Sept 2022 PLEASE NOTE - This episode was recorded before the sad death of Queen Elizabeth II. Our condolences are with Her Majesty's family and all who mourn. We will certainly discuss our great monarch's passing on next week's show. May her soul rest in peace with God after her long years of devoted service.
Church of England reverends Daniel French and Jamie Franklin sit down to talk about the big things in our culture and the church. Today, a discussion on anger and forgiveness for one's enemies, retrospective on Lockdown in the light of the new Frankfurt Declaration (https://frankfurtdeclaration.com ), Liz Truss becomes Prime Minister and "controversial" Roman Catholic Therese Coffey becomes Health Secretary, the Rev'd Dr Bernard Randall looks to his diocese for support after being fired from his post at Trent College for promoting Anglican doctrine - guess what happened next?, will the CofE continue to support the Net Zero agenda when pensioners start freezing in the dark this Winter because of it?, and we revisit the question of whether or not there is a moral way of refusing to pay exorbitant energy bills. That and much much more on this episode of Irreverend: Faith and Current Affairs!
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW please see: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/irreverend and https://www.patreon.com/irreverend. Find these details and more at https://irreverendpod.com.
Links:
Therese Coffey's "controversial" voting record on abortion and gay marriage: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022...
Bernard Randall is "a danger to children": https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...
Notices:
Find links to our episodes, social media accounts and ways to support us at https://www.irreverendpod.com!
Thursday Circles: http://thursdaycircle.com
Jamie's Good Things Substack: https://jamiefranklin.substack.com
Irreverend Sermon Audio: https://irreverendsermonaudio.buzzspr...
Freedom News Freedom News writes and shares posts that are of Interest to a broad demographic . Articles are to be taken on a individual basis and not under the assumption that different Authors and content providers and Horwich Nationalist as well share the same opinions. Articles copied are fully attributed to Authors under international fair use acts. .
Sunday 11 September 2022
Saturday 10 September 2022
Neil Oliver – one rule for us & one rule for them!’
Sept 2022 …hypocrisy is all around...we’re constantly being preached at by the rich, the famous & the powerful…
To see this episode in full & get exclusive access to new content every week
sign up to 'Neil Oliver' on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/neiloliver
Audio Podcasts,
Neil Oliver's Love Letter To The World &,
Neil Oliver's Love Letter To The British Isles
Available on all the usual providers
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...
Check out the Series Instagram account: Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverl...
Wednesday 31 August 2022
Reversing Generational Destruction of the Family
Reversing Generational Destruction of the Family
In the upheaval that followed the tumult of 2020, one of the many things revealed was just how miserable modern life is. The rickety house of cards that is the post-war, consumerist way of life was shown to be both incredibly fragile and unsustainable as well as a radical departure from the natural, human way of life. God did not create us to have families comprised of income-earner 1, income-earner 2, and children farmed out to strangers with maximum economic efficiency. Such a way of life sounds much more like a Soviet dystopia than wholesome Americana. And the truth is that it is, and this is a truth that the shock of 2020 forced many people to recognize.
It may have become clear to you the conflict in American society was not merely over cutting tax rates 1% or 1.3% or marginally reducing unnecessary government programs, or other mundane partisan bickering between Democrats and Republicans, but rather the conflict in America is a spiritual war. As you see hideous monstrosities like Admiral Levine and William “Lia” Thomas on your television screens, the near-daily story of yet another kindergarten teacher grooming students into transsexualism and other perversions, and now, four dozen purportedly conservative Republican representatives voting to codify the abomination of sodomarriage, this is not merely a battle over political interests, it is a battle over whether the United States of America will be under the dominion of darkness and evil or whether it will acknowledge the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, and submit to His rule and reign.
There is one side, that desires to subvert and destroy the natural and traditional ways of life that have made life worth living and enjoyable, and have given men such purpose and meaning that they are driven to conquer entire nations, invent technological wonders, or launch men into the heavens. The other side seeks to maintain such ways of life and to return to those ways of life that God established for mankind that our enemies have damaged.
For decades, Americans were born into a system where families are fractured, the bonds between mother and father and child are severed at an early age, the child is thrown into an impersonal, Soviet-style, child-rearing factory called “daycare.” They then are shuffled off to a building that often architecturally resembles a prison, where they go to public school. For many years, school may have been a place where reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught, where the teacher even began the day offering a prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ! But over the decades the veneer masking the purpose of public education from its inception has worn off, and it exists primarily as a place to groom and indoctrinate children into modern, liberal culture.
For years, many parents had no idea what went on in schools. When you are born into a system where “this is just what everyone does” you have no idea how damaging daycare and public education are to the bond between mother and child. Most people have just not known any better. Why would they? But then the lockdowns happened. Mothers were now home with their young children. Despite non-stop, multi-billion dollar propaganda campaigns to push parents to view children as burdens to their narcissistic consumption (staying home with little Susie means no brunch with the girls for me!), the way God built moms started to win out. Many mothers have begun to realize that not only is staying home with their children a wash economically with the cost of daycare, it is vastly more rewarding and meaningful than filling out spreadsheets or sending emails all day for a boss that would replace you in a heartbeat.
This isn’t just speculation, there is data behind it. A report by the State of Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (which set out to try and figure out why there is a severe labor shortage) analyzed in this thread showed that there is a direct correlation between a drop in labor participation and the rise in homeschooling that started with the pandemic, and has continued on after parents discovered the kind of things being forced on their children (anti-white racism, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.) as a result of the lockdowns.
And according to the report, it isn’t just the bonds between mother and young child being reforged, but also the bonds between elderly parent and child. If you have an elderly parent that is in assisted living or a nursing home, you know just how expensive that care is. Before the 20th Century, there were no nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Elderly people no longer able to care for themselves were cared for by their children and grandchildren. This is the entire point of saving an inheritance for your children, and the reason in the Bible the eldest child received a double portion (Dt. 21:17). This is the reason that Jesus denounced the scribes and Pharisees, because they nullified God’s commandment to honor your father and mother and care for them in their old age with the double inheritance by spiting them and donating their nest egg to the Temple (Mark 7:11ff). The scribes and Pharisees tradition was a rejection of God’s law, just as they rejected God’s Law in human flesh, Jesus Christ.
God had established a way of life where the generation in their prime had a duty to care for the generation that they brought into the world and a duty to care for the generation that brought them into the world. The modern way of life, which came into being after God stupendously blessed America with unbelievable prosperity after World War II, destroyed those bonds, and the generations that basked in God’s material blessings gladly renounced those duties. Why do the dirty thankless world of caring for my senile mother, changing her diaper and cleaning her up, dealing with her dementia and fits of rage, constantly worrying if she got out of the house and lost, when I can have a bunch of total strangers making just over minimum wage do that instead? Out of sight, out of mind, I have 401k contributions and expensive vacations to think about, instead.
Such an attitude is abhorrent to both biblical Christianity and the basic structure of how God made the world. He made us to love and honor our parents, even when they sometimes do not deserve it. He made us to love and want the very best for our children, even when they’ve done nothing to earn it. Dumping our children and parents off for total strangers to care for so we can make even more money is at the core of most of our social problems.
It is fashionable for Millennials to unthinkingly put the blame for all of this on Boomers because it as their generation that watched living standards, economic prospects, and sociological statistics (like marriage rates, birth rates, etc) all decline rapidly. Every Millennial and Zoomer has the Boomer relative in their ear telling them “back in my day, we just worked hard and that got me where I am” not realizing that median wages peaked in the 70s and economic prospects for regular, middle- and working-class Americans have never been better before or since. The cold hard reality is they were born into an era of prosperity and whether they had the work ethic or not, they were born on third base while thinking they legged out a triple. But the other fact is the Boomer generation really did have that work ethic. They worked extremely hard for what they have. But every virtue is also its own vice, and their motivation to work hard and maximize their income potential had a downside. Mammon became their God. Those bonds between parent and child in either direction were severed because there was money to be earned. The Boomer did a cost/benefit analysis on natural affections between parent and child and determined the duties God had laid before them could be fulfilled with more economic efficiency by others. The Boomer outsourced both sides of the Fifth Commandment and the results ever since have been disaster.
Before we are too hard on that generation, we have to recognize this is the situation they were thrust into. They were born into an era of untold prosperity, into the economic golden age of America. They didn’t ask to be any more than my generation asked to be born into an era of economic stagnation and precipitous social decay. Yes, it was a test of faithfulness the Boomer generation failed, but given my own generation’s failure at the test we have been given, we would not have fared much better. Nevertheless, rather than navel-gazing and pointing fingers at who exactly is responsible, if we are going to turn things around, we have to diagnose what went wrong. Trading the natural family for a little bit more income might seem good when the getting is good, but now that we are making bricks without straw and millennial parents have to deliver Uber Eats on top of two full-time jobs just to pay the bills, it has become clear the tradeoff was never worth it. What does it profit a man to gain a retirement home in Florida or Arizona, but lose any hope of a good life for your grandchildren?
Today, the younger generations are being forced to make harder decisions about things that matter. What we took for granted and didn’t know any better (“everybody has always had working moms! Of course you send the kids to daycare and public school!”) Is now being openly questioned by more and more people. But it is important to know what we are up against. This is, again, after all, a spiritual war. People who worship demons do not want regular people to have families. Our entire economy is designed for young people to not form families but rather be rootless, atomized consumers. Why have kids when you can go see the latest Marvel movie or throw axes at a gimmicky bar or have margaritas in Cancun? When people do eventually decide to marry and have their 1.2 children, the powers that be have so reduced the median income relative to cost of living that many people could not survive on one income even if they wanted to. And once you are in the two-income trap, it is incredibly difficult to dig out of. You are forced to make serious sacrifices in order to have a family.
But if you understand that this is not merely a question of what economic policy is better, but at its most fundamental level a spiritual war between Jesus Christ and Mammon, and that the sacrifices you make are not merely economic ones but rather spiritual ones, you will be empowered to do what you must. Staying home and raising little ones, staying home and caring for elderly, infirm parents these things are spiritual warfare against the usurious worshipers of Mammon. It is painful, but God is forcing us into undoing the curse of the Boomer generation. He is forcing us to re-forge the bonds between us and the generation that is preparing to depart this world and between us and the generation that has just entered the world. This is a death and resurrection. There is pain, but there is goodness and glory on the other end. This is how Christ tears apart the old world and remakes a new and better one. Devote yourselves to your children. Forgive your parents and show them the love and the respect God commands you to give that they might not even deserve. Do these things and Christ has promised to bless you (Eph. 6:1-3). And not only will He bless you, but through these dedicated acts of devotion He conquers the world.
Andrew Isker is the pastor of 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, MN. He is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Greyfriar’s Hall Ministerial Training School, and he has served churches in Missouri, West Virginia, and Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Boniface Option. Andrew, his wife Kara, and their five children reside in his hometown of Waseca, MN. He can be found on Gab @BonifaceOption.
Sunday 28 August 2022
Neil Oliver: 'Don’t be fooled into thinking this disaster movie is coming to an end'
Aug 2022 Neil Oliver reacts to Rishi Sunak saying experts had too much power over Covid lockdowns.
Watch on TV: Virgin 604, Freesat 216, Sky 515, Freeview 236, YouView 236
Listen on DAB+ Radio
Download the GB News App to watch live wherever you are, catch up with all our shows and get the latest news from the GBN family. https://www.gbnews.uk/freegbapp
Don't forget to follow us on social media too!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GBNEWS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GBNewsOnline
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gbnewsonline/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gb-n...
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gbnews
Friday 26 August 2022
Neil Oliver – ‘…coercion is coming down the line for us all… ’
…what they want are uneducated, unhealthy, unhappy, fearful people who are made compliant by their circumstances….’
To see this episode in full & more + get exclusive access to new vodcasts every week sign up to 'Neil Oliver' on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/neiloliver
Audio Podcasts,
Neil Oliver's Love Letter To The World &,
Neil Oliver's Love Letter To The British Isles
Available on all the usual providers
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...
Check out the Series Instagram account: Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverl...
#neiloliver #farmerprotests #selfsufficiency #farmers #amosmiller #Amish #dutchfarmers #farmers #Orkney #Rousay #independence #freedom #neiloliverGBNews #culture #travel #explore #history
Thursday 25 August 2022
An Organic Amish Farmer Needs Our Help Against the Big Brother Government
An Amish Farmer Needs Our Help
There's an important story starting to gain some traction that needs more attention and support from the Gab community. An Amish farmer is facing jail and $300,000 in fines for his multi-year battle with the federal government to operate his self-sustainable farm. You can read the full story which was covered by The Lancaster Patriot here.
"Amos Miller Organic Farm is our century-old Amish family farm in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania - serving its Private Member Association. The farm raises its animals and other pure foods the way nature intended and we are proud to be entirely chemical, cruelty and GMO-free. The animals are born and raised without antibiotics or hormones and they spend their entire lives naturally and stress-free out on pasture. All of the farm’s food is traceable, pure and grown on nutrient dense soil, under traditional time-honored methods.
The farm is now under attack by the USDA about non-conforming practices, the practices which pre-date the USDA. They are suing the farm to comply with USDA laws, concerning the way the farm animals are processed and how our food is labeled. The farm and its members believe that we have the right of free assembly and the right to choose how our food is processed and consumed without the USDA dictating to the farm.
Our Farmer, Amos Miller, needs your help to preserve traditional farming the way God intended."
Miller’s case has been making its way through the court system since 2016 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), represented by the U.S. Department of Justice, filed a civil action requiring Miller and Miller’s Organic Farm to comply with federal meat and poultry food safety statutes.
The USDA wants Miller to operate under the “Federal Grant of Inspection” before slaughtering, preparing, processing or selling for distribution certain meat and poultry products.
Miller had been slaughtering animals like cattle, chickens and pigs without federal inspections of his operation for several years. He argued that his business model of selling private club memberships to his Miller’s Organic Farm exempted him from federal regulations.
The DOJ won permanent injunctions against Miller in civil actions closed out in March 2017 and November 2019, while the FSIS later found Miller again out of compliance.
Another case was opened in 2021, and Miller was working on the compliance issues. He was eventually forced to stop selling most meat and poultry products earlier this year.
Late in 2021, Miller asked to remove his lawyer, Dallas-based attorney Steven Lafuente, from the case. Judge Edward G. Smith did not accept the motion to withdraw Lafuente.
Miller filed an “interlocutory appeal” with the Eastern District Court on May 10, which was assigned to the Third Circuit Court. In the appeal, Miller challenges Judge Smith’s decision to retain Lafuente as his lawyer.
The appeal charges that Judge Smith determined “that Amos Miller does not have the right to choose his own attorney” and that the decision was made in “error” and that the “judge was acting irrationally and beyond the confines of public policy.”
Miller and his wife, Rebecca, were originally set to appear before Judge Smith on Sept. 26 in the U.S. Courthouse in Easton for a show cause hearing to consider adding Rebecca as a defendant in the case, to examine compliance of paying $305,065 in fines and the possible incarceration of Amos “for his continuing civil contempt, until defendants make such payments.”
Christian Nationalism is not merely a political movement, in fact it is primarily a spiritual and cultural one. This farmer is an example for us all. He built his own operation and works the land to provide for his family as God intended. This is what true Christian Nationalism looks like. Soverignty. Sustainability. Liberty. That is why it is so important for us to get this story out there and support this farmer in any way that we can, even if it's as simple as saying a prayer for his family.
After this story went viral on Gab Tucker Carlson picked it up and finally many people are starting to pay attention. I encourage you to read the full coverage above and watch this segment from Tucker. Please share it with a friend and keep Amos Miller and his farm in your prayers.
You can also donate to a GiveSendGo campaign that was set up for the family here.
Click here to view this email as a blog post and please share this story!
Sunday 14 August 2022
On Christian Nationalism: Interview with Dr. Stephen Wolfe
In this episode of The King's Hall, we sit down with Dr. Stephen Wolfe to talk about Christian Nationalism. Our sponsor for this episode, Reformation Heritage Books, offers a large selection of helpful and theological rigorous resources on everything from biblical theology to history to blue collar family discipleship. One of the things that we are hoping to do with The King's Hall is to see men emboldened, invigorated, and equipped to lead the way in discipling and catechizing their children and see Christian homes built from the ground up—which is why we are so glad to be partnering with Reformation Heritage Books for this episode of The King's Hall. Grab their great Family Worship Bible Guide today! This episode is also sponsored by Christendom Bible College, which offers a Biblical, Historical, and Christian Principle approach to higher education—seeking to restore America’s character by training students in the foundations and principles of our Christian Civilization. Their intense commitment to Biblical Christianity stands out in sharp contrast to the compromise and capitulation that surrounds us at every turn in the world of higher education. Apply today! -Reformation Heritage Family Worship Bible Guide: https://www.heritagebooks.org/products/family-worship-bible-guide-leather-like-duotone.html -Christendom Bible College Website: https://christendombiblecollege.org -Christendom Bible College E-Book: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/7Qr6cJF/cbcebook -The King's Hall Website: https://www.kingshall.org -The King's Hall Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_Kings_Hall -The King's Hall Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thekingshall Psst: Patrons gain access to After Hours, a patrons-only show with every main episode!
Why Pagan Nationalism is So Dangerous
Unbelief is Destructive. That’s Why Pagan Nationalism is So Dangerous
by Chris Hume
This article was originally published on August 4, 2022 at The Lancaster Patriot
The hullabaloo about the bugaboo of “Christian nationalism” is a diversion from what its opponents are of necessity promoting—namely, pagan nationalism.
Noah Webster defined pagan as “pertaining to the worship of false gods.” A pagan worldview, therefore, is one based on a “god” or “authority” other than the one true God revealed in the Old and New Testaments.
Pagan nationalism, then, is the belief that America should be defined by a pagan (non-Christian) worldview, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Pagan nationalism seeks to merge pagan and American identities, enthroning a non-Christian worldview as the standard by which all things are judged.
For example, pagan nationalists want their worldview regarding death to reign supreme: any woman who wants to murder her child in the womb ought to be able to. Pagan nationalists also want their worldview regarding sexuality to be the law of the land. Homosexual “marriage,” drag shows for kids, and transgender “surgeries” (read: mutilation) are part and parcel with pagan nationalism.
It is worthwhile to note that abortion, infanticide, and sexual perversion are not new—they have been the offspring of paganism for millennia—but now we have pagan nationalists in America promoting these things as the basis of our society.
Biblical Testimony
While never using the term “pagan nationalism,” the Bible does address the concept.
The word of the Lord that came to the prophet Micah included an indictment that Israel and Judah had “kept the statutes of Omri, and all the works of the house of Ahab; and…[had] walked in their counsels” (Micah 6:16).
Omri and Ahab may have (at times) claimed to follow the one true God, but the pagan worldview influenced their governance of Israel. Omri followed the example of Jeroboam and worshipped idols (1 Kings 16:26) and Ahab built an altar for the false god Baal (1 Kings 16:32). These were wicked kings who worshipped false gods and implemented a pagan worldview in society; they were pagan nationalists because they believed paganism (the worship of false gods) should undergird and define society.
Thus, Micah indicts the people for following the statutes (or laws) of Omri and Ahab. These laws were not biblical laws, based on the biblical worldview. They were pagan laws, based on the pagan worldview.
Building on Micah’s theme, the prophet Jeremiah notes that the civil rulers’ acceptance of paganism led them to fill the land “with the blood of innocents” (cf. Jeremiah 19:4-5; 32:35).
Idolatry and paganism are consistently viewed as destructive in Scripture because only the biblical worldview provides the basis for righteousness in society. Abandon biblical law for society, and the only alternative is pagan nationalism.
More Examples
The honest student of history will note that pagan nationalism has left a trail of destruction and devastation in its wake. The pagan cultures surrounding Israel were devoted to false gods and all sorts of debaucheries, including incest, adultery, infanticide, and bestiality (cf. Leviticus 18). It was for this paganism that the land vomited out its inhabitants (Leviticus 18:28).
The Aztecs and the Mayans practiced pagan nationalism when they butchered both children and adults to appease their pagan deities.
Greco-Roman civilization became known for its sexual immorality, perversion, and infanticide. Pagan nationalism led to the practice of “exposing” unwanted babies, leaving them for dead outside the city gates.
Ancient Carthage was no better. They sacrificed their children to pagan gods for centuries.
Notably, it was the spread of the Christian worldview which led to the demise of paganism. Author Alvin J. Schmidt writes that it was “the early church’s opposition to abortion, along with its condemnation of infanticide and child abandonment” which became a “major factor in institutionalizing the sanctity of human life in the Western world.” Historian W. E. H. Lecky notes that “the value and sanctity of infant life…broadly distinguishe[d] Christian from pagan societies.”
The advance of Christianity led to the rise of private institutions to care for the poor, the immigrant, the sick, and the downtrodden. This compassionate care stands in stark contrast to the pagan nationalism that prevailed prior to Christianity’s influence on the nations.
Unfortunately, pagan nationalism has not yet died out completely. Whenever a nation seeks to base their laws and ordinances on anything other than the revealed Law-Word of God, they are practicing a form of pagan nationalism.
Hitler promoted pagan nationalism in Nazi Germany, carrying off Jewish children to be shot or killed in a gas chamber.
Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union was one of the clearest examples of pagan nationalism. The false god in Stalin’s mind was not a deity from the Roman pantheon—it was man, exalted to the position of the divine. Atheism is simply clandestine paganism. And Stalin’s pagan nationalism led to the unjust deaths of over 20 million people.
Paganism is wrong wherever it takes root. Claiming “atheism” or “no religious belief” is no excuse. Every culture that embraces pagan nationalism will be held accountable (cf. Jeremiah 25:29).
The Elephant in the Room
As American pagans decry Christianity, their pagan nationalism is the elephant in the room. The alternative to a society based on biblical law is a society based on paganism. And that is a dangerous thing. Unbelief and idolatry are so destructive because they replace the just standard of God’s Law-Word with a manmade, pagan standard. We’ve seen how that works out in history. And we’re seeing how it works out now.
When it comes to our culture’s embrace of pagan nationalism, including local groups like Lancaster Stands Up, they are simply parroting the narrative of the pagans who have died out before them. But the current climate has allowed the movement to grow, as narcissistic leaders disingenuously use language such as “equality” and “love.” Aided by the Internet, social media, and liberal news outlets, pagan nationalism has spread, most notably in the government school system. The prevalence of pagan nationalism as an ideology makes it one of the greatest threats to liberty and justice in America today.
The example of the biblical prophets is instructive. They clearly articulated the dangers of pagan nationalism and decried the political and religious leaders who abandoned God’s Law-Word in favor of pagan laws. We must do the same today.
Pagan nationalism has built a base that is ready and willing to plunge America into the same flood of debauchery that has characterized pagan societies in the past. The Christian faith tells us that followers of Christ must stand against the shedding of innocent blood and the rise of false ideologies. The biblical worldview must be boldly proclaimed to all people.
Otherwise, it’s clear pagan nationalists will impose their ungodly worldview on all Americans. We are already seeing it happen. But there is only one type of nationalism that will be victorious. And it isn’t pagan nationalism. It’s the nationalism that is demonstrated when the kings of the earth “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:11).
A growing number of Americans realize the con of these supposedly “neutral” pagans. They are not about “equality” or “love.” They are committed to forcing their pagan nationalism on all of us. And though I understand the dangers of pagan nationalism, I also know it is a movement of death with a diminishing powerbase. The Apostle Paul told Timothy that wicked men “will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all” (2 Timothy 3:9).
Pagans, your track record is horrendous, and your worldview is defunct. Stop promoting pagan nationalism. Repent of your folly and believe in Christ.
Chris Hume is the managing editor of The Lancaster Patriot. Follow @ChrisHume1689 on Twitter, and @hume227 on Gab
Saturday 13 August 2022
A Graze of Glory: Why Good Pasture Matters ,
A Graze of Glory: Why Good Pasture Matters
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, you’re probably an American that eats meat. If that’s the case, your meat is probably too simple. Or rather, the system that produced your meat is too simple. And this oversimplification causes serious problems for your health and our country’s soils.
Want to enjoy truly healthy meat? Embrace the simple complexity of pasture husbandry.
This may sound counterintuitive. Scripture tells us to live simply. The Righteous Job was a “simple” God-fearing, upright man, the type that the book of Proverbs exhorts us to be. So simplicity is good. Indeed, in all of Steadfast Provisions’ pemmican products, we aim for simplicity. Simple ingredients, processed in simple, traditional ways. But here’s the paradox: to live simply, we must embrace the complexity of God’s creation. Otherwise, things get very complicated, very fast.
This article might be feeling a little complicated, already – but stay with us, and you’ll be rewarded with a new understanding of food, and of how you relate to the natural world around you. All you have to do is understand the story of pasture.
Complex Pastures…
Imagine you’re in a broad grassy field, on a sunny summer day. Before you lies a cow. She’s barely visible amidst the thigh-high grass – only her ears give her away, the ears and the rhythmic sound of her chewing the cud. She’s working quiet magic.
Nearby, a hog nibbles a tuft of clover, and then turns his nose down to the sod, rooting and tooting away.
Seedheads sway gently in the breeze. Songbirds twitter and swoop. A kestrel watches from a fencepost. Time begins to slow down, approaching stillness. If you watch quietly enough, you can almost hear the grass grow. Life abounds.
Simple, right? Wrong.
Natural, yes. Beautiful, yes. Simple? No.
The simplicity is just a surface appearance. Beneath the surface, many complex things are happening, to keep the peaceful growth in balance.
Inside the cow, a community of millions of microscopic creatures works tirelessly to digest fibrous grass. The cow chews once, swallows, and lets these microbes do their work, exuding precise concoctions of acids and enzymes to unlock the precious sugars stored in the grass. Then the cow regurgitates the microbe-worked grass as a wad of cud, chews it again, and swallows it yet again. All in all, it takes about 12 days for a blade of grass to pass through a cow to become either beef or manure.
This complexity continues outside the cow: with every pull of her prehensile tongue, the cow anoints the grass with special enzymes and hormones from her saliva. These chemicals then stimulate rapid regrowth in the grass.
Meanwhile, the grass roots match the length of the above-ground stalks. This means that the root-ends die off with every graze, providing food for thousands of species of tiny bacteria, fungus, and protozoa, teeming invisible beneath the surface of the soil.
All of this activity is affected by the rhythms of the sun, the clouds, and the rain; by irrigation; by the rotational grazing and resting of the pastures; by migratory birds that eat bugs and drop nitrogen-rich manure; by coyotes that eat gophers and other rodents; by vultures that clean up decaying animals; and by pollinator insects that rely on wildflower blossoms.
All of this is, in the words of the Psalmist “Fearfully and wonderfully made.” The miracle of nature is that every part is designed to support and rely on every other part. The complexity of nature results in peace and balance, and its harmony surpasses the bounds of human understanding.
This should inspire nothing but reverence. We should remember God’s words in Job 38: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?… Who hath cleft a channel for the waterflood… to satisfy the waste and desolate ground, and to cause the tender grass to spring forth?”
None other than the Lord Himself.
…Versus Simple Feedlots
But over the last several hundred years, modern human cultures have forgotten to celebrate this complexity, and have forgotten how to work with this harmony. Instead, modernity has sought total control, maximum “efficiency,” and peak “yield,” at the expense of traditional, natural systems of balance. This was essentially a project of simplification:
Take the cows off of the pasture, put them in a feedlot, feed them full of grain, watch them grow faster, and sell more beef. Optimize your system for this one quantitative, profit-obsessed metric.
Engineer the genetics of the corn, breed the cattle for rapid weight gain, and process all the beef in one of a few enormous plants, owned by just three companies. It all seemed so simple… So free from the constraints of God’s creation, with all its mysterious complexities. Here is a system that is homogeneous, able to be duplicated anywhere and scaled up over vast lands and multifarious climates.
But then it all started to go wrong.
Cattle, crowded together in feedlots and eating unnatural amounts of grain, began to get sick with new diseases. So, they began to receive regular antibiotics. Antibiotics contaminate both the meat and the groundwater, causing the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and human obesity.
Manure, which is naturally a miraculous fertilizer for healthy soil, becomes overly-concentrated and turns into a toxic mess that poisons rivers and aquifers.
Cattle and other animals suffer in torturous conditions. They are treated like mere machines, rather than part of the creation that we were created to steward.
In fact, the whole living food system began to be treated as a mechanism, devoid of soul, devoid of spirit, devoid of natural variety. Farms became factories, animals became commodities. As the machine grew and more problems arose, everything became so complicated.
This saga teaches us something profound: complexity is not the same as complication.
The harmony of nature is complex. When we attempt to simplify the complexity, we break the balance, and then we try to fix the imbalance with complicated solutions, which themselves create more complications. It’s like if we drink coffee all day, and then we need alcohol to go to sleep, and then we need more coffee the next day to get up, and so on, ever-dependent on more and more complications to compensate for our imbalances.
This cycle is a race to the bottom: lower and lower animal welfare, ecological integrity, deliciousness, and nutritional quality.
The Nutritional Difference
How has this simplification, this industrialization, affected our bodies? In so many ways – mostly by affecting the composition of our favorite ingredient: animal fat. The main differences are in Omega-3s, antioxidants, and Vitamins C, E, and D.
Omega-3 fats are important because they help to regulate inflammation, a process that is healing, in balance, but can cause chronic health problems when there is too much of it. Essentially, if you eat too much Omega-6 and too little Omega-3 fats, your body can be chronically inflamed, which can result in cancer, heart disease, and reduced cognitive capacity.
Grains contain Omega-6 fats, while pasture grasses are rich in Omega-3 fats. So if livestock eats lots of pasture grasses, they’ll get more Omega-3s, and therefore pasture-raised meat causes less chronic inflammation. Omega-3 fat is a highly unstable molecule, which is very susceptible to oxidation and rancidity. This makes fish oil a dicey proposition and increases the value of Omega-3 fats in pasture animal fat, which are protected by the presence of saturated fats.
But even more important than omega-3s are the vitamins in the animal fat. Yes, fat contains vitamins, and many vitamins are actually only absorbable in the presence of fat, rather than water. Pasture-raised fat contains much higher levels of Vitamin E and beta carotene, both important antioxidants.
Now, Vitamin D is an interesting case. You probably know that Vitamin D is generally produced due to sunlight exposure. But many of us live in northern climes, where we cannot obtain sun-sourced Vitamin D for about half of the year. This is where pasture pork surely shines (like the sun. Get it?).
Pasture-raised pigs spend lots of time in the sun and absorb the rays through their thin coat of fur. This means they produce lots of Vitamin D, which is stored — you guessed it — in the fat! According to research conducted by the Weston A. Price Foundation, pasture pork lard has 10,500 iu of Vitamin D per tablespoon. That’s an excellent daily dose of D, especially because the Vitamin D in pasture lard comes in the form of calcidiol, the same type as is found naturally in our bloodstreams.
In comparison, factory-farmed lard from sun-starved, pasty pigs only contains about 1/10 the Vitamin D of pasture lard. That won’t get you through the winter!
So modern, simplified, feedlot factory farm meat lacks lots of good nutrients. Even worse, they contain lots of compounds that are bad for you. We already mentioned antibiotics. We should also consider chemical residues of glyphosate and atrazine herbicides, which disrupt your hormones and weaken your intestinal walls, potentially causing food sensitivities and overactive immune systems. You don’t want that in your fat!
It’s pretty clear: nutritionally, environmentally, and morally, modern feedlot animal agriculture is, simply, disastrous. So, what’s the solution?
The Simple Complex Solution
Well, the solution sounds simple: Return to pasture farming. Eat pasture-raised meat.
This is a traditional path in the best sense: returning to pasture isn’t the same as returning to the past. We’ve learned a lot about the true complexity of pasture ecosystems, in the past century, and we have new technologies such as electric fences, soil tests, and targeted mineral supplements. The way we revitalize tradition is to take something older, something more connected to the earth, something that can only work in intimate connection to a specific piece of land, and make it new again.
We’re blowing on a hearth fire that almost went out, adding kindling, resurrecting life in the smoldering coals of ancient wisdom. We are remembering what our wiser ancestors knew: God has made the earth to provide what we need, when we live in a prayerful, humble way, working diligently for what we eat.
We can embrace old ways, with new, appropriate technologies: This is the heart of Steadfast Provisions. We’re part of a movement to rekindle traditional pasture husbandry and food preservation. We take the bounty of natural pasture and concentrate it into a form that can carry you to the top of high mountains.
Meet Steadfast’s Pasture Farm Suppliers
David Treebeard is an Orthodox Christian, organic writer, and creative farmer. His company, Steadfast Provisions, crafts traditional nutrient-dense, nonperishable foods based on pure pastured animal fat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)