The Socialist Trojan Horse: What the DSA Is Really Hiding From You

 

Taiwan pet owners honor departed pets

 

Mamdani forgot he’s just a mayor. The State Department had to remind him

Story by Anthony Maranise, Washington Examiner

Mamdani forgot he’s just a mayor. The State Department had to remind him

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration recently scheduled a meeting between his commissioner of international affairs and Iran’s U.N. ambassador. The meeting was only stopped after the State Department intervened and ordered it canceled.

Mamdani says he didn’t know about it. That is not a defense. It is an admission that either his office is freelancing foreign policy or he sees nothing wrong with it.

He is a city mayor. Nothing more. The fact that he leads the largest city in the country does not grant him authority to conduct diplomacy with a regime that actively works against U.S. interests. Foreign policy belongs to the federal government. Period.

Local officials exist to handle local problems: crime, transit, housing, and basic services. They do not get to insert themselves into matters of national security and international relations. When a mayor’s team attempts back-channel contact with Iran’s representative at the United Nations, it is not bold leadership. It is arrogant overreach.

This episode fits a pattern. Mamdani ran on a platform that treated the mayoralty as a platform for progressive ideology rather than competent local governance. Now, his administration has demonstrated the same confusion of roles in practice. While City Hall dabbles in foreign affairs that it has no business touching, New Yorkers continue to deal with failing infrastructure, strained public safety resources, and a city government that too often prioritizes symbolism over results.

HUMILIATING: Gen-Z Can't Answer the Most Basic Questions

 

Dr. Ben Carson SAID that, the US Constitution Says Nothing About Church and State separation!!!??

Silicone Valley + (Video)

 

*Original Video (Source) https://youtu.be/rfS5Nwx7ocU?si=LxL_U98C9GdxX8WI

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Should a governor know the difference between SILICONE & Silicon? 

AI Overview 

Yes, a governor should know the difference between silicon and silicone. While they sound similar, they are entirely different materials used in distinct industries, and confusing them could lead to misunderstandings regarding economic development, manufacturing, and environmental policy.

 

"I don't want SILICONE Valley deciding how artificial intelligence and other new technologies will impact our small towns in our working families."...

Tim Walz

>---<

Tim Walz said SILICONE Valley!

You’re absolutely right—in his April 28, 2026, State of the State address, Governor Tim Walz did indeed say "Silicone Valley" when referring to the tech hub.

 

CBS News +2

While the official transcript from MN.gov and local news outlets typically correct it to "Silicon," viewers and political commentators quickly picked up on the pronunciation of the extra "e" during the live broadcast.

CBS News +1

Context of the Slip
The gaffe occurred during a segment where Walz was taking a swipe at the "technocrat" elite, specifically naming Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and JD Vance. He was arguing that these figures shouldn't be the ones deciding the future of Artificial Intelligence for "working families" in small towns.

Bring Me The News

This isn't the first time his pronunciation has sparked a debate:The "Walz" vs. "Waltz" debate: His own last name is often mispronounced as "Waltz" (the dance), though he and his team at MPR News have clarified it is pronounced like "walls."

Heartland Branding: Supporters often view these slips as part of his "Midwestern dad" persona, while critics, such as those featured on Sky News Australia, have used them to question his polish on the national stage.

 

Crikey +4

AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses

<---->

Silicon is a naturally occurring, hard, semiconducting element (Si) used in electronics, whereas silicone is a synthetic, flexible, heat-resistant polymer made of silicon, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen used in sealants and medical products. Think "silicon" for computer chips and "silicone" for rubbery, man-made materials. 

Live Science

 +4

Rep. Ilhan Omar mocked over brutal World War ‘11’ gaffe in resurfaced video

Rep. Ilhan Omar mocked over brutal World War '11' gaffe in resurfaced video 

Opinion by Victor Nava

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was mocked on social media Monday over a resurfaced video where she referred to World War II as “World War Eleven.”

In the Jan. 22, 2025, clip, Omar, flanked by other congressional Democrats, calls for the repeal of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which President Trump invoked to quickly deport suspected Venezuelan gang members in the country illegally.

“The last time the Alien Enemies Act was invoked, it was used to detain and deport German, Japanese, Italian immigrants during World War Eleven,” the far-left “Squad” congresswoman declared, reading from prepared remarks.

Omar quickly corrected herself after the verbal blunder.

“Oh … two … sorry,” she said, chuckling.

Omar made the verbal blunder in January 2025, while discussing efforts to repeal the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. C-SPAN

President Trump has previously criticized the Minnesota Democrat’s intelligence, referring to her as “Low IQ Ilhan Omar,” in a Truth Social post earlier this year, and several social media users hurled similar insults at Omar after watching the brutal gaffe.

“I can’t believe this dummy is in Congress,” read an X post from Libs of TikTok, which included a clip of the Omar’s misstep.

“She learned history at the Quality Learing Center,” MAGA influencer Sarah Sizzle wrote on X, referring to the infamous sign at a now- shuttered Minnesota day care center that was at the center of a fraud scandal last year.

Omar was ridiculed on social media over the gaffe. C-SPAN

“Was this for real? I thought it might be AI,” conservative columnist Ed Morrissey posted in disbelief.

Another X user responded with an AI-generated New York Times frontpage blaming Trump for starting “World War Eleven.”

One person argued Omar had “a case of the Biden’s” that day.

“This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the stupidist generation of politicians the world has witnessed,” another X user lamented.

Omar’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

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BREAKING: U.S. Secret Service Agent LEAKS Sensitive Security Information...

January 02 – The Lesson of Bethlehem - Maranatha

Former Homeland Security agent claims prosecutors ignored Minnesota day care fraud cases: ‘Just evaporated’

By
Patrick Reilly
Published Dec. 30, 2025, 7:34 a.m. ET

A retired Homeland Security Investigations agent recalled looking into fraud at Minnesota day care centers 10 years ago — but said the probe inexplicably “went into thin air” and nothing ever came of it.

Jeremy Christenson, who worked with HSI for 16 years, said he was part of a months-long fraud investigation in 2015 into day care centers that seemed completely empty, with a task force of 20 law enforcement agents and the state Department of Human Services.

They were probing Somali migrants who “were setting up sham day cares, [with] fake bills, fake students, or just enrolling students that never came. It was just all fake daycares. That’s the easiest way to explain it,” Christenson told Minnesota’s Alpha News.

Former Homeland Security investigator Jeremy Christenson discusses the rampant fraud case in Minneapolis.@AlphaNews/X

KARE 11 Investigates: Death raises new fraud allegations in Minnesota’s ...

But can ye not discern the signs of the times?

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven.

He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed. 

Matthew 16:1-4.

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Christians are ignorant of Great Commission because churches aren't teaching it enough

Staff writer 

Fri 18 Jan 2019 16:15 GMT

A pastor and missiologist have weighed in on why so many Christians in the US are unaware of the Great Commission.

After Barna research found that 51 per cent of American Christians do not know what the Great Commission means, it called in the experts to find out why.

Allen Yeh, associate professor of intercultural studies and missiology at Biola University, said some of the ignorance could be explained by simple terminology - the fact that 'the Great Commission' is not a specific term that Jesus actually used.

By contrast, Jesus taught his followers the 'greatest commandment' in Matthew 22:37-40 and it's a passage many Christians know by heart.

(Photo: Barna)

But that can't explain all of confusion, Yeh told Barna, and in his view, there's another important reason - churches are failing to teach it from the pulpit.

'I think some of the ignorance of this term can be attributed to churches not teaching this concept enough any more,' he said.

'I certainly heard it a lot growing up, but perhaps it has been lost on this current generation of believers.'

David Daniels, lead pastor of Pantego Bible Church in Fort Worth, Texas, takes a similar view.

Obama refuses to acknowledge ‘Muslim terrorists’ at summit

By Geoff Earle

February 18, 2015 | 10:37pm

Modal Trigger

Photo: Reuters

MORE ON:

BARACK OBAMA

Giuliani: Obama doesn't 'love America'

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Obama: American Muslims must do more to counter 'violent extremism'

WASHINGTON — They’re burning and beheading victims in the name of Islam, but President Obama delivered a major speech Wednesday on combating violent extremism — while refusing to use the words “Muslim terrorists.”

“No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism,” Obama told a crowd that included Muslim community leaders at the White House.

Following months of unrelenting atrocities by ISIS killers who released videos of themselves beheading US journalists and, most recently, 21 Coptic Christians, and burning a man alive, the president kowtowed to the audience by proclaiming that “Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.”

“Generations of Muslim immigrants came here and went to work as farmers and merchants and factory workers, helped to lay railroads and build up America,” he said.

“The first Islamic center in New York City was founded in the 1890s. America’s first mosque — this was an interesting fact — was in North Dakota.”

And just days after Pope Francis condemned ISIS’s barbaric murders of 21 Egyptians “simply for the fact that they were Christians,” Obama insisted al Qaeda and their ilk “are not religious leaders. They’re terrorists.”

“And we are not at war with ­Islam,” the president said. “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

In his much-anticipated remarks at a summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,” the president also:
Called on the international community to “eradicate this scourge of violent extremism,” repeating the White House terminology that eschews mentioning religion.

Declared that “we all know there is no one profile of a violent extremist or terrorist . . . Around the world, and in the United States, inexcusable acts of violence have been committed against people of different faiths, by people of different faiths, which is, of course, betrayal of all of our faiths.”
Mourned the “brutal murders” of “three young Muslim Americans” in Chapel Hill, NC, pointing to the religion of the victims even though the crime may have been over a parking dispute.
Pointed to “grievances” of young Muslims living in poverty under corrupt governments, saying that when there are no outlets, “resentments fester.”

Was protective of Muslims in the US. “Muslim Americans feel they have been unfairly targeted,” he said. “We have to be sure that abuses stop, are not repeated, that we do not stigmatize entire communities.”

Obama even acknowledged pundits who have parsed “the words we use to describe and frame this challenge” — a reference to growing criticism about the language deployed by his ­administration.

Obama’s speech included repeated references to Islam and Muslims as he laid out his argument — but he didn’t budge on how he would refer to the self-styled Islamic State.

Instead, he simply referred to ISIS and al Qaeda as “groups” and talked about the need to “vanquish these organizations.”

The summit itself didn’t have Islam in the name.

Although the White House didn’t make the guest list public, attendees at Tuesday’s session with Vice President Joe Biden were mainly from Muslim groups.

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Biden, a Catholic School ‘Kid,’ Praises Nuns Under Fire From the Vatican

POLITICS


By JASON HOROWITZ

SEPT. 17, 2014

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke on Wednesday in front of the statehouse in Des Moines as he helped a group of social justice activists kick off their 10-state “Nuns on the Bus” tour.CreditCharlie Neibergall/Associated Press



DES MOINES — At a Vatican meeting a few years ago, Pope Benedict XVI unexpectedly asked Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for some advice. “You are being entirely too hard on the American nuns,” Mr. Biden offered. “Lighten up.”

Last year, Mr. Biden seized on an audience with Pope Francis as another opportunity to praise the sisters who remained the target of a Vatican crackdown for their activism on issues like poverty and health care.

And on a visit to Iowa on Wednesday, Mr. Biden literally, as he might put it, got on board with the nuns.

“You’re looking at a kid who had 12 years of Catholic education,” Mr. Biden, wearing a white shirt and a red tie, said before a backdrop of the gold-domed Iowa statehouse and a “Nuns on the Bus” coach bus. “I woke up probably every morning saying: ‘Yes, Sister; no, Sister; yes, Sister; no, Sister.’ I just made it clear, I’m still obedient.”

RELATED COVERAGE

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The issue of obedience has weighed on those nuns of late, as the Vatican has deemed the women on stage with the vice president radical feminists who pay too much attention to social justice and too little to promoting church teaching on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Mr. Biden greets supporters in IowaCreditCharlie Neibergall/Associated Press

Mr. Biden’s visit came just weeks after Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Vatican’s enforcer of doctrine, shocked many American nuns with his comments to a Vatican newspaper. As he defended the effort to rein in the nuns, the cardinal remarked, “Above all, we have to clarify that we are not misogynists; we don’t want to gobble up a woman a day!”

So while political reporters focused on Mr. Biden’s appearance as his first foray back into a presidential campaign season, the outing also put the nation’s first Roman Catholic vice president in the middle of a protracted political fight between the pope he admires and the American nuns he reveres.

“All politics begin here in Iowa,” said Sister Simone Campbell, the head of Network, the group that organized the tour and described Mr. Biden’s papal conversations. She expressed delight that the vice president had lent some star power to what she called “our little, teeny event.”

In an interview, Sister Campbell said Mr. Biden had expressed a willingness to join the nuns after their first tour in 2012, “Nuns on the Bus: Nuns Drive for Faith, Family and Fairness.” That was the year that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cracked down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents about 80 percent of America’s 57,000 nuns. The report explicitly cited Sister Campbell’s group, which helped lobby for President Obama’s health care law, as being a particularly bad influence.

The continuing inquiry has prompted tension in the Vatican.

Many Catholic progressives have looked to Francis, who has stripped some of the American church’s most powerful traditionalists of their power in Rome, to end the investigation and affirm that the nuns’ work with the poor is in sync with his own priorities. So far, they have been disappointed.

Sister Campbell said Obama administration officials had offered to help make her group’s case through diplomatic channels and added that the president’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, a Catholic whosebrother is a priest, “is like totally into” the nuns’ approach to the faith.

Mr. Obama himself has long ties to Catholic activism; he began community organizing under the guidance of progressive priests in Chicago.

But it is Mr. Biden who feels closest to the nuns.

At the event on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said, “The Nuns on the Bus fought like the devil for health care.” He then helped kick off their 10-state tour to increase voter turnout by saying, “I know no group of people who bring a greater sense of justice and passion to what they do.”

The prelates of the church, he suggested, would be wise to listen to the nuns, because “guess what, they are more popular than everybody else.”

The Holy See’s press office declined a request for comment. Privately, Vatican officials’ responses to Mr. Biden’s appearance ranged from indifference to annoyance.

“There will be people unhappy in the Vatican if this becomes an occasion for the nuns to get a big vote of support from the White House,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”

After praising the nuns in hushed tones, Mr. Biden abruptly switched to a shouting campaign mode on the bright afternoon, calling for respect for immigrants, protection of voting rights and restoring the middle class before a crowd of about 250 people.

“What happened? Things are out of whack!” he yelled to applause. (He also quoted Thomas Pynchon and, hours after apologizing for his use of the word “Shylocks” to portray craven bankers, described a Chinese leader as hailing from “the Orient.”) Even more so than former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was the star attraction at Senator Tom Harkin’s steak fry on Sunday, Mr. Biden was saddled with the weight of defending the Obama administration. When he did so, the crowd’s energy waned.

After the speech, Mr. Biden hugged the nuns, spent more than half an hour shaking nearly every hand at the rally and then boarded their bus, which was made to look like a campaign flier with the words “We the People, We the Voters” scrawled across the windows. He had a fund-raiser later in the day for congressional candidates, but first the bus dropped him off at the Waveland Cafe, one of Iowa’s best-known campaign stops.

Mr. Biden entered the diner and greeted a small group of local Democratic Party officials seated at a round table and eating cake with white frosting. He answered a question from reporters about Iraq, slipped his credit card to the waitress and, as his aides bounced the press from the diner, took his seat in the middle of a table full of nuns. They ordered burgers and Reuben sandwiches. Mr. Biden ate French toast with peanut butter and maple syrup. Then, for an hour and a half, he shared his views with them on subjects both theological and temporal, including St. Thomas Aquinas, the political origins of papal infallibility and the fallout from the sexual abuse scandal in the church.

He told the sisters that nuns had built his confidence as a stuttering child — “You have no idea of the impact that you have on others,” he said — and that he believed Francis was working hard to bring about reconciliation with them. “Everything will be all right,” he assured the nuns.

After a brief pause, Mr. Biden, who has run unsuccessfully for president twice, added that he had not “always accurately predicted everything.”


A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2014, on page A22 of the New York editionwith the headline: Biden, a Catholic School ‘Kid,’ Praises Nuns Under Fire From the Vatican.


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Adventist leader Dan Jackson confronts future challenges in American-born movement

Mark A. Kellner Deseret News National
news@effinghamherald.net

POSTED: July 29, 2014 5:00 a.m

Gerry Chudleigh, Adventist News Network

Donna and Dan Jackson have shared a Seventh-day Adventist ministry that has taken the family all over Canada and to India for missionary service.







SILVER SPRING, Md. — Nothing — not surviving a car wreck en route to his wedding, nor being a Seventh-day Adventist missionary, nor years in the pulpit — had prepared Dan Jackson for the challenge his daughter threw at him on a Saturday afternoon.


The eldest of their three teenage children at the time didn't appreciate the weekly ritual of attending Sabbath services where dad was the preacher.

“ ‘You make us go to church because you don't want to look bad,’ ” Jackson recalled her saying. "It hit me like a brick, right between the eyes. … I was stunned."

After pondering her words for a couple of hours with his wife Donna, Jackson called the children together to announce that when they turned 17 years old, attending Rutland Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kelowna, British Columbia, where Jackson served, would be their choice.

"There were a lot of people who thought I was stark raving mad," he said of his parishioners. "Seventh-day Adventists have strong beliefs and a strong culture, and we can force people into the mold, but we really don't help them in the long run."

An upbeat man with a puckish sense of humor, the 65-year-old Jackson draws on that experience when puzzling out the challenges he faces as the Adventist Church's North American Division president. While the 151-year-old denomination was born in the U.S., less than 1 percent of the membership resides in North America. Leaders such as Jackson recognize decades-old methods of outreach that worked among their aging membership aren't as effective as they once were — particularly with young adults.

"We cannot rely on methods that were developed and implemented in the ’60s. We're not living in the 20th century anymore," he said. "So I (believe) that thinking Seventh-day Adventists … are realizing that we've come to a point in time where the mission of the church is expressed in a way that is relevant to our own culture."

Relevant expression of faith

That expression may take forms other than traditional broadcasting outreach, weeks-long evangelistic meetings in or near local churches and even the longstanding practice of "literature evangelism," often carried out by door-to-door salesmen hawking "The Bible Story" and other family-oriented books.

"Adventism has got to move beyond its own walls. We've got to quit believing that the only relationships that we have are the safe relationships that we find on Sabbath morning," he said. "We need to become the incarnation of the things we believe."

It's this "incarnational" style of religion, he believes, that not only impresses today's post-modern youths, but which also had an impact in his own family.

He recalled his youngest daughter being a "very self-motivated, initiative-taking kind of person," leaving home in her mid-teens and returning "with a surprise who became our grandson."

Dealing with the unplanned pregnancy of an unmarried teen daughter, Jackson informed his congregation's leaders and offered to let them call for another pastor if they desired. He also told them it would be up to the congregation, and not their pastor, to exercise any church discipline.

"Pastors are people," Jackson said, explaining both his candor and the reason he gave leaders that option. "Yes, congregations have expectations (of members), but pastors also have to be able to negotiate an understanding (that) my kids are people, they will make mistakes, but I'm going to love those kids more than I'll love you."

One day, the women of the congregation showed up at Jackson's home, asking to see his daughter. The young expectant mother was a bit anxious, he said, until one of the church members greeted her, "We've raised $400 and we're here to take you shopping!"

What happened after that? "She had a child," Jackson said, "but the experience itself was so potent for her that it became the instrument of leading her back to God again. Today, she is the principal of a 12-grade Seventh-day Adventist academy. … God is using her in an amazing way."

His eldest daughter — the one who balked at weekly church attendance — continued to have problems with the family's faith.

She "wound up in the New Age, and her beliefs, which she maintained for a lot of years, have now dissipated," he said. "She does not totally orient to Christianity, but she has come a million miles. She has become very much closer to Christianity." (Their third child, a son, remained faithful and is an active church member today, Jackson said.)

Jackson believes it was the example he and his wife modeled of faith lived, not merely spoken, that helped close the gap.

A life preserved

Jackson, dressed in a charcoal suit, light blue dress shirt and patterned tie, reflected on his life, his family and the challenges the Adventist Church faces one July afternoon in his office. The papers on his desk attest that this is a working office, but Jackson's attitude is thoughtful and reflective, albeit with a seemingly permanent twinkle in his eye.

Against a backdrop of bookshelves displaying Adventist literature and Bible commentaries, as well as mementos such as a stuffed polar bear doll wearing a Canadian maple leaf sweater, Jackson said he felt a call to the ministry as a child. But the urge was sublimated after he developed a desire for a political career, planning on college degrees in economics, first, and then political science.

In one unplanned moment, that political career vanished.

A 20-year-old Jackson, driving to his wedding in Chase, British Columbia, fell asleep at the wheel. Instead of pitching over the side of a mountain into a lake a thousand feet below, the car veered left, crossed a lane of traffic and ended up in an eight-foot ditch. Jackson walked away.

"When the police came, they stood at the side of the ditch looking down at the car, and people had gathered around, and they were asking how many people had died," he recalled. "And I stood there, and it really started to hit me: my life has been preserved, and for what? I began to pray, and sensed the leading of God, and wound up in training for pastoral ministry."

That career change placed Jackson in a pulpit for over two decades, along with a five-year missionary stint at an Adventist college in Pune, India, from 1981 to 1985. The experience, he said, was "a real, deep privilege. India is a great nation, and the diversity there is kind of exhilarating. We were very free and felt free to go into Buddhist temples and Hindu temples."

He said the Muslim fruit-and-vegetable sellers in the community became friends, though he still regrets, 30 years later, not having gone with one of them to their mosque for prayers.

Jackson then served as a college chaplain and later a church administrator in Canada before his 2010 election to president of the North American Division, one of 13 global Adventist Church regions. Jackson's five-year term ends next July, when he could be re-elected.

Church confronts demographics

Whether or not he returns, the church Jackson helps lead continues to confront change. Along with the pull of secularism is an aging congregation. According to the North American Division's executive secretary, roughly 65 percent of current church members are either baby boomers or were born before that generation; fewer than 15 percent can be classified as millennials.

That "graying" of Adventism may be addressed by Jackson's hoped-for "incarnational" form of outreach, but also by redefining how the message is conveyed. One Adventist scholar maintains it's no longer a matter of selling a given Christian brand.

"The church’s ministry efforts were developed in a context very different from today," Loma Linda University religion professor Zane Yi said. "Back then you could assume people were Christian and denominations just had to convince people, through arguments, that theirs was the right or best version. Things are very different today and Adventism, like many communities, has struggled to figure out to communicate and minister effectively in a post-Christian society."

Facing economic realities, Jackson's division has seen changes old-timers might have dubbed radical: In the past 12 months, the centralized media center north of Hollywood, California, where the 85-year-old "Voice of Prophecy" radio program and the decades-old "It Is Written" telecast were produced, was disbanded, allowing those ministries to relocate to less-expensive areas.

In June, global Adventist leadership voted to transfer the Pacific Press in Boise, Idaho, to Jackson's division while closing and selling off the assets of the Review & Herald Publishing Association in Hagerstown, Maryland.

Print publishing was once an Adventist strength, but the availability of church writings on mobile devices for free has contributed to the declining demand for printed books. From 1985 to 2013, the Hagerstown operation's revenues fell by more than half, the Adventist News Network reported.

Such moves — and continuing tensions over the question of ordaining women to Adventist pastoral ministry — are causing ripples within the Adventist community.

Andy Nash, a Seventh-day Adventist who teaches journalism at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee, says that a malaise affecting young Adventists has many causes, including the recent shutdown of "The Record Keeper," a $1 million Web-based film project that portrayed Adventist themes through a steam-punk motif.

"I've never seen Adventist young people so excited about an official church initiative as (I saw in) my students about 'The Record Keeper' Web series," Nash said. "It grabbed their attention and got them thinking about deep things. It was very disheartening (for them) to get excited and have it taken away."

Church leaders say the project was shown to have some theological issues, but that they are willing to consider similar outreach in the future. And while the decision was made one level above Jackson's leadership role, its impact may be most keenly felt within his church region, where young adult retention is a hot topic.

Other avenues of growth for Adventists in North America exist, one scholar said. Ronald Numbers, a former Adventist and University of Wisconsin professor who authored a critical biography of church co-founder Ellen White, said Adventism's American future lies in the waves of immigrants coming to the nation's shores.

"It probably hasn't done any worse in the U.S. than many other Christian communities," Numbers said, via email. "But it's grown worldwide faster than most. Recent growth in America has come largely from the Latino community, leading some observers to talk about 'the browning' of the American church."

Sabbath distinction

Perhaps no feature distinguishes Seventh-day Adventism from other Christian faiths as much as its adherence to what followers call the "Bible Sabbath," observed on Saturday, after the pattern of ancient Israel and as noted in Exodus 20:8-11.

In 1888, church leaders had to defend their right to worship on Saturday and work the rest of the week during U.S. Senate hearings on a "National Sunday Law" that would have criminalized working on the first day of the week. The bill never passed, but the prospect galvanized the 25-year-old movement into a course of religious freedom advocacy that continues today.

Adventists have often made the Sabbath a cornerstone of outreach efforts, with preachers and evangelists offering up to $100,000 to anyone who can find a Bible verse showing the day of worship had been changed to Sunday.

Today, the need for a regular day off from work may be greater than ever in a 24/7 society, but the notion of evangelizing about a given day of the week might not best convey the message. Instead, Jackson harkens back to how he responded to his children's challenges about sabbath worship to stress the need for Adventists to focus on the life-enhancing role the Sabbath plays.

In practice, he contends, that means demonstrating through their lives that the day is "an opportunity to rest, to take a break, to commune with nature, to build relationships, so that the Sabbath is no longer some obscure teaching, but rather, it's who I am, it's something I express on the seventh day, but also on the other days of the week."

Editor's note: Mark A. Kellner is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and for 11 years worked at the movement’s world headquarters as news editor for Adventist Review and Adventist World magazines and as director of the Adventist News Network news service.

Email: mkellner@deseretnews.com

Twitter: @Mark_Kellner


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