content/uploads/journal/published_paper/volume-35/issue-2/t4XGTAVq.pdf].

Nantel openly admits the humanity of preborn babies. She defines “fetus,” as “an unborn baby in its mother’s womb, at any time from conception to birth.”

Nantel quotes practitioners who work with pregnant people to help them communicate with their babies before they abort them.

She quotes family doctor G. McGarey suggesting that someone having an abortion should have “a heart-to-heart conversation with her baby in the womb, explaining how this is not a good time for her to raise a child, reassuring them that they are deeply loved.”

Most people don’t kill the people they love, but McGarey tells pregnant people that as long as the baby knows you love them, aborting them is fine.

Another practitioner, M. Axness, says women having abortions should communicate with the baby:

through prayer, imagination, art, letter, dance, song—a level of communication with the newly arrived being in their wombs through which they explain to the baby that it isn’t the right time for him or her to come and that it is necessary to separate.

While belief in telepathy isn’t exactly a religious belief, it is another belief and claim that science can ’t prove. It is, for this reason, quasi-religious.

Asking babies to consent to their abortions

HH Watkins has women with unwanted pregnancies ask the baby to consent to their abortion. The child, according to Watkins and Nantel, will then telepathically communicate to the mother that they agree to be aborted.

She instructs pregnant people to connect with their preborn babies, get their permission for the abortion, and then abort without guilt, knowing that their babies consented to be killed.

This process, Watkins says, leads the aborting person to have “a deeper sense of self, more respect for life, and positive feelings about a better-timed future pregnancy through the process of dialogue with their baby.”

Unsurprisingly, in all but one case, every time Watkins did this exercise with a pregnant person, the pregnant person “heard” their baby give permission for the abortion. Clearly, these people hear what they want to hear.

What about the one exception? Well, the woman had the abortion, anyway.

After getting the “answer,” of no, the woman says to her baby, “You don’t mean that?”

The thought that a child might not agree to be dismembered or poisoned was shocking to her.

Watkins recalls what the pregnant woman did next:

[She] continued the process of weeping and talking to the fetus at home until there was only silence in response. She concluded the fetus accepted her intended surgical intervention…

The surgical intervention was accomplished without complication, healing was rapid, and the client felt little or no remorse. She knew at all levels she had made the appropriate decision for herself.

Lives sacrificed to convey a message

Nantel gives another example of a woman who allegedly got her babies’ permission for abortions. This woman had three abortions. With the first, she didn’t attempt to communicate with the baby because, she says “I was much more centered on myself and my life circumstances than on the baby.”

She claimed to have had an “intimate relationship” with the other two babies, who agreed to be aborted.

The woman explains:

I never felt I was doing them harm. Just before the abortion for each of them, I asked the lady who showed me the ultrasound screen to give me five minutes alone with the baby before the intervention.

I spoke to each of them in a fluid, soft manner, more like saying, ‘Thank you, see you later…’ The ultrasound screen conversations were way of recognizing the relationship, expressing my gratitude…

It was so clear for me that these two children had not come to me saying, ‘Let me be born.’

She came to believe that her babies intended to teach her a life lesson through the pregnancy and subsequent abortions.

These babies helped me, and I acted on what they helped me with. I honored them. And they had a tremendous healing effect on the guilt and angst which I carried a long time during and after my first abortion.

The babies, she says, were “beings who were my equals, partners in learning.”

The universe sacrificing others on one’s behalf

I ran into this kind of thinking in a writing group I attended a few years ago. A woman at the meeting believed that everything in the universe worked for her benefit.

In keeping with the religious concept (often known as “manifesting,”) if one wants something, they just need to ask the universe for it. If they really believe that the universe will deliver, it will. If it doesn’t, of course, the person doesn’t have enough faith.

This woman told the group that she had done this, and several months later, her husband died. This, she said, was an answer from the universe, because it set her free to pursue her writing career full-time.

I wasn’t sure what was more shocking- the incredible self-centeredness of someone who believes the universe kills people for her benefit, or that the others in attendance were nodding in agreement. I left the group as quickly as I could and never went back.

The writer’s view was in keeping with the belief that the entire universe revolved around her and her alone.

(She did say that after her husband’s death, she communicated with his spirit, and he told her he was at peace with dying to promote her career. I guess that lets her sleep at night.)

Woman “channels her highest self” and determines her baby chose to be aborted

The last story comes from Anna Runkle, a Planned Parenthood worker who counsels women in abortion clinics. Her book In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion was written to help pregnant people decide whether to have abortions.

In the book, she tells the stories of several women. Once was a 40-year-old woman named Claudia.

Claudia explained how her preborn baby, whom she named Rose, communicated with her from the womb and told her having an abortion was okay:

I got into the car and sat there and [the baby] spoke to me. She says, ‘I am looking forward to having you be my mother, but I want you to know this is your decision and whatever decision you make is perfectly fine with me. If you choose not to continue this pregnancy, I will be waiting.’1

Claudia says, “I sat in the car and cried for about an hour, feeling very grateful and very sad at the same time.”2

She had her abortion, and about a month later, had a session with her “ministers.” She explains that “[i]n my practice, we channel our higher selves.”

While “channeling her higher self” (whatever that means) she got the following “message” from her aborted baby:

[T]he message that I received during this counseling was very similar to the reassurance that my child Rose had given me in the car. Ever since then, I have felt a full heart relationship with this being…the relationship has given me great comfort and has been a source of joy for me…

I also believe that souls choose to be born or to live a certain amount of time in the womb and then depart, or they choose to be aborted…

Given my agreement with my child, who is eternal, I did nothing other than delay her return to the earth by agreement with her.3

Clauda’s religious belief, which she holds onto despite a complete lack of evidence for it, is that her baby chose to be aborted and will return to live in the future. She even claims she has a “relationship” with the baby she had killed.

The level of religious delusion and cognitive dissonance here, and in the other examples, is astounding.

I am an atheist. As such, I don’t believe religious claims without evidence. I admit I don’t know everything. I may be wrong about the nonexistence of the soul and life after death.

But I am extremely doubtful that all these babies consented to their abortions.

Religious beliefs sometimes inspire people to do good and noble things. Other times, they act as excuses to justify atrocities. We’ve seen that with the 9/11 terrorists and with various religious wars throughout history. I would consider this another example.

Footnotes

  1. Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion(San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 46.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid., 46-47.

LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.



from www.lifenews.com