Laigle’s Forum

Anthony Horvath, a contributor at Laigle’s Forum, is the Executive Director of Athanatos Christian Ministries which in turn is an apologetics organization with a unique bent:  it aims not just to defend the Christian faith through evidence and argumentation, but by influencing the culture through the arts.

Their second annual online apologetics conference has a more narrow emphasis:  a defense of Biblical marriage and the family through film, video, and movies.  After all, the family is constantly being undermined in our movies and sitcoms.  Homosexuality is being normalized right beneath our noses, and with it gay ‘marriage.’  The defense will have to be mounted not just at the political level, though.  We’ll have to fight fire with fire.  And, as it happens, Christians were never supposed to abandon the arts to secularists, anyway.

Please take the time to check out the conference home page:  http://onlineapologeticsconference.com/

Since the conference is held online, you can participate from anywhere around the world.  We look forward to seeing you there.

More info:

Keynote:

(Topics, if listed, are tentative)

• Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, and columnist for World Magazine.  Website.  Topic:  “Cultural Apologetics.”

Others:

• Jason Jones, Co-executive producer of the award winning Bella and president of the Bella Hero Project and humanitarian project, I Am Whole Life
• Dallas Jenkins, Producer/Director of Jenkins Entertainment (eg, What If and Though None Go With Me)
• Dick Rolfe,  CEO of the Dove Foundation “Using Hollywood to Win the World.”
• Dr. Angus Menuge, Concordia University Wisconsin.  “C. S. Lewis on Domesticated Living.”
• Dr. Ryan MacPherson, Bethany Lutheran College.  President of The Hausvater Project.  “The Biblical Model of Marriage.”
• Mikel Del Rosario, Apologeticsguy.com.  “Families Under Fire: Defending a Biblical view of Marriage and the Family through the Visual Arts.”  Info
• Mr. Anthony Horvath, Athanatos Christian Ministries.
• 1st Prize Winner of ACM’s Christian Writing Contest.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”  Whether this is good or not, it is the reality.  Today, attitudes and beliefs are often shaped by the things we see and the movies we watch.  For some Christians, this would prompt them to consider withdrawing altogether from our media rich society.  However, movies, music, art, and literature are all expressions of human creativity- and humans, though fallen, still are made in the image of the Creator God.  Our artistic endeavors bear witness to our created nature and therefore have the potential to open eyes, hearts, and mind to the nature of the Creator.

Read the Rest

Book Review by Mary Ann Kreitzer

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare — hearing the words, “You have a very sick child.” For a dad, it’s particularly difficult because his job, besides providing materially for his family, is to protect his loved ones from harm. But when illness strikes a child, a dad often stands helpless to “fix it.” Decisions about dealing with a critical illness in an already born child are difficult enough, but when that illness occurs in utero, parents are faced with another issue. The question is inevitable – “Will you keep it?” Since Roe v. Wade made abortion-on-demand legal in all 50 states at any time during pregnancy, vulnerable families faced with a sick little one are often given the bad news and immediately invited to consider abortion. How will they respond to the challenge? Anthony Horvath, in his book “We Chose Life: Why You Should Too,” shares his story, his faith, and the reasons he believes others should “choose life” as he and his wife did. Those who find themselves in similar circumstances with a seriously ill unborn child would do well to put their panic on hold and read his story.

In December 2006, after two normal pregnancies that filled their home with three boys including a set of twins, the Horvath’s were thrilled to learn during a routine ultrasound that they were expecting a little girl. Then the shoe dropped. The ultrasound showed something else. “The doctor came in. She wasn’t smiling. Her expression was grim … she went right to the point. Our new baby girl had a lot of fluid in her skull, a condition called hydrocephalus. The doctor told us that it could be just hydrocephalus, or, worst case scenario, it could mean that she had spina bifida (SB)” [spina bifida is a general term for a group of a neural tube defects where a segment of the spinal column fails to close resulting in a buildup of fluid in the brain.]

A second ultrasound showed that the baby had the most severe form of the disease, myelomenigocele spina bifida. While there was no way to know the severity of the outcome, the baby could end up mentally and physically handicapped, catheterized, and permanently unable to walk – or not. “Here was the brutal reality,” Horvath says, “There was no way of knowing the future.”

Continue reading »

Glenn Beck and how Americans got this way

By Don Hank

Recently, a lot has been written about Glenn Beck and his refusal to look at the eligibility issue and his disdain for those of us who care about it.

First, let me be clear: I am a birther. By that I don’t mean that I am claiming Obama was definitely born in Kenya (where they have erected a monument at the place where he was born). I mean that I don’t know if Obama is a natural born citizen because he has never proven it. Therefore Beck is remiss to dismiss birthers’ concerns. We have a constitutional right to know, and judges who say otherwise are derelict in their duties and don’t deserve to be called judges any more than those judges who in 1973 decided that humans in the womb aren’t humans.

Ironically, though, despite Beck’s vexing unwillingness to admit what an increasing number of Americans know or sense about Obama’s eligibility to be president, no one has taught to the broad masses the sources of Marxist brainwashing – how we got to where we are – better than Glenn Beck. Others have written books that changed the way scholarly conservatives think, but Beck popularized this knowledge in ways that made scholars of ordinary people. He went into detail on the origins of “progressivism” and that is important. Without a comprehensive knowledge of how millions of ordinary decent Americans have been turned into glassy-eyed liberals, we are easy prey both to the propaganda itself and to those who accuse us watchdogs of McCarthyism.

Even if you are put off by Glenn’s histrionics, his shows have been a classroom for a long time – especially his TV show, where he has reviewed important eye-opening books night after night. He did his homework. If Patriots view Beck with a jaundiced eye today it is partly because he fails to see the importance of the eligibility issue but also in part because they have underestimated the role of propagandists in turning America leftward and they fail to see how much Beck has pulled back the curtain for millions of us, providing us a glimpse into the sordid world of Marxist disinformation in which we find ourselves.

Further, without Beck, there would not have been the Washington tea party. Like him or hate him, Beck has changed the nation.

This is as good an opportunity as any for a quick review of how we got where we are today, and we can start with a video of an interview with ex-KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov, who shows how Americans were brainwashed through KGB methods such as demoralization and manipulation of and by the media. One thing that sticks in my mind from Yuri’s talks is that people brainwashed by these methods refuse to believe the truth and are essentially dead to the truth. “These people cannot be changed by logic. The change is complete and irreversible,” as Yuri puts it.

Remember the last time you tried to debate with a “liberal” zombie? The change that zombie underwent at some time in his life was complete and irreversible, wasn’t it? Facts are irrelevant.

Only a nucleus of people who read history, keep up with talk radio and web sites like Laigle’s Forum have even a pinch of understanding of what is going on around us and why. The average American will look you in the eye and tell you with a straight face that our “liberalization” is a result of a natural evolution process. We just keep getting smarter and more sensitive to the needs of others. Praise be to Darwin!

The Soviet propaganda source laid bare in the above-linked video is only one of many. Our education system, as Yuri mentions, has undermined us almost to the point of no return. But the influence came not only from Soviet operatives. Another powerful agency was the Frankfurt School, a group of German Marxists who came to America to escape Hitler and showed their gratitude by teaching their host country to hate its founders, its traditions and its culture. Herbert Marcuse, a famous 60s radical and member of our pseudo-intelligentsia, was a scion of that group. Still another group was the more-or-less home-grown communist agents like Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven, who taught other leftists how to manipulate us. Then there were our early educational theorists like John Dewey and his myriad clones. Reaching way back, there were psychologists like Freud and Pavlov, and later the “sexologists” Masters and Johnson who taught that sexual promiscuity is our reason for living. Then there was Dr. Spock who taught us how to spoil kids, and Timothy Leary, who taught spoiled kids how to do drugs. Radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin, pushed for welfare and abortion and aided in breaking up families by redefining “abuse” of women, making it include things as prosaic as “giving your wife the silent treatment,” and hypocritically warned of child abuse while endorsing pedophilia. Thanks to their efforts, the institution of “no-fault divorce” was born, which converted the marriage contract into a worthless piece of paper for millions of husbands, who were often rendered penniless in “family” court in the headlong national effort to “protect women and children.” Similar agents of change were pedophiles like NAMBLA founder Allen Ginsberg, and homosexual activists who introduced and pushed for “gay” marriage to further undermine what was left of the American family. The Liberation Theologists made minorities feel oppressed and helpless and urged them to “strike back” at whites, their “oppressors,” rather than raise themselves out of poverty and ignorance through hard work and study, the only way to raise oneself out of poverty and ignorance. The net effect of these hate mongering racists, working in tandem with the educational left, was to create walls of ignorance, prejudice and hatred that will take decades to tear down. Likewise, the developers of the Delphi method, whether wittingly or unwittingly, made a significant contribution to mind control, manipulating participants to accept ideas – even dangerous ones – by “mainstreaming” them. Finally, as David Kupelian reminds us, Madison Avenue advertisers have contributed mightily to plunging us into a bottomless moral abyss where good is evil and vice-versa. (I’m sure you can think of many more such contributors to the brainwashing of America).

If you look at the sleaze surrounding Obama in his college days you get an idea of who many of the other movers and shakers were in the movement to destroy traditional America and replace it with Marxist utopian ideals.

We find that almost all of the ideas promulgated by these “agents of change” are now chillingly mainstream or close to it. Likewise you will find very few liberals who care that the White House resident has communists among his czars or his past mentors. In the ghetto, you’ll find almost no one who objects.

The Dems have them firmly in place down on their plantation.

So where does this leave Glenn Beck?

If I had Glenn Beck in front of me I would say:

You have focused bravely on monumental issues and I admire you for it. In the final analysis, every single one of these issues – from socialist health care to welfare for rich bankers – stems from the unwillingness of American politicians and judges to honor the Constitution. But the Constitution also has rules governing who can be president and who can’t.

I am therefore asking you to focus fairly on the eligibility issue. Give it its just due and please respect truth seekers whose quest has taken them down other trails than yours. They are your potential allies and you can win them back with a little extra effort.

by Anthony Horvath

To begin with, I need to say that as an occasional reader of the InternetMonk blog, I almost always approve of almost everything that I read there. Michael Spencer gets a lot of things right and a lot of things he says needs to be heard by the Church. So this is not knee jerk reaction. Indeed, I find him a kindred spirit and frankly wish that I didn’t have to challenge him on his recent blog entry, Christians: What are you saying about the President?

Before I begin, I should also mention that there is a sense in which I’m singling him out unfairly. I have been hearing similar sentiments from a variety of places. So, this should be read as a challenge to Spencer but also a whole host of other commentators too. Rightly or wrongly, his post is being taken as representative of several worrisome trends.

The IM begins with a litany of comments that he has heard that he finds disgraceful. Without hearing the context in which they were spoken we are left to take them on their face. There isn’t much we can do about that. We certainly can’t ask him to substantiate each one. Some of them we can join in denouncing, but others I think I’d like to hear the arguments for. Did Mr. Spencer solicit their arguments even? Therein lies the first problem. Mr. Spencer leaves little room for the possibility that the speakers have good reasons for what they are saying. Rather, we are told with utter certitude that these are all “threatening, hateful, hostile or untrue words.”

That approach only works if you expect that your audience already accepts the terms of the discussion, which of course most of the people commenting on the entry did. But since the whole point is to persuade those who don’t accept those terms to think like you then in my view you have to do more than just throw out statements that you expect any reasonable person to reject. Granted, we don’t want to endorse something that will get you on ‘some FBI list’ but I personally don’t see an inherent contradiction (for example) between praying for someone and hating them, or at least hating what they stand for.

Perhaps more worrisome then the possibility that a caricature is being painted is that the concern is over seeing “a black Democrat take the office of the President.”

That is utterly ridiculous. I know a lot of people who are horrified at an Obama presidency and none of them care one lick that he is black. What about the wide spread support of Alan Keyes? What about the folks who pined for Condi Rice to run? Then, when we heard examples of contemptible statements none of them supported the racial aspect. So where did this come from? I’ll tell you what it sounded like to me- it sounded like a very clever way to call people racists without using the word. Saying it bluntly would have seen immediately as insulting and patently false. Instead, it was still insulting and patently false, but cleverly worded. Still an insult and still patently false. Mr. Spencer calls people to repentance for saying the things they said. He should repent for this insult to fellow Christians.

But I don’t want to dwell on this aspect. My problems with his post run far deeper.

Spencer’s arguments after this basically have two halves. The first half is ‘No, I don’t agree with Obama but I still wish him well.’ The second half is his exposition on what the Christian’s attitude on government should be. I will take them each in turn and then wrap it up with a discussion of worrisome subtext to Mr. Spencer’s arguments, and others I’ve heard and read as well.

Like the many pundits and bloggers wishing Obama a ‘successful’ presidency, Mr. Spencer says: Read the rest of this entry »

 EU flag over Buckingham Palace creating a furor

By Donald Hank

No Union Jack is in sight atop the home of the royal family. But if the following web site is a reflection of the reality over there, things are really heating up.

Click here to see the blue flag (no, it’s not the Union Jack!) and read the comments

For those who haven’t been following this issue here, citizens of the UK have been denied the opportunity to vote on whether or not to allow their constitution, which dates back to the Magna Carta, to be replaced (superceded) by the EU Constitution.

That is because powerful politicians have signed on to various treaties over the years that, bit by bit, took away the sovereignty of the Brits, who would almost certainly nix the EU Constitution if they could.

How could this happen, you ask?

Look around you: Americans too have a long history of having policies shoved down their throats by politicians, some elected but many not. The Council on Foreign Relations acts in some ways like an arm of the government, setting policy, much of it highly unpopular, behind our backs. This trend heated up when we were forced to accept Most Favored Nations status for China. The people didn’t want this, would not have voted for it, but our leaders suddenly took the ball and ran with it, and next thing you knew, we had betrayed Taiwan and jumped in bed with the Red Chinese, their-and our-worst enemies in that region, and are becoming poorer every day as a result.

Next came NAFTA. You didn’t vote for it. But unelected zealots in the CFR pushed for it and eventually, they found a stooge to sign it and now you have a treaty that was touted originally as bound to favor the US, but wound up increasing our trade deficit, making us all poorer. Then there was an open-border policy, amnesty for illegal aliens, CAFTA, and now the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership) and soon a truck route to deliver Chinese goods all over North America in Mexican trucks, and now the latest trick: a military partnership that grants Canadian military personnel authority over you and me.

What are we losing, you say?

Sovereignty, and economic power.

Why?

Because powerful people many of whose names are unknown to us, are deeply entrenched in high places, and they are protecting their own personal interests at the expense of citizens, enriching other nations, most of which are hostile to us, for their own gain but also out of a Marxist zeal to see our wealth redistributed to poorer countries.

The Great American Experiment has been hijacked.

Suddenly, Americans in the know feel a great deal of solidarity with the British, because we are all in the same boat.

The people who gave the world the Magna Carta now joins the people who founded the most powerful nation on earth in ceding their power back to a few powerful men.

But by the looks of the above-linked web site, the rich and powerful have not figured out how to make them like it.

Nor have our rich and powerful figured out how to make us like the three candidates they have foisted upon us.

Tom Cox ” fires” the GOP

Fellow conservatives and constitutionalists: Have you noticed as I have, that when you vote for the lesser of two evils for President, you still get evil?

 I have threatened to vote third-party in the past, but the fear tactics of the Republicans have pulled me back at the last minute. This year is different. I am watching the Constitution Party (CP) very carefully. If they nominate Dr. Alan Keyes as their candidate for President, I will vote for him, even if I have to write him in

 Keyes is the only guy in the whole field with the backbone and principles to restore the federal government to its Constitutional functions and limits. The Democrats and Republicans lost interest in the Constitution long ago, and are content to squabble over power until the nation goes down the drain.

 The Libertarians are OK on some issues, but they are clueless on national defense and sovereignty. Defending personal freedom is meaningless if our nation is attacked and destroyed.

 This was a great country, once, and it can be again, but only if we act soon. Stop choosing between evils. Check out the Constitution Party, http://www.constitutionparty.com/

 Tom Cox
Charlotte, TN

Apologetics Critical to Homeschoolers, All Christians, Says Academy

MEDIA ADVISORY, April 14 /Christian Newswire/ — Athanatos Online Academy offers course modules about the facts of the faith to supplement curriculums for churches, homeschool organizations, while remaining available to individuals.

The academy offers an Apologetics Certificate program as well. The academy home page is www.athanatosministries.org/academy.

The apologetics academy offers affordable, short term courses that are easy to plug in to existing programs.

Executive Director Anthony Horvath explains, “If you’re studying the conditions that led to the fall of Rome you’re also talking about the same context in which the New Testament came into its final form. Our courses on the creeds or the New Testament canon would help students see the relationship between Christianity and history. That is something we are convinced homeschooling families are interested in.”

Horvath explains that apologetics is consistent with the incarnation and a rejection of Gnostic ways of thought, “God didn’t have to come in the flesh. He is the one that stepped into history and challenged people to believe the miracles which they saw with their own eyes. God answered the problem of pain and suffering by entering into the human experience. He could have dealt with us apart from our senses, but he didn’t.”

Horvath argues that people are confused about apologetics, “Many people think apologetics and they think arm twisting. But apologetics can just be setting the facts straight. But apologetics also represents a way of thinking, too. Jesus said to love God with your heart, yes, but also with your mind. Homeschoolers understand this.”

The online academy is not about convincing nonChristians to become Christians but to equip Christians with the facts and evidences for Christianity so that they can more effectively minister to family, friends, and others that they meet. Horvath argues, “We need informed Christians because uninformed Christians tend to fall away completely- or at least their children tend to. It helps when you understand where Christianity fits into other areas of study.”

The academy’s courses are two to five weeks long and do not have a burdensome workload. Much of the reading material is available on the Internet but the academy aims to expose people to the writings of top Christian scholars, too.

The Academy is in session four times a year and the next session begins April 21st. The academy is enrolling now. Group rates are available.

The academy page is www.athanatosministries.org/academy

You may contact Anthony at 202-280-7971 or press@athanatosministries.org