Two of my comments on THE BREAKFAST CLUB’S interview of Vivek Ramaswamy follow the video — with some additional context to the six cults studied:
RPT’s Master Class on Racist Democrats!
After hearing Ramaswamy say on the Breakfast Club, “…if there are human beings, and not god, living in a nation…” (8:05 mark) – I assume many around the show and fans think they are in fact gods. Literally. Here I refer to the Five-Percent Nation and the Nation of Islam, and the subsequent racist black nationalist New Age UFO cult and anti-Semitic history and the creation of the “devil” on the Greek island of Patmos over 6,000 years ago, an evil [big-headed] scientist, Yakub. I assume these influences, even music, is large in this audience. For instance, here are hip-hop “influencers” that are members [or were during the height of their career] of this black nationalist – racist – cult and the subsequent “Afrocentrist” history that sets up failure in fighting “the Devil” – the white man – rather than a self, which a healthy religion does:
Rakim – member of the influential duo Eric B. & Rakim; Big Daddy Kane; Lakim Shabazz; Nas; Wu-Tang Clan – Ghostface Killah and Raekwon have deep ties to the 5%’ers, as do the following: Gang Starr; MF Doom; Jay Electronica; Busta Rhymes (Raised a Five Percenter, he has since converted to traditional Islam); Black Thought – Lead MC of the Philadelphia-based hip hop group The Roots; Ras Kass; Jus Allah – Member of the underground rap duo Jedi Mind Tricks; Cormega; Allah Mathematics – Hip hop producer and DJ for the Wu-Tang Clan; Erykah Badu – Her Grammy Award-winning song “On & On” features teachings of the Five Percent Nation [my favorite is Tyron]; Pete Rock & CL Smooth; Jadakiss; Jay-Z;TDK, Xcel, Raz Fresco, World’s Famous Supreme Team DJ Crew, Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers (a group whose very name comes from Five Percent teachings), 6orn, Estee Nack, Carmelo Anthony (NBA), L.L. Cool J, Kanye West, Jay Electronica, Queen Latifah, — just to name a few.
And I say this after studied [in-depth] 6 major racist cults [religious and secular].
After watching the appearances of Larry Elder and Vivek Ramaswamy on this show, the complete lack of understanding of facts and an honest contemplation of a countering viewpoint stands out. Rather, they simply malign with racism and false history. I can see from the comments below/above that there is an already large [and growing] group of observers and thinkers that likewise show the depravity of thought on The Breakfast Club. Bravo to the commonsense commenters 👏👏👏👏👏
ADDED INFO-THE BIG “SIX”
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY (C.I.) |While in jail for my 3rd time for a decade old warrant, I was privileged to lead a young C.I. man to the Lord… he threw all his racist pamphlets from that “church” away while in Pitchess Detention Center, North – long story. It has its roots in British Israelism.
KU KLUX KLAN (KKK)| 5-to-8k members per SPLC – both the Aryan Brotherhood (a racist prison gang not much different than the BGF), the largest white power groups, and the KKK are socialists. Leftists politically. One study found that there were “4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unidentified gender (although likely male); 3,265 were Black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese.” (They were most probably ALL Republicans.)
NATION OF ISLAM (NOI) | A racist black nationalist New Age UFO cult and anti-Semitic group currently led by Louise Farrakhan – after his UFO visit, the Little Messiah. They believe they are gods who participated in the creation of this world and that over 6,000 years ago, an evil [big-headed] scientist created the devil on the Greek island of Patmos. (The “devil” is the white population, which will be enslaved or culled by black gods returning in UFOs:
SEE“Farrakhan’s Bats*#t-Crazy UFO Sermon”
FIVE-PERCENTERS: NATIONS OF GODS AND EARTH | 5-Percenter Nation is a splinter group founded by Allah the Father (formerly Clarence 13X) who left NOI. They use “science” and “math” to communicate deeper “truths” of existence – for lack of space.
BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY | while I have studied its South American Marxist roots (and connection to Pope Francis), mainly my interest lies in its Black Liberation Theology. I ordered 4 books many years ago from the Akibba bookstore (the Afrocentric bookstore of Obama’s church of 20-years, Trinity United Church of Christ — now totally revamped with the Rev. Wright gone): 1. A Black Theology of Liberation, by James Cone; 2. Black Theology & Black Power, by James Cone; 3. Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology, by William R. Jones; and 4. (a book I enjoyed somewhat), The Black Christ, by Kelly Brown Douglas. I was surprised to find the amount of racism I did.
Here are three quotes from James Cone’s main thesis:
QUOTES FROM BOOK PURCHASED VIA OBAMA’ CHURCH:
“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” – Adolf Hitler | Mein Kampf
“There is no place in black theology for a colorless God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color. The black theologian must reject y conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.63
“Christianity is not alien to Black Power, Christianity is Black Power” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.38
“In contrast to this racist view of God, black theology proclaims God’s blackness. Those who want to know who God is and what God is doing must know who black persons are and what they are doing” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.65
“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” – Adolf Hitler | Mein Kampf
“These new theologians of the Third World argue that Christians [liberation theology accepting Christians] should not shun violence but should initiate it” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.32
“It is important to make a further distinction here among black hatred, black racism, and Black Power. Black hatred is the black man’s strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.14
“It is this fact that makes all white churches anti-Christian in their essence. To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.151
“It [black liberation theology] is dangerous because the true prophet of the gospel of God must become both “anti-Christian” and “unpatriotic.”…. Because whiteness by its very nature is against blackness, the black prophet is a prophet of national doom. He proclaims the end of the American Way” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.55-56
“The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!” – Adolf Hitler | Mein Kampf
This influence from Liberation Theology is a main driver to the whole “white privilege” lie we see today.
These cults are typically led by a leader who tells the people how to vote. Also note that in 2008 three-of-the-four largest supremacist groups asked their followers to vote for Obama. And the one who didn’t tell his people to vote for Obama says voting is a waste of time and that he doesn’t vote — so, essentially, of the largest 4 that told their supports to go out and…:
📢. . .VOTE FOR A BLACK MAN:
Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance;
Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America;
Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights;
Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party.
… is💯% (Or, if you wish, 3/4ers with 1/4 abstaining)
BONUS:California’s KKK Grand Dragon Endorsed Hillary
BONUS:Florida NAZI Leader of Blood Tribe: Anti-Capitalist and Pro-Biden
BONUS:Richard Spencer Admit Being A Socialist (not “Alt-Right” but “Alt-Left)
I note this myth that racist cults are “right leaning” in a comment to a friend:
Most of those people typically vote Democrat. Even if they wrote Trump in (who is not a conservative — he is a populist — and why 34% of Bernie Sanders voters said they will vote Trump over Hillary) they along with almost the entirety of the racist cults in America vote Democrat down ticket from there. Why, I sum up why in my post, and it is why the driver that killed that woman was involved in Occupy Wall Street (Gay Patriot h-t)…. [QUOTE from my site]
A RECAPfrom a large refutation of the idea that the KKK and others vote Republican for clarity on the reasoning racist/nationalists cults vote Democrat (RPT):
They are typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance).
Again, there are about 5-to-8,000 KKK members nationwide, of which a few hundred were there. All Republicans denounce that. But no Democrat has really denounced the NAZI style church Obama went to for 20-years — see HERE and HERE.
While most Democrats publicly support BLM, who has followers that have killed people and the co-founder of on BLM radio called for lynching and hanging of white people and cops. In other places they have called for genocide, and the many other examples I could give… like this via my YouTube (to the right):
Remember, REPUBLICANSvoted for these acts at 100% or slightly less… Democrats voted against them 100% or slightly less:
Civil Rights Act 1866,
Reconstruction Act of 1867,
Freedman Bureau Extension Act of 1866,
Enforcement Act of 1870,
Force Act of 1871,
Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871,
Civil Rights Act of 1875,
Civil Rights Act of 1957,
Civil Rights Act of 1960,
1964 Civil Rights Act,
1965 Voting Rights Acts,
1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act
And — lest these quotes are lost to history:
BILL CLINTON: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,”
JOSEPH BIDEN: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” continuing he said, “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
DAN RATHER: “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
Democrats even chose a racist to be the keynote speaker at the 2012 Convention: JULIAN CASTRO is a member of La Raza… the group Cesar Chavez (founder of the founder of the United Farm Workers [UFW]) said was a supremacist group:
When I wrote a few months ago about the origins of “la raza” as a racial-surpremacist concept (developed in the ’20s and ’30s on the idea of the biological superiority of mestizos), Janet Murguia, head of the National Council of La Raza, pointed and sputtered over at the Huffington Post.
Well, while reading a memoir/history of the immigration-reform movement by retired historian Otis Graham (who’s on my board), I find out that even Cesar Chavez rejected the “la raza” idea as inherently racist. Graham quoted a 1969 New Yorkerprofile by Peter Matthiessen:
“I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride, you know,” Chavez told me. “Some people don’t look at it as racism, but when you say ’la raza,’ you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won’t stop there. Today it’s anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro, and the day after it will be anti-Filipino, anti-Puerto Rican. And then it will be anti-poor-Mexican, and anti-darker-skinned Mexican. … La raza is a very dangerous concept. I speak very strongly against it among the chicanos.”
“That’s one of the reasons he is so upset about la raza. The same Mexicans that ten years ago were talking about themselves as Spaniards are coming on real strong these days as Mexicans. Everyone should be proud of what they are, of course, but race is only skin-deep. It’s phony and it comes out of frustration; the la raza people are not secure. They look upon Cesar as their ‘dumb Mexican’ leader; he’s become their saint. But he doesn’t want any part of it. He said to me just the other day, ‘Can’t they understand that that’s just the way Hitler started?’ A few months ago the Ford Foundation funded a la raza group and Cesar really told them off. The foundation liked the outfit’s sense of pride or something, and Cesar tried to explain to them what the origin of the word was, that it’s related to Hitler’s concept.”
In 1968, the Ford Foundation started the Southwest Council of La Raza, presumably the “outfit” Chatfield was referring to, which five years later changed its name to the National Council of La Raza.
Not only that, but Julian Castro’s mother is involved deeply in the MEChA movement. That is the group that wants Mexico to take back the portion lost in the Mexican-American war. These guys/gals ACTUALLY show up in brown shirts.
…“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am—Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.
[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by a determined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]
[….]
Rosie named her first son, Julian, for his father whom she never married, and her second, who arrived a minute later, for the character in the 1967 Chicano anti-gringo movement poem, “I Am Joaquin.” She is particularly proud that they were born on Mexico’s Independence Day. And she was a fan of the Aztlan aspirations of La Raza Unida. Those aspirations were deeply radical. “As far as we got was simply to take over control in those [Texas] communities where we were the majority,” one of its founders, Jose Angel Gutierrez, told the Toronto paper. “We did think of carving out a geographic territory where we could have our own weight, and our own leverage could then be felt nation-wide.”
Removing all doubt, Gutierrez repeated himself often. “What we hoped to do back then was to create a nation within a nation,” he told the Denver Post in 2001. Gutierrez bemoaned the loss of that separatist vision among activists, but predicted that Latinos will “soon take over politically.” (“Brothers in Chicano Movement to Reunite,” Denver Post, August 16, 2001).
Gutierrez made clear his hatred for “the gringo” when he led the Mexican-American Youth Organization, the precursor to La Raza Unida. According to the Houston Chronicle, he “was denounced by many elected officials as militant and un-American.” And anti-American he was. “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill him,” Gutierrez told a San Antonio audience in 1969. At around that time, Rosie Castro eagerly joined his cause, becoming the first chairwoman of the Bexar County Raza Unida Party. There’s no evidence of her distancing herself from Gutierrez’s comments, even today. Gutierrez even dedicated a chapter in one of his books to Ms. Castro.
The BREAKFAST CLUB has it all backwards. All the hosts of the show – show their ignorance to history and facts surrounding the Democrat Party. They should be swarming to vote Republican, for the Grand Ol’ Party’s history and freedom goals!
The original recording of this I did disappeared into the wasteland of the Internet. So I re-downloaded it into a new file. Rob Bell has his presentation of the “Gospel” put to the test of the Word of God as well as Christian historical points examined. This topic is long, but important (2hrs). Pirate Christian radio can be found here as well as a couple other sites by Chris Rosebrough:
My Vimeo account was terminated many years ago; this is a recovered audio/video from it. (Some will be many years old, as is the case with this audio.)
In this version of his Fighting for the Faith podcast from his Pirate Christian Radio apologist Chris Rosebrough does a serious and thorough deconstruction of the gospel-less gospel of Rob Bell, a popular icon in the egregiously ecumenical Emerging Church aka Emergent Church—morphing into Emergence Christianity (EC).
How refreshing to hear Rosebrough bring our attention to the critical importance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as he reminds the Body of Christ that “the Gospel is not a side issue. The Gospel is at the very heart and center of Christianity; you get the Gospel wrong, you are sending yoursefl—and other people to Hell.”
With this as the necessary backdrop Rosebrough begins his program examining the “good news” of Rob Bell in the light of Holy Scripture with the following, which is actually no surprise at all to readers of Apprising Ministries:
Something seriously wrong with this guy’s teaching. I’ve been smelling smoke for years from this guy; and now well, it’s erupted into fullblown fire… I’m going to play for you the audio from this video. I’m not going to interrrupt it; I’m going to let you hear the whole thing in context, and then we’re gonna circle back and we’re gonna pull this thing apart piece by piece.
Not only are there doctrinal errors in here; there are historical errors in here, and he’s engaging in something here called deconstructionism. This is a very, very dangerous “gospel” that he’s preaching. And I am not going to back off from my assessment; I’ll tell you ahead of time, this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is not the Gospel that the Apostles preached. This is something completely different…
I am willing, at this point, to stand by my assessment; unless I hear otherwise from Rob Bell, which I seriously doubt, I’m going to basically make the charge this is not Christianity. This is a rehashed liberalism, if you would; kind of an interesting spin on liberalism, the liberal social gospel, if you would. This is seriously, seriously, dangerous and heretical stuff…
This show was done well after my paper was first published on Scribd and emailed to Chris. The similarities can be attributed to coincidence or me focusing Chris in on the issues at hand. My paper can be found here:
In both my paper and the audio portion of Lee Strobel added in the Pirate Christian Radio broadcast, Rob Bell’s history is shown to be way off and in line more with Gnostic scholars like Pagels and the Jesus Seminar. My paper also included Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, probably the premier historian on pre-Christ history.
Some posit that Jewish thinking on Satan is borrowed from Zoroasterian thought, however, Satan makes an appearance in the book Job. Job is a very early book… pre-dating Zoroaster’s life easily. Satan, as described there, is nothing like the evil god Ahriman, who is a dualistic equal to Ohrmazd the good god, rather than a subordinate.
There is a waay more in-depth dealing with this topic of a supposed Zoroastrian influence in Dr. Corduan’s PDF here:
Another excellent resource that responds to specific scholars on the issue is professor Edwin M. Yamauchi’s, PERSIA AND THE BIBLE, esp. chapter twelve. Here is an excerpt from Dr. Corduan’s excellent book:
Zoroastrian Influences
Scholars commonly observe that the real significance of Zoroastrianism lies in the influence it has exerted on the development of other world religions, specifically Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For example, it has been suggested that Jews picked up the concepts of Satan, angels, demons and the apocalypse (resurrection and judgment at the end of the world) during their exile in Babylonia and immediately thereafter. Notions of Zoroastrian influence were particularly popular during the early twentieth century. Even though scholarly support for them has eroded, they continue to be propagated on the popular level and in introductory textbooks.
There is nothing intrinsically pernicious about the idea that one religion may have influenced another one. A case in point lies in the origin of Islam in the life of Muhammad. We know that Muhammad came into contact with established versions of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. We know what those adherents believed for the most part, and we can show exactly how some of those beliefs showed up (and how they were modified) in the Qur’an. Thus it makes sense to think in terms of the influence that these three religions exerted on Muhammad. I have argued that we must leave plenty of room both for Muhammad’s own creativity and for the vestige of original monotheism present in Arabian culture at his time. The idea does become objectionable when the identification of a supposed influence is used to eliminate all originality (or even truth—the “genetic fallacy”) from a religious belief simply by showing that it was derived from some other source.
We can use the example of influences on Muhammad to establish criteria by which we can judge whether Zoroastrianism could have influenced Judaism. In order to conclude reasonably that such an influence occurred, the following points have to be true:
Zoroastrianism must have been established in the form in which it was supposed to have influenced Judaism.
There must have been sufficient opportunity for the Jews to absorb the doctrines.
There must be sufficient resemblance between the Zoroastrian version of the doctrines and the biblical version to make influence a reasonable conclusion.
There must be a clear indication that the influence went from Zoroastrianism to Judaism and not the other way around. This criterion is particularly incisive if there is some evidence that the beliefs in question may have been present in Judaism before the period of supposed contact with Zoroastrianism.
As it turns out, not one of these criteria supports the notion of Zoroastrian influence.
1. Zoroastrianism had a particularly tough time getting established in Persia. Even the kings we know as Zoroastrians worshiped Ahura Mazda along with other gods. All these kings ruled at a time later than the period of the exile. Cyrus, who sent the Jews back to their own land, was not Zoroastrian. If Zoroastrianism had influenced Israel at this time, then the Jews must have been more open to the message of Zoroaster than the Persians themselves were.
2. The kind of intimate contact necessary for assimilation of foreign beliefs cannot be demonstrated for the Jews in the mainstream of biblical Judaism. As stated above, Persia did not become Zoroastrian until after the exile. So the influences (if any) must have come much more indirectly. An interesting sidelight to this discussion is that the ten northern tribes were indeed transported by the Assyrians to the region roughly identical with Media, the sphere of Zoroaster’s activity. But the northern tribes had no concrete influence on the development of Judaism (in fact, they basically vanished). It would be far more likely that their presence in Media might have influenced subsequent thought there, but we have no evidence for that hypothesis either.
3. By and large, the supposed resemblances between Zoroastrianism and Judaism are superficial at best. Beyond the idea that Jewish biblical writings show evidence of Satan, angels and apocalypse, there is very little similarity in the details. It must be kept in mind here that (1) we know very little about the Zoroastrianism of the Achaemenid dynasty; (2) much of what we do know comes from sources considerably later than biblical writings; (3) what we do know reflects the garbled, magic-obsessed, syncretistic religion of the magi—hardly the Zoroastrianism necessary for the Jews to use as source for the biblical version. The Talmud (itself a very late source—A.D. 400) states that the Jews brought the names of angels back with them from Babylon; we can also allow for the idea that they may have been stimulated in their thinking about God, Satan, angels, demons and so on (in fact, common sense tells us that they must have done so). Nevertheless, such broad strokes are a far cry from proving that the Jews directly borrowed the actual concepts from Zoroastrianism. The Old Testament depicts Satan as a very inferior being, not as a dualistic opponent of God. We find only the sketchiest references to angels. They are definitely not objects of worship, and it is apparent that the apocalypses of the two cultures differ in all details other than that there is a resurrection and a judgment.
4. Finally, beyond resemblances, there are no particular data to support the assertion that Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism rather than the other way around. The very idea of foreign influences on Judaism has its basis in a dogmatic commitment by Western biblical scholars of the early twentieth century to explain Judaism in terms of the supposed evolution of religion (see chapter one). Thus all claims to an original revealed monotheism needed to be rethought in terms of either evolutionary development or foreign influences such as Zoroastrianism. Wherever such scholars find an apparent resemblance to another religion or culture, they immediately infer that the other religion was the source that influenced Judaism. This tendency also shows up in the ascription of Zoroastrian influence, though the data really do not support the arrows going in that direction (just as it would be difficult to make them point the other way). It becomes apparent that in tracing the supposed influence the question is frequently begged in favor of Zoroastrian influence on biblical writings. A quote by James H. Moulton is telling for this whole enterprise:
It is perhaps as well to remember that these theories do not come from Iranian experts, but from scholars whose fame was achieved in other fields. Were we to count only the Iranists, we should even doubt whether the Parsi did not borrow from the Jew, for that was the view of [the Iranian scholar] Darmesteter!
In sum, the story of Zoroastrian influence on other religions has been greatly exaggerated. The resemblances are more superficial than real, and even where they are close, there is no good reason to infer direct influencing or borrowing. The real significance of Zoroastrianism does not lie in its influence on other religions but on what we learn about this religion in its own domain, as well as what we learn about the experience of monotheistic religions by its example.
Winfried Corduan, Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 129-131.
A caller notes his experience the day after the Supreme Court announced their Federalist ruling at his synagogue. Dennis Prager makes a great argument from our [pro-life] point of view. I have used a similar “extreme” example to counter the Left’s extreme examples, but a “well-ta-do” family with the means to care and raise the child is a good one as well… uses the Left’s argument of “poor” persons with no means of caring for said child and turning the argument around on them.
This is the quote I always use:
“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it. Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”
Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA: Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.
[BTW, this was the first book I read that made excellent arguments using the Left’s positions to show just how vacuous their stance was.]
Even well-known atheists GET IT. And the BIBLE IS CLEAR in the Old Testament about the issue.
IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE VIDEO IN HD, CLICK THE GEAR AT THE BOTTOM OF THE VIDEO AND CHOOSE 1080P
Here is my intro to this story via my Facebook page for this site (added to just a tad):
A recent story has caught the attention of many in mainstream culture… but is starting to filter down to the myopic persons (like myself). It is this, that eve was not created from a rib ~ (really, something to do with Adams side — probably involving DNA, like adult stem-cells or something… bottom line is though, WE DON’T KNOW) ~ but from Adams penis bone (or, “baculum”).
I didn’t stutter. I said, Adams penis. While I can only imaging the furor and angry clambering across the gender feminist sub-culture (and smile inwardly at this writhing), I HAD to post on this topic.
“Enjoy.”
Another tidbit I learned from cruising the internet about this story is that an extinct walrus is known to have a 22-inch bacula. (The picture to the above/right is of a four-foot walrus bacula)
Keep dreaming boys!
When I first saw the below story… I thought the professor HAD to be a lib! Why? Because progressives have a tendency to sexualize e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g ~ which is why sex-education starts in kindergarten now. Anyhew, here is the “bulk” of the story via The Blaze:
A professor of the Bible in California has posed the theory that the Adam and Eve narrative in the book of Genesis was mistranslated and that Eve was created not out of Adam’s rib, but his baculum, or penis bone.
Ziony Zevit, a professor of biblical literature and Northwest Semitic languages at American Jewish University in California, recently presented his argument in an article in Biblical Archaeology Review based both on what he believes to be an erroneous translation for the Hebrew word for “rib” and also on the unique anatomy of the human male, one of the few mammals lacking a baculum.
He also pointed to the fact that men and women have the same number of ribs and that men have an even number of ribs, suggesting none are missing….
Using the logic from the story I have read… Adam had two??? But I digress… apparently, literally. However… my amateur musings aside, here is the logic of professor Zevit:
A rib seems like an unlikely origin for Eve because male and female humans have the same number of ribs.
Ribs also lack “intrinsic generative capacity”, which penises have “in practice, in mythology, and in the popular imagination”.
Most mammals – and especially primates – have bacula, humans do not.
It is therefore “probable” that Adam’s baculum was removed to make Eve, and not a rib.
The Hebrew is really just saying “from his side.” That is it. “a “rib” is just a cultural “guess” at what took place, but we really do not know.
So after hanging out at a friends house for his birthday, I mentioned that I think the professor mentioned in the story is liberal. [Plus, as a fan of Dennis Prager… I knew the odds were in my favor. See Prager’s “Explaining Jews, part V: Why are Jews liberal?“] So when I got home, I looked him up. This is his background:
University of Southern CA, B.A. 1964
University of California, Berkeley, M.A. 1967
University of California, Berkeley, Can. Phil. 1970
University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. 1974
Um… Berkeley… in the seventies?
Bam!
I read an interesting article on Professor Zevit’s piece that I think was helpful. The article is entitled “A Flaccid Interpretation of Eden,” and is by Joseph Ryan Kelly. A very informative piece, I suggest reading it in its entirety.
…Novel interpretations like this one occur from time to time throughout Zevit’s re-reading of the second, third, and fourth chapters of Genesis. He maintains that Eden was a real location in the Armenian highlands somewhere west of Lake Van (Eastern Turkey), the most northern corner of the inhabited world known to ancient Israelites. Adam was not created from dust, light in color, dry, and loosely compacted. God formed him from apar, a “clod” which, like humans, is rich in constitution and ruddy in complexion. Following the transgression of the divine command — or the “oblique instruction,” as Zevit prefers for the grammatical informality of the command — God’s curses transform neither the bodies of the individuals involved nor their environment. Rather, as performative speech acts, they transform somewhat negatively how the serpent, “Hawwa” (Zevit refers to Eve by her Hebrew name), and Adam perceive an element of their lives.
Is Zevit just out to present novel, if philologically and historically sound, interpretations of the Garden of Eden? I asked myself this question with increasing frequency as I found it more and more difficult to hold together in my mind’s eye the picture of Eden Zevit was painting. What themes tie together a far northern location for Eden, creation out of clod, ossifical castration, and curses functioning as performative speech acts? This cacophony of novel (and sometimes not-so-novel) interpretations does not resolve harmoniously — at least not into the familiar narrative of sin and death that characterizes Western culture’s tradition of a fall. Zevit’s narrative becomes clear only near the end of the book. Forget sin and death; this is a story about human nature, the acquisition of knowledge, and ethical self-awareness. A story not about loss, but gain. Not a decline, but a rise.
It is unfortunate that Zevit’s chosen path of discovering what really happened in the Garden of Eden elides other interpretive paths explored in Western culture. He focuses exclusively on philology and historical criticism as tools of discovery, but during the Enlightenment a number of philosophers could not regard as purely sinful humankind’s acquisition of knowledge. They too cast aside notions of a fall. Immanuel Kant, for example, saw humankind’s pursuit as a positive step for the development of humankind, even if human actions introduced evil into the world. The first human couple discovers the freedom that constitutes the foundation of human morality. This freedom and capacity for moral discernment is fundamental to Kant’s deontological moral philosophy centered on the categorical imperative.
Philosophers of the twentieth century continued to acknowledge the merits and necessity of human freedom, although they were less enthusiastic about its implications. The circumstances of their own day — world wars and the threat of mutually assured destruction — made it increasingly difficult to remain generally optimistic about human freedom. What they discover in the Garden of Eden is not the origins of sin but an explanation of human sinfulness. The fall is less an experience in history and more the culmination of the creation of humankind.
Acknowledging that “knowledge is not foolproof,” Zevit’s interpretation otherwise lacks the sobering dimensions of this twentieth century philosophical interpretation. The Garden story is a “positive and optimistic one.” Immediately following the events in the Garden, human knowledge leads to the development of urban centers, pastoral nomadism, musical instruments, forged metal tools, and manufactured materials. Where other scholars tend to see an embedded critique of Mesopotamian civilization, Zevit sees only the human capacity to create knowledge. These implicit elements of critique aside, the flood and the confusion of languages at Babel explicitly reveal a darker side of human freedom. Readers of the biblical text, like philosophers of the twentieth century, are justified in recognizing that human freedom has its tragic consequences.
Has Zevit pulled back the curtain on these early chapters of Genesis? While his use of philology and historical criticism forces us to reconsider interpretations often taken for granted, his approach does not produce confident conclusions. Does God really create Hawwa, Eve, out of Adam’s penile bone? Genesis 2:21 describes God removing one ofAdam’s ribs or ṣelaot. To incorporate this detail into his interpretation, Zevit translates the term ṣela as “lateral bone.” Imagining the baculum as belonging to a category of lateral bones strikes me as a specious argument. But perhaps more pressing is the way this proposed etiology differs from other etiologies involving humans in the Hebrew Bible. Elsewhere, biblical texts use past events to explain cultural institutions or customs.
[…..]
What Zevit is proposing is altogether different. By removing Adam’s baculum and closing up the flesh, God forever changes physical features of the male anatomy. The eighteenth century French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck thought organisms could transmit to their offspring characteristics they acquire during their lifetime. However interesting Zevit’s Lamarckian interpretation may be, it seems atypical among biblical etiologies, if not anachronistic. Do other etiologies in the Bible betray a belief in the inheritance of acquired traits? One does not readily come to mind. Moreover, it seems counterintuitive that Israelites would have believed one could inherit acquired characteristics given the regularity with which they circumcised male penises. Though not a coup de grâce, this thought raises a pressing question about an already tenuous interpretation.
The challenge of interpreting enigmatic details like this one exemplifies the problem inherent in trusting that the tools of our academic disciplines will guide us to some supposed real meaning of the biblical text. Claims about the authentic meaning of any biblical text function best as a marketing strategy — a means of attracting a broad customer base for discussions about textual and sometimes historical interpretation that may otherwise fail to produce intrigue among the general public.
I appreciate that Zevit has produced a book discouraging scholars and the general public from taking for granted the interpretation of this classic biblical text. However, I question the value of perpetuating the misconception that the object of interpretation is to discover the one real meaning of a text. If a text contained only one truly authentic meaning, it seems reasonable to assume such interpretations would have long since been realized. That scholars like Zevit continue to use the tools of their disciplines to construct different plausible historical interpretations of biblical texts should indicate not the inadequacy of their tools, but rather the inadequacy of such a limited understanding of textual meaning. Despite the interesting insights Zevit derives from his imaginative interpretation of Genesis 2-3 — or rather because of them — we are no closer to discovering what really happened in the Garden of Eden.
BTW, “baculum” (Latin) is part of a fallacy in logic:
Argumentum ad baculum is a fallacy in argumentation that is based on an appeal to force. For example, “You better believe what I say because if you don’t, I will beat you up.”
My wife and I were reminissing about Northpark and figured that my time-line was off a bit — and that my date of initial attendance was a bit off. I (and then we) actually attended Northpark for 10-years, not 12… hence the change in the title.
Postmodern, Cultural-Marxism in the Church
Why this post? While airing the churches dirty laundry is not the best option, it is an option to warn others of misuse of Scripture, pastoral staff that is not sound in the essentials, and a general refusal to come to terms with what historic Christianity has considered the “fundamentals.” As you will see the doctrine of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and other essentials are rejected by the authors of the books given to me by a pastor at NorthPark. I deal with these books in-depth in my chapter entitled, “Emergen[t]Cy ~ Investigating Post Modernism In Evangelical Thought.” But below is primarily a “review”/rejection of a book used in a men’s college class at church by pastor Bob Hudson… and ultimately was the last straw for me at a church I truly loved and that my wife and I truly enjoyed.
We loved its members, and our kids grew up in the children’s ministry here. My leaving this church of 12-years was not an easy decision, but came about because of the lack of doctrinal protection in the core of the pastoral/deacon group of persons. Pastors in particular are admonished to cleave to sound doctrine so that they could be good ministers of the gospel (1 Tim 4:6). And the church was growing so fast and the head pastor is soo gracious that the aberrant teachings slipped under the rug.
After leaving this church I found that the pastoral staff at another church I was considering were also in need of simple doctrinal adherence and the creeping of Eastern philosophy likewise was rearing its head… unchallenged in this church.
My last semester at seminary introduced me to a previously unknown movement within evangelical circles known as the “Emergent Movement.” In reality, it is merely liberal theology repackaged to look like the core of the Gospel… when in fact, it is the jettisoning of core doctrines that are the foundational to the Gospel. 2 Timothy 2:15 reads: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth.”
As I said, my introduction to this movement came about at Seminary because of some of the books recommended to me in my syllabus, which led me down a rabbit hole of reading. This trail sparked conversation between one of the new pastors and myself… he assured me that the movement wasn’t all that bad, and that I needed to read up on the topic. So, we had some coffee at my house and we had a cordial meeting and he left me an armful of books. (I will post some of the content and the authors thoughts on salvation — from this armful of books given to me by a pastor from an “conservative evangelical church — in an appendix at the end.)
I read them… Wasn’t all that “bad” ~my ass.
One night alone in prayer might make us new men, changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth, from trembling to triumphing ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon
In one of the books for instance, and this would be important to a well-liked sermon at my old church on core doctrines that one shouldn’t sway on,
What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if as you study the origin of the word virgin, you discover that the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew Language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first ‘time she had intercourse?
Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2005), 26.
This reading led me to other instances like the following November 2004 Christianity Today article written by Andy Crouch, titled “Emergent Mystique,” Rob Bell said,
“We’re rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life” (emphasis added). Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, predated Bell in his popularizing of interspirituality by “[opening] the door for Christians to explore other traditions, notably Taoism (Chinese witchcraft), Hinduism and Buddhism.”
Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart:Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999), 39.
Merton of course is famously known for saying that he sees “no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity … I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can” (David Steindl-Rast, “Recollection of Thomas Merton’s Last Days in the West” [Monastic Studies, 1969] 7:10).
I can list more instances that threw red-flags up for me, but needless to say I had a coffee infused meeting with my pastor, and I thought we were on the same page. I had a few more short discussions with him and some of the other deacons, but it wasn’t until a young man came up to me and mentioned the book the pastor who handed me the armload of counter-Christian books was using in the men’s college group that I knew I needed to protect my family from bad teaching.
Much like the author I too wore Rage Against the Machine shirts (p. 97 – I think my oldest son still wears some of my old shirts) mainly because I genuinely like the music, and secondly, my reasoning behind wearing Rage Against the Machine shirts was that often times conversation would open up with young people that would lead to me talking about the bands radical Marxist leanings. It was a chance for me to lead these misguided persons towards a healthy-well-balanced understanding of American history and ideals, separated from the Howard Zinn type histories that many of those teaching them would infuse their young minds with. (See my RIP of Zinn’s passing.)
Shane, in contradistinction, wore the shirts of this band with full knowledge of and support for this class warfare idea found only in Marx and Engels manifesto.
I say this confidently only after reading Irresistible Revolution.
In his book, Shane makes the argument that you have to be an atheist to be a Marxist. Besides flying in the face of history this is only a small value in Marxism — granted an important one — however, Marxism is much more than merely a belief in disbelief. or disbelief,in the divine. In fact, the divine is merely transferred to this world in dialectical materialism, and a push for utopia creates the “divine” in man and his anthropogenic fundamentalism… as exemplified in Shane’s writings. Take note as well that I argue that Mormonism is a form of Dialectical materialism and is closer to atheistic Marxist philosophy than to Christianity. Last time I checked Mormonism is riddled with the Divine as is atheistic Buddhism. (In other words, to be “religious” does not require the Divine” as Shane posits.) Not to mention how the Communists (atheists) used religion:
A poignant example of this comes from the Bolshevik Revolution. While this was an atheistic movement with a view of religion as “the opiate of the masses” used by a few powerful people to control said “masses,” the Soviets themselves tried to use religion to “control the masses.” One early attempt by the Bolshevik Revolution to take over the spiritual was through the Renovated Church (also known as the Living Church Movement) which was meant to reinterpret the teachings of Christ and the Apostles towards a Soviet end. During one of the short-lived attempts here by the Soviets we find this official “statement of faith:”
✦ The Soviet power does not appear as a persecutor of the Church. ✦ The Constitution of the Soviet state provides full religious liberty. ✦ Church people must not see in the Soviet state a power of the anti-Christ. ✦ The Soviet power is the only one which tempts by state methods to realize the ideals of the Kingdom of God. ✦ Capitalism is the “great lie” and a “mortal sin.”
(Taken from the first chapter to my proposed book, Worldviews: A Click Away from Binary Collisions. Here is a quote taken from this first chapter from Edgar C. Bundy’s book, How the Communists Use Religion [Wheaton, IL: Church League of America, 1966], 12. I will put this caveat here; however, it applies to the whole: I will quote authors with whom I do not necessarily agree with. I often quote authors that are: atheists, pagans, fellow Christians, politicos, homosexuals, evolutionists, and the like… merely because I quote an author, this quotation does not mean that I support their work as a whole.)
Back to the story. After the young man told me about the book, I purchased my own copy, and began reading it, coming to page 34 I read the following:
Who knew you could make so much money writing a book? For the sake of transparency, I want you to know that all the money I get from the sales of this book, both the advance and the royalties, is being given away. This is not a noble act, of charity. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Besides, this is not just my story, and I am not just exploiting the stories of others. This book has emerged from a movement of communities of faith and struggle, inspired by local revolutions and ordinary radicals, anchored in life among the poor and marginalized. So it is not only a responsibility but a joy and honor to share the profits with all of them. [Here he referenced a footnote] May we continue to feed each other hope as we dance God’s revolution together.
(Emphasis added to the Marxist/Leninist language)
This is how the footnote read:
In appendix 1 at the back of the book, you will find a list of ordinary radicals with whom I enthusiastically redistribute the money I receive from the publication of this book through the Simple Way’s Jubilee Fund.
Here is that appendix:
View pages by clicking here: 360, 361, and 362. It was about midnight when I got on my computer and followed these URL’s Shane provided. My jaw dropped, again-and-again. I prayed for hours after this encounter with the radicalism being taught our young men at a supposedly “conservative” evangelical church.
It didn’t take much time in this appendix, unfortunately, I didn’t have to. The following is some of what I found merely by following the links Shane provided in his book. (I emboldened the main site referenced in Shane’s appendix. Following that I either a) include a quote that represents some positional statement of that site, or b) simply went to that sites “links” section and linked out to whom they recommend themselves. Although I could have listed many links, I think the few I chose make the point. I would say enjoy… but…
✦ Liberation theology ✦ Feminist theology ✦ The Catholic Worker movement ✦ Theologies and biblical reflections emerging from the peace movement and faith-based resistance communities ✦ Gay and lesbian theology ✦ Jewish renewal
Example of whom this site links out to or recommends: http://www.jesusradicals.com/ This site has a “positional statement:
Jesus Radicals is a web-based community of Christians exploring Christian anarchism and a belief that the Gospel rejects militarism, capitalism and the state and promotes a message of justice and love.
I am Pastor Maggie Ainslie. I’ve been pastor of Atonement Lutheran Church for 9 1/2 years now. I live 4 blocks away from the church with my husband Matt….
While I think a case can be made for deaconesses, I do not think women should be pastors… per the Bible.
A statement found in this site from the site’s admins:
For our nation in which money is readily available for warfare and weapons builders, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and while the very term security is used synonymously with weapons and military might: not with jobs, universal health care, healthy communities, education, a non-toxic environment, a future, All: We lift up the stones of our arrogance.
... An Aside To The Above BRANDYWINE Comment:
Their “cost of war” [which use to be on the above “Brandywine” site] counter on this site is B.S. by the way. But that is neither here nor there. I will post this short exchange between radio talk show host Michael Medved and a caller to exemplify the “cost of war” misunderstanding that was prominent during the Bush years (see my PAGE on military spending):
Above all, we need to hear more and more about the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. “We are all members, one of another. Where the health of one member suffers, the health of the entire body is lowered.” “An injury to one is an injury to all,” [as] the old I.W.W.’s (The Industrial Workers of the World) used to say. [The IWW — FYI — is a communist/Marxist organization]
[…]
In none of the letters sent to us in protest was there recognition of the fact that the writer, Gonzales, was as much opposed in his own way to the Marxist-Leninist position as we ourselves. His position is that of the anarchist, pleading for the principle of subsidiarity, calling for “secular monasticism,” using that expression when speaking to the clergy in order to make them understand the idea of farming communes, or collectives, or cooperative farms.
I.W.W. — The Industrial Workers of the World – http://www.iww.org/ (a socialist/Marxist organization)
→ The I.W.W. was one of the earliest “anarcho-sydicates” of direct action, sabotage, and were distinguished from the rest of the early socialist, Left-Wing movements by their admission of violence to gain the end results. ~ Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1957, 1985; 1st Elephant Paperback Edition, 1989), 17, 22.
Economic justice: ESA, on the whole, promotes an economic theory that once would have been called socialism, but which now, on the basis of historical considerations and semantic charity, is usually referred to as “democratic capitalism.” ESA describes itself as “pro-poor,” which means, in practical terms, that government-directed flow of capital is a necessary condition of economic justice. “Economic justice” is itself considered to be more a matter of equal distribution than fair return. Some argue that, over the past few years, Sider has drifted more towards the right. He certainly speaks with approval of “market economies,” but remains, with ESA and its partners, wary of “free market economies.”
Environmental protection: ESA is the source and current partner of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), which has recently become famous for its “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign. Basically, ESA’s position on the environment is: (1) The earth’s resources are running out, which entails the need for major lifestyle changes for (primarily) Western nations and (primarily) middle and upper class individuals. (2) The profligacy and abuses of (the rich people in) the West have contributed mightily to the instability of the global environment (e.g., “global warming”); hence, major changes are in order. ….
The situation in Guantanamo is desperate. Over 100 prisoners are on hunger strike, and the strike just passed its 150th day this week (also the beginning of Ramadan). 45 are being forcibly fed by tubes snaked through their noses. And all this under the backdrop of indefinite detention, folks who have been waiting for trials for over 10 years and over half of whom have been cleared for release but remain trapped in the nightmare.
A growing number of folks are feeling the urgency — many are on solidarity fasts, and recently Mos Def underwent a forced feeding to demonstrate its horror. Some of us are exploring a possible delegation to Guantanamo, others will be at a vigil at the White Houseon Monday. Track the developments here: www.witnesstorture.org.
Obviously one can see the extreme political nature of this book and how it rejects history for one superimposed by Chomsky and Zinn, as well as in Shane’s continued commentary on the world around him. Lit-sen Chang many years ago foresaw this radical nature of the current emergent movement, as, it incorporates an old lie:
As Dr. Carl F. H. Henry pointed out: “The Chicago evangelicals, while seeking to overcome the polarization of concern in terms of personal evangelism or social ethics, also transcended the neoProtestant nullification of the Great Commission.” “The Chicago Declaration did not leap from a vision of social utopia to legislation specifics, but concentrated first on biblical priorities for social change.” “The Chicago evangelicals did not ignore transcendent aspects of God’s Kingdom, nor did they turn the recognition of these elements into a rationalization of a theology of revolutionary violence or of pacifistic neutrality in the face of blatant militarist aggression.” (Cf. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, “Evangelical Social Concern” Christianity Today, March 1, 1974.) The evangelical social concern is transcendental not merely horizontal.
We must make it clear that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who “deal only with surface phenomena. They seek to remove a deep-seated tumor from society by applying a plaster to the surface. The world’s deepest need today is not something that merely dulls the pain, but something that goes deep in order to change the basic unity of society, man himself. Only when men individually have experienced a change and reorientation, can society be redirected in the way it should go. This we cannot accomplish by either violence or legislation” (cf. Reid: op. cit.). Social actions, without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only create horizontal anxieties and perplexities!
Furthermore, the social activists are in fact ignorant of the social issues, they are not experts in the social sciences. They simply demand an immediate change or destruction of the social structures, but provide no blueprint of the new society whatsoever! They can be likened to the fool, as a Chinese story tells, who tried to help the plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course such “action” only caused the plant to wither and die. This is exactly what the social radicals are doing now! And the W.C.C. is supporting such a tragic course!
We must challenge them [secular social activists] to discern the difference between the true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says: “For the godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (II Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experiences of many former Russian Marxists, who, after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat, but not before God. They admitted that “A Russian (Marxist) intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed (Marxism) constrains him to hate” (cf. Nicolas Zernov: The Russian Religious Renaissance). “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one…. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10,23). A complete change of a society must come from man himself, for basically man is at enmity with God. All humanistic social, economic and political systems are but “cut flowers,” as Dr. Trueblood put it, even the best are only dim reflections of the Glory of the Kingdom of God. As Benjamin Franklin in his famous address to the Constitutional Convention, said, “Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Without reconciliation with God, there is no reconciliation with man. Social action is not evangelism; political liberation is not salvation. While we shall by all means have deep concern on social issues; nevertheless, social activism shall never be a substitution for the Gospel.
Lit-sen Chang, The True Gospel vs. Social Activism, (booklet. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co: 1976), 9.
There seems to be a correlation as well in Shane’s book that some are saved because of their works. He mentions in this light, Mother Teresa. I do not know ultimately if Mother Teresa was truly saved or not… only God knows this… that being said, I can say that if Mother Theresa believed the following…
Among the all-too-accessible examples that could be cited, consider the following excerpts (chosen because they are representative of the genre, not because they are outstandingly bad) from Novena Prayers in Honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, a booklet published by the Sisters of St. Basil with official church approval (Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur):
Have pity, compassionate Mother, on us and our families; especially in this my necessity (here mention it). Help me, 0 my Mother, in my distress; deliver me from all my ills; or if it be the will of God that I should suffer still longer, grant that I may endure all with love and patience. This grace I expect of thee with confidence, because thou art our Perpetual Help (p. 5).
We have no greater help,
no greater hope than you,
O Most Pure Virgin; help us, then,
for we hope in you, we glory in you,
we are your servants.
Do not disappoint us (p. 16).
Come to my aid, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; not even from Jesus, my Judge, because by one prayer from thee, He will be appeased. But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation, I may through negligence fail to have recourse to thee and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, therefore, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace to have recourse to thee, 0 Mother of Perpetual Help (p. 19).
Elliot Miller and Keneth R. Samples, The Cult of the Virgin: Catholic Mariology and the Apparitions of Mary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books/Academic, 1992), 57. An astute reader pointed out that the above actually comes from an Eastern Orthodox liturgy officially authorized for use by the Catholic Church.
…No matter what her good works are or would be, this dedication to other than Christ clearly — according to Scripture — negates the adherent from salvation. There is good evidence that this Marion worship was employed in Mother Teresa’s faith. Shane also talks of and quotes Gandhi approvingly, which seems odd. Odd because Gandhi was a racist and ordered, in racially tainted radio broadcasts, his followers to kill Zulu’s (blacks). Gandhi only used “peaceful” protests with the British because militarily India could not cope with the British and Gandhi was a good politician first and knew where to draw his lines and which strings to pull.
I wish I could say differently, but the book is just bad from beginning to end. Noteworthy as well is that it is not a proper resource for a church to use, at least a church that claims conservative Evangelical mores. Obviously no book is COMPLETELY bad, and there are noble points in it… I mean who wouldn’t want to stamp out poverty worldwide and stop all wars as Shane says? The question for me is: How has this worked in real life? Shane makes a myriad of claims about war and poverty that do not fit reality, but, rather, are closer to some make believe candy-land Utopian dream. To wit I wish to debunk some of Shane’s thinking:
Again, Shane exudes noble ideas in the book. Who could argue the goals? They just may not be very realistic, that’s all. On pages 123-124 you find a portion of what Shane’s “ministry” does on “an average day”:
“We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it. We fight terrorism — the terrorism within each of us, the terrorism of corporate greed, of American consumerism, of war…. We spend our lives actively resisting everything that destroys life, whether that be terrorism or the war on terrorism. We try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish. We believe in another way of life — the kingdom of God — which stands in opposition to the principalities, powers, and rulers of this dark world.”
Unfortunately, this “kingdom now theology” that so infects the Word-Faith Movement and the name it and claim it gospel, also infects the eschatology of the extreme theological Left. Both theologies have the view that Shane enumerates when he encourages us to “take courage, as you will then have more grace as you liberate others” (p. 32). I am sorry, no person can liberate me, they and I are fallen and cannot liberate even ourselves. A great example of this egalitarianism:
“When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, Loneliness, despair, death, slaughter — they are all hell on earth. Jesus’ desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth.”
Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2005), 148.
Obviously the political and theological tome of this book is very charged, to say the least. (If you need to understand more of my reasoning, or have questions about this post I will be more than happy to talk to you — my email is in my bio section.) As a Mennonite group of churches points out as well, not only is the book politically charged, but missing anything to do with the Gospel. In writing a reason why nine Mennonite churches were withholding their kids from an event that included Shane Claiborne, the The Mennonite Brethren Network mentions the following:
…“[Mother Teresa] seemed to be giving the gospel a pretty good shot … .”
Did Mother Teresa relate the gospel of repentance and grace through faith alone to those dying, or did she only love? Claiborne wrote nothing about the lepers’ repentance and faith in Christ. Mother Teresa’s own writings testify that she did not try to convert people.
Furthermore, Claiborne’s teachings about the poor go beyond the meaning of Scripture, implying that God is mystically present in them and that his death on the cross was intended to improve poor peoples’ lives:
“Jesus was crucified … for joining [poor people].”
“People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order.”
“… when the curtain of the temple was torn open as Jesus died on the cross. Not only was God redeeming that which was profane but God was setting all that was sacred free. Now God dwelled not behind the veil in the temple but in the eyes of the dying and the poor …”
“As I looked into the eyes of the dying, I felt like I was meeting God.”
Is this possible without their repentance and faith in Christ, which are absent from Claiborne’s accounts? No.
Shane Claiborne also showed universalist tendencies when he interviewed Tony Campolo about the Muslim faith:
Campolo: [regarding Muslims] And to speak to each other with a sense that even if people don’t convert, they are God’s people , God loves them, and we do not make the judgment of who is going to heaven and who is going to hell … I think that what we all have to do is leave judgment up to God.
Claiborne: That seems like a healthy distinction—between converting and condemning. One of the barriers seems to be the assumption that we have the truth and folks who experience things differently will all go to Hell …
Claiborne: You also note in your book the encounter of Francis of Assisi and the Muslim Sultan …they came together across major religious divides and had a mystical unity … Maybe we will even find a mystical union of the Spirit as Francis did.
One thing that pained me deeply was the approval of particular authors either through word-of-mouth when speaking to pastors or pastoral desks adorned with these writers. Here is one excerpt from one of these authors that a pastor couldn’t see an issue with that gave me pause about the rest of their ministry:
When the boundaries between God-ordained practices and pagan practices are erased, as is the case in the Emergent Church, then it makes sense to find practices that are attractive to people in the surrounding culture. One such practice is Yoga. Although Yoga is a Hindu practice and intimately related to various Hindu deities, some Christians have begun to bring this pagan practice into the Church. Some claim that they have removed any religious content and are merely using Yoga positions for exercise. But this is wrong and dangerous. In the case of Pagitt’s church, Solomon’s Porch, Yoga clearly is not merely “exercise.”
Pagitt’s book, Church Re-imagined, contains a description of the church’s weekly yoga class written by the woman who leads it. She states, “We aren’t here for a hardcore physical workout as much as the chance to be together, to breathe, to relax, and to bring ourselves to a place of peace and gratitude.” The process includes having the students regulate their breathing. They also use different poses each week: “These vary from week to week, but Downward Facing Dog is a must.” The poses and breathing are designed to do something to their inner state: “This [that the chit-chat has stopped] tells me that tension has been released from the muscles, inner chatter has moved out of the brain, and self-awareness and peacefulness have settled in.”
The yoga instructor gives a more detailed description of the last pose:
Our last pose of the evening is called “savasana”… or corpse pose. The student lies on her back letting the legs fall open as they will, the arms hang limp like empty coat sleeves. The face, the forehead, the space between the eyebrows all relax, and the person melts heavily into the floor. Eyes are closed, breathing is rhythmic. I turn the lights off, and only the glow of candles and sometimes fireplace illuminates the room. This state of being is holy. It is at this time that we become closer to God, aware of our bodies, of the divine.
Clearly, her claim is that yoga is a means to become holy and draw near to God. A corollary to this claim is that humans have a right to determine their own path to God. The Bible makes it clear that we must come to God on His terms only, not ours! It is one thing to claim the right to use practices of other religions in a non-religious way (which I believe has no place in the church), but it is egregious to claim that practices from pagan religions can make us holy and closer to God.
Bob Dewaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity (2009), 128-130 (quote within the quote taken from Pagitt’s book, Church Re-Imaged).
You see, when you forgo the plum-line of Scripture and include practice as your truth… problems tend to follow. As I was looking for new churches, I started to attend what was billed as a conservative Reformational/Bible based church. At this church I was attending to find a new home church I was in conversation with an elder/assistant pastor when I mentioned Thomas Merton, to which he replied he loved Merton! Not only that but that a class he was taking at Talbot was using a Merton “biography” (of sorts) in class. He then said he didn’t see anything wrong with the book or Merton. So, I purchased the book and read it.
And this is the current state of the church apparently, not discerning enough on important doctrinal areas, and making some issues that are in house debates front-and-center.
Discussion/Questions
There was a gentleman, who I am still friends with from North Park (the church I left) who contacted me, this is our conversation on FaceBook that included a couple of people:
Part of Convo One:
ME: Thanks you two for the support. …. It wasn’t the “big building,” it was the book that speaks out against churches like North Park:
1. If we have parishioners who follow the advice in the writings of Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and the like (passed on by our pastors in some way), they will leave our church due to its “suburban” nature. (pp. 62, 84, 163 of Shane’s book [as examples])
2. If our parishioners reject the emerging ethos as aberrant, then as they discuss the matter with some of our pastors, they will possibly find a church that takes a firmer stance on this up-and-coming issue within the historic faith.
Shane is also very antithetical to police (p. 122), anti-military (pp. 95-96, 122-123), and teaches a “kingdom now theology” (pp. 62, 87), calls for overthrowing a particular social order using Marxist/Leninist speak (p. 129), and the like. Pretty wild stuff even beyond the Richard Foster discussion we had.
[….]
TRAV: Thomas Watson said it better than I ever could, he said, “Toleration is the grave of reformation. By toleration we adopt other men’s sins, and make them our own”…
ME: Can I tell you that that quote hit the spot, let me explain why. On page 152 of Shane’s book we read this: “People are poor not just because of their sins, they are poor because of our sins…” Again, some of what Shane writes is true. Throughout his book he shifts blame off of the person and their position with their savior and puts the blame on corporations, the rich, the privileged white-person, the police, etc. The class warfare language is immense in this political tome [see video below]. On page 124 he equates poverty with violence (“…knowing the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty…”). Newsflash, many of the persons committing the most heinous crimes today (Islamo-Fascists) are rich and have had privileged education. He doesn’t make sense. [At the same time Shane negates man’s nature and the purpose for missionaries work. It is for the unsaved person ultimately to have “Life more abundantly,” which means salvation.]
Poverty exists mainly because of corrupt governments (mainly revolutionary governments) and often times because of pacifists standing in the way of liberating millions of people by force do they remain in abject poverty (like the UN). So Shane’s “sin of pacifism” inflicts more poverty and death on cultures than do the liberating forces that try to let people govern themselves (like in Iraq and Afghanistan).
Another friend mentioned that this should be handled in a more private manner I mentioned in parts the following:
Part of Convo Two:
ME: Kev, you said,
“I think you also know the leadership of NP would NEVER consciously ‘promote’ this nonsense.”
I am sorry to inform you to the contrary. Ping-pong and softball at the men’s retreat and talking about which NFL team is up that week and giving the shoulder-to-shoulder “dude hugs” may not bring out these topics, but I tend to. Where is the sound exegetic doctrine? This isn’t about “giving your testimony” versus “an apologetic,” or “pre” and “post” tribulation positions. This is about many in leadership implicitly supporting heretical views and a couple explicitly teaching it. Being “young in their theology” (as told to me during a convo with _________ means they shouldn’t be in the positions they are.
[….]
This just isn’t a disagreement between brothers, it is many positions in a fine church being filled with people who teach or do not understand what heresy is. The pulpit (the main one, the college groups, or [any other position in any church]) are not places for experimental theology and aberrant Christian beliefs and practices… Rob Bell teaches a different Christ, Richard Foster teaches paganism/occultism, Shane Claiborne teaches Marxist/Leninist ideals and “Revolutionary Christ” (see above), Doug Pagitt teaches post-modern relativistic Gospel, Brian McLaren and psychologist David G. Benner do not think we have gotten the Gospel right yet, Thomas Merton was a Buddhist, Henry Nouwen was a homosexual Catholic/Buddhist mystic. For leaders not to know the dangers of recommending, teaching from, or following such “theology” is not something that needs to be brought before two or three brothers. These are “other than Gospel/Christian” theologies that are being injected into a once fine church by a non-existent vetting process (too much grace, no truth). Its like Obama’s Cabinet and tax issues! So my warning may throw some, but as they travel with this church… keywords like Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Richard Foster, Shane Claiborne will hopefully be etched in their minds.
Before we make it to my old “Afterward, I left all this up (above and below) because it is and has been a great help to those seeking a healthy-well balanced church in our Valley, as well as providing others who are in need of some resources to better respond to this nonsense in their home church. So I am both happy that this has been a good resource for some, but sad I even had to write it. Take note that both Pastor Dave and I agree on the facts of the case… but acting on and believing the facts are two entirely different things.
There was a final meeting between myself and pastor Dave White of NorthPark Community Church. After this meeting I wrote a caveat that I have not rejoined North-Park. The church has continued its slow decent away from doctrine and closer to unhealthy relationships.
APPENDIX
This armful of books given to me by pastor Bob Hudson had a very universalist stint to them. Here is an excerpt from my book where I discuss this aspect a bit more:
In a Christianity Today article, Brian McLaren is quoted as saying that he does not “think we’ve got the gospel right yet…. I don’t think the liberals have it right.[1] But I don’t think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy.”[2] [3] Agreeing apparently with Brian McLaren that we have yet to get the gospel right is David G. Benner, who says that the “spiritual climate is ripe… [for]… Jesus seekers across the world are being prepared to abandon the old way of the written code for the new way of the Spirit. Paul told us long ago we’ve been freed by the gospel to live a new way, but we’ve not known what it is or how to do it.”[4]
McLaren says we do not have the Gospel right yet… Benner says we do not have it right either, yet, we should look to Eastern mysticism to get it correct? I don’t think so. Not only do these authors deny that the Gospel has been known or lived in the past, they teach that orthodoxy has yet to be formulated. Yet in a self-refuting manner they seem to accept universalism as an orthodox doctrine. Universalism is the idea that every “act of worship is accepted by the divine regardless of the theological cloak in which it is hidden[,] since all persons posses divinity within, all deserve the love of the Supreme.”[5] This universalism is pointed out in an excellent book entitled, Reforming or Conforming? Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church:[6]
The gospel, according to the emergent thinkers, is not about individual conversation. It is not about how people get “in.” It is about “how the world will be saved from human sin and all that goes with it….”[7] This sounds close to the mark until we examine more thoroughly what is meant by the terminology. Their concept of “world” does not simply involve humans who don’t believe in Christ. The emergent gospel is not just bringing unbelievers to the Savior for the forgiveness of sin and the imputation of God’s righteousness. There is more, as Rob Bell informs us:
✦ Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with is maker. This has huge implications for how people present the message of Jesus. Yes, Jesus can come into our hearts. But we can join a movement that is as wide and as big as the universe itself. Rocks and trees and birds and swamps and ecosystems. God’s desire is to restore all of it.[8][9]
McLaren continues the thought: “Is getting individual souls into heaven the focal point of the gospel?” I’d have to say no, for any number of reasons. Don’t you think that God is concerned about saving the whole world?… It is the redemption of the world, the stars, the animals, the planets, the whole show.”[10]According to McLaren, “The church exists for the world – to be God’s catalyst so that the world can receive and enter God’s kingdom more and more.”[11]
When asked to define the gospel, Neo (the main philosophical character in McLaren’s novels) replies that it could not be reduced to a little formula, other than “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”[12] Narrowing this definition is not easy, but McLaren gives some insight when he writes,
✦ I am a Christian because I believe that, in all these ways, Jesus is saving the world. By the “world” I mean planet Earth and all life on it, because left to ourselves, un-judged, un-forgiven, and un-taught, we will certainly destroy this planet and its residents.[13]
In Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones’ book, The Emergent Manifesto of Hope, we find an emphasis on this universalism:
In summary, we give the following statement of our understanding about the widening scope of salvation:
Not only soul, whole body!
Not only whole body, all of the faithful community!
Not only all of the faithful community, all of humanity!
Not only all of humanity, all of God’s creation![14]
[….]
Sacrae Doctrinae
Tony Jones, an emergent leader, wrote on his blog Theoblogy, about the depths in which this movement will go in order to change or challenge sacred doctrine:
Anyway, my point in all this is that the doctrine of the Trinity is still on the table. Some people, it seems to me, would like for us to no longer debate certain “sacred” doctrines — the Trinity, the nature of Christ, the nature of scripture, the nature of marriage etc. And these persons tend to get very jumpy when emergent-types discuss these sacrae doctrinae, especially in books and at conferences that are being taped. “This is dangerous,” they say.[15]
Yes, the Trinity is being questioned. Instead of pointing to men like Merton, Yancey, and Meister Eckhart, maybe these authors/pastors should start providing answers to their parishioner’s questions rather than asking them to question history and doctrine, ad infinitum. Rob Bell joins this bashing… sorry… questioning the doctrine of the Trinity:
This three-in-oneness understanding of God emerged several hundred years after Jesus’ resurrection. People began to call this concept the Trinity. The word trinity is not found anywhere in the Bible. Jesus didn’t use the word, and the writers of the rest of the Bible didn’t use the word. But over time this belief, this understanding, this doctrine, has become central to how followers of Jesus have understood who God is. It is a spring[16], and people jumped for thousands of years without it. It was added later. We can take it out and examine it. Discuss it, probe it, question it. It flexes, and it stretches.[17]
Footnotes
[1] While these authors and pastors try not to be labeled as “liberal,” that is exactly what they are. In an interview with Rob Bell (audio of which can be found at Fighting for the Faith… right around forty minutes into the program) where he is praising the TNIV — a gender neutered Bible — Rob himself says he is in the middle of the progressive movement: “My name is Rob Bell, I’m a pastor in Grand Rapids Michigan, the epicenter of progressive culture.”
This can also be found as well under iTunes free podcasts under Fighting for the Faith, dated at 9-1-09, the podcast is titled, “What is Rob Bell Going To Do Now That The TNIV is Going to Be Discontinued?” One of the founders of the emergent movement, Mark Driscoll notes as much as well:
Emergent liberals range from those on the theological fringe of orthodoxy to those caught up in heresy that critiques key evangelical doctrines, such as the Bible as authoritative divine revelation; God as Trinity; the sinfulness of human nature; the deity of Jesus Christ; Jesus’ death in our place to pay the penalty for our sins on the cross; the exclusivity of Jesus for salvation; the sinfulness of homosexuality and other sex outside of heterosexual marriage; and the conscious, eternal torments of hell. Some emerging house churches are also emergent liberal in their doctrine. Emergent liberals are networked by organizations such as the Emergent Village, which is led by author and theologian Tony Jones (Jones is no longer a youth pastor but is involved at Doug Pagitt‘s church), along with other prominent emergent leaders such as Pagitt, Karen Ward, and Tim Keel. The most visible emergent liberal leaders are Brian McLaren and Rob Bell. Emergent liberals are commonly critiqued as those who are merely recycling the liberal doctrinal debates of a previous generation without seeing significant conversion growth; they are merely gathering disgruntled Christians and people intrigued by false doctrine. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, offers this critique:
✦ When it comes to issues such as the exclusivity of the gospel, the identity of Jesus Christ as both fully human and fully divine, the authoritative character of Scripture as written revelation, and the clear teachings of Scripture concerning issues such as homosexuality, this [emergent liberal] movement simply refuses to answer the questions.”
Religion Saves + Nine Other Misconceptions, 217.
[2] Andy Crouch, “Emergent Mystique,” 37-38.
[3] A caveat here: if he does not think liberals have it right, and then says he does not have it right either… is he then saying he is on the conservative side of the issue? If he is on the right, then where does that leave people like D. A. Carson, Millard Erickson, or myself? I guess I do not fit within what he considers orthodox… maybe we’re “fascists” of sorts?
[4] David G. Benner, Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship & Direction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 9 (emphasis added).
[5] David K. Clark and Norman L. Geisler, Apologetics in the New Age: A Christian Critique of Pantheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990), 70-71.
[6] Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald N. Gleason, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 285.
[7] Brian McLaren, The Last Word After That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005), 69.
[8] Bell, Velvet Elvis, 109-110.
[9] A humorous aside: could you imagine bickering back-and-forth with God if Job co-opted everything God created? As God would point out how small Job was in comparison to His creation, Job would respond, “no, I am part of this wide and big universe, I am not tiny! I am bigger, in fact, than that Behemoth you just showed me.”
[10] Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 184.
[11] Ibid., 121.
[12] Ibid., 151.
[13] Brian Mclaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2004), 106.
[14] Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 82-83 (emphasis added).
[16] “Bell’s term for a removable doctrine,” this insight came from Truth for Christ whose main page is: http://www.truthforchrist.com/, the quote can be found at:
You can almost hear the faint calls of imperialism or xenophobia happening: Of course! How dare Paul say that this girls culture or viewpoint needed changing to begin with! Paul obviously needs a diversity training course.
ACTS 16:21
“They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.” (ESV)
“They are telling people to do things that are not right for us as Romans to do.” (ETRV)
Political Correctness is nothing new. Now here is the story sent me via FaceBook found on CP Church & Ministry:
The head of the Episcopal Church has garnered outrage from some in the Anglican Communion over her claim that St. Paul of Tarsus’ curing of a demon-possessed slave girl as described in the Bible was wrong.
In a sermon delivered before the Diocese of Venezuela on the island nation of Curaçao, Presiding Bishop The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori said that by driving the demon out of her Paul was “depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness.”
“Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness,” said Jefferts Schori.
“Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it. It gets him thrown in prison. That’s pretty much where he’s put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!”
The passage that Jefferts Schori was preaching can be found in the Book of Acts, chapter 16. The chapter provides an account of some of the mission Paul of Tarsus did in the early church.
In the incident described in Acts 16, Paul cures a slave girl of a demon that had given the girl the ability to fortune-tell and made money for her masters.
[….]
Some commented on-line about the sermon:
“Paul cast a demon out of the slave girl, an agent of Satan, a force of darkness, and didn’t deprive her of some spiritual gift…this sermon is not a Christian sermon,” posted Fr. Will McQueen.
“It is terribly stunning to read that the Presiding Bishop elevates the sinful practice of necromancy to the Holy Spirit inspired territory of spiritual gifts. This is eisegesis of a demonic sort,” posted Fr. Trent Overman.
This comment brought to mind this verse in Isaiah:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (5:20, HCSB)
Continuing:
“How can the Presiding Bishop miss the point that the woman was exploited – the slave woman was in physical, spiritual and relational bondage – she was being used for profit and her incessant shouting was disruptive and insincere,” posted a user doting the name “BabyBlue.”
Charlie Jackson, a poster who identified himself as “a pretty theologically liberal Episcopalian”, nevertheless concluded that Jefferts Schori’s interpretation of Acts 16 “is just too much.”
Chris Rosebrough of Pirate Christian Radio (http://www.piratechristianradio.com/) discusses quickley a new book by author, Peter Enns, entitled, The Evolution of Adam. As is the problem with postmodernity and the liberal viewpoint of revelation and the Bible, eisegesis is practiced rather than exegesis.
“I don’t think they have any good Biblical basis at all,” Beisner said. “What they do is they jump quickly from the Biblical teaching that we’re supposed to be caring for the poor to ‘global warming is going to hurt the poor more than it hurts anybody else,’ which by the way is true of every problem. You know, poverty makes you vulnerable, period. Wealth makes you less vulnerable, period. There’s even a proverb in the book of Proverbs that says essentially that.”
According to Beisner, the belief that fighting global warming was a component of helping the poor was specifically used by the Evangelical Environmental Network and endorsed by others to make this case.
“They jump quickly from, ‘We need to help the poor,’ to ‘global warming is going to hurt the poor, therefore we need to fight global warming,'” Beisner said. “In 2006, a group – the Evangelical Environmental Network launched a new project called the Environmental Climate Initiative, which put out a statement, ‘Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.’ And that statement was endorsed by 86 different leading evangelicals – presidents of the evangelical colleges, admission organizations. And I went down the list of endorsers. There was no list of authors of that. I later found out the main author was an ethics professor named David Gushee. When I debated him over that at this university, he told me before the debate, ‘You know when I was preparing for this debate, I found out the science was a whole more nuanced than I realized when I wrote the paper.’ I thought, ‘David, you should have known that before you wrote.'”…..
