Good morning,

I’ve been thinking about one institution’s unwillingness to speak loudly, forcibly, and truthfully against the overreach of secular government.

But first, here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, May 22, 2020
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This coming Monday a grateful nation pauses to remember the men and women who gave their lives in defense of our nation while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

• Stand Up. Open Up. Show Up. That’s the message at OpenTheStates.com. The coalition of small business owners and grassroots activists are encouraging each other across the nation to set aside the fear-mongering mandates issued by overreaching government by simply getting back to business today, May 22. They want to speak loudly through action.
      
• Will you be joining them in supporting local businesses that choose to open?
       
• As bars in Texas prepare to reopen their doors today at 25 percent occupancy for the first time in months, those businesses face an uncertain future. Brandon Waltens spoke with Michael Klein, the president of the Texas Bar and Nightclub Association, about what the closures have meant for bars across the state and how long it will take for normalcy to resume.
        
• An impediment for his industry and many others, Klein said, will be incentives created by government for people to stay on unemployment. “We’ve kind of incentivized people not to work.
   
• According to Texas Workforce Commission data, between 2.2 million and 2.6 million Texans have filed for unemployment because of the government-mandated shutdown of the economy.

• With multiple court decisions pending on the status of vote-by-mail eligibility for upcoming elections, Texas voters deserve a swift resolution. Erin Anderson offers an update on the legal actions occurring in state and federal courts as Texas Democrats seek to force open a process they themselves have said was fraught with fraud and abuse.
       
• Dallas’ city council will vote next week on a special development deal for the son of Royce West, a Democrat U.S. Senate candidate and sitting state senator. Robert Montoya reports a meeting this week raised issues ranging from city staff keeping elected officials in the dark to questions about the developer’s competency.
     
• Despite saying forecasting “beyond a month or two is very challenging,” the interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority said this week large events such as October’s Austin City Limits music festival or University of Texas football games are not likely for the rest of 2020. Jacob Asmussen notes this could cause greater economic disruption for central Texas.
       
• “The government has recently come up with a new way of mandating things. They are called ‘recommendations’ and ‘guidelines’.” – Luke Macias, political consultant

• The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to confirm John Ratcliffe as the new Director of National Intelligence. Brandon Waltens has the details.
   
• A Republican member of the Texas House from northeast Texas, Ratcliffe’s confirmation will trigger a unique process for filling his place on the November ballot. Republican precinct chairs from Congressional District 4 will meet in early August to name a nominee. Watch for an explainer by Cary Cheshire in the coming days.
   
• Retired Admiral Ronny Jackson, a Republican candidate for Congress, has drawn fire from Obama-era officials and the national media over his scathing criticism of the controversial surveillance conducted against the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Now, Thomas Warren reports, Jackson is firing back.
       
• “Weaponizing the federal government to punish political opponents is wrong,” Jackson told Texas Scorecard.
   
• In a new commentary, President Trump’s senior campaign advisor Katrina Pierson argues that when it comes to women’s empowerment the Democrats are all talk.

Friday Reflection

by Michael Quinn Sullivan

America is losing its founding sense of self-governance because our churches have gone silent, or – worse – become shills for the welfare state.

When the Hellenists were kicked from Israel in the second and first century B.C., the fight was led by a priest and his sons. The American revolution was famously staffed by pastors who gave up their pulpits to serve their flocks in battle. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was nurtured in the church.

Yet the last 40 years has seen American pulpits go increasingly quiet on issues that matter most. On any given Sunday, pastors can be found waxing eloquent about the derivation of Greek words, or amusing their congregation with self-help anecdotes like a part-time comedian during open-mic night.

Too many pastors have become unwilling to speak uncomfortable truths in the face of governing power. They do not want to risk offending the sensibilities of the soft leftists in their congregations... or the hard leftists in government bureaucracies.

Yet questioning earthly powers, upsetting the governing status quo of the religious and political elite, was all part and parcel of Jesus’ ministry. That approach has been effectively educated out of most mainline seminaries. 

(Today, churches often reflect the secular cultural and government mandates rather than stand apart from them. In the name of “peace and purity” in the church, a sadly large number of pastors avoid confrontation with a soft capitulation. Criticism of government is verboten. Sermons against confiscatory taxes, abortion, and same-sex marriage might scare away “seekers” and are avoided.)

A friend who attended a very conservative seminary told me he was distressed by the sheer number of students who subsisted on government programs.

He was frustrated that while the church is called to care for the poor, pastors emerging from seminaries having been enculturated into the welfare state would too readily embrace the idea that church money should be reserved for esoteric pursuits. As he said mockingly, they had lived on government handouts and turned out just fine.

The biblical call for Christians to care personally for the least among us is at the heart of a self-governing people. Or it should be. 

Offloading the messiness of practical compassion to a faceless bureaucracy might be convenient, but it fails to uphold the dignity of the individual being served. And it completely ignores the mandate for Christians to practice acts of mercy.

We have relegated “loving our neighbor” to providing a convenient app for getting a list of government services. 

British historian Tom Holland hit on this in a recent commentary for the Telegraph:

Parroting the slogans of the Department of Health and Social Care may conceivably help save lives – but it seems unlikely to win many souls. ... If they are not to seem merely eccentric branch offices of the welfare state, they need to recapture their confidence, and take a risk: the risk of seeming odd.

Jesus had no trouble being odd. He called odd men to be His disciples. Following God is, indeed, very odd to those who hate Him. The wisdom of God is treated as foolishness by sinful men. We must reject the pursuit of cultural approval and embrace the oddness of God if we are to serve Him faithfully. And it is only by serving God that we can truly love our neighbors.

Churches – pastors and parishioners alike – must reject the welfare state and reassert their God-given role in fighting for the weak, the downtrodden, and the rejected. Government bureaucracies may feed the stomach, but they will crush the soul.

America’s legacy as a self-governing people will survive and thrive only to the extent our churches are willing to speak truthfully, even forcefully, to secular power. 

Quote-Unquote

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer​