Religion

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by Reid Fitzsimons (note that an edited version of this article was, I'm happy to say, published at The American Thinker: (www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/08 the_sin_of_calling_something_a_sin.html )

There is a Christian guy in Denver, CO, Jamie Sanchez, who felt “called” to open a charity project for homeless people in 2012. It was named Recycle God’s Love (www.recyclegodslove.com/) and gradually expanded, but remains small in financial terms. The “non-profit” charity world can be, and often is, a cutthroat place of greed, deceit, and essentially money-laundering: putting millions in the pockets of wealthy people while pretending to do something meaningful, but Recycle God’s Love seems legit, operating in the $100,000 range and the people who run it do so without pay. Besides the usual meals, they provide homeless people (in the 300-400 range) clothing, wound care, hygienic supplies, help with obtaining official ID, even haircuts (and, of course, the Gospel). In 2023 they opened a cafe as a way to provide employment and job skill opportunities. Of note is they receive no government funding.

Jamie Sanchez, founder of Recycle God's Love, with family. I believe the woman pictured is his wife who died of cancer in 2018

They have an 800 word statement of “what we hold to be true,” and 18 of those words are “We believe that a homosexual lifestyle is contrary to God’s Word and purpose for humanity and is sin.” They list a number of other sins, including thievery, murder, extra-marital sex, adultery, and hating your neighbor. Their statement adds, “Moreover, this organization is instructed to Love those living such lifestyles. We Believe that showing hate towards people in these communities is not the way Jesus would respond. Therefore, although disagreeing with the lifestyles we believe to be sinful, we must show love.” All in all, this is pretty standard true Christian doctrine.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

The preacher opens his mouth and out comes fury, like always. He doesn’t have to be a Christian preacher- other religions could do the same- but his sermon is filled with venom and righteousness. He talks about sinners (or perhaps infidels), and how they will be thrown into the eternal hellfire of damnation. God is angry, and He judges severely. Somehow the actual message of Jesus Christ isn’t mentioned because it’s not really important. What is important is manipulating and controlling susceptible people, those with whom the message of fire and brimstone resonates because they are convinced they are the chosen, the righteous ones, and that they are better than everyone else.

Left: prosperity Christianity televangelist Kenneth Copeland, net worth about $300 million Right: Egyptian-born American Imam Ammar Shahin, who gained a certain version of celebrity in 2017 when he preached, “Oh, Allah, count them (Jews) one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one.” He is currently affiliated with the "non-profit" Islamic Center of Davis, CA

The enraged and violent approach to religion has waxed and waned throughout history, sometimes marginalized, but at other times the predominate cultural and political force. Insane Christianity had its moments and was the source of massive misery, wars, and genocide, but thankfully this approach involving righteous atrocities has pretty well faded away over the centuries, largely because it never was based on Jesus to begin with. And yes, the statement, “Kill them all and let God sort it out,” is historically accurate. Not to malign Islam, but unfortunately too many people who control things in Muslim areas pervert Islam for their own greed and power in modern times: kind of where Christianity was 500 years ago.

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by Reid Fitzsimons (note this is a very long article of approx 5,300 words, the first 3,500 being mine and the remainder those of a then pro-life Jesse Jackson from 1977)

Around 45 years-ago I was visiting in-laws deep in Mississippi, this being in the waning days of what we call “Jim Crow.” The in-laws were relatively wealthy, as defined by being two million in debt due to ill-conceived business ventures. They had employees, many of them black, and I befriended a young black man about my age. We had been given an excess amount of pecans and I offered him a bag to take back to his family, which he appreciated. As he was walking away, one of the in-laws, a generation older than me, exclaimed “He’s stealing the pecans!” Knowing this could have an unfortunate outcome, I quickly explained I had given him the bag. The response, in a genteel Southern accent (me being a Yankee) was, “We don’t do that kind of thing down here.”

The political structure of Jim Crow was pretty typical of oppressive societies throughout history, meaning the oppressors needed the oppressed to maintain power. In Jim Crow, there was dangled before the white masses the perpetual threat of “nigras not knowing their place and being uppity.” This had broad and powerful appeal to many of the white masses, who from childhood had been taught that blacks were, simply, inferior. They- blacks- could be dutiful and affectionate pets and treated accordingly, but there was always the fear they would turn on their masters, and the whites holding the power knew how to exploit this fear: one can picture the ugly man, George Wallace, with his ugly promise of “...segregation forever!”

The deluding and the deluded
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by Reid Fitzsimons

I’m fairly confident I made it through the years of adolescence and young adulthood with just the average amount of obnoxiousness, and that whatever stupidity I committed did did not include “gay bashing.” Perhaps I should be proud of this, but I’m not sure not being a jerk is deserving of pride. Then again, at the time (this being the 1970s) homosexuality wasn’t really The Thing: back then, if you wanted to garner attention and stick it to the MAN, radical hippie chic was more in vogue than “coming out.” Paradoxically, eventually the anti-establishment hippie radical largely became establishment, as did “coming out.”

Groovy man! Confusing self-indulgence with altruism
I didn't realize there was a "coming out" day until I did research for this article

That’s not to say there wasn’t “gay bashing". People I became friends with decades later admitted they said odious things to homosexuals, and came to regret their behavior. One was (at the time) a young pastor who, with like-minded idiot Christians, drove about the known homosexual areas of Dallas and hurled insults. He quickly realized there was nothing Christian about this activism and, besides being appalling, was counterproductive- the success of convincing a homosexual to say, "Yes, I will now become a heterosexual” upon hearing someone yell, “Queers are going to burn in hell” was about 0%. By the time I met this pastor he was perhaps the most sincere “walk the walk” Christian I ever knew, who dedicated his life to providing a home for abandoned and abused children in Honduras. He was very conservative, with beliefs that would make him an object of scorn among the diversity and inclusion crowd: his theology was God loves the sinner but not the sin, as compared to God loves the sinner and especially loves the sin, with carnal sins being extra sanctified. The latter is the theology of the progressive collection of pretend Christians, often referred to as “mainstream.” To them, self-gratification is the highest calling.

Contradictions that speak for themselves
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by Reid Fitzsimons

I’m a tall white guy, but I don’t have any sense of “tall pride” or “male pride” or “white pride.” I’m not ashamed to be tall or male or white because it’s just the way it is. The thing about pride is that, by definition, it is something related to accomplishment. For example, one might feel a neighborly pride because they learned the skills that allow them to help the widow next door with a plumbing problem, or do-gooder pride because they set up a fun and wholesome project for poor kids in an impoverished country. Feeling pride merely for existing is empty and meaningless, like getting an award for simply showing up and meeting minimal expectations. Really, how much pride can a male athlete, who doesn’t do well competing against fellow males, feel by declaring he’s a female and beating girls? Hopefully none.

The proud winner is Rhys McKinnon, who later changed his name to Rachael McKinnon, and again to Veronica Ivy. Apparently winning and attention is everything for this guy, even if he had to pretend to be a girl to ride to victory.
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Sometimes there is little diversity among diversity-equity-inclusion activists

Note: The previous posting discussed the Salvation Army jumping on the “woke” train, so to speak. I sent the link to the heads of the Salvation Army administrative office closest to us, that being in Scranton, PA. I quickly received a friendly and brief reply (below at bottom) from Major Bob Schmig (they use military ranks in the Salvation Army hierarchy. Maj. Schmig offered no comment regarding the topic at hand, and I composed and sent him a follow-up e-mail/letter, which is the main text of this posting. Note that the term Pharisees is used, which defies simple definition but were basically a group of learned Jews around the time of Jesus that formed somewhat of a social/political class and emphasized adherence to the Laws of Moses and oral tradition. They tended to be privileged and numbered perhaps in the 1,000s. They received the animosity of Jesus because he perceived then as hypocrites in the “do as I say, not as I do” realm. In today’s terms, they might be referred in the political world as the Establishment, or more invectively, “the Swamp.”

Greetings Major Schmig:

Thank you for your prompt reply to my e-mail from several days ago, and I appreciate your taking the time to read my article, “The Salvation Army: Let’s Talk About Elitism.” You might have noted I mentioned a time as a volunteer medical director at a remote clinic in Kenya- this was in the early 2000’s and at the peak of the African AIDS crisis. It was a rare day in which a tragedy did not present itself, and I want to describe one so that you might better understand my perspective.

One horrible day we received word that 3 or 4 children were ill because they had eaten rotten fish that had been laced with insecticide and laid about in hopes of poisoning rabid dogs. I dispatched a vehicle but by the time it arrived all but one of the children had died. The one girl that returned, perhaps 7-years-old, was terrified, having witnessed truly miserable deaths of her younger siblings, and we couldn’t determine if she too had consumed the poisoned rotten fish. Nevertheless, though there was no protocol on how to treat such a thing, I empirically induced vomiting (if I recall) and had her drink slurry of charcoal through her tears and sobbing. Ultimately I assumed she hadn’t consumed the insecticide because I don’t think she would have survived regardless of treatment, and thankfully she was okay. Maybe you’ve witnessed and experienced similar events, but having seen so many children die during my time there, I developed a particular revulsion to children dying, perhaps especially black kids.

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The current Salvation Army leadership, with the heads of their "International Social Justice" commission on the right

by Reid Fitzsimons

An interesting thing happened to the venerable and widely respected Salvation Army (SA): they were caught, so to speak, in the ether of political “wokeness,” and a lot of disappointment followed. Specifically, they posted on their website a “guide” entitled “Let’s Talk About Racism,” sometime in the Spring of 2021. This was outed, so to speak, by non-traditional media, specifically a group called Color Us United, in October 2021; the resulting publicity led the SA to delete the document in November. As part of their defense, they referred to it as a “study guide…for internal use,” and issued a rather acerbic and juvenile preamble on Nov. 25th: “This statement is in response to a politically motivated group that is trying to force The Salvation Army to conform to the group’s ideology of choice.” Here is a link to the full SA statement: https://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/story/the-salvation-armys-response-to-false-claims-on-the-topic-of-racism/

It’s never a good idea to take grandiloquent positions based on snippets from others so, after some difficulty, I did track down the deleted “Let’s Talk About Racism” document, and an associated study guide; it can be found at an internet archiving site called Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/). After reviewing the materials I, as a heretofore enthusiastic supporter of the SA, concluded the critics were correct, and that the apologetics issued by the SA were misleading and even self-righteous, and one of the terribly frustrating things about this controversy is that it was entirely unnecessary. So... Let’s Talk About Racism Elitism. 

To be a bit acerbic myself, Let’s Talk About Racism is less a thoughtful and serious paper than one written for extra credit by a sophomore college student in a sociology class (minus the Biblical references), a class where the professor is an ageing hippie who yearns to be pertinent while dreaming of the halcyon days from the 60’s of “free love,” i.e. easy sex without responsibility or consequence, days long before “#MeToo.” It is rife with the vocabulary of the progressive word salad, and indeed begins with a specious argument, presented as established fact, that “Race is a social construct.” For anyone unfamiliar with the phrase “social construct,” it a means to diminish or deny what until now has been generally accepted, and is often used in a pejorative, disdainful manner; it is most commonly seen in the world of “transgender” polemics: gender is merely a social construct, and to believe there is a factual or biologic basis for male and female means you are an ignorant moron.

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Chuck Schumer gesturing
Benito Mussolini gesturing

by Carole Milljour

Note: The following is a letter sent by a friend (and supporter of this website), Carole Milljour, to the rather duplicitous and moral reprobate Chuck Schumer, Senator from NY. She had originally signed on to a group letter opposing the use of Federal government money to pay for abortions (i.e. repeal the long-standing Hyde amendment), and in this letter she is responding to his reply, which, of course, is both despicable and predictable (his response is below Carole’s letter).

There are many parallels between slavery and abortion, the most obvious being there are those who create a culture which allows for sub-humans, and this entitles them to use their Untermensch as chattel: if it’s not human you can treat it like an inanimate machine, and if it proves to be troublesome, simply sell it or kill it. Curiously, there were many slave owners and supporters of slavery who did in fact have moral qualms about the horror they propagated, but were essentially addicts to the convenience and power that apparently comes with owning people. This raises the great moral question- which is more depraved, to know it is evil ad do it anyway, or to be so reprehensibly inhumane as to not even recognize evil. Chuck Schumer is somewhat atypical because he fits in both of these categories.

Dear Honorable Charles Schumer:  

It may be a woman's body, but it is not her life she is sacrificing, but a child of God.  Our government should not be funding abortion services or services in which body parts of an unborn baby are sold for profit.  As a taxpayer, and voting resident of NY, I do not like the attitude of anyone who thinks they have any power at all to vote for taking a human life, especially when that individual is in office to work for the citizens of this state.  It may be your opinion, but not the opinion of everyone you were chosen to represent. 

I am shocked and angry that you can have such little concern for an unborn child with the feeble excuse that it is okay to terminate it under the guise of “it's a woman's right since it is her body.” No one should have that right.  That unborn child suffers when it is torn apart in the womb.  Abortion is a moneymaker and people who are for it don't care one way or the other for the child or the mother.  It's a disgrace.  A woman has the right to use the various types of birth control, because that is her body; but the body she plans to remove from her womb is not hers: that child is a separate entity unto it's own.  I was my mother's child, not my mother!  It may have been her body, but I was her child!  

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by Reid Fitzsimons

I received a call the other night from someone I didn’t recognize who wanted to ask me two quick questions. It ended up he was a campaign worker for a candidate in PA’s 12th congressional district, Lee Griffin, running for the seat currently held by Fred Keller. Once I was oriented to the purpose of the call I asked if his guy was a Democrat, and eventually, after some equivocation, the answer was yes. I explained that I cannot find it in myself to vote for anyone who aligns themselves with the hatred and racism of the Democrats, a party of, by, and for “Black Lives Matter,” which itself is an organization that primarily caters to privileged white and black leftists and manipulates and exploits black Americans for personal and political power and profit- quintessential racism. The caller, who was very polite, said that his guy Griffin wasn’t a racist because he had an inter-racial marriage. The call ended amicably. Admitting to my own embarrassment that I should have known who Lee Griffin was, I decided to take a look at his campaign website, leegriffinforcongress.com, which to me has the feel of zealous religiosity rather than a political tone.

There was a time when the Democrat party was in fact a political party, and in my lifetime they defined themselves as the party of the workingman, as compared to the Republicans being the party of the wealthy. Whether this was true or not is debatable, but nevertheless the Democrats were a political enterprise, and ran the gamut of union workers, law and order types, and the occasional wacko (like any party), but no one questioned their basic allegiance to the idea and fact of the US: George McGovern was pretty far out there in 1972 but he was a decorated and courageous WW2 bomber pilot.

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The apparent head of the United Methodist Church "Imagine No Racism" project, Mark Webb, who holds the title of "Bishop."

A very good and caring friend recently mentioned she had attended a seminar entitled Imagine No Racism, sponsored by the United Methodist Church in the Buffalo, NY area. I checked it out on-line and what I discovered was no surprise. For example, there is a list of desired qualities of prospective “team” members: Do you have a passion for racial justice and equity? Are you open to change and willing to grow in your knowledge and awareness of racial injustice and white privilege? Do you have some knowledge already of racism and/or white privilege? There is a mention that “Racism is a disease that infects the hearts, minds, souls and bodies of individuals, churches and communities. Our Social Principles state, ‘Racism is the combination of the power to dominate by one race over other races and a value system that assumes that the dominant race is innately superior to others.’” All utterly predictable non-sense, of course. Below is an e-mail I sent this person, which was well received by her.

Note the person referred to as “Nelson (name changed)” is a gentleman from Kenya who I first knew when he was a teenager when I was a volunteer medical director of a clinic in his remote village in the early 2000s. In Dec. 2018 my wife and I were able to bring him to the US on a non-immigrant visa to attend college; he has subsequently earned a 4.0 GPA!

Hi_______:

I’m intrigued by the seminar you mentioned, “Imagine No Racism;” I went to the website for it. I think you know I can be pretty scathing when it comes to religious and societal matters, and this has both! Perhaps you could share the following story at your next session.

You haven’t met him but I think you know who Nelson is. In 2017 I traveled with him and my son throughout very (VERY) remote eastern Uganda. When Nelson returned to Kenya he entered what is called the Land of the Luos (any major tribal area may be referred to as the “Land of…”). Nelson is in fact a Luo but his skin, while a very dark brown, is not the actual black that is typical of the Luos. This was at the time of some tribal conflict, so once he was back in Kenya he kept his mouth shut (Nelson likes adventure and new experiences!) and heard some guys talking about what they should do to him. They assumed he was a Kikuyu or other rival tribe and even considered killing him. At this point he spoke up, in his native Luo language, and said he was as Luo as they were, with an implication they should have been ashamed of themselves, and he continued his travels unmolested. Is that racism- injuring and even killing people not because they are black, but because they are not as black as some others?

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