Apparently it’s now a scandal if you belong to a Christian church

Thoughtcrime, mob-enforced. But maybe they've gone too far this time

Apparently it’s now a scandal if you belong to a Christian church that believes basic Christian stuff

You’ve probably heard by now of the hit piece BuzzFeed has published about Chip and Joanna Gaines. It is, without a doubt, the most astoundinly shameless and irresponsible pieces of journalistic garbage that’s ever been published. And it’s not because a word of it is necessarily inaccurate. What’s truly so disturbing about this piece of gutter trash is that the entire piece implies there is something scandalous about the Gaines being what hundreds of millions of Americans are and have been their entire lives - Bible-believing Christians:https://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/chip-and-joanna-gaines-church-same-sex-marriage?utm_term=.gcpZEGwZW#.amwwRN8wZ

They have built a small empire, and they are not done yet. They have a huge retail space in Waco, as well as a new magazine, the Magnolia Journal; they have a real estate company; Joanna has a paint line and a home decor line. Season 4 of Fixer Upper begins Nov. 29.

They are also, as they detail in The Magnolia Story, devout Christians — Joanna has spoken of and written about her conversations with God. (God told her both to close her store to spend time with her children, and then to reopen it a few years later.) Their church, Antioch Community Church, is a nondenominational, evangelical, mission-based megachurch. And their pastor, Jimmy Seibert, who described the Gaineses as “dear friends” in a recent video, takes a hard line against same-sex marriage and promotes converting LGBT people into being straight.

So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage? And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s House Hunters and Property Brothers? Emails to Brock Murphy, the public relations director at their company, Magnolia, were not returned. Nor were emails and calls to HGTV’s PR department.

We’ve talked about this before. Media bias shows itself not necessarily in a presentation of falsehoods - although to be sure it sometimes takes that form - but more often in the way true facts are treated. The fact that an American couple belongs to a Christian church that believes homosexuality is a sin is not a matter that requires journalistic investigation. You don’t have to contact the church, interview anyone, seek confirmation or clarification . . . it’s basic, long-established, down-the-line Christianity. It’s as unremarkable as a journalist being told to spell words correctly.

Yet the writer of this keyboard-spewed vomit attempts to scandalize it simply by presenting it in the language and context of scandal. “Do the Gaines agree with the pastor?” (Why wouldn’t they?) “Calls were not returned!” (Why should they be? There’s no reason for the call to have been made in the first place.) “So in the absence of a response from them or their representatives, it’s worth looking at the severe, unmoving position Seibert and Antioch take on same-sex marriage.” (No. It’s not. It’s the same teaching Christian pastors have taught for two millenia. If you didn’t know that, that’s your fault. not the Gaineses’.)

But the goal here is to marginalize what has long been understood as mainstream. It’s to establish a new limit on freedom of religion. Whereas before, people of faith could apply their faith in their daily lives, including in their business careers, the new paradigm says you can believe anything you want in private, but it can’t affect anyone else in any way - at least not if liberals don’t like it. So if you’re Christians and you have a TV show, that might result in that TV show doing something liberals don’t like (e.g., only having opposite-sex couples featured), therefore, you can’t be Christians and have a TV show. It’s a scandal.

And the weaponized secular left will attempt to apply this in every other aspect of life as well. Any Christian who owns a business will be confronted with a demand that they explain themselves on the matter of homosexuality, and if they don’t reject what the Bible teaches, they will be the target of an effort to hound them out of their business lest they ever say or do anything not in compliance with the agenda of the secular left.

They’ve already been doing this for several years to professional athletes, getting in their faces and demanding to know if they would “accept a gay teammate,” then going insane if the answer hints even the slightest bit at biblical teaching on the matter.

But has the secular left gone too far with this? Is the populace starting to notice the fascistic tendencies of this phenomenon? This morning in the Washington Post, of all places, writer Brandon Ambrosino, who is gay and planning to marry another man, declares that the hit piece on the Gaineses is dangerous:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/12/01/buzzfeeds-hit-piece-on-the-gaines-family-is-dangerous/?utm_term=.65bc81b8e4a0

The piece starts off innocently enough by describing the success of Chip and Joanna Gaines, a husband-and-wife team whose series “Fixer Upper” is one of the most popular shows on HGTV. After pivoting to the religious beliefs of the Gaineses, and pointing out that they go to an evangelical church whose pastors oppose same-sex marriage, Aurthur then poses these questions:

“So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage? And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s ‘House Hunters’ and ‘Property Brothers’?”

The entire article is an elaborate exploration of that hypothetical question. And yes, it is very much hypothetical, by the reporter’s own admission: “Emails to Brock Murphy, the public relations director at their company, Magnolia, were not returned. Nor were emails and calls to HGTV’s PR department.”
But that does not stop Aurthur from writing almost 800 more words about the non-story. Her upshot seems to be: Two popular celebrities might oppose same-sex marriage because the pastor of the church they go to opposes same-sex marriage, but I haven’t heard one way or the other. (I can’t imagine pitching that story to an editor and getting a green light, by the way.)
Is the suggestion here that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate — a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?
In fact, that is exactly what the weaponized secular left is attempting to establish. If you are a Christian, you must be opposed to gay marriage. If you are opposed to gay marriage, you are a hater and you will probably do something discriminatory. Therefore, if you are a Christian, you must be silenced and/or forced to renounce what the Bible teaches on homosexuality, or you cannot be allowed to have any sort of career or livelihood.

Why else would BuzzFeed publish a story like this in the first place? It’s not news that two high-profile Americans happen to be Christians. And it’s not news that their Christian pastor agrees with the Bible on homosexuality. What BuzzFeed is asserting here is that this is no longer acceptable in our post-Christian culture, based on the train of logic outlined above.

And BuzzFeed just may have taken it too far here, and invited a very hard and painful snapback. Just as Americans got tired of being lectured by the media in the presidential campaign - and made their feelings known on Election Day - the response to this BuzzFeed hit piece seems to be demonstrating that people understand what’s going on here. The Gaineses are very popular, as is their show, and people recognize they are being attacked simply because of their faith. They have hurt no one. They have committed no crime. They have perpetrated no offense against anyone. But because they are Christians, they must be taken down.

That’s what BuzzFeed is trying to say. The public seems to be saying, “Enough of this garbage.” And if that’s really the reaction, then maybe the worm has finally turned, and maybe the snapback will be as hard and painful for the secular left as it ought to be.


Dan Calabrese

Pro Deo et Constitutione –
Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis
Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber

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