Ann Coulter Remembers: Phyllis Stewart Schlafly, 1924-2016

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-09-05.html

September 5, 2016 - Phyllis Stewart Schlafly, 1924-2016

She was valedictorian of her high school class and won a full scholarship to a Catholic womens college, but decided it was not challenging enough, so she worked her way through Washington University. With no scholarship money, Schlafly earned spare money as a model and also as a machine-gunner at a St. Louis ordnance plant -- at that time the worlds largest. 

She earned straight As from Washington University and graduated a year early, Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha (the National Political Science Honor Society). Her undergraduate political science professor wrote that her intellectual capacity is extraordinary and her analytical ability is distinctly remarkable . . . I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that [Schlafly] is the most capable woman student we have had in this department in ten years. 

Schlafly then attended Harvard graduate school on a scholarship, earning a Masters degree in political science in seven months. She received As in constitutional law, international law, and public administration, and an A- in modern political theory. (And this was long before Everyone-Gets-An-A grade inflation.) 

Though Harvard Law School did not admit women, Schlaflys professors urged her to stay and attend law school. Alternatively, they proposed that she earn her doctorate. (Imagine the Harvard faculty meetings if she had stayed on and become a professor there!)

Her constitutional law professor at Harvard called her brilliant -- and consider that this was back when Harvard was a serious place, so it meant something. The professor who intervened on her behalf, Benjamin Wright, was a distinguished constitutional historian -- the sort of legitimate scholar who probably wouldn't have a chance of being hired by today's Harvard. 

Schlafly said no thanks to Harvard Law and instead went to Washington, D.C. for a year, where she worked at the precursor institution to the American Enterprise Institute. It was the only time this monumental American political figure lived in the nations capitol. 

After D.C, she returned to Missouri in 1949, married Republican lawyer Fred Schlafly, and raised six amazingly accomplished children in Alton, Illinois, where she lived until Fred's death in 1994.

In 1977, when being harangued by Dr. Joyce Brothers on the Merv Griffin Show, Schlafly mistakenly claimed Harvard Law School had been admitting women since at least 1945 and said she knew that because she almost went there. In fact, Harvard Law School did not begin admitting women for another several years. But in 1945, Harvard was prepared to make an exception for Phyllis Schlafly.

Years later, when Schlafly was testifying against the Equal Rights Amendment, the woman who almost became the first woman ever to graduate from Harvard Law School was ridiculed by potty little state legislators for not having a law degree. Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), for example, called her one of those women with absolutely no legal training stand there brandishing law books, telling people what ERA 'really' means. 

So in 1976, at age 51, while writing her syndicated column, raising six children, defeating the E.R.A. -- and in the middle of writing an 800-page book assailing Henry Kissinger -- Schlafly went to Washington University Law School in St. Louis. She graduated near the top of her class and won the award in Administrative Law. 

Though Schlafly is most famously associated with her stunning, nearly miraculous, defeat of the E.R.A., she has played a pivotal role in a broad range of political controversies for more than half a century. 

Schlafly managed her first congressional campaign in 1946, at age 22. The year after she married, she ran for Congress herself, losing to a popular Democratic incumbent. She ran and lost again against another popular Democratic incumbent in 1970. These may be the only quixotic battles she failed to win.

During 1970 congressional race, her opponent ceaselessly sneered that Schlafly should be home raising her children. Schlafly responded: My opponent says a womans place is in the home. But my husband replies, a womans place is in the House -- the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, feminists think they invented that line.

In 1964, she wrote A Choice, Not An Echo, which sold an astounding three million copies. (The average nonfiction book sells 5,000 copies; the average New York Times bestseller sells 30,000 copies.) This book would change the Republican Party forever. In this respect, it was not unlike many battles Schlafly would wage: First, she would conquer the Republican Party, then she could conquer the nation. 

A Choice, Not An Echo, is widely credited with handing Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for president. Goldwater lost badly in the general election -- but the Republican Party would never be the same. Goldwaters nomination began the retreat of sell-out, Northeastern Rockefeller Republicans -- who wanted to wreck the country with slightly less alacrity than the Democrats. 

Without Schlafly, without that book and that candidacy, it is unlikely that Ronald Reagan would ever have been elected president. 

Later in 1964, she collaborated with Admiral Chester Ward on another book, The Gravediggers. This book accused the elite foreign policy establishment of cheerfully selling out the nations military superiority to the Soviet Union. It sold an astounding 2 million copies. 

Also with Ward, Schlafly co-authored the extremely influential (and extremely long, at over 800 pages) Kissinger on the Couch methodically assailing Kissingers foreign policy. As with her crusade against the E.R.A. -- being waged simultaneously -- Kissinger on the Couch would turn conventional wisdom upside down. 

Until then, attacking Kissingers beloved Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT) was the secular version of challenging the Pope on infallibility -- or, I suppose, challenging a proposed constitutional amendment that purported to give women equal rights. But she was right, she was persuasive, and she overturned popular opinion.

Indeed, Schlafly has written prolifically about American foreign policy and military affairs, writing extensively about ICBMs and defense treaties. She was an early and vigorous proponent of a missile defense shield. 

Meanwhile, feminists engaged in cliffhanger debates about whether it was appropriate for feminists to wear lipstick. 

That Phyllis Schlafly is the mortal enemy of a movement that claims to promote women tells you all you need to know about the feminists. That many people alive today are unaware of Schlaflys achievements tells you all you need to know about the American media.

Almost no one remembers this now, but when Schlafly turned her attention to the E.R.A., no reasonable person would have supposed that the amendment could have been stopped. In 1971, the House passed it by 354 to 24. The next year, the Senate had passed it by a vote of 84 to 8. Thirty states had approved it in the first year after it was sent to the states for ratification. Only eight more states were needed, within the next seven years. There was little question that the E.R.A. was about to become our next constitutional amendment.

But the E.R.A. had not yet faced Phyllis Schlafly. Beginning in 1972 and over the next eight years, thanks to Schlafly and her magnificently patriotic organization, the Eagle Forum, only five more states ratified it. In the same time period, five states rescinded their earlier ratifications, for a net total of zero ratifications. 

Not surprisingly given her background, one of Schlaflys most devastating arguments against the E.R.A. was that it would end the female exemption from the draft. Though the amendments proponents sneered that this was preposterous, she was right. Law professors would soon be making the exact same point in the likes of the Yale Law Journal. 

She unflinchingly pressed points that polite people thought it bad taste to talk about. Academics prefer to approve the general sentiment and not think about any messy details or facts. Thus, for example, Schlafly questioned how ERA would affect gays, abortion, adoption, widows benefits, divorce law, and the military. She had an instinctive knack for pulling at the string that quickly unravels liberal nonsense. 

Schlafly was composed, brilliant and relentless. Among her campaign initiatives against the ERA, Schlafly sent quiches to all the U.S. Senators who voted for the ERA with a friendly note saying, Real men don't draft women. A subscriber to the Phyllis Schlafly Report wrote to her in 1972: "We beat ERA in Oklahoma today and all we had was your report. I just went to the Capitol and passed it around and we beat it."

Schlaflys arguments trumped the political platforms of both parties, both Republican and Democratic presidents and their wives, and a slew of Hollywood celebrities including Carol Burnett, Marlo Thomas, Phil Donahue, Alan Alda, and Jean Stapleton. As Schlafly said, they have the movie star money and we have the voters. 

Or, as George Gilder said, the only person on the other side was Phyllis Schlafly, but that was enough.

Reviewing a history of the sexual revolution in the New Yorker, John Updike wrote: If the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion, was . . . the crowning achievement of the sexual revolution, the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, which ran out of time in 1982, with only three more states needed for ratification, was the legal triumph of the counter-revolution, led in this instance by Phyllis Schlafly . . ." 

It was almost unfair for Schlafly to train her analytical mind on the feminists. But what the feminists lacked in linear thinking, they made up for in their hegemonic control of the mainstream media. 

No matter. Throughout her career, Schlafly refused to be intimidated by mediocre opinion makers decreeing what the bien pensant were supposed to think. She would take positions that almost no academic would defend, not because it was wrong, but simply because it was so contrary to acceptable opinion. 

The most unfathomable aspect of Schlaflys success to todays political activists is that she mobilized a vast army of women -- and she did it without the Internet. Not without reason, she has been called the greatest pamphleteer since Thomas Paine. (But unlike Paine, she never went bad.)

The story behind Phyllis Schlaflys biography provides a good snapshot of Schlaflys power to inspire. The books author, Carol Felsenthal, had written a book review for the Chicago Tribune in 1977 ridiculing Schlaflys ninth book, The Power of the Positive Woman as irrational, contradictory, and simple-minded. 

And then something extraordinary happened. Felsenthal says: Two days later, the letters of protest started coming, and they kept coming -- from people who were enraged that I had insulted Our Savior, as one letter writer called Schlafly, or Our Wonder Woman, as another called her. 

Felsenthal noted that her newspaper, The Chicago Tribune did not even run a letters column for book reviews, so these werent for publication. Though Felsenthal had written hundreds of columns before this, she said she could count on one hand the number of letters they provoked. These women, she said, were writing for one reason only -- to convert me, to make me see the light. 

Naturally, Felsenthal became fascinated with the woman who could arouse such passionate support. The end result was Felsenthals meticulously researched, definitive biography of Phyllis Schlafly, titled: Phyllis Schlafly: The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority. Charmingly, the toughest part of Felsenthals project was overcoming Schlaflys resistance to the very idea of a biography. 

There is no major national debate in the past half-century in which Schlaflys powerful, salubrious influence is not manifest.

She staunchly opposed abortion, gambling and gay marriage and equally strongly supported Ronald Reagan and the strategic defense initiative. One of the rare times she disagreed with Reagan was over the idea of having another Constitutional Convention. She was right and she won. In 1996, Schlafly supported Pat Buchanan for president and in 2008 she supported Duncan Hunter, specifically opposing Mike Huckabee.

On March 11, 2016, Schlafly officially endorsed Donald Trump for president.

Schlafly wrote about a complicated issues with insight and clarity. Time and again she would disembowel a 500-page legalistic monstrosity with a short syndicated column. Like an Olympic athlete, her talent was to make it seem easy.

She was as proficient as any law professor in the seriousness of her arguments. This is all the more impressive because she is writing for busy people -- housewives and politicians -- people who probably wouldn't mind a more purely rhetorical effort. But she never condescended to her audience. People who dismiss her as a mere rabble-rouser either havent read her work or have no idea what actual "scholarship" would be. 

The sheer breadth of the issues Schlafly took on is astonishing. It is impossible to think of anyone alive today who addresses such a range of topics in any depth. Most public figures focus on one or two issues and stick with those. Not Schlafly -- and with no detriment to her analysis. (If anyone on the left did this with Schlaflys skill, there would be monuments, Time magazine Person of the Year awards, and hagiographic Hollywood movies.)   

Schlafly commented on her boundless energy, saying, "It solves a lot of problems if you're busy."

For someone who spent so much time attacking liberal policies and received so much abuse in return -- Schlafly was remarkably free from ad hominem (or ad feminem) rhetoric. She was spat upon, burned in effigy and had a pie thrown in her face. Bomb threats were called in to her speeches. Feminist Betty Friedan once told her, "I'd like to burn you at the stake." Feminist Midge Costanza said Schlafly and Anita Bryant would make "a fine set of bookends" for Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

But Karen DeCrow, who debated Schlafly more than 50 times as president of the National Organization for Women from 1974-77, said she enjoyed those debates. "Phyllis is smart, so it was fun, DeCrow said. I never found Phyllis to be unpleasant, unfriendly or uncooperative." Felsenthal reports that during an interview, feminists surrounded Schlafly, spat at her and shoved middle fingers in her face. She says Schlafly "didn't pause, she didn't even blink." 

Schlaflys retorts were more subtle, once noting during a debate on the ERA before jeering Brown University coeds that "another sexist difference between men and women, is that women hiss." But she never got personal or vicious -- as they did with her. She was a true lady. 

Though conservative women in later generations are often compared to Schlafly, all of us combined could never match the titanic accomplishments of this remarkable woman. Schlafly is unquestionably one of the most important people of in the twentieth century and a good part of the twenty-first. Among her sex, she is rivaled only by Margaret Thatcher. 

Schlafly once said that what shed most like to be remembered for is converting this nation to where it's as normal for parents to teach their kids to read before they get to school as it is to teach them to ride bikes." Based on her own successful home-schooling of her children, she has written wildly popular phonics instruction guides with tapes and a workbook.

The most fitting epitaph to Phyllis Schlafly is the last line of her profile at the Eagle Forum website, which concludes: The mother of six children, she was named 1992 Illinois Mother of the Year. You know she means it, and yet you also suspect she takes devilish pleasure knowing that the prominence given the award must drive feminists crazy.

Schlafly could have rested on her laurels after writing A Choice, Not an Echo. She could have rested on her laurels after defeating the E.R.A. Indeed, she could have rested on her laurels on any number of occasions over the past half century. America can be thankful that she did not.

Upon Ronald Reagans election in 1980, Senator Jesse Helms said, God has given America one more chance. With Schlafly and her long career, God gave America dozens of chances. 

Schlafly is survived by her six children, sons John, Bruce, Roger, and Andrew, daughters Liza Foreshaw and Anne Cori, 16 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. 

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Shortage of school psychologists in Georgia threatens academic and mental health needs

The effects the shortage of school psychologists has on families in Georgia are as numerous and unique as the problems children can face. 

Matthew J. Vignieri is a school psychologist in Hall County and co-chair of the Advocacy Committee of the Georgia Association of School Psychologists.

In this essay, he discusses an issue that gets little public attention in Georgia, the shortage of school psychologists.

By Matthew J. Vignieri

School psychologists in Georgia are struggling to meet the demands of high caseloads due to a severe shortage of professionals in the field.  These mental health specialists are typically employed by school systems and apply practical principles of psychology to improve educational outcomes.  A critical component of their work includes psychological evaluation, where they administer and interpret assessments of intelligence, psychological processing, and/or emotional well-being; the importance of these measures is accentuated by federal mandates requiring that they be utilized as part of a student’s eligibility for special education services.

Due to the shortage, school psychologist struggle to meet deadlines for these evaluations and have little time to utilize other aspects of their training including counseling and consultation with schools, families, students, and community providers.  Ironically, their ability to help develop and implement academic, social, emotional, and/or life-skills interventions can prevent many common problems from occurring in the first place, thus reducing the need for special education evaluations and services.  Regardless, having so few school psychologists ultimately leads to high evaluation caseloads which therefore make it difficult for an individual psychologist to assist in ways aside from assessment.

The effects that the shortage has on families in Georgia are as numerous and unique as the problems children can face.  One issue centers on the time it takes for a student to be assessed.  A child with a learning disorder may struggle in a general education setting for years before being evaluated and found eligible for specialized instruction. By that time, they are multiple grade levels behind their peers.

In some cases, catching up is impossible.  Children with emotional needs are worse off in many ways, as therapeutic services are not yet offered as part of special education plans.  Their parents may have to wait months for assessment results that are needed to make informed decisions regarding private mental healthcare.

National and state leaders in the field are still working to understand the extent of the shortage.  While there are close to 770 school psychologists overseeing Georgia’s estimated 1.6 million students, there are more than 50 available positions across the state.  Many of these positions will likely go unfilled during the 2016/2017 school year.

Determining the complex reasons behind the shortage is a work in progress, but it is certain that training comes into play somewhere. Over the past five years, an average of 27 school psychologists graduated from one of three training programs at Georgia State University, Georgia Southern University, or the University of Georgia. This past year only 18 students in total graduated from these programs.  Several of these will leave the public sector and/or state entirely in search of better work conditions, higher pay, and the ability to practice more broadly; all of this is available to some extent in surrounding states.  On the other end of the career timeline, the fact that a large percentage of school psychologists are eligible for retirement within five years is a factor that will compound the shortage in Georgia in the future.

It is likely that there is no one solution to increase the number of school psychologists across the state; doing so will necessitate a combined effort between national and state leaders in the field, legislators, school psychologist trainers, school administrators, and community members.  As some members of the public are unaware that school psychologists even exist, primary efforts must be towards promoting the practice, and thereby the shortage, more effectively. School psychologists, myself included, must try harder to attend school board meetings and meet with local and state legislators.  We must go beyond simply writing policy-makers, to sitting down face to face, extending our services, and building relationships.  And by all means, it is imperative that we become more active in local, state, and/or national school psychology and educator associations.

At the university level, school psychology trainers must put forth greater effort toward improving the internship process for certification in the field.  There is an abysmal lack of paid internships in Georgia, which leaves many prospective school psychologists with no choice but to finish their training in other states.  For example, the school psychology program at Ohio University is strategically partnered with their state’s Department of Education to offer internships with a salary close to $40,000.  Interns in Mississippi earn between $25,000 and $30,000 per year.  Georgia’s school psychology training programs are encouraged to form a coalition to improve the internship process via strong partnerships with not only with the Department of Education but every school system across the state.

As with many educational initiatives in our society, funding is one barrier toward increasing the numbers of school psychologists in Georgia.  While the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act provides several new opportunities for financing school psychologist’s efforts to improve school climate, federal House and Senate Appropriations Committees must commit to fully funding such initiatives.  Therefore, I implore legislators at all levels to support full funding for ESSA Title IV, particularly Part A.

Once appropriated, Georgia legislators must do everything possible to bring the state’s decades old funding formula for school psychologist positions into alignment with National Association of School Psychologist recommendations that one psychologist serve no more than 1000 students; the fact that school psychologists in Georgia have been funded at a state-wide ratio of 1:2475 for almost a quarter-century is completely unacceptable.

I challenge community members to imagine what Georgia would look like if it were possible to have a school psychologist in every single school building.  What is the potential for other sectors of our society after 10 years of teaching children in a manner that not only improves their academic well-being, but their emotional development and social potential?  I believe that Georgia is able to lead the way here, and increasing the number of school psychologists is just one step of many in a direction that will be of benefit to our society’s most important resource: our children.

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http://yournewswire.com/tens-of-thousands-of-scientists-declare-climate-change-a-hoax/

Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money. 

One of the experts is weather channel founder, John Coleman, who warns that huge fortunes are being made by man-made climate change proponents such as Al Gore.

Natural News reports:

In a recent interview with Climate Depot, Coleman said:

“Al Gore may emerge from the shadows to declare victory in the ‘global warming’ debate if Hillary Clinton moves into the White House. Yes, if that happens and the new climate regulations become the law of the land, they will be next to impossible to overturn for four to eight years.”

Climate change proponents remain undeterred in their mission, ignoring numerous recent scientific findings indicating that there has been no warming trend at all for nearly two decades.

Al Gore’s dire predictions of the melting of polar ice on a massive scale have proved to be completely false. In fact, in 2014 – a year that was touted as being “the hottest ever” in the Earth’s history – there were record amounts of ice reported in Antarctica, an increase in Arctic ice, and record snowfalls across the globe.

Debunking the “97 percent” lie

On top of those “inconvenient truths,” the White House’s assertion that 97 percent of scientists agree that global warming is real has been completely debunked. Several independently-researched examinations of the literature used to support the “97 percent” statement found that the conclusions were cherry-picked and misleading.

More objective surveys have revealed that there is a far greater diversity of opinion among scientists than the global warming crowd would like for you to believe.

From the National Review:

“A 2008 survey by two German scientists, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, found that a significant number of scientists were skeptical of the ability of existing global climate models to accurately predict global temperatures, precipitation, sea-level changes, or extreme weather events even over a decade; they were far more skeptical as the time horizon increased.”

Other mainstream news sources besides the National Review have also been courageous enough to speak out against the global warming propaganda – even the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece in 2015 challenging the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) pseudoscience being promulgated by global warming proponents.

And, of course, there are the more than 31,000 American scientists (to date) who have signed a petition challenging the climate change narrative and 9,029 of them hold PhDs in their respective fields. But hey, Al Gore and his cronies have also ignored that inconvenient truth, as well.

Many of those scientists who signed the petition were likely encouraged to speak out in favor of the truth after retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist John L. Casey revealed that solar cycles are largely responsible for warming periods on Earth – not human activity.

Al Gore and cronies continue getting richer from the global warming hoax

But the global warming crowd continues to push their agenda on the public while lining their pockets in the process. If you’re still inclined to believe what Al Gore has to say about global warming, please consider the fact that since he embarked on his crusade, his wealth has grown from $2 million in 2001 to $100 million in 2016 – largely due to investments in fake “green tech” companies and the effective embezzlement of numerous grants and loans.

You might want to take all of this information into serious consideration before casting your vote in the November election.

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Exceptionalism and Religious Freedom

https://youtu.be/YjntXYDPw44

https://www.good.is/articles/jordan-andersons-legendary-clapback

‘Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master’

via Facebook

In 1825, at the approximate age of eight, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled “Jordon”) was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio when, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On August 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter entitled “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master” was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance and dignity. That year, the the letter would be republished in the New York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child’s The Freedman’s Book. 

The letter mentions a “Miss Mary” (Col. Anderson’s Wife), “Martha” (Col. Anderson’s daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson’s son), and George Carter (a local carpenter). 

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jordon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve - and die, if it come to that - than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jordon Anderson

Learn more about Jordan Anderson here. 

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http://www.ligonier.org/blog/spiritual-disciplines-and-sinkhole-syndrome/

Spiritual Disciplines and the Sinkhole Syndrome

You know the story. A man has been a believer in Christ for decades. To all outward appearances he’s a man of Christian faithfulness and integrity. He has maintained a reputation as a fine example of public and private faithfulness to the things of God for decades. Then, without warning, it all collapses into a sinkhole of sin. Everyone wonders how it could have happened so quickly. In most cases, it soon becomes known that—like most sinkholes—the problem didn’t develop overnight.

Several years ago, this man likely had a relatively consistent devotional life through which the Lord often refreshed, strengthened, and matured him. But with each passing year, his busy life became ever busier. Increasingly he saw his devotional life more as a burden—a mere obligation sometimes—than a blessing. Because of the massive doses of Bible teaching he’d heard—in addition to the knowledge gained teaching church Bible classes himself—he began to imagine that he needed less private prayer and Bible intake than when he was younger and not as spiritually mature. Besides, he had so many other God-given responsibilities that surely God would understand that he was too busy to meet with Him every day.

One small concession led to another; one plausible rationalization led to the next, until the devastating day when a tipping point was reached and the spiritual weakness developed by too many private compromises could no longer sustain even the appearance of Christian integrity. And into the sinkhole fell his reputation, witness, ministry, and perhaps much more.

If you’re a strong, young Christian, passionate about the things of God, and you find it impossible to imagine yourself coming to such a condition: beware. This situation could easily be yours in a few years. The words of 1 Corinthians 10:12 are an apt admonition here: “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”

I’ve been in pastoral ministry for twenty-four years. For fifteen years I’ve been a professor of biblical spirituality. I’ve written several books and many articles related to spirituality. I speak on the subject to future ministers and missionaries on a daily basis in the seminary classroom, and in churches and conferences around the country almost every weekend. And yet I will freely admit that it’s harder for me to maintain my devotional life now than ever in my life. That’s because I’m busier now than ever. I have many more responsibilities than I had as a young man. And they all take time, time that must come from somewhere.

As the pressures of life increase and more deadlines loom, it becomes harder to maintain time for the devotional life. And herein is where the erosion begins.

At the outset it’s likely that very few will know when the hidden part of your spiritual life begins crumbling. Just as imperceptible movements of water underground can carry away the earth beneath long before anyone on the surface perceives it, so the pressures of life can secretly displace the soil of our private spiritual disciplines long before the impact of their absence is visible to others. The more public parts of a Christian’s life, such as church involvement and various forms of ministry, can often continue with little observable change right up until the awful moment of collapse and the hypocrisy is revealed.

I’m sure you’re already familiar with many factors that undermine intimacy with Christ. Realize that it’s almost certain that the “time-thieves” trying to steal from your time with God will only increase as the years pass. My hope is that this article will alert you to this subtle, creeping tendency so that it won’t overtake you.

Never be deceived by the temptation to think that with the increasing spiritual maturity you expect to come with age, the less you will need to feast your soul on Christ through the Bible and prayer. What Jesus prayed in John 17:17 for all His followers—“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”—applies to us all throughout our lives.

Jesus practiced what He prayed for us. While Jesus is infinitely more than our example, nevertheless, He is also our example of sanctified living, of life coram Deo. The Bible tells us that Jesus regularly attended when God’s people assembled to hear the Scriptures (Luke 4:16) and also that He would get alone to meet with His Father (Matt. 14:23). Jesus’ followers need both the sustaining grace that comes through the public worship of God as well as that which comes to us when we meet with Him individually.

I don’t want to minimize the role of the church in preventing spiritual shipwreck in the life of the believer. In this piece, however, I am writing to warn those who will increasingly be tempted to think that frequently meeting God with others can compensate for seldom meeting with Him alone.

There are seasons of life when our devotional habits may be providentially altered. But the general rule is that those reconciled to God through the cross of His Son need conscious, personal communion with Him every day until the day they see Him face to face. And the ordinary means by which He gives it is through the personal spiritual disciplines found in Scripture, chief of which are the intake of the Word of God and prayer.

Pursue the Lord with a relentless, lifelong, obstacle-defying passion. Resolve never to let your daily life keep you from Jesus daily.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

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On Suffering and Serenity

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/09/17348/

My Same-Sex Attraction and My Brother’s Disease: On Suffering and Serenity

Suffering can lead to serenity, if we respond to it with trust in a loving God who will make all things right. We must remember: Love would not allow what Love could not restore.

My brother and I are as different as night and day. He has an olive complexion with deep brown eyes, while I have lighter tones and eyes of blue. Whereas I am passionate and can be easily ignitable, he has a calm and even keel to his demeanor that I’ve come to admire. These and countless other differences I could list should come as no surprise because we are not biologically related. My brother was adopted as an infant, and sixteen months later, I was welcomed into the same family.

Our parents were generous and loving, and they provided a stable home for us. We grew up in an idyllic middle-class neighborhood in a 1950s-era two-story house. We walked to our elementary school, memories of which I cherish to this day. While we both had experienced the tragedy of being separated from our birth families, our adoption was a beautiful redemption. My brother and I are forever grateful for the gift of our wonderful mom and dad. But tragedies, no matter how lovingly responded to, can still produce wounds that eventually must be attended to. Both my brother and I were thus wounded from the beginning. As with most other things, we dealt with our wounds very differently. I began asking questions in search of my birth mother as soon as I understood what being adopted meant. These were questions my brother resented and would not himself ask for twenty more years.

My brother was also born with a physical deformity. A surgery performed in early childhood only served to provide painful memories and later complications. Whereas I was physically healthy, my brother always seemed to have health struggles. While this wasn’t “fair,” we didn’t think about it. We simply lived our lives, walking to school together, teasing and fighting with each other, and spending more time in our backyard pool than out of it during the summer. This continued until one summer when I went for an extended stay with relatives, including a sexually predatory uncle. Never to be the same, I returned home and withdrew into my room. I did not laugh with my brother any more, and my strong propensity toward depression began to manifest itself. I was ten.

Meanwhile, my brother’s struggles increased. His physical problems made him the target of merciless teasing that would reach a hellish crescendo in high school. I was isolated, depressed, and infected with shame over the sexual abuse that I still kept secret. At age twelve, I began to experience same-sex attraction, which greatly added to my confusion. By the time we were fifteen and sixteen, I was clinically depressed, wearing a tuxedo to the school dance, and contemplating suicide. My brother was getting drunk during lunch hour just to get through the days. Blind to each other’s pain because we were absorbed in our own, he and I led parallel lives of dysfunction. There was minimal interaction and even some enmity between us.

Somehow we survived and graduated. Though I had experienced a genuine conversion to Christ that undoubtedly saved my life in the midst of my suicidal, gender-bending days, the festering wounds remained. In college I abandoned my faith to embrace a lesbian identity and life. My brother’s life lacked direction, and his penchant for numbing his pain through alcohol increased to full addiction. In our quests to quell our aches, we both walked away from our Creator and His revealed will. This demonstrated that our problem went much deeper than our hurts. We were not only wounded. In C.S. Lewis' words, we were “rebels who needed to lay down our arms.”

Eventually, by God’s grace, we were both roused to repentance by the “megaphone of pain.” For my part, to shorten a story told in other places, I traded my lesbian-centered identity for one centered in being a beloved child of God, and I sought to obey Him once more. For my brother’s part, he was finally diagnosed as having a degenerative disease of his muscles, more damage from the womb revealed. This diagnosis brought my brother back into the arms of the Good Shepherd who was searching for him.

My brother has a tattoo on his upper arm: “Live free or die.” Though it probably resulted from a drunken dare, it expresses a valid desire. We were created for life and freedom. But true life and true freedom can’t be found apart from the Creator, the source of Life. And as any recovering addict or repentant sexual transgressor knows, the one who commits sin is the slave of sin. Real freedom comes only in walking in harmony with God and thereby maturing into virtue, goodness, and self-mastery.

I have not seen that tattoo in over twenty years. My brother always wears long sleeves because long ago his disorder left his upper arms wasted and skeletal. The tattoo I do see is the one on his wrist to remind him of the One who suffered on his behalf by being nailed to a tree. This helped him maintain sobriety. When he was tempted to drink, he would look at his wrist and connect his pain to Jesus on the Cross, where suffering becomes redemptive and Christ’s pain heals all who are willing to say “yes” to Him.

I had a different journey of dealing with depression, seeking sexual sobriety unto chastity, and recovering from much dysfunction. My twenty-seventh birthday came during a season of facing some deep wounds. I didn’t feel like celebrating and decided to go away. I told my friend Diane before leaving, “It’s not like it’s been just one thing, but it’s been thing upon thing upon thing.” That day, my friend Karen gave me a birthday card saying she had a sense that Joel 2:25 was especially for me at that time. I knew the verse well, a comforting and well-known promise, but in her handwriting, the second half of the verse leapt out at me. “I will restore the years the locusts have eaten: the swarming locust, the stripping locust, the creeping locust, and the gnawing locust.” Not just one thing, but thing upon thing upon thing.

Thus away to a rustic cabin I went for three days of solitude, prayer, and fasting. I had one purpose: to question the Author about my life script. Under a large wooden cross on a hilltop, I sat down to talk to God as I enjoyed the evening sky. I had a list in my hand, a litany of complaints over life events that I would have written differently, beginning with the circumstances of my conception.

As soon as I began to speak, the wind began to blow. A storm of some kind was coming, but the sky was cloudless, and I was undeterred. As I continued, the wind picked up and lightning began to strike. Each time I raised my voice, the wind whipped harder, until I was practically shouting. I watched in wonder at the repeated and increasing flashes that were streaking across the darkening sky. I finally fell silent, bested by the wind and in awe of the magnificence and beauty of the most amazing and continuous electrical storm I have ever seen. Lights danced in the firmament, and the only time I used my voice again that night was to praise their Maker.

This glorious display was followed by two days of silence. I received no answers to my questions. I reread Job and was reminded that I was the one who would give account for my life to God, not He to me. In my final time of prayer before departing on the third day, under the cross once more, I laid down my life’s list and declared that I would choose to trust Him though I could not understand His ways. Then in the silence, as clearly as I have ever heard anything, I heard His Spirit whisper: “Love would not allow what Love could not restore.” In this gracious promise, I was given something far better than understanding it all. I was given the peace that surpasses answers and understanding, along with the hope of the gospel.

The Serenity Prayer is a blessing and gift used in almost every twelve-step model of recovery there is. Most of us know the first four lines:

God grant me the serenity 
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference. 

Currently, however, there is less and less acceptance of things we cannot—or should not—change. With the increased power of technology, there are more and more “scripts” that we simply refuse. Don’t like the biological sex and body you were born with? Get hormones and surgery. Change it. Dealing with the wrenching pain of not being able to have your own biological children? Don’t worry about commodifying other humans and even your own hoped-for progeny. Change it. Are you pregnant but with too many babies or a baby with too many chromosomes? Abort and try again. Change it. Have a disabling condition that you can’t remedy? You don’t have to accept this script. Change it. Prepare your “final exit” with “dignity.” And the list goes on . . .

True serenity becomes a distant illusion and true acceptance nonexistent. All gives way to our culture’s new form of “courage.” This “courage” refuses any limits and seeks to alter, medicate, and assuage every experience that gives us pain or pause. Wisdom is lost completely. Believe me, I am all for alleviating suffering. Explore every moral means available to you. But there is ultimately a limit—ethical, medical, or otherwise—to many of our efforts in this regard.

As my brother ages, his disability progresses and his pain increases. It is a disease of dystrophy, not a terminal condition. But there is no cure, and there is a limit to what can be done palliatively to assist him. For him, to live in the body involves daily suffering. In our culture, many will rush to offer him the “on your own terms” option glorified by Me Before You if ever he should decide his pain is too much. Regardless of his responsibilities to his wife and child, our culture tells him that he has the right to self-determination—that he can set his own limits about the script he will “accept.”

As a same-sex attracted woman, I was offered a rewritten script from some Christians in which celibacy was not required of me. While I’m sure they thought it was compassion, it was also an easier path for them than accompanying me in the midst of my storm. If I thought I was transgendered today, I’m sure they would encourage me to seek surgery and applaud my “courage” to change, considerations for husband, children, and my long-term health and well-being notwithstanding.

But there is a second half of the “Serenity Prayer.” It provides the component needed to achieve the genuine serenity, courage, and wisdom sought in the prayer’s opening lines:

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
If I surrender to His Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next.
Amen.

“Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.” Read that again: Suffering can lead to serenity. If only we respond to that suffering with trust in a loving God who will make all things right. If only we receive His hope that extends beyond this life and world. The Lord is patient. He will help us come to that trust. He never stops pursuing us, longing to have compassion on us, if only we surrender and turn to Him in our aching anger.

Suffering and sorrow. Which of us would ever script our lives in such a way? My brother wouldn’t have chosen disease, addiction, or loss as part of his story. My birth mother would not have chosen a crisis pregnancy and the loss of her firstborn, nor my adoptive mother her infertility. On and on it goes. I never would have allowed sexual abuse or same-sex attraction to be written into my story. And yet it is that very suffering that helped lead me to serenity because it has led me to God.

I am many years down the road from being twenty-seven and the words I heard on the hillside. Since then, I have known joys I never could have dreamed or planned along with trials so stunning they left my prayers wordless and tear-filled not just for weeks or months, but for several years. But I have also now lived long enough to catch glimpses of at least a few “other sides” of these sufferings. There is a beautiful work in progress. God can triumph over any twist of plot the enemy of our souls scrawls across our pages, and He writes a much better story than we do.

This is not just my story or my brother’s story. It’s all of our stories. All of us are wounded from the womb. Sin has separated us from our Father. Life is our journey to find our true identity as beloved children of God and to let the Good Shepherd of our souls lead us home to Him. The Author behind both your story and mine is the King of Love. Give Him your “litany of locusts,” trust Him in your pain, and hear His promise anew: “Love would not allow what Love could not restore.”

Jean C. Lloyd, PhD, is a teacher and a happily married mother of two young children.

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