Episode 436 - Speaker Johnson’s Failures Leading To Complete Economic Thralldom

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See the link for the video of ‘Speaker Johnson’s Failures Leading To Complete Economic Thralldom – Herding The CIN’ at Rumble or YouTube

Last weeks program is missing since I had a lot of study to prepare for this weeks ‘Speaker Johnson’s Failures Leading To Complete Economic Thralldom – Herding The CIN.’ Johnson is Herding the CIN problem in the House of Representatives. More on CIN in ‘The Rest of The Story Section.’ The reality is that his failures have begun at the pulpit of every Congressional Member ‘identifying’ as Christian. According to the referenced #3 Pew Report, we have a great majority which have ‘identified’ as a Christian Congress. Does this mean we have Christian Nationalism?

I take the position of failure for Speaker Johnson in that the economic policies as well as the majority of legislation being brought forward for passage in the House, is not in alignment with his adult life efforts at the Alliance Defending Freedom, nor his time with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is not alone in these failures of policy and law. There are many particular failures stampeding the Citizenry into economic thralldom. These failures also extend to the numerous Protestants and few Catholics in Congress, who but for a few, ‘identify’ with a god/religion contrary to Foundational Christianity. Therefore, they act and vote according to the theology of that or those contrarian god(s). Along with these National Congressional Christians, don’t forget the multitudes of bureaucrats across all levels of governance who ‘identify’ as Christian but bow to another by doing the bidding of that god – the state.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Regarding the topics of Economic Thralldom, Economic Theology and Congress Members ‘identifying’ as Christian is a major rabbit hole, or I should say black hole, that I can easily run us all deeply down into. Additionally in the Reference section, there is a lot of information as to what real and meaningful legislation or resolutions Speaker Johnson sponsored – Well, not so meaningful, just typical for the Establishment feel good or tweaking law type stuff. Again, you can go to the references to see what he sponsored, co-sponsored and how he voted during his time in Congress.

All I can asses respecting Speaker Johnson’s failures and the 118^th Congress is that we have and can expect ‘more of the same road apples in the parade with no shovels and buckets that followup on the droppings.’ Imagine that marching band, never breaking formation having to follow on.

The following quote I am presenting next is not out of place for this week. When you really have a complete understanding of the full content of this posting: That of the Majority of Members in Congress being Christian.

Sam Adams wrote:

This was the dire effect of their foolish adulation of their Governor, while they professed to observe a day set apart in honor to the King of kings. – Their thanksgiving began with prophaness & ended in idolatry; or rather it began & ended with both. There is no question but the priests were the vicegerents of the Governor, or his heralds to publish his impious proclamations to the people. But is it not strange that the people were so king-ridden and priest-ridden, especially in matters which concern’d their Religion, as to look upon the joint authority of their Governor and Clergy, sufficient to justify them in sinning against the authority of God himself: and in acting in open violation of his law, revealed to them from Heaven with signs and miracles at Mount Sinai, and register’d in their book of the law, as well as engrav’d on the tables of their hearts!

Where We Are

It seems to be generally felt and acknowledged, that the affairs of this country are in a ruinous situation. With vast resources in our hands, we are impoverished by the continual drain of money from us in foreign trade; our navigation is destroyed; our people are in debt and unable to pay; industry is at a stand; our public treaties are violated, and national faith, solemnly plighted to foreigners and to our own citizens, is no longer kept. We are discontented at home, and abroad we are insulted and despised. – Philadelphia Freeman’s Journal, May 16, 1787

Those who know of and or understand that we have a Federal Government and a ‘shadow government’ functioning outside of the designated Constitutional limits, see the present Administrative and Congressional budgeting and financing of government activities as further destruction to the actual and guaranteed liberties of the Citizenry. Congressman Chip Roy sums up this March 8th House/Senate Spending Bill in an interview by Sahil Kapur:

…the newly passed government funding bill was “more of the same games, a lot of smoke and mirrors.” And he predicted the next package of bills will similarly be “garbage.”

…Roy said, “I think the speaker reflects a conference that likes to give lip service to fiscal restraint and refuses to act on it. That’s what I think.”

In the same article, Rep. Ralph Norman summed it up:

“He (Speaker Johnson) inherited a lot of this. No, I don’t blame him,” Norman said. “It’s like herding cats up here.”

As I have noted in many other programs, all governance, which encompasses policies, laws regulations, fiscal mechanisms are morally determined by the god of the religion the legislators, administrators, judges and bureaucrats attend to. Hence policies and legislation regarding economics is not jut moral, it is religious.

I will later discuss that the numerous members of Congress ‘identifying’ as Christians. Let me leave this moment with a reference to Mathew 23:27 first (Ye are like unto whited sepulchers) and then to the third reference in the References section at the end: Congress Remains Far More Christian than the Country – Denominational identity is dropping among lawmakers, but few are “nones.” by Kate Shellnutt. One has to clearly understand that those being chastised in the Biblical reference were the legal and political leaders of the people. Hmm, ‘dropping denominational identity but few ‘nones’. What do they ‘identify’ as?

More Than Opening Comments

With that, How dare I make such a strong statement regarding Speaker Johnson’s failures? The evidence is notably spread over the last one-hundred years in the policies and laws that have been allowed to be implemented by himself and his predecessors ‘identifying’ as some form of Christian. These policies and laws allow for egregious administrative bureaucracies to become a substitute ruling body that reigns unchecked tyranny across the nation and violate foundational Federalist and Anti-federalists governance principles, as well as Biblical principles of Liberty. Additionally, to the policy evidence, as I have noted over the last five weeks of programing, our historical Christian church polity has failed our citizenry, thus failing those who would vie to become one that is elected.

The failures of church polity and theology where predicted by the Anti-federalists. The general Christian beliefs at the Founding are contrasted with our present as noted from the governing principles in Sermons of the Revolution, such as that substantive sermon by Rev. Ezra Stiles (see Episodes 431 through 434).

One striking element to my charge against Speaker Johnson’s Failures is that he has been accused of being a Christian Nationalist. Yet, he has not developed policy or legislation to warrant such an accusation. He has compromised with the ‘whitewashed tombs’ of Congressional Members and now as Speaker moved forward agendas contrary to his acclaimed adult life efforts. What he is doing is continuing to pick up and take charge of the dead bones and decay of the uni-party Establishment. Marching along, ensuring the Cultural, and Law Structured policies will continue to bring about the Economic Thralldom of the Citizenry.

To be clear, I am not being specific to the most recent Continuing Resolution but to the divestiture from Speaker Johnson’s favored principles of a common theme in promoting a Christian World View. He speaks and the words echo in the sepulchers with no actuality in accordance to that World View.

My intention over the next few months is to re-introduce the Citizenry, from the Christian and the whole of the secular society, to the foundational principles of economics. American economics was based on Biblical principles. I have been doing a lot of refresher reading of many works not only from the time of the Reformation but through to our present, that are strong in the core concepts of Biblical economics. Yet, those in political leadership across the national spectrum are ignorant or worse, ignore these truths which would keep a free sovereign citizenry secure in their property and God given Liberties.

Keep in mind that private property and every sovereign liberty acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence has been and is now being made void or negligible by the actions of this Christian Congress.

The Majority in Congress Are Christian Nationalists?

Let me begin with a reference to a Pew Research that details ‘The religious composition of the 118th Congress.’ As a statement of fact, there are 469 Members in Congress that ‘self identify’ as Christian. Of these, 303 are grouped into the general category of Protestant. Would you not think that by virtue of these numbers, we should be seeing policies and leadership as, what Rev. Ezra Stiles called, a Christian Republic? Should we not be seeing leadership of Christian Congressional Nationalists?

Yet, we see that to ‘self identify’ as something is now vogue in meaning but to be at your very essence in reality, you are opposite of what you ‘identify’ as. In this series of discussions I will eventually delve deeper into Economic Thralldom or as Hayek called it, The Road to Surfdom.

Attempting To Stay Focussed

To keep focussed on the religious composition of Congress as well as the Leadership of Speaker Johnson respecting the history of American Economics, I will tease you this week with a challenge to read ‘The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States’ by John Chamberlain, originally written in 1959. With this book and others on Biblical Economics available, the average Citizen would take for granted that all of those ‘self identifies Christians’ elected into Congress would act in and according to the sovereignty of God. But wait, they do act according to the sovereignty of their gods – but to which god or gods are they making decisions?

The Rest of The Story

Speaker Johnson’s Failures begins with the CIN (Christian In Name) and lack of living according to the Sovereignty of the Biblical God. The complexity of Congress has been and continues to be the failures of the pulpits, since the early 1800’s, loosing their foundational Reformation principles and theology, the pulpits disassociated from governance. The 19^th century modernism with humanism in the lead divorced God’s sovereignty from governance, education, business and culture.

>It is not just the varying theologies with the 303 Protestants in Congress but the theological bending of Adam Smith that moderns gloom on too. I have been taking a dive into The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology by Stefan Schwarzkopf. An interesting point he brings out on page 4 in the Introduction is that:

Comprising historical and contemporary, and theoretical and empirical elements, economic theology can thus be defined as follows:

‘It is the study of the forms of interaction between theological imaginaries on the one hand, and economic thought and economic–managerial practices on the other, both past and present. It identifies explicit and implicit theologies inherent in economic concepts, institutions and practices as well as the role of economic terminology within theological thought, both past and present.’

Economic theology is thus not merely the study of religious teachings “about” economic problems. Economic theology understands the economic/economy and the theological as intimately connected rather than as separate subjects.

Therefore, the Protestants along with the 148 Catholics in the Congress, have proven what is evident – that their theology, especially economic theology can be all over the map. Regardless of what Thomas Aquinas taught on economic theory, most Catholics, as John D. Mueller writes regarding American Catholics, ‘exhibit the attention span of fruit flies when their faith impinges on their politics.’ They are totally unaware of the basic ‘just price theory’ of Thomas Aquinas or even those fundamental concepts of ‘utility and function’ in the economic assessments of Augustine of Hippo.

Hence, CIN is actively participating in SIN which leads to completed Economic Thralldom as well as every aspect of creating national thralls for those in power. Theology matters. Who is the religion and god of those in Congress? The State?

Final Point…For Now

I will be following up next week with a Pew report regarding the decline of religion in the U. S. The simple fact is that our Founders tied Liberty to Biblical Christianity for morality, virtue and governance. Without true Biblical Religion, as we are seeing it now, the Constitution, law, justice and liberty mean nothing, absolutely nothing.

I am attempting to not take the following out of context. Regarding economics and theology. The Pew report ‘identifies’ the majority of Congressional Members as Christian yet their disparate theologies of the vast majority have been grossly secularized. In an effort to keep this newsletter short, I want to finish with a couple of quotes from Schwarzkopf’s Introduction:

When studying the theological underpinnings of economics and the economy, we also need to differentiate between explicit and implicit theological imaginaries. The former include forms of banking and finance that, for example, are explicitly based on theological assumptions inherent in muamalat, the body of Islamic commercial and civil law. An example of more implicit theology is the widely noticed secular–evangelical, eschatological enthusiasm of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who often aim at nothing less than the end of death and the creation of a race of human terminarchs (Laughlin 2018; Geiger forthcoming). As regards “the economic”, we need to differentiate between the modes of thought that become crystallized into economic concepts; second, economic institutions as abstract and/or concrete entities that are governed by law, customs and values, such as competitive markets, the banking system, fiat money, property rights, contracts and gendered occupation patterns; and finally the practices we subsume under the term economic organizing, that is, groups of people gathering to achieve a particular purpose, such as accounting, marketing or instigating a revolution. – page 5

Thus, economic theology is in danger of being reduced to an anti- or pro-capitalist polemic if all it does is to call out the existence of new gods and new religions, and if it is not able to define itself as a critical method (Bartel and Hulsether 2019: 585–6). As a method, economic theology helps identify both explicit and implicit theologies inherent in economic concepts and practices, which mainstream social science approaches that focus on individual choices and social institutions often fail to see. This also means that “having” and “doing” economic theology are not the same. – page 8

For now, Speaker Johnson’s Failures are not in ‘herding cats’ as Congressman Roy mentions but in not fully applying his Biblical Theology in full context to those other 302 Protestants whose economic, social, legal and constitutional theology is dictated by the gods of their religious idolatry.

Sam Adams Wisdom

1765 – We need not inform you that we are the Descendents of Ancestors remarkeable for their Zeal for true Religion & Liberty…

1769 – Happy was it for him, that he was in the Hands of a People; who attended to the Dictates of sound Policy, Religion and Loyalty …

1770 – …They will judge freely of every point of state doctrine, & reject with disdain a blind submission to the authority of mere names, as being equally ridiculous, as well as dangerous in government and religion.—It may have been, Messirs. Printers, too much the practice of late, for some plantation governors, like Verres either ancient or modern, to oppress and plague the people they were bound to protect, and, perhaps in obedience to “orders that have come from secretaries of state”…

1771 – …It cannot, therefore, be said to be the language of the body of the clergy, and all ages have seen that some of that order have ever been ready to sacrifice the rights as well as the honoured religion of their country, to the smiles of the great…

1771 – … But this heightened his wickedness; as it might have convinc’d them, that he was as destitute of the common feelings of love for one’s native country, as he was of religion and piety…