'Woke' church leaders at odds with congregations on political issues

This finding would appear to refer to the Catholic and Anglican churches only

'Woke' church leaders are at odds with their congregations on key political issues such as taxation and the role of the market, a new opinion poll has found.

While more than half – 51 per cent – of the clergy support the imposition of high taxes to redistribute wealth, only 34 per cent of regular churchgoers feel the same way.

And while only 30 per cent of clerics say that they trust large multinational corporations, that rises to 73 per cent among their flocks.

The poll, conducted by Savanta ComRes for the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics (CEME), is likely to reinforce the perception that Left-wing ‘woke’ clergy are out of touch with worshippers.

Church leaders were also more in favour of ‘wage-shaming’ well-paid business leaders, with 82 per cent backing publicising the pay gap between businesses’ highest-paid and lowest-paid employees; but just 66 per cent of regular churchgoers support the idea.

In addition, 89 per cent of Church leaders want businesses to take an active role in tackling climate change, versus 64 per cent of their congregation.

The poll also reveals a generational divide over attitudes to business, with 88 per cent of the over-55s regarding wealth-creation as its key role, compared with only 65 per cent of 18-to-34-year-olds.

Dr Richard Turnbull, director of CEME, said: ‘Church leaders are out of touch with Christian opinion.

'Church leaders convey a lack of understanding of key aspects of business, display excessive reliance on the power of taxation and government, lack confidence in larger and global businesses and indeed in Britain as a nation.

‘A message is being preached that is not believed by most of its recipients. Committed church-goers have a considerably more positive view of the market, business and society in a number of key respects.

This tells us then that church congregations may have a more informed view of business than those that purport to teach them.’

Savanta ComRes polled 3,400 people between May and August 2021 and interviewed ten Anglican and Catholic bishops.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/other/woke-church-leaders-at-odds-with-congregations-on-political-issues/ar-AAQG1c9

***********************************************

Texas Man Denied Monoclonal Antibodies Because He’s White

Twitter users Harrison Smith posted a viral video to Twitter showing how he was denied the life-saving monoclonal antibody treatment because he’s white. Some states are more broad with their criteria for the treatment, but others have strict guidelines, one includes race. (Yes, really)

The nurse can be seen telling the man that you either need to be older than 65, have some sort of medical condition, or be black/hispanic.

It is important to note that he is a young, relatively healthy male. However, if this young, healthy male was a different race, he would have received treatment, according to the nurse.

One of Smith’s followers even called the hotline to confirm the story, and they admit that Smith would have gotten the treatment if he was a minority.

Welcome to Biden’s America

https://patriotfetch.com/2021/11/watch-texas-man-denied-monoclonal-antibodies-because-hes-white/

***********************************************

The Left Always Defends the Real Criminals

Last summer, as Black Lives Matter and Antifa were rioting in the streets of America, Democrats and their allies in the leftist media described their behavior as "fiery but mostly peaceful" and justified the damage for the sake of "racial justice."

Two billion dollars in damage later, making them the most expensive riots in U.S. history, they haven't changed their opinion. In fact, they've doubled down and regularly defend the violence.

Americans were reminded of the left's summer of rage this week as they focused on the trial of 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse.

On August 23, 2020, police were called to the scene of a confrontation after a woman dialed 911. Upon their arrival, 29-year-old Jacob Blake — who had multiple warrants out for his arrest, including third-degree sexual assault and criminal trespassing — was refusing police orders and was shot. The media immediately claimed Blake was shot because he was a black man, not because he had a knife, was refusing police orders and was attempting to kidnap his two children.

Seizing an opportunity, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden piled onto the false claims and said Blake's shooting was a product of systemic racism in policing. Kamala Harris visited Blake himself, saying she was "proud" of him. Their positions were then amplified as righteous by CNN and MSNBC.

Because of these lies, chaos quickly descended on the small town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and rioters started burning down the city. The media had sided with Blake, a criminal with a long history, and fanned racial flames built on falsehoods.

During the rioting, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, was chased and physically attacked by adult males Anthony Huber, Joseph Rosenbaum and Gaige Grosskreutz. As a last resort, Rittenhouse shot them, killing two. Grosskreutz, who pointed a pistol at Rittenhouse's head, survived after being shot in the arm. Again, the left and their allies in the media took the side of the "victims" and painted Rittenhouse as a "murderer" and "white supremacist."

But once Rittenhouse was able to tell his story, it became increasingly obvious those defending Huber, Rosenbaum and Grosskreutz, were cheering for the bad guys.

"I didn't do anything wrong. I defended myself," Rittenhouse explained during testimony this week. "I didn't want to have to shoot."

"If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it…and probably killed more people," he continued.

Joseph Rosenbaum was a multi-time pedophile who anally raped a child and sexually assaulted a number of boys ages 9-11 years old. He spent ten years in prison and was on lifetime probation. Anthony Huber was a convicted felon and repeat domestic abuser. Gaige Grosskreutz was convicted of a misdemeanor for carrying a firearm while intoxicated.

The men who chased Rittenhouse, attempting to kill him, are the real criminals. Predictably, the left and the media took their side. Kenosha burned because corrupt media and leftist activists lied about Jacob Blake being an "unarmed" black man shot by police. The same people proceeded to smear Rittenhouse, who was in town to help protect the community and ended up fighting for his life. The left never misses an opportunity to root for the lawbreakers and to destroy the lives of the honorable.

https://townhall.com/columnists/katiepavlich/2021/11/12/the-left-always-defends-the-real-criminals-n2599027

******************************************

The Absurd Side of the Social Justice Industry

From the NYT

If you follow debates over the strident style of social justice politics often derided as “wokeness,” you might have heard about a document called “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts.” Put out by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Health Justice, the guide is a long list of terms and phrases that some earnest people have decided others in the medical field should avoid using, along with their preferred substitutes.

Some of these substitutions make sense; health care professionals shouldn’t be referring to people who’ve been in prison as “ex-cons.” Some are a matter of keeping up with the times, like capitalizing Black when talking about Black people. Some, however, are obnoxious and presumptuous and would impede clear communication. For example, the guide suggests replacing “vulnerable” with “oppressed,” even though they’re not synonymous: it’s not oppression that makes the elderly vulnerable to Covid.

My guess is that very few people will follow these recommendations. As Conor Friedersdorf points out in The Atlantic, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, still talks about “those who are most vulnerable” when discussing vaccination. “Advancing Health Equity” advises steering clear of words with “violent connotation” like “combat” or “target,” but last week the president of the American Medical Association gave a speech calling doctors “an army against the virus.” At one point the document itself critiques how, in health care, diseases “become the main target rather than the social and economic conditions that produce health inequities.”

Like most other reports written by bureaucratic working groups, “Advancing Health Equity” would probably be read by almost no one if it did not inadvertently advance the right-wing narrative that progressive newspeak is colonizing every aspect of American life. Still, the existence of this document is evidence of a social problem, though not, as the guide instructs us to say instead of “social problem,” a “social injustice.” The problem is this: Parts of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” industry are heavy-handed and feckless, and the left keeps having to answer for them.

Consider the endless debate over critical race theory in public schools. In certain circles, it’s become conventional wisdom that even if public schools are not teaching graduate-school critical race theory, they’re permeated by something adjacent to it.

“The idea that critical race theory is an academic concept that is taught only at colleges or law schools might be technically accurate, but the reality on the ground is a good deal more complicated,” wrote Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic. Across the nation, he wrote, “many teachers” have started adopting “a pedagogical program that owes its inspiration to ideas that are very fashionable on the academic left, and that go well beyond telling students about America’s copious historical sins.”

In truth it’s hard to say what “many teachers” are doing; school curriculums are decentralized, and most of the data we have is anecdotal. But there was just a gubernatorial election in Virginia in which critical race theory played a major role. If the right had evidence of Virginia teachers indoctrinating children, you’d think we’d have heard about it. After all, school there was almost entirely online last year, offering parents an unprecedented window into what their kids were learning.

Instead, the Republican candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin, ran commercials featuring a woman aggrieved that her son was assigned Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” as a high school senior. But if conservatives couldn’t find useful examples from the classroom, they discovered a rhetorical gold mine in materials from a training session for administrators, including a slide juxtaposing “white individualism” and “color group collectivism.”

“Teachers and administrators said that conservative activists had cherry-picked the most extreme materials to try to prove their point,” The New York Times reported. I’m sure that’s true, but it’s also true that school districts should avoid using training documents that will embarrass them if they’re made public.

For Arab Americans, It’s Not Thanksgiving Without Hashweh
Such training would be worth fighting for if it had a record of success in changing discriminatory behavior, but it doesn’t. As the scholars Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev wrote in The Economist, hundreds “of studies of anti-bias training show that even the best programs have short-lived effects on stereotypes and no discernible effect on discriminatory behavior.” Instead of training sessions, they suggest that employers should focus their diversity efforts on concrete efforts like recruitment.

But substantive change is hard; telling people to use different words is easy. One phrase you won’t find in “Advancing Health Equity” is “universal health care”: The American Medical Association has been a consistent opponent of Medicare for All. The word “abortion” isn’t in there either, though it would advance health equity if more doctors were willing to perform one.

In The Washington Post, the columnist Matt Bai described the document as an ominous development. “I’d argue that it’s actually a powerful testament to where we are at the moment — and it should frighten you as much as it does me.” It doesn’t frighten me: In a truly Orwellian situation, people would actually have to follow new linguistic edicts instead of being able to laugh at them.

But it does irritate me, because it’s so counterproductive. “It’s not scary, it’s just ridiculous,” is not a winning political argument.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/15/opinion/diversity-equity-inclusion.html

****************************************

My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

*****************************************